THE REUNION by Kiersten Modglin
RATING: 5 Stars!!!!!
SYNOPSIS: Cait Du Bois returns to Hotel Lilith for her High School reunion, the same hotel where she had her high school prom. The same hotel where the most terrible night of her life occurred. The same hotel that changed her life forever.
Returning to Hotel Lilith for her high school reunion only happened because Cait wanted to show off how successful she turned out to be; in high school, things were always easy. She is now a best selling author, and not a stranger to being recognized in public, when in high school, she only stood out as a loser.
The memory of prom night terrifies Cait. But, she is determined to put the past behind her and move forward. However, someone or something has a different plan. When Cait arrives at the hotel, strange things begin to occur. Cait receives a strange package, strange phone calls, and strange texts. Someone wants the truth to come out. This truth, could be the very thing that unravels Cait’s life as she knows it.
REVIEW: I was honored to receive an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
To put how amazing this book is into words is difficult! The story is told between alternating time periods, flash backs to Cait’s days in high school, and the present time where she is at Hotel Lilith beginning days before the reunion.
Kiersten Modglin has done it again, and it is the best ever! The Queen of Twists did not hold back on the twists in this book. The suspense is palpable and the desire to continuously know that happened in Cait’s past and what is happening in Cait’s present never stopped. This book is a true page turner; I just could not put this down! Just when you think you have it all figured out, or even just had some guesses, you are wrong!!! I still have yet to figure out a KMOD twist before it is revealed.
A MUST READ!
MISSING IN PORTLAND by C.L. Kenny
RATING: 3 Stars.
SYNOPSIS: Girls are disappearing in Portland, Oregon. There is a serial killer on the loose. The killer is taking the girls to he play pen and using them as sex slaves. Mallory, a young, new journalist is looking to make her mark in the journalism world. She sets off for Portland, in search of these women and their story. She attends press conferences, interviews family members, all in hopes of helping these women. Did she get herself in too deep?
REVIEW: First and foremost, I’m putting a Trigger Warning on this book for sexual abuse.
I was really excited to read this book. The blurb about this book on Amazon was VERY intriguing, but the book to me, fell very flat. The taking of women to use them as sex slaves is a heavy topic. The style of writing seemed very immature for that kind of topic. The writing itself felt very juvenile.
Additionally, Mallory is supposed to be an investigative journalist trying to make a name for herself, but the book kind of loses that. Yes, it does tell us that Mallory was going to the press conferences and interviewing families and writing articles. We never see this articles. We know the things that happen, but if her journalism is the whole reason she goes to Portland, why wouldn’t we see some of that?
This book had a lot of potential.
THE WHISPER MAN by Alex North
RATING: 3 Stars
SYNOPSIS: After Tom Kennedy’s wife died, he decided to move him and his son Jake to a new town. Jake was a quiet child, he did not fit in and didn’t have any friends. The new town that they moved to had a history of crime.
Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents and earned the name “The Whisper Man” by whispering to those he killed outside of their window. Just as Tom and Jake moved to this town, another boy went missing. It resembles the disappearance of those twenty years earlier, but The Whisper Man (Frank Carter) was in prison.
Detectives now are trying to find this missing boy, including a detective that worked on the Frank Carter case. Now he must go visit The Whisper Man in prison.
Time is ticking as this boy is missing, and now Jake is starting to hear whispers at his window.
REVIEW: I wanted to like this book much more than I did. There were some really good twists in the book, but the book was so long and it was dragging. There was one character in the book, Karen, who unnecessarily cursed and it was off-putting. I don’t mind cursing in a book where it fits, but I don’t appreciate it for no reason necessary.
One of things that I really did appreciate in the book is that it is written in the third person, but from a few different characters points of view. When there was a chapter written in Jake’s point of view, the style of writing changed to mimic that of a child.
I wouldn’t tell anyone to go out and read this book right this minute, but I would tell someone to read it as the twists were really good!!!
MOTHER…LIAR…MURDERERY by Ashley Beegan
Rating: 3 Stars
SYNOPSIS: Astrid Moor will do anything to protect her son, including murder. A murder that she has gotten away with. Now, she is constantly checking over her should, checking the streets when she leaves the house, and making sure that no one can find her. But someone does and they want to make her pay. Astrid contacts Alex Swanson for help; he helped her when she committed murder, and now she wants his help again. Alex is now a DI and working a serial rapist case; he did not expect to hear from Astrid. He never imagined that he would be helping her yet again. Astrid Moor is willing to do anything to protect her son, and herself. How far is she willing to go, again?
REVIEW: I received an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.
This book started off with a bang. I was hooked and instantly wanted to keep reading. However, with the introduction of additional characters and not knowing until the end how they all connected, left me a little confused. It led me to not rush through the book as I did with her first novel (Lucy’s Coming For You). I would have appreciated a little nugget here and there that connected the characters.
Otherwise, this is a good book from Author Ashley Beegan. It’s the second book in the series, and I will definitely be keeping up with Alex Swanson in the next book.
THE ANTIDOTE FOR EVERYTHING by Kimmery Martin
RATING: 3 Stars
SYNOPSIS: Georgia Brown is a urologist at a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. She spends a lot of time around men in this career, but her love life is a disaster. With no family, her friend, Jonah, has become her family. Jonah is a family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital.
While Georgia is away on a work conference, Jonah shares the news that he is losing patients and is going to be fired. Jonah, a gay man, has been providing medical care for transgender patients. The private, religious hospital, no longer wants Jonah to treat these patients and tells them to leave. Additionally, Jonah is being set up by someone – the hospital claims that Jonah is stealing drugs.
Georgia now wants to fight alongside Jonah at this injustice. However, her attempts to help Jonah with the situation place both Jonah and herself in a predicament where they can both lost everything – including their jobs.
Are Georgia and Jonah able to fight the hospital? Did Jonah steal the drugs? What about all of Jonah’s patients?
REVIEW: I enjoyed this book – once I understood what it was going to be about. It should NOT take 100 pages to get the the point of the book. And it was a slow 100 pages. Someone asked me what it was about and during the first 100 pages, I said “I have no idea.” (I had not read the synopsis online or on the book. I’ve previously read a book by this author, so I blindly went into reading this book).
Also, a love interest was introduced for Georgia, but then it felt like he was forgotten about for chapters at a time.
My favorite part of this book was the fight for the transgendered people Jonah put up, and how much he advocated for them, cared for them, and worried about them.
MISSING DAUGHTER by Kiersten Modglin
RATING: 4 Stars
SYNOPSIS: First and foremost, a trigger warning: this book contains a missing child, and second, there is an in-depth discussion of PPD.
The day after Skylar’s birthday party, Ginny wakes up realizing that Skylar did not wake up crying the night before as she does every night. This worries Ginny and she goes to check on Skylar in her room. Except, Skylar isn’t in her room, and Ginny doesn’t know where she is. The police are called and the investigation begins. Only, Ginny’s husband tells the police that Ginny is off her medication, and trouble bonding with Skylar when she was younger, and stopped going to therapy. Ginny suffered from PPD
As Ginny tries to figure out where her daughter is, she soon realizes things are not as they seem. Her past has become her present and she will stop at nothing to find her daughter. But who has her? And who is the woman she heard her husband talking to while he thought she was sleeping?
REVIEW: I struggled reading this book, and not because it wasn’t captivating. It was because of the in-depth discussion of post-partum depression. I don’t know if Kiersten Modglin experienced PPD, but if she didn’t, then she hit the nail on the head with her eye-opening descriptions of what it is like to have PPD. Everything she wrote about, I experienced. It made me cry as I really connected with Ginny and felt for her.
Beyond the PPD, the book was great. I had no idea of the twist that was coming, and yes, with KMod books I am always trying to guess what is going to happen! I don’t think I’ve ever been able to guess all the twists and turns in one of her books, ever!
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS by Alice Feeney
RATING: 4 Stars!!!!
SYNOPSIS: With a marriage that has been on the rocks, Adam and Amelia Wright win a weekend getaway in Scotland. This could be exactly what they need to fix their marriage. Adam Wright, a talented screen writer who is basically married to his work, also suffers from face blindness – he cannot make out faces, including his wife’s.
As the couple celebrates their anniversaries with the traditional gifts, Adam’s wife also writes him a letter. Except, she never lets him read these letters. There are ten letters; tere are ten years of secrets.
Someone is lying; they didn’t win the trip to Scotland. Someone does not want them to live happily ever after – but who? Who is lying? What is hidden in those letters? This is an anniversary they will never forget.
REVIEW: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was hooked right from the start and did not want to put it down. I needed to figure out what was going on and why it was going on.
This book is told from multiple perspectives, which really gives you insight into what’s going on in the book, but also what is going on in he character’s minds. The book is suspenseful, but not scary. Alice Feeney did a great job with creating a creepy and eerie atmosphere. I am not one a reader that likes a lot of description, but this book had the perfect amount
My only qualm with this book is: when driving to the place where they were having their weekend getaway, they were using paper directions. It was explained that Amelia took Adam’s phone out of the glove box and into the house before they left. However, at some point in the book, she asks him to play music and she hands him her phone to put music on. Why then, are they using paper directions? It was never explained that maybe there was bad service. I know it’s small, but for some reason, this hole really bothered me.
THE GHOST WRITER by A.R. Torre
Rating: 3 Stars
Synopsis: Helena Ross is a best selling novelist and one of the most popular romance novelists. She seemingly had a perfect life – a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter. However, nothing is ever as it seems, and there is a horror that is going on behind closed doors.
Helena receives some devastating news and decides to finally write the book that she has been waiting to write – a tell all of her life. This book has a very tight deadline of three months for completion. With a tight deadline, and how draining this process is for Helena, she recruits a ghost writer to help her write the book. In an unlikely pairing, the ghost writer learns of Helena’s gut-wrenching, heartbreaking and eye-opening journey. Helena has been hiding the truth about her life for the past four years, and now it is time to come clean.
REVIEW: This book seems to have a lot of great reviews. I don’t think that the book got good until page 270. I was really bored reading up until that point. I kept reading hoping that it would get better, and it did not until that page. The narration of the book was just dull. It is an easy, fast read so I still read it in a few days.
Helena was unlikeable and I guessed off the bat one of the ‘twists.” The “shock” that the ghost writer isn’t who they say they are isn’t that big of a shock, or that big of a deal. Helena was curt and cold. I’m a type A person, but she as Type A to a degree where I can’t even imagine living my life like that.
I believe the author was trying to create a suspenseful novel, but that did not happen at all. Whatever happened in the last four years to Helena, whatever secret she was hiding, was dragged out to the point where I wanted to gouge my eyes out. Perhaps this book would have been better if it had been shortened.
The three stars is for the last 1/4 of the book.
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