Behind the Red Door

By Megan Collins

The Blurb –

“When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.

Back at her childhood home to help her father pack for a move, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. With the help of her psychologist father, Fern digs deeper, hoping to find evidence that her connection to Astrid can help the police locate her. But when Fern discovers more about her own past than she ever bargained for, the disturbing truth will change both of their lives forever.”

The Review –

This was another book I couldn’t put down! I should probably start reading the synopsis of books instead of just getting them base on the covers. This was very well written of a first person point of view of returning home to think that you are just helping out your parents in a tough situation. Then it turns into your worst nightmare of your childhood that you have repressed. I liked that there weren’t many characters to have to follow along with and also the timeline of events was pretty cut and dry if we were in the past or in the present. I did guess correctly about who the kidnapper was and the reasoning behind it, however I did not guess who “kidnapped” Astrid for the second time. Looking forward to reading another book by this author soon.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5!

If Something Happens to Me

By Alex Finlay

The Blurb –

“For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken.

With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He’s put his past behind him.

Until, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali’s car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me…

Then, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.

As Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff’s deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who’s experienced tragedy of his own.”

The Review –

Imagine going through the worst experience of your life, losing someone you care about in the blink of an eye. Having to live for half a century with the guilt of not being there to protect her, and then you finally get the motivation to start living your life again; once you get on a vacation you see the man who is involved in your kidnapping. It’s like a swift kick in the tail feeling. I felt the pain throughout this book of how Ryan has to deal with day to day stressors, but then has to confront the person who was involved in Alisen’s disappearance. The characters show a lot of bravery trying to find out what happened to her that night. They touched on a young male having a true crime podcast, I wish they would have incooperated more of that into the book. Maybe they can have a part 2 where they have the podcast and Poppy trying to figure out another case. Very quick ending to tie everything together, but it made sense of her going missing and people being followed/harassed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5!

She’s Not Sorry

By Mary Kubica

The Blurb –

A terrible accident.

Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom and working full time as an ICU nurse, when a patient named Caitlin arrives in her ward with a traumatic brain injury. They say she jumped from a bridge and plunged over twenty feet to the train tracks below.

A shocking revelation.

When a witness comes forward with new details about Caitlin’s fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was a crime committed? Did someone actually push Caitlin, and if so, who… and why?

No one is safe.

Meghan lets herself get close to Caitlin until she’s deeply entangled in the mystery surrounding her. Only when it’s too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims…

The Review –

I was recommended this book by a coworker who has very good taste in reading material. Of course she was spot on again, I could not put this down since I started it. I am a huge fan of mystery and knowing that I am missing something on purpose from the author because they will use that at the end to make “the turn of events” happen. This is also special to me since I did go through nursing school before I got into law enforcement so this incorporates both parts of my life with past and present. There are a lot of twists and turn throughout the whole book with the attempted murder, the fraud, kidnapping, and actual murder. I thought I had the suspect figured out and of course I was wrong! This is a great quick read especially if you like a good whodunit!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 !

The Club

By Ellery Lloyd

The Blurb –

Everyone’s Dying to Join . . .

The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members’ clubs dotted across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.

The most spectacular of all is Island Home—a closely-guarded, ultraluxurious resort, just off the English coast—and its three-day launch party is easily the most coveted A-list invite of the decade.

But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point: the ambitious and expensive project has pushed the Home Group’s CEO and his long-suffering team to their absolute limits. All of them have something to hide—and that’s before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island. 

As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members will begin to wish they’d never made the guest list.

Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out.

The Quotes –

That if you really wanted to do it, it was never too late to change your life. To follow your dreams. To be a better person. To start treating the people around you the way they deserved to be treated.

The Review –

I had high hopes for this book since it was a Reese’s Book Club pick for 2022. I read this in just under 24 hours in quite a few sittings. There were many times that I wasn’t quite sure if we were in the past or present settings and also way too many characters to follow along with. It did help that each section noted which point of view was speaking, however it was still hard to figure out how everyone tied together in some parts. I did like the premise of the book with celebrities and the rich and famous being murdered for doing terrible things, it shows that they are not untouchable. It was just too hard to figure out who was alive or dead, or who was supposed to be dead and then came back alive.

This is not a “Club” I want to be invited to.

⭐️⭐️

You Will Be Mine

by Natasha Preston

The Blurb –

ROSES ARE RED

VIOLETS ARE BLUE

WATCH YOUR BACK

I’M COMING FOR YOU

Lylah and her friends can’t wait to spend a night out together. Partying is the perfect way to let loose from the stress of life and school, and Lylah hopes that hitting the dance floor with Chace, her best friend, will bring them closer together. She’s been crushing on him since they met. If only he thought of her the same way…

The girls are touching up their makeup and the guys are sliding on their coats when the doorbell rings. No one is there. An envelope sits on the doormat. It’s an anonymous note addressed to their friend Sonny. A secret admirer? Maybe. They all laugh it off.

Except Sonny never comes home. And a new note arrives:

YOUR TURN

The Review –

I’ve wanted to read this for a very long time, and I’ve rented it multiple times since I never seem to get to it. Then when I started it, it took me many days to read it. I had no idea what this book was about, other than the name suggesting that someone was about to be stalked. I will admit there were a lot of characters to learn pretty early on, and since they all lived together it was difficult to establish who were friends or siblings. Probably about halfway through you could start to tell who everyone was in context to the main character. I did really like that they had pictures of the notes that the killer was leaving, this added to the stalker vibes we were supposed to be feeling. This was more “gory” than I thought it was going to be, since part of the killings were the people had their hearts cut out. Overall it was pretty good, just your typical “if I can’t have you, no one will” kind of book. I was pretty surprised who the actual killer was, normally I can guess it, but this book I was completely thrown off.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Black Widows

By Cate Quinn

The Blurb –

“Polygamist Blake Nelson built a homestead on a hidden stretch of land—a raw paradise in the wilds of Utah—where he lived with his three wives:

Rachel, the first wife, obedient and doting to a fault, with a past she’d prefer to keep quiet.
Tina, the rebel wife, everything Rachel isn’t, straight from rehab and the Vegas strip.
And Emily, the young wife, naïve and scared, estranged from her Catholic family.

The only thing that they had in common was Blake. Until all three are accused of his murder.

When Blake is found dead under the desert sun, all three wives become suspect—not only to the police, but to each other. As the investigation draws them closer, each wife must decide who can be trusted. With stories surfacing of a notorious cult tucked away in the hills, whispers flying about a fourth wife, and evidence that can’t quite explain what had been keeping Blake busy, the three widows face a reckoning that might shatter all they know to be true.

For fans of The Wife Between Us and The Dry comes a chilling murder mystery that takes a domestic thriller’s classic question—”Did his wife kill him?”—and twists it into an completely new type of suspense.”

The Quotes –

“It would almost seem as though your husband went out shopping for wives. A maid in the parlor, a cook in the kitchen, a whore in the bedroom.”

The Review –

I’m going to be honest and I did not know anything about this book before I started reading it. I was shook for the second chapter when it explained it was about a polygamous family and the husband had been murdered. It brought me back to when I first started watching “Sister Wives” a couple years back when all 3 wives were living in one household together raising their families. The 3 wives in this book are complete opposite personalities. You have Rachel who is the “legal wife” who seemingly is supposed to run the household. You have Emily who is very sheltered and unaware of normal society things. And then you have Tina who is the wild child that was supposed to be tamed by her new living situation. It’s nice to see the author bring these 3 women together to try to figure out who murdered their husband, rather than have them pitted against each other. However this quickly takes a turn and they are forced to rescue themselves at the end. This book goes to show how deep is a Mother’s love and how far she will go to protect their children. After reading this I will never be able to look at a shoe box the same way again 😣.

Trigger warning for infant death/miscarriage.

Very good book overall with good character interactions, easy to follow along the chain of events and which chapter reflects which wife.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Mystery of Three Quarters

By Sophie Hannah

The Blurb –

“Hercule Poirot returns home after an agreeable luncheon to find an angry woman waiting to berate him outside his front door. Her name is Sylvia Rule, and she demands to know why Poirot has accused her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met. She is furious to be so accused, and deeply shocked. Poirot is equally shocked, because he too has never heard of any Barnabas Pandy, and he certainly did not send the letter in question. He cannot convince Sylvia Rule of his innocence, however, and she marches away in a rage.

Shaken, Poirot goes inside, only to find that he has a visitor waiting for him — a man called John McCrodden who also claims also to have received a letter from Poirot that morning, accusing him of the murder of Barnabas Pandy… 

Poirot wonders how many more letters of this sort have been sent in his name. Who sent them, and why? More importantly, who is Barnabas Pandy, is he dead, and, if so, was he murdered? And can Poirot find out the answers without putting more lives in danger?”

The Review –

This is the third book in this series and I have been hooked from the first one! I loved the premise of sending 4 letters to 4 different people and signed fraudulently by someone claiming to be “Poirot”. It makes the mystery even deeper, does it mean that 1 of them is the killer and the other 3 are a distraction? Does it mean that all of them have murdered together and someone is calling them all out? Or is it none of them have committed murder but someone wants to get Poirot’s attention by signing his name on them? Poirot takes his time at the end over a couple of days to reveal the final conclusion, can you guess who the murderer is?

Overall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ –

I give this book 4/5 stars. I believe this is her best one yet with twists and turns to oversee the process of Poirot and Catchpool to solve this murder, or is it a true accident?

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