Book 9 (of 52) – None Of This Is True

None Of This Is True – Lisa Jewell

A chance meeting between two women who share the same birthday, Josie, a local housewife, and Alix, a successful podcaster, leads to a new project tracking Josie’s path as she, or at least claims to, forge a new life for herself.  Unfortunately for Alix, Josie seems obsessed with her, showing up at her home and stealing small mementos.  Alix puts up with it, though, as she feels she is getting great content that will become a winning podcast.  Instead, she ends up with more than she bargained for when Josie, claiming spousal abuse, moves in for a week.  As Alix starts to see Josie’s story fall apart, she worries she may have put her family in danger, but is it already too late?

A 2023 nominee for Best Mystery and Thriller in the Goodreads Choice Awards, None of This Is True is my first go-around with the works of Lisa Jewell.  She tells a riveting story, switching perspectives between the two birthday twins and with the purported Netflix documentary of the podcast as it is being produced.  If this is a good representation of Jewell’s work, I may need to dig into her extensive back catalog as time goes on.

Book 7 (of 52) – Bright Young Women

Bright Young Women – Jessica Knoll

In January of 1978. an unnamed serial killer (*cough*Ted Bundy*cough*) attacks a sorority at Florida State University, killing two and maiming two others.  When the sorority president sees him fleeing the scene, she embarks on a journey to prove that the man wanted for numerous murders out west was the one she saw.  She teams up with an older woman, whose girlfriend went missing years before, to find out the truth, both in the 70s and today.

A nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller in last year’s Goodreads Choice Awards, Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll, blends the historical facts of Ted Bundy’s reign of terror with the fictional victims of an unnamed sorority in Florida and a troubled young woman finally finding her footing in Washington.  This is my first experience with Knoll’s work in book form, though I did see the adaptation of her Luckiest Girl Alive, starring Mila Kunis, last year.  I’m sure I will check back in on her at some point.

Book 5 (of 52) – Yellowface

Yellowface – R.F. Kuang

A struggling white author sees an opportunity when her friend, a successful Chinese author, dies unexpectedly after a night of drinking, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript.  After reworking and filling in the missing gaps in the manuscript, the white author has a best seller on her hands, but when questions pop up online, she worries that she is found out.  When she publishes a second work, solely of her own imagination save a single paragraph that served as inspiration, she is found out, as her dead friend workshopped the paragraph at a workshop years prior.  After the dust settles, everyone seems to have moved on, but the ghosts of the past never do stay dead, do they?

R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, the winner of the 2003 Goodreads Choice award for Best Fiction, was an interesting look at the publishing industry and the effects social media can have on writers used to existing in solitude.  I was enjoying it most of the way, but the ending fell flat for me.  Outside of this, I don’t know much about Kuang or her other work, so I don’t know if we will be seeing her back here again sometime.

Book 2 (of 52) – Holly

Holly – Stephen King

Fresh off of her mother’s death from COVID, Holly Gibney is hired to find a missing young woman by her hysterical mother.  The trail leads her to a string of missing people going back years, all last seen in the same area.  With the rest of her team either incapacitated or distracted by their own lives, Holly goes it alone, tracking the trail of the missing to the home of a retired couple.  Could they be protecting a serial killer?  Or is the truth much more disturbing?  Holly intends to find out before telling anyone what she’s found, which could be her final mistake.

Stephen King’s latest, Holly, brings back the Holly Gibney character I was first introduced to in 2018’s The Outsider.  She’s the lead this time around, in a tale that won the Goodreads Choice Award for horror, chasing down cannibal professors.  This now makes four years straight with a King work, my longest streak, and is my eighth post-college book of his, surpassing my total from high school and college.

Book 1 (of 52) – The Last Devil To Die

The Last Devil To Die – Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club returns for their latest adventure.  When Stephen’s friend is murdered over some missing heroin, the gang starts investigating, trying to stay one step ahead of the police and the smugglers looking for their lost drugs.  When Stephen’s declining health keeps Elizabeth occupied, Joyce picks up the slack.  As the investigation proceeds, bodies start piling up, too many bodies for a simple shipment of heroin, which helps lead the gang to figure out who’s responsible.

Richard Osman returns with The Last Devil to Die, the fourth entry in his Thursday Murder Club series.  Nominated for the Best Mystery & Thriller category in the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards, this continues to be a lighthearted, yet engaging series.  With this entry just released in September, we probably have a while until the next entry, but when it comes out, I’ll be waiting.

Book 59 (of 52) – My Darling Girl

My Darling Girl – Jennifer McMahon

After a childhood of abuse at the hand of her mother, Alison is stunned when she learns that her mother is dying and wants to move in for her final days.  While she sees glimpses of a mother that she barely knows, she also sees the abusive side, which seems reserved for just her.  As the end draws closer, Alison begins to believe that her mother is possessed by a demon who plans to target her youngest daughter when the time comes to find a new host.  While everyone around her starts to think she is going crazy, Alison comes up with a plan to bind the demon and save her family.  But is she too late?

The latest form Jennifer McMahon, My Darling Girl, was nominated for Best Horror in the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards and is now the eighth of her works that I’ve read. After not really feeling the last book of hers that I read, this was a nice bounce back, with a twist at the end that I did not see coming.  I’m sure I’ll be diving into more of her work soon.

Book 58 (of 52) – I Have Some Questions For You

I Have Some Questions For You – Rebecca Makkai

A successful podcaster returns to her New Hampshire boarding school to teach a two-week class, becoming drawn to the unanswered questions surrounding the death of her former roommate.  Falling down the rabbit hole, she teams up with two students, who started a podcast on the story for their class project, to dig deeper into the case, hoping to find enough evidence to spur a new trial.  When a hunch leads to a big break in the case, they get a hearing to argue for a new trial and may have actually identified the real killer, but will that be enough?

Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You came to my attention after being nominated for Best Mystery & Thriller in the Goodreads Choice Awards.  I liked the concept, but the execution was a little lacking.  The ending could have been tightened up a bit and, overall, there was a lot of superfluous fat that padded out the story with no real benefit to the overall tale.  This was my first experience with Makkai’s work and I’m not sure when. or if, I’ll get back to it.

Book 57 (of 52) – Happy Place

Happy Place – Emily Henry

Harriet, a surgical resident in San Francisco, arrives in Maine for her annual reunion with her college friends planning to tell them about the end of her engagement.  Instead, she finds her former fiancé waiting for her, convinced into coming as this will be their last summer together in the family cottage and a surprise wedding.  Harriet tries to work through her feelings, for her ex, her job, and everything else, before the week comes to an end.

I had initially skipped over Emily Henry’s Happy Place when I saw that it had won the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance, as that isn’t really my genre.  When I came across it again on the list of best books of the year from the Chicago Public Library, I decided to give it a shot.  Despite the fairly obvious ending (of course they are getting back together!), it was an enjoyable read.  I don’t know how much I will dip my toes back into the romance pool going forward, but this trip, at least, was worth the ride.

Book 43 (of 52) – The Drowning Kind

The Drowning Kind – Jennifer McMahon

When her estranged sister drowns in the family pool, a therapist from the Pacific Northwest returns home to the East Coast hoping to lessen her guilt.  Instead, she digs into her sister’s recent life, studying the history (and mystery?) of the family homestead and the pool and springs that are claimed to bring terrific miracles, but at a horrific cost.  Can she learn what happened to her sister before the ghosts of the past take her too?

Jennifer McMahon returns with The Drowning Kind, her tenth novel and the seventh that I’ve read.  Nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for horror in 2021, the story kept me enthralled until the end, when it kind of petered out and finished up somewhat disappointingly.  I’m sure I’ll be crossing paths with McMahon’s work again in the future, and hopefully it is something I jibe with more strongly.

Book 30 (of 52) – Lessons In Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus

A headstrong woman, with a masters in chemistry, finds it hard to be taken seriously in the world of science in the 1950s.  When her life partner dies unexpectedly, she finds herself alone, pregnant, and jobless.  While trying to find a new path, she unexpectedly finds herself on television, teaching cooking through chemistry, and becomes something of a celebrity.  Meanwhile, her daughter and neighbor start to bring together a found family to replace the one she never had.

Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry, won the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Debut Novel and was a nominee for Best Historical Fiction, which explains how it would up on my list of books to read.  I’ll confess that this really wasn’t my type of book, as I kept waiting for something to happen, but it just told a story of how women were treated by society in the not-so-distant past.  An adaptation for Apple TV+ is due this fall, with Brie Larson taking on the role of Elizabeth Zott, which I think will be a better medium for this particular tale.  At least for me.