The Island by Natasha Preston

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A deceptive invitation!

Teen influencers arrive on an island after being invited for a fun-filled weekend to post online reviews and build excitement for the upcoming opening. The island is an amusement park and resort all in one. The six influencers have a variety of online posts and followers. Before they can enjoy much of the island, the killing starts. One by one, people are being chased and killed. Those who remain must work together to outsmart the killer and survive until help arrives.

Likes/dislikes: I enjoyed the premise of inviting influencers to review and build hype about a new place. The mystery was fun and suspenseful. I liked learning about each character’s background.
Language: R for 121 swears, no f-bombs.
Mature Content: none other than the violence.
Violence: R for bloody deaths.
Ethnicity: mixed

The Headmaster’s List by Melissa de la Cruz

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Fast-paced mystery with a slow burn romance!

Spencer wakes up in the hospital after being injured in a car crash that involved her and three other students from Armstrong but she only remembers a few details. One of the students, Chris, died in the crash and another passenger, Tabby, won’t talk to Spencer but only glares at her. Ethan was driving and speeding and says he tried to brake but the car wouldn’t stop and they hit a tree. Ethan is on house arrest, Tabby seems fine but angry, Chris died and Spencer has broken some bones and has stitches from her jaw to her cheekbone. Jackson, Ethan’s best friend, helps Spencer get around and with her schoolwork, as well as helping her piece the details from the night of the accident together because she’s extremely frustrated that she can’t remember. The more she digs into the details, the more in danger she becomes.
Fast-paced mystery with a slow burn romance, 5 stars!

Likes/dislikes: I like the intense, poetic opening that reveals the story. I like Spencer’s strength and integrity and Jackson’s personality. I enjoyed figuring out the mystery and how a mental health therapy dog helped a trauma victim.
Matue content: PG-13 for prescription drug addiction, drinking, vaping
Language: PG-13 for 24 swears and 5 f-bombs
Violence: PG for brakes being cut to cause an accident, hit and run, being held at gunpoint and being hit in the head with a gun.

Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury

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Strange, eerie and twisted!

Told in two separate timelines that are ten years apart. Daisy moves to a mansion property that her mother inherits from her deceased brother-in-law. Ten years later, Brittney cohosts a show with Jayden and they’re focusing on this same mansion property and the story of Daisy. Brittney’s mom gives credit to the mansion for helping her turn her life around and others attribute positive changes to it, dubbing it the Miracle Mansion. This mansion is also known because of its dark history shrouded in secrecy and quiet scandals. Daisy and Brittney have a lot in common in dealing with their seemingly selfish mothers. Jayden and Brittney get more than a documentary when they visit the mansion and conduct their interviews. Strange, eerie and twisted, 4 stars!

Likes/dislikes: I appreciate the content warning at the beginning of the book. Too many swear words even though some helped convey the message of abuse. The mystery kept spiraling and kept me interested. King is my favorite character because of his calmness and integrity.
Mature Content: PG-13 for underage drinking, implied sex, off page sex, being choked while having sex, mention of vaping, gay side character, implied sexual abuse of minors.
Language: R for 168 swears and 106 f-bombs.
Violence: PG-13 for goat being killed by getting throat slashed, mentioning of deaths in mansion.

Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu

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Exciting new book from Marie Lu!

Present time in America, Winter is a famous performer who is being recruited by the Panacea Agency to help take down a dangerous criminal, Eli Morrison. Eli has invited Winter to perform at his daughter Penelope’s birthday celebration in London. This is why Panacea wants Winter’s help, because he can infiltrate Eli’s life with little suspicion.
Sydney Cosette works for Panacea and poses as Winter’s bodyguard. The two seem to come from very different backgrounds but they discover they have commonalities. Winter and Sydney get hit with a few surprises on their mission and they’ll have to rely on their wits and trust each other to make it through alive.

Likes/dislikes: Winter and Sydney are interesting characters with unspoken depth. I like the mystery, action and setting of the story. I love the ending.

Mature Content: PG-13 for bisexual relationships mentioned, off-page kissing; sex alluded to by stating, “ended up in bed together”; drinking, transporting drugs, kissing.

Language: R for 49 swears and no f-bombs.

Violence: PG for kidnapping, killing mentioned, death by choking on a chemical weapon, hand to hand combat, shot in the chest. Sydney’s mother Killed by father in domestic abuse rage.

Ethnicity: The ethnicity of the main character is Chinese American, other characters are Black, white, brown-skinned, mixed.

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James

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Shea is a receptionist in a doctor’s office and makes a crime podcast in the evenings. She wants to interview a woman accused of but acquitted of murdering two men forty years ago, Beth Greer. Beth is a rich heiress who lives alone in the family mansion after her father was shot and her mother died in a car accident. Mystery surrounds Beth. She reaches out to Shea to talk about what happened forty years ago. Little by little, Shea is exposed to Beth’s life and secrets and the further she digs the more dangerous it all becomes. 5 stars for this well-written haunted mystery!

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

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Book edition:

Three eleven year old girls entered the woods and two came out. One of them had been stabbed so the other two girls got help and testified that a serial killer rapist was to blame. Years later, when the three girls have become adults, the killer dies in prison. The three women meet and discuss how relieved but worried they are about a secret they’re hiding. The mystery of their secret becomes many mysteries buried, one on top of another. This is a delightfully twisted and unexpected mystery, 5 stars!

Edgewood by Kristen Ciccarelli

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Mystery, fantasy, adventure and romance!

Emeline Lark lives in Montreal where she’s trying to leave her forest hometown of Edgewood in the past. She’s on the verge of becoming a singer with a recording company but as she performs she sees signs of the Edgewood Forest creeping onto the stage. Emeline sees a mysterious hooded stranger in the audience who becomes the key to her past and future, unbeknownst to her at the time. Pa, her grandfather, has dementia and when she goes home to take care of him, she’s pulled into the Edgewood Forest and her life is thrown into upheaval and danger. To free herself from the evil and corrupted Wood King, Emeline will have to dig deep and get to the bottom of the forest curse.

5 solid stars!!! Mystery, fantasy, action and romance.

Likes/dislikes:
The writing pulled me into the story with incredible world building and mysterious surroundings and characters. Hawthorn is a fascinating character. The story has action, tenderness and a roller coaster of emotions.
Language: R for 14 swears and 3 f-bombs
Mature content: R for Sex on page 295 that doesn’t mention genitals and is described vaguely; non-detailed oral sex on page 340. The relationship between the two characters is a loving one and the sex is because of this love for each other.
Violence: PG for Stabbing of the Shadowskin creatures, no blood involved; danger and Shadowskins chasing people.
Ethncity: Predominantly white in Montreal and Edgewood but mixed colors of skin in the otherworldly forest of the Wood King.

Daughters of Nri by Reni K. Amayo

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Twins, stolen and separated!

Naala gets reprimanded for getting dirt all over her wedding gown that Gini designed and sewed. Sinai is trying to avoid a bully. These two young women are twins separated soon after they were born and they have no idea that the other one exists. Twins are forbidden and usually killed because the leader has heard a prophecy that twins will be his undoing. The girls’ parents were royalty, also unknown to them. Their mother died after giving birth to them and their father planned on keeping them safe afterwards but the girls were stolen and their father died of a broken heart. Now Naala and Sinai are living separate lives and know nothing about each other, their parents or the prophecy. Naala has just escaped the slaying of her village and is living on the run with other survivors of Eze’s army. Sinai has made a pact with a magical older lady and now she’s supposed to be spying on Eze. The mythology was all new to me since I didn’t have much background knowledge of the specific culture and I enjoyed learning about that. I would have liked more action and development of the characters but still a good read, 4 stars!

Blade of Secrets by Tricia Levenseller

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A fun, dangerous adventure with the added touch of magic!

Ziva is a magical blacksmith who creates weapons with a touch of magic added. She lives with her younger sister Temra. Their parents were killed when Ziva was five. They lived at an orphanage and then Ziva was trained by a blacksmith until he retired. Ziva and Temra now run a smithy business together. Ziva’s abilities are widely known and when a warlord gives her a job, she’s thrilled. Until she discovers the warlord’s plans to conquer the kingdom and enslave the people. She decides to take her magical weapons and run with her sister. They take Petrik, a scholar, and Kellyn, a mercenary, along for safety. They head to their father’s family that they’ve never met, thinking that’s the safest place to go. On their travels, they deal with ambushes and the worry of trusting Petrik and Kellyn. Their grandmother welcomes them when they arrive and they attend religious services with her. The priestess delivers the sermon about the dangers of magic and that magic holders should be and will be killed. Ziva and Temra are terrified. That’s just another dangerous situation among many that they have to deal with on their mission to protect the kingdom from the warlord’s lofty, greedy goals. The group dynamics are interesting and their banter made me laugh several times. The book started off a bit slow in the first few pages but then picked up the pace and then I couldn’t stop reading it! A fun, dangerous adventure with the added touch of magic, 5 stars!

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

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An unusual mystery that grabbed my attention!

An unusual mystery that grabbed my attention!
I read The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes as part of Reese’s Book Club January Pick. I’m so glad I read this book! It’s completely different than I thought it would be. I jumped right into reading without looking at the synopsis, so I didn’t know what to expect. The murders occurred in a way that I would have never imagined before. Prepared to be engaged in the author’s writing and held in perplexity in trying to figure out the mystery. It’s mellower than I expected but riveting and interesting all the same.
Maya struggles with sleeping because of an incident that happened seven years prior. Her friend died right in front of her and she suspects Frank of murder but she can’t prove or figure out how he killed her friend. She has taken Klonopin to help her sleep ever since her friend died but she has to go cold turkey because she lost her access to the medication. While dealing with withdrawal symptoms, she sees an online video of Frank with a woman dying right in front of him, all caught on a security camera. Maya immediately assumes Frank caused this woman’s death but it just looks like she fell over without him touching her at all. This video causes Maya to want to get to the bottom of her friend’s death and stop Frank from ever doing this again. Maya goes down a rabbit hole of past memories and current weirdness. She can’t trust her instincts, memories or what she has seen and she needs all the help she can get to stop Frank.

I enjoyed the author’s writing and mystery building skills!