review: i know my name by c.j. cooke

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C.J. Cooke's debut is a stunner. I Know My Name opens with a woman waking up after washing ashore on a remote island near Crete. A few pages later, a man receives a phone call from his neighbor who has discovered his two young children have been left alone. Lochlan rushes home where he finds his wife has indeed vanished with only her old Swiss passport missing. There are a number of directions Cooke could've gone with I Know My Name, but the reveal was quite unexpected. This tightly crafted psychological thriller delves into dark subject matter, but Cooke handles it brilliantly.
5/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.

review: sweet tea and sympathy by molly harper

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Molly Harper's new series kicks off with a hilarious scene involving shrimp, flamingos, and the trampling of rare orchids. It's a big enough disaster to cause Margot Cary to be fired from her job and not be able to get another suitable position. Making matters worse, she didn't renew her lease because she was buying a condo, which is out of the question now. So even though she hasn't had any contact with her father's family since her mom left him when Margot was a toddler, Margot agrees to her Great Aunt Tootie's job offer. The adjustment to life in small town Georgia after living in Chicago makes for more hilarity.

Sweet Tea and Sympathy is a sweet story of family. And does Margot have quite the family! They are a colorful bunch to say the least. This first in a series is filled with the hijinks of a close family and all sorts of small town gossip and rivalries. There's also a Hallmark movie-style romance between Margot and the widowed elementary school principal.
4/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Gallery.

review: beyond scandal and desire by lorraine heath

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Mick Trewlove is a self-made man with a vendetta. He was given up to a baby farmer by the Duke of Hedley, whose legitimate son has a gambling problem. Mick's plan for revenge is two-fold--he'll win the Duke's property through the son's poor gambling decisions and also gain the affection of the son's betrothed, who happens to be Hedley's ward. But Mick didn't count on actually falling for the kind-hearted Lady Aslyn.

The first in a new series, Beyond Scandal and Desire has a fantastic plot and tremendously enjoyable characters. The secondary characters (who in some cases will be main characters in future books) were just as multi-dimensional as the main characters. Despite taking place in 1871, Aslyn is a headstrong young woman. In keeping with the time, she's been sheltered, but Lorraine Heath makes sure she has agency when it comes to the romance. There's also an excellent twist that causes Mick to rethink everything.
5/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Avon.

review: hit so hard by patty schemel

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The child of two recovering alcoholics, Patty Schemel (best known as the drummer for Hole) experienced AA meetings in her living room, but also a significant amount of underage drinking (starting at age 12) and pot smoking with her siblings. Schemel also found a love for music and playing the drums. As someone who loved the grunge scene, I found the details of playing shows and recording particularly interesting. Unfortunately some of the details have been lost to a heroin haze. She doesn't shy away from revealing the lows she sank to while struggling with her addiction to heroin and later, crack as well.

Schemel (alongside Erin Hosier) is an excellent storyteller with a narrative style that's a bit like a friend sharing her story. Her descriptions of the horrors of heroin, the fast times with Hole, and the failed times in rehab make the all too familiar tale of an addicted rock star into an engrossing memoir.
5/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.

review: hiding out by tina alexis allen

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Tina Alexis Allen had quite the childhood. The youngest of 13, she grew up with an alcoholic father who was abusive to her mother. In an incredibly candid memoir, Allen reveals she began drinking at a young age and alleges two of her brothers sexually abused her. And although Allen doesn't characterize her first sexual relationship as abuse, it was with one her middle school teachers while Allen was that teacher's student. Allen says this is her "younger self's truth" which seems to explain why she doesn't outright say that her teacher's actions were a crime and that her nights of partying with her father were inappropriate. The Allen of today may know all this, but the Allen of the time seemed to just be happy to be out as a lesbian to someone in her family. She and her father bonded not only over drinking, but regarding their sexuality. Despite a long marriage to a woman and 13 children, Allen's father was gay. And it would turn out that wasn't her father's only secret--he also had a clandestine job that Allen still hasn't completely uncovered. Hiding Out is a shocking, but powerful read.
5/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Dey Street.

review: little monsters by kara thomas

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After moving to Broken Falls to live with the dad she never knew, Kacey is quickly befriended by two girls who have been best friends for years. Sometimes they're a bit distant though, like the night they don't pick up Kacey for the party. That might not have been a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it ends up being the night Bailey goes missing. As the cops investigate, it starts to look like Kacey, the outsider, knows more than she's sharing.

This young adult thriller was amazing! It reminded me a lot of a recent headline-grabbing news story (link is to the story which will spoil the plot), but Kara Thomas puts her own spin on it to make the story even more shocking. The writing is superb as the mystery unfolds. There are plenty of good suspects to keep the reader guessing, but not so many as to overwhelm. The inclusion of some of Bailey's diary entries is a nice touch that allows the reader to get to know Bailey while also letting Thomas reveal some important plot details.
5/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.

review: the sisters of glass ferry by kim michele richardson

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In Kentucky in 1952 twins Patsy and Flannery are high school students. Flannery is quite serious while Patsy is more adventuresome and excited about an upcoming school dance. By 1972 (The Sisters of Glass Ferry is told in alternating timelines), Patsy has been missing for 20 years and Flannery is visiting her hometown when what happened to Patsy and her boyfriend is finally revealed. There is a lot of set up with nothing much happening until the end of the seventh chapter. It takes a few more chapters for the reader to find out what happened to Patsy and even more for Flannery to learn the truth.

While some stories lend themselves well to the alternating timeline form, all it did for The Sisters of Glass Ferry was make a potentially thrilling story boring. The Sisters of Glass Ferry suffers from a lot of backstory as well as unnecessary information about Flannery's life 20 years after her twin's disappearance. Furthermore, Kim Michele Richardson extends the story well beyond what was needed by time-jumping to 2012 with a new revelation that harkened back to a previous plot point hardly developed at all. It all seems to be done to make the female characters experience one huge tragedy after another.

About the audiobook: Marguerite Gavin is the narrator for The Sisters of Glass Ferry by Kim Michele Richardson. She does a good job with the content she was given placing the right emphasis on words and using appropriate inflections. She changed tone to show that Patsy was more carefree than Flannery. The audio version was published November 2017 by Blackstone Audio. It runs 8 hours.
2/5
Review copy provided by Audiobook Jukebox.

a christmas to remember by lisa kleypas, et al.

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A Christmas to Remember features four historical romance novellas that are tangentially Christmas stories. The first, I Will by Lisa Kleypas, didn't feel like a Christmas story at all. Rather than centering on Christmas events, I Will is about a man manipulating a woman into pretending to be his significant other only to have the pair fall for each other. This one, like the second novella (Deck the Halls with Love) in this collection, is part of a series; that I'm unfamiliar with either of the series these first two novellas belong to could have contributed to my not liking them. Although it seemed like these should work as standalone stories, I had a feeling that some background would've made them more interesting. Deck the Halls with Love is about a couple who wants to be together, but aren't because he first proposed to someone else causing her accept another man's proposal. The fourth novella was also pretty ho-hum, in my opinion. The Duke's Christmas Wish features a man of science confused by the concept of love. Megan Frampton's No Groom at the Inn, the third story in the collection, is the gem in this group. Here a woman left destitute after her father's death accepts a deal to be paid (quite handsomely) by a man who must attend a lengthy holiday gathering and wishes to have a woman at his side to prevent interference from his mother. I appreciated the agency given to the female character. Frampton also injects a lot of humor which makes the story a fun read.
2/5
(4/5 for No Groom at the Inn)
Review copy provided by the publisher, Avon.

review: a line in the dark by malinda lo

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High school students Jess and Angie are best friends, but their relationship becomes strained when Angie begins dating Margot, who is wealthy and attends a private boarding school. Jess and Margot do not like each other with Jess saying that Margot's a bad person (Jess saw her shoplift and also knows someone Margot bullied) and Margot saying Jess is jealous (which she definitely is). There's typical high school drama until Jess discovers a secret while on the boarding school campus for her special art class. The plot intensifies when Jess gets drunk at a party and reveals the secret. Angie hurries Jess away from the party, but the fallout is huge--the girl Jess fought with is found dead. Soon the police are questioning everyone from the party and the drama heats up as the twists and turns play out.

The ending of A Line in the Dark was quite surprising. Part of it being surprising is that the actions of one of the teens felt out of character. It would've worked better if Malinda Lo had developed her character more to make it easier to believe she would do what she did. The build up to the ending was great though with the girls being just like so many I knew in high school.
4/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.

review: royally wed by teri wilson

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Loosely based on the movie Royal Wedding, Teri Wilson's Royally Wed finds a heartbroken musician called in as a last minute replacement to perform at Princess Amelia's wedding. Although Asher doesn't know it, the princess is being forced to marry her best friend's father in order to preserve the royal lineage. Circumstances (namely a dog named Willow) repeatedly bring Asher and Amelia together until the pair becomes romantically entangled.

Wilson's Royally Wed deviates enough from the movie's plot that the story is truly her own. Though a bit far-fetched, the cuteness of Asher and Amelia's relationship allowed me to become wholly caught up in their romance. Using Willow to bring the pair together worked well and added some fun comedy to the romance.
4/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Pocket Star.

top ten tuesday: new-to-me authors in 2017

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every Tuesday the site has a new top ten list with this week's being Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2017. All the links below are to my reviews.

Ania Ahlborn
Jillian Cantor
Natalie Charles
Amy S. Foster
Hollie Overton
Kristin Rockaway
Joanna Schaffhausen
Adam Silvera
Sherri Smith
Julie Lawson Timmer