Fiction Review: Three New Novels

With such a busy spring and summer here, I got a little bit behind in sharing my book reviews that appeared on Shelf Awareness, so here is a little catch up. I reviewed these three novels this spring. They are each very different from each other, but I enjoyed them all.

A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas (full review at the link) is a slow-burn psychological thriller. Ruth is a therapist who works in London for the National Health Service, but she is suffering at least as much as her patients because her own son went missing a year ago. When a young man is assigned to her reminds her of her son, she knows she should ask another therapist to take the case, but she is drawn to helping him. You know all along that something bad is going to happen, but the tension of this suspense novel keeps you reading, with flashbacks to before her son's disappearance and plenty of creepy foreshadowing.

Abi Maxwell was one of the wonderful authors featured at Booktopia 2019 in Vermont this May, and I had the chance to read and review her second novel, The Den, in time for the event (full review at the link). This is the story of two sets of sisters, set 150 years apart on the same piece of land in New England, one modern story and one historical one that are interwoven in a clever way. You can read the details in my review; I enjoyed this atmospheric and intriguing novel. I also enjoyed meeting Abi at Booktopia and talking to her about the novel (including that haunting picture on the cover!). Now, I'm interested in reading her first novel, Lake People.

Last Day by Domenica Ruta (full review at the link) is an entirely different kind of novel. The world that Ruta has created in this novel is pretty much the same as ours, with one big difference: every year on May 28, the whole world celebrates Last Day. This unique holiday assumes that the world will end the next day, and while some cultures still celebrate the spiritual aspects of the day, in the modern Western world, the day is mostly celebrated with beer and barbecues and all kinds of excess. Despite the oddity of the plot, this is a character-driven novel, about several different people in the Boston area whose paths cross on this particular Last Day. It's a thoughtful novel that I enjoyed.

So, that finally catches me up (and I can finally close those windows in my browser!).

Have you read any of these books yet? Or any other new releases that you enjoyed recently?