Out of the Easy

 Fiction by Ruta Sepetys

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Josie Moraine didn't choose New Orleans; her mother Louise dragged her there in 1940 when she was just a little girl. She certainly didn't choose to grow up there in the heart of the French Quarter with everyone knowing her mother was a prostitute. But now it's 1950, Josie is turning eighteen, and she's got big plans to leave the Big Easy and start fresh. Will she be able to break out of her mother's shadow and somehow gain respectability?

This was a good story with great characters.

I also read by this author: Ashes in the Snow

The Guest

 Fiction by Emma Cline

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the story of an unpleasant girl called Alex. She started out as a high-class prostitute but is on her way down, For some reason she seems to keep alienating everyone around her and has no friends. Now her ex-boyfriend (maybe ex-pimp?) is after her, because she stole drugs and money.

I really wanted to like Alex and hoped for a good outcome from her. I finished the book so I could find out what happened. But guess what? I still don't know! IT DIDN'T TELL ME what happened to her.

NOTE: I thought I had read a book by this author before, but when I looked at my records (by which I mean, this blog) I didn't see her name anywhere. After I started reading, however, I realized that I had begun and abandoned the author's previous book The Girls because the characters were so unpleasant AND the story kind of sucked. It was a big DNF. So THIS is why I've started logging my DNF's (books I did not finish because I disliked them) in my blog this year, so I can stop wasting time reading authors I don't like just because their books get raves from other people.

Image from https://www.barnesandnoble.com

You Can Trust Me

 Fiction by Wendy Heard

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Summer and Leo are best friends who share a nomadic lifestyle and live by their wits. By this I mean that they are a pair of pretty girls who sleep in a van and run small cons to pay the bills.

Then Leo sets her sights on a multi-billionaire tech-genius guy who may be worth a long-term con. She goes to visit him on his private island and doesn't come back. Has she decided to part ways with Summer and live off her new boyfriend? Or is there something more sinister going on?

This was an exciting thriller with several surprises.