Staff Picks: July 2022
BRANDY’S PICK: The Bodyguard by Katherine Center
GENRE: Romance
WHY SHE PICKED IT: Kara Sullivan is a historical romance author who also moonlights as a bookstagrammer. As if Kara wasn’t busy enough with trying to write and complete her latest novel, she is also helping her best friend plan a wedding. Kara’s deadline is quickly approaching but she has been experiencing a bit of writer’s block (just like me in writing this little review). Until her college ex-boyfriend, Ryan, re-enters the picture and past feelings are suddenly providing inspiration for her latest chapters. Kara is torn between getting closer to Ryan to continue feeding off the inspiration he brings or to push him away so as to not get hurt again.
A book about writing and books?!? Sign me up please! This cute little rom-com is sure to make you angry, make you cry, and make you laugh. It has a little bit of everything and will become one of your favourite summer reads.
THE SYNOPSIS: She’s got his back.
Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindgerten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.
He’s got her heart.
Jack Stapleton’s a household name—captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, famous for, among other things, rising out of the waves in all manner of clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity. But a few years back, in the wake of a family tragedy, he dropped from the public eye and went off the grid.
They’ve got a secret.
When Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah—against her will and her better judgment—finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. Even though her ex, like a jerk, says no one will believe it.
What could possibly go wrong???
Hannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.
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LISA G’s PICKS: When a Killer Calls by John Douglas
GENRE: Nonfiction, True Crime
WHY SHE PICKED IT: 'When a Killer Calls' is the newest true crime book by John Douglas-the famous 'Mindhunter' of the FBI who was instrumental in creating the base of criminal profiling. If you are waiting for Netflix to put out the next season of 'Mindhunter' like me-you will find 'When a Killer Calls' satisfying. It follows Douglas's own case of missing teen Shari Smith in 1985, the crimes of Larry Gene Bell, and the process of criminal profiling to work the case. An interesting read from beginning to end.
THE SYNOPSIS: On May 31, 1985, two days before her high school graduation, Shari Smith was abducted from the driveway of her family home in South Carolina. Based on the crime scene and the abductor’s repeated and taunting calls to the family, law enforcement quickly realized they were dealing with a sophisticated and highly dangerous criminal. A letter arrived the next day entitled “Last Will & Testament,” in which Shari, knowing she was to be murdered, wrote bravely and achingly of her love for her parents, siblings, and boyfriend, saying that while they would miss her, she knew they would persevere through their faith. The abduction rocked her quiet town, triggering a massive manhunt and bringing in the FBI, which enlisted profiler John Douglas. A few days later, a phone call told the family where they could find Shari’s body.
Then nine-year-old Debra May Helmick was kidnapped from her yard, confirming the harsh realization that Smith’s murder was no random act. A serial killer was evolving, and the only way to stop him would be to use the study of criminal behavior to anticipate his next move before he could kill again. Douglas devised a risky and emotionally fraught strategy to use Shari’s lookalike older sister Dawn as bait to draw out the unknown subject. Dawn and her parents courageously agreed.
One of the most haunting investigations of Douglas’s storied career, this case details how the eerily accurate profile he created—alongside his carefully crafted and stage-managed manipulation of the killer’s psychology—combined with dedicated police work and cutting-edge forensic science to end a reign of criminal terror. As Shari’s family took incredible personal risks to lure her killer from the shadows, Douglas and the FBI pushed criminal profiling to its limits, culminating in one of his most dramatic and effective confrontations with a sadistic and remorseless killer.
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LISA S’s PICK: Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
GENRE: Horror, Thriller
WHY SHE PICKED IT: I flew through this novel. The book is labelled as horror, but it reads more like a spooky thriller. The pictures Teddy draws are included in the book, which added so much to the story, because we saw the difference in his drawings from the beginning, through the middle, to the end. I didn’t see the big twist coming, and while the bread crumbs were there, they were worked into the story so organically that they were not flaming red flags. I’m so looking forward to whatever comes next from this author.
THE SYNOPSIS: Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job in the affluent suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.
Mallory immediately loves this new job. She lives in the Maxwell’s pool house, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.
As the days pass, Teddy’s artwork becomes more and more sinister, and his stick figures steadily evolve into more detailed, complex, and lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to suspect these are glimpses of an unsolved murder from long ago, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force lingering in the forest behind the Maxwell’s house.
With help from a handsome landscaper and an eccentric neighbor, Mallory sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy—while coming to terms with a tragedy in her own past—before it’s too late.
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TORI’s PICK: Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
GENRE: Young Adult, Fantasy
WHY SHE PICKED IT: Sometimes a good dedication page is enough to get me to read a book. This one is dedicated "For all the girls who found themselves in books." That pretty much sums up this story, another world to live in for a few hundred pages. This YA fantasy is a fun adventure about sorcerers, libraries, and secrets. It's also a stand alone, so the whole story is in one book rather than a long series, something I really look for in YA fantasy.
THE SYNOPSIS: All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.
Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.
As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.
CLICK BELOW TO RESERVE “Sorcery of Thorns” by Margaret Rogerson:
