Tag: book-reviews

ARC review: Cross My Heart by Megan Collins

Oh hello! There’s still time to preorder your next great read before 2024 ends! How about Cross My Heart by Megan Collins, author of such books as The Family Plot and Thicker Than Water?

Let’s start with the official blurb:

She has his dead wife’s heart; the one she wants is his. The author of The Family Plot brings her signature prose to a twisty novel about a heart transplant patient who becomes romantically obsessed with her donor’s husband.

Rosie Lachlan wants nothing more than to find The One.

A year after she was dumped in her wedding dress, she’s working at her parents’ bridal salon, anxious for a happy ending that can’t come soon enough. After receiving a life-saving heart transplant, Rosie knows her health is precious and precarious. She suspects her heart donor is Daphne Thorne, the wife of local celebrity author Morgan Thorne, who she begins messaging via an anonymous service called DonorConnect, ostensibly to learn more about Daphne. But Rosie has a secret: She’s convinced that now that she has his wife’s heart, she and Morgan are meant to be together.

As she and Morgan correspond, the pretense of avoiding personal details soon disappears, even if Rosie’s keeping some cards close to her chest. But as she digs deeper into Morgan’s previous marriage, she discovers disturbing rumors about the man she’s falling for. Could Morgan have had something to do with his late wife’s death? And can Rosie’s heart sustain another break—or is she next?

And here’s my official, post-it-everywhere review:

Rosie just got a new heart, but she wants more than anything to give it away. If only she could be certain that the man in her sights isn’t a murderer …

This is a deliciously twisty book that will surprise even the most avid thriller fan. Maybe you want to be suspicious of Rosie and her soft new heart, and maybe you should be … but it turns out it’s not for the reasons you think. She’s trying to walk this line and ignore the fact that she’s playing a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse (and maybe confusing which one of them happens to be the cat) while ignoring the danger signs every step of the way. No man can be worth as much effort as Rosie puts into trying to uncover the reality of Morgan Thorne.

This book surprised me with its similarities to one of my absolute favorites, but I can’t reveal which one or else that gives a lot away. Let’s just say Rosie’s contemplations of mortality and identity play into far more than wondering if her new heart can’t help but love her husband’s donor. The absolutely twists and turns (yes, plural) this book takes kept me riveted right up until the end. Megan Collins crafts complex characters who have their own reasons not to reveal everything all at once, and the way she tells their story just adds to the suspense. Cross My Heart is a must-read.

Cross My Heart is out January 14!

ARC review: You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace

I was lucky to be granted a NetGally advanced copy of You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace. I didn’t know anything about the book, but the back cover certainly made it seem right up my alley:

The night after her father’s funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn’t know it, but it’s not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink—even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces—something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

The thing is, it’s not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Will Claire finish off her blackmailer before her pursuer reveals all? Let the games begin . . .

You’d Look Better as a Ghost is a bit You, a bit Dexter, a bit Hannibal, and a bit Fight Club – but not the Fight Club part of Fight Club. Claire is a serial killer with a dark sense of humor and her own personal code, and when we first meet her she’s reeling from the death of her father and trying to cope in the way it seems only she can. Her bereavement support group doesn’t seem to be helping … and might actually end up hurting as it throws her together with people she’d otherwise never have met.

Claire’s an engaging narrator obsessed with observing “ordinary people” and doing her best to fit in just enough so that her hobby – no, not her art; her other hobby – isn’t recognized. For the most part she keeps to herself, which makes the bereavement group such a challenge, since she has to figure out how, exactly, “ordinary people” act in that situation. She makes some insightful comments about the other characters while at times missing the obvious about both them and herself, making you turn the page to see when – or if – she’ll realize it, or if she’s just set herself up for a fall.

If you like the voices of Joe Goldberg, Dexter Morgan, or the narrator in Fight Club, then you need to pre-order You’d Look Better as a Ghost. Part comedy, part thriller, and guaranteed to keep you up until the last page is turned, this book kept me laughing – and guessing – to the end.

Five stars. You’d Look Better as a Ghost comes out March 26 from Penguin Books.