Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties by Camille Pagan

Maggie has been with her husband, Adam, for almost thirty years. They were college sweethearts who did the whole nine yards: marriage, two kids, a beautiful house in the suburbs and a cozy retirement pending. Then Adam comes home one day and drops a bomb into their supposedly happy life; he’s no longer in love with Maggie and wants out of their marriage. Not only did Maggie not see this coming, but she thinks it must just be a phase and tries to figure out how to get Adam back. When that proves utterly, and humiliatingly, futile, she pack her bags, first for a trip to Rome that they were supposed to take together, and then to Ann Arbor for a change of scene. Just when she is getting her life back on track, with new work possibilities and a new beau, Adam has a change of heart (attack) and wants Maggie back. Will she choose her previous, carefully planned out life, or her new and unpredictable one? This coming of (middle) age novel is full of the funny, laugh-out-loud moments I’ve come to expect from a Camille Pagan novel, with a relatable heroine who is trying to find her footing in a time of life when most people are securely planted. While I’m still a little shy of that phase of life, it was refreshing to have a (slightly) older protagonist in a women’s contemporary fiction novel.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Sometimes the latest and greatest thrillers don’t live up to the hype, but that’s not the case for The Woman in the Window. It’s a taut and unpredictable story about a devastated woman who spends too much time spying on her neighbors and eventually sees something awful – or does she? Sure, there are some tropes involved: the wine, the gaslighting, etcetera, etcetera. In fact, I am kind of done reading about drunk, unreliable women, but if you want to read one last one before the genre goes belly up, this is the best of the recent crop for sure. Anna has been housebound for the last 10 months after a traumatic experience that also involved her husband and child leaving her. While she still speaks to them regularly, she is increasingly isolated in her Harlem house, and distracts herself by looking at the goings on outside, various online pursuits, and copious amounts of wine and psychotropic meds, which should not be mixed together. When a new family moves in across the way, she’s immediately drawn into their lives, seeing things she wasn’t meant to see. The first “reveal” as to why Anna suddenly developed a bad case of agoraphobia is no big surprise, nor do I think it was really meant to be – anyone paying attention will figure it out about 100 pages in, though the reveal takes another 100 pages or so to come. It’s the end game that you want to keep reading for, with a well-done twist that I didn’t see coming.  

Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

Killman Creek picks up about a month after Stillhouse Lake leaves off. Mel Royal has yet to be caught since his escape from prison, and Gina/Gwen decides she wants to take the fight to him and get the heat off her children. She leaves them in the safety of Javier and Kezia, and takes off with Sam to hunt down Absalom and her ex. Unlike the first installment, which was told solely from her point of view, this one bounces between her, Sam, Lanni and Conner, giving us a little view into their thoughts and motivations. Gwen is getting so desperate for revenge, and for it all to be over really, that she’s willing to put herself out there as bait for one last chance to protect her kids. Sam is torn between his growing feelings for Gwen, and new evidence that makes it seem like she was complicit in Mel’s murders after all. Lanni is exploring her growing feelings for her best friend, and the possibility that her mom was lying to her all this time. And poor Conner is split between his limited understanding of his dad’s atrocities, and his old self, Brady, who has a deep longing for his father’s love and attention. That leads him to make a foolish choice, which brings all of Gwen’s careful preparations falling down. 

The pacing in this installment is fast, as Gwen and Sam gallivant around trying to hone in on the increasingly depraved reality of the Absalom group. The one thing I just can’t understand is why Absalom wants Gwen taken down so badly, but sometimes it’s best not to think too hard on these plot points! Not sure where the third book is going to go with the narrative, since things tied up quite nicely at the end, but hopefully it spares the kids any more trauma.

The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin

Doctors Zadie and Emma have been best friends for decades, weathering medical school together and something terrible that happened in their third year there. What exactly that was, and why it was so devastating, gets brought back up when their old friend Dr. Nick moves to Charlotte. With flashbacks between present day goings on in Charlotte, NC, and their medical school days in Louisville, KY, the picture starts to come into focus, until we’re left with the shattering truth. The descriptions of the medical aspects of this book are fantastic, from an emergency “cric” at the pool to endless trauma at the hospital – Kimmery Martin (a doctor) clearly knows her stuff and how to make it compelling, and also “humerus.” (chuckle) Something tells me that the more outrageous of the medical vignettes were probably real life experiences from her own training. As far as the plot drama goes though, the final explanation seemed a little awkward and not entirely plausible. Sure, good people do bad things sometimes, but I wasn’t left satisfied with the explanation. Read it for the medical drama, skim the relationship stuff.        

Beneath the Water by Sarah Painter

Stella was born with a heart defect that was repaired at birth but caused her some serious issues as a young adult. A new valve gave her a new lease on life, but only partially so; she’s skimming through things, working as a temp, engaged to Ben, who is good but not perfect, as if in a reflection of her understanding of the shorter time she might have to live. When Ben dumps her (a typical start to any contemporary romance, sure) she heads off to coastal Scotland to visit her friends from Uni, Caitlin and Rob. They’re settled down and have a baby on the way, everything that Stella wants but has yet to achieve. Drawn in by the fresh air and beautiful scenery (and distance from her ex back in London) she tries to start over in the tiny village of Arisaig. The only one hiring is an eccentric best-selling novelist, Jamie Munro, who is far behind on his next deadline and needs a personal assistant. Romance blossoms (of course!) but so does a historical mystery and a revenge plot. There is a lot going on in this book! While it might be a hard read for some, since it is a little all over the place, I say just sit back and enjoy the ride. The characters are compelling, and while it could have used a little tightening up on the plot points towards the end (someone dies and yet there doesn’t seem to be any police involvement?) all in all it was a highly readable book. I enjoyed her last novel, In the Light of What We See, thought this one was even better, and will look forward to reading her next one.

Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

If you can get over the initial premise of this book (husband Mel has created an abattoir in the garage where he tortures and kills women and his family is none the wiser until a car randomly plows into the house one day revealing all), then this is great read. Even the (now-ex) wife Gina/Gwen (she’s been on the run since she was cleared of any wrongdoing in the killings, because “how could you NOT know?” wonders how she could have not known. Now she has to worry about other people wanting to take their vengeance out on her, whether it’s internet trolls, family members of the victims, or her butcher-ex, who is still trying to exert his influence from prison. At first Gwen seems a bit paranoid, but when her worst fears start to come true and her fake identity has been compromised, we realize what real threats she and her children are under.  Even the remote community of Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee is no refuge, and when women start to turn up dead disposed of in the same manner as her husband once did, Gwen is under the microscope once again. This book isn’t for the faint of heart, but not overly gruesome either. And it does end on a cliffhanger, so that you’ll race to read the next installment, which I’m still not sure I want to do …

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone follows the Allbright family as they leave their peripatetic lifestyle in the lower 48 and move up to Alaska in the mid 1970’s. Ernt’s stint in Vietnam and five years as a POW have left him broken and abusive. Cora just can’t quit him – “There was a poison in him, and I drank it up.” – but is fiercely protective of their teenage girl, Leni. The whole family is hoping for a fresh start in Alaska, and at first it delivers it to them. The first half of the book is an engaging tale of what many families must have gone through when searching for a different lifestyle up in “the Great Alone.” But Ernt’s demons soon catch up to him, and the reader has to spend the rest of the book waiting to see what will go wrong, and just how bad it will be. Leni is constantly foreshadowing what is sure to come (“winter is coming,” literally), and I truly dislike books like this, as why should I invest in the characters when I know that bad things are going to happen to them?

When the sh%t does hit the fan, it’s one devastating event after another, each one getting more and more unbelievable. This could have been a beautiful book about so many things, and there’s no question that Hannah knows how to write well, but instead it just feels like a setup for tragedy so that it can have a “literary” label slapped onto it.