There are a few great titles coming out this March! I am soooo excited to share a few of my favorite March book releases with you!
Missing Clarissa
I received an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review*
Missing Clarissa is available March 7th. Admittedly, this is a young adult book, but I enjoyed A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (read about that here), and this promised to delight fans of that series. I went in with high expectations.
Cam and Blair are best friends – and as opposite as can be. Which just works for them – they balance each other out. Then, they are assigned their 11th grade journalism class project, and chose to cover the disappearance of a local girl from 1999. No body was ever found, and the case is still open. Better yet? They decided to turn it into a podcast.
I want to start off with: having each character described first by their race was very distracting. I get establishing characters, but it was excessive IMO.
Secondly, for the whole first half, I was convinced Ripley Jones read Holly Jackson’s series while writing hers.
BUT toward the end, before the “meeting”, there are a few pages where we pop into each characters life. Like 10 lines each — short blurbs. I loved the pace! I was sucked RIGHT in.
After that, the action picked up, and I was flipping kindle pages faster than they could load.
I did think it ended rather abruptly… which I suppose means I was left wanting more. I could easily see Jones turning this into a series (which I would likely read!)
A solid 3.5 for me.
I also had to google what a U-Haul was! For anyone wondering: it refers to the idea that lesbians tend to move in together after a short period of time. My mind was in the gutter 😅
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
I received an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review*
This title is available March 14 here.
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was such an entertaining story! An older, Chinese woman lives above her tea shop. Her days are very monotonous and she is lonely. Until one morning, when she ventures downstairs and sees a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. Naturally, she does what anyone would do… and draws an outline of the body in Sharpie, rifles through the deceaseds’ pockets, and then takes the flash drive he was holding in his hand.
When the police brush this off as an accident, Vera takes matters into her own hands, and starts her own investigation.
Vera is determined, bossy, and so endearing. You cannot help but root for her to solve the case. She befriends each of her suspects, which makes solving the case interesting!
I had the ending predicted about 1/4 of the way through… so as a “mystery/murder” book, this is “Mystery Lite” in my option. HOWEVER! I found myself grinning as I read, and staying up late because I didn’t want to stop reading. The story was very cute, and so well-written, with such likable characters! I didn’t want to believe any of them could be a murderer! Highly recommend you add Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers to your reading list!
What Have We Done
I received an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review*
What Have We Done is available March 7th.
To be honest, What Have We Done took me a bit to get into. I read and liked The Night Shift, so I had lofty expectations for What Have We Done.
The story is told from each of the 3 mains characters perspectives. Jenna (a stay at home step-mom) with a few secrets, Donnie is a bit of a has-been rockstar with his own issues, and Nico the reality tv star with debt. They all have problems… but these characters are all a little exaggerated and a little cliche. And these problems all come to light when a contact killer is hired to kill them.
I didn’t connect with Nico or Donnie, and felt their chapters dragged – and were a bit underdeveloped. The chapters alternating between perspectives gave reading the book a good pace… but that’s about it.
This book wasn’t fully up my alley, and definitely not my favorite Finlay. I would recommend What Have We Done to fans of James Patterson.
We’re All Lying
I received an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review*
We’re All Lying is available March 14. Cass seems to have it all — the career, the family, he gorgeous husband. That is, until she receives an email from her husband’s mistress. Her entire world is crumbling, and her own buried secrets come back to haunt her.
****Will update once finished! 😉
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A handful of great books released in February, too. You can check them out here! Holly Jackson actually released a short story that’s kind of an “origin story” for Pip, which was worth the read.