The Boys’ Club

 

Author: Erica Katz

Publisher: Harper

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️

First year lawyer Alex Vogel joins a high powered Manhattan law firm. She throws herself into her work to win a spot on the prestigious mergers & acquisitions team. Her climb up the Big Law ladder comes at the expense of her relationship with her boyfriend, her friends and her safety. 

I started out liking Alex. She’s young, smart, idealistic and hard working. She wants to do well and make a good impression at the big law firm where she’s just been hired as a junior associate. But as she makes a name for herself and starts working with the hotshot M&A guys, she becomes a real jerk. She ignores her boyfriend. She’s mean and judgmental to her parents. She starts drinking like a fish and doing drugs. She has an affair with a married senior partner at the firm. 

Some things didn’t ring true for me. The way Alex describes her parents’ house almost makes them sound poor. But her dad is an oncologist. And Alex didn’t have any law school loans to pay off. So I’m assuming she didn’t live a hard scrabble life. She looks down on her mom for being a stay at home suburban mom while Alex was growing up instead of a hard charging career woman. Alex only changes her mind about her mother after she learns her mom gave up a career as an architect to raise her. 

So many things seemed like a cliche that we’ve seen a million times before- the long hours of work, the partying, entertaining clients at a strip club, the affair with one of her bosses. The ending wasn’t exactly a let down but I didn’t find it completely satisfying. 

The author does try to keep the story moving along. She keeps the lawyer and M&A jargon to a minimum. I prefer thrillers with more action, but other readers might find this compelling. 

Becoming

 

Author: Michelle Obama

Publisher: Crown

Year: 2018

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving.”

Michelle Obama’s autobiography doesn’t reveal any political bombshells. Instead she discusses growing up in a working class family in Chicago’s South Side and surrounded by family. She was a feisty kid and a driven student. After college and law school, she went to work in a big law firm in Chicago and that’s where she met her future husband. 

She discusses juggling her career and motherhood along with her husband’s burgeoning political career. She says she never liked or had much of an interest in politics and she had to grow into campaigning. I liked her behind the scenes look at life in the White House. 

The former First Lady keeps politics to a minimum and instead focuses on family, finding her voice and using it to help others especially children and disadvantaged youth. Her writing style is casual and yet intimate. Reading her book feels like she’s chatting with you over a friendly lunch. 

Politics aside, Michelle Obama’s story is one of family, community, hard word, gratitude and love. 

We Are All the Same in the Dark

 

Author: Julia Heaberlin 

Publisher: Random House Audio

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis: It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town’s Baptist church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.

When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town’s youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can’t look away. She shares a wound that won’t close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.

Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save the lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past—the night her friend disappeared, the night that inspired her to become a cop, the night that wrote them all a role in the town’s dark, violent mythology.

This is just such an amazing book! Everything works-

 ✨ the setting - a dusty Texas town still haunted by the disappearance of the homecoming queen years earlier

✨ the characters- a broken man who the town blames for the disappearance of his sister and father, a badass female police officer intent on discovering what happens all those years ago, an a mysterious one-eyed girl with demons of her own

✨ the pacing keeps the past and the present flowing together and never gets bogged down

✨ POV - the multiple points of view really  develop each character 

✨ the writing is fantastic 

The audio narration by Jenna Lamia, Catherine Taber, MacLeod Andrews and Kirby Hayborne is masterful and pitch perfect. Lamia and Taber provide nuanced performances for their characters. 

Julia Heaberlin delivers an exceptional character driven mystery that will stick with you for a long time. 

Don’t Turn Around

 

Author: Jessica Barry

Publisher: HarperCollins

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis: Midnight. Cait Monaghan and Rebecca McRae are on a desolate road that slices through the New Mexican desert. They've never met before tonight.  Both have secrets to protect. Both of their lives are in danger.  

When a truck pulls up fast behind them, they assume it's punk teenagers or run-of-the-mill road rage, but it soon becomes clear that whoever is driving the truck is hunting them for sport—and they are out to draw blood.  

As the miles unspool and the dangers mount, the pasts they've worked so hard to keep buried have come back to haunt them.  Someone wants one of them dead. But which one?  And given the lives the two women have been leading, that someone could be almost anyone.

If Cait and Rebecca are going to survive, they'll have to learn to trust one another—and themselves. But trust is a costly business, and they’ve both paid the price before. 

Creepy suspense! Cait and Rebecca are on a middle of the night road trip from Lubbock to Albuquerque. It’s desolate, dark and there’s no cell service. A truck with an unknown driver is following them and then tries to run them off the road. Is it a random stranger or is one of them a specific target? 

The women’s stories unfold throughout the course of the book. I’ll just say they both have secrets. I don’t want to give anything away.

Jessica Barry keeps the tension ratcheted up as the road trip goes on and the women find themselves in more and more danger. The pacing is quick and the characters are interesting. 

I really liked Freefall, the author’s debut novel. She doesn’t disappoint with this book. This is a creepy thriller that will make you think twice next time you see headlights in your getting a little too close. 

Grown

 

Author: Tiffany D. Jackson

Narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Publisher: Harper Audio

Release date: 9/15/20

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Author Tiffany D. Jackson doesn’t shy away from the hard issues. Her two previous books, Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming, punch you in the heart. Jackson doesn’t let up on the intensity in her soon to be released book Grown. Jackson explores a predator manipulating his victim, child kidnapping, sexual abuse. 

All seventeen year old Enchanted Jones wants to do is sing. When she meets superstar Korey Jones, she believes all her dreams will come true. Instead, her dreams turn into a nightmare. 

Korey is eleven years older than Enchanted and offers to be her mentor. Enchanted doesn’t know Korey has a thing for young girls. He promises her love and a record album but only delivers lies, isolation, and mental, physical and sexual abuse. 

When Korey is murdered, Enchanted is the main suspect but she knows she didn’t do it. She must find out the truth and learn to heal. 

This is a chilling story of a predator who manipulates his victim and how those around him enable him. It also explores how society treats the victims and blames the victims. 

Jackson’s writing is crisp and she keeps the story moving. The audiobook narration by Joniece Abbott-Pratt is excellent. She makes it easy to distinguish each character. She strikes the right tone for Enchanted, a girl on the verge of being a grown up and yet still a kid. 

It’s a chilling and heartbreaking book. This is a book that I want to give to every teenage girl or young woman I know. I want them to read it and learn.

Grown publishes on 9/15. Definitely put this on the top of your TBR pile. 

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins and HarperAudio for the review copy. 

The Nothing Man

 

Author: Catherine Ryan Howard

Publisher: Blackstone 

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. Now I am the woman who is going to catch him.”

When Eve Black was 12 years old she was the only member of her family to survive a home invasion by the Nothing Man. As an adult, all Eve wants to do is identify the Nothing Man. She writes a book about the Nothing Man’s attacks on her family and his other victims. 

Jim Doyle, a supermarket security guard, sees Eve’s true crime memoir on sale and realizes the danger he is in. Jim is the Nothing Man and he knows Eve will stop at nothing to find him. So he must come out of retirement stop her first. 

Catherine Ryan Howard’s thriller is a book within a book. And she makes the format work. It feels like you’re reading a memoir of Eve’s hunt to find the man who slaughtered her family. The tension ratchets up as Jim reads the book and his rage builds. The engrossing story is intricately plotted and intense. 

At first the book within a book format was just a smidge confusing since I was listening to the audiobook. But then I realized Eve’s chapters where her book and Jim’s chapters were his thoughts. Narrators Alana Kerr Collins and John Keating doing a fabulous job bringing the characters to life. And I loved listening to their Irish accents! 

This is one of my favorite thrillers that I’ve read this year! 

Happy Book Birthday!

 Happy Pub Day to When No One Is Watching! 

Author: Alyssa Cole

Publisher: William Murrow Books

Year: 2020

By Alyssa Cole

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Billed as Get Out meets Rear Window, author Alyssa Cole offers up commentary on gentrification and racism wrapped in a creepy thriller. 

Sydney watches in dismay as her idyllic Brooklyn neighborhood quickly starts changing. More and more of the neighborhood’s long time Black residents and shop owners are leaving or disappearing as more white people are moving in. 

Sydney receives subtle and not so subtle threats as she digs into the mystery of the neighborhood’s sudden changes. Who can she trust to help save her home and also her life? 

Cole crafts a compelling thriller infused interesting characters, some humor and chilling danger.

Thank you to Goodreads, Alyssa Cole and William Murrow Books for the gift of this terrific suspense novel!