Fiction by Mary Miley
This is a mystery set in the 1920’s. Jessie Beckett is a former vaudeville child performer and is now working as an assistant script girl for a Hollywood studio. When her friend Barbara’s husband is murdered, Jessie investigates.
This was a lighthearted story with some surprises.
Audible Original Fiction by Erin Clark and Laura Lovely
Zelda is a wheelchair user and an assistant in an advertising firm. She is hoping to move up into a more creative role as soon as she can, but her boss seems uninterested in promoting her. Besides that, she’s still reeling from her mother’s death and her father’s hasty remarriage. She needs an outlet, and she finds it in the role of The Break Up Artist, anonymously writing scathing letters for people who want to quickly end their relationships.
But what happens if she actually meets a real person who has been on the receiving end of one of her angry missives? And what if it’s a good looking guy she just might fall in love with?
It’s obvious what will happen here; still this story was engaging and had some funny parts. It’s a pretty good straight romance.
Fiction by Laura Lippman
This was a slow-moving mystery story set in the late sixties. The characters were believable but not always sympathetic. It was okay but not great.
Fiction by Kristan Higgins
Emma London is doing fine nowadays with her teenage daughter Riley, although some thought Emma would never survive when she first became pregnant as a teenager herself. Chief among the naysayers was Emma's wealthy grandmother Genevieve London, who had raised Emma since the age of eight. After over fifteen years of silence, however, now Genevieve is suddenly calling to ask Emma to come home.
Emma is proud to have never needed her grandmother's help, and she is unprepared when the old woman might need help herself. Will she forgive old hurts and try to repair their relationship?
This was a really good character story with some romance.
I also read by this author: Pack Up the Moon
Fiction by John Marrs
Fiction by Gregg Hurwitz
This is apparently #2 in the Tim Rackley series, which I wasn't aware of when I picked it up. I didn't need to have read The Kill Clause (the first book) to understand this one; however I do think reading this one might have ruined the prospect of reading the first one by giving everything away...
In this story ex-state trooper Tim Rackley is tasked with trying to rescue a girl called Leah from a cult. It's kind of upsetting to read; I don't like to think that a cult could really suck normal people in like that.
This was an exciting story but very dark.
Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Nicola Sanders
Amy used to be a dance teacher, but now she is only Jason's wife. Since their marriage, Jason has taken control of every aspect of Amy's life, watching her every minute and trying to catch her deceiving him. She had foolishly signed over all of her money to him to "invest" for her; now she has no resources and no way out. Even her mother takes Jason's side in their arguments, refusing to believe that Amy is being abused.
When her mother offers her a ticket to a cruise ship vacation, Amy is desperate to take it and try to get away. Her mother means for the trip to be for both Amy and Jason, but Amy tells her husband that she'll be traveling with her mom and is relieved when he believes her. Or does he?
This was an exciting story with several surprises! (And one over-the-top twist at the end that I don't 100% buy.)
I also read (FREE!) from Amazon Prime Kindle: The Sideways Life of Denny Voss
Fiction by Heather Gudenkauf
Five people are competing in a reality show called "One Lucky Winner," each hoping to win a prize of ten million dollars. But this competition is long on hype and short on details; no one knows what exactly the competitors will be required to do or how they have been chosen. And the challenges will be streamed live at unexpected times, not recorded and aired on a schedule.
Supposedly these things are meant to make the show different and exciting, but also they serve to keep everyone guessing and the contestants off-balance. But it quickly becomes clear that there is something strange going on behind the scenes....
This was a fast-paced an exciting story, but the plot was WAY over the top. I couldn't help but think it stretched the reader's willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. And I felt like the characters were less likeable and believable than they could have been. Still, it was pretty fun to read.
I also read by this author: This is How I Lied
Fiction by Jennifer E. Smith
Greta James is a successful independent rock artist with one hit album and another due to come out soon, but the death of her mother several months ago has put her into a bit of a tailspin. Now her brother Travis is urging her to go on an Alaskan cruise, of all things, in order to accompany her dad. It was supposed to have been an anniversary trip for her parents and their couple friends, and Travis thinks it's a bad idea to let their father go alone. Although Greta has never had the greatest relationship with her dad, she agrees to go, hoping they can learn to get along without Mom as buffer.
This was a sweet story about mending old relationships and maybe forging new ones.
Fiction by Jennifer Weiner
When Diana was fifteen she went to spend the summer on Cape Cod as a mother's helper for a professor her parents knew at home in Boston. She had hoped to have fun and maybe even find love, but she came back broken and depressed, refusing to tell her parents what had happened to change her.
More than twenty-five years later another woman named Diana, this one nicknamed Daisy, is navigating a particularly difficult stretch of motherhood with her own fifteen-year-old daughter and wondering why she feels dissatisfied with life. Then she meets the other Diana, and discovers that maybe what she really needs is a friend.
But the reader can tell that there is something else going on under the surface of the friendship between these two women, and eventually a secret will explode to the surface.
This was a good story with great characters and I liked the realistic nature of the plot and resolution. Still it got a little heavy-handed and Big-Issue driven at times.
Fiction by Ken Follett
This book took over a week to read, which is a long time for me. It's pretty dense prose and complicated; every word needs to be understood with no skimming. I've read other books by this author, mostly historical fiction, and those were all good enough for me to devote the time to this one.
In this novel, the author takes the events that led to The Great War, or World War One as it became called, and modernized them into a slowly escalating world crisis that ends up making war inevitable. But in modern times, we have nuclear options available, and World War Three doesn't end well for anyone.
This was a good story with great characters, but it was chillingly easy to see how the USA and China, in particular, could be maneuvered into war even with moderate and decent people in change, which in general we never have...
I also read by this author: Circle of Days
