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Polly Crosby’s ‘The Book of Hidden Wonders’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. Romily’s world is a strange and beautiful place; a little girl so fascinating her father has made her the subject of his wildly successful children’s book series, she is whimsical and interesting and weird. The kind of girl who feels her strangeness keenly and vastly underestimates how interesting…
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Amber Garza’s ‘When I Was You’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. This is more like it; from the moment you take a step into Kelly Medina’s world, everything you’re reading and looking at just goes a shade darker and more innocuous than it should be. Is what Kelly’s narration is telling us the truth? Or is it all part…
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Helen Cullen’s ‘The Dazzling Truth’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. I love books that focus on family drama; I love them way more than I love being embroiled in it in reality, that’s for sure. We meet Maeve and Murtagh way into their relationship and go backward to the beginning; we learn about their beginnings, their peccadilloes, Maeve’s…
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Gretchen Anthony’s ‘The Kids Are Gonna Ask’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. The premise of this book, teenage siblings who do a podcast with their grandmother, Maggie, didn’t seem like the kind of book that would take me on a twisty ride with lots of questions, a healthy dose of suspense, and a few surprising reveals but damned if that…
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Kristin Rockaway’s ‘She’s Faking It’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. From the moment I met Bree, striving hard to maintain excellence at a job with zero growth potential or future, I identified with everything she was going through. Struggling to pay her bills, always? Check. Battling a mile wide bad luck streak that doesn’t even sound real when…
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Brianna Wolfson’s ‘That Summer in Maine’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. From the moment we meet Hazel and her mother, Jane, and the rest of their family, it is evident that there is a lot of tension and misunderstanding in their blended familial dynamic. We see how Jane’s remarriage to a perfectly fine man named Cam and the birth…
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Molly Fader’s ‘The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. Every family has secrets; some dark, some upsetting, some that are so silly it’s not clear when they come to light why they’re even a secret in the first place. From the moment we meet Hope, Peg, and Tink it’s obvious that everyone, even Tink at 10 years…
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Kimberly Belle’s ‘Stranger in the Lake’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. Charlotte’s world from the outside is glittering and amazing, something to be envied, but from the moment we step over the threshold of her home we know, just as she does, that something is way off. Is it her secretive, seemingly devoted husband, his loyal friend, Micah, or…
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Chelsea M. Cameron’s ‘The Girl Next Door’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. I have long been quite tired of the usual love story; yes, there is a formula and, yes, it works but the last thing devoted readers want is to read a constant stream of enemies to lovers of disdain to love but much of the time it is…
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Aimee Agresti’s ‘The Summer Set’
This review was commissioned by Harper Collins. Aimee Agresti’s The Summer Set is a fun read; following Charlie, a retired Hollywood starlet, over a summer where she works at a camp for aspiring young thespians is the definition of a beach read, especially once her sexy ex, Nicholas, is on the scene. A sweet glimpse…