A quick review of The Ascent by Allison Buccola Continue reading
Category Archives: suspense
Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza
If it wasn’t for some dark themes I would have thought this book was written for children. The writing is very simplistic. Everyone’s thought process is very black and white. The bad men are very bad. The influencers are all liars. The prairie is vast. It is an odd choice to write about influencers when … Continue reading
You Belong Here by Megan Miranda
You can always count on Miranda to have a busy plot with a lot of characters but to tie up loose ends. This book was no different. I enjoyed the townie vs college dynamics and how she touched on being a relatively young mother of a college student when some of her peers have elementary … Continue reading
Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman’s fixation with weight is in full effect in Murder Takes a Vacation. It was brought up so many times. It was a major feature of her Tess Monaghan books as well but it seems to have escalated. Who talks about their weight that much to strangers? And friends? She had virtually no other … Continue reading
Past Lying by Val McDermid
I listened to all of the Ann Cleeves Vera, Shetland and Two Rivers novels and then moved to the Karen Pirie series by Val McDermid. Some themes, like fatphobia re: the main character are similar and for both Vera and the first book barely mentioned the detective until most of the book was over and … Continue reading
You Should Have Told Me by Leah Konen
The mystery in You Should Have Told Me was pretty solid but I wanted to say that I enjoy reading a book where the people aren’t just upper middle class or wealthy moms, lawyers, writers, doctors etc. Janie is a reluctant unemployed mother and her partner is a guitar teacher with a low paying indie … Continue reading
Lost to Dune Road by Kara Thomas
I want to say upfront that I received an ARC of Lost to Dune Road from NetGalley so I’m hoping the mistakes are fixed before publication. I was excited to see Kara Thomas back! I still think her YA is a little more solid than her adult fiction but this was a good start to … Continue reading
Perfectly Nice Neighbors aka Those People Next Door by Kia Abdullah
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 by Julia Bartz
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
Prom Mom by Laura Lippman
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
Rachel Reads Books 