Book Review: In the Face of Catastrophe: How a Traumatic Brain Injury Became a Blessing

📚 Book Review: In the Face of Catastrophe: How a Traumatic Brain Injury Became a Blessing

@Jennifer Rose Goldman, Caryn Meg Hirshleifer 

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🗓️ Publication Date: August 6, 2024

📚 My Review:This was a very inspiring memoir told from the point of view of 5 different people. What an amazing outlook Jenn has and so lucky to be surrounded by so much love. I have no doubt that she will continue to progress with all her goals and recovery!

The diary entries were well written and easy to read. What a wonderful gift to have done this together!

Thank you to Netgalley and Greenleaf Book Group for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: The Gift of Presence

When a stroke leaves Jenn comatose and clinging to life just days before her thirty-first birthday, she and her family face an overwhelming and painful journey. As they struggle to grasp what happened, to move forward and heal, they discover an unexpected how to be present in times of uncertainty while holding onto hope and the power of family and community to sustain them through these challenging times.

Structured as diary entries, this poignant memoir shares memories from each family member as they walk together through this profoundly life-changing event, grapple with grief, and learn to look for silver gratitude, intentional time together, and the closeness of family and friends to help them heal. Jenn was already a motivational speaker and professional advocate for wellness and self-care before her stroke, and now she and her family share a very personal and intimate time of their lives in the hope that those who are struggling with similar experiences of loss and change will find connection, solace, and the courage to overcome even the greatest challenges.

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Book Review: Everyone Here is Lying

📚Book Review: Everyone Here is Lying

Shari Lapena 

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐💫

📚 My Review: 3.5* rounded up on Goodreads! First, January LaVoy's narration of this was spot on! The book was a fast paced family drama/thriller with enough surprises to keep it interesting. There were so many suspects and really.. Everyone was lying!!!

My only problem through the whole book was Avery's character. She's aged 9, but the portrayal of her, the language she used, and her thought process throughout seemed SO much older and I felt that a teenager would have been more believable.

Regardless of that, it was still an enjoyable book with a good reminder that lies rarely work in your favour!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. (Audiobook copy from my local library)

📚Goodreads Synopsis: Welcome to Stanhope - a safe neighbourhood. A place for families.

William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.

Hours later, Avery's family declare her missing.

Suddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbours become increasingly unhinged.

Who took Avery Wooler?

Nothing will prepare you for the truth

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Book Review: House of Glass

📚Book Review: House of Glass

Sarah Pekkanen

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🗓️ Publication Date: August 6, 2024 

📚 My Review: I really enjoyed this! The storyline and pace of the book were great and the twists, while not necessarily earth shattering, weren't easily guessed. I liked Stella's character and enjoyed the side story about her mother's death and how it was woven throughout. This was my second book by Sarah Pekkanen and I'll be on the lookout for more. If you like family drama thrillers with creepy kids and houses this is probably for you!!!

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC of this book

📚Goodreads Synopsis: On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce - and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

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Book Review: The Fiance Dilemma

📚 Book Review: The Fiance Dilemma 

Elena Armas

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🗓️ Publication Date: July 30, 2024

📚 My Review: Well, well well... Can Matthew be my new book boyfriend? This was a perfect summer read with great characters, lots of laughable and sweet moments, and a few blushable ones too! 😊 I adored Josie with all her quirkiness, and rooted for her the whole way! I may not have read the long game yet (the first book in this series) but it's definitely going on my list!

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the eARC of this book.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: Josie Moore has given the opposite sex—and love—plenty of chances. Four exactly, if you count all her failed engagements, and five if you include the absentee father who kept her existence a secret until very recently. So when her father decides to announce his retirement with a splashy magazine piece about the family, Josie realizes her romantic history is a complicated PR issue. 

Matthew Flanagan is in the mud, literally. Not only has he been fired from his job, but also the tires of his car are stuck in the muck after taking a wrong turn as he enters Green Oak, North Carolina. So, he grabs a duffel with his essentials and goes in search of a place to crash until he gets his life back on track. But instead, he finds his best friend’s sister, Josie, greeting him as her fiancé. 

What starts as a big messy misunderstanding quickly turns into an arrangement with Matthew playing a new role as doting fiancé. A fifth engagement—and a stunt, at that—makes Josie’s stomach turn, but every dilemma requires a choice between equally undesirable alternatives, and Matthew doesn’t seem to mind becoming one more number in a colorful list of grooms-that-never-were. Despite the ring on her finger, Josie knows this is only temporary, even if the rest of the small town believes that the fifth time’s the charm.

Book Review: The Mother-in-Law

📚 Book Review: The Mother-in-Law 

Sally Hepworth

Format: Audiobook

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 Publication Date: January 29, 2019

📚 My Review: A twisty family drama for sure! I listened to this one and found it fast paced and engaging. I enjoyed how the chapters moved between Lucy and Diana and how the multiple timelines lent to building the story. The narration was also great.. Definitely add this one to your list!

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: A twisty, compelling novel about one woman's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in murder...

From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, and properly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice who helped female refugees assimilate to their new country. Diana was happily married to Tom, and lived in wedded bliss for decades. Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law. 

That was five years ago.

Now, Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer.

But the autopsy finds no cancer.

The autopsy does find traces of poison and suffocation. 

Who could possibly want Diana dead? 

Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her adult children and their spouses?

Book Review: Textbook Romance

📚 Book Review: Textbook Romance

Kristen Bailey 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Publication Date: July 29, 2024

📚 My Review: This was the perfect summer read! It has an easy reading style that was fast paced and had me laughing one minute and ready for tears the next. The dual POV was perfectly executed (*chef's kiss) and you just can't help but fall in love with Jack and Zoe. Cute, cute, cute! Lottie and Dylan added a great "real family drama" dynamic to the storyline and I adored their relationship with their mom. Add this one to your list!!!

Thank you to Netgalley and Storm Publishing for the digital ARC of this book

📚 Goodreads synopsis: When maths teacher Zoe Swift meets the irresistibly funny and charming Jack Damon at her friends’ wedding, sparks fly faster than you can say "the square root of sixty-nine." 

And when Jack turns up at her school, newly recruited as a supply teacher, she can’t ignore the intense effect he has on her when their paths cross in the corridors. But Zoe is still reeling from her husband's recent jaw-dropping betrayal and adjusting to life as a single mum to two teenage kids. She's not sure if she's ready to open her heart to a fling with a younger man.

As Zoe and Jack's connection grows deeper, their undeniable chemistry and Jack's steadfast support help Zoe rediscover the good things in her love of a good dance, the soothing power of takeout, the secret thrill of receiving a well-timed chicken emoji and the wonder of multiple orgasms…

But with complicated family dynamics and co-parenting with her ex to manage, a sizeable age gap, and Jack's uncertainties about his future to factor in, she’s about to find out that love isn’t always a simple equation.

Can Zoe accept this gift from the universe and take a chance on a far-from-textbook romance?

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Book Review: What Have You Done?

📚Book Review: What Have You Done?
Shari Lapena
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 Publication Date: July 30, 2024

📚 My Review: There was so much to love about this book! It hooked me from the start and I didn't want to put it down. The writing was fast paced and I really enjoyed how each of the multiple POVs provided a unique aspect that kept you guessing as to their involvement.. if any! 🤔

If I had one complaint, it would be how the actual murderer was revealed. Don't get me wrong, I love a good plot twist but this one actually left me feeling a bit disappointed. It makes me so sad because I loved everything else about the whole thing!

This was my first book by the author and it definitely won't be my last.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the eARC of this book.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: The new binge-worthy novel from the “queen of the one-sit read,” and New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. But this morning that will change. And one innocent question could be deadly. What have you done?

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.

But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.

How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.