Books Dani Likes

Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia

Hello Kittens! I’ve got a great backlist title for you today. It’s going to appeal to fans of non-traditional thrillers and all the “city folk” who get freaked out just thinking about going into the woods. “Leave no trace” is a well-known concept when it comes to responsibly interacting with the great outdoors. The main idea is that whatever you bring with you must also leave with you so that you leave no trace that you were ever there. Letting nature remain undisturbed by your unnatural presence. This was an impulse grab at the library for me. I read an excerpt of the first few chapters quite a while ago on BookishFirst, but I wasn’t a winner in that drawing so I kind of moved on and forgot about this title. Too many books, too little time. I’m glad I found the time for this one and I hope you will clear a little time and space in your TBR for it.

Some of you may be thinking to yourself, “Hey Dani! You haven’t posted anything in a really long time. Aren’t you going to explain why?” To which I reply, “Nope. We’re just going to gloss over it and all move on with our lives. Enjoy the review darlin’.”

Title: Leave No Trace

Author: Mindy Mejia

Author website: https://mindymejia.com/

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publish date: September 4, 2018

ISBN: 9781501177361

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Lucas Blackthorn and his father Josiah disappeared in the wilds of Minnesota over a decade ago. They vanished without a trace from a camping trip and were never heard from again…until now. Lucas is discovered in a town not far from where he and his father originally disappeared. Josiah is nowhere to be found and Lucas won’t speak to anyone, not even to explain what happened to him and where his father is. The justice system delivers the uncommunicative Lucas to a local mental health facility where the Senior Psychiatrist for the facility makes a bold decision to pair a relatively inexperienced speech therapist with this challenging patient. Maya Stark has a history of her own and isn’t overly sure about this whole plan, especially not when her first encounter with Lucas results in Maya unconscious on the floor and Lucas attempting the first of many escapes.

This story kept me mesmerized for all 319 pages. The reader knows very little about either Lucas or Maya in the beginning of the story, but there are hints at darker pasts for both of them. Lucas comes across unhinged and extremely dangerous. He attempts to escape multiple times and always seems to be trying to return to the woods. The reader is left asking again and again, if he wanted to be in the woods so badly, why did he come out? He’s completely disconnected with modern society and doesn’t understand most of what is happening to him in the mental health system.

Maya, on the other hand, knows the system inside and out. She was a patient before she went to school for speech therapy, and her history with the facility is a persistent teaser throughout the first half of the book. As Maya struggles to acclimate to her new role and to this challenging patient, she also has to confront the decisions that led her to this point and the past that is still influencing her daily interactions. Maya’s character is well-developed and intriguing.

The book will have the reader fascinated by the inner workings of the mental health system and the courageous, hopeful, and sometimes disappointing staff who work within it. While the social commentary isn’t laid on too thick, the point is made well that the pipeline between the judicial system, the mental health system, and a successful re-entry into society is riddled with holes and switchbacks. Mejia paints a rich cast of characters, both patients and staff, and challenges the reader to not accept the first version of a story as the only version of the story.

It takes a lot to surprise me with a mystery, but this one got me. There are great twists throughout, and the final one is gut wrenching. You won’t be sure who to root for, if anyone, but the ending was extremely satisfying. There’s nothing like a story that wraps itself in a perfect little bow at the end. Sometimes a person just gets tired of cliffhangers.

Disclaimer: None needed. This was a library find and I fully encourage you to go pick up a copy from your local library too.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

I don’t recall any curse words in this one. There are a couple of homicides, drug use, and an attempted rape, so it won’t be everyone’s glass of lemonade. Still, it’s a good addition to the genre and the underlying themes of the mental health system should keep a book group going for a while.

The Other Woman by Sandie Jones

Salutations Kittens! I’ve got a real treat for you this week with Sandie Jones’ The Other Woman, which takes a new look at the doomed relationship suspense trope. As the main character deals with a devious future mother-in-law, readers will cringe through every marriage rite-of-passage in this gripping read. I loved this title because I really couldn’t figure out these characters and there were several sub-plots that added complexity to the story and kept me guessing. This title had a little violence and a curse or two, but overall, I think this is a title that is going to be getting a lot of attention (it would make a great movie) and could be pretty widely recommended.

Title: The Other Woman

Author: Sandie Jones

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Publish date: August 21, 2018

ISBN: 9781250191984

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Meet Emily. Emily is a young professional living and working in London. She’s had a lot of jobs over the years, but has finally found something that she loves in recruiting. As she is finishing up a particularly useless professional conference, she escapes to a nearby bar and runs into an intriguing man named Adam. At first she thinks he’s a rude, entitled jerk, but he works to redeem himself and ends up calling her a few days later.

The relationship proceeds smoothly from there and Emily starts thinking about Adam’s long-term potential. She is so excited when Adam takes her to meet his mom, Pammie. Emily stresses over what to wear and she and Adam have a little tiff on the drive over, so her nerves are at a high when she finally meets his mother. Pammie seems like a dream. She is so kind, but every now and again, she says something a little off and Emily can’t quite figure her out. As time goes on Emily begins to question whether Pammie is really as excited for their relationship as she wants everyone to believe. For instance, why does Pammie show Emily a photo album that includes a picture of Adam’s last serious girlfriend in it? That was an accident, right?

That is only the beginning. Emily starts to think that all of the disasters and fights that she and Adam go through have Pammie at the heart of them. He just can’t see his mother the same way that Emily does. As the relationship progresses, Emily becomes increasingly suspicious of Adam’s mother. Can Emily claim her rightful place in his life when his mother is constantly intervening? Who will win the battle for his heart and what will be lost in the ensuing war between the women.

I thought that I knew where this title was going, but I fully admit that the ending through me for a loop. I spent some time frustrated with character of Emily, because she started off as such an independent and seemingly tough cookie but then she crumbles in the face of Adam’s misdeeds and flippant treatment of her feelings. I don’t particularly enjoy reading about weak female characters, but Emily’s back and forth with forgiveness and paranoia was definitely draining at times. I found myself wondering, “Why doesn’t she just leave? He can’t be worth all that.” For the record, I stand by that sentiment. If you’re reading this and a man treats you the way Adam treats Emily, leave him.

I appreciated the number of subplots that acted as red herrings. It seems like in the current suspense climate, you can’t assume that someone is dead just because everyone believes they’re dead, and I admit to wondering if that was the scenario with this title or a while. I usually obsess over all of the possible ways that a story could end if such-and-such character wanted revenge for something or if there’s someone from the protagonist’s past who changed their name. With this story, I suspected everyone. Pammie, James, Charlote, and even Emily’s good friend Seb. I also loved that the reader’s first exposure to the story is that very creepy prologue. I assumed when I got to the end of the story that it would circle back around to that moment exactly, but in fact it references a moment about ¾ of the way through the book, so that plot point might not have the oomph that it might have otherwise.

Overall, the story is one that I think most suspense fans will enjoy. I’ll be recommending it to patrons once our library gets a copy in.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher through BookishFirst in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

Our House by Louise Candlish

Hello Kittens! I have an intriguing read for you from British author Louise Candlish this week. Our House is Candlish’s 13^th novel and it comes out in just under two weeks. I’ll admit that I struggled with this one originally. In fact, I became frustrated with the characters halfway through and took a break to read The Broken Girls. I came back to it and am really glad that I stuck with it until the end. I changed my mind to such an extent that I just put another of Candlish’s titles on my TBR list.

Title: Our House

Author: Louise Candlish

Author website: http://www.louisecandlish.com/

Publisher: Berkley

Publish date: August 7, 2018

ISBN: 9780451489111

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Fiona and Bram Lawson are living an enviable life in a posh neighborhood in London with their two sons, Harry and Leo. At least, that’s how it appears to outsiders. But, of course, there’s more to this couple than meets the eye. Bram is a mild alcoholic with a roving eye and a moral compass that can’t seem to find true north. When Fiona finally kicks him out, allowing for a generous custody arrangement known as a bird’s nest, she puts the last bit of trust she can muster in Bram to the test. As she returns home from a weekend away and discovers a family moving in to her house, she cannot wrap her mind around how a mistake like this could have been made. As she learns about the real depth of Bram’s betrayal of her family, she depends on family and neighbors to see her through the most difficult struggle of her life. It’s easy to see this story as a condemnation of Bram, but nearly every character in this story ends up being severely flawed in one way or another.

The story begins at the end, just as Fiona begins to unravel schemes that have been building for months, and we spend the next 400 or so pages figuring it out with her. The story alternates between Fiona’s and Bram’s perspectives in the present day and the past. One unique feature that I really enjoyed was that the present-day Fiona is telling her side of the story on a popular podcast called The Victim, and the reader gets to experience the transcripts and online reactions to Fiona’s story as it is told. This was the first story that I’ve seen take the phenomena around real-life suspense stories like Making and Murderer and Serial (plus so many others) and run with it. It was charming and added a new dimension to the story, because you got to see a fictional audience reacting to the story, asking some of the same questions that I was as a reader.

I struggled a little with maintaining a suspension of disbelief in the middle of the story as Bram’s actions grow more despicable and desperate, while Fiona seems to be far too forgiving. I do not generally like stories that present women as weak and overly trusting of loathsome men for the sake of “love”, as I think it normalizes that cycles of violence that so many women find themselves trapped in in real life, but this book was an exception. Before all is said and done, Fiona finds her strength, albeit in less-than-ideal ways. The ending redeemed this storyline for me, and I’ll be trying additional titles from Candlish in the future. If you like suspense and some really vile characters, give this one a try.

Disclaimer: I received this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

The main thing that stops this one from the coveted fifth glass of lemonade is the presence of some cursing and the death of a child.

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

Hello Kittens! This week’s creepy tale should cool you off if you’re mired in the heat like we are down South. This one gave me the major heebie-jeebies. I was reading it on a dark and stormy night and ended up yelping out loud when thunder clapped just as I read, “There was someone in the field.” It was way creepier than it sounds, okay? I was actually in the middle of Our House by Louise Candlish when this library hold came in for me. It was perfect timing because I needed an emotional break from the characters in Our House. I ended up devouring this book in 3 days. This was my first title from Simone St. James, but I am officially a fan now, so I’ll be looking for more from this Canadian author in the future.

Title: The Broken Girls

Author: Simone St. James

Author website: http://www.simonestjames.com/

Publisher: Berkley

Publish date: March 20, 2018

ISBN: 9780451476203

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

From the first few pages, The Broken Girls draws the reader into a creepy world where something dark is stalking girls in the woods of Barrons, Vermont. This story follows the trend of the last few years of dividing its storyline between two time periods in the same place. We meet Katie, Roberta, CeCe, and Sonia in Barrons in 1950. All four girls are students at Idlewild Hall, a boarding school that takes girls who are unwanted by their families or other boarding schools. These are tough girls whose pasts are already haunted, but they are in for more of the same at Idlewild, because something sinister lives there too. “Do not let her in again!”

Then we fast forward to 2014 and meet Fiona Sheridan, a freelance journalist who has her own tragic history at Idlewild. The school was already closed down when the body of Fiona’s sister, Deb, was found there, but it is no less haunting for her 20 years later. When Fiona learns that the property has been purchased and that the new owner intends to renovate the school and re-open it, she knows she has to act. So much of what happened to her sister is unresolved for Fiona, that she has to keep digging to figure out what happened, and she just so happens to stumble upon the rest of the story of Idlewild in the process.

All of these women have survived terrible things, but as the story vacillates between 1950 and 2014 all of their stories will come to a point, revealing many long-held secrets.

The pacing of this story was excellent, and the plot twists were superb. I truly had no idea how St. James was going to tie all of the threads together, but she did a wonderful job. It’s difficult to pinpoint the real villain in the story, and there is an incredibly creepy ghost influencing the story throughout. The suspense in this novel was taut and the historical details added a new level of intensity midway through that kept the story moving when it might otherwise have stalled. It reminded me of…nothing. It was truly a unique read for me, and that was a very pleasant surprise.

Disclaimer: None needed. I got this title from my library.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

There are a few things that might trouble a reader in this story, namely, ghosts, rape, children born out of wedlock, grisly murders. Nothing graphic and not overly descriptive of the worst parts.

Not a Review

Hello Kittens! Today I bring you…not a review. Sorry my darlings, but I don’t have anything ready that is up to my standards today, but on Monday we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled reviews. Between Summer Reading and a family medical emergency, I have a small deficit between what I have read and what I have reviewed. No worries though! All and everyone is well now!

In lieu of a review, just this once, I’ll leave you with a list of some of my most anxiously awaited titles that will be publishing later this year (and next year). I love the anticipation of an upcoming release and knowing about the best books before they come out so that I can better advise my patrons and get them on holds lists sooner. I’ll break them down by genre for you, so sit back and enjoy!

General Fiction

September 4- Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird. This is the story of a young slave women who serves the Union Army in the Civil War. After the war, she cannot return to her former bondage and chooses to disguise her gender and join the Buffalo Soldiers.

September 18- Boomer1 by Daniel Torday. The major plot point of this story seems to revolve around a spurned man ranting about Baby Boomers on the Internet…and I do love a good rant.

October 23- Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adje-Brenyah. This is a collection of short stories that adds to the increasingly emerging literature of African American voices describing the experience of black men and women in America.

October 2- When the Men Were Gone by Marjorie Herrera Lewis. Based on the true story of a high school teacher who becomes the first female high school football coach in Texas when World War II robs her small town of most of its men. Facing opposition at every turn, she battles through.

October 30- Family Trust by Kathy Wang. This one sounds like The Nest in a different setting with different cultural influences. Nonetheless, I think this debut is looking promising.

September 18- A Willing Murder by Jude Deveraux. I’m mainly interested in this one because Deveraux, known for her romances, is stepping into a new genre: mystery. I love when authors stretch their talents. Sometimes it works, sometimes it bombs, but I applaud the effort.

Romance

September 11- Intercepted by Alexa Martin. Tells the story of an NFL girlfriend scorned who begins to fall for an old flame who just happens to be on the team of her cheating ex-boyfriend. Diverse and set in a world most of us can only imagine.

October 30- The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory. Public proposal goes wrong, written by the author of The Wedding Date. Say no more.

November 6- On Magnolia Lane by Denise Hunter. The third book in the Blue Ridge Romance series

This one’s summary reads like a modern re-telling of You’ve Got Mail, told with a flower shop owner and a pastor in the virtual world of online dating. With the passing of Nora Ephron a few years back, I love when people bring stories like this one back into the mainstream consciousness. It’s just nice.

January 29, 2019- 99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne. Darcy is in love with her twin brother’s best friend and has been since she was a child. Now an adult, the two are thrown together during a house flip and the sparks start flying.

January 1, 2019- The One You Fight For by Roni Loren. This is the third in a series about the adults who are dealing with the after effects of surviving a school shooting 14 years ago. The premise is intriguing because the subject matter is so sensitive, but I’m going to give this series a try.

Science Fiction

August 18- The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden (the end of a trilogy that started with The Bear and the Nightingale). A fairytale retelling set in Russia and featuring a flawed female main character discovering an inner power.

September 4- Poor Relations by Jo Walton. This one takes an interesting look at gender roles in a world only a few hundred years in a future where humans have colonized outer space. Not having read it yet, I am still going to assume that things are more similar than they are different.

August 2- Early Riser by Jasper Fforde. It doesn’t matter what the plot is. If Fforde writes it, it will be excellent and I will read it. He’s had me since Thursday Next.

Fantasy

November 8- The Kingdom of Copper (the second book in the Daevabad trilogy) by S.A. Chakraborty. This book follows The City of Brass and involves djinns and a Middle Eastern setting. That was really all I had to know to be sold on this one.

May 14, 2019- We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal. This one sounds pretty epic and follows two young people, Zafira and Nasir, as they fight their separate battles to save their land from an encroaching evil. Tthey are sent on similar quests to find an artifact that is supposed to help them stop this evil and their stories collide.

Young Adult

August 28- That’s Not What Happened by Kody Keplinger. This is from the same author who brought us The Duff, but this is an entirely different direction. It follows the survivor of a school shooting as she struggles with whether to reveal the truth about what happened that day, especially in regards to her friend, a victim who has been seen as a martyr for her faith.

September 4- Ignite the Stars by Maura Milan. This is a sci-fi retelling of the Mahabrahata. It will be interesting to see this ancient Sanskrit text transformed into a YA Sci-Fi novel.

October 9- Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak. The Book Thief was one of those life-changing books that you read when you’re too young to really understand it’s beauty but that you love anyway. Based on that alone, I am going to be picking up this next title from Zusak. It’s been several years since we saw anything from him, and I’m sure there is going to be a lot of buzz around this release.

August 28- Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram. This is the story of a nerdy kid from a Persian family who is struggling with his various identities. When his family travels to Iran to see an ailing family member, Darius must confront a new world while still figuring out his own place in American society. I’ve got an ARC of this one, and the first few chapters do not disappoint.

This list barely even scratches the surface. The Fall is going to be loaded with fabulous books. What are you most excited for? Drop a comment below and let me know about the books you are stalking for your TBR list.