The Perfect Fraud by Ellen LaCorte (ARC Review)

The Perfect Fraud by Ellen LaCorte
Publisher: Harper Books (June 18, 2019)
Description from the publisher: 

Motherhood is tough. But then, so is daughterhood. When we first meet Claire, she’s living in Sedona, Arizona with her boyfriend Cal and ducking calls from her mother. Her mom is a world class psychic on the East Coast and Claire doesn’t want her to discover the truth. Claire works in the family business and calls herself a psychic, but she doesn’t really have “the gift” and hasn’t for a long time. She’s a fraud.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Rena, a young mother, has family issues of her own. She’s divorced and her four-year-old daughter, Stephanie, suffers from mysterious, seemingly incurable stomach problems. No matter how many specialists Rena drags her to, no matter how many mommy-blog posts she makes about her child’s health issues, trying to get help and support from her online community, Stephanie only gets sicker.

When Claire and Rena meet by chance on an airplane, their carefully constructed lives begin to explode. Can these two women help each other and can they help Stephanie before it’s too late?

I think it's a pretty well established fact that I'm rather picky about suspense or thriller novels. I have to be really invested in the plot, or really invested in the characters. I would say that this debut novel from Ellen LaCorte definitely grabbed my attention with her plotting. Even though it's pretty clear what's going on early in the novel, with some unreliable narration, I breezed through this book curious as to how she'd bring the two women together.

Dual narratives are a favorite of mine, especially when they seem like nearly unrelated accounts that dramatically collide in the final pages of a book. The author was a little heavy handed with Rena's unbearable personality and grammar (if you are a grammar nerd, it will make you CRINGE), and Claire's character felt somewhat wooden and cliched. However, I couldn't help but turn the pages in their increasingly fraught, increasingly sinister, cat and mouse dance.

If you're looking for a quick and easy thriller that doesn't require a lot of brain space for the beach this summer, this would certainly fit the bill. Trigger warning, though, for child abuse. Many thanks to Harper Books for a complimentary advance copy for my honest review!

Ten Books For Summer (Five I Recommend, Five I'm Looking Forward to!)

I'm a little late to the party on adding my annual summer list to the pile! But I hate to break with tradition, and I like having this list handy. So without further ado, here's this year's list of five books I can vouch for (and you can probably score easily from the library) and five new summer releases I'm planning to gobble up this summer. Plus, you can find links to previous summer lists here! 

Books I'd recommend for summer reading:
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is the third year in a row that Jenkins Reid has landed on my summer reading list, and her latest is one of my favorites of the year. This fictional oral history of a 70s rock band is full of frothy LA scenes and such a fast read that's perfect for summer.
review here

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
This breakout debut romance novel was so sweet and wonderful - and, fair warning, very steamy! I loved her unique perspective and lovable characters. It looks as if her latest, The Bride Test, will be just as great - perfect bonus summer read.
review here

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren
Speaking of steamy... This was the first book I read by the writing team of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings (yes, C-Lo is their combined pen name) and it still stands as my favorite after having read Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating. This story of 'the boy next door' has much more heft, but I think that any of their works would probably be great summer fare. Their current release, The Unhoneymooners is getting darn good reviews, too.
review here

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Even if you've seen the movie (I mean, who HASN'T? If that's you, get on it!) this book will still seem fresh. It is a bit of a chunkster, with loads more detail than the film. Lush and fizzy fun detail that just screams indulgent summer read. This was on my to-read last summer and I'm glad I finally did!
review here

The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand
It ain't summer without an Elin novel to read, and I'd also recommend The Rumor and The Matchmaker (her other summer books I've read) which are all spectacularly immersive novels of summer on Nantucket. This was my favorite of these three, though - her first foray into a mystery was so much fun!
review here

Books I'm hoping to read this summer:
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Let me preface this by saying that I read Eat, Pray, Love and found it INSUFFERABLE. Just. No. However, I have never read Gilbert's fiction and, given all the raves about this coming of age story set in 1940s New York City, I am intensely curious.

Recursion by Blake Crouch
This book is gonna be errrrrywhere this summer, as it's the follow up to Crouch's wildly successful Dark Matter (which ended up on my favorites of the year in 2016). This sounds fascinating, with a sci-fi twist on how our memories work. It seems to be receiving equally excellent reviews, and is already optioned for Netflix.

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center
Speaking of follow ups to wildly successful novels, this summer's novel by Center is a follow up to one of my favorite reads of last summer: How to Walk Away. A story about a female firefighter sounds especially intriguing and I'm looking forward to reviewing it for y'all, since I have an advance copy!

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary
This romance novel that came out in April seems to have risen to the top as a favorite among the book community and I think it will make for a perfect beach read: two people sharing a room for rent that have opposite schedules, hijinks ensues. 

Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand
Yes, Elin gets double billing because she is the queen of the summer novel (even though her winter books are some of my favorites). Last summer, I loved her take on a mystery novel and presume I'll love her take on historical fiction just as much!

Books I Read in May

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
This was a cute premise for a romance novel, and it’s funny because I lived THIS EXACT SCENARIO in my 20s: I was a production assistant at an awesome boutique advertising agency that was merged with a lame big box corporate one and became a true nemesis with the other production assistant. The difference here is a merging of two publishing firms (though boutique vs big box still stands) and the other assistant at my firm was truly an absolute troll (no hard abs with a soft heart to be found) and I high tailed it outta there, finding another job ASAP! Alas, I wish I had the forethought and talent to turn it into an adorable and steamy love story... 

Evicted by Matthew Desmond
I put this book off for a long time, because it’s not particularly uplifting material. I didn’t always reach for it, and it took me a long time to finish, but it is such an essential read. Poverty is so much more complicated than it seems and Desmond deftly crafts personal stories, of those he lived among to do his research, to elucidate this crisis. 

The Current by Tim Johnston
 I first heard about The Current on the From the Front Porch podcast, and it's made the What Should I Read Next summer reading guide - I can certainly see why: I’m not usually a thriller fan, but this one had excellent character development and a mesmerizing ethereal tone. It can feel languid it parts, and my expectations going in were for something fast paced, so I had to adjust those expectations. I also felt like the end was a little ambiguous and I wanted to know MORE! Sequel perhaps?

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Loved this one! Full review here.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
My expectations were pretty high going into this book, as I think Mindy is pretty awesome and I'm just now getting into The Office. I know, I know. We tried getting into it last year but it just made me so uncomfortable and, honestly, angry. Perhaps it's because I'm a former HR professional, but Michael Scott freaking sucks in the first season. How am I supposed to enjoy a show where the main character is awful? The endearing side has yet to appear because he's not much better in season two, but we're seeing some bright spots and I want to know what all the fuss is about, so we're sticking with it. ANYWAY. It was fun to get some inside baseball on her career, the show and some of the inner workings of Hollywood. But the tone just felt... juvenile? I just hated all of her self depreciating talk of her body, food, dating, etc. It makes me curious to check out her more recent book to see if her tone has matured.

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
Ahhh, back in Three Pines! Well, not exactly with this one in the series, but it still has all the familiar sumptuousness of the first three books and, of course, the incomparable Inspector Gamache. I was happy to have timed this for some warm weather reading (before the inevitable June-uary hits Seattle) as it’s set at a secluded lake resort in the summer. I also serendipitously timed it for a rather stressful week around here, and these are such cozy and comfortably familiar reads. I feel as if this series gets better with each book. This was book four and number 15 (!) comes out later this year. I'm so glad I can keep working my way through them for years to come.