Audrey is a teacher on a search and rescue mission. She lost her best friend who went missing years ago, and there is a local girl Megan who went missing very recently. In the woods, there is a witchy story about a witch who helps young women in difficult circumstances or she takes them. There is also a local neighbor who is a creepy old dude. There is also a very powerful family with a politician and generational wealth.
Typically audio is my go-to format for suspense books- they really keep my interest and have great acting. In this case, I sort of struggled. I usually love Marshall’s writing but this one I found hard to follow on audio. There are alternating viewpoint chapters that are at different time periods- not only that but the trapped woman is known as “Stranger” and doesn’t have a name. Marshall’s a masterful storyteller but I think this one will work better with eyeball rather than ears. I really loved the spooky atmospheric setting and the earlier chapters of Audrey which were captivating!
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the ALC. book to be published February 23, 2026
A wacky tale of suburban PTO moms and murder. The new mom on the block is our main character, Jill. For a short book, this one is kind of chaotic. I really enjoyed Darla and the other mom characters, even though Jill was pretty insufferable. It reads a bit like YA, it goes deep on storylines that go nowhere and rushes through the development I was eager for. A few scenes genuinely cracked me up. Still, I enjoyed a lot of the dialogue and would try other books by this author. The pacing in this one seemed off for me, but I think others may really enjoy it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for this buzzy ARC! Book to be published 2/24/26.
I like this book, I didn’t love it. This is a murder mystery about two people – Frida and Gabriel- that grew up in a cult and escaped as young adults. They are at a resort and a young woman ends up dead. There are mysteries about how they escaped their cultist upbringing ,, the murder itself, and his wife who died a few years earlier. He was suspected, but not charged with the crime.
The book has an interesting writing style, it is very simplistic. Very short, declarative sentences over and over. The ending was not a surprise, but it was a simple plot, and ultimately a satisfying ending. It is a quick read and I am sure I will forget this book quickly.
My favorite aspect of this book was the throwback to when they were in the cult, I actually wish they would’ve gone into more detail about their agency born cult leader Emile and What the beliefs of the cult were. It ended in a traumatic way, as many separatist cults do.
Thanks to NetGalley and Elliot and Thompson for the ARC. Book to be published August 7, 2025.
Well friends, this one was not for me. A woman is on a bus with other mentally ill patients and it is the year 1954. They call her Dorothy but she doesn’t think it is her name, and she apparently has a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. She then determines that she has is a time traveler named Bix. She has a husband Paul in one of the timelines, but she also has a mission to save the world from destruction.
That is about all I understood. I think if you like the book Dissolution you would like this. I love speculative fiction but this was very cerebral. It has the pacing of a mystery but I couldn’t quite grasp the concepts and then found myself skimming.
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt publishing for the ARC. Book to be published August 19, 2025.
It pains me to rate this 1 star. The first few chapters are some of the best character building, best dialogue, one of the cutest meet cutes of the last 10 years. Samantha and Xavier have wonderful back stories, they are great characters, I would want to be friends with them. I never really like an “insta love”trope, as it feels like lust to me. I prefer the time tested “friends to lovers” or even “enemies to lovers” can be done well. But that is the least problematic thing, even though it is insta-love, it feels not like lust but instead like a REAL connection based on shared interests and good chemistry.
I appreciate how daunting of a task it is to write about dementia, it is an issue that affects more and more families every year. It is heartbreaking and raw and hard. And if someone sees their pain on these pages and feels seen and understood, I am grateful for that person. But the way the family handles Samantha’s mother’s early onset dementia really bothered me. She was very unsafe, they were completely incapable of assisting her, there were 5 adults living with her and they were failing daily because they “promised her she could stay at home.” It is painful to watch.
And although Samantha and Xavier had a great connection early on, they decided to have a long distance relationship from the very start. I had a visceral reaction to how BAD of an idea this is, how you cannot be in a real relationship with someone without a foundation. This tricked the characters into thinking they loved each other more than they could have. A good connection is a great start, but you cannot commit to someone thousands of miles away. There was a lot of “yearning” in this novel, and it was so painfully obvious that the characters were trauma bonding over their situation, their financial problems.
Xavier was a gem, a wonderful person despite having horrible parents, he had good boundaries and kept his distance. I applaud the author for having a character with estranged parents that was a good situation, there is no reconciliation. That is a lot of people’s stories and this was well done. But honestly, they were SO awful, almost comedically so, and Xavier continued to make bad decisions in order to “show” them.
Over and over they fell more and more in love despite not even knowing each other. It didn’t even make sense for Samantha to move to California into such a crowded house to help her mother when she was so incapable. And then honestly on EVERY OTHER PAGE these terrible things would happen and it was so much trauma bonding I could not handle it.
Girls, do not get into a committed relationship with someone you barely know, particularly one with abusive parents, in a long distance situation. You will be tricked into thinking you are more in love than you are, and when you finally come back together you will put up with a LOT that you would not have put up with. Because of all the work it took to get together! You will ignore all the red flags.
Not since Twilight have I been so angry at a “romance” that was not romantic.
After all that, again, I have to repeat myself. I am sure a lot of people will rate this 5 stars, and I GET IT. It has SO much going for it. But I do not find this romantic at all, I am drowning in red flags.
Other things I loved- Samantha’s brother and Xavier’s friends and his mentor, Dr Hank.
In short, this book is perfect in every way except for what HAPPENS in it.
Lucy moves to Colorado after her brother Mikey moved there a few years ago. After Mikey’s death she seeks out the woman he loved, Helen. I really disliked both Lucy and Helen as characters, as they seemed very hopeless and irritable. There is a big disparity between the rich and the working class in this book and a focus on pharmaceuticals as a solution to anything.
The book has a dream like quality that I personally found difficult to follow. I enjoy speculative fiction and books with a climate change theme, but this one did not grab me.
Others did enjoy it quite a bit, though, so maybe it’s just not for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC. Book to be published June 3, 2025.
Friends, this one was not for me. I really liked the publishing industry and a good second chance romance. Jack was a decent character and I found him to be a relatable person that I felt empathy for. The pacing of this book was really strange, big jumps in the narrative and not explaining things that needed to be explained. There was a big build up on this enemies-to-lovers plot of wondering what had happened back in the uni days that made Andi hate Jack so much. Once this was revealed, and this was at least two thirds of the way through the book, it was very frustrating and a dumb thing. I am not a fan of the miscommunication trope when it could have been fixed with ONE conversation, but mostly this one fell flat for me specifically because I found the FMC to be so self-centered and unlikable.
Honestly there wasn’t a lot of romance. The aspects of the book that dealt with grief and needing therapy were well done. This would be a good addition in a collection of “books that are heavy handed in wanting the reader to go to therapy.”
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the ARC. Book to be published May 20, 2025.
A locked-door mystery which takes place on a yacht; the characters all look- and even act- alike. Sasha is starting her career as a stewardess on a billionaire’s yacht, where a year ago one of the stewardesses was murdered. It doesn’t take long for another murder to occur. The stewardesses/coworkers all look alike, the same beauty, the same long blond hair, same high cheekbones. We need to learn who killed the recent person and the past one. It is a typical locked room mystery with several suspects, all pointing the fingers at each other.
They are kind of awful to each other, none of them are people you are really rooting for. The characterization in this novel was really lacking, once the killer was revealed I wasn’t surprised, it was a bit of a letdown. It is definitely very readable, but not very interesting. I didn’t like any of the characters.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Book to be published June 17, 2025.
This was a miss for me. The book is about Regina, who serves soup at a local soup kitchen, and she used to be a celebrity chef. Queenie B lost everything, went into rehab, apparently got sober, fell off the face of the earth. Gale is a newly sober chef in a reality show competition, Regina helps him and he doesn’t understand that she used to be a celebrity chef.
I thought this seemed like a really fun premise, but it lost something in execution. I did like how each chapter gives you a food term like “al dente” or “flambe” or “blanche” and then describes what it means. I didn’t connect to any character in the book, I found myself drifting off, I had a hard time getting through the narrative. As intriguing as the blurb was, it is almost like the book had no plot at all. Maybe it was the disjointed narrative.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC. I was given an advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review. Book to be published April 15, 2025.
I jumped at the chance to read this upcoming mystery/thriller, as I loved the author’s last book, House of Glass. While this was a fun book to read, the ending and big reveal to both mysteries seemed a bit contrived.
Georgia is in the locked ward, being found insane and guilty of murdering her sister Annabelle. We don’t know Mandy, but out of the blue she is contacted and told she has a fraternal twin. Conveniently her parents are both dead. So she does a DNA test to confirm that she and Georgia are sisters. Alternating short chapters are Georgia in the locked ward- trying to prove her innocence and trying to recruit her long lost twin. The other chapters are Mandy as she tries to solve two mysteries; why were she and Georgia separated at birth, why did her parents never tell her she had a sibling? And the second mystery, who killed Annabelle and how did they frame Georgia?
Overall the plot was pretty silly at times, it felt a little too melodramatic and it was hard to determine why the characters were acting the way they were. There wasn’t a whole lot of character development. Also it seemed kind of convenient that Georgia just found out about Mandy just before being accused of murder.
I did have fun reading this, as it has good pacing and the short chapters keep you turning the pages. But it was missing a lot of elements that we love in a good mystery. Hopefully Sarah Pekkanen’s next book will be back up to her standards.
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martins Press for the ARC. Book to be published August 5, 2025.
