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.

 

Hannah Lyon's entire job is to question how the world works. She's a physicist. So why can't she figure out what happened to her own husband?

Ellis Blake’s No Prisoners is set in New Mexico in 2008. Adam goes out one night to run an errand and that's the last anyone sees of him. Five weeks later the police think he just walked out of his life and into a new one. Hannah knows better, so she starts digging, while Detective Lou Hunt does the bare minimum on the case.

Here's where I have to be honest with you. I'm an action oriented reader. I like a fast pace, and this is a slow burn that tested my patience. The first two-thirds is a lot of Hannah driving around and a lot of Hannah trying to get someone, anyone, to take her seriously. I had to power through.

Then she notices a red SUV following her every move, and that's the moment the whole story starts to pick up a bit. Once it does, the mystery gets twisty and I did not see all of it coming. That's what saved it for me.

I'll be straight about the rest too. I didn't click with these characters. Hannah's under enormous stress and she's the only one fighting for Adam, but she reads as brittle the whole way through. Lou Hunt starts out sympathetic and then loses me, and I can't tell you why without spoiling it. Same with Adam.

Three stars from me, almost entirely about the pace. But I know plenty of readers live for a slow-building thriller, and if you're a patient reader who loves a family drama that takes its time, you are going to feel very differently than I did. This one's for you.

Thank you G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for the ARC. No Prisoners is out July 21.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of  The Last Thing He Told Me.

About the Author

Ellis Blake is the pseudonym of Ben Sanders, award-winning author of American Blood and other books in the Marshall Grade series. He lives in New Zealand. 

Dissection of a Murder

 

She's defending the case. He's prosecuting it. They're married.

It's her first murder trial. The prosecutor sitting across the courtroom is her husband, the man who trained her to do this job. Yeah. I was in.

Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray follows Leila Reynolds, a barrister handed a case way above her experience level: defending a former client accused of killing a well respected judge. The catch is everywhere. The client wants her and only her, and he won't talk. Her husband Julian is the lead prosecutor, posh and seasoned and exactly the opponent you don't want in your first big trial. And the tension doesn't stay in the courtroom. It follows them home.

Jo Murray is a former barrister and it shows. The legal details feel real without ever getting bogged down in procedure. The pace never sags, which is genuinely hard to pull off in a legal thriller. There's an unreliable narrator (you know how I feel about those 👏) plus a mysterious Witness X whose chapters run alongside Leila's with an agenda all their own. I blew through it.

The narrator is Joanne Froggatt, who you'll know from Downton Abbey, and she is phenomenal. She takes a sharp story and sharpens it further. Leila's composure, the parts she's hiding, and the control underneath all of it, comes alive in how Froggatt reads her. This was a binge, mostly because the plot and that voice were such a good pairing.

I won't say a word about the ending except that it landed for me. Some readers might not like on it, and that's fair. Go in knowing as little as possible and let it work on you.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Perfect for legal thriller fans, domestic suspense readers, and anyone who loves a courtroom story with real bite. Out now.

If you liked this review, you might be interested in Fifty Fifty, a high stakes legal thriller by Steve Cavanagh.

About the Author

Jo Murray grew up in Teesside, England, during the ’90s, when working-class girls were told they probably shouldn’t try to become barristers. Thankfully, she ignored everyone. After studying Classics at Newcastle University, she went to law school and was a criminal barrister before leaving the profession to look after her two children. She lives in North Yorkshire.

Follow Jo on Instagram for news and information about her book.

Man of My Dreams

 

🎧 Pub Week Audiobook Review 🎧

She wrote the perfect man into her next book. Then she met him in real life. Then things got weird.

Man of My Dreams might be the most fun I've had with a thriller so far this summer, and it's not even technically summer yet.

Ivy Harcourt is a bestselling romance author drowning in second-book imposter syndrome. Then she rescues a runaway dog in the park and runs straight into Liam: charming, British, hot architect Liam, who happens to be the exact love interest she's writing into her next book. Like he walked off the page and into her life. They fall fast, but he might be too perfect. He might be hiding something. And Ivy has secrets of her own.

This is a romantic popcorn thriller in the best sense. Fast-paced, twisty, and so entertaining I tore through it. Worley tells it in a dual timeline, with flashbacks to Ivy's childhood narrated by her sister Cora, who grew up with an autoimmune disease so severe she couldn't leave the house or be around anyone outside her immediate family. That thread gets darker and more interesting as Cora grows up and grows resentful, and it pays off in an ending that goes fully unhinged. Olivia Worley really knows how to write an unhinged woman, and I say that with full respect and admiration. I loved it. Did I see where it was headed once I finally clicked into the twist? Yeah, a little. Did it matter even slightly? Not at all.

Gail Shalan absolutely nails the narration. Every character has a distinct voice, and I never once got confused between Ivy and Cora, which matters a lot in a dual-timeline story. Nine and a half hours flew by.

If you like meet-cutes gone very wrong, boyfriends as unreliable as your narrators, family secrets, witty banter, and the kind of female lead who keeps you guessing, this one's for you. It’s great choice for Olivia Worley fans, romantic suspense readers, and anyone who wants a fast, twisty book to throw in the beach bag. This is a pool read, plain and simple. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen. Man of My Dreams is out now.

If you liked this review, you might enjoy another book by Olivia Worley - So Happy Together.

About the Author

Olivia Worley is an author born and raised in New Orleans. A graduate of Northwestern University, she now lives in New York City, where she spends her time writing thrillers, overanalyzing episodes of The Bachelor, and hoping someone will romanticize her for reading on the subway.

Keep up with news and information about Olivia on her website and Instagram.

IG Live | a conversation with Lee Goldberg

 

I didn't expect a murder mystery to make me laugh this much. Lee Goldberg pulled it off.

I went Live with him to talk about Murder by Design, the first book in his new Edison Bixby series, and the conversation was every bit as quick and funny as the book.

Edison Bixby is a former LAPD detective who took a bullet to the face. He survived, but the brain injury left him with zero filter — he says the rudest possible thing in the room every single time. He's also wealthy, brilliant, and now works as an insurance investigator who cracks cases by spotting how the design of a building or a space can make a murder possible.

His first case looks open and shut: a woman falls down a mall staircase in front of dozens of witnesses, all of it caught on video. Everyone sees an accident. Bixby sees a murder by design, where someone quietly engineered her into causing her own death. Pair him with Wally Nash, a broke actor hired mostly to keep Bixby from insulting everyone, and you've got the strangest, most entertaining Holmes-and-Watson duo I've read in ages.

Lee talked about how he got his inspiration for the book from a quote by a famous architect and how he wanted to write a fun and unique detective. He also said he's working on a sequel already. 

It just hit shelves, so the timing couldn't be better. If you like your mysteries clever and a little tongue-in-cheek, this is your next read.

Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today, Lee. I really appreciate it and I'm already looking forward to the sequel!

You can watch the replay of our conversation here. Check out my full review of Murder by Design here.

You can find Lee on Instagram and check out his website for more news about Lee and his books.

IG Live | a conversation with Andromeda Romano-Lax

 

Some thrillers entertain you. This one stays with you long after you finish. 

I went Live with Andromeda Romano-Lax to talk about What Boys Learn. The conversation got just as intense as her book. In a good way, of course. 

Abby Rosso is a high school counselor and a single mom raising her teenage son in a wealthy Chicago suburb. Then two teenage girls are found dead over one weekend, and Abby starts to suspect her own son is tangled up in it. Maybe even responsible.

It's a psychological thriller, but it's really chewing on something bigger. How well do we actually know the people we love the most, and how far would a mother go before she let herself believe the worst?

Andromeda talked how one of her previous books, The Deepest Lake, sparked What Boys Learn. 

If you've got a thriller lover in your life, or you're raising boys yourself, this is the one to put in their hands next.

You can watch the replay of our conversation here. Check out my review of What Boys Learn here. 

You can find Andromeda on Instagram and on Substack.