The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Read by Lesley Manville

12 hours 26 minutes

Published September 2020 by Viking Press

Publisher’s Summary: 

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves
A female cop with her first big case
A brutal murder
Welcome to...
THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.

When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

My Thoughts: 

Both this book and the Netflix adaptation where recommended to me by my dad; it was the last book he ever recommended to me and I would have read it, whether or not I thought it was something that would appeal to me. As you know, my dad was an avid reader; he was also an avid viewer of Netflix movies and series. When he discovered that the book that his care home's book club was reading had been adapted for Netflix, he decided to make it a read/watch combo. I'm glad I took his recommendation on both the book and the adaptation, which stars Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan. 

The older I get, the more I enjoy about older people, especially those who are living their best lives, being useful and clever and not just accepting that it's time to sit back and get out of the way. This group of friends combines their skills (and the smarts to get a police woman to work with them) to not only solve the murder, but to save the peace of the retirement village for all of the residents. It's surprisingly funny, I loved the characters, and it was twisted enough that I never saw the ending coming. Which, of course, I know is not that rare, but still 

I highly recommend the audiobook; Lesley Manville's reading is marvelous. I also highly recommend the adaptation, which is never weighed down by its all-star cast, who all shine, and stays true to the book. 

The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

Read by Kristen DiMercurio and Zachary Webber

7 hours

Published March 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

Hallie Piper is turning over a new leaf. After belly-crawling out of a hotel room (hello, rock bottom), she decides it's time to become a full-on adult. She gets a new apartment, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe, but when she logs onto the dating app that she has determined will find her new love, she sees none other than Jack, the guy whose room she snuck out of. 

After agreeing they are absolutely not interested in each other, Jack and Hallie realize they're each other's perfect wing-person in their searches for The One. They text each other about their dates, often scheduling them at the same restaurant so that if things don't go well, the two of them can get tacos afterward. 

Spoiler: they get a lot of tacos together. 

Discouraged by the lack of prospects, Jack and Hallie make a wager to see who can find true love first, but when they agree to be fake dates for a weekend wedding, all bets are off. As they pretend to be a couple, lines become blurred and they both struggle to remember why the other was a bad idea to begin with.

My Thoughts: 

A friend recently met Lynn Painter (can't remember where or how) and asked me, the next day, if I'd ever read any of her books. I said I hadn't but since she's from Omaha, I decided I should give her books a shot, even if they aren't a genre that I regularly read. What better time than summer to read a rom-com? 

What Didn't Work For Me: 

• The great guy who's with a terrible woman (who he's poised to propose to in Chapter 1) is such a confusing trope for me. Painter has Jack explain this by saying that things just sort of progressed to that point because it felt like that should be what came next. But seriously, how? Wouldn't he have wised up to what kind of person she was LONG before it came to an engagement? 
• Both the almost-became-Mrs. Jack and a former classmate of Hallie's that we meet in the first chapter are terrible human beings. I felt like the same result could have been reached without making these women such reprehensible people. 
• I was never clear why Hallie and Jack decided they couldn't date when they found each other on a dating app.
• Ok, this is going to make me sound prudish, but the sex. Not that they had sex. Just that in the first chapter, things were largely left to our imaginations (although we learned a lot about what had happened as the book went on) and the focus was really on the friendship (and they way each of them begins to realize they have feelings for the other one but don't want to mess up the friendship so don't say anything). Then, suddenly, it's all about the hot, steamy sex that the two have one weekend while they are "pretend" dating at Hallie's sister's wedding. 
• The narrating. I really enjoyed having the dual narrators and both readers were solid. 

What I Liked: 

• While these two main characters had plenty of faults (Hallie actually moved out of an apartment she shared while the roommate was out of town without telling the roommate), I felt like they both showed some growth as the book went on. 
• I really enjoyed the banter between the two characters. I found it witty and fun and would have enjoyed more of it. 
• You know that the two will end up together in the end and you know that something will come up that will cause a deep rift before that can happen (and you even know well before it happens what it will be) and it still worked for me. 

I'll confess: I did look at Goodreads review before I wrote this and the reviews are largely very good (although a handful of people really disliked this one). I imagine a good many of them are fans of the genre in general and more are fans of Painter's in particular. So, while there was a lot that didn't work for me in this one, there was enough to like to make me consider trying another of her books. Those reviews that praised the book (and even some that didn't) recommended others of her book as better. So I'll give her another shot. In fact, I've just put another of Painter's books on hold. 

Pete and Alice In Maine by Caitlyn Shetterly

Pete and Alice In Maine by Caitlyn Shetterly

256 pages

Published July 2023 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

Reeling from a painful betrayal in her marriage as the Covid pandemic takes hold in New York City, Alice packs up her family and flees to their vacation home in Maine. She hopes to find sanctuary—from the uncertainties of the exploding pandemic and her faltering marriage. 

Putting distance between herself and the stresses and troubles of the city, Alice begins to feel safe and relieved. But the locals are far from friendly. Trapped and forced into quarantine by hostile neighbors, Alice sees the imprisoning structure of her life in this new predicament. Stripped down to the bare essentials of survival and tending to the needs of her two children, she can no longer ignore all the ways in which she feels limited and lost—lost in the big city, lost as a wife, lost as a mother, lost as a daughter and lost as a person. 

As the world shifts around her and the balance in her marriage tilts, Alice and her husband, Pete, are left to consider if what keeps their family safe is the same thing as what keeps their family together.

My Thoughts:

This is one of those books that I should have reviewed as soon as I finished it, while my thoughts were still fresh in my head...and I could really remember the details. So, as so often happens these days, this review will be brief. 

What Didn't Work For Me: 

• The kids. For me, Iris is just too precocious and Sophie is just too angry and allowed to be too rude and mean.
• Alice...sometimes. She seems terribly unhappy in her live even before the betrayal and the pandemic, but unwilling to do anything to make things better for herself. 
• I've, thankfully, never been in Alice's position so I can't say how I would react. Still, I found myself irritated with her back and forth in regards to her feelings about Pete. On the other hand, again, I've never been in that position so it might be exactly the way I'd react. 
• Although the entire book is built around needing to leave NYC because of the pandemic, it never seems to touch the family in any way and Alice never seems to be particularly concerned about the ways it's affecting others. 

What I Liked: 

• I remember hearing about how many people with second homes left the cities in the early days of the pandemic, but this is the first book I've read that tackles how that might have worked for those people. I appreciated that Alice recognized their privilege. 
• It took me back to those days when we lived in terrible fear of dying (well, at least a good chunk of the population did). It was easy to believe that the reactions of the local in the book mirrored what a lot of locals felt when the city people began moving into their communities, possibly bringing a deadly disease they might otherwise have avoided, into their neighborhood. 
• Pete and Alice. They felt well developed, with both a lot to like about them but also plenty of flaws. 
• I liked the writing, the intimacy of the story. I felt as if I really got to know these characters and got into their heads. 
• The ending. I knew how I wanted the story to end (given what happens in the book), but Shetterly throws a curveball right at the end that entirely changes what will happen next. I do, almost always, like a book that ends without a clear ending. Life happens in segments that don't always come to neat and tidy endings before the next segment begins. That's what happens here and I like it a lot. 

One Day In December by Josie Silver

One Day In December by Josie Silver

Read by Eleanor Tomlinson and Charlie Anson

10 hours

Published January 2018 by Broadway Books

Publisher's Summary: 

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic...and then her bus drives away. Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they "reunite" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus. It would be. What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

My Thoughts: 

A coworker recommended this book to me when I told her what kind of books I felt like would work best for me back in December when I was so mentally distracted and in a reading slump. And then it took weeks to become available and somehow I let it expire before finishing it. I finally got it back last week and picked up right where I'd left off. That happens all too often to me and most of the time I find that I've lost my connection to the story and the characters. Not this time. 

If you've been following along with me for long, you'll know I don't read many romance novels (except, of course, for the classics!). But I was feeling the need for lighter stories that had happy, expected endings. Trust a romance novel to give you that. Sure the premises are often preposterous - I mean, you lock eyes at a bus stop and then spend a year searching for him because you're certain he's "the one." Ridiculous, right? But sometimes you just have to be willing to go with it because it's going to lead you to a story that rings true in so many other ways. 

One Day In December isn't just a romance novel; it's also a book about friendship, about the friendship between Laurie and Sarah that prevents Laurie from ruining Sarah's and Jack's relationship and about the friendship between Laurie and Jack that develops between two people whose goal is to make Sarah happy. I loved the friendship between Laurie and Sarah - the kind where special sandwiches are developed, where both understand the other like no one else ever will, the kind that can be bent but not broken. 

My coworker was right when she told me that this one has the depth that keeps it from being the kind of light and frothy romance novel that scares me away from the genre. I don't want to give away too much so I can't really even give you clues about what happens that gives you the bitterness to take the edge off of the sweet. You'll just to have to take my word for it that those things give these characters dimension and make them feel more like people you'd know. 

This book is the perfect example of why you should take a risk on books and try things you'd normally steer clear of - they might just be the right book at the right time. 

While Justice Slept by Stacey Abrams

While Justice Slept by Stacey Abrams

Read by Adenrele Ojo

Published May 2021 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:

Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together—excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn—the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases—has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney. Plunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court—a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington. 

As political wrangling ensues in Washington to potentially replace the ailing judge whose life and survival Avery controls, she begins to unravel a carefully constructed, chesslike sequence of clues left behind by Wynn. She comes to see that Wynn had a much more personal stake in the controversial case and realizes his complex puzzle will lead her directly into harm’s way in order to find the truth.

My Thoughts:

It's getting late, I'm reading so much I hardly have time for writing reviews, and I really, really need to get to comments so I'm going to keep this one short.

Why'd I Read It: It was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, a woman who is crazy busy but still finds time to read a lot of mysteries. When she recommends one to me, I know I'm going to like it. 

Some Backstory: You'll know the name Stacey Abrams from her run from Governor of Georgia and, more importantly, for her tremendous work in getting eligible persons signed up to vote in that state. She wrote this book many years ago but had no luck getting it published. Did her name recognition help in the end? Undoubtedly. But this isn't the first book that Abrams has had published - she's previously written and had published several romance novels and a number of nonfiction books. 

What I Liked: 

• Adenrele Ojo does a fine job reading the book which will make you think you should pick up the audiobook if you want to read this one. Read on.
• Abrams includes biotech, genetics, espionage, medical, legal, and political elements and makes readers pay attention to the ways she weaves these elements together. 
• Avery comes with a background that makes her feel more real, including a drug addict mother, a history of gambling, and a educational background that had her jumping from school to school.
• Once this book gets rolling, there's no stopping it - it feels like it's ready made to be an non-stop action movie. 

What I Didn't Like:

• The good guys are practically wearing white, while the bad guys are in black. There's almost no grey here. I kept waiting for one of the good guys to turn out to be a bad guy but it never happened. 
• I prefer authors to give us a sketch of their characters but not to dwell on them. Abrams gives readers every detail, often enhancing those descriptions as the book goes on. 
• Avery's mother, Rita, is an addict and, we are given to infer, a sex worker. Abrams seems to a very little sympathy for either addicts or sex workers, painting Rita in the most negative of lights and never given the impression that either addicts or sex workers are victims. 
• There are some pretty glaring points where Abrams has characters, particularly Avery, doing things that we've been led to believe they are too smart to do. 

About that comment I made earlier about the audiobook. There is so much going on in this book, especially in the first half as it is set up, that it's tough to keep up with all of the details when you're listening to it. I'd definitely recommend you at least have a copy of the book on hand if you're going to listen to this one, so that you can refer back to it. 

Now, you're probably thinking that even though I said that I'm bound to like any book my sister-in-law recommends, I didn't seem to like this one much. It does have its flaws. But I was all in for the story and Abrams never made solving the problem too easy for the smart group Avery surrounded herself. Was the ending a little implausible? Well, yeah. But it's the ending you want and I was happy with it. And it had me looking forward to the next two Avery Keene books which Abrams is already contracted to write for Doubleday.