Dear Readers, February was a great month of reading, all six books were four out of five stars, which has never happened. I read all six books from the TBR for the month. All the books I read were part of a series, some I really needed to catch up on. I read 1 science fiction, 3 mysteries, 1 horror, and 1 crime drama.  

Four Star Reviews:

One of Us Is Back by Karen M. McManus is the final book in the young adult thriller/mystery trilogy One of Us is Lying. I have enjoyed the series that started with books One of Us Is Lying, One of Us Is Next and the final book One of Us Is Back. One murder that was an act of revenge has started a whole slew of them. This book does a good job of bridging all the stories together, by flashbacking even before the first book started and what caused the first murder to happen that is tied to the new murders. The story weaves characters from both books pretty seamlessly and wraps up the unfinished story from the second book. The characters who were heavily involved with the plot of the first two books form a super group called the Bayview Murder Club. One of Us Is Back happens 3 months after the events of One of Us is Next. We get 3 main characters Nate, Addy, and Phoebe who we follow and we get flashbacks from Simon. The book does a good job of giving almost every character a moment but there are now too many to really give everyone justice. The book does give a good overview of the first two plots of the first books, which I enjoyed because I could not remember everything that happened. 

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose is a fun cozy mystery featuring Molly the maid, a girl who is on the spectrum and can not read emotion in faces. The Mystery Guest is the second book in the Molly the Maid series, the first book was simply called The Maid. Molly Gray is a fun character who is so sweet and disciplined, yet this is the second time she has dealt with and been accused of murder. This time the murder is a little more personal with Molly having met the victim when she was a child. The title The Mystery Guest could be taken as an unexpected guest, but in this book, it refers to a mystery writer who is a guest at Molly’s hotel. The mystery is set up very well with a lot of suspects you have to root through to get to the killer and the motive. I did not pick the killer in the end, I thought the novel was going differently. I was moderately satisfied with who the killer was at the end. This story is told the same way as The Maid where we go back and forth from the present to a flashback to the past. The pace of the novel was good and constant not too fast and not too slow. The humor was spread throughout the novel and usually was one of Molly’s sayings at an inappropriate time, which sometimes made the humor dark and I love it. The characters are what makes this novel special. The ending was satisfying it remained surprising and heartfelt with a possible new beginning for Molly the maid. Thanks to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for letting me read it free in exchange for a review.

City on Fire by Don Winslow is the first book in a gangster trilogy about Danny Ryan a low-level member of the Irish mob. Winslow writes gangsters and shady people on both sides of the law so well and City On Fire has a lot of them, that you will love and hate. This book is a character piece that analyzes a variety of different characters who have a bad side. This book has so many characters but Winslow can give them all unique stories and backgrounds to not confuse the reader. The beginning makes an effort to start slow and expand to its many characters, but I still felt it was too fast and a little confusing the way the second chapter expanded, Winslow being the great writer that he is I was not confused for long, in chapter 3 and 4 everything made sense and I was able to tell which member was in which gang and was never confused again. The book is about a gang war between the Irish and Italian mobs, and it starts in the dumbest way possible. When the war does start the story gets good with lots of twists, turns, and double-crosses. The ending was good and it had a couple of good twists at the end, it shows how Danny Ryan’s character reacts when backed into a corner.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells is book 4.5 in The Murderbot Diaries series. This story is short, very short at 19 pages. The story is just a catch-up on all the major things that have happened in the first 4 books leading up to book five Network Effect. The story quickly establishes the threat of what Murderbot and the team are trying to do, showing that one of the biggest corporations in the universe is corrupt and tried to have them killed because of a discovery the team made. Murderbot was supposed to be the killer but went against orders and now works to help the crew take down the corporation. Not all the crew exactly trust Murderbot but Ayda the team lead does and most fall in line. The story is short but it does its job well establishing the crew, what their mission is, how hard it is to pull off, and how dangerous it is.

City of Bones by Michael Connelly is Harry Bosch book 8 and book 11 in the Harry Bosch Universe that connects all Michael Connelly books. City of Bones is a slow-burn thriller that shows every detail of police procedure. We the reader know everything that Bosch knows when something unexpected happens we feel it with Bosch. The crime is personal for Bosch as he finds bones that belong to a child who was severely abused as Bosch was when he was a child. The pace is a bit slow but I found what was going on interesting as it looked into what goes into solving a cold case that happened 20 years before. The twists and turns make you think multiple people are the killer and happenstance and chance encounters play a part in the twists. The ending was satisfying but was not all that exciting. City of Bones balances the light and the dark, with Bosch starting a new relationship that makes him feel young again with the dark brutal murder of a child. This is the book that defined the Bosch and Chief Irving relationship that is portrayed so well in the show

Goosebumps: Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns by R.L. Stine is Goosebumps book 48 in the original series order. This book is really weird and quite scary. One of the top five scariest stories so far. The horror is throughout this book, there’s a home invasion scare (they make kids do push-ups so the scare does not last that long but at first it is scary) and a creepy old couple that wants to kidnap the kids and judge their costumes forever, and then the final horror the Jack O’ Lanterns who force the kids to trick or treat forever. The ending is really bizarre and weird, which is a little bit of a cop-out, but Stine saves it by having a sinister ending that is left to you the reader to determine if the character was joking or not. The final twist I would put in the top five of memorable final twists in the Goosebumps series so far.