Readers' Favorite

January 9, 2016

A Psychological Thriller: The Girl with no Past by Kathryn Croft


Gripping, a real page turner ~ WildRunning Tiger

Thrilling ~ Jenny Kinch

intriguing story ~ Furnace




A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

Leah Mills lives a life of a fugitive – kept on the run by one terrible day from her past. It is a lonely life, without a social life or friends until – longing for a connection – she meets Julian. For the first time she dares to believe she can live a normal life.

Then, on the fourteenth anniversary of that day, she receives a card. Someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed the life Leah has created.

But is Leah all she seems? Or does she deserve everything she gets?

Everyone has secrets. But some are deadly.



Buy The Girl with no Past at Amazon


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January 8, 2016

Review: The Lone Wolf's Heart by J. Jennings

by Claire Rees

cover The Lone Wolf's Heart

The Lone Wolf's Heart by J. Jennings follows an orphaned girl called Jenny, who through her job as a waitress meets the gorgeous, mysterious shifter called Mark.

Romantic relationships are strictly forbidden between humans and shifters and so they both try to keep their feelings for each other a secret. Until Jenny is attacked by another shifter and Mark infiltrates a rival clan to find out who hurt Jenny. Mark discovers jenny’s attackers and kills the female shifter to protect Jenny.

They fall in love and get married, by Jenny giving herself to him) and mark is forced out of his Clan for choosing Jenny over them as they refuse to accept a human as one of their own.

All is going well for the newly weds until a heavily pregnant Jenny is kidnapped by a rival clan and Mark is forced to go begging to his old clan for help.

The story line is good and interesting, the characters were likeable and believable. But I would have liked a little more information on the way of the shifters and a little more description on the day to day lives of the couple once Jenny was forced to live in the woods away from other humans.


I would very much like to read book two to see what happens next and if Jenny and Mark will finally get their happily ever after.

Buy The Lone Wolf's Heart at Amazon



Book info:
available formats: ebook (43 pages)
published: November 2015
genre: horror, romance
source: author
read: January 2016

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January 7, 2016

Why You Should Leave a Comment

by Donna Huber



You just read a great article online and you thought to yourself 'that's a great read' and you might even share it to Facebook or Twitter, but then you move on.

But the author of the article never knew you liked their article. Sure they can see that it was shared so many times (though it is a bit more difficult to track that on Twitter now), but they don't know that you personally shared it and enjoyed their article.

That is why it is important to leave a comment.

You might not think that leaving a "great article" comment is important or even worth the effort. However, I can tell you as a writer there is nothing that puts a smile on my face faster than seeing someone leaving a comment, even if it is just "great article".

Why is it important and has me doing the happy dance?

Because it let me know, one, a real person read my article. I can look all day at the numbers my metrics. But some of those numbers are robots or scammers. And the ones that aren't are just hypothetical people that I know only what the numbers tell me. But to see a real comment (as oppose to the scammers that want to get a link on my blog), lets me know that there is a real person reading what I wrote and did enjoy it and didn't just mindlessly share what everyone else is sharing.

While you might think leaving a comment saying "great article" is meaningless. It is not. I know the time you took to actually type that comment. I participate often in a weekly meme and it takes effort to leave a comment. And you know what? Most of comments are "that book sounds interesting" and "not really the book I typically read". Not really profound statements.

So the next time you read an article you enjoy consider leaving a comment to let the writer know exactly that. Your comment doesn't have to "add" to the conversation or be some profound statement to be appreciated by the writer.

And you know what else? When one person comments it makes it more likely another person will also comment. So what do you say? Want to make a writer happy today?


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January 6, 2016

10 Books for Book Clubs



Is your book club gearing up for a new year and trying to decide what to read? Check out these popular book club reads.

cover All the Light We Cannot See
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Buy All the Light We Cannot See at Amazon


cover The Nightingale
In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

Buy The Nightingale at Amazon


cover The Martian
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded on Mars' surface, completely alone, with no way to signal Earth that he’s alive — and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone years before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark's not ready to quit. Armed with nothing but his ingenuity and his engineering skills — and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest source of strength – he embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive, using his botany expertise to grow food and even hatching a mad plan to contact NASA back on Earth.

As he overcomes one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next, Mark begins to let himself believe he might make it off the planet alive – but Mars has plenty of surprises in store for him yet.

Grounded in real, present-day science from the first page to the last, yet propelled by a brilliantly ingenious plot that surprises the reader again and again, The Martian is a truly remarkable thriller: an impossible-to-put-down suspense novel that manages to read like a real-life survival tale.

Buy The Martian at Amazon


cover Me Before You
Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

Buy Me Before You at Amazon


cover Go Set a Watchma
From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch--"Scout"--returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past--a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision--a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.

Buy Go Set a Watchman at Amazon


cover The Cuckoo's Calling
A BRILLIANT DEBUT MYSTERY IN A CLASSIC VEIN: DETECTIVE CORMORAN STRIKE INVESTIGATES A SUPERMODEL'S SUICIDE.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.


Buy The Cuckoo's Calling at Amazon



cover Little Women
Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth--four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England

The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored for generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo's hand, cried over little Beth's untimely death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Aspiring writers have found inspiration in Jo's devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature's most beloved women.

In her enlightening, thoughtful introduction, Elaine Showalter discusses Louisa May Alcott's influences and her aspirations for Little Women, as well as the impact the novel has had on such women writers as Joyce Carol Oates and Cynthia Ozick.

Buy Little Women at Amazon


cover The Snow Child
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm, she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

Buy The Snow Child at Amazon


cover Fates and Furies
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

Buy Fates and Furies at Amazon






cover Red Queen
This is a world divided by blood – red or silver.

The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change.

That is, until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power.

Fearful of Mare’s potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.

But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance – Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart ...

Buy Red Queen at Amazon




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January 5, 2016

Teaser: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

by Donna Huber

I think this year I'm going to try to read (or listen to) books that I never have but maybe should have. I have a list of books that I was suppose to read but didn't get around to (I think we were assigned something like 50 books my senior year). The first book up wasn't one I was assigned to read, but there are often references to it in life. I've been thinking about it since reading Sylvain Reynard's Gabriel's Inferno trilogy. When I saw The Divine Comedy available in audio at my digital library I thought that I would give it a try.

Have you read it?

cover The Divine COmedy

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I dound me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover'd there.
How first I enter'd it I scarce ca say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd
The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

Buy The Divine Comedy at Amazon


Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.



January 4, 2016

New Releases - January 2016 #MondayBlogs


It is a new year and there are some great books expected to come out. We are excited for all the wonderful reading to come. Here are a few new releases you might not want to miss.


cover The Guest Cottage
From the New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes the spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong: two men lie dead in a suburban living room; two women are on the run from police; and a marriage is ripping apart at the seams.

     When Richard Chapman offers to host his younger brother's bachelor party, he expects a certain amount of debauchery. He sends his wife, Kristin, and young daughter off to his mother-in-law's for the weekend, and he opens his Westchester home to his brother's friends and their hired entertainment. What he does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, a dangerously intimate moment in his guest bedroom, and two naked women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night. In the aftermath, Richard's life rapidly spirals into a nightmare. The police throw him out of his home, now a crime scene; his investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave; and his wife finds herself unable to forgive him for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters who will kill her in a heartbeat. A captivating, chilling story about shame and scandal, The Guest Room is a riveting novel from one of our greatest storytellers.

Available January 5
Buy The Guest Cottage at Amazon


Who will hold the winning hand? Sherlock meets Ocean's Eleven in this wickedly funny, action-packed crime caper.

Darkus Knightley is used to expecting the unexpected. An extraordinary solver of crimes, with immense powers of deduction, and regularly found bedecked in tweed, Darkus is anything but the average 13-year-old. But he is the person to call when strange goings-on are afoot!

Despite trying to leave his detective ways behind to lead a normal teenage life, when his father's loyal housekeeper, Bogna, goes missing, Darkus must return to the family fold and follow the clues to America and the bright lights of Las Vegas. Alongside his father, Alan, and stepsister, Tilly, Darkus must once again face the deadly criminal organisation the Combination – and this time, all bets are off. With danger at every turn, Knightley and Son will need an ace or two up their sleeves in order to win this game. Will the odds be in our detective duo's favour? Or will this be the Knightleys' final roll of the dice?

Perfect for fans of Sherlock, this thrilling crime adventure will keep you on the edge of your seats.

Available January 7
Buy Knightley & Son: 3 of a Kind at Amazon


cover Match Me If you Can
From the USA TODAY and Sunday Times International Bestseller comes the romantic comedy for every woman who's ever suspected that it really isn't her... it's him
"Michele's writing is so engaging and witty." Sophie Kinsella


Ever thought about recycling your Ex?

Best friends Catherine, Rachel & Sarah are fun, smart, successful and single - just like millions of women with a low tolerance for idiocy in their dates.

Mr. Right hasn't turned up yet, and Mr. Right-Now isn't worth booking a wax appointment for. So when Catherine, London’s finest matchmaker, gets Rachel and Sarah to join her dating site where they can recycle their ex-boyfriends in exchange for an upgrade, they soon realize that anything could happen . . .

Three best friends, proving that sometimes it really isn't you... it's him.

Available January 14
Buy Match Me If You Can at Amazon


cover Sword and Verse
Raisa was just a child when she was sold to work as a slave in the kingdom of Qilara. Despite her young age, her father was teaching her to read and write, grooming her to take his place as a Learned One. In Qilara, the Arnathim, like Raisa, are the lowest class, and literacy is a capital offense. What’s more, only the king, prince, tutor, and tutor-in-training are allowed to learn the very highest order language, the language of the gods. So when the tutor-in-training is executed for teaching slaves this sacred language, and Raisa is selected to replace her, Raisa knows any slipup on her part could mean death.

Keeping her secret is hard enough, but the romance that’s been growing between her and Prince Mati isn’t helping matters. Then Raisa is approached by the Resistance—an underground army of slave rebels—to help liberate Arnath slaves. She wants to free her people, but that would mean aiding a war against Mati. As Raisa struggles with what to do, she discovers a secret that the Qilarites have been hiding for centuries—one that, if uncovered, could bring the kingdom to its knees.

Available January 19
Buy Sword and Verse at Amazon


cover Friday Barnes Girl Detective
When Friday Barnes solves a bank robbery, she uses the reward money to send herself to Highcrest Academy, the most exclusive boarding school in the country--and discovers it's a hotbed of crime!

Soon she's investigating everything from disappearing homework to the terrifying Yeti haunting the school swamp. But the biggest mystery yet is Ian Wainscott, the handsomest (and most arrogant) boy in school who inexplicably hates her. Will the homework be found? Can they ever track down the Yeti? And why is Ian out to ruin her?

With black-and-white art throughout, this is the launch of an exciting new mystery series!

Available January 19
Buy Friday Barnes, Girl Detective at Amazon


cover Pucked Over
Lily LeBlanc isn’t versed in the art of casual sex, but after seven years in an on-again, off-again relationship, she’s definitely willing to give it a shot. And who better to try it with than her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend? What could possibly go wrong? Nothing at all.

NHL player, Randy Ballistic, lives up to his last name on the ice and in the bedroom. His best friend and teammate has recently given up the puck bunnies and traded them in for a real girlfriend. And she just happens to have a seriously feisty, extra-hot best friend on the rebound. Randy’s more than happy to be Lily’s spring board back into the dating scene.

Casual sex is only casual until those pesky things called emotions get involved. Once that happens, someone’s bound to gets pucked over.

Available January 24
Buy Pucked Over at Amazon


cover The Manning Grooms
A reluctant groom and an impulsive one…

Jason Manning is content with his life as a bachelor, a slob and a sports fan. Then a precocious teen named Carrie Weston decides to play matchmaker, introducing him to her mother. To his relief, Charlotte is as uninterested in marriage as he is. But Jason's feelings start to change once he gets to know his Bride on the Loose.

James Wilkens was almost a Manning groom—because he almost married one of the Manning sisters. With that broken engagement behind him, he spends New Year's Eve in Las Vegas…where he meets Summer Lawton. She's just suffered a painful betrayal, and James promises her that in a year she'll be over it. To prove his point, he makes a date to meet her in Vegas Same Time, Next Year. Except it turns out to be more than a date—it's a wedding!

Available January 26
Buy The Manning Grooms at Amazon


cover The Only Girl in School
From the acclaimed author of The Secret Tree comes the story of a girl who finds herself a sudden outsider in the loneliest place in the world--middle school.

When Claire's best friend moves away just before the start of fifth grade, Claire suddenly becomes the only girl in the entire elementary school. While the boys are resentful that she gets a bathroom all to herself, Claire soon sees the lonelier side of things--until a few incidents put her quite literally in the spotlight.

Available January 26
Buy The Only Girl in School at Amazon







Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

January 3, 2016

Yours Completely: A Cinderella Love Story by Krista Lakes

Sweet, sweet love story!!!! ~ Heather Cicio

Remarkable update to a classic fairy tale... ~ Constance Cole

Entertaining and Magical Romance ~ Tami Talbert




Maids don't ever get to go to the ball... do they?

Jace Connors:
Stretched thin from running a business and organizing a wedding, the last thing Jace needs is the world's most eligible bachelorettes trying to sneak their way into his bed. When he meets Ella grooming the inn's horses, though, she leaves him breathless. Jace knows that he can't let her get away...

Ella McDaniels:
What starts as an almost-kiss in the barn ends up captivating Ella, even though she knows that the richly dressed Jace is out of her league. However, when he keeps showing up wherever she is, her attraction to him grows. And if she can outwit her wicked stepmother, she just might be able to dance with him at the wedding reception ball. There's only one problem...

What if Jace is actually the groom?

This novel is the first in Krista Lakes' new series Brides and Billionaires and, for a limited time, comes with a bonus novel, Sunrise Kisses!



Buy Yours Completely at Amazon





Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

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