The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
This was my first “sitting and waiting for my allergy shot” book of the year. I go every Thursday (ish) at lunch time, and I have to get my allergy shot and sit there for 30 minutes to make sure I don’t have a bad reaction. I started last year and would usually play on my phone while I waited, but this year I decided to use my time wisely and read an actual physical book. So needless to say it took a while to […]
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And Your Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers
Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena
Near the Bone by Christina Henry
How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens
The Lightness by Emily Temple
The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman, Laura Blackett
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Franny, Jet, and Vincent Owens take special joy in disobeying their mother’s rules. They wear red shoes and black clothes. They read books about magic. They fall in love. It’s the Lower East Side in the 60s. Who can blame them? I didn’t realize this was a prequel. I just picked it up at an airport bookstore when I had 3 hours to kill and a low phone battery. I’m grateful this is the only book that called out to me. I’m always drawn to […]
Someone We Know by Shari Lapena
A woman goes missing in a close-knit neighborhood in Shari Lapena’s Someone We Know. Her husband is clearly a psychopath, but then again, the woman has committed the grave sin of being an attractive flirt. Shortly into the novel, the woman is found in the trunk of her own car, kicking off a a pretty straightforward whodunnit. Told mostly from the perspective of a neighbor of the murdered woman, the plot adds a wrinkle right off the bat: the neighbor’s son has been breaking into […]
An Unwanted Stranger by Shari Lapena
An Unwanted Guest is a closed door mystery involving a group of strangers trapped at a luxury hotel during an ice storm. I may have squeed with excitement when I read that description. Sadly, that was the only time this book delighted me. Mitchell’s Inn in the Catskills Mountains is a gorgeous hotel, deep in the woods, with no cell phone service or internet. Guests enjoy gourmet meals, unlimited alcohol, and outdoor activities such as cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Three couples, a pair of friends, […]
An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
(3 stars) An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena This was probably two and a half stars, but I’m rounding up. The story was decent but pretty predictable. An Unwanted Guest takes place in a small family-run inn on a night when the weather is so bad that all the guests are trapped inside. They lose power and the roads are unpassable. Unfortunately, that’s right around when people start dying. First, the beautiful engaged woman falls down the stairs. Everyone suspects her fiance until an author […]
The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
Sometimes you read a book that you can’t believe is so bad you just keep reading it. This was one of those books. The shifting narratives don’t work, you pretty much know who did what it’s just a wait for the cops to figure it out. The only reason why I didn’t zero star this thing was the ending which made me go, huh. “The Couple Next Door” follows Anne and Marco Conti. A happily married couple (or it appears to be so) […]
