One Last Secret by Adele Parks
This book took me by the throat and squeezed. It was an insane, twisty, nerve-wracking read and I read it quickly because I needed to know what happened. I did have my suspicions and needed to see if I was right (I was). Adele is a fantastic author, this book is definitely one of her best.
One last client
A week at a beautiful chateau in the south of France—it should be a straightforward final job for Dora. She’s a smart, stunning and discreet escort, and Daniel has paid for her services before. This time, all she has to do is to convince the assembled guests that she is his girlfriend. Dora is used to playing roles and being whatever men want her to be. It’s all about putting on a front.One last chance
It will be a last, luxurious look at how the other half lives before Dora turns her back on the escort world and all its dangers. She has found someone she loves and trusts. With him, she can escape the life she’s trapped in. But when Dora arrives at the chateau, it quickly becomes obvious that nothing is what it seems…One last secret
Dora finds herself face-to-face with a man she has never forgotten, the one man who really knows her. And as old secrets surface, it becomes terrifyingly apparent that one last secret could cost Dora her life…
Coming out on December 27, don’t miss this one!
All the Broken Places by John Boyne was …WOW. I don’t give out a ton of five-star ratings on Goodreads, where I keep track of all the books I read, but All The Broken Places was definitely a five-star read!
He is one of my favorite authors, not only does he write beautifully, but the stories are filled with emotion and you cannot help but become invested in the lives of the characters.
I could never bring myself to read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is the prequel to this book. I felt that would be too emotional and hard to read, as is the case with many novels about World War 2.
This story is told from the perspective of Gretal, the sister to the brother from Striped Pajamas. She’s 91 years old and is nervous about some new neighbors in her apartment building. She hopes there aren’t any kids. As she laments over the neighbors, meets them, and bonds with the young boy, she is also reliving the horrors of the 1940s. She must come to terms with things from her past as she tries to do the right thing in the present.
1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event which tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame, and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past.
Nearly eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childhood. When a couple moves into the flat below her in her London mansion block, it should be nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. However, the appearance of their nine-year-old son Henry brings back memories she would rather forget.
Faced with a choice between her own safety and his, Gretel is taken back to a similar crossroads she encountered long ago. Back then, her complicity dishonoured her life, but to interfere now could risk revealing the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting.
I cannot recommend this book more, it was so good from start to finish and a definite MUST READ.
This is out now, don’t miss it.
All the Wicked Games by Lauren North
This book! That ending! I’m a big fan of Lauren North’s books so I was really excited to read All The Wicked Games. This is a dark and twisty novel that gave me absolute creeps and chills.
Best friends Cleo and Rachel spend their evenings pretending to be people they’re not, inventing elaborate stories to escape the monotony of their real lives. It’s all harmless fun – until they play the game on the wrong person…
It’s your move now.
Five years later, Cleo is still struggling to come to terms with the night that destroyed her friendship with Rachel and almost cost them their lives. And then she receives a text: Rachel is missing. Have you seen her?
There’s only one person to blame.
Wracked with guilt for failing Rachel the last time they were in danger, Cleo races to find her friend. But could the past be repeating itself? Only this time, they’re caught up in a far darker game.
The ending was not what I expected at all! I guess that’s the best kind of suspense, one that can shock you, right?
This is out now, don’t miss it!
I am so grateful that I’ve read several awesome books in a row! The last was The Opportunist by Elyse Friedman and I loved it!
Clever and well-written, the story had me hooked from the first page until the satisfying end.
When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, his twenty-eight-year-old nurse, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana, a hardworking single mom, has more important things to worry about.
But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive and persuade Alana to fly to their father’s West Coast island retreat to perform one simple task in their plan to make the gold digger go away. Kelly, however, proves a lot more wily than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Just how far will her siblings go to retain control?
Put this on your TO BE READ list right now, pre-order it, or write it down somewhere because you will definitely want to read this novel.
This book comes out in December!
Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Koller Croft was amazing. I loved the story, the writing, the characters, everything. I just love a certain type of book, it’s hard to describe it but a few that fit into this category include Pretty Things by Janelle Brown and The Last Flight by Julie Clark.
Here’s the synopsis of Stone Cold Fox
“Like any enterprising woman, Bea knows what she’s worth and is determined to get all she deserves—it just so happens that what she deserves is to marry rich. After a lifetime of forced instruction in the art of swindling men by her mother, Bea wants nothing more than to escape her shadow, close the door on their sordid past, and disappear safely into old-money domesticity.
When Bea finds her final mark in the perfectly dull blue-blooded Collin, she’s ready to deploy all her tricks one last time. The challenge isn’t getting the ring, but rather the approval of Collin’s family and everyone else in their tax bracket, particularly his childhood best friend Gale. Going toe-to-toe with Gale isn’t a threat to an expert like Bea, but what begins as an amusing cat-and-mouse game quickly develops into a dangerous chase. As the truth of Bea’s past threatens to come roaring out, she finds herself racing against the clock to pass the finish line before everything is exposed.”
It comes out in Feb 2023 so be sure to pre-order!
I was in a reading slump, but that promptly ended on page 1 of Mary Kubica’s newest book, Just The Nicest Couple. This one comes out in January 2023 so pre-order now and add it to your Goodreads list.
“Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found.
Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.”
This is fast-paced, nerve-wracking, and nail-biting. I read almost the entire book in one sitting!
What do you do when every book you read is just “meh”? I think I started and stopped about four books before this one!
If you want a twisty thriller right now, grab The Inmate by Freida McFadden!
Sue Watson’s books never let me down. I don’t even need to see a synopsis from the book to know I’m going to read it if Sue wrote it. I went into The Nursery not knowing much about the plot and was instantly glued to the pages. You can easily place yourself in Emily’s shoes as her daughter is messaging a stranger over social media, panic and worry immediately set in as Emily wonders who this person is and what they want with her daughter. There are buried secrets that Sofia can never learn, what if one of them is coming to the surface now?
Then: Morning light shines into the nursery, casting shadows across the pale pink walls and wooden cot in the middle of the room. She opens the door expecting to hear the soft coo of her daughter Sofia stretching herself awake. But the room is silent. The cot is empty. Her little girl has vanished…
Now: Twelve years have passed, but Emily will never forget the night her life changed forever and she’s happy to have her daughter back beside her. A teenager now, Sofia, who was once a star student, is getting into trouble at school and she’s started asking questions about when she was a baby, but Emily can’t tell her what really happened the night she went missing. Nobody would understand why Emily did what she did, and if anyone ever found out, she could lose her daughter forever.
But when Emily catches Sofia messaging a stranger online, and as she reads the last message received, her heart pounds in her chest.
Your mother isn’t who you think she is.
Days later, Emily returns home to find the house silent. She checks every room but Sofia has vanished, again. She shudders as she remembers that night in the nursery. Has her past finally caught up with her? And is she already too late to save her precious daughter?
This was a quick read, mainly because I couldn’t stop reading until I had answers! It comes out on October 20.
The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan Church was a FIVE STAR read! I absolutely loved this historical fiction novel and am eagerly awaiting the author’s next book. It’s not that often that a book makes me cry real tears but this one had me sobbing. I was also swept up in the story so completely that I lost track of time. If you are a fan of southern fiction and/or historical fiction, you don’t want to miss this.
For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah’s country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.
When an accident takes her father’s life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state’s shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.
This was a book where I liked the setting, the writing style, the plot, and the tension…basically everything was done so well that I had no choice but to give it five stars on Goodreads. The only problem with an outstanding book like this is that it inevitably has to come to an end.
Keep your eyes out for it when it’s published on March 7, 2023!
Leah Konen has a talent for writing books that are full of nail-biting tension. With every novel, she manages to weave suspense into every chapter and it really keeps you glued to the pages. You Should Have Told Me is her latest novel and it will be out on January 3.
Janie needs a break: her baby won’t sleep, she’s struggling with motherhood, and a secret from her past threatens to tear her new family apart. So when her partner, Max, offers to do their baby’s feedings that night so she can finally get some sleep, she jumps at the chance. But when Janie wakes up at three a.m., her daughter is screaming alone in her bassinet … Max has vanished.
Alone with a newborn and desperate for answers, Janie searches for Max, but the more she learns about the man she loves, the more she wonders how well she knew him at all. When a woman is murdered and Max becomes the prime suspect, Janie must face her partner’s secrets—and her own—if she ever wants her daughter to see her father again.
There were a few things about it that I didn’t love, but all in all, it was a solid read!
Out on January 3.
I love a good true crime story. This started when I was a young teenager and had read all the books that I wanted to read in the kids/teen section of the library so I moved upstairs to the adult section and got hooked on Ann Rule books. Now, all of these years later, I am still drawn to true crime. When I saw that Gregg Olsen had a new book out, American Mother, I knew I needed to read it.
This story was previously published under the title, Bitter Almonds: The True Story of Mothers, Daughters, and the Seattle Cyanide Murders.
At 5.02 pm on June 5, 1986, an emergency call came into the local sheriff’s office in the small town of Auburn, Washington State. A distressed housewife, Stella Nickell, said her husband Bruce was having a seizure. Officers rushed to the Nickell’s mobile home, to find Stella standing frozen at the door… Bruce was on the floor fighting for his life.
As Stella became the beneficiary of over $175,000 in a life insurance pay-out, forensics discovered that Bruce had consumed painkillers laced with cyanide.
A week later, fifteen-year-old Hayley was getting ready for another school day. Her mom, Sue, called out ‘I love you’ before heading into the bathroom and moments later collapsed on the floor. Sue never regained consciousness, and the autopsy revealed she had been poisoned by cyanide tainted headache pills. Just like Bruce.
While a daughter grieved the sudden and devastating loss of her mother, a young woman, Cindy, was thinking about her own mom Stella. She thought about the years of neglect and abuse, the tangled web of secrets Stella had shared with her, and Cindy contemplated turning her mom into the FBI…
Gripping and heart-breaking, Gregg Olsen uncovers the shocking true story of a troubled family. He delves into a complex mother-daughter relationship rooted in mistrust and deception, and the journey of the sweet curly-haired little girl from Oregon whose fierce ambition to live the American Dream led her to make the ultimate betrayal.
Never has the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” been more true. It’s hard to believe people can be so wicked, so evil. I thought this was a good book and researched well. The beginning had me hooked and it grew slower in the second half of the book. Still, for fans of true crime, this book will be a must-read.
Published on Nov. 8.
The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson remains one of my absolute favorite suspense novels. It’s one of the books I recommend whenever anyone asks for a thriller/suspense novel. I can still remember reading it and staying up late at night, incapable of closing it before I finished. I was on pins and needles during the entire story and I know many others feel the same. He is an incredible author and one of my automatic must-read authors.
I was nearly jumping out of my chair when I saw The Kind Worth Saving was coming out. I hoped it would be good, nothing worse than a favorite author writing a book you just can’t get into. Alas, this is REALLY good. I can recommend it without reservation.
This book centers on Henry Kimball from The Kind Worth Killing. He’s now a private detective, hired by a former student named Joan. He taught one year of high school English before a school shooting traumatized him and he left to go into the police force. Joan wants Henry to catch her husband having an affair so that she knows for sure to divorce him. The chapters alternate between Joan in the past, and later present day, and Kimball.
It’s such good suspense, you don’t need to know any more than what I have said already. I loved the twists and turns and pacing, tension…all of it. Just SO GOOD. You can easily read this as a stand-alone or read The Kind Worth Killing first. I have forgotten all the characters from the first book so it was kind of a standalone for me, doesn’t matter really.
There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private investigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: he knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.
Now Joan needs his help in proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a “for sale” sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.
Is it possible that Joan knows something about that day, something she’s hidden all these years? Could there still be a killer out there, someone who believes they have gotten away with murder? Henry is determined to find out, but as he steps closer to the truth, a murderer is getting closer to him, and in this hair-raising game of cat and mouse only one of them will survive.
Pre-order now, it comes out in March!
