The Survivors
by Jane Harper 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She was four years younger than him and shy to the point that he wasn’t even sure he knew what her voice had sounded like.

… it must have been good fun, Kieran thought, otherwise why did they do it every weekend? But it was interesting looking back how the good fun had sometimes felt a lot like hard work… It had all seemed so important at the time, Kieran thought as he stood on the beach now. Life and death.

He had fed Audrey and read to her from a picture book that hinted heavily on its front cover that it would unlock her genius potential. Instead, it had sent her back to sleep, which in that moment seemed like an even better result. They should have put that on the cover.

My Review:

This was one of those slowly unwinding tales that kept me feeling a bit uncomfortable, on edge, impatient, tense, and unable to put my Kindle down without feeling annoyed at the intrusion.   I was hooked from the beginning and full of nagging suspicions as at one time or another, almost every character seemed a bit off and capable of something dreadful. The writing was cleverly realistic with deeply flawed yet enticing characters while shrewdly plotted and cunningly paced to drive me mad in brain itching increments. It was brilliant.

I was provided with a review copy of this powerful piece of literature by  TLC Book Tours and  Thomas Nelson publishing.

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet, and playwright who teaches Creative Writing and English at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She is a graduate of the Spalding low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novel Drinking From A Bitter Cup and House Repairs.

Connect with Angela

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage
by Samantha Tonge

Favorite Quotes:

‘You’re talking to the person who a couple of years ago dabbled with online dating. I lied about my birth date to register. A woman asked me to send her a dirty picture.’ He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘I sent her a photo of me in my muddy cricket kit.’

I’ll buy us a big palace and they won’t have to work. We can eat all the chocolate we want and I’ll only wear clothes covered in glitter.

Have you never made a mistake? One you spent years wishing you could take back? Because if you haven’t already, believe me, it’s just a matter of time.

My Review:

I count sixteen books listed on Amazon for this crafty wordsmith and though I’d love to read them all, I’ve only gotten to four of those so far. While I have enjoyed each of those four, this one is definitely my favorite to date. There was a perfect balance of wit, family drama, villainy, curiosity arousing mystery, tragedy, and a budding romance for a young woman at a major life crossroads while uncovering long-buried family secrets. Ms. Tonge’s writing was smooth, lushly detailed, easy to fall into, and continuously engaging while shrewdly paced. She relentlessly poked at my inquisitive nature and had me fit to burst before finally revealing the well-contained family secrets, and there were several unexpected yet quite cleverly plotted outcomes. What a wily minx!

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I was told by Mama that I would be much better placed to marry well if I knew how to get out of a motorcar without flashing my own undercarriage.

Handsome? Heavens no, but he had two of the best qualities you can hope for in a husband…. a vast fortune and a dicky heart!

She’d scare Hades himself away from the Underworld… Churchill should have sent her into Berlin and cut the whole thing short years ago.

My Review:

This was a well-plotted, unpredictable, and slowly unwinding cozy mystery with lush descriptions and active storylines involving new friendships, post-WWII recovery challenges, transcontinental ocean cruise travel and hijinks, shopping and dining fare in three countries, crossword puzzle development, burglary, and murder. I couldn’t even begin to solve this one as Ms. Chester had me addled and intrigued with her well-contrived schemes, yet the clues were there, just to skillfully buried among the richly detailed and abundant aspects described in each crime scene and series of events for the little pea in my brain to put together.

The characters were an interesting and unusual grouping of personalities and circumstances with Americans including a radio showbiz entertainer, a wealthy American heiress, and her vile Aunt, who was a detestable and snobbishly elitist old dragon who bossed and insulted everyone and got away with it; as well as a Nazi scientist quietly hiding in cabin #13. I adore Fen Churche and her honorable and straightforward nature and keep hoping a romance will spark for her soon with the deliciously handsome and highly likable Viscount. I do loves me a HEA.

About the Author

Amazon
Goodreads
Website
Facebook
Twitter

BookBub

.
.

Fliss Chester lives in Surrey with her husband and writes historical cozy crime. When she is not killing people off in her 1940s whodunnits, she helps her husband, who is a wine merchant, run their business. Never far from a decent glass of something, Fliss also loves cooking (and writing up her favorite recipes on her blog), enjoying the beautiful Surrey and West Sussex countryside, and having a good natter.

JUST GET HOME
by Bridget Foley

Favorite Quotes:

Sometimes there is a recognition between two people that hastens their transition from strangers to friends. Like falling in love, but without the hormones.

It will be chaos for days. Weeks. There will be looting. Riots. The earthquake isn’t the real disaster, Dessa. The disaster is what happens after.

What must it be like to have that power? To not be afraid, but to have others be afraid of you? Not just right now on this dark street, but on all the dark streets.

Beegie’d never thought of it before, but she realized most people sounded like animals when they laughed; Barb sounded like a donkey, brays with big deep breaths in between. And Eric sounded like a chimpanzee, kinda screaming and baring his teeth.

You know only white people camp, right? … Camping, hiking… all that is a white thing. Black people, Mexicans, Latinos, whatever, we don’t do shit like that… It’s rich people pretending to be poor. Sleeping outside. Eating on the ground and shit. Only white people are crazy enough to play homeless for fun. All ‘getting in touch with nature.’ Brown people, uh-uh. We don’t pretend. We don’t get in touch with nothing.

My Review:

Wow, this was a tense, insightfully observant, and all too realistic and disturbing revelation of the unchecked inhumanity and brutality once terror and lawlessness are unleashed following a natural disaster.

Dessa was socializing with friends on one side of LA while her toddler was at home with a new babysitter when an earthquake rips the town apart. The challenges from the lack of resources, destruction, and environmental hazards were a lesser impediment to her attempts to return to her child than the dangerous, surreal, malicious, and uninhibited cruelty and barbarism of the citizens she encountered along the way.

Bridget Foley ever so aptly captured the fractured underbelly of all levels of society while exposing their anxious inner musings, memories, biased observations, regrets, poor choices, and base natures. The storylines were fraught with distress and taut with angst and impending peril with each encounter. It was riveting, exhausting, compelling, and disheartening, and oh so shrewdly and cunningly paced. Ms. Foley is quite the storyteller, but her evocative words are not ones I’d want to peruse before heading off to the land of nod least I thrash in my sleep.

JUST MY LUCK
by Adele Parks

ISBN: 9780778331735

Publisher: MIRA Books

Adele Parks has brought her #1 Sunday Times sensation, JUST MY LUCK (MIRA Trade Paperback; April 6, 2021; $17.99) to the US! 

Be careful what you wish for… 

After spending happy hours, parenting classes, and barbeques together for the last 15 years, Lexi and Jake Greenwood have celebrated and shared almost everything with the Pearsons and the Heathcotes, including their lottery numbers. Then one night, the unthinkable happens. Someone has been telling lies – lies dark enough to burn bridges and tear the tight group of friends apart. When the Greenwoods win a stunning $23 million in the lottery with their group’s numbers shortly after their dramatic falling out, the Heathcotes and Pearsons believe they’re entitled to part of the prize… and the three couples will do anything to claim what is theirs. 

Reader beware: the last chapter will change everything. 

A compulsively readable portrait of the fragility of friendship, the corrosiveness of sudden wealth, and the dark side of good luck, Adele Parks’ latest domestic thriller will make you think twice about trying your hand at the lottery. 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He is being crass. I am not sure what the elegant response to winning nearly eighteen million pounds is, but I doubt it is demanding the money like a highway robber.

These so-called friends of theirs are a bunch of sharks. There are more holes in their stories than there are in my kitchen colander.

I think we both wish we were in some sort of nineties cop show where she could open the drawer of her desk and pull out a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses.

Toma stares at me with unadulterated admiration. It’s the best look one human being can give another. He looks at me with respect, approval, gratitude and eagerness.

How do you manage it? … Caring so much for people you don’t even know? In my experience, it’s cruel enough caring for those you do.

I wish them well, but mostly I wish them well away from us.

My Review:

I couldn’t seem to start this review for over a day, as I needed to ruminate, ponder, and mull. This was a prickly pickle. Most of the characters were not likable or annoyed me greatly as they were snide, greedy, snobby, selfish, unreliable, and conniving. They also disappointed me, as even the few likable ones tended to be wishy-washy and weak. However, I am aware that most people, regardless of culture, have a bit of all of these failings in their bag of traits. And I am also highly aware that as much as the characters were antagonizing me, I couldn’t have stopped reading about them as I was intrigued and rather desperate to know what was going to result from their flailing. The plotlines were maddeningly paced but when I reached the conclusion and looked back, I registered the cunning and shrewd craftsmanship in the storytelling.   Adele Parks is a wily one.

Staying Out for the Summer
by Mandy Baggot

 

Amazon  / B&N / GP/ Apple 

 

After a summer of staying in, it’s time to let your hair down and escape to Greece!

For Lucie Burrows, it’s time to embrace Greek life and put the past behind her! Having spent the summer of 2020 battling a global health crisis, Lucie Burrows is looking forward to a summer out of lockdown.

When best friend, Gavin, finds them the perfect Greek escape Lucie finally starts to think this summer might just go without a hitch. But after a landslide puts the village into a local lockdown, Lucie is thrown together with Michalis Andino, the super sexy village doctor. It’s not quite the holiday she had planned, but things could certainly be worse.

As Lucie relaxes into the Greek way of life, she begins to wonder whether this lockdown might just end in a new life, a new love…

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

She clamped her hands to the few inches of little more than dark brown stubble, now covering her entire scalp. ‘Gavin! What happened?! My hair! I was… I was… always getting called Sandra Oh and now I’m… I’m—’ ‘Sandra Oh No?’ Gavin offered unhelpfully.

 

‘Why does everybody want me to marry and breed?!’ She dropped her fork and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I am not a horse.’

 

‘You were the one who stopped talking, Michalis,’ Dimitri told him. ‘I never wanted to stop listening.’

 

Lucie eyed up the tiny test tube Melina was holding carefully like it contained tears of a dragon.

 

Simon’s softer and more cautious about everything. He literally caresses that coffee machine at work. Unlike Jez, who goes at it like he wants it to bleed.

 

They were both a little red-faced with the frenetic pace Mary and Ariana were setting, leading dancers holding handkerchiefs in a zig-zag formation around a little girl dressed as an effigy of a virus. Earlier there had been an interpretive dance with a troupe of schoolchildren in tortoise costumes battling against another group dressed as dark evil organisms…

 

My Review:

 

I adore Mandy Baggot’s cunningly wry, snort-worthy, and clever sense of humor. Her latest missive features a unique Greek odyssey in a tiny and quirky village with storylines infused with a bit of everything including family drama, well deserved vacations for exhausted pandemic fighting medical professionals, a new and an old holiday romance, diverse characters, terrapin home invasions, culture clashes, divinely amusing comedy, and an oddly conceived festival with fierce costumes for the Flying Tortoise King.   I savored Ms. Baggot’s comical and evocative words between family dramas of my own, which made her sweet and humorous tale exponentially sweeter.

About the Author

Amazon

Goodreads

Website

Twitter 

Facebook

.

Mandy Baggot is an internationally bestselling and award-winning romance writer. The winner of the Innovation in Romantic Fiction award at the UK’s Festival of Romance, her romantic comedy novel, One Wish in Manhattan, was also shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year award in 2016. Mandy’s books have so far been translated into German, Italian, Czech, and Hungarian. Mandy loves the Greek island of Corfu, white wine, country music, and handbags. Also a singer, she has taken part in ITV1’s Who Dares Sings and The X-Factor. Mandy is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Society of Authors and lives near Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK with her husband and two daughters.

Follow Aria

Website: www.ariafiction.com

Twitter: @aria_fiction

Facebook: @ariafiction

Instagram: @ariafiction

.

Molly’s seventieth birthday comes as something of a shock. The woman in the mirror certainly looks every day of those seventy years, but inside Molly feels she still has so much more living left to do. Widowed and living alone with her cat Crumper, Molly fears she is slipping into a cliché of old age.

When Molly’s sister Nell appears on her doorstep, distraught that her husband of more than forty years, Phil, has left her for a younger lover, the women decide to seize the day. By the morning, flights are booked, bags are packed, and off they go for an adventure in Spain.

The sun, the sea, the new friends, and the freedom are just the tonic for broken hearts and flagging souls. But even Spain isn’t enough to revive Molly’s spirit. A solo journey to Mexico is booked as Molly continues to chase the sun and to chase happiness. Will she find what she’s looking for in Mexico, or will she discover that true contentment can’t be found on a map, but it might just be found in a new flame.

Judy Leigh is back, with her trademark spirit of joie de vivre, fun, warmth, and timeless lessons in how to live.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… our neighbour is a handsome Swedish man who sits naked in the hot tub on the roof terrace. What’s not to like about Spain?

You need to remember that we’re not living in the sixties now, Ryan. It’s not very flattering to be asked for sex like that – I felt like an after-dinner mint.

Ahead to the right was a white three-sided building wrapped around a courtyard, its interior dirt-dark. Molly thought it looked like a rotten molar.

It wasn’t every day they saw a teenage mutant ninja turtle crawling along the highway on a moped. And this turtle, Michelangelo with the green face, the orange mask and the wide grimacing tombstone teeth was wearing a tight leather jacket, an orange dress and a long black scarf that ballooned behind, resembling a cape… An American man wound down his window and shouted that she had made his day: the ninja turtles he’d seen on TV when he was a kid had never been cross-dressers. Another man yelled that she must be the most mutant ninja turtle he’d ever seen.

My Review:

I reveled in this tale of two older sisters who were capriciously traveling on an impulse to escape their restlessness and the drama of their less than satisfying home situation in England. I savored every word and adored the spontaneous and impetuous nature of Molly; she was unpredictable and prone to whimsy and highly amusing hijinks, even at seventy years young.   Molly is my new favorite septuagenarian. Ms. Leigh’s well-crafted storylines and writing style were fluid, engaging, easy to fall into, riotously entertaining, and extremely pleasing. Her wry wit, keenly detailed observations, and shrewd insights resonated with me and I want to amass and read all her clever words. I am now her ardent Fangirl For Life.