"Knave of Diamonds" by Laurie R. King

I really enjoy stories about con artists.  Which means it's a little weird to me that I didn't connect more with this book.  It was fun, but I sometimes felt like I was being subtly told how fun it was, not that I actually was finding it fun?  Maybe I just read it at the wrong time -- I got two holds in from the library and had to quickly read this one before it was due again because someone else had placed a hold on it.  I probably would have enjoyed it more in January or something.  I also think that I probably will enjoy in more if/when I reread it at some point, because I will stop worrying about Holmes and Russell's safety every minute of the story.

I did like it!  I just didn't love it.  Which is okay.  I only love about half of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books by Laurie R. King.  But I like basically all of them :-)

In this one, Mary Russell's uncle resurfaces after being presumed dead for years.  He's a con artist and thief.  He wants Russell to help him find something.  That he stole years ago, and was subsequently stolen from him.  It's complicated.  And it all turns out just fine, whew.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some discussions of British societal uproars over the uncovering (years previous) of a "homosexual ring" within the upper echelons of society, and some remarkably (for LRK) veiled implications that a side character may have feelings of some kind for someone of the same sex.  Also, some violence and a smattering of light cusswords.

"Woman in Shadow" by Carrie Stuart Parks

It's been a few years since I read any books by Carrie Stuart Parks, and that feels foolish of me, because I enjoy her writing a lot!  Time to do some catching up in 2026, I think!

Woman in Shadow is a stand-alone Christian suspense mystery about a woman who has PTSD and lost a limb due to a violent crime incident in her past.  Part of her therapy for working through her trauma involves going back out into the world and learning how to use her forensic linguist training and skills to help others again.  She is sent to help a ranch resort near Yellowstone National Park figure out if someone is sabotaging their work, and why.

She uncovers some dark truths, both about the dangers at the ranch and about her own past.  By shedding light on them, she's able to stop something really sinister from happening, and also able to heal emotionally and mentally from burdens she was forcing herself to carry.  She also gets a friends-to-maybe-more-in-the-future side story with a local law enforcement officer who has his own troubles to get through.

I really loved how the main character's training as a forensic linguist helped her navigate the new surroundings she gets dropped into, and also helped her figure out who to trust, who was hiding things, and so on.  I also really liked her character development -- there was no "instant healing," but rather a steady progression toward doing better with things, with stumbles and natural pauses.

My book club read this for our autumn book, and we all loved it!

Particularly Good Bits:

"The mountains marched into the distance like a stack of torn paper, each layer lighter than the previous one, ranging from deep viridian to soft lavender (p. 24). 

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for memories of violence, non-detailed descriptions of some pretty horrible deaths and injuries, and a lot of suspense and peril at the end.  No cussing, no smut, no detailed gore.

"The Souls of Lost Lake" by Jaime Jo Wright

Oh my.  This was very creepy.  So creepy, I almost quit reading it about halfway through because I was afraid it was going to give me nightmares.  But I decided to read a couple more chapters, and then eerie and creepy things started getting real-life explanations, and I went ahead and finished the book.  It turns out that all the ghostly and creepy things were totally explainable and due to secret human activity, and there were no hauntings.  There definitely were horrible murders in the past, and those were hard to read about, but they weren't what was creeping me out anyway.

This is one of those split-timeline books where you have one storyline going on in the present day, and another in the past.  The present-day story is about a young woman named Arwen who lives at and works for a Christian camp in the north woods of Wisconsin.  She is helping with a search for a missing little girl who disappeared near the camp.  In the process, she digs up a lot of information about her own past.

In the past story, it's the 1930s, and there's a young woman named Ava Coons whose whole family was killed in a bloody and terrifying way when she was a child.  Their bodies disappeared, and her family home burned to the ground -- only Ava escaped, and she was covered in blood and dragging a massive, bloody axe when she was found by people of the small Wisconsin town nearby.  Even though Ava had no memory of what happened to her family, and clearly was too small and weak to even heft the axe she was dragging, many people still thought she killed her family.  A decade later, a person from that town is killed with an axe, and many people want Ava arrested for the crime.  About the only person who believes she is innocent is a new minister who isn't very well known in the area yet.  Ava starts to fall for him, even while trying to figure out how to prove she isn't now and never has been a killer.

The burned-down Coons cabin also plays into Arwen's story, and she lives near the small town where Ava grew up after her family died.  

I devoured this book in three days because I absolutely had to know how everything turned out.  I've been assured by some friends that the rest of Wright's books are not this creepy, so I think I will try another, one of these days.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for creepiness, discussions of murder victims, lots of innuendo, and scenes of a child being in peril.  I would not hand this to any of my teens to read, to be honest.  But it's also not really R-rated.

"All is Calm; All is Bright" by Colleen Coble

This book is two Christian fiction mystery novellas, All is Calm and All is Bright, and although they both belong to other series Coble has written, they stand on their own perfectly well too.  Which is good, because we read this for my church's book club this month, and none of us had read any of her other books before.  But I plan to look for more now!

All is Calm is part of the Lonestar series, which takes place in Texas (obviously).  A woman accused of helping sabotage a race horse runs away -- with the race horse -- and finds sanctuary at a ranch that helps kids with emotional problems.  She had stayed there as a teen and remembers that it was a place of comfort and hope.  Once there, she teams up with an injured veteran to figure out who actually sabotaged the horse... and they end up clearing up a couple other mysteries too.  And falling in love in the process, because of course they do!

All is Bright is part of the Hope Beach series, which is set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  In it, a bright and helpful woman is targeted by an unknown assailant who forces her car off the road and into the ocean.  She survives, but she and the local sheriff can't figure out who would try to harm or kill her, since she's the most helpful person you've ever met.  Of course, they eventually do solve the mystery and catch the culprit, while starting to fall a little bit in love in the process.  

Of the two, I liked All is Calm better.  Part of that was the location -- a Texas ranch is always going to be catnip for me -- but part of it was that I simply felt like we got to know the characters in it really well.  I had a little bit harder time connecting to the people in All is Bright, but I did enjoy it a lot anyway.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for some mild violence and characters in peril.  Both romances are clean and wholesome.

This is my second book read and reviewed for A Literary Christmas and my 57th read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Kidnapped" by Jan Burke

This was a nail-biter, and no mistake.  So many little threads of killings and kidnappings and disappearances and deaths, all woven together skillfully.

A young man goes to prison for killing his father and little sister.  His brother and mother are convinced he's innocent.  Fast-forward a few years, and new evidence crops up, old evidence is shown to be mismanaged and misidentified, and then a dead body linked to another kidnapping is found, and suddenly lots of crimes that seemed unrelated start forming a pattern.  At least, that's how intrepid reporter Irene Kelly sees it, and her police detective husband Frank sees it the same way.  

This book marks the end of My Year with Irene Kelly.  Although there is one more book in the series, Disturbance, I won't be reading it.  I discovered that it deals with the same ultra-creepy killer from Bones, which I disliked so much when I read it earlier this year that I didn't even review it.  I don't want to remember it.  So I know I don't want to read another book about the same guy.

I'm really happy I've finally read this whole series!  Bloodlines remains my personal favorite, and I also think it's the most masterful of the ten I've read.  But I very much enjoyed most of the other books, including this one.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for semi-graphically described murders, bad language, adult dialog, and some non-graphic sexual situations.

This has been the 55th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Flight" by Jan Burke

This book was a great relief.  I disliked the previous Irene Kelly mystery, Bones, so much that I didn't even review it here or on Goodreads.  I just want to forget it.  I put off starting this one for over a month because I was afraid it would be similarly gruesome and creepy.  But I do aim to read the whole series this year, so I finally started reading Flight, and it was great!  Not creepy.  Whew.

This book actually focuses more on Frank Harriman, Irene Kelly's husband who is a homicide detective.  He's tasked with solving a cold case from 10 years earlier, before he transferred to the Las Piernas PD.  The case involves a homicide detective who was accused of taking a bribe to kill a teen witness in a murder case, and then disappeared.  When his body is found, the case gets assigned to Frank because he's the only detective on the force who wasn't there earlier and doesn't have a preconceived attitude or ideas about it.

Because I happen to love stories of vindicating someone falsely accused of something awful, I totally dug the mystery here.  And even though it's "a novel of suspense" instead of a straight-up mystery (which means there are chapters from the villain's POV), the villain here wasn't super duper creepy like the one in Bones (which was also suspense, not straight mystery), so I didn't have to skip his chapters like I ended up doing with Bones.  

Yay!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R for bloody murder, violence against teens, scary situations, and a little more sexual content than Burke usually has.

This is my 46th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Hocus" by Jan Burke

Well, that was extremely tense and thrilling.  Wow.  You know, I don't think I realized quite how attached I've become to Frank Harriman, police detective husband of Irene Kelly, until this book.  Maybe Irene hadn't either. 

I think this is the fastest I've read one of these books, and even though I knew (because I've read one later book in the series before) that Frank was going to come through this book alive, I was frantic to get him rescued.  I couldn't read fast enough.

You see, Frank Harriman gets abducted by two unhinged dudes who have a past history with him, a history that involves a brutal double homicide and hostage situation.  Frank was the hero of that first incident, but he's the victim this time around, and... you know how I get all protective of fictional characters I love?  MAN, I wanted so much to jump into this book and protect Frank.

Yeah.  Anyway, Irene Kelly continues to be a delight to hang out with.  I love that she never does stupid things like run heedlessly into what she knows will be a dangerous situation, or go off chasing someone without letting other people know where she's going.  Yes, she runs toward danger at times, but she knows that she's doing so, and she calls for backup and help consistently.  I appreciate that a lot.

Particularly Good Bits:

Wrigley and I have a strained relationship in the best of times, and between two and three in the morning is never going to rank as one of the best of times (p. 45).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for some brutal violence, abduction of children, bad language, and hints of sexual conduct between married people.  It's not particularly icky in any way, but it's not suitable for children, either.

This has been my 19th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Vera" by Elizabeth von Arnim

Well, that was... foreboding and dark and oddly mesmerizing.

Honestly, if von Arnim wasn't such a ridiculously good writer, I would not have finished this book.  It's very squirm-inducing, in that you KNOW the main character is making a terrible mistake, and you feel so helpless because you can't stop her.  Or at least, I did.

Vera is about a barely-of-age young woman, Lucy, whose father dies, leaving her protectorless for a few days.  Into this void steps Everard Wemyss, a capable and confident man who comforts Lucy and plans her father's funeral for her and generally takes charge of her affairs, all only a couple of weeks after his wife Vera has died in a fairly awful accident.

Everard gradually takes over Lucy's whole life, convincing her to marry him after only a few months.  It's not until after they're married that Lucy starts to see that Everard's complete control over every situation extends to complete control over her.  He insists on being obeyed, agreed with, coddled, and kowtowed to.  In fact, he is basically a two-year-old in a man's body, one that gets insidiously cruel when annoyed or irritated or contradicted.  

It's a chilling portrait of a casual sociopath who doesn't even realize what a monster his is, and who utterly hoodwinks most people into thinking he is an ordinary, even worthy, member of society.  Mostly because he believes himself that that's what he is.  Lucy realizes too late that Vera's death may not have been the accident Everard says it was, as she starts to understand what Vera's life must have been like, married to Everard for fifteen years.

I've read two really interesting things about this book that made me want to finish it even though it's a terribly unhappy book and I didn't like any of the characters.  (Not even Lucy, though I pitied her a lot.)  First, I read that von Arnim based this on her own deeply messed up second marriage to a similar man.  And, second, I read that this probably was an inspiration for Daphne du Maurier when she was coming up with Rebecca.  I can definitely see how this could have inspired du Maurier -- you can practically hear her reading it and saying, "Well, what if the husband was like this instead?  What if the second wife was like that?  What if the first wife was this kind of woman?"  That was quite fascinating to me, as a writer.

I expect it really would be very effective as a lesson on "what kind of person not to marry."  Or on "what kind of person not to become."  And I did have a lot of fun after I finished it by inventing a what-happens-next for it.  I gave Everard an unpleasant and well-deserved death, freeing Lucy to gradually recover from how shriveled and piteous she'd become.  That was a good time.

But I will never read this unhappy book again.

Particularly Good Bits:

You couldn't passionately protect Vera.  She was always in another room (p. 99).

The books people read -- was there ever anything more revealing? (p. 247)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a few mild cuss words and a lot of creepy behavior.

This is my 40th book read for my third Classics Club list, and my 17th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker

An appropriate read for October, don't you think?

I first read Dracula in May of 2000 while on tour in Canada with my college's choir.  I was freshly in love with the TV show Angel and its titular vampire hero, and I decided I ought to read the greatest vampire novel of all time.

Maybe this is not a good book to read while riding on a bus for hour after hour.  Or while missing your first real boyfriend, whom you've been dating for like a month.  Or when you're twenty.  I don't know.  I just remember thinking this book was boring and being mad because my favorite character died.

Reading it again at age 40, after spending half my life intrigued by vampires, but also after having read a whole lot more Victorian fiction?  I reeeeeally dug it.  Boring?  Not at all!  I found it tense and fast-paced, with a excellent suspense that mounted page after page.

And this time, my favorite character didn't die.  Because this time, my favorite character was Abram Van Helsing.  (Sorry, Texan.)  My goodness, what a fount of courage, knowledge, and resourcefulness!  I've never been prouder to be half Dutch.

I really liked the epistolary format that Stoker uses, because it made this feel like everything was happening right now.  Very immediate, and great for building suspense toward the end as different characters told what they were doing, and you know what was happening to others, but they didn't.

(My photo from my Instagram account.)

Particularly Good Bits:

The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall; but the god created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow (p. 142).

What a fine fellow is Quincey!  I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking (p. 238).

We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor (p. 424).

How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! (p. 486)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scary situations, suspense, and some icky stuff about eating bugs and spiders, plus quite a lot of blood.  It's not gory or graphic like a modern horror novel or thriller, but it's intense sometimes.

This was my seventh book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list.

"Riviera Gold" by Laurie R. King

It seems like, for the last few years, I've been loving every-other-one of Laurie R. King's novels of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.  I loved Garment of Shadows, liked Dreaming Spies pretty well, loved The Murder of Mary Russell, and liked Island of the Mad kind of okay.  I'm happy to announce that Riviera Gold continues this pattern -- I loved it!  It's one I will add to my bookshelf at some point, for sure.

This adventure finds Mary Russell cruising up to Monte Carlo with a bunch of friends, but without her husband, who is sleuthing elsewhere.  Although she appears to be in this just for the fun of learning to sail a yacht, she's actually tracking down Mrs. Hudson, who memorably departed Sussex in The Murder of Mary Russell.  

Russell finds Mrs. Hudson all right, and also a whole lot of trouble.  Smugglers, arms dealers, thieves, swindlers, and many actually nice people rub elbows with each other, and with Russell and Holmes.  Actually nice people including people called Scotty and Zelda and Dos.

And, yes, that's F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitgerald, and John Dos Passos.  They don't appear in this book as much as Cole and Linda Porter did in Island of the Mad, but since I'm a Fitzgerald fan (this blog is named after a line of his, after all), I definitely enjoyed seeing them crop up.

Anyway, I was worried at first that Sherlock Holmes wasn't going to be in this book much, since he was off on another case, but he joined Russell before long.  My favorite parts of this series are usually when they're working together, and this book proved no exception.  They did pursue different clues and work on separate angles of the case, but were a team nonetheless.  

Adding this to my listing of all King's Russell/Holmes books in order of favoriteness:

1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice (book 1)
2. The Game (book 7)
3. The Murder of Mary Russell (book 14)
4. O Jerusalem (book 5)
5. Garment of Shadows (book 12)
6. Riviera Gold (book 16)
7. Pirate King (book 11)
8. Locked Rooms (book 8)
9. Dreaming Spies (book 13)
10. Justice Hall (book 6)
11. The God of the Hive (book 10)
12. The Language of Bees (book 9)
13. The Moor (book 4)
14. A Monstrous Regiment of Women (book 2)
15. Island of the Mad (book 15)
16. A Letter of Mary (book 3)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence, peril, murder, and a little bad language.

"The Bones Will Speak" by Carrie Stuart Parks

Yay!  I've now read all four Gwen Marcey mysteries by Carrie Stuart Parks!

I read them all out of order, but oh well.  I really enjoyed all four of them -- they were all engrossing and the sorts of stories I can inhale in just a couple whirlwind days.

This might have been my favorite of the four, actually.  Maybe because it has a rescue aspect to it too, not just solving a crime or stopping one.  And because her daughter Aynslee isn't quite as grating in this one as some of the others.

Gwen Marcey's dog finds a serial killer's dump site AND a not-quite-dead-yet victim at the same time.  Both are very close to Marcey's house.  And the victims, both the dead ones and the one saved at the nick of time, bear an eerie resemblance to Gwen's teen daughter.  The killer appears to have ties to a neo-Nazi group, and lots of danger and excitement occur before the end.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 because there are discussions of teen prostitution, some suggestive dialog (not involving Gwen), some disgusting crime scenes, and a lot of danger/peril.

(Here are links to my reviews of the other books of the series, if you're interested:  A Cry from the Dust, When Death Draws Near, and Portrait of Vengeance.)

"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

Oh. My.

So, I've heard some pretty glowing stuff about this book from a lot of people over the past few years.  I even checked it out of the library once, but didn't get around to reading it before it was due.  

Mostly, I wanted to read it because I love graveyards. I love to ramble around in them, reading headstones and soaking up history.  When we lived in Connecticut, there was a massive graveyard a few blocks from our house that was the only really wide-open space with grass and trees that we could find for my energy-soaked toddler to run around in.  It was a popular spot for joggers and other moms with strollers.

Anyway.  I just never quite got interested enough in this book to read it until I read somewhere recently that it's a retelling of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.  I adore The Jungle Book, especially Bagheera, the massive black panther guardian of little Mowgli.  So I thought I'd give this a try at last.  Especially since I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane so much.

Reader, I loved it.  LOVED IT, I SAY.  

Especially Silas, the Bagheera character who was a vampire.  Honestly, if someone had just said to me, "Bagheera is a vampire in this book!" I would have snatched it up immediately.  Because I also love vampires.  Especially really good vampire guardians who use their majestic, undying power to care for and protect someone.  (My second-favorite TV show of all time is Angel, the spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its main character, the protective good vampire Angel, is one of my 5 favorite fictional characters of all time.  It's a thing.)  So, yeah, wow.  Silas was amazing.  Also, I love the name Silas because of Slow West (2015), and I had a merry time imagining Michael Fassbender as a vampire, and yeah.  

But the whole book was amazing.  Smart, funny, exciting, scary/creepy in the best ways, and thoroughly satisfying.

A little baby's family is killed by a relentless murderer, the man Jack, but the baby is taken in and protected by the ghosts that live in a nearby graveyard.  They name him Nobody, Bod for short, and raise him in the graveyard.  The vampire Silas reluctantly becomes his guardian, then mentor, then friend, and Bod learns all sorts of unusual skills (I wish I knew how to Fade, because that sounds so handy in so many social situations), and eventually he has to confront his family's murderer, of course.  Oh, it's delicious!  Delicious, I tell you!

This might be the best new-to-me book I've read this year.

Particularly Good Bits:

"I've absolutely no idea," said Silas, who consumed only one food, and it was not bananas (p. 27).

There were people you could hug, and then there was Silas (p. 149).

At the best of times his face was unreadable.  Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined.  Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not follow (p. 194).

"You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it" (p. 298).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scary scenes involving murder, ghosts, demons, etc.

"A Cry from the Dust" by Carrie Stuart Parks

Inspired by how much I liked When Death Draws Near and Portrait of Vengeance, I decided to go back and read the first couple books in the Gwen Marcey series because my library system has them.  The first book, A Cry from the Dust, came in last week, and I promptly devoured it.  

I like this series so very much!  Gwen Marcey, forensic artist and human lie detector, is a fascinating character with all kinds of foibles, problems, and strengths.  I could see myself being friends with her if she was real and we met up somehow.  And, since characters I want to be friends with is what makes me love books... yeah, it's not a surprise I'm enjoying these.

In this book, Gwen Marcey loses the job she was hoping would lead to a permanent position.  Her husband recently divorced her, after her battle with breast cancer left her flat-chested and bald, and she needs steady work to make ends meet.  Her teenage daughter resents both her parents over the divorce and acts out as a result.  

Into this personal maelstrom comes a chance to work with the FBI to catch domestic terrorists linked to a fringe Mormon leader who is trying to seize more power.  Gwen jumps at the opportunity, but winds up in mortal danger.  Lots of exciting stuff happens as a result :-)

If you enjoy books or TV shows about forensic crime investigations, you'll probably like these.  I especially like that these don't splash around a lot in the kinds of icky details some of those glory in.

(Yeah, I'm a Bookstagrammer.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for non-graphic discussions of pregnancy and polygamy, characters in mortal danger, discussions of historical massacres, and suspenseful events.

"Crown of Souls" by Ronie Kendig

Cole "Tox" Russell and his task force of super-soldiers are back for another Indiana-Jones-meets-Jack-Reacher adventure.  This time, someone Tox used to work with has gone evil.  Former soldier Alec King starts killing people he blames for the death of some of his team members years ago, and he thinks Tox will join him on what King insists is a holy quest to rid the world of evil.

Eventually, Tox and Haven and the rest of their cohorts find evidence that King has gotten his hands on an artifact called the Crown of Souls that uses an otherworldly power to control and distort whoever wears it.  The crown has a history that involves Saladin and the Knights Templar, ancient Assyrians, and more. 

On a whole, I did not like this as well as the first book in the series, Conspiracy of Silence.  I felt like the faith-based elements were less focused and integral to the story, and I had a harder time engaging with the plot.  However, it was definitely a thrilling story, and if you're into thrillers or books that blend archaeology with suspense, you'll probably like it a lot.

Particularly Good Bits:

The subtle tendrils of bitterness were watered over years as wounds were left to fester, the person believing their wrong, their hurt more important than healing.  Than letting go (p. 432).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for a lot of violence and some implied sexual activity -- one side character has been cohabiting with someone they're not married to.  No graphic or detailed love scenes.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for me to read while judging the INSPY awards. In no way did I agree to review this book in exchange. These are my honest opinions.

"Imperfect Justice" by Cara Putman

One of my favorite things about this book was how perfectly it nailed what the ruthless life of Washington D.C. is like.  I live outside the Beltway, but I know plenty of people who live in the glittering, grungy world that attorney Emilie Wesley inhabits.  It's a place where everyone is trying to make an impression, to win some competition or other, to edge just a little bit ahead in their own personal race.  

Emile Wesley works for a no-profit that helps abused women escape dangerous and harmful marriages.  She's confident, talented, and determined.  But when one of her clients winds up dead, accused of shooting both her daughters before turning the gun on herself, Emilie's whole world crumbles.  She's convinced her client could never have done such a horrible thing, not when she was on the verge of escaping a manipulative, abusive husband.  

But the only person who believes the same thing is the dead woman's brother, Reid Billings.  He's a hotshot investor whose instincts and drive have pushed him to the top tiers of the D.C. financial world.  Now Reid and Emilie must team up to prove his dead sister's innocence and stop her abusive husband from retaining custody of their surviving daughter.  But an uncle's rights in a custody case are minimal compared to a biological father's, and their chances of winning are slim at best.

I really enjoy legal thrillers, though I don't read a ton of them.  I will definitely seeking out more books by Cara Putman because I thoroughly dug this.  Especially because it included a lot of discussions of how a Christian behaves in situations like this, whether they can forgive those who intentionally harm them, and what happens when they do.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for discussions of physical and emotional abuse, scary situations, and violence.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for me to read while judging the INSPY awards. In no way did I agree to review this book in exchange. These are my honest opinions.

"Portrait of Vengeance" by Carrie Stuart Parks

What a thrill ride this book was!

Seriously, it grabbed hold of me within the first couple of pages and I inhaled it in just over a day. 

Forensic artist Gwen Marcey takes on a gruesome murder case that closely resembles memories from her past that she's been running from for decades.  But this fresh crime occurred in a Nez Perce community, and Marcey is seen as an interloper sticking her nose in where it's not needed.

One of the few people who welcomes her help is  Seth Kus, chief of the Nez Perce Tribal Police.  Handsome, skilled, and respected, he and Gwen Marcey find themselves attracted to each other in the midst of a swirling, ever-worsening investigation.  Kus also has family history that will also impact the case in ways neither he nor Gwen Marcey can imagine. 

In the end, Marcey has to figure out what really happened to her and her family when she was a child, dredging up horrific memories and trying to analyze them with the methods she uses to help others process crime scenes.  Once she does, she has the key to the identity of this murderer.  

This is one of the best modern forensic novels I've read in years.  I enjoyed When Death Draws Near last year, but this was waaaaaay better.  Marcey's Christian faith is tested in many ways during this story, especially the need to forgive others as Christ forgave us.  A lot of Christian fiction kind of shoe-horns faith into the story, but here it's an integral part of who this character is and how she behaves.  I was highly impressed.

In fact, my fellow judges and I selected it as the winner for the 2018 INSPY Awards for Best Mystery/Thriller!

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  a hard PG-13 for descriptions of horrible crimes including murder, children in danger, and discussions of child abuse.  No bad language or sexual content.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for me to read while judging the INSPY awards. In no way did I agree to review this book in exchange. These are my honest opinions.

"If I Live" by Terri Blackstock

Well, that didn't take me long, did it?  I'm all done with this book after like 3 days, which means I'm also done with the If I Run series!  

Overall, I liked the series a lot.  Blackstock has an engaging writing style with great energy and flow.  Her characters were human, relatable, and likeable.  Her dialog stayed crisp through the series.  Her pacing got a little lax in a few places -- there were a couple spots where I felt like monkey wrenches got thrown into the plot just to make the books longer.  However, in the author's note at the end of If I Live, Blackstock said that this series was initially inspired by the classic TV series The Fugitive and the way that Dr. Kimball (David Janssen) would find a modicum of peace and comfortability somewhere doing a job or helping someone, maybe even start to make friends, and then the police or the one-armed man would show up and he'd have to flee again.  Once I read that, I was like, "OH!  That's what she was going for.  Okay."  In retrospect, it really did have that feel to it, so if you're a fan of that series (::cough:: Eva ::cough::), you would probably dig the way this is set up.

This book had a lot of nice, believable, non-mushy romance in it to go along with the thrill ride, which was extra fun :-)  I also liked how it didn't end with the end of the manhunt for Casey, but went on to show the aftermath of the whole plot, how it affected not only Casey and Dylan, but people in Casey's family, the bad guys' families, and the families of victims too.  It didn't wind up too quickly, which some suspence novels do, and I liked that.

I didn't like the amount of decision-based theology that this one had, though.  The first two books stayed pretty neutral, theologically, but this one definitely weighed in on the "you have to make a choice/decision to believe in Christ" side in a heavy way.  

(From my Instagram)

As an individual book, I liked If I Live better than If I'm Found, and maybe better than If I Run too, just because it has a very satisfying ending.  As a series, these books gave me a good ride.  I'm going to see if the library has more of Blackstocks books, as I'd really like to try more of her stories.

Particularly Good Bits

"I'm more myself when I'm with you than I've ever been with anybody else" (p. 226).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence and suspenseful situations.

"If I'm Found" by Terri Blackstock

So, you might have been wondering why, if I loved If I Run so much, it took me NINE MONTHS to read the second book in the trilogy.  I will tell you.  It's because I was waiting for book 3 to be released, because I knew once I finished book 2, I would want to dive right into book 3.  And I was right.  As soon as I finish writing this review, I'm going to start reading If I Live, which came out last week.

All told, I didn't like this one quite as well as book 1.  Partly that's because I tend not to like middle stories in trilogies because they frustrate me with their lack of resolution.  But in this case, it's also because there's an abused, probably molested child at the center of the story.  And ever since I had kids of my own, I've had a really hard time with stories that involve any kind of child abuse, especially molestation.  Even though this is only suspected abuse, and it never goes into detail as to what might be happening to the child, it was still very hard for me to read.  I almost quit reading in the middle, to be honest.  (SPOILER) Happily, by the end of the story the child has been rescued, at least.

The story is a continuation of If I Run, of course, with Casey Cox still running from the corrupt police officers who have framed her for the murder of her best friend.  Dylan Roberts is still on her trail, but he's convinced of her innocence now and is trying to find her so they can pool the evidence they've independently gathered that will take down those corrupt police officers.  Of course, since there's a whole book to go, they don't manage to do more than meet up yet.  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut they start to develop romantical feelings toward each other, which makes things even more interesting and injects some welcome light into an otherwise bleak story.  Also, Casey is continuing her journey toward faith in God, and Dylan is finding some help in battling his PTSD, so yeah, there's some good news in amongst the bad.

Particularly Good Bits:

I don't know where I am, but when you have no destination, it doesn't really matter if you get lost (p. 3).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence, including guns and hand-to-hand fights; for suspenseful situations; for innuendo regarding a man having an extramarital affair; for discussions of suicide; for drug use (shown to be evil); and for alleged child abuse/molestation.  There's no bad language.

This is my 4th book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2018.  Yay!  I'm a third of the way to my goal already!

"Conspiracy of Silence" by Ronie Kendig

Imagine a story that's a cross between an Indiana Jones movie and Jack Reacher book, and you've pretty much nailed what Conspiracy of Silence is like.  You've got archaeologists discovering Biblical artifacts and unleashing a plague.  You've got a bunch of top-notch modern warriors going after lots of scary bad guys who want to weaponize that plague.  You've got a female FBI agent who specializes in detecting deception who helps figure out who's lying to the warriors and who truly wants to help them.  Oh, and one archaeologist is the sister of one of the warriors, and that warrior's brother used to be married to the FBI agent's sister.  Just to tangle everything up more, because more tangling is always good for a thriller.

This was a very engrossing book, one that sucked me in a bit slowly, but then held me fast.  Also, the Knights Templar are just always a good time, aren't they?  I can't remember any story involving them that I haven't liked, from Ivanhoe to The Maltese Falcon.  This is the beginning of a series, so while the central problem is resolved, there are still some loose threads left that will continue into the next book.

Particularly Good Bits:

Some people had emotional baggage.  Cole Russell had an entire department store (p. 272).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for a lot of violence.  Many, many fight scenes, shootings, deaths, etc.  

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for me to read while judging the INSPY awards. In no way did I agree to review this book in exchange. These are my honest opinions.

"Destry Rides Again" by Max Brand

If you have ever seen the movie Destry Rides Again (1939), you  might think you know what this book is about.  I know, because I love that movie, and so I picked up this book at a cute little used bookstore up in the Shenandoah Valley thinking it would be similar to the movie.  After all, the cover even touted it as the basis for the movie, as you can see.

Um, yeah, not so much.  Now, the main character in both the book and the movie does have the last name 'Destry,' and there's a moment in both of them where he's in a bar and he orders a non-alcoholic drink and gets laughed at.  

But that's it.  Everything else, completely different.  However, that doesn't mean I didn't dig this book!  Because I totally did, once I got through the first couple chapters and realized that the movie does not follow the book at all.  (There's a 1932 movie that looks a bit more like the book, but I haven't seen it.)

In the book, Harry Destry is a proud and boastful punk who likes to go around proving he can out-ride, out-shoot, and generally out-do any man he meets.  He gets blamed for a train robbery he didn't commit, and the jury sentences him to prison because they don't like him.  When he gets out of prison, he sets about ruining or killing the jurymen... and if you're thinking this sounds like a western version of The Count of Monte Cristo, well, I thought so too.  And, as that's my second-favorite book of all time, I very much enjoyed that similarity!  But unlike Edmund Dantes, Harry Destry has one worth opponent who nearly bests him. 

Also unlike Edmund Dantes in Monte Cristo, Harry Destry discovers the emptiness of revenge before he loses the woman he loves or the boy who has helped him survive the frightened wrath of those he's hunting.  The ending of this book was so full of shiny awesome that I know I'll be re-reading this book again and again in the coming years.

Particularly Good Bits:  

Then silence gathered the house softly in its arms (p. 99).

Bullets fired from the saddle on a galloping horse are rarely more dangerous than a flight of wild sparrows (p. 108).

The wolf on the trail is a sleepy thing, and the wildcat is totally unobservant, compared with the eye of a young boy (p. 178).

Too much is made of guilty consciences.  They generally begin to work on criminals after the stern hand of the law has grasped them by the nape of the neck (p. 224).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  A strong PG for western violence of many sorts, some mild bad language, and a lot of suspenseful situations.  

This is my sixth book read and reviewed for the Adventure of Reading Challenge.