Review: Girl Forgotten

Girl Forgotten by April Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Piper is new in town and recently learned she must complete a passion project at school.  As a true-crime podcast fan, she decides she wants to create a podcast about what happened 17 years earlier to Layla Trello.  She doesn’t think she can solve the case, she just wants to spark interest and see if people would give answers now that they are older.  As Piper gets further into the podcast, she begins to get threats.  Is the killer still around? 

Girl Forgotten is a stand-alone mystery that was a very quick read.  Fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder will enjoy this story and I also liked the sidebars about what it takes to create a podcast.  Piper has some secrets of her own that are revealed and when the killer is discovered … I was pleasantly surprised.  This mystery won’t keep you up worried about your safety, but you may stay up trying to finish before sleeping.

View all my reviews

Review: Archenemy

Archenemy by Christina Bauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The angel Xavier has a plan to capture Set, the Egyptian chaos god, and lock him away.  Everything is going well until a mysterious woman appears and tells him she is from his future.  If that wasn’t weird enough, Camilla tells Xavier that they must work together to defeat Set.  That goes completely against Xavier’s plan and he does everything he can to avoid her help.  Of course, it doesn’t help that he is unexpectantly attracted to her.  Is Camilla’s appearance part of Set’s chaos magic?  Will Xavier be able to save humanity and himself?

Archenemy is the first book in the Angelbound Xavier series.  This is a new spinoff series of Angelbound and takes place many years before the original books.  Bauer has made another short book that had the action and adventure almost turning the pages themselves.  I believe this book could have been even better if it was longer and some additional details were given throughout, but I also enjoyed a book I could finish in one sitting.  I’m looking forward to the next book being released.

View all my reviews

Review: Stars and Smoke

Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Winter had made it big with sold-out shows in major cities.  He is now on the radar of The Panacea Group, a covert ops organization that has been around since the Revolutionary War.  Why are they interested in him?  Penelope is the daughter of a criminal billionaire and she wants Winter to give her a private concert for her birthday.  The Panacea Group wants him to say yes … and spy for them.  They have never had a chance to get this close and they want him to join their team.  The mission goes sideways and Winter and his Panacea partner must decide what they will do next.

Stars and Smoke is the first book in the series by the same name.  I can’t put this in one genre, but if I need to … I believe the best place is an adventure book.  There is a little bit of a mystery, but that is not the overarching theme.  There is romantic tension, but this isn’t a romance.  This is the first book in the series, but the major plot points are wrapped up and there is no cliffhanger.  This was a wild ride of a book and I look forward to the sequel.

View all my reviews

Review: Three Drops of Blood

Three Drops of Blood by Gretchen McNeil
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate has finished her first season as an actress on a TV show and is looking forward to filming the next season.  Drama on the set causes the show to get canceled, but she doesn’t want that to slow her down.  She still plans to pursue acting full-time, even though that will require her to skip her senior year of high school.  Her parents don’t want her to stop her education and require her to pay rent if she isn’t in school.  Since she hasn’t been able to get an acting gig, she takes a boring office job to pay the bills.  The only bright spot is the window that lets her see a romance between a woman and her assistant … that is until the romance turns into a double murder.  What will she do, since no one believes her?

Three Drops of Blood is a stand-alone mystery that was lauded as a blend of A Good Girls Guide to Murder and Hitchcock, but I don’t agree.  The murder didn’t take place until I was 59% through the Kindle version, so over half of the book was character development.  Please, no one needs that much for a stand-alone story.  The last 40% (which is the actual mystery) would make a wonderful novella, but as a novel … it was a disappointment.

View all my reviews