Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier packed just enough punch in the plot to keep me going. The characters were decently drawn (although recognizable) and the narrative came together nicely. Right up until the very end. At the start of the novel, Geo is at her own trial for being an accessory to a murder that happened fourteen years prior. The killer was her high school boyfriend, and the victim was Geo's best friend. Geo is sentenced to five years and right after she

Every once in a while, I discover an author who's new to me, and they become someone that will now always jump off the bookshelf. Abbi Waxman immediately won me over with Other's People's Houses . Her hilarious and whip-smart writing made me an instant fan. This story is about a neighborhood and the people that live there. As the title hints at, one can never tell what's going on behind closed doors. This becomes glaringly clear after Frances Bloom, the main charact

I love a good soapy drama. A wicked, gossipy neighborhood tale just hits the spot sometimes. I was drawn to The Mother Next Door by Tara Laskowski because of its comparison to Big Little Lies , which is a favorite of this reader. In some ways it was similar, the school mothers forming cliques with a hierarchy of women. And they certainly had secrets to keep. But halfway through this novel my interest was waning, perhaps because the characters seemed like stereotypes

This is a story about a city pool except it isn't. It's a story about community and connectedness in the heart of London. Libby Page hits the nail on the head with the tone of The Lido , finding the perfect spot between sentimentality and determinism. Rosemary has been coming to the lido (a British word for municipal pool) for eighty years. She swam there as a girl during the second world war; met her beloved husband George at the lido and became engaged poolside; and