My picks from November’s Book of the Month selections are
two spooky mysteries I’m excited to see solved!
The Family Upstairs
by Lisa Jewell
Amazon Summary: Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.
She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.
Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.
Why I chose it: I loved Lisa Jewell’s previous novel Then She Was Gone, so I couldn’t pass up this one when it was a Book of the Month pick! Lisa Jewell writes such original, creepy, engaging stories. I hope to one day get through her entire back catalogue, but right now I can at least keep up with her new releases!
Ninth House by Leigh
Bardugo
Amazon Summary:
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.
Why I chose it: I have to admit that I’ve never read any of Bardugo’s other works, despite hearing nothing but good things about them. I am just not a big young adult fantasy fan. But this book sounds like a creepy mystery and that it right up my alley.
Since it’s been so hyped, my expectations are pretty high. Hopefully it delivers!
Do you subscribe to Book of the Month? What were your picks
for November? Comment and let me know!
