Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the psychological thriller novel Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
After throwing her father’s corpse into the family trash incinerator, Sally Diamond doesn’t understand why her neighbors are treating her weirdly. But, it's fine; she's used to be on her own, and she has memories of her dad to keep her...
Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the psychological thriller novel My Murder by Katie Williams.
After being brutally murdered, wife and new mother Lou is brought back to life via cloning, along with several other victims of her serial killer. She gets to return to her happy marriage. Her daughter. Her old job. All the parts of her life she was told she...
If it’s one thing I love about Wendy Webb novels, it’s that they’re incredibly creepy. And her latest book, The Haunting of Brynn Wilder, certainly delivers all the spine-tingling, floor-creaking moments you’d expect with a title like that. That being said… this book is also incredibly heartbreaking, which is something that I did not expect. What originally drew to me to Webb’s novels is this author’s ability to weave a damn good...
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the hardest book reviews to write are for the books you love the most. There’s just so much you want to say! And it seems impossible to find the right words to express how much the story means to you. That’s how I feel about The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary. And, I'm completely surprised by this. I went into The Flatshare with low expectations. Very low, to be honest. I’d seen the book...
Christmas Shopaholic may be the best Christmas book I've read in a long time. It might also be the best book in Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series I've read in a long time. On both counts, nothing could have surprised me more. Every December, I take a break from my more "serious reads" to indulge in a little Christmas reading -- light, fluffy stories filled with messages of seasonal hope and love, a glowing tree and festive decorations, the...
Even though The Merriest Magnolia sounds like a Christmas book, and the beautiful cover makes it look like a Christmas book… it’s not what I would call a true Christmas book. And, I really liked that about it. Hear me out, Countdown to Christmas fans: I love me a good seasonal read when December rolls around, but sometimes my beloved Debbie Macombers are a little too simple, too predictable, and too syrupy sweet for my taste. Author Michelle...
Clear your weekend, Tartlets. In fact, clear your week. Because Winter Solstice is a book you want to read slooooowly, savoring every word and turn of the page. I discovered this 2011 novel by Rosamunde Pilcher on a list of holiday reads from Modern Mrs Darcy. It was the most recommended book by her readers, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. Winter Solstice starts off in a sleepy little English village of Bilby, then moves to a...
House of Salt and Sorrows is aptly named: there's a heck of a lot of Salt, and there's way more sorrow than necessary plaguing the Thaumas family. The more you read, the more you're like, Sheesh, hasn't this family been through enough??? Despite having more money than Pontus, the one thing they don't have is the ability to keep their women out of harm's way: in the past few years, Annaleigh Thaumas has lost her mother and four -- four! --...
Dixie Wheeler, the main character of Theme Music, is a little odd. She gets a pass, though. You would, too, if your whole family was brutally slaughtered in front of your eyes. You heard me. The prologue of this debut novel by T. Marie Vandelly is an incredibly graphic replay of when Dixie’s father pulled a Lizzie Borden on his family, taking an axe and chopping them into pieces one Thanksgiving morning. Reader, be warned. This lil' intro is...
First of all, can we all just take a moment to acknowledge how much the cover for The Girl in the Mirror looks like the cover for Desperate Girls? Second of all...is it weird that I called the entire story, from beginning to end? Nothing about The Girl in the Mirror surprised me. Like, NOTHING. And I don't think it's because I'm just that brilliant (I'm not). It's because author Rose Carlyle dropped a lot of super-obvious clues throughout the...
