A quick review of The Ascent by Allison Buccola Continue reading
Tag Archives: bad men
Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh
I was really looking forward to Other People’s Houses. I ended up getting an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher but I had pre-ordered it because my local libraries don’t always carry her books. I really enjoyed the first (and second!) book in this series (and her other books) but this one was a little … Continue reading
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
A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan
This may be my favorite book of 2025 so far! I loved the New Zealand setting. I felt like I was eating sausages right along with them. It did a great job of having a child narrator without it feeling childish or too all knowing. It really hit all the parts of childhood—family dynamics and … Continue reading
We Don’t Talk about Carol by Kristen L. Berry
I enjoyed We Don’t Talk about Carol but at times it was a bit convoluted and sprawling. I’m not sure if the pregnancy storyline was needed or fit. It took away momentum from her family of origin story, the story of these missing Black girls and the investigation. I liked the main character and she … 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
A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy by Kathy Kleiner Rubin and Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi
A Light in the Dark was in no way a light read. It was quite graphic about not only what happened to her but other victims of Ted Bundy. She felt compelled to write the book after 40+ years of fawning over Ted Bundy to set the record straight–he was not a smart, attractive man … Continue reading
Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career by Kristi Coulter
I don’t even think I realized Exit Interview was about Amazon until I checked it out of the library, it was a “coming soon” title and the author seemed familiar so I put it on hold. The cover should have been a little clue but I think I thought it was just about office work. … Continue reading
The Summer She Vanished by Jessica Irena Smith
I liked the idea of The Summer She Vanished but it could have done with some editing. There was a fair amount of repetition—for example the main character, Maggie, thought things like “why didn’t I think of that” about nearly every revelation. The American characters also used a lot of British terminology like “smallhold” that … Continue reading
A Stolen Child by Sarah Stewart Taylor
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
Rachel Reads Books 