Beguiling

The Heroine is a Woman

Revisado: 03-21-25

Although this book is #16 in the Detective Josie Quinn series, The Innocent Wife is the first audiobook by Lisa Regan that I’ve read.
It worked as a standalone although I had the feeling, like with any series, there was an ongoing back story.
Husband and wife marriage therapists, Claudia and Beau Collins have been idolized as the perfect couple made famous in their town of Denton by their local television show. The show is about to air their romantic 15th anniversary dinner when Beau arrives to join his wife and finds her dead at the dining room table.
This is a whodunnit with plenty of twists and turns.

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Many Troubled Marriages

Revisado: 03-17-25

If you’re looking for a good marriage in this group of neighbors, good luck.
Lizzie, an attorney, and husband Sam, an unemployed alcoholic journalist have a crippled marriage. Lizzie is working for a law firm in a high paying position. When applying for the job she failed to disclose that she was in financial distress, fearing that revealing that information would eliminate her as a candidate because it might make her susceptible to bribery or theft. She needs to pay off the indebtedness incurred when her husband had a drunken binge. Sam’s journalistic career began to decline when he was fired from his high prestigious job at the New York Times because he descended into alcoholism. Currently he’s unemployed.
Out of the blue Lizzie gets a call for legal help from an old college friend, Zack Graydon. Criminal law is not her specialty but she agreed to listen to his side of the murder of his wife Amanda he his charged with committing and promised to find more suitable representation for him. Zack, who is awaiting trial in New York’s notorious Rikers’ Island, refuses to consider another attorney and when Lizzie tries to withdraw from representing him he threatens to blackmail her which result in her losing her job.
Zack and his wife didn’t marry for love and in the eleven years they’ve been married things have only gotten worse with two exceptions, they are wealthy, attributable to Zack’s mysterious new start-up company, and their son Case.
Amanda is able to endure this loveless marriage because being a mother to their only child is so rewarding but then he moves across the country to attend a summer camp and she is bereft. In his absence. She really hasn’t made friends amongst her neighbors and the parents of her son’s private schoolmates but she has a chance to attend a party. For six years while their children and their schoolmates are out of town celebrating July 4th, gallery owner and her physician husband have hosted a sex party where anything goes and everything remains confidential.
After returning home from the party, Amanda is found dead in her home on the stairway. Blood is everywhere. Her head has been bashed in. It’s always the husband or is it?

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A Story Worth Telling

Revisado: 03-13-25

I have a very difficult time reading the stories, either fiction or nonfiction, about the lives of slaves. Such tragedy and misery only sour my mood and make me very resentful. How can any human being believe that slavery was a good thing? As a black woman, now aged 71, I am the beneficiary of the sacrifices of many who came before me, related by blood and bondage.
This is a story of a girl captured by slavers as she played. She is about the same age as I am now and she is recalling the times of her long life. She has been robbed of many things but held onto the fading memories of her family in the "before times", those times being in her village in Africa before she was stolen.
Not known for her beauty she had other gifts that eased her burdensome way. Her father permitted her to accompany him to the market city, dressed as a boy, as girls were not allowed on such errands. She had a proclivity for the sounds and meaning of other languages and this talent allowed her to be a translator. Later she learned the art of midwifery and the gathering of medicinal herbs and was much valued and sought after.
I listened to the audiobook and was rewarded with excellent narration.
Because the tale had many sad moments and because reflected in the story were the lives of my ancestors I can’t say it was enjoyable to relive a painful life, it was a story well told.

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Heart pounding excitement

Revisado: 02-01-25

For five years Grant Anderson has been earning his living as a boat builder in Derryfield, New Hampshire. Sarah is a 1st grade teacher and Grant’s girlfriend since his arrival in Derryfield. He listens attentively to her stories about her days’ events and her background but he doesn’t share much about his past. She’s becoming curious as to what he did before he arrived in town.
Grant‘s friend Lyle Boudreau is the captain and owner of Deep Sea Charter. Lyle, who has come down with a bug, asks Grant if he will stand in for him and take the scheduled client out on his boat. While out on the water Grant is confronted by Frederick Newman, the client, who announced that he has come prepared to kill him. When Newman pulled a gun and details his murderous plan, a struggle ensues and Newman is killed and his body is dumped overboard. When Grant returns to shore he realizes that his five years of living in obscurity under another name is over.
His real name is Paul Brightman, superstar performer at a New York City hedge fund. He meets a beautiful aspiring photographer who lives under her mother’s maiden to distance herself from the notorious Russian oligarch, Arkady Gawkin.

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Don’t Bother

Revisado: 12-16-24

I am mystified as to why this got such high ratings. It seemed like a story suitable for a high school freshman English class. This was a real stinker-too.

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Complicated but enjoyable

Revisado: 11-20-24

You need a scorecard to keep track of all the characters.
Story takes place in Minnesota and Washington DC
Characters:
Bo Thorsen - “Spiderman” Secret Service Assigned to protect the first lady, Kathleen “Kate” Jorgenson Dixon. She wants to divorce the president but if she does it may ruin his chances for re-election.
Kate’s secret: she had an incestuous affair with her uncle/metalwork artist. She was discovered by David Moses as she was quarreling with her uncle about ending the affair. She blamed David. David protested but because of his horrible background he was not believed. This incident ruined his life.
Clay Dixon - The President. The death of his trusted advisor, Allen Carpaethian, left him adrift. His wife, angry that he leaves her out of their agreement to be partners in his political life, wants to leave him.
Senator William Dixon - World War II hero; the president’s father; power obsessed overbearing politician.
His timid wife was an alcoholic who died at young age an unhappy women caused by the meanness of her father and the coldness of her ambitious husband. The Senator is insistent that his son win the election.
David Solomon Moses - “Nightmare” mental patient who wants to seek revenge on Kate and her father for ruining his life. He loved Kate as a teenager but she spurned his advances. He is a sociopath with stalking, bomb making and murdering skills. He injured the First Lady’s father by attacking the father in his apple orchard in Minnesota. The accident results in Kate returning to Minnesota to attend to her father.

The Devil’s Bed refers to a torture site where David Moses, working for the government, had been broken.

Tom Jorgenson - Kate’s father; former Vice-President, returned to Wildwood, the family apple farm in Minnesota.
Annie Jorgenson - Tom’s sister; judge; age 70s
Nell - The cook at the apple farm.
Diana Ishimaru - Head of the Minnesota Secret Service field office.
Secret Service Director Stanton - (Washington DC)

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The ending was too abrupt

Revisado: 11-18-24

Knowing about the loyalty of fraternity brothers, I could see the situation of young Black fraternity brothers returning to school getting stopped by the police. I can also believe how they could be incarcerated for months prior to trial. The story held my interest and being able to predict the outcome with the only question was how it would be constructed when I finally got to the ending. My reaction was: what? What happened? Did I miss something? It was as if the publisher told the writer it had to be finished today and the ending was abruptly terminated.

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This is the one for you if you like plenty of twists and turns

Revisado: 11-14-24

If you’re going to read this novel, and I suggest that you do if you want a roller coaster ride of twist and turns, you’re going to need to have a notebook. It is a complicated story with interwoven stories and people who have more than one name and it’s terrific.

Let’s begin with Simon Peter Tobias. A geeky law orifessir up fir a tenured professorship. Dean Comstock, his boss, wants to fill the slot with the relative of a wealthy benefactor. Simon resists the pressure from Comstock who is threatening to blackmail him by releasing information that strongly suggests that Simon murdered his father for being unfaithful to his dying wife. On his mother’s deathbed he promised her that he would marry and have children.

Next, we have Victoria Tobias. She’s married to Simon. If she stays married to him for 10 years, she is entitled to $21 million. Simon and Vicki are in a loveless marriage, but they stay together in order to get the money in the trust fund. But Vicky has a secret. She has stolen the identity of a dead woman named Vicky. Vicky is only nine days away from getting $21 million. Simon on the other hand has fallen in love with his married ex-girlfriend Lauren Lemoine Bettincourt.

Enter Christian a conman whose real name is Nick Newsome. His scam is to woo wealthy married women, get them to divorce their husbands, get a sizable divorce settlement then Christian would steal their fortune then disappear. Vicky seeks Christian’s services as financial advisor in anticipation of getting the $21 million dollars.

There are a lot of other characters and nobody is who they seem.

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What a disappointment

Revisado: 11-08-24

The final book in The Perfect Nurse trilogy is not Daniel Hurst’s best work. Maybe part of the blame rests with the robotic narration of the audiobook. The lion’s share of the blame lies with the central plot being the overused condition of amnesia suffered by Darcy, the central character, resulting from a car accident. Her family are medical professionals: retired father is a doctor, retired mother was a nurse and sister Pippa is a nurse who at one time worked at the same hospital as Darcy. For such smart people they are pitifully harebrained, none more than Pippa, who goes to laughable lengths to protect her sister.
A series of blunders and unintended murders causes the family including Pippa’s reluctant husband and her 4 year old son to flee their homes in suburban Chicago for a secluded cabin in the woods. Darcy flees her Florida due to an accidental murder there and takes a bus ride to her parents’ Chicago home in search of her family. Gradually snatches of her memory come back and the story takes off in some totally implausible directions too preposterous to detail.
Running through the storyline is an homage to the profession of nursing.
Conclusion: this trilogy is disappointing.

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Offensive overuse of the "N" word

Revisado: 11-06-24

As an African American, each time I heard the word nigger spoken so authentically in the audiobook book of The Quiet Game, I cringed as if slapped each time I heard it. I tried to remind myself that among Southern Whites it is used very freely and after all the story takes place in Mississippi where Blacks have long been accustomed to hearing this loathsome epithet. With this in mind, I don’t think I can separate my intense negative reaction and just look at the story itself but I am writing this review so when I look back over my 2024 reading goal, I’ll remember the story.
The central character, Penn Cage, a successful prosecuting attorney in Texas, grieving the death of his wife, returns to his hometown in Mississippi with his 6 year old daughter Annie. He is welcomed by his parents and can live with them until he adjusts to small town life where his father is a well respected physician and his mother is well known for her general goodness. Ruby, their Black maid of 35 years, the stereotypical Mammy character, is overjoyed tp see her surrogate son and his precious little girl. He becomes reacquainted with, Livvy, his high school love who also relocated from Atlanta to look after her ailing alcoholic mother. Livvy is perfect in every way. Her parents are town royalty. Her father, a former judge is richer than cream and of course he is as corrupt as Livvy is beautiful, smart and charming.
But everyone in town has secrets and Penn is pulled into a swirl of corruption, rape, and murder.

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