Publisher: Simon & Schuster

#BookReview The Strangers We Know by Pip Drysdale @SimonSchusterCA #TheStrangersWeKnow #PipDrysdale #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview The Strangers We Know by Pip Drysdale @SimonSchusterCA #TheStrangersWeKnow #PipDrysdale #SimonSchusterCA Title: The Strangers We Know

Author: Pip Drysdale

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Nov. 7, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 336

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8.5/10

Imagine seeing your loving husband pop up on your best friend’s dating app. Now imagine that’s the best thing that happens to you all week…

When Charlie sees a man who is the spitting image of her husband, Oliver, on a dating app, her heart stops. Her first desperate instinct is to tell herself she must be mistaken—after all, she only caught a glimpse from a distance as her friends laughingly swiped through the men on offer. But no matter how much she tries to push her fears aside, she can’t let it go. Because she took that photo. On their honeymoon.

When other signs of betrayal begin to surface, Charlie does the only thing she can think of to defend herself—she signs up for the app to catch Oliver in the act.

But Charlie soon discovers that infidelity is the least of her problems. Nothing is as it seems, and nobody is who she thinks they are…


Review:

Ominous, engrossing, and suspenseful!

The Strangers We Know is a captivating, sinister tale that takes you into the life of Charlie Buchanan, a young wife who, after finding her husband’s profile on a dating app and becoming increasingly sceptical of his recent unexplainable behaviour, suddenly finds herself on the run from the police when his body is discovered inside their home and it becomes abundantly clear that they believe she’s the murderer.

The writing is taut and brisk. The characters are resourceful, confused, and persistent. And the plot is an intricate, action-packed tale full of twists, turns, secrets, surprises, questionable personalities, duplicitous motivations, manipulative actions, parasitic relationships, violence, and ruthless murder.

Overall, The Strangers We Know is a fast-paced, tortuous, complex tale by Drysdale that does an exceptional job of reminding us that money and greed can easily sway perspective and are, in fact, often the root of all evil.

 

This novel is available in paperback now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Pip Drysdale

Pip Drysdale is a writer, musician and actor who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she played shows across Europe and started writing books. Her debut novel, The Sunday Girl, was a bestseller and has been published in the United States, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Strangers We Know was also a bestseller and is being developed for television. The Paris Affair is her third book.

Photo courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.

#BookReview Someone You Trust by Rachel Ryan @rachelryanbooks @SimonSchusterCA #SomeoneYouTrust #RachelRyan #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview Someone You Trust by Rachel Ryan @rachelryanbooks @SimonSchusterCA #SomeoneYouTrust #RachelRyan #SimonSchusterCA Title: Someone You Trust

Author: Rachel Ryan

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Aug. 1, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 272

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

Amy jumps at the opportunity when she’s offered a nannying job in picturesque West Cork. The assignment is for the friendly and welcoming Carroll family, whose stunning house is situated on a stretch of remote and rugged coastline overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the perfect chance for Amy to escape the suffocating city and the man who made her life hell.

With two adorable children to oversee, a pair of generous employers, and more freedom than she’s enjoyed in years, everything seems wonderful. So why can’t Amy shake a creeping sense of unease? Perhaps it’s the husband’s erratic behavior. Or the fact that she was never told about the reclusive teenage son whose bedroom is next to hers. Or maybe it’s the strange messages that somebody has been painting around the local village.

Quickly, it becomes clear that all is not well in the Carroll marriage, nor in their idyllic rural community. Whispered secrets and strange occurrences fill the breathtaking scenery with menace and, as the days pass, Amy learns that the refuge she has sought just might be the most dangerous place of all.


Review:

Brisk, riveting, and suspenseful!

Someone You Trust is an ominous, character-driven thriller that introduces us to Amy, a young woman who, after fleeing Dublin for a quieter existence and a place to hide, quickly discovers that everything is not as perfect as it seems in the affluent home of the Carroll family she’s employed by, everyone has a secret to hide, and danger lurks around every corner.

The writing is crisp and edgy. The characters are anxious, secretive, and flawed. And the plot, using a back-and-forth style, is a menacing tale full of twists, turns, revelations, insecurities, lies, obsession, manipulation, domestic abuse, infidelity, troubled pasts, and familial dysfunction.

Overall, Someone You Trust is a tortuous, addictive, unnerving tale by Ryan that is deliciously relentless, surprising, deceptive, and bursting with misdirection.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Rachel Ryan

Rachel Ryan was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. She can usually be found writing in coffee shops, hanging around libraries, or walking the streets of Dublin, making up stories. The Woman Outside My Door is her first novel.

Photograph by Ailish Kerr.

#BookReview Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent @lizzienugent @SimonSchusterCA #StrangeSallyDiamond #LizNugent #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent @lizzienugent @SimonSchusterCA #StrangeSallyDiamond #LizNugent #SimonSchusterCA Title: Strange Sally Diamond

Author: Liz Nugent

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Jul. 18, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 320

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 9/10

The internationally bestselling author of the “dark, captivating psychological thriller” (People) Lying in Wait returns with a wickedly dark, twisted, and brilliantly observed new novel about an enigmatic woman confronting her unknown past.

For Sally Diamond, people are confusing, unpredictable, and hard to read. She has always preferred routines to spontaneity, silence to noise, and forthright communication to small talk. Adopted at the age of seven by a psychiatrist, she cannot remember any details of her childhood before that age. Now, at forty-three years old, the truth comes into sharp focus when Sally’s past becomes headline news: she endured something unthinkable as a child, and now, the entire world knows exactly who she is…and was.

Suddenly, Sally finds herself in the spotlight. People everywhere are digging into her past, ravenous for details, and Sally herself is learning things about herself and her family that she never knew before. Soon, a stranger from New Zealand sends her a familiar teddy bear in the mail, but why does he insist on addressing her as Mary? And why is her new neighbor so obsessed with her?

Told from the alternating perspectives of Sally in the present-day and a boy named Peter in the past, this is a novel that confronts the trauma of family secrets and explores one woman’s brave decision to define herself and her future.


Review:

Thrilling, haunting, and highly unnerving!

Strange Sally Diamond is a dark, perceptive, mysterious tale that takes you into the life of Sally Diamond, a socially inept, middle-aged woman with PTSD from childhood trauma and a tendency to take things literally who, after recently losing the only father she’s ever known, begins to struggle with living alone when long-buried secrets come to light, memories begin flooding back, someone is intent on tormenting her about the past, and danger now seems to lurk around every corner.

The prose is meticulous and tight. The characters are scarred, selfish, eccentric, and dangerous. And the plot, told from alternating perspectives, unfolds methodically into a seedy tale full of twists, turns, surprises, familial drama, lies, secrets, deception, self preservation, wickedness, tragedy, and murder.

Overall, Strange Sally Diamond is a nuanced, sinister, unpredictable tale by Nugent that once again highlights her innate ability to showcase the scheming, despicable, demoralizing, evil side of human nature while also reminding us of the devastating, enduring consequences of living in environments fraught with excessive control, manipulation, violence, and forced captivity.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Liz Nugent

Liz Nugent has worked in Irish film, theater, and television for most of her adult life. She is an award-winning writer of radio and television drama and has written critically acclaimed short stories both for children and adults, as well as the novels Unraveling Oliver and Lying in Wait. She lives in Dublin.

Photograph by Beta Bajgartova.

#BookReview The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler @simonschuster @SimonSchusterCA #TheWifeApp #CarolynMackler #SimonSchuster #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler @simonschuster @SimonSchusterCA #TheWifeApp #CarolynMackler #SimonSchuster #SimonSchusterCA Title: The Wife App

Author: Carolyn Mackler

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Jun. 27, 2023

Genres: Women's Fiction

Pages: 384

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster

Book Rating: 8/10

Because every wife deserves a happy ending.

Three best friends decide they’re finally done with their ex-husbands taking their work as wives and moms for granted. They’re ready to monetize the mental load, stick it to their exes, and have a wild ride in the process.

Lauren, mother of twins, wakes up one morning to her Wife Alarm Bells sounding. She sleuths on her husband’s phone and stumbles on a dirty secret that explodes her marriage. Madeline has it all—a penthouse apartment, a perfect daughter, and no-strings-attached romps with handsome men. When she learns that she might lose her child to her ex in England, it stirs up a decades-old personal tragedy. Sophie, with too much FOMO and never enough money, obsesses over her ex-husband’s Family 2.0—all while keeping her true desires hidden, even from herself.

It starts as a joke during a tipsy night out, as Lauren, Madeline, and Sophie rail against everything wives do for free. Let’s build an app that monetizes the mental load. And maybe get revenge on our exes in the process? Soon, the Wife App is born, and before long, it’s the fastest growing start-up in New York City. But then life intervenes. Love intervenes. Ex-husbands intervene. And the consequences are bigger than anything Lauren, Madeline, or Sophie could have expected. Carolyn Mackler marks her debut into adult fiction with a hilarious rollercoaster ride of revenge and redemption that is at once a send-up of modern marriage and a celebration of female friendship and love in all forms.


Review:

Fresh, spirited, and fun!

The Wife App is a lighthearted, engaging tale that sweeps you away to NYC and into the lives of three divorced friends, Madeline, Lauren, and Sophie who, after spending a night grumbling over all the selfless tasks mothers and wives are bombarded with on a daily basis, decide to join together to create an app which would monetize and give value to all those unappreciated, time-consuming, dreaded domestic chores nobody likes to do.

The writing style is witty and sharp. The characters are independent, layered, and supportive. And the plot is a humorous tale about life, love, family, friendship, child-rearing, introspection, marital inequality, interfering exes, tender moments, taking chances, and new beginnings.

Overall, The Wife App is an easy, uplifting, entertaining tale by Mackler that is bursting with female friendships, self-discovery, romance, and the ups and downs of single parenthood.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

             

 

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Carolyn Mackler

Carolyn Mackler is the acclaimed author of the YA novels The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (A Michael L. Printz Honor Book); The Universe Is Expanding and So Am I; Infinite in Between; and Love and Other Four-Letter Words; and the middle grade novel, Best Friend Next Door. Carolyn’s award-winning books have appeared on bestseller lists and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Carolyn lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. The Wife App is her first adult novel.

Photo by Sarah Klock.

#BookReview The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale @SimonSchusterCA #TheNextGirl #PipDrysdale #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale @SimonSchusterCA #TheNextGirl #PipDrysdale #SimonSchusterCA Title: The Next Girl

Author: Pip Drysdale

Published by: Simon & Schuster on May 2, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 368

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8.5/10

For fans of The Perfect Girlfriend, The Flight Attendant, and Promising Young Woman, a compulsively readable suspense novel about a woman who will stop at nothing to expose the dark secrets of a powerful man—with shocking results.

A bad day at work. A drunken night. A rogue Instagram follow. That’s all it takes to ruin a life…but whose life will be ruined?

When Billie wakes up in a strange guy’s bed, her first thought What happened last night? She can’t even remember meeting him. And how the hell did she get to Coney Island?

Then reality bites and the memories flood in—the reason she was in that bar drinking to start with was because today she’s going to get fired. Yesterday, her law firm lost a high-profile assault Samuel Grange v Jane Delaney. And it looked like it was her fault.

It wasn’t.

Yet now Samuel Grange is free to drive off into the sunset in his Porsche and do it all again to another woman. And all Billie can think What about the next girl? And the one after that?

But there is nothing she can do to stop him.

Unless…She could expose the truth about him on her own. Then everyone would see what he is really like. She could make sure he’ll never be able to do it again.

The problem is, the only way to protect the next girl is to become the next girl.

And, well, that could be a little risky…even deadly.


Review:

Dark, tight, and complex!

The Next Girl is an intense, edgy thriller that takes you into the life of Billie Spencer-Tate, a young paralegal with a knack for losing her day job, who after losing her mother to suicide due to an online troll, spends the majority of her time and effort using her high-tech knowledge and social media skills to hunt down, identify, select, and hand out her own style of justice to those men who abuse, prey, and gaslight women, with her latest target being the arrogant, despicable, dangerous Dr. Samuel Grange who she is determined to expose.

The prose is taut and gritty. The characters are consumed, unpredictable, and secretive. And the plot builds quickly as it twists, turns, shocks, surprises, and unravels all the personalities, behaviours, relationships, and motivations within it.

Overall, The Next Girl, at its core, is a novel about secrets, manipulation, friendship, coercion, obsession, control, cunning behaviour, tragedy, violence, and vengeance. It’s a highly suspenseful, exceptionally clever tale by Drysdale that highlights everything is not always as it appears and is definitely one of the most gripping page-turners I’ve been lucky enough to read this year.

 

This novel is available in paperback now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Pip Drysdale

Pip Drysdale is a writer, musician and actor who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she played shows across Europe and started writing books. Her debut novel, The Sunday Girl, was a bestseller and has been published in the United States, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Strangers We Know was also a bestseller and is being developed for television. The Paris Affair is her third book.

Photo courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.

#BookReview Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall @HMarshallAuthor @SimonSchusterCA #LookingforJane #HeatherMarshall #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall @HMarshallAuthor @SimonSchusterCA #LookingforJane #HeatherMarshall #SimonSchusterCA Title: Looking for Jane

Author: Heather Marshall

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Mar. 1, 2022

Genres: Historical Fiction

Pages: 384

Format: Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 10/10

For readers of Joanna Goodman and Genevieve Graham comes a masterful debut novel about three women whose lives are bound together by a long-lost letter, a mother’s love, and a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose—inspired by true stories.

Tell them you’re looking for Jane.

2017

When Angela Creighton discovers a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession in a stack of forgotten mail, she is determined to find the intended recipient. Her search takes her back to the 1970s when a group of daring women operated an illegal underground abortion network in Toronto known only by its whispered code name: Jane…

1971

As a teenager, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was sent to a home for “fallen” women where she was forced to give up her baby for adoption—a trauma she has never recovered from. Despite harrowing police raids and the constant threat of arrest, she joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women the choice she never had.

1980

After discovering a shocking secret about her family history, twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell begins to question everything she has ever known. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she feels like she has no one to turn to for help. Grappling with her decision, she locates “Jane” and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network’s ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her.

Weaving together the lives of three women, Looking for Jane is an unforgettable debut about the devastating consequences that come from a lack of choice—and the enduring power of a mother’s love.


Review:

Absorbing, poignant, and heartrending!

Looking for Jane is a harrowing, moving novel set in Toronto between 1960 to 2017 that introduces you to three young women as they navigate the torment and fallout of a world where unwed mothers are sent to homes, deprived of basic necessities, coerced into relinquishing their parental rights, and unnecessarily punished viciously, babies are bought, adoption information is sealed, abortion is not legal and expensive back alley butchering is often the only choice, and an incredible network of caring professionals endanger themselves in order to provide safe options while rallying for change.

The prose is vivid and rich. The characters are strong, vulnerable, determined, and brave. And the plot told from multiple perspectives, is a compelling blend of life, loss, secrets, surprises, heartbreak, abuse, survival, motherhood, female friendships, pregnancy, infertility, and the history and legalities of abortion.

Overall, Looking for Jane is a compassionate, enlightening, timely tale inspired by true-life events that is a haunting reminder of just how much physical, psychological, and emotional abuse young unwed women endured and shockingly highlights that even though we’ve come so far in respect to women’s rights and body autonomy, in some respects, we still have a long way to go. It’s a book that ultimately needs to be read to appreciate just how well-researched, beautifully written, and extremely memorable it truly is.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

       

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Heather Marshall

Heather Marshall lives with her family near Toronto. She completed master’s degrees in Canadian history and political science, and worked in politics and communications before turning her attention to her true passion: storytelling. Looking for Jane is her debut novel.

Photograph by Amanda Kopcic.

#BookReview The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson @Sadeqasays @simonschuster @SimonSchusterCA #TheHouseofEve #SadeqaJohnson #SimonSchuster #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson @Sadeqasays @simonschuster @SimonSchusterCA #TheHouseofEve #SadeqaJohnson #SimonSchuster #SimonSchusterCA Title: The House of Eve

Author: Sadeqa Johnson

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Feb. 7, 2023

Genres: Historical Fiction

Pages: 384

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster

Book Rating: 10/10

From the award-winning author of Yellow Wife, a daring and redemptive novel set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.


Review:

Insightful, thought-provoking, and memorable!

The House of Eve is a compelling tale that sweeps you away to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., during the early 1950s and into the lives of two Black women; Ruby Pearsall, a high school junior who dreams of winning one of only two scholarships so she can attend university and become an ophthalmologist until her love for a local Jewish boy puts a little wrench in her plans, and Eleanor Quarles, a Howard University sophomore whose love for a wealthy medical student and an unexpected pregnancy opens her eyes to a world she never knew existed and a social hierarchy she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to climb.

The prose is eloquent and expressive. The characters are genuine, multilayered, and vulnerable. And the plot is a beautifully written, poignant tale about life, loss, courage, hope, dreams, motherhood, poverty, racial discrimination, inequality, forbidden love, adoption, familial drama, and the heartbreak and struggles of infertility.

In 2021, Johnson’s previous novel, The Yellow Wife, was one of my favourite novels of the year, and it’s safe to say The House of Eve will be on that list for 2023. It’s a powerful, emotional, masterfully woven tale that transports you to another time and place and immerses you so thoroughly into the personalities, feelings, and lives of the characters you can’t help but be completely absorbed and fully invested.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

       

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Sadeqa Johnson

Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels. Her accolades include being the recipient of the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Award and the USA Best Book Award for best fiction. She is a Kimbilo Fellow, former board member of the James River Writers, and a Tall Poppy Writer. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives near Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and three children.

Photograph courtesy of Author's Website.

#BookReview The White Hare by Jane Johnson @JaneJohnsonBakr @SimonSchusterCA #TheWhiteHare #JaneJohnson

#BookReview The White Hare by Jane Johnson @JaneJohnsonBakr @SimonSchusterCA #TheWhiteHare #JaneJohnson Title: The White Hare

Author: Jane Johnson

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Oct. 4, 2022

Genres: Historical Fiction

Pages: 400

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

For fans of Alice Hoffman and Kate Morton, The White Hare is a spellbinding novel about mothers and daughters finding a new home for themselves, the secrets they try to bury, and the local legends that may change their lives.

In the far west of Cornwall lies the White Valley, which cuts deeply through bluebell woods down to the sea at White Cove. The valley has a long and bloody history, laced with folklore, and in it sits a house above the beach that has lain neglected since the war. It comes with a reputation and a strange atmosphere, which is why mother and daughter Magdalena and Mila manage to acquire it so cheaply in the fateful summer of 1954.

Magda has grand plans to restore the house to its former glory as a venue for glittering parties, where the rich and celebrated gathered for cocktails and for bracing walks along the coast. Her grown daughter, Mila, just wants to escape the scandal in her past and make a safe and happy home for her little girl, Janey, a solitary, precocious child blessed with a vivid imagination, much of which she pours into stories about her magical plush toy, Rabbit.

But Janey’s rabbit isn’t the only magical being around. Legend has it that an enchanted white hare may be seen running through the woods. Is it an ill omen or a blessing? As Mila, her mother, and her young daughter adjust to life in this mysterious place, they will have to reckon with their own pasts and with the secrets that have been haunting the White Valley for decades.


Review:

Atmospheric, mysterious, and intriguing!

The White Hare is a rich, eerie, gripping tale that transports you to Cornwall during 1954 and into the lives of three generations of Prusik women as they move to a dilapidated new home and try to come to terms with all the powerful emotions, spooky folklore, traditions, long-buried secrets, strange behaviours, tragedy, and magic that surrounds them.

The prose is tight and intense. The characters are multilayered, vulnerable, and scarred. And the plot is an unsettling tale of life, loss, trauma, tragedy, desperation, familial drama, legends, folklore, secrets, supernatural phenomena, new beginnings, and the complex relationships that exist between mothers and daughters.

Overall, The White Hare is an ominous, vivid, gothic tale by Johnson that undoubtedly kept me engaged and invested from start to finish and was truly a delight to read.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

       

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Jane Johnson

Jane Johnson is from Cornwall and has worked in the book industry for over 20 years, as a bookseller, publisher and writer. She is responsible for the publishing of many major authors, including George RR Martin.

In 2005 she was in Morocco researching the story of a distant family member who was abducted from a Cornish church in 1625 by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa, when a near-fatal climbing incident caused her to rethink her future. She returned home, gave up her office job in London, and moved to Morocco. She married her own ‘Berber pirate’ and now they split their time between Cornwall and a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains. She still works, remotely, as Fiction Publishing Director for HarperCollins.

#BookReview The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave @SimonSchusterCA #TheLastThingHeToldMe #LauraDave

#BookReview The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave @SimonSchusterCA #TheLastThingHeToldMe #LauraDave Title: The Last Thing He Told Me

Author: Laura Dave

Published by: Simon & Schuster on May 4, 2021

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8.5/10

We all have stories we never tell.
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.

Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.


Review:

Sinister, sharp, and engrossing!

The Last Thing He Told Me transports you into the life of Hannah Hall, whose world gets turned upside down when her husband suddenly disappears one day, and she reluctantly must delve into his past that seems to be a lot more complex and contain more long-buried secrets than she ever could have imagined.

The writing is tight and intense. The characters are mysterious, troubled, and multilayered. And the plot intertwines and unravels quickly into a suspenseful, intricate tale of lies, secrets, manipulation, parenthood, familial drama, unexpected twists, heart-wrenching motivations, violence, and deception.

Overall, The Last Thing He Told Me is a tortuous, clever, heartbreaking page-turner by Dave that keeps you guessing from the very first page and, ultimately, leaves you shocked, surprised, and thoroughly entertained.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or one of the following links.

              

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Laura Dave

Laura Dave is the international bestselling author of several novels including The Last Thing He Told Me and Eight Hundred Grapes. Dave’s fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, ESPN, Redbook, Glamour and Ladies Home Journal.

Dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA Today), Dave has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends and NPR’s All Things Considered. Cosmopolitan Magazine named her a “Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year.”

Several of her novels have been optioned for film and television with Dave adapting The Last Thing He Told Me for Hello Sunshine and Apple.

Photo courtesy of Author's Website.

#BookReview The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn @SimonSchusterCA #TheGirlsAreAllSoNiceHere #LaurieElizabethFlynn

#BookReview The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn @SimonSchusterCA #TheGirlsAreAllSoNiceHere #LaurieElizabethFlynn Title: The Girls Are All So Nice Here

Author: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Published by: Simon & Schuster on Mar. 9, 2021

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8.5/10

Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here opens when Ambrosia Wellington receives an invitation to her ten-year college reunion. Only, slipped in with all the expected information about lodging and the weekend’s schedule is an anonymous letter that says: “It’s time to talk about what we did.” Instantly, Ambrosia realizes that the secrets of her past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she’d thought. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did—and who she did it with. Larger-than-life Sloane Sullivan (“Sully”), who could make anyone do anything. The game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else, and the girl, Amb’s angelic roommate, who paid the price.

Amb had thought that she and Sully had gotten away with what they did their first semester at Wesleyan. But as Amb receives increasingly menacing messages during the reunion, it becomes clear that she’s being circled by someone who wants more than just the truth. Amb discovers that her own memories don’t tell the whole story, and that her actions and friendship with Sully had even more disturbing consequences than she ever imagined.

Told in alternating timelines between the reunion and Ambrosia’s turbulent first months of college, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a gripping rollercoaster ride of a novel that examines the dark complexities of female friendship and the brutal lengths girls can go to take what they think they are owed.


Review:

Sinister, atmospheric, and disturbing!

The Girls Are All So Nice Here transports you into the life of Ambrosia Wellington as she reluctantly heads to her ten-year reunion at Wesleyan College, where the past will collide with the present, long-buried secrets will finally be unearthed, and her freshman year, mean-girl behaviour may at long last be punished.

The writing is tight and intense. The characterization is spot on with a cast of characters that are selfish, secretive, insecure, and unlikable. And the plot, using a past/present, back-and-forth style, is a suspenseful, twisty tale filled with friendship, drama, deception, jealousy, hatred, abuse, callousness, desperation, cruelty, and revenge.

Overall, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a tortuous, clever, creepy page-turner by Flynn that keeps you guessing from the very first page and leaves you chilled, surprised and thoroughly entertained.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or one of the following links.

              

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn is a former model who lives in London, Ontario, with her husband and three children. She is the author of three young adult novels: Firsts, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, along with Last Girl Lied To and All Eyes on Her, under the name L.E. Flynn. Her adult debut, The Girls Are All So Nice Here, has sold in nine territories and has been optioned for television by AMC.

Photo by Sandra Dufton.