ginasbookreport

The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict and narrated by Laura Costello Publisher:  Poisoned Pen Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Thriller / Domestic Suspense Read This If You Love:  Agatha Christie “Endgame has kept our secrets for half a century, now it’s time for it, and its secrets, to have a new owner.” The Christmas Murder Game  by Alexandra Benedict is a classic locked-room mystery novel set at Christmas. Before Lily’s aunt dies, she sets up one last Christmas game to be played at Endgame House. This year the prize won’t simply be an extra gift, but instead the holder of the key wins Endgame House and all that goes with it. Lily and her cousins all head to the English manor house to play the game, celebrate the holiday, and navigate their complicated family past. However, Lily is there to also uncover the truth behind her mother’s mysterious death. Told via the Twelve Days of Christmas where each day releases a new clue for the particpants to so

The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Contemporary Romance Read This If You Love: Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey “I’ll take your place. We’ll switch, like we used to do when we were kids, remember?” The Holiday Swap  by Maggie Knox is a cozy holiday romance, complete with a twin switch and dual love stories. When Charlie suffers a mishap while filming her baking show, she needs to quickly find a way to keep performing her job to salvage her career. Lucky for her, she has an identical twin in Cass, and Cass runs the family bakery. Charlie goes back home to present herself as Cass and finds how much she needed to return to her roots and having a hot fireman around doesn’t hurt, either. (Side note: Between the description and the cover art, was Jake a Prince Harry look-alike?) Meanwhile in LA, Cass is acting as if she is Charlie and finding her voice and love, too.  Much of the no

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson Publisher:  William Morrow Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery Read This If You Love:  Eight Perfect Murders / Riley Sager books “But instead he lifted a finger and swept it across his neck, then pointed at me.” The Christmas Guest  by Peter Swanson is a creepy and dark holiday murder novella. What else could you want for Christmas!?! Ashley is a long way from the US and gets invited to go home for the holidays by her friend Emma. The idealistic setting of an English village at Christmas sounds perfect. Adding to the scene is Emma’s handsome brother Adam. However, this village has a dark history of unsolved murder and killers don’t take a break for the holidays.  This is a dark murder mystery that is a great and suuuuuuper fast holiday read for mystery fans. (It is NOT for those looking for an uplifting cozy holiday read.) I gobbled this one up in a few hours one evening and couldn’t put it down. Swanson somehow strikes the perfect c

The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino & translated by Giles Murray Publisher: Minotaur Books  Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Suspense Read This If You Love: Police procedural books / Jonathan Kellerman novels “She’s an actor. She plays whatever role the circumstances demand.” The Final Curtain  by Keigo Higashino is a Japanese police procedural. Written as an old-style hit-the-pavement investigative, it wraps up the Detective Kaga series by unraveling the deaths in the present and past. Woven together across decades, how are all of these people connected and who is responsible for the killings and why? Can Kaga and his cousin unravel the case and put all the pieces together before the victim count rises? I didn’t love this book but think many will. It was too predictable to me and I’m starting to realize I’m just not a big procedural fan. The trope in this sub-genre seems to place the detectives as connected to the case, which can be boring. However, if

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter Publisher:  William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre:  Mystery / Thriller / Suspense / Murder Mystery Read This If You Love:  Janice Hallett books / Netflix documentaries “One body. Six Experts. Can you solve the case before they do?” Murder in the Family  is mystery novel like no other. Guy Howard’s stepfather was murdered when he was a child and the case remains unsolved. Now that Guy is a film maker, he decides to enlist the help of six experts and a documentary staff to pull back the years and solve the case. What results is Infamous: Who Killed Luke Ryder… a Netflix documentary that just might unravel Guy’s entire world. Can you solve the case before the experts do?  I’m a huge fan of mystery-based documentaries and was instantly drawn to this book when my SIL sent me a link. It didn’t disappoint! Told through news clippings, documentary scripts/interviews, and messages, Murder in the Family

The Engagement Party by Darby Kane Publisher: William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Mystery / Suspense / Thriller Read This If You Love: The House Murder series by Yukito Ayatsuji / Horror Movies / Lucy Foley novels “Time to tell the truth.” When a group of friends gathers on a remote island for an engagement party, they are faced with their past. Who will come out alive? As the cover says: “The guest list is a real killer.” The Engagement Party  is a juicy chaos of a mystery. I was blown away with how Kane wove together all the most salacious early 90s crimes and wrapped them in a classic locked room mystery. It was like being trapped in an 80s horror movie with an Agatha Christie twist…I simply couldn’t read it fast enough. Kane hits this one out of the park. Packed full of her trademark twists and turns, but this time wrapped in a classic horror mystery vibe. Her best novel yet.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros Publisher: Red Tower Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Fantasy / Romantasy Read This If You Love: Fourth Wing / Game of Thrones “I lace my fingers on top of my head and look away, waging war with the grief, the pain, the never-ending guilt, and as usual, I lose.”   Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros and The Empyrean series is the book craze of 2023, for sure. This series is EVERYWHERE. While I typically don’t get drawn into a crowd when it comes to books, I’m fully in for this series. Divided into two parts, Part One of Iron Flame  could have been a complete novel. I loved that section. Part Two faltered a bit for me until the last 100 pages or so. Why? I just don’t enjoy the drippy romance scenes. I’m here for the world-building, the complex relationships, the ‘who will win’ scenes. I found Iron Flame  to have a bit more romance in it (or spicy scenes, as some call them) than Fourth Wing , so I give the edge to Fourth Wing  as my favorite of the two

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose Publisher:  Ballantine Books an imprint of Random House Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Cozy Mystery / Mystery Read This If You Love:  The Maid by Nita Prose / Cozy Mysteries / Agatha Christie / Only Murders in the Building “I’m afraid it’s too late. He’s dead.” In this second book in the Molly the Maid series, we once again find ourselves back at the Regency Grand Hotel. Our favorite maid, Molly, is now Head Maid, and the hotel staff is preparing to host a famous author. The author has a much-anticipated announcement, but before he can reveal the information, he literally drops dead. How does this keep happening to poor Molly!?! She is once again at the center of a homicide investigation where she plays the role of suspect and sleuth. Through flashbacks, we learn more about Molly’s childhood while connections are made to her present. Who exactly is this author and who would want him dead?  Molly will soon uncover the truth along with her cas

The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin Publisher: Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Suspense / Gothic Read This If You Love: Fans of Darby Kane books “Most people sweep monsters under the bed. I pull the covers back and let them crawl in.” The Stranger Upstairs hits the ground running and doesn’t let up. Sarah is a therapist and a bit of a self-help guru with an Instagram addiction. She decides to invest all her efforts into renovating Black Wood House, the notorious home where murders were committed. Along the way, she might want to restore her marriage as that has completely crumbled, as well. Everything is turning into a nightmare and nothing is what it seems. This novel is the pinnacle of a haunted house story for those looking for a spooky read. The narrative is woven together via traditional writing, website entries, news articles, and voice/text messages. It all feels very much like a modern day horror story.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James Publisher: New American Library, a division of Penguin Group Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre:  Mystery / Psychological Thriller  Read This If You Love: The Sun Down Motel / Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things “I could not scream. I tried and tried, my mouth open, as I gasped for air; tried and tried to scream, in a terrible pantomime I would relive in my nightmares for months to come. I was frozen, unable to move or run, and an icy grip took my upper arms, and lifted me from the floor.” The Haunting of Maddy Clare  is a ghost story centered around the unsettled soul of Maddy Clare. Alistair Gellis, Matthew Ryder, and Sarah Piper are brought in to help clear Maddy’s ghost from the Clare farm. In doing so, they set out to unravel the mystery of what happened to Maddy in life. Set after World War I, Gellis and Ryder are former soldiers who carry the scars of the war physically and emotionally. Sarah is alone in the world and lookin

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros Publisher: Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre: Fantasy  Read This If You Love: Harry Potter series / Game of Thrones series “A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.” Fourth Wing  has taken the fantasy and general reading worlds by storm. The first book in the Empyrean series crafts a world where dragons rule the sky. At Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail is reluctantly training to be a dragon rider. As the daughter of a ruthless general who helped to violently squash a rebellion, Violet is immediately a target for many of her mother’s enemies. She must navigate the training, which results in daily death tolls and navigate all those who want her to fail. Who are her friends and who are enemies? Those lines might not be as clear as she first thought. She has a lot to learn about herself, her family, and her world. The world-building that Yarros accompl

When I’m Dead by Hannah Morrissey Publisher:  Minotaur Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Psychological Thriller  Read This If You Love:  A Flicker in the Dark  / Lisa Jewell books “If we find the killer, we find Chloe. If we find the killer, we find Chloe.” When I’m Dead  is the third book in Morrissey’s Black Harbor series. Like the many books and TV series that focus around a small village in the UK, this one is set stateside in a tiny town in Wisconsin that has an astronomical crime rate. (Seriously, they are going to run out of people to murder if this series keeps going.) Against the backdrop of a dark and spooky October night, Rowan (the medical examiner) and her husband Axel (a detective) are called out to investigate the body of their daughter’s best friend. Who could have committed this vicious act and why? Making it all more mysterious, Chloe disappears the same night. From there, it is all about finding the killer to find Chloe. While this book is in a

People to Follow by Olivia Worley Publisher:  Wednesday Books a division of St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Young Adult / New Adult Read This If You Love:  Pretty Little Liars / One of Us Is Lying  / And Then There Were None “We need to search the island. Now.” When ten social influencers agree to film a new reality show where they are disconnected from their phones and their followers, they end up on a secluded island. We all know what happens when a group of people are trapped on an island in a mystery novel! In short order, the show’s S ponsor  starts to text them orders on their one-way watches. Follow the instructions or you might just find yourself cancelled and on this island that could be permanent. I was drawn to this book because of the clear nod to my favorite mystery novel, And Then There Were None . While People to Follow  does pay tribute to the classic mystery concept, it brings the plot into the modern day via the social media angl

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett Publisher:  Atria Books  Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Cozy Mystery Read This If You Love:  Janice Hallett / Alternative storytelling / Solving Puzzles One Christmas Play One Dead Santa Everyone’s a Suspect Once again we find ourselves back with the Fairway Players and all their antics. While they set out to put on a pantomime for charity, they end up with a dead Santa. Oops! Told in Hallett’s signature structure and style, this short novella is a hilarious romp of a cozy mystery. Presented via emails, text messages, WhatsApp, interviews, and letters, The Christmas Appeal  is structured so that you, the reader, get all the information and have the ability to solve the mystery. Can you do it before the investigating detectives? It’s a perfect whodunnit as Christmas past and present collide. Would be a great holiday read for mystery lovers. Pop on the tea and curl up on a snowy day to gobble up this fun book.

West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman Publisher:  Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 Genre:  Mystery / Thriller Read This If You Love:  Fans of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and all serious mystery book lovers “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout?”—T.S. Eliot “Don’t hold back on us. Tell us a detective story.”—Otto Mayer  West Heart Kill  isn’t a mystery novel like other mystery novels. Well, or it is. Well, or it is about all other mystery novels. Set at the hunting club of West Heart, our author takes us on a journey through the history of mystery novels as he unveils the secrets and bodies that pile up over the July 4th holiday at this remote club. It’s a very meta take on the genre that is so well loved by many. You, the reader, are a character in this account of neighborly friendship gone awry. Will you (or anyone) solve all the puzzles? What tropes, cliches, or clev

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell Publisher:  Atria Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Thriller / Psychological Thriller /  Suspense Read This If You Love:  Samantha Downing / Tarryn Fisher / Gillian Flynn “The people who seem boring can sometimes have the most interesting stories to tell. You just have to get it out of them somehow.” When Alix goes out to celebrate her 45th birthday, she meets her “birthday twin” Josie. Soon enough, Alix decides to produce a podcast about their shared birthday and the way two people born on the same day in the same hospital can lead very different lives. The problem? Alix has no idea that she has stepped into her own true crime podcast. Everyone’s lives are tossed upside down and the story is told between narrative, podcast interviews, and documentary scenes.  None of This Is True a fascinating fictional take on our obsession with true crime properties. Let’s leave the plot description at just that vague bit. Jewell’s books a

The Only One Left by Riley Sager Publisher: Dutton an imprint of Penguin Random House Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Thriller / Horror  Read This If You Love:  Stephen King “Lenora Hope is the one patient nobody—not even the police—will mind if I kill.” Kit really  messed up and now the only job available is caring for the town’s own Lizzie Borden…Lenora Hope. Lenora has a dark reputation, but what is the true story behind what happened to her family on a dark and stormy night in Hope’s End? That’s all you are going to get out of me in terms of a synopsis. I don’t want to spoil anything! However, …Wow. Wow. Wow. I absolutely loved this book and it easily takes top spot for Sager novels. Gripped from the first page, I walked away with the same feeling I had when I read Misery  by Stephen King for the first time. The Only One Left is set in the 1980s and it not only nails the setting of the decade, it pays homage to that era’s fiction and horror novels. It is writt

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett Publisher:  Harper Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature Read This If You Love:  The Dutch House  / The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls   “Cricket, it’s your past.”   “I understand that joy is inappropriate these days and, still, we feel what we feel.”   Tom Lake is an exploration of life, love, and the fact that each and every person can never be truly and completely known…even by those that love us most. Every step we take in life leads us to the next, and when that role becomes parent, children think of us as starting the day they were born. In this masterpiece, Lara is on her family farm during COVID lockdown and her three daughters have returned to help harvest the cherries. As they spend this scary and uncertain time together, the women pepper their mother with questions about her past as an actress and her time with the famous Peter Duke. What they think they knew of their parents is peeled back.  Told through Lara’s experien

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney Publisher: Flatiron Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Thriller Read This If You Love: Shari Lapena “People say there’s nothing like a mother’s love. Take that away, you’ll find there’s nothing like a daughter’s hate.” Three suspects, two murders, and one victim. Twenty years ago a baby was kidnapped from her stroller. Now a woman is murdered in a care home. What unfolds next is a thrilling mystery full of surprises and twists. Who is good? Who is bad? Who is the victim? Mother and daughter relationships are complicated even when they are good. When they are bad, they can be deadly.  Told in short chapters with alternating narrators, Good Bad Girl  continues Feeney’s signature style of fast-paced and edge-of-your-seat storytelling. I LOVED Sometimes I Lie  and Rock Paper Scissors , and this book is right up there regarding the level of engrossing entertainment. “The future can seem too uncertain when your past catches up with your pr

A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly Publisher: Minotaur Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Historical Fiction / Mystery  Read This If You Love:  The Rose Code  / spy novels / WWII historical fiction / mystery novels “You see, I simply adore detective fiction. Each new story contains within it the tantalizing possibility of a puzzle so fiendishly twisted that the solution may elude me until the final pages.”  Evelyne is doing her part in the war effort by endlessly stuffing bullets. Her only intrigue are the mystery novels that she loves. Soon, she finds herself reassigned to a secretive mission and finds herself locked in a room with a dead body. Working with a mysterious minister’s aid named Mr. Poole, the two set out to unravel all of the puzzles surrounding them. “I wasn’t sweet at all. I was curious and determined to find the killer.”  This book reminded me so much of The Rose Code  and the TV series The Bletchley Circle . The war efforts, the fashion descriptions, t

The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day Publisher:  William and Morrow a imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Thriller / Domestic Suspense Read This If You Love:  Broadchurch “Here’s the thing not everyone understands about crime in a small town: When it goes down big for the first time in a generation—when some farmer gets out his buck-hunting rifle, say, and turns it on his wife—everybody’s asking the same questions: How could it happen? Here, in this quiet town?” When a car is found submerged in water at the old quarry, Liss Kehoe’s entire life is turned upside down. They might already know who is in the car, but how they ended up there is a bombshell that unleashes a trail of revelations and reckonings.  First off, if you haven’t been reading books by Lori Rader-Day, you need to get that fixed right away. She is a master writer in the crime fiction genre. Plus, fans of Agatha Christie and historical fiction should not miss Death at Gree

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie Publisher:  William Morrow Paperbacks Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Mystery / Cozy Mystery Read This If You Love:  Fans of the Miss Marple series and classic mysteries “Oh, I am sure—about the murder . It’s the murderer  I’m not sure about.” In this classic Miss Marple mystery (book #10), Marple is on vacation very far from her beloved home of St. Mary Mead. However, wherever she goes, murder seems to follow her—even all the way to the Caribbean. Staying at the hotel of the St Honore, Miss Marple is getting to know the fellow guests. In short time, one of the guests is dead and while the doctor assumes it was high blood pressure and old age, Miss Marple isn’t so sure. She soon finds herself working alongside Mr. Rafiel (who is both wealthy and elderly) to solve the murder and to unravel all the other connections before more bodies pile up. This is one of my favorites of the Miss Marple books because we not only get her throughout the e

The Last Word by Taylor Adams Publisher: William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Horror Read This If You Love: Riley Sager / Simone St. James / Stephen King “In a story, the author is God.” Emma is dealing with, or avoiding dealing with, all that life has thrown her way. She has isolated herself and set about reading free and 99 cent books off of Amazon. The book that her only neighbor recommends is  Murder Mountain  and it was just sooooooo bad. She couldn’t stop herself from writing a scathing one-star review. When the author requests she change it, a series of events kicks off that leaves Emma fighting for her life while reckoning with her past.  “She cupped her fingers to the glass, squinting out into acres of coastal prairie. Searching for her killer.”  The Last Word is not for the faint of heart. It’s a heart pounding horror novel that will keep you up at night and looking around the corner in a dark room.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Mystery / Cozy Mystery Read This If You Love: A Caribbean Mystery “Yes, you are right, Madame. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and yet you forget that everywhere there is evil under the sun.” Arlene Stuart is beautiful and catches all the eyes of the sun seekers at Leathercombe. Men are drawn to her beauty and women are drawn to her ease of capturing men’s attention. Now, Arlene is laying on the sand and she will never get up again. Who killed her? Poirot is on the case, and it is all the best that Christie has to offer.   Classic Christie is delivered via this 24th novel featuring Hercule Poirot. Pause to acknowledge how amazing it is that Christie was so prolific! Poirot is still as interesting of a detective even 24 books in and was still hitting all the right notes. Evil Under the Sun  is one of my favorite featuring the mustached character. Right before I re-rea

The Golden Gate by Amy Chua Publisher:  Minotaur Books an imprint of St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Historical Fiction / Mystery Read This If You Love:  Historical Fiction / History “Nothing added up. I had a dead presidential candidate in the Claremont stripped half-naked with flowers sticking out of his mouth.” The Golden Gate weaves a mystery around the history of Berkeley and San Fransisco in the 1930s and 1940s. When a dead presidential candidate shows up in the storied Claremont hotel, Detective Al Sullivan is on the case. While investigating the homicide, Sullivan gets pulled into the peculiar Bainbridge family and their complicated past. Who committed the murder, why, and how reads like a classic gum-shoe detective tale. However, The Golden Gate  is packed full of historical details along the way.  While I enjoyed the core mystery, I prefer my historical fiction novels to better integrate the facts into the story versus having long passages of histor