Shelley's Book Nook

☆☆1/2 ebook, 416 pages Expected publication: May 7th 2019 by St. Martin's Press & Wednesday Books About the Book: Shane has been doing college all wrong. Pre-med, stellar grades, and happy parents…sounds ideal—but Shane's made zero friends, goes home every weekend, and romance…what’s that? Her life has been dorm, dining hall, class, repeat. Time's a ticking, and she needs a change—there's nothing like moving to a new country to really mix things up. Shane signs up for a semester abroad in London. She's going to right all her college mistakes: make friends, pursue boys, and find adventure! Easier said than done. She is soon faced with the complicated realities of living outside her bubble, and when self-doubt sneaks in, her new life starts to fall apart. Shane comes to find that, with the right amount of courage and determination one can conquer anything. Throw in some fate and a touch of magic—the possibilities are endless. How am I twenty years old and I

☆☆1/2 ebook, 298 pages Expected publication: May 7th 2019 by Lake Union Publishing About the Book: It was to be the perfect wedding—until the bride disappeared. Annie Taft’s wedding is four days away, and it will be one of the grandest anyone can remember in her small South Carolina town. Preparations are in order. Friends and family are gathering in anticipation. Everything is going according to plan. Except that Annie herself has vanished. Did she have second thoughts? Or has something much worse happened to the bride-to-be? While her loved ones frantically try to track her down, they’re forced to grapple with their own secrets—secrets with the power to reframe entire relationships, leaving each to wonder how well they really knew Annie and how well they know themselves. I liked the premise of the book but the execution failed. Sadly for me, the book felt a bit drawn out. I could not connect or feel much for the characters, there were just way too many of them. It took me thre

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 316 pages Expected publication: May 2nd 2019 by Bookouture About the Book: Anna’s hands tense on Alice and she hesitates. In that endless pause, I see all I need to know. She doesn’t want to give Alice to me – not now, and not ever. And part of me doesn’t even blame her. Milly always dreamed of being a mother. Adopted herself, she has always imagined a powerful intimate connection with a child of her own. So when she and her husband Matt are told they can’t have children, her dreams are shattered. But then their loved ones offer the ultimate gift – Milly’s best friend Anna and Matt’s brother Jack will be donors so that Milly can carry a child and finally have a chance to be a mother. And with everyone accepting and open, Milly believes that nothing could could go wrong. Except none of the four people involved are prepared for the feelings that will threaten their most important relationships as their precious, longed-for daughter Alice grows up and receives a

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 329 pages Expected publication: May 1st 2019 by Bookouture About the Book: She lied to her daughter to save her family. Everyone knows Leona would do anything for her daughter Beth: she moved to Church Langdon to send Beth to the best school, worked hard to build a successful business to support them and found them the perfect little cottage to call home. Leona and Beth hike together, shop together, share their hopes and fears with one another. People say they’re more like best friends than mother and daughter. It’s the relationship every mother dreams of. But their closeness means that Beth struggles to make friends. Her mother has kept her sheltered from the world. She’s more reliant on her mother’s love. More vulnerable. When Beth finds an envelope hidden under the floorboards of their home, the contents make her heart stop. Everything she thought she knew about her mother is a lie. And she realizes there is no one she can turn to for help. What if you’ve b

☆☆☆☆1/2 Kindle Edition, 304 pages Expected publication: April 30th 2019 by Kensington Publishing Corporation About the Book: The missing don't always want to be found...Kate Harlow recognizes this painful truth, even as she keeps searching for her daughter, Sophie, who disappeared two years ago. The police have stopped investigating--after all, Sophie has sent postcards home, insisting that she's fine. To fill the space in her increasingly empty days, Kate volunteers at Message in a Bottle, where runaways can leave messages for loved ones, no questions asked. Then one evening, a call comes in from a voice Kate instinctively recognizes, even through bursts of static and beyond the sudden dial tone that breaks their connection. Those closest to Kate worry she's cracking under her grief, imagining that it was Sophie. But Kate knows--that it was her daughter on the phone. And that a stranger has been inside her house. Watching her. Sophie is out there. And Kate has to find

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 320 pages Expected publication: April 30th 2019 by St. Martin's Press & Minotaur Books About the Book: A powerful follow up to multiple award-winning debut Bull Mountain. Clayton Burroughs is a small-town Georgia sheriff, a new father, and, improbably, the heir apparent of Bull Mountain’s most notorious criminal family. As he tries to juggle fatherhood, his job and his recovery from being shot in the confrontation that killed his two criminally-inclined brothers last year, he’s doing all he can just to survive. Yet after years of carefully toeing the line between his life in law enforcement and his family, he finally has to make a choice. When a rival organization makes a first foray into Burroughs territory, leaving a trail of bodies and a whiff of fear in its wake, Clayton is pulled back into the life he so desperately wants to leave behind. Revenge is a powerful force, and the vacuum left by his brothers’ deaths has left them all vulnerable. With h

☆☆☆☆ e-book, First Canadian Edition, 352 pages Expected publication: April 30th 2019 by Penguin Random House Canada About the Book: Ruth Hartland is the director of a trauma therapy unit in London. A psychotherapist with twenty years of experience, she is highly respected in her field. But her family life tells another story: her marriage has fractured and her grown daughter, Caroline, has moved far away to Australia. Most devastatingly, Caroline's twin brother, Tom, has disappeared and has had no contact with anyone for two years. Ruth's fragile son has always been sensitive and anxious, the opposite of his cheerful and resilient sister. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return. Then Ruth is assigned a new patient, a young man who bears a striking resemblance to Tom. Ruth is determined to help Dan, but her own complicated feelings and family history cloud her judgement--and professional boundaries, once

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 400 pages Expected publication: April 30th 2019 by Penguin Random House Canada & Viking About the Book: When tragedy erupts on a stifling summer night, three ordinary people, with the extraordinary jobs of rescuing strangers, are connected to one another in ways both explicit and invisible. Each is deeply devoted to what they do, but they are all beginning to crack under the immense pressures of their work. Tough-as-nails Kate, when she's not working with her beloved search-and-rescue dog, Zeus, is a trauma nurse who spends her off-duty hours trying to forget what she has seen. Estranged from her troubled family, she must confront the fact that resolution may elude her forever. Respected police officer Mike is on the edge of burnout and sets himself on a downward spiral that may be impossible to break, fraying the bonds of love that hold his family together. Tamara, an agoraphobic 911 dispatcher, who is trying her hardest to remain as calm and emotionless as an

☆☆☆☆☆ ebook, 298 pages Kindle Edition, 266 pages Expected publication: April 26th 2019 by Bookouture About the Book: You’ve seen me on the street. You’ve walked past my house, and pointed, and wondered. The cat lady. All on my own, with only my five cats to keep me company. Did no-one ever tell you that you can’t judge a book by its cover? Everyone in town knows Nancy Jones. She loves her cats. She loves her tumbledown house by the sea. She loves her job in the local school where she tries to help the children who need help the most. Nancy tries hard not to think about her past loves and where those led her. Nancy never shares her secrets – because some doors are better kept locked. But one day she accepts a cat-sitting request from a local woman, and at the woman’s house, Nancy sees a photograph, in a bright-red frame. A photograph that opens the door to her painful past. Soon Nancy doesn’t know what frightens her the most: letting her story out, or letting the rest of the worl

☆☆☆ ebook, 298 pages Expected publication: April 23rd 2019 by Lake Union Publishing About the Book: Julia Martin grew up wealthy, but it wasn’t until she met her husband, Jack, that she knew true happiness. He made her feel worthy and loved. Their marriage was also an escape from her sister’s bullying, her father’s scrutiny, and her chilly and enigmatic mother. But when tragedy strikes on the night she gives birth, Julia’s happiness is shattered. She has no choice but to return home to her family’s South Carolina mansion, where the grief and guilt buried in her mother’s past await her. As a young woman trapped in a bitter marriage, Julia’s mother, Iris, once needed her own means of escape. In Lily, she found a best friend. In the flower shop they opened, she discovered independence. Then came a transgression—unforgivable, unforgettable, and unresolved—that changed Iris’s life forever. Now, in Iris’s most desperate hour, her only hope is to regain the trust of the daughter she love

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 346 pages Expected publication: April 16th 2019 by Bookouture About the Book: We stand in the back of the hall as the children troop in. Big ones, little ones. Straggly hair, cropped hair, curls… the adults surge forward to choose and soon there is just one child left, a little girl sitting on the floor. She is thin as a string bean and her sleeve is ragged and damp – like she’s been chewing it. 1939. War has broken out – hundreds of children are evacuated to the countryside to keep them safe from the bombs raining down on the cities. Wrenched from her family in the East End and sent more than a hundred miles away, seven-year-old Pearl Posner must adapt to a new life away from everything familiar. Vivienne didn’t ask for an evacuee child. In fact, she’s not sure her heart can take it. So many years, so many disappointments… Vivi’s ability to feel love left her the day she learned the truth about her husband Edmund, and when she made the worst decision of her

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 368 pages Expected publication: April 23rd 2019 by St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books first published April 4th 2019) About the Book: Marianne was never supposed to return to town, the town where she grew up in the shadow of the Nazareth Mental Hospital. Her mother may be suffering from dementia nearby, but she had thought she'd left that place, and its dark secrets, behind her. That is, until her husband buys a flat in its newly renovated interior so that she can be close enough to help her mother, and Marianne can't tell him why the place fills her with such dread, she can't risk destroying the careful life she's built. Erin Kelly, the master of suspense, will delight fans with her next thrilling novel of psychological suspense. The Victorians used to call their mental hospitals stone mothers. This book started off a little slow for me but the writing itself was so incredible that I continued on and am SO glad I did. Once you get to

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 304 pages Expected publication: August 6th 2019 by St. Martin's Press About the Book: Dover, Massachusetts, 1969. Ginny Richardson's heart was torn open when her baby girl, Lucy, born with Down Syndrome, was taken from her. Under pressure from his powerful family, her husband, Ab, sent Lucy away to Willowridge, a special school for the “feeble-minded." Ab tried to convince Ginny it was for the best. That they should grieve for their daughter as though she were dead. That they should try to move on. But two years later, when Ginny's best friend, Marsha, shows her a series of articles exposing Willowridge as a hell-on-earth--its squalid hallways filled with neglected children--she knows she can't leave her daughter there. With Ginny's six-year-old son in tow, Ginny and Marsha drive to the school to see Lucy for themselves. What they find sets their course on a heart-racing journey across state lines—turning Ginny into a fugitive. For the

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 305 pages Published December 2nd 2018 by HQ Digital About the Book: One lost letter. A chance to change her life! Superhero single mum Cath always puts other people first. But now that she’s seen her son safely off to university (phew!), life seems a little, well…empty. So when Cath unexpectedly discovers some letters written by her great-grandfather during the First World War, she decides to take herself on an adventure to France to retrace his footsteps. Cath expects to spend her holiday visiting famous battlefields and testing out her French phrase book. What she doesn’t anticipate is that her tour guide, the handsome Olivier, will be quite so charming! Soon Cath isn’t simply unearthing the stories of the past – she’s writing a brand new one of her own, which might end up taking her in a very unexpected direction. I'm not a big fan of chick lit, but I don't dislike it either - there are just other genres that I prefer. When I read the description for this

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 272 pages Expected publication: April 16th 2019 by Penguin Random House Canada & Knopf Canada (first published August 28th 2018) About the Book: Connell Waldron is one of the most popular boys in his small-town high school--he is a star of the football team and an excellent student, and he is never wanting for attention from girls. The one thing he doesn't have is money. Marianne Sheridan, a classmate of Connell's, has the opposite problem. Marianne is plain-looking, odd, and stubborn, and while her family is quite well off, she has no friends to speak of. There is, however, a deep and undeniable connection between the two teenagers, one that develops into a secret relationship. Everything changes when both Connell and Marianne are accepted to Trinity College. Suddenly Marianne is well liked and elegant, holding court with her intellectual friends, while Connell hangs at the sidelines, not quite as fluent in the language of the elite. Throughout t

☆☆☆ ebook, 343 pages Expected publication: April 16th 2019 by Montlake Romance About the Book: In the small town of Celeste, Texas, Mitzi Taylor has never quite fit inside the lines. Nearly six feet tall, flame-haired, and with a plus-size spirit to match every curve, she’s found her niche: a custom wedding-dress boutique catering to big brides-to-be with big dreams. Taking the plunge alongside her two best friends, she’s proud they’ve turned The Perfect Dress into a perfect success. Just when Mitzi has it all pulled together, Graham Harrison walks back into her life, looking for bridesmaid dresses for his twin daughters. A still-strapping jock whose every gorgeous, towering inch smells like aftershave, the star of all Mitzi’s high school dreams is causing quite a flush. For Mitzi, all it takes is a touch to feel sparks flitting around her like fireflies. She can just imagine what a kiss could do. Graham’s feeling it, too. And he’s about to make that imagination of Mitzi’s run wil

☆☆☆1/2 ebook, 300 pages Expected publication: April 12th 2019 by HQ Digital About the Book: Love is in the air...? Luca is used to being the 'single one' at weddings - it happens, when all your other friends are engaged, married or taken. But when she bumps into Tom, her friend from university who broke her heart into a million pieces, she finds herself wondering what could have been. It's ten years later, surely she should be over that Tom by now? So why is he looking even more gorgeous than ever - and why doesn't he seem to be able to keep his eyes off her either? And as the champagne flows and old secrets resurface, Luca realises that perhaps the time to take a chance on love and life is...now? This book was a bit of magic, a touch of humor, and a lot of romance. It reminded me of the chick-lit books that were popular many years ago but have become unfashionable. I absolutely loved the author's sense of humor. And, yes, Luca is a kooky most of the time, bu

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 208 pages Expected publication: April 9th 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt About the Book: What is the cost of motherhood? When The Risk of Us opens, we meet a forty-something woman who deeply wants to become a mother. The path that opens up to her and her husband takes them through the foster care system, with the goal of adoption. And when seven-year-old Maresa—with inch-deep dimples and a voice that can beam to the moon--comes into their lives, their hearts fill with love. But her rages and troubles threaten to crack open their marriage. Over the course of a year, as Maresa approaches the age at which children become nearly impossible to place, the couple must decide if they can be the parents this child needs, and finalize the adoption—or give her up. Oh my gosh...All the stars. This is a heartbreaking tearful adventure into the frightful world of fostering to adoption. Yes it is excruciatingly sad but whether or not you enjoyed the characters portraye

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 256 pages Expected publication: April 9th 2019 by Thomas & Mercer About the Book: Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return. As months pass, hope vanishes. Supplies are low. Livestock are dying. A brutal winter is bearing down. Then comes the stranger. He claims to be looking for the girls’ mother, and he’s not leaving without them. To escape, Wren and her sister must break the rule they’ve grown up with: never go beyond the forest. Past the thicket of dread, they come upon a house on the other side of the pines. This is where Wren and Sage must confront something more chilling than the unknowable. They’ll discover what’s been hidden from them, what they’re running from, and the s

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 288 pages Expected publication: April 9th 2019 by Hanover Square Press & HARLEQUIN – Trade Publishing About the Book: A taut portrait of poverty, Catholicism, and a family in crisis in rural Vermont. A 12-year-old altar boy lives with his family in a small, poverty stricken town in Vermont. His father works at a manufacturing plant, his mother is a homemaker, and his fifteen-year-old brother is about to enter high school. His family has gained enough financial stability to move out of the nearby trailer park, and as conflict rages abroad, his father’s job at a weapons manufacturing plant appears safe. But then his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and everything changes. As his family clings to the traditions of their hard-lined Catholicism, the narrator begins to see how ideology and human nature are often at odds. He meets Taylor, a perceptive, beguiling girl from the trailer park, a girl who has been forced to grow up too fast. Taylor represents everyth

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 384 pages Expected publication: April 9th 2019 by Grand Central Publishing About the Book: Coach Randy is working mightily to keep it together, and not simply with his vaguely unhappy wife, distant child, and a new boss who's eliminating half the sales force. This season's soccer parents are a demanding bunch. Diane's wine-fueled group e-mails are almost unintelligible; team mom Jacqui's enthusiasm for the league verges on manic; a divorced couple can barely conceal their murderous rage at each other; and another mom is laser-focused on schooling everyone on what constitutes a healthy snack option. All the secrets and lies bubbling below the surface of their membrane-thin civility threaten to combust when Alejandro, a young, foreign assistant coach refuses to play by the Beverly Hills code, which is to mind your own business and don't look too deeply into anyone's soul. Especially your own. Brett Paesel brings hilarity and huge heart to

☆☆☆1/2 Kindle Edition, 308 pages Expected publication: April 8th 2019 by Canelo Escape About the Book: When bestselling romance author Chloe Piper’s marriage implodes a week before Christmas, she flees her cheating ex and the village gossips for the solitude of the newly built Sunny Meadow Farm and the company of her hapless dog, Ronnie. But Chloe is soon pushed out of her comfort zone. Because with a lively development building crew – headed up by charming Alex – and a larger-than-life neighbour determined to make Chloe’s love life her pet project, Chloe finds herself in a whole new world of chaos. I enjoyed this book, but I'm very confused by the tag line "romantic comedy". I didn't find it to be that funny really (unless you count dog farts as funny). It is a great story of second chances, and one of love lost and gained, of failure and success. It's also about relationships and friendships. It's a wonderful story that follows a woman after her divor