Every Time We Say Goodby by Natalie Jenner

A special thank you to the author, Natalie Jenner, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. 

The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. 

There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary. (From HarperCollins.)

Jenner's latest once again brings a vibrant cast of characters to life—including cameos from her previous two novels (The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls) and by classical Hollywood cinema's leading ladies. 

The story takes place in post-war Italy where a group of American and British expatriates become entangled in controversy while making a movie about a female Italian resistance fighter during the occupation called "La Scolaretta," the Schoolgirl assassin. Her story makes up the dual narrative. 

Meticulously researched, this novel demonstrates how impactful art is not only to preserve our history, but as a medium to communicate to the masses as well as entertain. 

Every Time We Say Goodbye is a cinematic novel of love, art, grief, and of confronting the past to face the future.

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NATALIE JENNER is the author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls. A Goodreads Choice Award runner-up for historical fiction and finalist for best debut novel, The Jane Austen Society was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller, and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. 

Born in England and raised in Canada, Jenner has been a corporate lawyer, career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

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Q & A with Natalie Jenner*

GWR: How long did it take you to write Every Time We Say Goodbye, and how many drafts were there before publication?

NJ: I tend to have a “four seasons” energy when it comes to writing: I start with the hopefulness of spring, finish with the sharpened-pencil mood of fall, buckle down in our Canadian winter to edit, and deliver the final MS at its end. With Every Time We Say Goodbye, it was the same: roughly a year, May to April, and about three substantive drafts in total—but months of line editing in between! 

GWR: What was the genesis of the novel?

NJ: In the spring of 2021, I was rewatching Day For Night, an old Francois Truffaut film about film, and ended up falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole when I learned that Rome’s famous Cinecittà studios had been used as refugee camps during and after WWII, and that some refugees might even have been extras during filming there of the Hollywood epic Quo Vadis. This lit a creative spark in me, and I decided (helped by lack of travel in 2021 due to the pandemic!) to set my next book in Rome, my favourite city.

GWR: What do you have more fun with, character development or plot? 

NJ: I write line by line, without outlining or knowing what is going to happen, so everything—plot and characters—is fun for me. This also means that the characters drive the plot: I feel like I am a tin can tied to their collective bumper, being pulled along in their wake, and only discovering their secrets along the way. The absolute most fun for me is when I finally realize what those secrets are.

GWR: Your books are always meticulously researched and detailed—can you tell us about the process?

NJ: My process is very haphazard, in part because the subject matter of each book drives the research. But basically, I research just enough before I start writing to ensure a sense of time and place, then as I write I research whatever pops up in the plot. I can say that the research for Every Time We Say Goodbye was the most intense, intensive, and harrowing that I have ever done. From war orphans, partisan resisters, religion and censorship, to Italian laws, culture, cinema, and politics: much of this was brand new to me, and I felt a real imperative to get it as right as possible, out of respect for that amazing country and its equally amazing people.

GWR: What made you decide to write a dual timeline? Was it easier or more challenging?

NJ: I never had any intention of writing a dual timeline. In fact, I was halfway through the book, when one morning (and I will never forget this moment) I sat down at my laptop and suddenly the words “The handbag is almost empty inside” just popped onto the page. Right way, I realized I was inside the head of la scolaretta, the fictional “schoolgirl assassin” that many of my 1950s characters had been referencing in the plot. In a way, she made me write her, probably to get her right—or at least better than I had been doing! So again, the story sowed the seeds for that decision. It wasn’t necessarily easier, but I did love finding ways structurally to connect the two timelines, and create echoes between the respective plots, themes, characters, and settings.

GWR: Setting always plays such an important part in your novels. Although this book is largely set in Rome, it begins and ends in England—do you have ties to either country? 

NJ: My love for Italy, and Rome in particular, started in adolescence: I happen to be one of the last high-school Latin graduates in the province of Ontario! For six years I daily parsed the writings of Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus, and saw the intricate connection between that dead language and our own—in fact, it’s one of the few subjects I studied that impacts me still to this day and in a very fun, writerly way. I have since visited Italy several times, and Rome remains my favourite city in the world. 

I only recently realized that all of my books end in England, which makes me appreciate what some call ancestral memory—all I know, is that I have always felt an incredibly strong attachment and affinity to all things British. My father, brother, and I were born in England, and I grew up in a very British-Canadian household: kippers for Christmas morning breakfast, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em on the tv. I continue to visit my paternal family and friends there every chance I get.

GWR: Was it hard to say goodbye to the characters in these books?  

NJ: No, but probably only because I always try to leave my characters in the best place in life that I can, ready to face whatever life throws at them next. I think I purposefully do that in order to feel closure—yet I keep finding ways to revisit many of my characters in subsequent books, so I think perhaps I am just really bad at goodbyes!

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be?

NJ: An Aperol Spritz: summery and long-lasting, with a refreshing bite. 

GWR: What are you working on now?

NJ: I am putting the finishing touches on Austen at Sea, which is the tale of two daughters of a Massachusetts supreme court justice who start a correspondence with Jane Austen's last surviving sibling, a ninety-one-year-old retired admiral, and travel by mail packet steamship to meet him in the summer of 1865 just as the civil war has ended. In their absence, their widowed father's colleagues on the bench start a judicial reading circle dedicated to Austen as a means of distracting him. Louisa May Alcott also makes an appearance in the plot, leading the other women on board ship in a charity performance of vignettes from A Tale of Two Cities. A literary treasure hunt soon ensues, culminating in climactic court cases on both sides of the Atlantic involving a piece of Austen history and a multitude of characters including theatre impresarios, street waifs, newspapermen, suffragists, gypsy fortune tellers, and many more (my quasi-tribute to Dickens). These is also a very loose connection to my first novel, The Jane Austen Society, which has made the entire writing experience especially gratifying and “full circle” for me as a writer—see my failure at closure, above!

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada. 

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Stephen Aston is getting married to Heather. Not only is she the same age as one of his daughters, but he is still married to his first wife, who is living in a care facility with dementia. But he'll take care of that easily by divorcing her.  

Tully and Rachel Aston look upon Heather as nothing but an interloper. She's the same age as Rachel, and even younger than Tully—clearly she's a golddigger and after their father's money. But Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and her own reasons for wanting to marry Stephen. 

With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets, the new wife, and who their father really is. But will this unleash the most dangerous impulses...in all of them?

The Younger Wife is completely binge-worthy. With its dynamic plot, this twisty domestic thriller explores one family's secrets, lies, and compulsions. 

Told from multiple points of view—Tully's, Rachel's, Heather's, and another important character (no spoilers)—The Younger Wife is perfectly paced and expertly plotted. Hepworth employs her opening hook as the scene that unfolds at various points in the story. Her writing is enthralling and addictive and her characters are layered and complex. 

With an ending that will completely blindside the reader, this is Sally Hepworth at her best. And do yourself a favour and be sure to read the Author's Note.

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SALLY HEPWORTH  is the author of seven books, most notably The Mother-in-Law and The Good Sister. She has been featured in media outlets that have included USA Today, The New York Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Hepworth lives in Australia with her family.

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the perfect opportunity. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set sail for an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path, but like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape.

Shimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome anticipate, despite its mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumours of murder. But what they don’t expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe’s sandy beaches. The owners of the Azure Sky, Jake and Eliza, are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and if their sleek catamaran and well-stocked bar are any indication, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience life on an exotic island, and the serenity of being completely off the grid. Lux hasn’t felt like she truly belonged anywhere in years, yet here on Meroe, with these fellow free spirits, she finally has a sense of peace.

But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the balance of the group is disrupted. Soon, cracks begin to emerge: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest with Lux about their pasts––and perhaps not even with each other. And though Jake and Eliza seem like the perfect pair, the rocky history of their relationship begins to resurface, and their reasons for sailing to Meroe might not be as innocent as they first appeared.

When it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them are going to make it off the island alive. 

Reckless Girls is a wicked gothic suspense novel set on an isolated Pacific island with a dark history. 

Primarily told from Lux's perspective, there are flashbacks with different narrators to flesh out the characters and their backstories. Hawkins also employs the use of letters, emails, and old diaries to give context to the island and its history. 

The strengths of the story lie in the compelling narration and atmospheric setting. Meroe's remote location is the perfect choice of setting—its isolation adds another layer of tension.

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RACHEL HAWKINS is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books for young readers, and her work has been translated in over a dozen countries. She studied gender and sexuality in Victorian literature at Auburn University and The Wife Upstairs was her first adult novel.

Hawkins currently lives in Alabama. 

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

If Avery Chambers can’t fix you in 10 sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. Her successes are phenomenal—she helps people overcome everything from domineering parents to assault—and almost absorb the emptiness she sometimes feels since her husband’s death.

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple, that is until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair the relationship not only for the sake of their 8-year-old son, but because loves her husband. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her license due to controversial methods.

When the Bishops glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.

From the powerhouse duo behind An Anonymous Girl, The Wife Between Us and You Are Not Alone, Pekkanen and Hendricks are back with another blockbuster. The narrative is incredibly solid. Pekkanen is a seasoned author and by extension, Hendricks' previous editing experience also makes her a great writer. 

Told from Avery and Marissa's points of view, The Golden Couple is layered and complex. Their characters are well-developed, the plot is perfectly paced, and it's completely binge worthy. The only misstep is the subplot—it isn't nearly as compelling and detracts from the original story—there should have been more attention given to the backstory of a young Marissa and Matthew. That being said, there were no loose ends and everything aligned. This team is thorough. 

With the theme of trust propelling the narrative, The Golden Couple is gripping and perfectly executed.

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GREER HENDRICKS spent two decades as an editor at Simon & Schuster. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Allure, and Publishers Weekly.

SARAH PEKKANEN is the internationally and USA Today bestselling author of eight previous novels. A former investigative journalist and feature writer, her work has been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, and many others.

Together, they have written the New York Times bestselling novels You Are Not Alone, The Wife Between Us and An Anonymous Girl.

The Therapist by B. A. Paris

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press and Raincoast Books for a finished copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbours are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

Paris weaves an insidious web of lies in this gripping psychological thriller about a house with a shocking secret. Alternating between Alice in the present and a therapist in the past, the novel takes a deep dive into obsession and trust. 

Alice initially comes off as the all too familiar unreliable female narrator that is bordering on being crazy.  Early on in the story, we know that she is affected by an event in her past which has made her somewhat of a recluse—she is deeply attached to her village, her friends, and her cottage—and although she is apprehensive about moving to London, she is excited to be living with Leo. Even though she naive, and exhibits obsessive behaviour, her intentions are only good. Bust as the story unfolds it becomes apparent that she is not the unreliable narrator as originally perceived to be.

Perfectly paced, expertly plotted, The Therapist is Paris at her best. 

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B. A. PARIS is the internationally bestselling author of The Dilemma, Behind Closed Doors, The Breakdown, and Bring Me Back. She has worked both in finance and as a teacher and has five daughters. The Therapist is her fifth novel.

Paris grew up in England, but has spend most of her adult life in France.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don't exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can't imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there's certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there's this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August's day when she needed it most. August's subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there's one big problem: Jane doesn't just look like an old school punk rocker. She's literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it's time to start believing in some things, after all. 

McQuiston said this is the "weird, fun, horny project of [their] heart" and it definitely was. There is so much to enjoy and celebrate about this book—I love to read about characters that need more representation and think it is so important for everyone to be seen and validated. 

But One Last Stop didn't totally work for me and I can't exactly pinpoint why... I found that the quirky character traits were overdone and it detracted from the overall enjoyment of the story (I'm a less is more person and McQuiston had a lot going on). The bit of sci-fi did nothing for me either. There were lots of truly beautiful parts—and also important historical moments—but again, overshadowed by the weird. I almost gave up but pushed through and ultimately, I'm glad I did. 

Although One Last Stop was just okay/good for me, it will certainly resonate with a lot of readers and have its audience. That being said I love love loved Red, White & Royal Blue and will definitely pick up their next book.

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CASEY McQUISTON is a New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies and a pie enthusiast. They write stories about smart people with bad manners falling in love. 

McQuiston was born and raised in southern Louisiana, they now live in New York City with their poodle mix/personal assistant, Pepper.

Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press and Raincoast Books for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. 

All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...

Marin and her husband, Derek, are successful and admired in their community—she owns a chain of upscale hair salons and her husband, Derek, runs his own company. They were living the perfect life until their world falls apart when their son, Sebastian, is taken. He let go of his mother's hand in Pike Place Market and was lured away by someone in a Santa Suit with a lollipop. 

A year later, Marin is a mere shell of her former self. The FBI search has gone cold, all of the publicity surrounding the case had dried up, and her and Derek barely speak. Taking matters into her own hands, she hires a private investigator to pick up where the police left off. But instead of finding Sebastian, Marin learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman named Kenzie. She's an enemy that's very real and becomes the target for all of Marin's pent up rage—she's lost her son and is not about to lose her husband too. 

Little Secrets is a perfectly-paced union of domestic suspense and psychological thriller. Hillier ratchets up the tension with themes of obsessions, guilt, and betrayal. She also pens layered and complex characters. Marin's consuming guilt and grief turns into anger which propels the narrative. Her best friend/former boyfriend Sal is an ex-con with his own dark agenda. He encourages Marin to make a decision that will have potentially catastrophic consequences. 

Hillier is an electric writer and gifted storyteller. With all of her stories involving trauma and fear, she plays on her reader's anxieties and sympathies. By having Sebastian missing and not dead, Hillier holds us in a suspended state along with her characters. And what makes this book a stand out in its genre is the added layer of emotion.  

Delightfully distorted, emotionally wrought, and perfectly paced, this book won't be a secret for long!

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JENNIFER HILLIER writes about dark, twisted people who do dark, twisted things. Her novel, Jar of Hearts, was the Winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Novel. Jennifer is also the author of Freak, The Butcher, Wonderland, and Creep. 

Hillier was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and lived in the Seattle area for years before returning home to Toronto, where she now lives with her family. 

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Q & A with Jennifer Hillier*

GWR: What was the inspiration behind Little Secrets?

JH: Every novel I write starts with a tiny seed of an idea, almost like a snapshot of one scene. Little Secrets actually began as a story about cheating. I could see a woman, about 40 and married, sitting in a diner in the middle of the night, waiting to meet someone. I wanted to know why she was there, and who she was meeting. As I wrote the scene, it went in a much different direction than I thought. Later, I figured out that Marin's son had been kidnapped long before the diner scene ever took place. While Little Secrets is not exactly a "missing child" story, the disappearance of Marin's son (which happens in the first chapter) obviously affects everything she does afterward.

GWR: What comes first for you—the overall idea or the characters? 

JH: It's usually the characters. The plot doesn't develop until I've begun to flesh them out, and I tend not to know the hook of the story until I fully understand what it is the characters really want.          

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardener or a plotter/architect?

JH: Total pantster. And I wish I wasn't. If I could plot and then write, I think I would be so much more efficient, but anytime I've tried that, I've lost total interest in the story. The joy of writing, for me, is being as surprised as my readers with each new revelation and twist. But it unfortunately makes for a very inefficient writing process.  

GWR: How many hours a day do you write? What does your writing process look like?

JH: These days, I write in little chunks over the course of an eight-hour day. Pre-pandemic, when my son was doing school in-person and my husband was at the office and I had a quiet, clean house to myself, I could usually hit my quota within three hours (I try for 2,000 words per day). But now, with my son in virtual school and my husband working from home, everything is noisy and messy and just harder, which I know is the case for everyone. So now I write whenever and however I can. I'm constantly interrupted, so it's twenty minutes here, two hundred words there, whatever I can do.

GWR: Did any minor characters become major characters over the course of the novel?

JH: Sal was meant to be a very minor character, until I figured out how long he and Marin had known each other and how close they were. Their long friendship added layers to her backstory and elements to her personality that wouldn't have otherwise existed. But then other characters that I thought would be major ended up having not as much to say (like Derek). I'm always surprised by how things work out.

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write?

JH: There were a lot of hard scenes in Little Secrets, but if I had to choose one, it would be when Marin learns that one of the people from her support group has finally found their missing child...and it's terrible news. Marin spirals to a pretty dark place, and as a mother myself, it was like putting myself through a nightmare of my own making. I needed a couple of days to recover after writing that scene.

 GWR: What draws you to darker themes? 

JH: I think writing dark stories helps me to make sense of the horrific things that happen in real life. Everything that fiction has ever delved into has actually happened somewhere, to someone, and in many cases, the truth is even worse than the stories we writers create. I recently watched American Murder: The Family Next Door on Netflix, which is the true story of Chris Watts murdering his wife and children. Can I just say, that real-life story was way worse than any thriller I've read, maybe ever. Writing about the dark stuff helps me feel a sense of control over the terrible things that actually happen, especially since I try to end all my stories with a sense of resolution. Which we don't always get in real life.

GWR: Is there a particular author or work that inspired you to become a writer or the way you write? 

JH: There have been many. The first non-picture books I ever read as a child were the Nancy Drew books, which probably encouraged a love of mysteries in general from an early age. I also discovered Stephen King pretty early, and then as a teenager, I loved Sidney Sheldon. King taught me a lot about characters, and how, if a reader truly believes in a character, the reader will also believe anything that happens to that character, no matter how outlandish. And Sheldon taught me the fun of a fast-paced read, and how to move the reader quickly from one scene to another—basically, how to write a page-turner. As I got older, I started reading a lot of thrillers, which seemed to combine what I loved most about King and Sheldon. I read Jeffery Deaver, Jonathan Kellerman, John Grisham, and then eventually discovered Chelsea Cain and her serial killer, Gretchen. Cain's fearlessness in writing Gretchen changed everything for me. 

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be?

JH: I'd tell her not to do it and to finish her degree, because writing is hard! Okay, kidding. I would probably just remind her to keep reading a lot, and writing a lot, and to stay true to her own voice. I think everything that happens in our lives brings us to exactly where we need to be to write that first book. I could not have written Creep, my first thriller, in my twenties. I needed to get married, turn 30, work, buy a house, sell a house, and move to Seattle in order to be in the right space both physically and emotionally to write that first novel. (Also, Creep is being re-issued by the publisher in March, ten years after it was first published—I'm excited to see it back out in the world!)

GWR: What are you working on now?

JH: Another psychological thriller, which should be out in Spring 2022-ish. I'm a bit superstitious and I don't like to talk about my books until the first draft is complete, and I'm still a few months away from that happening. But I'm having fun writing it! 

Thank you so much, Erin! You have been so wonderful and supportive of authors, and it was truly a pleasure to do this interview. 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.  

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

A special thank you to Libro.fm and Macmillan Audio for an audiobook listening copy, and NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded trinkets and jewellery from her well-to-do clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for. 

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea. She was an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story with her wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?

With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature’s most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?

The Wife Upstairs is a modern and bold retelling of Jane Eyre that was absolutely brilliant from start to finish.  This gothic psychological thriller is completely hypnotic—it's a fresh and feminist reimagining that will take readers by surprise. Hawkins is a master and I highly recommend this wicked love triangle story. 

Full of twists and turns, secrets and surprises, you will be hooked from the first page. I highly recommend.

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RACHEL HAWKINS is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books for young readers, and her work has been translated in over a dozen countries. She studied gender and sexuality in Victorian literature at Auburn University and The Wife Upstairs is her first adult novel.

Hawkins currently lives in Alabama.

Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

On the anniversary of a family tragedy, Molly Clarke walks away from her life. 

The story is that her car was abandoned, found miles from home. There was also a note in Molly's handwriting found at a nearby hotel. 

It happens all the time—women are desperate to leave their lives behind and start over, so they just disappear. Especially ones that have fractured families.

But is that what really happened to Molly Clarke?

In Walker's latest psychological thriller, she uses an unimaginable family tragedy and highly-developed characters to examine the bond between a mother and her children. Her writing is sharp, powerful, and unflinching. 

Told in alternating perspectives and with dual timelines, Don't Look for Me is an intricately plotted thriller about a Mother's guilt. Like The Night Before, this was incredibly effective—Walker reveals a little at a time which is both frenzy inducing and momentum building. Her characters are well-developed and propel the plot which is expertly paced.

Congratulations, Wendy, on another fantastic book.

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WENDY WALKER is the author of the psychological suspense novels All Is Not Forgotten, Emma In the Night, The Night Before and Don’t Look For Me. Her novels have been translated into 23 foreign languages and topped bestseller lists both nationally and abroad. They have been selected by the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, The Today Show and The Book of the Month Club, and have been optioned for both television and film.

Walker lives in Connecticut where she manages her busy household.

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Haven't you always wanted to be a twin? The bond they share is unlike any other sibling connection.

To an outsider, Fern and Rose appear to be as close as only twin sisters can be. Of the pair, Rose is the more responsible one—she has a home and is trying to start a family with her husband—whereas Fern, the librarian, is more of a free spirit who avoids social interaction. But one thing is certain, as different as they are, they are completely loyal to one another. Especially Rose who always protected Fern from their sociopathic mother. She hid her true nature to everyone else, but Rose could see her for who she truly was.

Years ago, Fern did a very bad thing. And Rose, being her protector, has never told a soul. So Fern decides that she is going to help her sister achieve her dream of having a baby. But Rose is becoming concerned with the choices Fern is making—they all have a terrible outcome. What Rose doesn't realize is that Fern is discovering all the secrets that she has been keeping...and that their mother might get the last word after all.

Told from alternating points of view between Rose and Fern, The Good Sister is a gripping domestic thriller with razor sharp writing and perfect pacing. With Hepworth telling both sides of the story, the reader questions the women's character. Is Rose really the protective sister, or is she controlling and cunning? And what about Fern? Is she a sociopath like their mother?

I have nothing but effusive praise for Sally Hepworth's novels and this book is no exception. Her characterizations are rich and layered, as are the family dynamics. The Good Sister is more than just a story about the bond between sisters, it is a character driven thriller that will have readers anxiously turning pages to its stunning conclusion.

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SALLY HEPWORTH  is the author of six books, most notably The Mother-in-Law. She has been featured in media outlets that have included USA Today, The New York Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Hepworth is based in Melbourne, Australia.

The Night Swim: A Novel by Megan Goldin

A special thank you to Edelweiss, NetGalley, Macmillan, and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you also to St. Martin's Publicity Group for the opportunity to be a part of the Blog Tour.

What is the price of a reputation?

Rachel Krall is a household name thanks to her true crime podcast, Guilty or Not Guilty. She is used to being recognized by her voice so when she finds a note addressed to her on her windshield, begging for her help, Rachel can't help but feel uneasy.

Season Three of her show takes Rachel to Neapolis, a small town that is divided by a devastating rape trial. The town's golden boy—a swimmer on pace to qualify for the Olympics—is on trial for raping the police chief's granddaughter. Rachel immerses herself into the case by conducting interviews and her own investigation for the podcast. But she still keeps finding more letters in the most unexpected places. She is being relentlessly followed by someone that wants Rachel to look into what happened to her sister twenty-five years earlier. On record, Jenny Sills drowned, but whoever is behind the letters is convinced that it was murder. Rachel starts poking around and asking questions, yet nobody wants to answer them. With the two cases looking more and more similar, the past and present collide in a shocking twist to reveal what really happened to Jenny.

In Goldin's newest thriller, she examines whether or not past wrongs can be put right. Using an epistolary narrative style, the story unfolds through podcasts and letters as well as the actual trial. For the most part, this is effective, but there are times where it felt bogged down.

At times The Night Swim is a heavy book, especially with the sensitive topic of rape and Goldin handles it with the utmost care. The trial scenes are not for the faint of heart—they are an accurate and necessary comment on victim shaming. This book is raw, it is real, and it is harrowing. What it is not, is a thriller—it is a slow burn mystery with legal undertones.

Deftly plotted and well-sculpted, this is a solid sophomore effort from Megan Goldin.

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MEGAN GOLDIN worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she
covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia.

She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to
Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs.

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Q&A with Megan Goldin

Your previous novel, The Escape Room, was set in the world of Wall Street high stakes investment banking. How did you decide to set your next book in a seaside resort community?  

For me, part of the pleasure of writing is to explore characters, places, issues and even writing styles. When I finished writing The Escape Room, I was interested in expanding my horizons as a writer rather than embarking on a new novel that would  tread similar ground to The Escape Room. I'd been reading about several sexual assault cases going through the courts and I was interested in exploring some of the issues in my fiction. Not just about sexual assault itself but about the judicial process and the effects of it on families. As for my choice of location, my process is that I sit down and start writing, and let the story unravel in a very organic way. So when I started writing The Night Swim, the setting sort of chose itself!

Rachel, the main character in The Night Swim, hosts a true crime podcast.  Are you a fan of those types of podcasts yourself?  Why do you think they're so popular these days? 

I love podcasts and I listen to them often, while exercising, cooking and driving. Of course among the podcasts that I enjoy most are true crime podcasts although I also enjoy history podcasts and current affairs podcasts as well. True crime podcasts are popular because people are fascinated by the dark side of human nature. Like many podcast listeners, I became a fan after listening to Serial. I quickly became addicted to other podcasts as well. The biggest problem right now with true crime podcasts, and podcasts in general, is that there are so many fantastic ones around. I wish I had more time to listen to them all.

What made you decide to write the book from a dual point of view?  Did that make it easier or more challenging to explore the parallel storylines? 

It's actually quite challenging writing from multiple points-of-view as each narrative has its own 'voice' and style  so it's quite a complicated process. I often start my writing day by spending the first couple of hours just reading back on the previous chapters of that particular point-of-view so that I can get the 'voice' back of the character before I start writing.

Are courtroom scenes difficult to write?  How do you keep the energy or tension up? 

I've read novels and watched movies with terrific courtroom scenes over the years. When done well, powerful courtroom scenes are among the most memorable scenes in films and books. So I have to admit that I rubbed my hands with glee when I had the opportunity to write the courtroom chapters. It's almost as if I'd been working towards writing those chapters my entire life!

The tight-knit town in the story is torn apart over charges that the town's "golden boy" brutally attacked a young woman.  Were there any real-life cases you drew from to tell this story? 

There wasn't any specific cases that I based the novel on but there were many sexual assault cases that had been in the news over the years that I had read about. Many of them left a deep impression. When I started writing The Night Swim, I went back and read courtroom transcripts from some of these cases as well as other cases that came up in my research. I also read, watched and spoke with as many people as I could in order to get an insider view of what happens when these cases are brought to court.

The parallel storyline involves someone (Hannah) leaving mysterious notes for Rachel, begging her to investigate their sister's death from decades ago.  Why was their approach so secretive, and at first, vaguely threatening? 

Hannah had a traumatic childhood because of what happened to her mother and sister. She never really recovered from those childhood traumas so she was understandably wary about whether her story would be taken seriously. She was a fan of Rachel's podcast and she truly believed that Rachel would get justice for her sister if she only knew what had happened, but she also knew that she needed to find a way to connect with Rachel and get her attention. Following Rachel, and leaving messages for her was her way of connecting. Hannah was so focused on getting to the truth about what happened to her sister that she didn't realize that it might be perceived as threatening.

The Night Swim looks at how sexual assault victims who come forward often face an equally traumatic ordeal with the investigation and publicity. How did you portray this with sympathy and care, while still keeping the pages turning? 

I tend to put myself in my characters shoes when I write so I found it emotionally gruelling to write some of the chapters related to sexual assault in The Night Swim. I felt an enormous obligation to be as accurate as possible about what sexual assault survivors and their families go through. So I did as much research as possible and wrote, rewrote, edited and re-edited those scenes many times over. I did my very best to write it with the respect and sympathy that the subject matter deserves as it's a truly harrowing trauma that affects people for the rest of their lives.

A nightingale makes regular appearances throughout the book.  Are you a bird lover yourself?  What made you include that in the story? 

As part of my research, I'd read about the Greek myth of Philomela. She was raped and then silenced when her tongue was cut out and eventually turned into a nightingale. There are various interpretations of the story but some suggest that the silencing of Philomela symbolises the silencing of women over the centuries. So that's how the nightingale found its way into the book. As for whether I'm a bird lover: I'm living in Australia right now and we have magnificent wild parrots and rainbow lorikeets which are the most stunning rainbow colored birds that live in the trees by my house. We're currently locked down due to coronavirus so it's somewhat liberating watching the beautiful Australian birds fly around freely even if we are stuck at home.

I hear you just got a new puppy to help you and your family get through the lockdown in Melbourne.  Tell us about her! 

I jokingly call her our lockdown puppy but in truth we'd been thinking of getting a puppy for a long time. She is a Labrador puppy and we were lucky to get her because in Australia there is such a demand for dogs right now that there are few rescue dogs available and pedigree breeders have multi-year waiting lists. My beloved Lab cross died of cancer a few years ago and I'd been waiting until my kids were old enough to get a new puppy. I volunteer to care for temporary guide dog puppies so our new puppy was always going to be a Lab of some description. They are beautifully natured dogs although they spend the first year tearing the house apart as they chew everything in sight. My last Lab ate books from cover to cover. With the pressures of the lockdown and the effect it has on kids, it's a welcome distraction for my kids to have a puppy to help raise.

The Jane Austen Society: A Novel by Natalie Jenner

A special thank you to Libro.fm and Macmillan Audio for an audiobook listening copy, and NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Chawton, a village in England, is famous for being the final home of Jane Austen. A hundred and fifty years later, it is still home to a few of her distant relatives. When the last pieces of Austen's legacy are threatened, an unlikely group forms in the efforts to preserve Austen's home and legacy. These people—a labourer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Jane Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they band together to create the Jane Austen Society.

This powerful and moving debut is a fictional account of one of England's most celebrated authors. Jenner's appreciation and enjoyment of Jane Austen is apparent—she shares the same joy of Austen's writing with her characters. 

Natalie takes the utmost care in developing her large cast. She fully fleshes out their backstories and connections to one another. This is some of her strongest writing—these relationships that she creates rival those in an Austen work.

The Jane Austen Society is an exploration of the resilience and strength of the human spirit in times of great tragedy and loss. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book will delight historical fiction and Austen fans everywhere.

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NATALIE JENNER obtained her B.A. and her LL.B. from the University of Toronto, where she was the 1990 Gold Medalist in English Literature at St. Michael's College, and was Called to the Bar of Ontario in 1995. In addition to a brief career as a corporate lawyer, Natalie has worked as a recruiter, career coach, and consultant to leading law firms in Canada for over two decades. 

Jenner was born in England and emigrated to Canada as a young child. Most recently Natalie founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

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Q & A with Natalie Jenner*

GWR: How many hours a day do you write? What does your writing process look like?

NJ: When I am working on the first draft especially, I write every morning from 5 am to 7 am, awakened against my will by my characters already in mid-conversation with each other. I love writing very early in the day because that’s when I face the least risk of interruption—or distraction—by the world outside. I will spend more time later in the morning, after breakfast and exercising, going over the new material and editing it until I am satisfied enough to move forward again. The rest of the day I spend on twitter. Not really. But sort of.

GWR: Are you a pantser (fly by the seat of your pants) or a plotter?

NJ: Completely flying by the seat of my pants! When I start the first draft, I don’t have any idea of what is going to happen from one word to the next. I write, day after day, seven days a week without a break, in order to find out what is going to happen. It’s a very exhilarating way to write. Your characters will surprise you, and misbehave, and you will discover twists and turns—and even larger themes—that your own creative subconscious mind has already been setting up throughout the text without you even knowing. For me, the first draft is like a drug, a dream—revision is the penance for the fun of the first draft.

GWR: How did you come up with the concept for The Jane Austen Society? What was the inspiration?

NJ: Following a very sudden and extremely harrowing medical diagnosis for my husband a few years ago, I had been reading a lot of books by and about Jane Austen as I often due in times of stress, as well as watching a lot of Escape to the Country and dreaming about far-off bolt-holes in England! Over time I found myself becoming very intrigued on an intellectual level by Austen’s unique ability to soothe my emotional pain. Through my reading, I was also inspired by how Austen’s cottage in real life was saved by a society set up by very regular, local villagers, and by how letters, artifacts, and places can help future generations understand the great geniuses of our past. Finally, as a former and recent bookshop owner, I had been inspired by the many moments of connection in my shop, whether with me or between customers, over a shared love of books. All of this coalesced into my wanting to explore how books can comfort and connect us, despite seeming differences, as well as the question of who gets to write, affect and change history.

GWR: Do you have a favourite character in this book?

NJ: I bit off a lot with eight main characters in this book, and I don’t think you do that as a writer unless you are going to love and be fascinated by them all. But if I had to pick one, it’s probably Evie. She is the only character based at all on someone real (my daughter, who was exactly Evie’s age when I was writing the book), and recently I realized Evie is also an homage to my self-taught mother (one of the delayed discoveries we pansters get, even years after writing). Both these women in my life have a strong educational bent, the ability to become very single-minded in focus, and a refusal to be beaten back by bad luck in life.

GWR: What character did you sympathize with the most and did that change while writing the book?

NJ: I sympathized tremendously with all my characters because, looking back, I now see that I was unconsciously using them to work through my own challenges involving my husband’s medical prognosis, which remains challenging and unclear. That intense relatability and osmosis for me with my characters is probably why my sympathies never flagged or changed. But if I had to pick one, I would say I sympathized the most with Adeline the schoolteacher, because she is given an excruciating level of loss to cope with—more than most humans will ever have to survive. And her owning of her grief—while internally fighting to not let it overcome her—emotionally affected me throughout the entire course of the book.

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write?

NJ: As a pantser, I find the chapters just flow through me, especially in the course of that first draft. It’s a magical process actually (in case anyone is wondering why writers do what they do, that “being in the zone” feeling is pretty intoxicating!). But I would say that the most emotionally difficult scene for me to write was when Adeline is so immersed in her grief, that you can see how cut off she is from any real or authentic connection with others. I also found the Christmas churchyard scene with Dr. Gray, where he contemplates the mistakes he has made as a doctor and as a man, very difficult to experience alongside him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I first heard the audiobook version of those two scenes, narrated by the British actor Richard Armitage, that I found myself brought to tears for the first time.

GWR: Tell me about the research you did for the novel?

NJ: Well, I sort of back-ended into this book because most of the research was done before I even had an inkling that I was going to return to writing after a ten-year break from trying to get published. In addition to all the reading by and about Austen that I mentioned above, I also took a trip to Chawton, the village in England where she had spent the final decade of her life, to essentially walk in her footsteps and pay homage to her for helping me through such a difficult time in life. Looking back, I now see that being in this very peaceful, beautiful, and historically significant place inspired me both emotionally and creatively. After that trip, I continued to read more about Austen herself, her own process as a writer, and her own internal struggles. Then, for my 50th birthday, I treated my daughter and myself to our first Jane Austen conference in Philadelphia, and the theme was her final novel Persuasion, particularly how grief runs through it. All of those experiences fused together to provide a very strong, emotive and almost intuitive feel for Austen that pretty much fuelled me the entire time I wrote this book.

GWR: How did you balance crafting a good story against historical accuracy in terms of character development?

NJ: I think I got lucky on this one. Because I had done what turned out to be a year of unintentional research, when I did feel that creative impulse to write again, I was able to keep all that completed research both in the back of my head and behind me, so-to-speak. It acted more as a whisper in my ear as I wrote, rather than something looming that I had to manage or contemplate in terms of accuracy. I focused the entire time on the characters, what was driving them, and their potential conflicts with each other, and used the historical knowledge I had unintentionally acquired to enhance their believability and create atmosphere and tone, rather than as an element itself of the plot.

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be?

NJ: That writing a book is not about getting published. It’s about developing a strong skill-set, a muscle, an intuitive radar for the mechanics of a story well told. And inspiration will come when it comes—even then, there is still no guarantee that it will be the kind of inspiration that will make your story resonate commercially and lead to outside interest. The only thing you can control is to make space for writing in your life, and to practice and develop the skill-set required, so that the minute inspiration strikes, you are ready for it.

GWR: What are you working on now?

NJ: I am working on another work of historic fiction, although I can’t say too much about it yet (partly because I am wildly superstitious while working on the first draft!). But as with The Jane Austen Society, this book is also set in England in the past—this time early 1950s London, in a bookshop. My lips are sealed on the rest!

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.

The Half Sister by Sandie Jones

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

  

A family in the throes of grief is upended when a stranger arrives at their door. 

Every Sunday, sisters Lauren and Kate have lunch with their newly widowed mother. At one of these lunches, a woman by the name of Jess shows up asking to see Henry, her father. She is armed with DNA test results and claims to be their half sister. 

Kate and Lauren must come to terms that their parents have a dark past. As the fallout starts, it becomes clear that they all have lives built on lies and their family is not as perfect as it appears.

The Half Sister is told from the perspective of two sisters: Kate, a celebrity gossip maven who is desperate to have a baby with her adoring husband, Matt; and Lauren, a frazzled mother of three with an abusive husband, Simon. Jones writes Kate as being paranoid and distrusting, whereas she pens Lauren as more sympathetic towards Jess. 

It is human nature to make assumptions and Kate and Lauren do this to each other. We all want what we perceive other people to have without actually knowing how much of it is real. What we see externally we compare against our assumptions and perceived ideas of happiness, success, etc. Lauren and Kate really need each other but are divided by their notions of one another. 

Like The Other Woman, mothers play a huge role in the story. More specifically, how mothers prioritize the health and well-being of their children over everything in their lives. Women get lost along the way.

While the book is being categorized as  thriller, this is misleading. At best it is a family drama with a bit of suspense—it just doesn't quite thrill. Unfortunately, the miscategorization of this book is not the only problem. The narrative is rather repetitive and the characters lack depth. Things are touched on and not given the page time they deserve. For example, Simon was a necessary evil and contributed to the overall plot, but I wanted more from Simon and Lauren's storyline—perhaps this was a conscious choice due to the sensitive subject matter. I also wanted to learn more about Harry and felt that he wasn't fleshed out enough. 

That being said, Jones is a wonderful writer. She engages her reader in short succinct chapters and redeems herself with the ending. 

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SANDIE JONES has worked as a freelance journalist for over twenty years, and has written for publications including the Sunday Times, Woman’s Weekly and the Daily Mail. Her debut, The Other Woman was a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick.

She lives in London with her husband and three children. 

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Samantha Casey adores the Kempner School and its namesake owners, Max and Babette. She loves being the librarian at their elementary school—it is a beautiful Victorian building that is brimming with creativity and warmth.

The school suddenly loses its beloved leader and a new principal is named to take his place. He turns out to be Duncan Carpenter, a former colleague of Samantha's that she had such an unrequited crush on, she had to move away and start over. 

Duncan is nothing like he was. Gone is the funny and charming man, in his place is a militant leader obsessed with safety—he is destroying Max's legacy by turning the school into a prison. Sam is determined to save Kempner, the place that has become her home, before it becomes a thing of the past. 

Things You Save in a Fire was my first Katherine Center book and I was blown away.The pace and flow of the narrative was spot on and the writing was effortless and completely captivating. What You Wish For did not quite have the same effect. The story starts off as being very repetitive, going in circles, so it takes more time than necessary for story to flesh out. There is also a campiness about it which I especially noticed with Alice—she didn't add any real value to the narrative and I wanted more out of her relationship with Sam. These reasons are the difference between three and four stars.

But you really can't fault Center's writing. It is beautiful and careful when dealing with some of the more serious scenes, yet lighthearted and delightful. And I adored Samantha Casey immensely. Not just because she's a librarian with what sounds like a wicked sense of retro style, but because she is quirky and just plain good. 

This book is exactly what we need more of: finding joy. Thank you, Katherine, for this enchanting read that's full of heart, hope, and whimsy. I can't wait to read what you publish next!

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KATHERINE CENTER is the bestselling author of How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire, as well as Happiness for Beginners and The Lost Husband (a movie starring Leslie Bibb and Josh Duhamel).

Center lives in Texas with her husband and two children. 

The Dilemma by B. A. Paris

A special thank you to Edelweiss, NetGalley and Macmillan/St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Livia is turning forty and is throwing herself a party. And not just any party, one that she has been planning for the last twenty years. The only person that will not be in attendance is her daughter, Marnie, who is in Hong Kong. But Livia has been keeping a secret from Adam because of the effect it will have on their lives. She has decided to wait until after the festivities to tell him, and is actually relieved that Marnie won't be there.

Adam wants the evening to be perfect for Livia because she never got to have a wedding. Livia and Adam were married in a registry office when they were teens because Livia was pregnant and subsequently disowned by her parents. On the day of the party, Adam learns of some news that could not only ruin the party, but devastate their lives, so he decides to keep it to himself until after the guests leave.

The Dilemma is a departure for B. A. Paris in that it is more of a domestic drama versus a typical thriller. At its core is "the dilemma" and it is an emotional punch right to the gut. Are the characters acting out of love and wanting to protect their family, or deception and being self-serving?

I ultimately struggled with the book for both it being marketed incorrectly as a thriller, and with the fact that the dilemma itself was not believable—Adam choosing to keep a life-altering secret from his wife is simply not plausible. The book was also too long. There were pages and pages where nothing much was happening, or that it was repetitive. I don't know whether this was because the story only takes place over a day and Paris needed to fill the pages, or because of the limited setting which was their home.

Paris did redeem herself with the ending—it didn't end the way that I thought it was going to.

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B. A. PARIS is the internationally bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors, The Breakdown, and Bring Me Back. She has worked both in finance and as a teacher and has five daughters. The Dilemma is her fourth novel.

Paris grew up in England, but has spend most of her adult life in France.