Code Blue by Fern Michaels (Sisterhood #37)

Justice is easy when you’re rich, connected, and apparently immune to things going wrong.

I just finished Code Blue by Fern Michaels, and I’m giving it a solid three stars. On paper, this book should have been right up my alley. A group of wealthy, well-connected women who have the money, resources, and determination to right wrongs and seek justice outside the system is usually more than enough to sign me up. I am always willing to spend some time with women who look at the regular channels of justice, decide they aren’t getting the job done, and take matters into their own hands.

Theresa discovers she has an aunt living in an assisted living community in Arizona. That said aunt is apparently at death’s door. She immediately drops everything and heads to Arizona, only to be turned away by a rude nurse who tells her she’ll have to make an appointment for the next day. When Theresa returns for her appointment, things get even stranger. The woman who is supposedly at death’s door isn’t her aunt at all, while her actual aunt appears to be heavily drugged and confined to a wheelchair.

Well, now we have a mystery.

It soon becomes apparent that something is very wrong at this assisted living facility, and the trail leads to some pretty hefty fraud with connections reaching all the way to the Senate. Naturally, Theresa and her very wealthy, very connected friends decide something needs to be done about it.

I was pretty ambivalent about the characters. They were all okay, except for the two evil nurses. Let’s face it. What’s a thriller without a couple of evil nurses? But I didn’t love anyone, and I didn’t really care enough about anyone to want to throttle them either. The whole thing just wasn’t that...suspenseful.

And I did keep reading. I wanted to see what these women were going to do and how everything would play out. The problem was that I had to completely suspend my entire belief system to get there.

These women don’t just make complicated plans; they make complicated plans that work perfectly. Every. Single. Time. They have the right connections, the right resources, the right people, and apparently the universe itself is cooperating with them. Nobody screws up. Nobody throws an unexpected wrench into the works. Nothing goes spectacularly sideways and forces everyone to scramble. Where’s the fun in that?

For me, a big part of the tension in a thriller comes from wondering whether the characters are actually going to pull something off. I want that moment when the brilliant plan falls apart and everyone has to figure out Plan B while I’m happily turning pages and ignoring whatever productive thing I was supposed to be doing. Code Blue never really gave me that feeling. Once these women decided what they were going to do, they did it.

I also struggled with the writing itself. Despite some very adult subject matter, the prose often felt surprisingly simplistic to me, almost as though the book had been written for a young adult audience. I kept wanting more depth, more complexity, and a little more sophistication from both the storytelling and the characters.

Still, the premise was good enough to keep me reading, and I certainly didn’t hate the book. There’s something undeniably satisfying about watching powerful women use their resources to help people who have been failed by the system. I just wish getting there had been a whole lot messier.

Three stars. A great premise, some satisfying vigilante justice, and a group of women I wanted to root for...but apparently even Murphy’s Law knows better than to mess with rich women with connections.

Peace River Village by Christopher Amato

 "Retirement" is apparently detective-speak for "Sure, I'll get involved."

Practically everything a girl could ask for in a crime thriller: evil guys kidnapping young women to sell them, corruption in the police department, murder, and four retired detectives who discover that apparently retirement is more of a suggestion than an actual rule.

What’s not to love?

The four retired detectives were easily my favorite part of Peace River Village. Art, Jarvis, Lois, and Diego completely won me over. Art and Jarvis are regular old guys who seem perfectly content to enjoy retirement, desperately trying to do absolutely nothing. Lois and Diego, on the other hand, just can’t help themselves. There are crimes happening, people need help, and apparently you can take the detective out of the police department, but you can’t take the police detective out of the retiree.

This isn’t really a whodunit. Because of the way Christopher Amato tells the story, I knew who the bad guys were, and I knew who the dirty cop was. But that didn’t bother me at all. The fun and suspense came from watching the pieces come together.

There is some seriously ugly stuff going on beneath the surface of Peace River Village. Young women are being kidnapped and sold, people are being murdered, and police corruption makes it difficult to know exactly who can be trusted. Fortunately, four people with decades of investigative experience have a hard time ignoring trouble when it lands practically in their laps. Even when two of them would really rather be doing nothing.

And I have to admit, I particularly enjoyed Art and Jarvis dispensing just a teeny bit of home-style justice before the decidedly un-retired police department arrived. Was it strictly by the book?

Well...

They’re retired. They don't have a book anymore.

Peace River Village was a solid four-star read for me. It had plenty of crime and corruption, genuinely nasty villains, likable characters I enjoyed spending time with, and enough action to keep me turning pages. But the four retired detectives are what really made this one work for me.

Apparently retirement just means you get to solve crimes without having to fill out the paperwork.

Past Tense by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #23)

Come for the family history. Stay for the deeply satisfying application of Reacher’s fist.

I really need to stop pretending my audiobooks are going to stay in the car. This one escaped the vehicle more than once because I needed to know what happened next. 

Reacher is on his way to San Diego when he sees a sign for Laconia, New Hampshire. His father, Stan Reacher, was born there, so Reacher does what Reacher does. He changes direction. He decides to poke around a little, see the old family home, and learn something about where his father came from. Naturally, nothing is quite that simple.

While Reacher is digging into his family history, a young Canadian couple named Patty and Shorty are traveling through the area when their car breaks down. They end up stranded at a remote motel where the owners seem helpful enough at first.

Their situation goes from inconvenient to creepy to absolutely horrifying. There are some truly evil people in this world, and Lee Child apparently rounded up several of them and put them in one place. The more I figured out what was happening at that motel, the more horrified I became. It became impossible to hit the pause button.

Of course, those particular evil people have one rather significant problem they don't know about yet. Jack Reacher is in the neighborhood.

Child keeps Reacher's search for his family history and Patty and Shorty's nightmare running separately for much of the book. I knew they had to come together eventually, but I couldn't figure out exactly how he was going to do it. Those evil people needed to meet Reacher. Or, at the very least, Reacher's fist.

I also really enjoyed learning more about Stan Reacher. Reacher goes to Laconia thinking he knows the basic story of his father's childhood and discovers that some of what he knows doesn't add up. One revelation in particular finally explains something that has popped up before in the series: why Stan could never remember his own birthday. I love when a long-running series reaches back and answers a question I didn't even realize I was still carrying around.

And, because this was an audiobook, Scott Brick deserves some of the credit for those five stars. His narration kept me completely invested in both storylines. After spending this many books with Reacher, the voice matters, and Brick did a great job bringing him, and the suspense, to life.

Past Tense gave me everything I want from a Reacher novel: mystery, suspense, truly awful bad guys, some fascinating Reacher family history and the enormous satisfaction of knowing that some very evil people have absolutely no idea who just wandered into their general vicinity.

They really should have picked a different motel.

The Best Wild Idea by Lily Parker (Off Limits #3)

Sometimes you just need a billionaire and a sunset or two. 

Sometimes I want a book that twists my brain into knots, makes me suspicious of everyone, and has me scribbling notes in an attempt to figure out who killed whom. And sometimes I want to go to France with a billionaire. The Best Wild Idea by Lily Parker was exactly what I was in the mood for.

Grant, Silas, and Juliette were best friends throughout college. Eventually, Grant and Juliette fell in love and became engaged, while Silas inherited his father's billion-dollar company. Unfortunately, Silas didn't handle his father's death particularly well. In his grief, he turned into a rich jerk, pushed away the people who cared about him, and badly damaged his friendship with Juliette. Then Grant became terminally ill.

Before he died, Grant made one final request of his best friend. Exactly one year after Grant's death, Silas was to take Juliette on the trip of a lifetime and help her remember how to enjoy living again. There's just one tiny problem. Juliette hates Silas.

Of course, I knew this was a romance when I picked it up. I knew where we were probably headed. There would be forced proximity. There would be feelings. There would be page turning of the decidedly non-plot-related variety. I knew what I had signed up for. And you know what? I enjoyed myself.

I bought the developing relationship between Silas and Juliette. That was important because Grant wasn't some conveniently awful fiancé who needed to be removed from the picture so these two could get together. They both genuinely loved him, and his loss mattered. Juliette is trying to figure out how to have a life after Grant, while Silas has his own regrets to face and relationships to repair.

As for the billionaire lifestyle, I cannot speak to its accuracy. I have never met a billionaire. I have also, somewhat regrettably, never been one. I'm therefore willing to take Lily Parker's word for it. 

But honestly, realism wasn't what I wanted from this book. I wanted something light that didn't require me to think too hard. I wanted to suspend reality for a while, travel somewhere beautiful, picture a gorgeous sunset in Spain, and watch two people who had been through some pretty awful things find their way forward. The Best Wild Idea gave me exactly that.

Was it realistic? I have no idea. Ask a billionaire.

Was it a lovely escape for a few hours? Absolutely.

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs (Temperance Brennan #5)

Nothing says ‘just one more chapter’ quite like human remains in a septic tank.

I finished Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs at 1 a.m. this morning. That should probably tell you everything you need to know about the rating.

I enjoy Kathy Reichs' books immensely. Give me a strong, intelligent female lead, plenty of forensic science, a complicated mystery, and an author who can keep me three steps behind until she's good and ready to show her cards, and I'm a happy reader. Apparently, I'm also a reader who doesn't need sleep.

This time, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is in Guatemala, helping excavate the remains of 23 people who were "disappeared" during the country's brutal civil war in the early 1980s. It's grim, heartbreaking work, and the fact that the story is rooted in Guatemala's very real history gives this book considerably more weight than your average murder mystery.

But Tempe is a classic overachiever. One collection of human remains is apparently not enough. She's asked to consult on another investigation involving four young women who have disappeared without a trace. Then human remains turn up in a septic tank.

Yes. A septic tank.

I'm just going to give you a moment with that.

Reichs does what she does so well here: she gives us multiple investigations, piles on the forensic evidence, explains the science without making me feel like I accidentally signed up for a graduate-level anthropology course, and somehow makes me believe I'm keeping up with Tempe. 

I wasn't.

I happily followed her around Guatemala, collecting clues and learning fascinating things about bones, decomposition, identification, and forensic anthropology, while Reichs quietly stayed several steps ahead of me. I didn't figure out how everything fit together, and I didn't particularly want to. Half the fun of a Tempe Brennan novel is watching all those seemingly disconnected pieces finally click into place.

There's also something especially powerful about the setting and the cases Reichs chose to bring together. Tempe is helping recover and identify people someone tried to erase from history while young women are disappearing in the present. The past and present sit uncomfortably close to each other throughout the story, giving the mystery an emotional weight beyond simply figuring out whodunit.

And through all of it, Tempe remains exactly the kind of protagonist I love. She's smart, capable, curious, stubborn, and very human. She doesn't magically know the answers. She follows the evidence, trusts the science, asks questions, makes connections, and occasionally walks straight into situations that make me wonder whether forensic anthropologists come with a self-preservation setting that Tempe has simply turned off.

This proves to me that intelligence and common sense are sometimes mutually exclusive.

Grave Secrets had everything I want from Kathy Reichs: fascinating forensic science, a strong female lead, a complicated investigation, history woven into the mystery, and enough twists to keep me happily clueless until Reichs decided I was finally allowed to know what was going on.

And it kept me reading until 1 a.m.

Oh, well. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

The Witness by Nora Roberts

One woman versus the Russian Mafia? Umm...Sure.

There are five-star books that make me forget I own a mop, and then there are very good four-star books that allow the dust bunnies to remain at least mildly concerned. The Witness falls into the second category.

At sixteen, Elizabeth Fitch makes one spectacularly bad decision involving a fake ID and a nightclub and ends up witnessing a Russian Mafia hit. Suddenly, she's running for her life. Over the next twelve years, she changes identities, moves repeatedly, and does everything possible to stay one step ahead of the people who still want her dead.

Eventually, as Abigail Lowery, she settles in a secluded home in Arkansas, where she has security systems, a very large dog, and absolutely no interest in making friends. Naturally, this catches the attention of Brooks Gleason, the local chief of police.

I genuinely liked both Abigail and Brooks. Abigail is brilliant, socially awkward, extraordinarily cautious, and equipped with an eidetic memory that has helped keep her alive for twelve years. Brooks is persistent without being obnoxious about it, and I enjoyed watching him slowly work his way past the walls Abigail has built around herself. Their relationship gave the book a warmth I wasn't necessarily expecting from a story involving witnesses, murder, and the Russian Mafia.

Eventually, though, I had to ask my disbelief to go sit quietly in a corner.

Do I believe an extraordinarily intelligent woman who has spent twelve years preparing and protecting herself could be a formidable opponent? Absolutely. Do I believe one woman with an eidetic memory can essentially take on a major criminal organization and bring it down?

Ehhhhhh ... Okay, Nora. I'll go with it. 

There was plenty of suspense to keep me interested, but The Witness never became a book that required a lot from me. I didn't need a notebook. I didn't need to keep track of seventeen suspects and four timelines. I didn't spend half the night saying, "Just one more chapter." It was exactly what I wanted today: something suspenseful but light enough that I could simply relax and enjoy the ride.

And yes, there are the requisite Nora Roberts sweaty sex scenes. They're not my thing, but I knew perfectly well what I was getting into when I picked up a Nora Roberts romantic suspense novel. Pages turn. I turned them. 

The Witness didn't keep me up all night, and it didn't save the dust bunnies from their eventual fate, so it doesn't quite make five stars on my personal rating system. But it was a very good, satisfying, feel-good romantic suspense with two characters I genuinely enjoyed spending time with.

And as a bonus? The majority of the story takes place in Arkansas. One more state down in my 50 States Challenge! Apparently all I needed was Nora Roberts, a brilliant woman in hiding, and the Russian Mafia.

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Even Lucy doesn't know if she can trust Lucy.

For September's book, the Rusty Book Club chose Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. I should have waited. At least until September 1st. I had things to do today.

None of them got done. Instead, I picked it up and apparently decided that laundry, housework, errands, and anything else remotely productive could wait until I figured out whether Lucy Chase murdered her best friend.

Here's the scoop:

Years ago, Lucy was found wandering along a Texas road, covered in her best friend Savvy's blood, with absolutely no memory of what happened. Savvy was dead. Lucy couldn't explain why. There wasn't enough evidence to charge her, but that didn't stop pretty much everyone in town from deciding she was guilty.

And really. Amnesia? How ... convenient.

The problem is that Lucy doesn't know whether she did it either. She's reluctantly back in her hometown for her grandmother's birthday party, where a popular true-crime podcaster has decided to investigate Savvy's murder. Yeah. Grandma set her up.

As he starts interviewing the people who were there, old stories begin to shift, secrets start crawling out of the woodwork, and Lucy has to confront the possibility that somewhere inside her missing memories is the answer to what happened that night.

I loved Lucy. Absolutely loved her. This woman majors in snark and speaks sarcasm as a second language. She's been accused of murdering her best friend, nearly everyone in town thinks she did it, and even she can't say with absolute certainty that they're wrong. Rather than turn her into a weepy, helpless protagonist, Tintera gives Lucy a wonderfully dark sense of humor and a sharp tongue.

My kind of gal.

The podcast structure works beautifully alongside Lucy's narration. As the podcaster interviews people connected to Savvy and the night she died, we're hearing their versions of events while Lucy is trying to piece together her own. It adds another layer to the mystery because nobody's account can simply be accepted as fact—including Lucy's. She isn't deliberately hiding the truth from us. She genuinely doesn't know what the truth is.

Neither did I. I had theories, though. Isn't it always the boyfriend or husband? And when said man is apparently willing to screw anything that moves, surely we've found ourselves a prime candidate.

Think again. I was completely blindsided. 

That's exactly what I want from a thriller. Give me characters I want to follow, make me suspicious of everybody, let me confidently construct my little theories ... and then prove me completely wrong. And if you can make me abandon everything I planned to accomplish that day because I absolutely have to know what happened?

Five stars.

The dust bunnies will still be there tomorrow.

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

Sorry Hercules. We need to see other people. 

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas was August’s pick for the Rusty Book Club, and I made it to page 152 of 460 before admitting defeat.

I was bored to tears.

And here's the frustrating part: I don't think the problem was the premise. Alexis is determined to be Spartan through a blood test of sorts, and there’s fighting, danger, insults, mythology, and plenty of things that should have made this interesting. The world-building wasn't particularly difficult to follow, and I didn't actively dislike Alexis.

I just didn't care.

By page 152, I should have been invested in something. Instead, people fought. People insulted each other. Things happened. Yada, yada, yada. I kept waiting for the moment when the story would grab me, and it never did.

The writing didn't help. The prose felt surprisingly juvenile to me, almost like something written at a sixth-grade reading level, except with cussing thrown in. There is nothing inherently wrong with simple prose, and profanity usually doesn't bother me, but here it sometimes felt as though the author had just discovered cuss words and was determined to try them all out.

The humor didn't land for me, either. At all. In fact, I was surprised to find out it was supposed to be funny. What was apparently intended as funny or edgy banter mostly made me wonder how many pages I had left.

Way too many, as it turned out.

I hadn't even reached the romance portion of the story yet, which I know is a significant part of the book. Maybe that's where everything changes. Maybe another hundred pages would have completely won me over. But I have a personal rule about reading: a book has to give me a reason to keep turning the pages. I had already given Blood of Hercules 152 of them, and I still wasn't curious about what happened next.

That's my signal to stop.

This clearly has an audience, particularly readers who enjoy dark romantasy, mythology-inspired stories, irreverent humor, lots of banter, and plenty of profanity. I am simply not that audience.

On a positive note, I thought the cover was nice.

This Jury is Guilty by Laurie Blake

Forget reasonable doubt. I had reasonable doubt about everyone in the room.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for inviting me to read an advance copy of This Jury Is Guilty by Laurie Blake through NetGalley. Being personally invited to read this one was a lovely surprise, and I’m very happy to say it turned out to be a five-star read.

Superstar Danny Scott is on trial for hiring someone to kill his equally famous wife, Hope Harrison. Hope survives the attack, killing her would-be murderer while defending herself, but what really happened between this Hollywood power couple is far from clear. Hope says Danny is violent and wanted her dead. Danny’s side paints a very different picture, suggesting Hope has a personality disorder and may actually be responsible for the violence in their marriage.

So who is telling the truth?

There’s just one little complication: Danny and Hope are both actors. Convincing people to believe them is literally what they do for a living.

But This Jury Is Guilty isn’t just a question of whether Danny or Hope is telling the truth. It’s a question of whether you can trust anybody in the room.

The story is told through multiple jurors' points of view, and almost no one is quite who they first appear to be. Dee has done her homework on her fellow jurors. Franny seems like a harmless little old lady, but she has secrets of her own. Michelle will do anything to be foreperson. Sofia is keeping things from her wife. And then there’s Rick, who thinks pranking people is hilarious. I hated Rick. There. I said it.

And apparently those twelve strangers have enough skeletons to open their own cemetery.

That was probably my favorite part of the book. The trial itself is fascinating, but the people sitting in judgment of Danny are every bit as interesting as Danny and Hope. Everyone brings something into that jury box, their secrets, biases, motivations, and histories. The more I learned about them, the less certain I became about anyone. I may never look at a jury quite the same way again. I’m going to be giving them all the side-eye.

The beginning felt a little slow to me, and that was the one thing that initially had me wavering between four and five stars. But by the time I finished, I understood why. Blake wasn’t wasting pages; she was putting pieces on the board. With this many characters, secrets, motivations, and points of view, the groundwork mattered. I honestly can’t think of much information that was included without eventually serving a purpose.

And the payoff worked. I figured out a piece or two along the way, but certainly not everything. I was surprised by the verdict, and Blake kept me questioning what I believed - and whom I believed - right up to the end.

That ultimately settled my rating. A slightly slow beginning that turns out to be necessary setup isn’t enough to take away a star when the rest of the book is this cleverly constructed. This book is definitely five stars.

I’d recommend This Jury Is Guilty to readers who enjoy twisty courtroom and locked-room thrillers, multiple POVs, deeply unreliable characters, celebrity scandals, and stories where everyone seems to have something to hide. If you like trying to decide who is lying while gradually realizing that the better question might be who isn’t?, this one is for you.

Just don’t assume the people sitting in the jury box are any more trustworthy than the people on trial.

Content warnings: domestic abuse, violence against women, murder.

 

Long Shadows by David Baldacci (Amos Decker #7)

I had theories. Decker had theories. Only one of us should be solving murders.

As usual, David Baldacci’s audiobook refused to stay in the car. Kudos to Hachette Audio for keeping it entertaining and enjoyable!

Long Shadows brings Amos Decker back for another complicated investigation, and at this point, I really like this guy. The more time I spend with Decker, the more human he becomes. He’s still blunt, socially awkward, and capable of seeing connections nobody else sees, but he has changed considerably from the man we first met in Memory Man. There’s more humanity underneath all that Decker-ness now, and I’ve really enjoyed watching his character develop.

This time, Decker also has a new partner: Frederica “Freddie” White. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about somebody replacing Alex Jamison, but I needn’t have worried. White is terrific. She’s smart, capable, and takes absolutely no crap from Decker. Better yet, she isn’t Jamison 2.0. She has her own personality and her own way of dealing with him, and watching the two of them figure each other out was one of my favorite parts of the book. Especially since she has two black belts and threatened to take him out if he didn’t behave.

I like her already.

The story begins with a suicide and quickly moves to the murders of a federal judge and her bodyguard, killed in the same house at nearly the same time. Naturally, things aren’t quite as straightforward as they appear.

Decker has a theory. I had a response to his theory.

Oh please ... What are the chances?

Apparently, the chances were pretty darn good.

That’s Baldacci, though. He takes something that sounds just improbable enough to make me skeptical and then starts fitting the pieces together. Meanwhile, what initially looks like one investigation becomes something much bigger and considerably more complicated.

And I never figured it out.

He’s gooood.

That’s probably why this audiobook escaped the car. Again. I would finish my drive, turn off the engine, go inside ... and turn the audiobook right back on. Baldacci kept me curious about how the murders fit together, whether Decker’s seemingly unlikely theory was actually right, and just how many more secrets were waiting underneath the ones we already knew about.

Five stars from me. Long Shadows gave me a complicated mystery I couldn’t solve, continued the wonderful evolution of Amos Decker, and introduced a new partner I’m already looking forward to spending more time with.

Apparently, my car no longer has exclusive listening rights to David Baldacci.

My Husband's Family by Kristina Kamen

Somewhere on this floating soap opera, somebody may or may not have been murdered.

This family puts the “fun” in dysfunction, and I loved every messy minute of it. Buy this book. Now. Or at least as soon as it becomes available.

Rebecca has just married Preston Wexley, heir to a billion-dollar family empire, and is looking forward to her honeymoon. Unfortunately, her new mother-in-law, Savannah, has other ideas. Before Rebecca knows it, the honeymoon has become a family cruise (!) aboard a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean. Seriously. Who does that?

And what a family. We have Savannah, the overbearing matriarch who will do absolutely anything for her sons; her ex-husband Roger and his very young, very pregnant new wife; Preston’s brother Brad and his social-media-influencer girlfriend, who films things she probably shouldn’t; Preston’s former fiancée; Savannah’s wedding-bartender-turned-boy-toy; and a few more people with some very complicated connections to Rebecca’s past.

Honestly, there are so many juicy secrets aboard this yacht, these people practically don't need to eat.

And then someone goes overboard.

Was it an accident? Or was someone assisted into the sea? Who fell? What happened? And if they were assisted, why? Kamen lets us know just enough to keep us guessing while steadily revealing the secrets everyone brought aboard with their luggage. And their “baggage.”

The story moves among four timelines: before the fall, the night of the fall, the day after the fall, and eventually two weeks after the fall, as well as multiple points of view. Normally, that much jumping around has the potential to make me crazy, but it never did. Every chapter is clearly labeled with both the timeline and the character whose point of view we're following. This is an incredibly well-constructed book. I always knew where I was and whose story I was reading, while Kamen controlled exactly how much information I had at any given moment.

The characters were just as much fun as the mystery. I took turns liking and disliking nearly everyone depending on what they were doing and what new secret had just surfaced. Except for Savannah. I never liked her. She made me want to toss her overboard myself. Overbearing doesn't begin to cover it. She's fiercely devoted to her sons, but that devotion comes with enough seriously morally gray choices to require her own paint swatch. She's also exactly the kind of character who makes a book like this so much fun to read.

Best of all, I did not figure everything out. Not even close. Kamen kept me on my toes right through the end, and when the pieces came together, I could appreciate just how carefully everything had been constructed. The devil really is in the details.

I loved this book. It's twisty, funny, suspenseful, wonderfully complicated without ever becoming confusing, and packed with the kind of family secrets that make you very grateful for your own relatives. Readers who enjoy closed-circle mysteries, wealthy dysfunctional families, multiple suspects, shifting loyalties, and trying to figure out who is lying about what should have an absolute blast with this one.

Five stars, and I'd give it more if NetGalley would let me.

Content warnings include death/possible murder, infidelity and sexual relationships, references to sex work, pregnancy, and manipulative/dysfunctional family relationships.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

 

The Icehouse by J.J. Richards (DCI Walker #1)

 Murder and Mayhem in Lancashire

There is nothing quite like a murder investigation that suddenly gets personal.

The Icehouse by J.J. Richards follows DCI Walker as he investigates a series of murders around Lancashire. The killer has a distinctive signature, and unfortunately for Walker, it looks a lot like the one left behind when his sister was murdered years earlier. Her case was never solved, so the similarities bring the past crashing straight into his current investigation.

This was a good, solid police thriller that kept me interested from beginning to end. Walker's personal connection to the case added an extra layer of tension without taking over the investigation, and I definitely wanted to know whether the new murders would finally lead to answers about his sister.

I listened to this one, and while it didn't completely refuse to stay in the car, it occasionally escaped the car, which is always a very good sign.

Four stars. A strong, engaging mystery with enough personal stakes to keep me listening and enough unanswered questions to make me curious about DCI Walker's next case.

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez (Part of Your World #2)

Fake dating, handwritten letters, and no dead bodies. Somehow, I was still up until 3 a.m.

I picked up Yours Truly because I needed a break from murder and mayhem. I wanted something light, cute, and cuddly that didn't require me to keep track of bodies, suspects, motives, or who had buried whom in the backyard. I did not expect fake dating, good old-fashioned handwritten letters, and two ridiculously likable people to keep me reading until 3 a.m. Apparently, romance can be dangerous to my sleep schedule, too.

Jacob Maddox is an ER doctor with severe anxiety. Interestingly enough, the emergency room is one of the places where he is most comfortable. Give the man a medical crisis and he's fine. Give him an awkward social interaction and things can go spectacularly sideways.

Enter Briana Ortiz, an ER nurse and well-loved team leader who is up for a promotion. Briana is smart, confident, fiercely protective of her people, and possesses an almost sixth sense for figuring out what someone needs. Unfortunately, that sixth sense fails her completely when it comes to Jacob.

Briana decides Jacob is one of those doctors: the arrogant, I'm-better-than-you variety. She's not particularly shy about letting him know she doesn't care for him. Then she accidentally breaks his phone after crashing into him in the hallway, and Jacob's anxiety makes explaining what happened approximately 4,000 times messier than it needed to be.

So he writes her a letter. An actual letter. On paper. With a pen. In an envelope.

Be still my old-school heart.

That first letter changes everything. Briana realizes she has completely misjudged Jacob, and the two begin exchanging handwritten letters. In a world of texts, DMs, dating apps, and messages consisting entirely of emojis, there was something ridiculously charming about watching two people sit down and actually write to each other. More importantly, the letters give Jacob a way to communicate without the immediate pressures created by his anxiety, and they give Briana the opportunity to see the thoughtful, funny, compassionate man she couldn't see through his awkwardness.

Of course, this is a romance novel, so we need complications. Jacob needs a date to his brother's wedding. His brother, incidentally, is marrying Jacob's ex-girlfriend.

Oh, sure. Why not? Even in cute, cuddly romance novels, some people can be really weaselly.

Briana agrees to be his fake girlfriend, and the more time they spend together, the less fake their relationship starts to feel. Unfortunately, the original arrangement gives both of them a perfectly reasonable excuse to doubt everything happening between them. Is that touch real or part of the act? Did that moment mean something, or are they just putting on a convincing show?

Normally, this is about where I'd start yelling, “Communication, people!” But Jimenez gives both characters legitimate reasons for their uncertainty.

Briana is still dealing with the emotional fallout from an ugly divorce and an ex-husband who left some pretty deep scars behind. Trust doesn't come easily anymore. Meanwhile, her younger brother Benny desperately needs a kidney transplant, and Jacob becomes his donor. That creates another question Briana can't quite silence: Does Jacob really want to be with her, or does he feel obligated to stay because he gave Benny a kidney and became connected to their family?

Jacob has his own doubts, and his anxiety makes emotional risk particularly difficult. Does Briana really want to stay with him, or does she feel like she owes him because he gave her brother a kidney?

What I loved about Jacob, though, is that Jimenez never presents Briana as the magical woman who “fixes” him. Jacob has sought therapy and treatment. He understands his anxiety, knows his boundaries, and has built a successful life while learning how to manage it. He doesn't need Briana to cure him. He just needs someone willing to understand him.

And Briana does.

That's ultimately what made these two work so well for me. Briana instinctively understands what other people need, while Jacob has worked hard to understand what he needs. Both are caregivers. Both are compassionate. Both carry some emotional baggage. And underneath all the fake dating and romantic confusion, they genuinely like each other.

Yes, there are a couple of steamy scenes. Anyone who has read my reviews for more than five minutes knows those aren't my thing, so I exercised my highly developed page-skipping skills and carried on. I can't really fault a romance novel for containing romance-novel things.

I went into Yours Truly looking for a palate cleanser, something sweet and entertaining before I returned to my regularly scheduled murder and mayhem. Instead, I became completely invested in Jacob, Briana, Benny, those wonderful handwritten letters, and whether two very good people could finally convince themselves that the other one really did love them.

Using my own rating system, there's no question about this one.

★★★★★ — Five stars. I was still reading at 3 a.m. Bedtime never stood a chance.

Well played, Abby Jimenez. Apparently you don't need a dead body to keep me turning pages. And by the way, I'm absolutely stealing the glitter payback idea. That was genius. 

Malice by Jonathan Kellerman (Alex Delaware #42)

 Four bodies. One connection. Zero eye rolls. Five stars.

Four victims. One very specific method of murder. And absolutely no obvious reason why any of them should be connected. Jonathan Kellerman had me hooked.

Malice begins with the discovery of a young man who has been shot precisely in the brainstem, stabbed postmortem, and dumped in a secluded area on a college campus. And there are absolutely no clues. Then another body turns up. And another. By the time there are four victims, the method is clearly a connection, but finding anything else that ties them together is another matter. Even more puzzling, the fourth victim is the brother of the first.

Enter LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, who make one heck of an investigative team.

I particularly enjoyed Milo. He's smart, methodical, and has a wonderfully dry, sometimes macabre sense of humor that made me laugh at some very unexpected moments. Alex complements him perfectly. He doesn't spend the entire book trying to psychoanalyze everyone in sight. He observes, listens, thinks things through, and occasionally sees something from an angle Milo hasn't considered. Their different strengths work together naturally, and I thoroughly enjoyed following the investigation with them.

Kellerman's writing is also wonderfully visual. I could see this story as I read it: the locations, the crime scenes, the environments where Milo and Alex were working. He gives enough detail to put me firmly into the scene without slowing the story down with description just for description's sake.

But the real hook for me was that murder method. It was so distinctive that it seemed impossible for these deaths not to be connected, yet there was seemingly nothing tying the victims together. And, of course, Kellerman kept me guessing. I never figured out where he was taking me, which made watching everything finally come together even more satisfying. No spoilers here, but I finished this one with a very big smile.

I honestly don't have a meaningful criticism. I didn't get bored. I didn't get frustrated. I didn't roll my eyes even once. The plotting was smart, the mystery kept me guessing, the characters kept me entertained, and the ending absolutely landed. This was exactly the kind of crime novel I love.

Readers should be aware of descriptions of murder, violent death, and crime scenes, including postmortem violence and discussion of human remains.

Fans of intelligent police procedurals and psychological crime fiction, especially readers who enjoy trying to solve seemingly unrelated murders alongside the investigators, should have a great time with this one. Malice was my kind of murder and mayhem from beginning to end.

 

Walk the Wire by David Baldacci (Amos Decker #6)

Come for the murder. Stay for the toxic waste, terrorism, and  government secrets. I mean, why not?

This is yet another David Baldacci audiobook that refused to stay in the car. At this point, I should probably stop pretending these are strictly for my commute. I'm not kidding anyone but myself.

Walk the Wire is the sixth book in Baldacci’s Amos Decker series, and the more time I spend with Amos Decker and Alex Jamison, the more I like them. Especially Amos. His character development throughout this series has been fantastic. The man we met in Memory Man is still very much there: brilliant, blunt, socially awkward, and equipped with a brain that works unlike anyone else’s. With every book, though, he becomes just a little more human.

This time, Decker and Jamison are sent to investigate the murder of a young woman in a small North Dakota town. On the surface, it looks like a fairly straightforward murder investigation.

Oh, bless your heart, you sweet summer child. Have you not met David Baldacci?

Because before long, we've got secrets, more murder, toxic waste, terrorism, government interests, and enough people hiding things to make you wonder whether anyone in town has ever told the truth about anything.

This is one of the things Baldacci does so well. He starts with a crime that seems relatively contained, then begins pulling threads. Every person seems to know something they're not saying, and the only thing that is obvious is that nothing is obvious.

The narration made this another easy audiobook to get lost in. Or, in my case, one that was supposed to live in the car and mysteriously followed me into the house. Funny how that keeps happening with Baldacci and Hachette Audio.

Five out of five stars. No hesitation.

If you've been reading the Amos Decker series from the beginning, Walk the Wire gives you everything you've come to expect: a complicated investigation, twists piled on top of twists, plenty of danger, and Amos using that extraordinary brain of his to notice the things everyone else misses. But it also gives us another chapter in Amos's slow, fascinating evolution.

And apparently all it takes to help Amos Decker become more human is a little friendship, a lot of murder, some toxic waste, and the occasional terrorist threat.

No judgment here, Amos. You do you! I'm just going to stand back and watch the magic happen.

Shadow Game by Nick Petrie (Peter Ash #10)

 Peter Ash has apparently never once heard the phrase “not my circus, not my monkeys.”

The story begins with Peter Ash walking off his white static on the Appalachian Trail. And because Peter is a trouble magnet, it isn't long before he crosses paths with an armed and decidedly unfriendly old man somewhere in Tennessee. Peter continues on his way, but two days later he encounters the man again, this time being accosted by two professional killers. Peter steps in to help because, well, Peter just doesn't know when to quit. Before long, he's helping an old man who has more secrets than a government file marked CLASSIFIED, being framed for murder in three different states, and running from professional killers while still trying to figure out exactly what he's gotten himself into.

And I loved every minute of it.

Shadow Game is another outstanding entry in Nick Petrie's Peter Ash series. Petrie does his usual excellent job of creating secrets that have secrets, layering in twists and surprises, and making sure almost nobody is quite who they appear to be. I would have happily read this book in one sitting if I'd had the opportunity.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the way Petrie connected current political events and events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall to the story. I remember that period, and the combination of those historical elements with today's political drama gave the story an additional sense of authenticity. Rather than feeling tacked onto the thriller, the past becomes an important part of understanding what's happening in the present.

Peter remains one of my absolute favorite fictional characters. His instinct to help someone in trouble regardless of the danger to himself is simultaneously one of his best qualities and the reason he keeps ending up in situations like this. And then there's Lewis. Resourceful, loyal, adaptable Lewis, who would apparently rather hunt bad guys with Peter than help his sweetheart take her kids on a college tour. Their friendship continues to be one of my favorite parts of the series. When Peter needs him, Lewis shows up, no matter the risk. Everyone should have a Lewis.

I really don't have a meaningful criticism of this one. The old man's determination to keep his secrets could easily have become frustrating, but Petrie reveals enough at exactly the right moments that his silence makes sense before it becomes annoying. The pacing stays tight, the mystery keeps unfolding, and the twists keep coming.

Shadow Game can stand alone, but readers will get much more out of Peter, Lewis, and their history if they've spent some time with them before. At the very least, I'd recommend starting with The Drifter. You'll want to meet Peter and shake his hand before inviting him to dinner.

Five stars, hands down. This is exactly what I want from a Peter Ash novel: danger, mystery, loyalty, history, plenty of surprises, and Peter Ash being constitutionally incapable of walking away from trouble.

Content warnings include murder, violence, gun violence, PTSD/trauma, and references to war and political violence.

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

 

I will miss you, my friend.

I first met Teri in 2012, when I joined Mensa and decided to attend a board meeting as my first “event.” (I guess my idea of fun isn’t the same as everyone else’s.) She instantly recognized me, even though we had never met before. She said, “You must be Michael’s sister!” and I sat beside her for the meeting. We didn’t really become close until after her stroke. That was when I discovered that we had some things in common … and some very different ideas about music. I discovered that she was a fan of soft rock, whereas I am an AC/DC and Metallica fan - the louder, the better.

One day, her sisters Marian and Shirley and I were all sitting around her hospital bed talking about music, and Shirley began playing Jim Croce or Dan Fogelberg, something in that genre. Teri said, “Shirley, why don’t you put on something that Serena would enjoy?” I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. Well, no good deed goes unpunished! Her sister Marian and I sang along loudly with “Highway to Hell.” Teri listened to us as non-judgmentally as anyone could, and about half-way through the song, said, “Shirley, what else do you have?” We laughed until our bellies hurt.

I will always remember that day and the laughter that came with it. She was so sweet, had an incredibly bone-dry sense of humor, and gave me some wonderful memories. I will miss her.

 

https://www.legacy.com/person/teri-diana-prentiss-(marie)-62124702

All the Little Houses by May Cobb

I get enough mean-girl drama teaching middle school. I don't need to read about it recreationally. 

All the Little Houses was the pick for the ManiScripts Book Club for August. I tried to be open-minded because this is not the type of book I normally read. Apparently there is a good reason for that.

I struggled a little with my rating. At first, I was wavering between two and three stars because the book isn't badly written. In fact, I think Cobb accomplished exactly what she set out to do. Unfortunately, what she set out to do involved a whole lot of mean-girl drama, and I get enough of that teaching middle school. I don't need to read about it recreationally.

The story is told from multiple points of view, and that part worked very well. I never had trouble keeping track of the characters or figuring out whose story I was following.

First, we have Nellie, a spoiled, wealthy mean girl who isn't particularly nice to anyone, including her own parents. Her mother, Charleigh, isn't much better. She's wealthy, judgmental, manipulative, and apparently thinks paying people to spend time with her daughter is preferable to teaching Nellie how to be a decent human being.

Then there's Jane, whose family is the complete opposite. They live off the land and don't have much money, but Jane prides herself on her ability to make people like her. She even calls it her superpower. Her parents, Ethan and Abigail, have their own highly questionable ways of making money, involving sex and manipulation.

Jackson, Charleigh's best friend, was actually the one character I liked. He's gay but isn't out to anyone except Charleigh, and even he is getting tired of her behavior. I could have done without the graphic sex scene, but that's just me. Other players include Blair, who befriends Jane despite Nellie's objections, and Luke, Jane's secret boyfriend, neither of whom is particularly likable.

So when things start going very wrong, part of my brain was saying, Well, what did you expect?

Blair has an accident that leaves her in a coma. Charleigh is murdered. Her body inconveniently refuses to sink. Luke is set up to take the fall for the murder.

And then...

The End.

I turned a few more pages because I honestly thought there had to be more. There was, but it was a preview of the next book. I don't mind a cliffhanger when I'm invested enough in a story to immediately think, Give me the next book! Unfortunately, my reaction here was more along the lines of, Wait. That's IT?

Part of the problem was that I simply didn't care enough about these characters. I didn't particularly care what happened to Blair. I knew who killed Charleigh and who was responsible for setting up Luke. With the exception of Jackson, I didn't like anyone enough to become invested in what happened to them next.

And that's ultimately what pushed this down to two stars for me.

Cobb did a good job with the multiple POVs, and the characters were distinct and easy to follow. She also wrote the toxic friendships, manipulation, jealousy, wealth, and mean-girl behavior convincingly. If you love books about wealthy people behaving badly and interpersonal drama where nearly everyone has an agenda, you may have a completely different reaction to this one.

For me, though, it was too much drama, too few people I cared about, and not nearly enough payoff at the end. A cliffhanger should leave me desperate for the next book.

This one left me checking to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped a chapter.

Ward D by Freida McFadden

The scariest thing in Ward D was how badly I wanted Amy to stop whining.

I usually have a pretty good track record with Freida McFadden, but Ward D is the first of her books that just didn't work for me. Which is particularly disappointing because the premise is fantastic.

Amy is a medical student assigned to spend a night shift in Ward D, the locked psychiatric unit of a hospital. As if that isn't uncomfortable enough, her ex-boyfriend Cameron, another medical student, is working the same shift. The hospital's internet system is down for maintenance, there's no cell reception, and then one of the patients urinates on an electrical connection, causing a temporary power outage that resets the codes on the locked doors, including the seclusion rooms.

Oh, and Amy's childhood best friend Jade is a patient on the ward. Jade believes Amy wronged her years ago, and she's been holding one heck of a grudge.

On the surface, this had everything I should have loved. Locked ward. No communication with the outside world. Power problems. Doors that may or may not stay locked. Someone inside who has a very personal reason to hate Amy. Then people started disappearing.

Unfortunately, the tension never matched the premise.

My biggest problem was Amy herself. For heaven's sake, this woman was whiny. She repeatedly complains that Cameron dumped her for a test, conveniently glossing over the fact that the "test" was his board exam and he wanted to devote his time to studying for it. I also spent a good portion of the book wanting to shake her. She was in Ward D to observe and learn. Why she couldn't keep her head down and do what she was asked to do was beyond me.

The psychiatric ward itself should have been wonderfully creepy, but it never quite got there. The patients were mostly quirky rather than frightening. There's SpiderDan, who believes he's Spider-Man and eventually creates a web out of dental floss. Mary spends her time knitting a seemingly never-ending scarf. Miguel believes he's the son of God. Jade was really the only patient who felt genuinely dangerous because she was absolutely convinced Amy had wronged her, and nothing was going to change her mind.

Then there were the coincidences. The internet is down. There's no cell reception. An electrical problem causes a power outage. The door codes reset. And apparently this locked psychiatric ward in a hospital doesn't have an adequate backup plan for any of this.

OSHA would have had a field day.

There are twists toward the end, and I didn't see all of them coming. Unfortunately, by that point I wasn't invested enough for them to have much impact. The tension was so lacking that I seriously considered DNFing the book halfway through. Then the truth comes out rather quickly, everything gets wrapped up, and...that's that.

The audiobook narration was good, but even a strong narrator couldn't make Amy less irritating or manufacture the suspense I kept waiting for.

Ward D had a five-star premise trapped inside a two-star thriller. I wanted claustrophobic. I wanted creepy. I wanted to be checking the locks on my doors while I listened.

Instead, I mostly wanted Amy to stop whining and follow instructions.