Review: The Killer's Girl

The Killer's Girl by Helen Phifer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second in the series of Detective Morgan Brookes. What a ride this series has been.

Morgan discovers the reason that she wakes every morning just after 4am and finds out a lot about her background that she had no idea about. 

There is a killer on the loose and its imperative that they discover who this is. Who knew that it would be someone so close.

An excellent read.

Review: Neighbors

Neighbors by Danielle Steele
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The newest Danielle Steel novel is a little gem. Another earthquake causing quite a lot of damage in her area, so Meredith, a former movie star and recluse, takes in the neighbours in her surrounding area. Each one has a story and we see how it all unfolds.

A lovely read.

Review: A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humour, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

I loved this book.

Review: A Town Called Solace

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A terrific story. This writer would appeal to Canadians and especially those who have been in the north and especially northern Ontario. She has what I call Canadian speak.

Liam, now in his thirties and newly divorced finds that he has inherited a house from a lady who lived next door to his family when he was very young. The house is located in a remote northern village called Solace in Ontario, Canada. 

Liam doesn't really want to set down roots and plans to sell the house right away but before that can happen there are things in the community that pull him in and require his assistance.

I loved this story and love this writer.

Review: Miss Benson's Beetle

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thoroughly enjoyable read by the author of another favourite of mine, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

Miss Margery Benson has led a lonely life, teaching Home Economics. In her younger days she was a good friend, assistant, of a professor who studied insects. His particular interest was beetles and he passed this interest to her. 

Margery had a strong interest in a gold coloured beetle that her father had told her about that was found in an island off Australia called New Caledonia.

She had a sad history, losing her four brothers all at once in WWI and her father to suicide as he was too grief stricken to go on living when he got the news of all his sons passing. Thereafter Margery along with her grief stricken mother, lived with her two aunts.

Margery had a dream to find that gold beetle and when she was in her forties she planned the trip of a lifetime.

An excellent read.