Tag Archives: Mysteries and Thrillers

ARC — She Doesn’t Have a Clue — Jenny Elder Moke

Genre: Mystery, Romance
Actual Rating: 4 stars
Spicy Meter: 2 fire emojis
Content Warnings: Touches on subjects like cheating and insecurities. Describes murder and murder attempts. Contains explicit sexual content.

Part mystery, part romance, set in a private island off the coast of Seattle? Count me in. (I mean, the Seattle Seahawks already had me crying every Sunday, why not extend that pain into a couple days while reading this book, you know).

“She Doesn’t Have a Clue” follows Kate Valentine, the author of a famous mystery/detective book series, as she agrees to go to her ex-fiancé’s wedding in a lavish private island off the coast of Seattle. What she didn’t expect was that her ex-almost-something, Jake Hawkins, an Australian adventure writer and worldwide excursion guide, would be her plus one and roommate for the whole weekend—and that someone would be actively trying to kill the bride and setting it up to look like what happens in each of Kate’s mystery books.

All I have to say is that Jenny Elder Moke really did deliver both a mystery and a romance, and I’m not sure which part of the story I was captivated by the most. The romance was so sweet and spicy, and the mystery had me not wanting to put the book down, in search for answers. This was a fun, dynamic, and unique read, that I’ll definitely be recommending for years to come.

If you’ve enjoyed shows like “How To Get Away With Murder”, are looking to read a book with some romance involved, and are into Hotstralians, then “She Doesn’t Have a Clue” is definitely worth a read for you.

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ARC provided by NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: January 21, 2025

The Last Thing He Told Me — Laura Dave

“Maybe we are all fools, one way or another, when it comes to seeing the totality of the people who love us—the people we try to love.”

Genre: Mysteries and Thrillers
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
Spicy Meter: N/A, it’s clean.
Content Warnings: Discusses mobs, fraud, parent death, fake identities, disappearances, and hit and runs.

“The Last Thing He Told Me” follows Hannah Hall as she sets to find her missing husband, Owen Michaels, who left her a single note that wrote “Protect her”. That ‘her’ is Bailey Michaels, Hannah’s husband’s daughter, who perhaps isn’t the fondest of Hannah. Pretty quickly, they both realize Owen perhaps isn’t who he said he is.

I really enjoyed this read. I’m actually a bit sad I rated it this low, but I’ve got my reasons. Hannah and Bailey are great, they’re complex and clever and honestly, just like two people you could truthfully run into in real life. They weren’t two-dimensional, it wasn’t all black and white, I loved that. But—and it’s a bit but—I did not like the ending. At all. After seeing them fight to find Owen they just…didn’t do what I expected them to do. The whole thing felt really out of character.

Nonetheless, I would highly recommend this read if you’re looking for a mystery novel. It reminded me of “The Guest List” by Lucy Foley and “The Maid” by Nita Prose, but not because of their plot, because of the way they made me feel—like I knew a lot, only to be blindsided by the truth.

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“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren’t so far apart—and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”

ARC — Mad Honey — Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

“This has always been my favorite fact about bees: in their world, destiny is fluid. You might start life as a worker, and end up a queen.”

Genre: Fiction, Women’s Fiction (I would add Mysteries and thrillers here)
Actual Rating: 5 stars
Spicy Meter: N/A, was clean, but does mention the act itself.
Content Warnings: Discusses transphobia, homophobia, suicide attempts, self harm, and bullying. Described domestic abuse and child abuse. This is a hard, serious read.

“Mad Honey” follows Olivia McAfee, a single mother to Asher and professional beekeeper, as she lives through her son’s murder trial. This book also follows Lily Campanello, Asher’s girlfriend, before her death. Built between flashbacks and two points of view, this book will take you through a rollercoaster of emotion like no other.

This is one of the best books I’ve read all year. I loved absolutely everything about it—from the writing, to the timelines, to the characters. Everything. I loved and grieved Lily with Asher. I suffered through the trial with Olivia. My heart shattered for Ava, Lily’s mom. The plot twists where literal breathtaking.

—Can’t say I was completely surprised with who ended up being the murderer, but I still loved how it was revealed and executed. This book will be nothing how you expect it to be.

I would highly recommend this book above any other suspense or mystery or just general fiction book you’ve got on your TBR. “Mad Honey” will have you on the edge of your seat and you’ll just wish you could finish it in one sitting, I know I did.

If you’ve enjoyed books like “The Guest List” by Lucy Foley or “The Maid” by Nina Prose, then this book is for you.

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ARC provided by NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: October 4, 2022

“You read about tragedies in the paper, where a student athlete falls dead in the middle of a basketball game or a National Honor student is killed by a drunk driver or a school shooting claims the life of a preteen. In the news you see their faces, braces and cowlicks and freckles.
You tell yourself this wouldn’t happen in your
hometown.
You tell yourself this isn’t anyone you know.
Until it does, and it is.”

ARC — What We Both Know — Fawn Parker

“It’s as though the more he forgets the more I remember.”

Genre: Fiction, Mysteries and Thrillers
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Content Warnings: Dementia, insinuations of incest and child molestation, explicit pet death,

Hillary Greene is left with some hard tasks: take care of her senile father and write his memoir. Her father is a renounced author and, after years of writing, is losing himself and all the secrets he tried so hard to bury. Hillary, on the other hand, is an aspiring author and is grieving the loss of her sister. She is left with a choice: share, through the memoir, who her father really was or cover it all up so his legacy as a writer can live on.

This was an extremely depressing and disturbing read. Let’s start with the fact that the daughter—and caregiver—calls her dad Baby? We then find out why that is, but it still made me uncomfortable at times, even if it was a nickname.

Personally, I think that the most devastating part of this book was how, through her endeavors, she uncovered truths that were there all along, not only about her father, who the memoir is about, but of her dead sister as well. I can’t say I agree with all the actions Hillary took throughout this book, but at the same time I could mostly see where she was coming from.

I would highly recommend this book, especially if you’re fond of dark stories. If you read and liked “A Little Life” by Hanya Tanagihara or “My Dark Vanessa” by Kate Elizabeth Russell, then “What We Both Know” is for you.

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ARC provided by NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: May 03, 2022

“They say a man becomes a man when he loses his father, but what does he become when he loses himself?”

The Guest List — Lucy Foley

Genre: Mystery and Thriller
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses murder, abortion, involuntary porn, and alcoholism.

You’ve been cordially invited to the wedding of two rising micro celebrities. Told through different points of view, and occasionally alternating between timelines in the past and the future, “The Guest List” is as close to a murder mystery party as a book can get.

I was so excited about this book. Seeing as it won in its genre in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards (and I just recently started reading mystery novels again), I thought I would’ve loved it. But I was not happy with the ending and how they got there. I feel like so many knots were left untied, and, honestly, I didn’t even sympathize with the characters at all.

It’s not that I wouldn’t recommend this book—it was really well written and the plot line (up until the very end) was well carried out and very interesting—I just didn’t love it. Give this book a read if you already like Mystery and Thriller novels. Don’t let this be your first exposure to the genre, because you might be discouraged from ever reading it again.

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ARC — The Girl Who Knew Too Much — Tiffany Brooks, narrated by Stephanie Willing

Genre: Mystery and Thrillers, Young Adult
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses murder and pedophilia.

“The Girl Who Knew Too Much” follows Riley Ozment as she joins 19 other teenagers in a Survivor-style reality show that’s located on a deserted island off the coast of Brasil. Riley’s hoping to redeem her past and succeed in her future by winning on the show but, mostly, by finding the hidden treasure that’s been lost in the island for hundreds of years.

This is a perfect YA novel. And by that, I mean that the plot is entertaining and different, and the main character is an immature teenager that’s just figuring out who she is. Childishness aside, this is a great (fictitious) adventure book.

Thanks to NetGalley, I was able to listen to the audiobook of this novel and I must say I loved Stephanie Willing as a narrator. I will definitely be looking at other audiobooks narrated by her. I rounded up the rating from 3.5 stars to 4 stars in Goodreads just because of this awesome voice actor.

I would recommend this book to young adults (and YA-literature lovers) who enjoy outdoorsy adventures and reality TV. I can’t recommend this book based on any other book I’ve read before, because it’s that unique. But remember: it’s YA. It is far-fetched at times, and it is ridiculous, but that’s also what makes it fun.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: January 1, 2022

ARC — The Maid — Nita Prose

“It’s easier than you’d ever think—existing in plain sight while remaining largely invisible. That’s what I’ve learned from being a maid. You can be so important, so crucial to the fabric of things and yet be entirely overlooked.”

Genre: Mystery and Thrillers
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses death, murder, and drugs.

“The Maid” follows Molly Gray, a young woman whose passion is to be an exceptional hotel maid. After she finds one of the hotel’s guests dead in his room, she is thrown into a whirlwind of chaos that ends with her being accused of being the murderer. The summary of the book describes it as a “Clue-like, locked-room mystery” and it really delivers just that.

This book has a very interesting narrative. Molly seems to be neurodivergent in some way and I just loved how her inner voice remained consistent. Oh, she is blunt, but she’ll stay blunt throughout the entire novel, through the chaos and sometimes even comical mystery. It made me furious how some people took advantage of her naïvety, but that just made it into an even more wonderful book.

I would recommend this book to fans of murder mystery parties, escape rooms, and true crime shows and podcasts. This book will have you nervous with anticipation and is exceptionally written. The only reason why I didn’t give this book a full 5-star rating is that I wasn’t as surprised as I thought I would be by the end of the book.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: January 04, 2022

ARC — The Lives of Diamond Bessie — Jody Hadlock

“Do you know why most of us are here? Because we’ve been betrayed by the men who wanted to enjoy the pleasure of our company, who lead us down the primrose path, promising to defend our reputations, to marry us, but then abandon us because they’re engaged or married to someone else. Then they claim they’ve never known us (…).”

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mysteries and Thrillers, Women’s Fiction
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Content Warnings: Domestic violence, mentions death, sexual assault, suicide, and drug abuse.

“The Lives of Diamond Bessie” follows the story of Annie Moore, a woman in the 1860s who, after getting pregnant out of wedlock, is sent to a convent to pay for her sins and not bring shame upon her family. After giving birth and having the baby taken away from her by the nuns, she runs away in hopes of being reunited with her daughter. With no references, she can’t find a decent job and is left with no other option but to resort to prostitution. This is essentially what’s given to us by Jody Hadlock through the book’s description, but I must say this isn’t even one-eighth of the story.

You build so many preconceptions about what will happen in this book based on its summary… and then Jody takes them all and rips them apart. Annie, Elisabeth, Bessie, you were such an amazing character, such a resilient woman. Once you learn why they call her Diamond Bessie, you’ll be devastated and hoping it’s all a dream or some kind of premonition.

This book is very fast-paced, and maybe to a reader that enjoys extensive details and narrative it may seem like it skips through some steps. I think it was paced differently from other books I’ve read, and so I enjoyed it very much.

I would recommend this book to any reader who thinks sex work is real work (because it is) and to readers who like historical fiction and true crime.

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: April 5, 2022