For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

 Samantha Downing has captured the personalities and attitudes of both teachers and students in her latest thriller, For Your Own Good. She nailed the demanding parents as well.

Riding on a high after winning Teacher of the Year at Belmont Academy, Teddy Crutcher feels compelled to teach some students lessons not necessarily a part of the curriculum. Case in point: Smug Zach Ward and his parents. Wanting Teddy to change Zach’s B+ to an A+ on a paper, the parents confront Teddy in his classroom, making Teddy dislike the teenage twerp even more.

Teddy feels he must push his students to be the best they can be, and he does not care for any interference from meddling parents and other teachers. In fact, he goes to deadly lengths to remove obstacles from his path.

This delightfully wicked tale is Samantha Downing’s third book following He Started It and her debut novel My Lovely Wife, which was nominated for an Edgar award. She lives in New Orleans.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 21, 2021.

I would like to thank Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Therapist by B.A. Paris

 

The Therapist is B. A. Paris’ latest psychological thriller that will have readers stumped as each clue is revealed.

Alice and her partner Leo decide to combine households and move to a gated community in London called The Circle. When Alice learns that a woman was murdered in their new home, she at first thinks she cannot continue living there then digs deeper to try to solve the mystery of who really killed the therapist.

As her circle of suspects keeps growing and changing, Alice finds herself teaming up with a private investigator who is also trying to determine the real killer. Could it be her partner Leo who has a really big secret she uncovers? Or is it one of the husbands of the women who live in The Circle? Alice scrambles to put the pieces together before someone else is murdered.

B.A. Paris continues to entertain her readers with page-turning plots. I could not have gone to bed without finishing this one. The author of Behind Closed Doors, The Breakdown, Bring Me Back, and The Dilemma – I have read them all --  lives in the United Kingdom.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 20, 2021.

I would like to thank St. Martin's Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda

 Hollow’s Edge was Such a Quiet Place in this thriller by Megan Miranda. After the murder of the Truetts, the neighborhood has never been the same. When the convicted killer, Ruby Fletcher, is released from prison after only 14 months, the neighbors reinstate a crime-watch like patrol and tell Ruby’s roommate Harper Nash to send Ruby packing.

An unsuspecting Harper suddenly finds her roommate back in her house after the latter’s conviction was overturned. But the overturned conviction does not reduce Harper’s fear of Ruby as everything seems to point to Ruby’s guilt. Soon Harper is receiving threatening notes, and she becomes determined to get to the root of the murders before someone else is killed. Things are going on in Hollow’s Edge that no one can seem to explain, and everyone becomes a suspect.

The weaknesses in this novel included a lack of development of its characters: one could have easily replaced another as there was nothing differentiating them. Additionally, the convoluted timeline of the original murders only confused the plot.

Megan Miranda has crafted suspenseful novels like The Girl from Widow Hills and The Last House Guest, which was a pick for Reese Witherspoon’s book club. A New Jersey native, Miranda lives in North Carolina with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 20, 2021.

I would like to thank Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Stranger in the Mirror by Liv Constantine

 

The Stranger in the Mirror reads like it was written by two different people. Oh, wait, it was…Liv Constantine, the pseudonym for a sister writing team. The first half of the book had one steady tone throughout but when the story picked up in the middle, the tone was completely different. I admit being a bit lost with the timelines, and I hope it was just because I was reading an uncorrected proof.

Amnesia produces an unreliable narrator, and this has been done before. Then there is the diabolic doctor, also done before. Usually Liv Constantine has fresh, dynamic plots and characters, but this volume does not seem to measure up to their previous work.

The amnesiac Addison is engaged to be married but she has no idea who she is or what her story is. Her about-to-be mother-in-law is skeptical of Addison and plots to put off the marriage. Addison has been lucky enough to be “adopted” by a caring truck driver and his nurse wife, who try to nurture her for two years. Coincidentally, a wife and mother named Cassandra has been missing from her home for two years. Clearly Addison is Cassandra but unwinding the whole, messy plot will take some time.

The Last Mrs. Parrish and The Wife Stalker were both deliciously wicked and clever, while their latest thriller is just lackluster. Sorry, sisters.

Liv Constantine is the pseudonym of sisters Lynne and Valerie Constantine. Some of their books are in development for both TV and film.

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

 

While I have grown to be a fan of Riley Sager, his latest, Survive the Night, misses the mark for me in a couple of areas. First of all, the premise: A campus killer has yet to be caught. A guilt-ridden roommate who must get away from the college. Despite all the warnings and information provided on campus, she gets into a car with a strange man for a ride home to Ohio? Secondly, the unreliable narrator constantly flipping the plot with “movies in her head” got tiresome very quickly, and the “flips” seemed a cop out instead of good writing. This plot device was plain tiresome.

The story takes place just short of Thanksgiving 1991. Film student Charlie Jordan cannot take the guilt anymore regarding the death of her roommate Maddy. She just must get away from campus NOW, so she posts a request on a ride board. Remember those? Her boyfriend Robbie does not put much effort into convincing her to stay on campus with him.

Josh Baxter is the stranger who shows up after 9 p.m. to give Charlie an all-night ride home to Youngstown, Ohio, from fictional Olyphant University in New Jersey. Charlie knows she is doing a risky thing getting a ride from someone she does not know but her anxiety and survivor guilt are in control of her. As the projected six-hour journey progresses, she talks herself into and out of believing that Josh is the Campus Killer. At a stop for food at a diner in the middle of nowhere, Charlie calls Robbie and lets him know she is in trouble. She thinks the waitress might be of help in this situation and that Robbie will have called the police.

But all is not what it seems of course as this is a Riley Sager thriller in which Charlie must find a way to survive the night.

Sager pays homage to the many movies he loves as well as to some music from the 1990s. He is a former journalist, editor, and graphic designer who previously published mysteries under his real name, Todd Ritter. A Pennsylvania native, Riley lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he writes, reads, cooks, and attends movies. My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 8, 2021.

I would like to thank the PENGUIN GROUP Dutton for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict

 

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray misses the mark for me. Benedict has made a career of writing about admirable women such as Mrs. Einstein, Mrs. Churchill, and Mrs. Christie. In this book, she has collaborated with another writer to provide a look into the story of a woman whose whole life is nothing but deception. Worse, this woman feels she deserves to experience a “grand passion with a man” even if it is someone else’s husband. Try as I might, I find this book and this person wanting. I agree that this is a “little-known story,” but I do not find it “remarkable.” In this case, the man behind the woman is also not admirable but a serial philanderer.

This historical fiction explains the charade put on by Belle Marion Greener as she passes for white to work for J.P. Morgan as his personal librarian for his collection of rare books and such for the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.

Heather Marie Benedict left her litigator career in New York City to focus on writing novels. Her first novel, The Chrysalis, prompted her to write full-time. As Marie Benedict, she has written historical fiction about famous women including The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Other Einstein, Carnegie's Maid, The Only Woman in the Room, and Lady Clementine. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

Victoria Christopher Murray is the author of nine novels including The Ex Files; Too Little, Too Late; and Lady Jasmine. She splits her time between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 7, 2021.

I would like to thank the Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman

 

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman seems like a real departure from her previous books that I have read (Lady in the Lake, for example). The protagonist is not at all likable and very self-indulgent not to mention totally unreliable with added help from Ambien and oxycodone. The timeline that jumps all over the place I found to be disconcerting.

Gerry Andersen is a novelist who wrote the best seller Dream Girl, about which he says is not modeled on any one person. He is in both a writing slump and a physical slump having fallen down the stairs of his new digs. He has just come off his third divorce and the death of his mother, whose illness caused him to move from New York to Baltimore so he could take care of her. Worse, he has a crazy ex-girlfriend who isn’t yet ready to give up on his supporting her as he did in New York. He thought he got rid of her when he sold his property there, but she is on his trail.

When he starts receiving strange phone calls and visits in the middle of the night from a woman claiming to be the “dream girl,” he is wondering if he is falling into dementia like his mother or if the drugs are now in control of his world. His life has become a nightmare, and he does not know if it is the sleep-time variety or real.

Laura Lippman is an Edgar Award-winning novelist. She has written 21 novels, a novella, a children’s book, and a collection of short stories. She lives with her family in Baltimore.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 6, 2021.

I would like to thank William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and Custom House for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Haven Point by Virginia Hume

 

Virginia Hume’s debut novel Haven Point names a coastal vacation community in Maine where the Demarest family spends their summers. Cadet nurse Maren met Dr. Oliver Demarest at Walter Reed Medical Center during World War II, which readers learn in a flashback.

The story begins in August of 2008 with Maren waiting in Haven Point for her granddaughter Skye to arrive from Washington, D.C. Together they will decide where to scatter Skye’s mother Annie’s ashes.

The plot pivots along multiple timelines as readers learn about the Demarest’s summers when Maren raises three children and cares for Oliver’s alcoholic mother while he remains at his D.C. orthopedic practice. Being an outsider in a swanky resort community, Maren is never accepted by some members though she deals with them with grace and dignity. The community shows its true colors when a tragedy strikes the Demarests.

In the next generation, Annie’s bouts with rehab bounces her daughter Skye from her home with her mother to living periodically with her grandparents, spending time in Haven Point where Skye, too, is treated like an outsider.

Only when all family secrets are revealed will Skye come to terms with her life and her mother’s death.

Virginia Hume, a freelance writer and editor, began her career in politics and public affairs having served as Deputy Press Secretary for the Republican National Committee in the 1990s. She is the daughter of American journalist and political commentator Brit Hume. She lives outside Washington, D.C., with her family.