Ellie and the Harpmaker is a lovely, sweet, charming story about love and friendship. Ellie is a woman in an unhappy marriage to a controlling, abusive husband. Dan is a reclusive harp maker who likes his privacy and his routines, until Ellie walks into his shop. He offers Ellie a harp of her own, and unbeknownst to her husband, she comes into his shop daily for lessons, thereby discovering a part of herself that she’d been forced to keep hidden but that gives her a dose of daily happiness.

The novel is written in a genteel, almost fabulistic style. Ellie is drawn to Dan’s shop because of the magic in his craft, and in the friendship that develops between them, and Prior certainly weaves a spell of just that magic for the reader. The novel tackles some serious issues — domestic abuse, a secret that upends a character’s life — yet it all does so with a somewhat hazy, rosy glow. Just as Ellie loses herself in the melodies she can create through her harp, so do can we readers lose ourselves in the world Prior has created, an isolated, idyllic place where a lonely poet and a harp maker can form a connection.

Something about the relationship between Ellie and Dan reminds me a bit of gentle British romances, like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. Despite the undeniable physical attraction between them, the chemistry isn’t at all fiery. The lasting impression one receives is that of a deep and binding friendship rather than a romance.

The book is a bit of a slow burn. To be honest, it was difficult at times to tell if Ellie and Dan really liked each other, or if they just each offered the other a chance to escape a particular kind of life. Dan is also incredibly naive about relationships — at one point, he completely misunderstands a long-term relationship, in a way that felt a bit more like Forrest Gump than Don Tillman. That reveal just made me more sad than anything, because he was deceived by someone important in his life, but it also made me uncomfortable how Ellie kept digging into his back story without his knowledge or consent.

So the romance in this book didn’t really hook me, but I love the development of Ellie and Dan’s friendship. I love the setting, and I love the descriptions of the harps and the potential they have to make people happy.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What if you’re on a subway platform and a total stranger hands you her baby then jumps in front of a train? It’s an incredibly tense concept, and one that hooked me immediately.

Woman on the Edge is a quick and exciting read. The first half was really strong, as the novel introduces us to the cast of characters. The woman who jumped turns out to be Nicole, a powerful CEO of a health and wellness organization who is haunted by the death of a baby in her care twenty years ago. The woman who receives the baby is Morgan, a social worker whose husband defrauded the women’s shelter she founded then died by suicide. Morgan doesn’t remember ever meeting Nicole before, yet Nicole has named her the legal guardian of her baby, Quinn.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Nicole has been the subject of harassment by a red-haired woman for years, and that the harassment has started up again and intensified ever since Quinn was born. A red-haired woman also begins stalking Morgan, at one time almost running her over, and Morgan must solve the mystery behind Nicole’s death in order to protect her own life and the life of Nicole’s child. It’s a gripping thriller, told in alternating chapters between Nicole and Morgan’s points of view, and like Nicole and Morgan, it’s hard to know whom to trust.

Unfortunately, the momentum flags a bit as the story approaches its conclusion. The latter half of the book doesn’t really reveal a lot of surprising information, and the red herrings aren’t quite developed enough for any of the potential villains to really have an impact. The last few chapters are a series of reveals that felt a bit too cursory to really make an impact, and felt a bit more like an info dump than anything.

The big reveal about the villain was also disappointing. Their motivation was explained, but it fell flat given how strong the story had started and how rich Nicole’s backstory had been. The villain’s actions also didn’t quite make sense given the rest of the story; I wish there had been more hints earlier on about what they were up to. Overall, it felt more like a need to tie up loose ends than a natural outcome of events.

Still, the first half is super strong, the hook is killer, and the bits about postpartum depression and mental health are sobering. I also like how real the connection between Morgan and Nicole turns out to be, and how much a minor encounter can result in a genuine connection between two strangers.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book. Shaun, an Irish bookseller, learns that his Uncle Teddy didn’t die in a car crash after all, but instead went to New York to escape his homophobic family and hometown. Shaun’s search for his uncle leads him to an American missing persons cold case website, where one of the users posits the possibility that Teddy is dead after all, and that he’s actually the true identity of the cold case labelled ‘Boy in a Dress.’ The website’s users — founder Chris (Ratking1), moderator Ellie (RainbowBrite), Chris’ sometime-lover Scott (Aqualung), and former cop Pete (BobbieCowell) — all team up to restart the investigation into the case, and possibly get Shaun the answers he seeks. What they don’t realize is that the person who actually killed the Boy in the Dress is among them, posting on the site, working the cold cases, and keeping tabs on their investigation.

It’s a chilling premise. I like how Lotz explores the relationships built online, and how she acknowledges the characters’ obsessive tendencies and often sad life circumstances while still maintaining a level of respect for them. She delves into their motivations (e.g. Chris’ missing mother) and their dreams (e.g. Ellie’s unsupportive husband and somewhat-but-not-really crush on BobbieCowell). We are also told who the real murderer is fairly early on, and it was fascinating to read the chapters from that character’s perspective, and to see how they’re manipulating the investigation to protect themselves. I also liked learning about Shaun’s family and their backstory, and how circumstances led to Teddy leaving for New York in the first place.

But overall the book just moved too slowly for me. Things unfolded at a very slow pace, and while the book was only 480 pages long, it felt a lot longer. Because we know the identity of the murderer early on, and can pretty much figure out how Teddy fits into the whole situation, the thrill is a lot more about whether or not the other users of the site can figure it out and bring the murderer to justice. Despite some scenes where characters are legit in danger, the overall feel of the book is just sad and a bit sordid.

Missing Person is a very character-driven thriller, but while the characters all had their own interesting tidbits, I just wasn’t invested enough in any of them to stay interested despite the slow pace.

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Thank you to the publisher for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.