DEAR HANNA
Zoje Stage
Do you remember Hanna? She’s back and in fine form in Zoje Stage’s follow-up to her wildly successful novel BABY TEETH.
Hanna is casually manipulative, casually psycho, and casually looking for a replacement family. We meet up with her when she has a meet-cute with him. He has no idea what he is in for, who he is up against, or that he is up against anything.
He thinks he’s met his replacement wife and really he met his nightmares in five feet of phlebotomist, going by the name Hanna.
She loves being a phlebotomist because it allows her to act out a fantasy she’s had since childhood. Soon he and Hanna marry and Hanna moves in with him and his daughter.
One day the daughter comes with unsettling news that ignites a far more nefarious version of Hanna than we’ve ever seen before. It’s twisty and twisted and I couldn’t get enough.
DEAR HANNA is told through letters sent back and forth between Hanna and her brother Goose who still lives at home with their notorious mother and absent father. The letters were exceptionally insightful and I loved getting to know Hanna and the other characters better this way
Hanna is still a fun character to visit. I did not enjoy the last few of Stage’s novels, but it seems Hanna is my winning ticket. There was a material aspect to the book that I did not enjoy. Hence, the four stars instead of five. It’s a spoiler so unless like me you read DEAR HANNA we’ll never be able to discuss it.
So what are you waiting for?
Thanks to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for the advanced copy! It was a pleasure!
DEAR HANNA…⭐⭐⭐⭐
Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies by Catherine Mack
Book Summary.
EVERY TIME I GO ON VACATION SOMEONE DIES
Catherine Mack
Eleanor is going to Rome on a much-needed vacation. Well, kind of a working vacation. It’s more like a work trip. She’s writing the second novel in her murder mystery series, which takes place in Rome. Title to come. And she’s on a book tour through Italy.
One of her goals for this vacation is to read a lot of books by the waterside, make a bunch of new fans, and most importantly, figure out how to kill a character in her series named Connor. Connor the character is named after a real-life person, named Connor and Eleanor has struggled to both kill off his character and cut ties with him in real life.
While on vacation someone tries to kill the real Connor, ending her book tour and their relaxing vacation. Eleanor is the first to start theorizing about who would’ve wanted the real Connor dead (herself being high on the list), and we follow along as she solves the mystery.
Recently, a handful of books were all released around the same time that broke the fourth wall. It is repetitive to me at this point but EVERY TIME I GO ON VACATION SOMEONE DIES may be the first one of those books you’ve been able to get your hands on at the library. There is a reason for that.
This one was the least successful of the five books I’ve read this spring that break the fourth wall. It has Finlay Donovan in Italy vibes going for it. The mystery and the elements are cozy, I just wasn’t impressed by the story or the writing.
Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press | Minotaur Books, and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copies!
EVERYTIME I GO ON VACATION SOMEONE DIES…⭐⭐⭐
LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Catherine Steadman
I’m not sure why this is called LOOK IN THE MIRROR. Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on me yet.
LOOK IN THE MIRROR by Catherine Steadman stars Maria. Maria is a nanny who usually works for very wealthy clients. She often gets to travel to exotic locations and mind the children of some of the richest families.
She receives a curious job offer to sit in a house with no children and just a mysterious handler to get her information. She doesn’t know a lot but she does know she is not allowed in the room at the end of the hall. Which makes it the only room she wants to go into.
Nina’s father just died and in his will he leaves her a vacation home that she has never known him to own during her life. When she arrives she finds that her father must’ve been a lot wealthier than she knew.
The house is luxurious and extravagant and much beyond anything she could’ve imagined him owning in his lifetime.
How these two women are connected and the story of the mystery surrounding the house is the plot of Catherine Staedman’s latest thriller, LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
This is not my first reading experience with Catherine Steadman. I’ve read a few of her thrillers and I have really enjoyed her more recent ones lately.
LOOK IN THE MIRROR is quick and fast-paced. There are twists around every corner. Just when I thought I had some part of the maze figured out, a hole would appear and I’d be dropped into a new maze with a completely different set of restrictions and barriers.
It was a lot of fun trying to figure it all out!
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine | Ballantine Books for the advanced copy and the opportunity to provide feedback!
LOOK IN THE MIRROR…⭐⭐⭐
