Laura Hillenbrand's bestselling book details the life of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner who even shook hands with Hitler at the Berlin Olympics. Shot down in the Pacific Ocean in 1943, Lt. Zamperini managed to survive on a life raft for 47 days only to be found by the Japanese. Lt. Zamperini's resilience will amaze you as he struggles to survive life as a Japanese prisoner for almost three years. Hillenbrand's superb writing brings Zamperini's tale to life while also helping you understand the historical context. A fascinating read for anyone who loves to read WWII history and memoirs.

Shortly after World War II, a real estate mogul buys The Dutch House, a lavish estate outside of Philadelphia. This purchase changes everything for his children, Danny and Maeve - driving out their mother, and leading to Cyril's remarriage and their exile from the house by their stepmother. A captivating study of the bond between siblings, The Dutch House shows of the dangers of obsessive nostalgia and fascinates with Patchett's signature style.

Fleeing an abusive husband, Claire Cook has planned for months for the perfect escape only to have her plans dashed at the last moment. A chance meeting at the airport results in Claire switching tickets and identities with another woman. When Claire's original flight crashes, everyone thinks she's dead. Now is her chance to remake herself as Eva. But Eva had her own secrets.

Although The Last Flight starts off intensely, the suspense quickly burns out and you are left with a ho-hum read that bores more than thrills.

Emily has found the perfect man in Adam and is ready to tie the knot. Yet one thing stands in the way of their union - Adam's mother. Pammie is determined to be the only woman in her son's life, and you'll be shocked to discover how far she is willing to go to eliminate the competition.

This psychological thriller, a Reese Witherspoon book club pick in 2018, didn't live up to my expectations. As a narrator, Emily drove me crazy with her desperation and willingness to overlook all the huge red flags flying everywhere. The concluding twist was excellent, but the lead up was entirely mediocre.

When the reaper comes to collect him at his own funeral, Wallace Price, a soulless lawyer obsessed with all the wrong things, finds himself taken to a small tea shop tucked into the mountains. Given one week until he needs to pass on, Wallace decides to lives as much as he can in the next seven days with the help of the kind tea shop owner who is assigned to assist Wallace.

Many readers are going to love Under the Whispering Door, raving about the profound truths conveyed through wry humor and quirky characters.

Unfortunately, I am not one of them. To me, Under the Whispering Door felt like it was trying to hard to be meaningful. The tongue-in-cheek humor just isn't my style, so I decided not to finish this one.

If you liked Fredrik Backman's Anxious People, you'll likely love this book. Else, I'd skip this one.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Tor Books. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

On their annual girls' trip, Emily and Kristen are having the time of their lives in Chile. On the last night, Emily comes back to the hotel to find Kristen with a dead body. Kristen claims that the cute backpacker she picked up attacked her and she killed him in self-defense. Except, the same thing happened last year to Emily. As Emily's guilt over the cover-up reaches a boiling point, Kristen makes a surprise trip to visit her and Emily has serious doubts about their friendship.

After a long streak of less-than-satisfying thrillers, We Were Never Here was just what I needed to read this month. The story starts off with a bang as lightning strikes twice with Emily and Kristen's disastrous trips abroad. Bartz did just enough to keep up the suspense through the middle of the book as Emily begins to question Kristen's motives. Although the ending was on the predictable side, I thought We Were Never Here was an all-around fun thriller to read.

In the sequel to These Violent Delights, Shanghai is on the brink of revolution. To prevent her cousin from usurping her position, Juliette knows the best way to protect Roma is to make him hate her. Thinking that Juliette murdered his cousin, Roma is on the warpath as a new monstrous danger emerges in the city just as the conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists comes to a head.

In the sequel, Gong steps back from the monster aspect of the first story to almost exclusively focus on the will-or-won't-they aspect of Roma and Juliette. Then once the two inevitably get together, the plot rushes through the ending, attempting to tie up all loose ends. In all, Our Violent Ends was your typical YA sequel, delivering more of the same story which will keep fans happy but failing to add any more depth to the narrative.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Simon & Schuster through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Maggie O'Farrell imagines the life of William Shakespeare's wife. Since almost everything about her is forgotten to history, O'Farrell has free reign in imagining Agnes as a fierce and misunderstood woman, who marries a poor Latin tutor, the son of a disgraced businessman.

While flashing back to Agnes and William's past, the crux of the story focuses on the death of their son Hamnet, showing the endless depths of grief of a mother who loses a child and imagining how Hamnet's death influenced Shakespeare's famous play, Hamlet, written just four years later.

Hamnet is a slow enveloping read which focuses more on atmosphere than plot. O'Farrell consciously chose to never mention William Shakespeare by name, which I thought was an interesting omission. I loved the lyrical narration which keeps you slightly removed from the story, but readers who don't love literary fiction will probably find Hamnet overrated.

In an imagined modern resurgence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, BBC new producer Tessa spots her sister on the security footage of an IRA robbery. Suddenly Tessa's world shifts as she is confronted with the fact that her sister is in the IRA. Asked to act as an informant, Tessa must decide where her loyalties lie, what she is willing to do for family, and how to balance the needs of a sister with those of her newborn son.

Picked as Reese Witherspoon's book club pick in April, Northern Spy has all the building blocks for a thrilling spy story. Instead, Berry opts for a slow character-driven novel that spends most of the time in Tessa's anxiety-ridden thoughts, mostly about her baby. The author missed the chance to really make you think about how terrorism from one viewpoint looks like heroism from another.

Also, I was disappointed that there was no author's note reminding American readers that the violence-ridden Northern Ireland she depicts is a gross over-exaggeration.

Three couples at a destination wedding in Portugal find themselves torn apart in this story that's more soap opera than thriller. Rachel and Noah were best friends in college teetering on couplehood, but now Rachel is married to Jack and Noah is married to Paige and the four are still extremely close. At Jack's brother's wedding, the over-the-top bride, Ali, rubs everyone the wrong way and Rachel begins to wonder if Ali isn't more calculating than anyone realizes. 

The Guilt Trip is a story built on rumor, innuendo, and the suspense of who's sleeping with whom. While I enjoyed the characters, the story mostly just winds its way slowly until the dramatic climax, which was a bit overdramatic for my taste.