Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Y'all, this book is CREEPY with a capital C and I loved it. Benjamin is an older gentleman who is trying to reconnect with his daughter. Something terrible happened when she was a child and they went camping together. Helen went missing and when she was finally discovered, she couldn't remember anything about what happened while she was missing. This led to the dissolution of her parents' marriage and she didn't know if she could trust her father.

Now, many years later, the two begin to converse again. But a mysterious woman appears on Benjamin's doorstep wanting to investigate what *actually* happened all those years ago. Who is she? And who is this kid who is always hanging around her? Why does she care what happened? And most importantly... what happened to Helen while she was missing.

This is a pretty short listen; packed full of creepiness and suspense. I simultaneously wanted to slow down the title so I could just keep listening, but also speed it up so I could just KNOW what happened. The balance of ambiance and plot was perfection. I also really enjoyed the narrator-- I would pick up the audio again for sure.

My one complaint is that the ending was a bit more ambiguous than I was hoping for. I wanted a few more answers than the author was willing to share.

3.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley for sending me an advanced copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

I Am Margaret Moore is a book about a girl who lives for the summers where she can go to camp and prove who she really is. Margaret loves nothing more than the girls who live with her in bunk 5.... except for the one summer where she chooses a boy over her best friends. That summer, something happened. But no one is talking about it-- especially not Margaret's friends or that boy whom she refuses to name.

I knew this book was going to be weird. I had previously read Hannah Capin's book Foul is Fair and adored it. This book does have some similarities. Both are about female empowerment, revenge, and friendship. Both have supernatural elements and a train-of-consciousness type of style. However, I have to say that I think FiF was executed much better than this title. The style of writing, while appropriate for the story, came across much more repetitive and overdone than it did in FiF. I wish the second half of the story had been a bit shorter (thus, less repetitive)-- I think it could have made a *SUPERB* short story/novella vs a full length novel.

That being said, I did genuinely enjoy this title and will continue to pick up Hannah Capin's books in the future. I will also be purchasing my own copy of this book for my personal library. This just wasn't my favorite HC book of all time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Reputation is a cross between Pride and Prejudice and Mean girls, with the conversations a la Gilmore girls. Georgiana has been sent off to her aunt and uncle after her parents have given up on her ever getting married and decide to move to the shore for the fresh air. Georgie is struggling with being abandoned and also whether or not she even wants to be married. Then one night at the boringest-party imaginable, she meets Francis-- an esteemed young lady who just happens to be the epitome of a mean girl. Georgie quickly becomes entranced by Francis and her friends and all the debauched things they introduce her to.

While the vibes of a regeancy era Mean Girls were fabulous and enjoyable, I felt like Frances got way too much of a pass in this story. She is absolutely despicable and our MC spent way too much time being like "but Frances is my best friend!" and I found myself eyerolling and thinking "girl, get out!!"
Easily the best part of this book was the romance with Mr. Hawkesly. They have the absolute best banter-- of course carried out through letters in this historical novel.

I appreciated the idea of the novel, and genuinely enjoyed the romance and some of the drama. I just think this title went on a little too long and maybe went a little too far in some places. I wanted to revel in the drama and not find myself rolling my eyes at how over-the-top some of it was.

The narrator for this title was fab-- I would definitely pick up other titles in the future without knowing anything about them except that the same narrator reads it.


TW: gaslighting, mean girls, drunkenness, death of a sibling (in the past), death of a parent (in the past), sexual assault, rape (off page), parental abandonment, severe peer pressure

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Ava is a 13 year old Persian girl growing up in Southern California in the 1980s. She's dealing with pressure from her mom to grow up in to a doctor, racism, insecurity, and the growing pains of friendships as you go through puberty.

This title is written in verse and that style definitely suits the story. It makes the story flow, just like a wave. However, the narration for this title was awful. It was overall very staccato and disjointed. There were weird huge gaps between words and it felt stilted and awkward. It could have been a stylistic choice, but I don't think it served the story well.

I feel like the story reflects a lot of important issues and themes that affect everyone as they are growing up, and also include specific issues/themes that affect POC growing up in a predominantly white culture. However, I feel like this book was trying to do too many of those things at once. It brought up so many different issues that it was impossible to truly do all of them justice. The main issue from this story is (spoiler) the fact that her best friend Phoenix is dying of leukemia. This was handled pretty well, but this storyline started to take over the narrative and everything else just fell by the wayside.

I do think this is an important story and I enjoyed reading from the perspective of a Persian middle schooler-- I don't think I have ever read anything with that type of protagonist before. It's so important to see characters who look like you when you're growing up. I'm glad Persian-American girls will have Ava to relate to. I would definitely recommend having those kids read this in the physical format though. I wonder if the reason I didn't like this story as much as I expected to is because I just really hated the audio.

4.5/5
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When the corn is waist high is about Solomon Lancaster, the local sheriff and also the priest at the local Catholic church. His small Indiana town is shaken to the core when someone is murdered in a particularly gruesome way... and then more and more bodies continue to show up. Father Lancaster finds himself in a weird place as he is trying to shepherd the town through this crisis, but also trying to help solve the mystery of this serial killer.

I was completely taken by surprise by this story more than once. I enjoyed being in Father Lancaster's head as he's trying to navigate this weird juxtaposition of his two vastly different roles. The mystery was incredibly intriguing-- as the bodies continued to show up, I found myself coming up with all kinds of scenarios of how these people could be linked to one another and what on earth could be motivating this killer.

Once we get to the big mid-twist of the book, I enjoyed how the tone shifts from this sort of light-hearted investigation into a supremely gritty look into a killer's motivations and methods. The drastic change in tone was SO compelling and I was just completely and incredibly impressed with the author's talent in making these two very different halves of the book feel cohesive and yet completely different from one another. And that ending????? I genuinely haven't stopped thinking about it for a week.

The narrator was amazing. He did a great job of following the author's lead-- the narration was different between the two halves of the book. I appreciated his talent in moving from the small town crime investigation into the twisted thoughts and minds of a killer. Highly recommend for anyone who loves a true crime type story!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Murder in the neighborhood is the story of the mass shooting in New Jersey in 1949 carried out by Howard Unruh. Most of the story of the actual event is a first-hand account from Raymond. Ray was a child at the time of the shooting and was present for several of the murders. The rest of the story is told from a huge amount of research and interviews done by Ellen J Green.

While much of the story and setup for the shooting was really interesting, I found my mind wandering as the narrative went on and on. I think a lot of this came from the author's explanations of Howard's motivations. It came across to me like I should have sympathy for Howard and maybe even understand why he would one day just go out and shoot 13 men, women, and children-- a completely un-understandable act. While Howard had a difficult childhood and obviously had trauma from serving in WWII, I thought we spent MUCH too much time trying to understand Howard and not nearly enough time learning about his victims and their lives that were cut short.

The narrator for this title was perfectly fine. He didn't stand out in any way for me-- good or bad. Overall, I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I left the book feeling indifferent about the story and the narrator. My one word descriptor for this book would be "underwhelming."