The Fiction Writer by Jillian Cantor

The Fiction Writer by Jillian Cantor

Published by Park Row ISBN 9780778334187

Trade paperback, $17.99, 304 pages

I am a big fan of novels that retell or reframe a classic- Ann Napolitano's Hello Beautiful (Little Women) and Curtis Sittenfeld's Eligible (Pride & Prejudice) are two of my favorites- so when I heard that Jillian Cantor's new novel The Fiction Writer paid homage to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, I was intrigued.

Writer Olivia Fitzgerald is having a bad year. After the success of her first novel, her second novel (a retelling of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca) doesn't sell well at all. Her live-in boyfriend moves out, and her editor is not excited about her next effort.

Her editor says that billionaire and People's Sexiest Man Alive Ash Asherwood has requested that Olivia ghost-write a book with him about his grandmother and her relationship with Daphne du Maurier. The money is too good to turn down, so off Olivia goes to Malibu.

Ash is a widower, his wife perished in a car accident (was it an accident?) and he is reclusive. His housekeeper seems to be very attached to him and is hostile to Olivia.

While Olivia is becoming accustomed to life in Ash's beautiful ocean front home, Ash is pulling her more into his orbit. But when Olivia tries to get down to work discovering what exactly his grandmother and Daphne du Maurier's secret is, Ash becomes cagey and puts her off.

Olivia decides to investigate on her own, and discovers that Ash has not been truthful with her. What is he hiding and what is his real purpose for bringing Olivia to Malibu? 

Fans of Rebecca will enjoy The Fiction Writer on a deeper level, and the controversy around Daphne du Maurier's novel (other people claimed that she stole their story) adds an interesting aspect to the story. Pairing a nice copy of Rebecca with The Fiction Writer would make a great gift for the classic literature lover on your holiday list.

 

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Fall 2023 Blog Tours.

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm by Patricia Crisafulli

The Secrets of Still Water Chasm by Patricia Crisafulli

Published by Woodhall Press ISBN 9781954907645

Trade paperback, $19.95, 220 pages

Librarians these days have to deal with many challenges- budget cuts, crumbling buildings, people who want to ban books, governments passing laws that are unrealistic (and unconstitutional) among them. Ohnita Harbor librarian Gabriela Domenici has to deal with even more dangerous situations in Patricia Crisafulli's second book in her Ohnita Harbor Mysteries series, The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm.

In the first book in the series, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor, Gabriela discovered a dead body and was nearly killed by the head of the library board of directors as he tried to steal a valuable relic donated to the library.

In the new book, Gabriela understandably suffers from anxiety from her near-death experience. When she and her boyfriend Daniel are out hiking a trail in the nearby Still Waters Chasm in the Adirondack Mountains, they come across some huge construction vehicles but no one around. It  looks like the trucks may be drilling deep underground on the public land, but for what reason?

On their way out of the park, they stumble upon a man and a woman and an overturned canoe. The woman is dead, and while they attempt CPR on the man, he appears dead as well. With foam coming out of their mouths, could they have eaten something poisonous?

Gabriela and Daniel move around to try and get a cell phone signal and call the police. When the police arrive and Gabriela and Daniel take them to the bodies, the bodies and the kayak are gone. 

So now Gabriela is involved in another mystery. She also attempts to help Wendy, a young woman who inherited an antique drawing of what appears to be some type of early sail. The young woman wants to sell the antique to get away from an abusive boyfriend, and Gabriela, a research expert, promises to help her discover the worth of her drawing.

She also befriends Lucinda, an herbalist with an expertise in plants and their healing properties. There are people in town who do not like Lucinda, they call her a witch and believe she poisons people.

Daniel is unhappy that Gabriela is getting involved with people and situations that could be trouble for her. She is still fragile from her last experience.

Crisafulli based Ohnita Harbor on the city of Oswego in Central New York, a place where I attended college, and anyone who lives in the area will recognize the castle library where Gabriela works. I like how she works in interesting topics- fracking, inventor Robert Fulton, library politics- that enlighten the reader.

I enjoyed getting reacquainted with characters from the first book, like Gabriela's fiesty Italian mom Agnese and the staff of the library, but you need not have read the first book to enjoy this one. The mystery kept me turning the pages and I admit to holding my breath at the end. 

Crisafulli's The Secrets of Still Water Chasm is a fast-paced mystery that elevates the genre with great characters and a fascinating setting.  I'm looking forward to a third book in the series.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Patricia Crisafulli's tour. The rest of tour can be found here:

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The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525805004

Hardcover, $30, 368 pages

Alex Hay's intriguing historical mystery novel The Housekeepers has a lot of balls in the air. Set in the early 20th century, it begins with Mrs. King, who runs a grand Mayfair home, being dismissed from her prestigious position for the crime of being seen going into one of the male worker's rooms.

Mrs. King does not intend to take this firing lightly and plots her revenge against the unpleasant young woman who has inherited the stately manor from her recently deceased father. She will rob the home of all of its possessions on the night of a grand ball, held to impress a wealthy suitor for the new mistress of the mansion.

Mrs. King rounds up a posse of women who each have something they want- the queen of the black market with connections to the everyone in the criminal underground, a young seamstress who becomes the confidant of the mistress and whose loyalty becomes confused, and a fading actress looking to create the performance of a lifetime.

Each of these women has a reason for participating, and as their secret connections are revealed one by one, the reader is surprised and taken aback (in a good way). As Mrs. King learns more about nefarious events that took place in the home, she becomes even more determined to get justice.

The story can be a bit outrageous- Mrs. King and her cohorts plan to strip the manor of its entire contents, furniture and all, while the home is filled with revelers- but it is interesting reading how it is done. Think Downton Abbey meets Ocean's Eleven and add in the #MeToo movement, and you've got The Housekeepers, a caper story with serious undertones. It would make a fantastic movie, and if you liked Deanna Raybourn's recent novel, Killer of a Certain Age, The Houskeepers is your next good read. 

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Summer 2023 Blog Tours.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Published by Berkley ISBN 9780593549223

Trade paperback, $17, 352 pages

I was in the mood for something lighter, and the cover of Jesse Q. Sutanto's newest mystery Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Murderers beckoned me to pick it up. Am I ever glad I did!

Vera Wong is a 60 year-old widow who begins each day at 4:30am precisely and texts her laywer son "reminding him that he's sleeping his life away and should have been up before her" as he has a "whole world to conquer." Then she dons her sweatpants, Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and visor and heads out for her daily walk around her San Francisco Chinatown neighborhood.

When she returns home, she opens her business "Vera Wang's World Famous Teahouse", which is neither owned by the famous fashion designer Vera Wang nor world famous. Sematics. She waits for her only customer of the day, her neighbor Alex, who comes in to get tea and bring it back to wife who is suffering from Alzheimer's.

Everyday is the same until one morning when Vera comes down from her upstairs apartment to find the dead body of a man in her teahouse. Vera calls the police and is excited because she watches all the CSIs and she knows all the activity that will follow. She begins to brew special teas for the police, teas that will help with concentration and solve the crime.

When only two police officers arrive, they find that Vera drew an outline of the body with a Sharpie marker on the floor. She says she did not touch anything else (do we believe that?) and when the police find little evidence of a murder, Vera is disappointed in the police's lack of investigation.

So of course, Vera begins her own investigation. Other people trickle in- a man who claims to be a reporter, a woman who claims to host a true crime podcast, the man's widow with her young daughter, and the man's brother. These five people band together to try and find the killer, even though Vera has declared that one of the other four are her main suspects.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Murderers is a laugh out loud cozy mystery, and Vera is a truly unforgettable character. The things she says, the texts she sends her son, and yet she has a heart of gold beneath her lack of a filter. If you are a fan of the Hulu series Only Murders In The Building, you'll love this book. It has the same sensibility.

My only criticism is that Vera is described several times as "elderly". I am also 60 years old and many of my friends are "of a certain age" and I do not consider myself or them "elderly". It's supposed to be remarkable that Vera is so spry, but we all get around just fine. I hope when they do the TV series of this book they make Vera a little older than 60. I look forward to more of Vera's future escapades.

Thanks to Berkley for providing me with an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I Love When You Lie by Kristen Bird

I Love It When You Lie by Kristen Bird

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778333432

Trade paperback, $18.99, 352 pages

Kristen Bird’s intriguing novel I Love It When You Lie begins with Stephanie Williams, wife of the town mayor, answering questions in the sheriff’s office. Her three sisters-in-law- Tara, June and Clementine, along with Stephanie, are thought to be responsible for the disappearance of one of four men: “a preacher, a doctor, a professor and a mayor.” 

The question to be answered is which one has disappeared and why. Tara is the oldest sister, the one who took care of her younger siblings when they spent a short time in foster care after the death of their parents. Their grandmother took the children in and lovingly raised them, and they are preparing for her funeral as the story begins.

Tara’s husband is the the town preacher, who spends most of his time tending to the needs of his parishioners rather than his wife and teenage daughter Lottie, who is rebellious. She is hiding a big secret from her husband and if it comes out, it could destroy their all their lives.

June is a nurse at the local hospital, married to a doctor from Peru. It took time for the townspeople to accept her husband, but he is well-respected now. June has had several miscarriages, and is despondent that they don’t have a baby. A tragedy with a patient becomes compounded when June does something desperate, something that her husband can never support.

Clementine is dating a much older married professor at her college, a man who is accused of sexual misconduct with his students. While she becomes wary of all of the signs that he is not the man she hopes he is, she knows that if she leaves him, he can destroy her career as a writer. When he accompanies her back home to her grandmother’s funeral, secrets are outed. 

Stephanie catches her cheating husband during his grandmother’s funeral wake and decides she has had enough. Besides, she is the one who should be mayor of this small town, she has the brains and the drive to do it better than her husband.

The sisterly relationships are the core of this story. They protect each other, even if they are not always in agreement with the decisions each one makes.  I liked the Alabama setting, and learning about the small town rituals, especially Decoration Day, when everyone gathers to honor those they lost with shared food, songs, and psalms. 

So who disappears and who made him disappear? You’ll have to read to find out.

If you are a fan of the fantastic Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters, (as I am), put I Love It When You Lie on your TBR list.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Winter 2023 Mystery/Thrillers Blog Tours.

Just The Nicest Couple Couple by Mary Kubica

Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica

Published by Park Row ISBN 9780778333111

Hardcover, $28.99, 320 pages

As Mary Kubica's twist domestic suspense novel Just the Nicest Couple opens, a woman is running through the woods as some unkown person is chasing her. Who is she and who is she running from?

Christian, a financial analyst, comes home from work to find his wife Lily exhausted in a chair. Lily is a high school math teacher and she is pregnant, in her first trimester. They are thrilled to be having a baby, but after a few miscarriages, they are also cautious.

Although he is concerned that Lily is more tired than usual, Christian dotes on his wife and offers to bring her dinner in bed so she can rest. Lily seems overly worried that the doors are locked, she thinks she sees something or someone outside their home.

Nina is a teacher at Lily's school and her husband Jake is a reknowned neurosurgeon. Nina and Jake have a fight one morning, and when Jake storms off and doesn't return home from work, Nina thinks he is staying at a hotel to punish her. 

But when Jake's hospital calls to find out why he has missed appointments with patients, Nina goes to the police to report him missing.  Word about Jake gets around, and Lily tells Christian that she saw Jake in the wooded area where she was taking a walk and shares what happened when they spoke.

Christian and Lily decide that no one can know what happened between Lily and Jake that day. And so begins a series of bad decisions they make that could have far reaching repercussions. Nina doesn't think that the police are doing enough to find Jake, so she begins searching for answers herself.

Nina and Jake and Christian and Lily are couple friends- they have been out to dinner together, at each other's homes, at school functions together. But how well do they really know each other?

There are a lot of secrets in Just the Nicest Couple, and just when you think you know what has happened, Mary Kubica throws in some twists that most readers (including myself- one of those twists really comes out of left field) did not see coming.  She expertly builds the tension in some key scenes that are just made for a good TV movie.

If you are fan of twisty suspense novels that keep you turning the pages to see what happens next, Just the Nicest Couple is one not to miss.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Winter 2023 Mystery/Thriller Blog Tour.

More excellent summer reads from my favorite authors

Reprinted from the Citizen:

As summer rolls on, there are so many excellent books just waiting to pop into your beach bag, and here I’ll cover a few I have recently enjoyed.

Susan Elia MacNeal continues the saga of Maggie Hope in The Hollywood Spy. Maggie Hope is an American who worked as Winston Churchill’s secretary in the first book in the series, The Prime Minister’s Secretary. Her skills led her to become a spy for the British during WWII, working for the elite SOE agency. 

After stints in London, Paris, Berlin, and Scotland, Maggie goes to 1943 Los Angeles to help her former boyfriend John, an RAF pilot training American flyers. John’s fianceé drowned and he suspects foul play. Maggie agrees to investigate.

The most interesting part of this terrific tenth entry in the Maggie Hope series is learning all about Los Angeles during this time. It contained a large number of Nazi supporters, who went underground once the US entered the war. The Ku Klux Klan picked up where the Nazis left off, with racism against Jewish people, Blacks, and Latin people running rampant, including acts of violence against those groups.

MacNeal immerses the reader right into Los Angeles of that time, and you can feel all her research right on the page, as established by her bibliography at the end of the book. It’s also fun to see so many real people drop in, including Walt Disney, Linus Pauling, Howard Hughes, Cab Calloway, Hattie McDaniel, and more.

I highly recommend “The Hollywood Spy” for anyone who enjoys Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series.

Laura Lippman pays homage to Stephen King’s book Misery in her novel, Dream Girl. Gerry Andersen is an author who has yet to match the mega-success of his first novel, “Dream Girl”. When Gerry takes a serious fall in his Baltimore apartment, he is bedridden and dependent on the care of his young assistant and the nurses who come to his apartment. 

One night Gerry receives a disturbing phone call from a woman who claims she is the real person he based his novel on. He knows this cannot be true, the character was a figment of his imagination.

When the phone calls continue, neither his overnight nurse nor his assistant hears the phone ringing. When he sees a woman in his room late at night and calls out, the nurse comes running but no one is there, and the security cameras for the building show that no one came into his apartment. 

Is Gerry losing his mind or is someone messing with him? Could it be one of his ex-wives? The book goes back and forth in time, and we get a real feel for the character of Gerry, who he is and where he comes from. Fans of Lippman’s Tess Monaghan PI series will enjoy the cameo by Tess as Gerry looks for help to find answers.

I read Dream Girl in one day, I could not put this one down.

Anne Leigh Parrish continues her wonderful series about the Dugan family in her novel, A Winter Night. We first met the Dugans in Our Love Could Light The World, a series of linked stories, and their story continued in the novels, The Amendment and Maggie’s Ruse. 

Oldest daughter Angie takes center stage in this beautifully written story. Angie is 34, working as a social worker in adult care/nursing home. She is seeing Matt, a bartender and friend of her brother, and so far it’s going well.

After some disastrous relationships, Angie has trust issues. She is seeing a therapist to help her work through it. Angie has always been the one to care for her father, a recovering alcoholic who is remarried, but as his life seems to veering off course Angie is called in to help him once again.

It’s great to reconnect with the Dugan family, and Parrish writes dialogue that just crackles with honesty, like mother Lavinia saying that her ex-husband’s “promises are never false. They’re just seldom kept.” Or when Lavinia says “if you want your marriage to work, you have to rise up to meet it.” (Lavinia gets the best lines.)

The Dugan family lives in the Finger Lakes region, and readers will be able to relate to many of settings and character.  And with the extreme heat we have been experiencing, a book set in a central New York winter is a welcome distraction. A Winter Night is a moving character study, and I highly recommend it. 

The Happiness Thief by Nicole Bokat

The Happiness Thief by Nicole Bokat

Published by She Writes Press ISBN 9781647420574

Trade paperback, $16.95, 280 pages

How can you resist a book that opens with "I think I killed my mother."? Nicole Bokat's novel The Happiness Thief begins with that intriguing sentence that encourages the reader to discover why Natalie would think that.

When Natalie was thirteen, she was in a car accident that killed her mother. Natalie suffered a serious brain trauma, and she can't remember exactly what happened, except that she fears that she shined her flashlight in her mother's eyes and that is what caused the accident.

Natalie is with her stepsister Isabel on a Caribbean island where Isabel is speaking at a Happiness Conference.  Isabel is a self-help guru (think Glennon Doyle or Brene Brown) who is trying to build her brand after writing a successful book, and working to finish a second book. People surround Isabel at the conference, wanting any piece of her and her advice that she can give them.

"Isabel was the powerhouse and the bulwark, while Natalie was the sensitive one" in the family. Natalie's husband recently left her and their teenage daughter Hadley for a younger colleague. The dissolution of her marriage has left Natalie depressed, and this trip is supposed to cheer her up.

While driving on the island at night, a car follows them and shines highbeams at them. Natalie is driving and hits something in the road, leaving blood on the bumper. She panics, and flashes back to the accident that killed her mother. Isabel and the man in the car behind them get out and look for what was probably an animal, but Natalie is convinced it was a person.

When they return home to Boston, Natalie receives an email from somone who says he knows that she hit someone on that road. Even though Isabel does her best to prove Natalie that she didn't hit a person, Natalie is not convinced.

There are two mysteries here- was Natalie responsible for her mother's death and did she hit someone on the island? I didn't find myself as invested in the mysteries as I did with Natalie's home life. The relationship between Natalie and her daughter Hadley was the strongest part of the book, that felt true and honest.

I found it difficult at first to keep track of the family situation- Isabel's mom (deceased), Natalie's mom, Natalie's dad who died when she was young, her stepfather who is Isabel's father. It took awhile to get it straight. 

There are a lot of moving parts in this story, this is the kind of book you have to pay close attention to when you're reading. If psychological suspense and family drama is something you enjoy in a book, The Happiness Thief will quench your thirst.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Nicole Bokat's tour. The rest of the stops are here:

Review Stops

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New in PaperbackThe Falling Woman by Richard Farrell

The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell
Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781643751399
Trade paperback, $16.95, 352 pages

In Richard Farrell's debut novel The Falling Woman, Erin is fighting a tough battle with pancreatic cancer. When she and her husband Doug, who has been by her side caring for her, receive the latest test results, the news is not great. She is not in remission, but she will need to continue treatment, to keep fighting.

Erin is tired, and not sure how much longer she can fight. She decides to fly to a cancer survivors retreat, something that concerns Doug. The flight that Erin is on crashes over the Kansas farmland, and it appears there are no survivors.

But Erin is thrown from the plane and lands in a barn. She is found by the owner, and taken to the hospital. Before she can be questioned by the authorities as to what happened, Erin disappears.

Charlie is an investigator for the NTSB. This accident is the first major case he is assigned to, and if he does a good job, he will move up the ranks and gain respectability. He is assigned to identify the 123 bodies, a gruesome and difficult task, but one he takes very seriously.

When rumors of a female survivor swirl, the media leaps on the story. The lead investigator assigns Charlie to track the woman, and determine whether she exists or it is a hoax. This upsets Charlie, he feels it is a waste of time, and he is in a no-win situation.

Erin hides out in a cabin in Virginia, she has decided not to tell anyone that she is alive. Her husband and daughters have already mourned once, and they will have to mourn all over again when she dies of cancer.

Charlie tracks her down and tries to convince her that she must come forward. She owes it to her family, and the families of the other six women who hold out hope that it is their loved one who is the survivor.

The scenes between Charlie and Erin are the heart of this intriguing story. Can he convince her to come forward and save his job or will Erin convince him that she is entitled to live out her final days in peace? Charlie also confides in Erin about a major step he and his wife have to decide.

We see the government bureaucracy at work as the higher-ups in the NTSB want to shift blame for anything that can go wrong with the investigation, and I found the steps the investigators took at the crash sight intriguing.  I liked the character of Lucy, the investigator who put forth the idea that other people have survived plane crashes and maybe someone did here as well.

There is action and two characters thrown together who have to convince the other of what is morally right. The Falling Woman feels like a cross between The Fugitive movie and Ann Napolitano's novel Dear Edward.  Readers will spend time wondering what they would do in Charlie and Erin's positions. Farrell's first novel is thought-provoking, it will be interesting to see where he goes with his next one.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Richard Farrell's tour.

Santa Monica by Cassidy Lucas

Santa Monica by Cassidy Lucas

Published by Harper Perennial ISBN 9780063018440

Trade paperback, $16.99, 448 pages

Fans of Liane Moriarty's books should make room on their shelves for Cassidy Lucas' debut novel, Santa Monica. Set in a wealthy enclave of Santa Monica, we have sex, adultery, secret relationships, immigration issues, an unexplained death and so much more in this propulsive page-turner.

Zack is the sexy trainer that all the ladies in his exercise classes pine after. When he is found dead by his half-sister Leticia, an undocumented worker from Mexico, the book grabs us and never lets us go until the very end.

The story moves back in time five months and we discover that Leticia cleans house for several wealthy families in Santa Monica, including Mel Goldberg, a Brooklyn transplant. Mel's husband Adam wrote a hot screenplay and now they have made the move to Hollywood.

Adam has settled into the Hollywood scene, but Mel misses her business, her friends, and pretty much everything about Brooklyn. She doesn't fit in with the thin, blonde, surgically enhanced women who spend a lot of time at the gym where Zack works. She's a little overweight, and openly speaks her mind on  everything, including her politics, which differ from many of the other women.

Her one friend Regina is an exercise addict, and convinces Mel to host an exercise class at her house. Zack is the instructor and he finds himself drawn to Mel, which enrages Regina, who has her eye on Zack. Regina has involved Zack in a shady financial scheme which she hopes will get her out of debt before her husband finds out.

Zack doesn't want anyone to know that Leticia is his half-sister. Leticia works several housecleaning jobs, babysitting jobs, dog walking jobs, anything she can to support herself and her young son, who is disabled after an accident. Zack feels guilty, and tries to help Leticia in any way he can, and he adores his nephew.

All of these stories circle each other until they collide. The juxtaposition of the wealthy Santa Monica residents and people like Zack and Leticia, who scramble everyday to keep their heads above water, is thought-provoking. Leticia's fear of being discovered by ICE agents, deported and having to leave her son gives the reader a window into the daily stress of living with that fear.

The characters here are multi-dimensional. We see their good sides and the bad decisions they make; we root for them to make good choices and cringe when when they don't. When a book gets me that me invested, I know it's good read. There are also some very steamy sex scenes here that will raise your pulse like you just took a strenuous class at the exercise studio. 

Santa Monica is a stellar debut, a satisfying mystery with incisive social commentary. I hope to read more from Cassidy Lucas and I can see this as an HBO miniseries, ala Big Little Lies. I recommend it, I read it in one day as I couldn't put it down. 

 

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke
Published by Harper Books, ISBN 9780062853370
Hardcover, $26.99, 320 pages

The Better Sister is the third book from Alafair Burke that is related thematically, although the characters are different in each book. The Ex deals with a lawyer called upon to defend her ex-boyfriend from a murder charge. The Wife features a woman whose high-profile professor/author husband is accused of preying sexually on young women. And in her latest, The Better Sister, a high-powered magazine editor finds her husband murdered in their  East Hampton vacation home.

Chloe worked her way up in publishing to become the editor-in-chief of the last successful feminist magazine standing. She married Adam, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, now a lawyer in a white shoe firm. Adam was previously married to Chloe's older sister Nicky, who was always the wild-child bad sister to Chloe's rules-following, hard-working good sister.

One day Adam found Nicky floating facedown in their pool, with their toddler Ethan next to her. She had been drunk or on drugs (not unusual), and Adam divorced her and took Ethan to live in New York, where Chloe began to spend all her free time with them.

Adam and Chloe married, and Chloe became Ethan's defacto mom. Nicky was out of the picture, staying back home in Cleveland to care for their parents.

When Chloe finds Adam stabbed to death in their East Hampton home, she knows that the police will look hard at the spouse, they always do. She also has to contend with the fact that she is not legally Ethan's mother and has to contact Nicky, who soon shows up.

Chloe and Nicky revert back to their sibling relationship- Chloe is the responsible one, Nicky is the screw-up. But when the police turn their attention to Ethan as a probable suspect, Chloe and Nicky must make amends and decide to work together to prove Ethan innocent.

The Better Sister is a twisty, timely suspense story. Chloe is a women who is a prominent media person, and with that comes the trolls who send her hateful, even threatening, messages on social media. Chloe believes that perhaps one of them could be the killer.

Burke throws in a lot of red herrings, and she excels in letting the reader believe they may have solved the mystery, only to be surprised at the big reveal. Being a former prosecutor, she brings a sense of reality and tension to the courtroom scenes.

As the mother of two young men, I really felt such empathy for Chloe as a mother, trying to protect her son. I had a pit in my stomach during many scenes.

One thing you learn from The Better Sister is that secrets can destroy people, and I can only think that if they communicated better, some of their big problems could be avoided.

I read The Better Sister in one sitting, furiously turning the pages to find out who dunnit and why. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes a great suspense story.

Hotel on Shadow Lake by Daniela Tully

Hotel on Shadow Lake by Daniela Tully
Published by Thomas Dunne Books ISBN 9781250126962
Hardcover, $26.99, 245 pages

Daniela Tully's debut novel, Hotel on Shadow Lake, takes place in more than a few timelines. It begins with in 1990 with an older German woman, Martha Weisberg, receiving a letter from the postman- a letter from 1944. Now that the wall has come down in Berlin, many people have letters delivered to them that just disappeared after the war, and Martha is one of them. (Tully's family actually received one of these letters, the inspiration for her novel.)

The letter is from her twin brother Wolfgang, who died at the end of the war. Martha doesn't want to open the letter, afraid of what may be inside it.

We then turn to 1938 Germany, where Martha lives with her mother and brother, having lost a sister and her father. Wolfgang is becoming more involved in the Nazi party, something that Martha knows her father would be saddened by if he were still alive.

Wolfgang has become friends with Siegfried, another man who believes deeply in the Nazi party and Hitler's rise. They go to the many Nazi rallies and are swept up in the horrible acts that are the beginnings of the atrocities that the Nazis inflict on anyone not throught to be of pure Aryan blood.

In 2017, Martha's granddaughter Maya receives word from her father that the remains of her missing grandmother Martha have been found- in the United States, about an hour away from where Maya studied abroad in 1990.

Martha disappeared in 1990, and no one knew that she had even gone to the United States. Her remains were found in a landslide near a popular resort in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. The Montgomery Preserve Resort has been owned by the Montgomery family for generations, and it has been visited by presidents and wealthy people for many years.

Maya goes to New York and begins snooping around to find out what brought her grandmother to this place, and she gets caught up in secret history of the Montgomery family. She is determined to discover what exactly happened to her grandmother- was it an accident or was she murdered?

One of the reasons I really enjoyed Hotel on Shadow Lake is that the Montgomery Resort is physically closely based on Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills, a place that my husband worked at when he was in college. The author has vividly recreated the place for the setting of her story, and if you have ever been there, you will recognize it immediately. It is an important character in the story.

There is a lot going on in the story, with multiple timelines and characters, and Tully skillfully weaves them together to create an enthralling story, one that kept me turning the pages. Many times a book will be either character-driven or plot-driven, but Tully has managed to combine the two in writing a story that will keep you guessing until the very end. I highly recommend Hotel on Shadow Lake.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Daniela Tully's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Daniela Tully’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Tuesday, August 7th: @ladyofthelibrary

Wednesday, August 8th: Write Read Life

Thursday, August 9th: Laura’s Reviews

Friday, August 10th: @jennblogsbooks

Saturday, August 11th: Books & Bindings

Monday, August 13th: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Wednesday, August 15th: From the TBR Pile

Monday, August 20th: @booksncatsncoffee

Tuesday, August 21st: Cheryl’s Book Nook

Monday, August 27th: bookchickdi

Tuesday, August 28th: Savvy Verse and Wit

Wednesday, August 29th: Girl Who Reads

Thursday, August 30th: @hotcocoareads

Friday, August 31st: Mystery Suspense Reviews

Tuesday, September 4th: Kahakai Kitchen

TBD: @thats_what_she_read

TBD: A Chick Who Reads

TBD: What is That Book About