The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club by Gloria Chao

Started: 11/25/2025

Finished: DNF (had to return to library and I don't want to finish it)

Year: 2025

Pages: 309

Genre: mystery

Grade: D

Reason for reading: library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "The body in the closet was going to be a problem. Kathryn Hu knew it. Yes, Tucker Jones was a cheating scumbag, and yes, she’d agreed to meet Olivia and Elle—Tucker’s other girlfriends—to exact revenge for all he’d put them through… But then they found him. Dead.

"Do they look guilty? Yes.

"Do they feel guilty for having wished him dead just hours before? Maybe a little.

"But—solid motive and a crime scene covered in their DNA aside—they’re innocent. They swear.

"To clear their names, Kat, Olivia, and Elle team up to find the real killer. But as they go undercover and lie to everyone, including the hot detective working the case, they realize that every person in their ex's life had a reason to want him dead. Will they uncover the truth before they go down for a murder they didn't commit?"

Opinion: Amazon describes this as laugh out loud....nope...not in the least. You have 3 women old enough to NOT play the stupid disgusting pranks that were described-especially when one is a lawyer. Yes he was a cheating ahole but just move on. The murder mystery was ok.

The Academy by Elin Hlderbrand and Shelby Cunningham

Started: 11/24/2025

Finished: DNF

Year: 2025

Pages: 413

Genre: literature

Grade: F

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "It’s move-in day at Tiffin Academy and amidst the happy chaos of friends reuniting, selfies uploading, and cars unloading, shocking news arrives: America Today just ranked Tiffin the number two boarding school in the country. It’s a seventeen-spot jump – was there a typo? The dorms need to be renovated, their sports teams always come in last place, and let’s just say Tiffin students are known for being more social than academic. On the other hand, the campus is exquisite, class sizes are small, and the dining hall is run by an acclaimed New York chef. And they do have fun—lots of parties and school dances, and a piano man plays in the student lounge every Monday night.

"But just as the rarefied air of Tiffin is suffused with self-congratulation, the wheels begin to turn – and then they fall off the bus. One by one, scandalous blind items begin to appear on phones across Tiffin’s campus, thanks to a new app called ZipZap, and nobody is safe. From Davi Banerjee, international influencer and resident queen bee, to Simone Bergeron, the new and surprisingly young history teacher, to Charley Hicks, a transfer student who seems determined not to fit in, to Cordelia Spooner, Admissions Director with a somewhat idiosyncratic methodology – everyone has something to hide.

"As if high school wasn’t dramatic enough...As the year unfolds, bonds are forged and broken, secrets are shared and exposed, and the lives of Tiffin’s students and staff are changed forever."

Opinion: The writing style was fine. Just didn't care about reading about teenagers in boarding school.

Cold Snap by Marc Cameron

Started: 11/17/2025

Finished: 11/23/2025

Year: 2022

Pages: 336

Genre: mystery/thriller

Grade: B+

Reason for reading: continuing with series, library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "After an early spring thaw on the Alaskan coast, Anchorage police discover a gruesome new piece of evidence in their search for a serial killer: a dismembered human foot.

"In Kincaid Park, a man is arrested for attacking a female jogger. Investigators believe they have finally captured the sadistic serial killer. But one deputy is sure they have the wrong man.

"In the remote northern town of Deadhorse, Alaska, Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter escorts three handcuffed prisoners onto a small bush plane on route to Anchorage. It’s a routine mission and a nonstop flight—or so he thinks. When the plane makes an unexpected landing in the middle of nowhere, all hell breaks loose.

"Back in Anchorage, deputy Lola Teariki has traced the dismembered foot to a missing girl—and the serial psychopath who slaughtered her. It’s one of the prisoners on Cutter’s flight . . ."

Opinion: Intense. Two cases that ended up being more related than initially thought. Very good continuation of series and ending leads to the next book.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler

Started: 11/14/2025

Finished: 11/17/2025

Year: 1995

Pages: 327

Genre: literature

Grade: C

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "The headlines are all the same: Beloved mother and wife Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To the best of her family's knowledge, she has disappeared without a trace. But Delia didn't disappear. She ran.

"Exhausted with her routine and everyone else's plans for her, Delia needed an out, a chance to make a new life for herself and to become a different person. The new Delia can let go of all the hurt and resentment that left her stuck in her past. As she eagerly sheds the pieces of herself she no longer needs, Delia discovers feelings of passion and wonder she'd long since forgotten. The thrill of walking away from it all leads to a newfound sense of self and the feeling that she is, finally, the star of her own life story."

Opinion: Relateable but predictable. Wasn't horrible. Wasn't great. Average

Dedication to Murder by Lauren Elliott

Started: 11/13/2025

Finished: 11/14/2025

Year: 2023

Pages: 314

Genre: cozy mystery

Grade: B-

Reason for reading: library book, continuing with series

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "Wedding bells are about to ring again in Greyborne Harbor, and as Addie slips into her white dress her thoughts are focused on a bright future with Dr. Simon Emerson. But a discovery in her attic leads her to startling revelations about the past. As the owner of Beyond the Page Books and Curios and a lifelong bibliophile, Addie is delighted to find a rare collection of classic children’s books gathering dust in a secret room beneath the rafters, including a first edition of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. To her surprise, a handwritten inscription on the title page provides a clue to unraveling a complex mystery in Addie’s family . . .

"But that’s only the first surprise in a series of shocking twists that will turn Addie’s vision of where her life is going and where she’s come from upside down—including a suspicious death in the present that suggests foul play."

Opinion: Different than the other books in the series. Two pretty interesting mysteries that are tied together.

Hunter's Heart Ridge by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Started: 11/7/2025

Finished: 11/11/2025

Year: 2025

Pages: 303

Genre: mystery

Grade: C

Reason for reading: library book, continuing with series

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "It's November of 1965 and the second weekend of Vermont's regular deer season when Vermont State Police detective Franklin Warren is called out to what looks like an accidental shooting at The Ridge Club, an exclusive men's hunting and fishing club for congressmen, diplomats, judges, and titans of industry: a former ambassador has been shot while out hunting. With the war in Vietnam picking up speed on the other side of the world, Warren quickly realizes that many of the club’s members are powerful men who may have ulterior motives and connections in high places.

"While Warren's suspicions about the club members build, his neighbor Alice Bellows is throwing a dinner party, preparing for Thanksgiving, and worrying about her pregnant friend and fellow widow, Sylvie Weber, whose due date is coming up. When Alice's old handler and friend, Arthur Crannock, unexpectedly shows up in Bethany, Alice begins to wonder whether his presence has anything to do with the death at the hunting club.

"As an early season snowstorm bears down on Bethany, knocking out power and phone lines and blocking the roads, Warren and his assistant, Trooper Pinky Goodrich, are trapped at the Ridge Club, likely along with a killer, and Alice, increasingly fearful that her past in the intelligence world is no longer in the past, will have to act fast to save Sylvie and her baby."

Opinion: Mystery was intriguing....side story did not need to be there-there is another way to get more of Alice and neighbors' stories-felt disjointed.

A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke

Started: 11/5/2025

Finished: 11/7/2025

Year: 2024

Pages: 322

Genre: paranormal mystery

Grade: C

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): Ruby Young's new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

"Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she's kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

"Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can't solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn't kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can't, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. As the roommates form an unlikely friendship and get closer to the truth about Jake's death, they also start to uncover other dangerous secrets."

Opinion: Interesting concept. Decent murder mystery. Some things didn't apply but might in the next book.

Sudden Prey by John Sandford

Started: 11/1/2025

Finished: 11/5/2025

Year: 1996

Pages: 374

Genre: thriller/mystery

Grade: B+

Reason for reading: TBR pile, continuing with series.

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "The crime spree should have ended when Lucas Davenport killed the female bank robber during the shoot-out. But it’s just beginning, because the woman’s husband isn’t about to let Lucas—or anyone he loves—escape retribution."

Opinion: Revenge doesn't always go the way that you want. Good thriller, fast paced.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

Started: 11/1/2025

Finished: DNF

Year: 2024

Pages: 445

Genre: literature/fantasy

Grade: F

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he is heartbroken – and determined to find the imaginary town where he suspects she has taken up residence. Thus begins a lifelong search that takes the man into middle age, to a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own, and on a journey between the real world and this otherworld: a shadowless city where unicorns roam and willow trees grow."

Opinion: Not sure if it was a lost in translation or what but I could not follow or be interested in this couple or what happened to them.