Stepping in the Write Direction

Author Sally Hepworth says this about her 4/4/23 book The Soulmate,  “But while The Soulmate started as an exploration of how we might like to murder our husbands, it quickly morphed into something else. An exploration of the bad and good sides of marriage. What we bring to it. What it brings out in us. I like to think of it as a murderous love story. Unconventional, of course, but that’s what I do.”  The story grabs you right from the beginning when a woman plunges to her death from a high seaside bluff favored by suicides. The story is told from the point of view of two of the main characters, the wives of two couples, Pippa and Amanda, one dead and one alive.  Through the alternating narratives of the women we learn about their relationships with their husbands, what brought them to the dramatic and tragic scene on the bluff, how their lives intertwined, the complications of their relationships, and the challenge to understanding what is real as Amanda describes, ...

I purchased the Kindle edition of Lilac Cottage ( Mackinac Cottages Series Book 2,  a Christian Mystery & Suspense Romance) by Carrie Fancett Pagels because I’ve enjoyed other titles by this author, I loved the cover, and I love Mackinac Island. I bought the first book in the series as well, Butterfly Cottage (Kindle currently priced at $2.99, but probably not for long). I typically have a ton of digital library books checked out across three different platforms (Libby, Hoopla, and CloudLibrary), and usually am reading the books with the most people waiting on the hold list for them first. I just had to start this book to see how it was, despite my two library books with people waiting, and I read the first half of the book over 2 days because the tyranny of my “to do” list forbade my binging on it in one sitting. By the third day the plot and suspense made the book unputdownable, and I finished the second half in one day; the “to do” list had to wait!  The author has a do...

In Where They Lie by Joe Hart, Child Protective Services Agent  Nora McTavish is driven to investigate what appears to be a tragic accident involving a foster family she had contact with. An observer of the “accident” reports seeing a struggle before impact, indicating intent may have been involved. The apparent sole survivor points the finger in a surprising direction. Nora’s recent incident report review with the family haunts her with the feeling she overlooked something.  Nora is drawn to her career in child protective services because she grew up in an abusive situation that cost one of her siblings his life, a sibling who appears to her from time to time as a silent specter.  At one point Nora observes,  “In the family unit things like morality and justice and right didn’t always hold sway. Sometimes a tarnished sense of love reversed things in a weird mirror image of what should be. Normal became split lips and bruises and inappropriate touching. The...

  Love in a Cold Climate is a lively satire of the British upper crust around 1930. English readers, at the time it was published in 1949, could no doubt recognize the fictional characters as people who actually existed, many from author Nancy Mitford’s own family and circle. I read that Mitford had sent the manuscript to her friend Evelyn Waugh, who returned it saying what a delight it was to read, but telling her she must rewrite it, which she refused. She commented later how many reviewers panned the book in America, but volumes were flying off the shelves. Mitford cared more about what big sales numbers said about her book, than critics. The novel was funny and witty, moving along at a good pace, and compelling the reader forward to see what would happen next. I read it in two sittings.  Mitford’s own upbringing within the context of the upper crust, (although her childhood was fraught with issues), allowed her to be fluent in every aspect of the lifestyles, social nuances...

  The Mother-In-Law is my first Sally Hepworth book, it was very good (I read the bulk of it in one sitting), and literally, like the book cover says, “everyone in  this family is hiding something.” Enough of a mystery to keep the reader turning pages, enough author skills to deliver the complexity of real human issues credibly through her characters without any lecture or preaching, and a conclusion you can definitely live with.  Before I read this book, I watched a YouTube 3/27/23 live video “Special Prelaunch Q&A: NYT Bestselling Author Sally Hepworth hosted by Sara DiVello” on her channel “Mystery and Murder Mavens hosted by Murder By The Book.” The interview about her newest book The Soulmate got me interested in the Melbourne Australia based Hepworth’s books.  My library’s digital platform Libby has seven of her ebooks (that can be opened and read on Kindle), four of the titles with audiobook editions as well. I put a hold on The Soulmate, Hepworth’s latest...

Four fifths of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes was engaging and compelling. The final fifth devolves into a maddening “Groundhog Day” scenario where Tony tries to make sense of an inheritance he can’t seem to access, while emailing and repeatedly reconnecting with his former deceased’s family love interest, whose response feels like a real time version of angrily throwing pieces of a crumbled Rosetta Stone at Tony, confusing reader and protagonist together.  This passage resonates: “Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” That final fifth of the book does wear a reader down, battering them with confusion, ultimately sending one into the internet nether regions searching for instruction.  The theory that makes sense to me was in John Self’s review of The Sense of an Ending in his blog “ASYLUM John Self’s Shelves,” posted in “Barnes Jul...

The Golden Spoon by Jessa Matthews was such a delight to read. For a lover of mysteries the only thing better than a mystery where the tension and climax are building as a storm brews in the storyline, is to actually be reading it while a real thunderstorm is happening, as it was for me. I assumed the plot would be about someone involved with the televised baking show getting killed early on, and the rest of the book would be about solving that murder. It was so much more complex and enjoyable. The book starts out simply as six baking show contestants are making their way to the manor house of the show’s host, where filming occurs and all will be staying. There is tension as hopes are high in each baker to win the contest, each for their own reason. Early on a theme of someone sabotaging contest cooks develops yet no one is identified as the culprit, then liaisons occur, professional rivalries, and soon it seems each contestant has something going on, and no one is dead yet. The gift o...