I haven’t done six books in a month in a long time, but ’tis the season! August is always my best reading month of the year. This month’s reads were a mixed bag. Two flops and a few really good reads. Let’s get into it!
Bath Haus by P.J. Veron • ★★★★☆
You know I love a good domestic thriller, and oooh was this a twisty one!
I don’t want to give you too much up front, but here are the basics, Oliver lives with his partner, a successful doctor, in D.C. He should be happy, but isn’t quite. So he visits a gay bath house one evening and barely escapes. What he hopes is the end of that encounter, of course, is just the beginning.
Dead Lake by Darcy Coates • ★★☆☆☆
I’m not sure how I fell into the trap of reading another Darcy Coates book, but much like The Carrow Haunt which I read in 2020, I was simultaneously engaged and irritated.
I’ve had this book on my Kindle for years and finally dove in after seeing this advertised as the perfect book to read by the campfire at a bookstore. I mean, I love campfire stories, so this could be good!
And in the end, this is pretty much a campfire story and shouldn’t have gone further than that. Like the last Darcy Coates book I read, this book lacked so much detail and overlooked so many small errors. How you ask? Let me tell you!
In Dead Lake, Sam visits her uncle’s cabin to work on paintings for an upcoming art show. She’s got a week to put together a collection of oils for this major show and hasn’t started anything. Not a single thing. And it’s oils—paints that take literal weeks to dry.
Some other issues I had: Her uncle is friendly with the city council so he got to build a cabin in the middle of a park just for fun. Presumably a national park or at the very least a state park based on context, but we don’t know! In this cabin, there’s no running water, just a pump (that’s fine!), but the bathtub is upstairs. Ummm… No one in their right mind would build a cabin that way. No one wants to lug water upstairs. Also, it’s set in the US but she keeps calling flashlights torches. This was the same in The Carrow Haunt. It’s not a big deal, but it’s such an easy edit! Also, if you want the stories to be set in the UK, that’s fine! They are so vaguely written that she could easily set them in the US, the UK, Slovakia, Indonesia, New Zealand—wherever.
In summation: Anything that was scary about this book was made lame by the vague writing.
The Family Plot by Megan Collins • ★★☆☆☆
Maybe I would have liked this book better if I had read it versus listening to the audiobook. I was not a fan of the voice actor’s rendition. And maybe I wasn’t into the execution of this book either.
It sounds promising from the Goodreads synopsis: “[Dahlia was] raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she has spent the last several years living on her own, but unable to move beyond her past—especially the disappearance of her twin brother Andy when they were sixteen.” Right?
But it was just so flat and implausible. A bunch of murders happened on this small island and during their childhood and no one was worried? Everyone still found it to be normal to be obsessed with true crime instead of, you know, concerned for their safety? I’m not buying it. And I didn’t find it to be chilling or scary, which was the whole point.
The Retreat by Sarah Pearse • ★★★☆☆
I’m not much of a series reader, but I really enjoyed Sarah Pearse’s The Sanatorium. When the next volume came out in what is now a detective series (a specific type of series I’m not really super interested in), I figured I should pick it up.
And it’s a good read (and no, you really don’t need to have read the first in the series to jump in). Detective Elin Warner heads to a remote island to investigate the death of a resort guest. The island has a spooky history, both criminal and paranormal. Sounds good to me!
I think if you’re into detective books, this would be a four-star read, even five, but police work isn’t something I’m really keen on.
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam • ★★★★☆
I rented this audiobook on a whim after I saw it made Barack Obama’s summer reading list. I’m glad I did! This book was a thinker but also one that kept me listening whenever I could squeeze in a few minutes.
Let’s just say what I thought this book didn’t go where I was expecting it. I mean, it went there but then way, way beyond.
Depending on the type of person you are, it’s the perfect read for vacation or the worst read because you know that the family vacationing in this book doesn’t end up with the trip they expected.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry • ★★★★☆
Gosh am I a sucker for an Emily Henry book! Beach Read remains one of my favorite rom-coms of all time. Book Lovers is a worthy follow-up (People We Meet on Vacation was also good, but comes in third in my ranking).
Anyways, I love how this book leans into the rom com tropes, turns them on their head and then turns them over again. It’s very clever and sweet.
Oh you want detail? Literary agent Nora thinks of herself as the cold city lady that every rom-com leading man leaves behind for a new woman in a small town—and she is! She has several exes that have left and married the type of women featured in Hallmark movies. But here’s the thing: Her sister loves these sorts of stories and insists they live a rom-com-style life when they go on a trip. Is there a handsome man in town? You bet! A tiny bookshop? Obviously! Quirky locals? Duh!
But Book Lovers is about more than romance, it’s also about sisters and family and how to choose the life you want to live. Gosh, it was a good one.
As always, you can follow along with my progress and see what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.
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