Ungodly Rich

 

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Julia falls for a gorgeous guy who loves adventure and a good adrenaline rush. Turns out he's the god of war, his family runs a global empire, and his mom wants Julia gone.

Ungodly Rich by Katharine McGee reimagines the gods and goddesses of Olympus as the ultra rich, ultra powerful family behind a worldwide corporation. Think Succession, but everyone has magic powers and nobody has ever been to therapy. 

The whole thing is a romp. Hera is the scheming future mother in law determined to end her son's romance. Aphrodite is the jealous sister in law happy to help her do it. And Hades is off in a corner running his own quiet plan to topple Zeus.

Saskia Maarleveld narrates, which was a good sign before I ever hit play. She gives Hera a voice that cuts like glass, and I never once lost track of who was who, which is no small thing with a cast this size.

This is a fun pick for a lot of different readers, especially if you love romance, retellings, or watching a wealthy family come apart at the seams. Word is there's a sequel in the works and I'm here for it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now.

Grab a copy from Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you liked this review, you might be interested in my review of  The Witch's Heart.

About the Author

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling of the American Royals series, The Thousandth Floor trilogy, and A Queen’s Game. She studied English and French literature at Princeton and has an MBA from Stanford. Follow Katharine on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

Beyond Honor

 

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Thank you Simon & Schuster Audio, Atria Books, and Megan Beatie Communications for the gifted copies.

An Alaskan hunting guide, a New York developer in over his head, and a CIA analyst chasing a conspiracy straight into the Oval Office. This debut ties all three together and never lets up.

Beyond Honor by K.B. Brodsky is an old-school, globetrotting political thriller with the pacing of a modern action novel, and it's a debut. Bill and Karen Brodsky are a husband-and-wife writing team, which explains nothing about how they pulled this off on the first try.

Three threads: Kevin Rhoads is young Alaskan hunting guide whose tracking skills make him CIA paramilitary material. When his team is killed, his grief turns into something sharper, and the man who goes into Siberia on a solo extraction has vengeance on his mind. Real estate developer Peter Michaels is desperate for financing. He takes money from the wrong people in Moscow and finds himself owned. Analyst Whitney Skyler uncovers foreign operation that involves the Oval Office. Whitney and CIA Director Cynthia King leverage a thirty-year debt of honor to try to free an American agent rotting in a Russian prison.

To say there's a lot going on is an understatement. What impressed me is that none of it tangles. The threads converge into a fast-paced edge-your-seat thriller. 

I went back and forth between print and audio and ended up doing most of it on audio. Narrator Jacques Roy handles a huge cast without a single moment where I lost track of who was talking. That's harder than it sounds.

A sequel is already announced and I'm in. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now. 

Grab a copy of Beyond Honor from Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

I you enjoyed this review, and want more espionage, you might be interested in my review of The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen.

About the Author

K.B. Brodsky is the pen name of Bill and Karen Brodsky, a husband-and-wife writing team based in New York City and Colorado. Beyond Honor is the first book in a series. Follow the authors on Instagram and visit their website for more news and information about their work.

Book Mail

 

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Two of these are about sisters. The third is about a woman who hauls dead bodies for a living. My mail carrier has range.

Thank you William Morrow, Thomas & Mercer, Kathleen Carter Communications, and Henry Holt and Co. for the gifted books!

This stack is a genre whiplash in the best sense. 

My Sister Is Going to Kill Me by Nina Simon puts two opposite sisters on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, and then a fellow traveler turns up dead. It's from the author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night, so you know the family dynamics are going to do half the work. Out now.

She Dies in the End by Elle Marr really caught my eye. Penny Lin is a body broker in Portland, transporting donated cadavers to labs and universities. Then she finds her ex-lover among the deceased with an anonymous note attached: don't tell a soul. Whoever sent it knows exactly what she's been running from. First in a new series, out Oct. 20.

Between You a River by Kimberly Garza is my literary pick of the three. Two estranged sisters get called back to their home in the Philippines to settle family business. What they find is their mother's buried history and a fight over ancestral land. Garza wrote The Last Karankawas, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice. Out Dec. 1.

You can preorder these books through my affiliate storefront from Bookshop.org and hekp an indie bookstore while you're at it.

Last, Now, Next

 

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Thank you Sourcebooks Audio and Simon and Schuster Audio for the gifted audiobooks!

Last: The Sins of Summer Daughters by Lo Patrick. A grandmother in small-town Georgia watches her granddaughter get accused of murder, and it drags up something she buried back in the 70s. Slow, humid, and quietly brutal. Out now.

Now: It's Not What You Think by Clare Mackintosh. Nadeeka is positive her partner is cheating. She goes home to confront him and walks into a crime scene instead. The title is not messing around. Out Sept. 22.

Next: Trad Wife by Sarah Langan. A journalist shows up at a trad wife influencer's picture-perfect farm to write a takedown. The farm has other plans. Langan says it's not satire, it's horror. Out Sept. 29.

Grab a copy of The Sins of Summer Daughters or preorder It's Not What You Think and Trad Wife from Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

The Camino

 

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Thank you Simon and Schuster Audio for the gifted audiobook!

This is not the fast paced thriller the cover promises, and that's exactly why I liked it.

A widow retraces her husband’s final walk on the Camino and discovers the man she married never existed.

The Camino by Anya Niewierra is billed as a literary thriller, and it is and it isn’t. It reads more like a domestic drama braided with historical fiction, with a character study at its heart. So a fair warning from your librarian: if you go in expecting a page turner with a twist every chapter, you might be disappointed. But if you love to settle into a layered story and let it unfold at its own pace, your patience will be rewarded.

Lotte Bonnet is a Dutch chocolatier whose husband Emil, a refugee from Bosnia, died by suicide while walking the Camino de Santiago through central France. One year later, Lotte follows his exact route, stop for stop, hoping to understand what happened. Along the way she learns that Emil had been living a lie for their entire marriage. And she starts to realize someone does not want her to finish the walk.

The second timeline comes through a letter written to Lotte, describing life in Bosnia before the war and the hardships and horrors once it began. I’m old enough to remember watching the Bosnian War unfold on the news, and it’s clear Niewierra did serious research here. This is a time and place that doesn’t get much shelf space in historical fiction, and it deserves it.

I liked Lotte. I found the story unique and intriguing. There's a subplot I thought pulled focus from the main story, but overall it's an engrossing read. A quick note that this book was a phenomenon in the Netherlands, selling over 800,000 copies and winning multiple awards, and it's finally available in English for the first time.

On audio, Carlotta Brentan and Vas Eli are excellent. Their performances perfectly match Niewierra’s lyrical prose, and having two narrators for the two timelines really elevated the listening experience.

This is a good choice for historical fiction lovers who want a setting and events off the beaten path, and literary thriller readers who like to get lost in a story that takes its time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Heather. It's a literary thriller by Caitlin Muller.

About the Author

Anya Niewierra is the number one bestselling author of the Netherlands, dubbed by the press as the new queen of Dutch literature. She has written six books, all of them immense bestsellers. Her breakthrough book The Camino has sold well over 800,000 copies in the Netherlands, won both the NS Reader’s Award and the Hebban Crime Award, and was the bestselling and most borrowed book of the year in the Netherlands in 2024, spending over 170 weeks on the bestseller list. It’s currently being made into an international television series and has been published in multiple languages. Follow Anya on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

IG Live | a conversation with author Andre Hardy

 

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Andre Hardy played running back in the NFL and then wrote a gritty crime fiction debut. If you missed our live chat, check out this replay.

Tear the City Down came out yesterday and it's the kind of book I'd recommend to any reader who tells me they want something gritty and don't want to be babied. Coltrane Davis is a fixer who wants out. His daughter's tennis career is finally the thing worth going straight for. Then a Chargers star running back vanished the night before a big game, and  Coltrane’s boss pulls him back in for one more job. That job takes him somewhere very dark. (Be aware there are several trigger warnings.)

We talked about how a guy goes from the football field to writing noir, why jazz runs through every page, what Andre saw behind the scenes in football that made it into the book, and the many side his of hometown city San Diego. 

If you're a fan of S.A. Cosby or Walter Mosley, this one is for you.

Watch the replay, then grab the book at Bookshop.org. This is for the readers who like their crime fiction fast, brutal, and with a heart.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Megan Beatie Communications for the gifted book.

if you missed it, be sure to check out my review of Tear the City Down.

August Reading Wrap Up

 

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I read 13 books in August. Want to know what they were and what my two favorites for the month were? Check out my reading wrap up that's posted over on my Instagram.

Check out my list of favorite books of the year so far at Bookshop.org. Every purchase from there helps out an indie bookstore.