Reading a Nicholas Sparks novel is like booking a room at a Hampton Inn–you pretty much know what you’re going to get. In a typical Sparks book, boy meets girl, boy and girl fall for each other, the relationship comes up against headwinds, and it all works out by the end of the story. Not so much with Dreamland, however.

Colby Mills, the male protagonist, is a farmer in Washington, NC, but we find him on St. Pete Beach, Florida at the novel’s beginning. Colby, who’s also a wannabe musician, has a several-weeks gig on the beach. There he meets Morgan Lee, a new college graduate who also writes and sings songs and has plans to make it professionally in Nashville. And, yes, boy meets girl–Colby and Morgan have a fleeting encounter that […]

Ruth Ware’s Zero Days is her latest mystery novel, and it’s another five-star hit for this New York Times bestselling author. Diving into it, you’ll quickly learn why Ware is touted as today’s Agatha Christie.

Gabe and Jacintha (“Jack”) are a married couple who work together. You’ll think they’re up to no good from the very beginning, but quickly learn they are penetration experts. Companies hire them to physically break into their offices and hack their technology, revealing vulnerabilities in both physical and tech firewalls.

Returning home from her most recent job, Jack finds Gabe in a shocking situation that ignites the arc of the entire story. Ware takes the reader through twists and turns as Jack begins a mission to discover the truth behind the sudden change in her marital relationship. I can’t […]

A Novel Proposal, best-selling author Denise Hunter’s latest release, is a fun beach read. In fact, most of the novel’s action takes place on a South Carolina beach, where the writer Sadie Goodwin has retreated to pen her first romance novel. While staying at her best friend’s mom’s beach house, she encounters a grumpy neighbor and the challenge of switching from western novels to the romance genre.

After putting out a neighborhood library box, she comes across a book hiding a very secret treasure. That sends Sadie on a mission to find its owner and, along the way, gives her plenty of material for her manuscript’s love story. Her winsome personality also sparks a change in her neighbor, and plays a key role in the book.

The book is light and fun, with plenty […]

Notwithstanding the older release of this book, it deserves a review. If you were a fan of Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, you’ll love this second of a trilogy with young lawyer Jake Brigance as the protagonist. (The third novel is A Time for Mercy, published in 2020.) After his big but controversial win in the Hailey trial, Jake and his wife, Carla, have suffered through harassment and arson, and are now living in a rental after their house was burned to the ground. Thinking the Hailey verdict would set him on the path to legal infamy, he has actually struggled to find cases, few of which have been challenging. And then, everything changes.

A wealthy old white man, Seth Hubbard, takes his own life once he knows he’s in the final stage of a terminal illness. In a […]

The prolific author, Elin Hilderbrand, has released her latest novel, The Hotel Nantucket. Main character Lizbet Keaton is named the new general manager at the historic Hotel Nantucket, recently purchased by an English billionaire. Having just come off a romantic breakup, Lizbet welcomes the busyness required to run the hotel. Little does she expect to encounter a crazy cast of characters–staff and guests–who enliven her job while challenging the hotel’s success. In the midst of all this, she’s also pursuing new romantic interests.

Hilderbrand inserts the point of view of the ghost of Grace Hadley, a chambermaid who perished in a fire at the hotel in 1922. She oversees and comments on the goings on at the hotel, adding to the quirkiness of the novel’s plot line.

The book is fun and entertaining. Get […]