Iris Carmichael has spent her life feeling second best to her twin, Summer. Born moments apart and identical to the naked eye, Summer nonetheless has always been the beloved golden child while Iris is the prickly black sheep. But the race to be the sole heir of their father's massive estate is the one time Iris is determined to be the "first" twin.
Expensive lifestyles, backstabbing siblings and gorgeous Australian and island settings make this the ideal escape, dive in and enjoy!
Ruth Ware is the master of the contemporary locked room mystery and I would follow her anywhere. Murder amongst frenemies in an isolated cabin? Check. Disappearing woman overboard on a luxury yacht? Check. Mysterious happenings at a secluded Highland manor house? Check. So when she packed her bags to join a corporate retreat in the Alps, I threw warm clothes and my deductive reasoning in my suitcase to join her. Since we can’t travel in real life, it’s the next best thing. Just watch your back!
Popular opinion traces the dawn of the age of the psychological thriller to “Gone Girl” in June 2012, however, for me it began with S.J. Watson’s “Before I Go to Sleep” published a year earlier. A tale with a narrator so unreliable she herself doesn’t remember the facts of her life from day to day, coupled with a truly suspect domestic relationship, Watson’s debut lacked only the titular “girl” in it’s heralding of a new era. Now he returns with his third effort, the story of a small village with an inordinate number of missing girls and a filmmaker with a missing past who is as desperate to solve both puzzles as someone else is to keep both her and the dead quiet. Welcome back, S.J. Watson.
This speculative fiction starts off with a chilling home invasion (which had me double-checking every closet in my house), followed by a twisted path of paranoia, doppelgangers, and the varying limits of a mother's love when pushed to unspeakable brinks. The journey of the overwhelmed main character - explored in quick, disjointed segments - only raises more questions than answers, as well as the sneaking suspicion that she may just be losing her mind and dragging the reader along with her into the abyss.
Woof. I couldn't put it down. The premise is simple, the themes all too relevant. From the start I cared for the characters, had my stomach clenched throughout the meat of it, and shed a tear at the end. It's horror with a heart!
Michael Connelly strikes again. This time with a new character, one that I hope to see more of. She is Renee Ballard, a fierce, complicated police detective who has been relegated to the night shift after a sexual harassment charge she brought against a superior has been thrown out. As I said, Renee is a complicated woman with lots of baggage, who finds solace in extreme paddle boarding and her beloved dog. This is a great ride and it is gratifying to see that Connelly retains his excellent chops.
