Book Haul: Mystery & Thriller Week

Early May book haul. This haul was accidentally, but perfectly timed for Goodreads' Mystery & Thriller Week.



Title: The 9th Girl
Author: Tami Hoag
Series: Kovac and Liska #4
Genre: Mystery; Thriller; Suspense; Crime; Fiction
Goodreads Rating: 4.03/ 5 stars
Pages: 499 (Paperback)
Publisher: Dutton (Penguin)
Published: 2016 (Original publication: June 1, 2013)

Summary: On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, a young woman is found brutally murdered—the ninth so far this year in a string of grisly slayings. Homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska fear that it’s the work of a serial killer they call Doc Holiday, a transient who has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska uncover the truth, they find that the monsters in the ninth girl’s life may live closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: Which is the greater evil—the devil you know or the devil you don’t?

Hoag had me hooked the second I started the first book, Ashes to Ashes, in this series. So, of course I had to keep up with the series.

Title: The Cuckoo's Calling

Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Series: Cormoran Strike #1

Genre: Mystery; Fiction; Crime; Thriller
Goodreads Rating: 3.83/ 5 stars
Pages: 464 (Paperback)
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: April 29, 2014 (Original publication: April 18, 2013)

Summary: 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.

I'm a diehard fan of Rowling's renowned Harry Potter series; and while I didn't care for her novel, The Casual Vacancy, I figured I would give her other adult novel/series a chance.

Let me know if you spotted any favorites or any books that you've been looking forward to reading.

Until next time! Thank you for stopping by! And if you have yet to do so, follow me here on my blog via email subscription to be able to stay informed on when new posts are uploaded.

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- Anisa

Mini Review: Ashes to Ashes - Tami Hoag (Kovac and Liska #1) Review

Summary: He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won’t stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn’t talking.

Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still. Her superiors are interested only because the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When Peter pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI’s ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career—and her life. For she’s the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer . . . and the one woman he wants next. 

Pages: 576

Goodreads Rating: 4.02/ 5 stars

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Fiction, Crime Fiction, Adult Lit, Romance
                                                                                              Series: Kovac and Liska #1

The writing is fantastically addictive and the characters are so diverse and real, to the point that they feel like individuals you know, love, and hate. Brimming with a wonderful sense of familiarity! Fast paced but thorough and filled with fantastic detail. The flow was easy enough to fall into step with and the story, itself, is beyond easy to lose yourself in. It's always a treat to come across a book that is impossible to put down. I went to bed with question after question, I woke up with questions, I read on with questions burning holes through my mind.

The characters felt wonderfully real as well as all of the situations. The actuality of how real and possible all of those situations felt made the thriller aspect of this novel all the more engrossing and nerve wracking. For each answer that Hoag gifted you with she fired three more loaded questions or speculations your way. In one sentence you  felt convinced that you knew who the killer was, and in the next breath you were back to not knowing. I found myself second guessing every character's motives to the point of paranoia and just when I was convinced I knew who the killer was, Hoag hit me with a whammy of all whammies; multiple revelations within a short span of time that made me take a step back and view all of the players on the chess board in a new light.

The romantic interest on the side was done very well and in its own way became intricate to the story line. The romance was suspenseful, hot then cold then hot again, it was lacking in faith, it was brutally honest, it was love. But most importantly it was real. It felt tangible; it read like an actual romantic relationship, that real human beings are capable of experiencing. What I loved the most was that the concluding page didn't bring a happy ending to (the case or )the romance, but rather a happy beginning. A beginning of wonderful things to come.

I highly recommend checking out this book and I, myself, cannot wait to get my hands on more of Hoag's work. My Goodreads Rating: 5/ 5 stars.

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- Anisa