Susan_P

A serene wildlife reserve is transformed into a landscape of physical and psychological danger, where predators lurk on two legs as well as four.

We first meet sisters Danielle and Grace as they return to their isolated childhood home following their conservationist mother's death. Their mother's cryptic final instruction was to locate a hidden storehouse and destroy its contents, which sets the story in motion. What begins as a reluctant reunion quickly turns deadly after a murder occurs during a safari excursion, leaving the group stranded in the wilderness with dwindling supplies and a growing suspicion that one of them is a killer.

Moss's greatest strength lies in her setting. Drawing on her extensive experience with African safaris, she creates a vivid and immersive landscape where the environment itself becomes a character. The relentless savannah, dangerous wildlife, and isolation amplify the novel's tension, producing an atmosphere that feels both breathtaking and claustrophobic. The wilderness is not merely a backdrop but an active force shaping every decision and escalating every threat.

The relationship between Danielle and Grace provides the emotional core of the novel. Their fractured bond, shaped by childhood trauma and parental favoritism, adds depth to the thriller elements. As secrets emerge, themes of loyalty, guilt, and the lingering impact of family wounds are highlighted. The mystery unfolds alongside these emotional revelations, giving the story more substance than a conventional survival thriller.

The pacing is relentless. Once the murder occurs, the narrative rarely pauses for breath, balancing survival challenges with a steadily escalating whodunit. The author is good at scattering clues throughout the story while maintaining enough uncertainty to keep the identity of the culprit hidden until the final act. Great twists, atmosphere, and a satisfying conclusion.

So books about female rage, and women murdering men are all the rage now, and this one fits in nicely with that genre. Set in South Korea, it's the story of Yoohee, a plant store owner with a unique side hustle.

I'll never look at a mild mannered plant store owner again after reading this! Yoohee tends her plants by day and her business is thriving. There are some unusual lumps in her garden but those areas just serve as a more intense form of fertilizer for all her exotic and common plants. You get a brief glimpse into her background, and the boys that taunted and abused her in high school, which the author explains as the reason she sympathizes with the women that come to her door wanting someone to 'disappear'. This incident didn't seem to be as much of a motivation to me for her to do what she does, but anger and rage lay dormant for some people.

Eventually a detective starts sniffing around when all of the men have been seen visiting the plant shop, but he really can't find any compelling evidence against Yoohee.

It seems that women worldwide face the same issues, and this was a unique cultural take on the Korean customs and way of life. It did make me appreciate plants more, and I loved how each chapter was entitled with a plant name that is important to that particular story.

It's the year of space stories, between 'Project Hail Mary', and 'Atmosphere'; and now we have Ms. Cleeton's entre into the genre. Known mainly for her historical fiction novels set in Cuba, this is a new avenue for her.

A love story, that may or may not have some 'otherworldly' aspects to it, it's set in 1968, at the height of the Space Race, when the world is fixated on the Moon and the brave men who reach for it. Joe Mitchell, an ambitious astronaut, is poised for one of his career's most dangerous missions. He and his fellow crew members launch into space amidst great global anticipation, but soon contact is lost. When officials presume the spacecraft destroyed and the crew dead, Vivian, Joe's wife, is left in a world of grief, disbelief, and unanswered questions.

Rather than giving in to despair, Vivian relives the story of their love, from their first meeting to the vibrant life they built together, to make sense of what has happened. As rumors swirl and the investigation unfolds, something else begins to happen: mysterious communications arrive that only Joe could have sent, leading Vivian to wonder if love might truly transcend time and space.

There haven't been many books written about astronauts' wives and the struggles they endure, and by centering the narrative on Vivian's experience, Cleeton gives the emotional stakes real weight, making Joe's possible fate feel profoundly personal rather than abstract.

There's great character development here and you feel for Vivian and what she is going through. Another great addition to the Cleeton library!

This is a slow moving saga set in the 1700s, about the love between two women that are running from their past. Agnes, once a slave, escaped her master after a tragedy with her parents. She now lives off the land with her dog in the woods. She fled from Virginia to Nova Scotia, where she meets Cora, a native of Jamaica, who sees Agnes in the woods one day and strikes up a friendship. There's quite a bit of history here that I was unaware of, when the British forcibly relocated the Maroons from Jamaica to Nova Scotia to help in the war effort.

The book goes back and forth between Agnes and Cora's determination to survive the brutal Canadian winter, to a trial where one of them is accused of a crime. The description of the brutal winter is just bone chilling. When one of them falls through the ice and is left for dead, you can't imagine not being in shelter. They both have chances to abandon their wilderness survival class, but don't think they can be together unless they are away from society, which makes for a lonely existence when you just have each other.

It's very well written, with excellent character development and gives you a glimpse into this period of history so that was interesting, but just sad that a relationship between two women could not be accepted back then, or they thought it couldn't, that they had to isolate themselves. But they were happy, so to each his own.

First of all, this cover is stunning! I did, however, find the writing a bit challenging to get into. The style of the prose was not succinct.

Set in Singapore in 1972, the author plunges us into a world where Chinese secret societies guard the last pockets of unsanctioned magic. We first meet 17-year-old Adeline Siow, a loner who discovers she can summon flame literally at her fingertips. After her mother dies in a house fire, leaving a butterfly-shaped burn scar on Adeline's skin, she tracks down a mysterious girl with a butterfly tattoo, Ang, and finds herself drawn into the clandestine world of the Red Butterfly gang, sworn to a fire goddess and fueled by vengeance. As Adeline searches for her mother's murderer and navigates a dangerous succession crisis within the gang, she also becomes entangled in a slowly burning romance with Ang, just as rival gangs close in and bodies start appearing, marked by a chilling new magic that threatens everything.

In my head I was imagining an all female version of 'West Side Story', as the two rival gangs battled over access to this unique magic.

However, this is a slow burn and the plot drags a bit. The writing is beautiful and atmospheric, but often stilted and overly descriptive. I wanted something to happen sooner. There were also lots of characters tossed around so it was sometimes challenging to determine who was on which side, and who was doing what to whom.

Other than that, I would say it was a lush, evocative, historical mystery that does a good job depicting the events of the time with a bit of magical realism thrown in.

The Bone Thief starts out with Bureau of Indian Affairs archaeologist Syd Walker, called to investigate a chilling case at a remote summer camp. Newly buried skeletal remains have gone missing—and a local Native American teenage girl has vanished too. As local authorities downplay her disappearance, Syd uncovers troubling links to an elite Founders Society, the descendants of colonial settlers who claim ancestral land rights.

The disappearances, it becomes clear, aren't isolated and seem to be an ominous pattern that has spanned generations. There are deep rooted layers of privilege and inherited power and this reminded me a bit of 'Killers of the flower moon', as the white men married into the American Indian tribes just to get mineral land rights.

This book is similar to her previous novel, Blood Sisters, as Lillie tackles the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW), offering a fictionalized yet resonant insight into systemic erasure and injustice faced by Native communities nationwide. She also brings back the character of Syd Walker, so if you read her earlier book, this part will be familiar as well. It is scary, disturbing, and very emotional. I love that the author is of Sioux-Cherokee descent, which gives the novel integrity, vulnerability, and a personal investment in finding justice. She also does a good job highlighting how the ways history can reverberate painfully into the present.

As women, we see how men control the world around us, but Ann Malaika Tubbs gives us specific examples here that are blatant as well as subtle, and shows how they have permeated every aspect of society throughout history. You need only to read the table of contents which is structured as a poem to see how women's stories are distorted and ignored throughout history, how we are subject to men's rules, how they turn our strengths into weaknesses, and destroy our sense of safety. The chapter on how women are abused and objectified, reminded me of a famous quote: 'Men fear that women will laugh at them, while women fear that men will kill them'. Sad, but many times true. The author does a great job with all these topics and still ends the book on a chapter of hope, on how we can make a difference by coming together, supporting one another, and fighting for justice.