Reading Between Flowers

Hi readers! Today I have a book that I picked up because the premise sounded sooo good, however, the execution… I am not sure I liked that much.

✦Book Title: They never learn

✦ Author: Layne Fargo

✦ Genres: thriller, mystery

✦ Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

✦ Publication Date: October 13th 2020

BUY THE BOOK HERE – AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY |

☼SYNOPSIS

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan…until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay...and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

☾REVIEW

★★★

Rating: 3 out of 5.

the concept for this book was so captivating and I was immediately hooked. We are following a dual perspective, at first I wasn't really into Scarlett's POV but slowly, the MC´s lives interwind and the story got way more interesting.

This is not a spoiler since its literally in the first sentence of the synopsis, but we are following a literal murder, she is a killer and yet I loved her and felt for her. The true horror was not the killing part and how she did it heartless, it was more so the disgusting man behavior in this book. I found myself being repulsed by them and how gross they were. But also, there is a part in this story where I wanted to throw the fucking book out of the window, HOW COULD YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT SHE WAS WEARING, a skirt its not an invitation.

Anywway, it got to a point where I was a bit bored ngl, towards the 70% of this book I was kind of ready for it to be over, nonetheless highly recommend if the blurb sound appealing. If you have ever dealed with shitty man in your life, you will relate to this.

✦ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | GOODREADS | TWITTER

Layne Fargo writes killer books for feminist killjoys. She's the author of the thriller novels TEMPER and THEY NEVER LEARN (currently in development as a television show), and coauthor of the bestselling Audible Original YOUNG RICH WIDOWS. She also co-created, co-hosts, and produces the podcast UNLIKEABLE FEMALE CHARACTERS on Lit Hub Radio.

Layne lives in Chicago with a rescue pit bull and cat who are best friends, and the only man she never wants to murder (well, almost never). When she's not plotting twisted stories, she enjoys long walks in the local cemetery, binging trashy TV shows, and spending all her money at indie bookstores.

Hi readers! Today I have a thriller that I was sooo excited to read! It is also a new release that came out on the 11th of Jnauray. The price sounded so so good that I had to read it!

I hope you enjoy it xx

✦Book Title: A flicker in the dark

✦ Author: Stacy Willingham

✦ Genres: thriller, mystery

✦ Publisher: Minotaur Books

✦ Publication Date: January 11th 2022

BUY THE BOOK HERE – AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY |

☼SYNOPSIS

When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.

Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?

☾REVIEW

★★★

Rating: 3 out of 5.

this was fun, and I have to say I kind of liked it.

the idea sounded soooo good that I knew I had to read it. before I did it, I went into goodreads and saw how everybody was saying that it was super predictable and how everyone had guessed who the murder was, which, im not going to lie, made me feel a little bit discourage but I went into it nonetheless.

a bit part for me in mystery books is the surprise factor and yes, I did guess it too.

not the entire thing but a part. clearly that is a huge reason why this book did not got a higher rating.

i liked the fact that we are following the daughter whose father was charged as a murdered, I thought it was such an interesting thing to see and follow the point of view of someone that was directly involved with the murder.

overall I did enjoyed it, its super easy to read and not complicated at all, I do recommend it because I feel like everyone would like it even if you guessed the ending!

✦ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | TWITTER |GOODREADS

Stacy Willingham's first novel, A Flicker in the Dark, is scheduled to be published in January 2022 by Minotaur Books and HarperCollins UK.

Prior to writing fiction full time, Stacy worked as a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies. She earned her BA in Magazine Journalism from the University of Georgia and MFA in Writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

She currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Britt, and her Labradoodle, Mako.

Hi readers! Today I have short and fast thriller mystery!

✦ Book Title: These silent woods

✦ Author: Kimi Cunningham Grant

✦ Genres: thriller, mystery

✦ Publisher: Minotaur Books

✦ Publication Date: November 16th 2021

BUY THE BOOK HERE – AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY |

☼SYNOPSIS

No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness. But she’s starting to push back against the sheltered life Cooper has created for her—and he’s still haunted by the painful truth of what it took to get them there.

The only people who know they exist are a mysterious local hermit named Scotland, and Cooper's old friend, Jake, who visits each winter to bring them food and supplies. But this year, Jake doesn't show up, setting off an irreversible chain of events that reveals just how precarious their situation really is. Suddenly, the boundaries of their safe haven have blurred—and when a stranger wanders into their woods, Finch’s growing obsession with her could put them all in danger. After a shocking disappearance threatens to upend the only life Finch has ever known, Cooper is forced to decide whether to keep hiding—or finally face the sins of his past.

Vividly atmospheric and masterfully tense, These Silent Woods is a poignant story of survival, sacrifice, and how far a father will go when faced with losing it all

☾REVIEW

★★★

Rating: 3 out of 5.

This was a very interesting time. I will start off by saying this will not be a memorable book and lets face it, i will forget about it within months. So lets talk about while I still remember it.

I listened to the audiobook and to be honest I don’t really think i would have been able to read it physically. It actually was quite fast-paced but I don’t know, the audiobook was just, different. I say that i would not have been able to read it physically because i wouldn’t have been interested enough to pick it up, so I decided to listen to it whenever i was doing something else.

Anyways im getting off topic. Something that i liked was the fact that we are following our main character who is a person with a very fucked up past. So he is basically a criminal (that is why he is on the run) but obviously he tells you the story from his point of view so you even get to understand and feel for him which always surprises me, the fact that the twisted main character is actually lovable.

However there was a huge reason why this book wasn’t all that great, and it was because everything got told very fast. Form the halfway point you basically know the whole story of their past. The present moment was not as interesting to me hence why i thought that the flashbacks reveled too much too fast.

The father-daughter relationship was quite cute at times and it actually warmed my heart how far he went to save his daughter.

Overall, i would recommend it if you are interested into it but I wouldn’t go out of my way just to read it. Interesting and all but definitely not a memorable story.

✦ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | TWITTER |GOODREADS

Kimi Cunningham Grant is the author of three books. Silver Like Dust is a memoir about her Japanese-American grandparents and their experience in the internment camp at Heart Mountain during World War II. Her second book, Fallen Mountains, is a literary mystery set in a small town in Pennsylvania, where fracking has just begun. In her third book, These Silent Woods (November, 2021), a father and daughter living in the remote Appalachian mountains must reckon with the ghosts of their past.

Kimi is a two-time winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Poetry and a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in creative nonfiction. Her essays and poems have appeared in Fathom, Literary Mama, RATTLE, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry, Apalachee Review, Grasslimb, and Whitefish Review.