Iris and her husband Gabriel are best friends with Laure and her husband Pierre. They met years ago and have stayed close even though they live in London and Paris. Iris and Gabriel are shocked when they come home after a vacation to find Laure has moved into their house after a fight with Pierre. Weeks go by and there is no sign that Laure hasn't made up with Pierre or has plans to go home to Paris. Matters go from bad to worse as Laure being with them starts to affect their other friendships and the question of foul play puts a strain on their marriage as well. How well do you really know your friends? No spoilers but you may feel like i did after halfway through the book that you want to toss all of them off the nearby cliff because of their whining but in true B.A. Paris tradition there is a smoking ending coming. For fans of her other books and all those thrillers we live vicariously in. 3 1/2 stars
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Rosie is hanging on by a slim financial thread her senior year at Yale. She will do anything to be the "have not" in her house of "have it all" friends and stay on the equestrian team and in the shadow of Cress and her financial king father. Annalise is added to the house capturing Rosie's attention and unseating Queen Bee Cress which leads to drama and disaster. Soon Rosie will see through the veneer and understand the reality of the world she so desperately wants to be a part of. Mean girls, class differences, privilege all play a part in this coming of age thriller. Prepare yourself for the mind games and twists that come together seamlessly. Readers of WHEN WE WERE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL and the author's previous books will enjoy this one.
4 1/2 stars Ernest and his girlfriend Juliette are on a famous train crossing Australia as part of a Mystery Writers literary event. A cast of well known authors, editors and agents are featured guests as well as train cars filled with paying fans. Ernest is not well known but his first book did rather well and he has accepted the advance to write another book. The only problem is that he has lots of blank pages and no idea what to write. When the headliner author is murdered on the train he has what he needs - a murder to solve and a train full of suspects at his disposal He just needs to solve the murder, write the book and stay alive. Tongue in cheek nod to classic detective series of old along with a healthy dose of wit, irreverence and lots of subtle clues for the armchair detective in all of us. A good time is sure to be had by a variety of readers. Fans of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING and Anthony Horowitz will eat this up. 4 1/2 stars A ghostwriter takes on more than just writing a famous person's memoir when she shows up at Dorthy's door tucked away in Maine. Dorthy has just lost her run for President but rather than hide with her tail tucked she gets tangled up in a suspicious suicide / potential murder of her neighbor. In the classic tradition of Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, Dorthy and her partner in crime solving writer track down the killer. Everyone at the house is a suspect, the police don't seem to have a clue and Dorthy does not like to be told to back off. A literary game of CLUE with all the requisite twists and turns. The author has a popular Agatha Christie podcast and he honors the classic mystery style well. Fans of Anita Prose, Sophie Hannah and of course Dame Christie will approve. 4 stars
Meg has checked herself into a high end rehab clinic to look into the death of her estranged sister. She is a professional poker spy working for casinos to catch those cheating and with no tells to give her away she thinks she can go undercover at the clinic, get answers and get out no problem. She also thinks they won't catch that she is addicted to painkillers and has mind numbing nightmares. Everyone is a suspect from the other patients to the doctors in this high energy psychological thriller that delves into childhood trauma, addictive personalities and experimental treatments as much as it is a murder mystery. Well researched, intense and with a narrator we definitely can't trust - this is one clinic you don't want to check yourself into. Readalikes would be the medical thrillers of Robin Cook and THE SILENT PATIENT. 4 stars A mind bending thriller of a history lost with the blanks filled in by unreliable narrators and some trauma of her past buried deep within her psyche. Kat and Jude Bird are mirror twins identical in every way but the image is flipped. They have always had the other's back and are connected in body, actions even language. Kat awakens from a coma to find out that she has been in an accident and remembers nothing except the face in front of her - Jude. As Jude begins to reload all their memories so far some things just don't add up. We, the reader, are privy to the girl's unusual childhood as part of a strange cult at the hands of a powerful leader and the trauma they both suffered. Abbott Kahler is able to weave a precise and calculated drip of tension along with choice tidbits of information in her previous non-fiction books and it serves her well here. You will find yourself rooting for vengeance and be appalled in equal measure but you will certainly never be bored. Fans of THE GOOD SISTER by Sally Hepworth or intense thrillers like THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW or THE SILENT PATIENT will approve. 4 stars
Love gone wrong is the best way I can sum up this twisted tale. All the elements of a Greek tragedy and thriller are here - an unreliable storyteller, questionable morals of all the participants, a good portion of unrequited love, passion and backstabbing. A beautiful actress travels on holiday with her husband, son, best girl friend, confidante and friend (the narrator) and housekeeper to her Greek island home. The winds are picking up, a storm is coming and not everyone is destined to make it off the island. Full of clever twists and turns and misdirection that will appeal to his fans and readers of sad tales of love gone wrong. 4 stars
Leah has a rare disease known as motion blindness which allows her to see but not movement. She sees life in a series of blurry still frames. Her mother has just died leaving her alone in her New York apartment with the exception of the caretaker who has been with her since childhood and her doctor.
She makes friends uneasily one being a young man at the bookstore she visits daily and the second is her new neighbor who is her age but has an abusive husband she is trying to divorce. Leah's other senses are heightened and she smells and hears much more acutely than most. This hyperawareness alerts her to danger and she senses that something bad is going to happen to her neighbor at the hands of her husband. This leads Leah to take drastic action to help her friend ending in disastrous results. We, the reader, are trapped between feeling sorry for Leah but also don't trust her impressions. As the tension mounts you feel like you are not getting the whole story. The writing becomes frenzied and Leah's fuzzy perceptions only heighten the paranoia that creeps in. A tense Hitchcockian edge of your seat psychological tale with the most unreliable of narrators. Fans of REAR WINDOW, WOMAN ON THE TRAIN AND WOMAN IN THE WINDOW will appreciate this. They say that seeing is believing but what if you are only seeing part of the picture? 4 blurry stars Evie and her new boyfriend Ryan are in love but Evie seems to always be looking over her shoulder and doesn't give up too many details about herself. There is another side of her and this is just another job for Mr. Smith. Complications arise (as they always do) and Evie (who is really Lucca) must fight or take flight once again. This is full of complicated identities, false clues and a hazy good guy or bad guy outlook with a blockbuster ending. It was just a job where only bad guys got hurt until she met a good guy. Fans of grifter tales and Killing Eve will find joy. 4 stars
Rachel Hawkins pulls no punches in the saga of battling relatives and potential heirs to a doomed house and legacy of either really bad luck or just plain evil. Cam is a quiet bartender and his wife a schoolteacher living modestly in Colorado when Cam is summoned back to the North Carolina family he worked so hard to get away from. His mother Ruby has died and left her entire estate to him leaving out her sister, niece and nephew. Bad blood runs deep and there is plenty of mean intentions in the McTavish family as well as a few bodies. Interspersed in the family drama that Cam and Jules find themselves in are a pack of damaging letters written by Ruby that catalogue her interesting life and bad luck with husbands. Even up to the end this whodunnit leaves us wondering who is a hero, who is a villain, who is innocent and who deserved what they got. Fans of wealthy damaged families like those found in SUCCESSION, KNIVES OUT or stories of black widow wives will find much to love. 4 stars |
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