This is a fun, fast mystery–excellent summer read. In my review, I wrote:

The novel begins with a jolt. At the annual employee Christmas party, our narrator, Tate Kinsella, escapes from her irritating co-workers by heading up to the roof to have a smoke. (Our so she says.) There she encounters Helen, a woman seemingly set on suicide. Tate, by telling Hellen how much her own life sucks, convinces Helen not to jump and the two women leave the party and exchange numbers.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Tate finds herself in the back of a police car, accused of a murder in which a woman has fallen from that same roof, and which Tate vehemently denies having done. And yet, from the moment she tells the police her story, things don’t add up. She contradicts herself even more when she tells her lawyer what happened. There’s lots of evidence that points to Tate and the police–and, to a certain extent, the reader–are convinced of her guilt.

The story then jumps to Maddy, the wife of Tate’s boss. Maddy has many things she’s worried about, the greatest of which is the erratic behavior of her 15 year old daughter Emily. As the book progresses, we hear Tate’s voice, then Maddy’s, then Tate’s. We wonder who the hell Helen is and why Tate is lying to everyone. It’s confusing, interesting, and gripping.

It turns out that the truth is–shocker!–complex, twisty, and dark. One character preys on young girls and there are passages in this book that turned my stomach. This is very much a story about power, gender, abuse, and revenge and, for the most part, it’s a compelling one.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.

Our reviewer Lisa loved this work of historical fiction. She wrote:

A lovely, muscular novel that takes a look at life in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s workshop during its late 1800s heyday, The Tiffany Girls finally gives a voice to the unsung designers and artists who helped put together the glass king’s most famous pieces.

Responsible widow Clara Walcott Driscoll is running the women’s division of Tiffany’s New York Glass company in 1899 when the whole team is put to task making an enormous stained glass chandelier, to be shown at the upcoming World’s Fair. The design is an enormous task that will require a number of hands, and she’s losing glass cutters at an alarming speed. She doesn’t know that the design she’s been working on, a dragonfly lamp, will soon make the shop’s name…..

The working hands left include the pair belonging to Grace Griffiths, a copyist who begins to tune in to feminist thoughts while attending speeches by Emma Goldman. A budding cartoonist, Grace is highly skilled and constantly getting into scrapes. Eventually, she takes on a double life as a political cartoonist working under the name G.L. Griffith.

Emilie Pascal is the daughter of an abusive art forger who had a position at an exclusive art Academy. She reveals her father’s lies, but confessing the truth places her own skills in question when her father abandons her, leaving her to bear the brunt of his shame. Since women are not accepted at the academy, the resultant scandal means she is forced to give up her dreams, her connection to her family’s life as well as living in France. Emilie learns the art of stained glass on the boat to America. At the Tiffany office, she’s hoping to start over and make a new life for herself – thanks to a forged letter of recommendation.

An impressed Clara sees Emilie’s designs when she faints at her interview and thinks they might have the potential to pull them out of their production troubles. Living in the same boarding house, Emilie and Grace soon become close. The lives of all three women become interlaced as work for the World’s Fair pieces commences and each of them enters into history in her own unique way. But can Clara keep her staff of unruly young women away from the boys and on-task? Can Emilie conceal her secret past? And can Grace protect her double identity?

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Lisa also loved this contemporary romance. She wrote:

Full Exposure takes us into the heart of Mardi Gras with all of its glitter and pageantry. Two lovers find romance unexpectedly, but is what they have real enough to last?

Josie Parks and Spencer Pham meet in a New Orleans urgent care center and strike up a banter-filled conversation after she whacks him in the head by mistake after trying to grab some Mardi Gras beads. Josie is a boudoir photographer who’s without a gig after her client cancels on her; she decides not to get a refund for her trip and heads into town hoping to find inspiration. Spencer is in town making a documentary about his family; they were the first Vietnamese Krewe members in the history of New Orleans. Hoping to break out of their old corporate hellholes, Spencer and Josie make a deal: Josie will help Spencer with his documentary if he’ll show her around town. Love follows, but what happens when Josie has to go back to Washington D.C.?

This is a warm, sweet contemporary that’s touched with the sweetness of New Orleans and the golden glow of possible romance. Josie is good at her job but wants to be better, wants to get to make a different kind of art. Spencer has rejected a whole corporate ethos to be where he is now. They are both likable, they both adore their families – Spencer’s relationship with his sister and mom is particularly touching.

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We gave this sweet read a B+. In her review, Charlotte wrote:

A major strength of this book is that it is about women, and written by a woman who clearly likes women. Nothing gets my goat like a book that seems devoted entirely to mocking women as stereotypes. But Katie and all the other women in the novel are satisfactorily diverse in their personalities, desires, etc., and the only truly unlikable character is Clara. Colgan also writes a good best friend character. Louise is an endearingly good-natured person, and her little tadpole of a side-plot romance with the town vet is lovely. And Colgan poses some of the best questions of the book through her. “I just wanted a husband and some children and some chickens,” Louise says.

“And I know it’s really unfashionable to say that and I know we’re all supposed to be career women and not give a toss and stand up for our feminist heritage. . . . But I feel like an idiot for wanting that, and there isn’t a single man in this stupid fucking town [London] who feels like that. . . . Is that fair?”

And these words are spoken not by a woman who’s your typical conservative – she’s the same woman who has been coping with her break-up with an unmitigated stream of “unbelievably casual sex”. Is there anything better than when a heroine has a best friend who doesn’t run a bakery and who has more complex feelings than a Blush Face emoji?

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.