the Serial Killer's Guide to San Francisco

 

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for my honest review.*

Capri (emphasis on the PRI) is a strong willed woman who started a tour company in San Francisco 10 years ago when her marriage fell apart. As the granddaughter of the infamous Overkill Bill serial killer, she emphasizes serial killers and murders in her tours and the company has become quite successful. Then a murder happens and the cops are calling it a copycat of Overkill Bill who has always maintained his innocence and Capri's ex-MIL goes missing and she is the person that the family turns to for help.

I loved that Capri was such a strong character and didn't kowtow to anyone, including the hot detective. (Because, of course, there is a hot detective!) And she even stood up to her own dad about looking into the original Overkill Bill murders to try and find out if her grandfather really was innocent. Adding in several other characters that help with the tour company and her graduate school attending daughter, there is a great cast of characters to build on for any future books in the series!  A single POV and snippets of San Francisco tourist locations and this made for a great debut!

Four stars!

The Maid

 

Another novel about a neurodivergent main character. Five stars from me again!

Poor naive, unassuming Molly the maid works in the Regency Grand Hotel in a big city and is one of the best maids due to her attention to detail and ability to follow all of the rules to the letter. She is definitely unique and on the spectrum in some capacity. But she is also so easy to like in her quaint ways and way of talk. When Molly finds a body in a room she is about to clean, she does what she can to help her friends who might be affected by the murder. 

Such a sweet reminder in the book to be careful of your friends and know your enemies. But when you can't tell which is which, it makes it mighty hard to survive. And Molly is on a bit of a down ward spiral after losing her Gran several months ago. Gran helped her find her way. But she still has Gran in her mind and in her heart and with her Gran as her guide through life, Molly just might make it after all.

This was such an endearing novel (minus the death and mystery) and Molly is such a strange bird in a great way that it is easy to root for her to figure things out. It's also kind of easy to sort out what is going on even when Molly doesn't.

I can't wait to read the next in the series!

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.*

I can't believe that I put this book off as long as I did. What a fantastic debut novel for Karryn Mayne and I am adding her to my authors to follow on Goodreads. And recommending this book to everyone!

On the surface, Lenny Marks is set in her ways and one could assume it is due to being on a spectrum of some sort. That is certainly what I thought for most of the novel. Her schedule is never changing - grocery store, food, work - every week it is all the same thing. Until she realizes that she is lonely, admits it to her mum, and her mum starts pushing her to make friends at work and to engage. And when a letter from the parole board is delivered to her at work, it starts a spiral of changes that Lenny can't stop.

Lenny's quirkiness with her anagrams to calm herself sometimes had me thinking - "wait... can you really make that word?" And the answer was always yes!

The novel was a great pace and with a bit of a mystery behind the parole board letter. and it works to dismantle Lenny's world piece by piece until she is precariously close to collapse. The characters are fantastic and Lenny's loneliness is palpable. Her actions to try and make friends and adjust to the outside world are enough to bring her (and me) back to being alone in her home and disregarding every chance to change her life.

I want to say that I hope I can read more about Lenny Marks, but in order for that to happen she needs another mystery and I would very much rather for her to live her life in the peace that she finds!

Five stars!! A must read!

House of Glass

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.*

Stella is an attorney appointed to look out for the best interest of a 9 year old while the parents are going through a nasty divorce. At every turn, the parents and grandmother thwart Stella's attempts to get to know Rose and find out what would be in her best interests. Another wrench in Stella's job is that Rose has been non-verbal since her nanny died by falling through an attic window. And Rose may or may not have witnessed the fall and the death. This is just one of the answers that Stella can't get to. While the family is divorcing and Rose is non verbal and they are recovering from the loss of the nanny, they are slowly switching all of the glass in the home out for plastic of some sort.

Stella is also coping with the crappy time she had growing up and almost witnessing her mother's overdose and, naturally, taking on this case helps her start to resolve those feelings and be able to investigate the overdose.

The family comes off very unlikeable and manipulative in the book. There is a good pace and the writing was pretty great. I listened to the audio version and the narrator did a great job with the suspenseful parts. It kept my attention and my heart raced a bit when the twists were revealed and when creepy things happened with Rose. 

Five stars!

One Big Happy Family

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.*

Charley is working at a legendary hotel on the coast of Maine with a crotchety and handsy boss who has recently died. She thinks she had it made with room and board included with the job and isn't sure how things will work out with the boss's daughters who will inherit the hotel - will she keep her job or be out on her bum? This is the weekend that the will will be read and Charley is nervous about changes that may or may not be coming her way. Add to the mix a hurricane that is heading straight toward the hotel and it sets up a great story for a locked room mystery.

The descriptions of the characters and how the stories were laid out was fantastic! Some things I was able to guess, but other things were out of left field to me. The 3 daughters were so different in their lives and personalities as were their partners and the children. It kept Charley on her toes to be able to take it all in and keep everything tidy throughout the weekend.

I feel like there were things that were added in that were secondary to the main story at the hotel, but there was also reason for Charley's thoughts to be split between there and the assisted living house where her grandmother was. But the grandmother story line was a lot more secondary to me and somewhat of a distraction.

Very enjoyable book with very despicable characters! A great read! Five stars!