She Lies In Wait by Gytha Lodge

Fourteen-year-old Aurora Jackson has been waiting for 30 years for her body to be found. Once it is, old wounds are re-opened and all five of the other teenagers who were with her that night are now prime suspects in her murder. Was it her older sister Topaz? Or Coralie, Topaz's jealous best friend? More likely it was one of the boys, Benner, Conner or Brett, and no one seems to suspect the tomboy, Jojo. DCI Jonah Sheens is on the case, but there's just one problem - he was slightly older than the kids at the time but still knew them, perhaps a little too well. The five characters are still a tight-knit group, protecting each other's secrets even as they've gone on to live successful lives. The book alternates back and forth between that fateful night and the present day investigation, and we also get a good look at the rest of DCI Sheens investigative team, as this is presumably the first book in a series. I like what I see, and look forward to reading the next one.

Watching You by Lisa Jewell

Where Watching You starts off and where it ends are in two completely different places, but you can be sure to feel the hair on your neck raised the whole time as you wonder "who is watching me?" A quaint street in Bristol where neighbors know each other (and watch each other obsessively, apparently) becomes the scene of a grizzly murder. We don't know who is dead, but the young Joey Mullen is a prime suspect due to her infatuation with the owner of the house, a married Tom Fitzwilliam, and the fact that the police found one of her boot tassels on scene. As we alternate between present day police interviews and scenes from the past few weeks as Joey and Tom get to know each other, the image of what might have happened starts to crystallize, until new details emerge and it gets all blurry again. This is truly one of those books that will leave you uncertain until the very end.

You Were Always Mine by Nicole Baart

The premise to You Were Always Mine by Nicole Baart is an interesting one, and not what you might immediately think. Jessica has recently separated from her husband, their marriage having descended into complacency and general lovelessness. She holds on tight to her two sons, especially Gabe, 6, who is adopted. One day her ex doesn't show up for school pick up, and Jessica starts down a slippery slope to discover why and what happened to him. It's hard to discuss it any more without revealing some of the carefully plotted twists. I can say that there's a fair amount of sadness in this novel, but a good amount of mystery as well, and as already mentioned, it's not what you might initially think!

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!