Title: Their Double Lives
Author: Jaime Lynn Hendricks         
Genre: Mystery/thriller   
Rating: 4 out of 5

Living a double life always comes with a cost.

A down-on-her-luck waitress at a posh New Jersey country club, Kim Valva couldn’t be living a more different life from the carefree socialites she serves. Her live-in boyfriend recently cheated on her, her social life is in shambles, and her dog needs a life-saving surgery that she can’t afford. Then her luck seems to change when a mysterious figure identifying themself only as The Stranger contacts her with an offer she can’t Put a pill in the new member’s drink and, when he dies, she’ll have enough money to fix her dog and her life.

Her target turns out to be Tony Fiore—Kim’s bad boy ex-boyfriend from high school. Fifteen years have passed, and he now goes by Anthony Fuller. He’s cleaned up, made tens of millions, and his gorgeous fiancée, twenty-two-year-old PJ Walsh, is on his arm.

PJ had her own agenda from the second she met Anthony. Find him, trick him, marry him, kill him. It was supposed to be easy, but she finds that while living her double life, the lines blur between who she is and who she’s pretending to be.

Stunned to see Tony again, Kim can’t bring herself to go through with spiking his drink. Instead, it is PJ who dies horrifically at the table just as dinner ends. Was someone else at the club—member or worker—tasked with poisoning PJ just as she had been instructed to do to Tony? Who would want both of them dead? With no one to trust and The Stranger to answer to, Kim must peel back the layers of deceit to reveal a deeply buried truth, more shocking than she could ever imagine…

I was kind of ambivalent about these characters. I didn’t love them, didn’t really hate them (except maybe Anthony’s boss’s wife). The dog was probably the best character of all. The level of duplicity in these people was next level, and if this hadn’t been such a quick read, I’d have put it down just because of that. There were lots of twists and turns here, but I did figure out who The Stranger was before the reveal. A solid read—if you don’t need characters you love.

Jaime Lynn Hendricks lives in Florida. Their Double Lives is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Penzler Publishers/Scarlet in exchange for an honest review.)

Title: The Murder Machine
Author: Heather Graham         
Genre: Thriller, Mystery  
Rating: 3 out of 3

 Artificial intelligence meets genuine murderous intent.

This state-of-the-art smart home has a next-generation entertainment system, an ultramodern kitchen where every appliance is online and even a personal AI to control it all. Standing above its owner’s lifeless body, FBI agent Jude Mackenzie is faced with the daunting task of discovering how the woman was killed by her own home. How do you catch a murderer that doesn’t leave any fingerprints?

Enter Special Agent Victoria Tennant, whose familiarity with cybercrime reveals the stark a machine can only do what it’s been directed to. As the number of grisly “accidents” begins to rise, the pair must race to uncover the perpetrator even as they find themselves caught in their digital crosshairs! There’s nowhere to hide when danger may be as close as the very phones in their pockets.

This was…not as good a read as I expect from Heather Graham. I knew who the murderer was about 2/3rds of the way through the book, which was fine, but no one else seemed to suspect them.

My real problem, though, was the “relationship” between Jude and Vicky happened so fast—overnight—and with barely even any hints of attraction to each other before they were both thinking they were in love. All the relationships in the book felt superficial and glossed over, and I almost put the book down halfway through, but decided to keep reading in the hopes it would improve. It didn’t.

Heather Graham is a bestselling author. The Murder Machine is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/MIRA in exchange for an honest review.)

Title: Bait and Swiss   
Author: Korina Moss  
Genre: Mystery/thriller   
Rating: 4 out of 5

 t’s been almost two years since Willa Bauer opened Curds & Whey in Yarrow Glen, and both cheesemonger and cheese shop are thriving in the Sonoma Valley. While Willa doesn’t eat chocolate, it’s true that life is like a box of chocolates. Unfortunately, life’s latest curveball is that Willa’s ex fiancé and ex-best friend—the reason for her chocolate aversion—are opening a chocolate pop-up shop across the street. By the end of the shop’s first day, the town’s newest reporter is the victim of death by chocolate. Now Willa’s ex wants her to be Swiss Congeniality, solve the case, and save the day. As much as Willa wants to hit him with the nearest cheese wheel, she can’t stop herself from saying yes. And it’s not long before tourists decide to stay clear of town until the killer is caught. To save Yarrow Glen, Willa and Team Cheese have some work to do.

This series is a solid read, and this entry was no exception. As always, there’s a lot of cheese talk, which makes me hungry, a lot of friendship and having each other’s back, and, of course, a seemingly random murder. Willa and all of Team Cheese are fun to read and taking Mr. Detective mostly out of the game this go around added a bit more trouble to the mix. This would be a fun weekend read.

Korina Moss is an award-winning author. Bait and Swiss is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)

Title: The Queens of Crime   
Author:   Marie Benedict       
Genre: Historical fiction        
Rating:  4.0 out of 5

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

This started off pretty slowly, and I almost gave up and DNFed it. It ended up being a decent read, although it’s not fast-paced at all. I enjoyed seeing the author’s version of these famous authors on the page, but the POV felt distant to me, dragging the pace down.

Marie Benedict is a bestselling author. The Queens of Crime is her newest novel.