Six friends attend their ten year college reunion, and are made to confront the truth behind a tragedy they’d all tried to leave behind. In college, a seventh friend, Heather, was murdered, and her boyfriend Jack was the prime suspect and immediately ostracized by his friends. But Jack was never convicted, and at the reunion, Heather’s younger brother Eric confronts the group, proclaims Jack’s innocence, and announces that the real murderer is among them.

In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is a good campus thriller. The story switches in time between the present-day reunion and the characters’ college years, and as the events leading up to Heather’s murder unfold, many secrets — and possible motives — are also revealed. I didn’t guess the murderer’s identity, nor did I guess their motivation, and the ending has the kind of ambiguous happiness that leaves the reader wondering if justice has been achieved.

I think I would have been a lot more captivated by this novel if I hadn’t read a similar campus thriller earlier this year that I thought was much stronger. The Girls Are All So Nice Here goes full throttle in giving us an anti-hero protagonist — Amb isn’t just unlikeable, at times she’s downright despicable, yet author Laurie Elizabeth Flynn manages to inject her with just enough humanity that you can’t help but feel for her a bit. As a result, that book is probably one of the most disquieting campus thrillers I’ve ever read. I called it bleak in my review and recommended allocating some time for self-care after reading, and that was because the story tore into my gut, and left me feeling disquiet throughout.

Jessica, the protagonist of In My Dreams, pales in comparison. She’s both unlikeable and sympathetic, but more in the mould of what you’d expect for this genre. She’s not as wealthy as her classmates, which makes her insecure and resentful, and she wants to fulfill her father’s dreams, which makes her ruthless in her ambition. She’s a complex, well-written character, but not one that will stick in your mind months after you finish reading the book. (Ironically, her main insecurity is that she’s often overlooked and forgotten, so maybe the author did her job too well?) It’s mostly that she’s exactly the type of protagonist that I expected, down to her having a quasi-love triangle with the golden boy and the bad boy. That’s all fine, but it’s also a bit of a disappointment after The Girls took me so much by surprise.

There was also something almost workmanlike with the reveals. The story is structured so that the set piece moment — where all the suspects are in a room with the detective figure (in this case, Eric) — happens about halfway through. Eric pretty much goes around the room, mentioning a clue, then pointing out that a particular suspect or the other is now revealed to have a motive. In classic mysteries, this set up works because it all happens within a few pages, so as the reader, you’re treated to a dazzling array of sleights of hand before the detective reveals who the killer actually is.

But this book spaces it out over several chapters, with interludes from the perspectives of each suspect. This format works in that it gives each suspect their time in the spotlight, and their opportunity to explain their actions. But the sleight of hand dazzle is lost, and by the third or so suspect, it’s already fairly obvious that the reveal is going to turn out to be a fairly minor one. That being said, the spacing out of reveals succeeds in showing us why each of the friends is somewhat complicit in the murder, even though not all of them are technically guilty of the crime.

I also like how the book delves into the lives of all these characters, and shows us what they’re dealing with, beyond the trauma of the actual murder. There’s an almost Rashomon-like feel to how each of the suspects gets to say their piece, and while the execution fell a bit flat for me, I like the broadness of perspective the story provides on the crime.

The ending, as I said, was unexpected, at least to me. I’m not sure how I feel about the way it ended, but in a way that this uncertainty is a positive. The author does give us a firm resolution and insight into all the secrets surrounding Heather’s murder, but I don’t know if I would say the ending is a happy one necessarily. I still feel that a character got away with murder, and I thought that was a nice, slightly uneasy, note to end on.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Once Upon A Puppy has so many of the elements I usually love in a romance – adorable dog, fake dating, and an uptight grumpy hero who’s soft and squishy at heart. It ultimately fell a bit flat for me, but to be honest, I can’t pinpoint a specific reason why, other than the book never quite hooked me.

On paper, it’s exactly the kind of book I usually fall heads over heels in love with, squeeing over, and unable to put down. Yet it took me almost a month to finish it, and finishing it was more might-as-well than OMG-I-can’t-wait-to-keep-reading. I liked Deenie and Connor enough, but never quite fell in love with them. And Max, adorable and rambunctious as he was, seemed to disappear once the story got going, which is kinda meh — if you’re going to make an animal the catalyst for your romance, do it with your whole chest like Abby Jimenez and Jill Shalvis do. The romance is a bit slow-paced, with more heart than heat, but I’ve enjoyed sweet and slow-burn romances before. The side characters are interesting — I was especially intrigued by Deenie’s relationship with her sister (which I felt was underdeveloped here) and Connor’s relationship with his mom — but again, not quite compelling enough to hook me where the main characters fall short.

Deenie took me a while to warm up to — I guess I’m more like Connor than I thought. When she wrinkled her nose at the contract Connor drew up for their dog-training arrangement, I was Team Connor all the way, since that’s a work arrangement, and I would hate my dog trainer to just have a key to my home and come in whenever they choose. Still, Deenie eventually won me over with her devotion to Aunt Bitty. I also love how Connor recognizes that she isn’t actually flaky, and is actually uber-responsible and dependable, and just hates external validations of her commitments.

I also like how both Deenie and Connor have their own past hurts to overcome — Deenie with her overbearing family who doesn’t approve of her free-spiritedness, Connor with his runaway bride and his belief that he needs to be perfect to be loved. I like how the side characters show that Deenie and Connor’s perceptions may not be super accurate of reality (Deenie’s sister loves her deeply despite not fully understanding her choices, and Connor’s mom loves him unconditionally). And I like how what Deenie and Connor see as their own weaknesses and reasons for not belonging (Deenie’s sparkle amidst her staid family, Connor’s seriousness amongst his more social bosses), the other recognizes as their uniqueness and strength. Deenie and Connor both feel they have to mask themselves to fit in, while they each recognize that the other shouldn’t mask at all but rather be fully themselves. I like that.

Overall, the book fell kinda flat for me, but it does have a lot of the elements I usually adore in romance, and the writing is solid, so I’m chalking this up as a ‘not for me’ or perhaps, ‘not the right time’, and I may check out this author again in future. I like how Deenie and Connor make each other better, and how they help each other realize how they’re wonderful just the way they are.

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Thank you to Forever and Netgalley for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

A PTA mom, Summer Peerman, falls seriously ill from aconite (wolfsbane) poisoning at an elementary school, and PTA president Kira Grant, who handed her the cup and grows wolfsbane in her backyard, is the prime suspect. Defense attorney Allison Brown takes the case, desperate to earn enough wealth and fame to leave her misogynist boss and start up her own practice.

The Darkest Flower was just so much fun to read! I absolutely love the battle of wits between Kira and Allison, and I loved jumping between both their perspectives. Allison is a sympathetic character, too street-smart to believe all her clients are innocent, yet still clinging desperately on to the ideals that prompted her to go into law school in the first place. She’s suspicious of Kira, and turned off by the other woman’s arrogance, but the commonwealth’s case is weak, and Allison needs to pay the bills. She’s also a single mother who can’t afford the piano lessons her daughter wants, so I like seeing that tension play out as she investigates the wealthy, overbearing moms in Kira’s circle.

And Kira is just the best kind of anti-hero — manipulative, scheming, and arrogant. Yet also, oddly enough, possibly innocent? Summer herself admits she can’t think of a reason why Kira may want to kill her, whereas Allison’s investigation unearths at least three other women in the PTA who had more obvious motives. It was a blast watching Kira butt heads with Allison over the defense strategy, especially since Kira pulls no punches in needling Allison about her (illicit, unethical) affair with opposing counsel, and in one fantastic scene, went downright nuclear and threatened to take the case to Allison’s a-hole boss instead.

An intriguing point of contention between them is the racism that one of the other PTA moms displayed towards Summer. (Summer is Black; Kira and all the other PTA moms are white.) Kira wants Allison to use this in her defense, but Allison is uncomfortable with Kira’s eagerness to use Summer’s Blackness to boost her own white privilege, and also with Kira’s eagerness to use her privilege of wealth against the much less wealthy other suspect. It’s a dilemma that’s wonderfully complex, and I love how Allison grapples with her client’s right to the best defense versus how ethically icky this strategy makes her feel.

The ending was one that I didn’t see coming, but it also felt absolutely fitting given everything else that happened. This is my first book by this author, and with these characters, but I would absolutely pick up a sequel, and I look forward to reading her future books.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.