The Sun Down Motel

 

Author: Simone St. James

Publisher: Berkley

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Happy Halloween! 

After seeing so many rave reviews here on bookstagram, I decided to give this one a try. It did not disappoint! This was the perfect read for Halloween week.

I don’t read much horror, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this when I started it. But its combination of horror and mystery is perfect! It combines a creepy motel, several dead girls, and a 35 year old mystery. 

If you haven’t read this yet, don’t wait until next Halloween! Curl up and get cozy with this book on any dark night. And if you hear a door slam while you’re reading, maybe don’t go investigate it! 😀 

Necessary Lies

 Necessary Lies

Author: Diane Chamberlain 

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Year: 2013

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis: After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother's aging, her sister's mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.

When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County's newest social worker, she doesn't realize just how much her help is needed. She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband. But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong. 

Set in rural Grace County, NC in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy. Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it's wrong?

Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain is not my usual genre, but it was my book club’s October read and I enjoyed it. Ivy and Jane are interesting and compelling characters. The book dealt with poverty, racism and eugenics. Who decides what is best for under educated people living in poverty? And what happens when those decisions clash with someone’s hopes and dreams? This was was a powerful and thought provoking read! 

Shogun

Author: James Clavell

Narrator: Ralph Lister

Publisher: Blckstone Audio

Year: 2015

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a sweeping historical fiction saga set in ancient Japan. Blackthorne, a bold & daring Englishman, pilots a Dutch ship that washes up in Japan after a storm. Blacktorne is an incredibly obnoxious main character. He’s a great sailor, smart & speaks several languages. But all he does is rant and rave. He eventually learns to appreciate the culture and falls in love with a Japanese woman. 

I listened to the audiobook which has a listening time of 53 hours & 33 minutes. I did speed up the narration to get through it faster. Props to Ralph Lister for his narration. He must have really had his work cut out for him voicing this tale. 

I liked the basic bones of the story, but it just took too darn long to unfold and there were too many characters to keep track of. I also thought the author spent way too much time explaining some historical details when the Cliff Notes version would do. We are also promised a big battle that never materializes. Kind of a let down. 

So why did I read this? For some reason this epic is on Amazon’s list of 100 mysteries and thrillers to read in a lifetime. I don’t understand why they considered this a mystery or thriller. There’s no crime to solve. No clues or red herrings. There’s some political intrigue as Torunaga plots to consolidate his power to try to become shogun. But I definitely don’t see this as a thriller. 

Sometimes I Lie

Author: Alice Feeney

Publisher: Flatiron

Year: 2018

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t usually read the same author back to back. But the library ebook hold gods blessed me with two Alice Feeney books in a row. I thought His & Hers was okay and kind of entertaining. Didn’t love but didn’t hate it. I recently finished Sometimes I Lie. Talk about bonkers! And I mean that in a good way. It’s a wild story of two sisters Amber and Claire. Amber is in the hospital in a coma. She can hear what’s going on around her but she can’t communicate. She’s trying to piece together how she ended up in the coma. The story alternates between her thoughts while she’s in the coma, her life just before the accident that put her in the hospital and a series of childhood diary entries. 

There are so many twists and turns

In this book that it really kept me guessing! 

His & Hers

Author: Alice Feeney

Publisher: Flatiron 

Year: 2020

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alice Feeney is a new to me author. After seeing posts all over bookstagram about this one, I had to see what I was missing. 

There’s A LOT going on in this book. Old high school friends, affairs, small town angst, a mother-daughter relationship, a divorced couple seeing each other again, and multiple murders. 

The story is told from the opposing viewpoints of divorced couple Ann and Jack. Anna is a recently demoted news anchor sent to cover a murder investigation in her sleepy hometown. Jack is the lead detective of the murder investigation. Jack was having an affair with the victim who also happened to be Anna’s high school bestie. And that’s just the start of this twisty tale! 

This was an entertaining read, but was just a little too outlandish for me. 

The Devil’s Share

Author: Wallace Stroby

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

Year: 2015

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t know about you, but I get so tired of psychological & domestic thrillers. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve read some great ones that I’ve loved. Sometimes I just need a break from this genre du jour. I like action. Give me a good heist! 

Wallace Stroby’s Crissa Stone series has been my remedy for psychological thriller fatigue. Crissa’s a professional thief with a sense of fairness and justice. Any heist she plans, she tries to make sure nobody gets killed or hurt. She just wants to get in and get out with the loot as fast and as clean as possible. But something always goes wrong and she’s left with a mess to clean up. 

Crissa’s hired by an art dealer. He’s acquired several antiquities from a troubled country under shady circumstances. He’s made a deal with the government to return the items to their country of origin in exchange for not being prosecuted. After making the deal, he finds a buyer for the artifacts. He wants Crissa to steal the items from him so he can sell them and collect the insurance money. It should be an easy job- robbing a man who wants to be robbed. But then things go horribly wrong and Crissa finds herself in more danger than she bargained for. 

This is the fourth book in the series. Crissa is an interesting character. Stroby writes her so minimally, but I still fell like I know her and that is a neat trick. We get some of her backstory, but he never goes into great detail about her personal life. He doesn’t dwell on her looks and appearance like some male authors who write female characters do. She’s intelligent, tough when she has to be, organized, loyal, and has a code of ethics. She could have been successful in any profession she chose. But she chose a life of crime and she understands the danger and consequences of that decision. 

All four books in the series are relatively short and packed with action, never getting bogged down. The books can be read out of order without missing too much from an earlier book. Coleen Marlo narrated all four audiobooks. She does a fantastic job! I’ve really enjoyed this series and I hope there’s more to come in the future. 

The Scholar

 

Author: Dervla McTiernan 

Publisher: Sphere

Year: 2019

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Scholar is the second book in Dervla McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series. DS Reilly hasn’t had many active casing since transferring to Galway. One night, his girlfriend calls him in a panic. She has discovered the victim of a hit and run accident. He rushes to the scene and realizes it was no accident. It was murder. The case is complicated because Reilly’s girlfriend found the body, it involves the granddaughter of a rich and powerful head of a big pharmaceutical company some academic chicanery. 

The who done it part wasn’t hard to figure out, but it’s still an enjoyable police procedural. Even though this is the second in the series, there’s enough backstory to fill in the blanks if you haven’t read the first book.