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Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann
Bob the Artist by Marion Deuchars
The Big Shrink by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins
Black Hammer, Volume 4: Age of Doom Part Two by Jeff Lemire
Bound for Murder by Victoria Gilbert
Bowled Over by Victoria Hamilton
The Bride Was a Boy by Chii
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Counting to Perfect by Suzanne LaFleur
Death by Coffee by Alex Erickson
The Great Brain Robbery by P.G. Bell
Holiday Buzz by Cleo Coyle
The House That Lou Built by Mae Respicio
It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Just Like a Mama by Alice Faye Duncan and Charnelle Pinkney Barlow
A Love Hate Thing by Whitney D. Grandison
Magnificent Birds by Narisa Togo
The Mess That We Made by Michelle Lord and Julie Blattman
Out of Circulation by Miranda James
The Pretenders by Rebecca Hanover Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis
Sabrina the Teenage Witch by Kelly Thompson and Veronica Fish
The Space Between by Dete Meserve
Swing it, Sunny by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
There's a Murder Afoot by Vicki Delany
The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala
The Troubleshooter's Guide to Do-It-Yourself Genealogy by W. Daniel Quillen
The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas and Erin E. Stead
The Winterhouse Mysteries by Ben Guterson and Chloe Bristol
Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda
World's Worst Parrot by Alice Kuipers

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December 2019 sources
December 2019 summary
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 06)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 13)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 20)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 27)

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The Space Between: 01/08/20

The Space Between

The Space Between by Dete Meserve is about an astronomer coming home from a conference to find her husband missing, presumed kidnapped. She has to do everything she can to find him while planted evidence makes her look responsible for his disappearance.

The book is set in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Sarah, her missing husband, and their near-do-well son, Zack, live in Bel Air and she commutes every day to Pasadena. Right there I have questions — how did they afford the house and why isn't her commute worse given the distance and the lack of major freeways near her home. Or maybe I'm still traumatized from my two years of commuting to and from UCLA when I was living in Pasadena.

The evidence against Sarah include a million dollar deposit, a deleted security camera record, an alarm that wasn't set, and a loaded Glock she's never seen before. Then to make things more complicated, there's evidence her husband may have killed a woman he was seen with during a business trip to New York.

The mystery itself was along the lines of an elaborate Columbo plot without the benefit of seeing the crime committed. Given the husband is missing and the murder victim is someone Sarah has never met, there's not the emotional draw like the cozies I regularly read would have.

The set up for the actual murder plot — the woman in New York — took longer to set up than it needed to. There's a lot of time spent with back story about Sarah's relationship with her husband and the trouble they've been having with their son.

The setting also isn't used to its full potential. Sarah's place of employment ends up being a made up one, named for Carnegie — which brings to mind turn of the last century libraries, not modern day science labs. If Pasadena is key to the plot, why not make her employer either JPL or Caltech?

Three stars

Comments (2)


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Comment #1: Wednesday, January 08, 2020 at 01:25:31

Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out

Sounds like a bit of a miss, thanks for sharing your thoughts.



Comment #2: Monday, January 13, 2020 at 23:25:00

Pussreboots

It was okay but not great.

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