The Invite

 

Irina Shapiro's latest caught my eye, so I ordered it and finished it in one day. 

Does it kind of look like an adult YA Point Horror from the 90s to anyone else? 

Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. 

Seven college friends who are now 26 are invited to a lake house by one of their number that hasn't been seen for I think it was three years. 

The once missing girl is Lexie. She was Serena's best friend in college and Noah's girlfriend...until she dumped Noah over text and disappeared. 

Noah is a pretty straightforward character. So boring that I can't even remember his profession. After Lexie's disappearance, he ended up with Serena and they're married. Serena wants kids right away. He does not, which he mentions right before they get to the lake house. She's pissy about it but pretends to be okay with it. What he doesn't know is that she's pregnant already. 

Serena is a Raging Bitch. And she's racist. Very insecure and that turns into sheer nastiness. I hate her. She's of course very upset at Lexie's return because she's sure Noah still wants Lexie. (And he does.)

Richie is a criminal attorney, works for the DA, typical player. 

Remy is a fashion photographer, works with some high profile people, also a typical player. (Though maybe not typical because a lot of the fashion industry is gay and he's not.) 

Angelina is a nurse with a long-time thing for Richie. She's the mom friend. 

Mia is an elementary school teacher. Can't say much about her that isn't a spoiler.  

Vince is The Black Guy. Yes, this is seriously his role. He's Angelina's ex and hoping to get back with her, but the others aren't close to him at all. Serena makes some racist comments towards him and doesn't understand why he was even invited. She felt the same way when Noah invited him to their wedding. See what I mean about racist bitch? Vince is a very likeable character, his only flaw being that he's a little too moony over Angelina when she's clearly into Richie. He and Mia are the only two I actually liked. While Angelina has a black grandmother, everyone else is mayo white, so Vince feels like he's the guy added for variety like they'd do in 90s YA horror or horror movies. I'm really not sure what Shapiro was going for with him. Was she mimicking that trope? You could take him out of the entire book and it wouldn't change much. 

So friends at the lake house. Lexie doesn't show. A body turns up in the lake the next morning. Cops are called. No one trusts anyone else. And it just spirals from there. 

I enjoyed it, mostly because it really did feel like grown up Point Horror. But I'd never reread it. Hated the ending. If you liked those books in the 90s, maybe check this out, but I wouldn't spend money on it.

Catching Up

Okay, I've gotten woefully behind on a lot of reviews. I always intend to write about things and then don't, so here are quick blurbs on some of the things I've read in the past almost year or so. 

Second book in the Against All Gods trilogy. Just as good as the first. I'm partway through the third, but I put it down two months ago and haven't picked it back up. I need to, but I also don't want it to be over. 

A girl who's missing her best friend (she's away at camp) meets a new girl that's only in town for a carousel revival project. It's basically a coming of age story and very good. 

Same author only with adult, enemies-to-lovers lesbians.

I really love this author. She's the one behind the updated Anne and Jo graphic novels that I may or may not have reviewed. 

Just look up Kathleen Gros and enjoy her stuff. 

  

Parachute Kids and its sequel Outsider Kids are about three young immigrant kids who are trying to live on their own hiding in the US while their parents work to get over here legally. 

This one is an excellent read, but definitely some serious themes. Highly recommend them both. 

Sea Legs is about a girl that lives on a boat with her parents and their cat. They travel from place to place, sometimes staying a while to earn money and then the girl can go to regular school. Otherwise, she's homeschooled. This one is mostly light-hearted with some serious moments, but those moments get VERY serious. 

I think I've reviewed Peapod Farm here before. Very cute series about a city girl whose Mom gets divorced and they move to the country to live on a farm with her new boyfriend. His two daughters come stay with them on the weekends. He's an asshole in the first one, but improves as the series goes on. This is the third volume. I was disappointed Summer, who they teased last time as not being as mean as she seems, didn't play a role in this volume. I mean, she's there, but not in the capacity I expected. 

I've also read the newest in the Click and Sunny Side Up series. Those are always good. 

Switching back to regular novels. 

This thing is amazing. 

It flips between 1936, when the older main character is a teen, and 1978, when she's a curator at the Met. The second main character is about that age in the 1978 sections. 

It involves Egypt, fashion, the Met Gala, and a stolen artifact. 

HIGHLY recommend. I need to check out more of her books when I've done my TBR pile some justice. 

Flipping back to YA. I don't usually do YA romance unless it's tied in with some historical or fantasy theme, but this one caught my eye. 

Sadie Wen is a model student, fighting for the spot of valedictorian, and her mortal enemy is Julius Gong. For a bit of therapy, Sadie writes emails where she says exactly what she wants to say, mostly to Julius but also to other classmates and teachers. Well, in this book, they get sent out and she's got to deal with the consequences. 

There's a novella sequel to this that just came out and I'm looking forward to reading it, even though I usually don't do digital. 

The newest book from the same author. 

Former model Leah Zhang is on a guided trip through China that's supposed to immerse her in her culture. 

Naturally, the guy that ruined her life with a lie is along for the ride. 

I really enjoy this author. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on her. 

I have two more by her in my TBR that I need to get to. 

And finally, I've gotten back around to Irina Shapiro. I was rereading The Clique series and then started on Alphas, and I needed to also read something that wasn't so teen fluffy. 

Echoes from the Past is a Shapiro series that comes before the Nicole Rayburn ones I started with. But I need to read all nine of these before getting back to Nicole, as she's teaming up with Quinn, the main character of this series. 

They're very similar to the Nicole books. Half is set in the past. Half is in the present and deals with the main character's personal drama. The main difference is that Quinn is an archaeologist who has the power to see the lives of the people who owned the artifacts she finds. They have to be dead for her to see anything, but you can imagine how this would be useful to an archaeologist. She seems to not like it, and I get that you could never use it for anything academic, but I'd still love that ability to really see into the past. 

Okay, that catches me up. I'm planning on working through the Echoes from the Past series, while finishing my Alphas reread, then probably getting back to the final book in the Against All Gods trilogy. I need to also finish Ami, the second Guardians of the Dawn book, as the third comes out on the 19th and it's featuring my favorite character. 

Nicole Rayburn 4

I finally got back to Nicole Rayburn's world of historical and present day mysteries. 

This one was my least favorite of the four so far. 

In the present day, a DNA test reveals Nicole's husband Kyle is not his father's son. He ends up getting the story of a drunken, post-near death experience hookup from his mom. She was a cop and this happened with her partner, who eventually became the police chief (or something). He spends a lot of time dealing with this, so the present day stuff is mostly him and less Nicole, which bored me. I like Kyle, but I don't really care about Kyle. 

In the past, we're in 1582. Lady Katherine Stiles has just lost her father and is dealing with learning that he left his estate and title to some random male cousin instead of her. She's got an uncertain future and it only gets worse when cousin Eustace arrives and he's an asshole. She turns to Luke, her childhood friend who worked for her father, and the two plot a bit, but she ends up taking things into her own hands and marrying her cousin. She's 14. He's an older cousin but not as much older as he could have been. It's just what was done back then, but this one is soap opera level. First, Luke discovers Eustace isn't Eustace. He's some actor who was Eustace's companion (yep, they mean that and that's why Eustace was kicked out of seminary school) and who killed Eustace and decided to take his place. Second, Kate is fucking Luke in secret, hoping to get pregnant so she can provide an heir and keep the estate. Maybe something can "happen" to Eustace. But Eustace is very abusive and the scenes with him are rage-inducing. Third, Luke is marrying the cook's daughter and Kate is jealous, even though she knows she can't marry Luke. So the day after the marriage, Kate slips Eustace some deadly nightshade and he gets sick and falls down the stairs, putting him out of commission for a few months. Luke at this point is in bed with both his wife and Kate. I think? Now I can't remember if they overlap. Anyway, Eustace is getting better over time and Kate and Luke fight over it with him basically condemning her to what she's gotten herself into. Kate goes to her neighbor and former suitor Lachlan, who's the only good character in this whole damn thing, and tells him what's going on. He's in love with her and on the unscrupulous side, so he agrees to off Eustace. He makes it look like he threatened him with revealing his lies and Eustace ran away to London, but Lachlan actually keeps him in a tower on his property and ends up killing him. Good. Kate bangs Lachlan and ends up having his baby. And if it couldn't get any more soap operaish, Kate and Luke's wife Hannah go into labor at the same time. Kate and Lachlan's kid is a girl, while Luke and Hannah have a boy, but Hannah passes out and the old nurse switches the kids so Kate can have her heir and never worry about having to marry. So Kate has to watch her daughter be raised by someone else, while she raises their kid as her heir. 

Eeyeah, it's a lot. It feels like just plain too much, especially coming from a 14-year-old. 

Kate is a wildly unlikeable character. I get that she's desperate, but if she'd given Lachlan a chance instead of being selfish and determined to keep her stupid estate, then she would have ended up in a decent and likely eventually happy marriage and still had a large estate. They could have outed fake Eustace and then maybe gotten the original estate, too. But noooooooo.  

So yeah, this is the first one of these I really didn't like. Shapiro needs to dial the plots back down to normal drama and leave the daytime antics to the soaps. 

The next book involves Dr. Quinn Allenby, who's the protagonist of another Shapiro historical mystery series. There are a whopping nine books in the Echoes from the Past series and all of them were written before Nicole Rayburn, so I'm taking a jump over to that series and then coming back for the Nicole/Quinn team up. They're also teaming up in the sixth Nicole book, but at least I'll have done the legwork already. 

Nicole Rayburn 1, 2 & 3

This is the book I mentioned last post, the one by the same author as Lost Colony.

The Hanging Tree is the first of six (so far) historical mysteries featuring non-fiction history writer Nicole Rayburn. 

In this first adventure, Nicole is staying at a writer's retreat for a week. She wants to come up with a new book idea after publishing some of her history non-fiction. (She specializes in the Alfred the Great era.) Her agent suggests she try writing fiction and while at the retreat, she learns about its ghost story, where a girl in the 1600s was hanged for witchcraft from a tree that still stands on the grounds. 

Nicole delves into research on Alys Bailey, the supposed witch. 

The book runs in alternating sections. A few chapters will be from the present day and then it will flip to 1639-1640. Nicole is always first person POV, whereas everyone else is 3rd person. Nicole and Alys are the most frequent voices, but each's love interest gets a few chapters. 

Alys's story is that she's basically getting pushed out of her home because her parents are dead and her older brother has just married. His new wife isn't exactly keen on Alys. Alys joins the household of the just-married new lord, who married into his position and is new to both the household and this area. His wife is a Puritan bitch, who's so off her rocker, she's disappointed her new husband doesn't beat her because she thinks that's what a godly man would do. Alys and the husband find solace in each other, and I'm sure you can see where that would lead to witchcraft accusations. 

In the present, Nicole is dealing with her own mysteries. There are hints at the haunting maybe being true, but it's definite that someone is messing with her research. She and Kyle team up to solve the mystery, which ends up with a few surprising reveals at the end. 

The second book is set later in the pandemic. Nicole and Kyle stayed together during the whole thing, so their relationship is strong. 

Or is it? 

Kyle takes Nicole to a friend's fancy B&B-type of place, which overlooks an island that contains the ruins of a church and an abbey-turned-residence. Nicole is thrilled by the historical significance and unearths yet another mystery from the past to inspire her next book.

The present day chapters are Nicole's researching the new mystery, and dealing with Kyle's sudden drama. His ex-wife was in a bad accident and still has him listed as her next of kin. As the story unfolds, we learn she was with Kyle's ex-best friend, Len, who was introduced last book and is a complete shit. And she's pregnant. Kyle is a bit too much of a nice guy and keeps getting pulled away to help the ex, dealing with the police side of the accident (the other driver was killed, there are signs the ex wasn't the one driving though it was made to look that way, etc.), and the ever-increasing drama leads Nicole to question their future, especially after a phone call from the ex. 

The chapters from the past are far more interesting. We're back in 1540 this time, during the age when Henry VIII is killing monks and nuns and stealing from them. Isobel Devlin finds herself married to the man who forcefully took Montrose Abbey, though she doesn't realize the depths of what he did right away. She's happy at first and they're as steamy as the couple in the first book. (Not like romance novel steamy, but there are multiple sex scenes in these books.) Once she finds herself pregnant, she starts to learn some backstory on her new husband from her terrified midwife. Isobel unravels her mystery while dealing with a bitchy best friend and hiding the truth from her husband, who gets scarier the more she learns. The mystery that Nicole first hears of is that the abbey caught fire and Isobel disappeared, never to be seen again. So it's fun to see how Isobel goes about everything she does. 

This one's present day is 2021, so there are still pandemic elements going on. 

Kyle's aunt has just died and left him her home, which confuses him, as he thinks it should have gone to his sister. He and Nicole, now married and expecting, are tasked with going through her things and trying to decide what to do with the house. Nicole once again gets a mystery handed to her on a plate. There was a ghost ship/shipwreck right outside the house in the late 1700s. 

The couple go through Kyle's aunt's things and find more clues to the shipwreck mystery, while Kyle also deals with minor aftermath from the events of the previous book. Asshole Len makes another appearance. Thankfully, that's not the main present day mystery. That involves figuring out what happened with his aunt's secret baby. 

Back in the past, Elisheba Keenan is being dragged from town to town by her gambling addict alcoholic husband. When she begs him to stop gambling for the night, he ends up selling her. Yep, you could sell your wife back in 1783. She's purchased by a man that turns out to be ship's captain Gabriel Randolph. The ship, of course, is the Aurora, the one who wrecked behind Kyle's aunt's house. Elisheba, now Ellie, is tasked with caring for the captain's sick daughter, Violette. I loved all these chapters, though the ending for the family might be a little too happy? It feels on the unlikely side. 

The book ends with a cliffhanger about Kyle's family, so I'm excited to see where that goes, but taking a break from these for a short time. I have the next one to read and then the fifth ties in another of the author's characters from a completely different historical mystery series. I'm probably going to have to read all of those before tackling the fifth Nicole book. 

I enjoyed all three of these immensely, though that is mostly due to the historical chapters. Alys, Isobel and Ellie are all fabulous characters. Nicole and Kyle are okay, though their drama is much less interesting. I don't dislike either of them. It's just hard to compare to historical women. 

Lost Colony

So Facebook loves to recommend books to me. This was one of them and so is the one I'm currently reading. The amusing thing is that until I cracked the cover on the second book, I didn't even realize they were by the same author. I didn't even glance at the author's name on the second book's cover. It was the layout that struck me as familiar. Turns out, this lady has written over 30 books! Mostly mysteries, I think. I plan on making my way through the series the second book begins and then we'll see if I pick up more of her work. 

The Lost Colony sounded right up my alley. It's about a reality show that pits a group of people against the living conditions of Jamestown. They can have no modern amenities. Everything is supposed to be as authentic as possible, except for the inclusion of women right away. It's set on a deserted island with a small settlement created for the show. There's a boat nearby with a medical team and any extra supplies the cast might need to keep alive, though they're supposed to do most of the work themselves.

As you can imagine, things immediately go wrong. When the contestants wake up after their first night on the island, the ship is gone. They're the only people on the island...and part of the supplies is also missing. Then the murders begin.

The book changes POVs every few chapters. It's easy to follow, because the POV character's name is under the chapter heading. The main two are Natalie, a school nurse, and Declan, a cop. But every character gets a turn at a POV chapter. 

I can't say much without massive spoilers, but I enjoyed this one a lot. I liked all the different backstories, the secrets each character hid. My only complaint is something I can't explain without spoilers, but let's just say I didn't care for the shift in her personality the last few days/weeks on the island and what she dealt with near the end was completely unnecessary. That bit of the story could have been removed without changing the plot a bit, so it felt like too much and it's the type of thing I think of as weak writing. Overall, I enjoyed everything except that bit. I'd recommend this.