Mary Kubica is always good for a thriller and She’s Not Sorry was a free audiobook available when I needed one from the library (how many thousands of dollars have I saved?! AND I don’t hate my new longer commute because it allows for more “reading” in a week). Amazon: “Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom and working full time as an ICU nurse, when a patient named Caitlin arrives in her ward with a traumatic brain injury. They say she jumped from a bridge and plunged over twenty feet to the train tracks below. When a witness comes forward with new details about Caitlin’s fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was a crime committed? Did someone actually push Caitlin, and if so, who… and why? Meghan lets herself get close to Caitlin until she’s deeply entangled in the mystery surrounding her. Only when it’s too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims…” This was a solid thriller and a good audiobook. I recommend it.

I can’t even express how fortunate we are to have the library system we have. I so rarely purchase a book because, if you just wait long enough, it will come from the library. Don’t get me wrong, I love to hold my own book, but I have saved so many thousands of dollars over the years because of this incredible resource. Reese Witherspoon has great people who pick her books. Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein was no exception. “Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: The responsible and academically minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young, while Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price. As Mia and Cricket grow up, they must grapple with the legacy of their mother’s secret past while navigating their own precarious future. Can Mia allow herself to fall in love at the risk of repeating a terrible history? Will Cricket’s relentless chase of a lifelong goal drive her sister away? When does loyalty become self-sabotage?” (Amazon) This was a good read – you knew where it was going and how it would end, but it had unexpected moments of surprise and a good premise. I really enjoyed it.

I got Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America by Gigi Georges a long time ago, but never read it. It was a fascinating story and one I very much enjoyed reading. “Nestled in Maine’s far northeast corner, Washington County sits an hour’s drive from the heart of famed and bustling Acadia National Park. Yet it’s a world away. For Willow, Vivian, McKenna, Audrey, and Josie—five teenage girls caught between tradition and transformation in this remote region—it’s home. Based on four years of intimate reporting, Downeast follows their journeys of heartbreak and hope in uncertain times, creating a nuanced and unique portrait of small-town life with women at its center. It crafts a powerful and optimistic counternarrative to the dominant downbeat stories about rural America as a place of hopelessness and despair. All five girls know the pain and joy of life in a region whose rugged beauty and stoicism mask dwindling populations, vanishing job opportunities, and pervasive opioid addiction. As the girls reach adulthood, they discover that despite significant challenges, there is much to celebrate in ‘the valley of the overlooked.’ Their stories remind us of the value of timeless ideals: strength of family and community, resilience in the face of hurdles, reverence for nature’s rule, dignity in cracked hands and muddied shoes, and the enduring power of home.” (Amazon) Highly recommend, especially if you have any relationship to Maine.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham was another audiobook that was available from the library when I needed one. Amazon: “When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath. Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren’t actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?” This was a good listen and I definitely didn’t predict the ending. Good thriller.

I am not sure where I got the recommendation for The Last Illusion of Paige White. “Gorgeous, charismatic Paige White has always lived a picture-perfect life. Her meticulously curated social pages exude an old-fashioned, wholesome lifestyle set against a picturesque town in Australia. Images of breakfasts lakeside with her daughter, sunny afternoons in the family van, and romantic picnics with her husband are the envy of her thousands of followers. But when a dark, brooding image pops up on Paige’s page, where she appears waterlogged and disheveled—and shortly after she’s discovered drowned—alarm bells go off. Jane Masters, Paige’s childhood best friend, has returned for the funeral. Jane left years ago to pursue a bigger life as a journalist in Sydney, putting everyone from her early days in the rearview mirror. But as Jane sinks deeper into the community she thought she’d never return to, she begins to discover that darker things lurk beneath the sparkle of the lake. Told partially through Paige’s reflections on her life from limbo, The Last Illusion of Paige White is a smart, introspective, impeccably-plotted mystery that will have readers second-guessing what is truth and what is illusion, and their own obsessions with their online worlds.” (Amazon) This was a good thriller that kept you guessing until the end. It was a little dull in the middle, but overall, a good read.

You Deserve to Know by Angie Blum Thompson came up as an audiobook from the library. It was a good listen and fun that it was set in Bethesda. Small pet peeve is the the reader didn’t know how to pronounce Tatte. Amazon: “Neighbors Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa share more than playdates and coffee mornings on their tranquil street in East Bethesda. They confide their deepest secrets, navigate the challenges of motherhood together, and provide a support system that seems unbreakable. But when Gwen’s husband is found murdered after one of their weekly Friday night dinners, the peaceful quiet of their cul-de-sac shatters. The seemingly idyllic world of the three close-knit mom friends becomes a web of deception, betrayal, and revenge. As the police investigate, the veneer of friendship begins to crack, revealing hidden tensions, clandestine affairs, and long-buried jealousies among the three women. With suspicions mounting and the neighborhood gripped by fear, Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa must confront the chilling truth about their husbands, and the sinister undercurrents in their own friendship.” There was a little predictability to this one, but it was a decent listen, nonetheless.

I have loved Anthony Doerr books in the past and About Grace came up as an older one I might enjoy. Amazon: “David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen—a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in a supermarket. When David dreams that his infant daughter will drown in a flood as he tries to save her, he comes undone. He travels thousands of miles, fleeing family, home, and the future itself, to deny the dream. On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind. Doerr’s characters are full of grief and longing, but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose, he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. About Grace is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.” I found this one disappointing. I didn’t love any of the characters and found the story hard to believe. I did finish it to find out what happened, but I can’t recommend this one.

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn was a great audiobook that was immediately available at the library. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Amazon: “In the snowbound city of Kiev, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son—but Hitler’s invasion of Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper—a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC—until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life. Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.” Highly recommend this listen, but, prepare yourself…it’s LONG.

I love Ian McEwan. “2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery. 2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well. What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.” (Amazon) Unfortunately, this was not one of my favorites. I did listen to all of it to find out what happened with the characters, but I didn’t really like any of them and it wasn’t a love for me.

I loved Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson and found Good Dirt in a Little Free Library. Lucky for me, it was LARGE PRINT. What an amazing thing! So much easier for my old eyes! Highly recommend. Amazon: “When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby’s high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that’s exactly what they get. So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what’s happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family’s history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future. In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.” This was a great read and an enjoyable way to spend the weekend.