Songs of Wine and Murder

 

Songs of Wine and Murder

By: Lynn Cahoon

Genre: Mystery, Cozy Mystery

Summary:

A battle of the bands festival has come to South Cove and it not only brings murder with it, but it also uncovers secrets. The Moonstone Beach and Band Blowout Festival becomes the backdrop for things not always being as they appear. Who dies? Who did it? Why? 

Lynn Cahoon doesn't just bring you number 15 in her Tourist Trap Mystery Series, but she also gives you a fitting welcome to summer. Overall, I felt like this book was the perfect opener of a new season. Not only am I welcoming the summer weather where I live, but so is South Cove. So, it was nice to visit some of my favorite characters as summer starts.

Engaged couple Jill and Greg sprinkle in the wedding talk throughout the book, but it all takes a back seat when Axel, the lead singer for one the bands competing is found dead- choked to death with a guitar string. It doesn't take long for talk to start, and with talk comes secrets that get revealed. Was Hans, another member of a competing band responsible? Hans just so happens to be the nephew of the Mayor's wife. Were strings pulled to get his band this far? He doesn't leave the best of impressions with his behavior, but is he the one who killed Axel? Fingers start flying at more than one band member as the investigation unfolds- including some pointing in the direction of Jill's friend, Matt.

Meanwhile, at the bookstore, Jill has hired a new overflow employee.  While she's amazing at her job, she has a connection to longtime employee, Toby. While he remembers her as his first love, and the one who broke his heart, she doesn't remember him at all. Why is that? 

Readers of Songs of Wine and Murder are in for a delightful, lighthearted visit to their beloved beach town. So, pull up your beach/pool chair and catch some rays while you catch up on the latest happenings in South Cove.

The Spectacular

 

The Spectacular

By: Fiona Davis

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to the life everyone has always expected they’d have together: a quiet house in the suburbs, Marion staying home to raise their future children. But instead, Marion finds herself feeling trapped. So when she comes across an opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes—the glamorous precision-dancing troupe—she jumps at the chance to exchange her predictable future for the dazzling life of a performer. 
 
Meanwhile, the city is reeling from a string of bombings orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed the “Big Apple Bomber,” who has been terrorizing the citizens of New York for sixteen years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. With the public in an uproar over the lack of any real leads after a yearslong manhunt, the police turn in desperation to Peter Griggs, a young doctor at a local mental hospital who espouses a radical new technique: psychological profiling. 

As both Marion and Peter find themselves unexpectedly pulled in to the police search for the bomber, Marion realizes that as much as she’s been training herself to blend in—performing in perfect unison with all the other identical Rockettes—if she hopes to catch the bomber, she’ll need to stand out and take a terrifying risk. In doing so, she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most. --bn.com

Fiona Davis is one of those authors where I can go into the book blindly and know I won't be disappointed. One of those authors who's book release you anxiously count the days down to. She's the auto buy you clear your calendar for the minute you get your hands on it. In my case, you stay up far too late into the night because you couldn't stop reading. That's how it's been for me with all of her books and her latest, The Spectacular, was no exception. Once again, I was putty in her hands and loved every minute of the story she told.

The Spectacular centers around Marion Brooks. Our main character has come of age in the 1950s. She's always felt like an outsider with her father and sister, Judy. Life after their mother's death was never the same. Judy took after their father, while Marion inherited her mother's love of performing. However, Marion's dream and that of her father's couldn't be more different. He has visions of her getting married to her high school boyfriend, Nathaniel, who will work alongside her dad. Her father envisions them all living under the same roof. Nowhere in her father's vision is Marion a Rockette. And when she dares to live out her dream, he refuses to support her. 

On top of the grueling work, Marion finds out just how hard it is to achieve the illusion audiences look forward to seeing. While her father has next to nothing to do with her, she makes friends with some of the dancers. Life for everyone is brought to a screeching halt when the Big Apple Bomber sits next to Marion's sister for a performance. From the stage, Marion watches the devastation unleashed when a bomb her planted in a seat goes off. Marion's dream has now become a nightmare she blames herself for.

When the police don't seem to make any head way, Marion enlists the help of Peter, a doctor one of the city's mental hospitals. He's created something called a psychological profile- the first of it's kind. Based on information he's given, he's able to give the police a better understanding of who they've been trying to apprehend for 16 years. When they get a less than welcoming reaction from the authorities, Peter and Marion look for their guy on their own. But can they find him? And can they do it before anyone else gets hurt?

Once I started The Spectacular I was hooked. I loved every minute of the story. I loved seeing Marion choose to live the life she wants verses the life her father things she should have. I loved watching her come into her own as she navigated the unrelenting pressure that comes with being a Rockette. I especially loved all the behind the scenes history Fiona wove into the story. Watching Peter shape who the bomber would be was incredible. Watching he and Marion hunt their guy down was engrossing. Mostly, I loved seeing how seamlessly Fiona Davis has, yet again, woven fact with fiction.

If you love historical fiction, Fiona Davis is an author you want to read. 

A Shadow in Moscow

 

A Shadow in Moscow

By: Katherine Reay

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

Vienna, 1954

After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing deep within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Upon her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth—and starts passing along intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.

Washington, DC, 1980

Part of the Foreign Studies Initiative, Anya Kadinova finishes her degree at Georgetown University and boards her flight home to Moscow, leaving behind the man she loves and a country she’s grown to respect. Though raised by dedicated and loyal Soviet parents, Anya soon questions an increasingly oppressive and paranoid Soviet regime at the height of the Cold War. When the KGB murders her best friend, Anya picks sides and contacts the CIA. Working in a military research lab, Anya passes along Soviet military plans and schematics in an effort to end the 1980s arms race. --bn.com

*** I was very fortunate to receive a complimentary copy of this book and all opinions in this review are completely my own. ***

The only way to start my review is to say, "WOW!" For so much of this book, I felt right there in the scenes. Katherine does a phenomenal job of describing the scene and giving you details that make you feel you're right there- in the middle of everything with the characters. The details she included with the undercover work and spy maneuvers just made the story leap off the pages!! I felt the suspense the characters felt and the tension, too. This story was incredible. Her research was impeccable and brought the story she created to life.

Ingrid is a dynamic character. Her story engrossed me from the very beginning. Her storyline started off with secrets and pretty much stayed that way throughout the whole book. In fact, she doesn't understand for years why her father is dragged from their family home and beaten. She learns later her mother was pushed down stairs and died in the same attack. She had no idea the truth of what her parents were doing, nor who they were. Once the truth is revealed to her, her life is forever changed. 

Her parents' legacy comes into play once Ingrid is married and about to have her daughter. A hasty marriage doesn't live out as she thought it would and she decides she wants better for her daughter. This involves secrets, spying, sharing political information against the Soviet Union. The very government her husband is devoted to. Years of dinner parties and being the perfect hostess give her access to conversations she would later relay to the British. Over the years, she becomes legendary. So much so, in fact, that only people know who she is.

Anya is given the rare opportunity to leave Moscow and study in the U.S. for a few years. There, she's exposed to an entirely different way of life. One that has hope, options, freedom. She can't unknow what she now knows once she comes back to Moscow. Suddenly, the differences between the U.S. and Russia are all she sees. Anya makes a firm choice of where her loyalty lies when she's informed the Dmitri is dead. While everyone says he was mugged and killed, Anya fears something is off.  Shortly after, she notifies a man she met through a college professor in the U.S. and begins to spy for them. 

This story was so action packed. No chapter was without a purpose in driving the story along. My only complaint was that it felt the first half of the book unfolded in a slow pace. Lots was happening, but it felt like it was taking awhile to get it going. For example, Ingrid doesn't even get married until 80+ pages in. Based on the book summary, that was what catapults her into spying, so I expected it to happen sooner than it did. Dmitri's death (the catapult for Anya's spying) doesn't happen until pages 139. I wasn't expecting these key events to happen so late in the story. 

However, once the ball got rolling you were rolling. You were glued. You wanted to see how each operation would go. Would Anya get caught? Would Ingrid? Seeing everything come to a head and unfold from there was intense and I couldn't wait to see how the book would end.

Thank you, Katherine Reay, for another amazing book. You captivated me with the story you wrote. I was torn between wanting to know what would happen next to not wanting the story to end.