1.) The Examiner by Janice Hallett
From Goodreads:
Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one. There’s Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience in art practice aside from running his family’s gallery. Patrick runs an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified. Finally, there is the examiner, the man hired to grade students’ final works—an art installation for a local cloud-based solutions company that may have an ulterior agenda—and who, in sifting through final essays, texts, and message boards, warns that someone is in danger…or already dead. And nothing about this course has been left up to chance.
This was my first Janice Hallett novel and it was an interesting reading experience. Hallett writes her novels in a mixed media format. It took a bit of adjusting to her writing style and it was confusing at times but I also enjoyed this weird, puzzling, murder mystery.
The premise was interesting. Six art students from various walks of life end up as a cohort in an arts grad program at a prestigious UK university. They are enrolled to earn a one year masters degree by taking a challenging multimedia arts course.
The story is told via emails, texts, group chats, online message boards, assignments, course work, professor notes, board of review notes, Whatsapp conversations, and class notes as the author weaves the story together. It is clever, creative, and very cerebral. It was like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. I had to keep reading because I had no idea where the story was going or how it was going to end. There were some interesting twists and reveals. In addition, there was group project drama with its power struggles, personality clashes, miscommunication, and inability to work cohesively. This would be great Fall reading. I love a campus novel and an academia mystery. This one, while unique, got a bit too convoluted, drawn out, and outlandish towards the end.
My Rating: An unexpected and unique reading experience.
2.) Family of Liars by E. Lockhart
This is the prequel to We Were Liars which is a book that I didn't read but watched the TV show and enjoyed.
From Goodreads:
The thrilling prequel to We Were Liars that takes readers back to the summer that the Sinclair family’s lives changed forever...Welcome back to the Sinclair family. They always were liars.
This book is set a generation before We Were Liars. It is the story of the moms: Carrie, Penny, and Bess. It is another summer of secrets and family drama on Beechwood Island. I loved getting the backstory on the sisters and the parents. The Sinclair family as a whole is such an interesting fictional family. I enjoyed the inclusion of the extra characters...the uncle and cousins...who also grew up summering on the island with the sisters. I loved the cousin dynamic which was similar and different from the younger generation of cousins in We Were Liars. Yardley was a great character. The story was entertaining and the characters were interesting as the reader sees how the sisters childhood relationships influenced their adult relationships and what happened between them. It explains why their relationships are all fake smiles, pretended perfection, competitive, and surface level. It also shed light on Penny and why her marriage failed and what she was trying to hide in We Were Liars and other missing pieces of the Sinclair family puzzle.
The writing is definitely intended for a YA audience and didn't go as deep as I would have liked and the ending wasn't as shocking as in the first book; but I enjoyed the 1980s summer vibes and descriptions of food, elaborate family game nights, and traditions as well as the paranormal ghostliness. Stories about sisters will always be interesting to me especially sisters who start out close (or so they think) and end up not and how that comes about ... "But maybe we never were that kind of sisters..."
My Rating: An enjoyable summer read.
3.) Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
From Goodreads:
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life. Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared. A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible — a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
This is my second Alice Feeney book. The first one was kind of fun but this one wasn't great. The premise was so good but the ending was so annoying/infuriating that I immediately had to get on Reddit to try to interpret what the @#$% I just read.
I loved the setting of a remote Scottish island with a grieving writer with writer's block. I enjoy a locked island suspense mystery thriller. But this book didn't live up to its potential. The characters were unlikable. There were huge plot holes and unbelievable twists. I don't think the author knew what genre she wanted this novel to be. The pacing was weird. The middle of the book dragged. I wish more time had been spent on the ending. The build up was so slow and didn't hold my interest. This wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. I could put it down...often. It wasn't until the last 1/4 of the book that things started happening. There were themes of revenge and women's rage which could have been great but the story was so convoluted. By the time I read the last page I was so confused and left asking what just happened? This book came highly recommended by one of my favorite book podcasts so I was extra disappointed.
My Rating: Disappointing. The ending was just too far fetched for me.
4.) A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
From Goodreads:
Feyre, Rhysand, and their friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly altered world beyond, recovering from the war that changed everything. But Winter Solstice is finally approaching, and with it, the joy of a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens. They have more wounds than she anticipated-scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.
This is book four in the ACOTAR series. It is basically a holiday novella. It's the Winter Solistice in Velaris and Feyre, Rhysand, and their group are celebrating the holiday together. There are really no major plot lines. This book is all about relationships and character development. It's also supposed to be a breather between A Court of Wings and Ruin which was very heavy with drama and war and book five A Court of Silver Flames.
I liked the multiple POVs. Especially some from characters that we haven't previously had their POVs. I liked the setting of Winter Solstice and the characters getting a bit of a break. It was a quick read and full of romance and holiday fluff. If you are familiar with the ACOTAR series you know what you are getting into.
I still do not like Nesta! She's awful and so is Elain. They haven't won me over. I'm leery to start book five because I know it is all about Nesta. Ugh.
My Rating: A quick festive read.
5.) One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
From Goodreads:
Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer there at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life. Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it. Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when lifwas simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart. Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.
I've never read a Carley Fortune novel before but this book had so much buzz that I wanted to give it a try and I was sold just by looking at the cover. I am a lake girl through and through and anything with lake vibes is going to grab my attention. This is a companion book to Every Summer After but I had no idea and read it anyway.
The thing that I liked most about this contemporary romance was its nostalgic quality. The setting is immersive and cinematic. The author does a great job of putting the reader at the lake and in Barry's Bay which is a real place and one that I now would like to visit. I could feel the sunshine on the dock and the spray of water from the yellow ski boat as it zipped around the lake. Unfortunately the plot wasn't that riveting nor were the main characters. They were flat and one dimensional. Charlie talked like a frat boy home from college on summer break rather than the 35 year old business mogul he was supposed to be and Alice was just as juvenile. You can be playful and have flirty banter without it being so juvenile. All too often the banter between Charlie and Alice just made me cringe. I also wanted a deeper emotional relationship between them and less of a physical one. This book has some spice.
Contemporary romance isn't my favorite of the romance genre. I prefer a good Regency romance. LOL. I also should have read Every Summer After first and maybe I would have felt a deeper connection to the characters. But I loved the summer lake aesthetic and that was enough to keep me reading. I also agree with Nan who said, "Good things happen at the lake!"
My Rating: Okay... a fluffy summer romance.
6.) The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
From Goodreads:
Throughout her life Sybil Van Antwerp has used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings around half past ten Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has. A mother, grandmother, wife, divorcée, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
This book came recommended to me from so many places and people. They were right. It was wonderful. I loved the feisty, no nonsense, and opinionated Sybil Van Antwerp and I feel sad not to read any more of her letters. This is a book that will stay with me and has made me want to buy some beautiful stationary, stamps, pens, and write some letters. Letter writing is a lost art and I remember so clearly the joy of opening the mail box and finding a newsie letter from a friend or loved one.
This is beautifully written literary fiction set between the years of 2012 to 2021. Sybil is a 73 year old retired law clerk who has had an illustrious career. She is divorced and her children are grown with children of their own. The reader learns about Sybil, her life, friends, and family through reading her letters to them and theirs to her. Writing letters (and some emails) is how Sybil communicates with the world. It is also how she processes her emotions, expresses what she has a hard time saying in person, befriends people, makes demands on people, and how we get to know her. She is a force to be reckoned with and has much that she wishes to convey.
I loved the structure of this book. Sybil's story is told in epistolary form. The audiobook is especially fantastic with a wonderful cast of characters that brought the story to life. Her story was surprisingly propulsive as I tried to put together the pieces of her life. Sybil is flawed and often made mistakes as she confronted (or didn't) the things in her life and yet I felt empathetic to her even when she was in the wrong and I cringed reading her sometimes sharp and harsh words. But there was so much to her as a person...so much character growth. I loved Sybil's character arc. You could see how she was shaped by her childhood, family, marriage, motherhood, career, loss, grief, friendship, aging, and her yearning for connection. She could be a tough cookie but by the time I finished the book I absolutely loved (and now miss) Sybil.
I love that Sybil was a voracious reader and a writer. She wrote to many famous authors and literary icons (many of my own favorites) who sometimes wrote her back. All of the literary allusions to authors and books were delightful! I love when my favorite books and authors show up in other places. I particularly loved how she and her bestfriend and sister-in-law, Rosalie, ended every letter to each other with what they were reading. This is definitely a book for book lovers.
This lovely book made me think, feel, and reflect on the themes of regret, forgiveness, love, and the power of human connection. I want to buy a copy so that I can annotate it because there were so many beautiful quotes like, "Life is filled with the miraculous and the mundane." And "...I know you think of me as your mother only, but please inside, I am just a girl." This is a such an endearing novel and a debut novel at that! I look forward to reading more from Virginia Evans. I highly recommend this book.
My Rating: Absolutely charming.
7.) My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
From Goodreads:
At sixteen, Lady Jane Grey is about to be married off to a stranger and caught up in a conspiracy to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But those trifling problems aren’t for Jane to worry about. Jane gets to be Queen of England.
This was my book club's pick for September 2025. It is a YA Historical Fantasy and it's also very Princess Bride-esque. It is an alternate history of Lady Jane Grey who was the tragic great niece of King Henry VIII and her nine days reign as Queen of England before she was beheaded by her successor Queen Mary. But...that doesn't happen in this book! There is a plot twist! I loved that Lady Jane gets a much different fate in this over-the-top comedy.
In this tale Lady Jane is intelligent, stubborn, independent, and not a damsel in distress. Throw in a handsome and mysterious guy that she is forced to marry, royal and political intrigue, some eyebrow raising magical realism, a pretty outrageous plot, and you've got this book.
The writing is humourous and unique. It is actually triple authored. Throughout the book the narrators often break the fourth wall and throw in many pop culture references. Despite the actual sad history of Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guilford Dudley and this novel's satirical commentary on societal and gender norms of the time... the book doesn't take itself too seriously. Quite the opposite.
Did I love it? No..but it's light and fluffy and at times ridiculous but it was also a quick and humorous read. This is the first book in a series called The Lady Janies. If the next book was a continuation of this story I don't think I would read it but the next book takes on Jane Eyre in another alternative romance retelling and what can I say? I'm intrigued.
My Rating: A good palate cleanser.
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