The Push is a quick and intense read. I gave it 5 stars because it's a unique and fantastically written novel. It's dark, and also very sad and depressing. But Ashley Audrain makes narrator Blythe so real that I felt completely immersed in her struggles with motherhood and her relationships. I found the flashback sections a little confusing at first, but as the book went on it became clear that there was a purpose for including the unusual and disturbing stories of Blythe's mother and grandmother.

What a wonderful book! I really enjoyed the main character and listening to the audio version of this book. I also thought that the premise was new and creative for a book-as well as much needed- so many books seem to miss the hard topics that students really need to discuss-like Black Lives Matter and racism.

This was the first chapter book I read all by myself and I really liked it. I am going to read the whole Humphrey series and I just got a pet hamster that looks just like Humphrey. My favorite part of the book was when Humphrey and Aldo made friends with each other.

Anne and Marco have a baby! Their babysitter cancels on them, but they still attend a dinner party at the house next door, with the baby monitor in tow! The baby is taken! Who is responsible and why? The mystery unravels and some things are hard to come to grips with. It was an okay book. I would try this author again.

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.

This book is absolutely terrifying. My heart raced all the way through. It is Stephen King meets Fairfield Hills. An old Sanitorium is converted into a chateaux, an avalanche or two traps everyone in and things get very frightening. It is a fast read!

Amazing book, parts are a little hard to understand when they are not given a backstory such as kanji, ochimusha, and moonfolk.

I listened to this book, read by the author. It is a letter to his mother telling her how he viewed his childhood with her. She is Vietnamese and brought him up in America alongside her own mother. His American father was aware but not involved in his upbringing. His mother is quite abusive to him and he also has a relationship with a boy called Trevor so it is quite a difficult book to listen to, but beautifully written.

The is an amazing book which recounts the experiences of the author visiting 7 locations and reflecting on the visit as a Black male. The research on the legacy of slavery adds to the recollections of his experiences and shines a light on why history is so important to learn, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

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.