TUESDAY POTPOURRI: “THE LAST GOOD GIRL”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Books & a Beat.

The featured book today is one in a series:  The Last Good Girl, by Allison Leotta, a ripped-from-the-headlines novel featuring prosecutor Anna Curtis at the center of a national story involving campus rape and the disappearance of a young woman.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Friday) The guy had beautiful white teeth and a dimple that appeared when she made him laugh, but all Emily could think was, College is where romance goes to die.

They stood on prime real estate, belly-up to the bar at Lucky’s, pressed together by the swell of bodies around them.  The air was thick with sweated perfume, cheap beer, and the recycled breath of hundreds of young adults in their sexual prime.  The boy drained his Bud, set the bottle on the bar, and issued a mating call.

“Wanna do shots?”

***

Teaser:  The man puffed out his chest and pulled out the credential clipped to his belt on a retractable cord.  “I’m Bill Xanten, the Tower County district attorney.  And this is a lawless travesty.” (51%).

***

Synopsis:  It was her word against his…until she disappeared.

Emily Shapiro has gone missing. A freshman at a Michigan university, Emily was last seen leaving a bar near Beta Psi, a prestigious and secretive fraternity. The main suspect is Dylan Highsmith, the son of one of the most powerful politicians in the state. At first, the only clue is pieced-together surveil­lance footage of Emily leaving the bar that night…and Dylan running down the street after her.

When prosecutor Anna Curtis discovers a video diary Emily kept during her first few months at college, it exposes the history Emily had with Dylan: she accused him of rape before disappearing. Anna is horrified to discover that Dylan’s frat is known on campus as the “rape factory.”

The case soon gets media attention and support from Title IX activists across the country, but Anna’s investigation hits a wall. Anna has to find something, anything she can use to discover Emily alive. But without a body or any physical evidence, she’s under threat from people who tell her to stop before she ruins the name of an innocent young man.

Inspired by real-life stories, The Last Good Girl shines a light on campus rape and the powerful emotional dynamics that affect the families of the men and women on both sides.

***

What do you think?  Are you tempted?  Do you want to keep reading?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “BITTERSWEET”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by A Daily Rhythm.

It is time for more fun with our Tuesday memes.  The book I have chosen to feature is an ARC from Amazon Vine:  Bittersweet, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore.

 

 

 

 

Intro: (February – The Roommate)

Before she loathed me, before she loved me, Genevra Katherine Winslow didn’t know that I existed.  That’s hyperbolic, of course; by February, student housing had required us to share a hot shoe box of a room for nearly six months, so she must have gathered I was a physical reality (if only because I coughed every time she smoked her Kools atop the bunk bed), but until the day Ev asked me to accompany her to Winloch, I was accustomed to her regarding me as she would a hideously upholstered armchair—something in her way, to be utilized when absolutely necessary, but certainly not what she’d have chosen herself.

***

Teaser:  But whether Aunt Jeanne had changed or my eye had become considerably more nuanced in the intervening years, what I discovered that first December of college was that I’d rather shoot myself in the head than become her.  She lived in a dank, cat-infested condo and seemed puzzled whenever I suggested we go to the Smithsonian. (p. 11).

***

Blurb:  Suspenseful and cinematic, Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider’s hunger to belong.
On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it’s the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour. Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she’s ever wanted:  friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.
But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact – and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family’s dark secrets and make Ev’s world her own.

***

I am eager to begin this book, one which I have only heard good things about.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES”

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today my featured book is an ARC called The Secrets of Midwives, by Sally Hepworth.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Neva)

I suppose you could say I was born to be a midwife.  Three generations of women in my family had devoted their lives to bringing babies into the world; the work was in my blood.  But my path wasn’t so obvious as that.  I wasn’t my mother—a basket-weaving hippie who rejoiced in the magic of new, precious life.  I wasn’t my grandmother—wise, no nonsense, with a strong belief in the power of natural birth.  I didn’t even particularly like babies.  No, for me, the decision to become a midwife had nothing to do with babies.  And everything to do with mothers.

***

Teaser:  Panic broke out; a swarm of moths over my heart.  I no longer wanted Grace to disappear and take the last two minutes—I wanted her to take my future. (p. 9).

***

Three generations of women Secrets in the present and from the pastA captivating tale of life, loss, and love…Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy—including the identity of the baby’s father— hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible. Her mother, Grace, finds it impossible to let this secret rest. The more Grace prods, the tighter Neva holds to her story, and the more the lifelong differences between private, quiet Neva and open, gregarious Grace strain their relationship. For Floss, Neva’s grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva’s situation thrusts her back sixty years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter’s—one which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all. As Neva’s pregnancy progresses and speculation makes it harder and harder to conceal the truth, Floss wonders if hiding her own truth is ultimately more harmful than telling it. Will these women reveal their secrets and deal with the inevitable consequences? Or are some secrets best kept hidden?

***

What do you think?  Do the excerpts grab you?  Would you keep reading?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “THE POCKET WIFE”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

I am delighted to shine the spotlight today on an ARC I received this past week:  The Pocket Wife, by Susan Crawford.

 

 

 

Intro:  The ambulance is still miles away when Dana awakens to the near dark of evening.  It wails ribbon-thin in the smog over the highway as she opens her eyes where she lies sprawled across her couch in a suburb of Paterson, a stone’s throw from Manhattan but a different world entirely.  She wakes to a headache throbbing at the backs of her lids, a library book lying beside her.  She sits up and reaches for the book, marking her place with a tiny corner fold, giving it a little pat as she sets it on the coffee table.

Lately she can read a novel in two hours.  She has always been an avid reader, but these days she can read much faster.  The colors, the conversations, everything is much more vibrant and inclusive, as if opening a book releases genies trapped inside.  The scenes and people between their covers sometimes seem more vivid than real life, with their sunny pearl-toothed characters, the witty conversation, the handsome stranger squeezed into a subway car or knocking about on the street.  Sometimes, when she finishes a book at record speed, Dana feels a slight letdown, as if a good friend has hung up the phone in the middle of a conversation.

***

Teaser:  It’s not entirely unpleasant, this restlessness, this energy, the sharpness of her thoughts, her swift responses, intuitive, clever.  The clarity will in time give way to chaos.  (p. 18).

***

Amazon Description:  A stylish psychological thriller with the compelling intrigue of The Silent Wife and Turn of Mind and the white-knuckle pacing of Before I Go to Sleep—in which a woman suffering from bipolar disorder cannot remember if she murdered her friend.

Dana Catrell is shocked when her neighbor Celia is brutally murdered. To Dana’s horror, she was the last person to see Celia alive. Suffering from mania, the result of her bipolar disorder, she has troubling holes in her memory, including what happened on the afternoon of Celia’s death.

Her husband’s odd behavior and the probing of Detective Jack Moss create further complications as she searches for answers. The closer she comes to piecing together the shards of her broken memory, the more Dana falls apart. Is there a murderer lurking inside her . . . or is there one out there in the shadows of reality, waiting to strike again?

***

I am very excited about this one, hoping to dive right into it next week.  What do you think?  Does it grab you?  Do you want to keep reading?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “INTO THE DARKEST CORNER”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

I love this Tuesday event, a chance to spotlight current or upcoming reads.  Today’s featured book:  Into the Darkest Corner, by Elizabeth Haynes.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Thursday 21 June 2001)

As far as days to die were concerned, the longest day of the year was as good a day as any.

Naomi Bennett lay with her eyes open at the bottom of a ditch while the blood that had kept her alive for all of her twenty-four years pulsed away into the grit and rubble beneath her.

As she drifted  in and out of awareness, she contemplated the irony of it all:  how she was going to die now—having survived so much, and thinking that freedom was so close—at the hands of the only man who had ever really loved her and shown her kindness.  He stood at the edge of the ditch above her, his face in shadow as the sun shone through the bright green leaves and cast dappled light over him, his hair halo-bright.  Waiting.

***

Teaser:  (Friday 27 February 2004)

He took me straight home, which was both good and bad.  I didn’t even know what it was I wanted anymore.  (p.198)

***

Blurb:   Catherine Bailey has been enjoying the single life long enough to know a catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic and spontaneous, Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell.

But what begins as flattering attentiveness and passionate sex turns into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon learns there is a darker side to Lee. His increasingly erratic, controlling behaviour becomes frightening, but no one believes her when she shares her fears. Increasingly isolated and driven into the darkest corner of her world, a desperate Catherine plans a meticulous escape.

Four years later, Lee is behind bars and Catherine—now Cathy—compulsively checks the locks and doors in her apartment, trusting no one. But when an attractive upstairs neighbour, Stuart, comes into her life, Cathy dares to hope that happiness and love may still be possible . . . until she receives a phone call informing her of Lee’s impending release. Soon after, Cathy thinks she catches a glimpse of the former best friend who testified against her in the trial; she begins to return home to find objects subtly rearranged in her apartment, one of Lee’s old tricks. Convinced she is back in her former lover’s sights, Cathy prepares to wrestle with the demons of her past for the last time.

Utterly convincing in its portrayal of obsession, Into the Darkest corner is an ingeniously structured and plotted tour de force of suspense that marks the arrival of a major new talent.

***

I love books about obsessions and compulsions.  This one should keep me turning those pages!  What do you think?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “RUIN FALLS”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Tuesdays are great!  Don’t you love them?  The week is in full swing, and it’s our opportunity to visit blogs and read excerpts.  Today I am sharing one of my review books, an ARC from Amazon Vine:  Ruin Falls, by Jenny Milchman.

 

 

 

Intro:  The children had never been this far from home before.  Liz had spent most of yesterday driving around, hunting for no-mess Crayola coloring books, praying they weren’t too juvenile to keep a six- and eight-year-old occupied in the car, then running up and down the supermarket aisles in search of bars and snack pouches in case they couldn’t find food on the road.  Or in case they did find something, and Paul wouldn’t allow the kids to eat it.

Now the hours had ticked by, four of them, and it seemed they were no closer to their destination than they had been when they left home.  Descending from the mountains of Wedeskyull had presented a stark contrast and it felt like they were really traveling.  But the view outside the windows ever since had been made up of little besides cornfields.  Liz wouldn’t have believed how bleak acres and acres of green could appear when the crop was so unvarying.  The road they were driving on hadn’t dipped or risen for thirty minutes.  It was a flat length of asphalt, inky mirages always shimmering just ahead.

***

Teaser:  In the few moments she’d been able to attain unconsciousness last night, her rest had been overrun by what she’d learned on that website Paul had visited.  Or what she hadn’t learned.  Letters danced through the shards of her dreams.  P’s and E’s and W’s. (p. 123).

***

Blurb:  Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.

Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

***

Doesn’t this sound intense?  I am so looking forward to it.  Would you keep reading?  What are you sharing today?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “THE CORN MAIDEN”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today I’d like to share excerpts from a book that has been waiting rather impatiently for me to get to it:  The Corn Maiden (and Other Nightmares), by Joyce Carol Oates, is a book I purchased three years ago!  It is a collection of seven short stories, tales of suspense, “that will keep you riveted to the page.”

 

 

 

Intro:  (From the story “The Corn Maiden:  A Love Story”)

April:  You Assholes!

Whywhy you’re asking here’s why her hair.

I mean her hair!  I mean like I saw it in the sun it’s pale silky gold like corn tassels and in the sun sparks might catch.  And her eyes that smiled at me sort of nervous and hopeful like she could not know (but who could know?) what is Jude’s wish.  For I am Jude the obscure, I am the Master of Eyes.  I am not to be judged by crude eyes like yours, assholes.

There was her mother.  I saw them together.  I saw the mother stoop to kiss her.  That arrow entered my heart.  I thought I will make you see me.  I would not forgive.

***

Teaser:  The Corn Maiden had never been to Jude’s house before.  But Jude was friendly to her beginning back in March.  Told us the Master of Eyes had granted her a wish on her birthday.  And we were counted in that wish. (p. 4).

***

Blurb:  “The Corn Maiden” is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. Marissa’s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. In “Helping Hands,” published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates’s standing as one of the world’s greatest writers of suspense.

***

What do you think?  I am definitely not sure about this collection, hence the long period of time I waited before picking it up to read.  I have had a precarious relationship with this author’s works.  When I love one of her books or collections, I am enthralled.  When I do not connect with the stories or characters, I am sitting there going “huh?”

I don’t know which one this will be.  Have any of you read this?  Any thoughts?

***

TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “HELLO FROM THE GILLESPIES”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s featured book is an ARC from Amazon Vine, from an author that is new to me:  Hello from the Gillespies, by Monica McInerney.

 

 

 

 

Intro:  It was December first.  Angela Gillespie did as she’d done on that date for the past thirty-three years.  She sat down at her desk before dinner and prepared to write her annual Christmas letter.

After doing so many, she had the process down to a fine art.  It was a matter of leafing through her diary to recall the year’s main events, writing an update about each member of the family—herself, her husband and their four children—attaching a photo or two, then sending it off.

She’d written her first Christmas letter the same year she was married.  Transformed from single traveler Angela Richardson of Forest Hill, London, to newlywed Mrs. Nick Gillespie of Errigal, a sheep station in outback South Australia, she couldn’t have been further from her old life, in distance or lifestyle.  She’d decided an annual letter was the best way of keeping in contact with her friends and relatives back home.  As the years went by, she’d added Nick’s relatives, their neighbors and her new Australian friends to the mailing list.  It now went to more than a hundred people worldwide.

***

Teaser:  Angela was in her pottery studio.  She’d been there for the past hour, ever since she’d reread her letter.  She wasn’t working.  She was hiding. (p.118).

***

Blurb:  For the past thirty-three years, Angela Gillespie has sent to friends and family around the world an end-of-the-year letter titled “Hello from the Gillespies.” It’s always been cheery and full of good news. This year, Angela surprises herself—she tells the truth….

The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping badly with retirement. Her thirty-two-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.

Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when Angela is taken away from them in a most unexpected manner, the Gillespies pull together—and pull themselves together—in wonderfully surprising ways…

***

I was first drawn to this book by the memories of those Christmas letters I used to receive from friends…usually the people weren’t all that close, and the letters always sounded as though the families depicted in them were perfect, with flawless lives.  Of course I knew that couldn’t be, but sometimes, we see what people want us to see.

What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN”

 

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s featured book is You Should Have Known, by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Chapter One:  You Just Know)

Usually people cried when they came here for the first time, and this girl looked as if she’d be no exception.  She walked in with a briefcase and a swagger and shook Grace’s hand like the cool professional she clearly was, or at least wished to be.  Then she sat on the couch and crossed one long twill-encased leg over the other.  And then, sort of abruptly, she seemed to register where she was, with a wallop.

“Oh wow,” said the girl, whose name—Grace had double-checked a few minutes earlier—was Rebecca Wynne.  “I haven’t been in a therapist’s office since college.”

Grace sat in her customary chair, crossed her own much shorter legs, and leaned forward.  She couldn’t help it.

***

Teaser:  Grace nodded.  Doubts emerged often in her practice:  very old, dessicated doubts, saved and preserved and brought forth by very wounded, very sad women.  They were a theme with countless variations:  I knew he drank too much.  I knew he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.  I knew he didn’t love me, not as much as I loved him. (p. 16)

***

Amazon Description:  Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son, Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of the forthcoming You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to pay attention to their first impressions of men.

But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

***

Would you keep reading?  I am a sucker for books about human flaws and frailties, and about the therapists who try to help their patients.  Call if years of working with broken families.

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TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS – “WHAT I HAD BEFORE I HAD YOU”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s featured book is an ARC from Amazon Vine:  What I Had Before I Had You, by Sarah Cornwell.

Intro:  The first time I see my sisters, I am fifteen years old.  It is June, and the ocean is just warm enough for swimming.  I am floating on my back out past the farthest buoy.  If I turn my head, I can see the beach, glutted with tourists, rising above and dipping below each wave swell.  The world appears and vanishes, is and isn’t, is and isn’t.  Sometimes the lifeguard is sitting, and sometimes he is standing up on his white wooden tower, shading his eyes.  The closest swimmers are some forty yards off, a few old ladies doing the crawl, their crepe-paper elbows rising and falling.  A wave breaks against my face, and I sputter under the water, come up coughing.

***

Teaser:  I cough and bend over, watching the swirling kaleidoscope of floaters inside my eyelids.  I don’t want her to see me laugh.  I cannot resist saying, “Such clairvoyance,” as I close myself back into the basement stairway without any matches. (p. 87).

***

Blurb:  In What I Had Before I Had You by Sarah Cornwell, a woman must face the truth about her past in this luminous, evocative literary novel of parents and children, guilt and forgiveness, memory and magical thinking, set in the faded, gritty world of the New Jersey Shore.

Olivia was only fifteen the summer she left her hometown of Ocean Vista. Two decades later, on a visit with her children, her nine-year-old son Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, disappears. Olivia’s search for him sparks tender and painful memories of her past—of her fiercely loving and secretive mother, Myla, an erratic and beautiful psychic, and the discovery of heartbreaking secrets that shattered her world.

***

What do you think?  Is it tempting enough to keep reading?