Sharp Force by Patricia Cornwell

Sharp Force by Patricia Cornwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE SERIAL KILLER

NOT EVEN SCARPETTA…

During the early hours of Christmas morning, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom Slasher has struck again.

The serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. His pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to invade his victims' homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a ghost-like hologram before being murdered in their beds.

Scarpetta is summoned to Mercy Island, the site of a notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized, one of them from Scarpetta’s past. It soon becomes apparent that she could be next…
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I have been reading Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books since day one, so when the opportunity to review her newest came up, I jumped right on it. I love the combination of government agencies with medical examiner with straight up mystery thriller that she brings to the table, sometimes with a little bit of gore thrown in. This book is no different. We have Benton Wesley and his Secret Service background, niece Lucy and her FBI connections, and Dr. Scarpetta the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia. We have her usual foil in Pete Marino but also a little of his softer side. We have a serial killer and a bit of a grisly autopsy and the kind of forensic detail we have come to expect from this author. We have darkness and suspense and everything that makes for a good thriller. And most of all, we have the years and years of history I have with these characters and the relationships I feel I have formed with them, which is part of the joy of reading a series such as this one. I found myself so engrossed in the action of the story that I was surprised when I reached the end and found out who the killer actually was. Did the answer perhaps come a little bit out of left field? Maybe. Did I still enjoy the journey I took to get there? Absolutely. In other Scarpetta books, Cornwell has used a dual point-of-view to tease the reader throughout the book with the perpetrator's side of the story. In my opinion, this ending felt a little abrupt in comparison to some of her other works. Nevertheless, I couldn't give this one any less than five stars because the highs of this book were very high for me and more than made up for that little issue I had with it. I can't wait to see where Dr. Scarpetta takes us next.

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It's Different This Time by Joss Richard

It's Different This Time by Joss Richard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Ballantine and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Reeling from the cancellation of her hit TV show, June Wood has nothing left to lose when a mysterious email lures her back to the New York City brownstone she once called home before she moved to Los Angeles. Thanks to a clause in the former owner’s will, she and her old roommate, Adam Harper, now own the multimillion-dollar property—or at least they will in a month, once all the paperwork is signed.

Four weeks, then June can return to her life in LA and forget about New York City and everything she left behind. Sure, the fact that June and Adam are estranged and haven’t even spoken in five years, and that their friendship didn’t exactly end on good terms might complicate matters, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime.

As the autumn leaves fall around them, through shared meals and late-night conversations, old wounds and long-buried sparks resurface, and it becomes strikingly clear: June and Adam have unfinished business. Confronted with the consequences of their choices years before, they must now navigate the minefield of their past the best way they know how: together. Second chances are always a risk, but maybe, if they get it right and are finally honest with each other and with themselves, it could be different this time.
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This debut from Joss Richard had a lot of things working in its favor for me. I am a huge fan of New York City in the fall. I love Broadway. I am a bit of a foodie. And I always love a good second chance romance. Therefore, I went into this book expecting to really enjoy it, and I am happy to report that I was correct, and this was a great read for me. I really liked all the characters and enjoyed getting to know them. I am a huge fan of found family stories, and this book had plenty of that. The only thing that didn't flip this over into a five-star read for me is that one of my least favorite tropes factored heavily into the storyline, and that just made it a little less enjoyable for me. However, this was a really solid first novel from this author, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future!

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You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Sophie Sullivan

You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Sophie Sullivan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Maisie Smart doesn’t look back. Not on the choice she made to be a photographer, and not on the one-night stand she had six months ago. But sleeping with a professional hockey player who bolted the morning after is a whole new level of embarrassing. Now she’s about to spend the week at Tickle Tree Farms with her family this Christmas—and then the universe throws a Grinch in her festive plans.

Nick King is a mess. After a significant injury benches him, he has more time to dwell on his anxieties and the one-night stand he can’t get out of his head. With the holidays around the corner, he figures visiting his sister and nephew at their Christmas tree farm will be a good way to sort himself out. That’s impossible when he learns Maisie is there, still beautiful and justifiably angry about the way he left. But Christmas is the time for second chances, and the forced proximity may help Nick and Maisie unwrap feelings neither of them can walk away from twice.
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It felt a little wild to be reading this Christmas romance on a day when the high temperature topped out in the low 80s, but here we are. I am happily transitioning out of the summer months, and this was a great choice to get me excited about what the upcoming cooler months have to offer. This is a follow-up to Sullivan's 2024 autumn romance Can't Help Falling in Love, which I have not read, but it was easily read as a standalone. However, now that I have met Lexi and Will, the main characters from that one, I may have to go back and read their story. I would also love to see this series continue.

Anyway, what is there to say about a Christmas hockey romance? I don't read a lot of hockey romances, and hockey was a minor character in this one, which was fine with me. I enjoy sports romances, but I don't want the sports to take center stage. I have read other reviews that took offense at the "foul" language in the book, but I didn't really find it to be bad at all. Were there a few well-placed F-bombs? Sure. Were they egregious? No. There were love scenes, but they were not overly graphic. I am a smut-skipper and was easily able to page through them without losing out on the story.

The supporting characters were so well-developed and really added to the story. I loved that about this book. I really enjoyed Maisie and Nick, but I also loved that I loved the people surrounding Maisie and Nick. While a romance novel of this type is always going to be a little predictable (and that is fine with me), this one had enough depth that I was happy to keep reading. I appreciated that it tackled a couple of more serious subjects, and I loved rooting for Maisie and Nick as they made their way to their HEA.

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The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards

The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing.

But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one-by-one.

It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: The Wasp Trap. This experiment and the other tragic events of that summer long ago may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight.

Alternating between the past and present with a colorful ensemble of characters, The Wasp Trap is a fast-paced and twisty thrill ride that is perfect for fans of Lucy Foley and Alice Feeney.
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This book was presented as being perfect for fans of Lucy Foley and Alice Feeney, and since I am deep in thriller era, I decided to check it out. After a compelling prologue, I settle into a fast-paced, dual-timeline thriller that was full of twists and came to a satisfying conclusion. There were times that I thought that the author could have tightened up the plot a bit, but overall, this book had some real strengths. There were some characters that were easy to like, as well as some characters that were easy to hate, and while some dual-timeline books can be hard to follow, this was laid out in a way that made switching back and forth from 1999 to the present day seamless. There was a bit of gore without it becoming unnecessarily graphic, and I never felt like it settled into complete predictability, which many thrillers unfortunately do by the end of the book. Overall, this was a solid thriller, and I enjoyed it enough that I will look for other offerings from this author.


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Springtime at Hope Cottage by Annie Rains (read in 2021)

Springtime at Hope Cottage by Annie Rains
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for providing me with and advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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When opposites attract...

As an editor at a major New York City magazine, Josie Kellum is always on the go...until an injury sidelines her in the small town of Sweetwater Springs. Luckily, her new physical therapist is easy going and easy on the eyes. When their sessions start to heat up, in more ways than one, Josie is intrigued. But she has a city and career she loves waiting for her. So why does the thought of leaving him suddenly feel a lot like leaving home?

Tucker Locklear is just starting to move on after his wife's death. While he can't deny his attraction to the gorgeous, vivacious Josie, he won't risk the pain of losing someone again. The sooner he gets Josie back on her feet and back to her real life, the safer he'll be. But in Sweetwater Springs, love has a way of mending even the most damaged heart.
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Annie Rains has become one of my go-to authors for sweet small-town romance. This offering is part of the Sweetwater Spring series, but I had not read the first offering of the series and was fine reading this as a standalone. Josie and Tuck's story is a fun one to ride along with, although it is not without stumbling blocks, as Tuck has some trauma to work through after he lost his wife, and Josie is a city girl who finds herself in the country visiting the main characters from the first book in the series. I loved seeing how they got to know one another and work through their differences on the way to their HAE in this story of friendship, family, second chances, opposites attracting, and finding home.

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Young Fools by Liza Palmer

Young Fools by Liza Palmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Helen Hicks may not have any friends, but she does have a plan: prove her doubting, elitist parents wrong and become a literary sensation before she turns thirty. When she’s finally accepted into the esteemed Hayward Writing Intensive at twenty-four, Helen believes she’s right on schedule.

At Hayward, Helen meets Cherry Stewart, a free-spirited, ambitious kid whose eclectic tastes skew far more pedestrian than Helen’s, but as Cherry’s champion and mentor, Helen decides they’ll set the publishing world on fire and go down as one of the literary world’s most iconic duos.

But as Helen turns thirty with no debut novel in sight and a breathtaking case of writer’s block, she is forced to put her dreams on hold. Thinking Cherry shares her sad fate, Helen is shocked to learn that her best friend has not only finished and sold a novel in secret, but even more devastating it’s...genre fiction.

As Helen and Cherry’s yearslong friendship comes crashing down, Helen finally has the clarity and inspiration to take her own art to the next level. It’s going to get personal.
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This book gets off to a slow start, and at first I was struck by how very unlikeable I found one of the main characters. I understood that it was kind of the point of the story, but I kept waiting for there to be some kind of redemptive arc. - and I kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting. What I was enjoying in the book was the coming of age story of two young women in a new city as the strove to realize their lifelong dreams. The book felt kind of compulsively readable. In fact, I read most of it in one afternoon because I really was eager to find out just where it was going.

And then suddenly...BAM. There it was. My sticking with it had paid off, and I raced through to the end, finding myself fully satisfied with where the author had taken me, as Helen and Cherry journeyed through young adulthood and into their 40s and we got to see where they ended up in the present day.

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