I liked the idea of Dirty Laundry—Irish small town drama, yes please!—but it was really shallow. We were told a lot about what the characters had done but there was little to no reflection or depth to the story. I also found the ending a little confusing. There was a scene when Parth (spoiler ahead) … Continue reading
A Stolen Child was a little different than the previous three Maggie D’Arcy books. There is a big time jump between the last one and this one so Maggie is now completed training to be an Irish police officer, living with her boyfriend, his son and her daughter after spending much of the training apart. … Continue reading
I have been wanting to find some easy-to-read but not childlike mystery series to get into and stumbled across the Maggie D’arcy book four on Netgalley. I requested the first three from various library systems and have been working my way through them. I like the settings of each one and the mysteries are fairly … Continue reading
I swear I have really enjoyed some Kate White books in the past so I was happy to get this one from Netgalley as an ARC. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. I felt like this should have been two different books. One about a woman coming to grips with the ripple effect … Continue reading
After reading Those People Next Door (I read this book as an ARC entitled Perfectly Nice Neighbors which I believe is the UK title but it’s on Amazon as TPND) I read that the author’s other books were legal thrillers which surprised me because the court case was a real low part of the book. … Continue reading
The Writing Retreat was really a wacky, over-the-top horror-thriller. Unfortunately, it was so badly paced and written that it flopped. It should have leaned into how impossible and camp the setup was but never did. It was almost embarrassing to read. I was puzzled the whole time about when it was supposed to take place. … Continue reading
I’m going to start by saying that Prom Mom doesn’t come out until July but I was lucky enough to get an ARC on Netgalley. I wanted to write this while the book was fresh in my mind–as soon it was downloaded I started reading. Continue reading
Dirt Creek did one of the best jobs of keeping all the characters in this tiny interrelated town straight and reminding us who they were all the time in a helpful yet unobtrusive manner I’ve seen! I really can’t say enough about how rare that is! There were a lot of characters, a lot of … Continue reading
The Family Game is just such a fun book—an orphan novelist gets swept up by a wealthy man and his games-obsessed, insular family. Chaos ensues. Really a fun twist on the thriller genre with a little book within a book going on. Is it the best book in the entire world? Maybe not but it … Continue reading
I liked the idea of The Second Mother. A woman wanting to start over ends up at a remote island to be the teacher after the last ones left. I don’t think the book needed the mystery element which might have been part of why it felt flat. Nothing sat right about the ages to … Continue reading
Rachel Reads Books 