Two half sisters on a road trip to see their dying father end up miles from where they expected in an emotional novel about secrets, forgiveness, and what it means to be family by the author of La Vie, According to Rose.
Zahra Starling and her younger half sister, Aurora, have nothing in common. Not their childhoods or their personalities. And certainly not their outlooks. After a terrible loss, Zahra prefers the solitude of her LA kitchen to people, especially family. Bubbly Aurora, a rising Hollywood starlet, has everything she’s ever dreamed of, except a relationship with her sister.
Then comes a plea from their dying father, who wants both daughters by his side. He has a secret to share that’s been a long time coming.
It’s Zahra’s last chance to bring closure to the past, even if traumatic memories mean there’s no way she’s stepping foot on a plane. For Aurora, road-tripping to Seattle is the perfect escape and the chance to win over prickly Zahra.
What starts as a rough ride reopening old wounds evolves into something neither expects. When they finally reach their destination—and the truth that awaits them—the sisters will need each other like never before.
Review
Zahra and her half sister, Aurora have been summoned by their father to Seattle. Zahra refuses to fly and Aurora is more than happy to hide out in a car for this long road trip. But what awaits them in Seattle is not exactly what either one expects.
Y’all! This book was very close to a 5 star read. The only issue I had was the ending. It seemed to drag on and it just needed a bit of cleaning up.
That being said…I loved this book. I enjoyed how these characters developed and how their story unfolded. These two sisters could not be more different. Zahra is a bit rough around the edges and Aurora is bubbly and a people pleaser. But, their secrets and the past hurts start to melt away on this road trip and this story soon became a novel of love, forgiveness and friendship.
Need a heartwarming tale with characters that will draw you in and keep you there…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today
Sharp Objects meets I Have Some Questions for You in this haunting novel—inspired by a true story—about a crime writer who risks everything as she investigates the mystery of two deaths, decades apart, at a crumbling Vermont orphanage.
On a blistering summer day in 1968, nine-year-old Tommy vanishes without a trace from Coram House, an orphanage on the shores of Lake Champlain. Some say a nun drowned him, others say he ran away. Or maybe he never existed. Fifty years later, his disappearance is still unsolved.
Struggling true crime writer Alex Kelley needs a fresh start. When she’s asked to ghostwrite a book about the orphanage—and the abuses that occurred there—she packs up her belongings and moves to wintry Burlington, Vermont.
As Alex tries to untangle the conflicting stories surrounding Tommy’s disappearance, her investigation takes a chilling turn when she discovers a woman’s body in the lake. Alex is convinced the death is connected to Coram House’s dark past, even if local police officer Russell Parker thinks she’s just desperate for a career-saving story. As the body count rises, Alex must prove that the key to finding the killer lies in Tommy’s murder, or risk becoming the next victim.
Drawing inspiration from the real-life stories of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Coram House “reckons with both the long aftermath of violence and the hazards of writing true crime. It is an eerie, suspenseful mystery, sure to find readers among fans of Tana French” (Flynn Berry, author of Northern Spy).
Review
Struggling true crime writer Alex Kelley needs a fresh start. When she’s asked to ghostwrite a book about the orphanage—and the abuses that occurred there—she packs up her belongings and moves to wintry Burlington, Vermont.
Alex is a character I had mixed feelings about. She tends to jump to conclusions and she also does not seem to be a very nice person. And usually characters like this throw me off. But, the intensity of this tale had me captivated. I could not get this orphanage and the trauma surrounding it out of my head.
Even though I saw the twist coming, I am still giving this 5 stars. I loved the history of the orphanage and all the creepiness that this added to the tale.
Need an intense, creepy read with a twist…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Calamity of Souls comes David Baldacci’s newest novel, set in London in 1944, about a bereaved bookshop owner and two teenagers scarred by the Second World War, and the healing and hope they find in one another.
Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he’s old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. After barely surviving the Blitz, Charlie knows there’s no telling when a falling bomb might end his life.
Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of children to have been evacuated to the countryside Molly has been away from her home for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she’d hoped for as she’s confronted by a devastating reality: neither of her parents are there.
Without guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his bookshop, The Book Keep. Mourning the recent loss of his wife, Ignatius forms a kinship with both children, and in each other they rediscover the spirit of family each has lost.
But Charlie’s escapades in the city have not gone unnoticed, and someone’s been following Molly since she returned to London. And Ignatius is harboring his own secrets, which could have terrible consequences for all of them.
As bombs continue to bear down on the city, Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius learn that while the perils of war rage on, their coming together and trusting one another may be the only way for them to survive.
Review
This story follows two young teenagers, Charlie and Molly. These two are from totally different backgrounds but somehow they come together to be great friends and help each other through this terrible war.
I enjoyed these two characters, especially Charlie. He is a bit of a rounder and he gets himself in a mess a time or two. Then there is Molly. She does not take no for an answer. She has some gumption, for sure!
This story is a unique take on what transpired during WWII in London. It is more about friendship and staying friends through the hard times.
The narrators, David Baldacci; Stewart Crank; Alexandra Boulton; John Lee; Nicola F. Delgado; Matthew Lloyd Davies; Joe Pitts, made a fantastic team! I love lots of narrators to a story. Just makes it more real and full of life.
Need a completely different WWII novel…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest opinion
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street, a tense, propulsive family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,” they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems.
With her trademark psychological acuity, Jennifer Haigh delivers a taut, suspenseful story about family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, the fabled red thread that ties them together across time and space.
“Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.” ― The New York Times
Review
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
I loved the unique differences between the characters. Not sure if I can describe quite what I mean. Just know that every single character is different and they have something unique that draws the reader to them. They have quirks that every one of us can relate to, especially in the time of stress. And these parents are under immense pressure.
This tale had me really wondering where it was going. There were so many directions this author could have taken this story. I love the direction she chose and the secrets that were kept…even from the reader!
I have read several books by this author and they have all been wonderful! And this one is another good one!
The narrators, Katharine Chin; Yu-Li Alice Shen, are superb!
Need a suspenseful tale full of secrets…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington for her husband’s research she expected old growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by desert, and haunted by its own urban legends.
But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding his mother Esme’s death. In Abigail’s search for answers she enlists the help of a recovering addict-turned-librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner, and a mentally-shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history, and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.
As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.
A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters, and puzzle hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.
Author Bio:
Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.
An animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the sagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving through the desert at the edge of her sight. The morning had already broken a hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen stung her eyes—
Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything.
Yesterday, while walking along this desolate irrigation road, she’d spotted a cow skull between tumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran toward it, bracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet—proof, perhaps, that she ever left the house—she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag snagged on a curl of sage bark.
Somehow. Way out here.
The desert was scabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and nothing was ever there.
When Eli first told her he’d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific Northwest, Abigail thought ferns and rain, ale and slugs, Sasquatch and wool.
And then they got here, to this desert where no one lived. Not a fern or slug in sight.
This had been the most turbulent year of her life.
Eleven months ago, they met.
Seven months ago, they married.
Six months ago, they moved from her carpeted condo in Denver to this sunbaked town on the shores of Soap Lake, a place where neither knew a soul.
Their honeymoon had lasted almost three months—Eli whistling in his downstairs lab, Abigail unpacking and painting upstairs—and then he kissed her at the airport, piled onto a plane, and moved across the world to work in a different lab, on a different project, at a different lake.
In Poland.
When she remembered him lately, she remembered photographs of him.
The plan had been to text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw, but the reality was that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more frazzled than ever. This week had been particularly bad because he’d been off the grid on a research trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into the Polish abyss. And then at five o’clock this morning, her phone pinged and Abigail shot right out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he’d tossed her a life preserver from six thousand miles away.
And this is what he’d had to say:
sorry missed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i’ll call this weekend. xo e
As she was composing a response—her phone the only glow in their dark, empty home—he added a postscript that stabbed her in the heart like an icicle.
P.S. maybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life?
What kind of a sentence was that? And what was a “self life” anyway?
Abigail had called him right away. When he didn’t pick up she went down to the lab he’d set up in their daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of Soap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes, as cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his absence and tried to imagine he’d just stepped out for a minute and would be back in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a smoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place of a lab coat.
From one of his gleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that contained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral lake down the hill— she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be more at home on the shores of Loch Ness—and held one until a memory arose, like a visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he were gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then he was gone again.
She hated that she did this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she’d be smelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt compelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months of distance piled up, that he was even real.
Back when they’d first started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to her boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to dinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title insurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this restlessness to Eli, finding her path—figure out self life—had suddenly become a centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had happened. It wasn’t just a switch you flipped.
Abigail slid the tall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube somehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb.
Kapow!
On the tile between her feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass.
She stood over the mess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes squealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told herself, without conviction, it had been an accident.
And then she stepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the immediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert.
It stunned her, how harsh and gorgeous it was.
Loneliness: it felt sometimes like it possessed you.
She hadn’t spoken to anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service industry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the other morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed it over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink cowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail she was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late. And the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his phone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese pizza, saying, Yes, ma’am. Thanks, ma’am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out. And the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the grocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing up menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, “Thanks, but I’m not even goddamned forty!”
At least she’d discovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no vehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought Canadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the farms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller canals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and soil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food: grocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored Pringles.
Good soil. Blazing sun. Just add water and food was born.
Almost a trillion gallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion.
All that water way out here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot.
She halted on the road. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something, a faint yip or caw.
She scanned the horizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of movement in the wavering heat. Something running away.
A few times out here she’d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a fallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a distance like a unicorn.
Not running away, the smudge out there. Running toward. She was nowhere near a signal yet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the vanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she’d walked and, if things got bad, how far she’d have to run.
Three miles, minimum. Six miles, tops.
Definitely approaching.
Not something. Someone.
A human. Alone.
Running. A boy.
A little boy. Sprinting.
Abigail froze as their eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into her thighs with an oof! He wore yellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs.
He clung to her legs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty blood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt herself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat.
Deep breath. Shirt wipe.
“Hey! Are you hurt? Look at me. Are you hurt?”
The boy wasn’t crying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn’t let go of her legs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest.
She knelt in the gravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his shirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches from running through the brush, and the knees of his pj’s were badly scuffed, but he wasn’t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant— The blood belonged to someone else.
A group of siblings captured in an iconic beach nostalgia photo reunite on a sunny California island, where they’re forced to face the fallout of their unconventional upbringing—and the golden secret that has been simmering ever since…
“A love story to an era of sun, salt air, and freedom. I promise, you will devour this novel.”—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight
“Doan’s latest pulls you straight to the end like a powerful riptide. Unforgettable!”—Jessica Anya Blau, bestselling author of Mary Jane
It’s 1980s California, and everyone’s dreaming of the endless summer: sun-drenched beaches, infinite waves, and most of all, beautiful, beautiful freedom. For the Merrick siblings, this idyllic vision is their reality, as they travel up and down the coast with their parents in a van year-round, surfing and swimming their days away. But when a photographer secretly snaps a stunning photo of the family with their boards in the sand, and the image ripples across the country, the only life they’ve ever known is put at risk.
Decades after, the now-distant siblings gather on a gorgeous, wild island to honor their late father. But their reunion is complicated when a journalist, eager for the truth behind the famous photo, discovers their identity and tracks them down. As the siblings reckon with the possibility that more of their lives could be shared, a revelation about their past forces them to confront long-held heartaches. Together, they’ll have to decide whether to let the same tensions rip them apart again—or if telling their story on their own terms might just be the way to recapture the family magic.
Review
The Merrick siblings, this idyllic vision is their reality, as they travel up and down the coast with their parents in a van year-round, surfing and swimming their days away. But when a photographer secretly snaps a stunning photo of the family with their boards in the sand, and the image ripples across the country, the only life they’ve ever known is put at risk.
This is truly a unique family with some crazy rules. I love how they seem separate…but cause them some problems and they circle around each other in protection.
This is told in two different time periods. I wanted a bit more distinction between the two. But, this could have been because of the format. The audiobook might have caused part of this issue for me.
But y’all…the setting of the different California beaches and riding the waves…freedom at its best.
The narrator, Ann Marie Gideon, is pretty good. She was not as emotional in some areas as I felt the story needed.
Need a family drama with a great setting…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
Disguised by a name she found on a tombstone and accompanying a Vietnam vet she met in a graveyard, an unconventional young snake-handler who talks to the dead returns to the ghosts of her childhood home in 1967 Arkansas …
Fans of Delia Owens, Barbara Kingsolver, Kelly Mustian, and Quinn Connor will be captivated by this haunting Southern debut about found family, folk magic, the long shadow of trauma, the salvation of human connection, and the transcendent beauty of nature.
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, escaping a mental hospital in Alabama, working for a Louisiana circus, and dancing at a hoochy-kootch in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.
She intends only to visit briefly—to pay respects to her buried loved ones and leave. But a chance meeting with a haunted young Vietnam vet reconnects her with the remnants of a family she thought long gone, and their union becomes a catalyst for change and salvation. An abused woman and her daughters develop the courage to fight back, a ghost finds the path away from life, and a sanctimonious predator becomes the prey. In the process, Genevieve must choose between her longing for meaningful connection after years as an outsider and her equally excruciating impulse to run.
Written by a naturalist and set on the land where her family roots stretch back two centuries, The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree is a haunting story about letting go and the things we leave behind, the power of names, and the ties that bind. It is both harrowing and triumphant, a visceral Southern debut as otherworldly and beautiful as it is unflinching and wry.
Review
Genevieve Charbonneau has wandered throughout the South, escaping a mental hospital in Alabama, working for a Louisiana circus, and dancing at a hoochy-kootch in Texas. Now she is visiting the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse. She runs into a haunted young Vietnam vet and reconnects her with the remnants of a family. However, she soon discovers she may have to make a decision to run or fight!
Y’all, this story made me mad, sad, and yes, murderous! Trust me when I say I wanted to kill the father/preacher/abuser! The control this man had on his family…
To say this story is going to stay with me for a while is an understatement. And the way the author weaves in ghosts is brilliant. And yes there are snakes…not my favorite. But in true southern, religious fashion, this is a brilliant addition as well. Just makes the story more creepy, compelling and authentic!
There are quite a few characters, each with their own issue, and the narrators, Zura Johnson, Matt Godfrey, and Laura Jennings, are OUTSTANDING!
Need a haunting story which will have you gasping for air…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
A breathtaking, joy-filled novel about the people we love, the secrets we keep, and the enduring power of family, from the bestselling author of The Unsinkable Greta James.
“A glorious novel of love in all its forms—familial, romantic, lost, and found. Jennifer E. Smith is a ray of literary sunshine.”—Jenny Jackson, author of Pineapple Street
The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country.
Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota. They’re each at a crossroads: Gemma, who put her own ambitions aside to raise the others, now isn’t sure if she wants to be a mother herself; Connor, a celebrated novelist, is floundering after his recent divorce and suffering from an epic case of writer’s block; and Roddy, at the tail end of a professional soccer career, is dangerously close to losing his future husband for the chance at one last season.
Jude is the only Endicott who seems to have it all together—but appearances can be deceiving. As the weekend unfolds, and the siblings wrestle with their shared past and uncertain futures, they’ll discover that Jude has been keeping three secrets . . . each of which could change everything.
A captivating journey and an ode to forgiveness that takes listeners across all fifty states, Fun for the Whole Family brims with heart and resonates long after the final word.
Review
Jude is keeping quite a lot of secrets. She has not been in touch with her family for a very long time. But now it is time to come clean…about the past and the present.
Every character in this story is flawed and captured my heart. Each one has their own story and their own issues with their childhood. I found all the characters just so real! I mean…this could have been my dysfunctional family😜. Their interactions had me smirking and grinning! But they also had my heart breaking as well!
And y’all…Jude has them all traveling to North Dakota. And they all drop what they are doing and meet her there, even if they have not talked to her in years! Don’t let this dysfunctional family fool you! It is all there! You need to read this to find out!
I have read one other book by this author, The Unsinkable Greta James. And I loved it. So, add that one to your list as well!
This story is 4.5 stars rounded up.
Need a family novel you will not soon forget…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
A tasty, dishy inside look at the world of publishing. Readers will be begging for a sequel!”—Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of Summers at the Saint
A young romance writer makes a discovery that throws her elitist family into chaos in this sharp, witty and entirely delightful family drama for fans of Elinor Lipman and Jennifer Weiner.
Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe that fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream, while her sister, Jess, is a powerful social media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel.
Hiding her own romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry—a secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider with a grudge to settle. Now Emma must decide—as much as she’s dreamed of the day when her parents are forced to confront their own egos, can she really just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed?
From the wealthy enclaves of the Hamptons to the sparkling shores of Lake Michigan, The Page Turner is a delectable glimpse inside the world of publishing, and Viola Shipman’s most glittering achievement yet!
Review
When I first started this book I thought I was about to hit a book slump. But in true Viola fashion…I was pulled into this tale.
Emma is kind of the black sheep of the Page Family. Her family has been in the book publishing business for years but Emma just can’t seem to do anything right. And when her family signs a deal to help save the family business, but Emma has first hand knowledge that this is going to blow up in their faces, she has a big decision to make.
Emma is a character that my heart went out to. She is pushed around a bit by her family….but don’t worry…she comes into her own. And yes, she discovers a secret or two or three!
I love how this author can take a dysfunctional family and create a tale that is heartwarming.
I also loved the author’s note! If you don’t read anything else…READ THAT. Especially if you have loved books your whole life, it will give you strength and acceptance.
The narrator, Katharine Chin, could not have been better. I loved her as Jess!
Need a tale about power and family…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
Nestled among the cobblestone streets of Compiègne, there existed a bakery unlike any other.
Rumours were whispered through the town that its pastries offered a taste of magic, chasing away the darkest of sorrows. Just one bite of a croissant might bring luck, unlock a precious memory or reveal hidden longings.
But dark clouds were looming on the horizon…
For Edie Lane, a recipe for disaster doesn’t require that many ingredients. Take an unhealthy amount of wishful thinking and a sprinkle of desperation and that’s how Edie left everything behind in Ireland for her dream job at a bakery in Paris. Except the bakery isn’t in Paris – and neither is Edie.
This might not be where Edie intended to be but she soon realizes it’s exactly where she needs to be…
Review
For Edie Lane, a recipe for disaster doesn’t require that many ingredients. Take an unhealthy amount of wishful thinking and a sprinkle of desperation and that’s how Edie left everything behind in Ireland for her dream job at a bakery in Paris. Except the bakery isn’t in Paris – and neither is Edie.
Y’all know I am a moody reader. And to be honest, I think I have read way too many “sweet” reads lately. This one fell a bit short for me. Now, it has tons of five star reviews. So read it for yourself.
I just kept expecting this book to move faster. I enjoyed the setting of Paris (or is it Paris?) and I loved Edie and her predicaments. But, I was a bit disappointed with the pacing.
Need a sweet read set in Paris…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
reecaspieces 