Slowly but surely getting caught up!
In case you missed it...
January 2023 Reads
February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
July 2023 Reads
August 2023 Reads
September 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years
(79) ⭐ The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (448 pages, 2020). Audiobook. One of the best books I read this year! Desperate to avoid a provincial marriage, a young French woman strikes a bargain with a mysterious dark power in 1714. She will live forever, but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. For 300 years, Addie figures out how to get by, experimenting with ways she might leave some small mark on the world. Then, one day, she meets a young man who remembers her the next day. Rich, nuanced, fascinated, and dazzlingly written!
(80) House of Correction by Nicci French (ie., Nicci Gerrard & Sean French - 528 pages, 2020). Audiobook Not what I expected but well done. Soon after moving to the remote town of Okeham, London copy editor Tabitha Hardy is accused of murdering Stuart Rees, her secondary school math teacher and fellow Okeham resident. Though she doesn’t remember much about the day, she believes herself incapable of killing anybody. Tabitha soon fires her court-appointed lawyer, determined to represent herself with the help of the only person who seems to believe in her innocence. Part procedural, party comedy, part sobering murder mystery, I found this book smart & engaging, with some unpredictable twists near the end.
(81) Between Two Strangers by Kate White (304 pages, 2023). Audiobook. Desperate to have a child but too financially strapped, Skyler Moore is dumbfounded when she learns that a man she’s never heard of has left her a massive inheritance. While she soon realizes that the two engaged in an anonymous one-night-stand decades ago, it’s still not clear a) how the man knew who she was, or b) why he would leave her his fortune. Skyler spends the book trying to unravel the man’s connection to her life and history man while also managing the ire of his widow who’s been snubbed in the will. A solidly entertaining murder mystery/thriller.
(82) An Unkindness of Magicians (The Unseen World #1) by Kat Howard (354 pages, 2017). Audiobook. Re-read. I read this a few years ago and loved it! The sequel came out this year so I wanted to refresh my memory. This is such a brilliant story and premise–my only complaint is that I feel like it has so much potential for emotional depth and richness and the author didn’t maybe flesh all that out as much as she could have.
(83) 🪄A Sleight of Shadows (The Unseen World #2) by Kat Howard (320 pages, 2023). Audiobook. An excellent follow-up to book #1, just, again, I feel like she could have really milked the emotional richness and depth of this story but didn’t quite. (It also felt a bit short and almost abridged? I could have seen this story being a solid 20% longer.) Still well written and enjoyable and I look forward to more in this series.
(84) Exit by Belinda Bauer (325 pages, 2020). Audiobook. Widower Felix Pink belongs to a right-to-die group called the Exiteers, who do everything legal they can to assist the terminally ill in peacefully ending their lives. Then one night, suspicious circumstances result in Pink and his new partner assisting the wrong person, who ends up dead while the intended client is left furious. Now Pink is in hiding from the police as the dead man’s family searches for answers, not to mention his will. By turns sobering, sinister, heartwarming, and hilarious. Looking forward to more of Bauer.
(85) One of Us by J.T. Ellison (400 pages, 2023). Audiobook. Desperate to be a mother, interior designer Olivia Bender and her husband Park have suffered one miscarriage or failed fertility treatment after another. Then police inform the couple that, according to DNA evidence, the culprit in a recent murder is Park’s son. Horrified, Park confesses that back in graduate school, he donated sperm, but of course has no idea when, where, or how many times it was used. The Parks’ story and murder investigation dovetail with the stories of other characters, and over the course of the book the connections are revealed. This book felt a little slow and predictable for my taste but was still reasonably entertaining.
(86) The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter (304 pages, 2021). Audiobook. This book kind of reminded me of The Looker in terms of its vibe and not-good-ness. Photographer Delta Dawn makes a living transforming photos of mediocre-to-disappointing New York City social events into transcendently joyous memories. After chance events at Natalie Straub’s eleventh birthday party give her the opportunity to get to know the family better, Delta begins plotting how she might insinuate herself into their lives and luxurious home by manipulating more than photos. There is absolutely nothing redeeming or sympathetic about this lady from the first page and I just didn’t find the story all that interesting.
(87) Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland #1) by Anthony Horowitz (496 pages, 2016). Audiobook. A fascinating story-within-a-story puzzle read. Eccentric English crime writer Alan Conway is beloved for his series in which detective Atticus Pund solves Agatha Christie-style crimes in sleepy 1950s villages. But when editor Susan Ryeland receives his latest manuscript, something is clearly off–something that may change Susan’s life forever. A refreshing and clever take on the traditional vintage crime genre!
(88) I Found You by Lisa Jewell (352 pages, 2016). Audiobook. We begin with three seemingly separate stories: Single mom Alice, who finds an intriguing man with no memory sitting on a beach outside her house with no idea how he got there. Newlywed Lily, whose husband has failed to return to their suburban London home after work. And twenty-three years earlier, teenage siblings Gray and Kirsty Ross enjoying a summer beach holiday with their parents, until an odd young man begins paying an unnerving amount of attention to Kirsty. As we cut back and forth between the three stories and two time periods, the connections between the various people and places are revealed. Classic Lisa Jewell!
(89) Book of Night by Holly Black (306 pages, 2022). Paper book. Ugh this book took me so long to finish. So. LONG. I bought it in the international terminal where the pickings were slim to have something to read on the long flight to Greece, and it soon became clear that it just really was not for me.. Charlie Hall (kind of a bumbling, ne’erd-o-well Jessica Jones-like figure) has spent most of her life (starting from childhood) helping gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, etc. to steal from their fellow gloamists. She’s trying to go straight now, but when a horrifying figure from her past returns, she finds herself pulled back down into the seedy underbelly of gloamist Berkshires. Also, her mysterious, too-good-to-be-true-but-also-lacking-a-shadow boyfriend seems to be keeping secrets from her. An interesting premise here but I felt like the author spent too much time trying to make everything and everyone come off as edgy, tragic, and/or damaged and I just found it tiresome and not that interesting.
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