I can’t wait for … A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell (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:

There is a stranger outside Caroline’s house.

Her spectacular new beach house, built for hosting expensive parties and vacationing with the family she thought she’d have. But her husband is lying to her and everything in her life is upside down, so when the stranger, Aiden, shows up as a bartender at the same party where Caroline and her husband have a very public fight, it doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.

As her marriage collapses around her and the lavish lifestyle she’s built for herself starts to crumble, Caroline turns to Aiden for comfort…and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aiden’s obsession with Caroline, her family, and her house grows more and more disturbing. And when Caroline’s husband goes missing, her life descends into a nightmare that leaves her accused of her own husband’s murder.

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

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Top 5 Tuesday – K – L – M – N – O

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme that Bionic Bookworm hosts. Today’s topic is K – L – M – N – O. 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 K, L, M, N or O ?

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I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie

What happened to Amanda Holmes?

Twenty years ago, she was found bludgeoned in a rowboat at the MacAllister family’s Camp Macaw. No one was ever charged with the crime.

Now, after their parents’ sudden deaths, the MacAllister siblings return to camp to read the will and decide what to do with the prime real estate the camp occupies. Ryan needs to sell. Margaux hasn’t made up her mind. Mary believes in leaving well enough alone. Kate and Liddie—the twins—have opposing views. And Sean Booth, the groundskeeper, just hopes he still has a home when all is said and done.

But it’s more complicated than a simple vote. The will stipulates that until they unravel the mystery of what happened to Amanda, they can’t settle the estate. Any one of them could have done it, and each one is holding a piece of the puzzle. Will they work together to finally discover the truth, or will their secrets finally tear the family apart?

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I think one of my favourite things to read about is when someone wealthy passing away and their family is left to deal with dividing the estate, in which the deceased has added in some special clause to throw the family through a loop. I love reading about the drama and how the family reacts.

This is what happens in I’ll Never Tell, but there is also so much more! 20 years ago, Amanda was found left for dead at summer camp. The case was never solved and everyone has their own thoughts on who is the prime suspect. In current day, siblings Ryan, Margaux, Mary, Kate and Liddie, meet at their family’s summer camp to go over their father’s will.

This was such an unique read because you got to read hour by hour what Amanda was doing the night before she was found and seeing where everyone was at that time. Today, the siblings are going crazy because they believe one of them is guilty. Turns out they are all guilty of keeping secrets, which of course get unveiled.

My only negative and the reason I’m not giving this a 5, is because with the four female siblings, I found them to be very confusing and hard to tell apart. There was a few times where I had to go back to the beginning chapters to see which female they were talking about. I probably missed some of the background of the characters because I thought Mary was Kate or visa versa.

4 calculators out of a potential 5. I’ve read Catherine McKenzie’s previous novel, The Good Liar, but I’ll Never Tell just blows it out of the water. I would highly recommend this one and especially during the summertime!

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Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6) by Robert Bryndza

On a cold icy morning, a mother wakes to find her daughter’s blood-soaked body frozen to the road. Who would carry out such a horrific killing on the victim’s doorstep?

Straight off her last harrowing case, Detective Erika Foster is feeling fragile but determined to lead the investigation. As she sets to work, she finds reports of assaults in the same quiet South London suburb where the woman was killed. One chilling detail links them to the murder victim – they were all attacked by a figure in black wearing a gas mask.

Erika is on the hunt for a killer with a terrifying calling card. The case gets more complicated when she uncovers a tangled web of secrets surrounding the death of the beautiful young woman.

Yet just as Erika begins to piece the clues together, she is forced to confront painful memories of her past. Erika must dig deep, stay focused and find the killer. Only this time, one of her own is in terrible danger …

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If you love mysteries and thrillers and you haven’t read the Detective Erika Foster series, you need to start reading it right away! Each novel is unique and doesn’t slow down like some series tend to.

In the 6th novel in the series, Erika gets interrupted on Christmas Day with a young woman who was killed on her front doorstep. This may seem like a straight forward case, but this young woman had a ton of secrets and made some enemies along the way. I really enjoyed this novel and was totally surprised at the end of the novel when the killer was revealed.

4 calculators out of a potential 5. Another great novel in the series! I’m sad that I have caught up with the series, so will need to be on the lookout for when the next novel gets released!

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Educated by Tara Westover

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

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With over 330,000 ratings on Goodreads and an average rating of 4.48 (out of 5), you would think that you would be the majority of those that loved Educated. Sadly I did not.

Tara’s story is amazing. You would never think that what she went through happened in the last 30 years. She is so inspiring that she was able to go from no formal education to getting one of the top scholarships in the world.

The problem for me, was that I couldn’t connect with Tara and her story. I found the novel lacked an emotional element. I wanted to know more about Tara’s feelings – what was it like leaving America, what was it like taking an airplane for the first time, what was it liking being in a big city? I wanted to feel something.

I also found that some parts didn’t add up for me. There were different stories in the novel that Tara pointed out may not of happened the way she remembered. She remembers four people in the story, but out of those four, all have conflicting views on who was there. Tara also went through a time where she couldn’t rely on her own memory and had to rely on her boyfriend at the time. Because of this, I was hesitant on taking Tara’s story at face value.

2 calculators out of a potential 5. Sadly wasn’t the book for me or my book club (all gave the novel either a 2 or 3), but it still provided a lot of discussion!

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