Vivien Chien: Misfortune Cookie

Noodle Shop #9

Misfortune Cookie by Vivian Chien is the ninth book in the Noodle Shop Mystery series. Doughnut enthusiast and seeker of justice, Lanna Lee, is off to sunny California with her big sister Anna May to visit their Aunt Grace. But it isn’t all fun and games: Lanna has to attend a restaurant convention to hopefully learn some new things and better their family restaurant. The Lee sisters overall goals are to learn, relax, and enjoy themselves. To ensure this, Anna May starts the trip off sternly reminding Lanna to keep to her promise of trying to stay out of trouble. To her credit, Lanna does want to keep said promise. Misfortune Cookie gives readers a very accurate depiction of two very different siblings getting along, while also giving each other lots of sass. The sisters have very different personalities and are both rather stubborn, but over all they love and care for one another, which is why Lanna is so determined to keep her promise, not only to keep safe but to keep her family from worrying. read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Her Perfect Life

This book will be published on September 14.

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s story telling style is so smooth, her books fly through your reading fingers faster than you can think, almost.  This novel may be the most emotional, heart felt story in all of Ryan’s books.  It’s the alternating story of big sister, Cassie, and little sister, Lily.  While the book opens with Lily telling the reader how perfect her sister is, it fast forwards in time to Lily’s life, which does seem actually perfect. read more

Karen Dionne: The Wicked Sister

This is an excellent suspense novel, so excellent that I devoured it in a single day.  It gives a reader plenty to think about – but that’s after you’ve careened through it’s pages.  I absolutely could not stop reading.

Set in Michigan’s beautiful upper peninsula, the book alternates narratives between that of Rachel’s, in the present, and that of Jenny’s and Peter’s in the past.  It’s not immediately clear how the two connect but when they do, you really can’t look away.   Rachel is living in a mental hospital for killing her mother at age 11 and watching as her father then killed himself.  She has no memory of these events. read more