Month: June 2019

Pretty Guilty Women

~ rachelbenzine ~ 1 Comment

Review:

During the weeklong celebration of the Banks wedding, a man dies. Four women each confess to the murder, saying they committed it alone. Ginger is trying to manage her three kids and husband during this vacation they can’t afford. Kate is desperately trying to get pregnant. Emily is planning to drink her unpleasant memories away. And Lulu is pretty sure that her fifth husband is going to leave her. Why would each of these woman confess to the murdering the same man?

Over the course of the novel, we flash back and forth between police interviews of the women who confessed, and the days leading up to the murder. Pretty Guilty Women is a compelling suspense story. It touches on crucial issues like familial relationships, domestic violence, and what it means to be a parent. Added bonus: the author lives in St. Paul – I am always pumped to rep local writers! Pretty Guilty Women comes out in September, and I see it being a huge hit this fall!

Favorite Passage:

“Detective Ramone: Ms. Brown, Lulu admitted responsibility for a man’s death this evening. Here’s a photograph. Do you recognize him?
Emily Brown: Well, she can’t have killed this man.
Detective Ramone: Why not?
Emily Brown: Because that’s the man I shot.”
— twelve

What I Loved Most:

I absolutely adore murder mysteries… but I don’t read many of them nowadays, because they tend to give me nightmares. This book had a mystery, and I was excited to know who the killer was – but it wasn’t the kind of book that was creepy or overly suspenseful or is going to make me freaked out to be in my house by myself. Pretty Guilty Women was a great mystery without the unnecessary scary factor.

Read this book if you like:

Mysteries, female friendship, trying to figure out the story before the end of the book, Big Little Lies

Book Details:

Better Than the Best Plan

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Review:

Mitzy’s mom has always been a little untraditional… which is why they’ve moved from place to place as she tries out yoga or enlightenment or commune-living. But this time, things are different, and Mitzy is on her own. She comes home from school one day to find a note informing her that her mom is in Mexico for her latest venture, and Mitzy doesn’t know when she’ll be coming back. Seventeen-year-old Mitzy is a few months away from legally being an adult, so she figures she’ll be fine on her own. But when someone reports her to Child Protective Services, a social worker turns up to bring her to a foster home. And in a weird twist of fate, Mitzy finds out not only that she was in foster care as an infant, but that she is being brought back to the woman who was her foster mom for eighteen months.

Better Than the Best Plan follows the summer before Mitzy’s senior year of high school. Mitzy is trying to get settled into the gorgeous, fancy new house she’s staying in – but trying not to get to comfortable, since she is pretty sure her mom will come back to get her soon. Her new life is a far cry from her old life, and she is not sure what to think of the country club nearby, people who have private pools and tennis courts, or the cute boy who lives next door. Pick up Better than the Best Plan for a quick summer read that pulls you in from the first chapter.

Favorite Passage:

“I tell you all that because here’s the thing. I wanted to keep you. I so desperately wanted to keep you. I tried, in fact, probably harder than I should have. But your mother, she wasn’t going to walk away from you. She did everything the court required. She attended every DCF meeting. She jumped through every hoop, followed every rule. And it wasn’t easy. They really don’t make it easy, especially with kids as young as you. She really had to prove herself to them. But every challenge they laid, she met it, and so just after your second birthday, you went back to her. ‘Family reunification’, they call it. I wasn’t there to see it. I don’t think I had the strength to endure it. But you have to know that for nearly two years your mother fought for you. She never stopped being your mom, and she fought to make sure the court knew it. She didn’t leave you, Maritza. She went away, but she never left. Trust me on that.”
— Chapter Fifteen

What I Loved Most:

I feel like most of the books I’ve read featuring protagonists who are in the foster care system are heavy. Which is totally fair – these kids are going through super hard stuff. However, Better Than the Best Plan manages to be a light and fun read, while not shying away from hard questions like parental abandonment and messy family situations. This was a genuinely fun book to read. I also loved how the book stresses that even though Maritza’s biological mom left, it doesn’t mean that she stopped loving Ritzy. This book is very positive toward both the bio-parent and the foster parents. And it ends in a messy but happy way, which I think is a wonderful portrayal of how the foster care system can sometimes work to create a bigger family rather than splitting up families.

Read this book if you like:

Summer reading, identity searching, non-traditional families

Book Details: