Lydia

The natural progression of the relationship here was really so sweet and beautiful. It was a bit slow at the start, but once it picked up it was adorable.
3.5 for being a bit too slow to start.

The story and concept is a 4, but aspects of the writing left a lot to be desired, so I knocked it down to a 3. It could've used some editing, but I still think you should read this book! I felt very seen in the character of Rose, and that's a rarity.

Anybody who knows me at all knows I am a thriller girl through and through. Usually romance doesn't do it for me, I need something that go-go-GOES. With all of that being said, I LOVED THIS BOOK!
The Second Chance Year was extremely predictable, but so cozy and charming that I didn't care at all. I just wanted to hang out with these characters for yet another year!

Oh, and I loved all of the dessert puns. I would very much like a full list of every pastry simile/metaphor Wiesner used (please, Melissa, please provide this for me).

If you love second chances, fuck the patriarchy, sweet, cozy, character-driven books, this is for you.

Thank you SO much to NetGalley for the ARC.

Everybody is calling this heart-pounding, thrilling, and edge of your seat and I'm just confused. This book was dull. So very, very dull and repetitive. I'm starting to feel that people are only reviewing books to NetGalley positively to get more freebies and suck up to the publishers, WHICH DESTROYS THE POINT OF ARCS!
Anyway, back to No One Can Know.
I'm going to save you the time without explicitly telling you spoilers: everything is exactly what you think. There are no twists. If you have a suspicion about anything, yay! You are correct.
Rounding up from a 1.5 to a 2 because it wasn't offensively bad, just not very good.

True Blood meets The Walking Dead meets Six Feet Under meets Supernatural- that's really the best way I can describe this incredibly original and unique book. I was not expecting to like it as much as I did, aside from the high level of splatterpunk gore that I am not a huge fan of. Thankfully, that mainly came towards the end of the book, and it was essential for the plot so I will give it a pass.
This book was fun, ridiculous, unique, and overall a delight!

Thank you, NetGalley!

Another messy-rich-people drama book. I think I would enjoy these more if they weren't marketed as thrillers, because they definitely are not. These are domestic dramas with a very minimal mystery aspect.
Overall this was an enjoyable read, but not one I'll be thinking about in a few days (or even hours).
The cover, though? CHEF'S KISS. The best part of Rachel Hawkins' books are the covers.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a sweet little Christmassy book that hit the spot, but it ended way too fast. I felt like the author wanted it to be over so rushed the last 1/4 of the story :/
3.5

I am so mad at you guys for gatekeeping this book! Why is nobody talking about this? Why is there no hype? This book is so fucking good. I'm not even going to give a proper review because I want you to go into it. Totally blind and love it as much as I did. READ IT.

Edit: I posted this in two Thriller Reader Facebook groups and the posts kind of blew up. So if you're here because you saw me recommend that, HI!

sigh. Listen, I LOVE crazy thrillers with unbelievable plots and premises, but this book was...I'll say it. It was just dumb. The writing was very poor, the characters were grinding, the romance was dull, the thriller aspect was boring as hell. I wish I could give a better review since I got this book for free as an ARC, but frankly, I want compensation for the time I wasted.
This was also not marketed as Christian Fiction on NetGalley and I didn't see that until looking on Goodreads after reading, but I feel like that might explain a lot of why I hated it so much. I grew up religious, I've read a lot of Christian Fiction, NONE of it is any good.
Anyway, sorry guys. I cannot in good faith recommend this to anybody.

If you are able to suspend your belief a bit, you will absolutely love this book.

On paper this sounds like everything I would enjoy- murder, messy rich people drama, confined setting, thriller. However, this was a major miss for me. Despite there being literal murders, everything in this book felt extremely low stakes. I was never very concerned for the wellbeing of any of the characters and ultimately found myself wanting to skip through the chapters. Kass acted like she was very in the know after meeting members of the family literally 24 hours prior. I couldn't handle her stupidity and unrealistic reactions.
I was bored, annoyed with our (extremely naive) main character, and overall ready to move on from this ridiculous storyline.

I hate giving a poor review given the generosity of the author and publisher, but honest reviews are what this is all about, right?

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I can't handle Nora Roberts anymore. Every single book is exactly the same. Strong woman moves to a new(country) place, meets an asshole guy (portrayed as “sexy” and “strong willed”) and is essentially bullied into a romance. These books just terrible.

Started promising, then it got boring and predictable. DNF

I would love it if the twist wasn't so obvious from the beginning.

I enjoyed this, but didn't love it. I found a lot of the “twists” to be predictable and easy to guess.

This book was so POTATO!!! ...cute

I obviously had to read this one. It was cute, but not an instant favorite.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC!
If you love messy, spoiled rich people drama, this is the thriller for you! Trust me, you won't like a single character in this book, which is part of what makes it so appealing. The House Guest is told from multiple POVs and has so many twists and turns, up until the very last page.
Personally, I enjoyed it but wouldn't call it an instant favorite. A solid 3 stars from me.

A lovely book about the importance of inclusion and dangers of stereotyping.

I feel for Bird.

My Husband's Lies started out being fast-paced, griping, and fun. Unfortunately, as the story went on I started to lose interest. Perhaps it's because I'm a seasoned thriller reader, but I found it very predictable. My other main complaint was that the main protagonist made some of the dumbest decisions possible in the given circumstances.
Overall this wasn't bad, and I did enjoy it, but it definitely will not be topping my list of best reads of the year.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for this advanced copy.

I must address the elephant in the room: Rockwell? ROCKWELL?!?!?! I'm such a huge Name Nerd and his name took me out of the story every single time I heard it. Not only has Rockwell never appeared in the top 1,000 baby names since 1880, but if we look at the time Rockwell and Bree were supposed to be born, Rockwell was given to less than 5 boys per year. In years since it's gained a little bit of traction, but still there haven't been more than ~100 boys born in any given year EVER named Rockwell. That's out of about 4 million babies. Authors, I beg of you, do research before you choose names!

Off my name soapbox, this book itself was okay. It started out great, but I couldn't stand this couple together and wasn't able to root for them at all. Where was the chemistry? Not all romances need a second chance, sometimes the people are better off not together. The writing also felt very juveniles, but perhaps that was the narrators' deliveries. There were also some issues with my audiobook, but hopefully that has been fixed.

Thanks to netgalley

The only reason I'm giving this two stars is because of the cute illustrations, but the story is horrible. How is this uplifting and heartwarming? Did anybody actually read this? I'm baffled.

I FLEW through this, but maybe for all the wrong reasons. I enjoyed it in the way you enjoy watching a train crash; you just can't look away from the mess. This entire book felt like a satire of a thriller book, but Modglin was completely sincere in her (mediocre) writing.
The first half was slow and full of boring fluff, annoying and harmful stereotypes, grating characters, and predictable plot points. The second half geared up and swerved into ridiculous, unrealistic, and plain dumb. On top of all that, it got so preachy at the end and I was rolling my eyes at Kiersten going into “I'm 14 and this is deep” territory.

What could've saved this book? Take a deep look and realize this writing is satire level and fully take it there. This would have been a fun satire, but since KM took herself too seriously it was not good. Also, THE TITLE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY.

I know this review is a little harsh, but I KNOW Kiersten is a good writer, i've witnessed great books from her! Lately she's been pumping out short books that cater to boostagramers and influensters, and it shows.

Oh, the narrator was great- kudos, Stacy Gonzalez.

THIS BOOK IS ADORABLE! Some of the cutest illustrations I've seen all year and the story is perfect.