by Catherine Ryan Howard
Blackstone Publishing, 2021.
Fiction
No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 days ago, Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.35 days ago, when lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is. Today, Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?
What if you didn't know if you could trust your quarantine pod, what if you didn't know if you could trust yourself? Set in a modern day COVID afflicted Ireland, 56 days is an understated thriller mystery with plot twists and character developments around every corner. Howard provides an incredibly entertaining trust exercise in which the reader is constantly compelled to re-evaluate which of the narrators they find most believable, if any of them at all. This mystery kept me guessing till the end, and I was satisfied with how Howard tied up loose ends. I should admit that I am a huge sucker for all literature involving Ireland; that being said, I do truly believe this book will be an enjoyable read for anyone interested in mystery even if they are not a Hibernophile!
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by Alice Feeney
Flatiron Books, 2021. 294 pages.
Fiction
Think you know the person you married? Think again ... Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family, or even his own wife. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts--paper, cotton, pottery, tin--and each year Adam's wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn't randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn't want them to live happily ever after. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.
by Laura Dave
Simon & Shuster, 2021. 306 pages.
Fiction
Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.
Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.
by Tana French
Viking, 2007. 429 pages.
Fiction
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.
MES
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