I can’t wait for … The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (Can’t-Wait Wednesday)

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we are excited about that we have yet to read. The book I can’t wait to read is this week is:

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

What novel are you excited to read? Let me know in the comments below!

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Top 5 Tuesday – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme that Bionic Bookworm hosts. Today’s topic is U – V – W – X – Y – Z. You need to come up with a book title for each letter of the alphabet, which I think will be quite the challenge!

What is your top book that starts with U, V, W, X, Y or Z?

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The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are ruthlessly ambitious high-flyers working in the lucrative world of Wall Street finance where deception and intimidation thrive. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to reach the top.

When they are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise that requires them to escape from a locked elevator, dark secrets of their team begin to be laid bare.

The biggest mystery to solve in this lethal game: What happened to Sara Hall? Once a young shining star—”now gone but not forgotten”.

This is no longer a game. 
They’re fighting for their lives.

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Available Tomorrow – July 30, 2019!

I was totally surprised by The Escape Room in the best way possible. I wasn’t sure what I expected going in, but I wasn’t expecting what I got. It was so hard to put down and I eagerly keep flipping pages wondering what was going to happen next.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot, so I’m just going to say that the novel alternated between two plots, which obviously came together at the end. The first was four high power employees getting locked in an elevator, being told that it was an escape room for a team building event. The second was the story of Sara Hall.

I loved the way that the novel was divided and I was hooked on both of the elevator scenes and Sara’s story. The novel isn’t your typical mystery thriller where there isn’t a big twist at the end. I think the novel was flawless throughout and I really felt my like or dislike towards the characters.

5 calculators out of a potential 5. One of my favourite novels of the year. Highly recommend this one!

Thank you to Netgallery and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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Undone (Will Trent #3) by Karin Slaughter

When a tortured young woman enters the trauma center of an Atlanta hospital, Dr. Sara Linton is thrust into a desperate police investigation with Special Agent Will Trent and his partner, Faith Mitchell. Though guarding their own wounds and their own secrets, Sara, Will, and Faith find that they are all that stand between a madman and his next victim.

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Yay, it’s finally here – the merge between the Grant County series (starting Sara Linton) and the Will Trent series! I really enjoy both Sara and Will so I was very excited to start reading the novel where they come together. If you are planning to read this series, it’s very important to read Grant County first and then start with this novel. It’s confusing, but so worth it with all of the surprises that happen.

Sara is working in Atlanta and is treating Faith, who is the partner of Will Trent, after Faith fainted at work. During that time, a woman comes into the ER who was just hit by a car and has injuries that Sara has never seen before.

I really enjoyed all of the characters in this novel – Sara, Will, Faith and Amanda – and I loved seeing them all work together. I did guess the twist/bad guy at the end of the novel, but it didn’t take away from my experience at all.

Warning – minor spoilers: there was one sex scene between Will Trent and his wife, Angie, where it can be seen as rape. It was very uncomfortable to read as I did see it as rape (no means no). For those that are also uncomfortable with this, it’s best to skip this novel.

4 calculators out of a potential 5. Love this series and can’t wait to read the next novel!

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Summer of ’69 by Elin Hilderbrand

Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century! It’s 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother’s historic home in downtown Nantucket: but this year Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, a nursing student, is caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests, a passion which takes her to Martha’s Vineyard with her best friend, Mary Jo Kopechne. Only son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother who is hiding some secrets of her own. As the summer heats up, Teddy Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, a man flies to the moon, and Jessie experiences some sinking and flying herself, as she grows into her own body and mind.

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Elin Hilderbrand strays away from her genre in her new novel, Summer of ’69. Summer of ’69 takes the readers back to Nantucket during the summer of 1969 and follows the Levin family who are each struggling.

I was nowhere close to being alive in 1969 so I learned a lot about the time period during this novel. It was interesting learning what life was like 50 years ago and what major events occurred. I would of liked Hilderbrand to go a bit more detail about Chappaquiddick in the novel. I had very limited knowledge in what had happened and felt that I was missing something when Hilderbrand quickly rushed over the event.

I’m torn on if I liked the Levin family. It was hard to sympathize with some of the family member’s problems while they were living so lavishly in  Nantucket. Also I found that some of the characters weren’t explored as much as I would of liked them to be. They seemed very shallow.

3 calculators out of a potential 5. Not my favourite Elin Hilderbrand novel, but I did like reading a novel that had a sense of familiarity that also touched on something new.

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