#5Books: Book recs and yeah, I took a time out

Last year wasn’t the best — understatement of 2021, yes?

In truth, aside from COVID, I had issues at work with people, and I have to admit, am trying very hard not to dread going back to work today in fact. I wrote this on the weekend, so apologies if it sounds wonky.

When I went on my Christmas break last year, there wasn’t much I could do, and had a vague feeling of something being off because I wasn’t doing anything. Instead, I stopped — blogging, twitter (stuff was scheduled previously) and yeah commenting on blogs too. I avoided thhe news, and let myself read random things, as well taking the time to catch up on my reading, which had more erratic moments than I would care to admit last year.

End result: I feel better. Rested. Yes, there are lingering issues at work I have to make peace with, but I have a plan of attack to deal, that I am working very hard to keep at the forefront of my mind when said enxiety rears its head: go with the flow. I don’t want to give my energies to those things that sap my strength and chip away at my mental health.

I am hopeful; I am trying to be ready and hold myself accountable for things I know I need to do, but never do as consistently as I would like.

It also means, I am ready to get back to blogging — including sharing some of my reviews for The Children’s Book Council of Australia. I did previously, and then I stopped (why, I don’t know) but I now have nephews who are growing (5 year old twins), and one who is ust over a month old, so children’s books are going to become a big part of my life 🙂

How was your holiday break?

For this week though, here are my book recs

Quiet in her Bones

My mother vanished ten years ago.
So did a quarter of a million dollars in cash.
Thief. Bitch. Criminal.
Now, she’s back.
Her bones clothed in scarlet silk.

When socialite Nina Rai disappeared without a trace, everyone wrote it off as another trophy wife tired of her wealthy husband.

But now her bones have turned up in the shadowed green of the forest that surrounds her elite neighborhood, a haven of privilege and secrets that’s housed the same influential families for decades.

The rich live here, along with those whose job it is to make their lives easier. And somebody knows what happened to Nina one rainy night ten years ago.

Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream that night, and he’s determined to uncover the ugly truth that lives beneath the moneyed elegance…but no one is ready for the murderous secrets about to crawl out of the dark.

Even the dead aren’t allowed to break the rules in this cul-de-sac.

I know Nalini Singh’s name from her urban fantasy series, so I a thrilled that she has this coming out this year. It sounds like a delicious read, filled the kind of family secrets.

Girl A

‘Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’

Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family. She doesn’t want to think about growing up in her parents’ House of Horrors. And she doesn’t want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped. When her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can’t run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.

How do siblings come to terms with their past? I skimmed a couple of reviews on Goodreads and they mention this is less about a thriller and more about coping with childhood trauma.

Let her Lie

A dejected filmmaker lets his curiosity get the best of him and plunges into a web of depravity and danger from which there might be no escape.

Theo Snyder is at the end of his rope. One minute he was on top of the world, his documentary film The Basement a massive critical and commercial hit, the next crestfallen when his latest film was canceled after an embarrassingly public misstep. As his desperation grows, he makes a bold decision: to pursue the story of the notorious “Halo Killer,” Jasper Ross-Johnson. But delving into the life and mind of a serial killer could prove more deadly than Theo ever could have imagined.

At first, things are looking up. Jasper is willing to talk, the footage of the jailhouse meetings is spectacular, and famed investigator Zora Neale Monroe joins him on the project. Theo is sure he’s getting close to something no one else has discovered: the truth about why Jasper was captured before he could kill his final victim. Someone else was on the beach that day, someone who knows a lot more than they’re telling and just might know how it all happened. The truth could lead to more killing–unless Theo can uncover the real ending to the story of the Halo Killer first.

A real ending to a notorious serial killer case? Interesting: a partner, perhaps?

Three Single Wives

An addictive second mystery novel about book clubs, murder, and the domestic secrets inside every household from the author of Pretty Guilty Women!

Three beautiful women. Two wedding bands. One dead husband.

When Anne Wilkes, Eliza Tate, and Penny Sands arrive at book club bearing bottles of wine, none of them are plotting to kill. But when the subject of a philandering husband arises, revenge is in the air. By the end of the night, someone is dead.

Two women with rings on their fingers and one with stars in her eyes. All of them are hiding something. All of them are lying.

What really happened that night? Only the guilty knows. Did one woman take everything too far, or is the truth really more twisted than fiction?

A domestic thriller that will keep you guessing, Three Single Wives is a compelling mystery for book clubs that devoured Samantha Downing, Sandi Jones and Lucy Foley. 

Oh my my my, here there be liars. But who is dead? One of the ladies? Or a husband?

The First Day of Spring

A riveting page-turner about what propels one 8-year-old girl to commit an unspeakable act, and the tensely moving effect it has on the rest of her life – especially once she has a child of her own.

Chrissie is eight years old and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling of it made her belly fizz like soda pop. Across her neighborhood, Chrissie’s playmates and their parents are tearful and terrified. But Chrissie rules the roost – she’s the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a secret, thrilling power she doesn’t get to experience much at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.

Twenty years later, adult Chrissie is living in hiding under a changed name. A single mother now, she cares deeply for her own young daughter, which is why she’s so terrified when it appears that people are looking for them. The past is coming to catch up with Chrissie and she fears losing her child, the only thing she cares about.

Nancy Tucker leaves the reader breathless as she considers what happens when innocence and survival instincts collide. Tucker inhabits the voices of her young protagonist with a shocking authenticity and precision that moves the reader from sympathy to humor to horror to heartbreak, and back again. 

The characterisation here intrigues me — granted, blurbs are given to hyperbole, but the premise and the last para makes me eager for this book.

Have a great week everyone! I am currently reading a book in which The Queen of England (Yup, this one) investigates a murder at Windsor that was made to look like autoerotic asphyxiation. Now, that’s a sentence I never thought I would be typing!