A Merciful Fate by Kendra Elliot

FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick has been through so much in the last year my head is starting to spin. Poor girl needs a break! While I understand the need for constant turmoil to make the series continue, her relatives and loved ones must all be fretting at this point and wondering when it's going to be their turn to get shot, raped, abducted or killed! All kidding aside, this is another great installment in the series. While I suppose you could read this as a standalone, there is so much history now with the characters that it makes more sense to start from the begging so you can understand everything that is going on. This time around, Mercy is investigating a thirty-year-old armored-car robbery after the body of one of the robbers turns up. Throw in a tabloid reporter who is nosing around the story, a creepy guy in prison a la Hannibal Lecter (minus the eating people part I guess), an abusive ex who's intent on making his wife pay, and a case of mistaken identity whereby one of Mercy's loved ones gets shot, and you have yourself another fine Eastern Oregon mystery.

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The second offering from Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen is in the same vein as the first. There’s some mind-bending deception, a couple of twists here and there, and a satisfying conclusion. Jess, a twenty-something makeup artist, fakes her way into a morality study to make a little side-cash, only to have the study make more demands of her than she signed up for. The puppet-master, Dr. Lydia Shields, has an ax to grind and Jess becomes her blade. An Anonymous Girl lacks the “I never saw that coming” twist that was the highlight of The Wife Between Us (you can quickly guess where this storyline is going), but it’s an enjoyable ride there. My only beef is the tone that Dr. Shields was written in as she observes Jess (You fiddle with your hair, you hesitate before you answer this question, etc. [not verbatim]). It almost made me stop reading the book. But if you get past that hurdle the rest is worth it.

The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang

The Impossible Girl is an exciting romp through the lives of a gang of grave robbers in New York in the mid-1800s. This era is the heyday for medical autopsies and advancement in understanding physiology, and the doctors of the time are searching for medical anomalies to dissect and display. Enter Cora Lee, who herself is an anomaly, suspected of having two hearts. By day she flits about the city and arranges to “procure” the specimens for various doctors once the owners of the bodies have passed away, and by night she’s “Jacob,” her twin brother who does the digging. Only now the people she has her eyes on are dying in unnatural ways, and there’s a high price for anyone who can find the girl with two hearts, dead or alive. The story gets a little grim at times, but it's a unique look into parts of our history that are rarely discussed or written about in a fictional way.

Vox by Christina Dalcher

It’s hard not to compare Vox to The Handmaid’s Tale, and frankly, it feels a little derivative. Set in the “now” but with a slight twist, the religious right has risen up after that hopey-changey African American president and hijacked, and silenced, half the country. Women now have to wear a bracelet on their wrists that limit them to 100 words a day or they get an electric shock, and the government has plans to silence them permanently. They’ve conscripted Dr. Jean McClellen to help them in their efforts, and she’s received a temporary reprieve from her bracelet, only to have her husband say that he liked her better when she was silent. Her teenaged son is swallowing the propaganda hook line and sinker, and her five-year-old daughter gets an award for not saying an entire word all day at school. The premise is great… but then the rest of the plot happens. There are some unnecessary coincidences (her mother has a stroke in the exact part of her brain that Jean is an expert on, really?) and the events at the end are murky and hard to understand. I feel like this book could have been so much more, and that it needed a bit more time in development to flesh out the details better. Sorry, I’m a details gal!

Girl's Night Out by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke

Ashley, Natalie and Lauren head to Tulum, Mexico, to have some bonding time and reconnect. Things have been strained between them since the death of Lauren’s husband a year earlier – she hasn’t spoken to either of them even though they are all longtime best friends. Ashley and Natalie are business partners, but that relationship is taking its toll; when they get a buyout offer Nat wants to take it but Ashley doesn’t. Amid this turmoil that ladies land in Tulum, but when things should be getting better they just get worse. Girl’s Night Out is told in alternating timelines between their last day in Mexico, when Natalie wakes up and finds that Ashley is missing, and when they first landed and the events leading up to her disappearance. I like the effect, as the tension keeps building until you find out what happened to Ashley. She spent more time flirting with a handsome stranger than hanging out with her girlfriends, Natalie can’t remember what happened the night before, and Lauren is acting suspiciously … but where is Ashley? Liz & Lisa will take you on a wild ride once again with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

I’m not sure how to rate this one. It was so creepy that I almost stopped reading it several times, and yet so captivating that I couldn’t help but stick it out to the end. Suzette and Alex have a seven-year-old daughter, Hanna, who won’t speak. Not can’t, won’t. Until one day she does, but it’s to terrify her mother by pretending she is possessed by a long-deceased “witch” from France. And so the turmoil begins, though really it’s been building for years. Hanna is precocious, psychopathic, and out to kill Suzette so she can have her dad all to herself. Really, that’s the plot! Every parent out there is cringing! Suzette is hyper-vulnerable; she suffers from Crohn’s Disease, and since no school will keep Hanna for more than a couple of days, she's stuck homeschooling her mute Bride-of-Chucky daughter. Alex thinks Hanna can do no wrong, and turns a blind eye each time he is confronted with evidence of his daughter’s devilish ways. Sure, it’s a little sensationalist, and probably a step beyond what parents of violent or psychopathic kids really go through, or is it??

Everything We Give by Kerry Lonsdale

Aimee, Ian, and James are back with the conclusion to the Everything series, though James and his messed up family only have a small part to play in this installment. Instead, we get to learn Ian’s backstory, which, as it turns out, is equally messed up. He was raised by a mother with multiple-personalities and a distant father, so how he ended up so well-adjusted and successful is beyond me. But, he’s actually not okay inside and he needs to find some closure with his parents (who he hasn’t seen in almost 20 years since his mom got out of prison). But first, he needs to go to Spain, take some amazing photographs for National Geographic and confront his own ex. The whirlwind plots and steamy sex scenes continue in this installment, and it’s an entertaining summer read.