Thank you for joining me here! I hope you enjoy this series and I’d love to hear from you about what you are reading these days.
Book #1:
Falling by TJ Newman (Length: 303 pages). What a ride! This thriller was penned by a flight attendant who wrote it from the jump seat on red-eye cross-country flights. Mostly set on an airplane, a pilot is ordered to crash the plane or his family (wife and two children) will be killed. This is propulsive, on the edge of your seat writing, but the quality of the writing doesn’t suffer a bit here . . . it’s very vivid with dialogue that continually flows. I couldn’t put this one down and give it two thumbs up! (Just don’t read it while on a flight.)
Book #2:
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (Length: 646 pages). This is a fantastic historical fiction novel about codebreakers stationed at Bletchley Park outside London during World War 2. A sweeping plot with excellent character development makes this my favorite historical fiction pick in years. The author focuses on three women, all who are loosely based on real women, and while I wasn’t equally enamored with all three, none are unlikeable or annoying, and are fully human. I adored this book, and couldn’t wait to pick it up and continue reading, which is a good sign for me. It will make a great travel book as it’s a whopper–over 600 pages long. Not a page is wasted here, and be sure to read the author’s note at the end.
Book #3:
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn (Length: 319 pages). I’m conflicted about this thriller. It’s gotten a lot of good press, and I love any novel set on a college campus (who doesn’t?). This particular novel is set in Wesleyan, with two main characters who are entirely UNlikeable (they’re textbook narcissists), but the plot is definitely interesting enough to keep you reading. Set at a college reunion, the majority of the novel is comprised of flashbacks to the lives and interactions amongst the girls who all lived in the same college dorm. The thriller part (set at the reunion itself) isn’t as dark and twisty as advertised, and I found myself enjoying the flashbacks more than the thriller portion of the novel. However, the final twist is not what I was expecting, so that’s a huge plus for me. I will say the ending is a bit too pat, but on the whole it’s worth a library check out if you are like me and enjoy a college campus novel.
Lora Terrill 