Weekly Reads: Two Can Keep a Secret

Two Can Keep a Secret is the newest book by One of Us is Lying author Karen McManus. I was excited to get my hands on it. It was a really good mystery with missing and murdered teens and a massive whodunnit. I had several guesses throughout and I was wrong the whole way.

My rating 4 stars

Summary from goodreads:

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone's declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself.

Weekly Reads: Freefall

I had heard a lot of great buzz about the new novel Freefall so I was excited to get it from my library when it came out. It was a page turner! Told in multiple perspectives revealing little tidbits with each chapter, I could not put this book down. I told everyone I could about it as I was reading it, and you should read it too. I could totally see this being an insanely good movie. So read it before it gets optioned and the hold list at your library goes bananas. :P

My rating: 5 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

A propulsive debut novel with the intensity of Luckiest Girl Alive and Before the Fall, about a young woman determined to survive and a mother determined to find her.

When your life is a lie, the truth can kill you

When her fiancé’s private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, Allison Carpenter miraculously survives. But the fight for her life is just beginning. For years, Allison has been living with a terrible secret, a shocking truth that powerful men will kill to keep buried. If they know she’s alive, they will come for her. She must make it home.

In the small community of Owl Creek, Maine, Maggie Carpenter learns that her only child is presumed dead. But authorities have not recovered her body—giving Maggie a shred of hope. She, too, harbors a shameful secret: she hasn’t communicated with her daughter in two years, since a family tragedy drove Allison away. Maggie doesn’t know anything about her daughter’s life now—not even that she was engaged to wealthy pharmaceutical CEO Ben Gardner, or why she was on a private plane.

As Allison struggles across the treacherous mountain wilderness, Maggie embarks on a desperate search for answers. Immersing herself in Allison’s life, she discovers a sleek socialite hiding dark secrets. What was Allison running from—and can Maggie uncover the truth in time to save her?

Told from the perspectives of a mother and daughter separated by distance but united by an unbreakable bond, Freefall is a riveting debut novel about two tenacious women overcoming unimaginable obstacles to protect themselves and those they love. 

Weekly Reads: Greenglass House

 I signed up to read Greenglass House as one of the books on the South Dakota young adult book committee I'm a member of. It's a pretty large middle school read, and it fell toward the bottom of the stack of my to-read pile, leaving me to finish it down to the wire of when my review was due. And then I saw it on a list of read alikes for Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. And then it won an award. Man I needed to get reading!

The book was a little slow in some parts, but overall the mystery kept me flipping the pages. I think kids will devour this, and it'd even make for a good classroom read aloud.

My rating: 4 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

A rambling old inn, a strange map, an attic packed with treasures, squabbling guests, theft, friendship, and an unusual haunting mark this smart middle grade mystery in the tradition of the Mysterious Benedict Society books and Blue Balliet's Chasing Vermeer series.

It's wintertime at Greenglass House. The creaky smuggler's inn is always quiet during this season, and twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers' adopted son, plans to spend his holidays relaxing. But on the first icy night of vacation, out of nowhere, the guest bell rings. Then rings again. And again. Soon Milo's home is bursting with odd, secretive guests, each one bearing a strange story that is somehow connected to the rambling old house. As objects go missing and tempers flare, Milo and Meddy, the cook's daughter, must decipher clues and untangle the web of deepening mysteries to discover the truth about Greenglass House-and themselves.