Though I was immediately drawn to the synopsis of THE PRECIOUS JULES, my expectation that it was going to be a heavy, depressing read was not entirely accurate. Shawn Notcher has written the story of the Jules family with a great deal of sensitivity. The characters are all quite complicated and many are flawed but they are presented with a unique objectivity that made them realistic and, for the ...
ARC
Blog Tour: The German Wife by Kelly Rimmer
Kelly Rimmer has done it again with THE GERMAN WIFE. One of the only books I listened to during the pandemic was The Things We Cannot Say. I absolutely loved it so when the publisher reached out to me asking if I'd like to join the blog tour for this one, it was a no-brainer. I read a lot of WWII fiction and I found this book to be different than most. It's much more nuanced and complicated and ...
Review: The Finalists by David Bell
3.25/5 stars Wow! I really struggled with rating THE FINALISTS. I'm a huge David Bell fan and had high expectations for this book. In some ways, my expectations were met or exceeded. Here's what I liked: 1)Pacing - This book was a page-turner. I read it in about 2 sittings. Short, cliff-hanging chapters for the win!2)Writing style - The Writing style was typical David Bell — smart while ...
Review: Never Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnon
Do you enjoy books with characters you just love to hate? Me too! And that's only one of the reasons why I have such high praise for NEVER COMING HOME. Lucas Forester is just a guy who has done what he needed to in order to meet his goals. Taking the hit out on his wife, Michelle, was never personal. Sure, she had a few annoying characteristics but don't we all? Lucas is not a man with no ...
Blog Tour: Deserve to Die by Miranda Rijks
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Deserve to Die by Miranda Rijks! When Emma at Dampebbles Blog Tours sent out the synopsis for this one, I was immediately drawn to it. Who can resist a good domestic thriller that includes a couple with the perfect marriage living the perfect suburban life with a "patient, systematic, methodical" femme fatale thrown into the mix? NOT this girl! What did ...
Review: The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy is a delightfully fresh literary mystery. It was just the thing to get me out of a the little slump I'd been in. I wasn't in the mood for something terribly heavy or terribly morbid. I'm always up for quirky characters. No matter that the quirkiest character was deceased prior to Chapter One. (Of an apparent suicide. In a hot tub. With a string of Christmas ...
Blog Tour: Girl Unknown
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Girl Unknown! This book is unique in many ways. The first is that Karen Perry is actually a pen name for two writers collaborating on this book. This is the first book, to the best of my knowledge, that I've read penned by two authors and it definitely worked here. Most of the book is told in the alternating first person points of view of Caroline and ...
Review: Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates
If you're a friend or follower on Goodreads, you may have seen my status update at page 108: "The jury is still out on this one. I'm not a fan of omitting quotation marks and it's moving a little slowly." And this one at page 163: "Okay, now I'm hooked." A brief status update at the end of the book would have looked something like this: "Huh? What the heck?" And that pretty much sums ...
Blog Tour and Giveaway: The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper
Little Women was one of my favorite childhood reads. I don't recall how old I was when I read it but I do remember that I longed to be one of the March girls. And I was so proud to have finished such an unimaginably long book! I found 449 pages very daunting back then. Of course, once I began reading it was over all too soon. Now that I think about it, Little Women may have been my first book ...
Review of Little Deaths by Emma Flint
I was so excited to begin this this book. I knew that it was based on a true story story but it was one I was unfamiliar with. I made the conscious decision not to do any research on the case prior to reading this fictionalized version. As you can probably tell from my rating, I had several problems with the book. The first is that it was really quite boring. It just dragged on until the very ...
