Blog Tour & Review: Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

Publisher: Flatiron Books Published: August 7, 2021 Source: ARC Paperback via Publisher   Summary: Think you know the person you married? Think again… Things have been wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t…

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Month in Review: August 2021

  And here are we in September…this year really is flying by! I had another great month of reading, this time reading quite a few of my own books and some backlist review books, too! It looks like this month coming up is amped up with great releases and I’m looking forward to quite a lot of them…I just need time to slow down so I can fit them all…

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Review: The Riviera House by Natasha Lester (audio)

Publisher: Forever / Hachette Audio Published: August 31, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Forever / Audio: ALC via Libro.fm via Hachette Audio   Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Secret weaves a lush and engrossing novel of World War II inspired by a true story and perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and Pam Jenoff. Paris, 1939: The Nazis think Éliane can’t understand German. They’re wrong. They think she’s merely…

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Review: A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (audio)

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Published: August 31, 2021 Source: ALC via Libro.fm   Summary: With the same propulsion that captivated millions of readers worldwide in The Girl on the Train and Into the Water, Paula Hawkins unfurls a gripping, twisting story of deceit, murder, and revenge. When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand…

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Review: The People We Keep by Allison Larkin (audio)

Publisher: Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print: Personal copy via BOTM / Audio via Library   Summary: The People we Keep is about a young songwriter longing to find a home in the world. Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner. But when April realizes…

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Review: The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason

Publisher: Minotaur Books Published: August 17, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Retired detective Konrad returns to a haunting cold case in The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, the “undisputed King of the Icelandic thriller.” —The Guardian (UK) A frozen body is discovered in the icy depths of Langjökull glacier, apparently that of a businessman who disappeared thirty years before. At the time, an extensive search and police investigation yielded no results—one of the…

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Review: Two Truths and a Lie by Meg Mitchell Moore (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio Published: June 16, 2020 Source: Print – Hardcopy via Publisher / Audio via Library   Summary:  From the author of The Islanders comes a warm, witty and suspenseful novel filled with small-town secrets, summer romance, big time lies and spiked seltzer, in the vein of Liane Moriarty. Truth: Sherri Griffin and her daughter, Katie, have recently moved to the idyllic beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Rebecca…

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Review: We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz (audio)

Publisher: Ballantine Books / Random House Audio Published: August 3rd, 2021 Source: Print & Audio – Personal copy   Summary: An annual backpacking trip has deadly consequences in a chilling new novel from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd. Emily is having the time of her life–she’s in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than…

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Review: 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard (audio)

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Published: August 17, 2021 Source: Print & Audio via Publisher   Summary: No one knew they’d moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder? 56 DAYS AGO Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 DAYS AGO When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in…

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Review: My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black by Terry Roberts

  Publisher: Turner Publishing Company Published: July 27, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Ellis Island, 1920. New York Harbor’s immigration and public health authorities are slowly recovering from the war years when a young, pregnant Irish woman disappears from the Isolation Hospital on Ellis Island. Stephen Robbins, a specialist in finding missing persons, is assigned the case. Yet when he arrives at the isolation hospital, he discovers an inexplicable string…

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Review: Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson (print/audio)

Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio – ALC via Publisher   Summary: An epic, immersive debut, Damnation Spring is the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life. For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along…

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Review: Campus Bones by Vivian Barz (audio)

Publisher: Brilliance Audio Published: August 24, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Amazon Charts bestselling author Vivian Barz reunites Special Agent Susan Marlan with Professor Eric Evans in a riveting installment in the Dead Remaining series. It’s been a year since Special Agent Susan Marlan and Professor Eric Evans worked a taxing missing persons case together on the Olympic Peninsula. Though the couple have since separated, Eric must reluctantly turn to…

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Review: Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print – Personal Copy / Audio via Library   Summary: Kaia Alderson’s debut historical fiction novel reveals the untold, true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II. Grace Steele and…

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Review: No Woods So Dark As These by Randall Silvis

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press Published: August 4, 2020 Source: Publisher   Summary: There are good reasons to fear the dark… Former Sergeant Ryan DeMarco’s life has been spent in defiance–he’s defied death, loneliness, and betrayal all while fighting the worst parts of humanity. He’s earned a break, and following the devastation of their last case, DeMarco and his girlfriend Jayme want nothing more than to live quietly in each other’s…

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Review: The Last Commandment by Scott Shepherd

Publisher: Mysterious Press Published: July 13, 2021 Source: Publisher:   Summary: Christmastime in London. When three seemingly unconnected victims are murdered with matching sequential Roman numerals carved into their foreheads, Metropolitan Police Commander Austin Grant finds his answer in one of the last places he’d expect: the Holy Bible. Each of the deaths correspond to a transgression of one of the Ten Commandments, and Grant must find the killer before…

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Blog Tour & Review: The Family Plot by Megan Collins (audio)

Publisher: Atria Books / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: August 17, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Atria Books / Print: ALC via Simon & Schuster Audio   Summary: When a family obsessed with true crime gathers to bury their patriarch, horrifying secrets are exposed upon the discovery of another body in his grave in this chilling novel from the author of Behind the Red Door and The Winter Sister . At twenty-six, Dahlia Lighthouse has…

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Review: Half-Life by Jillian Cantor (print/audio)

Publisher: Harper Perennial / Harper Audio Published: March 23, 2021 Source: Print – Paperback via Publisher / Audio via Library   Summary: The USA Today bestselling author of In Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice. In Poland in 1891,…

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Review: All the Children Are Home by Patry Francis

Publisher: Harper Perennial Published: April 13, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: A sweeping saga in the vein of Ask Again, Yes following a foster family through almost a decade of dazzling triumph and wrenching heartbreak—from the author of The Orphans at Race Point. Set in the late 1950s through 1960s in a small town in Massachusetts, All the Children Are Home follows the Moscatelli family—Dahlia and Louie, foster parents, and their long-term foster children Jimmy,…

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Review: Limelight by Amy Poeppel (audio)

Publisher: Atria / Emily Bestler Books / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: May 14, 2019 (Paperback Release) / May 1, 2018 (Original Pub Date) Source: Print: Paperback via Author / Audio via library   Summary: In a smart and funny novel by the author of the critically acclaimed “big-hearted, charming” (The Washington Post) Small Admissions, a family’s move to New York City brings surprises and humor. Allison Brinkley—wife, mother, and former…

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Review: The Noise by James Patterson & J.D. Barker (audio)

Publisher: Hachette Audio Published: August 16, 2021 Source: ALC via Hachette Audio / Libro.fm   Summary: If you hear it, it’s too late. Can two sisters save us all? In the shadow of Mount Hood, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening…

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Review: Gone for Good by Joanna Schaffhausen

Publisher: Minotaur Books Published: August 10, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Gone For Good is the first in a new mystery series from award-winning author Joanna Schaffhausen, featuring Detective Annalisa Vega, in which a cold case heats up. The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no…

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Review: The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives by Kristin Miller

Publisher: Ballantine Books Published: July 20, 2021 Source: Netgalley via Publisher   Summary: Meet the trophy wives of Presidio Terrace, San Francisco’s most exclusive–and most deadly–neighborhood in this shrewd, darkly compelling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of In Her Shadow. Mystery writer Brooke Davies is the new wife on the block. Her tech-billionaire husband, Jack, twenty-two years her senior, whisked her to the Bay Area via private jet and purchased…

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Review: The Steal by C.W. Gortner & M.J. Rose

Publisher: Blue Box Press Published: August 10, 2021 Source: GetRedPR   Summary:  They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend – until they’re stolen. Ania Throne is devoted to her jewelry company. The daughter of one of the world’s most famous jewelers, she arrives in Cannes with a stunning new collection. But a shocking theft by the notorious thief known as the Leopard throws her into upheaval – and plunges…

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Review: The New Normal: A Roadmap to Resilience in the Pandemic Era by Jennifer Ashton, M.D., M.S.

Publisher: William Morrow Published: February 9, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: From Dr. Jennifer Ashton—the Chief Medical Correspondent at ABC News covering breaking medical news for Good Morning America and GMA3: What You Need to Know—comes a doctor’s guide to finding resilience in the time of COVID, while staying safe and sane in a rapidly changing world. In March 2020, “normal” life changed, perhaps forever. In its place we were…

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Review: The Stranger Behind You by Carol Goodman

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Published: July 6, 2021 Source: Netgalley   Summary: In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier and Shari Lapena, comes the newest mystery thriller from New York Times bestselling author Carol Goodman—a twisty, chilling story set in a former Magdalen Laundry in Manhattan that explores today’s #MeToo complexities. You’re never really alone Journalist Joan Lurie has written a seething article exposing a notorious newspaper tycoon as a sexual predator. But the…

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Most Anticipated Releases of the Month: August 2021

  Back again with my five most anticipated releases coming out this month. With so many releases this month, it was hard to select just five books, but these are the ones that really stand out in my mind for some reason – either because I have loved the author’s previous books or it’s a debut novel and sounds amazing. As I’ve done before, if I’ve already read the book,…

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Review: The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones (audio)

Publisher: Minotaur Books / Macmillan Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Minotaur Books / Audio: ALC via Netgalley   Summary: In the vein of the Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick The Other Woman, Sandie Jones’s explosive new novel The Guilt Trip will have listeners gripped to the very last chapter. They went away as friends. They came back as suspects. Rachel and Jack. Paige…

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Review: Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens (audio)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio: ALC via Netgalley   Summary: The acclaimed and beloved author of Still Missing is back with her most breathtaking thriller yet. The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For…

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Month in Review: July 2021

  How is it that we are already in August? This year is flying by! It was another month of amazing reads and yet, with as much as I read, my tbr remains overflowing? I don’t understand how that works? I guess it’s a good thing that I have more to read than I can get to, right? I’ve been participating in some amazing buddy reads and book club discussions…

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Review: Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb

Publisher: William Morrow Published: July 27, 2021 Source: ARC Paperback via William Morrow   Summary: From Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, the bestselling authors of Meet Me in Monaco, comes a coming-of-age novel set in pre-WWII Europe, perfect for fans of Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Kate Quinn.   Three cities, two sisters, one chance to correct the past . . . New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn…

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Review: The Second Life of Mirielle West by Amanda Skenandore (print/audio)

Publisher: Kensington Books / HighBridge Audio Published: July 27, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Kensingbooks & Bibliolifestyle / Audio: Library   Summary: The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord…

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Review: The Witness by Terry Lynn Thomas

Publisher: HQ Digital Published: April 23, 2021 Source: Netgalley via Publisher   Summary: From the USA Today bestselling author, comes the second explosive thriller about attorney Olivia Sinclair who must solve a cold-case murder to clear an innocent man’s name… HE SAW WHAT YOU DID… Teenager Ebby Engstrom witnesses a murder – and then passes out. The next morning, he wakes in his bed with no memory of how he…

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Review: Heavy by Kiese Laymon (print/audio)

Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: October 16, 2018 Source: Print: Personal copy via Literati Book Club / Audio: Library   Summary: In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse. Kiese Laymon is a…

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Review: What’s Left Unsaid by Emily Bleeker (print/audio)

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing / Brilliance Audio Published: July 27, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Uplit Reads / Audio: ALC via Brilliance Audio   Summary: An enthralling novel of secrets, second chances, and confronting the past by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of When I’m Gone. After a series of devastating losses, Chicago journalist Hannah Williamson has landed in Senatobia, Mississippi, to care for her bedridden grandmother and endure grunt work…

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Review: In the Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekback

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Published: June 14, 2016 Source: Personal Copy   Summary: An orphaned boy brought up to serve the state as a man. A rich young woman incapable of living by the conventions of society. Neither is prepared for the journey into the heat, mystery, violence and disorienting perpetual daylight of the far North. Stockholm 1856. Magnus is a geologist. When the Minister sends him to survey the…

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Review: We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange (audio)

Publisher: Celadon Books / Macmillan Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print: Arc Paperback via Celadon Early Reads Program / Audio: ALC via Macmillan Audio   Summary: In the vein of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest, Tracey Lange’s We Are the Brennans explores the staying power of shame—and the redemptive power of love—in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets. When twenty-nine-year-old…

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Blog Tour & Review: The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish (audio)

Publisher: Atria Books / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: July 20, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Atria Books / Print: ALC via Simon & Schuster Audio   Summary: The “queen of the sucker-punch twist” (Ruth Ware, number-one New York Times best-selling author) and author of Our House weaves an unputdownable pause-resister about a commuter who becomes a suspect in his friend’s mysterious disappearance. It all happens so quickly. One day you’re living the…

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Review: A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe (audio)

Publisher: Macmillan Audio / St. Martin’s Press Published: July 20, 2021 Source: Audio: Netgalley via Macmillan Audio / Print: ARC Paperback via St. Martin’s Press   Summary: From “a master of historical fiction” (NPR), Karin Tanabe’s A Woman of Intelligence is an exhilarating tale of post-war New York City, and one remarkable woman’s journey from the United Nations, to the cloistered drawing rooms of Manhattan society, to the secretive ranks of the…

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Evidence of the Affair by Taylor Jenkins Reid (audio)

Publisher: Brilliance Audio Published: January 15, 2019 Source: Personal copy   Summary: The repercussions of an illicit affair unfold in this short story by bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid. Dear stranger… A desperate young woman in Southern California sits down to write a letter to a man she’s never met – a choice that will forever change both their lives. My heart goes out to you, David. Even though I…

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Review: Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow/ Harper Audio Published: March 2, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio via library   Summary: A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true story—a skillful blend of Call the Midwife and The Alice Network—from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig. A scholarship…

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Review: False Witness by Karin Slaughter (print/audio)

  Publisher: William Morrow / Blackstone Publishing Published: July 20, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via William Morrow / Audio: ALC via Blackstone Publishing   Summary: AN ORDINARY LIFE Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defence attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilised – her life is just…

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Review: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

Publisher: Berkley Books Published: June 29, 2021 Source: Netgalley   Summary: The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian–who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired…

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Book Spotlight: A House Full of Windsor by Kristin Contino

  This book was published earlier this week and I’m excited to share it with you. I love all things having to do with the royal family, so of course I’m excited to read this one! Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing Published: July 13, 2021 Source: Netgalley via GetRed PR   Summary: Spanning from 1980s London and the royal wedding of a century to a present-day reality TV show, A HOUSE FULL…

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Review: With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt

Publisher: Algonquin Books Published: June 29, 2021 (Paperback Release) Source: Author via Suzy Approved Booktours   Summary: New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt writes novels that expertly explore the struggles and conflicts people face in their search for happiness. For the characters in With or Without You, it seems at first that such happiness can come only at someone else’s expense. Stella is a nurse who has long suppressed her own…

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Review: The Bone Code by Kathy Reichs (audio)

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio Published: July 6, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Number-one New York Times best-selling author Kathy Reichs returns with her 20th gripping novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations, 15 years apart, of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events. On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm…

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Review: The Therapist by B.A. Paris (audio)

Publisher: Macmillan Audio / St. Martin’s Press Published: July 13, 2021 Source: Audio: ALC via Macmillan Audio / ARC Paperback via St. Martin’s Press   Summary: The multimillion-copy New York Times best-selling author B.A. Paris returns to her heartland of gripping psychological suspense in The Therapist – a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret. When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community…

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Review: The Summer Sisters by Sara Richardson

Publisher: Forever Published: July 6, 2021 Source: Netgalley via Publisher   Summary: Fans of Lori Foster and Maisey Yates won’t be able to put down this heartwarming, multi-generational story about three sisters’ search to reunite their family and the love they find along the way. The Buchanan sisters share everything—including their inherited Juniper Inn. But when their mother won’t let go of a decades-long feud with their Aunt Sassy to…

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Most Anticipated Releases of the Month: July 2021

  Back again with my five most anticipated releases coming out this month. With so many releases this month, it was hard to select just five books, but these are the ones that really stand out in my mind for some reason – either because I have loved the author’s previous books or it’s a debut novel and sounds amazing. As I’ve done before, if I’ve already read the book,…

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Blog Tour & Review: Kill All Your Darlings by David Bell

Publisher: Berkley Books Published: July 6, 2021 Source: Netgalley via Publisher/GetRedPr   Summary: When a student disappears and is presumed dead, her professor passes off her manuscript as his own—only to find out it implicates him in an unsolved murder in this new thriller from the USA Today bestselling author of The Request. After years of struggling to write following the deaths of his wife and son, English professor Connor Nye publishes his…

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Review: The Forest of Vanishing Stars (audio)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio / Gallery Books Published: July 6, 2021 Source: Audio – ALC via Simon & Schuster Audio / Print: Netgalley   Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of the The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything. After…

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