I found Night Road in my Little Free Library. Since The Nightingale is one of my all-time favorite recent reads, I thought I would give Kristen Hannah another try. While Night Road moved at a good clip and the story was interesting, it wasn’t nearly as good as The Nightingale (to be fair, an almost impossibly high bar). We begin the story with Lexi moving in with her great-aunt after living most of her life in foster homes. On Lexi’s first day at her new school, she meets Mia who has no friends and can’t connect with her classmates despite having a happy home life and wonderful twin brother, Zach. Lexi and Mia become the closest of friends and Lexi becomes ensconced in the family’s life. Senior year brings trouble to the idyllic situation as Zach and Lexi fall in love, hoping that the rest of their lives won’t be upset. Of course, feelings are hurt, bad decisions are made and things fall apart. Night Road felt like a young adult novel for the first 2/3rds. The beginning was a little predictable and too shallow. The last 1/3, however, changed my opinion of the whole book. In fact, it took my rating from a 3.5 to a 4. So, while I originally said I’d skip it in favor of trying some other Hannah options, upon finishing, I would say it’s worth picking up. Fair warning, Hannah has a way with prose that makes a reader cry.

Despite a slow start, The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman is a delightful novel with interesting characters and an absorbing story. Rose and Helen are best friends, married to brothers, who share a brownstone in New York City. Rose lives in the downstairs apartment with her three girls and Helen lives upstairs with her three boys. The families are in and out of each other’s homes daily and the brothers work together in a box manufacturing business that had been passed down to them by their father. Imagine how excited the sisters-in-law are to discover, later in life, that they are both pregnant. Fast forward 9 months to a blizzard, when both husbands are out of town on business. What happens that night changes the course of both family’s history and weaves together a page-turning tale. I really enjoyed this story and highly recommend it. While you suspect the “mystery” early on, it isn’t confirmed until close to the end, which makes it that much more fun.

Never Let You Go is the newest by Chevy Stevens (Still Missing, Those Girls and That Night). Reading Stevens is a guilty pleasure – fast-paced, interesting plots that keep you on the edge of your seat. This one, however, I didn’t like as much as her others. Not only did the domestic violence bother me (too much like what I didn’t enjoy in Big Little Lies), but I too easily figured out the major plot twist and then just had to suffer through the rest of the story – it was too predictable. Lindsey escapes from her abusive husband with her daughter, Sophie, eleven years earlier. The night of her escape, her husband goes to prison for killing a woman while driving drunk. Present day, Lindsey has reinvented her life while Andrew has changed in prison. Suddenly, though, after his release, she fears he is stalking her and all her old fears come rushing back. One by one, you doubt all the characters in the book. The premise was a good one, and the tension was certainly real, but in the end, this one just didn’t hold up to her previous thrillers. I’d give it a miss.

Always, by Sarah Jio, was a bit of a disappointment. The idea was intriguing, but the writing was both weak and predictable. When we begin the story, Kailey and her fiance are enjoying a lovely dinner at one of Seattle’s best restaurants. Kailey seems to have it all – a job that she loves as a journalist and a seemingly perfect guy. After dinner, however, Kailey sees a homeless man who she realizes is the love of her life, Cade McAllister. Ten years earlier (the story is told in alternating chapters between 2008 and 1998) when Cade and Kailey met, the connection was intense. But, Cade mysteriously disappeared, leaving her devastated. Once she has seen him, she can’t let go and needs to figure out how he became homeless and unable to remember her. I really wanted to like this book, but the writing just didn’t hold up. I only finished it to find out what happened to Cade.

The Housekeeper by Suellen Dainty was thematically very much like Here’s to Us by Elin Hilderbrand. While somewhat heavy, it was a quick and light read that wasn’t too taxing. Anne is a chef working at her boyfriend’s restaurant, until she realizes that he is seeing someone else. Crushed, she leaves both the boyfriend and the job. She wallows in self-pity until she realizes that she would like to head in a different direction for a while. She becomes the housekeeper and chef for a self-help guru and her husband, a professor and writer. While working for them, she discovers that the psychologist who the husband is writing about treated her schizophrenic mother. You could 100% see the ending coming, which was too bad, but the story was decent and kept me entertained (low bar, perhaps).

The River at Night by Erica Ferencik grabs you immediately and doesn’t let go until the final page. I read it in about two hours because I couldn’t put it down. It’s perfect for a quiet weekend or a day at the beach – NOT for when you are home alone at night! Four friends have gone on girls’ weekends for the last fifteen years – some have been more thrilling than others. This year, the ringleader, Pia, has decided they need to go whitewater rafting in the wilderness. While Wini has reservations, she decides she would rather face her fears than miss the time with her pals. Of course, terrible things happen. This was not particularly well-written and you could argue the plausibility of many elements, but, laying those aside, this was a great read.

I have had an ancient copy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood on my bookshelf for years. I finally picked it up, wanting to know why it’s on so many “100 Best Books” lists. While I found it slow, the story was fascinating, particularly because it is descriptive of both the victim’s and perpetrator’s lives surrounding the murders. It wasn’t my favorite book of those I’ve read recently, but it’s certainly worth reading if you haven’t.

I’m a big fan of Lisa See. If you have not read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan or Peony in Love, you should. See’s The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane had a slow start, but once it got going, it was a compelling read that moved quickly. The book tells the story of Li-yan, of the Akha hill tribe, who grows and harvests tea. Li-yan, unlike most girls in her primitive community, goes to school and ends up learning all about tea at university and creating a successful business in tea exporting. Before university, she has a failed marriage and a daughter that she gives up for adoption. The daughter, renamed Haley, is raised by an American couple. As a teenager, Haley searches for her birth parents. At the same time, Li-yan searches for her. While I liked this book a lot, the ending came too quickly after a great deal of lead-up. It could have been elongated and it would have been more satisfying. Overall, however, this was a very good read, and, an interesting glimpse into the tea industry as well.

A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner is just the kind of book I like: historical fiction meets modern times with a mysterious twist. Most of this book takes place in 1911 and centers around Clara, a nurse, whose new love interest (really just an interest on her part) perishes in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. To flee the pain of Manhatten, she moves to Ellis Island to take care of sick new immigrants. Framing this story is the story of Taryn, who loses her husband on 9/11. While the stories are seemingly unconnected, we know a scarf ties them together somehow. This was definitely a story to get lost in and one I thoroughly enjoyed.

We chose All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda, for my neighborhood book club this month. Nic left home ten years ago in the wake of her best friend going missing. When she returns to help her brother clean out their family home to sell, another local girl goes missing. The story is told chapter by chapter in reverse order – starting at day 15 and working back to day 1, when Nic gets there. Then it skips ahead to day 15 to finish up. While the story was somewhat interesting, it wasn’t terribly well-written and I found the backward order and story elements somewhat confusing. The idea was novel and I wanted to like it, but I only finished the book to see whodunit. Otherwise, I would have abandoned ship. I’ll be curious to hear what the rest of the book group thought of it.