Category: reading

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book club Book review crime mystery reading

Read and Review (R&R) – “A Book Club’s Guide to Murder and Mayhem

“A Book Club’s Guide to Murder and Mayhem,” a Suzie Tuft Mystery – Book 1, is set in the scenic woods of Pennsylvania and centers around Suzie Tuft, a technical writer, who while taking a walk with her dog very near her rural home discovers a dead body. To make matters worse, the deceased turns out to be an estate attorney sent to notify her that her ex‑boyfriend with whom the relationship did not end on a good note, has died, and left her a large inheritance. Suzie is sure the inheritance comes with strings attached. The only bright spot in Suzie’s day is a handsome police officer sent to the scene who shows a noticeable interest in her and stirs feelings in Suzie that she hasn’t felt in a long time.

Shocked over finding the body and confused as to why her ex would leave her anything, Suzie is determined to get justice for the man who died trying to notify her. When characters from her past with her ex and others start showing up at her door threatening her and demanding she sign over the inheritance to them, she enlists her best friend, Jess, and other friends from their book club to help her.

There are twists, an interesting cast of characters, and red herrings which make this book a fun, cozy read. Bethany Barker did a great job of setting the scene, bringing to life her characters, and creating a storyline with loads of potential for future stories. I am looking forward to reading more Suzie Tuft mysteries.

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book club Book review historical fiction reading

Read and Review (R&R) – “This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger

April’s book club read was “This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger. This is the second book our group has read by this author. The first was “Ordinary Grace.” Once again, the author transports us back in time to a world and time period filled with hardship but also enduring hope. The theme throughout “This Tender Land” is one of “We are not alone.”

Four orphans on a journey down the Gilead River in Minnesota during the Great Depression desperately in search of their true home, love and safety.

It is summer 1932 and Odie O’Bannon is a young orphan boy living with his older brother Albert at the Lincoln Indian Training School where they are the only white children among hundreds of Native American children. Odie refuses to give into a system filled with corruption and abuse of the children. When he gets into unimaginable trouble from which he and his brother must flee the school they take along with them a native American boy named Moses and a young orphan girl named Emmy.

This Tender Land is a story of the human spirit, friendship, adventure, history, hope, and forgiveness.

William Kent Krueger writes an engaging plot with characters that jump from the page into your heart.

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Book review crime fiction mystery reading suspense thriller

Read and Review (R&R) “Don’t Believe It” by Charlie Donlea

This month’s book club read was Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea. If you haven’t read anything by him, I would recommend adding one of his books to your TBR list.

This suspense novel centers around a woman, Grace Seabold, who has been imprisoned for ten years in St. Lucia for the murder of her boyfriend, Julian Crist.

Sidney Ryan is an up-and-coming film producer who in the past produced two documentaries shedding light on a person in jail who was believed to be wrongfully convicted. This puts her in the radar of every convict in the country who believes they are innocent. Grace Seabold is one of those convicts. She writes to Sidney asking for her help to dig into her story and show the world she is innocent. Sidney travels to St. Lucia, meets with Grace and heads back home to make a pitch to the suits at Events, the station for which she is working as a producer. Given the green light, Sidney starts investigating the murder and the cast of characters that will make up the documentary The Girl of Sugar Beach. With each episode, more and more people become hooked on the one episode a week documentary which has Sidney finding things out along with the viewers. As Sidney becomes increasingly entwined in the case and begins to uncover inconsistencies, she and her audience of twenty million viewers are starting to believe that Grace Seabold is innocent. But is she?

Although about three-quarters of the way through the book, I was pretty sure who might be behind the murder, I wasn’t 100% sure. With an ending I didn’t see coming, Charlie Donlea had me turning pages and reading this book in a week’s time. I will have to say I had hoped for a different ending, but it was cleverly done. This is the second book I have read by this author. The first was titled, Twenty Years Later. Charlie Donlea is a master storyteller. His books are full of plot twists, and I will definitely pick up another novel by this author.

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Book review fiction mystery reading Uncategorized

Read and Review (R&R) – “Up Jumped the Devil” by Martha Reed

One of my latest reads was Up Jumped the Devil by Martha Reed. This is the second book in the Crescent City NOLA Mystery series.

Set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Up Jumped the Devil is chock full of a host of well-developed interesting characters, intrigue, the lore of New Orleans, and a little bit of voodoo.

Jane Byrne is the Chief Security Officer working the graveyard shift in New Orleans’ famous St. Louis Cemetery. The story starts with Jane trying to catch graffiti vandals. With a bad knee, and a boss who wants the culprits caught yesterday, Jane enlists the help of her transgender friend, Gigi. When Jane and Gigi corner a vandal, Gigi realizes she has seen the trespasser before. When the two sleuths track the perpetrator down, they find themselves entwined in a kidnapping ring. Solving the mystery is a matter of life and death – possibly their own.

Some of the other characters are Gigi’s father, Ken, who is a musician, his wife, Leslie, and Aunt Babette, a NOLA voodoo queen.

In Up Jumped the Devil, Martha Reed’s research of NOLA shines. I enjoy Reed’s storytelling and her ability to transport readers with vivid descriptions into the story and keep them there long after they finish the book.

When book three in this series comes out, it will be on my TBR list.

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Book review fiction mystery reading

Read and Review (R&R) – “Thicker Than Water,” by Liz Milliron

This month one of my reads was a well-plotted, character-filled mystery entitled, “Thicker Than Water,” by author, Liz Milliron. This book is set in Western Pennsylvania and it is the 6th book in the Laurel Highland mysteries series. In case you are wondering, the books don’t have to be read in order.

The main characters, Jim Duncan and Sally Castle are a couple moving forward in their relationship while trying to balance Jim’s Pennsylvania State Trooper position with Sally’s defense attorney career.

When a troubled college student shows up at Sally’s recently relocated law practice looking for help, Sally listens to her story, but before she can offer any assistance, the woman bolts out the door.

Two days later, Trooper Jim Duncan and his partner, Jenny Cavendish respond to a call about a missing autistic young man who claims to have seen a sleeping blue woman. When the young man is found, he directs Duncan to a cabin and in it is a deceased young woman. To complicate things, the deceased woman turns out to be the same college student that had visited Sally’s office seeking help.

On top of all that, the Thanksgiving holiday is approaching, and Sally feels pressure from her family to take her relationship with Jim to the next level – move in, tie the knot and have kids. Jim’s parents are arriving from out of town and it will be Sally’s first introduction to them. Will they also pressure Sally and Jim?

As the mystery unfolds and the cast of characters/possible suspects add up, Jim races against time to solve the crime and Sally immerses herself into investigating the suspects as she seeks justice for the deceased woman.

Will they figure this mystery out before someone else is killed? Who killed the young woman and why?

No spoilers here. You will have to read the book to find out.

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book club Book review crime fiction psychological thriller reading suspense Uncategorized

Read and Review (R&R) – “Watching You” by Lisa Jewell

Watching You by Lisa Jewell is our book club’s October read. It is a psychological thriller published in 2018 and this author’s sixteenth book. She has twenty published novels.

This was my first read of her books.

Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.

As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man. Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.

One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.

Meanwhile, twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, charting her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam.

The book starts out with a diary entry and a murder and then goes back to a narrative told in multiple points of view. It took me a while to get into this book. The beginning felt too slow and filled with the routine lives of the characters (some of them a bit creepy). Once the true action started, I found myself wrapped up under a blanket and reading for three hour stretches.

I did figure out who the killer was quite early on, but Lisa Jewell’s world-building and storytelling had me hooked and I continued to read to see how it would play out.

The author did a nice job of tying up all the loose ends and even pulled at your heart strings (slightly) for the killer.

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Book review crime mystery reading

Read & Review (R&R) – “Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger

A slow, summer read – my latest read is Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. This book is a New York Times Bestseller and Winner of the 2014 Edgar Award For Best Novel.

It is a story of a young man, a small town, and murder in the summer of 1961.

Ordinary Grace transports you through beautifully written scenes to a time of innocence shattered in the life of a boy growing up in a small town of New Bremen, Minnesota.

Frank Drum is preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a novel about a boy standing at the door of his manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him.

I was moved by this book, but I also felt that the characters were stereotypical and I did figure out who the killer was before the reveal.

While not a page turner, it is an unforgettable novel which casts the light on the hard price of wisdom and the ordinary grace of God.  

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book club Book review history reading Uncategorized

Read and Review (R&R) – “The Only Woman in the Room” by Marie Benedict

Our book club’s latest pick was written by Marie Benedict, a fellow Pittsburgher.

The Only Woman in the Room is the story of the 1930s film star, Hedy Lamarr. She not only possessed stunning beauty but a brilliant mind.

A young, Austrian-born, Hedwig Kiesler is gifted numerous bouquets of flowers by an Australian arms dealer, Fritz Mandl. At the encouragement of her parents they meet. Hedy marries him but soon discovers that he only wanted her as a pretty face to accompany him to social engagements. During the abusive marriage, Kiesler and her husband host many dinners and social engagements involving high government officials. When Kiesler overhears the Third Reich’s antisemitic plans, she devises a plan to escape. Her escape lands her in Hollywood where she became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.

Hedy Lamarr made many movies, but what I found most interesting is how she enlisted the help of a composer to create an invention and attempted to patent it. This patent is the basis of modern cellphone technology. She is dubbed the “mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communication such as GPS and Bluetooth.

I found this book very interesting.

Some other books by Marie Benedict are: The Other Einstein, Carnegie’s Maid, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, and Lady Clementine.

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Book review crime fiction psychological thriller reading suspense thriller

Read and Review (R&R) “The Couple Next Door,” by Shari Lapena

A friend of mine loaned me this book and it turned out to be the perfect purse companion for my recent flight and trip.

This psychological thriller is Shari Lapena’s debut novel and a very engaging, suspenseful quick read. The story is a compulsive page turner.

The Couple Next Door asks readers the question: How well do you know your friends and family?

It all started at a dinner party. . .

Anne and Marco Conti are a young couple with friendly neighbors, a beautiful baby girl, and a seemingly perfect life. When the couple are invited to a dinner party at the neighbors and the babysitter cancels, they go anyways, taking along a monitor and taking turns checking on the baby every half hour. Of course, we all know where this bad decision is going…the unthinkable happens: their baby is kidnapped. What follows is a roller-coaster ride of deceit, betrayal, and family secrets.

This book is filled with emotion and readers will find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into the secrets of the Conti family.

An unnerving plot, characters you can’t trust, and a shocking ending.

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Book review crime fiction mystery police procedural reading suspense Uncategorized

Read and Review (R&R) “Where the Guilty Hide,” by Annette Dashofy

Non-stop action in this well-written, heart-pounding, police procedural.

“Where the Guilty Hide,” a Detective Honeywell Mystery is the first in a new series by the proficient author, Annette Dashofy. This book is set on the shores of Lake Erie and told in third person with alternating chapters of Matthias Honeywell, a good-looking detective with demons he needs to overcome, and Emma Anderson, a freelance photographer who unknowingly takes a photo that could be sold to the highest bidder or could cost Emma her life.

When Detective Honeywell’s home invasion investigation turns into a murder investigation, he methodically tracks his leads. Each time, the leads bring him back to Emma Anderson. As the investigation continues and the home invasions and bodies pile up, Matthias and Emma race to catch the killer who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

This book also has an interesting, strong, supporting cast of characters and Dashofy’s plot twists are sure to keep readers turning pages until the final scene.