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Showing posts from August, 2016

Everything You Want Me to Be

Hattie Hoffman is a high school senior in a small town where nothing ever happens. Everyone is shocked when they learn she's been stabbed to death on the opening night of her high school play. She was a good daughter, a good student, a good friend, a good actress. She was going to New York after graduation. Who could have done this? Del Goodman, local sheriff and family friend of the Hoffman's, vows to find out. When he starts investigating, he uncovers another side of Hattie virtually no one knew about. This is told from three points of view. Their stories are equally compelling. The timeline jumps around to give us Hattie's last months and the aftermath of her death. The writing was really good. I devoured the book, so it was fun to look back and realize the little clues I missed and see the cleverness that was sprinkled throughout the book.  I won a copy through Goodreads First Reads.

Whisper to Me

Cassie has been dealing with a lot the last couple of years. Her mother died, she doesn't have a good relationship with her father who is an ex-Navy SEAL, she has no friends. Now she hears voices. The day she makes a gruesome discovery on the beach is the same day she starts to hear a voice inside her head. If she doesn't obey it, it will punish her. The voice is constantly putting her down. She falls in love with one of the guys staying in the apartment above the garage for the summer, but she's too embarrassed to tell him about the voice. She doesn't want his pity. She can't explain where she goes every Thursday night, the night she sneaks off to the bowling alley for the voice support group. Things didn't end well between the two of them. But she wants another chance and this is her writing an e-mail trying to explain why she pushed him away. I loved the writing and the fact that this book was a long e-mail. I liked Cassie. She felt real to me. She's just

Pretty Girls

More than twenty years ago, Julia Carroll vanished without a trace. Her two younger sisters haven't spoken since. Claire is married to a millionaire and has no children. Lydia is a single mother, dating an ex-con and struggling to make ends meet. Although they couldn't be more different, they still carry the pain of losing their sister. The murder of Claire's husband brings Claire and Lydia together and after uncovering one horrifying secret after another they finally find the answers to questions they've had for over twenty years. This book was soo good! I was hooked from the very beginning. I stayed up very late because I couldn't stop reading. The writing was excellent. There was lots of suspense and twists and turns. I was shocked at some things. It's heartbreaking to think that these kinds of things happen all the time. I really enjoyed reading from their father's point of view. The only downside is that the book is very long with long chapters. I was b

You Sent Me a Letter

It's two in the morning, the morning of Sophie's 40th birthday, when she wakes to find an intruder in her bedroom. They hand her a letter along with a threat: she is to open the letter later this evening in front of everyone at her party at exactly 8 p.m. or the people she loves will be in danger. As sleep eludes her, and her family fills her day with surprises, Sophie wracks her brain to come up with an answer as to what the letter contains and who could've sent it. This was an easy read. The writing was good, it grabbed me from the very beginning. I played the guessing game a little and it was fun. But after eight o'clock came and went I was left feeling unsatisfied. After I learned what happened it just made the whole book weird and far-fetched, although I can appreciate the cleverness it took to weave the story together.

The Widower's Wife

Ana Bacon, a young housewife and mother to a three-year-old, has fallen off a cruise ship into the dark and deadly water below and it's up to Ryan Monahan to find out exactly what happened to her. Ryan's an investigator and when he finds out that Ana's death could net a huge payout, he's skeptical that what happened was an accident. But her husband has an alibi and the security tape shows Ana falling. And yet Ryan keeps digging and the more he uncovers about Ana's life, the more reason he has to believe it was murder. We alternate between Ana and Ryan and learn more about Ana's husband, Tom - a drunk who has lost his job. The writing was good. The book was fast-paced and suspenseful. It's full of twists and turns that kept me guessing. But I lost interest after I found out what happened. Also, there were too many things happening all at once towards the end of the book.

The Roanoke Girls

Lane Roanoke is fifteen when she comes to Osage Flats, Kansas to live with her maternal grandparents and her cousin, Allegra, after her mother commits suicide. Lane doesn't really know anything about her family. Her mother ran away when she was young and severed all ties with them. Allegra, abandoned at birth and raised by her grandparents, begins to show Lane the perks of being one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But the Roanoke girls don't last long around here, they either die young or run away. When Lane stumbles across the truth of why she has no choice but to run. Now, eleven years later, Lane is barely making ends meet in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her that Allegra has gone missing and he wants her to come home. Returning to Osage Flats means facing what happened all those summers ago. Unable to resist her grandfather Lane returns to Kansas, determined to find her cousin. I like the way this book goes between the summer Lane first arrived at