The Arrangement - Robyn Harding

Nat, an art student in Manhattan is struggling to pay her bills, and is feeling the pressure as she falls further behind paying her roommates her share.  During a study session with a classmate at her beautiful Chelsea apartment, her friend tells her about becoming a Sugar Baby.   Desperation wins out and Nat signs up as a “pay per meet” where she will only meet men for dinner or drinks with “no strings attached”.  What could go wrong?

Nat feels an instant connection with her first date, Gabe. He’s older, successful and seems to really enjoy Nat’s company.  And then the roller coaster leaves the station…  Gabe tells Nat that he is divorced, which is, of course, a lie.  When his wife tells him that is daughter is struggling with self-harm, Gabe knows he needs to give his daughter all the attention and guidance he can but Nat just can’t let that happen.

When Gabe turns up dead and his volatile relationship with Nat is exposed, it seems obvious that she was the one to kill him.  She has no alibi and her ever escalation alcohol abuse doesn’t leave h er with much credibility. 

There were a few minor drawbacks.  I did not find a single character in this novel to be likeable, which may well have been the point. 

The novel really gained momentum after the break-up and murder.  This would make a great beach read, a little murder, a little “dating”, a little intrigue. 

3.5 Rounded to 4 stars.  Thank you to NetGalley and the publish for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thirteen - Steve Cavanagh

Thirteen is the 4^th book in Steve Cavanagh’s Eddie Flynn series.  While this book can stand alone, I feel that the reading may be more engaged with the main character if they knew more of his back story.

Bobby Solomon, one of the hottest actors of the time is on trial for the murder of his also famous wife and their chief of security. In this case, the killer is not the defendant but a serial killer so intent on getting away with his crime that he works his way onto the jury.   

Bobby’s hot shot legal team finds Eddie Flynn, a local defense attorney who is not afraid to go after the police department but as the trial gets under way and more information comes to light, Eddie turns out to be Bobby’s only hope.  Eddie employs everything from legal maneuvering to sleight of hand to keep Bobby from going to jail for the rest of his life but it might not be enough as the serial killer works from the inside to gut the jury.

This was a an interesting mix of police procedural and psychological thriller.   

I found the pacing of the first third of the book to be a little slow and disjointed. There were a few course changes so fantastically improbably that I found them to be unbelievable.  The story telling really picks up as the trial begins and there are enough twist and turns and red herrings to keep the reading guessing and surprised.

The entire novel is written without a setting in the sense that nothing was described, not the wood grain of the bench, the leather interior of the car, the leaves on the trees. Just as in books where the setting is so important as to become its own character, the lack of setting in this book was just as glaringly noticeable and made everything read in grey-scale.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC in exchange to my honest opinion.

Never Have I Ever - Joshilyn Jackson

Part time scuba instructor, wife of a professor, mother to a new born, and step mom to a teen-ager, Amy is living your standard suburban life, down to the wives\mothers book club.

The fodder for the neighborhood gossip, the latest tenant of the AirBnb property down the block shows up to the book club and inserts herself right in the middle of all the goings on, challenging the women to play an adapted game of Never Have I Ever.

Unreliable Narrator, meets twist after turn after lie … holy rollercoaster.

Every time I thought I saw where the story was heading, there was a plot twist, revelation or flash back that changed everything.   Neither of the main characters were particularly likeable, but I think that was intended.

The author’s descriptions in the scuba diving scenes were mesmerizing, her phrasing had both the heavy and light feeling of being suspended in the warm arms of the sea. 

This would be an amazing book club read.

Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for the e-Arc in exchange for my honest review.

Another Life - Robert Haller

Another Life is told through the lives of 4 different people in a tiny Upstate New York Community.
• Laura, a 15 year old girl trying to navigate life as a teenager, with all the emotions and confusion that comes with it. 
• April, a 40 year old divorce’, VBS and math teacher, and Laura’s mother, who has become stuck in a very comfortable and very lonely rut.
• Paul, a 20 something local celebrity home after heart-break in NYC, who id hiding out in his childhood bedroom and the bottom of a bottle
• Ben, a young boy also trying to figure out his place in the world; unfortunately for Ben, that place is even more confusion with the addition of his Foster brother, DeShawn.

Another Life looks at small town life and the interconnected- and disconnectedness of the people that live there. 

There were many, many issues that were brought up in this novel, all great points of discussion but ultimately these issues were just used as props and most weren’t dealt with in any depth. And wow, lots of church, pastor, vacation bible school stuff. I mean LOTS!

There were several other side characters whose stories were left without any type of resolution, DeShawn and Bethany and Paul and even Ben’s stories just petered out as the plot brought April and Laura back to each other and out of the small town. 

I feel that there were too many characters, not enough backstory and too many plot arcs that petered out. 

Thank you to Edelweiss for the e-Arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Mrs. Everything - Jennifer Weiner

“Mrs. Everything” by Jennifer Weiner follows the lives of 2 sisters from the 1950's onward. The author has said that this is her take on “Little Women”, which seems true enough as it highlights in some instances how far women have come and at what cost, while also showing how little has changed for women by and large. The book touches on what it is to be a woman in all the roles that women find themselves, including those they find themselves thrust into and those that the fall into by circumstance or choice. The characters are chronicaled as they struggle, with some limited success to figure out who they are as people independent of those roles. This would make an excellent book club read as it covered so many topics that would make for good discussion: Racism, sexism, sexual orientation, rape, drugs, motherhood, the freelove era, the #metoo movement, and more. While there were a lot of plusses for the book, I found the material to be a little bit too much. There were too many issues and at times the pacing seemed a little bit too slow. A good read, but not a great read for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the eArc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Cold Storage - David Koepp

Cold Storage was a fast, fun read.

A semi-intelligent fungus comes back to earth in some space debris and the military finds a quiet corner storage facility to warehouse it.  Times  change, circumstances change and the high alert safety precautions become a thing of the past as the unit is sealed up and, for the most part, forgotten about.   Insert global warming and human error and you have all the elements you need to a light, at times humorous, sci-fi/horror novel.

This is a fast paced, quick read.