• Book Reviews

    Last Day: Blog Tour

    Today is my stop on the Last Day blog tour! Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are unbiased and my own.

    SYNOPSIS: From celebrated New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice comes a riveting story of a seaside community shaken by a violent crime and a tragic loss.

    Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.

    Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.

    Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?

    Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .

    My thoughts:

    The opening of this book was captivating. It began on Beth Lathrop’s last day. While the rest of the people in her life were starting a new day, she was already dead. Beth was also six months pregnant which added yet another layer of complexity to an already tragic situation when she was found by her sister, Kate.

    My mind instantly went to – it’s always the husband – but this family, they are not strangers to tragedy and it became obvious that more was amiss when the painting stolen during the first crime years before, had once again gone missing.

    This book was a page-turner as it moved between two tragic plot lines. I really liked that the author used the same detective; it made the story more cohesive for me. And while the easy out would have been the husband, Beth had her own secrets that she kept from her sister which kept me second guessing everything.

    I enjoyed the writing and character development. And even though the story was a devastating one, the author kept the plot moving without getting stuck in the tragedies of the characters’ lives – had this not been the case, I probably would have struggled more with violence and loss of life.

    I didn’t guess the ending, which I actually prefer with a plot like this one. This was my first book by Luanne Rice and will definitely not be my last. This was a compelling book which will make the reader reflect on family relationships, the bonds of siblings, and secrets kept.

    Purchase Links:

    Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

    About The Author:

    Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of 34 novels, which have been translated into 24 languages. The author of Last Day, Dream Country, Beach Girls, Pretend She’s Here and others, Rice often writes about love, family, nature, and the sea. She received the 2014 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement in the Literary Arts category.

    Several of Rice’s novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Beach Girls for Lifetime. Rice’s four cats are her muses, and she speaks their language. She lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

     

     

     

  • Book Reviews

    Meet Me On Love Lane: a review

    From the USA TODAY bestselling author of On the Corner of Love and Hate comes a romantic comedy about a woman who grudgingly returns home to small-town Pennsylvania, only to find herself falling in love—not only with the town, but with two of its citizens.

    Synopsis:

    Charlotte Bishop is out of options in New York City. Fired, broke, and blacklisted by her former boss, she’s forced to return to her hometown of Hope Lake, PA to lick her wounds. Although she’s expecting to find a miserable place with nothing to do, she is pleasantly surprised to discover it is bustling and thriving.

    She’s only supposed to be in Hope Lake temporarily until she can earn enough money to move back to New York. She’s not supposed to reconnect with her childhood friends or her beloved grandmother. She’s not supposed to find her dream job running the local florist shop. And she’s definitely not supposed to fall for not one but two of Hope Lake’s golden boys: one the beloved high school English teacher, the other the charming town doctor.

    With a heart torn between two men and two cities, what’s a girl to do?

    A perfect blend of humor and heart, Meet Me on Love Lane is the second in a new series from USA TODAY bestselling author Nina Bocci that is sure to charm fans of Josie Silver and Sally Thorne.

    Review:

    This was such a fun evening of reading! I’m a sucker for small town romances – probably because I didn’t grow up in a small town but did go to the same private school K-12. That basically meant that your school mates were more like siblings instead of dates.

    I read the first book of this series, On The Corner of Love and Hate, and was so excited to start this second book. I am admittedly not a big series reader and I believe one of the reasons is because there seems to be at least one book that drags while setting up the next part of the story.

    That was not the case here and Meet Me On Love Lane could easily be read as either a stand alone novel or as a well done sequel. Kudos to the author here because keeping a story moving through multiple books isn’t always easy to do.

    Henry, one of my favorites from the first book, was back and as the high school English teacher. There was something so endearing about him and I really enjoyed getting to know him better in this book – as did Charlotte who had significant memory issues as a result of leaving home during the tumultuous and traumatic time of her parent’s divorce.

    The book flirts with a love triangle which is my least favorite romance trope. Fortunately it was brief and actually helped to move the plot along as Charlotte began to reconnect with her family and friends.

    I absolutely loved her grandmother, Gigi. She was the sassy and fun grandma we all wish we had if we did not have that growing up. Gigi added the perfect amount of humor to the book along with a few of the other characters.

    For me, this book was light on the romance and more about a woman finding herself after leaving one life behind as a child and then leaving another life behind to find herself as an adult. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book and I’m definitely looking forward to more books by this author.

    If you would like to enter to win a copy of this book, head over to my Instagram to enter!

    Thank you to TLC Book Tours, Gallery Books, and Nina Bocci for a free copy of this book in exchange for my promotion and review of this book.

    Connect with Nina

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    Purchase Links

    Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

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