"With Friends Like These", by Alissa Lee

Five Harvard alumnae have played a yearly tag and kill game with each other for 20 years that has kept them connected to each other and to the memory of a roommate who died playing the game.

At the 20th anniversary reunion Wesley tells her friends that the money they had chipped in decades earlier has grown nearly $1 million…..In their minds, each woman equates the prize with freedom and soon secrets begins to emerge…….

My thoughts:

This is a very tense read that brings out the dark side of people when money is concerned. How one can be haunted by the ghost of a roommate who died, seeing her in odd places, thinking can she somehow seek revenge? Their imagination goes wild……

My feelings reading this book was all over the place and I had a very hard time getting into this story. I tried to push through it but I finally had to skip passages to reach the end, I was wasting too much time reading something I didn’t care for and of course my mind was constantly someplace else…it was time to give up and move on.

Having said this, by all means “With Friends Like These” is not a bad book. It is simply not my cup of tea but it may be yours.

I received this ARC from Atria Books via Netgalley for my thoughts: this is the way I see it.

"The Devil is in the Details", by Vicki Delany

Sherlock Holmes Bookstore Mystery #11

Short and sweet like the book:

I like reading Vicki Delany cozy mystery she always gives us a sweet touch and delight us with surprises and plenty of suspects.

Andy about to marry Jayne is throwing a birthday party for his beloved when during the evening Tina, old fling of his, and an uninvited guest plunges to her death in icy water. The big question: Was it accident, suicide, or murder?

Using her distinctive Holmesian methods Gemma goes into sleuthing mode and finds plenty of people who might have wanted the woman to drown. …..and the irresistible cozy chaos begins….

This story did not disappoint it is always a pleasure to revisit with Gemma Doyle and the gang. The main suspect being Andy, Gemma raced to prove his innocence. I like how she goes about eliminating or adding suspects to her list and prove she is right. And the plot thickens when a second body is found and more twists and turns are added to the equation making a cleverly twisty mystery, full of exes and mostly secrets to kept us guessing to the very end. It is not fast paced but keep a steady tempo all through.

Although this may be the 11th in the series, the story is fresh and the characters only change slightly. It is a fun and an interesting series easy to get into and one I look forward to rekindle with.

My thanks to the publisher Crooked Lane Books as well as Netgalley for this ARC.