Killer Vibes

 

I think I found my favorite new detective of the year, and he’s a broke, bisexual stoner who trips into the case completely by accident.

Meet Peter Key. When we first find him, he’s a charming, aimless weed dealer living about an hour away from being either homeless or dead. Then a lawyer tells him he’s inherited a big rundown house in one of Austin’s swankiest neighborhoods from an uncle he barely knew. Good news, right? Except the uncle borrowed half a million dollars right before he died, the money’s vanished, and now the debt lands squarely on Peter. 

Everyone from the lawyer to a very intense real estate broker next door wants him to sell, pay up, and disappear. But Peter wants to keep the house. His only shot is finding the missing money before someone else does, and before he becomes the next body.

This one is a total romp and I loved every second, especially Peter’s laid-back charm, the quirky supporting cast, and the twisty hunt for the cash. It went places I never saw coming and stayed fun the whole way through. John Fram, writing here as Jack Friday, keeps the plot moving and the Keep Austin Weird energy cranked all the way up. On audio, narrator Max Meyers is fantastic. He runs the full range of Peter’s emotions and gives every character in the cast their own distinct voice.

If you like your mysteries offbeat, with great lgbtq+ representation and enough twists to keep any armchair detective guessing, bump this to the top of your summer list. It’s already one of my favorite reads of the year, and I’m thrilled it’s the first in a planned series. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted early listen. Killer Vibes is out July 14.

One more thing: come hang out with us live. I’m interviewing Jack Friday himself this Thursday, July 9 at 4pm EST / 3pm CST. Join us!

Jack Friday is a new pen name for horror writer John Fram. Check out my review of his previous book The Midnight Knock.

About the Author

Jack Friday is the pen name of John Fram, the author of several queer supernatural thrillers such as The Bright Lands and The Midnight Knock. He lives in Austin. Follow John on Instagram and visit his website for more news and information about hsi books.

Revolutionary War Reads for the Fourth of July

 

Four books that drop you right into the Revolution, no fireworks required. I was a school librarian for twenty years, and the Revolutionary War shelf was sometimes a hard sell until I figured out which books actually pull kids in. These four hold up whether you are twelve or seventy.

Johnny Tremain is the one I read as a kid and never shook. A young silversmith's apprentice in Boston badly burns his hand, falls in with the Sons of Liberty, and ends up tangled in the Tea Party and the first shots at Lexington. It won the Newbery in 1943, and it still moves.

My Brother Sam Is Dead is the one that gutted me. A Connecticut family torn down the middle, a father who wants no part of the fight, an older son who runs off to join the Patriots, and the younger brother left watching it all come apart. It is not the tidy version of the Revolution. It is the real cost of it. Fair warning, the title is not a bluff.

A Girl Called Samson is the grown up pick, and it is based on a true story. Deborah Samson bound her chest, called herself Robert Shurtliff, and enlisted in the Continental Army. Amy Harmon goes deep on the history with a slow burn romance running underneath.

Chains is the one I wish I could have handed every single student. Isabel is thirteen, enslaved in New York City in 1776, promised her freedom and then sold to a Loyalist family instead. She spies for the Patriots hoping it buys her liberty and learns neither side is really fighting for hers. It is upper middle grade, and it does not soften the violence of slavery, so go in knowing that. It will stay with you.

A little nostalgia, a little history they skipped in school, and a reminder that independence looked very different depending on who you were.

Deborah Sampson isn't the only woman who hid who she was to fight. Here's my review of Code Name Hélène.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica

 

I showed up to book club as a full penguin. Everyone else wore black and white and called it a day.

That felt fitting for this one, because How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior is all about actually showing up for something.

Veronica McCreedy is 85, rich, and cranky enough to clear a room. She’s estranged from everyone, so when a penguin documentary catches her eye, she decides the Antarctic research team studying them should inherit her fortune. But first she has to see the penguins herself, which means flying to Antarctica against everyone’s advice and parking herself at a research station where three scientists absolutely do not want to babysit her. She also goes looking for living family and turns up Patrick, a directionless grandson she does not click with even a little.

Then she talks the team into rescuing an orphaned chick, and the whole thing cracks open. Veronica finally has something to love, and her friendship with Terry, one of the scientists, gives her somewhere to put all that armor down.

Here’s what got the whole book club: Veronica is not likable for a good chunk of this book. But once you learn where the hardness came from, losing her parents in the Blitz, losing a child, decades of nobody, you stop wanting to shake her and start rooting for her. That’s hard to pull off and Prior does it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me and a unanimous yes from the group. Bring tissues for the backstory.

If you enjoyed this review, you may be interested in another cantankerous old woman, Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth.

About the Author

Hazel Prior lives on Exmoor with her husband and a huge ginger cat. As well as writing, she works as a freelance harpist. Hazel is the author of Ellie and the Harp-Maker, the #1 ebook and audiobook bestseller Away with the Penguins and its follow-up, Call of the Penguins. Life and Otter Miracles is her fourth novel.

Follow Hazel on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

The Forest Becomes Her

 

This book made me want to walk outside and put my hands in the dirt.

The Forest Becomes Her by Julie Carrick Dalton follows three women in Concord, Massachusetts after a centuries-old forest gets clear-cut to make room for a development of eco-friendly homes. The irony is lost on the developers. One massive oak is left standing alone, and that tree is what pulls these three women into each other's lives.

Polly is a grieving teenager who scattered her mother's ashes at the old oak, a place the two of them loved. Stella is the real estate agent selling the new homes, lonely after losing her best friend, Polly's mom. Hazel is Stella's neighbor, trying to make sense of a devastating loss, finding her only comfort in the soil of her backyard. Together they set out to save the tree, and they find friendship, community, and a way through their grief.

I loved all three women, but Polly especially. She's smart, shy, observant, and kind. She's carrying two kinds of grief at once, for her mother and for the forest, and she starts out alone but slowly finds her voice and her people. Dalton's writing is poignant without ever tipping into saccharine. You feel the weight these women are carrying, but the book never tries to manipulate you into feeling it. The magical realism is woven in so gradually it never feels forced, and the idea of finding solace in nature shows up in ways I won't spoil here.

Atmospheric, engrossing, and full of heart. The right reader for this is anyone who loves found family, magical realism, women's fiction, or stories about our connection to the natural world. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Megan Beatie Communications and St. Martin's Press for the gifted ARC. The Forest Becomes Her is out July 14.

If you enjoyed this review, you might like Little Wild by Laura Evans.

About the Author

As a journalist, Julie Carrick Dalton has published more than a thousand articles in The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Orion Magazine, Electric Literature, and other publications. A former beekeeper and organic farmer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of writing fiction in the age of climate crisis and is a member of the teaching faculty at Drexel University’s MFA Program. When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, you can probably find her skiing, swimming, kayaking, working in her garden, or trying to keep track of her four children and two dogs.

Follow Julie on Instagram and visit her website for news and information about her books.

Lydia Cooper Is a Lie

 

One photo. That’s all it took to turn Lydia Cooper’s quiet life with her dad into a full-on run for survival.

Lydia’s dad works in cybersecurity, so he knows exactly what the internet can do to a person. No social media, heavy parental controls, the whole lockdown. Lydia thinks he’s just being the most overprotective dad on the planet. So when she gets left out of yet another group chat and misses movie night at her crush’s house, she’s had enough. She figures out his password, makes the account everyone at school is on, and finally starts to feel like she belongs. Then an innocent group photo she’s tagged in changes everything, and suddenly she and her dad are running for their lives from people she didn’t know existed.  

Turns out her whole history is built on secrets, and she’s not even sure who she really is.

Lydia Cooper Is a Lie is smart, fast, and packed with twists. What I loved most is that Meaghan McIsaac writes Lydia as an actual kid. No eye-rolling sarcasm, no 13-going-on-30 attitude, just an earnest girl who wants to fit in, which makes you root for her hard when things go sideways. 

Jensen Olaya’s narration is a big part of why it works. Her voice sounds young, and she nails all the swirl of nerves and confusion Lydia’s feeling. It’s the everyday middle school stuff, fitting in, first crushes, the pull of social media, dropped into a movie-style thriller, and the combo really works. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Quick note for parents: this gives your middle grade reader a genuine thriller without anything beyond a PG-13 rating.

 

Thank you to Simon Audio for the gifted early listen. Out tomorrow. 

If you enjoyed this review, you might also be interested in Julie A. Swanson's book North of Tomboy.

About the Author

Meaghan McIsaac is the author of several books for young readers, including Lydia Cooper Is a Lie, Cheat Code, Movers, and The Bear House. She has an MA in writing for children from the University of Winchester and is also an illustrator for picture books and graphic novels. 

Follow Meaghan on Instagram and find more news and information about her books at her website.

The Neighbors Are Watching

 

If you love rich people behaving badly in a picture-perfect suburb, Aggie Blum Thompson is your author. The Neighbors Are Watching is set in Eastbrook, Bethesda, one of those leafy DC-area neighborhoods that looks flawless on the surface and is absolutely rotten underneath.

Caren blacks out shortly after leaving a graduation party and wakes up with a head wound near the house where a nanny was murdered a year ago. She thinks she was drugged. Her husband and the police aren't so sure. When she teams up with Finn, a new neighbor desperate to solve his best friend's murder, the two start pulling at threads that the whole neighborhood wants left alone.

This one has multiple POVs, a dual timeline, gaslighting, unreliable narrators, and characters making the worst possible decisions at every turn. It's a lot. And it works. The dual timeline was a smart structural choice; it let Thompson weave in the backstory of the original murder without it ever feeling like a detour.

The only two characters in this book NOT actively scheming or covering something up are Finn and his sassy landlord, which tells you everything you need to know. Oh, and Finn is a librarian. So he was automatically my favorite. 😄 There's also a diverse cast and solid LGBTQ+ representation woven throughout.

Narrator Alex Picard handles a large, chaotic cast with real skill. I never once lost track of who was who, which is genuinely impressive given how many people are up to no good here.

My only quibble: the big reveal of who the killer was fell a little flat for me. Not a dealbreaker, but I wanted more of a gut punch at the end.

Still, if you need a perfect pool or beach listen this summer, this is your book. It's entertaining, twisty, and I wanted to yell at Caren to run from the toxic bougie neighborhood the entire time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🎧 Thank you Macmillan Audio for the early listen! The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson is out June 30.

If you liked this review, you might be interested in The Dead Girls Book Club by Zia Rayyan.

About the Author

Before turning to fiction, Aggie Blum Thompson covered real-life crime as a newspaper reporter for a number of papers, including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Aggie is a member of Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her family in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Follow Aggie on Instagram or visit her website to keep up with news and information about her books.

Molka

 

This is all feminine rage and I’m here for it.

Molka is the Korean word for a spy camera, the kind secretly and illegally installed to record women without their knowledge. That alone tells you what kind of book you’re walking into.

Dahye is still grieving her older sister and buckling under a mother who makes her feel like she’ll never measure up. Then she falls into a fast, dizzying romance with a wealthy, charming man, and for a minute it feels like things are finally turning her way. Until a hidden camera captures one of their private moments and it ends up all over the internet.

What she doesn’t know is that an IT guy in her building has been quietly spying on women for a long time, and he’s fixed his attention on her.

When Dahye finally grasps the full scope of what’s been done to her, she stops absorbing it and starts fighting back. Hard.

I felt for her on every single page. This is a dark, disturbing, modern horror story about terrible men and the women they violate, and it does not flinch. Monika Kim writes with a blade. She refuses to look away from the daily reality so many women live with.

On audio, Rosa Escoda is fantastic. She carries Dahye from the giddiness of new love to the gut-punch of public humiliation to full-blown rage, and never drops a beat.

Not an easy listen. But a necessary one. Out now. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack, another novel about an unhinged woamn looking for revenge.

About the Author

Monika Kim is an acclaimed, Sunday Times bestselling author of “violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original” (The New York Times Book Review) horror novels. Her debut, The Eyes Are the Best Part, was a TIME Magazine, New York Times, B&N, and Kobo Best of the Year, as well as a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist and a Bram Stoker Award nominee. A second-generation Korean American, she learned about eating fish eyes and other Korean superstitions from her mother, who immigrated to California from Seoul in 1985. She lives in Los Angeles’s Koreatown.

Follow Monika on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information.