I love good twin/bad twin stories, and She Was the Quiet One was a boarding school drama filled with enough scandals and soapy fun to keep me reading into the night. When orphaned sixteen-year-old twins Rose and Bel Enright enrol in The Odell School, they almost immediately find themselves at odds with each other. Good twin Rose fits right into Odell’s competitive academic climate, finding a group of friends among the straight-A, student council types. Bad twin Bel immediately falls in with the popular crowd, a group of mean girl bullies with a running dare to seduce their handsome English teacher Heath Donovan. Heath’s mousy wife Sarah is the school’s math teacher and Rose’s adviser.

From the beginning of the book, we know a murder has been committed. We don’t know who the victim is or what the motive could have been, only that the police are investigating and it somehow involves the twins. Michele Campbell takes us from witness testimonies to flashbacks on the incidents that led up to the crime, and it’s a pretty thrilling ride.

The drama kicks off when Bel and her friends commit a cruel act of bullying and online harassment on Rose’s roommate, and Rose’s testimony becomes central to the lawsuit the victim’s family files against the school. Things escalate when Heath lets Bel off with a lighter punishment than her friends, and rumours begin to circulate that they’re having an affair.

I loved reading all the drama. Rose is way more uptight than Elizabeth Wakefield ever was, and Bel was much more screwed up than Jessica Wakefield ever allowed herself to be, so it was great to see them playing off each other. Unlike the Wakefield twins, there seems to be little love lost between the Enright twins, and only near the end do we realize that at least one of them actually did care for the other.

Sarah and Heath’s story was equally compelling, especially in the beginning. Heath is such a charming character, and I like how Campbell slowly lets us in on his darker side, particularly based on an incident from his and Sarah’s past. Sarah in turn is such a sympathetic figure, and while I often felt frustrated by her wilful blindness on certain topics, I can also see why she’d try so hard to hold on to her illusions.

The latter half felt dragged out though, and some of the characters keep making some really stupid decisions just for the sake of the plot. Like, if you have suspicions about someone, why would you go to where they are rather than go to the police? And if someone’s telling you they were attacked and there’s physical evidence, it seems honestly petty to immediately assume they’re lying and staging the evidence, just because they’re inconveniencing you in some way. All that kind of stuff kept the plot going and the tension increasing, but it got a bit eye-roll-y after a point.

Still, overall this is a fun read, and I enjoyed all the soapy drama.

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Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for an advance reading copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Switch and Bait is an online dating take on Cyrano de Bergerac. Blanche manages a bookshop by day and helps single women find quality men online by night. Her slogan: “We switch, I bait. Let me help you snag a date.” Blanche’s latest client, Ansley, is a sweet woman who becomes accident prone around attractive men. (Ansley’s claim to fame is that she was banned from the Smithsonian for life after knocking over their stegosaurus display. As a museum nerd, I’m thinking: that’s unrealistic, but also hilarious!) Ansley’s latest match is Henry, the brother in law of Blanche’s best friend and also a one night stand Blanche is still attracted to but somehow can’t help insulting every time they see each other.

Switch and Bait is a quick, breezy, entertaining read. I loved the online banter between Henry and Blanche-as-Ansley, which is both cheesier and cleverer than most online dating conversations: Henry messages, “Of all the dating apps in all the world, she swipes into mine.” Blanche-as-Ansley responds, “Here’s looking at you, bae.” And off they go into classic movie references.

There’s also a fun subplot involving a bookstore customer named Cliff, who looks just like Justin Trudeau and is incredibly good with his hands.

But overall, the central romance was just okay. Beyond the obvious conflict that Blanche was supposed to set Henry up with Ansley (which given how nice Ansley is, probably could’ve been addressed with a little communication), the major reason that keeps Blanche and Henry apart didn’t seem super fleshed out. She thinks they’re incompatible because he’s a Republican and she’s super liberal, but Schultz never quite shows Henry having problematic beliefs. When politics come up in the book, it’s mostly Blanche and Henry showing how they can be open-minded and cross the political divide, which helps show how they can get along in the end, but doesn’t quite address why their political affiliation was such a deal breaker.

I personally found Ansley a more compelling character, and laughed at all the scenes that featured her clumsiness. I was cheering her on all the way in her search for love, and I had a lot of fun with her part of the story.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Give Me Your Hand is a taut and thrilling story about a pair of scientists who share a childhood secret. Kit Owens and Diane Fleming were high school best friends gunning for the Severin scholarship for girls who aspired to scientific careers. Then one day, Diane shares a terrible secret that completely changes the way Kit feels about her, and that haunts Kit long after they’ve graduated.

Fast forward ten years, and both women are in the running for prestigious research positions with Dr. Severin herself. Dr. Severin and her team are studying a condition called PMDD, which is basically PMS that’s so bad, it can cause psychological damage. Diane’s secret has never fully left Kit, and when a night of drinking makes Kit reveal more than she meant to, the race for the research spots becomes even more complicated.

I loved so much about this novel. I love the complicated friendship between Kit and Diane, and how genuine admiration and respect for each other is intermingled with a touch of jealousy and a LOT of fear. I love that the book is about women scientists, and that Dr. Severin is this mentor figure whom both Kit and Diane aspire to become. The scene where she took them both to lunch and spoke a bit about the challenges of being a woman in STEM was super compelling and inspirational, and I almost wished Kit and Diane didn’t have that secret between them, so they could just bask in this moment and kick some scientific ass together.

Diane’s secret was unexpected for me. I had an inkling of what it was fairly early on (Abbott gives us a not-so-subtle clue at an English class discussion of a Shakespeare play), but the cold-bloodedness of the truth was a surprise, as was Diane’s response to the incident years later. I love that Abbott took a risk with Diane, making her capable of such an unsympathetic action, but also portraying how deeply she felt about it and how much she wished she could find a scientific reason for what she did and more importantly, for who she is.

The present-day twists and turns are fast paced and tightly plotted, and I love how everything eventually comes together to the novel’s emotional core. Give Me Your Hand is a compelling story. I love the science angle and the women in STEM angle, and I especially love how complex and flawed Abbott’s women characters are.

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