An egomaniacal movie director, an isolated island, and a decades-old murder--the addictive new novel from the bestselling author of Dear Daughter

Marissa Dahl, a shy but successful film editor, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline.

Some girl dies.

It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She'll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories.

But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it's supposed to be--or as it seems. There are rumors of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace.

Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself.

The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished.

A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction. (From the blurb)

My thoughts:

It's the same world as yours. I just notice it differently.

Meet Marissa Dahl, an endearing film editor, who might be perceiving the world slightly differently from you- she is clearly on the spectrum and has to work very hard to survive in this world of human interactions, body language, smiles, jokes, irony, meaningful looks and silences. Marissa is also brilliant at what she does. She lives, feels and breathes movies. She thinks in movie scenes. They are her anchor in this ever changing mysterious world.

Give me a movie and I'll find the meaning; I'll find the truth; I'll find the story. Sometimes I'll find all three.

When Marissa perceives Amy, her best friend / film director she has been working close for a very long time with/ flatmate needs some time and space for her relationship with Josh, Marissa with her characteristic sensitivity moves out. Now she needs to get a job as soon as possible and she can't be choosy. Her agent arranges an interview during which Marissa is shown a still and is asked to analyse it. Marissa correctly guesses it is from a true crime movie and is hired on the spot. Normally she would ask for a script, but the director is so well-known that she is willing to put up with a few eccentricities. She is whisked away onto an isolated island where the actual crime occured. The murder has remained unsolved. Everything about this production feels wrong. There an ex-SEAL who is providing security, nobody would talk about why the previous film editor was fired, and there are also weird accidents and mishaps. Marissa starts investigating.

My mind has a way of latching on to questions, like a dog with a bone. A wagon with a star. A Kardashian with a revenue stream. The only thing that'll work it loose is an answer.

I fell in love with Marissa and her quirky sense of humour. The events are narrated from her point of view, although there are also excerpts from a true crime podcast which features interviews with secondary characters. The podcast was created by Grace and Suzy - two courageous and extremely creative teenage girls, children of cooks working in the hotel/ production set, who took up the role of aspiring detectives and who managed to do things even an ex-SEAL with his own security agency couldn't have believed were possible. I love the way Marissa always behaved as a mature and responsible adult with them. There are other fantastic secondary characters you will enjoy reading about.
The book is full of names and movie references, which I didn't mind at all. To be honest, I had to look up a few of them. For me, in a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) and ironic way, it mirrored the way Marissa navigates the world that keeps throwing information at her which everybody seems to know about  and understand, while she needs to study it carefully before she can determine its relevance and significance.
Without giving away too much of the story, it is also a brilliant exploration of authenticity and its role in our culture.
Well-written, fast-paced, extremely entertaining, but also deep and thought-provoking, Pretty as a Picture was a delight to read. I will be looking forward to reading any future book written by Elizabeth Little and I wish this one all the success it deserves.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Viking for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

A police procedural introducing Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler, a cold case reviewer who lands a high-profile murder investigation, only to find the main suspect is his recent one-night stand . . .

When financier Gerald Cartwright disappeared from his home six years ago, it was assumed he'd gone on the run from his creditors. But then a skeleton is found bricked up in the cellar of Cartwright's burned-out mansion, and it becomes clear Gerald never left alive.

As the sole representative of South Yorkshire's Cold Case Review Unit, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is not expected to get results, but he knows this is the case that might finally kick start his floundering career. Luckily, he already has a suspect. Unluckily, that suspect is Cartwright's son, the man Tyler slept with the night before.

Keeping his possible conflict-of-interest under wraps, Tyler digs into the case alongside Amina Rabbani, an ambitious young Muslim constable and a fellow outsider seeking to prove herself on the force. Soon their investigation will come up against close-lipped townsfolk, an elderly woman with dementia who's receiving mysterious threats referencing a past she can't remember, and an escalating series of conflagrations set by a troubled soul intent on watching the world burn . . .
(From the book blurb)

My thoughts:
Firewatching is the first novel in a new exciting series featuring Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler. It was clear from the very beginning that the book is well-written and introduces a great cast of characters.
Adam Tyler works in the CCRU (Cold Case Review Unit and isn't particularly liked by his colleagues, because he actually gets results. Some of these cases benefit from the new technologies available to the police now, but mostly, in Adam's opinion, it is about a fresh pair of eyes looking through the notes and the evidence, looking and asking uncomfortable questions. Adam has a difficult family background and has gone through a rebellious teenager stage to end up following in his father's steps and joining the police force. He is still working on his family issues, but for now he feels more comfortable working and living alone. When his one-night stand Oscar turns out to be the only son of a man who disappeared six years ago and whose body was just found, Adam knows he should report a conflict of interest and get reassigned to a different case. Unexpectedly, his superior advises him leave the things as they are.  Adam also notices and asks to be assisted by a young ambitious policewoman Amina Rabbani who is eager to move to CID and whose insights and hard work prove invaluable in the course of this investigation.
The plot was quite complicated and I must confess that I didn't guess who the murderer almost until the very end. I enjoyed the first two thirds of the book more than the ending, which was very dramatic and refered to an old, but extremely tragic case of child abuse.
I loved the title of this novel- it is very nuanced and multi-layered, although discussing it here would give too many spoilers.
A solid police procedural that will be appreciated by the fans of the genre. I'll be looking forward to other titles in this new series.

Thank you to Edelweiss and G.P.Putnam's Sons for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

A ghostly feminist fable, Amina Cain’s Indelicacy is the story of a woman navigating between gender and class roles to empower herself and fulfill her dreams.

In "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor—social and erotic—but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one’s true calling. (From the book blurb)

My thoughts:
Indelicacy is a very unusual book. My conventional mind tried very hard and failed to put it within any time and place constraints, and then decided it didn't matter. As the blurb rightly suggests, there is something Victorian about it, something about male and female attitudes, the protagonist having people to wait on her and other people to entertain, or perhaps the idea that the only way to escape a life of poverty and endless floors to mop is to marry a rich man?

At the beginning of the book Vitoria works in a museum as a cleaning lady and a maid. She doesn't mind her life and enjoys an easy frienship with Antoniette and, above all, the possibility to admire paintings, landscapes, portraits and still nature, old and new ones, finished and unfinished ones- Vitoria is able to appreciate them all. She has a consuming need to write about the paintings she sees as if she is trying to carve out new imaginary experiences. One day she is noticed by a rich man who marries her after a very brief courtship. Suddenly, she is free to live a life of privelege in a beautiful house. Her requests are never denied, although she still has to ask for everything of any importance. This life of relative luxury wasn't something she wanted or cared about, it just dropped in her lap. Vittoria is trying to experience and make sense of it all- being able to write any time she wants, although her husband doesn't take it seriously, meeting new interesting people, dance lessons and the freedom of movement, sensual pleasures of making love with her husband Eventually she outgrows it and becomes stifled by the marriage without true companionship or understanding.

The writing is powerful in its seeming simplicity. Vitoria is ingenuine, selfish and honest. She doesn't want and doesn't see a need to conform to what other people around her expect her to be or desire. Extremely sensitive to every single detail, she rejects the notion of 'delicacy' in her quest for the truth of real experiences.

It is a very short book which can be read in under an hour. It left me feeling unsettled, as if I took a dive into deep sea full of mysterious shadows I struggled to make out, and then came up gasping for breath to realise that the world around me is still bright and full of colours.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the review copy provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than forty years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother's killer is uncomfortably close to home.

Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Ellery has experience with both troubled families and diabolical murderers, having narrowly escaped from each of them. She's eager to skip town, too, because her own father, who abandoned her years ago, is suddenly desperate to get back in contact. He also has a secret that could change her life forever, if Ellery will let him close enough to hear it.

Far from home and relying only on each other, Reed and Ellery discover young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They start tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer—one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn't about to give up now.
(From the book blurb)


My thoughts:
Although this is book 3 in Ellery Hathaway series by Joanna Schaffhausen, this thrille/police procedural works perfectly fine as a standalone. There is enough information and background, both factual and emotional, to understand both the past and the present of  the protagonists. The previous books are The Vanishing Season and No Mercy.
In All the Best Lies Agent Reed Markham makes an accidental discovery about his family that makes him question his relationship to his parents and his siblings.  It also makes him re-visit a 40-year-old cold case of a brutal murder of Camilla Flores who died of multiple stabbing wounds while her baby was nearby in his crib. Baby Joe Flores was adopted by Senator Angus Markham, became Reed Markham and grew up in a loving family that provided the best possible care and opportunities privilege can buy.
Ellery Hathaway couldn't have come from a more different background. Her father left his wife and two children and stopped answering his messages. When Ellery was abducted by a serial killer Francis Coben, John Hathaway chose to stay away. When Ellery's brother Daniel died of leukaemia, John even come to his funeral. Now he is trying to get in contact with Ellery who is keen to avoid seeing him at all costs. Ellery doesn't think twice. She is going to help Reed try to discover who exactly killed his mother, and she is going to stand by him, because the case is bound to be impossibly hard to investigate.
The plot is intriguing and although I had my suspicions as far as the identity of the killer was concerned, there were some twists I didn't anticipate. Joanna Schaffhausen's writing is superb. She created complex, well-rounded characters who keep evolving as they face new life challenges and make new choices.
The relationship between Reed and Ellery is complicated. He keeps thinking about the moment when he found fourteen-year-old Ellery and knows in some respects he was too late. 'He'd re-entered her life expecting gratitude and instead found himself hoping for forgiveness'. Ellery and Reed's understanding of each other's strengths and vulnerabilities and their desire to be there for each other is so powerful and rare.
Joanna Schaffhausen touches on family relationships, lies, secrets, and choices to hide the truth. She also gives her characters plenty of second chances and opportunities for healing and building a new life.
I am very glad to have discovered this compelling series with its fascinating characters. Highly recommended for all lovers of mystery/crime genre.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Minotaur Books for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

The Absolution is the third installment in Queen of Icelandic crime fiction Yrsa Sigurdard�ttir's series about the psychologist Freyja and the police officer Huldar.

The police find out about the crime the way everyone does: on Snapchat. The video shows a terrified young woman begging for forgiveness. When her body is found, it is marked with a number "2".

Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim, but who could have hated her enough to kill?

Then another teenager goes missing, more clips are sent to social media, and the body with a "3" is found. Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth is far from simple. The killer is not done yet. And is there an undiscovered body carrying the number "1" out there?(From the book blurb)

My thoughts:
Content/Trigger warnings: bullying, cyberbullying, suicide attempts.

This is my first book witten by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, but it won't be the last. The topic of this well-plotted and well-written police procedural was dark and painful, but we still need to talk about it.

Sixteen-year-old Stella has just finished her shift working in the cinema. She lets her workmates know her boyfriend is coming to drive her home and they happily leave her in their hurry to catch their bus home. While Stella is waiting and refreshing herself in the bathroom, she receives a snapchat image of herself from a stranger, and then she hears footsteps... A tall broad-shouldered man wearing a Darth Vader mask makes a video of Stella repeatedly saying 'Sorry, sorry, sorry' and sends it to all her contacts.

When the police hear from Stella's frantic boyfriend who was late by ten minutes and aslo received the terrifying videos, they start looking for Stella without much hope she'll be found alive. Among other witnesses, the police hear from Stella's close friends and it becomes clear that the girls are hiding something.

The series has two protagonists: Detective Huldar, smart, good-looking, messed-up, and a child psychologist Freyia who works in Children's Home and is used to dealing with traumatised children and adolescents. Freyja notices a girl, Stellas' classmate, who seems to have a different reaction to the news of Stella's murder. It turns out the girl was severely bullied by the angelic Stella and her clique. When Freyja suggests checking out this angle, the police are not convinced. Stella's body is found lying in a car park and there is a piece of paper with number 2 underneath. Does it mean there is Victim Number 1 whose body is lying somewhere? and where is Egill, another teenager whose abduction was accompanied by harrowing Snapchat videos?

One of my favourite books of all time is 'Cat's eye' by Margaret Atwood. Among other brilliantly explored topics, it deals with the psychology of a bully and possible reasons for becoming one. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir focuses on a different aspect: the effect bullying has on the victims' parents and this is why I got goosebumps on my skin. In her attempts to help the investigation, Freyja reaches to her own childhood and adolescence experience of being bullied and the effort it took to pull through that period of her life. She knows getting help is vital, but how often schools do not look too closely into suspicious incidents, knowing they'd be opening a can of worms, hoping the children will work this differences out? how often overtired and overworked teachers miss the signals until the situation becomes desperate or do not know how to deal with it? We live in a world where technology has given bullies more ways to harass and abuse their victims. It is important to be aware of cyberbullying and do everything possible to report and stop it.

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir rightly (and necessarily) points out, nobody (even the worst kind of bully) deserves to become a victim of horrific violence and murder descibed in the book, and the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, but it isn't easy to break the vicious circle which changes and scars everybody involved. A bully may become bullied and vice versa, as the brilliant ending to this gripping novel shows. There is also help and understanding you can reach for in people like Freyja who know how to listen and care to act.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Minotaur for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

Perfect for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Small Admissions, a wry and cleverly observed debut novel about the privileged bubble that is Liston Heights High--the micro-managing parents, the overworked teachers, and the students caught in the middle--and the fallout for each of them when the bubble finally bursts.

Isobel Johnson knows helicopter parents like Julia Abbott--a stage mom whose world revolves around interfering in her children's lives--come with the territory. Julia resents teachers like Isobel, who effortlessly bond with students, including Julia's own teenagers, who have started pulling further away from her.

Isobel has spent her teaching career in Liston Heights side-stepping the community's high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of Anti-Americanism and a "blatant liberal agenda," she realizes she's squarely in the fray. Rather than cowering, Isobel doubles down on her social-justice ideals. Meanwhile, Julia, obsessed with the casting of the high school's winter musical, inadvertently shoves the female student lead after sneaking onto the school campus. The damning video footage goes viral and has far-reaching consequences for Julia and her entire family.

With nothing to unite them beyond the sting of humiliation from public meltdowns, Isobel and Julia will find common ground where they least expect it, confronting a secret Facebook gossip site that's stirring up more trouble for this tumultuous, fractured school community.
(From the book blurb)

My thoughts:
It is always enlightning to see the world from a few different perspectives, so I found 'Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes' quite thought-provoking. Liston Heights High is a very realistic place with its pushy parents who fail to communicate meaningfully with their adolescent children, tired and overworked teachers who are only human, after all, and students, who are learning their lessons, not only in their subjects but also in life.
The topic of social media and their role at school is timely, but usually we see the students' side. this time we explore the consequences of a video going viral for an adult and her family.
Amusing, well-written characters I could relate to and a gripping story that got me out of my reading slump, Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes is a clever book with substance. Recommended.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Berkley for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.