I have always loved to read but I have phases when I binge books like it’s my job (if only.) Currently, I’m reading I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney and I plan on finishing it tonight. After that, there are three books that I have already reviewed. They are scheduled for posting in the upcoming week. These include The Lying Game by Ruth Ware, The Starter Wife by Nina Laurin and The Break Down by B.A. Paris.
Although I have been wanting to reread some of my favorite childhood series such as Private and Privileged by Kate Brian. Plus I keep getting many great recommendations from friends. Seeing as my love for reading has only grown, I can guarantee that I will get to all the books I want to read. My only worry is that the list keeps growing!
However, my next month or so is already fully booked with the following eight books. If you read them too we can be a virtual book club and we can discuss them in the comment section of my upcoming reviews! Disclaimer: I will not be reading them in this order.
1. The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan
Gilly Macmillan is the one who started all this for me in the first place. After reading 43 books in 2019 I somehow lost my love for books. What She Knew by Gilly MacMillan snapped me out of my funk and got me reading up a storm. After What She Knew I read Odd Child Out and since both were great, I decided to keep binging her books.
Synopsis
“Zoe Maisey is a seventeen-year-old musical prodigy with a genius IQ. Three years ago, she was involved in a tragic incident that left three classmates dead. She served her time, and now her mother, Maria, is resolved to keep that devastating fact tucked far away from their new beginning, hiding the past even from her new husband and demanding that Zoe do the same.
Goodreads
Tonight Zoe is giving a recital that Maria has been planning for months. It needs to be the performance of Zoe’s life. But instead, by the end of the evening, Maria is dead.
In the aftermath, everyone—police, family, Zoe’s former solicitor, and Zoe herself—tries to piece together what happened. But as Zoe knows all too well, the truth is rarely straightforward, and the closer we are to someone, the less we may see.”
This is not part of the Jim Clemo series like the other two books. So I am excited to discover new characters and read something completely different by Gilly Macmillan. Also, I love her name! If you want to read this book with me, book club style, buy it using this Amazon link and let me know what you think when I review this in the upcoming few weeks!
You can buy her other books on Amazon too:
- The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan
- I Know You Know by Gilly Macmillan
- To Tell You the Truth by Gilly Macmillan
- What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
- Odd Child Out by Gilly Macmillan
2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
“WHAT, YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS YET?” You may be yelling and facepalming. No, sorry. I haven’t read it or seen the movie. My husband has been on me about it too because he loves the series. Unfortunately, whenever people yell at me about reading a book it makes me stall even longer. Yes, blame my husband for my hesitation!
To be honest, I have started it before but keep putting it down in exchange for quicker reads that don’t have as much back story. There’s books you read to relax and books you read when you want to engage your brain. This book is definitely the latter but I will finish it in the next month. Pinky swear!
Synopsis
“Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.”
Goodreads
I’d love it if you guys read this with me and then throw in your two cents as a comment to my upcoming review. Although, you have probably read it already. If you’re late to the game like me, you can buy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson on Amazon using this link. If you want the complete series in a nice matching set (mine is frustratingly mismatched) you can buy it here.
3. What My Sister Knew by Nina Laurin
I just finished writing my review of The Starter Wife by the same author. I also recently read and reviewed Girl Last Seen a few weeks ago. Nina Laurin isn’t a huge author, yet, but I really enjoyed her books so far.
Synopsis
“We’re not just siblings; we’re twins. And we’re supposed to be able to read each other’s thoughts. Although Eli is a few minutes younger, he always seemed older, always one step ahead.
Goodreads
It turns out that Eli kept many secrets. And he told many lies. Although he was once seen as the golden child-while I stood by as the silent sister-his web of deception led to a guilty verdict for the arson that killed our parents.
Now his thirteen-year sentence has been served, and Eli is free. But we are still bound by a secret. Which is dangerous because he has nothing left to lose, and I have everything.”
Want to do a virtual book club type of thing where you read the book along with me? I’d love to know what you think and I’ll have this book read and reviewed in the next few weeks. You can buy a copy of What My Sister Knew by Nina Laurin on Amazon using this link.
Check out her other books:
4. The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes
I have never read anything by Stephanie Oakes. This book came up when I was browsing Goodreads, something that I should be banned from doing to be honest. My first reaction was to the cool cover, my second to the title and finally, the description below sold me.
Synopsis
“Molly Mavity is not a normal teenage girl. For one thing, her father is a convicted murderer, and his execution date is fast approaching. For another, Molly refuses to believe that her mother is dead, and she waits for the day when they’ll be reunited . . . despite all evidence that this will never happen.
Pepper Yusef is not your average teenage boy. A Kuwaiti immigrant with epilepsy, serious girl problems, and the most useless seizure dog in existence, he has to write a series of essays over the summer . . . or fail out of school.
And Ava Dreyman—the brave and beautiful East German resistance fighter whose murder at seventeen led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall—is unlike anyone you’ve met before.
When Molly gets a package leading her to Pepper, they’re tasked with solving a decades-old mystery: find out who killed Ava, back in 1989. Using Ava’s diary for clues, Molly and Pepper realize there’s more to her life—and death—than meets the eye. Someone is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.”
Goodreads
You can buy The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes using this Amazon link. I’ll be reading this in the next few weeks so if you read it as well, we can have a debate via comments on my upcoming book review. I tend to be easily pleased and I’d love to hear if you agree or disagree!
5. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb is the author of The Hour I First Believed and She’s Come Undone. I have heard of the second book but never read anything by him. I Know This Much is True has better ratings than the other two, and I am so excited to read it.
This really long book happens to have a really short description on Goodreads, so I stole one from Wikipedia. It’s long, but bear with me.
Synopsis
“The novel takes place in Three Rivers, Connecticut in the early 1990s. Dominick Birdsey’s identical twin, Thomas Birdsey, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. With medication, Thomas is able to live his life in relative peace and work at a coffee stand, but occasionally, he has severe episodes of his illness.
Thinking he is making a sacrificial protest that will stop the Gulf War, Thomas cuts off his own hand while at a public library. Dominick sees him through the ensuing decision not to attempt to reattach the hand, and makes efforts on his behalf to free him from what he knows to be an inadequate and depressing hospital for the dangerously mentally ill.
In the process, Dominick contemplates his own difficult life as Thomas’s brother, his marriage to his gorgeous ex-wife, which ended after their only child died of SIDS, and his ongoing hostility toward his stepfather. Dominick also displays classic symptoms of PTSD, as a result of stressors in his adult life. He sees a therapist, Dr. Rubina Patel. She helps Dominick come to understand Thomas’s illness better and the family’s accommodations or reactions to it.
In the course of Thomas’s treatment, Dominick is covertly informed of sexual abuse taking place in the hospital, and helps to expose the perpetrators. He succeeds in getting Thomas released, but Thomas soon dies, apparently by suicide. After Thomas’s death, Dominick discovers the identity of their birth father and a secret their mother had shared with Thomas, but not with him.
In the midst of this, Dominick learns that his live-in girlfriend, Joy, has been seeing a gentleman on the side, who is her bisexual half-uncle, and has also let him watch her and Dominick during sex on previous occasions. She is also HIV-positive, having contracted it from her secret lover.”
Wikipedia
A lot to process
I’ll be perfectly honest with you, this book is really intimidating to me. But it also sounds amazing and I can’t spend my entire life reading airport paperbacks, right?
If you’d like to take on this beast of a book with me, buy it on Amazon using this link. I’ll be reading I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb in the upcoming month or two and will post a review as soon as I’m done!
You can check out Wally Lamb’s other books here:
- She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb (this is high on my bucket list)
- We Are Water: A Novel by Wally Lamb
- Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb
- I’ll Take You There by Wally Lamb
- I’ll Fly Away by Wally Lamb
- The Life We Bury by Wally Lamb
- The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
6. The Cellar by Natasha Preston
I discovered Natasha Preston on Facebook Marketplace. She is a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author and her books have great ratings on Goodreads. Her romance books have better ratings than her thrillers, but I love the romance genre too so I may read some of those next.
Synopsis
“Nothing ever happens in the town of Long Thorpe – that is, until sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson disappears without a trace. No family or police investigation can track her down. Spending months inside the cellar of her kidnapper with several other girls, Summer learns of Colin’s abusive past, and his thoughts of his victims being his family…his perfect, pure flowers. But flowers can’t survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out…”
Goodreads
If you’d like to join me in discovering this new author, grab a copy of The Cellar by Natasha Preston today! This is part of a series. Other books by this author (I already have two of them but naturally, I want them all) are:
- The Cabin by Natasha Preston
- The Twin by Natasha Preston
- The Lost by Natasha Preston
- Awake by Natasha Preston
- Silence by Natasha Preston
- Players, Bumps and Cocktail Sausages by Natasha Preston
- Silent Night by Natasha Preston
- Save Me by Natasha Preston
- Lie to Me by Natasha Preston
- You Will be Mine by Natasha Preston
- Reliving Fate by Natasha Preston
- Covert by Natasha Preston
Believe it of not but this isn’t even all of them! Natasha Preston writes as much as I read apparently and I can’t wait to catch up on all these!
7. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
I have read a few books by Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10 was great, although the ending felt extremely rushed. The Death of Mrs. Westaway was probably my least favorite read of 2019. While In the Dark, Dark Wood and The Lying Game fell somewhere in between. I do have high hopes for The Turn of the Key!
Synopsis
“When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. And it wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. Finally, it wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.
It was everything.
She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.”
Goodreads
You can join my informal virtual book club by grabbing a copy of this book and reading it in the next few weeks. You can buy The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware on Amazon using this link.
Her other books include:
- One by One by Ruth Ware
- The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
- The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
- The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
- In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
8. I’m a Therapist and my Patient is in Love with a Pedophile by Dr. Harper
Where do I even begin with this one. I read the the first book in the series a few weeks ago and I still don’t know what to make of it. Nonetheless, after reading I’m a Therapist, and My Patient is Going to be the Next School Shooter I had to order the second book. No matter what, I will order the third as well.
Dr. Harper is a fictional character so I guess you can say that this book is written anonymously? It’s not very realistic, it feels quite rushed and at times it’s hard to follow. But it’s one heck of a story and I must know what happens next. Do I expect more confusion, frowning, sighing and yelling “what?!” out loud? Yes. And I can’t wait.
Synopsis
“I’ve counseled the most chilling criminals… A young inmate who fell in love with a pedophile. A man who intentionally infected strangers with HIV. A patient with an extremely unusual addiction. A sociopath who wanted to have a conscience. A conspiracy theorist who harassed victims of a terrorist attack.
And the patient who still haunts my dreams: A boy sold into human trafficking.
In these files, you’ll learn about the the psychology behind the world’s most dangerous criminals.
But you’ll also learn about me — and the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
Goodreads
You can ride the roller coaster that I assume this book will be along with me. That way we can discuss what the heck we just read in the comment section of my upcoming review. This is the second book in the series of three, so you want to start with the first:
- 1. I’m a Therapist, and My Patient is Going to be the Next School Shooter: 6 Patient Files That Will Keep You Up At Night
- 2. I’m a Therapist, and My Patient is In Love with a Pedophile: 6 Patient Files From Prison
- 3. I’m a Therapist, and My Patient is a Vegan Terrorist: 6 Deadly Social Media Influencers
Summary:
I will be reading all these great books in the upcoming weeks. If you’d like to read along with me in a virtual sort of book club, you are very welcome to do so! I’ll be posting reviews once I’m done and I’d love to have a discussion in the comment section.
I chose all these books at random based on recently read books and recommendations. It is a pure coincidence that three of eight are about twins and that two are about fires! Since I try to post a book review every other day, you may see some reviews from other books that I’ve read in the past. You have my word that these are my upcoming reads.
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Bonus Jewelry!
If you’d like to show off your love for reading via jewelry, check out these fun earrings on Everyfelt!
