A whip-smart, piercing debut novel, Smile and Look Prettyfollows four assistants who band together to take on their toxic office environments in the ultimate comeuppance.
Online they’re the Aggressive One, the Bossy One, the Bitchy One and the Emotional One. In real life, best friends Cate, Lauren, Olivia and Max all have one thing in common–they’re overworked, overtired and underpaid assistants to some of the most powerful men in the entertainment industries. When they secretly start an anonymous blog detailing their experiences, their posts go viral and hundreds of other women come forward with stories of their own. Confronted with the risks of newfound fame and the possibility of their identities being revealed, they have to contend with what happens when you try to change the world.
Gripping, razor sharp and scathingly funny, Smile and Look Pretty is a fast-paced millennial rallying cry about the consequences of whistleblowing for an entire generation, and a testament to the strength of female friendship and what can be accomplished when women come together.
The Review
SMILE AND LOOK PRETTY
I immediately loved the bookish nuggets hidden throughout the storyline. And I’d like to say I’m tired of these feminist stories but I’m not.
This is a story of four assistants who decide to start a blog to vent and partly expose their very badly behaving bosses. Each assistant is unique although we kind of center around one.
I enjoyed the conversation and I consider this one of my revenge fantasies. So that was fun to explore with the author.
I recommend SMILE AND LOOK PRETTY to readers looking for a light revenge thriller with female protagonists and bookish subplots. My fave!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/ Park Row for this advanced copy!
The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.
When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.
Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.
Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.
A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.
The Review
THE RESTING PLACE by Camilla Sten
Told in alternating points of view I found myself wanting to live in one world more than the other.
In the present tense, Eleanor suffers from Prosopagnosia. Also known as face blindness. When I read a few quick facts about this disorder I became even more fascinated by what you could do with a character who suffers from this.
Not only do they have trouble recognizing people they know, they also cannot tell between unknown faces and also can mistake faces for objects.
The anxiety this brings is palpable and does not get lost in the translation.
So you take this character who is disabled and use of her extrasensory perceptions to try and figure out how much danger she’s really in. And by the time she realizes the malice she’s already the frog in hot water.
Very good!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming March 29, 2022
Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio/ St Martins Press for this advanced copy!
In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect–a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.
Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases–a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.
They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?
A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel.
The Review
You never really know what you’re contending with when you read a book by Simone St. James and THE BOOK OF COLD CASES is no different.
Often her thrillers walk the line between human influence and supernatural events. Making them read like thrillers but also as horror. I’ve loved most of the books I’ve read by her and this one is right up there with my favorites.
This book follows Shea, a true-crime blogger who investigates cold cases. I love Shea – she is straightforward, curious, and just the right amount of naive. One day she meets Beth. Beth is exactly the kind of person Shea loves to interview. She is mysterious and has a lot to gain by talking. Shea might be the answer to all of her problems.
Shea requests an interview and Beth agrees. They both have motives and they both have secrets. The fun of the book is trying to figure out what exactly these women are hiding and how those secrets are going to express themselves?
I recommend this book to thriller lovers and to those who don’t mind blurred lines between genres.
