I’m not trying to steal Tarryn Fisher’s bag so let me recommend I Can Be a Better You, The Wrong Family, The Wives or the first in The Opportunist serI’m not trying to steal Tarryn Fisher’s bag so let me recommend I Can Be a Better You, The Wrong Family, The Wives or the first in The Opportunist series. This one, though????
This selection is another example of why everyone should have a ride-or-die, NetGalley addicted book bestie like Shelby in their life. Neighborhood WaThis selection is another example of why everyone should have a ride-or-die, NetGalley addicted book bestie like Shelby in their life. Neighborhood Watch was her most recent recommendation to me. She said to ignore the ugly cover and go request a copy pronto before reader copies got pulled from NG and since I am her minion I did exactly what she asked of me. And I do agree the cover is fug, but put “neighborhood” in a title and Imma be down to clown.
This puppy was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo Desperate Housewives - fully of rich beetches in their McMansiony hood. Everyone is up in each other’s bidness courtesy of the local “book club” – and then the body count starts rising. Good news is . . . .
By now you are probably aware of how far behind I continually am when it comes to posting reviews. This morning, however, when I logged on to GoodreadBy now you are probably aware of how far behind I continually am when it comes to posting reviews. This morning, however, when I logged on to Goodreads I saw this little diddy was right up there on the heading ticker which was just the nudge I needed I guess to write something up real quick.
The best way for me to describe Friends in Napa is that it is Big Little Lies meets Keeping Up With the Kardashians meets The Big Chill - and if that sounds like a Frankenmashup to you, well . . . .
If you too are a trash goblin and are experiencing some unseasonably warm weather and enjoy reading some pure stabby fluff on the deck, or like the same stuff Kelly Kapoor likes, then definitely give this a go.
The premise here is a fairly familiar one: There’s a dead body and you meander your way to the big reveal while meeting these various “friends in Napa” and watching their various skeletons fall out of closets. It’s vapid in the best guilty pleasure way possible and I gobbled it right up.
If you are trash like me, you might be familiar with the term “the sun shines on a dog’s butt every once in a while.” This could also be rephrased as If you are trash like me, you might be familiar with the term “the sun shines on a dog’s butt every once in a while.” This could also be rephrased as occasionally Kelly actually likes something that she has really been anticipating. Oh, but have no fear, friends – I’m still a wrongreader as most of my pals found this to be pretty lackluster. Me, however???
I was really vibulating with the Ira Levin sort of feels I was picking up. Be forewarned, this tale of a couple who inherit a deceased uncle’s $5M fat pad in NYC doesn’t contain many twists or turns, so it’s truly about the connection. I have no idea if the homage to Levin was intentional or not, but I was picking up on the best sort of tasty tidbits from Rosemary’s Baby and (maybe the only decent part at all) from Sliver.
The one thing I found absolutely unnecessary? The time-hop to the narrative in the past. That was 100% a lame distraction simply for “shock and awe” (and very little of that) that could have easily been information revealed while Rosie was digging through the boxes upon boxes in the storage unit to discover the “haunted” past of the historic Windermere. Also? Please don’t name characters “Chad” . . . .
This is the time where half stars would be great because I truly think this falls at 3.5. Buuuuuut, Imma round up because Lisa Unger remains firmly planted on my “don’t care how, I want it now” list and to maybe convince her publisher to not deny me every time I request an ARC since I actually read AND dig her stuff....more
This isn’t a particularly new sort of mystery plot: It starts with a party, someone gets murdered, everyone is a suspect and then you spend the rest oThis isn’t a particularly new sort of mystery plot: It starts with a party, someone gets murdered, everyone is a suspect and then you spend the rest of the book figuring out the whodunnit. Good news is, I generally love this storyline. Bad news is this one wasn’t much of a stand-out.
The specifics here are the Calhouns are having their annual Cherry Blossom party . . . and the police are there are on page one. By the 20% mark you know who the victim is and then you get to find out exactly what skeletons are hiding in the closets of each family member (as well as a neighbor or two). Things play out via sort of an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach and you really have to throw all common sense out the window when it comes to things like police procedures or legal work – not to mention that no one is likeable or more than a cardboard cutout as far as character development. But it’s getting real high ratings, so what do I know?
I dared to Google “Why is Freida McFadden so popular” because truly, my mind? She be blown. The first response (from Reddit – oh how I love the subReddits) states “I get why it's popular because it's fast paced and a very easy read but the plot is so derivative and the writing style is so annoying.” To that I say – PREACH.
Talk about an easy reader. The plot (LOL plot!) here starts with a body being buried in the woods. You then meet the “teacher” (teacherS in this case since Eve is married to a fellow educator named Nate) and their student Addie. It doesn’t take much of an I.Q. to figure out EVERYTHING that is going to happen so I have no idea what “twists” people cream their jeans over. Maybe they are contained in her other books???? (Sidenote to anyone thinking of making a drinking game every time “shoes” are mentioned. Don't do it. You will die from alcohol poisoning.)
Apparently she has a real rabid fanbase so I guess I can look forward to potentially getting trolled for eternity like I have for nearly a decade by the Cohorts (note to trolls - I delete and block you rather than engage so have a blessed day and maybe go outside and touch some grass). It also appears from my quick one minute search of the interwebs that she apparently is a copycat so the half that don’t love her want her cancelled. Bottom line? No matter what we readers/reviewers can’t win. But before any of you go all keyboard commando please note that popcorn thrillers like these are a dime a dozen and trying to claim Freida steals from Riley Sager, an author who admittedly makes his millions reimagining others’ tales, isn’t gonna hold up in court. I was looking to venture out of my comfort zone of listening to memoirs during my “Walk ‘n Talk” and this was so easy to follow while I attempted to kiss every dog that crossed my path on the trail at the park that I will most likely end up picking her stuff up over and over again. And most likely also give them 2 Stars max.
This was pretty much a you had me at hello for a couple of reasons . . . .
First, the cover. As much as I despise face covers, I don’t mind this creepy peeper whatsoever. Also, I’m a HUGE fan of authors who stick with the same font/format for their books. I have soooooo many problems recalling names and titles, but I can remember cover art nearly every time.
These bishes were everything I wanted them to be. Like grown up Mean Girls – or even better since they were not only wealthy, but Londoners, a gaggle of Caroline Stanburys . . .
But what is it about you might be asking. Lemme tell you. Tash is trying to navigate her way through balancing motherhood while simultaneously trying to gain a name for herself as a freelance journalist. Her latest story involves looking into a supposed accidental drowning – as requested by the dead girl’s mother. In order to get some free time to work, she enrolls her son in a playgroup containing a group of cliquey, well-to-do mothers. When they take Tash under their wing, she leans right in to keeping up with the Joneses only to discover they knew the deceased as well.
If you like a quality Lifetime Stabby Stab/Desperate Housewives sort of whodunit I’m telling you this is a winner. So satisfying to my little garbage addicted persona! The only complaint????
Come on, authors! You think we’re amateurs? We know all about this stuff – and don’t even get us started on petechiae. Or maybe I should make a note to myself if this is how police investigations/forensic pathology works across the pond and if I ever decide to murder someone, make sure to do it over there ; )...more
I attempted (and failed) to clean out my “Currently Reading” items (FYI – I only read one book at a time and listen to one audio) last week by simply I attempted (and failed) to clean out my “Currently Reading” items (FYI – I only read one book at a time and listen to one audio) last week by simply throwing ratings on some books I found to be average. Then I realized not only was this an ARC from NetGalley so I should probably spew something out about it, but that nearly all of my friends had 4 or 5 Starred it so I decided to give it a quick re-read . . . . and yeah, I stand by my 3 Stars.
The premise here is about a grieving mother who from all appearances simply walked away from her car and into the middle of a storm. A note is found at a local casino hotel room saying “don’t look for me.” We then fall into a dual narrative – one by the missing mother starting day one after she has disappeared and one by the daughter who is not willing to accept that she is gone starting thirteen days after her mother’s disappearance. The story unfolds until the two timelines converge.
I think my mediocre rating for this one can be blamed on a few things. First, when there are only a limited amount of characters the red herring suspects always seem pretty easy for me to spot. Which leads to a big “DUHHHHHH” moment when I finally get told whodunit. ACTUAL SPOILER AHEAD:(view spoiler)[Not to mention how severely disappointed I am whenever a leading lady turns into some dumb bimbo sexing up the baddy. (hide spoiler)] And unlike this lady . . . .
I do seem to prefer my thrillers to either be campy fun or black as Mitchell’s heart so the Lifetime Television for Women types of tales just aren’t always my jam. (If you are looking for a missing person story that will knock you right out of your shoes, I highly recommend The Trap.) As for this one, when the shit about the apples came in, I was definitely NOT feeling like . . . .
I don’t know how this got on my TBR, but whoever is responsible I say many thankings! I didn’t read much while I was on vacation the last week and a hI don’t know how this got on my TBR, but whoever is responsible I say many thankings! I didn’t read much while I was on vacation the last week and a half, but I picked this up on Festivus and flew right threw it. The premise here is simple: Ellen is a gal after my own heart . . . .
Who has finally managed to snag her dream home (of sorts) after perusing the Zillow for the perfect location. Now she just has to wait out the remodel in order for this to be the family’s forever home. But when an ominous note appears threatening to shatter Ellen’s glass castle, we find out maybe our leading lady isn’t as squeaky clean as she would want us to believe.
Okay, so this was fun. As you probably know, I love trash and reality T.V. and Lifetime Stabbies and this was on the high-end of that particular genre. Loads of fun. ...more
Thank goodness! Sally Hepworth has been a go-to for me when I want a solid family drama with a side of mystery type of read, but I found Th
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Thank goodness! Sally Hepworth has been a go-to for me when I want a solid family drama with a side of mystery type of read, but I found The Soulmate to be a real stinker. Luckily that was a one-off and this tale of a body discovered buried under a house, three (now grown) foster sisters and . . . .
Had me flying through the pages. Per usual some of the “mysterious” elements are fairly predictable, but once again Hepworth provides a real whammy of an ending.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley! ...more
We start off with Lee. She had fulfilled her dream of opening her own restaurant when the pandemic hit. Wrapped up with a real shady business partner Lee has ran across the country and is now homeless for fear that if she is found she’ll be ….
And if you think THAT is far-fetched - well, things haven’t even really gotten started yet.
If you can completely throw any semblance of reality out the window and don’t suffer whiplash due to eleventy twists and turns maybe give this a whirl.
I love the idea of maybe a little whodunit wrapped up in a neighborhood drama since I’m always on the quest for the next Big Little Lies. I love skeletons falling out of closets and secrets lives and lying liars. And I love the idea of a grief-stricken mother spending her free time peeping on the potential local neighborhood manwhore. That being said, I was sooooo disappointed so early into this book when it came to Paige. Talk about shark jumpingly unbelievable/zero to sixty on the train to WTF is this bitch doing? Then Cora ends up being some dumb hoe too? Ick. Georgia’s story was the one which took me by surprise and I became fully invested. But I’m telling you if I were someone who DNFs – this would have been a strong candidate. I am happy to report explanations for certain things were given at about the halfway point, but it still didn’t make Paige’s actions make any sense and it just came off as some super telenova-type of storytelling.
Not to mention some of this was just lazy (or maybe a case of short-term memory loss while the author was writing) –some inconsistencies are so glaring that it’s impossible not to notice. A few examples:
1. Please don’t talk to me about a 6 month old baby and then tell me how she eats pancakes for breakfast and handfuls of Cheerios and goldfish crackers.
2. You get drunk at the neighbor feller’s restaurant and find the two of you singing with to the muzak playing on the speaker system, so why are you so terribly shocked when he takes the microphone on piano sing-along night? (Also, tipsy he sang terribly but sober he was wonderful????)
3. Magically the “we’d have to keep you until your arraignment, which will probably be Monday since it’s after noon on a Friday” somehow turns into only a 30 minute wait to be processed and let go on bond.
Are editors members of the writers’ strike? WTF has been going on the last year or so??????...more
Here’s another ancient ARC that’s been sitting around my NetGalley shelf for eternity. I picked this up despite the dreaded face cover (and let me telHere’s another ancient ARC that’s been sitting around my NetGalley shelf for eternity. I picked this up despite the dreaded face cover (and let me tell you the flowers/fruits/veggies covering the face cover is one of my absolute most hated face covers, but it actually makes sense here so kudos to you, cover artist) because I REALLY enjoyed Good Rich People by this author. But this one???? Woof.
So first, the entire premise of some woman who randomly listens to a podcaster and then not only assumes she has gone missing/has been murdered when said podcast stops casting lets you know right away the leading lady is . . . .
But I can get on board with a little Velma action sometimes, suspend my disbelief and lean into the crazy. The main problem with this is that nothing happened until the end. This could have been a pretty decent short story, but even at less than 300 pages it just drug on and on with nothing happening but repetition that the ranch was not the place Sera wanted to be.
1.5 Stars but rounded up because there was potential here and I appreciate second person narratives when they are done well. ...more
Per usual I went into this one blind without taking a gander at any blurbs. I’ve enjoyed Shari Lapena in the past and apparently a tree house is stillPer usual I went into this one blind without taking a gander at any blurbs. I’ve enjoyed Shari Lapena in the past and apparently a tree house is still house enough of a cover for me to gravitate toward it. I was a little worried upon beginning that this was going to be a fail for me because I’m not super into missing child stories. But man oh man what a page turner. I was totally invested right from the jump.
The story here is about Avery who has some sort of unnamed oppositional defiance disorder type of condition. She is missing and it could be anything from she ran off to her daddy doing her or someone else. The first 200 pages of the story play out sort of like The First 48 and a Lifetime Stabby had a baby while the police do their thing and you meet all of the neighbors – who of course are almost all hiding something.
You won’t up your I.Q. reading this one, but if you’re like me you’ll be invested throughout and breeze through it in a matter of hours. Oh and the very end????
I’m going to keep this real short because simply put, this book was . . . . not good.
If you’re looking for a brainless “thriller” this summ
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I’m going to keep this real short because simply put, this book was . . . . not good.
If you’re looking for a brainless “thriller” this summer, then maybe (?????) add this to your TBR, but for real don’t ever attach my name to the recommendation. I’m Not Done With You Yet was the basic bitch of fatal female friendship stories. There’s a little obsession, there’s a wibbly wobbly timeline, there’s (not even kidding) 34 mentions of being a sociopath, but there’s oh so very little plot and then the narrator changed but the voice was so similar I had to backtrack and see that I was indeed reading from a different perspective.
Good news is, Jesse Q. Sutanto has already written about obsession (literally – the title is The Obsession) and it was a pretty decent YA approach to a story like You. Even better news is you can skip her additions to the thriller genre altogether and get one of her zany murder mysteries instead because both Vera Wang and The Aunties are laugh-out-loud funny.
This one leaves itself open for a sequel, but please god no . . . .
I mean we’re talking the holy grail of house covers right there, kids. Unfortunately the book itself was mostly a flop for me. The main problem was that this was marketed as a whodunit, but you don’t even get a dead granny until 30%. And granny didn’t even need to be murdered for this story. This one is all about the various skeletons that end up falling out of the cupboards when a group of longtime friends get together for a girls’ trip. Granny provided the chateau and was the catalyst behind certain skeletons, but again, she could have been dead to begin with and the ladies could have been coming together either for her funeral or reading of the will without any of the stabby even occurring. But it is what it is. Take this to the pool for some mindless summertime fun if nothing else. (Just be forewarned that this author comes off as a real Francophile who likes to toss in an obnoxious amount of super basic French words to her narration.)...more
I knew the first big reveal at only the 4% mark, but had to wait until 31% for confirmation. The journal entries regarding the past were quite deliciously horrible, but I found the present to be so lackluster until nearly the halfway mark that I was really just slogging through. And the last 25% could have been condensed to a few chapters and wrapped things up perfectly fine. So there you have it. Every reader has a different experience with each book they pick up. I wish I would have enjoyed this one as much as all of my friends did.
2.5 Stars
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley! ...more
I said if my hunch was right (at 14%) on this one I was going to give it 1 Star. I'm being generous here because it was readable . . . even if HIGHLY I said if my hunch was right (at 14%) on this one I was going to give it 1 Star. I'm being generous here because it was readable . . . even if HIGHLY convoluted.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!...more
Let me unload one piece of baggage before I even begin here. My copy of You Shouldn’t Have Come Here DID NOT include the Colleen Hoover cover blurb. ILet me unload one piece of baggage before I even begin here. My copy of You Shouldn’t Have Come Here DID NOT include the Colleen Hoover cover blurb. If it had, I would hope that I would have been smart enough to avoid this like the plague due the incessant seven year trolling I’ve receive from CoHo’s rabid fanbase. Buuuuuut, since The Perfect Marriage remains on my TBR, there’s a decent chance I still would have read it. Although I didn’t know about the new and improved cover at all, I was immediately confronted with a paragraph on the very first page. And then one by Jennifer Hillier, and Kaira Rouda, and John Marrs and Alex Finlay????? Now that I’m finished I have one question to ask . . . .
For real, though. I mean was this a dare to see how quickly this thing could go viral on TikTok? Are these authors a caliber of likeswappers Goodreads and The ‘Gram have never before seen? Did they all sell their souls????
I picked this up to give Jeneva Rose a second chance after reading One of Us Is Dead - a book that wasn’t terrible for me, just not as over-the-top as it could/should have been when it came to the delivery. I had not known Airbnb “Rooms” was now a thing since I refuse to watch television with commercials, but lemme just say if you’re thinking about staying with a random stranger maybe read this book because obviously this would be a killer’s wet dream. I was hoping for a popcorn thriller and suspension of disbelief was not going to be a problem for me when it came to the story of Grace who rents a room on a ranch in Wyoming from Calvin for ten days. I figured at least one person would wind up dead and I was down for the stabbies. But this was so booooooooooooring. Good lord amighty what a snoozefest.
The stuff that did finally happen was what most people would think was going to happen all along . . . other than the “twist” at the end which was one of those last-pagers that’s just stupid and thrown in as an attempt to shock the reader, but it was all too little too late.
Oh, and to authors who do things like this???
“Finally, a thriller. This one promised a twisty ending I wouldn’t see coming. It seemed every thriller promised that these days, but few actually delivered.”
“When she appeared in the kitchen, I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding in. Cliché, I know. But it’s true.”
It doesn’t make you seem clever to be “in on the joke” – it’s simply a confirmation that you don’t write well enough to come up with something other than the worn out lines every other pisspoor Wattpader comes up with.
Mmmmmmm, there’s nothing like the smell of a little gaslighting in the morning!
I’ll be the first to admit Darcey Bell is an acquired taste
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Mmmmmmm, there’s nothing like the smell of a little gaslighting in the morning!
I’ll be the first to admit Darcey Bell is an acquired taste – in fact, I gave A Simple Favor a 1 Star myself. And then the movie came out and I realized there really IS such a thing as being a wrongreader, because I had taken the print version waaaaaay too seriously. If I would have read it as dark humor I would have had a much more enjoyable time.
While this is certainly not going to win a Pulitzer (but, good grief, freaking Demon Cottonmouth (and yes I know it’s Copperhead) won that so I’m not exactly sure what’s happening there), at less than 250 pages this is a perfectly fine way to spend an evening with a bottle of vino out on the deck. A little gaslighting, a little revenge and one hell of a faithful feline friend.
3 Stars for the story – eleven trillion for Catzilla.
Kelly (and the Book Boar)
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