Top Ten Tuesday – Popular Books that Lived Up to the Hype

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Popular Books that Lived Up to the Hype.

For this topic, I could easily put down 20 books! I think a lot of books that I have read and enjoyed are ones that are popular and/or other reviewers/bloggers have raved about.  Most of the time, I won’t read a book until I check Goodreads and see that some of my friends have enjoyed it. I trust my book friends opinions!

 

What is your favourite popular book?

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Murder in Chinatown (Gaslight Mystery #9) by Victoria Thompson

Sarah Brandt has made her uneasy way to Chinatown to deliver a baby. There she meets a group of Irish women who, completely alone at Ellis Island, married Chinese men in the same predicament. But even as a new century dawns, New Yorkers still cling to their own kind, scorning children of mixed races.

When the new mother’s half-Chinese, half-Irish niece goes missing, Sarah knows that alerting the police will accomplish nothing, and seeks the one person she can turn to-Detective Sergeant Malloy.

And when the missing girl is found dead in a Chinatown alley, Sarah and Malloy have ample suspects in her murder-from both sides of Canal Street.

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Murder in Chinatown is the 9th novel in the Gaslight mystery series and I love this series! I love reading about what adventures and murders Sarah gets herself involved with. Also I have never read anything about the turn of the century so I love the historical aspect.

It’s interesting to make comparisons between today’s society and what society was like over 100 years ago. Sadly there are things that haven’t changed. In this novel, Sarah is open and honest about what the situation is like for the Chinese who have immigrated to the US. Only Chinese men are allowed to come over to work in the United States. They are treated as second class citizens even though in some situations they are making good money, even better than white immigrants.

Because of the lack of Chinese women, Chinese men are marrying Irish women and having mixed babies. These children are not treated as Irish or Chinese since neither society will accept them as they are not fully 100% of a certain race.

Thankfully we have Sarah. Even though she is well aware of the stereotypes, she ignores them and helps deliver babies regardless of what the situation is. In this novel, a Irish woman is giving birth and after the birth, an Irish-Chinese young woman goes missing and eventually is found dead. Obviously there is a lot of tension between the Irish and the Chinese, each pointing to the other as the murderer.

I enjoyed the mystery more than previous novels since I didn’t guess who the killer was. Thompson did a great job throwing in a number of suspects who each had a reason for killing the young woman.

4 calculators out of a potential 5. If you haven’t heard of this series, I would highly recommend it!

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The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand

It’s Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom’s wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate.

But it’s going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom’s famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect.

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From the very first page, I was hooked on The Perfect Couple. It rotated between current day, where the maid of honour was found dead by the bride-to-be on her wedding day and past events that played a big part in what was happening in the current day.

I liked the cast of characters that played a role in the wedding as well as the investigation. I liked how a character wasn’t focused on for too long and  we got to see the perspective of many others that played a part.

The mystery wasn’t super amazing and I had a feeling of where the novel was going. There was one part that I didn’t like, which was the conclusion of the chief’s and detective’s findings. I won’t spoil it, but it was disappointing and not the way I wanted an investigation to end.

This is the perfect read for this summer and I couldn’t put the novel down!

4 calculators out of a potential 5. I really enjoyed my first read by Elin Hilderbrand and I’m open for suggestions on other reads by her!

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WWW Wednesday – July 25, 2018

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme is hosted by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. The Three Ws are:

What did you recently finish reading?

It’s Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom’s wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate.

But it’s going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom’s famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect.

I haven’t read anything by Elin Hilderbrand before, but I will certainly be reading more! I loved The Perfect Couple! Full review will be up tomorrow!

What are you currently reading?

Sarah Brandt has made her uneasy way to Chinatown to deliver a baby. There she meets a group of Irish women who, completely alone at Ellis Island, married Chinese men in the same predicament. But even as a new century dawns, New Yorkers still cling to their own kind, scorning children of mixed races.

When the new mother’s half-Chinese, half-Irish niece goes missing, Sarah knows that alerting the police will accomplish nothing, and seeks the one person she can turn to-Detective Sergeant Malloy.

And when the missing girl is found dead in a Chinatown alley, Sarah and Malloy have ample suspects in her murder-from both sides of Canal Street.

I love this series! It’s focused on a widowed midwife in New York City at the turn of the century!

What do you think you’ll read next?

After what happened in London, Kirsty needs a fresh start with her family. 
And running a guesthouse in the Welsh mountains sounds idyllic.

But then their first guest arrives.
Selena is the last person Kirsty wants to see.
It’s seventeen years since she tore everything apart.

Why has she chosen now to walk back into Kirsty’s life? Is Selena running from something too? Or is there an even darker reason for her visit?

Because Kirsty knows that once you invite trouble into your home, it can be murder getting rid of it…

I never started reading this last week, but should get to it this week!

What are your WWW? Have you read The Perfect Couple, Murder in Chinatown or Do Not Disturb?

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The Ever After by Sarah Pekkanen

Josie and Frank Moore are happy… at least Josie thinks they are. As parents of two young girls in the Chicago suburbs, their days can be both busy and monotonous, and sometimes Josie wonders how she became a harried fortysomething mother rather than the driven career woman she once was. But Frank is a phenomenal father, he’s handsome and charismatic, and he still looks at his wife like she’s the beautiful woman he married more than a decade ago. Josie isn’t just happy—she’s lucky.

Until one Saturday morning when Josie borrows her husband’s phone to make a quick call—and sees nine words that shatter her world.

Now Josie feels as if she is standing at the edge of a sharp precipice. As she looks back at pivotal moments in the relationship she believed would last forever, she is also plunging ahead, surprising everyone (especially herself) with how far she will go to uncover the extent of her husband’s devastating secret.

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I’m super torn on my rating for this novel. I flew through The Ever After, reading it over 2 sittings, but I didn’t like the novel and was overall disappointed.

I really enjoyed Sarah Pekkanen’s other novels – The Wife Between Us & The Perfect Neighbors. I was hoping for a mystery thriller and I got a predictable drama about a wife finding out a secret about her husband that causes her to question her life.

I wish there was more action in the novel. You learn of the “secret” early on and then nothing really happened. The reader is dragged through Josie’s thoughts on what she is going to do next.

The positives are that the book is really hard to put down and it only 250 pages! I’m really surprised how quickly I read the novel, especially when I wasn’t loving it. Pekkanen really knows how to write and makes you keep flipping pages.

2 calculators out of a potential 5. I wouldn’t recommend, especially to those that enjoyed Pekkanen’s previous novels.

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