Posted on by Maureen

All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman 

Book Description 

A mom will do anything to save her kid. Anything.

“The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he’s a little shit.”

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.

The only problem? Florence has no useful skills, let alone investigative ones, and all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and Florence has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe…

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Posted on by Maureen

Give Me a Reason by Jayci Lee

Book Description 

In this modern retelling of Jane Austen’s PERSUASION, a K-drama actress gets her second chance at love with the man she left to save her family, if only she can work up the courage to risk her heart on forever…one last time.

For ten years, Anne Lee told herself that Frederick Nam was her past. To save her father from bankruptcy, she dropped out of UC San Diego to pursue an acting career in Korea. Anne had to stop Frederick from following her and ruining his future. Breaking up with him was the best way she could love him.

After Anne left him, Frederick spent years loving her, missing her, and hating her until he decided to live his life for himself. He followed his dream and became a firefighter in Culver City. He didn’t need romance. He had his work and his friends.

When she returns to Los Angeles, Anne and Frederick find themselves in the same wedding—she as her cousin’s bridesmaid and he as his friend’s groomsman. Even though he is cold and distant with her, Anne can no longer deny that she never got over him. Not even close. As for Frederick, needing to take care of Anne is a habit he can’t seem to kick, but that doesn’t mean he has to forgive her.

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Posted on by Maureen

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Book Description 

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

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Posted on by Maureen

Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker 

Book Description 

It’s never been safe for Fern, Jaq, or Mallory to come out to their families. As kids their emerging identities drove them into friendship but also forced them into the woods to hide in an old, abandoned house when they needed safety. But one night when the girls sought refuge, Mallory never made it back home. Fern and Jaq did, but neither survivor remembered what happened or the secrets they were so desperate to keep. 

Five years later, Fern and Jaq are seniors on the verge of graduation, seemingly happy in their straight, cisgender lives—until a spirit who looks like Mallory begins to appear, seeking revenge for her death, and the part Fern and Jaq played in it. As they’re haunted, something begins to shift inside them. 

They remember who they are. 

Who they want to love. 

And the truth about the vicious secrets hiding in their woods.  

This delightfully dark and pointed novel calls out the systems that erase gay and queer and trans identity, giving space to embrace queerness and to unleash the power of friendship and found family against the real monsters in the world.

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Posted on by Maureen

Say a Little Prayer by Jenna Voris 

Book Description 

Riley quietly left church a year ago when she realized there was no place for a bi girl in her congregation. But it wasn’t until the pastor shunned her older sister for getting an abortion that she really wanted to burn it all down.

It’s just her luck, then, that she’s sent to the principal’s office for slapping a girl talking smack about her sister—and in order to avoid suspension, she has to spend spring break at church camp. The only saving grace is that she’ll be there with her best friend, Julia. Even if Julia’s dad is the pastor. And he’s in charge of camp. But Riley won’t let a technicality like “repenting” get in the way of her true mission. Instead of spending the week embracing the seven heavenly virtues, she decides to commit all seven deadly sins. If she can show the other campers that sometimes being a little bad is for the greater good, she could start a righteous revolution! What could possibly go wrong? Aside from falling for the pastor’s daughter . . .

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Posted on by Maureen

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild 

Book Description

SHE THOUGHT IT WAS FATE. I KNEW IT WASN’T….

Honor seems to have everything: she adores her bright and beautiful daughter, Chloe, and her charming, handsome husband, Tom, even if he works one hundred hours a week. Yet Honor’s longing for another baby threatens to eclipse all of it―until a shocking event changes their lives forever.

Years later, Tom makes a decision that ripples through their families’ lives in ways he could never have foreseen. As the consequences of that fateful choice unfold, two women’s paths become irrevocably intertwined. But when old love clashes with new, who will be left standing? And what happens when your secrets come back to haunt you?

Blending a page-turning moral dilemma with satisfying emotional poignancy, Finding Grace is a sweeping love story that explores the price of a new beginning, how the ghosts of our past shape our future, and whether redemption can be found in the wreckage of what we’ve lost.

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Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox 

Book Description 

A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted and shuttered for years from outsiders—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

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Posted on by Maureen

Island Time by Georgia Clark 

Book Description 

Love is in the salty sea air in this smart and steamy ensemble romantic comedy set in a tropical paradise, from the author of the “sparkly and entertaining” (Oprah Daily) It Had to Be You. This is one island you won’t want to be rescued from.

The Kellys are messy, loud, loving Australians. The Lees are sophisticated, aloof, buttoned-up Americans. They have nothing in common…except for the fact that their daughters are married. When a nearby volcano erupts during their short vacation to a remote tropical island off the coast of Queensland, the two families find themselves stranded together for six weeks.

With only two island employees making up the rest of their party, everyone is forced to question what—or who—they really want. Island Time is a sumptuous summer read that dives deep into queer romance, family secrets, ambition, parenthood, and a bird-chasing bromance. This sexy, sun-soaked paradise of white sandy beaches, crystal-clear waters, and lush rainforest will show you it’s never too late to change your destiny.

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The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark 

Book Description 

June, 1975.  

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets. 

 Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write. 

 After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.

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Posted on by Maureen

The Death of Us by Abigail Dean 

Book Description 

It’s the night we never talk about.

It’s the story the world wants to hear.

But this isn’t the story of that night. This is the story of us.

Together, Edward and Isabel move to London. They are young and in love, occupied by friends, work and fun. But late on a spring evening when they are thirty years old, their home is invaded by a serial killer. In the wake of this violation, each tries to come to terms with a night that changed everything — and their marriage begins to crumble.

Twenty-five years later, their tormentor is caught, and Edward and Isabel reunite for his sentencing. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be brought to justice. Edward has tried to think about anything else. As they prepare to deliver impact statements in the public eye, it is time to revisit their love story. Will they finally be able to confront the secrets, longings and lies that tore them apart?

Or will the horror of that night be the death of them?

A captivating portrait of a marriage and its implosion, The Death of Us digs into the stories we tell ourselves about love — and everything love can bear.

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