Thriller

The Hiking Trip by Jenny Blackhurst

This was a fun and twisty mystery/thriller set on the West Coast Trail in Canada. Maise lives an unhappy life in the UK. She plans a trip to hike in Canada, but her friend flakes on her. Maise goes anyway, and while waiting to board the bus to the trail, she meets brother and sister Ric and Sera. They instantly click and decide to hike the trail together. The first couple of days go well with lots of fun antics, but then things go bad. Really bad. Twenty-five years later a woman named Laura is shook when she hears a body was found near the trail and police suspect it’s Sera. Laura is afraid the secret she’s been keeping will come out, and odd things start happening making Laura suspect someone is determined to make her spill her secrets.

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January 24, 2023 0

The Club by Ellery Lloyd

This is a fun and twisty mystery/thriller set in the glamorous world of an exclusive club for celebrities run by brothers Ned and Adam. The clubs are set up so that the celebrities can behave however they want inside them, with the assurance that nothing will ever get leaked to the press. The book is set over one weekend during the grand opening of the brother’s latest club located on an island off the coast of England.

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January 15, 2023 0

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

This was a pretty good mystery/thriller that involves two best friends and their summer at a high-end holiday home in a small town in Italy. Emily is a successful author of a cozy mystery series going through a painful and expensive divorce. She has recently recovered from a mysterious illness and is going through a bad case of writer’s block. Her best friend Chess is a successful self-help author and influencer.

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January 2, 2023 0

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

This is a very good contemporary fiction/mystery/thriller set in India. Geeta’s dead-beat husband left her five years ago. She didn’t kill him, but everyone thinks she did. Since then, she’s taken out her nose ring (become a widow) and made a life for herself selling hand-made jewelry. The inhabitants of her small village scorn Geeta, gossip about her, and the children are afraid of her. While this would make some women sad, Geeta relishes in her freedom.

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January 2, 2023 0

The Stranded (Stranded #1) by Sarah Daniels

This is a good YA Dystopian Sci/Fi Thriller set on the Arcadia, a luxury liner that set sail 40 years ago after being driven from Europe by an apocalyptic war. Since that time, it’s been a refugee camp anchored off the coast of the Federated States. The story centers on Esther a loyal citizen, working to have the rare chance to live a normal life as a medic on dry land, and Nik, a rebel planning something big to liberate the Arcadia once and for all. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and the oppressors of the refugees acts despicably toward them, requiring the rebels to alter their plans.

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December 29, 2022 0

Five Survive by Holly Jackson

This was an intense YA mystery/thriller about six friends headed to spring break that get trapped in an RV in the middle of nowhere by a sniper intent on learning one of their secrets. The story is told from the perspective of Red. Her mother, a police officer, was executed on the job 5 years ago and her father succumbed to alcoholism. This, as well as having little to no money, set her apart from other teens. Her best friend Maddie and a few others, however, have her back and make sure that she’s not left out.

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December 2, 2022 0

The Christmas Party by Mikayla Davids

This was an interesting mystery involving a dysfunctional family, a 5 star hotel in the country and a snow storm. What more do you need for dark family secrets to come out and someone to commit murder?

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November 24, 2022 0

Mrs. Hudson and the Christmas Canary (Holmes and Hudson #6) by Martin Davies

This is a pretty good historical fiction mystery set in Victorian London. Flottie is the teenage housemaid for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. She occasionally assists Mrs. Hudson, the cook, and Holmes in his investigations. This time, Flottie helps solve a 23 year old mystery of the missing solid gold Christmas canary that belonged to a wealthy family and was handed down over the generations. It was displayed as the Christmas tree topper every year, until it was mysteriously stolen during a house party.

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November 15, 2022 0

The Wicked Remain (Grimrose Girls #2) by Laura Pohl

This was a satisfying conclusion to a good YA Fantasy duology. The events pick up a few months after the first book. The girls continue to search for a way to break the curse, but are waylaid by personal issues that distract them from their goal. As they make progress on finding out the origin of the curse, more girls start dying.

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November 9, 2022 0