Happy Friday! A couple months ago I shared a round up of books I have read recently and shared how I have been enjoying getting back into reading. It’s something I enjoy, but haven’t always had time for/prioritized, and I’m happy that I’ve found the time now to jump back into it.
My favorite genre is thrillers, particularly psychological thrillers. The more twisty, turny, messed up the plot, the better! However, I like to branch out of my comfort zone every now and then, and I’ve included a few books of other genres that I really enjoyed, including sci-fi, historical fiction, and a fun, breezy rom-com! I hope this list gives you some ideas for your reading list – enjoy!
Reading Recently
This book had a few different story lines that all came together as one in a very interesting way. Definitely recommend!
| |Description
Every day is the same.
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the same signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting from their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
Until today
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled in not only the investigation, but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
This may not be one that I would have grabbed on my own, because, let’s face it, I tend to judge a book by its cover. David grabbed this one from the library and it was a good read! About half way through I thought I had it figured out and wasn’t sure how the author was going to drag the story out for another couple hundred pages, but boy was I wrong! It had some really good twists that made for a very good story.
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“Give me one name. One person. And I will make them disappear.”
Sarah is a young professor struggling to prove herself in a workplace controlled by the charming and manipulative Alan Hawthorne, a renowned scholar and television host. The beloved professor rakes in million-dollar grants for the university where Sarah works – so his inappropriate treatment of female colleagues behind closed doors has gone unchallenged for years. And Sarah is his newest target.
When Hawthorne’s advances turn threatening, she’s left with nowhere to turn. Until the night she witnesses an attempted kidnapping of a young child on her drive home, and impulsively jumps in to intervene. The child’s father turns out to be a successful businessman with dangerous connections – and her act of bravery has put this powerful man in her debt. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid. In the only way he knows how. The man gives Sarah a burner phone and an unbelievable offer. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that can make her problems disappear.
No consequences. No traces. No chance of being found out. All it takes is a 29 second phone call.
Because everyone has a name to give. Don’t they?
This book is probably my favorite on this list, and it’s not even the genre I typically go for. I could not put this book down and I talked about it all the time, telling everyone I knew about this interesting book I was reading. The coolest thing is that I found this book by chance for a dollar at a local thrift store AND it’s a first edition. I never would have sought out this book if I hadn’t come across it that day, but I’m so glad that I did.
It’s classified as historical fiction, but there are pieces of true events mixed in. It tells the history and beginnings of the Mormon church, how they came to practice polygamy, and what polygamy was really like. It had pieces of , the 19th wife of Brigham Young (leader and “prophet” of the Mormon church in the 1800’s). She ended up leaving the church and beginning a political crusade that would outlaw polygamy, and eventually split the LDS church into what we know now as the Mormon church, and a sect that continues to practice polygamy to this day. It also had bits and pieces of letters and biographies written by Ann Eliza’s family members, which pieced the story together from different accounts and view points other than her own.
At the same time it told the fictional story of a present day “sister wife” who had been arrested for killing her husband, and her son, who was excommunicated from the church when he was 14, is trying to figure out what actually happened. The fiction and non-fiction are intertwined perfectly, and it had me wanting to read and learn all about the church’s history. Go read this book!
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It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of her family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how both she and her mother became plural wives.
Yet soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love, family, and faith.
I have enjoyed every book I have read by Ruth Ware, and this was no exception! Lots of twists and turns as the main character pieces together the events of a “hen” weekend (what the British call a bachelorette party), which ends in tragedy.
Description
What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.
Sometimes the only thing to fear…is yourself.
When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora’s reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods.
A baby gets kidnapped, but the circumstances are suspicious. Things don’t quite add up and the police suspect the parents have something to do with it. You think you have this one figured out, but it’s much more twisted and diabolical than you think!
| The Couple Next Door |Description
It all started at a dinner party. . .
A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors—a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night, when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately lands on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.
What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.
Recursion by Blake Crouch
This is another one that David picked up from the library for me. It’s a sci-fi book, which I don’t typically read, but it was very interesting! It deals with time travel, but in a way that is different than I’ve ever heard of before. A neuroscientist creates a machine that is meant to help dementia patients with their memory, but she unlocks the secret to time travel and memory alteration. It was a little hard to wrap my head around the concept, but it was well written, and very interesting to see how it played out.
Description
Reality is broken.
At first, it looks like a disease. An epidemic that spreads through no known means, driving its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. But the force that’s sweeping the world is no pathogen. It’s just the first shock wave, unleashed by a stunning discovery—and what’s in jeopardy is not our minds but the very fabric of time itself.
In New York City, Detective Barry Sutton is closing in on the truth—and in a remote laboratory, neuroscientist Helena Smith is unaware that she alone holds the key to this mystery . . .and the tools for fighting back.
Together, Barry and Helena will have to confront their enemy—before they, and the world, are trapped in a loop of ever-growing chaos.
This book was a little slow for me, but it was definitely worth sticking with it. I kept thinking “what is this girl trying to accomplish by inserting herself into their lives like this?” But it all made sense and there were some twists I definitely didn’t expect. I love when I can’t predict a book!
Description
Amber Patterson is fed up. She’s tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more—a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.
To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a couple straight out of a fairy tale.
Amber’s envy could eat her alive . . . if she didn’t have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards, and if it is discovered, her well-laid plan may fall to pieces.
With shocking turns and dark secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end, The Last Mrs. Parrish is a fresh, juicy, and utterly addictive thriller from a diabolically imaginative talent.
Funny story on this one – David had noticed that this audio book was in high demand at the library, so when he came across a signed paper copy of it, he grabbed it thinking that I may like it. I had never heard of it, but because he’d noticed how popular it was, it stuck out to him at a used book store. The Wedding Date is a fun, breezy romantic comedy, that has you hooked on the characters from the first page. If you’re looking for a quick, light read, I recommend this one!
Jasmine Guillory’s other books The Proposal and The Wedding Party pull in characters from this book, so I’d be interested in reading them as well!
Description
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist.
On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend….
After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other….
They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century–or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want….
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
Another Ruth Ware hit! This book gave me a Pretty Little Liars feel, with flashbacks to high school years at a private school, and dark secrets.
| |Description
On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten, along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister…
The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isa—receive the text they had always hoped would never come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.”
The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second-rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty. But their little game had consequences, and as the four converge in present-day Salten, they realize their shared past was not as safely buried as they had once hoped…
Atmospheric, twisty, and with just the right amount of chill to keep you wrong-footed, The Lying Game is told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, lending itself to becoming another unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.
Let’s chat
Have you read any of these? Will you be adding any of these books to your reading list? Do you have any that you recommend I add to my list?
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Wow! You read so many of my faves! I’m a thriller junkie as well! haha I think we have similar book taste, because I also find the Mormon church and polygamy pretty interesting, so I am definitely adding that one to my list! Thank you for the suggestion!
You would definitely enjoy The 19th Wife then! It’s fascinating. I couldn’t put it down. I have got many book ideas from your posts so thank YOU!