First Lie Wins

by Ashley Elston

I’m not going to tell you anything about this thriller from Ashley Elston – except read it because it is an unusual and surprising thriller. This book immediately catches you off guard. Don’t read anything about it, just read it and be surprised.

 

 

The Dark Wives

by Ann Cleeves

I’ll say right off that this was not my favorite Ann Cleeves’ mystery, but still worth reading. This is her 11^th book in the Vera Stanhope series. This book starts out with two murders and the disappearance of a young girl. What the book is really about is the horrors of what we might call foster care but what in England is a “care home (called Rosebank) for troubled teens.”

Vera and her team made up of Joe Ashworth and the newest team member Rosie Bell (the replacement for Holly Clarke who died in the previous novel) take up the case after one of the staff members of Rosebank, Josh, is found dead. At the same time, one of the home’s resident’s Chloe Spence has disappeared. A second body of a young man connected to the case is found near the Three Dark Wives monument. Vera is convinced that if they find Chloe they will have solved the case.

I felt that there was too much concentration on Chloe. Many things that were being done behind the scenes remained behind the scenes and weren’t revealed until the end of the novel. Knowing what was going on behind the scenes would have made the novel more interesting and three dimensional.

 

Look in the Mirror

by Catherine Steadman

There are two women in this novel whose lives we are following. One is Maria and the other is Nina. Both of these women are bright and beautiful and in the middle of a terrible situation in which they will need every ounce of their intelligence, courage, and tenacity to survive.

One of the outstanding characters in the novel is the house called Anderssen’s Opening. It is a beautiful home in the British Virgin Islands with an outstanding view of the beach.

 

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When Nina's father dies, she inherits Anderssen’s Opening which seems like a dream vacation home in a tropical paradise - one she had no idea existed. Desperate to uncover why he hid such a big secret; she decides to visit the home which she now owns only to find that the house contains secrets she never imagined her father would or could be involved in.

Maria was the last women to stay in the house before Nina become the owner. Maria usually worked as a live-in nanny, but her job in her new home seems a little puzzling. For some time, she is on her own but gets bored and decides to explore an area of the house that she was told not to enter. Mostly not her fault because the door mysteriously opens one day and of course she is curious.

Both Nina and Maria are drawn into the mystery that is Anderssen’s Opening. Nina knows that the house is named after an opening move in chess. While exploring the house, she receives notes warning her to leave. Since no one else is in the house, it is unsettling to wonder how the notes are delivered and who is warning her.

Nina and Maria are smart women drawn into a bizarre situation that no one would imagine would happen to them. Their lives are twisted and threatened by whoever is manipulating the events within the house. Both must use their intelligence to try to escape a situation in which one or both could well end up dead.

 

What Have You Done?

by Shari Lapena

High school senior Diana Brewer’s body is found in a farmer’s field in the small town of Fairhill, Vermont. Her possessive boyfriend Cameron Farrell comes under suspicion as the last person known to have seen her alive, but as the police investigate there seem to be many people who were using and abusing Diana. Her father is separated from the family and her mother works nights to support them. Diana’s mother thought that her daughter was home in bed on the night she was murdered. She finds out quickly that she had no real idea of what her daughter was up to. Diana and her friends Riley and Evan spend time hanging out at the local graveyard telling ghost stories and drinking. Cameron thinks that Diana is just going to go to the same college with him and get married. Very few people know that Diana is planning to break up with the very short sighted and controlling Cameron to have the life she wants.

This book presents the many points of view of the characters from her friends to those people who may have killed her. Diana’s ghost is also given a voice and gives the story a paranormal aspect. The book is about a small town that thinks of itself one way but is shaken by what hides underneath the surface. It is also a novel about the control men still hold over women (especially young women) and how hard it is to escape that abusive control.