Books #61

I have some good recommendations for you!

1 – No Exit by Taylor Adams

Darby is a young college student driving through a a snow storm to get to her dying mother’s bedside. She stops at a rest area, in the middle of nowhere, and stumbles onto a scene she wasn’t expecting. The next 12 hours become life and death.

Excellent thriller book. Super faced paced. Strong writing. Good job at the creepy/remote atmosphere (very “The Shining” vibe). I thought it was predictable at first but then there were a few twists and turns that caught me off guard. It was very well done and an exciting read!

2 – The Summer Job by Lizzy Dent

Birdy is adrift. She’s got a sort of boyfriend who is kind of a loser and she bounces around jobs and doesn’t have a stable family. The only thing she has is her best friend Heather. When Heather decides to bail on a summer job as a sommelier in Scotland and run off to Italy with HER loser wannabe boyfriend, Birdy decides to go to Scotland and pretend to be Heather.

I enjoyed this book a lot! It was the perfect summer beach romance type read. I liked the story and the dialogue was snappy. Good book.

3 – That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

This was a weird book. It started out feeling like one book and it took a turn in a different direction. My biggest complaint with the book was how meandering the writing felt. It could have definitely been edited down a bit. Despite that, I thought the story was really good and I ended up liking the book a lot. It takes on the MeToo movement theme.

4 – That Weekend by Kara Thomas

I didn’t know this was a YA book when I picked it up. It turned out to be really pretty good. Senior best friends decide to spend Prom Weekend in the NY Wilderness. But only one of them returns. And that one has a head injury and doesn’t remember any of it. What happened?

Flawed but well written characters, interesting twist, good mystery. Would recommend.

5- Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian

“She was sent to the scaffold because she had a sharper tongue and a shrewder mind than her accusers. It is always the case when men hang women…there is nothing that frightens that man more than a woman who does not live happily under a man’s thumb.”

I enjoyed this book a lot. With one caveat: the dialogue was AWFUL. I’ve read many books set in historical times and they did a good job with giving the feeling of the time, but not writing in old English. If I wanted to read Shakespeare, I’d read Shakespeare. So yeah, the dialogue was not good.

That being said, I liked the story a lot. It was of course about misogyny and controlling women. Women that can’t be controlled are of course, witches. The book addresses domestic violence. It’s an interesting insight into divorce and witchcraft during colonial times. Loved the ending.

6 – The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

This was an interesting book. I didn’t quite know what to expect. It wasn’t really a thriller. It was just different…

Fern and Rose are fraternal twin sisters. Fern is neuro-diverse and Rose has spent her life “taking care of” Fern. Fern works at the local library and she’s very good at her job. The sisters have a very close relationship. But when Fern meets “Wally” and they become involved, her eyes are opened that her relationship with her sister is maybe not the healthiest.

Like I said, interesting book, worth a read, a little weird but enjoyable.

7- The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon

I really loved this book! It was a compelling read, I had a hard time putting it down. I don’t read a lot of romance books but this one was done really well. The characters were well written and felt real. I liked the diversity in the book. The romance between the two main characters was palpable! Usually I find these types of books lackluster but this one was done right!

Happy reading!