September Reads and Rapid Reviews
Here’s what I read in September and some quick hit reviews to see if they’d be something you might like to add to your TBR pile!
BOOKS
September Reads and Reviews
I know this is the first time I’ve shared on the blog about my book reviews, but I can honestly say it’s probably one of my favorite posts I’m going to be writing about!
After I got to reKINDLE my love with my Kindle (get it?????) I’ve fallen back down the lovely rabbit hole of reading.
I’ve been sharing my book reviews on the ‘gram, but I wanted to have a more permanent place for book reviews AND also be able to host little giveaways every month!
Without further adieu, let’s GO!
- The Guest List – Lucy Foley
- The Stillwater Girls – Minka Kent
- Local Woman Missing – Mary Kubica
- The Wife Between Us – Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
- Verity – Colleen Hoover
- The Last Housewife – Ashley Winstead
- Then She Was Gone – Lisa Jewell
- Behind Closed Doors – BA Paris
- Please Join Us – Catherine McKenzie
- It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover
- Things We Never Got Over – Lucy Score
- We Were Never Here – Andrea Bartz
- The Cabin in the Woods – Sarah Alderson
- Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney
- Pretty Girls – Karin Slaughter
- The Other Emily – Dean Koontz
- Top 3 Reads of September
- Monthly Giveaway!
- SHOP ALL BOOKS
The Guest List – Lucy Foley
Amazon rating: 4 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.85 stars
How I read it: Started with audiobook, finished with physical copy
Read if you like:
- Multiple POV
- “One location” whodunnit
- Domestic/academia thrillers
What I loved: Short chapters, not predictable
What I didn’t love: Too many story lines and super difficult to keep up with on audiobook, lots of accents which make me have a hard time listening
Book Blurb
“The bride – the plus one – the best man – the wedding planner – the bridesmaid – the body.
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.
And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?”
My thoughts
I feel like I probably would have liked this better if I had read it. I was able to zip through the ending SUPER quick with the physical copy, but because I have a REAL hard time with accents, this audiobook was full of them and it was incredibly difficult to follow at times.
I will say the writing was great and the characters were pretty fully developed, even though there are a lot of them.
While I love thrillers, this trope of “everyone in a room and wants to kill somebody, but who actually did it” isn’t really my wheelhouse.
The Stillwater Girls – Minka Kent
*Available on Kindle Unlimited!
Amazon rating: 4.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.1
How I read it: Kindle
Read if you like:
- Completely unpredictable plots
- Domestic thrillers
- Dual POV
Content warnings: Child abandonment, mild abuse
What I loved: Super fast paced, not predictable at all
What I didn’t love: I loved everything
Book Blurb
“Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return.
As months pass, hope vanishes. Supplies are low. Livestock are dying. A brutal winter is bearing down. Then comes the stranger. He claims to be looking for the girls’ mother, and he’s not leaving without them.
To escape, Wren and her sister must break the rule they’ve grown up with: never go beyond the forest.
Past the thicket of dread, they come upon a house on the other side of the pines. This is where Wren and Sage must confront something more chilling than the unknowable. They’ll discover what’s been hidden from them, what they’re running from, and the secrets that have left them in the dark their entire lives.”
My thoughts
UHHHHH WUTTTTT?!
Not an exaggeration, but you could have offered me millions of dollars and not one time would I ever have been able to guess what was going.
There were several times where I was SO suspicious and imagined how this was going to play out and they were all crushed by the ending.
HOLY CRAP. This book was an incredible read, super fast paced, and although I found a lot of characters suspicious, so many characters were likeable in this. The Stillwater Girls was action packed from front to back and I loved the style of writing.
This was my first book of Kent’s, but it absolutely will not be my last. This book has stuck with me and I think about it a lot which is something considering allllll the other things I have going on in my life, ha!
Local Woman Missing – Mary Kubica
Amazon rating: 4.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.13 stars
How I read it: Audiobook
Read if you like:
- Domestic thrillers
- Multiple POV
- Jumps in timeline
- TOTAL unpredictability
Content warnings: Child abuse/neglect
What I loved: Super fast paced, audiobook narrators, incredible twists, short chapters
What I didn’t love: I loved everything!
Book Blurb
“People don’t just disappear without a trace…
Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.
Now, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find…”
My thoughts
Okay I loved this so much that I went out and bought the physical copy.
I was hooked on these characters and their story from the get go.
Mary does a great job letting you get to know the characters, what makes them tick and then BLOWS YOUR ENTIRE WORLD APART at the end.
There are some thrillers that I read that are somewhat predictable and more of a slow burn, but even from the prologue I was hooked.
My heart was in a million pieces in just the first chapter, but it is absolutely what fueled me to BINGE listen to this on audiobook!
The Wife Between Us – Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
*Available on Kindle Unlimited!
Amazon rating: 4.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.86 stars
How I read it: Kindle
Read if you like:
- Domestic thrillers
- Dual POV
What I loved: Super fast paced, incredible twists, short chapters
What I didn’t love: I loved everything!
Book Blurb
“When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.
Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage – and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.
Read between the lies.“
My thoughts
I could not put this one down!
It is a bit longer at over 400 pages, but I can promise you it will not feel like it!
Even from the beginning there were twists that had me having to go back and reread things because I thought I misread, but I really LOVED the way this was written and it had me hooked from the first chapter.
Verity – Colleen Hoover
Amazon rating: 4.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.41 stars
How I read it: Audiobook
Read if you like:
- Domestic thrillers
- Dark themes
- Spice
Content warnings: Child death, child abuse/neglect
What I loved: Dark, keeps you guessing
What I didn’t love: The kid stuff was rough
Book Blurb
“Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of best-selling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of the night their family was forever altered.
Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.
Sexy. Twisted. Consuming.”
My thoughts
Verity was my first Colleen Hoover book and I honestly read this before I realized that she was huge on BookTok. I didn’t even realize her genre was romance.
I loved this because it combined the perfect amount of spice in the right way with the thriller, but have since read a couple more and there is none like this one.
She has since released an updated version with an extra chapter and if you haven’t read it, you totally should. I snuck to our Books a Million and just sat down in a chair and read it in 15 minutes.
I’ll just say that it made me question Jeremy even further than I already did in the original book.
This was actually really easy to follow on audiobook and I was able to finish this in a just a few days too by binging it.
Y’all gotta understand – I have had a LOT of trauma in my life and so dark themes don’t make me uncomfortable or anything of the sort and so I’ve heard a lot of people say this was too hard for them, but it wasn’t for me. It was really good and I’m quite honestly sad she doesn’t write more like this.
The Last Housewife – Ashley Winstead
Amazon ra