Lost in America - Episodes 1-3 by Laura Fitzgerald

This book grabbed me from the beginning. It had a unique plot and as the story went on, I couldn't put it down and needed to know what was going to happen. I wasn't crazy about the heroine, Kendra. She just wouldn't listen to anyone, but she did it with well intentions to figure out the truth and protect her mom. Kendra has a strong need to keep her mom safe after she lost her father and her mother lost her husband on the day of 9/11.

After almost dying herself, Kendra is given a gift called Insight, where she can see things that happen in the future and try to stop it. Such as kidnappings, rapes, murder, etc. There are several people telling Kendra to trust them, but she isn't sure who to trust. And I can't blame her. By the time episode 3 ended, I was as confused as she was.

This book ends with a cliffhanger. I was under the impression the series was complete, but it is not. I checked the authors website and Amazon, but did not come across when book 4 will be out. :insert frown face: because I am dying to know what happened.

For now, I will be keeping an eye out for the book and hope that it is released soon.

Lacey's Rating

About The Book

New Adult Thriller - How far would you go to save your mother's life?

It's the near future, and the next big thing is already here. Smartphones, tablets, even TVs have been replaced by Butlers, your own digital personal assistant who knows you intimately. It's killer technology ... really, it is.

Billed as "luxury for the little guy," your Butler knows your clothing sizes, your favorite pizza toppings, the music you like, and gets you whatever you want at your command. Your Butler is always there for you. Watching. Waiting. Listening. It knows everything about you, and so does the company behind it.

That's where the danger comes in.

Meet Kendra Sinclair. She'd be the first to tell you there's nothing special about her, until she uncovers a massive conspiracy designed to kill millions of people, including those she loves most. Kendra's the only one who can stop it ... unless the bad guys stop her first, which means she needs to get Lost In America.

But how can she, when privacy is just an illusion?

AMAZON

Killing Secrets by @DianneEmley #giveaway

This was a very interesting book and kept me reading. A teacher and student are murdered and it's made to look like a murder suicide. The male student being obsessed with the teacher and he has a history of attempted suicide.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this book as I tried to figure out the truth of who did it, as well as the mystery around the killed teenage boys family.

I found the writing to be good. It flowed well. The author did great on her descriptions and showing us the scenes instead of telling us. I really liked Nan and her daughter Emily. Enjoyed seeing how they reacted.

This isn't the first book in the Nan Vining Mystery series, however it's the first one I've read. I didn't feel like I was missing anything or any pieces of the story by not reading the prior books. I would be interested in reading more stories from this author and in the series. She actually surprised me with the ending, and that's a hard thing for writers to do. I thought I had figured out who the killer was, but I was wrong.

Lacey's Rating:

About The Book

For fans of Patricia Cornwell, Tana French, and Lisa Gardner comes a razor-sharp novel of suspense featuring Detective Nan Vining—a single mother whose worlds collide when her teenage daughter stumbles upon a grisly double homicide.

When she gets the call, Nan Vining responds as a mother first and a detective second. Her daughter, Emily, has made a gruesome discovery in a secluded section of a Pasadena park: a pretty, popular young teacher from Emily’s high school and a bright yet troubled transfer student—both dead and bloody in a copse of trees. But the crime scene isn’t the only thing that seems off to Detective Vining. There’s also the cocky classmate who was with Emily in the park—the boyfriend she never knew about. What else doesn’t she know about her daughter?

As she attempts to channel both her maternal and investigative instincts into one single point of focus, Vining’s superiors at the Pasadena Police Department are moving at lightning speed. Before the evidence has even been processed, the case is closed as a clear-cut murder/suicide: a disturbed teenager murders his teacher, then takes his own life. Vining doesn’t buy it. Now she’s chasing dangerous, powerful people with secrets they would kill for—and taking them down means risking her own flesh and blood.

The Giveaway

A $25 eGift Card and a copy of the book!

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About The Author

Dianne Emley is the bestselling author of The Night Visitor and the Nan Vining series: The First Cut, Cut to the Quick, The Deepest Cut, and Love Kills. A Los Angeles native, she lives in the Central California wine country with her husband, Charlie.

Author's website: http://www.dianneemley.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DianneEmleyAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DianneEmley

Last Stop Klindenspiel: A Dark Circus in Post World War II Poland

I'm always up for a circus novel.  That's why I downloaded Last Stop Klindenspiel from Amazon.  The last circus fiction I reviewed here on Book Babe was the YA paranormal romantic circus novel Girl on a Wire.  You can find that review here .  Last Stop Klindenspiel by Marta Tandori is very different in tone.  It's supposed to be a historical prequel to what looks to me like a contemporary Los Angeles noir  mystery series.  I haven't read the series, but the Kindle edition of Last Stop Klindenspiel contains several excerpts from the Kate Stanton series.  In the series timeline it is  established that Kate Stanton was once Katya Holberg.  I don't know how fans of the Kate Stanton series react to the revelations in this novel, but I found that the prequel stands very much on its own.

                                                         

My identification with Katya made this a tough read because she experienced so many traumatic events during and after World War II.  I had to take frequent breaks from the book in order to cope with its raw intensity.

 Many readers will not have heard of the Nazi Project Lebensborn.   This was as effort to increase the number of  so called "pure Aryan" children.   The term Aryan originally referred to a linguistic group, not a race. Katya was brought into the world as part of the Lebensborn Project.  Her father, a self-absorbed Nazi officer, had a sexual relationship with Sonia Holberg, a Norwegian woman who became Katya's mother.  After World War II the women who participated in Lebensborn suffered in the backlash against anyone associated with the Nazis, and so did their children.  Before reading Tandori's novel,  I was aware of the Lebensborn children, but had no real awareness of their post-war persecution.   This is an aspect of the post-war environment that should be more widely known.

The circus Klindenspiel was supposed to be a haven for Katya.  She would be able to exhibit the skills as a contortionist that she had learned from her mother.  Yet the young performers at Klindenspiel  were submerged in a miasma of fear and antagonism toward their superiors and each other.  Katya wanted to understand why there was so much negativity.   She idealistically wanted to improve the lives of everyone at Klindenspiel, and she received unexpected support from some very unlikely sources.

If you are looking for circus lore or vocabulary, you won't find that sort of thing in Last Stop Klindenspiel , but you will find some very realistic descriptions of training and choreography for acrobatic routines.  The vocabulary seems to originate from the world of gymnastics, and I have some familiarity with it.

What I appreciated about this book was the history, the character relationships, the suspense, the surprising plot twists  and the imaginative concept.  Marta Tandori did everything right in this book.

I'm still mystified about how Katya Holberg eventually became Kate Stanton, but I was completely satisfied by the resolution of this particular chapter in her life.