Meg Reads

Busy Philipps is a sparkly force of nature. I started this one on Kindle, and eventually switched over to audiobook to listen on my commute, and WHOA am I ever glad I did. Busy does so many fantastic impressions of the people she's writing about on the audiobook, and she nails it every time. Her Michelle Williams is spot on. Even the two lines she says as Katie Holmes: perfection. And I'm sure her mother sounds exactly the way Busy does on that recording as well. You get the picture. Busy isn't someone I knew much about, but remembered as a fixture kind of background character from a lot of things, like Dawson's Creek. Now that I go back and watch things she's done— she's completely right, she is sparkly and entertaining to watch. I found this book to be so well-written, human, open and vulnerable. She didn't hold back on what she really thinks of certain people *cough* I did not find James Franco's d-bagness to be shocking to say the least *cough* and...

Comes out today! Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Behind the Red Door starts with social worker Fern who is planning to return home to help her neglectful father pack up his home to move to Florida. Ted, her father, is a now retired university professor, obsessed with fear, who created various "Experiments" which were really more like pranks on Fern as a child to document her fear and response in the name of science. Not a great parent, to say the least. Fern has accepted his limitations (and those of her mom as well, who's off on a cruise somewhere, always having been emotionally detached from Fern), and has come to help because her father expressed that he needed her, which was basically like emotional catnip. Fern's been dealing with some reactions to some new medication her psychiatrist has prescribed, and as she's making the journey back to her hometown, we get the sense that maybe she's...

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.  This was a riveting read, with a multi-narrative style, similar to Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. This style can be tricky to navigate, as often in having a variety of perspectives, there’s some compromising on how deep of a sense you can get for any one character in the story.  This centered primarily around Helen, an architect working on a redevelopment of an abandoned, derelict psychiatric asylum in Lancaster. Her teenage daughter Zoe goes missing, and there’s a race against the clock to save her before it’s too late. The atmosphere with the asylum is eerie, but could have been fleshed out further to great effect. There are simultaneous stories here: one is about a historical serial killer who imitates someone to pin their killings on that person, another is about the dark history of a serial killer who lived in the asylum after its closure, yet another is a...

Wendy Clarke has done well with the twists and turns in this one— I didn’t see almost any of them coming, and they kept me extremely engaged in the story.  The Bride  is about a woman called Alice who has just broken up with her fiancé, is out of work, and is generally having a tough time of things. An old friend, Joanna, gets in touch out of nowhere, and invites Alice to her apartment to reconnect and meet her new partner. Alice is delighted and sets off on her way, only to arrive and find that Joanna isn’t there— just her fiancé Mark. And he hasn’t seen Joanna since the night before. Where on earth is Joanna? I loved the sense of atmosphere of the docks and Joanna & Mark’s apartment building— it added a great layer of creepiness to the whole thing. This book was unputdownable, and fast-paced, and you’ll be kept guessing until the very end. If you’d like a change of pace and an unpredictable thriller, give this one a read. Thanks NetGalley and Bookouture   for an ARC...

Arden Maynor was only six when she went missing while sleepwalking during a huge rainstorm. She was found three days later, miraculously alive in a storm drain. The media went wild about it (think: the Baby Jessica rescue back in the early ‘90s) and Arden and her mother ended up on the talk show circuit, receiving loads of donations, her mother even wrote a book. Arden, on the other hand, can’t really remember anything about that horrific incident. 20 years later, Arden’s changed her name to Olivia, and has abandoned her old life altogether. She’s trying to live a normal life in privacy. She has a house in a small town, she’s working in medical administration, and takes care to keep her history completely secret from everyone she knows. All is fine and well until she discovers herself sleepwalking again one night— something she hasn’t done since the accident. It rattles her, especially after another night of sleepwalking, she finds herself standing over a body in her backyard, hands co...

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a digital ARC in return for an honest review. Our Little Cruelties  is a beautifully written story about some dreadful characters. Set in Ireland, it’s about the three Drumm brothers and the awful things they do to people (primarily to each other). The opening of the novel starts in the present day where one of the brothers has died, but it’s unclear as to which one. The story then dives into the perspective of the eldest Will, the golden boy in his mother’s eyes but a really nasty piece of work in terms of how he treats women. Then it’s on to the youngest Luke, hated by their mother, who battles mental health and substance abuse issues in his adulthood as a pop star. Rounding out the trio is Brian, the middle brother, whose stinginess and manipulation of Luke and others for his own benefit don’t leave much sympathy for him either. These sections run through their stories from when they were kids, flipping back and forth in time, ove...