Over the summer, I read four novels of family drama and dysfunction, one of my favorite fiction topics.

Wreck by Catherine Newman is the sequel to my favorite book from last year, Sandwich, and while it was great to see how Rocky (Rachel) was faring, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous book. However, Rocky, dealing with a chaotic family life while contending with an unknown illness, kept my interest. Read it if you loved the first book. Due to be published in late October.

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean was a book I had been looking forward to reading for months, full of family drama with an intriguing thread of mystery. However, I was ultimately disappointed. Some of the scenes seem to go on forever, and about halfway through, I got bored, although I did love the bombshell ending. However, don’t let my crankiness deter you from reading it, as I know others who have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely? by Sarah McCoy was a, well, lovely novel based on the life of Delores Hart, an actress from the 1950s who left Hollywood to become a Benedictine nun. It is billed as a similar read to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and it was comparable in pace and tone. The dual-timeline story (1969 and 1991) kept my interest, but it was a little predictable — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown. While I generally love this author, the plot didn’t initially appeal to me, so I put off reading it. Then I started hearing about how good it was, so I dove in and loved it; it will be on my list of favorite books of the year. Taking place primarily at the dawn of the Internet in the early 1990s, the story of a father and daughter living off the grid is a blend of character study, coming-of-age, and mystery. It brought back memories of using dial-up Internet with modems, with AOL/Hotmail/Yahoo/Juno email services. It also reminded me of the real-life story of a father and daughter who lived off the grid in Portland’s Forest Park. It inspired Jennie Shortridge to write a novel about it in When She Flew (click on the title for my full review).

Happy Fall to everyone!

As usual, Jance writes a crackerjack mystery featuring Joanna Brady, who displays excellent investigative skills with diplomacy and empathy when dealing with the characters who populate these books. The setting of Southern Arizona is excellent, and I love how she incorporates real-life landmarks and settings into the story. This can work as a standalone mystery, as Jance does a good job of explaining events from previous books. However, for the whole experience, it’s best to start at the first book she wrote about Joanna (32 years ago!) and work your way through the series. Also, the Beaumont series is excellent and remains my favorite of Jance’s series.

Trigger Warning: I usually don’t do these, but I think readers should go into this knowing many of the killer’s victims are children.

Even though I have no interest in biking a long distance (or any distance for that matter!), I enjoy reading about challenging trips, especially bicycle journeys. This one was especially appealing since I’m familiar with all the coastal areas from Oregon to California. I loved it when he was describing the journey and experiences on the road, but the digressions to other parts of his life and the history lessons got a little distracting. At the risk of sounding shallow, he made a few errors in location names at the beginning of the book, such as going to Mt. Hood and visiting the “Stanley Hotel.” While he is correct in saying it was featured in the movie The Shining (the exterior anyway), the Mt Hood hotel is actually Timberline Lodge; the Stanley Hotel is in Colorado. Then in Portland, he said they went to “Jack’s Grill,” which should have been “Jake’s Grill.” Too picky? You make the call…

All in all, it was a fast read, and the author has an appealing style of writing, but if I were to recommend a book about bicycling the West Coast, I would recommend Jedidiah Jenkins’s To Shake the Sleeping Self and Barbara Savage’s story of her worldwide bicycle journey, Miles from Nowhere. For a bike journey from the POV of a middle-aged man, Bruce Weber’s Life is a Wheel is excellent.

Although this novel was popular a few years ago, it didn’t appeal to me, and I’m not sure why. However, I needed an audiobook and had heard that this one was well done, so I got it from Libby. It turned out that I loved this lovely story about surviving loss and finding family. Readers who want a “feel-good” and heart-warming tale similar to The Wedding People and Remarkably Bright Creatures will enjoy this. Authors who narrate their own books aren’t always the best choice, but Rowley did a great job.

I loved the first half of this unsettling dystopian novel about a reality show that is a combination of Big Brother and Love Island, with a dash of Survivor (and some reviewers had added Lord of the Flies to the mix). I was glued to the first half, but about 3/4 through, I started getting weary of the unlikable contestants and the machinations required to stay in the game, some of which were quite brutal. I understood what the author was trying to convey about consumerism and the public’s fascination with every move of a group of relationships that become dysfunctional (and mean) in the quest to be the “sole resident” of the Compound. However, I still found it a little tedious.

That all being said, this would be a fabulous book for groups, as there are sure to be those who love this and those who feel the way I did about it, which always leads to a good discussion.

Despite its lack of nail-biting narrative, fans of The Hunger Games series may enjoy this, and those who liked Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens (especially in audio format) will likely appreciate this novel as well. For a real-life take on participating in a reality show, Parvati Shallow (from Survivor) has a recent memoir, Nice Girls Don’t Win.

I had been meaning to read this for a few years, and since it was available as an audiobook, I checked it out. The book, with its dual timelines (1980s and present day), is set in an old roadside motel with ghosts. It read like a house afire in the first half, creating a spooky vibe through ghostly encounters and the mysteries surrounding the murder of young women. However, it then slowed down, and I admit to skimming a bit. It picked up in the last 50 pages and had a satisfying and unsettling ending.

Fans of Stephen King’s “The Shining” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” will find the ghostly encounters in this book both enticing and spooky. At the same time, those who prefer a more suspenseful book with a touch of what could be paranormal activity, such as in books by Riley Sager, may wish to give this a try. It might be a good book to read for fans of the film Psycho and the TV series Bates Motel.

For those who enjoy this author, her next book, A Box Full of Darkness, is scheduled for publication next January.

This was my first McFadden book, and it was fine. I won’t seek out her other books, but I would read more if I had nothing else — and the chances of that are slim. 🙂 The main character, Blake, is a little whiny and annoying, but the twists were a surprise (at least to me, some say they could see them coming a mile away), and I raced through it in no time. The audio is well done with a male and female narrator for the POVs.

If you’re a McFadden fan, pick it up; otherwise, it would make a good, fast read for the beach. Alternatively, try the psychological thrillers by Green Hendricks/Sarah Pekkanen, Liv Constantine, or Shari Lapena.