Lisa's Cubby

Peter Swanson’s novella, The Christmas Guest is an outstanding, nerve racking, frightening story with an amazing plot, twists and turns and an unbelievable chilling ending. Trust me, it’s a far cry from The Night Before Christmas!

American student, Ashley Smith is in London doing a junior year abroad. It’s coming up to Christmas, a difficult time for Ashley as she has no family, her mother dying years ago. She is used to spending the holiday alone, something she has gotten quite use to. Until this year when an English student, Emma Chapman asks her if she would like to come and stay at her family’s house for the week and celebrate Christmas with her, her parents and her brother Adam.

Ashley can’t believe her luck! Emma lives in Cotswold manor! What a luxury it will be for her to be pampered for once during the holiday season! She is so excited to find out what an English Christmas will be like. In her excitement she decides to buy a diary and document her stay which she can’t help but think will be the best week of her life!

But, as Ashely soon discovers, life at Cotswold manor is not what she imagined. It’s frightfully cold inside the house, she is left on her own quite a bit, Emma’s father is mean and unkind, and her mother, very meek. The only saving grace is Emma’s brother Adam who is not only handsome but funny and easy to talk to. Although she would never say the words out loud, she has a terrible crush on him!

There has also been a strange death in this cozy village. A young girl was murdered recently, and the killer has not been found. At one point Emma’s brother Adam had even been suspected on the crime, but he had a solid alibi. Now, Ashley has seen a terrifying stranger walking out of the woods and thinks she may have actually seen the killer!

As we follow the story through Ashley’s eyes and witness the dark path the story goes down and how its terribly horrendous turn, it will give the reader not only goosebumps but a shock at the stunning conclusion.

The Christmas Guest is another brilliant, imaginative Peter Swanson story, and even though it is short, it pacts that horrifying punch his readers are so use to and do look forward to. Merry Christmas?

Thank you #NetGalley #WilliamMorrow #PeterSwanson #TheChristmasGuest for the advanced copy.

The September Read with Jenna pick, Amazing Grace Adams is a wonderful, funny, well-written, empathetic story about a woman who has reached her breaking point, with her daughter, her husband, her work and everyone she encounters on that fateful day in which everything that can go wrong, does. The relatable story is filled with emotions everyone can relate to, anger, embarrassment, mistakes and a love so deep and desperate you would do anything to try and fix it and make it better. It’s about never being able to come back from loss, but at least trying to live and deal with the sadness openly. It’s about the good, the bad and the ugly of life and finally saying enough is enough.

Grace Adams is having a very, very bad day. She’s stuck in traffic trying to get to a bakery across town so she can pick up a 16th birthday cake for her daughter Lotte who does not want to have anything to do with her anymore, let alone see her.

So, feeling she has no choice, she gets out of her car, leaving it in the traffic and begins the long walk to find the bakery and make it to a birthday party which she is not wanted at. As she tries to maneuver through the different and difficult moments getting to the bakery, she begins to relive her life and assess what she has done right and wrong. At 45, and being perimenopausal, sweating at the drop of a hat, she relives what has led up to her husband wanting a divorce, her daughter moving out to live with her father and being fired all because she can’t seem to open her mouth. She can’t explain her feelings, so she just shoves them deeper and deeper into a vault she has never opened before.

As her life during the walk explodes around her and as she explodes on everyone she unfortunately encounters, Grace realizes she has become a person she does not know or understand. How and why did her life take such horrible twists and turns.

But by the time she finally makes it to the bakery to get the cake and brings it to Lotte’s birthday party, a party she was told NOT to attend, she is a new Grace, determined to make up for the mistakes she felt she has made , to love more deeply especially to love herself and try to be the woman she knows she wants to be, not the person who everyone around her wants her to be.

Amazing Grace Adams will make you smile, tear up but also make you realize how human everyone really is and make you admire Grace Adams for what she was able to do during that long difficult day, and perhaps we all could learn from her how to react when we make mistakes, or when we don’t speak out mind. She teaches us that no matter what you need to pull yourself up, experience the feelings, learn from them and grow. This is peace…

Courtesy of HOLT Social Media, here are some cute mobile backgrounds for your phone to fit the fun mood this book brings out, along with a delicious cake recipe!

Thank you #NetGalley #HenryHoltandCo #FranLittewood #TheAmazingGraceAdams for the advanced copy.

The follow-up to Shepherd’s eerie story, Malice House is filled with even more extraordinary monsters and bogeymen and an exceptionally horrifying story in which reality versus frightening villains created at an old movie studio.

As her father’s monsters in which he wrote, created and then they came to life are still lurking in all corners of the world, Haven, his daughter, a monster herself, who also has the power to draw creatures and her step-sister Kylie who has the power to write the stories are on the hunt to find their relatives who can hopefully explain to them why this happened and how to stop the killing.

They flee to Hollywood, where Haven’s former mysterious boss who use to send her horror movies from the deep dark web to review lives. There they begin to understand there was a horror film company from the early 1950’s whose logo seems to mysteriously appear on some of the dead bodies. One an actress from the era.

As they begin to get closer to finding out who her relatives are, all roads seem to point to her Uncle Arthur, a crazy monster her father created. He is wreaking havoc on not only her but is trying to kill all of her relatives so he can live forever.

But unbeknownst to them, monsters from these old movies mysteriously draw Haven and Kylie to them. But why? It’s now up to the two women to figure out how to stop these crazy monsters who seem to have so much power. Or they will all die.

Midnight Showing is filled with creative monsters both from the past and the present, an intriguing imaginative story you won’t want to stop reading, which includes a main character who herself is one of them. One thing is for sure, they must figure out how to kill Uncle Arthur and the dead movie monsters before they take over the world!

Excited to see where Haven and Kylie’s journey take them next!

Thank you #NetGalley #HyperionAvenue #MidnightShowing #MeganShepherd for the advanced copy.

I really wanted to love Out Of The Corner by Jennifer Grey. I have watched Dirty Dancing at least fifty times and can’t pass it up when I accidently stumble across it on television, but although her life story was interesting and at times shocking, I sort of felt like she had a bit of a repetitiveness to how she was feeling and what she wanted to do with her life.

Yes, she has quite a bit to say about growing up as the daughter of Broadway veteran Joel Grey, how they moved from the East Coast to the West Coast constantly depending on his jobs, how when she was a very young child, she spent every Saturday afternoon with her father at the matinee of Cabaret watching and learning and solidifying her choice of wanted to entertain when she grew up.

But then there would be bits of what I felt should have been very impactful life changing issues such as when her parents decided to divorce, and her father came out as gay which I felt she glossed over. But perhaps she felt that was his story to tell, not hers.

She does go into great detail about getting both the Ferris Bueller and Dirty Dancing movies which of course she became known for as well as her relationship (or lack thereof) with Patrick Swayze and how she regrets not seeing him then for what he truly was. She tells stories of how the shooting of Dirty Dancing was extremely difficult between the weather, people getting sick, and not enough money for a clothing budget. So much so I feel the need to go back and yes, watch the movie again! One particular interesting tidbit was the fact that Grey was scared to do the lift during the final scene, so much so that she did it only once and of course it was perfection.

As for her romantic relationships, she was engaged twice, once to Matthew Broderick whom she had a very volatile relationship with and whom she was in a car accident while vacationing with him in Ireland in which two people were killed, Broderick was in the hospital for months and Grey was left emotionally and physically scarred for life.

Of course, she starts the book with her infamous nose job in which she became unrecognizable as herself and how it came about and pretty much ruined her then career.

She goes into great detail about marrying her now ex-husband and having a child in her forties never thinking she would be lucky enough to become a mother, only to discover that she began to lose herself in becoming a stay-at-home mom (just like her mother who left a budding career and perhaps regretted having to do so).

Enter Dancing With The Stars and her decision to take on the challenge… and challenging it was! Not only not having danced in years but discovering the car accident she was involved in years ago had unknowingly destroyed her neck!

There are a few surprises hidden throughout the book. Who her best friends are and who else she dated and was even engaged to which I will not spoil here.

But overall, Out Of The Corner was a good read but sometimes I had the feeling I was reading a rant from perhaps a bit of a spoiled child. Not to take away from her story which is powerful in so many ways.

I will just let you decide for yourself.

The Stranger Upstairs will give you the creepy crawlies! Its dark story filled with all types of terror and mystery will take the reader down a rabbit hole of fear, suspense, madness and horror. It was delicious!

Sarah Slack a best-selling author and psychologist and her bartender husband Joe decide to buy, renovate and flip a beautiful house in an affluent community. But unfortunately, there is a history to Black Wood House. You see the previous owners were killed. The husband killed his wife then himself as their daughter ran for help. Although the neighbors feel the house should be demolished, Sarah and Joe were able to get the house and its history for a steal.

As Sarah has a plan to blog about the renovations while working as a psychologist, Joe is not so sure about buying this house. He was very set against it. But Sarah feels she and Joe need this. Their marriage is falling apart, and Joe does not want to even try anymore. But both know because of their history, they are stuck with each other. And they are running out of money as they’ve spent most of her book money and even though her second book is due soon; she hasn’t even started writing.

But as they begin the renovations, they both feel the eeriness of the house. Especially Sarah who opts to sleep in the murder bedroom while Joe sleeps on the couch. Sarah starts of hear noises and footsteps. She tries to introduce herself to the neighbors who don’t want anything to do with them. She’s even chastised for buying the house.

Then, she realizes someone has been inside the house, leaving her notes about things no one should know. She begins a descent down a delusion of paranoia even accusing a neighbor of breaking into her house and poisoning her cat. She knows the house wants her there, she can feel it. But as she digresses, she loses her job and begins to relive her past which she has tried to keep hidden from herself.

But nothing could prepare Sarah for what happens next when she discovers a dead body up in the attic. She knows whose it is and what makes matters worse Joe has left her and now she is alone in the house fighting for her sanity.

Could the house be doing this to her? Or is it the ghost of the husband who killed his wife? Do they know she has a lot in common with them? Or is it a neighbor who wants them out. She begins to not make sense, even to herself. She loses sense of time and can’t understand what’s happening around her.

As all the insanity and paranoia comes to a head and with-it Sarah’s secrets which have been hidden for years are exposed. And the body count will rise. Just as it seems it always does at Black Wood House.

The Stranger Upstairs is an intense deep dive into mania and lunacy with a terrifying ending which is so good it will continuously keep you thinking who was the real killer, a person or something else?

Thank you #NetGalley #Bantam #The StrangerUpstairs #LisaM.Matlin for the advanced copy.

Forever Home was such a pleasant surprise! It’s wonderfully funny, yet a bit sad, filled with secrets galore, twists and turns in family dynamics and to what lengths a family will go to protect each other. This cannot put down book has Norton’s incredible sense of humor written all or it!

Declan’s wife left him. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Not to his young children, son Killan and daughter Sally, and not to the gossip mongers in the town in Ireland. No one really understands why she let. But one thing is for sure. Her children can’t forgive her.

Carol, a teacher used to come over to Declan’s to tutor his daughter Sally. Sally began to look up to Carol as a mother-figure. But when Carol and Declan became something more and Carol moves into the house the tension is palpable. The children resented her, understandable because she had taken their mother’s place, someone they both felt would come back. But they live together for years, happily even though they are the talk to the town.

Years pass and the children are grown and out of the house when Carol sees Declan begin to show signs of dementia. She informs the children who seem on their own to decide to put their father in a nurse care facility, then evict Carol from the only home she has known for years so they can sell the house. Carol is devastated as she knows for a fact Declan never wanted to sell the house, but shockingly she finds Killan is the executor of the estate and has made this decision.

So, Carol, must vacate the house and move in with her parents Moira, her judgmental mother and Dave, her quiet seemingly spacy father who only seems to do as he is told. How could this happen to her, especially at her age?

But Moira comes up with a brilliant idea! She and Dave will secretly put a bid on the house and buy it! Carol is horrified but can’t stop the train which Moira seems to be on from going off the rails!

When the sale is done and they go to the house, something just doesn’t smell right. Carol and Moira find themselves in a horrible situation which they can’t tell anyone about, especially Dave and have a mystery they have no idea how to solve.

Since Declan seems to be getting worse, he is unable to help him with this problem, so Moira comes up with a plan which Carol reluctantly must agree with. This house which Carol loved and cared for all those years has turned into The Nightmare on Elm Street and they just hope their plan does not land them both in jail!

What Moira and Carol discover is things are done for reasons beyond anyone’s control. Sometimes to save a family you must lose the family no matter how much you love them.

Forever Home is filled with quirky characters, witty dialogue, heartbreaking realities of life and a powerful storyline of what one will do to protect their family, even when the family does not know they need protection.

Thank you #NetGalley #Hachette #GrahamNorton #ForeverHome for the advanced copy.

Rouge has it all…it’s a psychological mind blower, with a bit of sorcery thrown in. Then add an unstable mother and daughter with serious facial dysmorphia, a treatment center dedicated to everlasting beauty, and you will not be able to look away!

When Belle’s mother dies suddenly, she must go back to Malibu from Canada where she lives now to bury her mother as well as settle her estate. Although they were not very close, they talked on the phone some.

What Belle had not realized was while sometimes speaking with her mother Noelle on the phone, she would not seem to be one hundred percent present in the conversation. She just chalked it up to her age and being lonely or busy with the clothes shop she co-owned. Her mother had always been a bit eccentric and secretive.

One thing her mother did teach her was how to stay young looking. From Belle’s earliest memory her mother was always watching treatment videos and putting layer upon layer of serums on her face. And of course, Belle herself began to follow the routine with her mother making sure she had a daily skin care routine which could last a few hours. Something she has always continued.

But when Belle returns to her mother’s condo, she discovers all the mirrors broken. She also finds out her mother was in serious debt. How could she have not known any of this was going on? As she unpacks some boxes her mother had stored, she finds a pair of her mother’s red shoes. She decides to put them on. But something happens to Belle, something she doesn’t understand. Soon she finds herself at a treatment spa called La Maison de Meduse where she is promised experimental treatments which will keep her face young.

Not really understanding what is truly happening to her, she discovers the secrets behind the mirrors, the looking glass. It is frightening and confusing, but she begins to fall victim to the treatments, it seems, just like her mother. But her mother died. Will she die? But suddenly that doesn’t matter, she is lured away from reality.

Rouge is a very complicated story filled with love and hate of each other and of oneself. It touches upon mother-daughter relationships, the good, the bad and the ugly. It mocks what some will do to keep young no matter what the consequences. One must learn to step away from the mirror because you could truly get sucked in and shatter your life.

Thank you #NetGalley #Simon&Schuster/MarySueRicciBooks #Rouge #MonaAwad for the advanced copy.

Beach Read is not only a great beach read, but an adorable story which is meant to be read while on vacation, but also as that bedside table book you will look forward to each night. Although the premise of book is a bit depressing or perhaps a bit sad, it is the enjoyable antics and adventures, witty banter between the two main characters which will have you coming back for more!

January Andrews is a romance writer who just lost her beloved best friend, her father, who died suddenly. Through the initial devastation she unfortunately discovers some disturbing information about him which changes her life forever. Now depressed, she loses her boyfriend, the love of her life, is almost penniless (thank you Manola Blahniks!) and has a romance novel due at the end of the summer which she has not even begun to think about.

Now on top of all that, January must go to the small town her father grew up in North Bear Shores and somehow dismantle a house she never knew existed and learn secrets about the father she trusted and adored.

Augustus Everett is January’s angry next-door neighbor in North Bear Shores. He too is a writer, one of those fancy types who write deep, disturbing fiction. They could not be any different. He too is in the midst of a life crisis and has come here to lick his wounds. He is here writing his next book.

They meet, they don’t like each other and don’t really respect each other’s writing. Oh, and January is aware they were enemies in college always vying for top writing awards. Gus as she knew him then doesn’t seem to realize they know each other.

So, they decide to make a bet. January will try her hand at fiction, with some field trips from Gus to get her in the mood, and Gus will try his hand at romance with some field trips January has up her sleeve. All so they can get the feel of the other’s genre.

And this is where the fun really begins! As they learn more about each other, they discover they have much more in common than either ever could imagine. Their chemistry is palpable. But they still cannot tell each other their issues and they certainly seem to not want to deal with them themselves. How do they let their problems go and find the happiness we all want them to have? Is it even possible?

Beach Read is a charmingly cute, funny, sensitive tale filled with secrets which the reader can’t wait to find out! Oh and of course, the romance…yowzah!

Scenes Of The Crime is an unexpected whirlwind thriller with layers of shocking twists and secrets which will have you reading non-stop until its jaw-dropping conclusion.

A group of friends who met in college years ago meet at the winery where one of them disappeared years ago on the anniversary of the mysterious death (disappearance) of their friend Vanessa Morales who was the bond that kept them together.

Emily Fischer knew Vanessa as her best friend. Her hazy memory of what happened the night she disappeared is the reason she convinces the women to revisit the place where something obviously occurred. But what? That night has haunted her for years.

But she also has another motive. She is a writer on a sitcom, and she knows she has more in her than writing for a silly show. She wants to attempt a screenplay about the weekend Vanessa went missing. She is sure if she can pull this off, she will have a hit on her hands.

The cast of characters at the winery this weekend, as well as the weekend of the disappearance are:

Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin. They both came from a very wealthy family, but when Vanessa’s parents die in a car crash, instead of embracing her the family treats her as an outsider. Britany got everything she wanted, including the winery when her grandparents died. Vanessa had to beg just to get tuition money. Spoiled and narcissistic, she enjoys taunting the others with what she has and looks down on them for what they don’t.

Paige, who is still friends with Brittany to this day is her puppy dog. She follows Brittany around and agrees with everything Brittany says, no matter what. She has no opinions of her own and waits for her friend to lead her.

Finally, there is Lydia who has had a difficult and challenging life. In college she was trying to pay for school and help her sick mother with her medical bills which were adding up due to all her treatments. As she looked for research jobs at school, Brittany somehow was always able to make it, so Lydia lost the job. Now, she barely participates in any conversations they have during this weekend.

Without Vanessa, these women hardly really know each other. Vanessa was truly the glue which held them all together and now without her things don’t seem to be going very smoothly. And then on the first night, items of Vanessa suddenly appear in the rooms of the women. Items she had on or saved before her disappearance.

What is going on?

Fear begins to take over the group. Why? Because they all seem to have secrets from back in the day. As we learn the history of each woman, it becomes clear Vanessa was not really who they thought she was, but neither were the other women.

And Emily’s screenplay which is dispersed throughout the story becomes invaluable to the reader. What is clear is that something terrible happened the night Vanessa disappeared. Was it one of them? Now if Emily could only find out what happened, she would have the ending she knows would be spectacular. Although it could cost her life.

What really happened to Vanessa?

Scenes Of The Crime is filled with suspense, mystery and psychological torture. It immediately grabs you and its ending, a perfect ten.

Thank you #NetGalley #Bantam #ScenesOfTheCrime #JillyGagnon for the advanced copy.

Hold on to your bike helmets! Jennifer Weiner’s newest novel The Breakaway is an exciting, funny, heart-warming read with layers upon layers of twists. It’s a love story, a coming-of-age story with so many women empowering themselves, sub-plots any woman reading will be able to empathize with…truth, trust, body uncomfortableness, keeping secrets and mother-daughter relationships. Am I right?

Abby Stern is in her 30’s. She likes her life, although she is still trying to find her purpose. Always having wrestled with her weight, and her mother’s constant intervention even sending her to Fat Camp when she was younger has always heavily weighed on the way she views herself. But after she met Mark, an old flame from the camp who was able to lose the weight and keep it off, they begin dating. Although he is very strict with his eating regime, he does not mind Abby’s joy of food. She has wonderful friends and is an avid bike rider, something unfortunately Mark cannot enjoy as he has never learned to ride a bike. Abby is still trying to figure out what she wants to do when she grows up. She has a few different jobs which she enjoys, but nothing which really excites her.

But one thing which did excite her for at least one night, was the one-night stand with a gorgeous man named Sebastian. Yes, she sort of cheated on Mark but they had only been back together for a short while. But Abby has never forgot the feelings she had for Sebastian but realizes she could never be his type when he was sober.

Two years later, she is now at a crossroads with Mark who wants her to move in with him, and not only is she unsure of that next step, but she also still floats from job to job still searching for her purpose.

One thing for sure, she loves to bike and when she is given the opportunity by a friend to lead a cycling trip from New York City to Niagra Falls, Abby is up for the challenge. Until her life begins to spiral out of control because on this cycling trip are two guests, she would never imagine being in the same place…Sebastian and her mother!

This trip will change the lives of these bikers forever, in so many ways. They will all bond as they never could imagine. Still, Abby can’t let go of the image she has of herself, no matter what is said and done. And Sebastian is making her decisions very hard, and her mother is still continuing her calories. How will she find peace with them as well as herself? And is she strong enough to handle all the trials and tribulations this journey will take all of them on.

The Breakaway is a terrific title for this extraordinary story. As the important layers of the issues are pealed back perhaps someone reading this tale will find the comfort or answer they have been searching for. What a ride!

Thank you #NetGalley #AtriaBooks #The Breakaway #JenniferWeiner for the advanced copy.