Ward D by Freida McFadden

Started: 5/28/2024

Finished: 5/30/2024

Year: 2023

Pages: 333

Genre: suspense

Grade: B+

Reason for reading: library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "Medical student Amy Brenner is spending the night on a locked psychiatric ward.

"Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out.

"And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger.

"Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D.

"And now she might never escape."

Opinion: Talk about a nightmare-past meeting present.

A Cold Trail by Robert Dugoni

Started: 5/25/2024

Finished: 5/28/2024

Year: 2020

Pages: 339

Genre: mystery

Grade: B-

Reason for reading: continuing with the series, library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "The last time homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite was in Cedar Grove, it was to see her sister’s killer put behind bars. Now she’s returned for a respite and the chance to put her life back in order for herself, her attorney husband, Dan, and their new daughter. But tragic memories soon prove impossible to escape.

"Dan is drawn into representing a local merchant whose business is jeopardized by the town’s revitalization. And Tracy is urged by the local PD to put her own skills to work on a new case: the brutal murder of a police officer’s wife and local reporter who was investigating a cold-case slaying of a young woman. As Tracy’s and Dan’s cases crisscross, Tracy’s trail becomes dangerous. It’s stirring up her own haunted past and a decades-old conspiracy in Cedar Grove that has erupted in murder. Getting to the truth is all that matters. But what’s Tracy willing to risk as a killer gets closer to her and threatens everyone she loves?"

Opinion: A slow paced beginning. Wasn't surprised by the ending.

R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton

Started: 5/21/2024

Finished: 5/24/2024

Year: 2004

Pages: 415

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: bookcrossing.com book, continuing the series

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. Nord Lafferty was already in his fifties when Reba was born, and he could deny her nothing. Over the years, he quietly settled her many scrapes with the law, but wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institution for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she's about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence. Her father wants to be sure Reba stays straight, stays home and away from the drugs, the booze, and the gamblers...

"It seems a straightforward assignment for Kinsey: babysit Reba until she settles in, make sure she follows all the niceties of her parole. Maybe a week’s work. Nothing untoward—the woman seems remorseful and friendly. And the money is good.

"But life is never that simple, and Reba is out of prison less than twenty-four hours when one of her old crowd comes circling round..."

Opinion: A slightly different type of case for Kinsey-not sure why she even ended up starting the madness.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Started: 5/20/2024

Finished: DNF

Year: 2015

Pages: 438

Genre: WWII Literature

Grade: F

Reason for reading: library book, Reese book club

Type: Hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "France, 1939 - In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France … but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

"Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can … completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others."

Opinion: This was not horribly written as other mass loved books that I've attempted to read have been but I just could not get into it. 

Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs

Started: 5/20/2024

Finished: 5/20/2024

Year: 2004

Pages: 300

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: continuing the series, library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.

"She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?

"Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth-century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity.

"But something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.

"Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent part of her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.

"As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return....Tempe may be next."

Opinion: Back in Canada. More scientific information. More mystery. More twists to the romantic side of Tempe's life.

The Coming of Winter by David Adams Richards

Started: 5/20/2024

Finished: DNF

Year: 1974

Pages: 318

Genre: literature

Grade: F

Reason for reading: bookcrossing.com book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "The frustrations of the community are brought into focus in the plights of 20-year-old Kevin Dulse, his family, and especially his wild young friends. An intensely realistic story, it stands firm upon its engaging, unaffected characters and the raw talent of its then 22-year-old author."

Opinion: Just could not get into this. The main character was blah. 

Daughter of Mine by Megan Miranda

Started: 5/18/2024

Finished: 5/20/2024

Year: 2024

Pages: 354

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance."

Opinion: Lots of suspense and everyone is suspect until they aren't.

Chasing Justice by Kathleen Donnelly

Started: 5/15/2024

Finished: 5/18/2024

Year: 2022

Pages: 372

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: beginning of series, library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "After losing her military K-9, former marine Maya Thompson swears she’ll never work with dogs again. But when she returns home to Colorado and accepts a job with US Forest Service law enforcement, fate brings K-9 Juniper into her life just as another tragedy unfolds.

"Juniper, a beautiful two-year-old Malinois, isn’t the only new addition to Maya’s life. Josh Colten, the local deputy sheriff, insists on helping with her new case. Handsome and mysterious, he’s all anyone in town can talk about, but Maya can’t let herself like him, let alone trust him.

"When Maya’s grandfather goes missing amid a growing drug war, Maya must put her faith in Josh, and her own battered instincts, to find him. But there's a web of secrets tying her grandfather to the tragedy that brought Juniper into her life—secrets someone would kill to keep hidden"

Opinion: Not a bad start of a series...plus there's a K-9.

The Bone Tree by Greg Iles

Started: 9/5/2023

Finished: 5/15/2024

Year: 2015

Pages: 860

Genre: mystery/thriller

Grade: B

Reason for reading: continue with the series

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "Former prosecutor Penn Cage and his fiancée, reporter and publisher Caitlin Masters, have barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by wealthy businessman Brody Royal and his Double Eagles, a KKK sect with ties to some of Mississippi’s most powerful men. But the real danger has only begun as FBI Special Agent John Kaiser warns Penn that Brody wasn’t the true leader of the Double Eagles. The puppeteer who actually controls the terrorist group is a man far more fearsome: the chief of the state police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, Forrest Knox.

"The only way Penn can save his father, Dr. Tom Cage—who is fleeing a murder charge as well as corrupt cops bent on killing him—is either to make a devil’s bargain with Knox or destroy him. While Penn desperately pursues both options, Caitlin uncovers the real story behind a series of unsolved civil rights murders that may hold the key to the Double Eagles’ downfall. The trail leads her deep into the past, into the black backwaters of the Mississippi River, to a secret killing ground used by slave owners and the Klan for over two hundred years . . . a place of terrifying evil known only as “the bone tree.”

Opinion: racism, JFK murder, slavery. Very indepth

Murder of a Bookstore Babe by Denise Swanson

Started: 5/1/2024

Finished: 5/5/2024

Year: 2011

Pages: 243

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: continuing with the series, library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "When school psychologist Skye Denison discovers a body crushed by a toppled bookcase in Scumble River's new bookstore, she has to read the clues before she becomes the killer's next work-in-progress..."

Opinion: This was more enjoyable than the last one. Delusions are a thing.

Eyes of Prey by John Sandford

Started: 4/26/2024

Finished: 5/1/2024

Year: 1991

Pages: 454

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: continuing with the series

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "Lieutenant Davenport’s sanity was nearly shattered by two murder investigations. Now he faces something worse…Two killers. One hideously scarred. The other strikingly handsome, a master manipulator fascinated with all aspects of death. The dark mirror of Davenport’s soul…This is the case that will bring Davenport back to life. Or push him over the edge."

Opinion: Started off annoying with Lucas's behavior but the mystery/suspense made up for it.