When your best friend who can’t swim suddenly drowns, you know something isn’t right. That’s exactly what sends hotel heiress Torie Bergstrom back to Georgia’s Jekyll Island in Colleen Coble’s A Stranger’s Game. Torie hasn’t been home since she was ten, but she’s the one who arranged her best friend Lisbeth’s job at one of the family’s properties. Now Lisbeth is dead, and Torie is convinced it wasn’t an accident. To get answers, she checks into the hotel under an alias, only to discover that danger is lurking much closer than she imagined. Her quest for the truth leads her straight into the path of Joe Abbott and his young […]
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Secrets, Twists, and Shifting Truths
🌟🌟🌟🌟 James Patterson and David Ellis are back at it with Lies He Told Me, a thriller that keeps the pages flying and the tension high. The story centers on a husband whose life starts to unravel as secrets pile up, half-truths get exposed, and trust becomes a dangerous illusion. One of the best parts? You’ll find yourself second-guessing everyone—because in this book, nobody’s story is quite what it seems. The trademark Patterson pacing is here—short, snappy chapters that dare you to put the book down. Ellis adds his courtroom savvy and knack for layered characters, giving the novel more depth than some of Patterson’s lighter collaborations. The twists come fast, […]
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Faith, Justice, and Second Chances in Guilty Until Innocent
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Second chances don’t usually come twenty-five years late, but that’s exactly what happens in Robert Whitlow’s Guilty Until Innocent. Ryan Clark, a young lawyer on shaky professional ground, takes a job with his cousin Tom in small-town North Carolina. Almost immediately, he’s pulled into revisiting one of Tom’s most painful cases: Joe Moore, convicted of murder decades earlier. Joe was high the night of the crime and doesn’t remember what happened, but he’s since become a man of faith with a ministry behind prison walls. His family has never stopped believing in his innocence, and now they want Ryan and Tom to prove it. The deeper they dig, the more […]
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The Syndicate Spy Misses the Mark
⭐️⭐️☆☆☆ Every so often, a book comes along with a premise that sounds like a surefire winner. Brittany Butler’s The Syndicate Spy is one of those. A futuristic, female-led spy syndicate battling over dwindling oil supplies in a climate-altered world? Count me in. Sadly, the story never quite lives up to its promise. I don’t wish to be unkind, after all, writing a book is hard work, but the pacing is uneven, with stretches of clunky exposition slowing the action to a crawl. The world-building, while creative, often feels more like background noise than an integral part of the story. Juliet Arroway, the lead spy, has plenty of potential but […]
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When Stephanie Goes Rogue, You Go Along for the Chaos
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stephanie Plum has survived exploding cars, disastrous stakeouts, and endless doughnut runs, but in Going Rogue, the danger feels personal. When Connie—steady, tough-as-nails Connie—gets kidnapped, Stephanie and her merry band of misfits launch into action. The ransom? A mysterious coin tied to murder, mobsters, and more chaos than even Trenton can handle. What follows is classic Evanovich: a wacky chase, more near-death moments than any bail bond agent should endure and laugh-out-loud antics from Lula and Grandma Mazur. Add in the ongoing tug-of-war between Morelli and Ranger, and you’ve got another zippy romp that’s equal parts mystery, comedy, and popcorn entertainment. Do the hijinks sometimes feel familiar after 29 […]
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Tanner, Louise, and One Wild Ride
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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