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

ABOUT KELLY COLLINS   

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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:

Relationship: Hanging by a thread.
Sex life: Dead on arrival.
Alcohol: Essential.

It’s normal to hate the man of your dreams, right?

Once upon a time, Abbie and Matt had swoon-worthy mini-breaks in Paris, and Abbie would cook him steak wearing nothing but an apron and high heels. These days, they’re experiencing the longest dry spell on record… And Abbie is keeping a very big secret.

But she’s not ready to give up. Nobody knows Abbie like Matt does, and it helps that he’s tall, dark, and handsome, with hazel eyes and dimples to die for.

Determined to reignite the romance, Abbie initiates Operation Memory Lane and recreates their happiest memories. Maybe breakfast in bed, sexy lingerie, dirty martinis, and a romantic weekend in the countryside will bring back Abbie’s butterflies and make her giddy with happiness…

But revisiting the past is a risky business, and secrets always come out in the end. Will the truth ruin their second chance at love?

This totally addictive second-chance romance will give you All. The. Feels! Perfect for fans of Emily Henry, Sophie Kinsella, and Beth O’Leary.

(Previously titled:  I Feel Like There’s a But Coming

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She’d snogged boys before, obviously. Gareth Roland, who’d tasted of cheese-and-onion crisps. Wayne– she’d never found out his last name– who’d stuck his tongue so deep into her mouth she thought she might choke. Vaughan Black, who she’d had the most enormous crush on but who’d groped her so enthusiastically he’d snapped her bra strap, and she’d had to spend the rest of the night clutching her left boob against her side with her elbow.

‘You can’t feed prawns to random cats! What if it had a shellfish allergy?’ ‘A cat with a shellfish allergy? Come on. What next– vegan, paleo, keto cats?’ ‘Aren’t all cats basically keto?’ ‘Yeah, I guess. But only some of them bang on about it endlessly to their mates.’

… how many relationships could withstand one partner telling the other he was so far up his own arse he needed a candle to read his emails…

It had been the long, grueling, unsuccessful process of trying to procreate that had stopped me feeling like a desiring, desirable, sexual person and made me feel like an egg-laying chicken in a battery farm– except my eggs were no good, and I’d get turned into pet food even sooner than my fertile sister chickens.

If the recipe for a happy marriage was barely being able to say a civil word to each other, I reckoned they’d nail it.

My Review:

Although I never dealt with the same unresolved issues as this couple, I identified with their plight. I would bet good money that the vast majority of couples who managed to stay married for a few decades have struggled, to varying degrees, with a sense of red hot disappointment in how parts of their lives together panned out, I know I certainly have. And kudos to those of us who made it through to the other side once dealing with the ennui, raging inner diva of entitlement, and the dawning realization that this is it so you better get with the program. And gold stars to those of us able to make the jump to maybe it’s not all on him or even about the annoying habits that trigger sudden warp speed jumps in blood pressure.

This was my first time reading Sophie Ranald and I applaud her clever use of humor, sensitivity, and surprising insight in dealing with several prickly issues that aren’t widely discussed. The characters’ independent and united journeys contained a few potholes and landmines that aren’t all that uncommon but can weigh heavily and turn nasty on a dime. The storylines were laced together with comedic descriptions as well as real-life issues while cast with characters that were well fleshed out, multi-faceted, and quick-witted with sassy banter and snarky observations. Ms. Ranald persuasively captured their peaks and valleys and day-to-day travails exceptionally well and deftly framed them with a surprising poignancy while still maintaining an engaging, entertaining, and amusing tale.

The main character of Abbie wasn’t always likable and could be rather horrid and quite the madam, but that is what made her true to life as don’t we all have our moments? I confess to having my share, and most of someone else’s as well. I adored her patient husband Matt and held my breath for fear he would decide he’d had enough of Abbie’s self-involved orientation and distance. But she was also making an effort and saw the potential as she replayed her memories and retraced their steps. I enjoyed the trek through their story and have added Ms. Ranald to my list of new favorites.