THE LYING CLUB
by  Annie Ward

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Three women. Two bodies. One big lie…

A tangled web of lies draws together three women in this explosive thriller of revenge, murder, and shocking secrets.

At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke—a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother, and serial cheater—and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs.

But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers, and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town—where people stop at nothing to get what they want.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Reade was an undeniably handsome seventeen-year-old. He played lacrosse in the spring, wrestled in the winter, and was the captain of the soccer team in the fall. To Natalie, he looked like the sort of boy who would go on to pledge a good fraternity, major in economics with a minor in sexual assault, and eventually become a businessman like his dad. Had his circumstances been less affluent, she assumed he would have been just fine because of his looks alone. There was always Chippendales, reality television, and porn.

Everyone had problems with everyone.  The whole bunch. Every single last one of them had a reason to hate the other. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to do my job in a shark tank.

My Review:

There was a lot to unpack with this tautly written tale which featured a plethora of itchy elements that kept me on edge and debating the motivations and veracity of the entire cast of characters. And there was quite an oddly compelling and uniquely vile assortment to sift through.

The storylines were uncomfortably realistic, edgy, and disquieting. I had full-on cold prickles and was so immersed in her characters’ narratives I often found myself flinching during perusal. This was my second time falling into a well-contrived Annie Ward enclave of ghastly humans, torrid secrets, and twisty intrigue, and while I’m looking forward to many more, I need a spa day to release a boatload of tension and knots in my neck.

Annie Ward is the author of Beautiful Bad. She has a BA in English literature from UCLA and an MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Her first short screenplay, Strange Habit, starring Adam Scott, was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award winner at the Aspen Film Festival. She has received a Fulbright scholarship and an Escape to Create artist residency. She lives in Kansas with her family.

Favorite Quotes:

In wartime, life sped up and was lived in snatches and you had to make the most of what you had, when you had it.

My mother says, “experience is what we call the accumulation of our mistakes.”

Her cousin was a young soul. Since childhood, Saffy had darted through life like a dragonfly in a summer meadow, landing in pleasant places and, apart from her parents’ tragic deaths which she’d been too young to remember, her way untouched by shadows.

Something the war had also taught her was that the truth wasn’t always best. Rather, it was elastic and sometimes you had to lie to save yourself and those you cared about.

Family wasn’t always the people you were connected to by blood, but also those who came into your life by chance and stayed by choice.

My Review:

This was an absorbing, heart-rending, and intriguing dual-timeline and multiple POV narratives between family members in WWII England and modern times. The storylines were original, engaging, well contrived, historically and culturally accurate, and laced with modern-day family tensions and 1940’s wartime dangers, and a sense of impending peril.

Unexpected revelations, family secrets, cultural concerns, clandestine operations, and identity issues were insightfully and thoughtfully explored in both timelines. I cared about the characters and was riddled with curiosity about what was to become of them.

The writing has emotive, perceptive, easy to fall into, and kept a smooth scroll of sharp visuals sparking across my gray matter. Ms. Gilroy is not only an agile storyteller but a wily one full of surprises.

One Hundred Intentions
(Aspen Cove #20)
by Kelly Collins

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Killer Looks
(Assassins in Love #0.5)
 by Tawna Fenske

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They’re hitmen. Trained assassins. If they nail this job, there’s a payoff. Possibly cookies.

But first, the bad stuff. Dante’s done with hitman life, but there’s one last job to do. A favor to the Duke of Dovlano targeting brutal gun runners. Dante calls on comrades, Matteo—brilliant, brooding, lethal—and charming Sebastian “The Dentist” LaDouceur. Each has skills he’s honed to take out threats at all costs. They’ve also got soft spots for family, lost loves, baby farm animals, and iambic pentameter.

But when the job falls apart, their carefully laid plans go up in smoke. Can three killers with a conscience stick together, or is it every man for himself?

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

 

Seattle’s so weird… Everyone wants to look like they just hiked back from chopping down a pine tree and now they’d like an extra-tall espresso to go.

 

My Review:

 

This fast-paced novella kicks off an unexpected genre from this talented scribe. The storylines were busy, action-packed, and went in all directions at once while introducing three quirky mercenaries with an eye on taking down bad guys. This installment was short, amusingly detailed yet tense with impending peril while peeling back just enough layers of their past to taunt and tease my curiosity while leaving me hanging about their future. If I didn’t know the next installment was already on its way I would be stamping my little foot and swearing a blue streak as well as a pox on this wily author for the heinous cliffhanger. I do believe I’m hooked.  And would you look at that – it is currently free – but, you better hurry!

About the Author 

 

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When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at 22, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA-nominated, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. Publishers Weekly has praised Tawna’s offbeat romances with multiple starred reviews and noted, “There’s something wonderfully relaxing about being immersed in a story filled with over-the-top characters in undeniably relatable situations. Heartache and humor go hand in hand.”

Tawna lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, stepkids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets. She loves hiking, snowshoeing, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year. To find out more about Tawna and her books, visit www.tawnafenske.com.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Time is a chameleon. It’s ever changing, cannily adapting to circumstances. It stretches out some tiny moments for an eternity. Then it shifts course and swallows up whole days, years even, as if they never existed. It’s as slippery and elusive as water running through the cracks in a tightly cupped hand.

Grief is a shape-shifter. It defies logic, sneaking up on you when you least expect it and leaving you empty-handed and hollowed out when you go searching for it.

My fierce-looking dog’s favorite new toy is a fluffy stuffed rabbit. Instead of chewing it, Romeo has taken to carrying it around tenderly and sleeping curled around it at night. Love is an eternal mystery, I guess.

Grief isn’t linear. It isn’t logical. There’s no structure or civility to it; it grabs you when you least expect it and digs in its nails until you succumb.

My Review:

What guile! I fell right into a smartly laid trap and was easily led astray by these wily wordsmiths. I was totally hoodwinked by their agile misdirection and had felt so smug in my theories. I was sooo very, very, wrong! A lot was going on at once with multiple storylines that were actively engaging while taut with tension and a steadily ratcheting sense of intrigue and impending peril. The characters were an odd assortment of personalities and backgrounds with traits that prickled, enticed, annoyed, and teased my curiosity while leaving me with a desire to know more about each. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are full of craft and combined are a synergetic and breath-stealing dynamic duo.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Being a spoiled white girl when you’re Black is literally my favorite thing ever. It confuses very literally everyone.” “That’s the only reason I put up with it.”

Polite society is a misnomer.

She’s the only person I still love when I hate her.

Whatever else you are, you’re still a Black girl. One day you’ll know how impossible it is to tell the difference between personalized terror aimed straight at you, and good ole run-of-the-mill systemic prejudice.

Cherish was a spoiled white girl who also happened to be Black, and it meant that the consequence of coddling, the incompetence it breeds, was dangerous.

My Review:

It has been over a day since I finished reading this one and I am quite conflicted and have been stewing and unable to start another book while I ruminate. I vacillated while reading but just couldn’t grasp all that was going on in this disturbing, multi-faceted, and complex tale. I occasionally felt lost, and frequently addled and confused while trying to understand the logic and symbolism the characters employed. And I wasn’t the only one as they were confusing and confounding each other as well.

There was a surfeit of personality disorders, anger, smoldering resentment, and an annoying sense of entitlement, as well as significant features of mental illness to wade through. I was invested and motivated, yet I couldn’t put all the pieces together, it was beyond my plane of experience or comprehension. Regardless, the various characters’ level of sociopathy was chilling and distressing.

I still can’t settle on whom I despise more, as every single one of them was a source of deep disappointment to me in the end. There were no heroes in this tale but quite a few victims. I must surrender and move on, yet I give the author her due and respect her process and word prowess.   Ms. Morrow kept me on edge, off-balance, and intrigued.