Time for another round of Yvonne’s Shorties! This time around a detective thriller buddy read I loved, and a contemporary romance I ended up having mixed thoughts about.

Title: Close To Home
(DI Adam Fawley #1)
Author: Cara Hunter
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Detective
First published: December 14th 2017
Publisher: Penguin
Finished reading: February 22nd 2023
Pages: 385

“Which makes three complex answers to one simple question. Liars always overkill, at least in my experience.”


REVIEW

This detective series has been recommended to me over and over again, and I’ve been meaning to try it ever since the first book was published in 2017. Somehow it kept slipping between the cracks of my TBR mountain though… Just when I was thinking that 2023 should be the year I finally pick up at least Close To Home, we decided to make a buddy read out of it with Nicki. Great minds think alike and all! 😉 And what a successful buddy read it turned out to be. We literally flew through this first book of the DI Adam Fawley series, and we couldn’t believe just how messed up and disturbing the Mason family really was… It took me a little while to get used to the first person POV with DI Adam Fawley, but once I did I was hooked. The fact that you get multiple third person POVs as well as Tweets, news articles and flashbacks not only added dept to the plot, but helped everything feel more dynamics. The plot development itself is cleverly done, with plenty of plot twists to keep you on the wrong track. And so many shocking reveals about the Mason family! This is one of the reasons it’s very hard to stop reading; I kept wanting to read yet another page to see what new disturbing fact would be revealed next. I’m keeping this short to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say that you will change your opinion about Daisy long before that shocking epilogue. I confess I never saw the full truth coming! All in all a very successful first book, and I will be looking forward catching up with the rest of the series.

Title: Nora Goes Off Script
Author: Annabel Monaghan
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
First published: June 7th 2022
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Finished reading: February 27th 2023
Pages: 268

“And second, that the best things come back. Sometimes it’s right after the commercial, sometimes it takes longer. But time and sunshine bring growth, and life unfolds just the way it’s supposed to.”


REVIEW

WARNING: it’s unpopular opinion time again!!

There has been quite some hype around Nora Goes Off Script, and we all know how hyped books and me tend to get along… Still, there was something about the blurb that made me want to give this story a try anyway. I loved the sound of the main character being a screenwriter and turning her no-good husband leaving her into a successful script that is now to be made into a Hollywood movie. Talk about an intriguing premise! And I can’t deny that Nora Goes Off Script had me under its spell initially. I loved the focus on a single mom and both kids made for such great additional characters in the plot… The descriptions of the setting made me want to visit Laurel Ridge and especially Nora’s house myself; the tea house and its surroundings sound divine. I even liked the developments between Leo and Nora, even though it did seem a bit too much like insta-love. BUT. Then something happened and I started to feel more and frustrated by the whole situation. I’m never that big of a fan of the miscommunication trope in the first place, but I can tolerate it if it isn’t too obvious. In this case, it’s literally one of the two writing ONE text to clear everything up, and it all made me SO angry. Especially since the sudden change in situation doesn’t make sense at all after what happened before… And not even the final ‘twist’ and how everything wrapped up could fully redeem the story for me.

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