#audiobookreviewer – Rosepoint Publishing

Mad Mabel: A Novel by Sally Hepworth #AudiobookReview – Dark Humor Literature & Fiction

in Dark Humor Literature and Fiction

Rosepoint Publishing: Five Stars

Book Blurb:

Meet Mad Mabel.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She’s lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years–longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

When a new little girl (talkative, curious, nosy) moves into the neighborhood and stops at nothing to befriend Elsie, her carefully-constructed life threatens to come crashing down as the secrets in Elsie’s past start coming to light. Who was “Mad Mabel” fifty years ago? Who is Elsie Fitzpatrick today? And if the past has a habit of repeating itself, who has the most to lose?

Told with Sally Hepworth’s twists, humor, charm, and heart, MAD MABEL is novel that weaves past and present together–through the power of justice and redemption, and all the way to its stunning conclusion.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press

My Review:

Oh I have greatly enjoyed this author previously in deeply suspenseful literary novels, the last one being Darling Girls. The lady can write. This one doesn’t carry that tension-filled nail-biting thriller genre quite like that one, but nonetheless, was unique and quite entertaining.

Yes, once again, a protagonist near my age—I loved it! And of course I was listening to the audiobook and expected to hear that querulous voice so often attributed to an octogenarian, but, thank you, while just a little sharp, it merely reflects the woman’s no-nonsense personality. She’s had it tough and the book will explain why. But not right away.

I loved Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick. She’s a great main character and oozes personality. It’s one of those tough hide, soft heart things and it almost immediately bumps up against the latter when seven-year-old Persephone moves into the neighborhood with her single and struggling mother, Roxanne.

Persephone drove me nuts and for awhile, I had the same go away reaction to her as did Mabel. Long after I was ready to kick Persephone to the curb, Mabel was grudgingly beginning to hide obvious tender feelings for the poor thing, needy and lonely as she was.

In the meantime, Mabel discovered her neighbor in his little home…dead. This will not go well with her history and as there was a bit of antagonism between the two, it won’t take long for that bit to be discovered. Mabel’s background includes a murder conviction when she was fifteen. Even in her old Australian neighborhood, will she never be able to outrun that history?

The author does a fine job of weaving dual timelines with little twists that tease the imagination and beg the question—was Elsie the unfortunate child of deadly circumstances, bad timing, questionable coincidences and circumstantial evidence? Can anyone have this much bad luck? Is she, after all, innocent?

I enjoyed the sense of humor, the dialogue, and the build of empathy for Elsie…and the kid, as well as the contradictions in how her neighbors perceived her. No one believed this. She took in the victim’s dog? She didn’t like that dog. This is some great storytelling and the twists at the end truly caught me by surprise. Loved it. Yeah, I’ve got to recommend this one to my book club.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good satirical plot that will keep you flipping pages and forgetting the main character’s age. As my good motobuddy used to say, “age is just a number.”

Many thanks to Lynne at Fictionophile for her recommendation and to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Book Details:

Genre: Dark Humor Literature & Fiction, Domestic Thrillers, Dark Humor
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrator: Hannah Fredericksen, Jenny Seedsman
Release Date: April 21, 2026

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Sally Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Good Sister and The Soulmate. Her latest novel, Darling Girls, was released in Australia in September 2023, and will be released in North America in April 2024.

Drawing on the good, the bad and the downright odd of human behaviour, Sally writes incisively about family, relationships and identity. Her domestic thriller novels are laced with quirky humour, sass and a darkly charming tone. They are available worldwide in English and have been translated into twenty languages.

Sally lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her three children and one adorable dog. She has recently taken up ocean swimming (or to put it more accurately, ocean dipping).

5 stars

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Editors’ Pick Best Books of the Year 2011

Book Blurb:

The beloved New York Times bestseller from acclaimed author Eleanor Brown about three sisters who love each other, but just don’t happen to like each other very much.

Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can’t solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father—a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse—named them after the Bard’s heroines. It’s a lot to live up to.

The sisters each have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents’ frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them…

My Review:

OMG! A book club book and I missed the meeting! I’ll never know if I’m the only one who found the book dull as gray paint! Surely, there must have been some kind of consensus on the characters (or lack thereof) and the plot (so trope).

A storyline quickly recognized by anyone who ever had a sibling or read about them, particularly of the feminine variety. Three sisters who couldn’t be more different in looks (were they described?), size, temperament, or intelligence. With a slight spread in ages, a deeper division of experience not only with home life, but all aspects of education as well. Basically, a plot of the difference in the experience of how each saw their position in the family. Their relationships all varied with each other as well as their parents.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown — The Weird Sisters – UK cover

The father is a well-educated Shakespearean scholar. The younger sisters can’t wait to escape their small Ohio town, the school experience, or the books. Cordelia, the youngest and a wild child pregnant with an unknown donor, is ostensibly back to help with an ailing mother. (Not) Rose, the oldest and the one who thinks it’s up to her to run the household—it’ll positively shrivel up without her control. And Bianca—a middle child as messed up as she can get. Does it even make sense to try?

Nope. I didn’t care for any of them. I did have serious sympathy for the mother, trying to survive cancer, but really for what? She was curious about the grandchild? As it was, the plot plods along, through months, through years. Was it years? Seemed like it. And thank heaven it does end. Everyone finds her happy ever after (maybe I shouldn’t always hope for that), and even the mother survives and the father goes on to continue quoting Shakespeare. I wonder if anyone cared.

The star rating at Amazon is currently 4 of five and at Goodreads 3.37. Once again, I have a difficult time understanding how it was picked as the best book of the year. I think it’s a solid 2 stars, but then again, I admit to getting bored easily and perhaps others saw it as classic family drama. I’ll have to go the extra half star for the fact that it’s been chosen as fodder for book clubs. Including mine. I’m sure sorry I missed that one!

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Two point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Family Life Fiction, Coming of Age Fiction, Literary Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Narrator: Kirsten Potter
Release Date: January 20, 2011

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Eleanor Brown is the New York Times, national, and international bestselling author of The Weird Sisters, Any Other Family, and The Light of Paris.

#ThrowbackThursday

Trust No One: A Thriller by James Rollins #AudiobookReview #InternationalMystery&Crime

Book Blurb:

Knowledge can be magic—until it falls into the wrong hands.

The ritualistic murder of a British professor at the University of Exeter points to a startling cast of suspects: his own students. All are enrolled in a postgraduate program covering the history of witchcraft, folklore, and spiritualism.

All evidence points to Sharyn Karr—an American student. Prior to the professor’s death, he had thrust a centuries-old book upon her. It appears to be the handwritten and encrypted diary of an eighteenth-century mystic and occultist, the Comte de Saint-Germain. The professor begged her to keep the text safe, ending with a warning: Trust no one.

Such a responsibility forces her into cooperation with Duncan Maxwell, a fellow postgrad and the sixteenth in line to the British Crown. Already, Duncan has proven himself a savant with encryptions. Unfortunately, the pair clash at every level, but they both need one another. Especially when they discover the book’s opening words: Herein lies the secret to my immortality. Come find me, if you dare.

As dark forces close upon the pair, she and her friends are forced to flee, pursued by law enforcement and hunted by a powerful cabal. In an explosive chase across Europe—from the Tower of London to Parisian chateaus to a fortress in the Italian Alps—Sharyn must learn the true secret hidden in Saint-Germain’s text. It will send her and the others across history and deep into the heart of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a secret buried at the roots of Western Civilization, a discovery that could topple empires and change humanity forever.

For what lies at the end of Saint-Germain’s diary is as shocking as its opening words.

My Review:

Definitely not what I expected. I read the author’s name and downloaded. Then I read the blurb. So, my month continues.

This one reminded me of the wild movie series Indiana Jones or the Da Vinci Code but in this particular novel there is that history of witchcraft and folklore, which usually draws me in. I found this novel to start in a rather slow to set-the-scene kind of way.

But it never hooks like Indiana Jones or achieves the pace. The plot is interesting and poses several questions. (Treasure?) The main character is a young woman carefully chosen to protect a book too valuable to leave with the professor who knows his ownership may warrant violence.

Realizing she may be in over her head, Sharyn Karr (American) enlists the aid of Duncan Maxwell (British). Predictably, they mix like oil and water, but with their heads together, they do present an indomitable force. The problem is, I didn’t really get invested in either. I’m not sure they were developed sufficiently for that—the focus is on the search for the secret in the book.

It doesn’t take long before the professor has turned up dead and the two postgrads realize they are in a world of hurt. They’ll flee with the book as they also try to decrypt it and determine that it is far more important than either initially thought. Are they looking for treasure, or is the treasure more a biological secret? Both?

I did enjoy the narrator who did a fine job with the French language. It was a fun little European jaunt sampling Paris and the Italian Alps until the two find themselves trying to survive against both factions (the black-hearted Brotherhood and the Guardians) deep in the limestone caverns of the Alps escaping through subterranean chambers of ice caves.

And I can tell you from experience that ice caves are no fun.

Perhaps lacking the visual thrill of the Indiana Jones flick, it didn’t always keep my rapt attention, although I give credit to the narrator for inflicting as much ferocity as he could.

Are they able to discover the secrets hidden in the book? Wait. What happened to it? While some found it fast-paced and fascinating, I listened with half an ear sometimes. If you are a solid fan of the author, go for it.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: International Mystery & Crime, Action Thriller & Suspense Fiction, War & Military Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
Narrator: Simon Vance
Release Date: February 24, 2026

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: James Rollins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of international thrillers. His writing has been translated into more than forty languages and has sold more than 20 million books. The New York Times says, “Rollins is what you might wind up with if you tossed Michael Crichton and Dan Brown into a particle accelerator together.” NPR calls his work, “Adventurous and enormously engrossing.” Rollins unveils unseen worlds, scientific breakthroughs, and historical secrets matched with stunning suspense. As a veterinarian, he had a practice in Sacramento for over a decade and still volunteers at local shelters. Nowadays, Rollins shares his home up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with two furry companions, Echo and Charlie. He also enjoys scuba diving, spelunking, kayaking, and hiking. Of course, he loves to travel and experience new places around the world, which often inspire his next globe-trotting adventure.

Audiobooks

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum #AudiobookReview #DomesticThriller

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb:

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.

The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny will stop at nothing to find them, even as the police zero in on him as their prime suspect.

Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other.

My Review:

Maybe this just isn’t my month for five-star reads. I’m thinking perhaps I had too high expectations for this one. The title is intriguing; I like mysteries, and thought this is supposed to be one. I seem to be getting romance novels under the guise of mystery and by now you all know I’m not a fan of romance.

Joy and Benny host a podcast exploiting survival stories, the first of which was her own stemming from Joy’s experience with narcolepsy—an interesting little side device in the plot. Joy met and married Xander, who ends up managing the podcast and their direction.

Benny is not a childhood friend of Joy’s as they met later and formed a very close relationship. It was discovered early that they sparked off each other to the delight of everyone around them and found a way to utilize that gift.

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum — This Story Might Save Your Life – UK cover

The “mystery” starts when Benny arrives one morning at Joy’s home to find what appears to have been a break-in and both Joy and Xander missing. He finds a memoir Joy has left behind as a way to leave him clues and hides it before the police can discover it. This is where the storyline splits with Benny periodically reading another portion of the memoir and the ability to peer into Joy’s life with Xander—not the dream boat she’d imagined. (Enter domestic abuse theme.)

Eventually, Xander is found deceased and suddenly the police are looking at Benny. (Enter reader rolling her eyes.)

Okay. For the record, I was unable to invest in any of the characters, though Joy was well developed, found her relationship with Benny a bit much, the romance becoming a bore. The dialogue was rather immature, the pacing already slow being interrupted with the investigation to return to the romance. (Inner groan)

While some of it not already divulged in denouement, it wasn’t a surprise. All of a sudden everything was fine again. End.

It annoyed me throughout that both characters refused to acknowledge their friendship had gone deeper. Why weren’t they just honest with each other?

I’m aware that because I’m such a romance snoot and in the minority the majority of the time, I have to acknowledge that with so many enjoying the book, perhaps there again just not a book I should have attempted. If you enjoy romance, then maybe you’ll enjoy a predictable romance with an ending you already guessed.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Domestic Thrillers, Romantic Suspense
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrator: Julia Whelan, Sean Patrick Hopkins
Release Date: March 10, 2026

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Tiffany Crum grew up on a dairy farm just down the road from a maximum-security prison. A longtime Californian, she worked a variety of jobs in the film industry before earning her MFA in creative writing. She now lives in Atlanta with her husband, sons, and dogs, and spends her free time trying to keep her vegetable garden alive. This Story Might Save Your Life is her debut novel.

Audiobooks with headphones — Graphic books and coffee courtesy Freepik.com

Where the Wildflowers Grow by Terah Shelton Harris #AudiobookReview #SouthernUnitedStatesLiterature

Book Blurb:

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Goodreads, Essence, Sunset Magazine, SheReads, BookBub, and more!

From acclaimed author Terah Shelton Harris comes a poignant story of survival and redemption that questions what it means to stop existing and start living.

Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die.

Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts her, Leigh carries on, because survival is in her blood. So, when the transport bus taking her to prison careens off the road, killing everyone onboard except her, she does what’s in her nature. She survives.

While searching for a place to hide, Leigh stumbles upon an unexpected sanctuary: a flower farm in rural Alabama tucked away from the world. What Leigh doesn’t expect is the found family there who have built something from the wreckage of their own lives. Especially Jackson, the farm’s owner, who sees through Leigh’s defenses, offers her small moments of tenderness, encourages her to face her own tragedies. Slowly, Leigh finds peace with the hard pace and soft nature of the farm, taking comfort in the life blooming around her. Maybe she’s not beyond redemption, not too broken for something good. And maybe, just maybe, Leigh starts to heal.

But the past isn’t so easily buried.

No matter how far she runs, the truth of who she is and the ghosts of the Wildes follow. And when those secrets catch up to her, threatening everything she’s come to love, Leigh will have to truly face what she can survive.

My Review:

My first book with this author had me hanging breathless on every word when Leandra struggles to evacuate the prison bus that crashes into water. Not the first time she has witnessed death, not the first time she is unable to save the one person on the bus that she tried to repay the compassion shown her. She knows the crushing feeling of survivor’s guilt.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? She is now, has always been, the survivor.

So I was pretty well hooked by the time Leandra found the wildflower farm and became Leigh. For some time, she is skiddish as a wild horse and almost as onery. But the men, from a wild divergence of life experience and ages, take her in and show her nothing but kindness and patience.

There are some lengthy flashbacks to Leigh’s life, her family, her father, and the sister she was unable to save, but the full story of how she ends up in prison is dribbled out in tantalizing tidbit by tidbit.

When the book goes from suspense, thriller, literature, to romance, the reader is already hooked and hungry for how this will all play out. As a reader, it’s difficult to walk in those shoes unless your experience mirrors the main character. The mental and emotional toll on the MC is almost unfathomable and the writing is sensitive enough to convey the weight of it. It weighs on the reader as well.

It’s assumed that even as you are pretty sure you know where this is going, you might still be surprised. Would she stay long enough to get the money to move on? Or risk staying and eventually be found.

Jackson on audiobook remains steadfastly quietly spoken, philosophical, and patient throughout. His audiobook voice is lovely, soothing. Would it quell the savage beast that Leigh assumed she must be to survive, or is the land, the men, the work and philosophy enough to turn that person around? And it espouses lots of philosophy, beautifully written prose, and Jackson, smart as he is, can’t always know what’s in her heart. She has secrets.

Themes of abuse (mental and physical), poverty, family drama and dark relationships, racial prejudice.

I wasn’t a fan of the book flipping between the story I thought we started and the romance that ends it. Not a fan of romance in general, so I was disappointed when it seemed to resort to a default genre. Leigh amazes me with her decision at the end of the book, and it was a testament to how much she’d grown, the only real answer. Happy doesn’t always come ever after and this time not for a long time.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Southern United States Literature, Southern Fiction, Black & African American Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Narrator: Tracie Thoms, Diontae Black, Terah Shelton Harris
Release Date: February 17, 2026

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: TERAH SHELTON HARRIS is an author and former librarian, who now writes upmarket fiction with bittersweet endings. She is the author of One Summer in Savannah and Long After We Are Gone. Her books have been chosen as a Target Book Club pick, LibraryReads pick, Kobo Best Book, Together We Read pick, Publisher’s Marketplace Buzz Book, and a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee for Best Debut. Terah was also named Target’s first Author of the Year. Her third book, Where the Wildflowers Grow, will be published in October 2025.

Enjoy Your Sunday

Rosepoint Reviews – April Recap – May Flowers and Water Gardens

Still continuing with wet and wild weather, currently in a cool to cold pattern. We always get this setback going into Spring, but it’s annoying when you want to start the gardens. As if I didn’t already have enough, I’ve started a small water garden—really just a 26” bowl—should be deeper but couldn’t find one. At 26” though, I should be able to have a couple water lilies and an iris or two along with the free floaters. Preparing the water takes more time than expected. Once again, a big learning curve! I mentioned last month we were taking down the old tree in front of the kitchen window. This will fill in that void. (Too cold for the plants.)

water bowl with a couple baby plants

Still going to our YMCA three times a week for exercise and to mark our insurance calendar. The Y continues to invent activities for us seniors—gotta keep us busy, I guess, but the cooking class was fun and now supplies me with fresh veggies once a month for several months, Bingo, a painting class for the CE, and my book club, of course. Hard to get our reading done, though, there are many opportunities for listening!

The CE and I read or listened to a total of fourteen books in April. As always, the major source of our books is the library (audiobooks and ebooks). (We still obtain ARCs from NetGalley (though not as often) and author and publisher requests.) The links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

Iron Curtain by Russ Stone (CE review)
Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood
Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan
Fool by Mary Lawrence (5*)
Midnight Patriots by Paul Levine (CE review-NG-5*)
And Now, Back to You by B K Borison

Audiobooks

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams
The Last Word by Taylor Adams
Free Ride by Noraly Schoemaker
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Favorite Book of the Month

Both the CE and I each had one five-star read in April, but I happen to know he felt a bit of slowing in the middle of his book. Therefore, the favorite book for April and my only five-star review is:

Favorite for April – Fool by Mary Lawrence

My Reading Challenges page…I keep hoping to catch up. My Goodreads count is still off, and the landing page shows 53 of a challenge of 175 with one book owing a review from April and four books behind schedule. Oops.

To all my dear readers and fellow bloggers, thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts and reviews. I’m trying to up my bloghopping and hope to see yours soon.

overloaded desk

Hidden Pictures: A Novel by Jason Rekulak #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday #ParanormalSuspense

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Winner for Readers’ Favorite Horror (2022)

Book Blurb:

2022 Goodreads Choice Awards, Winner
2022 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Chapters Indigo Best of the Year, Long-listed

Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

My Review:

Ah, gee, this is one of those books that start out whiz-bang and then halfway to two-thirds in goes off the rail.

Mallory isn’t long out of rehab when she lands a nanny job for a five-year-old. For her a dream job; her own little space, freedom, and she bonds with the boy, Teddy, no prob.

The parents were extremely specific on rules, and they had rules for everything, but it worked until Teddy started drawing details of a murder well beyond the ability of his years.

Gleaning the house history from new friends in the area, she begins to put together a lot of pieces that spell a story that’s hard to believe. When she broaches the subject to the parents, they dispute everything, deny everything, and intentionally misdirect her.

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak — Hidden Pictures – UK cover

Mallory isn’t stupid (or maybe she is?), but there are so many problems with the idea that a nanny wouldn’t know the child better than she did to be surprised by the big twist. And the parents are further out than I thought—though something was off from the beginning—but Mallory was luxuriating in her circumstances and didn’t really think about the big picture for a while.

It just starts getting nutsy after that. Twists. Twists that add confusion. Twists that are just added to add twists(?).

It’s a fast-paced narrative, but after a while with one outrageous scene heaped on the last, it just gets too far over the top; only so much suspending of disbelief. Also, not a fan of a long-winded denouement.

This one starts out as a mild thriller then dissolves into a wild babblethon. If you enjoy reading this author and a suspense that goes awry, you may find this one compelling. I just couldn’t get past a few of the suppositions.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Paranormal Suspense, Murder Thrillers, Horror Literature & Fiction
Publisher:
Macmillan Audio
Narrator: Suzy Jackson
Release Date: May 10, 2022

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Jason Rekulak is the author of HIDDEN PICTURES (winner of a Goodreads Choice Award), THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS (an Edgar Award finalist) and THE LAST ONE AT THE WEDDING (winner of the ITW Award for Best Thriller). His new suspense novel LOOK WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN pounces into bookstores on October 13, 2026. His novels have been translated into 40+ languages. He lives with his family in Philadelphia.

#ThrowbackThursday

Ask Again, Yes: A Novel by Mary Beth Keane #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday #ComingofAgeFiction

Editors’ pick Best Books of the Year 2019

Book Blurb:

How much can a family forgive?

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

In Mary Beth Keane’s extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.

My Review:

Oh, look! It’s me swimming upstream again!

This is an intergenerational story that is told from multiple POVs. It starts out well with a hook regarding the two children that will grow into adulthood and through their children as well in a span of thirty years.

Peter and Kate are drawn to each other for some unfathomable reason after Peter moves nearby with his family. While Kate’s mother is happy and excited to welcome Peter’s mother to the neighborhood, Peter’s mother wants none of it and refuses attempts at being friendly neighbors. Both fathers are officers in the local police department.

Peter’s mother has taken a strong disliking toward Kate when the kids become teenagers and what starts as a small altercation escalates into a horrific tragedy for both families.

It’s a tragedy that will mark all members of both families the rest of their lives. After that whole scene is over, the rest of the story mumbles on until the reader is hoping for something…anything…just not more tragedy. But that’s what you get.

This reminded me of the years, generations ago, when the two in a totally miserable marriage but stayed together “for the children.”

That only served to make the children as miserable as the adults and colored the children’s relationships for the rest of their lives. And so it does here. The two cops were both Irish, initially bonded over that background, and along with that culture the alcohol associations.

I thought the pace to be agonizingly slow and felt most sorry for Kate. I couldn’t invest in either of the fathers, Peter’s mother was just dreadful, and I felt would never again be ready to be unleashed on society. Peter was so damaged, I just didn’t want to hear it. Somewhere in the middle, the plot broad jumped the timeline, which distracted the storyline forcing the reader to play catch up.

Sorry, but I just found it depressing and kept thinking about the kids—digesting this dysfunction until you can believe that if that’s what they learned, they’ll pass it on to the next generation. UGH.

It’s dark, full of flawed characters that even the ending only seemed to make worse. There were questions unanswered and nothing resolved. I breathed a sigh of relief when the end was declared.

This book was rather controversial with readers on both sides but Amazon awarded an Editors’ pick for Best Books of 2019. So you can decide whether this family life fiction is for you or not. I can’t recommend.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Two point Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Coming of Age Fiction, Family Life Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Narrator: Molly Pope
Release Date: May 28, 2019

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Mary Beth Keane is the author of five novels, including Ask Again, Yes, which was a New York Times Best Seller, The Tonight Show Summer Reads pick, and has been translated into twenty-two languages. Keane was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts, and has received citations from the National Book Foundation, PEN, and the Hemingway Society. Her new novel, Whale Harbor, is forthcoming from Scribner Books on September 29, 2026.