.

The School of Starting Over 
by Lisa Swift

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

That is never good. Never. The we need to talk and the I have to tell you something is always followed by news that you do not under any circumstances want to hear.

I couldn’t sit around alone for the rest of my life. I was two steps from adopting fourteen cats and giving up.

There was a sturdiness about Otis Bell that had always been appealing to me, and yet it was his vulnerability that did me in.

The truth was, I’d always been a charity case. My parents died when I was four, and from that moment on I’d been at the mercy of other people looking out for me.

“You’re beautiful, Mal.” … He didn’t say you look beautiful, but you’re beautiful. Somehow there was a difference, and it landed on me with substantial force.

 My Review:

I don’t know she does it but Jess B. Moore has magical skills, she writes from a dual POV with such keen insights, regardless of the age or gender, and transports me into her compellingly flawed characters’ lives as well as implanting me under their skin. I’m right there, either by their side or behind their retinas. I feel their uncertainties and annoyances while absorbing their inner musings. Her emotive tales conjure empathy and sympathy along with heart-squeezes, rapid blinking, and thoughtful reflection on her expert character development of not just the main characters but the secondary and tertiary players as well.

This installment featured an unlikely pair. Mallory was a fretful and fragile little bird who was riddled with insecurities and social anxiety. She strived to be independent but was in a near-constant state tension after her only friend moved hours away. She frequently felt awkward and worked at being invisible, yet she overflowed with kindness toward others. And she loved cats, how could I not adore her after she rescued an abandoned puss?   Poor Mallory had been cursed with a life-long crush on Otis, who had been a major anus toward her most of their lives. I wanted to give him more than a few swift kicks in a tender area for being such an ass, but he made up for it, eventfully, and gradually won me over when he finally stopped acting like a tool.

I am no fan of angst but, oddly, I don’t seem to mind at all when it comes to Ms. Moore’s captivating and perceptive scribblings.   The engaging storylines of The Chapel were relevant, original, well-crafted, and realistic, and seemed to keep me a bit on edge as Mallory was frequently tense. I enjoyed Otis’s sweetness once they fell into sync and hit their stride, and heard myself sigh contentedly at the stories end.   I can hear their fiddles, guitars, and mandolins being tuned and am already looking forward to my next trip to Bluegrass country.

Mystery at Apple Tree Cottage
(Eve Mallow Mystery #2)
by Clare Chase

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

As a freelance obituary writer, she interviewed the living to unearth the secrets of the dead…

‘I’m sure Simon’s ready to settle down now. And he’s looked very subdued lately.’ ‘You have a vivid imagination. He looks like a dog that’s been let off the leash each time I see him.’

She wasn’t busy at the moment, but a fascinating obituary subject could turn up at any time. It wasn’t like you got advance notice.

Still, he seems like a nice guy, not like he’s portrayed in the press. I’d guess he works hard at his bad-boy image, then goes home and brews up a cocoa.

I know what you’re thinking. I can see it in your face. Nothing would delight you more than having me as a houseguest, but you can’t imagine how to express your thanks. Well, don’t worry, you don’t have to. I want to come. If any dodgy characters turn up on your doorstep, I can frighten them away with my violent hair colour.

Villagers at the ready! Deploy!

He might not be chatty, but he’s easy on the eye. And great with a hoe. So there you are, double benefits. Nice scenery, which will lead to nice scenery.

My Review:

This engaging cozy mystery was a proper conundrum and complete head-scratcher with a full slate of suspects for such a small village. There appeared to be ample circumstantial evidence to put several under suspicion, yet no actual proof on anyone. Color me intrigued. I delighted in this amusing and observantly insightful tale with clever and generous servings of wry humor along with well-paced tidbits and red herrings that had my cynical nature spinning in all directions.

Clare Chase writes women sleuth mysteries. After graduating from London University with a degree in English Literature, Clare moved to Cambridge and has lived there ever since. She’s fascinated by the city’s contrasts and contradictions, which feed into her writing. She’s worked in diverse settings – from the 800-year-old University to one of the local prisons – and lived everywhere from the house of a Lord to a slug-infested flat. The terrace she now occupies, with her husband and teenage children, presents a good happy medium.

As well as writing, Clare loves family time, art and architecture, cooking, and of course, reading other people’s books.

Minnie Price married late in life. Now she is widowed. And starving.

No one suspects this respectable church-goer can barely keep body and soul together. Why would they, while she resides in the magnificent home she shared with Peter?

Her friends and neighbors are oblivious to her plight and her adult stepchildren have their own reasons to make things worse rather than better. But she is thrown a lifeline when an associate of her late husband arrives with news of an investment about which her step-children know nothing.
Can she release the funds before she finds herself homeless and destitute?

Fans of ‘The Hoarder’s Widow’ will enjoy this sequel, but it reads equally well as a standalone.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… her mind was still on the ashes. She imagined some flunkey heaving them out of a bucket on to the ground, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his shirt not tucked in. Perhaps they’d be mixed with someone else’s. She didn’t like to think of Peter being part of a medley of other dead people. She had never visited the garden of remembrance. It might be a desolate, litter-strewn corner; unkempt, unvisited.

… she had a dry sense of humour, an ability to make everyday things amusing. Today she spoke of a new volunteer at the charity shop who had already jammed the till twice and rubbed a donor up the wrong way by suggesting the paperback books he had brought in were ‘filth.’

Truth be told, the project Maisie suggests appalls him, (an image assaults him, fleeting though vivid, of his mother laundering the rags of hoboes and asylum-seekers, and combing the lice from the matted beards of down-and-outs,) but he would rather die than say so. Dilemma turns him thin-lipped and rheumy-eyed; his thinning hair reveals a scaly flair-up of psoriasis on the narrow dome of his head.

She leafed through the brochures. ‘I’ve never been to Morocco,’ she mused, ‘I expect it’s similar to Egypt, though. The young men are beautiful – there’s no other word to describe them – but by the time they’re forty over-exposure to the sun and inadequate dentistry turns them all into goblins

Jessica perches on the end of Amy’s lounger and eats the olives which have been put there for Amy to enjoy. She does not think she has ever seen such an elderly person before but in her experience the older a person is the more likely they are to have both the time and the wisdom to answer her questions. ‘Tell me about the olden days,’ she says to Amy, ‘when you were alive.’

My Review:

I adored this well-crafted and entertaining tale, it was cleverly written with frequent sneaky slices of delightfully wry humor deftly tucked in which often found me rereading them twice or more while giggle-snorting or smirking with each perusal. This was my first exposure to Ms. Cresswell’s writing and I was quickly impressed by her fluid style. The story flowed with a smooth and seamless quality with writing that was often emotive, highly insightful, and perceptively observant.   Her character development was top shelf with each cast member being enticingly quirked and uniquely flawed yet curiously interesting and accessible, regardless of their different walks of life and mannerisms.

I picked up two new items for my Brit List with trews for trousers, and three-line whip – a political term for a strict edict to attend and vote the party line or suffer the consequences. The character referenced was certainly at the mastery level of those – both the decrees and the consequences.

.

You’ve Got My Number
by Angela Barton

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA / 

Apple/ Google

Three isn’t always a magic number … 

There are three reasons Tess Fenton should be happy. One, her job at the Blue Olive deli may be dull, but at least she gets to work with her best friend. Two, she lives in a cozy cottage in the pretty village of Halston. Three, she’s in love with her boyfriend, Blake. 

Isn’t she? 

Because, despite their history, Blake continues to be the puzzle piece in Tess’s life that doesn’t quite fit. And when she meets intriguing local artist Daniel Cavanagh, it soon becomes apparent that, for Tess, love isn’t as easy as one, two, three … 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… her mind awash with thoughts of how to finish with Blake. Perhaps she should explain in the Star Trek terminology he was familiar with. ‘I need space, this is the final frontier.’

Tess remembered she’d been mumbling expletives in panic. ‘Nothing that a pint can’t put right,’ she replied, trying to sound unfazed. ‘I’m waiting for a girlfriend. She’s late.’ Great! Now she sounded like a possessive alcoholic lesbian who suffered from a mild dose of Tourette’s. This wasn’t going well.

‘I suppose you could try internet dating.’ Tess couldn’t believe how her mouth was taking control of this conversation instead of her brain. What was she doing trying to enrol him at a dating agency? ‘Too scary. I’ve had friends who have dabbled in it. Apparently the odds are good, but the goods are odd!’

Recently he’d been pestering her to move in with him, but she’d no intention of leaving Halston. She couldn’t imagine sharing a house with his numerous diecast models and action figures of Captain Kirk and an army of Klingons. Models of the Starship Enterprise decorated any flat surface and it didn’t help that a poster of Mr Spock looked down on her whenever she sat on Blake’s toilet.

When it came to men, her friend’s attention span was as temporary as a bruise.

My Review:

I checked it three times to be sure, and this is the second time I have smirked my way through one of Angela Barton’s cleverly amusing missives, I adore her unique style of witty levity and wry humor. Her endearing characters were realistically drawn, imperfect, and quite entertaining to delve into, as were her pleasantly engaging and well-crafted storylines. I am eager to see what she conjures next and wonder if she can best her creation of a confused elder’s prideful explanation of her son’s gift of a “dignified camera,” (digital). ~ Snort! Not like I’ve ever made such a gaff – oh no, not me!

Before She Knew Him
by Peter Swanson

About the Author

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Be her friend, Jason had said. Like it was that easy. Men knew nothing about the tricky waters of mutual mistrust women swam in.

It was a shark pool, and the women were the worst. Bored and half-drunk most of the time. What else was there to do but bitch, judge, and gossip about one another between charity events?

I don’t think badly of you for it, because I totally get why you did it, but if you marry a man for his money, sweetheart, you will always end up earning it.

What was it Mama used to say? Her pearls of wisdom on the world? Money, sex, and power are the father, the son, and the holy ghost of life, honey.   Just remember that. And women can get all three if they’re not stupid.   So don’t be stupid.

And as if there are no gays in the army… I mean seriously They all work out, and they all wear uniforms.   The army is basically the goddamn Village People.

My Review:

Sarah Pinborough is ingeniously clever and divinely gifted with the word voodoo. I lost myself in her riveting storytelling and hissed my resentment at any unfortunate and inopportune interruption to my perusal. I was enthralled and so thoroughly absorbed I found myself more than a bit disoriented when I looked up from my book and realized I wasn’t actually living in the sweltering Georgia heat while swilling drinks with or experiencing the stink-eye from with the elite Southern blue blood society of Savannah.   The narrative was so flawlessly transportive I clearly heard their drawling accents, creaking floorboards, the revving of their engines, and the clinking ice cubes – surely that wasn’t all in my head!

This was a twisty, unpredictable, and monstrously compelling tale that oozed intrigue while taut with tension that seemed to be continually and miraculously ratcheting up to an unbearable and apparently exponential level while cast with a full slate of quirky yet thoroughly vile characters. I have but two parting words and a request for this gifted scribe. More, please!

About the Author

Sarah Pinborough is the number one Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of the psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes, and more than twenty other novels and novellas, including The Death House and a young adult thriller, 13 Minutes. She has also written for the BBC. She lives in England.

Find out more about Sarah at her website, and connect with her on Twitter and Instagram.

 400 pages
William Morrow Paperbacks (February 18, 2020)

“This might well be my favorite Rader-Day so far: a brilliant premise intriguingly developed, totally believable characters and a climax that took my breath away.”  — Ann Cleeves, New York Times bestselling author of The Shetland and Vera Series  

From the author of the Edgar Award®-nominated Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.

Most people who go missing are never found. But Alice was the lucky one…

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Twisting and compulsively readable, The Lucky One explores the lies we tell ourselves to feel safe.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

A cake of angels and beauty itself, chocolate on top of chocolate, like a last request before execution. Merrily had passed out in a food coma in her old room and had to borrow the twinset and skirt from her mom’s closet for work… Merrily looked like a giraffe dressed for church, but she still looked better than the women in the front office any day of the week. Fact.

“I turned thirty. Thirty.” … Thirty was a monster. She’d been pursued by it and now here it sat in her lap, breathing its stink on her. Her age would ruin everything, if not this year, then soon.

“There’s my Alice in Wonderland.” Alice got up and met him for a hug. He couldn’t swing her off her feet anymore, but the old nickname never failed to shrink her to fit the tiny door of childhood.

Every sweet thing about Uncle Jim, Jimmy could ruin like a funhouse mirror. She liked to think that Jimmy was adopted, some changeling JimBig and his ex-wife had found and taken home.

Merrily had always wished for a baby brother or sister, but she needn’t have bothered. Her own mother provided all the mischief she could handle… Why were the grown-ups in her life so damaged and needy?

My Review:

This gripping, tautly written, and twisty book had me in knots and frequently chewing on my lips and picking at my ragged cuticles, which were merely the early clues that this was going to be a 5-Star read. Each character was oddly compelling although deeply flawed and not all that admirable. Neither of the two main characters, Merrily and Alice, were among the sharpest tools in the shed and I frequently wanted to schedule each of them a colonoscopy to search for their misplaced craniums.

The storylines were shrewdly crafted, cunningly paced, and riveting with intrigue while fraught with tension, family secrets, and impending peril. This was my first experience with the diabolically clever storytelling of Lori Rader-Day and in my expert analysis – she may well be a high priestess of the word voodoo as I was totally sucked into her vortex, tumbled around, and spit back out hours later feeling rather stunned, dazed, and pleasantly amazed.

I was provided with a review copy of this cleverly crafted missive by TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins.

About the Author

Resistance Women
by Jennifer Chiaverini

About the Author

Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.

Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.

Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?

Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He always thought of his first encounter with a homicide victim as two people meeting. An encounter every bit as important in death as it would have been in life, as revelatory as a conversation— in some ways more so.

She had the feeling she might fall off the world. Everything felt dangerous; she wasn’t sure her skin could hold her bones and blood and heart inside.

She was the crème brûlée of mothers: hard shell on the outside, total mush on the inside.

Every few weeks the morgue was called here to remove a body—mostly overdoses, some accidental and some suicides. The walls were soaked with the sadness of lonely people drinking themselves to death in their small rooms.

Surreptitiously, on the side Lulu couldn’t see, Scotty grabbed the roll of fat around her waist. The old commercial used to say if you could pinch more than an inch you needed to eat their cereal and get into shape. Scotty could pinch half a foot.

My Review:

Brilliantly conceived, cunningly plotted, diabolically crafted, shrewdly paced, and skillfully written. This book was da bomb! I was taut with tension with my shoulders in my ears and so sure I knew who had killed Beth, but, silly me, I was – so – very – wrong! This was my introduction to the skilled and breathtaking art form found in the wordcraft of Luanne Rice. I was enthralled, riveted, confounded, and ensorcelled. Ms. Rice was obviously gifted by the fairies of lexicon with mad skills. Her word voodoo is strong. I am her newest and most ardent fangirl.

About the Author

Connect with Luanne

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram