Tag:

Friendship

Review

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die

by Dodie Ownes

What is not to like about this rollicking, trope-riven (and I mean that in a good way!) revenge-mystery thriller? Jason, the three-timing guy who strings Cham, Nora, and Ruby along with good looks, great sex, and loose promises, is about to find out about a woman scorned. Add a spooky camp in a remote area outside of Big Sky, Montana; a cult history associated with one of the gals; and a donated organ (I kid you not), and you have my attention. As the women grow closer and more resolute that they just want to scare Jason, weird things begin to happen at the cabin to which they have lured the cheater and his new catch, Thalia, for a romantic weekend. When the ladies arrive, they find buckets of blood that may have been the first clue that this place had seen horrors in the past. The trio push through, however, with their observations shared with the reader in chapters told from each woman’s point of view, as well as excerpted police transcripts and diary entries. This is as much a sharp, funny feminist manifesto as it is a chilling payback story about the power in women’s ability to dictate their own future. A good dose of slasher, a hit of supernatural, and a lot about getting even, this atmospheric adventure has all the feels.—Dodie Ownes

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The Author Weekend

by Chris Kahn

Book of the Week April 9, 2026

Faye Wader, NYT bestselling author of the Kitty Howe mystery series, finally makes the plunge with the encouragement of her assistant, Jade, and hosts her first ever author event. On Misery Island, a place of nostalgic fun and hijinks for Faye, the 50 attendees will be able to attend Pre- Post- or Peri-Menopausal Mermaid Meditation; Publishing Confidential: Inside the Book Business, with Faye’s editor and agent; a Kitty Howe-themed Clambake, and more. The swag bags include plenty of kitsch, including signature Kitty Aviators, binoculars, and a lobster bib, along with copies of her last, and newest, title. And never mind that Faye’s number-one fan and critic, Peggy Mercer, will be there, surely with news of a misplaced comma or incorrect tense – all those other loyal adoring Kitty loyalists will lift Faye above that. The arrival of Faye’s franchise series rival, though not a complete surprise, ups the competition for attendees’ attention, as well as that of her editor, Merry, and her agent, Hal. Distracted by concerns with her forthcoming manuscript and lack of feedback from Hatchet, her publisher, Faye slips up on a plot point detail, which Peggy recognizes as a lie in Faye’s own backstory. Meanwhile Xoey, a social media maven who’s crippled without her phone, is desperate to tell the “author weekend story.” Feeling trapped by a prescribed wardrobe and envy, Faye begins to spiral. Before long, the bodies start to pile up. Readers will delight in discovering who ends up on the top of the heap, both literally and figuratively. A sharp, gossipy, and hilarious satire of the publishing business.—Dodie Ownes

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Review

Rules for Aging and Larceny

by Henrietta Thornton

A combination of nostalgia, free time, and the same girl-power attitude that saw them the target of an FBI investigation 50 years ago just might bring down a group of 70-somethings who regroup for one last heist. It all fell apart so badly years ago that they haven’t spoken since, but when Frances Deluca learns that she hasn’t got long left, she finagles her old friends, and one friend’s granddaughter, into taking revenge on someone who’s swindled one of the group. This girl gang is of the Robin Hood type and readers will relish both the emotion-filled caper and the ramping up of the bad guy’s comeuppance, which culminate in a high-stakes Ocean’s 11 (if the movie stars wore comfortable shoes and shirts with kittens on the collar). Books starring elderly characters are having a moment, as chronicled in our recent article Senior Slayers and Sleuths, and fans of those titles are the audience for this fun and sharp-witted tale of women who don’t let age stop them.—Henrietta Thornton

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Review

A Murder Most Camp: A Mystery

by Danise Hoover

In an unlikely combination of coming of age, family saga, gay romance, and cold-case mystery, we have Mikey (what almost 30-year-old is still called Mikey?), who’s compelled by his father to serve three months at a rustic summer camp as counselor to save his access to his outrageously huge trust fund. He needs to supervise Annabelle, his 12-year-old aunt (family drama), as part of his penance for his wastrel lifestyle. His special group of campers latches onto the story of Rose, a camper who went missing back when Annabelle’s mom was a counselor. The cabin at the center of the mystery is still there, but it’s long unoccupied and decrepit. The intrepid kids and Mikey, a born rule-breaker, work to find answers. Jackson, Mikey’s hunky cabinmate and camp lifeguard, aims to be the voice of reason between steamy sex sessions with Mikey. Do they find the answers? Does Mikey survive the grime and spiders of camp life? Does he actually grow up? Does anyone figure out why they are there in the first place? Confusing and somewhat silly, but ultimately fun.—Danise Hoover

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Review

Robbie McNeil’s Hit List.

by Danise Hoover

A characteristic that makes mysteries such a popular genre is that the concept of right and wrong is so often very clear. Not so much here. Robbie, our heroine, and Dee, her queerplatonic partner in a gay karaoke bar in a nothing Indiana town, are both successful contract killers. Their jobs are done quickly, cleanly, and without emotion, except for Robbie’s latest one. The information on the local target is sketchy and the target himself suddenly disappears. She can’t afford to return the deposit because she and Robbie have sunk all their money into a theatrical venture, and besides, it feels all wrong. Instead of ignoring who the target is, she works hard to find out the exact opposite. We have local politicians, Robbie’s musical ambitions, and the lively karaoke scene all tangled up with a client who just won’t quit in his effort to have this target done away with. Heath provides a fun story with a great deal of gender and identity fluidity. There is a happy ending of sorts, but is it right?

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Review

The Insomniacs

by Henrietta Thornton

Scotch, Allison Winn. The Insomniacs. April 14, 2026. 400 pages. Berkley.

The three insomniacs who first meet online and then at an all-night New York City diner have more in common than their tossing and turning. They’re each living a life that’s a lie. Famous baseball player Zeke believes he can only do one thing well—pitch—but isn’t sure he wants to do it anymore. Quiet older gentleman Julian is hiding his stressful past as an FBI agent. Sybil, a protective mom to the group, wants more than the stay-at-home life she quit medicine for. And the biggest lie of them all is that of the waitress they befriend, Betty, who pretends her parents are dead and her past is unremarkable. Flashes to her younger years reveal that she grew up the child of an abusive cult leader, and how she found her way to New York is a gripping plot point that grows in prominence as her insomniac customers try to help her. You’ll stay up late reading this cross between Maeve Binchy-esque strangers-becoming-family story and Tara Westover’s Educated, and fall in love especially with the Zeke and Sybil dynamic.

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Review

Making Friends Can Be Murder

by Danise Hoover

We start this complicated plot with a clever ongoing fraud scheme in which a woman assumes the same name as another with a common name and a trust fund in order to steal the money. In Minneapolis, Sarah Jones has become part of a project of a Catholic highschooler doing penance for bad behavior, bringing together a bunch of women with this same name for regular coffee and conversation, making it ripe for this fraud. To avoid confusion, each member is identified by age rather than name. Thirty is our heroine; twenty-seven the thief. Added into the mix is a freshly minted FBI agent with his own secret agenda (not nefarious) and a cloistered nun with an unexpected background. A Sarah Jones, not part of the group, is found murdered, taking the fraud investigation to a new level. We have time spent in the woods, old crimes to solve, family connections, and a spot of romance. Confused? Don’t be. The story maintains its integrity and is enjoyable to the end with an interesting set of characters poised for what could be another book in the future.

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Review

The Busybody Book Club

by Brian Kenney

Nova Davies has relocated from London to a remote Cornish seaside town, in part to be with her fiancé, whom she is set to marry in a little more than a week. While Nova loves her job as a social worker in the local community center, she can’t help but be a bit frustrated by her clients. Must the five members of her book group—a real bunch of misfits if there ever was one—argue about everything? But that’s just the beginning of a series of misfortunes, all of which seem to point to Nova. First one of their own, a book group participant, disappears, only to have a dead body show up in his house. Then a significant sum of money, earmarked to repair the community center’s ancient roof, goes missing—could Nova really have been so dizzy that she forgot to lock up the building? There’s a lot of fun to be had here, from Phyllis, an Agatha Christie superfan who insists on using Christie’s plots to solve the murder and find the funds, to Nora, whose life couldn’t become more complicated thanks to a full-on control freak of a mother-in-law and a mom who’s stranded in South America, likely to miss her wedding. And the fiancé? Please dump him. A delight from start to finish, and sure to please cozy readers who appreciate strong characters, a great community setting, and a dollop of criminal activity. For readers who enjoy Lucy Gilmore and Emily Henry.

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Review

Deep Beneath Us

by Danise Hoover

Tabitha is compelled by the spiteful actions of her ex-husband to move back to her childhood home. This is not a cozy, safe space as one might hope. It is a sort of compound: two schoolhouses on different sides of a reservoir, one occupied by her family, the other by her uncle’s family. In the past, four cousins, Tabitha the youngest, ran and played like a pack. But her mother is an unstable artist, her father and uncle killed themselves, and her sister and cousin married each other at age 16. Now, cousin Davey purportedly dies by suicide as well, leaving his property to Tabitha. But is that what really happened? Davey’s two cronies, along with three smart teens, use skills learned from TV crime dramas and DNA analysis to get to the bottom of it all. The characters are captivating, the atmosphere is dark and dour, and the wretched weather contributes to the overall tone of the book. The novel is set in Scotland and the use of Scottish dialect and expressions is sometimes daunting, but never gets in the way of the telling. To say that the plot here is a tangled mess may be an understatement, but the untangling is a treat.

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Review

The Note

by Henrietta Thornton

Friends Lauren, Kelsey, and May call themselves the Canceled Crew. Each has been vilified in the media, Lauren, who’s Black, because it’s assumed that she slept her way to her job as director of the Houston Symphony; May, who’s Chinese American, for a terrible incident on a subway platform that was filmed and went viral; and Kelsey, who’s white and rich, for being suspected of killing her husband. The women are now on a girl’s weekend in the Hamptons, trying to put it all behind them and let their hair down a bit, but the note of the book’s title throws them back into chaos. It’s a prank that isn’t so funny after the recipient goes missing and the three women are firmly back in the spotlight, a situation that widens every crack in their relationship with one another and their partners and families. Burke makes every character hyper real here, portraying the effects of privilege, thoughtlessness, and poor decisions with deft precision. The strong ties we feel to old friends, no matter current circumstances, are also shown in sharp relief. Add to this a page-turning whodunit element and it all adds up to a cracking read.

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