Last, Now, Next

 

From a murdered nanny to a baby penguin to center court at the US Open. My reading life has no theme and I've made peace with it.

Last, now, next is back after I let my reviewing slide for a bit. No apologies, just catching up.

LAST: The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson. A slow burn suburban thriller set in a too-perfect neighborhood outside DC. Empty nester Caren blacks out after a graduation party and becomes convinced someone drugged her. She teams up with a new neighbor who is obsessed with solving the murder everyone else wants to forget. Rich people behaving badly, manicured lawns hiding ugly things. My kind of mess.

NOW: How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior. My book club pick. An eighty five year old woman who is wealthy, cranky, and estranged from her family decides to fly to Antarctica to see the penguins she watched on TV, whether the scientists want her there or not. She is exactly the kind of difficult old lady I hope to become. Family, second chances, and yes, a baby penguin. I am not made of stone.

NEXT: The Open Era by Edward Schmit. My library hold finally is in. It follows the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam as he handles the spotlight, an anxiety disorder, and a slow burn thing with his biggest rival, all during two weeks at the US Open. A tennis romance is nowhere near my usual lane and that is the whole point.

That is the range. Murder, penguins, tennis. Tell me your brain works any differently.

Indie Darling

 

Kelly Williams might be my favorite new PI in ages, and I'm already hoping this turns into a series.

She's a Dolly Parton-loving, sports-car-driving private investigator in Nashville who only takes cases helping women, and her own past gives her real empathy for the women who walk through her door. Her newest client is Sarah Owens, better known as Seraph, the magnetic lead singer of an indie band with a cult-like following, witchy stage presence, and cryptic lyrics fans love to decode. Someone's been stalking her, and it's escalating. Then Seraph gets shot on stage mid-concert and the ambulance carrying her vanishes.

What pulled me in was the peek behind the curtain of the music industry, where all that glitter hides a lot of grit. Seraph's orbit is full of suspects, the pace never lets up, and the twists and red herrings kept me guessing. Amara Jasper's narration is so good. She juggles a big cast and balances Kelly's go-go-go energy with her tenderness, and gives Seraph the sympathy a complicated woman deserves. The easter egg lyrics running through the story and the actual songs at the end add to the whole atmosphere and really pull you in. Stay for the author's note too. It's worth it.

Twenty years of handing books to reluctant readers taught me that the right thriller can convert almost anyone, and this is one of those. If thrillers aren't usually your thing, this one still works for the strong women at its center, the questions about staying true to yourself, and the real cost of fame. Music lovers especially, this is your book.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the early listen. Indie Darling is out July 28. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead. It's a novel centered around the music industry.

About the Author

Lauren Nossett is a former professor turned novelist with a PhD in German literature. Her debut, The Resemblance, won the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

For more news and information about Lauren and her books visit her website or follow her on Instagram.

Dad-Coded Thrillers | six crime novels with that gruff, been-around-the-block energy

 

Father's Day weekend's coming up here in the U.S., and whether you're celebrating a dad, missing one, or just here for a good crime novel, these six fit the mood.

Six thrillers your dad or the thriller lover in your life probably haven't read yet. No hype. Just a retired librarian who loved books and wants to press these into your hands.

Every single one of these is under the radar, and every single one delivers.

if you liked these recommendations, you might be interested in 5 Mayteries that Take Place in 24 Hours or Less.

Give Me Everything You've Got

 

Every book has its reader. This one's reader just isn't me, and I want to tell you why.

Back in the 1930s, a librarian named S.R. Ranganathan wrote a set of guiding principles for library science. Two of them have stuck with me for 20 years: every reader their book, and every book its reader. The idea is simple. Every person can find books they love, and every book will find the people who love it.

That's my roundabout way of telling you I'm not the reader for Give Me Everything You've Got. And that's genuinely fine.

The premise: Ruby is a young filmmaker just starting to taste success when she's invited to spend the summer at the country house of Ellen, the feminist director she idolizes and who's promised to mentor her. The retreat sours fast. Ruby gets pulled into the mind games between Ellen and her magnetic daughter Lara, and the house itself starts to feel haunted by the sense that she isn't the first promising young woman brought there.

On paper that's gothic Rebecca territory, and I wanted to love it. I just didn't feel it. The characters stayed vague and hard to root for, the pace crawled, and the whole thing is written in long unbroken blocks with no quotation marks around the dialogue. If the goal was to read like one long stream of consciousness, the writing pulls it off. I found it tough to follow.

But not connecting with a book isn't the same as a book being bad. The prose is doing something deliberate, and there are readers who will fall hard for exactly that. If you love literary fiction that asks you to sink into a mood instead of a plot, this could be your summer obsession.

Thank you to Henry Holt for the gifted copy. Give Me Everything You've Got is out July 21.

If you enjoy literary fiction, James Grady's coming of age novel American Sky might interest you.

About the Author

Imogen Crimp’s debut novel A Very Nice Girl was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, selected for Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club and chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times and Grazia. She lives in London.

The Keeper

 

There's a particular kind of sad that comes with finishing the last book in a series you love.

That's exactly where I landed with Tana French's The Keeper, the third and final Cal Hooper book from Tana French. Three books in Ardnakelty, this tiny farming village in rural Ireland, and now we're saying goodbye to Cal, Trey, Lena, and the whole gossipy lot of them.

Life has been quiet for Cal and his fiancée Lena. Trey, the wild mountain girl he took under his wing back in The Searcher, has grown up and started making real plans for her future. Then the village gets rocked when Rachel Holohan, a young woman about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot, turns up dead. The official story is one thing, but anyone paying attention knows there's more to it. Cal gets pulled back in, the gossip starts flying, and what he uncovers could change Ardnakelty for good.

French is a master of setting. Her descriptions are so vivid you feel like you're standing right there in the village watching it all unfold. She balances the slow character work with a genuinely good mystery and never lets the pace sag.

One heads up: do not start with this book if you haven’t read the first two in the series. There's way too much history with these characters to skip ahead. Read The Searcher and The Hunter first and this one will hit so much harder.

On audio it's a marathon at just under 20 hours, but Roger Clark makes it fly. His narration paired with French's writing is a perfect match. I got pulled right in and I'm sad to leave this place behind. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you liked this review, you might be interested in my review of Tana French's Faithful Place.

About the Author

Tana French is the New York Times–bestselling author of nine books, including In the Woods, The Likeness, and The Searcher. Her novels have sold over eight million copies worldwide and won numerous awards, including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.

Visit Tana's website for more news and information about her book. 

Little Wild

 

Literary fiction, but make it gothic, witchy, and gay

I don't read literary fiction often, but Laura Evans’ debut Little Wild pulled me in anyway. The setting is 1937 Suffolk, England during a historic heat wave that won't break. There's a crumbling estate called Snare House, owned by the Winther family. Margaret lives with the family, but she's not part of the family. She narrates the whole story. She's sharp, watchful, and funny.  And she's hopelessly in love and obsessed with her best friend Joanie, even though she knows every one of Joanie's careless rich-girl flaws (big Daisy Buchanan energy).

Margaret has survived a lot. Her mother died young. Her father came back from the war hollowed out and neglectful. She was raised at the edge of the Winther family's world just enough to taste a life that was never really hers. She and Joanie make a plan to run off to London together as lovers. Then they're discovered, and everything breaks. Margaret is banished to a falling-down cabin in the woods with her father, grieving and alone. There in the woods, something old and strange starts waking up in her - a power that might have come from her mother.

What kept me turning pages was that I was never sure how much to trust Margaret. Was this grief and isolation bending her mind, or was she actually tapping into something real? She has this ethereal quality, and apparently her mother did too, and Evans never tidily answers it. 

The story touches on  love, friendship, grief, poverty, mental illness, and society's expectations and rolls of women. The writing is gorgeous without ever trying too hard. It’s immersive and  atmospheric, just flat-out good. 

I went back and forth between the ARC and the audiobook. Tamaryn Payne's narration is wonderful. She nails every character's tone and pours all of Margaret's longing straight into your ears.

If you love historical fiction, queer love stories, magical realism, gothic vibes, or a family drama, this blends all of it and somehow makes it sing. I could not stop rooting for Margaret.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen and Henry Holt for the gifted ARC. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out June 23.

Different genre, same wound: both Little Wild and The Three Lives of Cate Kay are about how the great love of your youth reshapes who you turn into when it falls apart.

About the Author

Laura Evans was born in the north of England and grew up in the Midlands. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge before coming in a roundabout way to journalism, where she became a magazine editor specializing in travel and nature. A lifelong city dweller who romanticizes the countryside, she spent several years in both London and Bristol before making her way to the medieval city of Norwich, where she lives with her family.

Visit Laura's website to keep up with news about Laura and her work. Follow Laura on Instagram.

Headlights

 

🎧 Pub Day Book Review 🎧

A single human hair tied around the tongue. That image alone tells you Headlights by C.J. Leede is not playing around.

Danny Stansfield is one day from leaving the FBI when his old boss in Denver calls with the three words he never wanted to hear: it's happening again. Years back, Danny worked a string of murders he could never crack, where the killers turned up dazed and wandering, wearing the skin of their victims and a single human hair tied around their tongue, with no memory of any of it. That case cost him his marriage and chased him out of Colorado. Now the bodies are back, and so is he, partnered with his ex-wife's new boyfriend and pulled straight into his own past.

There's something different about Danny. He's seen shadows since he was a kid. There’s a pull he gets when something bad is coming. He also watched his father kill his mother, and that history starts bleeding into the case in ways he can't explain.

This is a horror novel, a police procedural, and a supernatural mystery all running at the same time, and Leede ties every thread together without dropping one. Sharp writing, never a slow patch, atmospheric all the way through. Andrew Eiden narrates, and he's carrying a huge cast plus a mountain of tension and emotion. He absolutely delivers.

This is my first CJ Leede book and I have no notes. It’s shocking, dark, and so well put together.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted early listen. Out today!

If you enjoyed this review, you might also like my review of  The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer.

About the Author

CJ Leede is a bestselling horror writer, hiker, and Trekkie. She is the author of Maeve Fly, American Rapture, and Headlights. Her debut novel Maeve Fly won the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award and Splatterpunk Award, and earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination. 

Follow CJ on Instagram.