Tag: Family Drama

A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas

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Working for a prestigious therapy center in London, Ruth Hartland is the epitome of professionalism. She mentors members of her team and always has the right answers for the hard questions. The rules exist for a reason, and Ruth sticks to the program at all times.

What her team doesn’t realize is that Ruth’s life is not as perfectly carved as she makes it out to be. Her personal life is in shambles. Her daughter left the country, she recently separated from her husband, and her son has been a missing person for over a year.

The face that Ruth wears at work shows nothing of her inner turmoil, but inside, she is crumbling into an abyss. A new patient has been assigned to Ruth, and he reminds her so much of her son that it rattles her to the core. Can Ruth maintain professionalism with this boy who is in such dire need of help? Can she set aside her own feelings of failure about her son, in order to protect them both from her dark secrets?

A Good Enough Mother, by Bev Thomas, is a page-turner that grips you and drags you through to the very end. If you like psychological thrillers, definitely give it a read! I’m giving it a solid place on my “Best of 2019” shelf.

The Woman in the Dark by Vanessa Savage

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After Sarah’s mother passed away, she struggled to recover and her family was suffering. Her son was evasive and barely spoke, shutting everyone out of his life. Her daughter was defiant and disrespectful, a typical teenage girl but so very angry. Only Sarah’s marriage seemed strong enough to weather the storm…Until her husband declared that he wanted to buy his childhood home at the seaside, where they could all have a fresh start together and the idyllic childhood he always wanted for his children.

The plan would all sound so very lovely if Sarah didn’t know the truth. That idyllic childhood home was the scene of multiple murders. Nearly an entire family stabbed to death. No one had lived there since the incident and it had been waiting in disrepair, dilapidated and neglected for a decade. Sarah tried to resist, but she found herself too weak against the demands of her husband and his enthusiasm for their new life.

Immediately upon their arrival, Sarah begins to wonder if moving into the Murder House was a terrible, terrible idea. The house seems to whisper with the wind, and there are cold spots that make her skin crawl. The children are irritable and surly about the move, and Patrick has been acting strange ever since they moved in. An anger simmers in her husband that she never witnessed before, and the people in the town keep making comments which make Sarah wonder if her husband’s pleasant childhood memories were anything close to the truth. Figures can be seen staring up at the house at all hours of the day, hidden in the shadows and fog at night.

The Woman in the Dark is a psychological thriller which leaves you guessing until the very end. What secrets is Patrick hiding about his life in that house? What does he know about the murders which he is not revealing? Can Sarah save herself and her children from whatever evil resides in the bones of that creaking, moaning old house?

 

Heroes Are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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Annie Hewitt is down on her luck. Her mother passed away, leaving her a secluded island house in Maine, and since Annie is broke and jobless she has no choice but to sort through her mother’s things and decide what to do next with her life. Unfortunately, the island has many bad memories for Annie, mostly attached to the house next door, a giant mansion where her mother was briefly the lady of the house.

Is the current man of the house responsible for her near death as a teen? Is he a sadistic murderer, waiting for his next victim? Or is he just a dark, brooding, reclusive writer with serious sex appeal? The line is getting blurry for Annie, especially when she is very limited on social company…with the exception of her 3 larger-than-life puppets, of course.

I didn’t know what to make of this book at first-I truly thought I was stepping into a serious “unreliable narrator” situation, which is great because I have a penchant for that type of literature. But as the story unfolds, there are others on the island who might not have pure intentions, and evil is lurking in the corners. Annie has to use her humor and wits to shake down the community and figure out just what is going on there on Peregrine Island..And where is the legacy her mother claimed to have left her at the cottage? Does someone else want it, too?

I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a darker sense of humor and a taste for sarcasm. It is a combination of romance, comedy, suspense and drama, all tied together. I plan to read whatever else Susan Elizabeth Phillips has to offer the world, after reading Heroes Are My Weakness. Highly recommended!