Tag: marriage

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Success is often the result of a series of failures. Try to remember that. You never learn anything from success, but failure can teach you everything about a person. Especially yourself.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

Alice Feeney is one of my favorite thriller authors. She is a master of plot twists and mixing flawed characters together to create a messy story that requires atmosphere, secrets galore, and unreliable characters. Her 2025 release, Beautiful Ugly, is full of twists and turns that still have me wondering what exactly happened.

What should be the best day of Grady Green’s life ends up being his worst day. Expecting his wife home soon, Grady is anxiously awaiting news of whether or not his latest novel is a New York Times Bestseller. Calling to see where she is, Grady is stunned to hear Abby slam on the brakes, leave her car, and go completely silent. Concerned for her safety, Grady goes searching for Abby only to find her car on the cliff edge road with the headlights still on, the driver door open, and her phone sitting in the car. He combs the area looking, but Abby has disappeared.

Flash forward a year and Grady has hit rock bottom. He has lost his house, is unable to write, and struggles to sleep. His every waking moment is consumed with grief over what happened to Abby. When his agent suggests that he travel to a tiny Scottish island to focus on his writing, Grady takes her up on the offer. He is hopeful that he will be able to write while stranded on this picturesque island with no distractions. While on the ferry to the island, Grady is hit with his first inkling that something is wrong: he sees a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife. That’s impossible. Or is it? Could Abby be hiding out on this island? And if so, why hasn’t she contacted him? What is going on?

While I enjoyed Beautiful Ugly, I have to admit that this isn’t my favorite of Alice Feeney’s, but only because the ending isn’t as tidy as I would have liked. I will say that the ending completely fits with the themes of paranoia and misery that Feeney builds up throughout this novel. Readers are never quite sure who is telling the truth as the book progresses and the end will definitely leave you wondering what exactly has happened. Give this a read and then let me know what you think in the comments below!

This title is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.

An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people—including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher—liked to hang shit on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

What do you know about the cutthroat world of academia? Personally, I know next to nothing, but a new romance, and start to a new series, by Jodi McAlister called An Academic Affair discusses the lengths that people go through in order to secure an academic job. If you’re interested in a marriage of convenience or a rivals to lovers romance, I recommend you give this title a read!

Sadie Shaw and Jonah Fisher, English professors and academic rivals, have been fighting since they first met as undergraduates almost fifteen years ago. While they have been battling about almost anything and everything, they have had stalemates over the years. Teaching part-time and both dreaming of a full-time secured job, the two are shocked when a new teaching opportunity comes available that they are both qualified for. Obviously they are both going to apply for it and obviously their rivalry is going to reach untold heights.

Sadie and Jonah have their own reasons for wanting this job. For Sadie, she would finally have a full-time teaching position and the financial security and freedom that comes along with said job. The same is also true for Jonah, plus this job is in the same town as his recently separated sister, thus allowing him to help her and her children. Only one of them can get this job though.

After the hire is announced, Sadie discovers that the job offers partner hire. This may be a way for them both to secure full-time employment! Sadie proposes a legal marriage of convenience to Jonah. What could possibly go wrong? The positives far outweigh the negatives, but when the two spend more and more time together, their opinions of each other change. Maybe they could actually be friends? Or something more?

Let me be honest: I checked this book out based purely on the cover! This is a marriage of convenience, rivals to lovers, and open door romance that had me kicking my feet and giggling as the characters grew. The relationship between Sadie and Jonah was incredibly genuine and felt like it could have actually happened. Jodi McAlister is releasing a sequel called A Study in Sparkling which should be publishing in July 2026, starring some of the side characters from An Academic Affair. I can’t wait.

Literary Lovers (or Love Notes) series

  1. An Academic Affair (2025)
  2. A Study in Sparkling (2026)

Love Everlasting Volume 1 by Tom King

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Love Everlasting: Volume One is a graphic novel that was published in 2023. It contains Love Everlasting #1-5 and was written by Tom King, artist Elsa Charretier, colorist Matt Hollingsworth, letterer Clayton Cowles, and editor Marla Eizik. This book caught my eye as the cover reminded me of Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones’s Lady Killer. (The familiar cover is Issue #1 and an image can be found on the Dark Horse website.)

‘Love is everlasting.’ That is what Joan Peterson is told immediately before she is murdered. Shocking, right?! In Joan’s world though, being murdered is a frequent occurrence. She has been caught in a never-ending cycle of deadly romance for as long as she can remember. After each death, Joan wakes up in another timeline with a new, yet somehow the same, problem: a man wants to marry her. Every time she falls in love, says yes to marriage, she is dramatically torn from that world and catapulted into another one with more disastrous love on her horizon. Joan is confused about how she even started on this path, wanting to break free, but unsure of how. Readers are at a loss right alongside her. Towards the end of this first volume, Joan starts her journey to escape this maddening cycle of love and death. Will she escape? Only time will tell.

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Because that’s the thing with the audience, the thing I learned long ago. They don’t want to get *too* uncomfortable. They don’t want to actually live through what I’ve lived through, every ugly moment. They just want a taste.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham is a devastating read. Important note & trigger warning: this title talks about postpartum psychosis and postpartum depression. Keep that in mind as you decide if you want to read this title.

Isabelle Drake’s life changed forever one year ago. Her toddler son, Mason, was stolen out of his crib in the middle of the night. She and her husband Ben were asleep right next door while a monster took their young son and spirited him away. The police found little evidence and even fewer leads, which meant the case stalled quickly. Before Mason’s disappearance, Isabelle used to sleep soundly, maybe too soundly. But now, she suffers from insomnia. She instead sleeps through blackouts and/or tiny catnaps. Isabelle has lost track of so much time because of those blackouts, hours of which she has no memory.

To fill the time, Isabelle spends every moment searching for Mason. She has investigated all of her neighbors, covering the walls of her dining room with her research. In addition to her endless research, Isabelle travels to true crime conventions around the world, determined to get her story out and keep Mason’s disappearance forefront in the public’s mind. Wanting to try a new avenue, Isabelle decides to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster, but it quickly becomes apparent that his interest is in more than Mason’s case. He is poking around in Isabelle’s past. His constant questions combined with her insomnia put Isabelle on edge, digging up memories she’d much rather stay buried. She is forced to reconsider who she can trust as she heads down a path to a truth she may wish she never found.

This book is also available in the following format:

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Everyone has secrets, Lou,” she says. “Everyone should be allowed their secrets. You can never know everything about a person. You’d go mad trying to.”
― Sarah Pinborough, Behind Her Eyes

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough had an ending that I did not see coming, one that I had never read before. That automatically makes this book at least one star better than I would have given a similar book.

Louise is stuck in a rut. A divorced mom of one working as a secretary for a local psychiatrist, Louise’s life trudges by the same every single day. Everything changes when she decides to go out for the night and meets a mysterious handsome man at the local pub. Sparks fly, the two kiss, he leaves, and Louise is finally happy.

The following Monday, Louise shows up to work to meet her new boss, David. Her heart drops when she realizes that he is the same man that she met at the bar. He’s very much married. David and Louise talk where he tells her that their kiss was a mistake. His eyes say a different tale though – he can’t stop watching her.

After this talk, Lousie happens to bump into Adele. She’s a lonely housewife who is new in town, desperate for friends. The two develop a quick friendship. Louise has always suffered from night terrors. Adele has a way to help her cope with those. They start working out together, helping Louise to shed her extra weight and get in shape.  One slight complication: Adele is David’s wife. Louise is living a double life: forming a friendship with Adele, while also continuing her affair with David. The longer she carries on with both, the more cracks begin to appear. Louise starts to wonder what exactly is happening in David and Adele’s marriage. Her curiosty is piqued. The more she digs, the more she realizes that she is unable to extricate herself from David and Adele. They are hiding something, but she’s not sure what. They will do anything to protect their marriage’s secrets.

This book is also available in the following formats:

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

- Callen Leave a comment

You may know I’m a big fan of classic retellings, and of Jane Eyre and Rebecca. The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins is the ultimate retelling of both Jane Eyre and Rebecca, with modern feminist sensibilities.

Jane is the new dog walker in Thornfield Estates and resents the casual privilege her extremely wealthy clients display, while she’s struggling to make ends meet and living with a creepy church musician for a roommate. It seems a huge stroke of luck when she hits it off with reclusive widower Eddie Rochester and embarks on a whirlwind romance. But her sense that something isn’t right only grows as they start to talk about marriage, since the spectre of Eddie’s late wife Bea is never far away, in the neighborhood, in Eddie, and in the house. To make matters worse, then the police start asking Eddie more questions about the night Bea went missing and her best friend Blance died, and Blanche’s husband has plenty of unpleasant insinuations to make. Not to mention Jane’s own past is threatening to rear its ugly head…

I love that this book uses all the Jane Eyre names, but makes the original characters make sense in the modern world – John Rivers for example is perfectly drawn as an unsettling religious figure who wants Jane for himself and treats her badly. The plot is also optimized for modern readers as strategic flashbacks, confessions, and slow reveals avoid the boggy parts of Jane Eyre by mixing past with present. Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and other unreliable-narrator thrillers are clear influences, and The Wife Upstairs easily joins their canon of feminist thrillers where realistic women earn their victories the hard way.

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“If every story had a happy ending, then we’d have no reason to start again. Life is all about choices, and learning how to put ourselves back together when we fall apart. Which we all do. Even the people who pretend they don’t.”
– Alice Feeney, Rock Paper Scissors

Rock Paper Scissors  is Alice Feeney’s latest twisty psychological thriller that centers around how well you really know the people you are in a relationship with. Everyone has little secrets tucked away, things they don’t necessarily see as lies, but they keep them hidden nonetheless.

Married couple Mr and Mrs Wright are on a holiday away. Amelia won a weekend away to a refurbished chapel in Scotland, thinking that this trip will be just what the couple needs to get their marriage back on track. Her husband Adam isn’t quite as sure. He is a screenwriter who suffers from face blindness whose work consumes him.  Adam can’t recognize anyone, so he has to rely on other body clues to try to place who they are. This trip to a chapel in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm is not how he wants to spend his time. He has so much work to do.

The couple has a unique tradition for each of their anniversaries: they exchange traditional gifts for each year (gifts that fall as paper, cotton, pottery, tin, etc). Each year Adam’s wife also has her own tradition: she writes Adam a letter talking about how their marriage progressed during the last year. She has never let Adam read those letters until this trip. Each person has their own reasons for wanting to take this trip, but they also both know that this weekend away will result in either their marriage surviving or resulting in a break-up. The longer they stay at the chapel, the more it becomes obvious that one of them is lying and may even be actively sabotaging the other.

How well do you know your partner?

“Enjoy the stories of other people’s lives, but don’t forget to live your own.” – ― Alice Feeney, Rock Paper Scissors

This book is also available in the following formats:

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Liane Moriarty is known currently for her book, Nine Perfect Strangers, which was made into a limited Hulu series. She has nine adult novels that have been translated into forty languages and have sold more than 20 million copies all over the world. Moriarty has also written three books for children. Her latest adult novel had me on my toes until the very end.

Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not what you should have done. What you do now. – Liane Moriarty, Apples Never Fall

Apples Never Fall is her newest novel, published in 2021. The above quote stuck with me throughout the book as it served as a metaphor both for tennis, which features predominantly in this book, and for life. This is a novel about marriage, siblings, and family, and the confusion and betrayal we feel when those we cherish lash out and hurt us.

The Delaney siblings are at a loss. Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke are all grown and out of their parents’ home, yet they all have a strong pull back to where they grew up, especially now that their mother has gone missing, seemingly without a trace and for no good reason.

The Delaneys are well known in their community. Stan and Joy, the parents, are tennis stars who set up their own tennis academy. They have been married for fifty years and people constantly talk about what a good match they are both on and off the court. Now they have sold the tennis academy and aren’t quite sure what to do with the rest of their lives. Their four children were all tennis stars, in their own right, of course, but Stan never truly believed any of them had the ability to truly make it. It’s okay though because they are all, mostly, settled into their adult lives and seem to have a handle on the future. At least on the surface they are, but even the happiest surfaces can be hiding secrets underneath.

Everything starts to bubble up when a strange young woman named Savannah shows up on Stan and Joy’s doorstep begging for help, bleeding after a domestic violence incident with her boyfriend. Stan and Joy take her in with almost no questions asked, much to their children’s chagrin.

Flash forward: Joy goes missing and Savannah is also nowhere to be found. All the children and Stan have been questioned. The police immediately hone in on Stan because he seems to be hiding something. Their children are also not being fully honest with the police and with each other. It doesn’t help that two of them think their father is innocent while the other two think that he may have hurt their mother. The more questions that are asked, the more each family member is forced to closely reexamine what they believe to be their family truths and core memories.

I particularly enjoyed this novel because it flashes back and forth between past and present. Each major characters’ point of view is also presented, including some peripheral random characters to add some color to the story. I listened to the audiobook version and really enjoyed the Australian narrator Caroline Lee.

This book is available in the following formats:

The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“There’s only one defining juncture that, depending on which path you take, will determine the rest of your life.” – Sandie Jones, The Guilt Trip

The Guilt Trip is the story of friends and the secrets kept between them. Rachel and Noah met at university and have been friends ever since. Twenty years later, they are now married to other people. While the two once thought they may have ended up together, life proved differently. Rachel is now married to Jack and the two have a son. Noah is married to Paige and those two have a daughter. Jack’s brother Will is engaged to marry Ali, a younger impulsive, gorgeous woman. They are to be married in Portugal. All six friends are heading to Portugal for the two’s impending destination wedding weekend.

As each couple arrives in Portugal, they bring secrets. They may be staying at a gorgeous villa atop a cliff, but darkness has settled into their relationships. Rachel wants to get to know her future sister-in-law Ali better, but Ali seems to only want to get to know Jack better. She is constantly seeking his attention and trying to have alone time with him. The longer they are together, the more Ali begins to grate on everyone’s nerves. Paige, Rachel’s best friend, thinks Ali is becoming increasingly childish and attention-seeking. Jack is also not fond of Ali. He tenses up whenever she is around. Jack is also consistently finding more to argue with Noah, Paige’s husband and Rachel’s friend, about.

Everything tilts wrong when Rachel finds out a shocking secret about Ali. The longer the wedding weekend progresses, the more secrets begin to leak from each of them. Each secret has the power to weaken and possibly destroy a different relationship. What started out as a joyous happy weekend could prove to be deadly for those involved instead.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Careful What You Wish For by Hallie Ephron

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hallie Ephron is known for writing mystery and suspense novels. Her newest novel Careful What You Wish For is her latest offering.

Emily Harlow is a professional organizer. She loves to help people declutter their lives which is a bit ironic because Emily’s own life is a complete mess. Her husband is a hoarder. He has filled their basement, attic, and garage with all of the treasures that he has found at different yard and estate sales. Emily and her husband have an understanding though that she will not touch his finds. This marriage compromise is slowly making Emily’s life more stressful as his belongings spread throughout more of the house.

Desperate to get back to some sort of normalcy, Emily is relieved when she has two new clients sign up. One is an elderly widow finally ready to clear out her house of any reminder of her husband. Said husband also left behind a storage unit that the wife had no idea existed. Emily’s other new client is a young wife who wants to get rid of all of her belongings that have been sitting in the garage ever since she moved in with her husband. You see, her husband didn’t allow any of her belongings into the house. At all.

After the initial meetings, Emily discovers that both of her new clients are hiding something. The mess Emily finds herself in has the power to destroy her life. She must get creative in order to find her way out or she may lose her marriage, her job, or even her life.

This book is also available in the following formats: