Classic literature takes center stage in Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, the story of one girl’s search for the woman who inspired several of Lord Byron’s epic poems. Khayyam Macquet believes she has just tanked her university career – and in typical teenage hyperbole can’t help wondering if that means she has tanked her…
I’ve been aware of Lisa Wingate’s writing for many years, but it wasn’t until I picked up a copy of Before We Were Yours in the summer of 2017 that I considered myself a fan. In the almost three years since that day, I’ve read several of her backlist titles and I’m now completely under…
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant is an epic, detailed novel relating a singular story set in two different times through the eyes of three unique characters. In 1951, college graduate Esther has been living as a middle-class housewife and mother when a vacation with her husband turns out to be a lure which deposits…
Completely addictive, riveting, and engaging, The Sun Down Motel is the latest supernatural thriller from Simone St. James. A dual timeline tale of two women thirty-five years apart looking for answers to a series of disappearances, it contains the eerie, haunted tone I expect from this author’s work together with an excellent, engrossing mystery which…
Powerhouse authors Beatriz Williams, Karen White, and Lauren Willig have teamed up for their third collaboration, a triple timeline story about three women whose lives are inexplicably bound up in the somewhat tragic history of Paris’ Ritz Hotel. The sweeping tale spans fifty years, introducing readers to Aurelie, Daisy, and Babs as they discover who…
One of the last passages in the The Bright Unknown is “A lot of bad had to happen for us to have all the good in our lives.” One thing I can definitely attest to is that a lot of bad happens in this story. Whether that was truly necessary in order for any good…
As a big fan of May McGoldrick’s historical romances, I’m sad to say that Highland Jewel was a bit of a disappointment. While the first book in the Royal Highlander series, Highland Crown, balanced romance and action perfectly, Highland Jewel loses its way, leaning heavily upon action sequences, and giving us a hero who moralizes for…
In 1997, the Seinfeld episode called The Yada Yada aired. While this installment is best known for coining the term “anti-dentite” and the use of yada, yada to skip details in conversation, it also takes an intriguing look at religious conversion and the confused feelings such an event creates in the people around the convert. …
Over the past several years, I’ve developed quite a liking for dual timeline novels, and Home for Erring and Outcast Girls, centered around a home for fallen women in the early 1900s is one of the best I’ve read. It’s a bit complicated, due to the large cast of characters and the constant shifts in…
In The Golden Hour, author Beatriz Williams tells the interconnected stories of two women, decades apart, whose lives are irrevocably changed by their deep and abiding love for the men of the Winthrop family. For Lulu, a journalist desperate to uncover the truth about the apparent death of the man she loves, and Elfriede, a…