Doors Of Gold And Rust by A.N. Willis

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

I LOVE a second book in a series that stands up to the first! Doors Of Gold And Rust was just as wonderful as the first book! I liked that this story still had the same characters we already know, and involved the same house, but there are a whole lot of NEW mysteries to uncover. It was exciting, and I enjoyed it!

The story picks up just four months after the resolution of the last story, and we find Evelyn has befriended Jake, and Alex is a bit estranged as he’s living with his mom out of town. Evelyn receives a letter that sparks the return of Alex and the eventual discovery of a long-hidden murder on the Byrne House grounds.

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Fable by Adrienne Young

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

OH my goodness…Fable… I loved this book! So, this is my first book by Adrienne Young, and I’m a BIG fan now! This story was told so well! The descriptions just drew me into the story! I could see the glittering water, the coral reefs, the ships…everything! It was beautiful!

Fable is the daughter of a well-known trader, living her life on the sea. When their ship goes down, she is one of three that survive the night. Her mother does not survive, and her father, who is about the biggest jerk ever, drops her off on an island of vagrants and thieves. Fable lives the next 4 years fighting for her life, her food, and trying to make enough money to buy passage off this horrible little section of the world. When she does, she begins an adventure of a lifetime!

The plot was wonderful! I really loved how the story unfolded. There’s some history that we need to learn about Fable to understand why she’s on the island and some of her backstory. I don’t like a ton of flashbacks in stories because I find them disruptive at times. In Fable though, I enjoyed that there was need-to-know information about the past, but the author chose just the right moment to insert the flashback. It didn’t pull me out of the story, it just brought me closer!

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What You Wish For by Katherine Center

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Rating: 5 out of 5.
White library with lots of stairs and "Contemporary" text

You know how everyone talks about an author, and you’re like hmmm…I haven’t read this author, there must be a reason everyone loves them? Well….That was Katherine Center for me. I haven’t read any of her books, but she’s ALL over the book world! So, I was really excited that I managed to snag her audio and physical book, What You Wish For! And what I wished for came true, this author ROCKS!

What You Wish For is categorized as romance, and I would agree, there is definitely a romance element, but it felt like SO much more than that. There is hope, grief, inspiration, and friendship all mixed into this beautiful story!

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All Eyes on Her by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

All Eyes on Her is a young adult thriller that puts the reader in an investigative position, which I thought was fun and original! We start the story with Tabby telling us why she’s not guilty of killing her boyfriend, Mark. It then moves to other character’s perspectives of what they knew about the situation. I liked reading each character’s version of events. It gave me the opportunity to see the situation from so many different points of view.

The story is told through the multiple perspectives, but also provides chat messages, sections of diary entries, as well as newspaper articles. It really played up the social thriller genre with these entries and it was so easy to get into!

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How to Live on the Edge by Sarah Lynn Scheerger

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

How to Live on the Edge by Sarah Lynn Scheerger is such an emotional rollercoaster so buckle in before you start this one! It was a beautifully written book with such an emotional draw! 

Cayenne and Saffron lost their mother to breast cancer when they were young, leaving them to live with Aunt Tee. They know that the women in their family don’t live past 40. The BRCA gene mutation that runs in their DNA won’t let them. Cayenne spends her time flirting, very dangerously, with death. She stands in front of oncoming trains, jumping out of the way at the last second, and so many other perilous activities. When she is given video messages her mother made for her before her death, she finds that she doesn’t want them, but continues to be drawn to them.

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Olive the Lionheart by Brad Ricca

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

First of all, this cover is AMAZING! It is the kind of cover that made me not even care what the book was about, I knew I wanted to read it. And I lucked out because what was under the cover was good too!

This is a non-fiction account of Olive MacLeod. In 1910, she found out that her fiancé had gone missing while in Africa. So…she packed her bags and went to find him. Olive MacLeod is the kind of woman I would have liked to know. She was fiercely independent, wildly disregarding of the early 1900’s social restrictions, and extremely adventurous!

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Dylan McFinn Book on tray with glasses and flowers

Dylan McFinn and The Sea Serpent’s Fury by Liam Jenkins

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

Who doesn’t love a story with mermaids, myths, and destiny? Dylan McFinn and The Sea Serpent’s Fury had all of that and so much more!

This story starts with Culbert McFinn, a sea captain with a concern for the environment. He invents all these things to help get rid of the mounting number of plastic in the oceans. But then he’s caught by a mermaid and taken down to Lapatia, the land of mermaids. He finds himself quite happy with all the mermaids 😂 and chooses to stay there. And so, Dylan McFinn is born, half mermaid-half human. For Dylan’s 13th birthday, they take a family trip above the water, and that trip turns out to be quite eventful! Dylan’s destiny becomes clear as sea monsters and witches try to invade.

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Have You Seen These Children? by Veronica Slaughter

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

When Veronica was only 8 years old, her father kidnapped her and her four siblings taking them from the Philippines to the United States. Moving from state to state to avoid getting caught, they lived a life of fear and abuse with their father. Her memoir of this horrible experience is a moving, emotional story that is hard to put down.

This book is so filled with emotion, as a reader, I was pulled into the story, but as a human being, a mom, a sister, a daughter…I was INVESTED in the story. I cannot imagine the pain and suffering of a mother finding that all of her children have been kidnapped in one fell swoop. For children to have to go through an experience like this is awful. I couldn’t put the book down because I needed to know what was going to happen!

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The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

Wow! This book just blew me away! I was just expecting something different, I’m not sure what. Maybe more of an always running from the killer kind of story, but this was something totally different, and I loved it!

The main character runs an extremely popular podcast series where she covers crimes and has solved one for her past two seasons. This year, she decides she’s going to cover a live trial of a rape case and update her followers daily so they can feel like they are a part of the jury. Just before arriving in town, she receives a mysterious letter on her windshield that leads her down a path to 25 year old death that she can’t let go. She finds herself balancing the current case with this old case that no one seems to want to talk about.

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The Red Door by Heather Kindt

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

What I Loved:

I LOVE it when the second book in a series is just as great as the first, and The Red Door WAS just as amazing as The Green Door! I was so pleased to see that Heather Kindt’s writing was true to the first story, but still found a whole new world to delve into!

How I Felt:

The story picks up a very short amount of time from where the last book ended. I loved that we didn’t lose much time between the two stories, and it created that sense of urgency the characters felt to get back to the game.

The plot has our characters heading off to attack the challenge of whatever is behind the red door this time. And boy, it was a whole new world! I loved the magic twisted with very real-feeling situations that the characters faced. The Queen of the land they enter has this magical hold over the kingdom. People fall over themselves to throw their hearts and bodies at the Queen. Something strange is happening, and Meg needs to figure out how to resist the Queen before they are all lost to her magical pull.

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PINTO! by M.J. Evans

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

PINTO! is the only horse to complete a 1912 – 1915 horseback journey to visit all forty-eight state capitols with the “Overland Westerners”. This book takes that real-life event and tells it through the eyes of Pinto. I really enjoyed M.J. Evan’s choice to make the horse the narrator of this story. It did create a fictionalized feel to the story, however, it was obvious that she had worked hard to research and provide real information surrounding this historic event.

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The World Looks Different Now by Margaret Thomson

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The World Looks Different Now is an emotional story of a mother after the loss of her son. Margaret Thomson’s world is completely changed after the news that her 22-year-old son, Kieran, has committed suicide. Margaret and her husband travel to her son’s army base to help their daughter-in-law in the aftermath of this tragedy. Margaret needs to understand the circumstances surrounding her son’s death and works tirelessly to Kieran’s medical records and gain some sense of understanding about the death of her son.

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