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Category: Mystery

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

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You are either going to really like Catherine House or be like me and wonder, WTF did I just read?? Catherine House is a strange, fever dream of a novel with no clear-cut resolution. I am not even sure that I fully understand what was going on in the novel and what the purpose of the novel is.

In the novel, Catherine House is a college located deep in the Pennsylvania woods with an unusual liberal arts curriculum that somehow has produced some of the world’s best minds as its graduates, such as inventors, prize-winning scientists, Supreme Court justices and at least two presidents. The college is best known for its mysterious “new materials concentration” and the study of “plasm”. The students that attend Catherine House get free tuition and room and board, but the catch is that they must give Catherine House three years of their lives completely removed from the outside world. During these three years, they cannot contact their family and friends, they cannot watch television to keep up with the news and they cannot bring any personal possessions, including clothing, with them (the novel is set in the 1990s, but if it were set in the present, they definitely would not be allowed smart phones either).

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The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

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I read Lucy Foley’s last novel, The Hunting Party, and found it just difficult enough to figure out that I decided I would read whatever she publishes next. The Guest List is a huge disappointment. It is a mystery thriller that takes place the day before and the day of a wedding on a remote Irish island. It sounds interesting in theory, but in practice the characters, main and supporting, are all clichés and it does not take a lot of effort to figure out who the murder victim is, how all the suspects’ motives connect to the murder victim, and who the killer is. There are no surprises at all in this novel. The setting, the remote Irish island with a bog that is probably full of bodies and rumored to be haunted, is the most interesting part of the novel, but too bad it is underutilized; it is the perfect setting for a supernatural thriller. In any event, it would not take you very long to read The Guest List, but I do not suggest wasting your time on it.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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Meddling Kids is an adult homage to Scooby-Doo. Imagine Velma is a lesbian with a crush on Daphne and likes to beat up people; Daphne may or may not reciprocate Velma’s feelings and self medicates with alcohol; Fred is dead; Shaggy is in a mental institution and is either seeing his friend’s ghost or a hallucination; and Scooby-Doo is more of a Scrappy-Doo. In Meddling Kids, the four preteens, Andy, Kerri, Peter and Nate, and dog that solve mysteries call themselves the “Blyton Summer Detective Club”. In 1977, they solved their greatest, and last, mystery of the haunted Deboën Mansion and the “Sleepy Lake Creature”, which turned out to be a guy in an amphibian costume who was looking for gold supposedly hidden in the mansion.

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The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

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The Other Black Girl is currently being majorly hyped as the book to read this summer. Although I did enjoy reading this novel, for the most part, and it kept me up later than I should have been up on a work night because I did not want to put it down, I saw the ending coming a mile away, so I am on the fence if it is worth all the hype.

The premise of The Other Black Girl is very intriguing, especially when you learn that the author has based some of it on her own experience in the publishing industry: it is about an editorial assistant named Nella Rogers, who is the only Black girl that works at the prestigious Wagner Books (a fictional publishing company) in New York, until the other Black girl shows up, Hazel-May McCall. At first it seems like Nella may have finally found an ally in Hazel at the very white Wagner, but then things begin to happen and suddenly Hazel has become the office darling while everyone has turned against Nella. Then Nella finds a note on her desk that says, “LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.”

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White Fox by Sara Faring

White Fox by Sara Faring

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I had my eye on White Fox for awhile before finally purchasing it. It sounds exactly like the kind of novel that I would eat up: a mystery about two sisters whose famous actor mother, Mireille Foix, disappeared a decade earlier, they discover their mother’s long-lost screenplay, White Fox, that she was working on when she disappeared, and it may hold clues to what really happened to her. I devoured this novel in two days, not able to put it down until I knew what happened to Mireille Foix. I found this novel very interesting to read because of the way it is structured, but I think the whole mystery behind the mother’s disappearance was a bit too simplistic in the end.

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Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

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Firekeeper’s Daughter is an impressive debut from Angeline Boulley that I highly recommend. It is classified as YA, but aside from the 18-year-old protagonist, it reads like an adult novel. There is no magic, no supernatural creatures, no “chosen one” trope and certainly no love triangles. Firekeeper’s Daughter is very much grounded in the real world and in real-life situations and is a mystery/crime thriller rather than a fantasy novel.

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One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus

One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus

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One of Us is Next is the sequel to One of Us is Lying. I read One of Us is Lying a couple of years ago. It has good reviews that make it sound like a twisty mystery that I would not be able to guess the ending of. It is about five high school students who are in detention together, and one of the students ends up dead. A gossip blog reveals secrets of the four surviving students that points to one of them being responsible for the death. I knew right away there was two possible explanations for what happened to the student that died, and the explanation I decided on turned out to be correct, so I was disappointed at how easily I figured it out. The surprising part of One of Us is Lying is not the whodunnit, but rather the motivation behind the death. The other thing I got from One of Us is Lying is how toxic of an environment high school is (I did not enjoy high school, but I really do not remember it being as bad as depicted in a lot of YA novels these days). McManus has another novel called Two Can Keep a Secret that I have read as well, but to be completely honest, I do not recall what happened, that is how memorable it is. So, you must be wondering by now why I would bother reading One of Us is Next. Well, first, I was trying to get free shipping at Book Outlet, and second, I was curious to know if McManus’ plotting had improved enough to keep me guessing until the very end.

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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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I am very late to the Where the Crawdads Sing party, but better late than never, right? After reading this novel, I can see why it was such a hit when it first came out. I really enjoyed reading it and had a hard time putting it down; I finished reading it in two days. I very highly recommend you read this novel if you are like me and are also late to the Where the Crawdads Sing party.

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The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

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I am beginning to feel confident that Kate Quinn is a writer that I can rely on to churn out a great historical fiction novel. The Alice Network, The Huntress and now The Rose Code are all novels that I very much enjoyed reading. These three novels all have World War II as the backdrop, but each focuses on a different aspect of the war, and each one is well researched and intricately plotted. The Rose Code is about the people who worked at Bletchley Park during the war and helped win the war by cracking enemy military code and deciphering enemy communications.

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The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

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Novels with dual timelines where the protagonist in the present timeline is trying to solve a mystery from the past timeline are like catnip to me. When I read the synopsis for The Lost Apothecary, I thought, yes, this is going to be good. And the reviews that I read for it were all very positive. But unfortunately, I ended up being disappointed by this novel. It has the potential to be a good novel, but it seems like the author was in a rush to tell the story and sacrificed a richer plot and stronger character development. There are other authors who tell this type of story much better, such as Kate Morton, Eve Chase and Susanna Kearsley (although her novels have a supernatural slant).

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