Welcome to Litsy!

A traveling book that I was supposed to read in September, whoops. This one was borderline so-so for me, mainly because the two MCs were inconsistent and kind of annoying. Also it felt like the overall message in the end was that in the nature vs nurture debate, you can't escape nature (more details in the spoiler), and I didn't care for that. However, the use of forensic genealogy was intriguing and I enjoyed the secondary characters.

I know going into it that this type of romantic suspense is going to need me to gloss over a lot of ?!?!?! moments to make it work, but this book was really pushing the limits haha Pretty ridiculous on the whole, but sometimes that's what you need. A long while back someone gave me a box of random thrillers/romantic suspense, and this was one of them. Mildly entertaining, but off to a new home now.

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The first book read for my #BirthdayBashReadathon was a bit of a random choice - a sequel to The Wind in the Willows, written by not-the-original-Willows-author. I'm always somewhat leery of people piggy-backing off of someone else's work, but I think Horwood makes it work. It's obvious that he has a great deal of love and respect for Grahame's original characters, but says he was always a bit saddened by the ending of Willows, which reassures ⬇

Soft pick. I liked the main character and her close family ties, but this book was very slow paced, and the motivation of the bad guy just never really made a lot of sense. I get it that revenge is a dish best served cold... but sheesh. Nice for a one-off read, but this one is headed to the giveaway pile.

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While not my favorite Poirot, this one does involve Mrs. Oliver (although not nearly enough of her haha). I still haven't decided whether or not the ending is a bit of a cheat. Soft pick.

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Like many of the other buddy readers, I found this one to be one of the weaker entries of the series so far. The plot felt jumbled and unrealistic (more so than usual haha) and the whole “jealousy“ side line definitely felt like padding. Definitely not my favorite.

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I really enjoyed another trilogy by this author that I read last year. These are what I think of as sci-fi lite. They're set in space, we're zipping around the spaceships, but these aren't super science-y haha It's more about the romance, and I'm cool with that. I really liked the way these two crews, from opposite sides of a recently-ended war, had to get over their suspicions and work together. The pacing was a little a slow in spots, but ⬇

My book club loves to pick cozies from the middle of a series. Maybe I would have liked this cozy set in Salem better if I had started with book 1?

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Five years ago a high school senior disappeared. Although her body was never found, police decided that she was murdered by her boyfriend, who committed suicide a few days later. However, Pip - who is now a high school senior herself - has never believed that the boyfriend was the murderer. With the help of the boyfriend's younger brother, she sets out to reexamine the evidence. I really liked the format of this book, with parts of it Pip's notes⬇

The consensus for this one seems to be a sense of mild disappointment lol There were parts of this I really enjoyed and that resonated with me, but on the whole I found Elizabeth herself to be too self-absorbed and condescending to really like her/enjoy being in her head for an entire book. Also, I honestly wanted more garden. 😂

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