Fond of Fonts

     Second thriller/suspense novel of choice for the year and Ruth Ware doesn't disappoint! I actually nominated this novel for January's choice for a book club at my work and I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this storyline. One By One  is a 2020 publication depicting a group of current and former coworkers taking a frigid getaway trip to the French Alps. With two ski chalet employees accompanying them during their stay, a weather-predicted avalanche causes the party to end with a serious note of survival . Ware develops the storyline through two POVs, that of Erin (one of the two chalet employees with extensive medical background) and Liz (a former employee of the start-up group staying in the chalet). Erin and Liz are portrayed as slight opposites, but they both take time throughout the storyline to sit back and watch what's occurring among the guests, which happens to be murder .     As each character is picked off one-by-one, (of c...

Another unexpected young adult novel in the works, lo and behold it's from none other than Jenna Evans Welch herself! Spells for Lost Things  follows an interweaving story between Willow, who's mother is within reach but metaphorically a million miles apart, and Mason, who's mother is anywhere else in the world besides right next to him. Evans Welch does a spectacular job introducing a hodophile, Willow - a young woman before her senior year of high school who finds herself in the throws of deciding she'd rather be anywhere else deemed "home" than next to her mother in their California abode created after a divorce from Willow's father. Her mother receives an unexpected notification that her twin sister has passed away and needs her affairs tidied up in none other than Salem, Massachusetts. It was the utterance of a twin sister that caught Willow off guard from her mother's admission, but the prospect of traveling to Salem was something Willow yearned...

 Adrienne Young delivers once again with her stand-alone novel, SAINT . The cover, similar to Fable & Namesake , catches the eye with a vivid profile of Fable's father, Elias. Accompanying Fable's father is his lifelong friend, Clove, who was also introduced in Young's other two novels. Better yet, it's the first look at Fable's mother and Saint's true love, Isolde, that brings a heart-wrenching jerk to readers when picking up the book and delving in for the first time. The two narratives coincide with each other, jumping from Isolde's and Saint's POVs throughout the novel. Readers get an inside scoop as to what it was like for Isolde to escape the unloving clutches of her mother, Holland. Whereas Isolde knew only kindness from her father, she knew treachery and deceitfulness from her mother. It wasn't until she found Saint that she was able to dive deep into the waters of trust and love. The same could be said for Saint when he first laid eyes ...

     Fredrik Backman's Anxious People  is a 2019 publication, translated into English in 2021. This novel was nothing I had expected it to be based on the synopsis of a desperate individual who turned to robbing a bank in order to overcome current life circumstances. The novel follows a number of characters and their current livelihoods; individuals "held up" as hostages in the middle of an apartment showing which took place before the New Year holiday. I was impressed with the attention to detail Backman was able to portray, not necessarily in backdrops of locations but between the different characters' thoughts/lifestyles throughout the piece. What I expected of an individual in the beginning was not relatable to what was uncovered/divulged to the reader towards the middle/end of the novel.     This novel did follow the actions of a woman (not identified gender-wise until late into the novel) who chose to rob a bank in order to retrieve financial means t...

 Diane Chamberlain's suspense novel, The SIlent Sister , follows a story told by Riley MacPherson - a school counselor returning to her childhood home to tie up loose ends of her deceased father's estate. Riley is presented as a young woman accustomed to the strained relationship w/ her brother, Danny, and reminiscing about her younger years with her pre-deceased mother. A major tid-bit to the storyline would be Riley's old sister, Lisa, who committed suicide when Riley was around two-years-old. A mere figment in her memory. Riley dives deep into her father's affairs, moving through estate sale items, years of paperwork and photographs of a once put together family when Riley was a mere blip on their radar. Among the cluttered chaos, Riley is met with a disturbed thought based on her father's collection of bluegrass CDs and band posters in his abandoned RV in the trailer park -- could Lisa be... alive ? Riley spends countless time throughout the days of tying togeth...

  Megan Miranda's novel, "All The Missing Girls", was a thriller/suspense novel I was happy to inhale from my TBR pile - literally (two days of reading straight through). The storyline follows Nicolette Farrell's life, from ten years prior to drastically moving out of her hometown and present day. I believe anyone can relate when Nic's character spends time reminiscing about how things were during high school vs how much things can change when becoming adults. But, what happens when something you did ten years ago starts to repeat itself - almost too much? It makes you wonder, are we really any different than how we used to be? Or have we just gotten better at masking it? Miranda does an awesome job, in my opinion, by introducing this story in backwards timeline sectioning. Nic's return is broken up into two/three weeks worth of a story (with longer portions towards the end of the novel) but Miranda works backwards in showing the jump between past and present...