{I've Been Reading} Carpe Glitter

Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo

Persephone Aim inherited her grandmother's houses. Not only was her grandmother a hoarder who added buildings to her property to hold all of her possessions, she was also a stage magician. I got happily lost in the pages of this novella and my only complaint is that I wish it was longer so I could have spent more time with Persephone, watching her sort through her grandmother's possessions. I think I would have loved this book just for its descriptions of old dresses shedding sequins like scales, but then there's the artifact that she discovers broken into pieces and hidden throughout the three houses. That's the point where Persephone realizes that there's a lot about her grandmother that she didn't know.



Unfollow Me by Charlotte Duckworth

A mommy vlogger vanishes suddenly from the internet, all of her accounts deleted without warning or explanation. The online forums are buzzing with speculation. Instead of being the story of the missing influencer the book is about Lily and Yvonne, two of her obsessed fans.

I wanted to like this book and I did enjoy parts of it, but there are a lot of characters with alternating chapters and it was a struggle to figure out which ones were connected and how. More than once, I had to flip back a few pages to remind myself which character I was reading about. There's a message to all of this, about lying and oversharing and overstepping boundaries, and it's an interesting one. I kind of wish the book had spent more time exploring the members of the online forums than the histories of Lilly and Yvonne. 





My Husband's Lie by Emma Davies

When Thea gets the chance to move back to the old rectory she lived in as a child, she doesn't hesitate. She can already picture her daughters loving the big house as much as she did. Her husband, Drew, is a bit more hesitant, but he goes along with her plan. The husband and wife have been inseparable since they lived next door to one another as children. They're the perfect couple.

It's not long before Thea realizes that she's not welcome in her former home. Something happened  before her family moved away and she seems to be the only one in the dark about what it was.

Maybe I would have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't been expecting it to be a thriller (it's not) or if it had had a different title. The plot is interesting and the characters and their relationships are well developed, but I kept waiting for the awful event or revelation that never came.

Disclosure -- The publishers provided me with advance review copies. This post contains affiliate links.