Nine Liars

 

Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson                      Teen & YA Thriller/Mystery/Suspense/Detective

(from Amazon)  Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain—questions about college, love, and life in general.  Relief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.  The case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.  Seven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.

(My Review)

Stevie is at it again, and this time in LONDON!!!  David is studying in England, and he manages a visit with Stevie and the gang.  And of course, they get caught up in investigating a cold case.  Jolly good fun!

Clown in a Cornfield

 

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (Book 1 of 2)             Teen & YA Horror/Thriller

(from Amazon)  Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half.   On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.  Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. 

(My Review)

Quinn and her father move to Kettle Springs thinking they've moved to a boring little town - it is anything but.  Not knowing the tragic events of the past, Quinn joins her new friends going out looking for fun.  What they find is not the fun they were looking for, but people trying to settle the score - even if it destroys everything.    I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would.

Just Like Home

 

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey                          Ghost Thrillers

(from Amazon)

“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories ― she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family.  Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?  There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.

(My Review)

It's so hard to go back home - especially if your father was a serial killer.  Vera returns home to see her dying mother.  She left as soon as she could after her father was arrested for multiple murders.  When Vera returns, she discovers the house holds all of the secrets, all the way down to its very foundation.  This is a creepy read.  

The Dead Romantics

 

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston                         Paranormal Romance

(from Amazon)

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.  When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.  For ten years, she's run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.  Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.  Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

(My Review)

I absolutely adored this book!  Florence sees dead people.  She is also a ghostwriter for a famous author, with aspirations of writing her own books.  When she goes home for the death of her father, she surprised to see the ghost of her editor, who she is quite attracted to.  As she deals with her eccentric family, and helping the ghost, she finds...romance.  

Babel

 

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator's Revolution         by R. F. Kuang             Literary Fiction/Historical Fantasy

(from Amazon)  1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.  Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.  For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

(My Review)

Wow!  I'm not sure where to start (I literally just finished reading it).  As the book starts out, I found myself really enjoying the dark academia vibes.  I loved the descriptions of Oxford University, of academic life, the discussions of the linguistic lectures.  It was so very scholarly and interesting.  But, there were instances that were a bit unsettling.  Kuang did a great job building up this tension, until about 70% through the book, and you're like...WHAT??  This story is so powerful, making you think about how complicated language is - how it separates us, and brings us together.  This story also looks at the complicated history of colonialism.  I HIGHLY recommend this book!!!  

Sad Ghost Club

Sad Ghost Club (Volume 1 of 2) by Lize Meddings           YA Humorous Graphic Novel/Mental Health

(from Amazon)  This is the story of one of those days - a day so bad you can barely get out of bed, when it's a struggle to leave the house, and when you do, you wish you hadn't. But even the worst of days can surprise you. When one sad ghost, alone at a crowded party, spies another sad ghost across the room, they decide to leave together. What happens next changes everything.  Because that night they start the The Sad Ghost Club - a secret society for the anxious and alone, a club for people who think they don't belong.

(My Review) 

This delightful graphic novel, follows a "sad ghost" who is struggling with anxiety, overthinking, and loneliness.  Everyone just needs a friend. 

 

Nothing More to Tell

 

Nothing More to Tell by Karen M. McManus              YA Mystery

(from Amazon)  Four years ago, Brynn left Saint Ambrose School following the shocking murder of her favorite teacher—a story that made headlines after the teacher’s body was found by three Saint Ambrose students in the woods behind their school. The case was never solved. Now that Brynn is moving home and starting her dream internship at a true-crime show, she’s determined to find out what really happened.  The kids who found Mr. Larkin are her way in, and her ex-best friend, Tripp Talbot, was one of them. Without his account of events, the other two kids might have gone down for Mr. Larkin’s murder—but instead, thanks to Tripp, they're now at the top of the Saint Ambrose social pyramid. Tripp's friends have never forgotten what Tripp did for them that day, and neither has he. Just like he hasn’t forgotten that everything he told the police was a lie.  Digging into the past is bound to shake up the present, and when Brynn begins to investigate what happened in the woods that day, she uncovers secrets that might change everything—about Saint Ambrose, about Mr. Larkin, and about her ex-best friend, Tripp Talbot.  Four years ago someone got away with murder. More terrifying is that they might be closer than anyone thinks.

(My Review)  

Another great mystery from K.M. McManus.  Brynn moves back to her hometown, and starts an internship.  She convinces her new boss into looking into the murder of a beloved teacher that happened at her school, years ago, before she moved away.  She digs up secrets that some would prefer to stay buried.