Till Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
June is a successful natural wine bar* owner in Brooklyn who has recently become engaged to Kyle, her boyfriend of several years. Trouble starts when she begins seeing her dead husband, Josh – first in a park when she’s taking engagement photos (awkward timing, there) and then outside her bar. Of course, each time she’s unable to reach the man she sees to determine if it really is Josh (and how could it be?) or not.
* Why, yes, we do get to hear way more than I wanted to about natural wines.
Later, June comes across a Napa Valley winery’s website and is shocked to see that the owner looks just like Josh, though he goes by another name. Just like that, June decides to travel to California and investigate, telling Kyle it’s a business trip.
The storyline switches between June in the present, and Josh’s mother Bev, in the past. In the latter story, Josh is a teenager, and Bev’s marriage to her husband David is on the rocks. There’s a bunch of drama around Josh and his girlfriend Michelle, culminating in tragedy. The reader is given the strong impression that Josh is not a good person, which feeds into the idea in the present timeline that he may have faked his death and deceived June.
The ending is byzantine and fairly ridiculous, and the whole thing relies on important information being hidden from the reader for most of the book. I would have liked it better in spite of all that – it’s decently written and plotted – if I cared about the characters. But June and Bev left me cold; they are both selfish and charmless. My grade was a B-.
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The Honeymoon by Gemma Rogers
This story opens with a bang – Kelly, just married to Ryan, discovers her husband having sex with Liza, the best man’s wife, at the reception. Kelly doesn’t let them know she’s discovered them, and instead decides impulsively to take off for her honeymoon on Crete alone. Ryan soon follows, and then Bobby (the best man and best friend of Ryan) and Liza show up. Ryan and Liza both claim to Kelly that she must be mistaken. Kelly suffers a few strange accidents and for some reason continues not to out Ryan to Bobby. Ryan admits that he owes debts to dangerous people and since he and Bobby are in business together, Kelly can’t blow up his life and ruin his chance to somehow get the money he needs.
I know I should be more tactful, but Kelly is dumb as hell. She dithers and constantly goes over her options but never takes any decisive action. This is one of those stories predicated on the idea that someone the main character thinks is a good, upstanding person – good enough to marry – is instead a spineless, idiotic, unfaithful piece of shit. I usually have trouble with this type of premise because even if I get through basic suspension of disbelief, I can’t get over the fact that the protagonist has terrible judgment. In this case, at least, I could understand the bad judgment, because again, Kelly is D-U-M-B.
Anyway, everyone ends up back home in the UK, things devolve, Kelly trusts Ryan more than she should (she shouldn’t be trusting him AT ALL) and does other dumb things. The story is entertaining enough, but Kelly’s idiocy marred my enjoyment a bit, and the ending was anticlimactic. I gave this a B-. but I think I’ll drop it down to a C.
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To Have and to Hold by Lilly French
Emma and Luke have ostensibly happy marriage, a successful cleaning business, and three adorable children. The happy marriage is called into question when Emma finds a hotel receipt in Luke’s jacket pocket. She suspects cheating, naturally, but the reality is even more disturbing. Luke has secrets and is honestly a MESS; I pitied him a bit but found him very hard to empathize with. Emma is just sort of there; as a protagonist she’s very milquetoast. The other main character is Georgia, Emma’s long time friend, who has some secrets of her own. Georgia is probably more interesting than Emma or Luke, but that’s not saying much.
The story is both weird and somehow strangely predictable? The ending is genuinely depressing, and a postscript notes that the dialogue was partly written using AI, which feels like something that should have been disclosed at the beginning. I gave this a C-.
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You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego
I sometimes feel like I have to kiss a lot of frogs to get a prince when reading suspense. This book was not prince-level but was at least a minor baron. I’m not sure how much justice I can do to the byzantine plot, but I’ll start by saying that this is a riff on And Then There Were None, which is my favorite Agatha Christie novel (confession – I think I’ve only read three Agatha Christie novels? I should work on that).
A group of mystery writers are invited to an island retreat by a famous, and famously private, author. Some of the attendees claim to “know” J.R. Alastor but in reality none of them have actually seen him, and they are all intrigued enough to attend. Alastor of course does not make himself available in person but communicates through an event planner, Mia, with whom he has secret plans (and Mia herself has plans that Alastor doesn’t know about). As with And Then There Were None, the guests all have some nasty secrets themselves.
What follows is incredibly convoluted and often overwritten, but somehow…fun to read? It definitely held my interest, which is all I really ask. My main complaint was the characters occasionally not being as smart as I’d expect them to be. Still, Mia was a sympathetic protagonist, which also goes a long way for me. I gave this a B+ and will look for the author’s works in the future.
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The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell
I have heard a lot about Jewell and only recently realized she’s an English author, rather than American. I feel sort of silly about my preference for English settings in my thriller reading. Like boarding schools and exclusive universities, somehow an English setting adds a bit of otherworldly glamor to the story.
Anyway, this was more domestic suspense than really twisty, turny, occasionally nasty suspense; I can sometimes find domestic suspense a bit flat. The setting here is a sort of community I’m not really familiar with – in the heart of London it’s a square block of apartments and houses centered around a private park. The setting sounds idyllic, but perhaps not surprisingly the reality is a bit darker.
Clare has moved into Virginia Park with her two young daughters, Pip and Grace. The girls are close in age, with Pip being 11 and Grace 12 going on 13. The reasons for the move and the move itself though, starts to widen a rift between the girls. They have moved after their family home was burned down by their father Chris in a psychotic episode; Chris is now in a hospital and while Pip writes longing letters to him, Grace wants nothing to do with him. Once they move in they meet another family with three (strange) girls and a couple of other slightly older kids, and Grace gravitates towards the new group and leaves Pip a bit in the dust.
During the annual summer party in the park, on of the girls is attacked. Who did it? Does it have anything to do with the mysterious death of a another girl several decades before?
The writing in The Girls in the Garden was good and the story was pretty compelling, with an interesting array of possible suspects in the attack. The resolution fell a little flat for me; it felt like the most obvious person for the most obvious reason, and I’m just sort of conditioned to expect something a bit more twisty at this point?
Parallel to the mystery plotline is the story of Clare and her daughters and their trauma over Chris’s actions. Clare married young and feels unaccomplished and anxious about being on her own, but she also doesn’t know what to do about her marriage or how to trust Chris again. I found the domestic stuff less interesting though I did think it was well-integrated into the other storyline. My grade for this is a B, and I’ll be seeking out other works by Jewell.
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Jennie
has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she’s read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she’s had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she’s not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.
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