This one is my favorite so far of the other books that I've read. I couldn't put it down. The twist it took was page turning.

Good twist and turns. I wasn't expecting what happened.

Reading novels set during 2020, at the height of the COVID outbreak, feels surreal. At that time IRL, I wondered about people who got stuck away from home, family, friends, jobs, so this brought back a bit of my empathetic anxiety for those folks. Picoult found a fascinating way to tell a story with that idea as its backbone. She also explored some of the horrors that hospital workers experienced. We haven’t acknowledged their trauma in any meaningful way, and this book made me think about how medical professionals must still carry the weight of what they witnessed and were forced to cope with for those endless days. Aside from all of that, the 2nd half of this book was stunning! This might be one to re-read in a couple of years. Can’t say any more about it without spoilers, but it was unexpected and intriguing, to say the least.

(Review of audiobook) Absolutely gorgeous book! Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian family & church, this new perspective on the last decade of the life of Jesus blew me away. It was utterly unexpected — I rarely read book descriptions and picked this up just because it was by Sue Monk Kidd — and ever so rewarding. I loved all the different women trying to remain true to themselves in a world that demanded conformity and obedience from them. I love their strength, whether it was expressed as quiet resistance, loving support of their friends, or in shouted voices. I loved the spirit of Jesus from his first appearance until the end. And the author’s note at the end, obviously read by Kidd herself (that accent was unmistakable), was wonderful, too. The Book of Longings was an experience, not simply a novel.

Every single emotion worked me over while reading this book. The mystery was intriguing, but Whitaker’s characters were really amazing. Each one had hidden aspects, some revealed early and others not until the last act. But the tales of those condemned, cast aside, or simply forgotten by our society were powerful and haunting. Giving this 4.5 stars, but rounding up, especially after a couple of bad book choices. Usually an audiobook stays in the house or in the car for its duration, but this one kept me in the driveway until chapters ended so it could come inside with me. Couldn’t put it down until it was finished.

This was a good book. It took a twist and I wasn't expecting it. First of her kind of books that I've read! I'm gonna go check out her other books now!

A romance. It definitely was an expected book. I can’t say it was one of my favorites but I do enjoy a good romance book. It was hard to put down in some instances and easy to get into.

The book was good. Couldn't put down once I was towards the end. It took me a bit to get into thought. It definitely had a good twist!

This book has been so popular that maybe I expected a bit too much. (Which is why I usually avoid whatever is on bestseller lists and choose older titles.) The spookiness factor was good. But none of the characters was particularly likable, maybe because each of them was pretending to be someone they weren’t, so they didn’t inspire empathy. Best part of the whole book was the last quote by some random guy in a bar. Oddly enough, a line popped into my head during the next-to-last chapter, as the last big reveal was made, and the final quote was almost exactly the same. So this supposedly creepy tale ended with a fun chuckle. Odd side note: Foley uses a lot of British slang and names for things that we don’t hear in the US. Maybe other British writers tend to write with American readers in mind and avoid so much of that. Hope I remember to read the print version of my next Foley title so it’s easier to look up the unfamiliar words. Example: biro(sp?), which is some kind of pen or marker. With some foreign authors (Tana French and Stieg Larson come to mind) challenging pronunciations of places and people make audio preferable so my brain isn’t constantly struggling with how a word sounds even as I read silently. But Foley strikes me just the opposite. Love having the option of print or audio and deciding which authors are best in which format.

Loved the ending! Give this 3.5 stars, taking off a bit because of an important plot point that was illogical but that allowed Alice access to information she needed to make progress in solving the mystery. It felt like a careless addition to a story that had delicious twists and turns otherwise. The art world peek was entertaining, all the NYC location info added flavor, and competing law enforcement offices increased the tension. Seemingly random characters and towns were confusing at first, but Burke mostly brought them together in the end.