During this uncertain, scary time, when I'm not virtual teaching, I'm helping keep anxiety at bay as best I can with snuggles with my beloved pup and lots of reading. I've been making it my goal to make my way through my TBR bookcases and the ARCs on my Kindle.
Since I've been social distancing at home, here's what I've read so far:
*The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James (ARC)
St. James is great at at intertwining a ghost story with a compelling mystery. Here, a woman named Carly Kirk revisits the scene of her aunt Viv's long ago disappearance. As Carly digs deeper into the past, the past comes looking for her, in terrifying ways she never anticipated. The flashback chapters of Viv, interspersed with Carly's present, are really effective in building up suspense, and the scares hit hard.
*Haunted Hayride with Murder by Auralee Wallace
This is one of my favorite cozy mystery series. I love the hilarious and smart main character, Erica Bloom, and all of her Otter Lake Security Team friends, as well as her love interest, Sheriff Grady Forrester. Centered around the Halloween antics going on in Otter Lake, when a dead body is found it starts up talks again about the Apple Witch-but Erica believes something more human, though just as evil, is behind the murder.
*The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I can see why so many people have loved this book so much. Evelyn Hugo is such a complex character, one of the biggest movie stars the world had ever seen, until she went into seclusion. Now she is ready to tell her life story, but only to a barely known reporter. As readers and reporter learn more about Evelyn, the surprises build to a hard-hitting conclusion.
*Follow Me by Kathleen Barber (ARC)
Barber tackles the new age of social media in a only somewhat successful story. The tale of an Instagram influencer who may be paying the price for putting her whole life on display seems very timely, and is definitely interesting and suspenseful. But the big twist felt too predictable, though I didn't see the secondary twist coming.
*The Guest List by Lucy Foley (ARC)
This is the kind of book I tend to love. A huge wedding on a remote island during a storm brings together a group of people with ties both known and unknown. Foley does an amazing job of building suspense by cutting between past and present, and there were so many twists and turns that I never saw coming.
*Last Seen Alive by Dorothy Simpson
This is definitely a dated British mystery-there is an entire subplot where the Inspector has to talk to his son about the dangers of becoming addicted to gluesniffing-and it definitely does not have the speediest of plot developments. The mystery of who killed the woman in the hotel, who was extremely popular in high school, is an okay one, but the ending is definitely a shocker.
*One Little Lie by Colleen Coble (ARC)
I hadn't realized this was a Christian mystery when I originally got the ARC (I don't typically read mysteries with religious themes of any kind, it's just not a subgenre I'm particularly interested in), but decided to read it anyway. The religion aspect felt minor compared to all the other things going on in the book. It feels like Coble just keeps tacking on so many things that the mystery gets lost and the plot gets confusing. The book left me feeling unsatisfied, and not interested in picking up the sequel.
*Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman
This is a fun, clever book full of purposefully fake information. It was definitely a good book to be reading during this time.
*Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race by Chris Grabenstein
I really like this middle grade series. It promotes a love of libraries and reading, as well as the power of friendship and knowledge. There are always fun adventures happening-in this entry, familiar characters go on a fact-finding race, while also encountering a blast from their hero Mr. Lemoncello's past.
*A Mold for Murder by Tim Myers
This is a cozy mystery with a male protagonist, which is definitely unusual. The problem is that he isn't a very likable protagonist-he spends so much time bemoaning how hard his love life is that the mystery seems to get lost in his shuffle. The ending was surprising, but the book was merely meh.
