Wendy's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 13 Apr 2025 06:36:45 -0700 60 Wendy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Parents Weekend 217387739 From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.]]> 320 Alex Finlay 1250360722 Wendy 4
Having myself had multiple visits to private colleges for parent's weekend, I was intrigued. Right from the beginning when five students do not show up for dinner with their parents, I decided to suspend reality and just enjoy the suspense and mystery of what exactly happened. As the chapters alternate between the families and you learn more about the students through their families, Alex Finlay draws you in to their lives and relationships. This twisty suspense thriller kept my interest and was a quick read. Did I already mention that you need to suspend reality? I would like to see the author write another story that includes FBI agent Sarah Keller and her family. May 2025 Pub Date.]]> 3.66 2025 Parents Weekend
author: Alex Finlay
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: beach-read, book-club, coming-of-age, contemporary, domestic-thriller, family, fiction, friendship, multiple-narrators, multiple-timelines, mystery, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


Having myself had multiple visits to private colleges for parent's weekend, I was intrigued. Right from the beginning when five students do not show up for dinner with their parents, I decided to suspend reality and just enjoy the suspense and mystery of what exactly happened. As the chapters alternate between the families and you learn more about the students through their families, Alex Finlay draws you in to their lives and relationships. This twisty suspense thriller kept my interest and was a quick read. Did I already mention that you need to suspend reality? I would like to see the author write another story that includes FBI agent Sarah Keller and her family. May 2025 Pub Date.
]]> End of August 228680401 A captivating, multigenerational debut novel of a young woman navigating the personal trauma that ties herself, her nomadic mother, and her alcoholic grandmother together, perfect for fans of Ask Again, Yes and What the Fireflies Knew.

1979. Fifteen-year-old Aurora Taylor’s single mother prefers to leave when things get hard. She’s spent years abandoning bad boyfriends and dead-end jobs, without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror. After fifteen years in the passenger seat, Aurora needs more than two hands to count the towns she’s lived in. She’s learned to live small—it’s easier to leave when you don’t need to say goodbye. So when her mother Laine shows up at school with the car loaded, Aurora assumes her latest fling has run its course. Instead, it’s her grandpa Jay’s death calling them back to the town Laine has spent fifteen years running from.

Every visit to Monroe, Indiana ends in an explosive fight. Her mother and her Gran are oil and water, and it doesn’t take Aurora long to realize Gran has fallen off the wagon—again. With Gran drinking, and Laine’s discomfort in the little blue house, Aurora gives their visit a week, tops. But when Laine begins an affair with the town’s married mailman, everything changes. While her mom falls in love with a man she can’t have, Aurora has time to fall in love with the town. Her life begins to feel full—she has a friend to call her own, a gran who loves her, and a picture-perfect pastor’s son who sees Aurora as more than “Laine’s daughter.� It’s everything she never let herself dream about.

As the summer months march on, and her mom’s happiness becomes even more dependent on her unstable new relationship, Aurora worries the dream she allowed herself will end in heartbreak. This isn’t just another map dot on their endless journey, and Laine won’t just burn a bridge this time. Her choices threaten to light the town on fire, burning Gran’s hope, Aurora’s future, and her own chance at redemption to the ground with it.]]> 1 Paige Dinneny Wendy 3
I'm sure this happens to everyone, while waiting for the audiobook you want to read, you find a 'meanwhile' book to listen to, this was that book for me, this time. It's an interesting enough story about a fifteen year old girl with not the best mom and family life. When mom is out of luck and moves back home to live with her mother, that also means Aurora, her daughter, is now living with her grandmother. Life happens, bonds form, friendships are made, first boyfriend, you know the drill. This is a nicely told story of dealing with issues forced upon you and how you react to them. It's a well narrated young adult story that flows well.]]> 4.25 2025 End of August
author: Paige Dinneny
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, tween, ya
review:


I'm sure this happens to everyone, while waiting for the audiobook you want to read, you find a 'meanwhile' book to listen to, this was that book for me, this time. It's an interesting enough story about a fifteen year old girl with not the best mom and family life. When mom is out of luck and moves back home to live with her mother, that also means Aurora, her daughter, is now living with her grandmother. Life happens, bonds form, friendships are made, first boyfriend, you know the drill. This is a nicely told story of dealing with issues forced upon you and how you react to them. It's a well narrated young adult story that flows well.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Library of Hanna Reeves]]> 220506269 An antiques dealer and an enigmatic heiress embark on a revelatory friendship in a haunting and hopeful novel about family ties, secrets, and belonging by the bestselling author of A Heart Like Home.

Cautious Claire Shelton, employee at a Maine antique shop, is surprised when she’s recruited to catalog the treasures of reclusive Hanna Reeves, sole descendant of the state’s most colorful shipbuilders and industrialists. Hanna’s retreat from society years ago is just one of many mysteries behind the walls of Rose Hill, her fabled estate.

Settling into Rose Hill’s carriage house, Claire finds Hanna, nearing eighty, to be a still-formidable woman. She’s demanding, judgmental, and protective of a mansion that is a veritable shrine to her ancestors. Then, diving into her work, Claire discovers a hidden library that is the stuff of legend among locals. An avid booklover, Claire is in heaven. More enthralling are Hanna’s leather-bound family journals that open Claire up to the past—and soon forge a rich and unexpected bond between two very different women.

A legacy is coming to light. All of Maine is talking. Because the revelations in the journals are enlightening enough to unite old friends, lovers, and families. And shocking enough to tear them apart forever.]]> 303 Christine Nolfi 1662514085 Wendy 0 to-read 4.37 The Secret Library of Hanna Reeves
author: Christine Nolfi
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Last Twilight in Paris 212378273
London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.

Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan—a once-glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.

Louise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever. Inspired by the true story of Lévitan, Last Twilight in Paris is both a gripping mystery and an unforgettable story about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love to transcend in even the darkest hours.]]> 336 Pam Jenoff 0778307980 Wendy 4
This story was exactly what I would expect from Pam Jenoff. She found a historically factual event that occurred during WW2 that I never heard of and built a fictional story around it. In this story, I learned about a department store in Paris called Levitan, where Jewish prisoners during WW2 were forced to sort through items that were stolen from Jewish homes when they were forced out and sent to the concentration camps. These 'lucky' Jews, about 800 of them, were forced to sort through, make repairs, and then sell these stolen items to Nazis. While I didn't like the story line as much as in some of her other stories, I can certainly appreciate the history lesson and learning about this Jewish owned department store that once thrived in the center of Paris.]]> 3.97 2025 Last Twilight in Paris
author: Pam Jenoff
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: audiobook, book-club, dual-timeline, family, fiction, friendship, historical-fiction, love-story, mystery, ww2
review:


This story was exactly what I would expect from Pam Jenoff. She found a historically factual event that occurred during WW2 that I never heard of and built a fictional story around it. In this story, I learned about a department store in Paris called Levitan, where Jewish prisoners during WW2 were forced to sort through items that were stolen from Jewish homes when they were forced out and sent to the concentration camps. These 'lucky' Jews, about 800 of them, were forced to sort through, make repairs, and then sell these stolen items to Nazis. While I didn't like the story line as much as in some of her other stories, I can certainly appreciate the history lesson and learning about this Jewish owned department store that once thrived in the center of Paris.
]]> My Friends 217163697 #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Wendy 5
Fredrik Backman creates characters that are so real and so flawed and you can't help but get emotionally involved in their lives. This story of four high school misfits who find hope and friendship in their support of one another are the center of this novel. Their bond is so powerful, they have profound effects on other people's lives. The story is told from two of the friends in their forties, who meet a teenager, Louisa, whose had a rough life. When one of the friends sees in her what they had as teens, the gift of a painting leads to an unlikely friendship and we hear about that special summer when the four friends were fifteen. Fans of Backman's writing will not be disappointed. May 2025 Pub date]]> 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: 5-stars, book-club, coming-of-age, dual-timeline, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-narrators, netgalley
review:


Fredrik Backman creates characters that are so real and so flawed and you can't help but get emotionally involved in their lives. This story of four high school misfits who find hope and friendship in their support of one another are the center of this novel. Their bond is so powerful, they have profound effects on other people's lives. The story is told from two of the friends in their forties, who meet a teenager, Louisa, whose had a rough life. When one of the friends sees in her what they had as teens, the gift of a painting leads to an unlikely friendship and we hear about that special summer when the four friends were fifteen. Fans of Backman's writing will not be disappointed. May 2025 Pub date
]]> Witchcraft for Wayward Girls 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Wendy 0 to-read 4.02 2025 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tilt 214151301 Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing story about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.]]> 229 Emma Pattee 1668055473 Wendy 0 to-read 3.83 2025 Tilt
author: Emma Pattee
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All That Life Can Afford 216970859 A taut and lyrical coming-of-age debut about a young American woman navigating class, lies, and love amid London’s jet-set elite.

I would arrive, blank like a sheet of notebook paper, and write myself new.

Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.

Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. It’s like she’s stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?

Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you’ve left behind.]]> 384 Emily Everett 0593545141 Wendy 0 to-read 3.79 2025 All That Life Can Afford
author: Emily Everett
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Impossible Fortress 30893019 The Impossible Fortress will make you remember what it feels like to love someone—or something—for the first time.

Billy Marvin’s first love was his computer.

Then he met Mary Zelinsky.

Do you remember your first love?

It’s May 1987. Fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd. Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night. Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of their idol, Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert computer programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.
]]> 320 Jason Rekulak 1501144421 Wendy 0 to-read 3.81 2017 The Impossible Fortress
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Society of Lies 223641038 How far would you go to belong?

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion - it's been a decade since she graduated, and this visit is special because she will also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi.

But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya's worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on.

As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister's death, she begins to realise how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya's warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus - the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it.

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 400 Lauren Ling Brown 0593723376 Wendy 0 to-read 3.65 2024 Society of Lies
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Falling for You Again 221317843 Fate reunites a young woman with her ex-husband in a delightful and inspiring novel about family, old loves, and marriage on a dare by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Kerry Lonsdale.

Furniture artisan Meli Hynes still abides by her uncle’s truism: the only lasting love story is the one between artists and their creations. Having already given marriage a shot—for all of twenty-four hours during a Las Vegas fling—Meli made her choice. The wood-crafting shop that is her family legacy will always come first.

But when her uncle decides to sell to a competitor, Meli’s promised inheritance goes belly-up. She’ll do anything to muddle the deal. Including a marriage of convenience to an unforgettable and very practical old friend—the competitor’s son, Aaron. With a controlling family of his own, and every bit as impulsive as Meli, Aaron is in. After all, this isn’t the first time he and Meli got hitched on a whim.

The rules of the ruse are simple: public displays of affection and live together as happy newlyweds. The hardest rule of all? Never let real feelings get in the way of what they plan to be a purely professional second time around.]]> 271 Kerry Lonsdale 1662525281 Wendy 0 to-read 4.31 Falling for You Again
author: Kerry Lonsdale
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fallen Woman's Daughter 200079709
"A compelling, poignant story of mothers, sisters, and daughters"� Kate Quinn, New York Times best-selling author"An addictive read!"—Kirkus Reviews]]> 419 Michelle Cox Wendy 0 to-read 4.13 2024 The Fallen Woman's Daughter
author: Michelle Cox
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stolen Queen 211025454 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 352 Fiona Davis 0593474279 Wendy 3
It took me a while to get involved in the lives of the characters in this dual timeline audiobook. Maybe that has to do with little interest in Egypt's history and their archeological discoveries. I did start getting interested in Charlotte's history in Egypt in 1936 and into the life of Annie in New York City in 1978. I think if you're interested in the history of egyptian pharos and art, you may enjoy this one more than I did. I'm not sure this story should be considered historical fiction since most of the artifacts were made up, Fiona Davis does talk about this in the author's note.]]> 3.93 2025 The Stolen Queen
author: Fiona Davis
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, dual-timeline, family, fiction, friendship, historical-fiction, love-story, multiple-narrators, mystery
review:


It took me a while to get involved in the lives of the characters in this dual timeline audiobook. Maybe that has to do with little interest in Egypt's history and their archeological discoveries. I did start getting interested in Charlotte's history in Egypt in 1936 and into the life of Annie in New York City in 1978. I think if you're interested in the history of egyptian pharos and art, you may enjoy this one more than I did. I'm not sure this story should be considered historical fiction since most of the artifacts were made up, Fiona Davis does talk about this in the author's note.
]]> <![CDATA[Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir]]> 214151421 The most “profound� (Booklist, starred review) memoir you will ever read about the power of love.



Did I Ever Tell You? reads like a novel but is an unforgettable true story.



Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston was just eleven years old when her mother passed away, leaving behind a chest filled with gifts and letters to celebrate the milestones of Gwen’s life and each of her birthdays until age thirty.



When Did I Ever Tell You? opens, just three packages remain: engagement, marriage, and first baby. Tracing Gwen’s coming-of-age, the book reveals a treasure hunt, with each gift and letter unveiling more about her mother, her family, and—ultimately—herself.



This transformative memoir is a moving coming-of age story and an “extraordinary testament to the power of love over death� (Sarah Ruhl, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Smile). Like Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, Did I Ever Tell You? is a life-changing story that “has a scope and power that will take your breath away� (Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward).]]> 288 Genevieve Kingston 1668006308 Wendy 0 to-read 4.44 2024 Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir
author: Genevieve Kingston
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> El Dorado Drive 220239062 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Turnout comes a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.

“Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre.� —NPR

All I want is to be innocent again. But that’s not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.

When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she’s surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam’s ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back. Thanks to the Wheel�

Twice a month, the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to the party that is pooled together and then gifted to one lucky member. It’s all about giving back. Lifting each other up. As women should. As they must.

But when Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they’re not careful, it might just get them killed.

Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about greed, power, and vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.]]> 368 Megan Abbott 0593084969 Wendy 0 to-read 3.84 2025 El Dorado Drive
author: Megan Abbott
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Breaking the Dark 215363279 In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True) launches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring the private detective Jessica Jones.

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.�

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins� new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura.]]> 400 Lisa Jewell 1368099815 Wendy 0 to-read 3.86 2024 Breaking the Dark
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Midnight Estate 212378269 New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin

In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate on the east coast of Australia she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.

When a misshelved book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle's library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?

Told across three timelines and set against the Gothic backdrop of Wurimbirra, The Midnight Estate weaves a tale as intricate and haunting as Kate Morton's Homecoming, inviting readers into the heart of a family's darkest secrets with an absorbing book-within-a-book mystery.]]> 352 Kelly Rimmer 1525805118 Wendy 0 to-read 4.37 The Midnight Estate
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We All Live Here 222006988
The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family

“Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does.”—Jodi Picoult

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> Jojo Moyes Wendy 4
Lila Kennedy lives in a small town where everybody knows everybody else's business. That's the back drop when Lila's soon-to-be x-husband gets another woman pregnant, whose child attends the same school as Lila's daughters. Not only will Lila be dealing with people finding out this juicy tidbit, but she is also dealing with the recent death of her mother, her step-father sort of moving in to her home, her cheating husband moving out, and if that's not enough, her estranged father is back and also moving in? That's quite the scenerio and I totally enjoyed listening to Lila's struggles as she navigates her way through life. The audio was well done.]]> 3.63 2025 We All Live Here
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, book-club, contemporary, family, fiction, love-story, romance
review:


Lila Kennedy lives in a small town where everybody knows everybody else's business. That's the back drop when Lila's soon-to-be x-husband gets another woman pregnant, whose child attends the same school as Lila's daughters. Not only will Lila be dealing with people finding out this juicy tidbit, but she is also dealing with the recent death of her mother, her step-father sort of moving in to her home, her cheating husband moving out, and if that's not enough, her estranged father is back and also moving in? That's quite the scenerio and I totally enjoyed listening to Lila's struggles as she navigates her way through life. The audio was well done.
]]> We Live Here Now 219833105
But these things happen only when Emily is alone, so are they happening at all? She is still medically fragile. Her post-sepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she cannot fully trust her senses. Freddie does not notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start. She, however, starts to believe the house is haunted by someone who had been murdered in it even though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But just as the house has secrets so do Emily and her husband.]]> 304 Sarah Pinborough 1250394058 Wendy 0 to-read 4.19 2025 We Live Here Now
author: Sarah Pinborough
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)]]> 63132313 Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal � and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.]]> 560 Samantha Shannon 1639732233 Wendy 0 to-read 4.25 2013 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Expat Affair 218171597 An American expatâ€s startling discovery plunges her into the glamorous but deadly world of Amsterdam’s diamond industry.

Following a nasty divorce, Rayna Dumont came to Amsterdam for a fresh start. She’s never been the type for a one-night stand, but this move is all about adventure, and Xander is handsome and successful and more than willing to go along for the ride. Until the morning after, when Rayna finds him dead on the shower floor and millions of dollars� worth of diamonds missing from his safe.

From her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is captivated by the news. Her husband is Xander’s former boss and heir to a diamond house, and the scandal strains their already-rocky marriage. As the house comes under scrutiny, Willow wonders if her life is about to implode—and how much of the blame she can place on Rayna. Soon, Willow and Rayna are dragged into the dark and dangerous underbelly of the diamond market, where they’ll have to uncover the truth to survive. Who killed Xander? Where are the missing diamonds? And who can you trust in a strange and unfamiliar city thousands of miles from home?]]> 320 Kimberly Belle 0778310949 Wendy 0 to-read 4.17 The Expat Affair
author: Kimberly Belle
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Are All Guilty Here 221544394
Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]> 448 Karin Slaughter 0063336774 Wendy 0 to-read 4.13 2025 We Are All Guilty Here
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daikon 220161302 A sweeping and suspenseful novel of love and war, set in Japan during the harrowing final days of World War II, that is premised on an intriguing historical the United States actually delivered three atomic bombs to the Pacific, not two, and the first falls into the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army, who recruit a local civilian-scientist to figure out what it is, how it works—and how it might be used against the Americans.

War has taken everything from physicist Keizo Kan. His young daughter was killed in the Great Tokyo Air Raid, and now his Japanese American wife, Noriko, has been imprisoned by the brutal Thought Police. An American bomber, downed over Japan on the first day of August 1945, offers the scientist a shocking chance at salvation. The Imperial Army dispatches him to examine an unusual device recovered from the plane’s wreckage—a bomb containing uranium—and tells him that if he can unlock its mysteries, his wife will be released.

Working in secrecy under crushing pressure, Kan begins to disassemble the bomb and study its components. One of his assistants falls ill after mishandling the uranium, but his alarming deterioration, and Kan’s own symptoms, are ignored by the commanding officer demanding results. Desperate to stave off Japan’s surrender to the Allies, the army will stop at nothing to harness the weapon’s unimaginable power. They order Kan to prepare the bomb for manual detonation over a target—a suicide mission that will strike a devastating blow against the Americans. Soon, Kan is faced with a series of agonizing decisions that will test his courage, his loyalty, and his humanity.

This is a gripping and powerfully moving saga of love, survival, and impossible choices. It is set amid the chaos and despair of the world’s third largest city lying in ruins, its population starving and its leadership under escalating assault from without and within. A remarkable debut novel that is the result of twenty-eight years of work by its author, Daikon is a haunting epic that calls to mind such classics as Cold Mountain and From Here to Eternity—and introduces a singular new voice on the literary landscape.]]> 352 Samuel Hawley 1668083051 Wendy 0 to-read 4.55 Daikon
author: Samuel Hawley
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows]]> 32792163 Together Tea and Calendar Girls.

Every woman has a secret life . . .

Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she’s spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father’s death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community center in the beating heart of London’s close-knit Punjabi community.

Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories. Eager to liberate these modest women, she teaches them how to express their untold stories, unleashing creativity of the most unexpected—and exciting—kind.

As more women are drawn to the class, Nikki warns her students to keep their work secret from the Brotherhood, a group of highly conservative young men who have appointed themselves the community’s "moral police." But when the widows� gossip offers shocking insights into the death of a young wife—a modern woman like Nikki—and some of the class erotica is shared among friends, it sparks a scandal that threatens them all.]]> Balli Kaur Jaswal 0062680560 Wendy 4
This story about mature Punjabi widows telling erotic stories is fun, for starters, how prudish they are thought to be. There's a lot of Punjabi culture to be learned as it pertains to those living in England. I thought the fruit and vegetable analogies were so fun and there were definitely some laugh at loud moments. I also really liked how while all of this was going on, there were also love stories woven in as well as the possible discovery of a murder and murderer. I don't want to say too much since this was chosen for our next book club. If you are looking for an entertaining story without the fluff, you might want to pick this one up.]]> 4.00 2017 Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
author: Balli Kaur Jaswal
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, book-club, contemporary, family, fiction, friendship, funny, humor, love-story, multiple-narrators, mystery
review:


This story about mature Punjabi widows telling erotic stories is fun, for starters, how prudish they are thought to be. There's a lot of Punjabi culture to be learned as it pertains to those living in England. I thought the fruit and vegetable analogies were so fun and there were definitely some laugh at loud moments. I also really liked how while all of this was going on, there were also love stories woven in as well as the possible discovery of a murder and murderer. I don't want to say too much since this was chosen for our next book club. If you are looking for an entertaining story without the fluff, you might want to pick this one up.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret History of Audrey James]]> 223749932
An astonishing historical novel of one woman’s dangerous journey through World War II Germany and her life-changing friendship with a young woman decades later—from the #1 international bestselling author of Looking for Jane

Northern England, 2010. After a tragic accident upends her life, Kate Mercer leaves London to work at an old guest house near the Scottish border, where she hopes to find a fresh start and heal from her loss. When she arrives, she begins to unravel the truth about her past, but discovers that the mysterious elderly proprietor is harboring secrets of her own.

Berlin, 1938. Audrey James is weeks away from graduating from a prestigious music school in Berlin, where she’s been living with her best friend, Ilse Kaplan. As war looms, Ilse’s family disappears and high-ranking Nazi officers confiscate the house. In desperation, Audrey becomes their housekeeper while Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic. When a shocking turn of events embroils Audrey in the anti-Hitler movement, she must decide what matters most: protecting those she loves, or sacrificing everything for the greater good.

Inspired by true stories of courageous women and the German resistance during World War II, The Secret History of Audrey James is a captivating novel about the unbreakable bonds of friendship, the sacrifices we make for those we love, and the healing that comes from human connection.]]> Heather Marshall Wendy 4
This story starts off in 2010, in England, when Kate needs a fresh start after loss and her upcoming divorce. She travels to a remote village to work at an old bed and breakfast type lodging where her parents honeymooned many years ago. There she meets Audrey, an old woman with her own secrets, who she befriends and wants to hear Audrey's story of how she came to be there. Audrey begins telling Kate her story, which brings the reader back to Berlin in 1938. Audrey's best friend and chosen family are the Kaplan's, and we all know what happened to the Jews in Berlin in 1938. This story is one of witnessing unimaginable horrors, love, friendship, survival, resistance, and healing. It is powerful, emotional, and story telling at its best. I love that Heather Marshall wrote this story around a real life war heroine, Mona Parsons because as she says, when she heard about her, how could she not?]]> 4.44 2024 The Secret History of Audrey James
author: Heather Marshall
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: audiobook, book-club, coming-of-age, dual-timeline, family, friendship, historical-fiction, love-story, multiple-narrators, multiple-timelines, mystery, suspense
review:


This story starts off in 2010, in England, when Kate needs a fresh start after loss and her upcoming divorce. She travels to a remote village to work at an old bed and breakfast type lodging where her parents honeymooned many years ago. There she meets Audrey, an old woman with her own secrets, who she befriends and wants to hear Audrey's story of how she came to be there. Audrey begins telling Kate her story, which brings the reader back to Berlin in 1938. Audrey's best friend and chosen family are the Kaplan's, and we all know what happened to the Jews in Berlin in 1938. This story is one of witnessing unimaginable horrors, love, friendship, survival, resistance, and healing. It is powerful, emotional, and story telling at its best. I love that Heather Marshall wrote this story around a real life war heroine, Mona Parsons because as she says, when she heard about her, how could she not?
]]> We Are Made of Stars 214960921 Secrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars at a picturesque mountain getaway in this powerful novel about love and family by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends.

At the Vis Ta Vie inn, Reneé and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved home for good.

They’re not the only ones going through a season of change, though. Their guests include three couples in Hollywood celebs Leo and Penny are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce. Lucy, a practical-minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are struggling to find common ground. And former lawyer and current stay-at-home mom Sienna and charismatic sports agent Adam look perfect but are hiding rifts of their own. Thrown into the mix are self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosalie.

The stage is set for a week of betrayals, regrets, and shocking truths that can rend the heart or heal it. Vis Ta Vie�live your life—captures what it means to love through the darkness, and to find the light even after the magic fades.]]> 363 Rochelle B. Weinstein 1662520883 Wendy 0 to-read 4.14 2025 We Are Made of Stars
author: Rochelle B. Weinstein
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York]]> 211004205 The first comprehensive book about Michael Stewart, the young Black artist and model who died after an altercation with the police in 1983, from Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call.

At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.

Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.

The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.

Elon Green, the Edgar Award–winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart's life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980’s New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails.]]> 288 Elon Green 1250898226 Wendy 0 to-read 4.48 2025 The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York
author: Elon Green
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Woman in Suite 11 (Lo Blacklock, #2)]]> 220161593 In this follow-up to #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware’s multi-million copy mega-hit The Women in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe.

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her?]]> 400 Ruth Ware 1668025620 Wendy 0 to-read 3.78 2025 The Woman in Suite 11 (Lo Blacklock, #2)
author: Ruth Ware
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Baker of Vienna: A Novel]]> 221739728 An historical novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s own family after the Holocaust, a sweeping saga about survival, loss, love, and the reverberating effects of war

In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war.

Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe.

Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?

The Lost Baker of Vienna affirms the unbreakable bonds of family, shining a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart.]]> Sharon Kurtzman 0593830873 Wendy 0 to-read 4.53 The Lost Baker of Vienna: A Novel
author: Sharon Kurtzman
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secrets of Lovelace Academy]]> 214152112 From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and Courtney Sheinmel comes a historical adventure about a young girl plucked from a London orphanage to begin attending a boarding school with more secrets than she could imagine—perfect for fans of Enola Holmes.

Lainey Phillips has lived at the Sycamore Home for Orphaned Children since she was three years old. Now nearly a teenager, her life is hard, and she doesn’t expect it to get better—until a chance encounter during an open house changes everything when Lainey meets a woman who invites her to attend the prestigious Lovelace Academy.

Fitting in amongst the many privileged students within the ivy-covered walls of Lovelace Academy presents challenges unlike the ones Lainey has faced in the past. Her life of drudgery has hardly prepared her for the aristocratic airs and cutthroat academic ambition of the other girls. Terrified she’ll be cast out of the academy, Lainey grabs at her chance to prove herself by traveling to Switzerland to meet a female scientist crafting a groundbreaking theory.

Determined to prove her capability and reach her destination, Lainey must rely on her own wit—as well as a mysterious boy who has yet to prove himself as friend or foe. But the real test is what awaits her in Switzerland, at the home of Mileva Maric, wife of Albert Einstein.]]> 304 Marie Benedict 1665950218 Wendy 0 to-read 4.04 The Secrets of Lovelace Academy
author: Marie Benedict
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Two Truths and a Lie 55004051 416 Meg Mitchell Moore 006284010X Wendy 0 to-read 3.63 2020 Two Truths and a Lie
author: Meg Mitchell Moore
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paris Express 214151304 Emma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring� (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station.

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy� (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.]]> 288 Emma Donoghue 1668082799 Wendy 0 to-read 3.35 2025 The Paris Express
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Long Time Gone 216972034 When DNA results reveal a disturbing connection to the mysterious disappearance of a famous baby nearly three decades ago, a forensic scientist is plunged into a dangerous search for answers in this engrossing, propulsive new novel from the internationally bestselling author of Twenty Years Later.

Thirty years ago, Baby Charlotte vanished. Today, she’s still in danger.

When Dr. Sloan Hastings submits her DNA to an online genealogy site for a research assignment, her goal is to better understand the treasure-trove of genetic information contained on ancestry websites. Brilliant and driven, Sloan is embarking on a fellowship in forensic pathology, training under the renowned Dr. Livia Cutty.

Sloan has one reservation about involving herself in the she’s adopted. Grateful for a loving home, she’s never considered tracking down her biological parents. The results of her search are shocking. Sloan’s DNA profile suggests her true identity is that of Charlotte Margolis, aka “Baby Charlotte�, who captured the nation’s attention when she mysteriously disappeared, along with her parents, in July 1995. Despite an exhaustive search, the family was never seen again, and no suspects were named in the case.

Sloan’s discovery leads her to the small town of Cedar Creek, Nevada, the site of her disappearance. It also leads her to Sheriff Eric Stamos. The Margolis family’s influence and power permeate every corner of Harrison County, and Eric is convinced that in learning the truth about her past, Sloan can also help discover what happened to Eric’s father, who died under suspicious circumstances soon after he started investigating the case her disappearance.

Slowly, over the course of a stifling summer, Sloan begins getting to know her relatives. Though initially welcoming, the Margolis family is also mysterious and tight-lipped. Not everyone seems happy about Sloan’s return, or the questions she’s asking. And the more she and Eric learn, the more apparent it becomes that the answers they both seek are buried in a graveyard of Margolis family secrets that some will do anything to keep hidden—no matter who else has to die…]]> 416 Charlie Donlea 1496751140 Wendy 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Long Time Gone
author: Charlie Donlea
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Note: A Novel 226923864 A USA TODAY BESTSELLER AS RECOMMENDED ON THE TODAY SHOW AND CBS SUNDAY MORNING From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wife comes a suspenseful story about a vacation in the Hamptons that goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

"It's only January, but your perfect summer thriller is here already."—Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post

“I absolutely loved The Note . Trust no one in this irresistible page-turner.”—Ashley Elston, #1 New York Times best-selling author of First Lie Wins

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a thriller of the highest order from one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.]]> Alafair Burke Wendy 4
This was such an enjoyable thriller to listen to, it kept my attention as the story evolved. Three childhood friends reunite for a weekend in the hamptons and overdo it, a bit, yeah, maybe more than a bit. The story is told through childhood flashbacks to when they all were at the same summer camp, two of them teenagers. The twists and turns just kept coming, I have to say this is my favorite story by Alafair Burke so far.]]> 3.11 2025 The Note: A Novel
author: Alafair Burke
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, domestic-thriller, dual-timeline, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-narrators, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


This was such an enjoyable thriller to listen to, it kept my attention as the story evolved. Three childhood friends reunite for a weekend in the hamptons and overdo it, a bit, yeah, maybe more than a bit. The story is told through childhood flashbacks to when they all were at the same summer camp, two of them teenagers. The twists and turns just kept coming, I have to say this is my favorite story by Alafair Burke so far.
]]> The House of Eve 176443755
“A triumph of historical fiction� ( The Washington Post ), an instant New York Times bestseller, and a Reese’s Book Club pick, set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.]]> 384 Sadeqa Johnson 1982197374 Wendy 0 to-read 4.25 2023 The House of Eve
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Wendy 0 to-read 4.32 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Harvey Girls 220161428 Juliette Fay—known for her “well-drawn characters and vibrant historical backdrops� (Library Journal)—transports us to 1920s America with this big-hearted tale of two very different women who must learn to trust each other as one tries to save her family and the other to save herself. Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Kristina McMorris.

1926: Charlotte Crowninshield was born into one of the finest Boston society families. Now she’s on the run from a brutal husband, desperate to disappear into the wilds of the Southwest. Billie MacTavish is the oldest of nine children born to Scottish immigrants in Nebraska. She quit school in the sixth grade to help with her mother’s washing and mending business, but even that isn’t enough to keep the family afloat.

Desperate, both women join the ranks of the Harvey Girls, waitresses who serve in America’s first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad. Hired on the same day, they share three things: a room, a heartfelt dislike of each other…and each has a secret that will certainly get them fired.

Through twelve-hour days of training in Topeka, Kansas, they learn the fine art of service, perfecting their skills despite bouts of homesickness, fear of being discovered, and a run-in with the KKK. When they’re sent to work at the luxurious El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon, the challenges only grow, as Billie struggles to hide her young age from would-be suitors, and Charlotte discovers the little-known dark side of the national park’s history.

“Juliette Fay’s gift for creating complex, exquisitely human characters� (Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author) is on full display in this deeply moving and joyous celebration of female empowerment, loyalty, and friendship.]]> 384 Juliette Fay 1668095068 Wendy 0 to-read 4.14 The Harvey Girls
author: Juliette Fay
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The House We Grew Up In 39095097
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family's desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.]]> 416 Lisa Jewell 1476776865 Wendy 0 to-read 3.84 2013 The House We Grew Up In
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Real Name Is Hanna 53190758 shtetele she lives in “free of Jews.� Until the German occupation, Hanna spent her time exploring Kwasova with her younger siblings, admiring the drawings of the handsome Leon Stadnick, and helping her neighbor dye decorative pysanky eggs. But now she, Leon, and their families are forced to flee and hide in the forest outside their shtetele—and then in the dark caves beneath the rolling meadows, rumored to harbor evil spirits. Underground, they battle sickness and starvation, while the hunt continues above. When Hanna’s father disappears, suddenly it’s up to Hanna to find him—and to find a way to keep the rest of her family, and friends, alive.

Sparse, resonant, and lyrical, weaving in tales of Jewish and Ukrainian folklore, My Real Name Is Hanna celebrates the sustaining bonds of family, the beauty of a helping hand, and the tenacity of the human spirit.

National Jewish Book Award Finalist
The Julia Ward Howe Award for Young Readers
Florida Book Award and Foreword INDIES Award-Gold Medals
Skipping Stones Honor Award]]> 195 Tara Lynn Masih 1942134517 Wendy 0 to-read 4.15 2018 My Real Name Is Hanna
author: Tara Lynn Masih
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Middletide 199897203
One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Out of money and motivation, thirty-three-year-old Elijah returns to his empty childhood home to lick the wounds of his futile writing career. Hungry for purpose, he throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, the extraordinary girl from the nearby reservation whom he betrayed but was never able to forget.

As the town of Point Orchards turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder in this scintillating literary thriller that seeks to uncover a case of love, loss, and revenge.]]> 287 Sarah Crouch Wendy 0 to-read 3.52 2024 Middletide
author: Sarah Crouch
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nobody’s Fool (Detective Sami Kierce #2)]]> 217394492 In this stunningly twisty thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce’s college days comes back to haunt him. His memory is clear, but all these years later, the facts don’t add up…which is something he cannot ignore.

Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs.

Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.

His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past—and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.]]> 352 Harlan Coben 1538756358 Wendy 0 to-read 4.16 2025 Nobody’s Fool (Detective Sami Kierce #2)
author: Harlan Coben
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Count My Lies 214151565 A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can't help herself—she tells the girl's (very attractive) dad she's a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl's foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.

But maybe Sloane isn't the only one lying, and all that's picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.

The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.

Careful what you lie for.]]> 336 Sophie Stava 1668079348 Wendy 0 to-read 3.74 2025 Count My Lies
author: Sophie Stava
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club]]> 215805887 Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Lilac Girls.

“A dreamy beach book that also sizzles with tension . . . another winner by one of the best historical fiction writers around.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Stolen Queen

2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.

1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?]]> 336 Martha Hall Kelly 0593354915 Wendy 0 to-read 4.26 2025 The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club
author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daughters of Shandong 223329042
Daughters are the Ang family’s curse.

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.

Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.

From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.

Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.]]> 400 Eve J. Chung 0593640543 Wendy 0 to-read 4.57 2024 Daughters of Shandong
author: Eve J. Chung
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Things We Leave Unfinished]]> 56595508
Twenty-eight-year-old Georgia Stanton has to start over after she gave up almost everything in a brutal divorce—the New York house, the friends, and her pride. Now back home at her late great-grandmother’s estate in Colorado, she finds herself face-to-face with Noah Harrison, the bestselling author of a million books where the cover is always people nearly kissing. He’s just as arrogant in person as in interviews, and she’ll be damned if the good-looking writer of love stories thinks he’s the one to finish her grandmother’s final novel…even if the publisher swears he’s the perfect fit.

Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy� of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century—the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.

But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book—it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes—even if it means destroying Noah’s career.

Told in alternating timelines, THE THINGS WE LEAVE UNFINISHED examines the risks we take for love, the scars too deep to heal, and the endings we can’t bring ourselves to see coming.]]> Rebecca Yarros Wendy 2
This is very similar to a Nicholas Sparks book with not one but two love stories. We have present day Georgia Stanton and romance writer, Noah. When Georgia's gram passes with an unfinished love story, Noah is hired to complete the story. As we read more, we hear about Scarlett Stanton and her sister who are working for the country during WW2 where Scarlett meets the love of her life, Jameson Stanton. Its Scarlett and Jameson's love story that unfolds during the 1940s that is revealed to us and Scarlett's unfinished story that Noah is hired to complete. One of the characters in the story says it better than I can, 'Noone reads love stories for real life.' If that's you, and you enjoy the boy meets girl, falls in love, something happens and they are not together - until something else happens and then they are - and they live happily ever after, then this one's for you. Yes, it's predictable. The narrators did a good job with this one.]]> 4.10 2021 The Things We Leave Unfinished
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, chick-lit, contemporary, family, dual-timeline, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-narrators, mystery, romance, ww2
review:


This is very similar to a Nicholas Sparks book with not one but two love stories. We have present day Georgia Stanton and romance writer, Noah. When Georgia's gram passes with an unfinished love story, Noah is hired to complete the story. As we read more, we hear about Scarlett Stanton and her sister who are working for the country during WW2 where Scarlett meets the love of her life, Jameson Stanton. Its Scarlett and Jameson's love story that unfolds during the 1940s that is revealed to us and Scarlett's unfinished story that Noah is hired to complete. One of the characters in the story says it better than I can, 'Noone reads love stories for real life.' If that's you, and you enjoy the boy meets girl, falls in love, something happens and they are not together - until something else happens and then they are - and they live happily ever after, then this one's for you. Yes, it's predictable. The narrators did a good job with this one.
]]> Broken Country 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.�

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Wendy 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Broken Country
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daughter of Mine 194577491 The new thrilling novel from Megan Miranda, the instant New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Last to Vanish, and The Only Survivors.

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.]]> 368 Megan Miranda 1668055716 Wendy 0 to-read 4.03 2024 Daughter of Mine
author: Megan Miranda
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sweet Blue Distance 222839104
Carrie Ballentyne’s life was upended in 1845 when she had to leave the only home she’d ever known in the mountains of upstate New York. With her are her widowed mother and younger brother Nathan, but the separation from Bonner, Ballentyne, and Savard relatives weighs heavily. ĚýIn time Carrie finds footing as a midwife and nurse, but she never feels at ease in the city. So when, a decade later, she receives an invitation from a doctor in Santa Fe to join him at his practice, she readily accepts.
Ěý
The trip across the country is long and often dangerous, but she travels the last leg on horseback with men who have been hired to see her safely through the Native nations fighting the westward flood of colonizers. On that journey she makes friends who will be with her for all her Eva, a young widow; and Eli, an experienced surveyor. Once Carrie is established in Santa Fe, it becomes clear that her employer is not everything she was led to believe, and she is forced to face far more challenges and responsibilities than she anticipated. But she dedicates herself to the work and the women, providing health care, delivering babies, and earning the trust of her patients.
Ěý
In the course of that first summer in New Mexico, determined to make a life for herself in a new kind of wilderness far beyond her imagination, Carrie finds friendship, support, and even love where she least expected.]]> 800 Sara Donati 1984805061 Wendy 0 to-read 4.00 2024 The Sweet Blue Distance
author: Sara Donati
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beautiful Ugly 213911723
The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible � a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> Alice Feeney 1250363950 Wendy 4
This story is crazy! I think it's my favorite by Alice Feeney, so many twists and turns, you don't know what's real! The story is about a married couple, he is a writer, waiting for his wife to get home, she's late. Not only is she late and he's not happy about this, but on her way home, there's something or somebody in the road and she stops to see if she can help. That's the last her husband sees of her, she never got home to hear his news, and months later, he's got severe writer's block, and has to move because he can no longer afford his rent It's just a nightmare for him. Little does he know, his agent will come to his rescue but, should he accept the proposal? The audio was well done with the many different voices of the characters.]]> 3.65 2025 Beautiful Ugly
author: Alice Feeney
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, domestic-thriller, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-narrators, multiple-timelines, mystery, netgalley, psychological-thriller, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


This story is crazy! I think it's my favorite by Alice Feeney, so many twists and turns, you don't know what's real! The story is about a married couple, he is a writer, waiting for his wife to get home, she's late. Not only is she late and he's not happy about this, but on her way home, there's something or somebody in the road and she stops to see if she can help. That's the last her husband sees of her, she never got home to hear his news, and months later, he's got severe writer's block, and has to move because he can no longer afford his rent It's just a nightmare for him. Little does he know, his agent will come to his rescue but, should he accept the proposal? The audio was well done with the many different voices of the characters.
]]> The Crash 223318201
She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she's made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn't right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn't what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

9 hrs. 13 min.]]> 10 Freida McFadden Wendy 4
This audiobook has great narrators for all of the characters. In true Freida McFadden fashion, this story is pretty straight forward, like Stephen King's story, Misery, until it isn't. You think you know what's going to happen and why and you've got it all figured out. Well, I'm telling you that you probably do not and will totally enjoy this suspenseful thriller.]]> 3.22 2025 The Crash
author: Freida McFadden
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, book-club, contemporary, domestic-thriller, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-narrators, psychological-thriller, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


This audiobook has great narrators for all of the characters. In true Freida McFadden fashion, this story is pretty straight forward, like Stephen King's story, Misery, until it isn't. You think you know what's going to happen and why and you've got it all figured out. Well, I'm telling you that you probably do not and will totally enjoy this suspenseful thriller.
]]> The Second Home 43312830 Some places never leave you...

After a disastrous summer spent at her family’s home on Cape Cod when she is seventeen, Ann Gordon is very happy to never visit Wellfleet again. If only she’d stayed in Wisconsin, she might never have met Anthony Shaw, and she would have held onto the future she’d so carefully planned for herself. Instead, Ann ends up harboring a devastating secret that strains her relationship with her parents, sends her sister Poppy to every corner of the world chasing waves (and her next fling), and leaves her adopted brother Michael estranged from the family.

Now, fifteen years later, her parents have died, and Ann and Poppy are left to decide the fate of the beach house that’s been in the Gordon family for generations. For Ann, the once-beloved house is forever tainted with bad memories. And while Poppy loves the old saltbox on Drummer Cove, owning a house means settling, and she’s not sure she’s ready to stay in one place.

Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to a third of the estate. He wants the house. But more than that, he wants to set the record straight about what happened that long-ago summer that changed all of their lives forever. As the siblings reunite after years apart, their old secrets and lies, longings and losses, are pulled to the surface. Is the house the one thing that can still bring them together––or will it tear them apart, once and for all?

Told through the shifting perspectives of Ann, Poppy, and Michael, this assured and affecting debut captures the ache of nostalgia for summers past and the powerful draw of the places we return to again and again. It is about second homes, second families, and second chances. Tender and compassionate, incisive and heartbreaking, Christina Clancy's The Second Home is the story of a family you'll quickly fall in love with, and won't soon forget.]]> 341 Christina Clancy 1250239346 Wendy 4
What a perfect title for this book. Connie and Ed are raising their two teenage daughters at their home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and spend their summers in South Wellfleet, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Their girls are so kind, as you would think mid-westerners would be. Ann, the older daughter, wants her family to adopt a troubled boy, Michael, when his parents die. Ed and Connie do just that, and their second summer on the Cape with their three teenage children is where the story begins. The events of that one summer night change everything. The author draws flawed characters you can't help but like. Fans of Hilderbrand will really like this story and if you spend any time in the Cape, you will really enjoy the descriptions of this area. #netgalley #thesecondhome @StMartinsPress @ClancyChristi #StMartinsPress #SecondHomeNovel]]> 3.73 2020 The Second Home
author: Christina Clancy
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/04
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, family, fiction, friendship
review:


What a perfect title for this book. Connie and Ed are raising their two teenage daughters at their home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and spend their summers in South Wellfleet, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Their girls are so kind, as you would think mid-westerners would be. Ann, the older daughter, wants her family to adopt a troubled boy, Michael, when his parents die. Ed and Connie do just that, and their second summer on the Cape with their three teenage children is where the story begins. The events of that one summer night change everything. The author draws flawed characters you can't help but like. Fans of Hilderbrand will really like this story and if you spend any time in the Cape, you will really enjoy the descriptions of this area. #netgalley #thesecondhome @StMartinsPress @ClancyChristi #StMartinsPress #SecondHomeNovel
]]> Sunny Side Up 217388243 From body-acceptance advocate and MEGABABE founder Katie Sturino comes a heartwarming and hilarious debut novel for fans for Emily Henry and Sex and the City

Sunny Greene is thirty-five, recently divorced, facing the looming prospect of going solo to her little brother’s wedding, and currently trying to find anything plus-sized in the Bergdorf Goodman swimsuit department that doesn’t make her want to cry. It’s not going well. But isn’t rock bottom the perfect place to start a climb?

She decides it’s now or never. Sunny has her PR empire, her gorgeous Chelsea apartment, her two dogs, and her loyal best friends. Maybe it's time to just love her body and accept herself for who she is. With a new commitment to confidence, her journey begins. Who says a plus-sized divorcee can’t put herself first, feel beautiful, and date up a storm?

Of course things are never straightforward in the dating world. Is fate knocking at her door with Dennis, the charming and down-to-earth mailman, or should she be with Ted, the business tycoon who seems ready to make her size-inclusive swimsuit brand a reality? And what should she do about her ex, who shows up unexpectedly, eager to reconnect?

With the same candor and confidence her followers love, Sturino brings us Sunny Greene, a Carrie Bradshaw for the next generation, and her journey through the trials and triumphs of dating, friendship, and finding yourself.]]> 304 Katie Sturino 1250344204 Wendy 0 to-read 3.91 Sunny Side Up
author: Katie Sturino
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> What Have You Done 205039905
The new binge-worthy novel from the “queen of the one-sit read,� and New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. But this morning that will change. And one innocent question could be deadly. What have you done?

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.

But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.

How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.]]> Shari Lapena Wendy 3
This story takes place in a small New England town where nothing ever happens. That is, until a teenager from the local high school is found dead in a farmer's field. This audiobook was well narrated, and when the dead girl started narrating parts of the story, I started thinking about the similarities to 'The Lovely Bones.' I'm not really one for the supernatural but, as with 'The Lovely Bones,' it just worked. I enjoyed the fast pace and the way the story unfolded, pretty confident as to who didn't do it and there were still some surprises.]]> 3.58 2024 What Have You Done
author: Shari Lapena
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, domestic-thriller, family, fiction, friendship, mystery, suspense, suspense-mystery
review:


This story takes place in a small New England town where nothing ever happens. That is, until a teenager from the local high school is found dead in a farmer's field. This audiobook was well narrated, and when the dead girl started narrating parts of the story, I started thinking about the similarities to 'The Lovely Bones.' I'm not really one for the supernatural but, as with 'The Lovely Bones,' it just worked. I enjoyed the fast pace and the way the story unfolded, pretty confident as to who didn't do it and there were still some surprises.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book Club for Troublesome Women]]> 223735523 Four dissatisfied sixties-era housewives form a book club turned sisterhood that will hold fast amid the turmoil of a rapidly changing world and alter the course of each of their lives.

By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson--the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan--and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique.

Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?]]> 12 Marie Bostwick Wendy 5
This wonderfully narrated audiobook talks about how life was in the early 1960s, it reminded me of the television show 'Leave it to Beaver'. This story takes place in a DC suburb, 4 women, neighbors, decide to form a book club. And, when they read Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique', they all want more out of life aside from being a wife and mother. I love hearing them talk abour ordering pantyhose for the first time from the Sear's catalogue. This is the time period when many of us, myself included, helped glue green stamps into books for prizes and we had a milkman deliver dairy. It was also a time period when fur coats were status symbols, you could rent a typewriter for $7 a month, wives were getting an allowance from their husbands, and it wasn't until 1974 that a married woman could open a bank account for herself. This story is about the power of female friendships, the friendships that can change your life for the better. Along with the author, I also loved her characters.]]> 4.22 2025 The Book Club for Troublesome Women
author: Marie Bostwick
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: 5-stars, audiobook, book-club, family, fiction, friendship, historical-fiction, love-story, multiple-narrators, netgalley
review:


This wonderfully narrated audiobook talks about how life was in the early 1960s, it reminded me of the television show 'Leave it to Beaver'. This story takes place in a DC suburb, 4 women, neighbors, decide to form a book club. And, when they read Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique', they all want more out of life aside from being a wife and mother. I love hearing them talk abour ordering pantyhose for the first time from the Sear's catalogue. This is the time period when many of us, myself included, helped glue green stamps into books for prizes and we had a milkman deliver dairy. It was also a time period when fur coats were status symbols, you could rent a typewriter for $7 a month, wives were getting an allowance from their husbands, and it wasn't until 1974 that a married woman could open a bank account for herself. This story is about the power of female friendships, the friendships that can change your life for the better. Along with the author, I also loved her characters.
]]> Our Last Vineyard Summer 220161155 From the “great storyteller� (Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society) Brooke Lea Foster, a captivating new novel set in 1965 and 1978 about a graduate student who returns with her sisters to their family’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and begins to unravel old family secrets.

After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother—a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement—calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts.

When Betsy arrives on the island a week later, she must reckon with her strained familial relationships, a long-ago forbidden romance, and the complicated legacy of her parents, who divided the family even as they did good for the world.

Following a dual timeline between 1965 and 1978, and filled with the vibrant, sunlit nostalgia of the cherished New England vacation setting, Our Last Vineyard Summer poignantly captures two generations of women navigating love, loss, and womanhood while trying to find the courage to stand up for what they believe in—and the strength to decide if the home they once loved is worth saving.]]> 336 Brooke Lea Foster 1668034409 Wendy 0 to-read 3.67 Our Last Vineyard Summer
author: Brooke Lea Foster
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tenant 221733722 There’s no place like home�

Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone that he shares with his fiancee, he's desperate to make ends meet.

Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she?

Because something isn't quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets...

Danger lives right at home, and by the time Blake realizes it, it'll be far too late. The trap is already set.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden knocks at your door with a gripping story of revenge, privilege, and secrets turned sour�]]> 368 Freida McFadden 1464227314 Wendy 0 to-read 4.44 2025 The Tenant
author: Freida McFadden
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vacationland 59571997
Louisa’s father,Ěýa retired judge and pillar of the community, is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Louisa’s mother is alternately pretending everything is fine and not pretending at all. And one of Louisa’s children happens upon a very confusing and heartfelt letter referring to something Louisa does not think her father could possibly have done. She is not the only one searching for something in Maine this summer.

Kristie took the Greyhound bus from Pennsylvania with the $761 left in her bank account and a whole lot of emotional baggage. She has a past she is trying to outrun, a secret she is trying to unpack, and a new boyfriend who is so kind she cannot figure out what she did to deserve him. As June turns to July turns to August, secrets will be unearthed; betrayals will come to light; andĚýboth Louisa and Kristie will ask themselves what they are owed and what they owe others.]]> 384 Meg Mitchell Moore 0063026120 Wendy 0 to-read 3.48 2022 Vacationland
author: Meg Mitchell Moore
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Middle of the Night 205161838
In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.]]> Riley Sager Wendy 4 3.45 2024 Middle of the Night
author: Riley Sager
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, book-club, coming-of-age, contemporary, domestic-thriller, dual-timeline, family, fiction, friendship, multiple-narrators, mystery, psychological-thriller, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:
One night, Ethan Marsh had a backyard sleepover with his neighbor and best friend, Billy. That night changed Ethan's life because, when he woke up the next morning, the tent was slashed and Billy was gone. Flash forward 30 years later, Ethan's parents are relocating from NJ to FL, and Ethan is returning to his childhood home on the cul de sac in Princeton. Now that he's back, he really wants to find out what happened that night and the unfolding mystery is a good one! The narration was well done and I really liked Ethan and the way the story played out.
]]> Other People's Houses 221490975 From the author who brought you the jaw-dropping twist of I Let You Go, the gasp-out-loud ending of Let Me Lie, and the loveable, unpredictable Ffion Morgan in The Last Party and A Game of Lies.]]> 368 Clare Mackintosh 1728296544 Wendy 0 to-read 4.37 2025 Other People's Houses
author: Clare Mackintosh
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unraveling of Julia 221179145
Lately, Julia Pritzker is beginning to think she’s cursed. She’s lost her adoptive parents, then her husband is murdered. When she realizes that her horoscope essentially foretold his death, she begins to spiral. She fears her fate is written in the stars, not held in her own hands.

Then a letter arrives out of the blue, informing her that she has inherited a Tuscan villa and vineyard - but her benefactor is a total stranger named Emilia Rossi. Julia has no information about her biological family, so she wonders if Rossi could be a blood relative. Bewildered, she heads to Tuscany for answers.

There, Julia is horrified to discover that Rossi was a paranoid recluse with delusions of grandeur, who believed herself to be a descendent of Duchess Caterina Sforza, a legendary Renaissance ruler. Julia is stunned by her uncanny resemblance to Rossi and even to Caterina, then she unearths eerie parallels between them, including an obsession with astrology.

Before long, Julia suspects she’s being followed, and strange things begin to happen. Not even a chance meeting with a handsome Florentine can ease her disturbed mind. When events turn deadly, she breaks with reality.

Julia’s harrowing struggle becomes a search for her identity, a race to save her sanity, and ultimately, a question of her very survival.]]> 400 Lisa Scottoline 1538769999 Wendy 0 to-read 3.67 The Unraveling of Julia
author: Lisa Scottoline
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Would Never 214151513 A riveting literary page-turner that explores the extremes to which a family will go to protect their own—for fans of Miranda Cowley Heller and Laura Dave.

No one is more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband Jonah. Hailey—nicknamed Sunshine by her mother for her bright outlook and ever-present smile—is the peacemaker who has always tried to do what her family expects of her.

The months leading up to Jonah’s death have been fraught, including a bitter separation and a messy custody battle over their young daughter, Maya. When Hailey files a motion to relocate to Florida so she can be near her family, the divorce begins to escalate, drawing in all the members of Hailey’s family, who are determined to help her however they can.

Most invested is Sherry, Hailey’s mother who wants nothing more than to be close to her family. Then there’s Nate, Hailey’s devoted and protective older brother, as well as the patriarch, Solomon, who is keeping a secret of his own that threatens the stability and security Sherry has worked so hard to maintain. As the divorce spirals dangerously out of control, they are all forced to consider just how far they will go for each other.

Part gripping mystery, part compassionate family drama, We Would Never explores what people are capable of when they feel cornered, and how, in the absence of forgiveness, love and hate can intertwine and turn deadly.]]> 368 Tova Mirvis 1668061627 Wendy 0 to-read 3.44 2025 We Would Never
author: Tova Mirvis
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Famous Last Words 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 Wendy 0 to-read 3.73 2025 Famous Last Words
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paris Widow 198264654 A dream vacation turns deadly when secrets from the past catch up to a married couple in Paris in this new edge-of-your-seat thriller from USA Today bestselling author, Kimberly Belle.

When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics.

As the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story. Was Adam a random victim or the target of the explosion? And why is someone following her through the streets of Paris?

An irresistible, fast-paced read set in some of Europe’s most inviting locales, The Paris Widow explores how sinister secrets of the past stay with us—no matter how far we travel.]]> 304 Kimberly Belle 0778307972 Wendy 3
A happily married couple is vacationing in Paris. When Adam leaves his sunglasses at the cafe and goes back to get them, there's a big explosion and Adam does not return. Stella is understandably very upset and refuses to leave Paris until she knows what happened to Adam. As Stella tries to figure out what happened to Adam and why, the story evolves into suspenseful twists and turns. It's a fun ride with great narration.]]> 3.63 2024 The Paris Widow
author: Kimberly Belle
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, contemporary, family, fiction, love-story, mystery, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


A happily married couple is vacationing in Paris. When Adam leaves his sunglasses at the cafe and goes back to get them, there's a big explosion and Adam does not return. Stella is understandably very upset and refuses to leave Paris until she knows what happened to Adam. As Stella tries to figure out what happened to Adam and why, the story evolves into suspenseful twists and turns. It's a fun ride with great narration.
]]> You Belong Here 220160921 A decades-old secret that drove a mother from her hometown now threatens her college-bound daughter in this twisty new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again�

For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…]]> 352 Megan Miranda 1668080974 Wendy 0 to-read 3.80 2025 You Belong Here
author: Megan Miranda
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot]]> 101021597
Many of us dread having to convey our ideas to others, often feeling ill-equipped, anxious, and awkward. Public speaking experts help by focusing on planned communication experiences such as slide presentations, pitches, or formal talks. Yet, most of our professional and personal communication occurs in spontaneous situations that creep up on us and all too often leave us flustered and stumbling for words. How can we rise to the occasion and shine when we’re put on the spot?

In Think Faster, Talk Smarter , Stanford lecturer, podcast host, and communication expert Matt Abrahams provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously. Abrahams provides science-based strategies for managing anxiety, responding to the mood of the room, and making content concise, relevant, compelling, and memorable. Drawing on stories from his clients and students, he offers best practices for navigating Q&A sessions, shining in job interviews, providing effective feedback, making small talk, fixing faux pas, persuading others, and handling other impromptu speaking tasks.

Whether it’s a prospective client asking you an unexpected question during a meeting or all eyes turning to you at a dinner party, you’ll know how to navigate the situation like a pro and bring out your very best. Think Faster, Talk Smarter is an accessible guide to communication that will help you master new techniques in no time.]]> 254 Matt Abrahams 1668010321 Wendy 2
When reading a book for a work book club with your team, the dynamics are a little different than with a book club of friends. For one thing, the books are usually work related and this one is no exception. The author has tips for reducing anxiety when communicating. One thing I liked that he said was that a presentation doesn't have to be perfect, you don't have to be perfect. It's a good reference book for reminders and a 'pep' talk for yourself. As with everything else, practice, practice, practice.]]> 3.71 Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot
author: Matt Abrahams
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: contemporary, non-fiction, work-related
review:


When reading a book for a work book club with your team, the dynamics are a little different than with a book club of friends. For one thing, the books are usually work related and this one is no exception. The author has tips for reducing anxiety when communicating. One thing I liked that he said was that a presentation doesn't have to be perfect, you don't have to be perfect. It's a good reference book for reminders and a 'pep' talk for yourself. As with everything else, practice, practice, practice.
]]> Hold Strong 217563521
From Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, and Chris Crabtree comes an epic and inspiring novel—based on true events—about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II.

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of 1,800 starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. When Sarah intercepts a message about a Japanese convoy, the US Navy’s mission is sink the Arisan Maru and send it to the bottom of the South China Sea. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.

Anchored in an extraordinary true story and breathlessly recreated, Hold Strong is a one-of-a-kind novel that explores faith, courage, survival, and coming home against insurmountable odds.]]> Robert Dugoni Wendy 3
There's no doubt that Robert Dugoni writes a good story, regardless of the subject matter he chooses to write about. In this story, Sam and Sarah are high school sweethearts in a small midwestern town. The story, however, evolves into what happens to Sam and Sarah at the beginning of World War 2 as that alters their plans to be together. What this story turns into is a little known factual journey of Japanese POWs in the Philippines, before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and one of the Japanese prisoner ships in the south China seas. It's a brutal and factual account of the horrific treatment of what the captured soldiers had to endure to survive with detailed descriptions of mistreatment, ships, artillery, POW camps, as well as what was happening in the US to break the Japanese codes. While the descriptions felt very real and accurate, the technical details were a bit much for me. The audiobook narration was well done.]]> 4.39 2025 Hold Strong
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: audiobook, netgalley, book-club, family, historical-fiction, love-story, horror, multiple-narrators, ww2
review:


There's no doubt that Robert Dugoni writes a good story, regardless of the subject matter he chooses to write about. In this story, Sam and Sarah are high school sweethearts in a small midwestern town. The story, however, evolves into what happens to Sam and Sarah at the beginning of World War 2 as that alters their plans to be together. What this story turns into is a little known factual journey of Japanese POWs in the Philippines, before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and one of the Japanese prisoner ships in the south China seas. It's a brutal and factual account of the horrific treatment of what the captured soldiers had to endure to survive with detailed descriptions of mistreatment, ships, artillery, POW camps, as well as what was happening in the US to break the Japanese codes. While the descriptions felt very real and accurate, the technical details were a bit much for me. The audiobook narration was well done.
]]> Before Dorothy 219301734 Long before Dorothy visits Oz, her aunt, Emily Gale, sets off on her own grand adventure, leaving gritty Chicago behind for Kansas and a life that will utterly change her, in this transporting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

Chicago, 1924: Emily Gale and her new husband, Henry, yearn to leave the bustle of Chicago behind for the promise of their own American dream. But leaving the city means leaving Emily’s beloved sister, Annie, who was once closer to her than anyone in the world.

Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have made a life in the warmth of the community of Liberal, Kansas, and among the harsh beauty of the prairie. Their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep.

The wide-eyed child isn’t the only thing to disrupt Emily’s world. Drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and their much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of Dorothy.

Bursting with courage and heart, Before Dorothy tells the story of the woman who raised a beloved heroine, and ponders the what is the true meaning of home?]]> 368 Hazel Gaynor 0593440331 Wendy 0 to-read 4.57 Before Dorothy
author: Hazel Gaynor
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dressmakers of London 214151644 The author of The Lost English Girl returns with a heartfelt new novel about estranged sisters who inherit their late mother’s dress shop in World War II London.

Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open. Realizing this could be her one chance at reconciliation with her sister, Sylvia is determined to save Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions from closure—and financial ruin.

Through letters, the sisters begin to confront old wounds, new loves, and the weight of family legacy in order to forge new beginnings in this lyrically moving novel.]]> 432 Julia Kelly 1668032724 Wendy 0 to-read 4.32 2025 The Dressmakers of London
author: Julia Kelly
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The View From Lake Como 220687867 From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, a “dazzlingâ€� storyteller (Washington Post), and a “comedy writer with a heart of goldâ€� (NYT), comes a novel about one woman’s quest to build her own life before it’s too late.Ěý

Jess Capodimonte Baratta is not living the life of her dreams. Not even close.
Ěý
In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, “the perfect husband," Jess moves into her parentsâ€� basement to hide and heal. Jess is the overlooked daughter, who dutifully takes care of her parents, cooks Sunday dinner, and puts herself last. Despite her role as the family handmaiden, Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business run by her confidant, her dapper uncle Louie, who believes she can do anything (once she invests in a better wardrobe). Ěý
Ěý
When the Capodimonte and Baratta families endure an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that will force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy.
Ěý
From the shadows of the majestic marble-capped mountains of Tuscany, to the glittering streets of Milan, and on the shores of enchanting Lake Como (the other one), Jess begins to carve a place in this new/old world. When she meets Angelo Strazza, a passionate artist who works in gold, she discovers her own skills are priceless. But as Jess uncovers the truth about her family history, it will change the course of her life and those she loves the most forever. ĚýIn love and work, in art and soul, Jess will need every tool she has mastered to reinvent her life.

Fed by the author’s cherished Italian roots comes a bighearted, hilarious novel of the the story of one woman’s determination to live a creative life that matters, with enough room left over for love. With a one-way ticket to Italy, Jess is determined to write a new story on her own terms--this time, in stone.]]> 416 Adriana Trigiani 0593183355 Wendy 0 to-read 4.21 The View From Lake Como
author: Adriana Trigiani
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds]]> 145624887 352 Michelle Horton 153875715X Wendy 0 to-read 4.50 2024 Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds
author: Michelle Horton
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Doorman 217387696 In the new novel from the bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon, on the worst night in the greatest city on Earth, a doorman at the toniest address in town is drawn into a web of intrigue, robbery, and murder.

Chicky Diaz stands on his little patch of the earth, the clean quiet sidewalk in front of the Bohemia Apartments, there sure are a lot of great places to kill someone in this city.

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.

Chicky serves at the pleasure of residents like Emily Longworth, who, up in her penthouse, leads a life of her perfect kids in her perfect home, her perfect worries about museum boards, charity work, and so on. Emily’s husband, though . . . perfectly wealthy, but she has quietly loathed Whit Longworth since well before the revelations that he’s a private-equity war profiteer. But their marriage came with an iron-clad prenup, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave all that. Yet.

Meanwhile, in apartment 2A, there’s nothing perfect about Julian Sonnenberg’s middle-aged life. Already struggling with the indignities of turning fifty—a stale marriage, teenage kids who no longer need him, his work as an art gallerist making him feel culturally obsolete—and now his doctor tells him that he needs openheart surgery, immediately. Things are falling apart awfully fast.

In the basement staff room, the life-and-death stakes of daily life are hardly news to the primarily Black and Latino hospitality. So when the NYPD fatally shoots an unarmed Black man and the streets swell with both protestors and counterprotestors, the staff’s concerns are less about the building and more about their survival—and what justice will look like.

Enter Chicky in his epauletted suit, manning the line between the turbulent streets outside the Bohemia and the far more sanguine world within. And not that the Bohemia’s residents care much (except maybe Emily Longworth), but Chicky has his own problems, the kind that mean that for tonight’s shift, for the first time in thirty years, Chicky will be carrying a gun. Because someone, tonight, is going to die.

In what is far away his best and most ambitious book yet, Chris Pavone has delivered a piercing portrait of the way we live now that is also a finely honed thriller of ticking-clock suspense. The Doorman is a book about class and privilege in a city poised to boil over its proverbial melting pot, and the ever starker divisions testing everything the City likes to believe about itself.]]> 400 Chris Pavone 0374604797 Wendy 0 to-read 3.84 The Doorman
author: Chris Pavone
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All This Could Be Yours: A Novel]]> 222361547 Is a debut author's blockbuster bestseller about to ruin her life? A glamorous book tour becomes a deadly cat-and-mouse chase in this new and captivating thriller by "master of suspense" (Publishers Weekly) and USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan.

Debut sensation Tessa Calloway is on a whirlwind book tour for her instant bestseller, All This Could Be Yours. In a different city every night, Tessa receives standing ovations from adoring fans while her husband Henry and their two children cheer her on from their brand-new dream house.

But there's a chilling problem with Tessa's triumphant book tour—she soon discovers she is being stalked by someone who's obsessed not only with sabotaging her career, but also with destroying her perfect family back home.

Tessa fears the fallout from an impossible decision she once made—what felt like a genuine deal with the devil—appears to be coming due. And she’s realizing that every high-stakes bargain comes with a high-stakes price. If Tessa can't untangle who's threatening to expose her darkest secrets, she'll lose her career, her family—and possibly her life.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> Hank Phillippi Ryan 125035000X Wendy 0 to-read 4.42 All This Could Be Yours: A Novel
author: Hank Phillippi Ryan
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daughter of Mine 218598759 The new thrilling novel from Megan Miranda, the instant New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Last to Vanish, and The Only Survivors.

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.]]> Megan Miranda Wendy 0 to-read 4.01 2024 Daughter of Mine
author: Megan Miranda
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Goddess of Warsaw: A Novel]]> 206029561 The Goddess Of Warsaw is an enthralling story of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret. When the famous actress Lena Browning is threatened by someone from her war-time past, she must put her skills into play to protect herself, her illustrious career, and those she loves, then and now.
Before she was a “Living Legend�, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a wealthy Polish Jew whose life and prominent family were destroyed by the Nazis and imprisoned with the rest of Warsaw's Jews in a ghastly ghetto. Determined to fight back, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy and an assassin, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the Warsaw ghetto to protect her family and fellow Jews. While Bina accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process � including a forbidden love.
More than a decade after escaping the horrors of the war, Lena Browning rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but hunger for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Fierce and fearless, Lena uses her star power to right the past’s wrongs . . . and perhaps even finds the happy ending she never had.
A gripping page-turner of one of history’s most heroic uprisings and a glamourous actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.
“Jaw-dropping moments worthy of a Tarantino film . . . Unrelentingly immersive and suspenseful, The Goddess of Warsaw spins a haunting tale of the cost of survival, sacrifice, and the long-denied secrets of the past.�
—NATALIE JENNER, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society]]> Lisa Barr Wendy 4
This is the story of a 1950s Hollywood actress, Lena Browning. But, before she was Lena Browning, she was Bina Blonski, who grew up in Poland in the 1930s and 1940s, the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents. When approached by an up and coming actress to hear and write Lena's story, we are back in Warsaw Poland, when the Jewish people were rounded up, forced to live in a ghetto, and experienced the horrors of the war. The detailed descriptions of what Bina and her family members faced are unimaginable horrors and the sacrifices they had to make to survive are brutal. In the author's note, Lisa Barr tells us that she is the daughter of holocaust survivors. This is one of the most difficult stories I have lsitened to with the author's vivid descriptions of what the Jews suffered under the Nazis.]]> 4.03 2024 The Goddess of Warsaw: A Novel
author: Lisa Barr
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: audiobook, book-club, coming-of-age, family, fiction, friendship, historical-fiction, horror, love-story, multiple-timelines, suspense, ww2
review:


This is the story of a 1950s Hollywood actress, Lena Browning. But, before she was Lena Browning, she was Bina Blonski, who grew up in Poland in the 1930s and 1940s, the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents. When approached by an up and coming actress to hear and write Lena's story, we are back in Warsaw Poland, when the Jewish people were rounded up, forced to live in a ghetto, and experienced the horrors of the war. The detailed descriptions of what Bina and her family members faced are unimaginable horrors and the sacrifices they had to make to survive are brutal. In the author's note, Lisa Barr tells us that she is the daughter of holocaust survivors. This is one of the most difficult stories I have lsitened to with the author's vivid descriptions of what the Jews suffered under the Nazis.
]]> Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds 221854228
When Madison starts her first real job as an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley tech giant, she has hopes to start afresh and put her troubled life in Boston behind her. But it is not to be.

A young employee out for an evening jog turns up dead.

Her charismatic VP boss fills her with unease. And when Madison uncovers his deadly secret, her ordinary life is thrust into a high-stakes conspiracy the FBI is desperate to crack.

An unprecedented crime from the past is about to be repeated on an unimaginable scale.

A shocking revelation, and her quest for redemption, could get her killed.

Tick...tick...tick...]]> 422 L.V. Pederson Wendy 0 to-read 4.06 Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds
author: L.V. Pederson
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> You'll Never Know I'm Here 210440937 Soon, they’ll be caught up in one of their own.

When six book influencers take a weekend getaway to connect with their fellow creators, it’s meant to be a chance to relax, collaborate, and discuss all of the books they love.

But from the start, something’s clearly amiss. From the host’s mysterious absence and an unexpected guest to an odd occurrence in town and the strange and worrisome behavior of the neighbors, what starts out as an innocent and lively vacation quickly becomes a weekend filled with terror. And when one of the group members believes they see something horrifying at the house next door, their carefully laid plans begin to unravel.

Drawn into a mystery that runs far deeper and is more sinister than they could’ve imagined—and surrounded by those who refute their story—the group struggles to unearth the truth about the house and the couple next door before it’s too late.

As new questions and shocking revelations surface, the group must decide if they can trust each other—not only with their safety in the house, but with their lives entirely.

Readers� worst nightmares come to life in this terrifying new thriller that tests the limits of friendship, explores the power of social media influence, digs into the depths of trust, and examines the desperate and dangerous lengths of obsession from million-copy bestselling author, Kiersten Modglin.]]> 1 Kiersten Modglin Wendy 2
So, six book influencers, writers, all get together in some secluded rental house in nowheresville Kentucky. And, guess what? The towns people are odd, the Uber drive, THE Uber driver, yes, there's only one, is odd, and the neighbor's are odd. It takes a while for me to keep the three male and the three female characters straight, and about 30% in, something finally happens, or did it? Then, the drama picks up and by the time I finished, I just wasn't wowed by the who's and the why's and it just kind of fell flat for me. While I've enjoyed many of Kiersten Modglin's audiobooks, this one isn't one I'd recommend.]]> 2.95 2023 You'll Never Know I'm Here
author: Kiersten Modglin
name: Wendy
average rating: 2.95
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, contemporary, domestic-thriller, fiction, friendship, mystery, psychological-thriller, suspense, suspense-mystery, suspense-thriller
review:


So, six book influencers, writers, all get together in some secluded rental house in nowheresville Kentucky. And, guess what? The towns people are odd, the Uber drive, THE Uber driver, yes, there's only one, is odd, and the neighbor's are odd. It takes a while for me to keep the three male and the three female characters straight, and about 30% in, something finally happens, or did it? Then, the drama picks up and by the time I finished, I just wasn't wowed by the who's and the why's and it just kind of fell flat for me. While I've enjoyed many of Kiersten Modglin's audiobooks, this one isn't one I'd recommend.
]]> Cher: The Memoir, Part One 222159043
“Lending my voice to help deliver Cher’s memoir has been an honor and a thrill. Her life is fascinating, glamorous, surprising, excitingâ€� and at times, completely heartbreaking. Her story is a beautiful balance of ULTIMATE stardom and accessibility. She is CHER for a reason and this book helps the reader get behind â€the reason,’â€� says Block.

“When it came to completing the audiobook, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it all myself due to my dyslexia. But then I thought of Stephanie, who won the Tony for playing me on Broadway in The Cher Show. I knew she would be the perfect choice to get across to the reader the essence of me. I called her and within hours she re-arranged her schedule to start the recording. I felt so safe having her help share my story, and she did a beautiful job,� says Cher.]]> Cher Wendy 3
I love Cher and really enjoyed listening to her talk about her childhood and growing up. Cher narrates the beginning of each chapters and then seemlessly, another voice takes over. I had no idea about Cher's early childhood experiences, some of them were pretty awful. I also found myself looking up her Vogue covers, her 'naked' dress and some of the other costumes she talks about. I had no idea about some of her relationships and how controlling Sonny Bono was. Cher also seems like a real quality person who has made some really close friends over the years who will always stand by her. She also tells the reader that she refers to her son, Chaz, as chastity in this story since Chaz was Chastity at the time. I am looking forward to part 2 when it comes out.]]> 4.29 2024 Cher: The Memoir, Part One
author: Cher
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: audiobook, book-club, coming-of-age, contemporary, family, friendship, memoir, non-fiction
review:


I love Cher and really enjoyed listening to her talk about her childhood and growing up. Cher narrates the beginning of each chapters and then seemlessly, another voice takes over. I had no idea about Cher's early childhood experiences, some of them were pretty awful. I also found myself looking up her Vogue covers, her 'naked' dress and some of the other costumes she talks about. I had no idea about some of her relationships and how controlling Sonny Bono was. Cher also seems like a real quality person who has made some really close friends over the years who will always stand by her. She also tells the reader that she refers to her son, Chaz, as chastity in this story since Chaz was Chastity at the time. I am looking forward to part 2 when it comes out.
]]> The Snowbirds 211004155 The Last Thing He Told Me meets Fleishman Is in Trouble in this page-turning story of a couple who flee winter in the Midwest for Palm Springs, where they find their relationship at a crossroads.

Kim and Grant are at a turning point. A couple for thirty years, their "separate but together" partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face.

When they arrive at Le Desert, a quirky condo community where everyone knows everyone’s business, Kim immediately embraces the opportunity to make new friends and explore a more adventurous side of her personality. Meanwhile, Grant struggles to find his footing in this unfamiliar landscape, leaving Kim to wonder if their relationship can survive the snowbird season. But when Grant goes missing on a hike in the Palm Springs mountains, Kim is forced to consider two terrifying outcomes: either Grant is truly lost, or this time he’s really left her.

Is it ever too late to become the person we wanted to be—and is there still time to change into someone better? The exhilarating, but often confusing transitions of midlife are pitched against the promise and glamour of Palm Springs in this tender, honest story of what it takes to commit to someone for a lifetime. With compassion and humor, Clancy explores the redemptive power of finding ourselves, and of being found.]]> 304 Christina Clancy 1250284953 Wendy 2
This is my third book by Christina Clancy. I think my review is skewed because I really really loved her first two books, 'The Second Home' and "Shoulder Season' so I had very high expectations. Kim and Grant are unmarried partners together for more than 30 years and they raised two daughters together. When they fight and Grant leaves, should Kim expect that he'll return? Does Kim want to be married? Does Grant? When their passion fades, will going on a long trip to Palm Springs for a few months help them find their way back to each other? What does it say about them that they never got married? These are all good questions and they are all answered, I just never really got involved with Kim or Grant, their past relationships, or their daughters. Feb 2025 Pub Date 2 stars]]> 3.50 2025 The Snowbirds
author: Christina Clancy
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: beach-read, book-club, contemporary, family, fiction, friendship, love-story, multiple-timelines, netgalley
review:


This is my third book by Christina Clancy. I think my review is skewed because I really really loved her first two books, 'The Second Home' and "Shoulder Season' so I had very high expectations. Kim and Grant are unmarried partners together for more than 30 years and they raised two daughters together. When they fight and Grant leaves, should Kim expect that he'll return? Does Kim want to be married? Does Grant? When their passion fades, will going on a long trip to Palm Springs for a few months help them find their way back to each other? What does it say about them that they never got married? These are all good questions and they are all answered, I just never really got involved with Kim or Grant, their past relationships, or their daughters. Feb 2025 Pub Date 2 stars
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl from Greenwich Street]]> 214210952 Based on the true story of a famous trial, this novel is Law and 1800, as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr investigate the shocking murder of a young woman who everyone—and no one—seemed to know.

At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows.Ěý

Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house—and doesn’t come home.ĚýHas she eloped?ĚýRun away? No one knows—until her body appears in the Manhattan Well.

Her family insists they know who killed her.ĚýHandbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma.Ěý

But privately, quietly, Levi’s wealthy brother calls in a special favor�.

Aaron Burr’s legal practice can’t finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections.ĚýTo defend Levi Weeks is a double a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines.

Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn’t going to let Burr monopolize the public’s attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man’s life—and destroy each other.

Part murder mystery, part thriller, part true crime, The Girl From Greenwich Street revisits a dark corner of history—with a surprising twist ending that reveals the true story of the woman at the center of the tale.]]> 341 Lauren Willig 0063306115 Wendy 0 to-read 3.74 2025 The Girl from Greenwich Street
author: Lauren Willig
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Girls of Good Fortune 216594947 From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Ways We HideĚý

ĚýShe came from a lineage known for good fortune…by those who don't know the whole story.Ěý

ĚýPortland, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of the notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor, leaving behind those she loves most. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival—being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment—she fears that far more than her own fate lay at stake.Ěý

ĚýAs she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, from serving as a maid for the family of a dubious mayor to becoming entwined in the case of a goldminers' massacre, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove even more deadly than the dark recesses of Chinatown.

ĚýA captivating tale of resilience and hope, The Girls of Good Fortune explores the complexity of family and identity, the importance of stories that echo through generations, and the power of strength found beneath the surface.]]> 416 Kristina McMorris 1728284872 Wendy 0 to-read 4.07 2025 The Girls of Good Fortune
author: Kristina McMorris
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2)]]> 16117506
The whole city knows that Max Stella loves women, not that he’s ever found one he particularly wants to keep around. Despite pulling in plenty with his Wall Street bad boy charm, it’s not until Sara—and the wild photos she lets him take of her—that he starts wondering if there’s someone for him outside of the bedroom.

Hooking up in places where anybody could catch them, the only thing scarier for Sara than getting caught in public is having Max get too close in private.]]> 345 Christina Lauren 1476731535 Wendy 0 to-read 4.12 2013 Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2)
author: Christina Lauren
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Far and Away 220160948 The “absolutely hilarious� (Real Simple) Amy Poeppel delights once again with a charming new novel about a house swap gone wonderfully awry.

Perfect strangers Lucy and Greta have agreed to a house swap—and boy, are they going to regret it.

Lucy’s hometown of Dallas has gone from home sweet home to vicious snake pit in the blink of an eye after her son makes a mistake he can’t undo. And Greta’s beloved flat in Berlin is suddenly up for grabs when her husband Otto takes a dream job in Texas without even telling her. In their rush to leave town, Lucy and Greta make a deal, pack their bags, and—thanks to martinis, desperation, and some very rusty German—have absolutely no idea what they’re getting themselves into.

Trading Southern charm and barbecue for European sophistication and schnitzel, the two women get a lot more than a change of scenery as they move into each other’s houses, neighborhoods, and lives. Greta and Lucy’s husbands are no help: Otto is winning over his colleagues, swimming laps in the backyard pool, and rooting for the Rangers, while Lucy’s husband is doing a six-month stretch out west, either in a NASA biosphere or in jail, depending on who you ask. Meanwhile, Greta’s daughter Emmi and Lucy’s son Jack get tossed into each other’s orbits, where they both discover secrets they can’t ignore.

When Greta’s biggest career achievement—the buzzworthy purchase of a Vermeer at auction—is thrown into question and Lucy’s past with a hot Viking named Bjørn invades her present, the two women need each other in ways they never could have imagined. Through jet lag, culture shock, suspiciously nice neighbors, and scandals that refuse to be left behind, Lucy and Greta will have to decide if they can ever go home again.]]> 400 Amy Poeppel 1668022850 Wendy 0 to-read 4.39 2025 Far and Away
author: Amy Poeppel
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope]]> 58429268 272 Maggie Doyne 0785240284 Wendy 0 to-read 4.45 2022 Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope
author: Maggie Doyne
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> No Two Persons 111118070
One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.�

That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go�

Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.

Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.]]> 9 Erica Bauermeister 1250898358 Wendy 4
There is so much to like about this story (or stories). There's a book that an author writes and then you hear about it, a little more each time, through nine different people who each read this book. They are a new mother, a stunt man/actor, an artist, a diver, a teenager, a bookseller, a care taker, a coordinator, and a publisher. It seems to be nine short stories but they're not. It makes you think about the author in the book's story, why she writes it and why it resonates with so many people for so many different reasons. This is not the first book by Erica Bauermeister that I've read, which surprised me, and I already got a copy of 'The Scent Keeper' to read. I really enjoyed her book titled 'Joy for Beginners' and have gifted it to multiple people. Her writing style gets the reader to feel all the feels and the narration is very well done.]]> 4.07 2023 No Two Persons
author: Erica Bauermeister
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/19
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, book-club, coming-of-age, contemporary, family, fiction, friendship, multiple-narrators
review:


There is so much to like about this story (or stories). There's a book that an author writes and then you hear about it, a little more each time, through nine different people who each read this book. They are a new mother, a stunt man/actor, an artist, a diver, a teenager, a bookseller, a care taker, a coordinator, and a publisher. It seems to be nine short stories but they're not. It makes you think about the author in the book's story, why she writes it and why it resonates with so many people for so many different reasons. This is not the first book by Erica Bauermeister that I've read, which surprised me, and I already got a copy of 'The Scent Keeper' to read. I really enjoyed her book titled 'Joy for Beginners' and have gifted it to multiple people. Her writing style gets the reader to feel all the feels and the narration is very well done.
]]> Kill Your Darlings 218671812 From theĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author ofĚýThe Kind Worth KillingĚýandĚýEight Perfect MurdersĚýcomes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.

What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.

Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.]]> 288 Peter Swanson 0063433621 Wendy 0 to-read 3.59 2025 Kill Your Darlings
author: Peter Swanson
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Gift 201243153
It’s Christmas Eve and Stella Hansen is broke.

She is so broke that despite working two jobs, she can’t even afford a present for her husband on their first Christmas as man and wife. But then a mysterious storekeeper at a pawn shop offers Stella an intriguing trade.

Stella wants more than anything to buy her husband the Christmas gift of his dreams. But will it come at a terrible price?


The Gift is a gripping Christmas-themed thriller inspired by the classic O. Henry tale, The Gift of the Magi.]]> 2 Freida McFadden 1666651419 Wendy 2
Well, this was certainly predictable and yet, in true Freida style, not. So, a very poor newly married couple is celebrating their first christmas together. And, wifey wants to get her hubby a really special gift, which of course, is impossible when you have no money. But then, she is approached by someone who wants to by her hair, long golden locks, her best feature. So, does she love her hubby enough to sell her hair and get a gift for him that he'll love? Do you have an hour? The audiobook run time is 65 minutes and the narration is well done.]]> 3.01 2022 The Gift
author: Freida McFadden
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.01
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, contemporary, family, fiction, love-story, mystery
review:


Well, this was certainly predictable and yet, in true Freida style, not. So, a very poor newly married couple is celebrating their first christmas together. And, wifey wants to get her hubby a really special gift, which of course, is impossible when you have no money. But then, she is approached by someone who wants to by her hair, long golden locks, her best feature. So, does she love her hubby enough to sell her hair and get a gift for him that he'll love? Do you have an hour? The audiobook run time is 65 minutes and the narration is well done.
]]> <![CDATA[The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins, #1)]]> 40207839
Former CIA case officer Charles Jenkins is a man at a crossroads: in his early sixties, he has a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business on the brink of bankruptcy. Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters.

Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital. But when he finds the mastermind agent behind the assassinations—the so-called eighth sister—she is not who or what he was led to believe. Then again, neither is anyone else in this deadly game of cat and mouse.

Pursued by a dogged Russian intelligence officer, Jenkins executes a daring escape across the Black Sea, only to find himself abandoned by the agency he serves. With his family and freedom at risk, Jenkins is in the fight of his life—against his own country.]]> 479 Robert Dugoni 1503958302 Wendy 0 to-read 4.22 2019 The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins, #1)
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Business Trip 221853307
This program features multicast narration.

THE BUSINESS TRIP is the gripping, binge-worthy debut from author Jessie Garcia.

Stephanie and Jasmine have nothing and everything in common. The two women don’t know each other but are on the same plane. Stephanie is on a business trip and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive relationship. After a few days, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man—the messages becoming stranger and more erratic.

And then the two women vanish. The texts go silent, the red flags go up, and the panic sets in. When Stephanie and Jasmine are each declared missing and in danger, it begs the questions: Who is Trent McCarthy? What did he do to these women—or what did they do to him?

Twist upon twist, layer upon layer, where nothing is as it seems, The Business Trip takes you on a descent into the depths of a mastermind manipulator. But who is playing who?]]> Jessie Garcia Wendy 4 audiobook
Well, this was a wild ride. I found myself hoping Jasmine escapes her abusive boyfriend and Stephanie, power woman, continues to exceed at work. Then, there's Trent McCarthy, the opposite of what you would think god's gift to women might be. We are treated (ahem) to Trent's private thoughts, and I just couldn't help but thinking, it couldn't have happened to a better guy. As the story continues, I found myself so confused, in a good way, wondering how that happened and why. And then, lots of 'aha' moments as well, and who is Diana? The twists keep coming and boy was this fun! The story was also well narrated. Jan 2025 Pub Date]]> 3.61 2025 The Business Trip
author: Jessie Garcia
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: audiobook
review:


Well, this was a wild ride. I found myself hoping Jasmine escapes her abusive boyfriend and Stephanie, power woman, continues to exceed at work. Then, there's Trent McCarthy, the opposite of what you would think god's gift to women might be. We are treated (ahem) to Trent's private thoughts, and I just couldn't help but thinking, it couldn't have happened to a better guy. As the story continues, I found myself so confused, in a good way, wondering how that happened and why. And then, lots of 'aha' moments as well, and who is Diana? The twists keep coming and boy was this fun! The story was also well narrated. Jan 2025 Pub Date
]]> Don't Open Your Eyes 219301723 In this twisted psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick The Last Mrs. Parrish, a woman is tormented by nightmarish visions of her future—and then they start to come true.

Annabelle has everything she’s ever wanted. A devoted husband, two wonderful daughters, and a career she loves. She couldn’t be happier. So why is she suddenly plagued by disturbing dreams of a future where she hates her husband and her daughters� lives are at risk? At first, she chalks the dreams up to an overactive imagination. But when details from her dreams, details she couldn’t possibly have predicted, begin to materialize, she realizes these aren’t just dreams but rather premonitions of a terrifying future. They all point to a singular choice, an unknown moment that holds Annabelle’s life in the balance.

Then Annabelle has a dream that her daughter, Scarlett, is in immediate danger.ĚýSomeone wants Scarlett dead and Annabelle has no idea who or why. Suddenly, every choice she makes is fraught with peril, with no inkling of which move could bring this terrifying vision to life. As her present life starts to collide with the future in her dreams, she wrestles with how much control she really has over her destiny and whether or not she can change what is meant to be.]]> 352 Liv Constantine 0593875206 Wendy 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Don't Open Your Eyes
author: Liv Constantine
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hum If You Don't Know the Words]]> 32739413 Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy.

Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a nine-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred... until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin's parents are left dead and Beauty's daughter goes missing.

After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection.

Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum if You Don't Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.]]> 432 Bianca Marais 0399575065 Wendy 0 to-read 4.17 2017 Hum If You Don't Know the Words
author: Bianca Marais
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau]]> 220160204 Kristin Harmel, the New York Times bestselling author who “is the best there is at sweeping historical drama� (Kelly Harms, author of The Seven Day Switch), returns with an electrifying new novel about two jewel thieves, a priceless bracelet that disappears in 1940s Paris, and a quest for answers in a decades-old murder.

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance.

But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an exquisite diamond bracelet sewn into the hem of her nightgown for safekeeping. Soon after, Annabel was executed, and Liliane’s body was found floating in the Seine—but the bracelet was nowhere to be found.

Seventy years later, Colette—who has “redistributed� $30 million in jewels over the decades to fund many worthy organizations—has done her best to put her tragic past behind her, but her life begins to unravel when the long-missing bracelet suddenly turns up in a museum exhibit in Boston. If Colette can discover where it has been all this time—and who owns it now—she may finally learn the truth about what happened to her sister. But she isn’t the only one for whom the bracelet holds answers, and when someone from her childhood lays claim to the diamonds, she’s forced to confront the ghosts of her past as never before. Against all odds, there may still be a chance to bring a murderer to justice—but first, Colette will have to summon the courage to open her own battered heart.]]> 384 Kristin Harmel 1982191732 Wendy 0 to-read 4.50 The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds 213339041 EVERYONE HAS SECRETS... SOME ARE JUST MORE DEADLY THAN OTHERS.


When Madison starts her first real job as an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley tech giant, she has hopes to start afresh and put her troubled life in Boston behind her. But it is not to be.


A young employee out for an evening jog turns up dead.


Her charismatic VP boss fills her with unease. And when Madison uncovers his deadly secret, her ordinary life is thrust into a high-stakes conspiracy the FBI is desperate to crack.


An unprecedented crime from the past is about to be repeated on an unimaginable scale.


A shocking revelation, and her quest for redemption, could get her killed.


Tick-tick-tick...



“An emotionally charged thriller that deftly weaves suspense with a profound exploration of trauma and redemption.� - Kirkus Reviews


“Knockout espionage novel exploring trauma, vengeance, and self-forgiveness� - Booklife


“A thrilling plot, endearing characters, and clever twists and turns make Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds a novel that readers will enjoy and want to read more than once, like watching a favorite action film over and over.� -- BookTrib

]]> 395 L.V. Pederson Wendy 0 to-read 3.99 Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds
author: L.V. Pederson
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.99
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lies They Told 220999703
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.

Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.�

After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.]]> 416 Ellen Marie Wiseman 1496741501 Wendy 0 to-read 4.53 The Lies They Told
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let's Call Her Barbie 211953713 She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold new novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.

When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.

In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.

As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.

In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions� each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.]]> 429 Renée Rosen 0593335694 Wendy 0 to-read 4.25 2025 Let's Call Her Barbie
author: Renée Rosen
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bye, Baby 127305890
On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It's her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she's just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering—with a jolt of fear—that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world.

So begins the story of Billie and Cassie's friendship--both in recent weeks, and since they met twenty-three years ago, in their small Hudson Valley hometown the summer before seventh grade. Once fiercely bonded by their secrets, including a traumatic, unspeakable incident in high school, Cassie and Billie have drifted apart in adulthood, no longer the inseparable pair they used to be. Cassie is married to a wealthy man, has recently become a mother, and is building a following as a fashion and lifestyle influencer. She is desperate to leave her past behind--including Billie, who is single and childless, and no longer fits into her world. Hurt and rejected by Cassie’s new priorities, Billie will do anything to restore their friendship, even as she hides the truth about what really happened the night the baby was taken.

Told in alternating perspectives in Lovering’s signature suspenseful style, Bye Baby confronts the myriad ways friendships change and evolve over time, the lingering echoes of childhood trauma, and the impact of women’s choices on their lifelong relationships.]]> 352 Carola Lovering 125028936X Wendy 2
From the beginning until almost half way, I was not impressed with Cassie or Billie. Cassie, who attended Harvard, is out to hook a guy whose family comes from money, old money. When she is seemingly successful, she can't wait to ditch her childhood bestie, Billie. And, poor low esteem, waiting for a crumbs handout Billie, wants one thing, to be Cassie's best friend again. The incident is just so unbelievable but, by that point in the audiobook, I wanted to see how things would play out.]]> 3.70 2024 Bye, Baby
author: Carola Lovering
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: audiobook, beach-read, coming-of-age, contemporary, dual-timeline, family, friendship, fiction, love-story, multiple-narrators, suspense
review:


From the beginning until almost half way, I was not impressed with Cassie or Billie. Cassie, who attended Harvard, is out to hook a guy whose family comes from money, old money. When she is seemingly successful, she can't wait to ditch her childhood bestie, Billie. And, poor low esteem, waiting for a crumbs handout Billie, wants one thing, to be Cassie's best friend again. The incident is just so unbelievable but, by that point in the audiobook, I wanted to see how things would play out.
]]> <![CDATA[Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman]]> 217159488 From generational icon Brooke Shields comes an intimate and empowering exploration of ageing that flips the script on the idea of what it means for a woman to grow older

Brooke Shields has spent a lifetime in the public eye. Growing up as a child actor and model, her every feature was scrutinised, her every decision judged. Today Brooke faces a different kind of that of being a 'woman of a certain age'.

And yet, for Brooke, the passage of time has brought freedom. At fifty-nine, she feels more comfortable in her skin, more empowered and confident than she did decades ago in those famous Calvin Kleins. Now, in Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, she's changing the narrative about women and ageing.

This is an era, insists Brooke, when women are reclaiming agency and power, not receding into the shadows. These are the years when we get to decide how we want to live - when we get to write our own stories.

With remarkable candour, Brooke bares all, painting a vibrant and optimistic picture of being a woman in the prime of her life, while dismantling the myths that have, for too long, dimmed that perception. Sharing her own life experiences with humour and humility, and weaving together research and reporting, Brooke takes aim at the systemic factors that contribute to age-related bias.

By turns inspiring, moving, and galvanising, Brooke's honesty and vulnerability will resonate with women everywhere, and spark a new conversation about the power and promise of midlife.]]> 250 Brooke Shields 034944191X Wendy 3
Brooke Shields and I are almost the same age and going through a lot of similar female issues as we age. What she has to say about menopause, being an empty nester, and the female sex drive as we get older certainly resonates with me. I grew up with Brooke Shields and of course, had Calvins. She starred in 'Endless Love' with a friend of mine and I was a big fan of hers, I loved 'Suddenly Susan' and her comedic side. She narrates her story well, I enjoyed listening to it, and wish her the best in all her endeavors. Jan 2025 Pub Date. 3 stars.]]> 3.72 2025 Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman
author: Brooke Shields
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: audiobook, book-club, contemporary, family, netgalley
review:


Brooke Shields and I are almost the same age and going through a lot of similar female issues as we age. What she has to say about menopause, being an empty nester, and the female sex drive as we get older certainly resonates with me. I grew up with Brooke Shields and of course, had Calvins. She starred in 'Endless Love' with a friend of mine and I was a big fan of hers, I loved 'Suddenly Susan' and her comedic side. She narrates her story well, I enjoyed listening to it, and wish her the best in all her endeavors. Jan 2025 Pub Date. 3 stars.
]]> A Calamity of Souls 203418210
Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from #1�New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.�

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
�
Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era. �
�
Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.

Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.]]> David Baldacci Wendy 4
It's 1968 and we are in southern Virginia, where some white people do not agree that 'all men are created equal' and disagree with the repealing of the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation. So, that's the setting when a black man, who works for an older white couple, finds them murdered in their home. He's then accused of their murders and forced into to a speedy trial and the death penalty. A white local lawyer decides to represent the accused man and is then joined by a female black lawyer activist. These two lawyers, who seemingly have nothing in common, join forces to uncover the truth and stop the town and local law enforcement from convicting an innocent man. I'd like to say that this kind of racial bigotry has improved but, these days it seems to be getting worse. The narration for the audiobook was very well done.]]> 4.28 2024 A Calamity of Souls
author: David Baldacci
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: audiobook, book-club, crime-drama, family, fiction, friendship, historical-fiction, suspense-mystery
review:


It's 1968 and we are in southern Virginia, where some white people do not agree that 'all men are created equal' and disagree with the repealing of the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation. So, that's the setting when a black man, who works for an older white couple, finds them murdered in their home. He's then accused of their murders and forced into to a speedy trial and the death penalty. A white local lawyer decides to represent the accused man and is then joined by a female black lawyer activist. These two lawyers, who seemingly have nothing in common, join forces to uncover the truth and stop the town and local law enforcement from convicting an innocent man. I'd like to say that this kind of racial bigotry has improved but, these days it seems to be getting worse. The narration for the audiobook was very well done.
]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Wendy 0 to-read 4.45 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bachelorette Party 217388429 Scream meets The Guest List in this wickedly compelling and compulsively page-turning thriller of friendship and murder from the author of The Lost Village, Camilla Sten.

On a remote, craggy island nestled off the coast of Sweden, four friends—Tilly, Anna, Linnea and Evelina—meet every year. Best friends since childhood, the idea is to drink beer, dance by the water, and shake off the weight of life's expectations. The location of the island is a secret to everyone but them. One night of reckless fun and secret-sharing, and then they return to their normal lives.

Ten years later. Ever since she was a teenager, Tessa Nilsson has been consumed by the story of four friends who disappeared on their annual trip to a remote island together. As her true crime fervor turned into a wildly popular podcast, Tessa urgently covered Sweden’s most gruesome cases, but could never find the answers behind what happened to these women who disappeared, leaving a few maddening clues but no concrete answers. Now Tessa’s podcast has crashed and burned, any chance she had at uncovering the truth vanishing with it.

Anneliese is Tessa’s best friend, and before she walks down the aisle, she wants to have a bachelorette party. The Baltic Vinyasa, a sleek, sophisticated yoga retreat on a small island off the coast—one with such similar characteristics to the tragedy years ago that it raises the hair on Tessa’s neck. The idea is to drink gallons of cava, do sunrise yoga, and get in their last chance to bond with the bride. Tessa will not pass this up. It’s her last chance to find out what happened to the four women, once and for all.

And it’s someone else’s last chance to get revenge.]]> 304 Camilla Sten 1250868505 Wendy 0 to-read 3.60 2025 The Bachelorette Party
author: Camilla Sten
name: Wendy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love]]> 203680931 The author of the beloved international hit The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot returns with a funny, uplifting story about the power of friendship and finding love in unexpected places.

Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.

A true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, at 24 years old, has just lost the love of her life.

When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life.

A tale of friendship and kindness that reminds us that those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.]]> 304 Marianne Cronin 0063383519 Wendy 0 to-read 4.31 2024 Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love
author: Marianne Cronin
name: Wendy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>