{I've Been Reading} Dead Fake

 Jammed With Secrets by Selina Hill

I enjoyed the first book in this new series featuring Sadie Cruz, a celebrity chef whose reputation took an awful turn after a food critic died after sampling her restaurant's Heavenly Duck. Now she's in the spotlight again when a member of a 90s boyband is found dead in  her food trailer with one of her jam filled heart cookies smeared all over him.  It's an entertaining plot with a likeable protagonist, even if it sometimes felt like her investigation circled, going over the same information multiple times.   

Dead Fake by Vincent Ralph

Swipe to Die is an app that came out of nowhere and quickly became the most popular thing around. Just sign up with your email address, answer a couple of questions, and then watch an AI video of your own gory death. It's all innocent fun, right? This book takes all of the elements of an enjoyable slasher movie and makes them better by adding little hints of backstory that just wouldn't work in a film. The town of Bleak Haven has a troubled past, evidenced by the memorial wall at the local high school. One of the administrators is apparently a final girl, having survived a serial killer years earlier. Ava, the protagonist, is haunted by dark events in her own family's past, which makes her well equippped to try to stop whoever is behind Swipe or Die. I was extremely happy to see that this is the first book in a series about the town. 

The Room in the Attic by T. M. Logan

I don't know how this author managed to make an outdated flip phone so ominous, but I was holding my breath and wanting to yell at the characters to stop messing with it. It starts with Adam exploring a seam in the wooden paneling of their new residence and discovering a hidden space behind the wall. The tiny room is furnished with a chair and dresser and the dresser drawers contain an odd assortment of unremarkable objects. Told amost entirely from Adam's point of view, this book creates an uneasy sense of dread that I couldn't resist. 

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy.

{I've Been Reading} The Castaways

 The Castaways by Lucy Clarke 

Erin obsesses over a small plane that vanished on its way to a remote island near Fiji. She was supposed to be on that flight with her sister, but they fought the night before. Erin didn't show up at the airport. Lori disappeared with the plane. There are no answers, no hope, until the pilot appears in Fiji two years later claiming that he has no memory of what happened. Told in dual points of view, this thriller is a harrowing, stressful read. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's definitely the kind of book you want to be in the right mood for. I spent the whole read trying to reconcile what I hoped might happen with the sparse details that I knew had happened.

The Storm by Rachel Hawkins

The book gets off to an unsettling start with descriptions of what it's like to wait for a hurricane to hit. The Rosalie hotel has survived many storms over the past hundred years, but the people of St. Medard's Bay haven't been so lucky. One death, back in 1984, made national news. I usually love it when a thriller incorporates news stories as a way to dole out bits of information about past events, but I couldn't work up a whole lot of interest in this one. It's a slow burn without much sense of urgency and, while everything is eventually revealed and tied together, I don't feel like it lived up to the promise of the first few chapters. 

The Trip by Audrey J. Cole 

This is one of those thrillers where a friend group with a shared secret gets together after many years for a luxury vacation thatquickly turns deadly. The plot switches back and forth between a tragic rafting trip and a chartered sailboat that's caught up in an unexpected storm. It's all told from one character's point of view and, while the reader has to wait for events to unfold, the author isn't playing games and withholding information. The plot is fast paced and entertaining and includes just enough detail about the boat to be interesting. I have no idea if it's accurate, but it at least feels realistic, unlike the author's previous book. 

Disclosure -- The publishers provided me with advance review copies. 

{I've Been Reading} The Hong Kong Widow

The Hong Kong Widow by Kristen Loesch

A fantastic ghost story, this book follows Mei through three different timelines and has a wonderfully creepy atmosphere with some absolutely chilling moments. It's rare that a horror novel makes me jump as much as this one did, although I'm not sure "horror" is the best label. Is "ghostly thriller" a thing? Maidenhair House is the stuff of legend. In the 1950s, a series of seances ended in tragedy. Mei was there that night and survived, as she survived all of the horrors that came before that night. Sixty years later, her daughter pleans to visit the abandoned house. The historical details and descriptions had me totally immersed in the story.  

Silent as the Grave Rhys Bowen; Clare Broyles

This historical cozy is a treat for anyone who's ever been curious about the early days of movie making. As intriguing as the mystery itself is, the details about the movie studio and filming techniques were just as interesting. I've somehow managed to miss the first twenty-one books in the Molly Murphy series -- luckily the author weaves in just enough backstory to make jumping in easy!

Disclosure -- The publishers provided me with advance review  copies. 

 

{I've Been Reading} Bait and Swiss

 Bait and Swiss by Korina Moss

The Cheese Shop mysteries embody everything that first got me hooked on cozy mysteries. It's fun to immerse yourself in someone else's world and Willa's Cheeseboard Cafe is a perfect place to vicariously escape to. I didn't reread the description before starting the book, so I wasn't expecting any of what happened and I'm not going to spoil the fun for you by revealing the details. There's a murder and it hits close to home so there's a definite sense of urgency to Willa's investigation. The cheese shop sounds as delicious as ever. I almost stopped reading at one point to see if a particular recipe was included in the back of the book because it sounded so tempting. This is one of the best books in a great series. 

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

For as long as she can remember, seventeen-year-old Jane has lived alone with her father in the cabin. They visit town on rare occasions so that he can drop off copies of his zine at a local bookstore and she has one friend she communicates with by phone, but until the day her father brings home a laptop and connects them to the internet, she's been alone with her father and his theories. Once he goes online in hopes of reaching a wider audience with his manifesto, everything changes. Set in the mid-nineties in the early days of the internet, this book immediately caught my interest and held it through the end. 

What Happened to Lucy Vale by Lauren Oliver

This definitely wasn't what I was expecting. It starts out with a cast of characters that spans several pages. The chapters alternate between Rachel Vale and "We." We is (or are?) the local high school students and includes lots and lots of quotes from their Discord server. Those chapters were meandering and kind of overwhelming. The chapters told from Lucty's mother's point of view are, by comparison, a little boring. I didn't love it.