Reviews with TLC

A Fair to Die For by Radine Trees Nehring gently pulls the reader into the lives of Carrie, Henry, and their friends. Though part of a series, A Fair to Die For  stands on its own. Nehring creates characters who live lives that feel like the reader could drop by for a cup of coffee and feel right at home even as they are sucked into mystery and mayhem. As Carrie seeks to make sense of revelations about her family, she's sucked into a web of danger and intrigue. Carrie's husband and friends rally around her to keep her safe and help her bring down the drug organization threatening her family and her community. Nehring weaves a mystery through the problems created by family secrets in this well written classic cozy with likable characters.  

Joanne Pence plays with the cop-cozy dynamic in One O'Clock Hustle by making the cop a woman and the damsel-in-distress a dude-in-distress in a way that works really well. Rebecca Mayfield is known as a by-the-books homicide inspector, but Richie Amalfi, a man who lives by his own rules, lowers her defenses and has her questioning not only the rules but her own sense of right and wrong. When Amalfi becomes the prime suspect in a murder, he wants nothing more than to prove his innocence and get on with his life, and he will stop at nothing to do it. Amalfi doesn't even seem to realize he's a dude-in-distress as he runs around town trying to solve the crime he's accused of committing even when his actions tend to make matters worse. Mayfield is thrown into the role of protecting, defending, and investigating Amalfi all at once. To make matters more complicated, there's an undeniable attraction between them she's determined to ignore. Pence's characters exhib...

Jane Isay takes us behind the backdrop into the effects of lies told and truth revealed in Secrets and Lies: Surviving the Truths That Change Our Lives . As I read this book, I nodded in recognition at times, I squirmed in discomfort at others, and I blinked back tears as I empathized with the people whose stories she shared. Isay concentrates on what we might think of as "big" lies, but her words made me think about the million little lies we tell every day to keep peace. As she examines the pain inflicted by both secrets kept and truth reveals, Isay pushes us to examine the lives we lead and the connections in our lives. Does the secret we keep help or hurt? Does the truth we seek to reveal help or hurt? Do we seek to keep secrets or reveal truths to assuage our guilt or to free someone else? We all have to examine our motives, and Secrets and Lies acknowledges that every situation is unique and yet eerily similar regardless of the secret being kept or the truth being re...