The Sublet by Greer Hendricks (novella)
This was a what-did-i-just-read? kind of thing. It was weird and predictable and you know something big is coming but, to me, it didn't make sense. I think it was free? This was probably beginning of March though, so I don't really remember.
Death Row by Freida McFadden (novella)
Again: what-did-i-just-read? It released June 1st. I think it was free? I'm not sure about anything when it comes to this book. I'm actually still confused when I think about it that ending. I read the last section twice and everything, so good luck.
The Arrangement by Robyn Harding
This was really good. You have to suspend your belief a little bit but it was a gripping story and I liked the narration if you're into audio. It's a thriller with a few twists that take the story in a different direction than what you assume is going to happen.
Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
This was dull, tropey, and predictable. I caught the twists pretty early on and I found Cam to be a really dull person altogether. She is a literary agent who "just loves to read and lose herself in a book" and Luke is a ghostwriter who was her client and is now her husband and they have a baby together and she is going back to work after maternity leave and he holds 3 people hostage and kills two of them and completely vanishes and they never are able to ID these two men and 7 years later things start happening again. This takes place in London and everyone in the story, even the police, is very scandalized by the idea that guns apparently exist ...and this is why we won the war.
This was...not great. I like her writing but there was a twist that layered into the plot and it made it very non-believable. I like the idea of "the tenant" but I didn't like the way it was executed in this story.
Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health by Marty Makary
Ugh. The peanut allergy chapter alone will make you rethink the first decade of the 2000s. I remember when I first went into classrooms, starting in 2007, peanut allergies were everywhere. I would say this is required reading for everyone, even if you might not agree with all of his takes (for example, the over-medicalization of birth doesn't really bother me...but I think we do over-medicalize our kids.)
Kill for Me, Kill for You by Steve Cavanagh
I fell for the 5 star reviews and used a credit on the audio. I got the sense there was something weird in the narrative and any time someone mentions 9/11 in a book, you know something is up (think: that Robert Pattinson movie from way back when). But...there's still like 3 hours of audio left after some twists and it got weird and new characters that didn't make any sense to me and a whole subplot was introduced with, again, 3 hours left. I didn't care at that point. I felt like I'd gotten the gist of the story by then.
TL;DR: this is not as good as they claim in the reviews. I've not read his other books but this was made out to be a Peter Swanson-style and it just wasn't.
The Housekeeper by Natalie Bertelli
Another one where I felt like I got the entire essence of the story halfway through. I also did not like the narration. I felt like this could've been a lot better without a narrator who sounds like a grizzled old woman but is supposed to be 30. I struggled a lot with the main character. She was awful and helpless at the same time. It was on sale on Audible.
An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and the Story of Bad Decisions by David Zweig
Required reading. If anything would make me pull out the f-bomb in polite company it would be the fact that we destroyed schools for political gain. That's the one sentence summary of what happened in 2020. President Trump tweeted "open the schools" in July 2020 and, all of a sudden, everyone in anti-Trump areas started closing down the schools for 2020-2021.
Having taught in classrooms that looked like that ^, I do not accept the false narrative that kids are resilient (they're not) and "if it saves one life". My blood pressure is going up just thinking about it. Some of the potentially best teachers I'd have ever met otherwise, unmasked (pun intended) themselves as not being able to think, reason, or use their brains in a way that moved the needle forward. I lost trust and respect for most educators I knew. Yes, silent lunch was real. No, I would never, ever, ever put my kids in school on a military base after what I experienced in 2020-2022. (And from what I've seen in 2020-2025, I would honestly not put them in school at all...)
I recently saw some pictures from the end of 2022, with everyone unmasked and un-distanced in a school I'd worked at in 2021. It's almost like "how dare they pretend none of that happened?". Those kids didn't learn how to read in first grade (they also had a rotten curriculum so that didn't help) because of masking and distancing. It just so happens to be where we are moving back to this summer and there's no way I would entrust my kid to that school knowing the terrible decision-making they are capable of.
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Currently, I was trying to make my way through Bald-Faced Liar by Victoria Helen Stone. It's not great. I'm 20% in and I don't care. Her Jane Doe books were great, so this is a disappointment. I also quit The Crash by Freida McFadden because I don't do books about pregnant women in precarious situations. I did start it but I couldn't keep up once "the crash" actually happened.
Clearly I'm in need of a recommendation: no rom-coms, thrillers preferred. I also think it's time to cancel that Kindle Unlimited subscription because everything I've gotten from there lately has been a bust.
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Progress so far this year:
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