Maine

Bookouture Blog Tour for THE HOTEL by Emily Shiner

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I’m happy today to be part of Bookouture’s tour for a new thriller by Emily Shiner: The Hotel. I found this story a little hard to get into at the start as the pacing seemed a tad slow. Then I felt that things sped up about a third of the way in. The last quarter of the book was filled with twists and turns and surprises! I thought at first I liked the characters, but by the end I disliked everyone but the toddler.

While I enjoyed the novel (I do love suspense!), I had to suspend disbelief a bit for the last part of the book. This story did keep me on the edge of my seat and I look forward to more from Ms. Shiner.

Thank you for my copy and for having me as part of the tour!

Book Description:

As we welcome the Rowe family to our beautiful clifftop hotel, a shadow passes over my husband’s face. In that moment I see it: my husband is hiding a terrible secret. Has he put us all in danger?

Mark and I pride ourselves on giving visitors to our hotel, high on the rugged Maine cliffs with views of the ocean, a vacation they won’t forget. But the Rowes arestrangely over-familiar when they arrive with their teenage daughter. The wife puts a hand on Mark’s forearm and her husband meets my eyes with a knowing look as I hold my little son tight. They gush that they loved their previous stay here… But I’m certain I’ve never seen them before.

Mark reassures me that the Rowes are just being friendly. We have so many visitors, maybe we forgot meeting them. When I am locked in the master bedroom for over an hour, he later soothes my panic and says it was just an accident. But I know one of the Rowes was out in the hallway listening to me cry for help. I hear one of them whispering a lullaby to my baby on his monitor. I cannot trust these people.

But as the relentless icy rain gives way to the biggest blizzard of the season and we become cut off, I realize my son and I are trapped. Mark knows more about the Rowes than he’s letting on. I’ll do anything to protect my gorgeous baby boy. But how far will I have to go, to keep him safe?

The Hotel is a totally twisty locked room thriller that you won’t be able to put down. Fans of Shalini Boland, Freida McFadden and Jeneva Rose will be glued to the pages!

Author Bio:

Emily Shiner always dreamed of becoming an author. After spending years devouring stacks of thrillers, she decided to try her hand at writing them herself. Now she gets to live out her dream of writing novels and sharing her stories with people around the world. She lives in the Appalachian Mountains and loves hiking with her husband, daughter, and their two dogs.

It’s nice to meet you!

https://www.facebook.com/authoremilyshiner/

https://www.instagram.com/authoremilyshiner/

Sign up to be the first to hear about new releases from Emily Shiner here: https://bookouture.com/subscribe/emily-shiner/

Buy Link: NOT affiliated with BBNB

Amazon: https://geni.us/B0C9JM4CBTsocial

Audio:

UK: zpr.io/3EXY2dAGiijD
US: zpr.io/Q7Np6PrNsgYA

Listen to a sample here: https://soundcloud.com/bookouture/the-hotel-by-emily-shiner-narrated-by-lauryn-allman-john-chancer

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

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My good friend Amy runs an online book group through her site “Mom Advice” (look on Facebook for Mom Advice Book Group). She was having an author interview this past week with Mary Kubica. I loved her The Good Girl so I quickly got her new book The Other Mrs. and read it for the meeting!

Here’s the overview from Amazon:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Coming to Netflix!

“Altogether unpredictable.” —Karin Slaughter,New York Timesbestselling author

Propulsive and addictive, and perfect for fans of “You,” The Other Mrs.is the twisty new psychological thriller from Mary Kubica, the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl

Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor Morgan Baines is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie.

But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.

“Brilliant!” —Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

“Kubica’s best book yet.” —Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Timesbestselling co-author ofAn Anonymous Girl

Look for these other pulse-pounding thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica:
The Good Girl
Pretty Baby
Don’t You Cry
Every Last Lie
When the Lights Go Out

What a read!! I LOVE suspenseful books with twists that keep you guessing and this was one of them! I will admit that at 24% on my kindle, I had figured out what was going on with the main character, but I chalk that up to the fact that I have a lot of experience in the field of psychology. I was surprised at some of the other twists, and when Ms. Kubica was speaking with Amy, she said that she tries to put in several different twists so that if you figure out the main one, then you aren’t deflated for the rest of the book.

All the time she was speaking, I was impressed with how friendly and normal Mary Kubica seems. She lives in the Chicago area, so she sets many books there. She has a family. She loves and adopts cats. She seems like the friendly, Midwestern type — not a megastar author!

I will give her credit for “doing it again” with The Other Mrs.!

Find this book at a bookstore near you or online. I got mine at Amazon for my kindle.

Find my friend Amy (who is super popular and runs a blog dedicated to budget crunches, crafts, and a few other things at http://www.momadvice.com)

Find Mary Kubica at marykubica.com

Thanks for hosting a fun book group chat, Amy!!

*trigger warning for abuse/child abuse

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

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I adore the cranky and wonderful Olive Kitteridge; and I truly enjoyed the first novel about Olive and how wonderfully written it was. This one continues Olive’s story, basically for the rest of her life. It is so well-written that it makes the story of her life beautiful. Elizabeth Strout has an amazing way of making the ordinary extraordinary.

Here’s the overview (and thanks for my ARC galley through Net Galley!):

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions.

“Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I’d never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is.”—Zadie Smith, The Guardian

“Just as wonderful as the original . . . Olive, Again poignantly reminds us that empathy, a requirement for love, helps make life ‘not unhappy.’”—NPR

NAMED ONE OF FALL’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS BY People • Time • Entertainment Weekly • Vanity Fair • BuzzFeed • Vogue • USA Today • The Seattle Times • HuffPost • Newsday • Vulture • Bustle • Vox • PopSugar • Good Housekeeping • LitHub • Book Riot

Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). TheNew Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

Praise for Olive, Again

“Olive is a brilliant creation not only because of her eternal cantankerousness but because she’s as brutally candid with herself about her shortcomings as she is with others. Her honesty makes people strangely willing to confide in her, and the raw power of Ms. Strout’s writing comes from these unvarnished exchanges, in which characters reveal themselves in all of their sadness and badness and confusion. . . . The great, terrible mess of living is spilled out across the pages of this moving book. Ms. Strout may not have any answers for it, but she isn’t afraid of it either.”—The Wall Street Journal

QUICK REVIEW: Berried to the Hilt by Karen Mac Inerney

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I’ve enjoyed other “Grey Whale Inn” mysteries, so I was thrilled to find this one in the Kindle shop. These stories take place on Cranberry Island, off the coast of Maine, and center on a B&B owner, Natalie Barnes, who just so happens to run into murders/dead bodies/etc. In this installment, a sunken ship is located off the coast of the island and it’s a race to see who can claim it: a university team or a private treasure hunters’ group. Then one of the searchers is found dead. They’ve all been staying at the Grey Whale Inn, so Natalie has plenty of opportunity to sleuth around and establish motives and means (of which there are many!). However, will Natalie find she’s the next victim?

I do enjoy this cozy mystery series which comes with recipes at the back of the book (they are featured in the story). Natalie is a far nosier innkeeper than I would ever be, but it keeps the plot moving. I could see these stories being made into a BBC series.