Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane

 Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane is a gripping domestic thriller. In the prologue, Kane plunges readers into a chilling tableau: the Tanner family of four has vanished—dinner half-eaten, a bloodstain by the door, their bookstore in Sleepy Hollow, New York, on fire. Fifteen years later, the Tanner’s presumed-dead daughter, Aubrey, returns at just the moment an emergency court hearing is taking place regarding the estate of her late grandfather Xavier Tanner, sparking an unlikely alliance of three of the women in the room who hold long-buried secrets.

The courtroom scene is narrated by Stella, a psychologist whose mother Isabel is Xavier’s niece. Marni Richards is an elementary school teacher who suffers with great anxiety. Hanno Sato is the owner of the local coffee shop. In one way or another, each woman has a connection with the Tanners.

The story of what happened on the day the Tanners disappeared is rolled out with  tension-ratcheting momentum as each woman takes the stage briefly in the telling of what happened that day. However, the multiple point of view structure of the thriller with all four women telling the story is a challenge to readers trying to keep track of so many voices.

Aubrey challengers and threatens Stella, Marni, and Hanna with what she knows and what she thinks the role of each woman was on the day the Tanners disappeared. Before the story reaches its conclusions, one of the women will be questioned by the police, another will be caught up in the terror involving a son who has gone missing, and the third will be wrecked by the reveal of all the details about what happened 15 years ago.

Darby Kane is the pseudonym of HelenKay Dimon a former trial attorney and an award-winning romantic suspense author. A native of Pennsylvania, Dimon lives in California.

 

 

Dead Man Blues

 Author Silas House, writing under the pseudonym S.D. House, steps away from his usual Southern story telling to pen the book he has said he wants to read: a murder mystery called Dead Man Blues. Set in the 1950s in the fictional tiny town of Shady Grove on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Dave Hendricks has fallen about as far as a man can fall: he has lost his wife, his best friend, his job, and his reputation.

Left with only a houseboat to call home and his loyal dog, he works odd jobs in the marina where he rents space for his boat, drinks Jameson, and listens to the blues. A scream across the lake leads him to a fishing camp where someone has been murdered. Once a sheriff for his small town, his investigative instincts kick in as he surveys the murder scene before the current sheriff, his former best friend, arrives.

Even though the sheriff has betrayed Dave, he calls on Dave to help investigate the murder for the good of the community. Dave agrees to work along with, not for, the sheriff to find the killer who slashed and stabbed his victim.

When a second body is discovered—this one floating in Cedar Lake--the townsfolk are fearful of a killer in their community. Dave begins to piece together the puzzle about the two dead men, their connection to each other, and their connection to the community, as he closes in on the murderer.

House said on his Facebook page: “I’ve always wanted to write a murder mystery and now I have, under a slight pseudonym to differentiate this commercial work from my literary writing.”

He is known throughout the South as a quintessential person of letters: a novelist, poet, music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. He served as the  Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2023-2024. His trilogy of Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo are not to be missed by fans of Southern fiction. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads, Instagram, and Facebook starting August 5, 2025.

I would like to thank Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

 The eighth book in Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series, The Proving Ground pits Mickey Haller against the Artificial Intelligence industry when a teenager follows a command from a chatbot that tells him that it is okay to murder his ex-girlfriend. Leaving criminal law behind, Haller takes on the civil suit of Brenda Randolph, mother of the victim Rebecca, opposing TidalwAIv Technologies.

 

TidalwAIv has a lot at stake as it is looking for one of the bigger tech companies to gobble it up with its investors coming out billions ahead. On the other hand, Brenda wants three things from the company: accountability, action, and apology; the company just wants to offer a big payoff for a signed non-disclosure statement.

 

As the trial is about to begin, the Mason brothers, lawyers of record for TidalwAIv, have been playing loose with the discovery material offered to Haller, who believes the real evidence is hidden in all the redactions of the documents. Jack McEvoy, a journalist who wants to write a book about the case when it reaches its conclusion, signs on to work through the tons of printed discovery materials, where his research reveals a key witness who is fearful about testifying.

 

Before the trial begins, Aaron Colton’s parents, Bruce and Trisha, want to sue TidalwAIv, for turning their son into a killer. The judge allows them to join Haller’s case. The bonding of the mothers will work well for the trial but the father is easily persuaded by monetary offers. What sounded like a good idea in joining the cases may prove to be a thorn in Haller’s side as he and his team work to defeat AI gone rogue in court, the proving ground.

Set against the background of the LA fires of 2025, a personal side of the story comes forth as Haller’s first ex-wife Maggie McFierce moves in with him since her house is in the no-way in zone of the fires. This turn of events ignites a flame between the former partners.

 

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he wrote his first novel featuring Harry Bosch, The Black Echo, which he based partly on a true crime. Three of Connelly’s characters have found success on streaming platforms Amazon Prime and Netflix: Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Ballard.

 

 

We Were Never Friends by Kaira Rouda

 Sorority sisters Beth and Roxy’s adult children are getting married to each other, and to kick off an engagement party, Roxy has pulled out all the stops for a sorority sister reunion to celebrate Celeste Harrison and Zach Gentry in the latest from Kaira Rouda, We Were Never Friends.

Roxy has invited Beth, the mother of the bride of course, but she has also included Jamie Vale, the double-legacy pledge who is now a cardiologist. A fourth “sister,” Amelia Dell gets word about the festivities, crashing the party with her current boy toy Brett.

Gathering at Roxy’s Palm Springs vacation home, the “sisters” notice how the home refurbished by Roxy’s husband Ryan looks so much like the hotel where the last gathering of the women occurred, the Desert Sands, giving the gathering a déjà vu moment. A fifth member of the sorority sister group, Sunny Spencer, drowned at that celebration 25 years ago.

But as the title declares, these women were never friends, and the cracks in their relationships grow over a couple of days together. Rouda expertly weaves the women’s past entanglements and simmering resentments into the weekend’s escalating drama. Before the party is over, one of the revelers will not be leaving alive.

Kaira Rouda was born in Illinois but lives in Long Beach, California. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Women’s Fiction Author Association, and the International Thriller Writers. Her book Jill is Not Happy has been named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Zibby Media. 

 

I can't believe I finished this crappy book

 

What did I just read?

Author Stephanie Perkins calls Overdue a  sweet and swoony romance for adults. Riddled with pronouns, accented with unnecessary profanity, populated with an array of DEI characters including homosexuals, trending woke, and strutting king-sized liberal viewpoints, this is an over-long slog about a 29-year-old woman who has to decide if she wants to marry her long-time boyfriend by dating others for a month. Then two months. Then three months. Romance? Think again.

I thought I requested a cute little romance in a library setting. Disappointed.

Ingrid Dahl has a chance to move up and actually have a career by going to library school for FREE! She is already working at the library and turns down a remarkable chance for free education. Distracted by this game of let’s date around before getting married although we have been together for 11 years, she is decidedly immature.

I deserve a prize for sticking with this mess until the very last word.

This book is Stephanie Perkins’ departure from writing young adult romances and YA horror novels. Born in South Carolina, she lives with her husband in Asheville, North Carolina.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 29, 2025.

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

 

Nash Falls by David Baldacci

Walter Nash leads a comfortable, predictable life as a high‐level executive and family man who is unaccustomed to violence or intrigue in Nash Falls by David Baldacci. In this high tension thriller, his life will be turned completely upside down after a visit in the dead of night when the FBI makes contact with a damning revelation: Nash’s firm, Sybaritic Investments, is a money‑laundering scheme for a global criminal mastermind.

With little choice, Nash gives in to the FBI’s plan for him to go undercover. Once Nash begins a covert investigation into the vast workings of his company and all its divisions, everything in his reality starts to spin out of control once the evil schemer is somehow informed—a leak!-- of his pledge to the FBI. What begins as surveillance becomes survival. As Nash loses everything, he must reinvent himself from a mild‑mannered businessman into a vengeance seeker.

The cost to his personal life is devastating as a family member is kidnapped. When the captive goes online with an incriminating reveal about Nash—albeit the disclosure is one lie after another—he is forced to turn fugitive. With the help of his late father’s war buddy, Nash is able to make a daring escape to a safe retreat as he regroups in plotting how to fight back.

In this character-driven novel, Nash struggles with his conscience regarding revenge and violence and what these will cost to his personal identity and value system. His dilemma is reminiscent of Baldacci’s character Amos Decker first mentioned in Memory Man. Nash, an ordinary man being corrupted into becoming something he is not, is a frequent trope in thriller fiction.

David Baldacci, a New York Times bestselling author, has captivated readers worldwide with his gripping suspense and legal novels, many drawn from his background as an  attorney. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Baldacci has created numerous acclaimed series including the aforementioned Amos Decker series, as well as the Camel Club series, the Atlee Pine series, and the Aloysius Archer series. His debut novel Absolute Power launched his career in 1996, and he has continued to produce bestsellers that blend legal expertise with compelling storytelling.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 27, 2025.

I would like to thank Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Widow by John Grisham

 What if you are innocent and no one believes you? Publishing on  October 21, 2025, The Widow by John Grisham centers on Simon Latch, a small-town Virginia lawyer who must find a way to clear his name after being accused of murdering client Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow. Grisham’s longtime involvement with the Innocence Project directly informs the themes and emotional core of The Widow, even though the novel itself is a fictional “whodunit.”

Barnett comes into Latch’s office in need of a new will. Another lawyer in town gave it a try, but she is not satisfied with his work. While Latch usually charges $250 for a simple will, he sees a bigger paycheck as the widow claims to have great wealth. Greed drives him in this seemingly good fortune as he struggles to pay his bills and hold his marriage together.

Seeing a need to protect this woman’s wealth, Latch endeavors to draw up an expansive will setting up a plan for the distribution of her assets upon her death. Over a series of lunches he puts on his own tab, Latch extracts information from Barnett to create this last testament.

What Latch struggles to validate is the expanse of her wealth. He begins to wonder if she understands just how many assets she actually possesses. When it comes to the ones she can leave her fortune to, the answers to his questions make clear she has no one in her life other than two greedy stepsons with whom she has no relationship.

When the widow is involved in a car accident in which she is at fault, other legal documents become necessary, which Latch creates—at the urging of a concerned nurse--and is forced to have her sign while in the hospital where she is recovering from her injuries. Then the unthinkable happens and everything goes off the rails.

Latch’s efforts to prove himself not guilty of the widow’s murder is anguishing as he faces circumstantial evidence in the role he played in the death. Grisham uses his experience representing clients wrongly accused of crimes to illustrate how legal missteps and flawed evidence can threaten lives.

Latch finds himself on the brink of ruin as his already struggling practice nets not nearly enough to pay a highly recommended defense lawyer. Even closing his practice and selling the building will only make a dent in much needed finances. He finds it hard to believe that any jury could convict him because he is innocent of committing the murder and the evidence is only circumstantial.

The Widow, though fictional, carries forward these concerns as it portrays an innocent man racing to reclaim his reputation and prove his innocence in court. The Widow is less about who committed murder and more about how easily the wrong person can end up in the crosshairs.

Fans of Grisham’s earlier legal thrillers will find comfort in the familiar rhythm of courtroom drama, while newcomers may be surprised by the novel’s emotional resonance. Grisham is a board member of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit devoted to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals. Grisham made a name for himself with his very first  novel, A Time to Kill (1989), followed by other court procedural novels that made him king of the modern legal thriller.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 25, 2025.

I would like to thank Doubleday Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s All This Could Be Yours

 Coming out September 9, Hank Phillippi Ryan’s All This Could Be Yours is a taut, emotionally charged thriller that explores the dark undercurrents of fame, family, and the secrets from the past that keep trespassing on current lives. Blending psychological suspense with the precision of  journalistic writing, Ryan delivers an engrossing story that is both timely and chilling.

While readers might thrill at the opportunity to attend an author event at their local bookstore, it is a different story for the writer. Tessa Calloway keeps telling herself she is living the dream but the pressure of flight after flight, a different city every night, as she fulfils her contract to conduct author visits is taking its toll on her as well as on her husband and two children back home.

Not only the pace of the tour and being away from home plague Tessa but also something creepy is going on. Starting with a locket left behind in Tessa’s hotel room, a series of events is leaving her unsettled: startling messages left at her hotels, insistent questions about her private life from audience members, and people taking and leaving things in her hotel room while she is out. Tessa thinks it could all add up to something bad that happened when she was 10 years old, but it could be another thing that occurred when she was a teenager: events that caused her mother to flee with her and change their names.

Author Ryan seems to be digging into her own book tour experience as she captures the chaotic pace of the travel and the actual author events themselves. Tessa’s internal turmoil is magnified by the fact she cannot halt the pace in order to stop what sinister event seems about to occur. A thin line between having it all and what the costs may be to keep it all drives this page turner to the finish with one final twist.

Born in Indianapolis, Hank Phillippi Ryan is an American investigative reporter for Channel 7 News on WHDH-TV, a local television station in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also the author of mystery thrillers. Several of her books have been optioned for film and television.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 15, 2025.

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

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

 Following the success of the runaway best seller, A Flicker in the Dark, Stacy Willingham returns to the murky waters of Southern Gothic suspense with Forget Me Not, a story that examines how trauma reverberates across decades. Coming out August 26, the novel focuses on Claire Campbell, a journalist who has spent 22 years running from the ghosts of her past.

Haunted by the tragic murder of her sister Natalie, an event that drove their parents apart, Claire escaped her South Carolina hometown of Claxton for a fresh start in New York City at The New York Journal. She has not been back since she left 15 years ago but an unexpected call from her father brings her back home to deal with all of it again.

Now a freelance writer with her own schedule, she decides to take a job for the summer in the nearby Galloway Farm where her sister once worked before she disappeared. She will be picking grapes and doing other farm chores while staying on the farm in the guest house where she makes a surprising discovery: an old journal.

The past and present begin to be woven together as Claire uses her journalistic skills and the mysterious diary to create a narrative about the history of the farm and its people. What seems to be a tranquil atmosphere is anything but as the diary starts to reveal the story of a runaway teenage girl whose love for an older man turns into something dangerous as long-unsolved crimes are detailed in its pages. Claire believes the account holds clues to Natalie’s fate.

As things turn dark and mysterious, it is a race to the finish for readers to discover just what happened on the farm…and where the bodies are buried.

Stacy Willingham had remarkable success with her debut novel, A Flicker in the Dark. Actress Emma Stone’s production company along with HBO Max are developing a series based on the novel. Willingham lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her family.

 

The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas

 The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas is a gripping, emotionally resonant thriller that balances family drama with suspense that never slackens. Arriving on shelves August 5, the novel is a tense read filled with twists and turns as Tasha, the stay-at-home mother of twins in Chew Norton, a fictional town set near Somerset, England, and her mechanic husband Aaron embark on a” trade-life-with her successful scientist sister Alice” for a week in Venice.

Alice, a look-alike with her sister, and her husband Kyle, a successful entrepreneur, are in for a busy week in Tasha’s home as they are caring for two 3-year-olds. Tasha and Aaron enjoy a chance to reconnect after raising twins, but their holiday is colored black by a stranger who follows them on the streets of Venice, threatening them harm.

Meanwhile, the illusion of safety in quiet Chew Norton shatters when Tasha receives a devastating phone call: Alice and Kyle have been attacked during an apparent burglary leaving Kyle dead and putting Alice in intensive care. This terrible news is followed by a chilling note to Tasha shoved through her mail slot: “It was supposed to be you.”

What follows is a masterpiece of misdirection presenting a psychological puzzle that keeps readers guessing until the final pages. The story unfolds through alternating perspectives—Tasha, Alice, and their mother Jeanette weave a layered narrative of past and present that slowly reveals the family’s buried traumas and long-held secrets. A haunting subplot emerges involving a long-missing sister.

The Wrong Sister is Claire Douglas’ 10^th novel. She is a British author and former journalist. Her fiction writing career began when she won a competition in Marie Claire magazine with the submission of the first three chapters of her first novel which led to a publishing contract with HarperCollins. She lives in Bath, Somerset, England, with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 4, 2025.

I would like to thank HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline

 Author Lisa Scottoline ventures into new territory with The Unraveling of Julia, trading her familiar thrillers for a work part psychological fiction, part historical fiction with a twist of a ghost story. Hitting bookstore shelves July 15, the novel follows Julia Pritzker, a recently widowed woman grappling with the traumatic murder of her husband, when out of nowhere she inherits a Tuscan villa.

Emilia Rossi, old enough to be Julia’s grandmother if she had one, has bequeathed to Julia, a total stranger, the villa, a depleted vineyard, and a large monetary sum. Julia is adopted so she wonders how a recluse in Italy could even know her name or her contact information in Pennsylvania.

Julia journeys to Italy to unravel the mystery and is stunned by her resemblance when the caretaker shares a photograph of Emilia. Evidence that a young girl once lived in the villa stimulates Julia into imagining that she could be on the trail of her birth mother. The crumbling villa is not enough to persuade her to sell it as a local realtor keeps trying to tempt her with the offers he has been collecting.

With the introduction of paranormal elements, the novel takes a turn with Julia discovering she has a “gift,” she suffers a shock when touching a photograph of Emilia on the Rossi crypt in the cemetery, and she experiences strange occurrences at the villa, including visions of a long dead historical figure, Caterina Sforza (1463-1509),  an Italian noblewoman who lived during the Renaissance. Julia learns that Emilia had long believed that she was related to Sforza, so sure that she had a ceiling fresco created in the villa that featured the Sforza family tree.

The action picks up when Julia meets a librarian who helps her get away from people who have been following her ever since she inherited a fortune. Gianluca Moretti befriends her and becomes her companion as she tries to find answers about her inheritance and the possibility that Emilia is somehow related to her. Julia and Gianluca become attracted to each other but she pushes away her feelings as she buried her husband just a few months ago. When Gianluca has a terrible accident, Julia believes her pursuers were also chasing him. The local police are not much help, and Julia grows suspicious of them as well. With Gianluca out of the picture, Julia is on her own to unravel the Tuscan mystery.

Lisa Scottoline’s visits to Italy empower her descriptions of the Italian landscape and the various museums and architecture of the area. She has written more than two dozen novels as well as a couple of nonfiction books with her daughter. She has been drawn to writing historical fiction in recent years. She lives in Philadelphia with a menagerie of horses, dogs, and cats.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 30, 2025.

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

 

Fast Boys and Pretty Girls by Lo Patrick,

 A Haunting Return to the Heart of Georgia

“One year lasts a lifetime when it’s the year that changes everything” shares former teen model Danielle “Dani” Greer in Fast Boys and Pretty Girls by Lo Patrick, available July 8. As Dani, she saw New York City, Miami, and Paris, but after a short modeling career, Danielle moves back to Pressville, a small town modeled after Ellijay, Georgia, in a story that burns slowly and leaves deep scars.

Now married with four daughters all living in her childhood home, Danielle wakes from a nap to the excitement of the girls’ discovery of a body in the wooded ravine behind their house. While the majority of the book flashes back to Dani’s modeling years when she found herself enamored with a Georgia underage misfit, the current timeline revolves around the mystery surrounding the bones found on Danielle’s property.

As Danielle reveals that her boyfriend died in a motorcycle wreck on the curve of the road in front of her house more than a dozen years ago, she suspects that she knows the identity of the body in the woods although she has no idea how it could have ended up there. The past refuses to stay buried.

The investigation of the found remains by Cady Benson, a woman whose trajectory has been similar to Danielle’s with a brief career in New York and now settled as a police officer in Pressville, has triggered Danielle’s mental visit back to the confusing time in her life when she was a 17-year-old on her own in the Big Apple trying to carve out a modeling career.

Once again Danielle enters a puzzling phase in her life causing her to ask, could it be who I think it is buried in the woods? How much if anything do I know about the quickly identified body?

A satisfying exploration of love, loss, and the weight of secrets in small-town America, a surprising twist will devastate Danielle’s family.

Georgia native Lo Patrick is proving to be a compelling voice in Southern mystery fiction. A lawyer-turned-writer, she lives in the Atlanta suburbs with her family. Her debut novel, The Floating Girls, earned a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly in 2022, and she followed it with The Night the River Wept, another gripping Southern-crime tale.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 25, 2025.

I would like to thank Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

 

 

Our Last Resort by Clémence Michallon

Clémence Michallon’s sophomore novel, Our Last Resort, is a powerful psychological crime thriller, written using several timelines to tell the story of self-made siblings Frida and Gabriel. The pair grew up cloistered in a cult in upstate New York led by a charismatic and fanatical leader from birth to adulthood, when they made a daring escape from the compound.

Hitting shelves July 8, the book is set in the desert beauty of Escalante, Utah, at a luxury hotel where Frida and Gabriel agree to meet to repair the fracture in their bond that has developed over the last few years since Gabriel moved to the West Coast to get far away from the past. They enjoy swimming in the pool and taking desert trail hikes until a young woman who was also vacationing there turns up dead.

The situation quickly unravels as the police sort things out. When the first suspect, the dead woman’s husband, has his lawyer clear his name, suspicion falls upon Gabriel who has a well-publicized skeleton in his closet. Haunted by his past both during his cult years as well as during a troubled marriage, Gabriel is devastated at this latest turn of events.

United by the trauma of their upbringing, Frida refuses to believe Gabriel even knew the dead woman. As she doubles down to develop an alternate scenario regarding the murder, looking for evidence the police missed, how much will be enough to clear Gabriel of the crime?

As the back story develops alongside the present-day timeline, the climax explodes with a big reveal readers will not see coming.

Clémence Michallon burst into the writing world with The Quiet Tenant in 2023. Her background includes being a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Time Magazine, The Independent, and more. Born and raised near Paris, she moved to the United States in 2014 where she lives in  New York.

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates (I gave it one star)

 Few authors plunge into the darker recesses of human nature with as much skill and intensity as Joyce Carol Oates, in her  forthcoming novel, Fox, scheduled for release on June 17. Billed as her first murder mystery, Fox is about Francis Fox, a charismatic middle school English teacher at a private, elite school in Wieland, New Jersey, who ends up dead in an apparent single-car wreck.

Readers should be prepared to be shocked by the dirty deeds of Fox who lures young girls into his den, er, his office in the basement of the school. His shocking manipulations of the select seventh and eighth graders in his four classes are not for the faint. Little is spared in the descriptions of what he does to the girls who he first drugs.

Detective Howard Zenger is charged with solving the circumstances surrounding the death of Fox. Methodically he pieces together the clues that lead up to what happened not only to Fox but to his students. The girls seem not to fear Fox but rather seek his adoration. None tell their parents they are being abused because Fox has brainwashed them into thinking he loves them.

Oates seems to be creating her own Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) story rather than a murder mystery. Overall, in a blurb comparing Fox to Tom Ripley, a fascinating character who lives long in the mind of readers, Fox is found to be lacking. This is a story you must choose to push through or you throw up your hands and mark it DNF.

Joyce Carol Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published 60 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She also writes under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. She lives in New Jersey.

Don't Open Your Eyes by Liv Constantine

In a nightmarish journey into psychological terror, Don't Open Your Eyes by Liv Constantine plunges Annabelle Reynolds into a terrifying world of vivid, prophetic dreams that start coming true in increasingly disturbing ways.

Hitting bookstore shelves on June 17, Annabelle’s already anxious nature ramps up when her nearly perfect life with a husband, two daughters, a great career, and a wonderful home are threatened by bad dreams that turn into reality: an almost head-on collision with her husband and older daughter in the car, a serious fall from a balance beam that could have happened to her younger daughter.

Both scenarios are altered by Annabelle when she changes the timing for James and Scarlett to be on the road and picks up Olivia from school before she can go to gymnastics practice. In reality, a collision did occur causing James and Scarlett to be tied up in lengthy traffic and a gymnastic team member did fall from the beam, breaking her arm.

Relieved beyond words, Annabelle explains why she changed elements in both scenarios to her husband James, a medical doctor, who scoffs at Annabelle for believing her dreams could predict the future. He explains she is overly anxious and needs to return to her former therapist.

As the visions in her dreams become increasingly detailed and terrifying, both Annabelle’s and readers’ dread escalate as the most horrific predictions come true placing one of her daughters in a deadly situation. Beneath all the terror of Annabelle’s dreams and their realizations is a scaffold of past memories and secrets that are coming back into her life.

Liv Constantine has crafted yet another twisted thriller that will not let readers down. She lives in Milford, Connecticut.

 When Hattie Norwood visits her parents in fictional Mountain View, South Carolina, having learned their farm fields are too depleted to grow peanuts any longer, she is confronted with a big challenge on behalf of her hometown in Sing Me Home to Carolina by Joy Callaway coming out June 10.

Although Hattie just planned to stay the weekend, the mayor wants Hattie to use her skills as an event planner in Charlotte, North Carolina, to help the small town fight the proposed building of the new Carolina Panthers football stadium in their town. Hattie resists because she thinks the stadium would be a big boost to Mountain View, while town folks like their town just like it is.

To complicate things further for Hattie, her former boyfriend Lee, is back in town after his career in the Atlanta Braves was brought to an end thanks to a shoulder injury. Not only is she still attracted to Lee even though they broke up 11 years ago, but also she is curious about the new guy in town, Fox.

Rather than let her friends and neighbors down, Hattie agrees to stay in town long enough to help put on a benefit to stop the stadium during the annual Founder’s Day celebration. Lee makes the suggestion that the celebration be held at the Norwoods’ barn thinking the farm could transition from a peanut farm to a music and event venue. He even insists on paying for improvements to the old barn.

Who might win in this small town vs a football stadium competition? How might the Norwoods adapt from farming to running an event center? Will Hattie stay in her hometown and settle down with Lee…or Fox…or will she return to Charlotte?

Joy Callaway writes  historical fiction and southern contemporary romance novels. With a degree in journalism, she served as a marketing director for a wealth management company. She resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family.

 It’s one thing when your husband is arrested by the FBI for wire fraud but it is quite another when a social media account for the town of Juniper Shores, North Carolina, blasts this personal information and many updates in the latest beach read from Kristy Woodson Harvey, Beach House Rules, hitting store shelves on May 27.

Denied bond for white-collar crime, Charlotte Sitterly’s husband Bill has left her and their daughter Iris in a very vulnerable situation in which they cannot access their bank accounts, their house, their car, their personal belongings. But a stroke of luck in the form of neighbor Alice Bailey offering accommodation at her former bed and breakfast where she is already providing a safe harbor to two other families, is just the stroke of luck Charlotte and Iris need.

On the other hand, Alice’s beachfront home is a favorite target of social media gossip primarily because Alice is being targeted as a Black Widow having lost a husband to an avalanche on a ski trip, a second to a car accident, and a third to a fall from their three-story home.

But Charlotte and Iris are embraced by Alice and the other two families, and in this environment, they start to put their lives back together as Charlotte, always a homemaker, re-enters the job force and Iris is able to keep attending her school thanks to her popular friends who rally around her.

What are the chances that Bill has been framed, that someone else committed the crime? If he is guilty, can Charlotte possibly restore funds to those who have been cheated, especially to those who have had their entire retirement dollars wiped out? Will Charlotte and Iris ever be able to claim their home or will they continue group living in Alice’s home for the foreseeable future?

Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism, Harvey’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Southern Living, Parade, Traditional Home, and USA TODAY. She lives with her family in Beaufort, NC.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting May 3, 2025.

I would like to thank Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster LLC, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

 When Katie’s boyfriend cheats on her, her self-esteem takes a nosedive. Worse, her coworker assigns her a video profile of a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West in The Love Haters, a contemporary romance from Katherine Center arriving on bookstore shelves May 20.

Katie does not want the assignment—not because the Coastie is a hunk—but because she cannot swim nor is she a fan of helicopters, which are used in these rescues. Not only does she need to be a swimmer but she also needs to train to be the person who needs rescue from the ocean. However, if she does not fulfill the assignment, she will become a candidate for lay-off.

Tom “Hutch” Hutchinson is said to be a love-hater having gone through an ordeal in which his brother’s drunk fiancé threw herself at him at his brother’s rehearsal dinner. That created a rift between the brothers, who were already on shaky ground.

Now a bit of a love-hater herself after being dumped, Katie finds herself drawn to Hutch as he is such a kind, considerate person, as well as a competent rescue swimmer. When he learns she cannot swim other than maybe a sloppy dog paddle, he starts meeting with her daily to make her a competent swimmer. The more the two spend time together, the more the love-hating may be wearing off.

Readers will be rooting for Katie and Hutch in the latest from Katherine Center whose The Lost Husband and Happiness for Beginners were both made into Netflix movies. The author lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 18, 2025.

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

 

Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe

 In the first of two planned novels about the history of a plantation in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and its family, Mary Alice Monroe writes in the voice of an adult Eliza Rivers as she recalls her early years in Where the Rivers Merge being published May 13. The present is June 17, 1988, when Eliza, now Mrs. DeLancey, plans to protect Mayfield by putting 1,000 acres surrounding the farm into a conservation plan, a move her son Arthur protests as he tries to push her out of the DeLancey Group.

Eliza’s life as a young girl in the early 1900s consisted of plenty of chores but also time to explore the land, the pond, the forests, the birds, and other creatures. A horse lover, Eliza recounts a bit of history about the Marsh Tacky as she recollects her father’s purchase of the stallion Capitan. However, life on Mayfield was not all rosy as the Rivers family was “land rich and money poor” causing some of the strife in the often-dysfunctional family with a city mother and a country father.

Over the years, Eliza has been able to turn things around on Mayfield, creating a profitable truck market business, and she is developing the Mayfield Wildlife Foundation to preserve the land. With her second marriage, she gained a “collection of businesses into a conglomerate of corporations and subsidiaries” that became the DeLancey Group.

With her son’s limited vision for Mayfield and the company, Eliza seeks out her niece Savannah and grandniece Norah to visit Mayfield so she can share the story of her family’s history with them. A mural in the dining room of the house serves to prod Eliza to tell the stories that go with the scenes starting in the 1700s with construction of the fields for the farm’s original crop, rice.

This initial book in the series takes the reader up to Eliza’s first wedding in 1926 as she ends the telling with “This story is far from over.” Mary Alice Monroe, the Queen of Low Country Fiction and a go-to author of beach reads, has turned her hand to historical fiction, leaving this reader eager for the next book, to be called The Rivers’ End, to learn about all the tales remaining in the mural and the questions left unanswered.

Monroe is at her best when dealing with complex family situations and relationships. She lives on the Isle of Palms, a small barrier island just outside of Charleston, and has a mountain hideaway in North Carolina.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 12, 2025.

I would like to thank William Morrow, an imprint of Harper/Collins Publishers, and NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Readers’ Copy in return for an objective review.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick

 Traveling back to the 1960s when Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique was a popular book club read, four women—Margaret, Viv, Bitsy, and Charlotte—struggle with their place in the world in The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick coming out April 22.

Living in a planned community in Virginia, the women call themselves the Bettys in a salute to the author of Mystique. Bonded by their book club, the four each deal with various struggles: raising children mostly single-handedly, dealing with troubling times in their marriages, and dissatisfaction with their current life.

Though Margaret is devoted to her three children and her husband, she wants to do something more with her life. A writing contest catches her eye, causing her to wonder if she could brush up on her skills to become a successful writer.

Viv is proud of her “six “terrific, respectful, clean-cut, all-American kids,” loves her sexy husband, and really wants to get back to work as a nurse now that the kids are all in school. Frustrated with her doctor who will not prescribe birth control pills without her husband’s signature, she realizes her back-to-work plan is a fail as the smell of greasy pepperoni sends her to the bathroom…twice.

Bitsy is the youngest of the wives at 23. Having grown up with horses, Bitsy has always wanted to be a veterinarian but has been frustrated when none of her college professors would write her a recommendation for vet school because she is a woman. She  marries a veterinarian and works as a stable hand where she gets to ride and care for horses.

Charlotte is new to the community of Concordia, quickly earning a reputation as an “oddball.” For some reason not yet known by the others, her husband has banished her from the New York she loves to suburban living in Virginia. Her marital problems seem most profound as her husband is rarely home and is known to have a wandering eye. She finds joy in her four children and her ambitious painting projects.

While they attribute their willingness to try new outlooks and actions to having read Friedan’s book, they also give credit to the bonds they have created as they deal with the past, cope with a changing world, and redefine themselves.

Marie Bostwick writes uplifting historical and contemporary fiction. Marie’s popular Cobbled Court Quilt series has been embraced by quilters and non-sewers alike. Her novel The Second Sister was made into the Hallmark Hall of Fame feature film “Christmas Everlasting.” If she is not reading a book, Marie most likely is in her office writing one. She lives with her husband in Washington state.