The Messy Lives of Book People

A feel-good story about a cleaning lady--with writerly aspirations--secretly tasked with completing a novel by one of her literary heroes.

British author Phaedra Patrick (The Secrets of Love Story Bridge) consistently treats readers to stories with heartfelt plots and memorable, quirky characters. In her fifth novel, The Messy Lives of Book People, Patrick sticks with that winning formula, telling the story of an ordinary woman who is stretched beyond her comfort zone and is challenged to build a better, more fulfilling life.

Liv Green, middle-aged wife and mother of two adult sons, is a British cleaning lady whose postponed dreams of writing are suddenly reinvigorated when she lands a gig working for one of her literary heroes, bestselling author--and notorious recluse--Essie Starling. When Liv is caught secretly reading a work in progress--the 20th entry in Starling's popular Georgia Rory series--the standoffish, enigmatic author puts Liv on the spot, asking for her honest, writerly opinion. Nervous, Liv gives a tactful yet unabashed opinion. Later, she second-guesses being so forthright. Essie's lawyer contacts Liv soon after this: Essie has died after a surgical procedure. She left specific instructions that she wanted Liv to finish the novel in progress with the stipulation that Essie's death and Liv's ghostwriting be kept secret. This sets Liv on a confidential quest to conjure what Essie might have had in mind for her latest novel, the projected last in the series. However, it's Essie's real-life story that Liv ultimately unravels, one filled with unpredictable twists and turns that are as adventurous as the Georgia Rory novels themselves.

Patrick adds more entertaining, feel-good fiction to her growing body of work.

The Messy Lives of Book People: A Novel by Phaedra Patrick

Park Row (Original Edition), $16.99 paperback, 9780778312000, 352 pages

Publication Date: May 31, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 17, 2022), link HERE

 

The Hotel Nantucket

A compelling, juicy romantic drama about patrons and staff embroiled in the relaunch of a storied old hotel in Nantucket, Cape Cod.  

In The Hotel Nantucket, Elin Hilderbrand (Golden Girl; 28 Summers) brings readers an exciting, multi-plotted, genre-bending drama set in a storied old hotel on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts that's been spruced up and is ready to make a glorious comeback. The large-scale renovation of the once-derelict hotel, which had its heyday in the 1920s, is financially backed by a billionaire developer in London. He spares no expense and aims to put the hotel on the map as a top vacation destination.

The developer lures Lizbet Keaton, who just ended a long-term romantic relationship, away from her job at a competitor. Her job is to hire local staff to transform the old hotel into a first-class operation offering the finest in hospitality--a sterling spa and a celebrity-crewed kitchen and bar. What sets the hotel apart is its history, namely its resident ghost, a former chambermaid. Funny and often judgmental, she served at the hotel during the Roaring '20s and met a tragic death that's kept her spirit active on the premises.

While the hotel strives to regain its former glory, a large cast of characters--hotel staff and patrons--juggle romantic entanglements while unraveling mysteries and secrets in their own lives. Plotlines about scandalous affairs, extortion, assault and sordid pasts enliven Hilderbrand's obvious appreciation for the ins and outs of the hotel industry and for Nantucket culture. Readers in search of page-turning escapist fiction will be immensely intrigued by checking into The Hotel Nantucket and checking out all it has to offer. 

The Hotel Nantucket: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand

Little, Brown and Company, $29.00 hardcover, 9780316258678, 416 pages

Publication Date: June 14, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 17, 2022), link HERE

Point Last Seen

A gripping romantic suspense about a legendary coastal California town where a woman who comes back from the dead unearths startling secrets.  

Christina Dodd writes Romance, Suspense and Historical Novels. In Point Last Seen, she launches a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat Romantic Suspense set in (fictional) Gothic, Calif. The small beach town harbors “a hearty bunch of loners and eccentrics, artists and fortune-tellers. People who came to Gothic…stayed for a reason.” Gothic is referred to as a “City of Lost Souls.” Legend has it that on stormy nights lost souls return from the dead.

 

One night the legend comes to life: After a terrible February storm, an isolated, hard-working local sculptor, Adam Ramsdell, takes a walk on the beach in search of scrap metal that might’ve been brought in by the tides. During his hunt, he spies a body floating in the surf. He pulls a corpse--a pretty, young woman; bruised and battered with “the marks of a man’s fingers ringing her neck”--to the shore and revives her. The resurrected woman, Elle, can’t remember what happened to bring her to Gothic. This leaves Adam to take her to his home, offering her a safe place to stay until she regains her strength and hopefully, her memory, too. As Adam and Elle try to decipher her identity, the two form a romantic attraction that neither can resist. However, when troubling information bubbles to the surface of Elle’s memory, it suddenly becomes apparent that Elle might not be the only person in Gothic with secrets to hide?

 

Dodd delivers a passionately dark and dangerous story--leavened by a cast of memorable, quirky, small-town characters--sure to keep readers deeply engrossed in the ratcheting romantic suspense of a twisty plot.

 

Point Last Seen: A Novel by Christina Dodd

HQN Books, $17.99 paperback, 9781335623973, 448 pages

Publication Date: July 26, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE