This is my first read by Mary Kubica, but not my last. This one one of my favorite books this summer. It had twists and turns and unexpected things happen. It was not a predictable book and I appreciated that. People are missing, how and why this happens in this small neighborhood. The author keeps you guessing and the ending was pretty good! I didn't see it coming.

Honestly, I just found this really boring? There was nothing novel about the storyline or the characters, and I didn't care about what happened at all. Set in a small neighborhood were everyone knows each other, the story takes place 14 months after Ruby Fletcher, a girl who rented a room in one of the houses, was convicted of killing two neighbors. With her conviction overturned, Ruby reappears in town determined to get revenge on everyone who turned against her. Everyone in town, in turn, is determined to completely ignore her until she leaves. Maybe it was because the victims were dead before the novel started, and were clearly disliked by everyone in the community anyway? There was no real reason to feel anything - and that goes for all of the characters. The narrator is really unreliable and wishy-washy, and her building the case of what happened at the end was illogical and would never hold up any weight in court. The rest of the neighborhood also seems like it's filled with jerks. It was just a very lackluster read, unfortunately.

This is the story of Jane, through two decades, after she falls in love with a man with a big history in a small town. It was a light read - nothing spectacular - but reminded the reader that people are complicated, and life doesn’t always turns out in ways you anticipate.

This is another one of those books where the journey is really fun, but then the author proves that writing endings is really challenging. You can have a great idea for an atmospheric mystery, but you also need to have a great idea for how you are going to close things out, which Sarah Pearse didn't seem to have. The book follows Detective Elin Warner, who isn't really a detective anymore after a case went wrong and she decided to take some extended leave. Elin and her boyfriend, Will, have arrived at a hotel in the Swiss Alps to celebrate her brother's engagement. The hotel just happens to also be a really creepy former sanatorium, because the designer thought that would be a super cool place to build a fancy hotel. To continue with wonderful decision making skills, Elin also decides that this would be a fitting trip to accuse her brother of possibly killing their younger sibling during a childhood vacation. Because, hey, nothing says "happy engagement!" like "did you kill our brother, though? You can totally tell me if you did." There are just a few problems with this plan - first, Elin doesn't really talk to her brother anymore, so finding time to accuse him of this is a challenge. Second, his fiancée just went missing, and it may or may not be in poor taste to accuse him of anything given those circumstances. Third, there is an avalanche approaching the hotel, so they really all need to leave. And, of course, fourth, some people are starting to get murdered. After staying behind and getting trapped from the avalanche, Elin has to really deal with all her personal issues at once because she is the only cop-like person on the mountain who can investigate anything. No one can come help until the weather clears, which probably won't be for a while. There were a few issues I had with the book, two of which I found to be major issues. The first is that this was a fun crime novel, but ultimately it seems like no one could ever be punished for the murders that happened here. Elin isn't a detective in this area, as she points out again and again, and she tends to disobey the orders she is given (or just hides what she is doing because if she doesn't ask permission, she isn't doing anything wrong?) so it seems like everything she has gathered would be utterly useless. She also has a weird tendency to tell everyone around her everything she has discovered. Like, maybe they don't all need to know every piece of evidence you have gathered? You know someone around here is killing people, maybe stop telling everyone everything and you'd have better luck. The second is that the ending was just really dumb. The culprit didn't really make any sense, and it seemed like a massive overreaction for that person to be the one responsible for everything. I think it's worth it for the fun atmosphere of being trapped in the mountains with a killer, as long as you keep your expectations in line for the ending.

This was a heartbreaking novel that was full of masterful writing, but for whatever reason it just didn't capture my attention. The story mostly centers around Mehar, a woman in 1929 who has just been married. In Mehar's case, however, her marriage ceremony was shared with two other woman who also married into the family, leaving her unsure which man she actually married. She meets her husband only when she is called upon at night, at which point it is so dark she is unable to see him. Though she tries her best to come to a conclusion, she is ultimately unable to determine which of the siblings she has been married off to - until one day when she overhears a conversation and becomes confident in her answer - however, whether she is right or not will have a huge impact on her. I think where the book didn't work for me was due to the inclusion of the other character's storyline. In addition to Mehar, every once in a while there is a chapter that follows a young man who travels to India in 1999 to live with family and try to overcome his heroin addition. These chapters - and the storyline itself - ultimately seemed completely unnecessary. I didn't care about him at all, nor did I really see what he added. I feel like I would have much rather stayed with Mehar the entire time.

Ms. Bixby's Last Day was a different kind of book than what I usually gravitate towards (sci-fi). But I really loved this book anyway. It's about three boys who were in Ms. Bixby's class. When Ms. Bixby resigns during the school year because of terminal illness, the three boys band together to help make Ms. Bixby's dreams come true, to acknowledge how she changed their lives forever. I loved this feel-good realistic fiction that bounced between flashbacks and present day, told in turn by the three boys. I strongly encourage this book to basically everyone.

It’s a great book so far.…………………………………………….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BNN nnbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!………….,……:::::

This book tells the story of the generation who came to Britain from the Caribbean after WW2. Powerful story with many first-hand accounts. It helped me gain a sense of the Afro-Caribbean community in Britain decade by decade. Also gives the historical background to the Windrush Scandal that broke in 2018.

An entertaining book to read. However there were many things that could be done to improve it, like adding a little deeper meaning and adding few more sensory details.

Russell couldn't fall asleep. He wasn't tired. He tried counting all sorts of things and nothing helped. He tried counting his legs and then the stars and he found a new bed and he still wasn't tired. Then he tried counting sheep. That put him to sleep.