The Sun Down Motel

A creepy motel in a small town out in the middle of nowhere. Betty lives there because she loves nowhere else. There are others like her, but no one believes the truth about them.

Until Viv comes to town and starts digging, which just gets her in trouble. It’s 9182 and a few girls have gone missing that we know about. There’s a thread connecting them, but no one can see it except Viv. Then she goes missing.

In 2017 her niece, Carly, decides to go on a search. She begins living Viv’s life from 1982 in 2017. And everything slowly comes to light.

A spooky thriller with some seriously intense ghosts!! There’s a happily ever after though!

“If you want to meet people who make an art of not being curious, go to the Sun Down Motel.”

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Dial A for Aunties

Laugh out loud funny, love story, and a murder – all in one book!! That might be my favorite genre, and I found two this month.

Meddy has a Ma and Aunties who are meddlers of the best kind. They love her and would do anything for her, which they do.

Her mom catfishes a guy who ends up being the reason the police show up at the wedding she’s photographing. There’s a surprise blast from the past and plans that aren’t fully thought out end up saving the day!!

It took me three days to start it but only one to finish!

“There might be insta-love and also someone might die. We’ll see.”

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Golden State

What happens when there’s a suspicious death in a state where everyone is legally required to speak only truths? Seems like it would be easy to solve since no one is allowed to lie (the punishment is 5 years in prison per lie uttered publicly or to an official). That’s not the case in the Golden State.

But everything is On The Record. Every move. Every interaction. Every single piece of the day. Until it isn’t. Until there’s an anomaly. Until pieces of the record go missing. Until they seem to be altered to distort reality.

What a mind bender of a book really about truth and what can be known. Or is everything unknown and unknowable?

“She wants to speculate because that’s what Speculators do. We are the ones with the power, and the license, to truck with lies – we can sense them, we can handle them, and we are empowered to emit them ourselves. To construct different versions of the truth so each can be tested, so all might fall away until only the real one remains.”

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The Thursday Murder Club

This took me days to read, which is normal for some people but abnormal for me. I don’t know if it’s because of things happening in real life or the book wasn’t my favorite. Maybe right book, wrong time.

There are a lot of great one-liners in this that made me laugh aloud. Also a few twists and turns done deliberately with a unreliable narrator. I liked the back and forth of perspective with a journal mixed in, but I’m not going to rush to read the second one. Maybe someday.

“Then she said, ‘Are you ever free on Thursdays?’ And that, believe it or not, was the first I had heard of Thursdays.”

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Goodnight Beautiful

When Anne Bogel recommended this on an episode of What Should I Read Next, she said there were a few times she exclaimed aloud, “WAIT, WHAT?”

I had the same experience. So good. Mind bending. Thriller but not super scary. When I started part 2 I had to go back and look at the initial chapters to see what I missed. It’s all there. I could start over again right now to try to find all of the threads, but someone else needs tp read it before Book Club.

I can’t even share more about the story because anything I say will be a spoiler. Nothing is as it seems not even the jacket copy.

“And it’s not only them I’m interested in, it’s him, too, Dr. Statler.”

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The Push

I’m not sure what I think about this book. It’s well written. And page turning. And deeply dark.

It’s about mothers and daughters and marriage. Also mental illness and how it can be passed down through generations.

It also illustrates how significant it is that we learn how to be humans from the people who raise us. How to be mothers from our mother. It’s really hard to act differently from your parents, it’s possible but it takes an intentional effort.

“I would be different. I would be like other women for whom it all came so easily. I would be everything my own mother was not.”

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You Are Not Alone

What a ride this book was! So fast paced I read it in just a few hours. Shay witnesses something tragic and then her life changes dramatically for the better, but is it as it seems?

Throughout we are questioning the motives of people and their intentions. Are they being nice or do they want something from me? In this book only one of those questions is answered with a yes.

Captivating and spooky and mind-bending. also fact-filled, which was a nice break in the creepy action!

“I haven’t done anything illegal, I think frantically. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

Murder, Mystery, and Comedy … it’s not a combination found too often. There’s even a bit of a steamy (closed door) love story mixed in.

Finlay is overheard at Panera talking about the plot of her next romance suspense novel when she’s mistaken for a contract killer. With the bills piling up she can’t refuse the $50,000 payout.

The book is hilarious and smart. With great dialogue and funny conundrums. I loved it!! One of my top reads for the year!!

“My Google search history alone was probably enough to put me on a government watch list. I wrote suspense novels about murders like this. I’d searched every possible way to kill someone. With every conceivable kind of weapon. If researched every possible way to dispose of a body.”

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When She Knew

The thrillers continue with this child abduction story. It takes place over the course of ten days with an epilogue (which I always appreciate). The narrative alternates between the mother and the head detective on the case.

Almost everyone believes it’s the mother, but I never suspected her. And didn’t know who did it until the mother figured it out. Well written with many twists and turns!!

“I said to her that if you’ve been called those things, accused like the mother is, you never get over it. That’s the shame of it. if she’s guilty, she deserves it; if she’s innocent, then people have done her wrong.”

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The Woman in Cabin 10

I got this in a book club Christmas swap a few years ago and thought “not for me, but I hate giving books away, so I’ll keep it.”

It was perfect for my month of thrillers. Lo is a travel writer and is going on the inaugural cruise for a new company. But before she can go her home is robbed. Then she thinks she witnesses a murder on the ship.

But no one believes her because she’s already stressed from the break in. The book has a few twists and turns. Almost everyone is suspect at some point. It’s a good thriller, not “I can’t go to bed because I need to read the next chapter” until part 5 or 6 though.

“I should’ve felt afraid – a thirty-two year old woman, clearly wearing pajamas, wandering the streets in the small hours. But I felt safer out here than I did in my flat. Out here, someone would hear you cry.”

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