Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778387251

Hardcover, $30, 400 pages

Allison Brennan usually writes romantic suspense novels (I've previously read her Quinn and Costa FBI Thrillers and enjoyed them), and here she takes a turn towards a more cozy mystery-type novel in Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds.

Her heroine here is Mia, an accountant in a small firm where she is about to be named partner. She has worked hard to get this opportunity, but she also knows that accepting the partnership will mean even longer hours at the office.

Her boss books her a vacation at a fancy private island resort and insists she take it. Mia is sort-of looking forward to hanging out at the beach, reading her favorite romance novels, and maybe even having a vacation fling with Jason the hot bartender.

She didn't realize she would get caught up in a mystery when a guest goes missing. Mia and a teenage guest (who doesn't trust the woman her father wants to marry) team up to find out what happened to the missing guest.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this fun page-turner of a novel, and it does have a White Lotus feel to the story. Everyone has secrets that appear to be related to the missing guest who was perhaps blackmailing several of the guests.

The hot bartender has his eye on Mia, and after several attempts at romance are interrupted, they finally connect in some steamy scenes. Mia begins to question whether this is a vacation romance or could it be something more?

Brennan does a wonderful job balancing the romance and the mystery/suspense here, and bibliophiles like myself will enjoy and perhaps even recognize the quotes from popular mystery/thriller novels that opened each chapter. And I also loved that her heroine is an accountant, many readers will be able to relate to Mia's job. Careful readers may also be able to figure the secret that Jason is hiding.

All in all, Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds is a perfect beach read for those who like their romance mixed with a lighter mystery. I truly enjoyed it.

 

Three Books For Your Beach Bag

We’re heading into summer reading season and there are some wonderful books waiting to be added to beach bags.

Amy Poeppel writes delightful novels that make me laugh, filled with characters I wish were my friends. Her latest, Far and Away takes readers to Dallas and Berlin as two families swap homes for a summer. 

Lucy is preparing a big celebration for her son Jack’s high school graduation in Dallas when she receives a call from his principal asking her to come in for a meeting-now.

Jack is accused of doing something ‘sexist’, something that is out of character for her nerdy hardworking son. The whole situation spins out of control and Jack will not be participating in graduation ceremonies, and his college acceptance may be rescinded.

After the family is ostracized and their house egged, Lucy decides to take her children to Europe for the summer to let things die down. She goes online and finds someone in Berlin who is looking for a house Dallas for the summer. Perfect- a house swap solves the problem.

In Berlin, Greta is celebrating a big win- she purchased a Vermeer at auction for a client and everyone is talking about it. When her husband Otto comes home and tells her he took a job in Dallas for the summer, Greta is concerned her career achievement is in jeopardy.

Lucy enjoys showing her kids the Berlin she loved spending time in years ago, and while Greta is having a more difficult adjustment in Dallas her husband Otto is thriving.

Once again, Poeppel creates characters that are so fully developed from Lucy and Greta to Lucy’s neighboring in-laws, Otto, and Greta’s American neighbor who befriends Lucy. You feel like you know them well. 

Any mom of teens will relate to Lucy as she tries to navigate Jack’s predicament in this atmosphere of piling on before getting the whole story. 

And only Amy Poeppel can connect a possible fake Vermeer painting, a missing husband participating in a Mars biosphere experiment (or is he in jail?), and a complicated math formula and make it work so brilliantly. Take a trip to Dallas and Berlin this summer in one funny and sweet story in Far and Away, you’ll love it as much as I did.

Grab your beach towel and sunscreen as author Jane L. Rosen takes readers back to Fire Island in her third novel in the series Songs of Summer.

When record store owner Maggie May leaves her Ohio home in search of her birth mother on Fire Island, she may end up with more than she bargained for. 

She discovers that her birth mother is attending a wedding on Fire Island, but when she finds the woman, her mother is the middle of a very public screaming match with the sister she hasn’t spoken to in years. 

Before Maggie decides whether she wants to be a part of this family, she is befriended by a handsome man which leads her to question her own relationship with her childhood sweetheart.

I loved the first two books in the series, On Fire Island and “Seven Summer Weekends” and was so happy to reunite with many of the characters from these two books, including my favorite Shep, an elderly widower. Nobody writes older gentlemen better than Jane L. Rosen.

You don’t need to have read the first two books to enjoy Songs of Summer, but you will appreciate it more if you have. It's filled with humor and heart and I highly recommend all three.

You may recognize Vicky Nguyen from her work as a correspondent on the Today Show. She tells her story as a Vietnamese immigrant in her fascinating memoir Boat Baby.

Vicky’s parents were fearful for their lives following the end of the war in Vietnam. They escaped on a boat to Malaysia and, after finding an American family willing to sponsor them, they settled in Oregon.

Her parents worked hard to build a good life for their only daughter and Vicky wanted to be a typical American teenager. But she still had to face prejudice from her peers. It's an eye-opening look at the immigrant experience.

Vicky became interested in a career in television journalism in college. She worked long hours and moved from station to station to advance her career. She married her high school sweetheart and they faced challenges as they tried to start a family.

If you liked Connie Chung’s recent memoir Connie,  Boat Baby is a wonderful companion read. I found the parts on the news business most enlightening. 

Far And Away by Amy Poeppel- A

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Trade paperback, $18.99, 400 pages

Songs of Summer by Jane L. Rosen- A

Published by Berkley

Trade paperback, $19, 336 pages

Boat Baby by Vicky Nguyen- A

Published by Simon & Schuster

Hardcover, $29.99, 320 pages

Writing Mr. Right by Alina Khawaja

Writing Mr. Right by Alina Khawaja

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778368663

Trade paperback, $18.99, 304 pages

From the publisher:

The Dead Romantics meets Book Lovers in this charming rom-com about struggling writer Ziya, who’s about to give up on her dream of publishing until she wakes up one morning to find a physical manifestation of her writing muse in her apartment.

Ziya Khan is a legal secretary by day, but she spends her nights working hard to be a published author. She’s spent the last few years trying to get her novel published about a young brown woman falling in love with a small-town brown man—but with no luck.

After one particularly painful rejection on the night before her thirtieth birthday, Ziya decides to give up her pen for good and instead just wishes to be happy. Then, the next morning, Ziya wakes up to find Aashiq, a physical manifestation of her writing muse, sitting on her couch.

Aashiq has materialized to help Ziya find her love for writing again, despite Ziya’s determination to keep her dreams in the past. But bit by bit, Aashiq starts to remind Ziya of why she loved writing and that her words matter more than she thinks. And impossibly, something more starts to blossom between them.

But as Ziya falls for Aashiq, he begins to disappear, which prompts her to choose: her art or her heart?

My thoughts:

Romantasy as a genre is quite popular, and Writing Mr. Right is more of magical rom-com, something you may have seen as a 2000s rom-com movie.

Ziya is very good at her day job as a legal secretary, but she dreams of becoming a published author. Her novel as been rejected many times for being "too small-town" and she is getting discouraged when she finds the physical manifestation of her writing muse in the form of a very handsome man in her living room.

She tells her roommate and best friend that Aashiq is her boyfriend because the truth is too unbelievable. Aashiq even follows her to work where she tells her coworkers that he is shadowing her for a new program. He gets Ziya to open up to her coworkers, become more friendly to them, even going to lunch with them.

As Ziya's world opens up, she finds herself falling for Aashiq and he for her. But how can this relationship work? And can he help her become the author she always dreamed of being?

I like reading books by diverse authors, getting to know more about their culture and family life, and I enjoyed that aspect of the story a great deal.

If you like your romance with a magical touch, but romantasy seems too dark for you, give Writing Mr. Right a look.