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One By One Ruth Ware
by Ruth Ware


A corporate trip to the French Alps turns to a nightmare. Erin works for the chalet comoany hosting the group. An avalanche occurs and one by one people are dying. Liz the meak outsider of the froup ends up being revealed as the killer. She kills for revenge.
 
 


The Guest List
by Lucy Foley


I liked this book in spite of several negatives. It was extremely slow. And it had a lot of holes in the plot and unlikely coincidences. But I found the story entertaining and I was hooked to keep reading to find out who was murdered and why. I listened to the audiobook, which has the benefit of multiple narrators to bring the characters to life.
 
 


The Hollywood Spy
by Susan Elia MacNeal


Book Eleven in the Maggie Hope series. Maggie sets out to 1943 Hollywood where she agrees to help her previous beau, John Sterling, solve the mystery of Gloria Hutton's death. It is here she encounters American Nazism, the Zoot Suit Riots, Segregation, and the glittery stars of Hollywood. There is also a great, highly anticipated (at least by this reader) foreshadowing of a storyline for Book 12! Love this series!!
 
 


A Pretty Deceit
by Anna Lee Huber


Another great Verity Kent mystery. This time, Verity and Sidney head to Aunt's to solve the mystery of three murders and whether or not they are connected. A fun, Downton Abbey-esque read, albeit a little wordy in parts. Overall, an enjoyable book.
 
 


Falling
by T. J. Newman


This was fun. I'm sure if I spent more time thinking and analyzing it, I could find reasons to knock the stars down, but I don't really want to. It was tense and exciting and had excellent pacing, and was a book that I could not put down. Bill is a pilot who has just been asked to fill in on a shift. Unfortunately, the shift overlaps with his son's first baseball game, which already makes his wife upset with him. Even worse, after Bill leaves, his family is taken hostage. He's given a choice; his family, or the plane. If Bill wants his wife and two kids to survive, he needs to crash the plane and kill all the passengers on board. Right from the start the book is action-packed, and it never really lets up. I wasn't as thrilled with the FBI agent chapters (I didn't want to leave the plane!), but all in all everything was engaging. Did it have predictable moments? Sure. Do I think it'd make a good movie? Honestly, probably not. But as a quick suspense read, I don't think you'll go wrong here. I look forward to seeing what else Newman comes up with in the future.
 
 


Invisible Girl
by Lisa Jewell


At first I thought this book would have everything I was looking for. I like Lisa Jewell's writing style, and this one started out with all the ingredients for a great domestic thriller. But then nothing happened. The happy family wasn't really happy, the socially awkward 33 year old man wasn't a criminal and the missing girl wasn't missing. I didn't find any of the characters to be sympathetic or likable, and the story was slow and ultimately sort of boring.
 
 


The Divines
by Ellie Eaton


This was okay. Josephine has just gotten married. As a child, she was known as a "Divine" - she went to a very expensive school for entitled rich people, where the children were taught nothing academic and mostly just how to treat people they considered beneath them poorly. She hasn't thought about her years there much since she left, but when her husband starts asking questions about the box of mementos she's kept, she's forced to relive her past and confront some of the darker moments within - especially the tragic tale of her roommate, Gerry. The mystery part takes a bit to develop, and really isn't the focus of the story? It seems more like the struggle of a young girl to find her place in the world, and to deal with the pressure to conform to what her friends and family want her to be. The chapters alternated between her years at the school and her adult life, and I honestly didn't really care about her as an adult. Those chapters didn't really add anything to my experience. By the end I was left with this vague feeling like I'd missed something important, but I'm not sure what? This was the sort of book that seemed like my jam, because I love a good boarding school mystery, but something about it fell flat and I just didn't adore it like I expected to.
 
 


We Were Never Here
by Andrea Bartz


I fee like I'm on a trend this month of books that just start out really slow. Emily and Kristen have been best friends since college, and they have a hobby of going on trips to random places together. Last year they went to Columbia, where their trip ended with a dead guy. This year they go to Chile, where their trip also ends with a dead guy. Now forced to deal with the trauma of two dead men, Emily is struggling to return to normalcy. And then all of a sudden Kristen appears in town, moving in and inserting herself in her life more fully than ever before. Could those two instances really have been just a fluke, or is something darker hiding under the surface of their relationship? The first chunk of this book was just so boring, because it felt like you were waiting for the shoe to drop and the action to begin. The world-building aspect here was not captivating at all. The book was also SUPER predictable. You could see every twist and turn coming on a mile away, and I felt like the author didn't trust me to put together anything subtle. There was one clue near the end of the book that I went "huh, I wonder what that will mean," only for it to be immediately explained a few pages later, like she was afraid I wouldn't remember it if she waited. Overall a little too much of a handhold while reading, and nothing really special. Probably closer to 2 and a half stars, but I'll give it three because I don't think I regret reading it, it just wasn't memorable.
 
 


The Murmur Of Bees
by Sofia Segovia


This is the story of an abandoned, disfigured baby boy, found covered in bees who has the ability to know the future. The bees remain with him and protect him as he helps the family that raised him cope with the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. There are lots of interesting characters and a very engaging storyline.
 
 


A Long Petal Of The Sea
by Isabel Allende


This is a historical fiction about a family who begin life in war torn Spain in the 1930s and are transported to Chile (which is the long petal of the sea in the title). It follows not only their lives but also several other families who come and go throughout their lives. It is quite interesting and has made me want to research both the Spanish Civil War and Chile in greater detail.
 
 
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