The Scoop

An unflinching look at what happens to the integrity of an ambitious journalist when she--in desperation--takes a job at an online tabloid news outlet. 

The Scoop, a searing and suspenseful first novel by Erin Van Der Meer, centers on ambitious, 29-year-old Francesca “Frankie” Miller who loses her editorial job at an elitist New York City-based magazine. 

For three months, she scrambles to find work. Losing hope and in desperation, Frankie takes a job at The Scoop, a cultural tabloid-like news website cast as a fictionalized off-shoot of a stereotypical FOX News and/or its parent company The Wall Street Journal. Frankie hopes this job will be a mere stop-gap employment measure, especially as it seems that no reporting is off-limits at this "click-bait" digital news outlet. In need of a steady paycheck and lured by the prospect of a better future job dangled by her domineering male boss, Frankie plays along. She launches a juicy tell-all story that takes down a rock star, but this becomes the tipping point that forces Frankie to ultimately question herself; her morales, values, and integrity; and her ambitions.

 

Van Der Meer presents an authentically based, provocative exposé of the contemporary news industry, delivering insights via the acerbic wit of her protagonist whose plight ultimately descends into a much deeper, surprisingly profound and personally reflective story.

 

The Scoop by Erin Van Der Meer

Grand Central Publishing, $29.00 hardcover, paperback, 9781538776339, 320 pages

Publishing Date: April 21,2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Erin Van Der Meer HERE

Postscript

Popular Irish author Cecelia Ahern returns with the long-awaited sequel to her best-selling novel (and blockbuster movie), PS I Love You.  

A tender, moving story about a widow who helps a group of terminally ill patients leave behind heartfelt messages for loved ones.

Cecelia Ahern continues the story she started in her bestselling debut, PS, I Love You. After Holly Kennedy--an Irish, 30-year-old--lost her beloved husband and soul mate, Gerry, to a brain tumor, he left behind 10 notes, one for each month, capped with his tender signature of ‘PS, I Love You.’ Each letter offered Holly guidance and wisdom as she struggled to carve out a new life. 

In Postscript, it’s seven years later for Holly—now 37-years-old and romantically involved with Gabriel, a divorcée who co-parents a contentious teenager. When Holly is asked to be a guest on a podcast to discuss Gerry’s letters--what they meant and how they changed her--her participation drives a wedge in her relationship with Gabriel. And when a group of terminally ill patients--fans of the ‘PS, I Love You’ letters--approaches Holly, enlisting her help to write letters of their own, Holly’s perspective on life--and love--shifts. Holly assists a 17-year-old, unmarried mother facing cervical cancer to craft a heartfelt message for her newborn; a father with a brain tumor longing to remain part of his family’s life; a husband with advanced emphysema with a penchant for writing playful Limericks; and a woman battling MS. In offering assistance, Holly examines how time changes those forced to reinvent themselves—both the dying and the living.  

Ahern (Flawed) is a passionate, sensitive storyteller. She employs great empathy as she probes dark themes and gives readers the pleasure of another entertaining, enriching story buoyed by hope and positivity.

Postscript (PS, I Love You: Book 2) by Cecelia Ahern

Grand Central Publishing, $27.00 Hardcover, 9781538746592, 304 pp

Publication Date: February 11, 2020

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 (March 6, 2020), link HERE

The Girl In The Garden

While her lover sleeps, a young woman, Rakhee Singh, uncertain about her feelings regarding her impending marriage, slips off her engagement ring, leaves it on the bedside table and sets off from the NY-Metro area to India on a journey to reclaim her past and hopefully, rediscover herself.

This powerful first chapter that opens The Girl In The Garden, a debut novel by the very talented Kamala Nair, encourages the reader to take up the narrator's cause and travel with her as she goes back in time. Throughout the narrative, she recalls the summer of her tenth year, when her emotionally troubled mother mysteriously whisks Rakhee away from her father and their home in Plainfield, Minnesota and takes her back to her ancestral village in India. Once there, Rakhee becomes acquainted with an unfamiliar culture and relatives she has never known - and she also discovers a walled-in garden hidden in a thicket behind the family home. She and her young cousins have been told the garden is off-limits as a Rakshasi, a witch, is said to inhabit the empty space hidden in the forest. This restriction is exactly what piques Rakhee's interest until she decides to see for herself what resides therein.

Family secrets are at the heart of this quietly told, incredibly gripping novel narrated from Rakhee's point-of-view in one long flashback sequence that depicts a series of fully drawn characters embroiled in domestic complications. The hidden garden becomes a compelling metaphor for what happens when we compartmentalize the sorrows and challenges of our lives. The meaning of love and fidelity, and the consequences of hiding from the truth rather than facing it, are central issues that ultimately force Rakhee to circle back to the present and reconcile her own life.

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair
Grand Central Publishing, Hardcover, 978-0446572682, 320pp.
Publication Date: June 15, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness  To read this review (in a slightly shorter form) on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/24/11), click HERE

The Lincoln Lawyer

All right, I'll admit it - it was Matthew McConaughey who drew me to read THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly. I don't normally lean toward this type of book, at least not since I devoured Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow more than 20 years ago. But as a fan of MM, I was eager to examine how the story will translate from page to screen. I have yet to see the movie. But having read the book, I cannot picture anyone but Matthew McConaughey playing this part. I wonder if the author wrote the story with this leading man in mind?

The plot boils down to this: high-powered (yet jaded) attorney, Michael "Mickey" Haller knows what he's good at and has a very high opinion of himself - at least amid the legal system. Instead of an office, he works out of his car - a Lincoln Continental (of which there are actually four in the fleet), which serves to chauffeur him to what seems like revolving doors at various courtrooms throughout Los Angeles County. Mickey has done fairly well for himself (his slogan as printed in the Yellow Pages is "Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee") by defending a slew of guilty lost souls who live on the fringes of society - drug dealers, junkies, prostitutes. You name it and Mickey's defended it - and probably more than once.

Mickey is stymied when he's called upon to defend Louis Ross Roulet, a wealthy resident of Beverly Hills arrested for a violent, ugly assault. Mickey initially sees dollar signs with what he calls a 'franchise case' - an expensive trial with a laundry list of billable hours. But when Mickey rolls up his sleeves and gets down to business, he soon discovers that he's being as hustled as the clients he normally defends. A case that Mickey represented--and plea bargained years before--figures prominently into the Roulet case. Mickey suffers a crisis of conscience and a moral dilemma. Did Mickey's legal counsel of Jesus Menendez, a past client, put Menendez behind bars for the rest of his life for a crime his current client, Roulet, actually committed? It's an ingenious twist that adds texture and depth to this economically written, first person p-o-v story of gripping suspense, vibrant dialogue, and meticulous plotting.

Connelly sets up the first half of the book by establishing the status quo of Mickey's world - one filled with two failed marriages (and two ex-wives who still have a part in Mickey's life), his own shortcomings as a workaholic dad who hasn't always been there for his daughter, and the terrain he mines as a no-nonsense defender of the down and out. The Roulet case tilts Mickey's world on its axis as he tries to figure out a way to help his innocent, yet jailed client (Menendez), while trying not to jeopardize the Roulet case, as it suddenly puts Mickey's own life at risk. The second half of the book deals mostly with the trial and the challenges Mickey faces amid politics on the bench and the back room deals of the legal system.

In the end, however, it is Connelly's flawed protagonist and the arc of his journey that deepens Mickey's redeeming qualities and gains the unwavering empathy of the reader. You can bet that with or without Matthew McConaughey, I'm bound to read Connelly's next legal thriller (The Fifth Witness, a new Mickey Haller book, is due April 5th)...and maybe the backlist of his books, too!

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Grand Central Publishing, Mass Market Paperback, 9781455500239, 544pp.
Publication Date: January 25, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE

The Girl She Used To Be

In The Girl She Used To Be, David Cristofano parts a curtain that leads inside the world of the Federal Witness Protection Program (also known as Witness Security Program or WITSEC).

The protagonist of this finely-crafted novel of psychological suspense is Melody Grace McCartney. At six years-old, she and her parents accidentally witnessed a violent mob crime that launched them into WITSEC.

When the story opens, it is twenty years later. Melody's parents are gone, but she has remained in WITSEC, assuming a variety of different names and jobs as she has been moved, for her own safety, from place to place around the country. Melody seems relatively safe, teaching mathematical proofs to high school students in order to encourage them to utilize logic.  This scenario seems the perfect antidote to combat the nature of Melody's uncertain life:

"Life can be cruel," she says. "...I try to teach one central lesson in every class–and if they get this I will make sure they pass: Each and every equation brings an absolute certain conclusion. Well, that and don’t divide by zero. You see, certainty brings security. Security brings trust. Trust brings love."   (Chapter One, p. 2)

It seems fitting that Cristofano utilized a mathematical proof to headline each chapter. (I wondered if my reading experience would've been made even richer if I knew what each proof actually meant and if/how each tied to themes along the way.) What the proofs did reflect was the fact that Melody is an extremely bright woman.  She is a survivor. Yet security, trust and love are the variables in her own life that simply don't add up. In fact, a dearth of those three factors is what contributes to her chronic sense of restlessness and isolation.

When it's time for Melody to suddenly uproot her life and begin again in another town, things take a turn. During the move, the Feds mismanage Melody, and she comes face to face with Jonathan "Johnny" Bovaro, the henchman from the mafioso crime family, who has been on Melody's trail for twenty years. It is Bovaro's sudden presence in Melody's life--and the fact that he is the one and only person left in the world who has known her (really known her, her life story and her many identities) since she was six years-old--that forces Melody to question her existence and the meaning of her life. Bovaro tempts Melody to step outside her comfort zone. He actually offers her the chance for a future of her very own--a chance for security, trust and love--beyond the confines of WITSEC. Is it time for her to take a risk?

In his protagonist, David Cristofano has created an intriguing narrator and placed her at the helm of a moving and powerful mystery story that grows into a love story. Each characterization--how the author peels back emotional subtexts and private histories, layer by layer--shatters stereotypes and serves to ratchet up the suspense. It comes as no surprise that this novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, Best First Novel By An American Author, Mystery Writers of America (MWA).