Thursday, May 27, 2021

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free audioARC of this book. All opinions are my own.


Synopsis from Goodreads: 

From Laurie Frankel, the New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is, a Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, comes One Two Three, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry...and laugh again.

In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does...


Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed―tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne.

For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone’s seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they’ve been alive. Because it's hard to let go of the past when the past won't let go of you.

Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-grab-a-tissue-the-next novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it’s our daughters who will save us all.

Genre? Contemporary

Backlist? No. This novel will be published on June 8, 2021.

New to me Author? No.

What did I think?
This was my second Laurie Frankel book and one thing I noticed in both was how she was able to so beautifully weave serious, relevant subjects into novels that are fun and easy to read. One Two Three struck me as part family drama, part "Good Girls Guide to Murder". I listened to the audio and all of the narrators were extremely talented. They brought each of the sisters alive in their own ways. This book really made me think. So, if you're like me and think "environmental issues? meh, I'll pass on this," give it a try! I really enjoyed it! 

The Bridesmaid by Nina Manning

Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.




Synopsis from Goodreads: 

Your best friend. Your worst nightmare...

From the moment they met as children, Sasha knew that beautiful, wealthy, and confident Caitlin would always be her absolute best friend. Sasha would do anything to make Caitlin happy.

Even keep her darkest secrets…

The years have passed, but their friendship remains. And when Caitlin announces she’s getting married there is only one choice for the role of bridesmaid. Sasha will make sure Caitlin’s wedding is as beautiful and perfect as she is. Won’t she?

But as the big day approaches, cracks begin to appear. Because no matter what Sasha does, she never seems to make Caitlin happy.

And the secrets that once bound these two friends, now threaten to rip them apart for good...

Genre? Psychological thriller

Backlist? No. Pub day is today! May 27, 2021.

New to me Author? Yes.

What did I think? 

Woot Woot! 🎉 Happy Publication Day to The Bridesmaid by @ninamanning_author!
Huge thanks to the author, @netgalley, & @bookandtonic for the eARC.
Think about your best friend. You've been friends for most of your life. Of course you'd want them in your wedding, right?
The Bridesmaid was a page-turning novel that kept me reading to see what came next. It is suspenseful and really gives us a look into what friendship sometimes looks like.
Y'all, I legitimately questioned my feelings about friendships after this one. 😂
⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Inconceivable by Alex Johnston

    Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.



Synopsis from Goodreads: 

Fifteen years ago, Alex Johnston and her husband decided it was time to start a family. As it turned out, that was the easy part. Like many women of her generation, she had left child-bearing until her thirties as she finished her education and established her career. She was stunned to learn that her fertility had already peaked and was in serious decline. What followed was a harrowing, sometimes heart-breaking journey, including infertility and IVF treatments, and multiple attempts at surrogacy. She refuses to quit even after losing her first child (carried by a surrogate), a tragedy that jeopardized her marriage and her mental health.

Genre? Non-fiction/Memoir

Backlist? No. Pub day is today! May 4, 2021.

New to me Author? Yes.

What did I think? 

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of Inconceivable by Alex Johnston. This book stood out to me, as I'm currently going through secondary infertility after the loss of our second child to an ectopic pregnancy. Though I knew there was a possibility of triggers, I was willing to do my best, hoping there was also some "light at the end of the tunnel" moments.

Alex Johnston documents her struggles with getting pregnant, how much time and money she spent on IVF treatments, and her experiences through multiple tries at surrogacy (as in, someone else carrying for her). We have not tried IVF ourselves, but I do feel like I know a bit more about it after reading this memoir. 

I would recommend this book, honestly, to anyone. It really helps you look into the world of infertility, whether you live there or not.

The Wife Who Knew Too Much by Michele Campbell

   Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.



Synopsis from Goodreads: 

From Michele Campbell, the bestselling author of It's Always the Husband comes a new blockbuster thriller in The Wife Who Knew Too Much.

Tabitha Girard had her heart broken years ago by Connor Ford. He was preppy and handsome. She was a pool girl at his country club. Their affair should have been a summer fling. But it meant everything to Tabitha.

Years later, Connor comes back into Tabitha's life—older, richer, and desperately unhappy. He married for money, a wealthy, neurotic, controlling woman whom he never loved. He has always loved Tabitha.

When Connor’s wife Nina takes her own life, he’s free. He can finally be with Tabitha. Nina’s home, Windswept, can be theirs. It seems to be a perfect ending to a fairy tale romance that began so many years ago. But then, Tabitha finds a diary. "I’m writing this to raise an alarm in the event of my untimely death," it begins. “If I die unexpectedly, it was foul play, and Connor was behind it. Connor—and her.”

Who is Connor Ford? Why did he marry Nina? Is Tabitha his true love, or a convenient affair? As the police investigate Nina’s death, is she a convenient suspect?

As Tabitha is drawn deeper into the dark glamour of a life she is ill-prepared for, it becomes clear to her that what a wife knows can kill her.

Genre? Thriller

Backlist? Yes. Published July 28, 2020.

New to me Author? No.

What did I think? 

I've read a previous book from this author, Michele Campbell, that I really enjoyed for the most part, but had some very specific issues with it. So when I saw The Wife Who Knew Too Much, I was intrigued but hesitant. I'm glad I gave her a second chance and picked this up because it was SO GOOD.

Tabitha ends up re-connecting with a boyfriend from her teens and all of the love and emotion is still there between the two of them. Luckily, (or not), Conner's wife dies so they could be together. Good deal, right? Not at all. So many different things come to light that spells out T-R-O-U-B-L-E for Tabitha.

This book really had me going. It's definitely a suspenseful thriller. It's also the type of thriller where you don't really see the twist coming, but it's not a twist that comes fully out of left field. The twist makes sense and really ties it all up. I was a big fan of this one. 4.75 stars.

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Tiger Wars by Al Cimino

  Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.



Synopsis from Goodreads: 

The global smash-hit Netflix documentary mini-series Tiger King introduced viewers to the weird, crazy and chaotic life of private zoo owner and big cat breeder Joe Exotic, and his war against Carole Baskin. Baskin, who runs the Big Cat Rescue in Florida, a sanctuary for abused and abandoned wild cats, waged a long legal battle to have Joe’s exotic animal park in Oklahoma shut down for the maltreatment of his animals. But Carole had her own dark past and Joe wasn’t going down without a fight; he responded by plotting to have her murdered. Tiger Wars delves deeper into this stranger-than-fiction tale and tells the shocking story of this big cat war, the cult-like characters involved and the spiral of obsession that landed Joe Exotic in jail and exposed the dark heart of America’s big cat obsession.

Genre? Non-Fiction

Backlist? Yes. Published September 1, 2020.

New to me Author? Yes.

What did I think? 
Like a large number of people, I spent the first part of quarantine 2020 binge-watching the Tiger King on Netflix. So I felt like I was well aware of Joe Exotic and his eccentric ways and Carole Baskin and her whole deal. I definitely did (and still do) have a strong opinion on whether Joe should be found guilty and spend time in jail or whether Carole killed her husband and fed him to the tigers. 

However, this book definitely added a huge new layer of depth to what I thought I knew. Where Tiger King, the series, skimmed the surface of what was going on behind the scenes at G.W. Park, Tiger Wars dug deep and told us even more of the scoop. The Netflix series focused a lot more on Joe being the good guy, where as Tiger Wars shows us what others in his own park thought of him. 

This book was super interesting. It dug into Joe's trial, which I knew nothing about. I would definitely recommend it if you watched the series during quarantine. 

The Perfect Daughter by D.J. Palmer

 Huge thank you to @netgalley for the free ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.




Synopsis from Goodreads: 

The Perfect Daughter is a thriller that explores the truth or lies behind a teenage girl's multiple personality disorder, from D.J. Palmer, the author of The New Husband.

Grace never dreamt she’d visit her teenaged daughter Penny in the locked ward of a decaying state psychiatric hospital, charged with the murder of a stranger. There was not much question of her daughter’s guilt. Police had her fingerprints on the murder weapon and the victim’s blood on her body and clothes. But they didn’t have a motive.

Grace blames herself, because that’s what mothers do—they look at their choices and wonder, what if? But hindsight offers little more than the chance for regret.

None of this was conceivable the day Penny came into her life. Then, it seemed like a miracle. Penny was found abandoned, with a mysterious past, and it felt like fate brought Penny to her, and her husband Arthur. But as she grew, Penny's actions grew more disturbing, and different "personalities" emerged.

Arthur and Grace took Penny to different psychiatrists, many of whom believed she was putting on a show to help manage her trauma. But Grace didn’t buy it. The personas were too real, too consistent. It had to be a severe multiple personality disorder. One determined psychiatrist, Dr. Mitch McHugh, helped discover someone new inside Penny—a young girl named Abigail. Is this the nameless girl who was abandoned in the park years ago? Mitch thinks Abigail is the key to Penny’s past and to the murder. But as Grace and Mitch dig deeper, they uncover dark and shocking secrets that put all their lives in grave danger.
 

Genre? Thriller

Backlist? No. It's pub day was April 20, 2021.

New to me Author? Yes.

What did I think? 
Before I started this book, I had seen multiple reviews about how it wasn't any good. So I was hesitant. But boy, there's a reason I don't always read reviews. I thought this book was great! Penny is a teenager, who is found one day with blood all over her body, murder weapon in hand. The thing is, she cannot remember anything about where she was or what she was doing there. Penny's mom goes on a search to find out what really happened because she knows deep down that her daughter is innocent. 

This book was really interesting to me, especially with my background in psychology. Grace swears up and down that Penny has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID - previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder) ever since she was found in a park at 4 years old, but that's such a hard disability to diagnose, so others have a hard time believing her. Grace believes that Penny is fully innocent, but even if there was a chance that she committed this murder, it was one of her alters, not her. This book has the right amount of family drama thrown in with some legal themes, as well as the overarching theme of mental health awareness and trauma. 

April Reading Wrap Up

Another month has flown by. Here's a look at books we loved, books we didn't love, and books we DNF'd during the month of April. 


 Jay's Reads (20):


(Not Pictured: Winter Storms, Winter Solstice, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Bad Luck Club, and Yes & I Love You)



What I Rated Them:
Move Your Bus ☕☕☕☕
Two by Two ☕☕☕.5
This is My America ☕☕☕☕.5
Anxious People ☕☕☕☕.75
Nothing to See Here ☕☕☕.5
Winter Street ☕☕☕.25
The Cousins ☕☕☕☕.25
Winter Stroll ☕☕☕.5
Clap When You Land ☕☕☕☕.5
The Family Upstairs ☕☕☕☕.5
Winter Storms ☕☕☕☕.5
The Stranger Beside Me ☕☕☕
Winter Solstice ☕☕☕☕.5
Untamed ☕☕☕☕.75
The Vanishing Half ☕☕☕☕.75
Fierce Kingdom ☕☕☕.25
Dress Coded ☕☕☕.5
The Newcomer ☕☕☕☕.25
The Perfect Daughter ☕☕☕☕
Tiger Wars ☕☕☕.5
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ☕☕☕☕.5
Yes & I Love You ☕☕☕☕.5
Bad Luck Club ☕☕☕☕.75

Favorite Read: 
Anxious People, Untamed, and The Vanishing Half

Least Favorite Read:
Fierce Kingdom

DNF?:
I DNF'd Hamnet, but I put the audiobook on hold through the library and I'm going to try it that way.

Rolling over to next month: 
Hamnet (Waiting for audiobook)
Forget Me Not (currently holding onto this to return to later)
All Girls (currently holding onto this to return to later)
The Return
Inconceivable
In a Book Club Far Away