By Lucy Foley
William Morrow, 2022. 360 pages. Mystery
Jess needs a fresh start. Her half-brother, Ben, didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit in Paris, but he didn't say no. Only when she shows up, he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question. Everyone's a neighbor. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they're not telling.
Similar to Foley’s other popular novels, The Guest List and The Hunting Party, The Paris Apartment is told through multiple narrators. Each narrator's perspective reveals small details of the mystery while allowing the story to unfold slowly. I appreciated how each character was fully formed with their own backstory and connection to the mystery. Even the apartment building itself could be considered a character, its foreboding, yet opulent, structure hiding its own secrets through hidden passages and stairwells. Foley also does a fantastic job of portraying Jess as a fish out of water in not only the city of Paris, but in the ritzy apartment building with its suspicious residents. Jess becomes our touchstone for the story with each twist and turn revealed through her perspective, which provided a sense of comradery as a reader. If you enjoy a slow-burn mystery told through multiple narrators and love Foley’s other books, The Paris Apartment is the book for you!
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By Ruth Ware
Scout Press, 2022. 422 pages. Mystery
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, and occasionally vicious, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they cultivated a group of devoted and inseparable friends, Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily; but by the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Hannah is relieved to have finally put the past behind her, but her world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide including a murder.
By Stacy Willingham
Minotaur Books, 2022. 357 pages. Mystery
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath. Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness that she's worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So, when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?
BW
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