Show Me Your Books - August

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August was a good book reading month for me. I finished three books and started on my fourth, but didn't get done before this blog was posted. I did get a few books all at once and I started one (Columbine), but just couldn't finish it. I think it will take me a bit to get through that one. 

What did you read this month?

Home Before Dark - Riley Sager

Home Before Dark - Riley Sager

This was another book on my TBR list. I had it on hold before it even came out this year. I am a huge Riley Sager fan, so I knew I wanted to read this book.

The book is about a family who moves into a haunted house. They live there for about 20 something days and leave. Ewan writes a book about what happened to them at the haunted house and it has stuck with them forever. Fast forward 25 years and Maggie is an adult and her father has just passed away. She is left with money and the house that they abandoned 25 years ago. But why hadn't her family sold it when it was so haunted that they left and her dad wrote a very successful book off of it?

Maggie plans to renovate the house and sell it. But as she stays at the house, she sees that her dads book was telling the truth. This book has plagued her her whole life. She hated the book and never believed it. But she slowly starts to remember things. But it isn't all that it seems.

The book goes back and forth between present day and 25 years ago. I did enjoy the book. I think I have liked some of his other books more, but this was still a good one. I would give this 4 stars.

Here is Amazon's synopsis:

What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father's death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

The Guest List - Lucy Foley

The Guest List - Lisa FoleyThis has been on my reading list for quite some time. One of my blogger friends even wrote about it a few weeks ago and said how good it was. Well she was right. This was a good one. 

This book takes place mostly out on a small island off of Ireland. This is an old island that is supposedly haunted, as people have perished in the bogs. Jules is a successful blogger who turned her blog into a magazine. Her fiance, Will, is a star of a survival reality TV show. They plan to marry on this island as no one has ever done that before and Jules wants to be the first.

Will's friends arrive on the island and we start to find out about their past when they were in high school and at uni. Everything unfolds as the book goes on and we start to see who people really are.

The book goes back and forth between several characters from the point of when they were going to the island and all the way through the wedding night. We know someone has died during the wedding night, but we don't know who until almost the end of the book.

At the end, so many surprises come out. I had guessed little ones throughout the book, but the end was just full of them. This is definitely a must read. I give it 5 stars.

Here is Amazon's synopsis:

The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner  – The bridesmaid – The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

Little Secrets - Jennifer Hillier

Little Secrets - Jennifer Hillier

This book gave me a nightmare the first night I read it (while in Graeagle). This book starts off with a mom at the Seattle Pike Place Market and while she is texting her husband, she lets go of her four year old sons hand and he goes missing. The only evidence they have is that he was taken by Santa (a few days before Christmas) and given the lollipop that he was about to get from a fancy candy store at the market. They have surveillance of him leaving, but nothing else. As you can see, that is why it kept me up the first night. It is every parents worse nightmare.

But I kept reading and had to know what happened to Sebastian. As the story unfolds, it just blows your mind what people are capable of. This is a great book, but it tugs at your heart, so beware. I would give this book 4 1/2 to 5 stars.

Here is Amazon's synopsis:

ll it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman. This discovery sparks Marin back to life. She's lost her son; she's not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix.

Permanently.