⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 stars) What do you get when you throw together an eighty-four-year-old spitfire with a suitcase full of secrets and a twenty-one-year-old gamer girl who’d rather hide under the covers than face real life? In Colleen Oakley’s The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise, you get a hilarious, heart-squeezing road trip that proves friendship has no age limit. Louise hires Tanner as her reluctant caretaker, but before either of them knows it, they’re on the run—destination unclear, motives questionable, and plenty of “wait, WHAT just happened?” moments along the way. The dialogue is whip-smart, the characters are quirky and lovable, and Oakley sneaks in just enough mystery to […]
Read more...Category Archives: Literature
Cash Blackbear Rides Again in Broken Fields
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5 stars) Cash Blackbear never goes looking for trouble, but trouble always finds her. When the Ojibwe college student and farmhand stumbles across a murdered farmer and a frightened young girl in rural Minnesota, she’s pulled into a case as tangled as the furrows she plows. What unfolds is more than a mystery—it’s a stark look at the foster care system, the weight of racism, and what it means to fight for survival when the odds are stacked against you. Marcie R. Rendon’s Broken Fields is one of those mysteries you inhale in a weekend. On the surface, it’s a deliciously complicated whodunit set in 1970s Minnesota farm country. […]
Read more...
Secrets, Sisterhood, and Spies on Martha’s Vineyard
Martha Hall Kelley, one of my favorite historical fiction novelists, delivers another captivating tale in The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club. The title is a bit misleading—it isn’t really about a book club—but what unfolds is far richer and more intriguing. The dual timeline begins in 2016, when Mari Starwood travels from California to Martha’s Vineyard with nothing but a name on a scrap of paper. There she meets Elizabeth Devereaux, a reclusive painter whose family story reshapes Mari’s understanding of her own past. The heart of the novel, though, lies in 1942. Sisters Cadence and Briar Smith struggle to hold their farm together while U.S. troops train on […]
Read more...
Too Much Preaching, Too Little Plot in Light of the Ark
⭐️⭐️ James Bonk’s Light of the Ark had all the makings of a high-stakes Christian thriller—an ancient relic connected to the Ark of the Covenant, a family bound by secrets, and a battle between good and evil. Unfortunately, the story didn’t live up to its potential. Instead of feeling like an edge-of-your-seat novel, much of it read more like a series of sermons. As a devout Christian, I usually welcome Scripture and spiritual truths in my fiction, but here the “Christianese” was so thick it bogged down the storytelling. I doubt it would hold much appeal for nonbelievers looking for a page-turner. The pacing was another hurdle. The first 80 percent moved […]
Read more...
Books, Blackouts, and a Mother’s Choice
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Madeline Martin’s The Booklover’s Library drops us into Nottingham during WWII, where widow Emma Taylor faces an impossible choice: risk keeping her daughter Olivia in a bombing zone or send her off to live with strangers in the countryside. With little hope and even fewer job options—married and widowed women were barred from most work—Emma persuades Boots’ lending library to hire her. There she finds unlikely friendships, quirky patrons, and a reminder that books can keep people afloat when the world is sinking. What caught me most wasn’t the “library angle” (frankly, I’m getting a little worn out on book-about-books stories), but the history tucked inside. I had never heard of […]
Read more...
When Twisty Turns to Icky
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Every once in a while, I’m in the mood for a dark psychological thriller, so I gave Freida McFadden’s The Teacher a try. On the surface, it’s got the right ingredients—short chapters, plenty of twists, and a storyline about a teacher whose life unravels after a scandal. It’s undeniably readable; McFadden knows how to hook you. But here’s the rub: the subject matter left me cold. A predator targeting high schoolers? Sick. Layer on too much cheating and way too many graphic sex scenes, and what could have been a tense, smart thriller turned into something that felt more exploitative than entertaining. This was my first McFadden book, and while I […]
Read more...
Family Drama Meets Legal Intrigue in The Truth About the Devlins
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4 stars) Lisa Scottoline knows her way around a page-turner. With thirty-six novels under her belt, she’s mastered the mix of family drama, legal thrills, and a dash of mystery. Her latest, The Truth About the Devlins, has all of that in spades. The Devlins are a powerhouse family of attorneys—except for TJ, the black sheep who’s fresh out of prison and working hard to stay sober. He’s barely getting his life back together when his golden-boy brother confesses he may have killed a client. Suddenly TJ is pulled into a mess that could blow up his family’s reputation, and for once, he’s the only one who might be […]
Read more...
Unsung Heroines of the Arsenal
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Jennifer Chiaverini’s Canary Girls shines a spotlight on a little-known chapter of World War I history—the British “munitionettes” who risked their lives making bombs while their brothers, husbands, and sweethearts fought on the front lines. Through the perspectives of three women from different walks of life—April, a former housemaid; Lucy, the wife of a football star; and Helen, the boss’s socially conscious wife—the novel captures both the camaraderie and the danger of working in the factories. The women’s skin literally turns yellow from handling TNT, earning them the nickname “canary girls,” yet they persist, fueled by patriotism and the fellowship they find on the soccer pitch. Chiaverini blends historical fact with […]
Read more...
New Cop, New Island, Same Connelly Magic
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Michael Connelly is back with Nightshade, the first book to feature Detective Stilwell. Once a homicide cop in Los Angeles, Stilwell gets shoved aside by department politics and reassigned to Catalina Island, stuck handling property crimes. Sounds easy—until a woman’s body turns up at the bottom of the harbor, identified only by a streak of purple in her hair. Then a routine poaching call explodes into violence, dragging Stilwell into the dangerous orbit of a powerful island figure and an old rival determined to bring him down. The setting is terrific: Catalina’s picture-perfect charm hides plenty of shadows, and Connelly makes the most of it. Stilwell isn’t polished or […]
Read more...
Jewels, Justice, and a Lifetime of Secrets
✦✦✦✦½ Kristin Harmel once again proves why she’s one of today’s leading voices in historical fiction with The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau. This isn’t just a war story—it’s a jewel heist, a decades-old mystery, and a family drama rolled into one glittering package. Colette Marceau has always lived by her mother’s code: steal only from the cruel and use the spoils to help others. But everything changed in 1942 Paris when a Resistance mission went sideways. Her cousin Annabel was executed, her little sister vanished, and the diamond bracelet sewn into a nightgown disappeared with her. Seventy years later, that very bracelet turns up in a Boston museum, forcing Colette […]
Read more...