Review: It’s One of Us by J.T. Ellison

Fellow Nashvillian J.T. Ellison publishes her latest stand-alone thriller, It’s One of Us today. I was pleased to receive an ARC of Ellison’s latest novel so I could participate in her blog tour for the book.  Details on the book and how to purchase it are included after my review.

After years of struggling with infertility, Olivia and Park Bender’s marriage is showing signs of strain. On the morning that Olivia experiences a miscarriage, the police arrive at their Nashville home with shocking news – Park’s DNA has been linked to a series of crimes. The implication is that either Park is a suspect or one of his children is.

So begins J.T. Ellison’s latest thriller, It’s One of Us.

Park has things in his past he’s not exactly been forthcoming with Olivia about, including his donation to a sperm bank that used his sample far more than the documentation said they should or would. Turns out Park has multiple children by different mothers and these children have all connected on a Discord server. There are also questions about Park’s past related to the disappearance of his college girlfriend.

Ellison piles on twist after twist to the story, shifting through multiple points of view during the story. Whether it’s one of the women who used Park’s sample, Park’s daughter, the suspect, Olivia, Park, or Park’s twin brother Perry, each narrator provides an interesting piece of the puzzle as the story of what happened starts to unfold. Ellison even puts in an interesting twist or two to a love triangle that developed between Olivia, Park, and his twin brother Perry back in their college days and one that threatens to resurface again now.

Seeing Ellison reference various areas of Nashville and our local television station is an added bonus for this reader as a resident of middle Tennessee. Thankfully, she doesn’t pull a 24 and has every destination in the area be only five minutes from each other as the plot or latest twist needs various players in various places at a certain time.

The premise of a marriage already under strain due to infertility and then tested by the wildest of external forces is an intriguing one. Ellison’s exploration of Olivia’s struggle and emotions with infertility hits home with raw power and emotion. Be warned that if this is something you or someone you love struggles with, this book may hit you in all the right and wrong ways. The afterward reveals Ellison’s own struggles and how they led to Olivia’s creation.

But as twist after twist arrives, the story begins to lose a bit of its focus and intensity in the second half. As I said earlier, there is a love triangle that emerges between Olivia and the Bender twins – one that gets exacerbated as secrets come to light and Park’s twin brother Perry arrives back in town at precisely the wrong moment. White the story works hard to establish the long-simmering tension, but the payoff isn’t as solid as it could or should have been.

It ends up taking the story down a peg or two in the final pages and left me feeling a bit unsatisfied with It’s One Of Us in the final pages.

About the Book:

From the New York Times bestselling author comes this twisting, emotionally layered thriller about a marriage torn apart when the police arrive at an infertile couple’s door and reveal the husband’s son is the prime suspect in a murder. The perfect blend of exhilarating suspense and issue-driven book club fiction.

Everybody lies. Even the ones you think you know best of all . . .

Olivia Bender designs exquisite home interiors that satisfy the most demanding clients. But her own deepest desire can’t be fulfilled by marble counters or the perfect rug. She desperately wants to be a mother. Fertility treatments and IVF keep failing. And just when she feels she’s at her lowest point, the police deliver shocking news to Olivia and her husband, Park.

DNA results show that the prime suspect in a murder investigation is Park’s son. Olivia is relieved, knowing this is a mistake. Despite their desire, the Benders don’t have any children. Then comes the confession. Many years ago, Park donated sperm to a clinic. He has no idea how many times it was sold—or how many children he has sired.

As the murder investigation goes deeper, more terrible truths come to light. With every revelation, Olivia must face the unthinkable. The man she married has fathered a killer. But can she hold that against him when she keeps such dark secrets of her own?

This twisting, emotionally layered thriller explores the lies we tell to keep a marriage together–or break each other apart . . .

About the Author:

J.T. Ellison is the NYT and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and the EMMY-award winning co-host of A WORD ON WORDS, Nashville’s premier literary show. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in 26 countries. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.

Social Links:

Author website: https://www.jtellison.com/ 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jtellison14  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thrillerchick 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrillerchick 

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Its-One-Us-Novel-Suspense-ebook/dp/B09ZLGLKH9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=222QCNJW8SCPI&keywords=it%27s+one+of+us&qid=1673560699&sprefix=it%27s+one+of+us%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1  

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/its-one-of-us-j-t-ellison/1141813790?ean=9780778311768  

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/book/9780778311768 

IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/buy-local/9780778311768 

Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Its-One-Us/J-T-Ellison/9780778311768?id=8292090795540 

Review: Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski

Over my course of following the creative output of J. Michael Straczynski, one of his strengths has been the creation of diverse characters who form a connection with his audience. So, the highest compliment I can pay his latest offering Together We Will Go is that it continues that trend in the best possible way.

After suffering the latest in a long string of rejections, writer Mark has landed on his next project — an epistolary tale of a dozen strangers who have decided for one reason or another to end their lives. Renting a bus, Mark places an online ad to find people to join him on his final journey across the United States, planning to culminate the trip by everyone driving off a cliff near San Francisco. Riders earn their spot by agreeing to upload journal entries to a central server and occasionally having the audio transcript of dramatic moments archived and uploaded.

What Mark doesn’t count on is the diverse group of people who will join his cross-country trek and the ways various personalities connect and clash. He also didn’t count on the authorities in some of the states he’s crossing having an issue with a group of people on their way to commit suicide.

Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Andy Weir has been hailed as a new shining star in the science-fiction universe.

The Martian was a character-driven, page-turner that burned quickly by and left you wanting more. Artemis was largely forgettable (so much so that I struggled to recall if I’d read it only a year or so after it was published).

Now, Weir is back with Project Hail Mary — and the result is somewhere in between. While not quite as compellingly page-turning as The Martian, Project Hail Mary has at least lingered with me after the final pages were turned, unlike a certain sophomore novel by Weir.

Ryland Grace is a middle-school science teacher, who wakes up in a stark white room with no memory of how he got there. Grace’s memory slowly starts to return (in convenient chunks at just the right time for the story’s dramatic purposes) and he recalls that Earth is facing an extinction-level event and that he was one of the three people chosen to be sent into deep space to save himself and our planet. Grace’s two colleagues have perished, leaving him to piece together not only where he’s been, how he got there, but also what he needs to do so hopefully save the planet. And he’s also got to make the first contact with a new alien race.

Grace may not seem like the most likely or likable choice to go on a mission to save humanity. And Weir does his best to make Grace a character we can sympathize with and root for. The problem is that I never quite developed the same investment in Grace that I did in Mark in The Martian. Mark was gifted in certain areas, but never came off as smarmy or overly smug, Grace does. I kept wanting to like Grace but I never found myself rooting for him in the same way as Mark.

Which is all well and good. I don’t expect an author to write the same book over and over again. But what I do hope is the author will find a way to engage me across each of his or her novels. Weir did that with The Martian but failed to do so in his last two books. The dilemma that Grace faces is intriguing enough. It’s just there are long stretches of the book when I feel like Weir is trying too hard to prove the science behind his science-fiction and not necessarily engaging the reader.

Project Hail Mary isn’t quite the triumphant return I’d hoped Weir would have. It’s good, it’s (for the most part) readable. But it never quite got its hooks into me in the way I’d hope it would. This one may drop Weir from my list of automatic reads.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

I’ve never read Jane Eyre, so I can’t speak to how faithful to the original Rachel Hawkin’s updated retelling, The Wife Upstairs is or isn’t. What I can speak to is that sense that this novel never quite connected with me.

Set in Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is on the run from her past. Working as a dog-walker for the city’s elite, Jane meets Eddie Rochester. Eddie’s wife disappeared (along with her best friend) under mysterious circumstances and is presumed dead.

So, of course, these two begin dating and their relationship moves rather quickly from dating to living together to engaged. Jane doesn’t want a big wedding for fear of publicity bringing unwanted questions from her past life, but her old roommate is more than willing to blackmail her to keep those pursuing her at bay. Jane works to keep one step ahead of her past, teasing readers with what it may or may not be for far longer than I had much patience for.

That really sums up my disappointment with The Wife Upstairs. It teases us for far too long (though we know a bit about what Eddie is up to early on) without giving sufficient answers to the questions raised until I’d long since lost most of my interest in Jane. I suppose if I’d cracked open a copy of Jane Eyre at some point in my life, I’d already know a lot of what is revealed in the final third of the book. But that might have ruined some of the “thrill” of discovering all this for myself.

Another issue with The Wife Upstairs is that it attempts to be a domestic suspense thriller without offering much in the way of thrills or suspense. I found myself more relieved to finally be done with the novel than satisfied with the overall reading experience once I turned the final page.

Overall, a disappointment.

I received a digital ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry

One of my great literary pleasures of 2020 was discovering Katie Henry’s works. Henry’s young adult novels feature quirky teenage protagonists facing issues and dilemmas that most of us would struggle with as adults. The characters are all frustratingly relatable because, as readers, we can see how they could and should change themselves to make interacting with the world a bit smoother and easier. But, like all of us, they can’t or aren’t ready to make that change just yet.

Henry’s third novel This Will Be Funny Someday may be her best offering so far, which is high praise given how much I enjoyed her first two novels.

Sixteen-year-old Izzy has always felt a bit out of place. In her family, she sees herself as the odd person out when it comes to the matched pairs — her parents and her older twin siblings. At school, Izzy is protected by her relationship with her boyfriend, though even that has come at the cost of alienating her best friend. Izzy has deep-rooted issues when it come to assigning herself value — whether it’s the (misconception) that she ruined her mother’s career when her mom discovered she was pregnant with Izzy or the emotionally abusive nature of her relationship with her boyfriend.

Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue bu V.E. Schwab

Nearing her 23rd birthday in a small village, the Addie LaRue of 1714 wants nothing to do with her family’s plans to marry her to a widowed man nearly twice her age. Desperate to escape, Addie calls upon the gods, making a Faustian deal with a devil named Luc.

Addie won’t age. But she also won’t make an impact on the world nor will anyone she interacts with remember who she is. The deal runs out when grows weary and willingly surrenders her soul to Luc. But Addie didn’t count on the immediate heartbreak of her family instantly forgetting her, leaving her without a home and forced to find loopholes to make minor impressions upon the world for the next three hundred years.

Until one day, she wanders into a bookstore and meets Henry. And while stealing a book (Addie gets by stealing a lot of what she needs since people don’t recall her once she’s out of sight), Henry follows her and confronts her, saying the three words she’s been dying to hear for so long — “I remember you.”

Review: The Best of Friends by Lucinda Berry

Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani have shared multiple big life events over the year of their friendship. Their friendship has rubbed off on their teenage sons, who have grown up together and are very close.

Then one tragic night, everything is ripped apart, leaving one of their sons dead, the other in a coma, and the other unable or unwilling to provide any details of how, why, or what happened.

Lucinda Berry’s The Best of Friends has a great premise, a solid first chapter, and a great hook. It’s just too bad that the novel never really delivers on the promise of its initial chapter.

Part of this stems from Berry’s utilizing alternating first-person narration by all Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani. What should have been a great way to put us inside the emotions and thoughts of these three best friend as they try to make sense of what happened and why instead gives us three narrators who all come across as so similar that it’s hard to recall who is narrating each chapter were each one not identified at the top.

About a third of the way through the novel, I found myself earning for Berry to make one of the voices more distinctive, but it never happens. And while curiosity about what happened and who did what to whom kept me going, I never felt a connection with the characters enough to be truly shocked or rocked by any of the secrets each is hiding from her other friends.

We do get answers to the central mystery, but it ends of not feeling quite like enough. Maybe I’m spoiled by the likes of Laura Lippman or Elizabeth George who give us mysteries that not only work as puzzles to be solved but also attempt to give us some insight into the implications of the mystery on its characters and the larger world. I have a feeling this will be one of those books that I see crop up on my feed again in the near future and I’ll quickly forget most of the details.

I received a digital ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Four Days of You and Me by Miranda Kenneally

Alex and Lulu are as close to star-crossed lovers as you’ll see in Coffee County High School.

Beginning in their freshman year, both run for class president on the platform of how to best use some of the school’s vacant land. Alex wants a batting cage, Lulu want a garden to provide the cafeteria with sustainable fresh fruits and veggies. Despite being opposites, there is an unmistakable attraction between the two.

That attraction plays out over the next four years of their journey through high school in Miranda Kenneally’s Four Days of You and Me. The story unfolds one day in May as their class takes a field trip — whether it’s to the local science museum, a theme park, New York City or London.

Review: Who Killed the Fonz by James Boice

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, fondly remembered television series of the past received made-for-television reunion films. James Boice’s Who Killed the Fonz feels like it could be a long-lost reunion movie for the cast of one of my all-time favorite shows, Happy Days.

Beginning in 1984 (the year that Happy Days finally ended its epic run), Who Killed the Fonz finds Richard Cunningham at a crossroads in his Hollywood career. While he’s had success as a writer, including an Oscar nod, he can’t quite get his dream project off the ground. When his agent tells presents him an offer to make write a Star Wars clone, Richard is less thrilled. However, it’s either write the movie he doesn’t want anything to do with or face the end of chasing his dreams in Hollywood.

Then, Richard receives a call from Milwaukee that his old friend, Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli had died in an motorcycle accident. Seems that Fonzie flipped off the front of his bike on a bridge, plunging to his death in the icy waters below. Richard goes back to Milwaukee for the first time in twenty years to bury his old friend and to consider what the next stage in his career will be. (Marion moved out to Hollywood with Richard and Laurie Beth years ago after Howard passed away and they left the famous house to Joanie and Chiachi).

Billed as an 80’s noir thriller, Who Killed the Fonz is a loving homage to the classic series. Boice clearly knows his Happy Days lore, sprinkling in a few nostalgic flashbacks to classic episodes and moments from the series run as Richard comes to terms with the Fonz’s death and that he hasn’t been back to see his old friends in two decades.* He even has Fonzie’s funeral take place at the same funeral home used in the “Fonzie’s Funeral” two-parter late in the run of Richie episodes.

Review: Oh My Stars by Sally Kilpatrick

Neither Ivy Long nor Gabe Ledbetter could have predicted the chain of events that led them to serve as Mary and Joseph at the drive-through nativity in the small town of Ellery, Tennessee.

A published romance author, Ivy has suffered writer’s block since her husband passed away and plans fell through with their foster child. Gabe has returned home from Memphis, with a failing marriage and a looming malpractice suit.

So, when a baby is left in the drive-through Nativity, neither Ivy nor Gabe expected they would become her care givers. Nor could they predict the impact this little girl would have on their hearts. Could this be a Christmas present or miracle to help them both move on from their past and maybe find a new love — not just for the little girl, but for each other.