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Let’s talk about books. What type of book do you like to read? Do you stick to the same authors or are you willing to take a chance on something radically different from your norm? I have a cluster of authors that I gobble up the new books they put out like a binge eater…all in one sitting. And in between waiting for said authors to put out the next book, I have a group of “fill in” authors. And then there are the ones I read because I am so very curious about everything. It has been pointed out to me that my reading list is probably linked to Homeland Security but how can you have an opinion on anything if you haven’t fully researched it?

On my bookshelf you will find every James Patterson novel, every Laurell K. Hamilton, every Stuart Woods, Harlan Coben, Catherine Coulter, Iris Johansen, Anne Rice, Laura Childs, Tom Clancy, George R.R.Martin, Kim Harrison, Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, Lisa Scottoline, Lisa Unger, Karin Slaughter, Don Winslow, Sara Blaedel along with all the classics. I don’t do romance books, no heaving bosoms or glistening abs for me.

Reading is a magical thing that can take you places you would never have access to in the living world. I love everything about books. The cover, the feel, and smell of the paper, it all has to come together for me.  Books are like a good friend who stays around.

So here we are going to be talking about books. What we’ve read, what we are reading and what we hope to read. I find it so interesting that two people can read the same book and have totally different takes on it. But that is the fun of books and imagination. Everyone is different and I am intrigued by those different opinions.

Stick around for some really good, new authors I have found and feel free to make suggestions and comments!   On Twitter, @GaPirate  Email me at piratepatty@hotmail.com. Have your Marketing people or Publisher contact me for reviews. Top 1000 Reviewer for Amazon. Vine Voice on Amazon. Follow along on Instagram @PatriciaFairweatherRomero

LISA JACKSON’S THE GIRL WHO SURVIVED

In this deviously volatile, deliciously creepy thriller from the #1 New York Times bestseller, the lone survivor of a brutal family massacre must uncover the awful truth about the fateful night that left her forever marked…

Has she already had her last chance to be the final girl?

After losing her entire family in a brutal and confusing mass murder, Kara doesn’t want to be known as just the girl who survived a vicious attack at her family cabin in Oregon. All she knows for sure is that her sister locked her in the attic and left. When she got herself out she found no sister and only one brother clinging to life in the bloody living room. And he says one thing. Run. So she does. At seven years old, she can’t run far or fast but she runs from the shadowy figure standing at the door.

Her brother, Jonas, could be violent but she isn’t sure he did this. The state, however, is certain and now after twenty years, he is out. On a technicality, but out. As Kara tries to process what this means for her she also begins getting messages from someone claiming to be her sister telling her she is alive.

As she gets closer to figuring out what happened, will she finally be the girl who didn’t survive? Because the killer is still out there and is very close to finishing his job.

So much tension in this thriller! Just when I thought I knew, I did not. Good read!

NetGalley/ June 28, 2022, Kensington

LADY OF BONES by CAROLYN HAINES

A SARAH BOOTH DELANEY MYSTERY #24

We’re back in Mississippi with Sara Booth, Tinkie, and Jitty! It’s Halloween time and the entire gang is gathering to admire Tinkie’s new baby, Maylin, and do a bit of decorating too! But you know a good time here usually gets interrupted by a disaster.

This time it is Sara Booth’s mother’s dear friend, Frankie. Frankie is distraught and wants to hire the detectives to find her missing daughter in New Orleans. Christa is trying to when a journalism scholarship and is on to a hot story about cults. Soon after her roommate goes missing and two days later so does Christa.

So the team heads to New Orleans to find answers. Who is behind this mysterious cult that promises eternal life and youth? And what are they doing over in the Garden District talking about sacrificing women?

People of Eternity are wealthy and connected. Maybe even the police. But the ladies are determined and with the hunky detective on board, they try to stay alive long enough to find the missing girls and figure out who this mysterious Rhianna is.

It’s always a good time with Sara Booth and Jitty! That ghost kills me! Suspense, murder, and laughs make this a good read!

NetGalley/ St. Martin’s Press June 17, 2022

THE LIES I TELL by JULIE CLARK

Never con a con. Ms. Clark has given us two narrators of their lives. Meg and whatever the last name she’s using at the moment, and Kat, struggling with her writing, her relationship, and blaming Meg for all of it. A woman she doesn’t even know. But ten years ago a phone call from Meg sent Kat out on a lead that led to a life-altering trauma.

Meg has many names and many plans. She’s the ultimate con artist. But why? That is what Kat is trying to figure out.

Told in both voices, they are both playing at being honest and yet trying to get to the truth. Both for different reasons. And when Kat finally figures it all out, Meg is gone and Kat has some decisions to make.

This was much like a pretzel. Twisty and good! It was hard to keep up with all of Meg’s motivations and her cons. And she was good. Some women are content to move on after trauma. These are not those women. These are the women who are going to use every resource to get justice.

Well Done!

NetGalley/June 21st, 2022 Source Books Landmark

POINT LAST SEEN by CHRISTINA DODD

Life Last Seen Gothic Series #1

LIFE LAST SEEN

On a lonely stretch of beach in California is the remote town of Gothic. It’s the place to find lost souls. And when Adam Ramsdell finds a body in the surf, a woman who is obviously dead, he flips her over and hauls her off the beach. Only to have her come to life. Who is this woman and why isn’t she dead? It looks as if someone tried to kill her. She has bruises around her neck and has been battered by the ocean.

Elle. Her name is Elle. She thinks. She just isn’t sure of much else. So she takes refuge in Adams’s home. Remote and private. Just the way he likes it. Adam isn’t a talker. He says he has no friends, but everyone in town likes him.

As she heals and begins to get fragments of her memory back, she is terrified. What is it she can’t quite see in her nightmares? Or who? Someone tried to kill her and she has no idea who or why. Which makes trusting strangers difficult. It seems everyone in this town has at least one secret and she suspects Adam has a few as well.

And when her nightmare turns into reality, more people will be hurt.

This was a good mystery/suspense read. The characters were fun and the tension was real.

NetGalley/June 21st, 2022 by HQN




Fake it Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley

A reality star and a cupcake-baking football player pretend to be a couple in order to save his bakery in this sweet and sexy romance from Jamie Wesley, Fake It Till You Bake It.

A little bit of everything in this one. Romance, Reality television, sports, pretend relationships, and more.

Jada is stinging after turning down a proposal on that show that you are supposed to say yes to. Let’s just say she is now the villain in the tale. Time to go home and hide. Instead, she finds herself working at a cupcake bakery for a pro football player, Donovan.

They are in no way romantically involved. Far from it. But when the press finds her and assumes they are an item, they just go with it. It will help her reputation and promote his bakery.

Faking something has a nasty little habit of becoming reality. Sparks will fly!

NetGalley/  June 21st, 2022 by St. Martin’s Griffin


Can’t Look Away by Carola Lovering

Can't Look Away

Told in two voices, Molly and Sabrina.

We begin in 2013. Molly is 23 and finishing up her MFA and dreaming of being a writer while she waits tables and has fun with her friends. One night they talk her into coming to a bar with live music. An up-and-coming band starring lead singer Jake Danner.

Molly and Jake lock eyes and before you know it they are living together and she is in love. The man wrote a song for her. Their only real hit. But Jake has a girlfriend he hasn’t let go of yet. As in she doesn’t know they are broken up. But she is a vengeful one!

Now it’s 2022 and Molly and her husband, Hunter and their daughter Stella are living in Flynn Cove, Connecticut. Molly feels unfulfilled at her Yoga job and just doesn’t jive with the country club set. Until a woman comes into her studio and she thinks she finally has made a friend.

But Sabrina is playing the long game. She hasn’t let go of her belief that Molly ruined her chance with Jake. Imagine her surprise when she and Hunter show up to dinner and Sabrina’s hubby is Jake! Shock all around.

This isn’t what I would call a suspenseful read. Sabrina told us all along what she was doing. More like a domestic drama. HIgh School behavior at best. Everything gets wrapped up nicely but I still want to know why one of them isn’t in jail!

NetGalley/ June 14th ,2022 by St. Martin’s Press



crucial conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson and More

Crucial Conversations, Third Edition

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw

And so begins this book of tools for having the hard conversations. Communication is everything. It may seem as if all you need to do is talk. But it is never that simple. Everyone has opinions. Sometimes the stakes are high and emotions run high.

So, how do we have these important talks? Well, we don’t avoid them. We stop and take a moment or more to make sure we understand our own motivations and the other party’s opinions or views.

This book in the third edition addresses workplace conversations as well as personal relationship conversations. There will always be topics that are difficult to articulate without being seen as a bully. Whether it’s the ending of a relationship or giving a third warning to an employee. Have the facts and state your case clearly and then LISTEN.

In the hospitality industry, we deal with multiple personalities. Customers, staff, vendors, and they all need to be spoken to and handled differently. This book now sits on our shelf in the resource room. Unclear conversations lead to hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and loss of business.

We are referring to it on a daily basis.

Highly Recommend.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

A dazzling novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system–the debut of a blazingly original voice that “bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole” (Tommy Orange, best-selling author of There There)

When I saw that the author wrote this at 17 and lived on the streets of Oakland, I was floored.

The language is what I would expect from a teenager. All the feels are there.

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, live in East Oakland. A roach-infested hovel. That is all they can afford and they honestly can’t afford that. While Marcus is pretending to make a rap record, Kiara is hustling all over the dirty streets of Oakland looking for money. Their family fell apart long ago when her mom went to prison. Just teenagers themselves, Kiara also looks out for the little boy next door whose mother is an addict and never home.

After one drunk misunderstanding with a man turns into a career on the streets called night crawling. And since the johns are the cops, she is in it until they say she isn’t.

But then her name is connected to an internal investigation in the police department. A huge scandal involving officers and prostitutes.

The last thing Kiara wants is to be in any kind of limelight. She just wants to live.

This book was not pretty to read. It was raw, ugly, and made me cry and cringe quite a bit. But I am glad I read it and I hope we hear from this author again!

NetGalley/  June 7th, 2022 by Knopf Publishing Group



THE POPE AT WAR by DAVID I. KERTZER

Pulitzer Prize-winner David I. Kertzer brings us this magnificent work of the history of Pope Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

Based on newly opened Vatican archives, a groundbreaking, explosive, and riveting book about Pope Pius XII and his actions during World War II, including how he responded to the Holocaust, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Pope and Mussolini

Pope Pius XII, who died in 1958 and immediately had his archives sealed, probably didn’t think they would come to light in 2020. For a long period of time, we have wondered about his stance on the war and the people who surrounded the papacy. As a Roman Catholic myself, I can say he was very controversial.

Kertzer, who is one of the world’s leading scholars on the Vatican has been digging around in those archives for a while now. And he reveals how this pope traded moral leadership of the church to save its power.

It was difficult to read the atrocities and the deals that were made with fascists. But really haven’t we always known the church always acts in its own best interest? Not only is the research impeccable, but the facts are also explosive.

The amount of research that had to take place is monumental. I thought it read like historical fiction, but unfortunately, it was not fiction.

Outstanding work!

NetGalley/ June 7th, 2022 by Random House






COLD FEAR by BRANDON WEBB & JOHN DAVID MANN

Finn Thriller #2

Finn’s search for his memory of one fateful night leads him to Iceland–only to be followed by an unhinged assassin intent on stopping him–in the riveting follow-up to Steel Fear, from the New York Times bestselling writing team Webb & Mann, combat-decorated Navy SEAL Brandon Webb and award-winning author John David Mann.

Former Navy SEAL, Finn, is a wanted man. By multiple agencies. After jumping ship from the USS Abraham Lincoln, they say he is wanted for war crimes in Yemen. Only he has no memory of that. An entire village was wiped out and Finn can’t even remember if he was there or not. But his gut tells him he was not and he needs to find out who was and who killed his buddy.

He arrives in Iceland to track members of his team who he thinks have been sent to kill him. At the same time, the local detective has murders on her hands. Iceland never has any murders and now they are popping up every day. But the one that haunts her is the girl beneath the ice. Are the other murders connected to that somehow or are some collateral damage for the insane man that really is hunting Finn down.

All Finn wants to do is confront the three men who served with him and find out what really happened. But they are pointing the finger at him. Which has him questioning himself.

Can he find the answers without dying? You will have to read it to see.

I am a big fan of these two and have read all of their books. It’s full of tension and nail-biting and they really know what they are talking about.

Great Read!

NetGalley/June 7th, 2022 by Bantam