The Need to Know: It’s Always the Husband was like candy to me: a delicious treat that I quickly gobbled up.Last weekend I raced through Michele Campbell’s It’s Always the Husband, a compelling, dramatic mystery that reminds me so much of one of my favorite shows, How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM). Like HTGAWM, It’s Always the Husband focuses on a small group of friends who attend a private school together. Booze, drugs, sex, and drama abound.
Also like HTGAWM, eventually the characters in It’s Always the Husband find themselves confronting something much darker than the jealousies, insecurities, and resentments that underlie their friendship. Murder. In It’s Always the Husband, Aubrey, Jenny, and the beautiful, charismatic Kate don’t have a perfect friendship. But they’re college freshmen roommates, and they’re the closest friends each of them have. Fast forward twenty-two years later, and now Kate is dead. Who did it? And why? Campbell does an excellent job of using flashbacks to illuminate her characters’ deepest motivations and desires. These are characters that I didn’t feel protective of or emotionally drawn to, but layered, complicated characters who, at their core, want something more than acceptance: an acknowledgement of their superiority. Even more important in terms of this murder-mystery plot, Campbell’s ability to hold these various threads of the story together so skillfully means that the reader has suspicions about what happened to Kate and why, but no real certainty until the book’s last pages. As Campbell suggests through her portrayal of Aubrey, Jenny, and Kate and their dangerous friendship, any number of characters might have had motive—to use the police vocab—to kill Kate. If you’re in the mood for a moody, dramatic murder-mystery that’s centered on a rich portrayal of a female friendship, check out It’s Always the Husband. **I received a complimentary copy of Michele Campbell’s It’s Always the Husband from SheSpeaks but all opinions included here are my own. This book will be released on 05/16/17 and is available for pre-order today.
0 Comments
The Need to Know: Sherry Thomas is such a great writer and you and I need to read all of her books now.I’m a big fan of most literary retellings. I love it when beloved literary institutions are melted down and re-shaped into something new—without completely losing the spirit of what made the initial text so beloved in the first place. In today’s market, it seems that Sherlock Holmes’ retellings are particularly prolific, but Sherry Thomas still makes hers unique, fresh, and captivating in A Study in Scarlet Women. It’s England, 1886. Charlotte Holmes has always struggled with how to relate to others. She’s been gifted with “discernment,” a gift which is not always welcome when she shares what she has discerned with others. She also doesn't want to marry. Let’s see, how does she put it? Oh yeah: “I do not like the idea of bartering the use of my reproductive system for a man’s support—not in the absence of other choices.” When her father breaks his promise to allow her to continue her education, Charlotte determines that the only way out of her stifling home is to be ruined by a married man. She succeeds in her mission, but news of her ruin is unexpectedly spread thanks to the man’s mother, Lady Shrewsbury. Charlotte’s parents determine that they will exile her, but Charlotte sneaks out of her home before they can and seeks her fortune alone in London. But there are a couple of big problems. One, everyone seems to know what happened, thanks to the man’s mother, Lady Shrewsbury. Second, Lady Shrewsbury died the day after Charlotte was ruined, and members of society look upon Charlotte's sister, Livia, suspiciously. But Charlotte has noticed that two other members of the upper-class have fallen prey to similar deaths as Lady Shrewsbury, so she writes to a newspaper as Sherlock Holmes, an alias that she infrequently adopted earlier to help with other mysteries. Charlotte/Sherlock’s official detective career is born, and the stakes are huge. If she fails, her sister will forever be suspected of a crime, Sherlock will be disgraced, and she, Charlotte, will be left with a stultifying job that doesn’t fulfill her. Along the way, Charlotte joins forces with Mrs. Watson, a maternal, wise, and inventive woman who takes in Charlotte when she needs help most. That's what I adored most about A Study of Scarlet Women--how ingenious and strong the women are. Charlotte doesn’t take her independence in the manner which I would have most liked (I couldn’t help thinking about and sympathizing with the man’s wife), but she is determined, brilliant, and caring, and I rooted for her later success. Without getting into the specifics, the friendship that she finds with Mrs. Watson--another outsider--is an inspiring reminder of how women help each other. And the writing in this novel is fantastic. I found myself highlighting various lines, like this gem of Mrs. Watson’s: “Do not undervalue what you are ultimately worth because you are at a momentary disadvantage.” Oh, okay, that's only a fabulous piece of advice that I should have a print of so that I can remind myself every day.... This was such a fun, bold (and, at times, even sensual) read, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel. **This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Um, what just happened? Wait a minute. What?! No! Those were some of my responses to the end of Sarah Pinborough’s thriller/mystery Behind Her Eyes. I had been warned that the ending has a killer twist, so I had my eyes open, my senses on full alert, my imagination rattling off the dozens of possibilities for the novel’s ending. But still I was surprised (and also horrified, if I may be honest) once I reached the last page and realized that it was over. But let’s start at the beginning. This is the basic plot: Single mom Louise kisses a stranger named David who it turns out is married, and it also turns out, is her new boss. David is a psychiatrist who is married to Adele, a beautiful woman who chiefly stays at home during the day. Louise and Adele become friends. Louise and David begin sleeping together. Are you still with me? Then Louise gets the sense that there’s something wrong with Adele and David’s marriage. To be specific, that there are several things wrong, and that something very dark lies at the center of that wrongness. Louise is sleeping with David, and friends with Adele, and her complicated feelings for both people means that she’s even more conflicted about who the guilty party in the marriage is. It's hard to reveal too much about the plot without ruining the book. A big part of the fun and the mastery of Pinborough's storytelling is how marvelously she has structured the book. We read Louise’s perspective and we read Adele’s, we read from a notebook that Adele has gifted Louise, and we jump in time from the present moment to the past. The structure of the book ensures that the reader’s tension is amped up to the thousandth power. We see the lies that each character tells to herself and to others, and we see the manipulations and the violations. Pinborough skillfully plays with the reader’s expectations, heightening the drama and the anxiety within the story and all the while leading us to a truly explosive ending. You don’t know how many times I wanted to talk to the characters while reading this book. It was frustrating and also wonderful. If you’re in the mood for a beautifully written, smart thriller, check out Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes. I got my copy of the stellar book, Behind Her Eyes, from the Book of the Month Club, a site that I’ve praised on the blog before. When you subscribe to Book of the Month, you select one book a month from five options, all carefully selected by a panel of prestigious judges. The book offerings are diverse, but if you’re not enticed by any of the options, you can choose to skip a month and save your book for another month. I subscribed to the three-month plan, and chose Behind Her Eyes the month that it was offered. If you subscribe and select a book, your hardback book will ship to you in a cute box with a cute bookmark, and then you can add your pretty copy to your bookshelves with a feeling of supreme joy. This month (March 2017), Book of the Month is offering two special deals. Check them out below. 3-months Membership For $9.99 Per Month + Free BOTM Tote $5 for 1-month memberships Happy Reading! Jess The Need to Know: I stayed up until 1:06 this morning reading this book and wiping tears from my cheeks. So yeah, I really liked this book. The first sentence of The Orphan’s Tale by Pam Jenoff is “They will be looking for me by now.” Immediately I was hooked. In the opening pages of this thrilling story, an unnamed narrator has snuck away to an exhibit called “Two Hundred Years of Circus Magic.” The narrator glances at the exhibit’s photographs before locating a railcar, where she opens up a compartment in the back, hoping to find something which is not fully revealed to the reader. But there’s nothing there, “and the dream I had that it might hold the answers evaporates like cool mist.” This kind of narrative is one of my favorites: a frame story told from the perspective of an elderly person, about to reveal her life’s greatest secrets—if only to the reader—and a passionate, tender inner story that is slowly built on until the book’s last revelations. After the prologue, The Orphan’s Tale is told from two different perspectives, Noa’s and Astrid’s, both of which are rooted in the WWII period. Noa is a young Dutch woman who was thrown out of her parents’ home after she became pregnant with a German soldier’s baby. She ends up in Germany, alone, until in an impulsive moment she takes a Jewish baby from a railcar which the Germans are sending east. A series of events lead her and the baby to a famous circus, where she meets Astrid. Astrid’s husband, a member of the Reich, cast her aside because she is Jewish, and she returns to the winter quarters of her family’s circus, the only home she has ever known. Her family’s circus is no longer in operation because her Jewish parents and siblings are gone, but Herr Neuhoff, their former circus rival, offers her a job as an aerialist--her previous role in her family's circus--and she accepts. After Noa and the baby, Theo, arrive at Neuhoff's circus, Herr Neuhoff tasks Astrid with making Noa an aerialist within a 6-week time period—a task which Astrid resents for multiple reasons, not least because she thinks it is impossible. Will Noa become an aerialist? Will she and Astrid ever trust one another? But the captivating circus and the performers’ dynamics are only part of the story here. After all the story is set in World War II; two of its main characters are Jewish, and many of the other characters are accomplices to sheltering them, whether they wish to be or not. This beautiful story moved me in deep ways, and in the final pages, I wiped tears off of my cheeks as I read in bed. Now, hours later, I still feel immersed in the world of The Orphan’s Tale, and I’m also still processing what happened to the nuanced, imperfect, and also noble characters Jenoff created. I have read comparisons of The Orphan’s Tale to Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train. I would also add Natasha Solomons’ The House at Tyneford, and Kate Morton’s books, which use the same type of frame structure. In one way this thrilling, lovely book was easy to read. I raced through its pages. But on the other, there were sections of this book which were truly difficult to read and come to terms with, particularly after I read the “Author’s Note” and learned that a couple of the main plot-points are inspired by real-life events. The Orphan’s Tale offers the reader a chance to mourn and to celebrate, to become invested in the lives of the characters and to be reminded of our history. I’m so glad that I found this book. I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided in this review are my own. The Need to Know: An atmospheric, detailed mystery, Brunonia Barry’s The Fifth Petal is a satisfying, juicy book to sink into and enjoy. At its heart, The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry is a murder mystery about who murdered “the Goddesses,” three beautiful young women who were killed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1989 while attempting to consecrate the spot where their female ancestors were executed for supposed witchcraft in 1692. The answer to this murder mystery is particularly important to Callie Cahill, daughter of one of the Goddesses, who was present at that ill-fated ceremony and only avoided death thanks to “Auntie” Rose, who hid her away before returning to the murder site. Unbeknownst to Callie, now thirty years old at The Fifth Petal’s opening, Rose is still alive and many of Salem’s residents hold Rose responsible for the Goddesses’ murders, even though there was no evidence that she was their murderer. When Rose is believed to have committed a fourth murder, this time of a teenager who was threatening her, Callie immediately returns to Salem to clear Rose’s name and to uncover the truth about what happened to her mother and the other Goddesses. One challenge that Callie faces, among many, is that Rose is considered insane by many Salemites, and Rose maintains that a banshee was responsible for all four of the murders. Though the rich plot of The Fifth Petal is somewhat difficult to summarize, Barry maneuvers the plot and characters deftly, and the book remains suspenseful rather than gratuitously complicated. Barry’s rendering of Salem, Massachusetts, a city already compelling to many Americans familiar with the barest bits of its history, is smart and thorough, and she has rooted her plot within the occult and religious practices unique to Salem’s history. The ways in which Puritanism, Catholicism, and the occult clash and overlap with each other in The Fifth Petal enrich the reader’s understanding of the characters themselves: their motivations, their fears, and their desires. I was invested in finding out the answers to the mystery throughout the book, and in true Jessica form, I guessed that several different people were responsible before reading the book's satisfying revelations. The Fifth Petal is an engrossing, sexy read that is also dense and seemed well-researched. Fun to read and smart. A great combination, in any book. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review; however, all opinions included here are my own. For more info on Brunonia Barry: http://www.brunoniabarry.com/ Brittany Cavallaro’s A Study in Charlotte is an adventurous, suspenseful YA re-telling of Sherlock Holmes that is also frequently insightful and heart-warming. In this re-telling, the protagonists are two teens who are the descendants of Holmes and Watson. Charlotte Holmes is a well-known detective whose parents send her to a boarding school in the United States as a punishment. She’s also addicted to oxy. Jamie Watson attends the same boarding school for different reasons: presumably a rugby scholarship. He has problems with anger management and romanticizing Holmes and their potential relationship. These two come together when one and/or both are suspected of murdering their common enemy, an awful student named Lee Dobson. They race to solve the mystery so that their names will be cleared, and so that more students won’t be harmed or killed by the assailant. The evolution of the relationship between Watson and Holmes is sweet and lovely. As I made clear earlier, both protagonists have issues which threaten the development of their relationship, not to mention the fact that they are teenagers (brilliant teenagers, but still) who are isolated at a boarding school. But I enjoyed reading about how they forged and strengthened their relationship throughout the book; their efforts to trust each other are particularly moving given that at various times they have so few people they can trust. I didn't grow up as a super-fan of Sherlock Holmes, so perhaps I'm more open to re-tellings than a super-fan would be. I often think about trying to find more YA fiction, and I just stumbled across this one in my Amazon recommendations. A Study in Charlotte is highly recommended for anyone who wants to read a YA, mystery-thriller, with a will-they-or-won’t-they element. And the Holmes/Watson references are just fun--I would think whether you are a devotee of the original, or not. I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh There’s very little that I can say about the plot of this book that won’t reveal the huge twist. So this is all I will say: at the beginning of the novel, a driver of a car strikes and kills five year-old Jacob in front of his mom, and then the driver of the car drives away without stopping to help. The remainder of this novel focuses on the devastation which lingers following Jacob’s death and the investigative efforts to find the driver of the car. If you take a look at the blurbs/reviews on this book, you’ll probably see the word “twist” mentioned over and over again. Yes, there is a surprising, superb twist in this book—one that threw me off for a few moments and required that I re-think some things that I thought I knew. There. That’s all that I can say about the plot. I had a difficult time reading the first couple chapters of this book because it opens with Jacob’s death, from the mother’s perspective. It’s gotten more difficult to read about things like this happening now that I’m a mom, and I think that this opening, plus the fact that very little seemed to happen plot-wise immediately following it, made the beginning a little slow for me. But I kept reading (after first setting the book down for a month or so and then picking it back up), and I realized that this opening was perfect for the book—particularly after the twist happened. Once the pace picked up, it was full-steam ahead and I knew that something BIG was going to happen. I was suddenly glad that the slower beginning let me catch my breath a bit before I set off on a sprint. So if your reading of the chapters immediately following Jacob’s death is similarly slow, persevere. You’ll be greatly rewarded. I Let You Go is an engrossing read that is mystifying and very satisfying, and my expectations for the twist that I had read was coming were not disappointed. Perfect If You: Are looking for a thriller/mystery with a superb twist Not Recommended If You: Please don’t forget that this book opens with a child’s death, so even though the revealed answers to the mystery are satisfying, we’re still left with the fact that a child has been killed. It’s a fascinating, absorbing read but not really light reading. The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware Before The Woman in Cabin 10, these were my ocean-related anxieties: sharks. Barracudas. Sting rays. Rogue waves. Now I can add being murdered at sea to the list. Thank you, Ruth Ware and The Woman in Cabin 10. Lo Blacklock, a writer for travel magazine Velocity, is invited to attend the inaugural cruise—from England to Norway—of a super-luxury boutique ship. Before she leaves on her trip, she is the victim of a home burglary, an incident which traumatizes her. Fresh from this event, Lo is all the more distressed when she believes that her neighbor aboard the ship, the woman in cabin 10, has been murdered and thrown off the side of the ship. Lo’s anxiety is exacerbated by the fact that after she reported the incident, the officer on board found no evidence of a murder, and indeed, no evidence that a woman (or man) ever stayed in cabin 10. Did Lo imagine all of this, and if not, can she trust anyone on-board? Mysteries abound in this book, and Ware did an excellent job of keeping me invested in the story. Lo makes slow progress with her mystery throughout the novel; just enough to keep the reader invested without spoiling everything too soon. (Some TV shows that I’ve watched should take note of this. I’m looking at you, The Blacklist. FYI, I stopped watching this show a season or two ago because of this very issue.) When the answers are revealed to Lo’s Cabin 10 inquiry, I was truly surprised. Luckily for the reader, Ware doesn’t end the drama there. You have to keep reading until the end to figure out what happens (or happened) to the woman in cabin 10 and what happens (or happened) to our narrator, Lo. I’m trying not to ruin the plot for you, in case you haven’t noticed. Some of you might be familiar with Ware’s first novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood. In both cases, Ware offers us a female narrator who feels virtually isolated with her terror—an effective, and also, fright-inducing narrative strategy. I have to say that despite this similarity, I enjoyed The Woman in Cabin 10 much more than In a Dark, Dark Wood. Perhaps it was because of Ware’s evocative language—the repeated imagery of a victim floating amidst the cold fjord waters and seaweed is particularly haunting. Or maybe it was because the thought of not being believed has been a fear of mine since I saw a random movie about a night security guard as a kid (it wasn’t Night at the Museum). Or maybe I just liked Lo, and pitied her for having one of the worst possible weeks that I could think of. Regardless, this was a well-written, suspenseful thriller that makes me look forward to Ware’s next book and will make me think twice before boarding a cruise ship. Check Out: I recommended Tana French’s The Trespasser in a previous post, along with S. J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep and the Goddess J. K. Rowling's Robert Galbraith series. I think we’re really living in the age of the thriller/mystery. What thriller/mysteries have you read lately? I’ve read 93 books in 2016 so far. This post is part of a series on my favorites. The Trespasser by Tana French Part of the Dublin Murder Squad Series I look forward to Tana French’s books in a big way. French is a dazzling thriller/mystery writer, one of the best writing in the genre. If you’ve exhausted Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins’s catalogs—among other popular thriller/mystery writers—give French a try. I can’t remember how I stumbled across French’s first book In the Woods (2012), but I've loved each of the five which followed in her Dublin Murder Squad series. A different detective of the Murder Squad narrates each of French’s books, and French is a master at giving each of them a totally unique voice and their own strengths and foibles. The Trespasser (2016) is probably my favorite of French’s novels. It starts with the seemingly cut-and-dry death of a woman who has suffered a head injury but what follows is an intense psychological thrill-ride that is completely absorbing. Perhaps what I love best about French’s mystery plots is that unlike some thriller/mystery writers, her killers do not come out of nowhere. With French, the suspects are typically presented toward the beginning of the book and then the net narrows until the killer is revealed; the most fascinating (and most terrifying) part, though, is that along the way French shows us that many of the characters might have had motivation to commit the crime. She plays with the reader’s expectations and suggests how complicated humans really are. In a similar way, though her narrators use the first-person pronoun and we have immediate access to what they see and think, we come to understand that we don’t--and can't-- know all of the respective narrator, not really. Perfect If You: Want to get lost in a brilliant whodunit; like to guess that five different people are the killer before being presented with the truth (or maybe that’s just me; I would not make a good detective.) Not Recommended If You: Are looking for a fast, quick thriller/mystery read; Hate feeling anxious (it’s just my default setting so I can handle it). Hey! Over Here!: If you like Tana French or just the thriller/mystery genre, check out these other picks too: the book Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson (terrifying!); the Cormoran Strike books by Robert Galbraith aka J. K. Rowling (soon to be a HBO series, btw); the first few seasons of the television show Damages starring Rose Byrne and Glenn Close. Damages focuses on attorneys, corruption, and murder—instead of detectives and their cases—but every season begins with a provocative scene (i.e. someone covered in blood) and every episode which follows works backwards to show how the characters got there. |
About me.Give me that HEA, please.
Join my mailing list.Want to receive a weekly email with links to my latest blog posts? Sign up below!
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|