True Crime by Patricia Cornwell

True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere, and Scarpetta's began when Patricia Cornwell embedded herself in a morgue.

In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalized twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham’s wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalization and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner’s office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon.

Cornwell leaves no stone unturned in this deeply candid account of her life, offering inspiring insight into what made her into the international sensation she is today.
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Patricia Cornwell is a masterful storyteller, and because she writes her most well-known character Dr. Kay Scarpetta so well, I think it would be easy to conflate the two women. I went into this book realizing very quickly that I knew very little about Cornwell, and I appreciated her candor as she related details about her life. There were parts of her story that were difficult to read, and I found myself feeling great sadness for the child that she once was, as well as great admiration for the woman she has become. However, I also recognized in her some of the scars that her past have inflicted on her, and I appreciated that she was willing to let that come through in her writing.

She relayed the story of a life that began in poverty and then one day included time spent in the friendship of politicians and celebrities. She shared false starts and redirections in her career path before she came to the point when she developed the character for which she is so well-known and began the series of books that would become her legacy. She discussed frankly her history of trauma and the effects it had on her family and later on her romantic relationships. The flow of the book was sometimes a little clunky, but the material easily held my interest, especially in later chapters as we learned more about how her career as an author unfolded. Her dedication to accuracy in her novels and the research that goes into them is evident to anyone who reads them, and learning about the lengths she goes to in order to achieve this was fascinating. And although I know that she is not Scarpetta, I did recognize the parts of herself that she has injected into the character, and I enjoyed also reading about some of the inspirations she has had for other characters in her books. At the end of this memoir, I remain a big fan of the Scarpetta books, and I have a new appreciation for their author, the inimitable Patricia Cornwell.

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Five-Star Summer by Sarah Morgan

Five-Star Summer by Sarah Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Running a five-star Cornish hotel should have been Evie Hamilton’s dream job. But restoring it to its former glory is going to take a miracle. All Evie has is grit, and a hoard of unruly staff who love to speculate about her love life. She needs back-up, and fast.

Enter Abby Jones. Parachuted in by the hotel’s umbrella company for the summer, Abby thinks Evie could be the best friend she never had. But Abby has her own agenda for being in Cornwall. If her real motives are uncovered, their friendship is going to melt away faster than an ice cream in the summer sun.

Yet Abby’s arrival starts a chain reaction. With the help of a charming chef and a gruff pub owner, they begin to embrace their true selves and the bonds that unite them. But it’s not just the hotel’s five-star reputation that needs rebuilding – Evie and Abby will also have to brave tearing down their lives in order to reshape their futures…
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After reading several thrillers recently, I was looking for a kinder, gentler kind of book to kind of cleanse my palate, and this new offering from Sarah Morgan was all that I was hoping it would be. It had everything that is needed in a contemporary romance beach read as we head into the summer months, but it was also more than that. This was a tale of found family and women's friendship, of starting over and learning more about yourself. Told from multiple points of view, this book gave us insight into the thoughts and experiences of the three women who were at the heart of the storyline, and Morgan weaved their lives together to create a very enjoyable novel. I found myself coming to care about the small town of Cornwall, the hotel at the center of the story, and most of all the various characters (and some of them were real characters) who made up the cast of the book. There was just enough conflict to keep things interesting, and best of all, there was a HEA (and maybe even more than one!) to tie everything up in the end. I realize now that I have read very few of Morgan's books, and I want to go back and remedy that immediately.

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Dog Person by Camille Pagán

Dog Person by Camille Pagán
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Delacorte Press via NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Harold may be an aging mutt—but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she left Harold with a final task: to help her partner, Miguel, find love again.

Trouble is, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and when a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event, it pushes the store’s already precarious finances into the red. In a final attempt to save the bookstore, Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. But instead they’re greeted by Fiona, his sunny yet secretive sister.

Fiona is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy—and to Harold’s horror, she doesn’t like dogs. But her precocious eleven-year-old daughter, who’s also named Amelia, immediately befriends Harold . . . and he can’t help but wonder if his Amelia was right when she said there are no coincidences in life.

Harold is quickly running out of time to accomplish his mission, but if he can just convince his infuriatingly stubborn person to let Fiona in, he’s certain Miguel will find something far more important than a missing author: his own happy ending.
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I am someone who has loved many dogs in my life. And I have always been a person who talks to her dogs and is pretty sure that I can "hear" them talking back to me. Therefore, reading Harold's story in his voice was a really fun way to experience this story for me. I immediately fell in love with him and his people when I found myself awake early one morning (thanks to one of those dogs I was talking about) and decided to stay in bed for a bit and read my new book.

On top of our unconventional narrator, another thing to love about this book for me was that it had as one of its central settings a bookstore. I love books about bookstores, and this one was no exception. Miguel's devotion to Amelia's legacy leads him and Harold on an adventure as they attempt to save this legacy from financial ruin.

If you don't want to cry, this might not be the book for you, but if you are looking for an emotional exploration of grief and the healing power of love between a man and his dog, as well as the hope that comes from learning to love again, definitely pick it up. There also is a strong theme of found family throughout, and anyone who has read my reviews before knows that is a sure way to get me hooked. By the end of the day, I had finished the book and had been reminded why I have always been and would always be a Dog Person.

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Love by the Book by Jessica George

Love by the Book by Jessica George
My rating: 5 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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Remy is lucky. Her debut novel, based on her three best friends, became an instant bestseller when it was released, and her agent and publisher are clamoring for a follow-up. But just as Remy’s creative inspiration seems to leave her, so too do her friends: one moves to New York, one gets pregnant, and one gets back together with her (awful) boyfriend. After an ill-advised one-night stand complicates matters further, Remy is left deeply alone—and unable to find her next book idea.

Simone is successful. A Kindergarten teacher with a passion for kids, and a well-paying side hustle that affords her all the material comforts she desires, she doesn't have time for a robust social life. All Simone needs is her close-knit family—but after the true nature of her work is revealed, they cut her off, and she realizes for the first time just how isolated she is.

When Simone and Remy bump into each other (literally) in a bookstore, it isn’t exactly soulmates at first sight. Simone is guarded and prickly, Remy is insecure and heartbroken, and each woman is harboring a secret. And yet they might just be the missing piece the other has been searching for—if only they can let each other in.

Can Simone help Remy make one of the most important decisions of her life—and can Remy help Simone recover all that she’s lost? In Jessica George’s heartwarming, funny, and soulful second novel, she explores the restorative nature of female friendship and the life-changing power of platonic love.
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I missed out on Jessica George's first novel Maame (but I will certainly be remedying that!), so I was going into this novel blind. However, the description of it - exploring "the restorative nature of female friendship and the life-changing power of platonic love" - spoke so deeply to me because I have not been in a romantic relationship for many years. However, I am not someone who lives without love in her life. Those of us who live outside of romantic relationships sometimes are a forgotten demographic in popular fiction storytelling, so the thought of reading a novel not centered around this was interesting to me.

I immediately loved Remy, both her light parts and her dark parts. George writes her as such a well-rounded character, and we are able to see her for all her positive attributes, but she is never presented as perfect. In fact, throughout, I felt a low level of tension? anxiety? due to some of her actions and what their outcome might be, which is one of the elements of the book that had me grabbing every spare moment I had to read "just one more chapter." Simone, once she is introduced into the main plot and we get know her, is fascinating, in that she is so much more than she seems to be, and witnessing the way she and Remy dance around each other as they settle into their relationship is so real. The last third of the book flew by faster than I wanted it to, as I didn't want to say goodbye to these women who had come to feel like friends. However, I can say that I loved how we left those friends, and I will definitely read whatever comes next from Jessica George.

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The Name Game by Beth O'Leary

The Name Game by Beth O'Leary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Charlie couldn’t be happier to take the job of farm-shop manager on the remote, wild Isle of Ormer. She’s grieving, a little lost, and in desperate need of a fresh start.

Jones has come out of a difficult breakup and is looking forward to some peace away from the noise of his city life. Moving to Ormer couldn’t have come at a better time.

But when Charlie Jones and, ahem, Charlie Jones both turn up at Ormer’s one and only farm shop, claiming to have been offered the role of manager, everyone is baffled. How could this have happened? And just who is the real Charlie Jones?
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I think it was between The Switch and The Road Trip that I decided that I would be reading every book that Beth O'Leary wrote for the rest of her career and that I hoped that career would be good and long. First of all, her characters are always so enjoyable. Getting to know them through the pages of her books is always a fun time. The banter between her MMC and FMC in all of her novels have always been delightful to read. She does forced proximity so well, but it is always with a little bit of a surprising take, not in a repetitive or predictable way that makes it seem to be too trope-y. And the portions of this book that are made up of an epistolary format are woven seamlessly into the other more narrative timelines that eventually come together to bring us a twisty surprise (I did not know quite how she was going to pull everything together at the end, but I loved where we ended up!). There are some serious topics that are tackled in this one, including grief and early stages of recovery from alcoholism, and they are handled with sensitivity. I think the fact that I started and finished in one day speaks for itself!

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The Me I Used to Be by Kristan Higgins

The Me I Used to Be by Kristan Higgins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Back in senior year, Audrey, Micah, Jasmine, and Beck were the Core Four: the lucky one, the beautiful one, the smart one, the sporty one. They had color-coded dreams, inside jokes, and a lifelong friendship they thought would last forever. But graduation night ended in a tragic accident, followed by the kind of silence that stretches for decades.

Now, they’ve returned for their reunion, each carrying a life that looks nothing like the glossy future they imagined. There are stalled careers, complicated marriages, outspoken adult children, and secrets that never fit into holiday cards. For one of them, a diagnosis of early-onset dementia turns the weekend into a ticking clock.

Across one unforgettable weekend, the Core Four must decide if their past can still change their future together.
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I have been a huge fan of Kristan Higgins's books since back in the Gideon's Cove and Blue Heron days, and she has long been one of my auto-buy authors. Therefore, when given the chance to read her newest novel months before its publication date, I jumped at the chance and placed my entire TBR list off to the side so I could devour it this afternoon. Higgins was once an author who gave us swoon-worthy men and strong FMCs in her series contemporary romances (always with the important canine sidekick thrown in), and they were always fun to read. However, over the last decade or so, her novels have become fuller and deeper, and while they are still romances at their core (and those canine companions are still a part of every story), they have a complexity that was not evident in those earlier stories.

The tone of Higgins' latest offering reminds me a little bit of her 2021 title PACK UP THE MOON, possibly because I recently reread it in audiobook form, in that it has as a central theme a scary medical diagnosis and revolves around its effects on a family/found family (one of my favorite tropes) group. Told through multiple timelines and multiple viewpoints, it traces the story of four friends as they experience first a tragedy in high school, then it's ramifications throughout their early adulthoods, and finally a resolution that is unlike anything they ever could have expected. This grabbed me from the first chapter, and I read it straight through in a very satisfying binge reading session, which is actually the way I read most of Higgins's books, now that I think of it. I am so thrilled that this author has a new book being launched out into the world, and I hope there will be many more where this one came from.

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Once and Again by Rebecca Serle

Once and Again by Rebecca Serle
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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The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time.

Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Dave is alive and happy, and out on the Malibu waves. But ever since, Marcella, her power spent, has lived in fear of what she won’t be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite: a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models—and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.

Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road, back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next to door to return home as well: Stone, Lauren’s first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.

As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
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First of all, it's important to know that I am of the opinion that Rebecca Serle can do no wrong. I have never failed to read a book of hers that did not fully entertain me, sometimes ripping my heart out (In Five Years), other times leaving me with a feeling of just straight up satisfaction (Expiration Dates). Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to read one of my most anticipated releases of 2026, I jumped at the chance. While this new offering of Serle's did not leap to the top of my top five list of her works, it was still a solid novel with her trademark light magical realism element and the kind of characters who are easy to come to care for and an engaging storyline that kept me entertained from the first to last page. There were a few unexpected surprises thrown in that kept the plot from becoming predictable, and the HEA that I was expecting to find at the end of the book was different from the one I got. I loved that because it meant that all the assumptions I was making that I "knew where this was going" were wrong, and that is the mark of a good novel, in my opinion. Those who are already fans of Serle's will enjoy this one, and if you like authors like Ashley Poston and Kristy Greenwood, this should appeal to you as well.

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