Category: 3 Star

TITLE: Fear Thy Neighbor
CHARACTERS: Alison Marshall
AUTHOR: Fern Michaels
PUBLICATION DATE: 03/29/22
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
From one of the most gifted and beloved storytellers of her time comes a riveting new novel of suspense where one woman’s picture-perfect island sanctuary reveals itself to be filled with dangers…

At twenty-nine, Alison Marshall is ready to find a place to call home. With no family and no ties, she’s drifted from one small Florida town to another since high school, working odd jobs, saving hard, and building a nest egg. Once she finds the right place to settle down, she’ll know. And when she reaches beautiful Palmetto Island, she thinks she may have found it.

The small, close-knit island community seems to have everything Alison needs. On a hunch, she contacts the island’s only realtor, and learns that an old beach house is on the market. Miraculously, it’s in her budget, and Alison takes it as another sign that she’s in the right place.

At first, home is everything she hoped it would be. But as days turn into weeks, she uncovers a dark side to this supposedly peaceful haven. The locals have a secret, and once Alison discovers what it is, she faces a stark choice. She can stay and join them—or escape. But leaving brings its own risks, and Alison is starting to wonder if coming to Palmetto Island is the last mistake she’ll ever make . . .

REVIEW:
It has been a while since I have read Fern Michaels and this book reminded me of why. The storyline was ok but first I never really found myself liking any of the characters and there are so many parts that are just unbelievable.

I realized that the main problem I have always had with Fern Michaels writing is the way her characters talk. The conversations are so unrealistic that they are distracting.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

TITLE: The Night Shift
CHARACTERS: Sarah Keller
AUTHOR: Alex Finlay
PUBLICATION DATE: 03/01/22
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.

Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words… “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.

Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.

REVIEW:
3.5 Hearts I have some dislikes with this story but mostly I think it is pretty good. I enjoyed the cold case intersecting with the current case even though it has been a decade and a half. I enjoyed that Sarah is not a wallflower waiting for others to do the job. She gets right out there and does what she needs to do.

But that leads me to a dislike. Any woman who has been pregnant and ready to pop at 8 ½ months pregnant is not running around like a teenager, honestly at that far along the mom to be is exhausted. And more so the mom to be does everything in her power to protect her baby (in this case twins – which makes it even more so) but Sarah is out there doing things that just are feasible.

But other than that I enjoyed the story. I honestly kept trying to forget that Sarah was pregnant and enjoy the rest of the book even though it was very hard with some of the action scenes.

All in all a good book. Without the ridiculous writing for a pregnant woman (no surprise it was written by a man) I would have given this book 4 hearts.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

TITLE: Girl In Ice
CHARACTERS: Val & Wyatt
AUTHOR: Erica Ferencik
PUBLICATION DATE: 03/01/22
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has thawed from the ice alive.

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North and meet this girl, try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

REVIEW:
There is good and bad to this story. First the good. I really enjoyed the language part of this story. When Val talks to the “girl in ice” the conversations are interesting and well written.

Now the bad, the story is slow and while we are supposed to be spending time finding out what really happened to Val’s brother it seems to take a back burner to the rest of the story.

I think this story had a lot of potential but it just didn’t meet up to it.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

TITLE: The Killer In The Snow
SERIES #: DI James Walker #2
CHARACTERS: DI James Walker
AUTHOR: Alex Pine
PUBLICATION DATE: 02/01/22
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
The first fall of snow can be fatal…

A year has passed since DI James Walker cracked his biggest case yet, and he’s hoping for peace and quiet this festive season.

But across the fells, a local farmer returns home on Christmas Eve to find footsteps in the fresh snow that lead down to his unused basement – and no footsteps leading away. Days later, his body is found, alongside those of his wife and daughter.

Without a neighbor for miles, there are no witnesses and little evidence. And the crime scene has strange echoes of another terrible murder committed at the farmhouse, twenty years earlier…

James knows that to catch this killer, he needs to solve a case that has long since gone cold…

REVIEW:
This is the second in the series. In this one James has to open up a cold case to solve a recent one.

I thought the concept of having to solve a decades old case to solve a recent one was great. I enjoyed the suspense part of the story.

However, I find it really hard to want to read these books. I am not a fan of the writing of Alex Pine. I wanted to give him a second chance but I still had a hard time. It might be the London influence but there doesn’t seem to be any emotions in the writing. It is very monotone to me.

I am not sure I will pick up book 3 but it might depend on the synopsis and give the series another try.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

TITLE: Deadly Caller
SERIES #: Detective Jane Phillips #6
CHARACTERS: Jane Phillips
AUTHOR: OMJ Ryan
PUBLICATION DATE: 09/05/21
ORDER LINKS: Amazon

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
Two people, an online business meeting. Before it’s over, one of them will be dead.

On a weekly Zoom call with her most valuable client, Antonia Berry is beyond horrified when she witnesses his murder – four-hundred miles away – live on her laptop screen.

DCI Jane Phillips and the Major Crimes Unit begin to investigate and at first it seems the victim is just a regular guy with no obvious enemies or connections to crime. But then, when a woman is killed in a seemingly random hit-and-run, they discover the two victims are closely connected. A coincidence? Or a double murder?

As the team dig deeper into the two attacks, they hardly have time to draw breath before a third victim turns up dead – once more with clear connections to the previous murders.

With the clock ticking, Phillips and her team pull out all the stops, desperate to solve the case before the killer strikes again. The only problem – the person most likely to be the next victim is also the number one suspect.

Can Phillips find the killer before another person dies? Or will her determination to serve and protect at all costs see her become the final victim of the Deadly Caller?

REVIEW:
3.5 Hearts This is the 6th in the series but I have only read a few of them. In this one Jane Phillips is investigating the murders happening at Ardent Technologies.

The thing about this story and most of the stories by OMJ Ryan is the “who-dun-it” is told about ⅔ to ¾ of the way through the book which is different from most suspense/thrillers that we see today. There is good and bad to this. The good thing is we know who did it so we can enjoy the characters learning the truth when we already know it. The bad is we don’t get to guess along with the characters.

Another good read by OMJ Ryan with a number of twist any fan of the genre will enjoy.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

TITLE: The Other Family
CHARACTERS: The Howell Family
AUTHOR: Wendy Corsi Staub
PUBLICATION DATE: 01/18/22
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub makes her trade paperback debut with a fast-paced thriller in the vein of Lisa Jewell’s The Family Upstairs and Megan Collins’ The Winter Sister. Here, a family making a fresh start moves into a house which was the site of an unsolved triple homicide–and are watched by an unknown person…

The watcher sees who you are…and knows what you did.

It’s the perfect home for the perfect family: pretty Nora Howell, her handsome husband, their two teenage daughters, and lovable dog. As California transplants making a fresh start in Brooklyn, they expected to live in a shoebox, but the brownstone has a huge kitchen, lots of light, and a backyard. The catch: its previous residents were victims of a grisly triple homicide that remains unsolved.

Soon, peculiar things begin happening. The pug is nosing around like a bloodhound. Nora unearths a long-hidden rusty box in the flowerbed. Oldest daughter Stacey, obsessed with the family murdered in their house, pokes into the bloody past and becomes convinced that a stranger is watching the house. Watching them.

She’s right. But one of the Howells will recognize his face. Because one of them has a secret that will blindside the others with a truth that lies shockingly close to home–and to this one’s terrifying history.

REVIEW:
I had a hard time with this story. Mainly because I never really cared about any of the characters. Yeah I kind of wanted to know the secrets they were all hiding but then I was a bit disappointed in what they were.

I used to read Staub but hadn’t read one of her books for a while so I was interested to see if her writing appealed to me anymore. And I was sad that I was not wowed by the story.

There were parts of the story I found that caught my attention but mostly I was just rushing through the story.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.