The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer

Genre:  Adult Detective

Stephenie Meyer's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Stephenie Meyer's website):

She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn’t even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.

Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They’ve killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it’s her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous.

Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.

I feel like I need to admit that I was a Twilight fan.  Nevermind the fact that there may have been flaws.  In my teenage mind, those books were golden.  So of course when I found out there was another Stephenie Meyer book out there, I had to pick it up and see if I still held onto some pieces of my teenage mind.

Alex is on the run from a super-secret agency that helped get rid of terrorists and other threats.  She was a specialist who helped break people in interrogations using chemical warfare instead of physical warfare.  But the agency that employed her decided to permanently cut her loose and messed up.  So she's spent years on the run trying to figure out what happened.  Then a peace offering comes up:  one more interrogation in exchange for her life.  But when she meets the man to interrogate, not everything adds up correctly.  Sometimes, things sound too good to be real.

Let me just point out one glaring flaw in this whole novel.  I'm warning you now that I'm giving a spoiler.  Change the page if you don't want this...  Who on earth decides to fall in love with their torturer?  It's worse than Stockholm syndrome...  Now that I've got that off my chest, this book was easy to fall into.  Sure, it was a really big book, but it flowed well.  And the characters caught my attention.  Minus the initial flaw, I was sold.  But it did kind of feel like a cheap romance novel thrown into an intense detective situation.  But I guess, who cares?

Meh...  Some people are going to love it.  And some people are going to hate it.  Onto the next one.

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Genre:  YA Historical Fiction
Stalking Jack the Ripper Series, Book 1

Kerri Maniscalco's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Kerri Maniscalco's website):

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

Audrey Rose lives in a historical England where she is growing up to be a society girl.  She is doing everything that a wealthy and privileged English girl should do.  Well, except for helping her uncle dissect cadavers.  And helping him with solving deaths and crimes.  So it's no surprise that when Jack the Ripper begins to appear, she becomes intrigued...

So I can't really go into too much detail to this story.  Because most of us are very familiar with the unsolved mystery of Jack the Ripper.  And this fictional story tells it from Audrey's point of view.  And as much as I had it pegged from the very beginning, I was still disappointed with the ending.  And one of the things that angered me greatly was how many times Audrey was told she shouldn't be doing something because of her female status.  I just got tired of it a little.

This was a decent detective story to follow from start to finish.  And it does give a nice twist at the end.  I'd suggest checking it out if it peaks your interests still.

The Killer in Me by Margot Harrison

Genre:  YA Detective

Margot Harrison's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Margot Harrison's website):

Hasn’t he lived long enough? Why not? I could take him like a thief in the night.

This is how the Thief thinks. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown. He’s always waiting. Always there.

Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She’s intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims’ bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert.

Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf—the deserts of New Mexico.

But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she’s had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief?

Nina has been plagued with the life of someone else in her dreams.  A boy she learned to get used to until he began to do the unthinkable.  He became the Thief and killed people.  All Nina has to do is close her eyes and sleep in order to see the unthinkable happen.  And she's determined to get the victims justice.

Nina travels with her friend, Warren, across the country in search of this killer.  She's going to out him once and for all.  But when she gets to New Mexico and comes face-to-face with him, suddenly she's not so sure anymore.  Could this ordinary family-man really be that vicious killer at night?  Before she outs him, she's determined to test him to figure out if he really is the reason for her night terrors.  But what is finally revealed in this story is so much more than just a serial killer.

Starting out with this story, I was super creeped out.  It didn't help that I read this at night.  However, once the story developed and the paranormal aspects came out (with the serial killer-ness), I was so engrossed.  And the closer I got to the end, the more worried I became.  I mean how do you create a perfect ending for this story?  I'm not sure you can.

Honestly, this one's a thriller.  I think you should give it a try.

The Masked Truth by Kelley Armstrong

Genre:  YA Detective

Kelley Armstrong's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Kelley Armstrong's website):

Riley Vasquez is haunted by the brutal murder of the couple she was babysitting for.

Max Cross is suffering under the shadow of a life-altering diagnosis he doesn’t dare reveal.

The last thing either of them wants is to spend a weekend away at a therapy camp alongside five other teens with “issues.” But that’s exactly where they are when three masked men burst in to take the group hostage.

The building has no windows. The exits are sealed shut. Their phones are gone. And their captors are on a killing spree.

Riley and Max know that if they can’t get out, they’ll be next—but they’re about to find out that even escape doesn’t equal freedom.

Riley suffers from PTSD after having witnessed a murder while babysitting a little girl.  She hasn't been able to move on and be normal.  So one weekend, she finds herself at therapy camp along with other troubled teens.  But when masked gunmen interrupt this weekend therapy, it seems Riley will have to relive her nightmares.

Max is an average 18-year-old who moved from the UK to the USA in order to get away from his past.  He's trying to move on with the life he has, but things can be difficult.  And while he spends his time in the back of therapy making snide remarks over everyone else's problems, it seems like he's never going to open up about why he's there in the first place.  And then the gunmen arrive.

This is a classic adrenaline-rush, escape-the-killers, who-dunnit story.  You've got an industrial building with no windows and crazy teenagers stuck together for the weekend.  And stuff just happens to go wrong when kidnappers come in and take them hostage.  I followed the story pretty well and had most things figured out.  And I enjoyed the rhetoric between the characters.  Even though they considered themselves psychologically damaged, they still worked to survive.

An easy story that I think mystery readers will like.  You'll want to keep reading to make sure time hasn't ran out for the characters.

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Genre:  YA Historical Fiction

Jennifer Donnelly's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Jennifer Donnelly's website):

New York, 1890. A wealthy family. A deadly secret. A young woman with more to lose than she knows.

Josephine Montfort is one of the city’s most eligible heiresses, and as such, she understands the importance of doing what is expected. She knows that a suitable marriage and a comfortable life is what she should dream of—but her heart can’t help yearning for more.

But then Jo’s father dies violently, and her charmed life is suddenly shattered. His death appears to have been a tragic mistake, but Jo quickly discovers that the details of his death don’t quite add up. If her father’s death wasn’t accidental, could it have been suicide? Or worse….murder?

Jo is desperate to uncover the truth, but escaping her gilded cage is dangerous, and soon it’s hard to know who can be trusted. A chance encounter with handsome journalist Eddie Gallagher shows Jo just how dangerous digging up her family’s past will be—but some secrets can’t stay hidden, no matter how deep you bury them.

Jo is the editor of her school's newspaper.  All she dreams about is being a reporter like Nellie Bly.  Unfortunately, she spends her life in a rich woman's cage doing what's best for her family.  But when she's unexpectedly called home due to her father's sudden death, she can't leave it to rest.  She's determined to find out what happened in his final moments even if it means uncovering secrets.

When Jo shows up at her father's newspaper company, she meets a reporter called Eddie.  Eddie is looking for the next big story, and when he sees her looking for answers, he sees a future for himself.  As they agree to help each other, they get more than they bargained for.  As they're unlikely friendship evolves, Jo realizes the world isn't as nice as she was brought up to think it was.

This was a classic who-dunnit story set in early New York.  We got to see how sheltered a life an heiress can lead as well as how bad the slums were.  I loved seeing Jo break free from her cage.  And even though I had every plot twist and spoiler figured out, I still loved the writing.  And the ending was one I kind of love yet hate.  It's hard not to love it once you've fallen in love with the characters.

I love Jennifer Donnelly's writing.  It brings more to a story instead of just the plot.  I recommend you pick up at least one of her books.

Deadfall by Anna Carey

Genre YA Detective

Blackbird Duology, Book 2

Anna Carey's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Note:  This is the second book in a series.  Anything below might slightly spoil plots from the first one.

Description (taken from Anna Carey's website):

A week ago, you woke up in Los Angeles with no memory of who you are. The only thing you knew: people are trying to kill you. You put your trust in Ben, but he betrayed you and broke your heart. Now you've escaped to New York City with a boy names Rafe, who says he remembers you from before. But the two of you are not safe. The same people who are after you are tailing Rafe as well. As the chase heats up, your memory starts to return, but your past cannot save you from the terrifying circumstances of your present, or from the fact that one wrong move could end this game forever.

This book picks up right where the first one left off.  Sunny has been betrayed by Ben, who she was once falling for. And now she's in a train station trying to figure out where she should go next when she meets the boy from her dreams.  And he knows her name.

Rafe knows so much from her past, but she's not so sure she can trust him.  And as they head to New York, they find other kids like them.  Kids with targets on their backs.  And when Ben mysteriously shows up again with new information, Sunny isn't so sure who she should be trusting.  But as time lines begin to thin and pressure rises, all of these kids will run the risk of losing the game.

This series is definitely unique with the fact that it's all written in second person.  It's as if you are living as the main character and going through the events in her shoes.  And while I think adding the love triangle was a little cheesy and obvious to figure out, I still enjoyed going through the story.  Yes, it's a little outlandish, and I don't really think teenagers could outsmart a much older and richer group of adults.  But what do I know?  I've never played a game where my life is literally on the line.

I think this series is definitely a love it or hate it series.  And since the books aren't really that long, I'm going to recommend you read both books before giving a final judgment on them.  They might catch your interest...

Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan

Genre:  YA Thriller

Carrie Ryan's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Carrie Ryan's website):

I’m the daughter of murdered parents.
I’m the friend of a dead girl.
I’m the lover of my enemy.
And I will have my revenge.

In the wake of the deadly devastation of the luxury yacht Persephone, just three souls remain to tell its story—and two of them are lying. Only Frances Mace, rescued from the ocean after torturous days adrift with her dying friend Libby, knows that the Persephone wasn’t sunk by a rogue wave as survivors Senator Wells and his son, Grey, are claiming—it was attacked.

To ensure her safety from the obviously dangerous and very powerful Wells family, Libby’s father helps newly orphaned Frances assume Libby’s identity. After years of careful plotting, she’s ready to expose the truth and set her revenge plans into motion—even if it means taking down the boy she’d once been in love with: Grey Wells himself.

Sharp and incisive, Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan is a deliciously smart revenge thriller that examines perceptions of identity, love, and the lengths to which one girl is willing to go when she thinks she has nothing to lose.

Frances has just fallen in love with a boy while on a cruise ship.  Her family is vacationing on the Persephone and Frances has no greater care in the world than the boy named Grey.  That is until disaster strikes and everyone aboard the ship is killed.  With sheer luck, Frances and her friend, Libby, end up in a raft that becomes their savior as well as their doom.  When Libby's father finally finds them, only Frances is left living.  But when they get back to land, Libby is announced as the sole raft survivor and Frances buries her past.

Libby cannot let her past go.  There are too many unanswered questions.  Why were Senator Wells and his son, Grey, lying about that night?  What really happened on the Persephone?  With all her careful planning, Libby returns home to expose the truth.  One way or another, she will get Grey to admit what happened that night.  But she soon finds out that emotions buried in the past are closer to the surface than she thinks.

Have you ever heard of the show Revenge?  How Emily seeks revenge from the powerful Grayson family?  Isn't it funny that Grey's full name is Greyson?  Yeah, too many parallels here.  And while I found the story to be a good mystery that explains things well and goes through the emotions, it still felt like a copycat.  I couldn't get over the fact that it was way too similar to this tv show that I like to watch.  Both set in beach cities on a beach house with the main character assuming a different identity while seeking revenge.  I can't separate the two.

While this book is good, I don't feel like it's very original.  If you've never seen Revenge, then you won't have the same reservations that I had and will probably like this one.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Genre:  Adult Detective (Suspense/Drama)

Gillian Flynn's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Gillian Flynn's website):

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick Dunne’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick Dunne isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but hearing from Amy through flashbacks in her diary reveal the perky perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister Margo at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was left in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

Imagine that perfect couple down the street from you who has it all.  You know the one that you wish your life could be like.  You're life would be more perfect if you had what they had.  Now imagine the wife of that couple vanishing.  And watch as the facade slowly crumbles as questions come.  Questions that the husband can't answer without a guilty heart.

Nick is the golden boy that can get any girl he wants, but he treats them with proper respect.  His smile is the one all girls swoon over, and all of his female acquaintances never have a bad thing to say about him.  Amy is the well-off beautiful girl that every girl wishes they could be.  She has the looks, the money, and the man.  So what went wrong with this couple?  One day, Amy disappears and no one knows what happened.  And as Nick is pushed into the limelight, he tries to decipher Amy's anniversary gift as well as past friendships to find out what happened to her.  But when everything comes to light, we find even the golden couple can look very ugly.

First off, I watched the movie before I picked up the book.  The movie was so good and ended exactly how I wanted it to end.  I figured the book would have to be that much better, right?  Well...  Other than you have a little more insight to the characters, it's not really that much better.  It's still very, very good.  But after reading it, I have to say the movie had the perfect tone and the actors played the story so well that the book didn't really add anything more to it.  I'm in the definite group that says the movie gives you enough story that you don't need to read the book.  By the way, the book is hellishly long, and all of that psychological bullshit is drawn out (and well-played).  It really makes you think how the story would have ended if our world wasn't so set up in gender-roles like it is.

Yes, this book is good.  But if you've seen the movie, you don't need to read the book.  Unless you're a bookaholic.  I wonder what my opinion would have been if I had read the book before seeing the movie...

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

Genre:  Adult Detective

Stephanie Plum Series, Book 12

Janet Evanovich's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Janet Evanovich's website):

FIRST A STRANGER APPEARS
While chasing down the usual cast of miscreants and weirdos Stephanie discovers that a crazed woman is stalking her.

THEN, THE STRANGER REVEALS HER SECRETS
The woman dresses in black, carries a 9mm GLOCK, has a bad attitude and a mysterious connection to dark and dangerous Carlos Manoso… street name, Ranger.

NEXT, SOMEBODY DIES
The action turns deadly serious, and Stephanie goes from hunting skips to hunting a murderer.

SOON, THE CHASE IS ON
Ranger needs Stephanie for more reasons than he can say. And now, the two are working together to find a killer, rescue a missing child, and stop a lunatic from raising the body count. When Stephanie Plum and Ranger get too close for comfort, Vice Cop Joe Morelli (her on-again, off-again boyfriend) steps in.

Will the ticking clock stop at the stroke of twelve, or will a stranger in the wind find a way to stop Stephanie Plum… forever. Filled with Janet Evanovich’s trademark action, non-stop adventure, and sharp humor.

Welcome back to the world of Stephanie Plum.  She's got the job every body wants: a bounty hunter.  Or maybe it's the job only the crazy take?  But she's also got Trenton's two hottest guys falling for her.  Will she ever decide which one to take?

Stephanie is helping Vinnie's Bonds business by locating FTAs and getting them rebonded.  But when the lunatic FTA brings a shooting war, Stephanie backs off and finds herself being stalked.  Stalked by a random lady that she can't quite figure out the connection.  But once she does, her mind begins to make unlikely connections with what's going on.  As she works with Ranger to figure it all out, she finds Morelli not being keen to taking the back seat.

Another book in the Stephanie Plum series.  I find I'm able to enjoy them a lot more if I'm not reading one right after the other.  Because sure, the stories are different.  But they tend to end the same: the bad guys are taken care of and Stephanie Plum has Morelli on the right side and Ranger on the left.

Trust Me, I'm Lying by Mary Elizabeth Summer

Genre:  YA Detective

Mary Elizabeth Summer website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Mary Elizabeth Summer's website):

Fans of Ally Carter’s Heist Society novels will love this teen mystery/thriller with sarcastic wit, a hint of romance, and Ocean’s Eleven–inspired action.

Julep Dupree tells lies. A lot of them. She’s a con artist, a master of disguise, and a sophomore at Chicago’s swanky St. Agatha High, where her father, an old-school grifter with a weakness for the ponies, sends her to so she can learn to mingle with the upper crust. For extra spending money Julep doesn’t rely on her dad—she runs petty scams for her classmates while dodging the dean of students and maintaining an A+ (okay, A-) average.

But when she comes home one day to a ransacked apartment and her father gone, Julep’s carefully laid plans for an expenses-paid golden ticket to Yale start to unravel. Even with help from St. Agatha’s resident Prince Charming, Tyler Richland, and her loyal hacker sidekick, Sam, Julep struggles to trace her dad’s trail of clues through a maze of creepy stalkers, hit attempts, family secrets, and worse, the threat of foster care. With everything she has at stake, Julep’s in way over her head . . . but that’s not going to stop her from using every trick in the book to find her dad before his mark finds her. Because that would be criminal.

Julep is the daughter of one of the best grifters out there.  And he's placed her in an uppity school to help her get an in with the rich ones (because it's all about who you know).  But when her father mysteriously disappears, Julep must pick up his last job to figure out what happened to him.

Julep is your typical teenage grifter who can get away with a lot of things.  While helping a classmate pull a con over her mother and trying to survive high school, she comes home to an empty and ransacked house.  Something must have happened to him because of his last job.  But in order to figure out what happened, Julep must pick up clues from the pieces left behind.  But when the school jock wants to get involved with Julep's life, things just get a little messier.  And as Julep slowly pieces together what happened, she finds herself in trouble with some powerful people.

This was an easy story to follow that seemed to flow from start to finish.  You get to meet a lot of fun characters and watch how deception pans out.  While Julep's personality and the boy crush certainly got an eye roll from me, I was focused on the story.  And while I did have some small things figured out, I was still following the story.  But back to the romance, it was kind of cheesy.  But the good kind of cheesy I guess.

For those interested in a whodunnit story from the point of view of a thief/grifter, this would be the one to grab.  Just don't think too hard about the fact that she's only 16.

Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich

Genre:  Adult Detective

Stephanie Plum Series, Book 12

Janet Evanovich's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Janet Evanovich's website):

Stephanie Plum is thinking her career as fugitive apprehension agent has run its course.

She’s been shot at, spat at, cussed at, fire-bombed, mooned, and attacked by dogs. Time for a change, Stephanie thinks. Time to find the kind of job her mother can tell her friends about without making the sign of the cross. So Stephanie Plum quits. Resigns. No looking back. No changing her mind. She wants something safe and normal. As it turns out, jobs that are safe and normal for most people aren’t necessarily safe and normal for Stephanie Plum. Trouble follows her, and the kind of trouble she had at the bail bonds office can’t compare to the kind of trouble she finds herself facing now. Her past has come back to haunt her. She’s stalked by a maniac returned from the grave for the sole purpose of putting her into a burial plot of her own. He’s killed before, and he’ll kill again if given the chance. Caught between staying far away from the bounty hunter business and staying alive, Stephanie re-examines her life and the possibility that being a bounty hunter is the solution rather than the problem. After disturbingly brief careers at the button factory, Kan Klean Dry Cleaners, and Cluck-in-a-Bucket, Stephanie takes an office position in security, working for Ranger, the sexiest, baddest, bounty hunter and businessman in two continents. It might not be the job she’ll keep for the rest of her life, but for now, it gives her the technical access she needs to find her stalker. Tempers and temperatures rise as competition ratchets up between the two men in her life — her off-again, on-again boyfriend, tough Trenton cop, Joe Morelli, and her bad-ass boss, Ranger. Can Stephanie Plum take the heat? Can you?

Stephanie is throwing in the towel in regards to her bounty hunter gig.  She's done rolling around in trash just to catch an FTA (failure to appear) and get some bucks for rent.  She's going to get a grown-up, settle-down job.  And this is a definite turn-on for Morelli.  But Morelli and Stephanie are going to find out quickly that the craziness doesn't leave just because we've given up the bounty hunting...

Stephanie's being stalked.  And she's trying to figure out what's going on based on all of the clues.  But when she's faced with decisions like boinking Ranger or saying the infamous L word in front of Morelli, it's no surprise that her mind ends up elsewhere.  That is until a car catches fire.

I liked this one.  It had a definite change of pace as we watched Stephanie try new jobs and fail at them.  And the Ranger romance is getting hot.  But I've also got a soft spot for Morelli.  That's a definite love triangle that I don't ever want to see end (unless we can split Stephanie in two).

A super fun series that's going to keep you laughing.  Read them!  I've got ten more books to go...