Tag Archives: Adult

Apr

Godsgrave (The Nevernight Chronicle #2) – Jay Kristoff

Title: Godsgrave (The Nevernight Chronicle #2) by Jay Kristoff
Publishing Info: June 27, 2017 by HarperCollins, HarperTeen
Source: Scribd
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: March 7, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads
Related Posts: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1), Gemina (The Illuminae Files #1), Obsidio (The Illuminae Files #3), Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1)

Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident…until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.

Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out—and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date—one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.

I knew I was in for a while ride when starting GODSGRAVE but Jay Kristoff sure did not skimp on the cliffhanger here! There was definitely a lot that happened towards the end of the book, full of action, surprises, and twists. While NEVERNIGHT was easily one of my favorite books of last year, I didn’t love GODSGRAVE quiiiite as much but it was still one of my favorite reads of 2019!

The gladiator aspect was fine and enjoyable, but it was just such a different setting from the first book. I liked the school setting more in NEVERNIGHT and it was such an easy way to introduce all of the elements of this world, magical and political. GODSGRAVE became a lot more plot-driven instead of world-driven, I think, and there was a heavy action focus with the gladiator concept taking over a big part of this book. It was still enjoyable but I felt like some of the things we could learn about the world was a bit limited due to setting.

I also felt like we got a lot more character development in NEVERNIGHT. There were a lot of interesting things that happened here, although I do still wish we had gotten a few more answers here too. There was a lot to discover and I feel like we could have had a few more teases! GODSGRAVE was still a fantastic middle book but I almost felt like a couple things took a bit too long to transition. Then again NEVERNIGHT also really took its time setting a few things up. Also, I’m definitely not complaining because I really did still enjoy it! It’s just interesting to look back after finishing to see how things shook out over the course of the book. I think it would be fascinating to reread this whole series after reading the last book.

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Kept Me Hooked On: Roman influence in fantasy. I feel like most of the high fantasy influence is largely English. This was a very unique Italian/Roman influence and it was a neat change of pace!
Left Me Wanting More: World-building? It really wasn’t missing world-building but I did miss how much we got in NEVERNIGHT through what we learned through the school. It was just a different way of introducing things to the audience, I guess.

Addiction Rating
Read it!

A solid second book for this series and a great anticipation for the finale!

BOOKS LIKE GODSGRAVE

Apr

Every Last Lie – Mary Kubica

Title: Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica
Publishing Info: June 27, 2017 by HarperCollins, HarperTeen
Source: Scribd
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: March 7, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads
Related Posts: The Good Girl, Pretty Baby, Don't You Cry

Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident…until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.

Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out—and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date—one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.

Okay, so firstly, this book gets an extra bump from me just for being in my neighborhood, essentially. I was trying to pick up on all of the landmarks mentioned because the street where the accident happened (Harvey Rd and its 90 degree turn) sounded reeeeally familiar to me. Turns out that I finally narrowed it down thanks to a park mention and an intersection and this book takes place in the Plainfield/Oswego/Naperville area which happens to be right in my neck of the woods! It was really fun to actually be able to identify with the setting because usually the closest I get is Chicago proper or if a book is in the suburbs, usually it’s a fake suburb or has fake landmarks, so that was really fun!

I was actually more engaged with EVERY LAST LIE than I was with a lot of Mary Kubica’s books. Sometimes the main characters get a little too hard to follow but I really liked that EVERY LAST LIE wasn’t too dramatic (well, until the end) and it was a simple case of following up on some loose ends and curious happenings of the husband’s death. I liked following a character who was sane but grieving instead of someone who was on the breaking point, like some of the other Mary Kubica characters. Clara obviously had her moments of hardship and she sort of started to unravel at the end, but I liked that this was more thriller and solving a mystery than dipping into the psychological thriller and having a more unreliable narrator.

I didn’t really love the ending but I also didn’t hate it. I liked that things didn’t get TOO crazy but there was also something that wasn’t quite satisfying about it. Thriller endings are so hard sometimes because I can never tell how I “want” it to end. When they’re not crazy enough, it doesn’t feel like enough and sometimes they’re too crazy and I wanted more of the normal. I did like where this story went and it didn’t go too far off the rails but there was still just something I was missing.

Kept Me Hooked On: Familiar places! I’ll admit — it’s easy to get hooked on a book when I’m familiar with the setting. This was a real-life place where I’ve been before and it was that much more interesting picturing this book taking place there!
Left Me Wanting More: Book connection. I guess aside from the location connection, I didn’t feel as much as I wanted to with the main characters or the plot. It’s been a while since I read this (took me a while to write a formal review) and I can’t even really remember what happened.

Addiction Rating
Try it

I kept reading Mary Kubica books but really I haven’t quite loved any of them. I do like the local location so that’s definitely fun but if you like thrillers, she’s still a pretty popular author so I’d say they’re worth the try, in any publication order, really.

BOOKS LIKE EVERY LAST LIE

Apr

Shorefall (Foundryside #2) – Robert Jackson Bennett

Title: Shorefall (Foundryside #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Publishing Info: April 21, 2020 by Penguin Random House, Del Rey Books
Source: Received from the publisher for review purposes
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Date Completed: April 15, 2020
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

The upstart firm Foundryside is struggling to make it. Orso Igancio and his star employee, former thief Sancia Grado, are accomplishing brilliant things with scriving, the magical art of encoding sentience into everyday objects, but it's not enough. The massive merchant houses of Tevanne won't tolerate competition, and they're willing to do anything to crush Foundryside.

But even the merchant houses of Tevanne might have met their match. An immensely powerful and deadly entity has been resurrected in the shadows of Tevanne, one that's not interested in wealth or trade routes: a hierophant, one of the ancient practitioners of scriving. And he has a great fascination for Foundryside, and its employees - especially Sancia.

Now Sancia and the rest of Foundryside must race to combat this new menace, which means understanding the origins of scriving itself - before the hierophant burns Tevanne to the ground.

I picked up FOUNDRYSIDE on a whim in 2018 when I saw it as an ARC at ALA and it was sort of like a new discovery for me. No one I knew had read it and thieves! cons! banter! magic! It sounded like such a me book, and a me book it ended up being after I read it too. SHOREFALL was one of my most anticipated releases of 2020 because of that and whew. This was awkward and painful for me.

I listened to the audiobook for this one instead of reading since I received a copy from the publisher and that’s how I get most of my reads in these days. The narrator was fine but I didn’t love her and I would have preferred maybe two narrators to get a male voice in there too even though a lot of this book is from Sancia’s persperctive, despite being in the third person. Maybe I’m not remembering well, but I feel like we got a LOT more from other POVs in FOUNDRYSIDE and I felt like Gregor had a much stronger presence in that book… I really would have loved to see more character development in this book but it really just fell flat and I feel like we learned almost nothing new about any of the characters except for Gregor in moments of plot reveal. There just really wasn’t much of anything new, and if anything, Sancia just became mushier with a romance involved. It’s not a bad thing but she lost some zip and the character banter was one of the things that made FOUNDRYSIDE so enjoyable. There was pretty much nothing humorous in SHOREFALL and I was pretty bummed to see that missing here.

Speaking of tone, the whole feel of this book seems so different. FOUNDRYSIDE was basically all heist/theiving/scheming and SHOREFALL really didn’t feel engaging like that at all. There are some big villain presences in here and gods/godlike characters getting involved which I guess makes sense after the end of book one but it really did change the feel of just about everything. The book was working on a grander scale which seems to have worked for a lot of people but I just didn’t love it. The concept was a very Brandon Sanderson-esque type of concept for the book but I didn’t like the pacing and plotting here like I do with Sanderson’s books (sorry to make the comparison but it’s part of the reason I loved FOUNDRYSIDE so much) and it really lacked those fun twists or brilliant moments that I’ve loved so much before. There were some big twists here but the scale was just so big that I just wasn’t really into it. It was like it was pushed too quickly and maybe things like this should have been spread out into more than just three books, giving the second book time to set up another task for the team while slowly introducing these higher powers, giving more of a team bonding, time to care about the characters more and become really invested in them, and get the ball rolling on these bigger things coming into play. It seemed like it JUMPED from book one to book two and it was all a bit much for me, coming across as forced and trying too hard to be epic.

The pacing was just not for me at all. There were so many BIG BIG action sequences that I constantly felt like the book was ending with all of these climax-like moments. But then it just kept going and going and going. Everyone sort of seemed like a shell of who they once were with just the big points sticking and I missed all of those pieces that made them human, so the dialogue was boring and sort of eye-roll worthy at points. It felt basic and more like what I expect from some newer or younger authors. There were WAY too many villains speeches with the big bag guy just telling you what he was going to do and there was actually a point where the team was like “What do we do now” and Sancia says “Let’s talk to him. He seems like he likes to talk” (not a direct quote) and I laughed out loud. Yep, he sure does.

I read a couple reviews before I finished the book because there was seriously a point where I considered not finishing but I decided I could make it another five and a half hours. One review pointed out how characters constantly get cut off mid-sentence and wow, that was a mistake to read because it was all I noticed for the rest of the book and really annoying…. And then others raved about the ending of the book and even those who didn’t love it felt the ending redeemed the rest of it. I didn’t really feel that way but there is a big reveal moment that’s supposed to shock you and others that are supposed to tug on your heart-strings. I just didn’t care at that point and wanted the book to end so I was not moved at all but my feelings shut off by that point. As for the plotting…. Eh. I don’t really know if I care to read the last book, even if there are only three and I’d only have to read one more. I don’t really care for where this book took the series and I’m just so disappointed with the pacing, lack of banter, and lack of character development that I really just don’t care what happens, plot-wise or character-wise. I can’t imagine being drawn in enough to care about the last book, and that’s the saddest part of it all when I was so excited about the first book.

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Kept Me Hooked On: Less-mainstream fantasy reads. I don’t really know many people reading this series so it was still enjoyable to read something that was a little “unique” to me.
Left Me Wanting More: The feel of the first book. I missed nearly everything that made the first book what it was. Heists! Banter! Ugh.

Addiction Rating
Try it

If you read FOUNDRYSIDE and enjoyed it, you may still like SHOREFALL. It didn’t work for me but a bunch of other reviewers really loved it!

BOOKS LIKE SHOREFALL

Apr

All Your Twisted Secrets – Diana Urban

Title: All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
Publishing Info: March 17, 2020 by HarperCollins, HarperTeen
Source: Audiobook borrowed from library
Genres: Young Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: April 16, 2020
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.

Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?

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This was…. kind of stupid. I’ll explain later in spoiler tags but I’m really disappointed with this one for a few different reasons. Non-spoilery things first BUT THERE ARE SPOILERS LATER ON in this review, so beware! They are well-marked so feel free to read the rest until you hit them!

The characters are incredibly flat and one-dimensional. There was little to no character development for any of the characters except to push them toward their dedications or their stereotypical “brands”. There’s an athlete and all he cares about is baseball. There’s a musician and all she cares about is music. The guy who’s branded as a stoner and who’s thought to be dealing drugs comes from a bad home. There’s humanity in any of these characters and they’re so incredibly flat that it made the kind of annoying when there was really nothing to get to know about them along the way. The reactions were not deep, the goals were surface-level. It just wasn’t anything to write home about.

The book felt kind of campy instead of thrilling. I actually have no problem with campy… when things are meant to be campy. KILL THE BOY BAND? Highly amusing and excellent. I don’t think this was meant to feel so slasher film (without the slashing). It actually really did feel like ONE OF US IS LYING, as mentioned in the synopsis but too bad I didn’t like the feel of that book either so that didn’t work in my favor. A few things were just too over the top and the whole plan for this book was just… ridiculous. Kids trapped in a room and someone has to die or a bomb will go off??? Eye-roll city. I didn’t *quite* know that was the plot before I read it — I just knew they were trapped together and that it was a thriller — but I probably still would have read it anyway.

I wish we had a time-ticking, nail-biting, fast-paced thriller instead of constant flashbacks to the events leading up to the entrapment. I was just hoping we would get a thriller side of things and focus on what was happening in the room instead of flashing back. The rest of the book really wasn’t twisty or mysterious except for a couple truth nuggets that were stored away so they could be revealed later, but it really wasn’t that twisty for me, being a big thriller fan. I just don’t think everything we learned was a big enough factor for this threat of “someone has to die” to happen and I kept waiting to be shocked and I really wasn’t.

Some of the high school stuff was incredibly unrealistic. I played sports and did the plays/musicals in high school. There comes a point where you have to pick one or the other. I doubted that Sasha could have been a varsity cheerleader to the point where she’s helping pick people for the squad and organizing things AND been so involved in the play AND have been so into her studies. There’s just not enough time in the world (which I guess was the point) but no, literally. It’s not possible. The practices for sports and the plays are likely at the same time, at least at some point in time, because this is high school and kids still have to practice after school. And of course everyone in this book was SO GOOD at what they do. The brightest brains, a musical composer, an all-star athlete… it was all just a bit too perfect that it felt far-fetched.

And here’s the spoiler… Turn away now if you don’t want to read it! So we find out at the end that narrator and lead gal pal Amber orchestrated this whole thing, trapping everyone in the room together to force Sasha to confess how terrible she was so she could open her eyes to this and she would be a better person after it. She was going to do it all secretly so no one would ever know it was her. Firstly, this is a BIG thing to orchestrate and you’d be in incredible trouble on so many levels. Likely, you couldn’t pull it off (and ha, she uhhh didn’t in many ways) and there’s the risk of anyone finding out meaning trespassing, breaking and entering, some kind of death threats or something, and not to mention all of your friends and potential love interest hating you for it. But here’s the kicker… Sasha DIES, stabbed by Amber’s former best friend Priya (who stops being her friend because Amber is too concerned with Sasha) and NO ONE’S MAD AT AMBER FOR MAKING THIS WHOLE THING HAPPEN. Amber TELLS Priya, the girl who stabbed someone, and potential love interest that she was the one who set it up and they’re like, no, don’t tell the cops, you’ll get in so much trouble! Priya isn’t pissed as hell that the only reason SHE stabbed someone and will have to live with that forever is because of what her former best friend orchestrated? Of COURSE everything went wrong! You’re 17 years old! You don’t understand human nature and what people do when they’re forced to confront their most horrible secrets, especially in front of other people. What an idiot. I’m even angrier typing it all out and thinking about it all over again.

The reason for this book is so stupid and having talked about it, I just can’t deal with that being the whole plot of this book. I can’t believe anyone would think that would work. And that they get away with it and no one suffers any consequences. I guess I have something to rant about now though *shrug*

addiction_factor1

Kept Me Hooked On: Time-sensitive thrillers. I wish we spent the WHOLE time with the thrilling part of things, but I did like how there was a finite space in which this all took place.
Left Me Wanting More: Of a reality check? I just don’t see this EVER happening and it was far too unrealistic for me.

Addiction Rating
Skip it

I personally would not recommend this one. There are a bunch of people who enjoyed it but as a thriller fan, this really wasn’t enjoyable for me and the ending made me so mad. I just can’t recommend it because of that.

book_recommendations1

BOOKS LIKE ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS

Apr

The Better Liar – Tanen Jones

Title: The Better Liar by Tanen Jones
Publishing Info: January 14, 2020 by Penguin Random House, Ballantine Books
Source: Received from the publisher for review purposes
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: February 19, 2020
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

When a woman conceals her sister’s death to claim their joint inheritance, her deception exposes a web of dangerous secrets in this addictive new thriller for fans of Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, and Paula Hawkins.

“Like most of the dead, I want to be remembered.”

Robin Voigt is dead. If Leslie had arrived at her sister’s cramped Las Vegas apartment just hours earlier, this would have been their first reunion in a decade. In the years since Robin ran away from home as a teenager, Leslie has stayed in New Mexico, taking care of their dying father even as she began building a family of her own. But when their father passed away, Leslie received a rude awakening: She and Robin would receive the inheritance he left them together—or not at all. Now her half of the money may be beyond her grasp. And unbeknownst to anyone, even her husband, Leslie needs it desperately.

When she meets a charismatic young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Robin—and has every reason to leave her past behind—the two make a reckless bargain: Mary will impersonate Robin for a week in exchange for Robin’s half of the cash. But neither realizes how high the stakes will become when Mary takes a dead woman’s name. Even as Mary begins to suspect Leslie is hiding something, and Leslie realizes the stranger living in her house, babysitting her newborn son, and charming her husband has secrets of her own, Robin’s wild, troubled legacy threatens to eclipse them both.

An electric, twisted portrait of sisterhood and the ties that bind, The Better Liar is a stunning debut with a heart-stopping, twist-after-twist finale that will beg the question: How far would you go to get what’s yours?

This was a really interesting read! THE BETTER LIAR had so many layers and I love a good unreliable narrator. The switching of POVs made the story work and captured some thriller tricks at their finest!

The characters really sucked me into this book and especially with psychological thrillers like this, I feel like that’s so important. There was something about Leslie that you knew just wasn’t quite right but it and it was a thought-provoking ride trying to figure out what secrets she was keeping and why. We get a voice from Robin, who has been missing for years and we’re quite unsure what happened to her for all those years, so that added another layer of intrigue, and then there’s the stranger Mary who agrees to impersonate Robin so Leslie can retrieve an inheritance . It really was so twisty the way all of these characters worked together (or against each other) and how this story unfolded the more you learned about each one.

There’s a big twist in here (as there usually are with psychological thrillers) that I somehow didn’t see coming and I love with a book surprises me! That’s one thing I love about listening to thrillers on audio while working — my brain doesn’t try as hard to dissect the mystery since it’s being occupied by something else, so I was definitely shocked by this book and I loved the slow but steady journey to all of the reveals.

The book was interesting, twisty, and for its craziness, really not so far-fetched. I was worried the ending was just going to fizzle out and it actually had a few more twists coming to really bring the story full-circle and it was nice that the book didn’t drag on after the big reveal. Sometimes with thrillers once that big moment is presented to the audience, I tend to feel like things wilt if carried on too long, so I liked that this book was filled with things to keep the readers interested until literally the past page and also had a sense of originality to it.

Kept Me Hooked On: Unreliable narrators. You’ve got to love a good unreliable narrator, especially when there are three of them and you really can’t trust any one of them. This book definitely kept me guessing!
Left Me Wanting More: Pacing. I really didn’t have any complaints about this book, looking back. I liked the pacing of the book but I suppose there were just a couple points where my focus drifted. Really such a minor thing though because I really liked it from start to finish!

Addiction Rating
Read it

If you like psychological thrillers, I really recommend this one! I enjoyed every bit of it, really.

BOOKS LIKE THE BETTER LIAR

Mar

The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1) – Helen Hoang

Title: The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1) Publishing Info: June 5, 2018 by Penguin, Berkley
Source: Borrowed from Hoopla
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Date Completed: February 28, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases — a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice — with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan — from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...

I really enjoyed this book! The writing was so enjoyable and it was so easy to just fall into this story and be welcomed in by the characters. It was a cute, quick, fun, and meaningful read.

I really liked the inclusion and representation of Stella’s autism/Asperger’s and from what I know of it, I thought it was brought into the story and represented really well. It’s noted in the author’s bio that she is also on the autism spectrum so we can see her accurate representation of this in Stella’s character and I just really loved how it not only includes this character but also educates readers and shows what life can be like on a day to day basis as shown through Stella’s relationships, interactions, routines, and just daily situations.

The romance was SO cute I loved seeing Michael and Stella immediately fall for each other even though they weren’t “supposed to”. Michael treated Stella so well and I loved seeing a male protagonist stand up for a woman and treat women respectfully. There was just something so refreshing about the interactions between Michael and Stella that just made me so happy!

I kept waiting for the inevitable conflict and fight to pop up but things were going so well that I couldn’t tell where it was going to come from! Once it started to appear, I caught on and it was reassuring that even though the characters almost always make up, this one I knew they’d make up from! It was a really great romance and such a fun read. I really look forward to reading more from Helen Hoang!

Kept Me Hooked On: Adult romances. This was one of the first adult romances/rom-coms that I read on my kick to start reading romances and I was so happy that I enjoyed it!
Left Me Wanting More: I can’t think of anything it was missing! I just really enjoyed this book and I can’t think of anything I would have changed.

Addiction Rating
Read it

This was a lovely romance full of representation, cute moments, class, and steamy scenes. I definitely recommend it!

BOOKS LIKE THE KISS QUOTIENT

Mar

Darling Rose Gold – Stephanie Wrobel

Title: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel
Publishing Info: March 17, 2020 by Penguin, Berkley
Source: Received from the publisher for review purposes
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: March 6, 2020
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.

Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.

After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.

Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.

Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...

And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.

This was just a middle-of-the-road book for me. It’s being branded as a thriller but it’s kind of not that thrilling? There are some psychological aspects to it but it was more just a story about generations of abuse passing down the abuse but in different ways. I can see how it’s more “thriller” being that it could fit under the umbrella of psychological thrillers but it’s much more slow-moving than that.

The book alternates between the POV of Rose Gold and her mother, Patty. Rose Gold’s perspective takes place almost entirely in the past throughout the past five years while Patty has been in prison for child abuse, convicted of poisoning her daughter to keep her sick until she reached the age of 18 and caught on to what her mother was doing to her. Some of the Patty side was more interesting, displaying a different sort of delusion than we normally see in psychological thrillers, showing how her need to control Rose Gold and her need to feel needed as a mother led her to keep her daughter sick, so she could constantly be dependent on her mother. I wish that the author had pushed just a little further into this since we do get Patty’s POV. We see it later on when Patty is taking care of Rose Gold’s baby but I feel like we didn’t get a real reason why she was actually resulting to poisoning. I guess it’s more of an implied thing where Patty is too delusional herself to even admitting to using something to intentionally make her daughter sick…. except she does admit it to herself later. It’s a bit fuzzy and confusing so I’m not quite sure if that was intentional or if we just didn’t quite get one piece of the puzzle to really complete that picture.

The beginning and middle of the book were sort of just blah for me. Most of the book details Rose Gold’s life with her mother, what she went through, and how people treat Patty once she’s released from prison. It just felt like a lot of setting the scene before we got to the breaking points of these characters and I guess the truly horrific stuff started happening (on-page anyway, since we already know what happened to Rose Gold as a child) but to me, it didn’t really read as a thriller all the way through and it just sort of felt like regular fiction, telling a disturbing story but not really bringing the fast-paced thrills that I enjoy and prefer when I’m reading books of this genre. I guess my criticism of the book is more to do with how it’s marketed/presented/reviewed since it wasn’t really what I was expecting.

There were also a few things in the book that didn’t really get explored enough for me so it felt like they were there for shock value or as an “excuse” for behavior. Patty was physically abused (beaten) by her father when she was young and her brother committed suicide in their childhood home so Rose Gold buys Patty’s childhood home, knowing that when Patty gets out of jail, she’ll have to stay with her in the childhood home which held so many bad memories. Like… okay? Yes, that’s a big step to go out of your way to mentally abuse your mother who abused you but the whole point was that it made Patty uncomfortable and she pushed past it. It just seemed like a very big gesture not to be used in some other way in the book. It did add to the list of long thought-out plans to harm her mother but it just seemed kind of weird.

The ending was interesting but we spent so long watching it coming that it didn’t really pack a punch for me and I just felt like I read a book about some kind of unlikable characters. The abuse that they experienced led them to perpetuate the abuse cycle on and on and at a certain point, I was just uncomfortable with and annoyed at both of them.

Kept Me Hooked On: A different kind of thriller? It didn’t really feel like the thrillers I’m used to but I guess it’s just a bit of a different pace! It was interesting to read something outside of my usual pattern.
Left Me Wanting More: Development on some of the things mentioned along the way. There were a few things that were dropped and they just kind of felt like they were there for shock value since they didn’t really get brought up again or developed more in the moment. I wanted a few of the things that happened to mean just a bit more.

Addiction Rating
Get a second opinion

This wasn’t my normal kind of thriller so I just really was expecting something different and yes, something more. Other reviewers seemed to really like it so it seems like it might depend on what your preferences are!

BOOKS LIKE DARLING ROSE GOLD

Feb

Mini-Review: Time of Death (A Stillwater General Mystery #1) – Lucy Kerr

Title: Time of Death (A Stillwater General Mystery #1) by Lucy Kerr, Erica O'Rourke
Publishing Info: December 13, 2016 by Penguin Random House, Crooked Lane Books
Source: Audiobook borrowed from library, Used bookstore
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: May 28, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads
Related Posts: Dissonance (Dissonance #1), Harmonic (Dissonance #1.5), Resonance (Dissonance #2)

It’s been twelve years since ER nurse Frankie Stapleton fled the quiet banks of Stillwater, but with her sister’s pregnancy taking a dangerous turn and a string of failed relationships in Chicago hanging over her, Frankie is back–and hoping to put the past behind her. Within minutes of arriving at Stillwater General Hospital however, she ends up saving a man’s life, only to have him turn up dead hours later – and the hospital blames Frankie.

Her instincts say Clem Jensen didn’t die of natural causes, but the more she digs, the more she discovers too many suspects, a few surprising allies, and some hard truths about the first man she ever loved–and left. Now the boy she once knew is a skeptical sheriff’s deputy, her family's hardware store is in jeopardy, and the rift between Frankie and her loved ones is deeper than ever.

With her career–and future–on life support, Frankie must catch a killer, clear her name, and heal the wounds of the past in Lucy Kerr’s enthralling mystery debut, Time of Death

I’m so glad I finally read this book! It was a fun mystery that had more of a contemporary focus than a lot of mystery/thrillers do. The main character is back in town to help her family and runs into her old first-love/ex-fiance so there’s a lot of family stuff going on as well as a little hint of a potential romance. I love how the romance wasn’t rushed and there’s still plenty of time to explore that option in the rest of the series!

The mystery was also really well-put together. There were clues laid about so things were still constantly coming to light but the ending was a bit of a mystery until the reveal. I’m usually reading some darker thrillers or mysteries so this was a fun change of pace! It was somewhere in between a silly/fluffy cozy mystery and that dark thriller. A very happy middle!

Kept Me Hooked On: Mysteries. I read a lot of thrillers and I had fun reading something that was more into the mystery realm without that element of constant suspense.
Left Me Wanting More: Books! I was pretty satisfied with this one so I’d say I’d just like to read more of this series and see where the character storylines go too!

Addiction Rating
Read it

This was a really good read for me and I loved reading an adult mystery that wasn’t a thriller (as much as I love thrillers). I think it’s easily readable by those who like contemporary romances too!

BOOKS LIKE TIME OF DEATH

Jan

In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children #4) – Seanan McGuire

Title: In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children #4) by Seanan McGuire
Publishing Info: January 8, 2019 by Macmillan, Tor Books
Source: Scribd
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Date Completed: January 29, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.

When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

While I enjoyed IN AN ABSENT DREAM, I sort of felt like this prequel should maybe not have been the fourth book in the series. I didn’t mind that it was out of order chronologically but I felt more disconnected from Lundy after the last couple books (to be honest, I binge read the first three so I can’t remember which was she prominent in) and I would have liked to see her story earlier.

I liked how, unlike other children who had found doors, Lundy had family history with her door and the Goblin Market and how she was able to go there and back until ultimately the door was shut on her as well. It was also more interesting because she had some ties to the “real world” that she didn’t want to give up and felt an equal pull towards this new one. A lot of the other characters felt 100% better in their new worlds whereas Lundy’s sister gave her quite the reason to stay.

I really liked the feel of the world and the other characters. This felt like one of the lesser-developed portals compared to the other stories, possibly because Lundy kept going back and forth between the two. I would have like to spend more time there discovering more about the rules, spending time with some of the quests and tribulations instead of them being things that were just referenced.

This wasn’t my favorite story but it was still rather enjoyable. I know each story really does go back and it’s out of sequence chronologically speaking, but I almost wish there would have been one more story back and the school first and then heading back out to get more backstories of the other children at the school. I think I needed one more element to tie things back together, possibly.

Kept Me Hooked On: The many worlds of this series. It’s always so interesting to see what each person’s different world is! I really love exploring each one and seeing the creativity behind them all.
Left Me Wanting More: Character connection. I just felt al little distant from Lundy in this book. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was earlier in the series.

Addiction Rating
Read it

I’ve really been enjoying this series! Plus they’re super quick reads and really fun on audio!

BOOKS LIKE IN AN ABSENT DREAM

Jan

An Unwanted Guest – Shari Lapena

Title: An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
Publishing Info: August 7, 2018 by Penguin Random House
Source: ALAAC18
Genres: Adult, Mystery/Thriller
Date Completed: December 30, 2018
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads

A remote lodge in upstate New York is the perfect getaway. . . until the bodies start piling up.It's winter in the Catskills and the weather outside is frightful. But Mitchell's Inn is so delightful! The cozy lodge nestled deep in the woods is perfect for a relaxing--maybe even romantic--weekend away. The Inn boasts spacious old rooms with huge wood-burning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a book and someone you love. So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity--and all contact with the outside world--the guests settle in for the long haul. The power's down but they've got candles, blankets, and wood--a genuine rustic experience! Soon, though, a body turns up--surely an accident. When a second body appears, they start to panic. Then they find a third body. Within the snowed-in paradise, something--or someone--is picking off the guests one by one. They can't leave, and with no cell service, there's no prospect of getting the police in until the weather loosens its icy grip. The weekend getaway has turned deadly. For some couples, it's their first time away. For others, it will be their last. And there's nothing they can do about it but huddle down and hope they can survive the storm.

This was such an interesting read! I always love reading mysteries or thrillers where I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Shari Lapena did a great job at not revealing too much suspicion too early, and then once it started to arise, to cast it around really evenly to put a lot of doubt on the pages, never being too sure who to trust. At one point, I had no idea who was the murderer so I started to form all kinds of hair-brained ideas extending to psychological “everyone is the murderer” tropes that get played out so often. The ending was surprising and satisfying!

I also really loved this wintery setting. A snow storm was the perfect way to lock the guests of this hotel in, adding in the loss of power, unable to leave or maintain footprints because of the ice, and the antique nature of the hotel lending even less technology or modern conveniences, preventing the suspects from getting answers too easily. I also waited to read this book in the winter so it made it even more atmospheric (even though there wasn’t a lot of snow on the ground when I read it).

I feel like the narration could have been a bit smoother and it took me out of the novel just a little bit. Some of it felt forced and choppy (I sometimes have trouble when authors don’t use contractions in order to keep the narration formal when it just doesn’t seem natural) so that was really the only thing I didn’t connect with throughout the book.

It was quite a solid read with a good mystery and I really enjoyed it! I’m definitely interested in picking up more from Shari Lapena in the future and already have a few other titles from her earmarked!

Kept Me Hooked On: Single location thrillers. I loved that this all took place in a little off-the-grid hotel. It’s fun to see the ways that authors have to eliminate technology like this in order to keep everyone in the same place and unable to phone for help. I love everyone stuck together to hash out the mystery!
Left Me Wanting More: Smoothness. There were a couple spots that felt a little forced and choppy. With a couple more smooth transitions, this would have been even better, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot!

Addiction Rating
Read it

I really liked this one! I love when I read a thriller and I’m already looking forward to more from the author.

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