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

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About the Author

New York Times bestselling author and gifted storyteller Allison Brennan’s new standalone thriller features a troubled female police detective and an ambitious FBI special agent who wind up at the center of a ticking-clock investigation into a diabolical serial killer.

Brennan’s novel will launch a book-a-year series featuring a fabulous cast of recurring characters. It’s the story of a troubled female police detective and an ambitious FBI special agent who wind up at the center of a ticking-clock investigation into a diabolical serial killer, and the bond they forge in this crucible sets the stage for the future books in the series.

Detective Kara Quinn is visiting her hometown of Liberty Lake, Washington, after being placed on administrative leave by the LAPD, when she comes upon the mutilated body of a young nurse during an early morning jog. The manner of death is clearly ritualistic; she calls it in. Meanwhile back in DC, special agent in charge Mattias Costa is meticulously staffing his newly-minted Mobile Response Team. One of his first recruits is the brilliant FBI forensic psychologist Catherine Jones. When word reaches Matt that the Washington state murder appears to be the work of the Triple Killer–it will be the first case for the MRT. Jones has done the only profile on this serial killer, but she is reluctant to join the unit, still shaken by the death of her sister a year ago under circumstances for which she holds herself responsible. But only she holds the key to understanding the killer’s obsessive pattern–three murder victims, three deep slashes a piece, each three days apart, each series beginning on a March 3rd–3/3, then a three-year hiatus before he strikes again.

This time they have a chance to stop him before he claims another victim strikes, but only if they can figure out who he is and where he is hiding.

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Six months… Six months and the triplets start kindergarten.” She looked at her FitBit. “Five months, twenty-six days.”… Kara was still hung up on triplets. She’d definitely shoot herself. Or never have sex again.

Small town cop with a small town girlfriend and a small town life. Kara almost felt sorry for him. Like he still believed in Santa Claus and she was going to burst his bubble.

My Review:

This was quite a complicated and multifaceted tale with a full cast of compelling, intriguing, and complex characters. I quickly fell into this brilliantly contrived, tautly written, and brain-tickling vortex that alternated between the killer and those doggedly working to find him and end his spree.

The storylines packed a visceral punch and were cunningly crafted, quickly paced, and occasionally cringe-worthy. I was rabid to know all the deets about everybody and everything, and even when I knew who the killer was and why – I was still rabid to know how it would resolve. Basically, I was rabid and close to hissing at any interruption of my perusal. Pity my poor little husband.

Despite her prolific body of work, this was my first exposure to the shrewd and haunting storytelling and profoundly insightful character development of Allison Brennan. I was an instant fangirl, although I wouldn’t want to get too close as I would imagine her interior life may be a bit scary to inhabit.