Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney
Length: 295 Pages
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Trigger Warnings in this book for Nefarious Goings on Typical of a Mystery/Thriller, Cheating, Mentions of Animal Neglect

"Can a weekend away save a marriage?"

Alice Feeney has been on my radar for a while now, but when I want to pick something up I'm usually more drawn to Fantasy and Historical Fiction. However, her newest novel, Rock Paper Scissors, was an option for my September Book of the Month, and I couldn't resist. I mean, a mystery set in snowy Scotland, inside a supposedly cursed chapel, sounded too good to pass up! Happily, I can say that Feeney has made a loyal fan out of me!

Amelia and Adam are at the end of their marriage. He spends most of his time adapting novels into screenplays, is glued to his phone 24/7 and suffers from prosopagnosia, which leaves him face-blind and unable to recognize even those he holds dear. She prefers dogs to people and works at a rescue and lost both of her parents to a car accident before she was even born. They think they know everything about each other -- but do they really? A trip to Scotland, won by Amelia in a raffle, seems the perfect antidote to their marital problems. 

Told in interchanging chapters from Amelia's POV, Adam's, the mysterious Robin, who lives in a thatched cottage outside Blackwater Chapel, and anniversary letters written from wife to husband every year, this is a tightly plotted thriller that will have you guessing until the very end. Alice Feeney is one of the best mystery writers I've ever read, and this book is so original and a breath of fresh air for the genre! 

It was exactly what I was wanting: something atmospheric and gripping, perfect for the holiday season.

Book Review: The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke
Length: 368 Pages
Genres: Mystery and Paranormal
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

A special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an ARC of this book!

Trigger Warnings in this book for Violence, Gore, Body Horror, Death of a Loved One (Cancer) and Sexual Coercion (17 year old of a 15 year old)

This year I've made a concerted effort to get my Halloween celebrations started early and to get as much spooky reading in as I can! It seems that, without any planning on my part, I've picked books mostly about witches. I love a good witch film/show/book, but honestly, they can are very hard to pull off, usually falling on the side of cheesy instead of creepy. Happily, that is not the case in C.J. Cooke's newest book!

I was immediately drawn to this novel, set on the mysterious isle of Lòn Haven, Scotland, not only because of the fabulous backdrop but because it promised mysterious disappearances and lighthouses and witch trials (did you know that Scotland experienced four major witch hunts, between 1590-1727?), all things I'm absolutely crazy about. Told through various sections, from the POVs of single mother to three girls, Liv, who has arrived on the isle to paint a mural in the crumbling lighthouse in 1998, Sapphire, also in 1998, her eldest daughter, and Luna, her middle child, now pregnant in 2020. Luna is still desperately searching for her two sisters who went missing all those years ago on Lòn Haven, along with their mother, and can't reconcile her few, happy memories with the woman who abandoned her -- and possibly, killed her sisters. 

But then the impossible happens. Luna gets a call, saying they've found Clover, only she's the not grown woman she's expecting, but a little girl, the same age she was when she went missing twenty-two years ago. Could she be one of the fabled wildlings, faeries disguised as missing human children, borne of a witch's curse hundreds of years earlier? Or is there an even stranger explanation?

The Lighthouse Witches is not only teeming with beautiful writing, evocative of the beauty and wildness of Scotland, but is a thoroughly enjoyable story with a bittersweet ending that had me almost tearing up! I really, really enjoyed this one, and highly recommend you pick it up this Halloween season.