Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
Okay, so if you clicked by accident on this review without reading the full title, I warn you: this post is dedicated to spoiling the hell out of Nine Lives! If you are looking for a spoiler-free review, I just posted one: eARC Review: Nine Lives by Peter Swanson (NOย SPOILERS)
I’m writing a full-on spoiler-y review after it got a very positive reaction on Twitter:
Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
Categories: Thriller, Mystery
First Publication Date: March 15th 2022
Synopsis:
Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke–until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list.
First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they’re located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it?
FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off nextโฆ
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Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas
Categories: Romance, LGBT+
First Publication Date: June 3rd 2021
Synopsis:
๐จ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐โฆ ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐!
๐พ๐๐ผ๐
Marymount girls are good girls. Weโre chaste, weโre untouched, and even if we werenโt, no one would know, because we keep our mouths shut.
Not that I have anything to share anyway. I never let guys go too far. Iโm behaved.
Beautiful, smart, talented, popular, my skirtโs always pressed, and I never have a hair out of place. I own the hallways, walking tall on Monday and dropping to my knees like the good Catholic girl I am on Sunday.
Thatโs me. Always in control.
Or so they think. The truth is that itโs easy for me to resist them, because what I truly want, they can never be. Something soft and smooth. Someone dangerous and wild.
Unfortunately, what I want I have to hide. In the locker room after hours. In the bathroom stall between classes. In the showers after practice. ๐๐ฆ โ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ค๐๐๐๐๐๐. ๐๐ฆ โ๐๐๐ ๐ข๐ โ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ก.
For me, life is a web of secrets. No one can find out mine.
๐๐๐๐๐๐ผ
I cross the tracks every day for one reasonโto graduate from this school and get into the Ivy League. Iโm not ashamed of where I come from, my family, or how everyone at Marymount thinks my skirts are too short and my lipstick is too red.
Clay Collins and her friends have always turned up their noses at me. The witch with her beautiful skin, clean shoes, and rich parents who torments me daily and thinks I wonโt fight back.
At least not until I get her alone and find out sheโs hiding so much more than just whatโs underneath those pretty clothes.
The princess thinks Iโll scratch her itch. She thinks sheโs still pure as long as itโs not a guy touching her.
I told her to stay on her side of town. I told her not to cross the tracks.
But one night, she did. And when Iโm done with her, sheโll never be pure again.
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Categories: Fantasy, Mystery, Literary Fiction
First Publication Date: September 15th 2020ย
Synopsis: Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the houseโa man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao
Categories: Literary Thriller, Mystery
First Publication Date: July 2nd 2018
Synopsis: In this riveting tale about the secrets and betrayals that can accompany exorbitant wealth, two sisters from a Chinese-Indonesian family grapple with the past after one of them poisons their entire family.
Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, theyโve relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estellaโs poisoning of their whole clan.
As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking and brutal act. Was it their auntโs mysterious death at sea? Estellaโs unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their familyโs past and the truth about who she and her sister really are?
Traveling from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the most spectacular shows at Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourneโs university scene, The Majesties is a haunting and deeply evocative novel about the dark secrets that can build a family empireโand also bring it crashing down.
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
Categories: Literary Fiction, Mystery
First Publication Date: July 26th 2016
Synopsis: Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that Davidโs mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of Davidโs colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her fatherโs secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen Worldโs heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.
After my lukewarm reaction to Long Bright River, I did not expect to like this nearly as much as I ended up liking it. This has such great things going for it: it’s a slow-paced mystery which is far more character-driven than plot-driven, and manages to grip the reader’s attention by how interesting a character Ada is (and David, too). The mystery itself, while being the book’s main driving force, plays a secondary role for a big chunk of the story: you really get to see Ada, watch her grow, choose her own path in life and try to be her own self, apart from David, his lies and her unusual upbringing. I adore stories where tech/science play a big role, so it was to be expected that I’d love the computer science aspect of this novel: this feels like a love letter to coding and it made me think of the brief period in my life when I considered computer science as a career path. I also loved the puzzles (there is a coded message the reader can solve, somewhere in the first half of the novel). I loved this book, and this kind of story is what makes me love reading so much. I had so many feelings reading it and got very invested in the story, each character shining in their flawed ways. I ended up taking a star because around the middle of the novel the pacing felt a bit off and I was not too convinced by the plot twist, which we get lots of hints for since the first chapters. Still, these are rather minor complaints, I truly, truly enjoyed this novel. The Unseen World such a moving story and I was so immersed reading this that I forgot to take mental notes on what to write for a review; which is why this is mainly a collection of impressions hastily put together. If you love books about family secrets and slower, atmospheric stories, you might really like this.
Tupinilรขndia por Samir Machado de Machado
Categorias: Mistรฉrio, Representaรงรฃo LGBTQ+
Data de Publicaรงรฃo: 7 de Junho de 2018ย
Sinopse: O autor vira de ponta-cabeรงa os clichรชs dos romances de aventura e aรงรฃo, e re๏ฌete sobre temas como nostalgia, memรณria e nacionalismo. No inรญcio dos anos 1980, com o Brasil rumando para a abertura polรญtica, um industrialista constrรณi em segredo um parque de diversรตes. Batizado de Tupinilรขndia, o parque funcionaria como uma celebraรงรฃo do nacionalismo e da nova democracia que se aproximava. Todavia, durante um fim de semana em que se testavam as operaรงรตes do parque, um grupo de militares invade o lugar e faz funcionรกrios e visitantes de refรฉns. Duas dรฉcadas depois, um arqueรณlogo especialista em nostalgia, e desde a infรขncia obcecado pelo mito de Tupinilรขndia, recebe autorizaรงรฃo para mapear o local, que estรก prestes a ser alagado pela hidrelรฉtrica de Belo Monte. Ao chegar com sua equipe, descobre um terrรญvel segredo, e a partir daรญ as duas pontas do romance se unem numa aventura literรกria pelo passado recente do Brasil e pela memรณria dos anos 1980.
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The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan
Categories: Mystery, Magical Realism
First Publication Date: March 10, 2020
I received an advance copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis: University sophomore Miwako Sumida has hanged herself, leaving those closest to her reeling. In the months before her suicide, she was hiding away in a remote mountainside village, but what, or whom, was she running from?
Ryusei, a fellow student at Waseda who harbored unrequited feelings for Miwako, begs her best friend Chie to bring him to the remote village where she spent her final days. While they are away, his older sister, Fumi, who took Miwako on as an apprentice in her art studio, receives an unexpected guest at her apartment in Tokyo, distracting her from her fear that Miwakoโs death may ruin what is left of her brotherโs life.
Silent Scream by Angela Marsons
Categories: Thriller
First Publication Date: February 20, 2015
In Silent Scream, a crime was committed ten years ago, and now the people involved in it are dying, one by one. Detective Inspector Kim Stone is assigned to the case, and as the bodies start piling up, she must find the connection between them, find out what they did and who is behind all this. At the same time, her own dark past is catching up with her, as she sees on the victim all those years ago, a mirror of who she used to be. This is a very intriguing thriller, with so many mysteries to be put together and connected somehow, and I actually really liked Kim. She’s tough and no-nonsense to the point of caricature, and I found it fun to follow her along the investigation. The mystery is very formulaic, and I’m not sure if I will remember the plot in a few months, but I will remember Silent Scream was an exciting read and had a cool twists!
Categories: Literary Fiction, Mystery
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
The Glass Hotel is a literary mystery that explores the consequences of Jonathan Alkaitis’ Ponzi scheme on the lives of several people. Vincent, who pretends to be his second wife, is arguably one of the main characters, but we get insights into the lives of others, old friends, an estranged brother, some victims, whose stories are connected by the crime and form one narrative of broken relationships, unsolved issues, chance, corruption.
I first approached this book expecting a regular mystery, in the line of The Sundown Motel by Simone St. James minus the ghosts or The Hunting Party by Lucy Foyle but more literary, but it reminds me far more of Disappearing Earth by Julia Philips. Like the latter, the beauty of this book is on the portrayal of the lives of the people in the story, some of them only marginally connected to the crime. It’s a lovely book to sit down with for several hours and get lost in.
Because I expected something a bit different from the book, my experience was not optimal, and it took me several chapters to really get into the story; the change in points of view made me get distracted a lot. By the time I was halfway through I had gotten used to the book’s rythm, and then it was a really wonderful read. I would be curious to re-read this knowing now what to expect from the story format.
The beautiful writing really brings this to another level and makes the book a poignant read that I highly recommend.
Naty's Bookshelf 