Category / 52/52

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Book 13 (of 52) – Pieces Of Her

Pieces of Her – Karin Slaughter

When a video from a shooting at the local mall goes viral, Andy’s mom quickly kicks her out of the house and sends her away.  She starts to piece together that her mother may not be what she seems, finding clues that lead her from Georgia to Texas and, ultimately, to Illinois, where she learns the truth: her mother was part of a terrorist group and is now living under an assumed name.  When she is taken hostage by one of her mom’s old confederates, Andy learns that while her mother may not be who she thought she was, she is still her mother and will fight for her.

I first became acquainted with Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her in 2022, when I watched the adaptation on Netflix.  I remembered the main beats, but I think the ending was different.  There is another book in this series which I will get to one of these days, along with her other series that I am in the middle of.

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Book 12 (of 52) – I Hope This Finds You Well

I Hope This Finds You Well – Natalie Sue

When an IT mix-up grants a troubled office drone access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, she can’t resist using her new “gift” to try and save her job ahead of upcoming cuts.  But her plan starts to hit a few snags when she realizes that everyone else, who seem to know what they are doing, are not as together as they would have everybody think.  She starts to sympathize and, eventually, build real relationships with those around her, relationships that eventually outlive her time employed with the company.

I Hope This Finds You Well, the debut from Natalie Sue, fell on my radar as a nominee for favorite fiction in the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards.  It is a fairly relatable work, as the main character thinks of the people around her only in respect to how they relate to her and losing track that they have their own lives and problems that have nothing to do with her.  It is a trap I fall into from time to time.  I look forward to Sue’s future work.

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Book 11 (of 52) – The Blue Hour

The Blue Hour – Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins returns with her fourth novel, The Blue Hour.  In this go around, an art museum curator heads to a remote island to retrieve the remains of a collection left to the museum by an artist near and dear to his heart.  He deals with the friend/caretaker/lover? of the artist, who is loath to release any more material than she already has but relents somewhat when she sees he is a true fan.  A discovery in one of her pieces leads to the discovery of multiple murders, with perhaps more to come.

Hawkins hit the scene in 2015 with her smash debut, The Girl on the Train, which was one of many releases at that time to be dubbed “the next Gone Girl.” While I have enjoyed parts of all four of Hawkins’ efforts, there certainly are diminishing returns, as I liked each one less than its predecessor.  This one fell apart at the end, spoiling what had been an exciting tale to that point.  I may have reached the end of my road with her work, but I’ll probably forget my growing apprehension when she puts out her next new book.

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Book 10 (of 52) – We Solve Murders

We Solve Murders – Richard Osman

When three low-level influencers, all with ties to a security firm in London, are killed in a very public fashion, bodyguard Amy Wheeler, alongside her father-in-law Steve and world-famous novelist Rosie D’Antonio go on a global journey to find out who is behind the murders and why.

Richard Osman returns with We Solve Murders, the first entry in what is primed to be another series.  To be honest, I had assumed this was a new book in his Thursday Murder Club series and was well into it before noticing it was not.  Nominated for the Best Mystery & Thriller category in the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards, this looks to be another lighthearted, yet engaging series. I’ll be waiting for what comes next.

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Book 9 (of 52) – The Night We Lost Him

The Night We Lost Him – Laura Dave

When Nora Noone humors her stepbrother by helping him investigate their father’s death, she’s surprised to find that she agrees with him: the death is suspicious.  Travelling from coast to coast to try and uncover the secrets of her father’s past, Nora starts to understand him in a way she never did while he was alive.  When she discovers the truth about a long-time companion, it leads her to her father’s killer.

Laura Dave returns with The Night We Lost Him, a 2024 Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Mysteries and Thrillers.  Just like my last experience with her work, this fell much more on the mystery side of the house than the thriller.  It looks like she has a couple of older works that I might just need to check out one of these days.

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Book 8 (of 52) – Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers – Stephen King

Morris Bellamy has hit the jackpot.  After killing John Rothstein, author of his favorite books, for what he did to Jimmy Gold, his favorite character, he finds cash and hundreds of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.  Burying his haul in case the police are on to him, he gets arrested and sentenced to life for a different crime before he can enjoy any of it.

Decades later, a teenager finds the buried treasure, using the money to help his family get through hard times.  Things go awry, though, when he tries to sell some of the notebooks to a shady bookseller.  Around the same time, Bellamy is let out on parole and, finding his buried treasure is missing, goes after the one person he told about his crime years before: the crooked bookseller.  Can a local PI, a former cop, and his ragtag collection of civilian helpers stop Morris from killing the teen and his sister in order to get his hands on the notebooks and the unpublished novel?

The second entry in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy, Finder Keepers continues the adventures of Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson, although they play a much smaller part in this tale than they did in Mr. Mercedes.  While this is mostly a self-contained story, there are some small vignettes throughout which I assume are setting up the final entry in the trilogy, which I hope to get to soon.

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Book 7 (of 52) – The Last One At The Wedding

The Last One At The Wedding – Jason Rekulak

After three years without contact, Frank Szatowski is surprised when his daughter Maggie calls him to tell her about her engagement.  After an uneasy dinner with Maggie and her fiancé in Boston, Frank returns to Pennsylvania concerned, but excited for the happy day.  When he arrives in a small New Hampshire town to attend the wedding at the groom’s family’s private estate, his concern returns.  As the weekend goes on, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family, but it’s difficult.  As events unfold, Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but can he without losing Maggie forever?

Jason Rekulak returns with The Last One at the Wedding.  Unlike his previous work, which fell more in the horror genre, this is more of a straight mystery and even landed on the nominee list for the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award for Favorite Mystery & Thriller.  While I liked the overall story, I felt like the stakes were kind of low, as the main character is on the periphery of the mystery and not directly involved.  That said, it was a solid, if not spectacular, effort and I look forward to more from him in the future.

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Book 6 (of 52) – Funny Story

Funny Story – Emily Henry

When Daphne’s fiancé Peter breaks up with her for his childhood best friend Petra, she is forced to move in with Miles, Petra’s ex-fiancé.  After an unexpected invitation shows up for Peter and Petra’s wedding, a drunken Daphne jokingly responds that she and Miles will be attending, as a couple.  The more time they spend together, though, Daphne finds herself falling for Miles.  Despite their mutual attraction, they decide to just be friends.  When a new job opportunity pops up, Daphne has to decide if she wants to stay and explore things with Miles or move away and start over once again.

When Funny Story by Emily Henry took home the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance, I remembered enjoying the only other book of hers I had read and decided to give it a go, despite romance not really being my genre. Picking it up as my first use of my new Frankfort library card, it was a fun, if fairly obvious, tale and another enjoyable read. I don’t know how much I will dip my toes back into the romance pool going forward, but this trip, once again, was worth the ride.

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Book 5 (of 52) – The Bone Hacker

The Bone Hacker – Kathy Reichs

While working on identifying the bones of a Turks and Caicos native dug out of the water of a Montral harbor, Dr. Temperence Brennan is invited down to the Caribbean nation to investigate a series of similar murders and the bodies that were recently discovered.  When she arrives, the mysteries keep piling on, including a boat full of dead bodies that travelled 600 miles and the suspicious death of the investigator that invited her to the island, Brennan works with a local detective to try and tie all of the pieces together.

Published in 2023, The Bone Hacker is the 22nd Temperance Brennan novel from Kathy Reichs.  As I’ve said previously, my enjoyment of these novels has increased tremendously the more removed I am from the television adaptation Bones, now that I am able to enjoy them for what they are and not be so concerned with how they are different from the show.  With 23 total novels in the series, I have plenty of catching up to do,

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Book 4 (of 52) – Good Me Bad Me

Good Me Bad Me – Ali Land

After turning in her mother for murdering a young boy, Mille goes to live with a therapist and his family to prepare for the trial.  The fresh start is not all it seems, as her new foster sister has made it her mission to make Millie’s life miserable.  As Millie tries to adjust to her new life, she hears her mother’s voice calling to her.  Can she make a clean break?  Or will her upbringing and training come back stronger?

A few years back, I came across an article listing a number of works by female authors that were described as descendants of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.  Ali Land’s debut, Good Me Bad Me, is the final one that I had saved to read later.  I liked most of this tale, but the end kind of fizzled out for me.  It looks like Land hasn’t published anything since this, so this may be a one and done.