At the moment I’m either flying through books in no time at all or I feel like I’m getting nowhere with them. I’m currently reading festive ARC number two, which it’s way too early for this I know, but I’m trying to be extra organised for it this year. Anyway, it’s on the shorter side but I’m feeling really stuck with it. It shouldn’t take over a week to read such a short book but apparently that’s my life right now. For this reason, I’m again only committing myself to a few reads next month.
Five Little Liars by Amanda K. Morgan
I’ve been itching to get stuck into a good thriller and as this one is on the shorter side, I’ve decided it will be one of my picks for August. Short thrillers can either be incredibly tense or way too rushed. I’m hoping this one won’t just throw the solution in there as it’s running out of pages, which happened with a recent read for me, but it will actually build and resolve well. Fingers crossed for the latter.
Synopsis: Nothing ruins summer vacation like a secret . . . especially when that secret is a dead teacher.
Ivy used to be on top of the social ladder, until her ex made that all go away. She has the chance to be Queen Bee again, but only if the rest of the group can keep quiet.
Tyler has always been a bad boy, but lately he’s been running low on second chances. There’s no way he’s going to lose everything because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut.
Kinley wouldn’t describe herself as perfect, though everyone else would. But perfection comes at a price, and there is nothing she wouldn’t do to keep her perfect record – one that doesn’t include murder charges.
Mattie is only in town for the summer. He wasn’t looking to make friends, and he definitely wasn’t looking to be involved in a murder. He’s also not looking to be riddled with guilt for the rest of his life . . . but to prevent that he’ll have to turn them all in.
Cade couldn’t care less about the body, or about the pact to keep the secret. The only way to be innocent is for someone else to be found guilty. Now he just has to decide who that someone will be.
With the police hot on the case, they don’t have much time to figure out how to trust each other. But in order to take the lead, you have to be first in line . . . and that’s the quickest way to get stabbed in the back.
Misdirected by Lucy Parker
Audiobooks have become quite the saving grace for me recently. If you’d told me this time last year that I’d listen to over 200 hours of audiobooks by the middle of 2025, I wouldn’t believe you. I listen to audiobooks almost every day at the moment. I’m seriously starting to love them.
Anyway, I definitely want to check this out because Nicola Coughlan is the narrator. I didn’t read the synopsis before saving it to my library. If you can get an actor I love to narrate a book I will listen to it. This does sound interesting though. I love books about stardom and the entertainment industry, it’s great escapism.
Synopsis: Hattie Murton never dreamed of TV stardom. A straight-from-a-fairytale encounter with a casting agent somehow landed her a part on what she’d thought would be a one-off pilot for Leicester Square, a bodice-ripping drama adapted from a bestselling romance novel. Buoyed by a surge in demand for romantic dramas, the show instead propelled its core cast to household-name status within a month.
Hattie tries to look on the positive side of all situations, but four seasons of brutal press, overly invested fans, and a cutthroat industry that’s never quite felt like the right fit would give even Pollyanna an edge of cynicism. And high on the ‘con’ list when it comes to her current and unintended career is having to share a set and some horrendously early starts with Anthony Rafe. Leicester Square villain. A-lister. Absolute prat.
In the new season’s scripts, it appears that her previously sane, rational character is about to lose her mind and begin an unexpected and unsettlingly graphic affair with the series villain. Forced into close—very close and very…intimate—proximity with the man everyone loves to hate, Hattie’s horror is matched only by Anthony’s drawling disdain. But when very real chemistry sparks during their scripted love scenes, Hattie begins to think the industry’s legendarily heartless Bad Guy might just have a pulse after all. And Anthony, for his part, is caught off-guard by the way his heart races when he’s around his aggravating onscreen lover.
As reality starts to imitate art a little too close for comfort, the world’s most unlikely couple might just have more in common than they thought…
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