The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon

The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:

As if recovering from heart surgery beneath the gaze of his over-protective family wasn’t exasperating enough, someone keeps trying to break into Adrien English’s bookstore. What is this determined midnight intruder searching for?

When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of the renovation of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan -- now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.

Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien’s past than either one of them expects -- and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake’s own heart.

My Review:

When Adrien finds a decades-old corpse boarded up under his floor, he just can't bring himself to leave it for the police to solve alone. So he turns to Jake, who's out of the closet now and working as a P.I. For the first time, it seems like these two have a chance to build a lasting relationship. But only if they can come to terms with their past.

Adrien and Jake track down witnesses in this cold case, keeping me guessing till the end. At the same time, they try to figure out where they stand with each other. But Adrien's mother and step family are there to help, and Guy, Mel and Angus all play a part.

The Dark Tide provides plenty of closure, but don't read it by itself! Start from the beginning of the Adrien English series.

I was apprehensive when I started this series; I loved mysteries, but I had never read a gay romance before. I didn't know how I'd handle the explicit scenes. Well, I only keep my eyes half-closed now. (And they don't dominate the book anyway.) And after this satisfying finale, all I can think about is how much I'll miss Adrien!

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The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

My Review:

Spectacular! I borrowed this from the library, but I'll have to buy my own copy on Kindle.

This is a funny, sad and thought-provoking view of the relationships between white and black, employer and ‘help’ in the Mississippi of the early 1960’s. I can understand why so many book clubs are reading it!

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