★★★★☆ This beautifully written book opens with estranged siblings Byron and Benedetta Bennett reluctantly meeting after the death of their mother, Eleanor, to hear her final wishes. She leaves them an hour-long recording and a frozen Black Cake to eat together “when the time is right.”
Tag: Reading Community
Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
★★★★★ Like many of CoHo’s romance books, this book starts with an unusual meeting between our main characters. When Tate Collins finds a drunken Miles Archer camped at her brother’s front door, she isn’t impressed.
What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall
★★☆☆☆ As a child, Coco was the only survivor of a deadly home invasion that killed her entire family. She now writes obituaries for her hometown paper, owned by her college best friend. When elderly women start disappearing from Catalina, Coco begins to believe there’s a serial killer on the loose.
The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan Church
★★★☆☆ The Last Carolina Girl is Megan Church’s debut novel. Set in 1935, Leah Payne is living a happy, simple life in Holden Beach when tragedy strikes, making her an orphan. She is forced to leave the people and town that she loves to live with a foster family in Matthews, N.C.
A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham
★★★★☆ Chloe Davis is the daughter of a small-town serial killer in Louisiana. Since she was twelve, this fact has shaped so much of her life. It has affected romantic relationships, driven where she lives, and shaped every interaction with her mother and her brother.
We Love to Entertain by Sarah Strohmeyer
★★☆☆☆ I am an HGTV and reality TV fan, so when I saw this book with its striking cover and reality TV home renovation plot - I had to buy it. It’s too bad that the book wasn’t as good as its lovely cover, and the enticing back cover blurb led me to believe it would be.
As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson
★★☆☆☆ As Good as Dead is the third and final book in Holly Jackson’s best-selling young adult series, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. It was a fitting progression to the installment of a trilogy based on investigating serial killers.
Fire at Her Fingertips by Rebecca Crunden
★★★★☆ Written in the second person, Fire at Her Fingertips is about a young woman who lives with daily rejection by her family. She has nothing, not even a birthday, to call her own. Nothing, except the flames at her fingertips, that is.
All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham
★★★★☆ In this slow-burn suspense novel, Isabelle Drake has been suffering from insomnia for a year since her son, Mason, was kidnapped from his crib while she and her husband, Ben, slept in the next room. She’s so sleep-deprived she’s no longer sure of reality. This isn’t the first time Isabelle has had sleep troubles. Isabelle faced sleep demons during her childhood.
The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda
★★★☆☆ Megan Miranda writes excellent thrillers, so I was excited to see her latest book as one of my book of the month choices. The premise centers around a group of nine high school students who traveled by van on a service trip and managed to survive an accident deep in the Tennessee mountains on their way home.