Becca and Asher were best friends for years until she started dating Trip. Asher noticed she was more withdrawn and had lost her spark. Becca dumped Trip months ago but she's still distant with Asher. With both of their families vacationing at the cabin before school starts up again, Asher learns what happened between Becca and Trip and hopes that their own friendship can grow. This touched on emotional and mental abuse within a relationship, and when I say "touched" I mean like if you were to touch something hot then immediately pull your hand away before getting burned. It would have been nice to have more depth there. I couldn't relate to Becca or Asher. I didn't like them, they got on my nerves. Another thing that bothered me was going on about the games they played, like "Don't Break The Ice" and "Phase 10." I've never played either game and found it tedious to read through the rules and how each player took their turn.

Annie is the new girl in town. She befriends an insecure and anxious Jessie and they immediately become best friends. But as the school year progresses, Annie starts hanging out with Courtney and Larissa - two girls who have made Jessie's life hell for the past couple of years. Annie also starts dating Scott - Jessie's lab partner and the guy she has a huge crush on. Their friendship slowly begins to fall apart due to secrets, miscommunication and, what seemed like to me, plain not caring on Annie's part. The characters and situations are realistic. It's typical teenage/high school drama. Clichéd. There's nothing that makes this book stand out.

When teenage outcast Hawthorn Creely finds out Lizzie Lovett, a girl she didn't really know at all but spent years both envying and hating, went missing while camping with her boyfriend, she decides to look for her. She becomes obsessed with Lizzie. She comes up with a wacky idea about what happened and winds up working her old job and hanging out with her boyfriend in an attempt to find her. I really enjoyed the writing. The main character felt real to me. I almost don't want to admit how relatable I found her. At times the book did become long and drawn out especially towards the end. The thing I couldn't get over was how weird it was that Hawthorn and Lizzie's boyfriend were spending time together. But if that didn't happen we wouldn't have The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett, would we.

Louise Leighton's life has been falling apart ever since that night. Now, a year later, her husband is having an affair with her sister, she is going to lose everything she owns, her daughter is missing, and her life is in danger. But Louise can't tell the police the whole story because it will incriminate her daughter. No one can know about that night. I liked the cover and chose to read the book because of it. Huge mistake. The birds are dead. I hated the first half of the book. The chapters were short and "that night" was mentioned a dozen times in each one. I understood that something happened one night last year, I didn't need to read those words a thousand times before we actually got to that night. The writing was just okay. I didn't like any of the characters. The epilogue was the best part.

The Gardener has a beautiful garden filled with pretty flowers, shady trees and a collection of butterflies. But these are no ordinary butterflies, these are young women who have been kidnapped, renamed and tattooed with very detailed wings to resemble the different types of butterflies. And like butterflies they have a short lifespan. But the Gardener will preserve them and have them on display so he can always admire their beauty. After many decades the garden is finally discovered and a survivor named Maya is brought in for questioning by the FBI. This is her story. This is a very interesting concept for a book. What a world for those girls to live in. I loved how the stories flowed together - Maya is brought in by the FBI who are asking her questions and we go back as Maya is telling them about her past and her time in the garden - it was very well done. I wasn't crazy about the unnecessary twist at the end but it didn't deter me from giving it five stars.

Paige Dawson's daughter was murdered ten years ago and her husband has recently committed suicide. She has nothing left to live for. When she begins to go through his belongings she finds a gun. Paige then goes on a hunt to find answers as to why her husband would have a gun, but she could never have prepared herself for what she discovers. This was quick and easy. But I felt like I was reading a book and not there going through everything with the characters. There was no real depth to the writing or characters. There was no build-up to the big twists and they felt weird for the sake of being weird, like the author threw in one weird thing after another until it was just ridiculous.

Jessica Campbell is sorting through her recently deceased mother's belongings. She wasn't expecting to find two dead bodies in the bottom of her deep freezers. As a foster mother, Donna Campbell had many children come into their home over the years. Jessica can remember two teenaged sisters who lived with them almost thirty years ago. Casey and Jamie Cheng were two very troubled and defiant girls who everyone assumed had just run away. Jessica can't believe her mother was capable of something like this, but as she learns more about her mother's childhood she realizes that she didn't know her mother as well as she thought she did. This was a compulsive read for me. It is very well-written. I enjoyed going back and forth between the past, learning about the Cheng sisters, their upbringing and what lead them into foster care, and the present where Jessica is trying to figure out why her mother would murder two of her foster children. The ending wasn't what I was ex

The book begins with a suicide in the town of Battle Creek - a place where nothing at all ever happens. The townspeople fear that Satan may have something to do with it. The aftermath brings Hannah Dexter and Lacey Champlain together to form an unlikely friendship filled with violence and rebellion.  Sometimes I loved the writing, sometimes I thought the author tried too hard. Sometimes I liked the characters, sometimes I hated them. Sometimes I was bored, sometimes I was totally absorbed in the story. 

Noah Calaway fell in love with April Moon when he was fourteen. Now, many years later, after losing touch, April is in a coma at the hospital and she's the lead suspect in a murder. Noah is a former lawyer, no wait, maybe he still is a lawyer now that April may need one. He believes wholeheartedly that she is not capable of murder. He searches for evidence that will prove her innocence. Then Ella weirdly enters the story. She is beginning to uncover her family's secrets. Secrets that could help solve the murder. Wow, lots of animals are killed in this book. I definitely don't like that. I didn't care for the writing. The chapters alternate between past and present and sometimes in between. The characters were frustrating with their secrets, their manipulative ways and their drama. Some things were just unbelievable. It wasn't as suspenseful as I thought it would be and by the time the twists came along I wasn't surprised by them because I wasn't anywhere nea