The story is told from three perspectives. Jack/Asher, who was konked on the head and now has amnesia, Lily, who is dating Jack/Asher, and Maya, his stepsister who still lives in the family home.
Jack has woken up on a beach and has no idea how he got there or what happened. For that matter, he has no idea who he is. The only thing he knows is a string of numbers.
When he calls the number, Maya answers, and quick as can be he is back at home and being spoon-fed lies.
Maya is a scary girl. Sociopath seems about right.
When Lily follows a lead and finds him, he doesn't remember her but he is drawn to her and understands she is important to him. Maya isn't about to let that stand. Whatever his name, he isn't leaving again if she can help it.
I think I knew all along who did what to who. It was a fast read and I wish there had been more details and in the end, I just had unanswered questions.
NetGalley Review/ May 25th, 2021 by MIRA Books
It’s 1986 and Tully and James are living in Scotland. In a small town and have begun a friendship over their love of music, movies and soon have a very strong bond.
They are young and ready for adventure. When they go to Manchester for a weekend, they vow to follow different paths. And they do. As thirty years go by James receives a call from Tully and must face a heartbreaking decision.
The book had me until Manchester. After that it was too wordy, and I lost interest. This wasn’t for me but give it a try and maybe it’s good for you.
NetGalley/May 18, 2021 Penguin Random House Canada
Carolyn Haines’s Independent Bones is the next novel in the series that Kirkus Reviews characterizes as “Stephanie Plum meets the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” featuring sassy Southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney.
It’s so good to be back in Zinnia, Mississippi, with PI Sarah Booth Delaney and her partner, Tinkie. Tinkie is at that I’m about to pop stage of pregnancy, which just makes me like her more. Her southern manners are slipping and as usual it’s hilarious.
Sarah Booth is at the new park that Harold donated and speaking is a woman Sarah Booth doesn’t know. Dr. Alala Diakos is a visiting professor who is at Ole Miss in Oxford for a year, working on a book and inciting men, as she demands women stand up for themselves and demand equal pay and rights. But this is Mississippi, where I don’t think we could vote until not that long ago. And these are some deeply southern bred men, who expect their women in the kitchen or cleaning the house.
One particularly loud man, Curtis, whose wife, Tansy is in the ER regularly because she doesn’t know her place. But try to get her to press charges and she will defend him like a momma bear. As the crowd gets fired up, Sarah discovers a rifle aimed at the speaker. Is it Curtis’s?
Sarah calls boyfriend Sheriff Coleman, who takes this seriously and offers the visiting professor police protection. But Alala isn’t interested in protection or men. And when Curtis is found dead, Alala shows up on Sarah Booth’s porch looking for help in proving her innocence. Only she’s not helping her case when it’s found that she threatened him in a bar. Nor does it look good when more than one man is dead and she is a suspect.
It’s always a good time with this crowd. Sarah Booth is a strong, female who by the way has a friend who happens to be a ghost. All the characters are fully developed by now and I always have a laugh at Tinkie, who may be giving birth in the yard.
Mary Kubica is the writer who just pushes you right into the deep end on page one. I appreciate that. There is so much tension in this story! Everyone is shady. Everyone is lying. And the shocks don’t stop until the last page.
Meredith is a midwife. She has a lovely six-year-old daughter named Delilah and a husband who would rather not have his wife out at all hours of the night birthing babies.
When one of her clients goes missing after the baby is born, Meredith is suspicious of the husband. Then Meredith and Delilah go missing. Why? What do these two women have in common besides birth? When Meredith’s body is found without her daughter, the entire town is on the hunt. But with no luck.
Now, eleven years after the event, Delilah returns. Walking into town looking like she hasn’t seen daylight in a long time. While everyone wants to know what happened and where she has been, she is still shell-shocked.
This was a chilling one. However, I am missing a fingernail or two.
Always a treat to pop over to South Cove and visit with Jill at Coffee, Books, and More. Jill and other businesses on Main Street celebrate any and every event. This time it’s a new business in town hosting a paint-and sip-event. Jill has never claimed to be an artist. But spending time with her guy and her friends sipping and chatting in between slapping paint on her canvas, makes her happy. Our detective isn’t the only one wondering about the couple drinking and fighting in front of God and everyone.
They are drunk and one of the other participants offers to take them back to their B and B. Problem solved.
Until the next morning when the woman is found dead in the painting studio. She isn’t from here and neither is her husband, so why kill her? And why the art studio? And at the same time Esmerelda is acting odd. Even for her.
What is up with her neighbor? Also, Jill is working on her BFF’s wedding and working at her busy store. Thinking Esmerelda must know something, Jill goes to work to figure out who killed the victim and why so she can get Esmerelda back to work at the police station and finish the wedding details.
Some of these business friends are beginning to look sketchy. And they are!
Always a fun time in South Cove. Ms. Cahoon knows what she is doing.
This is the 8th book in the Lighthouse Library Series. Lucy the Librarian and Conner the Mayor are finally getting married!
The book begins with their friends throwing them a party at the beach, close to the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library where Lucy lives and works.
But just as things are winding down and they are packing up with Josie, Lucy’s almost-fiance’ Richard Lewiston the third and his bull of a mother arrive. Mother makes no apologies for coming uninvited to Lucy’s party. She does however, state her intentions to have Lucy marry her son. Almost desperately so.
Lucy and Richard aren’t interested in the least. As they agree to have dinner with the two, after all Lucy’s father and Richard’s father are law partners back in Boston. The dinner is awkward and they all head in different directions. Until a dead body is found at the back door of Jake’s Seafood Bar. The body of Richard the 2nd. What in the world is he doing here?
Lucy knows she will need to put on her detective hat in order to clear up the death and get rid of the grieving widow and her son before she can even think about walking down the aisle.
As for Charles, let’s just say he isn’t very happy with what she brings home. Charles is one of my favorite characters. Very discerning cat.
I enjoy this series so much. It’s a library. In a Lighthouse. Living in a lighthouse, be still my heart! So ready for the next book!
From the Queen of the Beach Reads comes Ms. Monroe’s latest.
I love this Beach series. Maybe because Charleston is my ancestral home as well. All the names and places are familiar to me and I feel like I’m reading a letter from home.
The Rutledge family has always been a part of Charleston. The family has seen hard times and wonderful times. They have found love and lost it. But the one place they have always come to heal is the beach house from Grandma Lovie. It’s the one sure thing. So when Linnea needs a place to stay after Covid forces layoffs at the marine center, it’s to the cottage she goes.
Across the street Cara waits for David to return from London with little Hope by her side. When he returns he is already sick and must quarantine himself in his room while Hope goes to stay with Linnea. And who should also be in quarantine but John right next door.
Everyone is worried and afraid for their loved ones. Linnea’s boyfriend Gorden finally arrives from London and again goes into quarantine. Now both men she cares for are right next door. What’s a girl to do?
This book was written during Covid. We can all sympathize with the family as we are living it along with them.
But never fear, the ending had me in a puddle on the floor and yet feeling hopeful.
OU Boy and I had decided I would take the Moderna vaccine and if I didn’t die then he would take it. I was so anxious the day before I almost chickened out but I need to leave the country soon and I have to have proof that I have had the shots.
Obviously the universe had other plans. We got there and I had my shot. Then Jennifer, our pharmacist told OU Boy she had one dose left as someone had chickened out. So he got stuck too.
For all the people in my life who told me how good they slept after the first shot and how painless it was? Screw you all.
From Saturday evening until Tuesday evening we couldn’t even move our arms. I was so glad I had mine in the left arm or I couldn’t have gone to the bathroom alone! We had fever, chills, PAIN. At one point I would have chopped the arm off. I had Covid last year. There was no PAIN. Granted it was six weeks of hell, but I recovered.
Wednesday dawned sunny and I had no more pain. Physical pain. As most of you know my mother left this earth on December 5th. May 5th is my birthday. This was the first time in my life I didn’t receive a card from my Momma. Plus that 5 a.m. text. So that set off the sobbing jag that lasted all day and night. I was already on the edge of a full-blown anxiety attack. As most of you already know it’s been almost five years since the great eye debacle (corneal transplant) and Monday my surgeon released me to a corneal specialist. I am finally stable. And what did I do? Pick up the phone to tell Momma.
It’s all these firsts that are gutting me. I am lucky I have three sisters and a brother who buoyed me up through texts, and lots of love. And OU Boy who took me to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant where they thought we were celebrating Cinco de Mayo. I’m French. We lost that minor battle, so no, it was Cinco de Patricia.
But we made it through. But that second shot on the 29th I am already ancy about!
Hope everyone is well and doing their best to stay healthy.
Everyone has hear of the Guinness family but I’ve never known much about the girls. This clears all of that up and very well.
This was a book of truths and an imagined tale. The author has done her research and this was a joy to read.
These girls seemed to have it all. The money, the name, and all the tight restrictions of the time. Fliss isn’t one of them and yet she is. It is her story most of all and it was an emotional one.
With their mother indisposed with some vague ailment, Fliss is charged with chaperoning the girls. She sleeps with them and eats with them but she knows she is not one of them.
The girls led very interesting and tragic lives and it is all here in this captivating book.
The author writes beautifully and the energy jumps off the page. Very Well Done!
Letty Carnahan is looking over her shoulder in a panic as she and her niece, Maya, run from New York to Florida. Things have gone terribly wrong and the worst- case scenario is now happening.
Letty’s sister, Tanya, is not exactly a paragon of truth and virtue. Hooking up with the slimiest of men. This time she chose the wrong guy. Oh, he looks good on paper, but is as scummy as they come. Tanya tells Letty that if anything happens to her, look at the husband. And then take this shoe of money and Maya and run.
When Letty turns up for her standard Sunday with Maya, what she finds is a body and a screaming child. What does she do? She runs. With no idea why she is going to some old motel in an old Southern Living article her sister included with the go-bag, she pushes forward until she finally reaches Treasure Island and The Murmuring Surf Motel.
Why is she here? What does this place have to do with Tanya? And why, oh why, does the motel manager’s son have to be a cop?
Ms. Andrews is the queen of the beach reads. This is one that had a bit of everything in it. Much like real life. The characters are so real and the story so compelling you may want to hit the road to find Treasure Island yourself.
