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Showing posts from September, 2022

The New Person: A Novel by Loretta Nyhan

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 249 pages Expected Publication: 29 Nov 2022 By: Lake Union Publishing Amazon | Goodreads About The Book: Single mother Roxy Novak works days at a dentist’s office and delivers food at night, making the best life she can for herself and her son, Aero. When her wealthy ex-husband decides to ask for full custody, telling her Aero will be better off living with him and his Instagram-famous new wife, Roxy is stunned and scared. How can she possibly get the money to fight back? Meanwhile, Nora and Owen Finnegan have been trying to have a child for years without success. After their latest surrogate suffers a miscarriage, they start the search again—and find Roxy, who sees a chance to salvage her own dreams of family by fulfilling theirs. But family is never simple, and neither are dreams. Nora, Owen, and Roxy hope that their surrogacy journey will lead them to what they want most in the world. All three will get more than they expected. My Review: This book surprised me in t

On The First Day Of Christmas by Faith Hogan

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🎄🎄🎄🎄 .ePUB, 240 pages Expected Publication: 13 Oct 2022 By: Head of Zeus | Aria Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: When Liv Latimer says goodbye to her colleagues and finishes work for the holidays, she's looking forward to a Christmas to remember with her boyfriend Eddie. But before she makes it home, her phone rings, calling her back into work. And Liv is faced with a choice. Does she do as she's always done, and put herself second? Or, will she say no, so she can finally begin the life she's dreamed of? Liv's decision will turn her world upside down in ways she could never have imagined. Because whatever choice she makes, Liv is about to discover, fate finds a way. My Review: This is my fourth book by Faith Hogan and every one of them was a four-star read for me. This book was such a joy, think of it as a yuletide Sliding Doors in Ireland and I so loved that premise. There are two parallel storylines and Faith Hogan managed to keep them running side by side ver

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 281 pages Published: 06 Aug 2020 By: Corvus Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. Now I am the woman who is going to catch him. You've just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago. Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was - is - the Nothing Man. The more Jim reads, the more he realises how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won't give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first. My Review: The last Catherine Ryan Howard book I read was Run Time and it was a book about a movie script that contains a book. This one is a book that contains a book. I don't know how she does it but Catherine Ryan Howard can seamlessly weave two stories at the same time without confusi

The Man I Never Met by Elle Cook

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 301 pages Expected Publication: 22 Nov 2022 By: Random House Publishing - Ballantine, Dell Amazon | Goodreads About The Book: When Hannah picks up a call from an unknown number, she thinks nothing of it--it's just an easygoing American named Davey who misdialed her while calling into a job interview. And when Hannah wishes him luck after clearing up the confusion, she never actually expects to hear from him again. Then she gets a text saying he got the job and he'll be moving to London, and she can't help but smile. Soon their texts become phone calls that turn into video calls, and their friendship becomes a relationship they can't wait to start in earnest once Davey lands in London in a month's time. But when Hannah goes to meet him at the airport, Davey isn't there--and the reason why changes both of their lives in an instant. With their future together suddenly so uncertain, they don't know what to do but try to move on from each other.

American Mother The True Story of a Troubled Family, Motherhood, and the Cyanide Murders That Shook the World by Gregg Olsen

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 468 pages Expected Publication: 08 Nov 2022 By: Thread Books Amazon  |  Goodreads   About The Book: At 5.02 pm on June 5, 1986, an emergency call came into the local sheriff's office in the small town of Auburn, Washington State. A distressed housewife, Stella Nickell, said her husband Bruce was having a seizure. Officers rushed to the Nickell's mobile home, to find Stella standing frozen at the door... Bruce was on the floor fighting for his life. As Stella became the beneficiary of over $175,000 in a life insurance pay-out, forensics discovered that Bruce had consumed painkillers laced with cyanide. A week later, fifteen-year-old Hayley was getting ready for another school day. Her mom, Sue, called out 'I love you' before heading into the bathroom and moments later collapsed on the floor. Sue never regained consciousness, and the autopsy revealed she had been poisoned by cyanide tainted headache pills. Just like Bruce. While a daughter grieved the sud

The Girl I Used To Be by Debbie Howells

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⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 304 pages Expected Publication: 19 Oct 2022 By: Boldwood Books Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Anna and Will have been passing in and out of each other’s lives since they were just teenagers. Now 20 years later, Anna is married - she has a lovely house, a step daughter in university and a husband with a good job. What she doesn’t have is joy. When she runs into Will it sparks something in her, a longing for the Anna she used to be. Together they embark on a journey to find what brings them joy, to discard what doesn’t and to become the people they always wanted to be. But in finding themselves, can they also find each other? My Review: I have a job that’s meaningless, a marriage that grows ever more  distant,  while meeting Will again has reminded me of the girl I used to be.  I read and loved The Life You Left Behind by Debbie Howells and was really excited to get this one from NetGalley. Unfortunately, I was left feeling very disappointed and I found it hard to get

The Three Loves of Sebastian Cooper by Zoë Folbigg

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 347 pages Expected Publication: 27 Sept 2022 By: Boldwood Books Amazon | Goodreads About The Book: As friends and family gather for the funeral of charming and charismatic Seb Cooper, three women sit in the congregation, mourning his loss. First there is Clair, Seb’s wife and partner of twenty years, and mother of his two children. Furious at Seb for dying and leaving their children without a father, Clair isn’t sure of her place, and has been left baffled and bemused by the conflicting stories of Seb’s last days. Then there’s Desiree, the woman Seb left Clair for. Heartbroken, self-conscious, and wondering if she made a mistake coming today. And the third and noisiest mourner of all is Noemie – Seb’s lover and the last woman to see him alive. Three women who loved Seb in their own different ways. Three women whose lives have now changed forever. But only one woman knows what really happened at the end…and only one truly had his heart. My Review: This is my fourth boo

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson

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⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 .ePUB, 262 pages Expected Publication: 01 Nov 2022 By: Sourcebooks Landmark Amazon | Goodreads About The Book: When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat. And in Maggie's world, book rules are made to be broken. To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upen

The Prisoner by B.A. Paris

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⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 267 pages Expected Publication: 01 Nov 2022 By: St. Martin's Press Amazon | Goodreads About The Book: Amelie has always been a survivor, from losing her parents as a child in Paris to making it on her own in London. As she builds a life for herself, she is swept up into a glamorous lifestyle where she married the handsome billionaire Jed Hawthorne. But then, Amelie wakes up in a pitch-black room, not knowing where she is. Why has she been taken? Who are her mysterious captors? And why does she soon feel safer here, imprisoned, than she had begun to feel with her husband Ned? My Review: Oh how I hate writing a bad review...this is my first book by this author and I am sad to say it just wasn't for me. Let's start with some positives...I liked the two timelines of the past and present and what was unusual for me was the fact that I enjoyed the present chapters much more than the past. I found the pacing quicker and of course, the tension of being kidnapped, locke

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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🎾🎾🎾🎾 .ePUB, 312 pages Publication Date: 30 Aug 2022 By: Doubleday Canada Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked the "

Such a Pretty Girl by T. Greenwood

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⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 .ePUB, 286 pages Expected Publication: 25 Oct 2022 By: Kensington Books Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Living peacefully in Vermont, Ryan Flannigan is shocked when a text from her oldest friend alerts her to a devastating news item. A controversial photo of her as a pre-teen has been found in the possession of a wealthy investor recently revealed as a pedophile and a sex trafficker—with an inscription to him from Ryan’s mother on the back. Memories crowd in, providing their own distinctive pictures of her mother Fiona, an aspiring actress, and their move to the West Village in 1976. Amid the city’s gritty kaleidoscope of wealth and poverty, high art, and sleazy strip clubs, Ryan is discovered and thrust into the spotlight as a promising young actress with a woman’s face and a child’s body. Suddenly, the safety and comfort Ryan longs for is replaced by auditions, paparazzi, and the hungry eyes of men of all ages. Forced to reexamine her childhood, Ryan begins to untangle

In the Shadow of Time by Kevin Ansbro

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 388 pages Publication Date: 30 Aug 2021 By: 2qt Limited (Publishing) Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: “I was in Mexico City for three months, and yet returned to England on the same day that I left…” Through her time-travel research, physicist Dr Sofia Ustinova has attracted the interest of higher beings from a distant galaxy…Luna, a porcelain-skinned teenager, lives alone in a Danish forest where she guards an astonishing secret…Pablo, an optimistic shoeshine boy, struggles to earn a living on the sweltering streets of Mexico City…Meanwhile, Hugo Wilde, a British secret agent, embarks on a mission to kill a Russian assassin, unaware that his life is about to change in ways he could never have imagined. My Review: This was such a fantastic and unusual read. Ansbro is an amazing wordsmith and his world-building fascinated me. I am not a big fan of science fiction but I do love a good time travel story and magical realism. I really loved the main characters in this b

In the Vanishing Hour by Sarah Beth Martin

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⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 .ePUB, 264 pages Expected Publication: 19 Oct 2022 By: BooksGoSocial Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Massachusetts, Summer, 1951: When a boy drowns in the Charles River, a family is devastated, and the town of Norumbega is changed forever. Eight years later, Frances Adams lives in the shadow of her dead brother, Mac. At her window dresser job, she befriends model Gwen, whose resemblance to Frances inspires her to reinvent herself. When Gwen vanishes into the river, Frances becomes obsessed with her memory. She transforms herself into Gwen’s likeness and feels an identity she has not felt before. An investigation begins, and the police question three young men. Frances and friend Iris follow them to the riverside park, where one of the men—the suspicious Harris—mistakes Frances for Gwen. Intrigued by the idea of haunting him, she continues her secret pursuit, immersing herself in the case. As the mystery unravels, shocking revelations about its connection to a long-past

Ten Years by Pernille Hughes

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ .ePUB, 333 pages Expected Publication: 31 August 2022 By: HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Becca and Charlie have known each other since university. Becca and Charlies have also hated each other since university. Until now. Until Ally’s bucket list. The death of their loved one should mean they can go their separate ways and not look back. But completing the list is something neither of them can walk away from. And sometimes, those who bring out the worst in you, also bring out the very best…Over the course of ten years, Becca and Charlie’s paths collide as they deal with grief, love and life after Ally. My Review: This was a very emotional book, I felt sadness, joy, and anger while reading it. The premise of a woman's fiancé and her best friend completing her bucket list, after her death, was a fun way to do the old enemies to lovers trope and I was so here for it. You could feel both Charlie's and Becca's love for Ally thro

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hardcover, 352 pages Published: August 30, 2022 By: Flatiron Books Amazon  |  Goodreads About The Book: Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. Now after years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in her crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. When the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. But at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed. My Review: What a wonderful take of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Christie fans will see the similarities right away and will like it too. The story is told from the point of view of the youngest daughter, D