A Match Made in Venice
by Leonie Mack 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She swallowed a snort of laughter at his tight striped swimming briefs. Unfortunately, he caught her at that moment and pierced her with a look. ‘Didi,’ he said in admonishment. ‘You look, you admire.’ He gestured down his nearly naked body. ‘You do not laugh.’

Didi choked, feeling trapped in a soap opera that she had no role in.

My Review:

This was an amusing and slowly-paced hybrid of women’s fiction, family drama, and slow-burn romance. It provided a witty and leisurely read with generous helpings of humor and perceptive inner musings while also including an entertaining travelogue of Venice. The storylines were original yet easy to follow and engaged my interest in the characters as well as their activities and exceptional surroundings. As a bonus, I also learned enough about the skill and process of glass blowing to ascertain that this is not an activity I should ever try.

About the Author

 Leonie Mack is an author of romantic comedies with great international locations. Having lived in London for many years her home is now in Germany with her husband and three children. Leonie loves train travel, medieval towns, hiking, and happy endings!

Social Media Links –

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Bookbub profile https://www.bookbub.com/authors/leonie-mack

 

Colm O’Flynn was loved by his close circle of family and friends, however, his death came too soon for everyone to make peace with their past.

Shauna, his second wife, adored him. But one night she broke their marriage vows, and didn’t get time to ask Colm’s forgiveness.

Jess was the first Mrs. O’Flynn. Her heart is set on someone new, but will the last one-night stand she shared with Colm come back to haunt her?

Colm’s best friend, Dan, is recently divorced. Can he take a second shot at happiness if it means betraying the one person who always had his back?

What no one knows is that somewhere out there Colm left messages that could set them free to start over again.

Can divine intervention help them find Colm’s last wishes before it’s too late to love again?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Since the day I met her, almost twenty years ago, she’d never varied from a size ten. That’s what daily yoga and a 5K run every morning did for you. I was a size fourteen. That’s what twenty years of talking about taking up yoga and running but not actually doing it did for you.

I’m forty-five and still have the urge to hide when my mother is around. But then, my mother, Saint Debbie of the Eternal Disapproval, has that effect on most people.

‘Gran, when did you take up line dancing?’ ‘When I got bored rigid at Pilates. There’s no point to it at all. I fell asleep last time I was there, and some strange and very flexible gentleman with his hair in a bun wasn’t best pleased.’

‘Honest to God, I don’t think he’s mine,’ she’d say about my dad, her Glasgow accent even thicker when she was riled. ‘The wean that shot out of my vagina was a lovely wee thing. There’s no way he grew up to be that gutless oaf. And don’t get me started on her. Cold, feckless tart. They deserve each other, they really do.’

My Review:

I adore Shari Low, her stories are riotously comical yet perceptively insightful. Her style is poignant and full feels yet cleverly amusing with smirk-worthy and irreverent humor. I am as enamored with her keen wit as her agile and evocative storytelling. Her latest tale was written with a dual POV and laced with deeply flawed yet irresistibly beguiling characters living intertwined lives filled with emotive inner musings, cheeky levity, family drama, grief, adultery, and snarky repartee. It was heart-squeezing, cringe-worthy, and as delightfully amusing as it was immersive. I definitely need more of this in my life.

Favorite Quotes:

Harriet felt as if someone had pressed halt on life’s stopwatch as her dad’s words rained down on her like the hardest, skin-jabbing, cricket -ball-sized hailstones.

New York was Jude’s reference for the USA as a whole. Harriet was convinced her friend thought the whole of the United States was as small as the Isle of Man and basically only contained one dirty blues bar, an all-day diner and a man selling hot dogs out of a cart next to the Empire State.

Today’s hair arrangement was Medusa meets Daenerys from Game of Thrones.

…you were always the star of your own show… Don’t let anyone make you drop back into the chorus line.

She looked sour, like someone had rubbed a lemon all over her face and then made her swallow it whole.

She watched Mack again, picking up a soft toy the child in the buggy had dropped, dusting it off a little, then handing it back. She almost sensed her ovaries let out a groan…

My Review:

I adore Mandy Baggot’s delightfully clever humor and perceptive storytelling and covet her agile writing style and talent for stringing clever arrangements of words together. Her latest offering is yet another fun and lively tale that alternated between tickling my funny bone and squeezing my heart, and often managed to achieve both at the same time. She is a goddess of inventive yet realistic plot development as well as the creation of eccentric and unconventional characters. I adored these oddly beguiling yet fractured characters as much as their devilishly amusing yet insightfully penned storylines. I would love for her to return to this enticing collection of oddly tuned yet endearingly compelling residents for a sequel.

About the Author

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Mandy Baggot is an international 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.

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The Way We Weren’t
by Phoebe Fox 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Will wanted her to stay home a few more days too, not try to jump right back into routine but give herself some time “to process.” As if she were an antiquated CPU.

“There’s a hundred bucks in there, and it’s in your name only,” she’d muttered from the side of her mouth like a Dick Tracy villain.

He had wispy white hair that danced back and forth on top of his head under the fan, like a line of anemic hula girls.

Marcie was accustomed to the meager wavelengths of his emotional spectrum— he had two settings, hostile and prickly…

… it was like wading into a sponge, the air so moist and warm and heavy it felt like someone else’s exhaled breath.

Get over here and hydrate, Herman, before you shrivel the rest of the way up.

My Review:

Even though the writing was well seasoned with angst, which isn’t on my list of favorite things, I didn’t seem to mind a bit as the storylines squeezed my heart and kept me fully engaged and heavily invested. I was so deeply immersed in Ms. Fox’s perceptive storytelling that, SMH, for a hot moment I felt the need to start making my own preparations for the incoming hurricane the characters were expecting.   Sigh, she sucked me right into their tale of familial woe and regrets, which were fretfully real and relatable.

Marcie had been enjoying a good life but it was one of acquiescence rather than one of her choosing, and don’t we all do that to some extent?   She didn’t realize she wasn’t satisfied with the way things were until she experienced a personal trauma and went off the rails, and this is where her adventure begins. It wasn’t an easy beach vacation, but she found pieces of herself, took some thoughtless risks, and was helped by a cranky and cantankerous old coot who had more layers than an egg farm. I alternated between adoring him and wanting to give him a few smacks with my Kindle.

Once again, Ms. Fox’s writing was uncannily insightful, itchy, and shrewdly paced. She stealthily slotted me into her characters’ tale and had me digging in the sand while rescuing turtle eggs, dancing rave style, serving beer in a dive bar, and digging out of a hurricane. I’m not used to this much activity, I need a spa day to recover.

About the Author

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Phoebe Fox is the author of the Breakup Doctor series (The Breakup Doctor, Bedside Manners, Heart Conditions, Out of Practice) and has been a contributor or regular columnist for a number of national, regional, and local publications, including The Huffington Post, Elite Daily, and SheKnows. A former actor on stage and screen, Phoebe has been dangled from wires as a mall fairy; was accidentally concussed by a blank gun, and hosted a short-lived game show. She has been a relationship columnist; a movie, theater, and book reviewer; and a radio personality, and currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two excellent dogs.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I’m nine— eavesdropping is the only way I ever learn anything useful.

“He’s not island.” I can’t keep it out of my tone, the immediate distrust I feel. It’s ridiculous. Makes me feel like one of the old biddies that sit on their porches in their house dresses, drinking their morning coffee and writing down the license plates of cars that they don’t recognize that have the nerve to drive down their street.

I’m going to put a BOLO out on you… When they find you, I’ll have you detained until the paramedics come strap you to a gurney and take you to the hospital where Evie will be waiting with a horse syringe full of Thorazine.

Linen suit. No socks. Preppy haircut. Crazy white teeth. Flashy watch. Looked like Miami Vice and Tom Cruise had a baby.

I slap the magazine home and rack one into the chamber, making sure the barrel of the gun is pointed away from my houseguests… I look up to find both of them staring at me like I’m juggling chainsaws.

My Review:

This gripping story kept me on edge and kept an itch going in my curiosity from beginning to end.   The tale was an uncomfortably prickly and gritty page-turner with a pervasive sense of peril, widespread corruption, and impending doom while something horribly tragic and vile was occurring right around the corner, but just what exactly that something was seemed just out of focus. I had my theories and was apprehensive about having it pegged correctly; I mostly had and have mixed feelings about being on target, as I didn’t want to be in this case.

The premise was dark and original, the plotting was brilliant and dastardly, and the pace was relentlessly electric. This author was such a crafty tease with dribbling and slipping sly little hints but giving nothing away. I adore her, am in awe of her skills, and have added her entire listing to my TBR as I covet all her clever arrangements of words. I hope I’m paying attention when the subsequent volumes are released.

The annual block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul de sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighborhood moms—known as the Ivy Five—plan the event for months.

Except the Ivy Five have been four for a long time.

When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the moms see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year’s block party should be the best yet… until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighborhood’s dark past—and the lengths they’ve gone to hide it.

As secrets seep out and the threats intensify, the Ivy Five must sort the loyal from the disloyal, the good from the bad. They’ll do anything to protect their families. But when a twisted plot is revealed, with dangerous consequences, their steady foundation begins to crumble, leaving only one certainty: after this year’s block party, Ivy Woods Drive will never be the same.

From award-winning author Tara Laskowski, The Mother Next Door is an atmospheric novel of domestic suspense in which the strive for perfection ends in murder…

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

The women stood between two cafeteria tables, four of them with slight smiles, heads cocked at the same angle, a united front. An army with moisturizing sunscreen and Kate Spade purses, doused in St. Yves perfume.

…she was about as clever as a pipe cleaner.

We passed gossip around our group like a bottle of wine— plenty for everyone.

The perfect house on the hill that I’d had to have. The perfect house in the perfect neighborhood. I’d built a castle on top of a snake’s nest.

 My Review:

This was cleverly paced and shrewdly plotted with just the right levels of humor and irony to temper the intrigue and needling angsty suspense that kept tickling my gray matter. The author is new to me and I enjoyed her writing style and hope to read much more of it in the future as her prose was smartly provocative yet easy to follow and called up sharp visuals behind my eyes. She craftily stuffed agile narratives with uniquely compelling characters who kept me a bit on edge and curious to know more about each one, although I wouldn’t want to share air with any of them.

TARA LASKOWSKI is the author of One Night Gone, which won an Agatha Award, Macavity Award, an Anthony Award, and was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, Left Coast Crime Award, Strand Critics’ Award, and Library of Virginia Literary Award. She is also the author of two short story collections, Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons, and Bystanders; has published stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Mid-American Review, among others; and is the former editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. Tara earned a BA in English from Susquehanna University and an MFA from George Mason University and currently lives in Virginia. Find her on Twitter and Instagram, @TaraLWrites.

SOCIAL LINKS:

Author website: https://taralaskowski.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tara.laskowski.9

Twitter: @TaraLWrites

Instagram: @taralwrites

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56555529-the-mother-next-door

 

A modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol…

Caroline is a cynic career woman living the high life in Manhattan where love and relationships are but a distant memory of the past.

But after a freak accident on Christmas Eve, Caroline receives a visit from a cheeky spirit of Christmas Past, Present, Yet to Come, and—most importantly—Christmas That Could Have Been. When she wakes up on Christmas Day suddenly married with three kids and living two doors down from her parents in New Jersey, Caroline has a chance to experience the life she would’ve had if she’d made a different choice.

Will small-town life as a mother and a wife make her rediscover what’s really important in life?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

New York is the city that never sleeps. The place where everything is possible. The tall skyscrapers glitter in the night with a seductive promise, like when you meet the eyes of a handsome stranger in a bar. Anything could happen.

And no matter that I was bone-tired half an hour ago, when Sam looks at me the way he is now, he could resuscitate me from the dead.

My Review:

I can always count on Camilla Isley for a sparkling, entertaining, and fun yet insightful read, she doesn’t disappoint. I enjoy her cleverly amusing tales and smooth writing style that easily and quickly pulls me right inside her characters’ fully inhabitable skins. This was a humorous and creative amalgamation of a modern-day A Christmas Carol and the 2000 Nicholas Cage movie The Family Man. I wore a smile most of the way through my perusal of this one.

Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband on an adventure abroad.
She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading–duh!–cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies–popcorn, please. She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them.

Social Media Links –

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14135080.Camilla_Isley

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Amazon: https://smarturl.it/CamillaIsley

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A series of copycat suicides, prompted by a mysterious online blogger, cause DCI Jude Satterthwaite more problems than usual, intensifying his concerns about his troublesome younger brother, Mikey. Along with his partner, Ashleigh O’Halloran, and a local psychiatrist, Vanessa Wood, Jude struggles to find the identity of the malicious troll gaslighting young people to their deaths.

The investigation stirs grievances both old and new. What is the connection with the hippies camped near the Long Meg stone circle? Could these suicides have any connection with a decades-old cold case? And, for Jude, the most crucial question of all. Is it personal — and could Mikey be the final target? 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Their relationship was rocky at best, but they clung to its wreckage.

 He was a clever man; she understood, now, just how much so. There was value in keeping your cleverness hidden, rather than flaunting it.

My Review:

Jo Allen has produced yet another shrewdly plotted and slowly evolving mystery that kept me guessing. I enjoyed the characters’ personal stories as much as their puzzling cases and this installment was fraught with relationship ills for both the heart and family. Jude is a complicated character, as was the perpetrator in this piece, and they were well matched. But of course, the DCI always holds the final trump.