Lisa's Cubby

Delilah Dawson’s book The Violence is a very hard book to get through, but an important read for those who have been abused in some way, shape or form. Which probably embodies all of us. But as Dawson writes at the end of the book, “Living well is the best revenge.”.

Chelsea Martin’s life looks perfect on the outside. Perfect husband, two daughters 17-year-old Ella and 5-year-old Brooklyn in a perfect house. Pretending is exhausting. Her husband David physically and emotionally abuses her, he makes sure she has limited money and no access to accounts, he demands they all greet him at the garage door when he comes home from work, the meals they eat are all his favorites, and when he begins to drink at dinner…well… that’s when most of the physical abuse begins, something Chelsea has tried desperately to keep hidden from her children. Unfortunately, David has set his sights on Ella and now Chelsea fears everything is escalating.

David’s best friends are a police officer and a lawyer, so Chelsea’s escape seems unattainable. Her mother, Patricia, is a self-absorbed, egotistic woman who cares only about herself and money. After an abhorrent childhood, and abusive relationship, she feels she is due the wealth and security she now has with her husband who is a judge. Yes, so she has seen her only daughter Chelsea with a few bruises, but she believes Chelsea should just try harder to make her marriage work. And help her leave financially? Well, that’s just not her problem. Chelsea’s children are spoiled as it is.

But Chelsea begins to finally see a way out of this abuse. After the Covid pandemic, another type of sickness has begun. It seems to have started in Florida where they live. No one knows how, but people are being affected. They are calling it the Violence because it causes a person infected to explode into a horrible rage physically mutilating anyone around them, be it person or animal. Then, the rage leaves and the infected has no idea of what they have just done.

Chelsea devises a scheme to get David out of their lives. And it works, but the real problems truly begin when she goes to her mother, Patricia to ask for help because she has no money and needs to get out of Florida. Patricia refuses to help her but agrees to take her children. Left with no choice she leaves them with her uncaring mother, promising she will come back for them.

But this is a pandemic like no other and through no fault of anybody their lives take separate paths. And then David comes back and wants to get his revenge on them all. Each of them will be challenged in ways they could never imagine. They have three options, fight for themselves, fight for each other or fight together against both the Violence and David. Can these women finally face their pasts and create a new future?

This is a powerful story about generational abuse and how it is possible to break the cycle by strength, love and forgiveness. Again, living well IS the best revenge.

Thank you #NetGalley #DelRay #DelilahS.Dawson #TheViolence for the advanced copy.

This poignantly, beautifully written story is about the correspondence between two very different women in different stages of their lives during the early 1960’s and the development of a lifelong friendship which began when one of them wrote a simple letter to the other about food.

It all begins innocently when twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom, whose dream is to write about food, sends a letter to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a columnist for Northwest Home Life complimenting her on her latest column. She encloses a packet of saffron as a suggestion as to how to cook muscles. Joan lives in Los Angeles and Imogen, Camano Island in Washington.

What starts out as simple letters about food and recipes, begins to turn into a deep friendship about problems, loves, and hidden secrets. They begin sharing not only recipes, but their feelings about the world during that time, the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy’s assassination, and women being treated equally in the workplace.

Through their correspondence, Joan learns about Imogen’s relationship with her husband, who has now become obsessed with cooking because of their communication. Imogen learns about a crush Joan has on a man, but in those days is frowned upon. As the friendship evolves into two best friends writing about their secrets, they begin to become each other’s cheerleaders and emotional support systems.

They both seem to get such strength and joy from each other with the simplicity of just words. Sometimes the letters are filled with happiness and unfortunately, sometimes with tremendous sorrow, as their friendship is tested throughout the years.

What started out as one simple note about adding saffron to muscles, turns into a lifetime of friendship, love, and companionship which will last forever. Kim Fay’s story Love & Saffron will make you cherish your true friendships. You may even want to give them a tight squeeze!

Thank you #NetGalley #G.P.Putnam’sSons #Kim Fay #Love&Saffron for the advanced copy.

Adele Parks’ new book Woman Last Seen is fast paced with an intriguingly different plot and incredible twists.

Without giving too much away it begins with two women who go missing.

Leigh Fletcher is a happily married wife and stepmother to two boys with her husband Mark. She travels weekly to her job as a consultant and returns mid-week to her family. Notoriously organized, even while being gone for half the week, she keeps the household running smoothly, prepares meals before she leaves and even has time to meet her best friend Fiona for tea weekly.

Kai Janssen loves her life! Married to a very wealthy Dutch businessman named Daan she does not want for anything. He adores her! Although she lives a very pampered life, she still splits her time taking care of her mother who is ill and lives in a care facility out of town. Usually, Kai and Daan talk at least once a day when she is away. But now Daan is unable to locate his wife. She has gone missing, and he is devastated.

Just as Police Detective Clements is called in to search for Leigh, although she believes Leigh either decided she needed a break from her family or wanted to upset her husband, the other call comes in about another missing woman, and that is Kai Janssen. Even though the women are so unalike, Detective Clements can’t seem to stop thinking the two cases are somehow connected.

But how could they be connected? Both women live in totally different areas. As the police begin to investigate, they start to think perhaps someone may have wanted to hurt the women. Why? Yes, as the saying goes if a wife goes missing, the husband is always the prime suspect, but in this case, they are the ones who called saying they were missing.

Where are Leigh and Kai? More importantly who took them and are they still alive?

And that, my friends are all the clues I am going to give you! You will just have to read the book for all the jaw-dropping, astounding turns the story takes!

Thank you #NetGalley #Mira #AdeleParks #WomanLastSeen for the advanced copy.

It’s 1966 and middle schooler Trudy Mixer who had been on top of the world now seems to be fighting a losing battle. Last year she had started the first ever Beatles Fan Club in Rhode Island. She and her best friend Michelle did everything together and her fan club was the top rated after school club at their school! Along with this she and her dad had bonded over the Beatles! Her father who was a workaholic was always so preoccupied that sometimes Trudy felt he did not even remember her. But not when it came to the Beatles (her favorite is Paul)! They listened to their albums together, sang their songs together and even stood in line waiting to buy their current records together!

This year, her best friend has decided to join the Cheerleading Club and seems to be drifting away from Trudy. The Beatles Fan club which was so popular last year only has four members, including her and the other members are sort of odd. If they lose one more member the club will have to be disbanded, much to Trudy’s horror. And as for her name, a new teacher has decided to call her by her given name, Gertrude, much to her embarrassment and has caused teasing from the other students. Her homelife has been okay, but her father has been busier and has had no time to commiserate about the Beatles.

So, when her father comes home with four tickets to see the Beatles in Boston on their world tour at the end of August, she is ecstatic! She thinks by going to see the Beatles it will boost the fan club to where it belongs, Michelle will be her best friend again and she and her dad will have something to talk about all summer! But then Trudy gets devastating news! Her father needs to be out of the country and will be unable to take her to the concert. They tell her she just can’t go. Maybe the next time they come.

Trudy is determined to make this happen and decides to take the Beatles Fan Club group to the concert without their parents’ knowledge. Of course, this would not have been her first choice, but she doesn’t have Michelle anymore and she seems to be short on friends. As the excitement builds throughout the summer, they make a plan as to how to get to Boston from Rhode Island. Then one of them finds out which hotel the Beatles are staying at and since they are going to be there anyway, they decide it would be easy to just go and meet them!

Even with all the preparations that summer, they could not have foreseen what problems they would encounter, and how their dream of a perfect night begins to fade away and starts to turn into a disaster! But what they do learn that night is invaluable. This journey will not only change them but bond these four unlikely companions in ways no one could have ever imagined.

It was the summer of 1966, the Vietnam War was raging, Ed Sullivan and The Beverly Hillbillies were on television and a group named the Beatles were in America and all the girls were swooning…

This story is not just for middle schoolers. It is for anyone who has ever dealt with loss, teenage embarrassment, insecurities, crushes and so much more. She Loves You is the story of true friendship, persistence, love and hope. I hope it was really true!

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont is brilliant! As an Agatha Christie buff I have read many books about her and those eleven mysterious missing days which she herself claims to have had amnesia and does not remember in 1925. Her own autobiography skips them! But in the Christie Affair, de Gramont gives probably one of the greatest hypotheses to what could have happened to Christie with amazing plot twists and turns, even a murder!

So, the story begins as they all do. Agatha’s husband, Archie asking her for a divorce. He had been having an affair with a young woman named Nan O’Dea whom he has fallen in love with. He would later marry her. There was arguing, (the servants heard it), Archie leaves. Then Agatha disappears leaving letters to Archie and to her daughter’s nanny. Her car is found abandoned.

But the difference with this book is The Christie Affair looks deeper into the mistress’ life and any part she may have played in the drama of the disappearance. Nan O’Dea had a happy childhood, living in England and visiting relatives in Ireland every summer. There she meets a boy and falls madly in love. But he goes off to war, and she a nunnery where she witnesses abuse and tragic loss.

Flash forward to how O’Dea is able to get the attention of Archie and seduce him for reasons which only become known (to the reader) much later. O’Dea was a fixture at the Christie home and Agatha seemed to accept her. O’Dea feeling Agatha did not know of the dalliance with her husband. Oh, how she misjudged Agatha’s intelligence!

This tale goes far beyond what those missing days may have been like for Christie. It also delves into what Nan O’Dea was doing as the world awaited the outcome of the fate of the missing famous writer. How their world’s will collide during that time. What the reader will find out is O’Dea had some haunting secrets of her own which just seemed to coincide with the search for the missing author. Nan O’Dea had been plotting for years to take back what she felt was rightfully hers and no one was going to stop her.

Without giving any of this delicious story away, let me just say that I felt as if I was reading a true Agatha Christie novel filled with mystery, clues and shocking developments! Well done!

Thank you #NetGalley #St.Martin’sPress #TheChristieAffair #NinadeGramont for the advanced copy.

Heather Gudenkauf’s The Overnight Guest had me hooked from the first page! I honestly could not catch my breath waiting to see what was coming next! The story, which consists of three separate plots is completely enthralling, each telling its own story with an ending which will leave you on the edge of your seat.

Wylie Lark is a true crime writer who has left her son and her ex-husband to go finish her latest book. She has taken up residence in as isolated farmhouse outside a small town in Iowa. She left also because of the tension between herself and her son. You see, Wylie has some secrets.

In the same town, many years ago a family was brutally killed during the night leaving only their daughter who was able to get away. Her best friend who happened to be sleeping over that night has never been seen again, and her body has never been found. Although there was a suspect, they were never able to find enough evidence to convict him, so the murders went unsolved.

Wylie finds herself stranded in the farmhouse as a blizzard roars outside. Upon trying to get to the barn for more firewood, she comes across the body of a young boy, almost frozen. She gets him into the house and begins to ask him questions as to where he came from and was he with anyone. He refuses to speak and seems terrified of her. Wylie proceeds to go back outside to try and find where he could have come from.

She discovers a damaged truck and a woman entangled in the wires of a fence on the property. She will not speak to her either. She goes back to the farmhouse to get wire cutters and upon her return the woman has gone missing. Upon Wylie’s return to the farmhouse the woman arrives and demands she let her son go. She has a gun! Not understanding what is happening, she tries to convince the woman that by leaving she will be sealing the fate of her and her son. And then there is a knock on the door which will change the trajectory of their lives forever.

The story is completely spellbinding with twists which seem to never stop. What an incredible satisfying thriller! Gudenkauf is a wonderful storyteller!

Thank you #NetGalley #ParkRow #TheOvernightGuest #HeatherGudenkauf for the advanced copy.

Lovers of movies such as Halloween, Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street…listen up! You will definitely want to add The Final Girl Support Group to your to be read pile! This story reads as if you took all the gory slasher films you’ve ever read, mixed them with the heroine’s psychological problems after the tale ends, added humor and mystery and voila this is their story!

Lynnette Tarkington is what is called a final girl. Years ago, she witnessed her whole family and her boyfriend being killed by a lunatic. She was the only survivor. She is not the only final girl. There are a handful of them, and they are famous, but not in a good way. They seem to attract the crazies. For years they have gotten together once a month to sit and discuss their problems with Dr. Carol, a therapist who herself became famous because of the group.

But it is hard for the group to cope with real life and the fear always exists that someone will try and kill them again. For Lynnette, she has been preparing herself for years. Then one of them is killed and the can of fear worms opens up. Then Lynnette is targeted and takes off leaving the life she thought she had planned which would protect her. But she sees now that the killing of one of them was not isolated. Someone is out to kill them all. Who and why now?

She realizes someone has been plotting against her for a very long time, even getting information from what she thought was a very secure computer. But none of the other girls believe her when she tells them what is happening. They seem to think she is just being her very paranoid self.

Lynnette decides she must try and figure out who is trying to kill them and stop them. But who can she trust? She can only trust the other final girls. But as she seems to get closer to the truth, none of the others will have anything to do with her. And Lynette will find not everyone, and everything is what or who they seem. Can this final girl save the other final girls from their final movie scene…death?

The Final Girl Support Group is filled with gore, fear, mystery and is quite funny and enjoyable! Or perhaps I have just watched too many horror films!

As only author Marie Benedict can do so well, she combines history with fiction to tell tales of strong women throughout the years. Those who have endured and conquered over those who refused to see their intellect or tried to take from them their ideas all because they are women. Her Hidden Genius is clearly her best to date. It espouses the life of a woman with superior intelligence who was forced to overcome many hurtles, but courageously stood her ground to maintain her love of science, intellect and discoveries.

Rosalind Franklin was born in England into a large, wealthy family. But all her life she chose to work hard. Her genius was seen at a young age and she chose science, a profession she was passionate about as her career. In the late 1940’s and 1950’s as a scientist in physics, she worked tirelessly to understand X-rays. Over the years her specialty and obsession became DNA and its pattern.

She first worked in a laboratory in Paris, a city which she loved, with a group of scientists, both male and female who respected each other and each other’s work. They encouraged each other and each other’s research. She also fell in love for the first time, something she never thought she would be able to do. As a woman, Rosalind always felt she would have to pick, a husband or her career. Her life always consisted of her work, her laboratory and her family back in England.

After a few years in Paris, and with her parents and family pressuring her to move back to England, she agreed. She took with her the work she had been doing on unlocking the secrets of DNA. But she would find her new workplace was nothing like the one she came from. She was looked down upon by the male scientists, never called doctor by them, called by her first name, and even a nickname they gave her. She received no respect at all. But she put her head down and with her assistant continued to work on breaking the DNA code.

Then she and her assistant made an incredible breakthrough. Suddenly she finds some of the male scientists asking too many questions. She discovers one actually breaking into her laboratory. The Director of the laboratory seems to not want to deal with her problems, basically wishing her away. She decides to take another job, but before she is able to leave, it seems her discoveries are written about by some of the male scientists at the laboratory.

Beaten down, Rosalind accepts her fate. She knows what she had done and that’s all that matters. It is only later that these scientists will be challenged, and the challenger will be another woman, a good friend of Rosalind’s.

Rosalind literally devoted her whole life to the study of science and her genius was truly hidden by the men who surrounded her and by the way women were perceived at the time. But through historical writers such as Benedict, they are now being given the accolades they have always truly deserved.

Thank you #NetGalley #SourcebooksLandmark #MarieBenedict #HerHiddenGenius for the advanced copy.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you sure? Where will you be when you grow up?

Gage Chandler is a true crime writer whose claim to fame was writing a book about a couple of teens who were killed by a teacher, Diana Crane, also known as the White Witch. What he found out about the murders would profoundly navigate the rest of his career. A career which has basically stalled.

But he is now given the chance of a lifetime! When asked if he would like to do a story about a double killing in the 1980’s in a porn shop, which has since been converted into a house in which he can live in while doing his research he is not convinced at first, but finally agrees.

The house is known in the town of Milpitas, California as the Devil House because when they found the mutilated bodies of the realter and owner of the building, there were satanic writings and graffiti everywhere. This was a time when satanic rituals among teenagers was very prominent. No one was ever charged with the brutal crimes. And to make matters worse, this small town had a previous murder back in 1981. A woman was raped and murdered, and a movie called River’s Edge was made about the case.

Locals are not happy to see a writer not only living in the house but stirring up all the bad vibes from the past. So as Gage immerses himself in research about what the history is of the Devil House and finding out that at the time of the murders two teenage boys, Derek and Seth had basically taken over staying in the building when the manager of the store had taken off, his imagination takes off.

He sets about interviewing people and begins to get a sense of what was happening at the time of the murders, with the teenagers and life in general in the small town. The deeper he delves the more he returns to his first book and how sometimes things are not as they appear to be. Although the stories are completely different, the similarities are concerning to him.

In most tragic murder cases there is the truth and there is what people believe or want to believe is the truth. There are suspects and there are individuals some wish were suspects. There is folklore which some take as fact. Gage finds himself totally immersed in not only this aspect of his current research, but in his past work.

He also realizes at some point that he grew up with a friend who moved to this small town during the time frame of the murders. As he reaches out to his friend for assistance Gage is at a crossroads in his career as to how to go forward. Sometimes a murder is sadly, just that even though everyone wants to believe it was more. It is up to the writer to either tell the facts as they are or embellish the truth for more interesting content. That is his quandary.

The Devil House is an interesting look at what being a true crime writer must be like. Thank you #NetGalley #MCD #DevilHouse #JohnDarnielle for the advanced copy.

In this haunting story, time moves backwards to Ellie Hockley’s life in 1965. Ellie lives in North Carolina in the deep south. She is a pharmaceutical student in college, preparing to step in at her father’s pharmacy when her studies are completed. Ellie’s life seems complete. She’s dating a local, will have a good job after she graduates, and her best friend Brenda is getting married. But, after going to a meeting about helping to register black people to vote during the upcoming summer, her life changes forever.

Against her parents, brother and friends wishes, Ellie makes the decision to go fight for black voters and their families. With volunteers coming from all different states, her being a southern girl makes her decision looked upon by other southerners as her being a traitor. Where Ellie is from, there are few black people and there are KKK meetings. Unfortunately, this puts the black families in which Ellie stays with in great jeopardy.

When a group of the volunteers decide to drive to Ellie’s small town, Round Hill to attend a KKK meeting, Ellie is shocked at what is being said and who is in attendance. When Ellie is seen at the meeting, she becomes fodder for the town. As do her parents and brother whose livelihood becomes impacted by her decisions. In the meantime, Ellie finds herself falling for someone she knows she will be unable to be with.

Flash forward to the year 2010 and Kayla Carter, an architect who along with her husband have been building an incredible house in Round Hill. Unfortunately, Kayla’s young husband dies in an accident while the house is being built and she is left a widow with a young daughter. Still uncomfortable about moving into the now finished house without her husband, Kayla is visited by a strange woman who seems to know too much about her and her family. She warns Kayla that someone could be killed if she moves into the house with her child. Although the police think this is just a random crazy person, she is taking the threats seriously. With a lake, woods and a dilapidated tree house on the land and finding out KKK meetings used to be held back there, she is taking no chances and decides a fence needs to be installed. Kayla’s dreamhouse is becoming a nightmare.

Then strange occurrences begin to happen on her property. If it wasn’t for her neighbor next door, Ellie Hockley, who has come back to Round Hill to take care of her ailing mother and dying brother, she does not know what she would do. But Ellie basically keeps to herself and is not opened to talking about the past.

As the two stories which are told in separate chapters, begin to collide Ellie and Kayla discover their lives are deeply intertwined. Decades old shocking secrets will be revealed which will change their lives forever.

Once again Diane Chamberlain has written a powerful thought-provoking story about hate, love and suppression as she has become well-known to be the master. Thank you #NetGalley #St. Martin’s Press #DianeChamberlain #TheLastHouseontheStreet for the advanced copy.