78. The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

listened on Libby

368pgs.

2022
Adult Contemporary Ghost Story/Fantasy
Finished 11/16/2024
Goodreads rating: 3.92
My rating: 3

My comments: Well, I didn't take down notes on this and it's a good six weeks later.  I do remember the story, and I remember shaking my head about some of it....her relationship with siblings, why she never returned home, and why she'd do all the writing she did as a ghostwriter for a hugely successful series and not be compensated better....

Goodreads synopsis:  Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.

For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.

Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

Romance is most certainly dead... but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.

77. The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

listened on Libby

384 pgs.

2024
Adult Mystery
Finished 11/1/2024
Goodreads rating: 3.60
My rating: 4.25 
Setting: southern Maine coast community

My comments:   Ending seemed incomplete.  Loved all the historical facts that some readers considered "preachy." Took place in southern Maine with lots of social/feminist thinking.

Goodreads synopsis:  A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers.

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

76. Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson

listened on Libby

384 pgs.

2024
YA Mystery
Finished 10/21/24
Goodreads rating: 3.78
My rating: 3
Setting: 1932 AND contemporary island on the St. Lawrence River

My comments: The story flip-flops back-and-forth between 1932 and current day.  The star of the story is a magnificent house on an island on the St. Lawrence River - in America, but close to Canada.  Six friends are going to spend the summer there giving tours and telling the tragic story of what happened n 1932 to a rich family of six adopted kids, all the same age and the deaths that happened there that summer.  Interesting story, but there was something amiss for me.  All 12 of the main characters are teenagers.  But there's something about the way the characters were developed that didn't work for me.  At least I think that's my problem - because unfortunately I do have a problem with the story, but I can't put my finger right on it.

Goodreads synopsis:  

Goodreads Choice Award

Nominee for Readers' Favorite Young Adult Fiction (2024)   From the bestselling author of the Truly Devious books, Maureen Johnson, comes a new stand-alone YA about a teen who uncovers a mystery while working as a tour guide on an island and must solve it before history repeats itself.

The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.

With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.

Oh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?

75. A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

listened on Libby

370 pgs.

2014
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 10/9/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 2.5
Setting: NYC 1911 & 9/11

My comments: Not a huge fan of this book, for a couple of reasons.  Told in two voices, one of a nurse, Clara, who survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 to "hide" on Ellis Island and a quilt shop fabric-lover, Taryn, who lost her husband on 9/11.  The majority of the story is told by nurse Clara ... whom I didn't like.  At all.  Her inconsistent personality (she flip-flops between a mamby-pamby-scared-everything watcher-of-the-world to a brazen in-your-face do-gooder) drove me nuts. A minority of the story was told by Taryn, ten years after 9/11, still bruised and barely living, which was more powerful and believable.  But not enough!  And the connection of this scarf was feeble, to say the least.  I didn't rate it lower because I enjoyed the history it shared and the 9/11 portion, but the 1911 lengthy section didn't work for me at all.

Goodreads synopsis:  A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away....

September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries …and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her? 

September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers …the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. Will a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life?

74. The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

listened on Libby when I FINALLY got it from TPPL

336 pgs.

2024
Adult RomCom
Finished 10/6/24
Goodreads rating: 4.14
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary LA (with some Houston)

My comments: I love Katherin Center's writing.  And this novel about writers writing together is a winner for me!  A completely clean romance with ups and downs and two funny, clever protagonists is a surefire hit.  Highly recommend for a feel-good story with an HEA.

Goodreads synopsis:  She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies―good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates―The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!―it’s a break too big to pass up.

Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone―much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script―it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter―even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules―and comes true?

73. Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

listened on Libby

384 pgs.

2024
Adult spicy romance
Finished 9/28/2024
Goodreads rating:  3.67
My rating: 2
Setting: Contemporary Austin, TX

My comments: Bleh.  Disappointing.  Tried and tried to like the female protagonist, Rue, but we were only given snippets of her inner self, and many didn't come until later on in the book.  Ice skating was a life changing event for both protagonists, and it should have been a bigger part of the book.  Rue was fighting with her brother about a cottage left in a will, but why?  Only because it was needed to move/change the plot a few times.  Not well done.  A disappointment from this author.

Goodreads synopsis:  Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through - and he's a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can't stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business - one that plays for keeps.

72. Storm Child by Michael Robotham

listened on Libby

336 pgs.

2024
Adult Contemporary Mystery/Thriller
Finished 9/21/24
Goodreads rating: 4.26
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Nottingham, England, and the coast of Scotland

My comments: Back and forth between two points of view: Cyrus and Evie, detailing how Evie slowly gets her memories back and discovers what had happened to her, her sister, and her mother.  The first half of the book takes place in their hometown of Nottingham, the second half in Scotland, where the fishing families that continue to be involved in the movement of illegal aliens into Great Britain are still hiding their participation from ten years before....as well as currently.  Good story.  Very well narrated.

Goodreads synopsis:  The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price?

71. The Burning by Linda Castillo

#16 Kate Burkholder

listened on Libby

320 pgs.

2024
Adult murder mystery/police procedural
Finished 8/21/24
Goodreads rating: 4.30
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary Amish country Ohio

My comments: This was a good one, although Kate was assaulted and quite badly injured numerous times and got out of it quite well each time, which is sort of hard to believe.  I guess she's more like superwoman than I had originally thought.  And in this one, the original murder was particularly grizzly in that a guy, admittedly a really, really bad guy, was burned at the stake.  It tickles me that Castillo can come up with so many plots that are quite varied from each other, as was this one.

Goodreads synopsis:  Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates a gruesome murder that reveals a little-known chapter of early Amish history in this new installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

Kate knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a deeply tr30oubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of something they dare not share?

When her own brother is implicated in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.

To uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she thought she knew about the Amish themselves―and her own roots.

70. Hunt the Stars by Jessie Mihalik

listened on Libby

419 pgs.

2022
Adult SciFi
Finished 8/11/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.03
My rating: 4
Setting: Far outer space, who knows when....

My comments: This is a very good sci-fi set in far outer space with lots of worm holes to go through, lol.  Humans have recently enced a war with similarly bodied extraterrestrials, though these counterparts have absurd telepathic capabilities and are very difficult to outmaneuver.  There is an element of romance throught, and I'm nout sure if I 100% liked that - the mystery and challenge seemed enough without it.

Goodreads synopsis:  

Goodreads Choice Award

Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction (2022)

Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together—even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse—no matter how much she’d like to.

With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons—for both anger and desire—she’s endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he’s promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.

But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie—with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line.

The critically acclaimed author of Polaris Rising takes readers on an exciting journey with the start of her brand-new series about a female bounty hunter and the man who is her sworn enemy.

69. Funny Story by Emily Henry

listened on Libby

395 pgs.

2024
Adult romance
Finished 8/4/2024
Goodreads rating:  4.23
My rating: 4.25
Setting:  Contemporary

My comments: A definite meet cute story that was quite enjoyable and ... well, cute...

     When Daphne is jilted the night of her fiancé's bachelor party, she is pretty devastated, as you'd expect.  That he jilted her to be with his best friend, a girls he's known since childhood, particularly upset her.  And having no place to go, she ended up moving in with the also-jilted boyfriend of the so-called best friend.  And it goes on from there.  Daphne is a children's librarian and loves her job, but has a lot of hangups.  Miles, her new roommate, also has a lot of hangups.  And they seem to fit together just like two pieces of a perfect puzzle.  He's too good to be true, actually.  With a cast of bizarre characters that are a lot of fun and a narrator who is one of my favorites, I totally enjoyed listening to this book.

Goodreads synopsis:  

Goodreads Choice Award

Winner for Readers' Favorite Romance (2024), Winner for Readers' Favorite Audiobook (2024)

A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?

68. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

listened on Libby

336 pgs.

2023
Adult Magical Realism/Fantasy
Finished 7/30/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.20
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Upper East Side of NYC

My comments: A girl who now lives in her beloved aunt's apartment on the upper east side of NYC, one day walks into it and discovers that she's gone back in time exactly seven years...and meets the young man who lived there seven years ago.  Very interesting, keeps your attention.

Goodreads synopsis:  Nominee for Readers' Favorite Romance (2023)

An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

67. The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

listened on Libby

355 pgs.

2021
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 7/27/2024
Goodreads rating: 3.95
My rating: 4.5
Setting: 1888 Dakota Territory

My comments: Entrancing historical fiction based on true events where on January 12, 1888 an unforgiving blizzard belted the Dakota territory and killed many people, mainly kids that were walking home from school on the prairie.  We follow a number of main characters for many years, finding the outcomes of all their lives.  Good , but sad story.

Goodreads synopsis:  The New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife reveals a little-known story of courage on the prairie: the freak blizzard that struck the Great Plains, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders--especially their children.

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a long cold spell, warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats--leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At just the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard struck without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn't get lost in the storm?

Based on actual oral histories of survivors, the novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers--one who becomes a hero of the storm, and one who finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It's also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It is Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed immigrants to settle territories into states, and they didn't care what lies they told them to get them there--or whose land it originally was.

At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents' choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today--because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.

65. The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

listened on Audible

320 pgs.

2024
Middle Grades CRF

Finished 7/20/24
Goodreads rating: 4.55
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary American city

My comments: Hank is 11 and his baby sister, Boo, is almost 3.  Their mom has an alcohol problem, a major one, and one day she doesn't come home.  After a week goes by and they're totally out of money, Hank has to figure out what to do.  Watching all the problems of a boy who works very hard to be good and kind as well as the thought-processes he goes through are the highlights of this book.  I feel like a lot happens that is rosier than would actually happen in real life - especially with the child welfare system - but it's nice to have a feel-good story with lots of positive people.

Goodreads synopsis:  When eleven-year-old Hank’s mom doesn’t come home, he takes care of his toddler sister, Boo, like he always does. But it’s been a week now. They are out of food and mom has never stayed away this long… Hank knows he needs help, so he and Boo seek out the stranger listed as their emergency contact.

But asking for help has consequences. It means social workers, and a new school, and having to answer questions about his mom that he's been trying to keep secret. And if they can't find his mom soon, Hank and Boo may end up in different foster homes--he could lose everything.

Gennifer Choldenko has written a heart-wrenching, healing, and ultimately hopeful story about how complicated family can be. About how you can love someone, even when you can’t rely on them. And about the transformative power of second chances.

63. A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

listened on Libby

357 pgs.

2022
Genre/Level
Finished 7/14/24
Goodreads rating: 3.99
My rating:  3
Setting: Contemporary Louisiana

My comments: For me, I think, it's hard to enjoy a story when you don't like or understand the protagonist.  To do really brave things without consequences for the final outcome, then refuse to do simple things that would be quite easy ... well, I don't get it.  Not too many surprises although it seemed to take forever for the final eents that pull the entire story together.  It was aggravating for me to hear Chloe go on and on and on and around and around in circles.  What a twit.  

Goodreads synopsis:  

Goodreads Choice Award

Nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller (2022), Nominee for Best Debut Novel (2022)

When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.

Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?

In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.

62. Clammed Up by Barbara Ross

#1 A Maine Clambake Mystery

listened on Audible

378 pgs.

2013
Adult cozy mystery
Finished 7-9-2024
Goodreads rating: 3.92
My rating: 3.75
Setting: contemporary Maine coast

My comments: I don't usually go for so-called "cozy mysteries", but I liked the cover of this one.  Maybe I just miss a good lobster dinner, but I thought I'd try just for the heck of it.  It really wasn't too bad.  I wasn't especially fond of the narrator....I think if I read it myself I would have given the protagonist a totally different demeanor.  Her voice sounded younger than 30 years old, more excitable, and even made her sound a little bit more know-it-all than I imagined her.  Pretty decent mystery with a lot of local color, set in a small community just a 10-minute or so drive from Bath.

Goodreads synopsis:  Julia Snowden returned to her hometown of Busman’s Harbor, Maine to rescue her family’s struggling clambake business—not to solve crimes. But that was before a catered wedding on picturesque Morrow Island turned into a reception for murder. When the best man’s corpse is found hanging from the grand staircase in the Snowden family mansion, Julia must put the chowder pot on the back burner and join the search for the killer. And with suspicion falling on her old crush, Chris Durand, the recipe for saving her business and salvaging her love life might be one and the same.

61. The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

listened on Libby

352 pgs.

2024
Adult RomCom
Finished 7/6/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.14
My rating: 3.75
Setting: Contemporary exotic island in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean

My comments: Somewhat typical Christina Lauren, where there's a decent story, quite a bit of sex, and everything - including quite a bit into the future - is all wrapped up tidily. There are a couple of thigs that I did not like...the protagonist's pink hair didn't work for me.  The other is the insistence of Liam to not be completely honest with Anna about what had happened 11 years previously.  It seems so stupid because de seems a pretty honest person.  Watching the indulgences of the super, ultra rich vs. the poverty of people tat don't have enough money for medical assistance just truly drove me crazy.  But it sure was an entertaining story.

Goodreads synopsis:  Christina Lauren, returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance.

Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.

60. Pitch Dark by Paul Doiron

#15 Mike Bowditch, Maine Game Warden

listened on Audible

304 pgs.

2024
Adult series murder mystery
Finished 7/4/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.28
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Maine woods, Jackman and US/Canada border.

My comments: This book was a bit different than his previous books which had Mike Bowditch out and about doing his investigating in different parts of Maine.  In this one he and his father-in-law are out in the woods tracking a bad guy and his young daughter.  A bit of adventure, some survival skills, pondering clues, and near-catastrophes and very close calls make this an interesting adventure.

Goodreads synopsis:  Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can’t believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie’s dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.

For Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond's secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area―including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady. Josie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and Cady. But hours after landing, the trip takes a dark turn when they witness a horrific murder and are taken captive themselves.

Freeing himself, Mike is forced to set off through the impenetrable Maine forest towards Canada, alone and unarmed in pursuit of a mysterious fugitive. As he navigates a windblown landscape choked with deadfalls and blocked by swollen streams, he marvels at his enemy’s bush craft. The killer possesses skills surpassing his own, and Bowditch can't tell if he is the cat or the mouse in this dangerous game. Can Mike Bowditch stop his adversary in time to save the life of a young girl, or will he be forced to watch another innocent soul die?

59. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

listened on Audible

307 pgs.

2023
Adult Mystery
Finished 6/26/24
Goodreads rating: 4.13
My rating: 4
Setting: Rural Maine (Rt. 9 north of Bangor) and Nova Scotia

My comments: Two voices, 1960 and perhaps 2000?  A four-year-old Micmac girl is kidnapped by a woman who has had many miscarriages and of course is slightly off.  The family of the little girl, Ruthie, (both parents, two brothers and a sister) never get over the feeling that she is still alive.  She is raised by the kidnapper and her husband as their own child, the mother being an odd woman who's super afraid that something is going to happen to now-Norma.  The story keeps switching back-and-forth between Ruthie/Norma and Joe, her two year older brother, who blames himself for her disappearance and has had an unhappy life because of the guilt he feels.  He's a good person, they are a good family, but it takes them almost five decades to reunite.  Such a sad story, but a really good one, too...

Goodreads synopsis:  A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.  

58. Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

listened on Libby

387 pgs.

2023
Adult mystery
Finished 6/23/24
Goodreads rating: 3.75
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Washington DC outskirts

My comments: Mia, from a Korean American family has a 20-year-old twin brother and a 13-year old autistic brother who cannot speak or communicate in any way.  The book starts with the stay-at-home father/caregiver taking Eugene on his daily walk to the park and never returning.  The entire book is based on trying to figure out what happened to the dad.  Did he leave?  Did he die?  If he did, where is he?  Eugene knows, but he can't communicate it.  Mia, the not-really likeable protagonist did start to grow on me a bit well into the book.  I loved the first half of the book, but the second half became more and more philosophical, which I really do dislike (in a book or in real life conversation, lol).  I probably would have rated this a 5 at first, but it went down by the time I finished.  I DID have a lot to think about, and I can still remember it months later, so that's a truly positive thing!

Goodreads synopsis:  When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another--both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

57. City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

# 1 Cara Kennedy

listened on Libby
304 pgs.

2023
Adult mystery
Finished 6/19/2024
Goodreads rating: 3.54
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary Alaska, winter

My comments: There were some elements of this story that drove me crazy, but the general premise AND the three voices you hear work quite well.  There's something about an entire town living in one huge building in Alaska that strikes a cord.  One of my problems is that only a handful of people were mentioned, and the idea of hundreds of people living here all together doesn't come together at all in my brain.  Our protagonist is hugely claustrophobic, so of course there are lots of scenes where this comes into account for her.  Too many.  I loved the way the three voices all intertwined, one being that of a young woman with some sort of mental disorder (schizophrenia?) - I loved being in her head and hearing what she was thinking.  The story ends with unanswered questions about Cara's past, so I definitely get the feeling there will be another book about her on the way!

Goodreads synopsis:  A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building, in this gripping debut by an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter.

When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel.

After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by fearsome gang members from a nearby native village.

Haunted by her past, Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town has something to hide. Will she be able to unravel their secrets before she unravels?"