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Book-reviews

Trust Me on This Review: Two Sisters, One Car, and a Secret Their Father Won't Take With Him

Trust Me on This Review: Two Sisters, One Car, and a Secret Their Father Won't Take With Him

Put two people who barely tolerate each other in a car for eleven hundred miles and something has to give. [Trust Me on This](https://amzn.to/4r75BFP

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If Tomorrow Never Comes Review: The Woman Who Saved Her Life Is Dating the Man She Can't Forget

If Tomorrow Never Comes Review: The Woman Who Saved Her Life Is Dating the Man She Can't Forget

Some romance premises rely on a coincidence. If Tomorrow Never Comes by Allison Ashley builds its entire emotional core ou

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A Vow of Embers Review: A Forced Marriage That Can't Be Consummated, and 584 Pages of Consequences

A Vow of Embers Review: A Forced Marriage That Can't Be Consummated, and 584 Pages of Consequences

A romance built around a marriage that legally can't be consummated is making a specific promise to its reader: an enormous amount of tension with no

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An American in London Review: Fake Dating, Real Chemistry, and a Weekend With a Duchess

An American in London Review: Fake Dating, Real Chemistry, and a Weekend With a Duchess

The fake-dating trope only works if the reader can feel the exact moment the pretending stops being pretend. [An American in London](https://amzn.to/

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Biggest Player Review: A Low-Angst Rom-Com That Works If You Don't Poke at It

Biggest Player Review: A Low-Angst Rom-Com That Works If You Don't Poke at It

Some romances want you to sit with the conflict. Biggest Player wants you to laugh, swoon, and move on to the next scene b

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Every Precious and Fragile Thing Review: A Death Doula, Her Daughter, and the Secret in the Keepsakes

Every Precious and Fragile Thing Review: A Death Doula, Her Daughter, and the Secret in the Keepsakes

There's a particular cruelty in a mother who's extraordinarily good at caring for people, just not the person who needed her most. [Every Precious an

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Fog and Fury Review: It Starts With a Missing Goldendoodle and Gets Very Dark

Fog and Fury Review: It Starts With a Missing Goldendoodle and Gets Very Dark

Some thrillers open with a body. Fog and Fury opens with a dog, and that choice tells you almost everything about what Rac

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Gravewater Lake Review: No Memory, No Phone Line, No Way to Know If He's Lying

Gravewater Lake Review: No Memory, No Phone Line, No Way to Know If He's Lying

Amnesia is one of the oldest tricks in the thriller playbook, and it works for a simple reason: a narrator who doesn't know her own story is a narrat

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Hard Lights Review: Reznick Goes to Hollywood, and It's More Investigation Than Firefight

Hard Lights Review: Reznick Goes to Hollywood, and It's More Investigation Than Firefight

Fourteen books into a series built on a black-ops "ghost" operative eliminating national security threats with brutal efficiency, changing the formul

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Into the Fall Review: A Missing-Husband Thriller Where the Marriage Is the Real Mystery

Into the Fall Review: A Missing-Husband Thriller Where the Marriage Is the Real Mystery

The best missing-person thrillers eventually admit that the disappearance was never really the point. Into the Fall gets t

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Missing in Flight Review: A Baby Vanishes at 35,000 Feet, and the Plane Can't Land

Missing in Flight Review: A Baby Vanishes at 35,000 Feet, and the Plane Can't Land

The locked-room mystery has a long, well-worn history, but Missing in Flight finds a genuinely fresh version of it: a seal

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No More Yesterdays Review: Bybee Sticks the Landing on The Heirs Trilogy

No More Yesterdays Review: Bybee Sticks the Landing on The Heirs Trilogy

Closing out a trilogy is a different job than opening one. By book three, the reader already knows the family, already has favorites among the siblin

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Not Quite by the Book Review: A Romance That Lets Its Heroine Want Something Other Than Love

Not Quite by the Book Review: A Romance That Lets Its Heroine Want Something Other Than Love

Most romance heroines swear off love and mean it for about a chapter and a half. Emma Rini, the burned-out bookstore manager at the center of [Not Qu

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Small Things Review: You'll See It Coming, and the Ending Still Lands

Small Things Review: You'll See It Coming, and the Ending Still Lands

Some short stories work precisely because they don't try to hide the ball. Small Things tells you, more or less, where it'

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Sweet Expectations Review: Another Wall, Another Ghost, and Taylor's Best Mystery Yet

Sweet Expectations Review: Another Wall, Another Ghost, and Taylor's Best Mystery Yet

A sequel's biggest risk is repeating the trick that made the first book work without actually improving on it. [Sweet Expectations](https://amzn.to/4

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The Bookstore Keepers Review: Alice Hoffman Does More in 35 Pages Than Most Novels Manage

The Bookstore Keepers Review: Alice Hoffman Does More in 35 Pages Than Most Novels Manage

Length is not the same thing as depth, and The Bookstore Keepers is the kind of short story that proves it in the most eff

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The Fourth Girl Review: Twenty-Five Years of Silence, and Someone Finally Wants to Talk

The Fourth Girl Review: Twenty-Five Years of Silence, and Someone Finally Wants to Talk

Twenty-five years is a long time to keep a secret buried, and The Fourth Girl understands exactly how much pressure that k

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The Golden Age of Magic Review: Fairy Godmothers in 1927 Hollywood, and It Mostly Charms

The Golden Age of Magic Review: Fairy Godmothers in 1927 Hollywood, and It Mostly Charms

The fairy godmother is one of the most underused figures in fantasy fiction, mostly relegated to a supporting cameo in someone else's Cinderella stor

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The Laughing Dead Review: Jess Lourey Found the Creepiest Real Medical Detail in Crime Fiction

The Laughing Dead Review: Jess Lourey Found the Creepiest Real Medical Detail in Crime Fiction

The best crime writers know that a real, documented horror is always creepier than an invented one. The Laughing Dead buil

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The One That Got Away Review: A Breakup Story That's Not the Romance It's Being Sold As

The One That Got Away Review: A Breakup Story That's Not the Romance It's Being Sold As

Every element of the premise behind The One That Got Away is engineered to make you assume you know where it's going. A ma

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The Paradise Petition Review: Two Women With a Past Start a Women's Rights Movement in 1883 Texas

The Paradise Petition Review: Two Women With a Past Start a Women's Rights Movement in 1883 Texas

Most historical romances that flirt with social commentary keep the commentary in the background, a period detail dressed up as texture. [The Paradis

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The Promise of Tomorrow Review: A Second-Chance Romance Built on Real Grief

The Promise of Tomorrow Review: A Second-Chance Romance Built on Real Grief

Second-chance romance lives or dies on whether the reason the couple split actually holds weight. The Promise of Tomorrow

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The Sideways Life of Denny Voss Review: The Most Disarming Narrator You'll Read This Year

The Sideways Life of Denny Voss Review: The Most Disarming Narrator You'll Read This Year

A novel narrated by a character other people constantly underestimate lives or dies entirely on whether the reader falls for that voice the same way

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The Union Street Bakery Review: A Family Saga That Earns Its Ghost Story

The Union Street Bakery Review: A Family Saga That Earns Its Ghost Story

A lot of women's fiction novels bolt a ghost onto a family drama because the marketing copy needed a hook. [The Union Street Bakery](https://amzn.to/

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The View from Prince Street Review: Three Witch Bottles, Three Families, and One Crash Nobody Talks About

The View from Prince Street Review: Three Witch Bottles, Three Families, and One Crash Nobody Talks About

Grief that never gets fully processed tends to calcify into something else entirely, and The View from Prince Street is bu

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The Violence of Sound Review: A Deaf Heroine, a Sonic Weapon, and a War on Two Fronts

The Violence of Sound Review: A Deaf Heroine, a Sonic Weapon, and a War on Two Fronts

Most magic systems built around spoken incantations quietly assume every sorcerer can hear themselves cast. [The Violence of Sound](https://amzn.to/4

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Tiny Daggers Review: Two Women Named Holly, and Neither One Is the Good One

Tiny Daggers Review: Two Women Named Holly, and Neither One Is the Good One

Every school has a Good One and a Bad One, and every adult who lived through that dynamic knows the labels were never quite accurate to begin with. [

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Unlikely Story Review: You've Got Mail, Rebuilt for the Google Docs Era

Unlikely Story Review: You've Got Mail, Rebuilt for the Google Docs Era

Every generation gets the epistolary romance its technology deserves. AOL instant messages gave us Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly. [Unlikely Story](https

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Who Is the Liar Review: Satanic Panic Horror Told by a Child Who Can't See the Whole Picture

Who Is the Liar Review: Satanic Panic Horror Told by a Child Who Can't See the Whole Picture

Some horror novels get their dread from what's hiding in the dark. Who Is the Liar gets its dread from who's telling the s

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Woman on the Verge Review: A Novel About Loving Your Children and Resenting Your Life

Woman on the Verge Review: A Novel About Loving Your Children and Resenting Your Life

Most novels about motherhood pick a side, either the exhausted honesty of how hard it is or the redemptive warmth of how worth it it all turns out to

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A Happy Marriage Review: The Most Unhinged Thriller You'll Read This Year — and That's the Appeal

A Happy Marriage Review: The Most Unhinged Thriller You'll Read This Year — and That's the Appeal

Some domestic thrillers ask you to believe one marriage is hiding one secret. A Happy Marriage by A.R. Torre isn't interes

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American Sky Review: What Happens to Women Pilots When the War Ends

American Sky Review: What Happens to Women Pilots When the War Ends

The hardest part of flying military aircraft in World War II wasn't earning the right to do it. For the women of the WASP program, it was what came a

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At the Corner of King Street Review: Witch Bottles, Salvage Yards, and a Family History That Won't Stay Buried

At the Corner of King Street Review: Witch Bottles, Salvage Yards, and a Family History That Won't Stay Buried

Some family secrets stay buried because no one goes looking. Others stay buried because the ground itself seems determined to keep them. [At the Corn

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Fatal Verdict Review: O'Mahoney Doubles Down on Beaufort's Rot — and It Mostly Works

Fatal Verdict Review: O'Mahoney Doubles Down on Beaufort's Rot — and It Mostly Works

A second book in a legal thriller series has one job above all others: prove the first one wasn't a fluke. Fatal Verdict b

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Going Home in the Dark Review: Koontz Plays It for Laughs and Still Makes It Terrifying

Going Home in the Dark Review: Koontz Plays It for Laughs and Still Makes It Terrifying

Dean Koontz has spent decades proving he can scare readers. What he's doing in Going Home in the Dark is riskier: he's try

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Reckoning Hour Review: A Southern Courtroom Thriller That Earns Its Twists

Reckoning Hour Review: A Southern Courtroom Thriller That Earns Its Twists

Some legal thrillers make you wait until the final chapter to earn their twist. Reckoning Hour by Peter O'Mahoney isn't in

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The Answer Is No Review: Backman's Frying Pan Satire Is Sharper Than You'd Expect

The Answer Is No Review: Backman's Frying Pan Satire Is Sharper Than You'd Expect

A discarded frying pan shouldn't be able to hold up an entire short story, let alone say something true about modern life. [The Answer Is No](https:/

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The Invitation Review: Jodi Ellen Malpas Builds a Romance on a Setup You Won't See Coming

The Invitation Review: Jodi Ellen Malpas Builds a Romance on a Setup You Won't See Coming

Most steamy romances tell you exactly what you're getting from the opening chapter: two people meet, the chemistry is instant, and the rest of the bo

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The Secret Library of Hanna Reeves Review: A Books-About-Books Novel With Real Teeth

The Secret Library of Hanna Reeves Review: A Books-About-Books Novel With Real Teeth

The "books about books" genre has a reputation problem. Too many of them treat a library as pure comfort, a warm room full of familiar spines where n

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While the Dark Remains Review: A Revenge Fantasy That Earns Its Long Winter

While the Dark Remains Review: A Revenge Fantasy That Earns Its Long Winter

Revenge stories live or die on patience, and While the Dark Remains by Joanna Ruth Meyer understands that better than most

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Book summary for You Must Be New Here: A Novel

Book summary for You Must Be New Here: A Novel

"You Must Be New Here: A Novel" is a contemporary work that delves into the complexities of identity and belonging. This novel captures the essence o

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Book summary for Abscond: A Short Story by Abraham Verghese

Book summary for Abscond: A Short Story by Abraham Verghese

As a literary analyst and a keen observer of medical humanities, I have long held that the writings of Dr. Abraham Verghese occupy a unique and vital

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Book Summary: The Fall Risk by Abby Jimenez

Book Summary: The Fall Risk by Abby Jimenez

The Fall Risk: A Short Story by Abby Jimenez is a captivating narrative that delves into the intricate dance between vulnerability and resilience. Ab

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The Housewarming by Kristin Offiler: A Heartfelt Journey into New Beginnings

The Housewarming by Kristin Offiler: A Heartfelt Journey into New Beginnings

When I first picked up "The Housewarming" by Kristin Offiler, I was immediately drawn into its emotionally reso

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The Fourth Daughter: A Novel by Lyn Liao Butler

The Fourth Daughter: A Novel by Lyn Liao Butler

In every family, the dynamics between siblings can create a unique tapestry of experiences and emotions. Growing up with brothers and sisters involve

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Discover the Magic of Lightning in a Mason Jar

Discover the Magic of Lightning in a Mason Jar

Lightning in a Mason Jar is not just a book, it's a journey into a world where nostalgia and magic intermingle to create a

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The Women of Arlington Hall - Insights and Perspectives

The Women of Arlington Hall - Insights and Perspectives

" The Women of Arlington Hall: A Novel " by Jane Healey transports us to a pivotal moment in history,

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