Share Your Shelf #23 & What I Read in February

It's time for Share Your Shelf with Dara and I. This post and link up are dedicated solely to books and book reviews and it's one I look so forward to each and every month. I am always looking for new and more book ideas. 

I had a great month of reading and while I put this post together before our little weekend trip away I'll be sure to link those books up that I read on the plane in next month's wrap up. 

1.  Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewel--  This was a very engaging audiobook to listen to with multiple character voices. Nina and Ash are reeling after the loss of Nina's husband (Ash's father) when they find themselves at odds over a man named Nick. Nick claims to be a friend of Ash's father but she finds him too slick and too polished but when she starts digging into his past Nina gets upset. However, the further Ash digs, the worse the stories get until finally she is forced to confront her mother with all she's found. I did find myself rolling my eyes a few times and found a few of the story lines/details to be far fetched but I definitely enjoyed it.  

2. The President's Daughter by James Patterson & Bill Clinton-- Former President Keating is just settling into retirement when 2 years after leaving D.C. behind it is confirmed that his daughter was kidnapped while hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. 19 year old Mel is not eligible for secret service protection, but as a former navy SEAL himself, Keating struggles to let the national security leaders handle things. It was a fast paced novel with a lot of action and some unexpected twists along the way. 

3. How to Cheat Your Own Death (Castle Knolls Files book 3) by Kristen Perrin-- I was given this ARC by NetGalley to read and review. While I could tell it was part of a series, this book can absolutely be read as a stand alone novel (though I definitely plan to go back and read the others in the series). Told in 2 parts, present day Annie Adams has inherited her great Aunt Frances' fortune and is struggling to make sense of a fortune teller's prediction of her own death and the demise of her family. While checking up on her mom one day she stumbles upon the dead body of her mother's protegee. It's not the first dead body Annie has seen but the events surrounding the death remind Annie a lot of something similar Aunt Frances went through when she was in college. Annie had been reading through all of Frances' journals and through flashback chapters, we learn of what Frances' life was like the year she started college, studied psychology and met both Vera and Max. The more Annie digs into the present day, the more past and present start to blur and it looks like someone is after taking down Annie's mother. It is a really great story that will be published April 28, 2026.

 4. Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon--  Chandler Cohen never saw her writing career taking the path it has, being a ghost writer for celebrity memoirs. But when the morning after a bad one night stand finds her face to face with her next potential job she's unsure whether she should accept or not. Finn Walsh played a character on a popular teen werewolf show and tours the country showing up at comic cons, so suffice it to say his career isn't going the way he thought it would either. Both think they could work well together as long as they can put what happened that fateful night behind them. But then Finn is surprised and a bit devastated to learn that Chandler did not enjoy herself at all that night and that's why she snuck out in the middle of the night and asks her to give him lessons on seduction when they aren't busy working on the book. I'm used to her books being far more PG rated since she typically write Young Adult novels but I enjoyed this one anyway. It was utterly adorable to watch these two fall for one another.

5. Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney--  I typically enjoy Alice Feeney's twisty tales and this one starts off with a baby being abducted while mom is out shopping. 20 years later a women is murdered in a nursing home and somehow these two crimes are related. Edith is a patient at the home who had bonded with the hard working Patience, a worker who has been lying to everyone about everything. It's not an easy plot line to describe as there are far more characters and plot lines but it was a fun listen! 

6. Catch Her if You Can by Tessa Bailey (Big Shots #5)-- Eve and Madden met in high school and have been fighting their feelings for each other ever since. Eve is busy turning her dad's old strip club into a burlesque night club when she takes guardianship of her nice and nephew. Drowning in debt and responsibility, Madden wants to be her life line. Newly signed on as catcher for the Yankees he offers to marry Eve so the kids can be covered under his insurance. They strike up a deal for a 6 month marriage but Madden has every intention of using that 6 months to change Eve's mind. Another truly adorable R-rated book by Tessa.  

7. The Summer Everything Changed by Sian O'Gorman-- I enjoyed this ARC I received from NetGalley. Rosie and Patrick met when they were both in college and rooming in the same summer house while working at their internships and fell in love. When summer ended Rosie was saying in Ireland to help her father and sister run their family inn while Patrick was headed to Boston to make his own dreams of opening an Irish pub in America come true. 10 years later Patrick is back in Ireland for his brother's wedding.. and is surprised to realize the wedding is behind held at Rosie's inn. The two have done well making their dreams come true but neither has ever really moved on from the heartache of letting one another go. It was such a sweet second chance romance but it is a pretty slow paced story which I both loved and hated. I loved that I really got a sense of all the characters and setting but I also really wanted to get to the point in the story where Rosie and Patrick FINALLY have a heart to heart over their old hurts and how they really feel about their current lives.  

 8. Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life by Vivian Tu-- Honestly, I thought this one was just meh. I skimmed through many of the chapters as I feel like the author just keeps making the same points over and over again. Perhaps if I was much younger, struggling financially, or didn't know anything about money/the economy I would have found it more helpful. Pretty sure the only person getting rich reading with this book is Vivian (though my copy was free through my library so she didn't make any money off of me). I don't know why I keep reading these books published by TikTok/Influencers who aren't writers and just seem to try and beef up their most popular posts with fluff to turn it into a book. There is one actual chapter about investments-- one!

 9. The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass-- I stumbled upon this book in my Library's Libby offers and thought it looked cute. Even better it fit a few of my 52 Challenge themes as the book is told from the perspective of a cat, a ghost, and 11 year old Evan. It was an adorable middle grade fantasy mystery. Evan notices that a little free library has cropped up overnight in his town and he's eager to explore so he takes a couple of books to read. Soon Evan and his friend Rafe notice a link between the books and the day the old library burned down many, many years ago. A day no one in the town seems to walk to talk about. Determined to figure out what happened and why it was never rebuilt the two boys set about solving the mystery. 

10. No One Was Supposed to Die at this Wedding by Catherine Mack (book #2)-- Eleanor is attending her best friend's wedding and it seems like anything that can go wrong will. A hurricane traps everyone on the island but Eleanor has already stumbled upon a dead body before chapter 1. By the end of the book there are so many suspects and potential theories. It was real fun and so fast paced that I didn't want to put it down at all. 

11. Hello, Molly!: A Memoir by Molly Shannon-- So while I do know who Molly Shannon is, I can't say I am a fan or anything. I knew nothing about her life until listening to this memoir. She does a great job telling her story; even those parts that are so hard to listen to. A pivotal moment in her life involves a family car accident that takes 2 people from her when she was just 4 years old. A bit wild and wacky she has some real crazy stories from her tween/tween years too. I am not a Saturday Night Live fan but it was neat to hear about her experiences and try to imagine some of the characters/scenarios she reminisces about. A very enjoyable listen.

 12. The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst (Spellshop book #2)-- I really enjoyed the second book in the series; it made for a real fun listen. Terlu Perna had broken the law and was put under a magical spell that turned her into a wooden statue in the library but one day she wakes up in the middle of the snowy woods and stumbles upon a gorgeous, huge magical series of greenhouses. When she discovers that the magical greenhouses are dying and someone sent her there to help the grumpy gardener and only remaining inhabitant on the island she is torn. As much as she wants to help with the greenhouses and the plans she doesn't know what to do and is a bit afraid of doing unauthorized magic again and yet seeing the dying, broken greenhouses makes her so sad. Of course she agrees to help and not all the spells she tries works. It was a cute story. 

 13. This Weekend Does End Well For Anyone by Catherine Mack (book #3)-- Another ARC I was delighted to get my hands on through NetGalley. Available April 28th this third installment in The Vacation Mysteries was just as good as the first two and picks up right where the epilogue left off in book 2. But don't worry, if you haven't read the other two the author fills in plenty of details that you could still easily follow it; though I do suggest reading all 3 since it's a really fun series. After having been involved in two real-life murder mysteries in the past year, Eleanor heads off on a much needed weekend at an all inclusive resort in the Bahamas. She arrives at the writer's conference to find a body on the floor in her room. Of course Eleanor feels the need to investigate and with lots of familiar faces around the hotel and at the conference there are plenty of suspects and other potential victims. I loved it! 

 14. Under the Stars by Beatriz Williams--  I'm always a bit tickled when a book's setting is so near to me; this one partly takes place in Norwich, Connecticut and just off the Connecticut coastline. Told in 2 parts one story line is a ship that set sail from Norwich, Connecticut in November of 1846 and sank/ran aground shortly after off the coast of Long Island. The other story line is about a mother daughter duo named Meredith & Audrey Fisher. They have a very strained relationship but Audrey has offered to spend one summer on the island while Meredith dries out before heading back to Hollywood for a role that will put her back on the map. I was much more interested in the ship that went down but the contemporary story line was good too. I really enjoyed this one!  

I'm nearly 1/2 way done the 52 book challenge already! 

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking up with: