Tag: reading

  • Jessica Knoll’s Helpless

    According to her new book’s publicity, Jessica Knoll’s Helpless, due out in July, is a “smoldering erotic thriller with a singular, mind-bending ending.” Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance look. This is the third Jessica Knoll novel that I’ve attempted to read; I’m going to try the The Luckiest Girl Alive…

  • Sad Girls: Paula Hawkins’s First Thriller

    I’m re-visiting Paula Hawkins’s 2015 Girl on the Train, which was adapted as a slightly shaky film starring Emily Blunt. Blunt is perfectly cast and holds most of the movie on her very capable shoulders, but the film version exposes a few weaknesses in the novel’s plotting while flattening out Hawkins’s more nuanced characterizations of…

  • Messy Middles: Maria Semple’s Go Gentle and Maria Adelmann’s The Adjunct

    “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” Epictetus While I usually finish reading novels before I write about them, I’m in the midst of a Big Edit of my own mystery novel, and that has me thinking about the…