Category: Reference

The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves

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Have you ever been in the middle of reading a book and then had the author mention a place that you are very familiar with? I felt that immensely with my latest read by Tracey Garvis Graves. As I was reading, I felt myself grow more and more connected to the book and the characters because of my previous knowledge of the places mentioned.

The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves is told by bouncing back and forth between college years and then ten years in the future.

Annika has always been different. She frequently becomes overwhelmed in social situations and has a hard time reading people. Sensory overload often hits her and leaves her lost and confused in many situations. The things that most people care about just are not high on the priority list for Annika. She cannot match her clothes, has no problem staying in the comfort of her home all day, and does not understand why people could ever be mean to animals.

When Annika heads off to college at the University of Illinois, she finds adjusting to college life difficult as she struggles to fit in and find her place. Giving up after about a month, Annika is ready to go home until her roommate Janice takes her out and helps her find something to keep her interest: the college chess club.

Annika is a brilliant chess player, but she has no desire to compete. Meeting up with the group weekly to play allows her the ability to destress. Through the club, Annika meets Jonathan. Playing together the first day Jonathan joins the club, he is immediately captivated by Annika and her complete and utter focus on the game. Wanting to get to know her better, Jonathan and Annika start hanging out more and they fall in love. The two go through some challenges, but Jonathan is continuously patient and understanding of Annika and Annika finds Jonathan’s presence increasingly soothing. The two begin to make plans for the future, but a traumatic event drives the two apart and shatters the bond that they once felt.

Flash forward a decade. Annika and Jonathan meet by accident and the old feel of sparks and the tug of the familiar soon has them wanting to meet up again. Annika is highly functioning as a librarian, while Jonathan has become jaded in both his personal and his professional life. When the two begin hanging out again, they wonder if they will be able to pick up where they left off all those years ago or if long-buried feelings will work to keep the two apart.

The book is also available in the following format:

Outfox by Sandra Brown

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Sandra Brown is a well-known and prolific author of romantic suspense. She is also one of my go-to authors when I’m not sure what I want to read, but I need something that will keep my attention. Her latest kept me engaged from start to finish and had an ending that I didn’t see coming.

Outfox  by Sandra Brown tells the story of one man’s quest to capture a serial killer and another man’s desperate need to never be caught. Drex Easton has been hunting a serial killer for most of his adult life. For 30 plus years, he has been struggling to find a man that he last knew as Weston Graham. Weston is a sociopathic conman who has assumed many names and even more disguises over the past thirty years. So far, he has lured and tricked eight wealthy women out of their vast fortunes. These women then disappeared without a trace, along with Weston. Looking into the disappearances, the only commonality Drex sees is that a new man comes into each woman’s life before their disappearance. The man, who Drex believes to be Weston, then vanishes and leaves behind no trace that he even existed.

Drex is convinced that each of these women have been murdered and that Weston is the mysterious man responsible. Every time he gets close to capturing Weston though, he slips away, leaving Drex frustrated and with another dead woman left behind. Using countless tools at his disposal, Drex is now convinced that he has finally found Weston and is working hard to gain his trust.

Jasper Ford is attractive and charming. Having just married a successful businesswoman significantly younger than him named Talia Shafer, Ford ticks off many of the things that makes Drex believe that he is in fact Weston Graham. Desperate to save Talia from death, Drex moves to the town where the couple lives and begins insinuating himself into their lives. He starts surveillance on their house, posing as a neighbor researching a new book that he is writing. The closer Drex gets to the couple, the more he becomes convinces that Jasper is in fact that sociopath that he has been hunting for years.

Drex has only one chance to catch Jasper Ford and prove that he is in fact Weston Graham, but the attraction that he feels towards Talia threatens to destroy all the hard work that he has put in. Relying on help from his friends and hiding from the ire of others, Drex works diligently to prove Jasper’s guilt and Talia’s innocence.

This book is available in the following formats:

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

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I had not heard anything about this book before I checked it out on OverDrive, but the plot appealed to me right from the beginning as it’s a twisty thriller with a noir feel. Mysteries abound in Lippman’s newest book as a housewife decides to upend her entire life in order to make a new name for herself.

Lady in the Lake  by Laura Lippman is a psychological thriller mixed with elements of classic crime noir set in 1960s Baltimore. Madeline ‘Maddie’ Schwartz is a housewife, happy with her pampered easy life. Well, she was satisfied with that life up until this year when she decided to leave her eighteen year marriage to start over and live a passionate life that was more meaningful.

Starting a new life, Maddie wants to make a difference. After learning of a young girl’s disappearance, she decides to help police look for the girl. Using those interactions as a step-up, Maddie works her way onto the staff of the city’s newspaper, the Star. Trying to make a name for herself, Maddie is on the lookout for a story that will help her rise to fame. She finds the story of a missing woman whose body was found in the fountain of the park lake and decides to investigate.

A young African-American woman who enjoyed a good time, Cleo Sherwood disappeared one night. No one seems concerned with how the woman ended up there, so Maddie begins to dig into her disappearance. Cleo’s ghost is not happy with Maddie poking around into her life and death. She just wants to be left alone.

This book changes perspectives between many different characters as readers learn about the characters on the periphery of Maddie’s life. As she looks into Cleo’s murder, Maddie investigates a wide number of people, but fails to truly see what lies right in front of her. Her inability to see this leads to dangerous consequences for herself, those closest to her, and the people she comes into contact with on a daily basis.

If you have the chance, I highly recommend that you listen to the audiobook version of this book. Since this book jumps around to multiple points of view, the narrator is able to add different accents, dialogue, and authentic speech to each character. This definitely made the listen more than worthwhile and helped me keep the multitude of characters separate in my head.

Lippmann based the crimes that occur in this book on two real-life disappearances. If you’re interested in learning more, Lippman did an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered that covers her inspiration.

This book is available in the following formats:

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

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Recently I’ve been reading books about sisters and how their relationships change over many years. Jennifer Weiner is one of my go-to authors for when I ‘m looking for books about sisters. Her newest book, Mrs. Everything, takes the idea of nature vs nurture and expands upon this to how the world changes us or if we change irrelevant of our surroundings.

Mrs. Everything  by Jennifer Weiner discusses the lives of two sisters, Jo and Bethie Kaufman. Jo and Bethie grew up in 1950s Detroit in a house with both parents. Their perfect house and family has very defined roles for everyone living in it. While the two girls may seem to fall into cookie-cutter expected roles, to limit them to those expectations is to further restrain their future possibilities. Jo is a tomboy who loves books and chooses to rebel in ways that make their mother increasingly worried. Bethie is a pretty, beautiful, and feminine good girl, the utter opposite of Jo. She wants to live a traditional life, like their mother, and takes pleasure in the power that her beauty gives her over others. The girls couldn’t be more opposite, but they both have ideas of what they want to do with their lives. Their parents treat both girls differently which results in them building barriers between the two and not having as deep relationships as they could have had.

Once they leave home and start trying to figure out what they want out of life, Bethie and Jo begin to change. This book has strong themes revolving around abandonments, rape, betrayal, same sex marriage, sisterhood, emotions, history, heartbreak, drama. It’s hard to water this book down into one short blurb, since it covers such a long period of time navigating changes throughout both sisters’ lives (and the people they choose to surround themselves with). This book may seem like it has too much going on at once, but stepping back and realizing that multiple themes happen throughout regular lives anyway, this book becomes easier to read. Mrs. Everything is a feminist manifesto, a family saga, a piece of women’s fiction full of drama and woman power as these two sisters struggle to be everything to everyone as they try to figure out who they are to themselves on the inside.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

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This memoir is not one for the faint of heart. It deals with graphic descriptions of rape and sexual assault and can be triggering to readers. This book also talks about how rape is handled in universities and colleges, as well as how victims are treated within the criminal justice system, by the courts and police, and by the public who, not even knowing the victim’s name, still passed judgements on her actions. I highly recommend you give it a read (or a listen) and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Know My Name by Chanel Miller tells the story of Emily Doe. Emily became known to the world when her victim impact statement went viral during the sentencing stage of Brock Turner’s trial. Brock had just been sentenced to only six months in county jail after he was found by two bicyclists in the midst of sexually assaulting Emily on Stanford’s campus. Millions read her statement and it was translated into many different languages as the world finally heard from the woman at the center of the case.

After years of being known as Emily Doe, Chanel Miller decided it was time to take control of her story and her name.  She began writing Know My Name as a way to tell the story of her trauma and how she is working to rise above and change the world. Chanel thought that her case was perfect and there was no way her rapist would not be sentenced for a long time. Turner ran away from the crime, there were multiple eyewitnesses, and physical evidence was collected and immediately secured from both her body and the scene.

The aftermath of her rape and the resulting trial threw Chanel down a spiral of isolation and shame. When she realized the oppression and negativity that victims face all the way from the worst to the best cases, Chanel realized that these reactions only make victims coming forward less likely. Throughout this novel, Chanel discusses how this culture is set up to fail and let down victims, but protect the perpetrators. With her family, friends, and attorneys backing her up, Chanel works hard to find herself again and to work through the suffering and intense trauma that are omnipresent.

The Davenport Public Library owns a copy of this book as an audiobook available through OverDrive or through our Libby App. I listened to this book and encourage you readers to seek out an audiobook version as Chanel is the narrator. Hearing her break down while reading certain parts of this book brought me back to when this story was all over the news and shed new light onto what Chanel was actually going through.

This book is also available in the following format:

The Other Mrs. Miller by Allison Dickson

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Do you ever have a feeling that people aren’t what they seem? That they are keeping something from you? This is the premise of Allison Dickson’s book The Other Mrs. Miller where a woman who hardly leaves her house becomes increasingly more suspicious of the people in her life.

The Other Mrs. Miller by Allison Dickson tells the story of two women watching each other and the consequences that follow.

Phoebe Miller hardly leaves her house. She doesn’t see the point. Living on a cul-de-sac affords her the opportunity to watch her neighbors in relative peace, so when a car starts showing up on a fairly regular basis outside of her house, she immediately becomes suspicious. Why does the driver keep showing up? What business could they possibly have on her cul-de-sac? Could they be wanting to get information out of her because of her family?

While Phoebe’s family may be infamous, Phoebe herself is uninteresting. She’s an unhappy housewife who has gained weight in the past couple years due to her love of ice cream and wine. Phoebe and her husband don’t get along very well with issues becoming more and more present every day. Not really knowing how to make things better with her husband, she keeps going on with her daily life knowing things will eventually work themselves out.

Phoebe is soon distracted when a new family moves in across the street. Drawn into their web, Phoebe finds herself wanting to know more about the Napiers: the doctor husband, the bubbly and energetic wife Vicki, and the handsome college-bound son Jake. Leaving her house to introduce herself to the new neighbors, Phoebe quickly finds the companionship she has been lacking with the Napiers. While she is enjoying having a new friend and is coming out of her shell more, Phoebe is growing more and more distracted from the things that she really should be paying attention to, like the car that’s been showing up outside of her house. Her life becomes more unpredictable, leading to a climax that will have readers on the edge of their seats.

This domestic thriller kept my attention from the beginning with secrets and plot twists popping up until the very end. Check out this book and let me know what you think in the comments!

This book is available in the following formats:

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

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Have you ever been to a renaissance faire? I spent quite a few summers growing up going to the local faire with my family. I was fascinated that there were people who made this their life for the whole summer, but had other lives outside of the faire. Faires serve as ways to experience the past, but with the knowledge that you can go back to your regular present life!

Well Met by Jen DeLuca takes the concept of past vs. present and runs with it. Willow Creek, Maryland is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Trying to keep anything quiet can be pretty difficult, but there are charms to living in such a small area. Emily is having a hard time seeing the positives, but she’s working on it. Emily moved her entire life to Willow Creek to help her sister recover from a bad accident. Being dropped into this new life, she works hard to alleviate any stress on her sister by making lists to navigate her new life. Instead of working two jobs, Emily spends her days running her sister to appointments and chauffeuring her niece around.

Driving her niece to the high school one day, Emily soon finds herself volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire so that her niece can participate. Emily bumps into Simon, an irritating schoolteacher who is in charge of the volunteers. While they don’t initially get along, Emily is forced to keep working with Simon since the faire is a huge part of his family. The faire is very important to Simon and Emily’s joking approach to the whole experience, plus her insistence that some aspects of faire should change, only further work to irk and anger Simon.

Once faire begins however, Simon slips into a new persona. Gone is the stuffy English teacher and in his place lives a completely new, and likeable, person. This new Simon flirts openly with Emily as she works at the tavern in her revealing wench outfit. The drastic difference between the two confuses Emily. Is the attraction she’s feeling towards Simon at the faire real? Or is it just part of their characters, the part of faire that Simon is always telling them that they need to portray?

Emily is more confused than ever as she works to figure out what she is going to do after the summer is over and her sister has recovered from her accident. She was only supposed to stay in Willow Creek until her sister recovered, but the more time she spends in the community, and the more she gets to know Simon, the more Emily is thinking that she might want to make a permanent home in Willow Creek. But should she? What about Simon? Where will she stay? Will everyone in Willow Creek grow to accept her?

The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan

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Growing up, we seldom had babysitters, let alone a full-time live-in nanny, so I was always fascinated when authors would weave stories of characters who grew up with nannies. I relived this fascination when I picked up Gilly Macmillan’s newest book, The Nanny. This book tells the story of one nanny’s power over an entire family and their struggle to find out the truth.

The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan drops readers right into the world of Jocelyn Holt. Told in alternating points of view, readers learn about the lives of Jocelyn Holt and her family as Jocelyn makes the trip back home. Having to return to the Lake Hall estate after the death of her husband, Jo is not happy to be dropped back into a life that doesn’t seem to have changed since she left. Her childhood wasn’t all that bad, that is before nanny Hannah left. Hannah and Jo were inseparable up until the summer of 1988 when Hannah left without a trace, leaving seven-year-old Jocelyn devastated and with no one to confide in.

Left with no answers as to where Hannah went, Jocelyn’s childhood at Lake Hall with her parents became more troubled. She grew up bitter and distant towards her parents, mostly to her mother, whom she blamed for Hannah’s abrupt departure. As soon as she was able to, Jo left Lake Hall and her parents’ stuffy aristocratic life behind.

Thirty years later, Jo finds herself back at Lake Hall with her young daughter in tow after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband. With nowhere else to turn, Jo is forced to confront and rebuild the troubled relationship she has with her mother. When Jo’s daughter and her mother start growing closer, she’s unsure whether or not this is a good thing. Right as the three reach a somewhat truce, human remains are found in a lake on the Lake Hall estate which makes Jo question if the events that she remembers from her childhood are actually true.

In the aftermath of this shocking discovery, an unexpected visitor shows up at Lake Hall. Jo and her mother are left reeling yet again as the identity of this visitor is revealed to be someone it can’t possibly be. Not finding any satisfactory answers, Jo digs into her past to figure out the truth surrounding her nanny’s disappearance, who her nanny really was, and what her mother has been hiding for over thirty years.

This book is also available in the following formats:

That’s What Frenemies Are For by Sophie Littlefield and Lauren Gershell

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Making friends as an adult is difficult. Sophie Littlefield and Lauren Gershell talk about the delicate balance between friends and enemies, as well as the different lengths that people are willing to do to in order to make friends in their newest book, That’s What Frenemies Are For. Hidden motives abound for all in this novel that grabs you by your private school, Manhattan socialite education and refuses to let go.

That’s What Frenemies Are For by Sophie Littlefield and Lauren Gershell talks about how easily influence and cache in different groups can change as readers follow the life of a Manhattan socialite who finds the next biggest craze in the form of a peppy spin instructor and an underperforming fitness studio. Her decision to rehabilitate the studio and the instructor in order to impress her friends and get back her social cache proves to turn into more than she can handle.

Julia Summers has it all: two children who love her, an adoring husband with a successful job, an apartment in the city, and a house in the Hamptons. Having finally made it to the top of her friend group, Julia influences almost everything the group does. Nothing happens without her approval or without her knowing about it. As a result, Julia is stunned when she finds others in her friend group suddenly vying for her position of power and cutting her out of decisions. When everyone starts to head to the Hamptons for the summer, Julia’s family is stuck in the city when catastrophe hits their Hamptons’ house.

Stuck in the city for the summer, Julia is desperate to reinvent herself before her friends come back. Looking for the newest fad, Julia finds Flame. Flame is the biggest new elite fitness craze that has the possibility to be even better if they just changed a few things. While going to Flame, Julia takes classes from Tatum, a giggly, energetic instructor who Julia decides to transform in the guise of improving Flame’s profit margin and helping to get the word out about the business.

Julia takes on the task to overhaul Flame and Tatum, but in a sneaky way that she hopes isn’t completely obvious to everyone around her. Things slowly start to spiral out of Julia’s control when she discovers that Tatum isn’t as docile as she initially thought. Julia’s comeback doesn’t go as expected and Tatum starts to take over everything herself.

With Julia’s relationships with her friends in turmoil, Julia turns to her family for comfort. Much to her surprise, her husband’s business goes belly up in a most unexpected way. Left with almost no support system and friends who have completely turned their backs on her, Julia has to rethink everything that she had previously held so dear. What does she really want out of life? What is most important to her? Is her perfect life worth it?

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

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Romance novels usually contain elements of real life that readers can relate to. The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez discusses the difficulties of infertility, how to navigate new relationships, and how to handle varying degrees of loss.

The Friend Zone  by Abby Jimenez is a heartwarming romantic comedy that at times delves into deep and sensitive topics. Kristen Petersen hates drama. She is blunt, to the point, and knows what she wants. While she doesn’t have many close family members or friends, Kristen will do anything for the ones that she does have. Her straightforwardness means that Kristen is very quick to dismiss guys who don’t understand her or those that she just doesn’t like. While she is quite frank, there is a major secret that she is keeping from everyone: Kristen has been experiencing major medical issues for years and in order to find some relief, she has chosen to go through a medical procedure that will result in her not being able to have children.

This secret is tearing her up on the inside. Kristen’s best friend is going to be married soon. Helping her to plan the wedding has left Kristen feeling unsure and angry because of how her life is turning out. Her sadness deepens when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. Josh is everything that she ever wanted. He’s funny, sexy, her dog loves him, and he seems to be able to read her mind. Josh ends up working for Kristen which allows the two to learn more about each other. Several circumstances converge to keep the two apart however. The biggest one: Kristen has a boyfriend. Another one: Josh wants a big family someday. He mentions it to her several different times.

Kristen decides that she needs to keep Josh away from her. She knows that she won’t be able to give him what he wants and that he would be much better off with someone else. The more she pushes him away, the closer they get though.  Kristen isn’t sure what else to do, while Josh isn’t sure why she’s pushing him away.

This book had me cringing at moments wondering why the two just didn’t take time to talk to each other, but also had me recognizing that since I have never gone through any fertility issues, I was unable to fully understand what was happening. All in all, I enjoyed the twists and turns of this book. Check it out and let me know what you think of it in the comments below!