New Scott Carson book on Edelweiss.
One of my favorite parts of the day, any day, was when we'd text each other that a new book by one of our authors had appeared on Netgalley or Edelweiss+. Sometimes the book has just been added so we couldn't request it yet, only stare at it hungrily until the request or download button had been added. Sometimes it was already available and that was pure magic. A book from the future just dropped into our laps.
The new Scott Carson is either called In a Town Like Yours or Lost Man's Lane, and again is either thriller or horror. I prefer In a Town Like Yours, and hopefully it'll be horror, though obviously I have nothing against thrillers. Where They Wait was so good though. Probably I should finally read The Chill.
I finished the new Simone St James the other day (Murder Road). V good, v murdery, but sad at the same time. Can you really be angry at ghosts who just want their stories resolved? Yes, it's terrible they're killing people, but grief makes people do strange things, even dead people. Also my brain keeps trying to sing it to the tune of Thunder Road.
Other new books I'm looking forward to are Safe and Sound (Laura McHugh), A Step Past Darkness (Vera Kurian), The Hitchcock Hotel (Stephanie Wrobel) and The Alone Time (Elle Marr.)
The spreadsheet of authors I keep track of has now reached 140. Only about seven of those are men. I should organize it a little better, condense the lists of books I've read into neat little lists, but I like to watch them spreading. Blue green for the books I've read. Fern green when I've been approved/acquired them. Gray when they've been newly added to Goodreads, Edelweiss, etc.
There are authors that have only one book that I check in on occasionally. Hoping they'll have something new. Is it better to have written one book and nothing else, or nothing at all? Is it worse?
I also read All Our Lies Are True (Lisa Manterfield) and it was...fine.
(Spoilers for All Our Lies Are True................................................................)
It took the main character a very long time to realize she was the one who'd accidentally killed her twin sister when they were kids and that her family had been keeping it from her AND medicating her ever since then. Anytime someone has a ritual of nighttime cocoa, or morning smoothies that they insist you drink, you know you're being drugged.
The strangest thing though was that it was set in England, written by an English author but it just didn't...feel like it. The author has apparently lived in California for some time. Either way it didn't satisfy the 'England book' want that is eternally there.
This problem is partly why I haven't gotten very far in Ruth Ware's latest either. (Zero Days). It doesn't feel like it's set in England, and I can't tell and it bugs me. But also the plot hasn't grabbed me like her other books.
Nothing new from Taylor Jenkins Reid this year. sighs sadly
Armistead Maupin on the other hand is releasing Mona of the Manor, the tenth installment in Tales of the City, and it does take place in England, so somebody is doing it right.
This has been Book Updates.