
LillianFrost is interested in reading...
4h

The Second Chance Trailer Park
Katie Powner
From award-winning author Katie Powner comes a funny feel-good novel about a woman discovering her second chance at life. This charming and heartfelt story is perfect for readers who loved Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame.Fifty-two-year-old Meredith McGillicutty is not having a midlife crisis. She’s just ready for a change of pace, that’s all. The fact that she lied to get into a retirement community has nothing to do with being passed over for a promotion at work nor her recent breakup with the only man she’s ever loved. Nothing. Meredith only wants some peace and quiet. To sit on a porch in elastic-waist pants and mingle with other mature individuals who value a life of serenity. But the residents of the Peaceful Pines retirement community have other plans for her. These quirky and endearing neighbors seem to know her better than she knows herself, and they decide Meredith’s life is only just beginning. Blending humor and tenderness, The Second Chance Trailer Park will appeal to fans of Fredrik Backman and Lenora Worth.

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
7h

Ink Ribbon Red
Alex Pavesi
Knives Out meets Saltburn in this wickedly plotted thriller where a group of friends play a deadly game that unwraps a motive for murder, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Alex Michaelides. Anatol invites five of his oldest friends to his family home in the Wiltshire countryside to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. At his request, they play a game of his invention: Motive Method Death. The rules are simple: everyone chooses two players at random and imagines a scenario where one kills the other, then writes it down as a short story. Points are given for making the murders feel real, as Anatol explains to the group. Of course, when given this assignment, it’s only natural to use what you know. Secrets. Grudges. Affairs. But once you’ve put it in a story, that secret is out. It’s not long before the game has reawakened old resentments and brought private matters into the light of day. So with each fictional murder, someone new gets a very real motive. Ink Ribbon Red ultimately asks: When a real murder is headed your way, will you be able to spot it in time?

LillianFrost commented...
12h
Wow so glad to hear you enjoyed this one!!! It is so eye opening and interesting and it deserves more hype so, I am so glad you liked it.


"But I think the violence isn't just a moral thing. It's not just a moral choice at this stage. It's a kind of reflex, and there's a great deal of establishment violence, as well."
I went into this book basically not knowing anything about the Troubles and I came out of it fully supporting the IRA. I'm not sure if Keefe wanted to write a pro-IRA book, but that is essentially what it read as to me, and while the later parts of the book detailed the ways in which the IRA perhaps became twisted from its original aims, the fact remains that to me, the IRA did what they did because of what the British started. When you have a majority colonizing force that is armed and violent, what other option do you have to get the them off your soil? Is there really another option, especially when they use violence against you and ignore your peaceful protests? I truly don't think the Sinn Féin party could have achieved the political success and prominence in politics that it did after the Troubles without the Provos IRA paving the way by forcing the British to take their aims (somewhat) seriously.
This book was well-researched, well-written, and never boring. There were twists and turns to the point where I would occasionally forget that this was actually a nonfiction book, because some of the things that happened, especially after the Good Friday Agreement, seemed to come right out of a political thriller (also fuck Gerry Adams!!) I feel like Keefe really dove into this topic and was able to draw from a variety of sources, including some of the oral history and recordings or transcripts that he did have access to, so we were able to read quotes straight from the sources of people who had been intimately involved with the IRA, like Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes.
I was shocked (but not surprised, let's be real) at the amount of crimes that the British state essentially got away from in the years before and during the Troubles, including state-sanctioned assassinations and situations where people who committed crimes during that period were just never prosecuted. Of course, when the oppressed rise up with violence, it’s always decried as “terrorism.” When the government does it, it’s always “self-defense” and “justified.” However, I was not shocked by certain people's attempts to rewrite history, particularly to paint the IRA negatively after the unification of Ireland actually began to be a talking point that people took seriously. The way that Price, Hughes, and other ex-IRA members were discarded and struggled with PTSD, alcoholism, and more made me think of the veterans who went through the exact same thing—and it really was the exact same thing, because they were basically in a war throughout their teens and early 20s, but without government (from the Sinn Féin party) recognition of what they had gone through or support to manage the fallout. Instead, it was all about how to appear squeaky-clean in the eyes of the press by denying, denying, denying.
I will say though, that I did not come away from this book with sympathy for the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, which is one of the stories that this book is woven around. At least one reason for that is because I felt so much sympathy for Price and Hughes, and they both stated that she was an informant for the British state. The book stated that more ex-IRA and supporters were prosecuted for their crimes than loyalists and British supporters, and it feels like this was another situation where the official powers spent a lot of time trying to bring her murderers to bring more ex-IRA people to "justice" when the British 1) started it and 2) did the same and worse to people.
Anyway, my own leanings and opinions aside, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the Troubles, the players who were intimately involved, and the subsequent political fallout after the peace talks and Good Friday Agreement. This book goes into both an overarching picture and the small details and events that happened throughout the many decades of upheaval with thorough research and engaging writing. I know that I, for one, will definitely be seeking out Keefe's other books, because with this one book, he has definitely established himself as a non-fiction great!
[tw: Alcoholism, child abuse, eating disorders, gun violence, murder, pedophilia, sexual assault torture, war]

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
12h

The Little Bookshop of Love Stories
Jaimie Admans
Today is the Mondayest Monday ever. Hallie Winstone has been fired – and it wasn’t even her fault! Having lost her job and humiliated herself in front of a whole restaurant full of diners, this is absolutely, one hundred percent, the worst day of her life. That is until she receives an email announcing that she is the lucky winner of the Once Upon a Page Bookshop! Owning a bookshop has always been Hallie’s dream, and when she starts to find secret love letters on the first pages of every book, she knows she's stumbled across something special. Things get even better when she meets gorgeous, bookish Dimitri and between them, they post a few of the hidden messages online, reuniting people who thought they were lost forever. But maybe it’s time for Hallie to find her own happy-ever-after, too?

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
13h

For Whom the Belle Tolls
Jaysea Lynn
They told her to go to Hell.She’ll go on her own terms.Lily is less than thrilled about her arrival to the Afterlife, but what awaits her is more fantastical than she ever could have imagined. Deities wait in line at the coffee shop. Fae flit between realms. Souls find ways to make death a beginning.As Lily explores everything the Afterlife has to offer, she finds herself drawn to a place most people would rather avoid at all Hell.What she discovers there subverts everything she’s ever learned, and Lily realizes the demons working at the gate to guide souls need help—badly. Armed with years of customer service experience and pent-up sarcasm, Lily carves out a place for herself among the demons, confronting, sassing, and aiding the spectrum of humanity to redefine justice and redemption.A chance meeting with Bel, a demon general with a distractingly sexy voice, sparks an immediate and deeply healing friendship. However, the undeniable heat between them simmers, and it’s only a matter of time before it combusts.Meanwhile, something stirs beyond the boundaries of their world, threatening to destroy everything they’ve ever known and everything that could be… unless they fight like Hell to stop it.

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
1d

A Bookshop to Die For (A Wonderland Books Cozy Mystery, #1)
M.P. Black
Ditching her fiancé at the altar, Alice Hartford bolts to her childhood hometown to reconnect with the last, happy remnant of her her mom's old bookstore. But the bookstore is falling apart. And when a handyman working there falls to his death, the local chief of police insists it's an accident. Alice knows better and must put her detective skills to the test — before a determined developer destroys her last chance at a new beginning. Join Alice in book 1 of the Wonderland Books Cozy Mystery Series for a twisty, feel-good cozy mystery that celebrates books, friendship, and the courage to start anew.

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
1d

More Miracle Than Bird
Alice Miller
On the eve of World War I, twenty-one-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees—on her own for the first time—is introduced to the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats at a soirée in London. Although Yeats is famously eccentric and many years her senior, Georgie is drawn to him, and when he extends a cryptic invitation to a secret society, her life is forever changed. A shadow falls over London as zeppelins stalk overhead and bombs bloom against the skyline. Amidst the chaos, Georgie finds purpose tending to injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital, befriending the wounded and heartbroken Lieutenant Pike, who might need more from her than she is able to give. At night with Yeats, she escapes these realities into an even darker world, becoming immersed in The Order, a clandestine society where ritual, magic, and the conjuring of spirits is practiced and pursued. As forces—both of this world and the next—pull Yeats and Georgie closer together and then apart again, Georgie uncovers a secret that threatens to undo it all. In bright, commanding prose debut author Alice Miller illuminates the fascinating and unforgettable courtship of Georgie Hyde-Lees and W. B. Yeats. A sweeping tale of faith and love, lost and found and fought for, More Miracle than Bird ingeniously captures the moments—both large and small—on which the fate of whole lives and countries hinge.

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
1d

Tides Wait for No Witch
Natalie Summers
A magical island. A mysterious relative. A family she didn't know existed. Inheriting a house from a dead great-aunt she’s never met should've been Sara Rivers' first clue that things were about to get weird. The talking sea otter? That was clue number two. Sara's plan was simple: stay the six months to get her inheritance, sell the house, and figure out what comes next. What she didn't plan on was discovering she's half witch, half undine, has magic she can't control, and has a family history she was never meant to know. Then a suspicious journal entry makes her doubt everything she's been told. The locals are friendly, the town is charming, and absolutely no one wants to talk about how her great-aunt really died. When another body turns up, Sara realizes Katrika’s killer isn’t done. Between mandatory magic lessons, the game shop she inherited, a runaway teen hiding out in her basement, and an infuriatingly attractive FBI agent who may (or may not) be on her side, Sara's getting closer to a truth someone killed to hide. And the killer is watching. Welcome to Spelltide Bay, where the gossip travels faster than seagulls, sea otters have opinions, and secrets never stay buried for long.

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
1d

The Little Porto Book Club
Rebecca Raisin
Introvert and self-described whodunnit enthusiast Viviane has never much believed in living life outside of the pages of a book. But when her interfering mother insists that Viviane needs some friends who aren’t fictional, she decides to head into the beautiful bustling streets of Porto in search of her community. What better place to start than by reading her favourite mystery in the corner of a little-known café? But when one, then two, and then outrageously six other people decide to join her silent book club Viviane realises that she is firmly out of her depth. There’s Thomas, a middle-aged man hiding his love for romance novels, Lucinda, a chic sixty-something with a penchant for Christie, and then there’s Tiago, the hot alpha male of every romance novelist’s dreams. But when one of these newfound friends disappears from the book club without a word, will the community come together to find their fellow lost soul, and will Viviane find love along the way…?

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
2d

Miss Zukas and the Library Murders (Miss Zukas, #1)
Jo Dereske
Meet Miss Zukas . . . the very proper, exceedingly conscientious, and relentlessly curious local librarian of tiny Bellehaven, Washington--and one heck of an amateur sleuth! The Bellehaven police are baffled when a dead body turns up right in the middle of the library's fiction stacks. But Miss Helma Zukas--who never fails to make note of the slightest deviation from the norm of everyday life--is not willing to let this rather nasty disruption stand. Her precious literary sanctuary has been violated, and if the local law cannot get to the bottom of this case, Miss Zukas certainly intends to--with the help of her not-so-proper best friend, Ruth, a six-foot-tall bohemian artist with a nose for gossip and a penchant for getting into trouble. But their research project is bringing them a little too close to a killer . . . who'd like nothing better than to write Helma and Ruth out of the story completely!

LillianFrost is interested in reading...
2d

Mad Broke Cold: An Unpredictable Psychological Thriller (Killer Thrillers)
Meghan O'Flynn
The Silent Patient meets You: Mad Broke Cold is a fast-paced psychological thriller full of shocking twists. Every person on Ice Island has an agenda—some understandable, some convoluted, some downright sadistic. Evelyn Hawthorn is a case in point. I’ll tell you about them all later… if we make it that long. Ice Island is home to violent psychopaths too dangerous to be housed in a normal penitentiary. They are experts at murder. They are adept at finding ways around the system—and the people who run it. Most of them have managed to slip out of high-security prisons. Luckily for the public, Ice Island is inescapable. Unfortunately for the doctors working today, a brutal winter storm just barreled into the island. They have no power, no phones. They’re running low on supplies. There will be no assistance from the mainland—boats are no match for the icy waves. But the patients on this island don’t want to be rescued. They’re hunting. And the only prey they’re interested in are the doctors who have kept them locked up all these years. The patients on Ice Island want blood. Enter case #281762: Evelyn Hawthorn. The woman is a genius, driven, but brutally dangerous to every single person on the island. Especially herself. Evelyn is seeing and hearing things that aren’t really there. She can’t remember the crimes that led to her being locked up. And she’s the one who cut the power, trapping all of them inside the asylum. Without the most dangerous woman in the compound and the information she has locked inside her brain, not a single person will escape Ice Island alive—without Evelyn, a woman who couldn’t remember her own name until four hours ago. If you love unreliable narrators, locked-door thrillers, whodunnits with surprising endings, and well-developed characters that bleed straight onto the page, dive into Mad Broke Cold today! An intense and addictive read for fans of Gillian Flynn, Freida McFadden, and Lucinda Berry.