Can a place be evil? Two thirty-something friends are about to find out in The Villa, an Italian mansion haunted by memories of sex, drugs, rock & roll, and murder… The plot is split between two timelines. In the present, two childhood friends try to deal with their issues asContinue Reading
None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive is a humorous book about a certain, relatively brief period in every married mother’s life, amplified up to eleven. Ramona is having an epically bad day. First, a hurricane is approaching and strangely that is not the worst news. AfterContinue Reading
In All Dressed Up, Becca is surprised to find her husband, Blake, has invited her to a murder mystery weekend in an authentic old mansion. Blake is trying to take Becca’s mind off his fling with his secretary. After all, she did agree to try and make their marriage work.Continue Reading
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is, of course, based on the famous tale by H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau. The original story was a cautionary tale against man’s hubris. The movie into which it was made was a horror film. This book, however, is a look into aContinue Reading
Whether you are luxuriating on a beach somewhere or sweating inside your own house this summer, you can feel like One of the Girls at a hen party in a secluded Greek villa. But beware! The secrets are oozing out faster than the sweat at this boozy gathering. “What happensContinue Reading
In Magpie, Marisa and Jake meet and quickly move in together. They try immediately to have a child. When Marisa becomes pregnant, the couple rent a room to Kate to make ends meet. Marisa feels that Kate is overly familiar with Jake. Is it just the pregnancy hormones making MarisaContinue Reading
Delphine, Lindsay and Margaux are The Ballerinas. In flashbacks, we see their complicated friendship from the age of twelve set in the world of Paris ballet. Now, Delphine has returned in her thirties to choreograph a new ballet with her old company, the Paris Opera Ballet, after a long stintContinue Reading
Isabel Puddles has returned to college to finish up her degree forty years after beginning it. She just completed a correspondence course to become a newly minted private investigator. Isabel breakfasts with her best friend every morning at the town’s cafe. She also works part-time in her nephew’s hardware store.Continue Reading
The Last Guest is advertised as an Agatha Christie and Mulholland Drive mashup. While it does have some characteristics of both, it is mostly a slow-paced behind-the-scenes look into the rich movie crowd’s symbiotic relationships. Elspeth is invited to her husband Richard’s fiftieth birthday party at his stunning mansion. SheContinue Reading
In Sankofa, Anna’s Welsh mother is dead. Anna’s husband has left her. When Anna finds the journal of the African father she has never met, she is intrigued. Can she make contact with him in West Africa? How will he react to her? Why was he kept hidden from herContinue Reading
In The Guilt Trip, three British couples go to a destination wedding in Portugal where secrets are revealed, and marriages are tested. Will and drama queen Ali are getting married. Will’s brother, Jack, is best man and attends with his wife, Rachel. Rachel and Jack’s friends, Paige and Noah, alsoContinue Reading
I guarantee that my synopsis below of the plot of The Audacity of Sara Grayson doesn’t do the book justice. I absolutely adored this book! It was much more than the sum of its parts. It gave me the same good feelings as The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. ThoughContinue Reading
The Others are an Israeli group of four college-age women. The women have vocally chosen to be childless in a culture that demands motherhood from its women. Unexpectedly, one of the group hangs herself. It’s now fifteen years later, and another group member is dead. Murdered with a doll headContinue Reading
Little Bandaged Days is the story of a mother’s slow descent into madness. The inevitability of the conclusion just fills the reader with dread throughout the entire book. The mother had issues after her first daughter’s birth. “I didn’t have a job, not anymore. Afterwards, after E was born, afterContinue Reading
In The Last Thing to Burn, Thanh Dao and her sister Kim-Ly are smuggled into the UK by shipping container from Vietnam. They promised before leaving to pay off their transportation costs over ten years. After that, they would both be free of work obligations. However, after a couple ofContinue Reading
In The Kindred Spirits Supper Club, Sabrina has an unusual talent—she can see ghosts. Luckily, it only occurs in her hometown in the Wisconsin Dells. Unfortunately, after being fired from her Washington D.C. journalism job, she is forced to move back in with her parents. However, things are looking upContinue Reading