Blurb

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father’s beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

Review

Mad Honey is a collaboration between Jodi Picoult, an author whose books I’ve read and loved, and Jennifer Finney Boylan, a new author for me. They each took turns writing chapters, and it was impossible for me to tell whose writing was whom’s.

The story follows Olivia McAfee, a beekeeper who fell in love with and married a cardiac surgeon. But her dream becomes a nightmare when he husband reveals his dark side, so she flees with her son Asher to begin a new life. Years later, Asher, now in high school, begins dating Lily Campanella, a young woman who has recently moved into town with her mother. Lily has had quite a tough life up to this point, but now that she’s met Asher, she feels truly happy. Then, Olivia received a phone call from Asher: Lily has been murdered, and Asher is being questioned by police. As the story progresses, Olivia begins to fear that perhaps Asher is more like his father than she had thought. What follows is a compelling and compulsive murder mystery as two lives are closely examined, and painful secrets are revealed.

Mad Honey is told in alternating POVs and a non-linear timeline by Olivia and Lily. The format works perfectly, and I enjoyed how the story unravels slowly, a little at a time, from each of their perspectives. As we near the center of the novel, what starts out as a basic murder mystery (or so we think) switches into something else entirely — something much deeper and more complex. It transforms into a mysterious, deep, haunting story because, at its core, this novel is about identity, abuse, self-acceptance, intolerance, toxic relationships, and trust. That being said, it’s gut-wrenching at times as the book does delve into some pretty tough topics, but they are handled sensitively and compassionately by the authors. There is a deeper story within these pages, and part of the book speaks to the divisiveness of the world we live in and how, even in these “modern times,” small-minded views continue to exist and thrive.

Additionally, Mad Honey is a novel full of fascinating multidimensional characters. All of them, even the secondary ones, feel real and whole. None of them comes off as mere caricatures or types but are complex and well thought out. What was also impressive was the amount of meticulous research the authors must have done to write this story. I learned a lot about several things from this novel but to say any more about that would lead into spoiler territory.

All in all, I can’t begin to express how much I loved this book. Mad Honey is a cleverly layered, thought-provoking, heartbreaking page-turner by two talented authors that kept me guessing from the very first page and, ultimately, left me shocked, surprised, and thoroughly satisfied when it was over. A brilliant collaboration that gets all the stars from me.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Ballentine books for providing me with a review copy of this novel.

Blurb:

Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

Review

This was the third novel by David S. Pederson. Unlike the other two I read, which featured Heath Barrington as the main character, the protagonist in this novel is Private Detective Mason Adler, a 50-year-old gay detective. The story takes place in 1946 in Phoenix, AZ, where the dead body of a woman is discovered in a trunk at Union Station. What’s interesting about this tale is that it’s inspired by a real-life murder in 1931.

In Murder at Union Station, Mason is hired to investigate the woman’s murder, and we travel with him as he interviews the various witnesses and suspects, trying to piece together the last hours of the woman’s life. The story is full of engaging, lively characters such as his sassy next-door neighbor Lydia and the flamboyant Walter as well Emil, the by-the-book police chief with whom Mason has an interesting — and somewhat contentious — working relationship. There was plenty of comical, witty banter between the characters, which lent a fun touch to the story. I also enjoyed the diversity in the novel, which one doesn’t always find in historical fiction: Mason and his friend Walter were both gay, two of the women in the story were a lesbian couple, the porter who transported the body to the station was a Black man, and one of the suspects was neurodiverse.

It was a lot of fun to unravel the mystery of what happened to the poor woman in the trunk as Mason gathered a plethora of clues from the colorful witnesses. Murder at Union Station is well-written, suspenseful, and smoothly plotted, and it kept me guessing until the big denouement at the end. It’s a fast, enjoyable cozy mystery that I enjoyed. I look forward to reading the first book in the Mason Adler series — Murder on Monte Vista. Recommended!

A huge thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book.

Purchase Murder at Union Station from Amazon

Blurb

A rural island community steeped in the mystical superstitions of its founders and haunted by an unsolved murder is upended by the return of the suspected killer in this deeply atmospheric novel.

Emery Blackwood’s life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily. Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among the community that fractured her world in two. She’d once longed to run away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saiorse Island and chase new dreams; now, she maintains her late mother’s tea shop and cares for her ailing father. But just as the island, rooted in folklore and tradition, begins to show signs of strange happenings, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that no one wants to remember.

August Salt knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night that changed everything. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from the past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises that span generations threatens to reveal the truth behind Lily’s death once and for all.

Evocative and compelling, Spells for Forgetting is a vivid exploration of lost love and the unraveling of a small town and its many secrets.

Review

Spells for Forgetting is an adult mystery/thriller that centers around August Salt, who has returned to his hometown on the mystical Saiorse Island fourteen years after he and his mother hurriedly left following the murder of Lily, one of August’s close friends. Everyone on the island is certain that August was the murderer — everyone except for his childhood sweetheart and the love of his life, Emery.

Though unwelcome on the island, August has returned to bury his mother’s ashes, and his presence on the island has stirred up some long-buried emotions on the part of the residents. Additionally, August and Emery begin to ask some difficult questions and as they do, learn that small towns have secrets — dark secrets as well as long memories, and there are still some around who would prefer that the past remains in the past.

A series of backstories slowly reveals the dramatic circumstances surrounding the events of the night in question and, in so doing, deeply draws the reader into the small-town environment of privilege and deep-rooted family ties, resulting in a spooky and unsettling story. I love stories that take place on isolated, creepy islands, especially ones with a deep, lurking evil in a tight-knit community and this book fit the bill perfectly. It was so haunting and atmospheric that I could vividly picture the creepy island in my mind as I read. The writing is sharp, edgy, and compelling, and I love how the story is told via alternating POVs and timelines, unfolding into a rather suspenseful and intricate tale of scandal, deception, class division, lies, betrayal, violence, and murder.

The spooky vibe makes this the perfect autumn read. So if you’re looking for a creepy mystery chock full of dark family secrets with a touch of magical realism, then it’s worth checking out Spells for Forgetting. Populated with wonderfully complex and empathetic characters, Young’s novel is a twisty tale of legacy and unbreakable bonds with the land. Utterly bewitching!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book.