Seventeen-year-old Linsey Hart disappears the day before she’s due to leave for college. As her neighbors piece together what they saw and what they think they know about the missing girl, their long-held secrets, prejudices, and entanglements become rudely evident.
There’s Linsey’s mother, Abigail, whose door-to-door searching makes her social outcast status painfully obvious; stay-at-home mom Reeva, whose primary concern is covering up the affair she’s been having with the Starbucks barista; Mr. Leonard, a reclusive retired piano teacher—and the last person to see Linsey alive; George, an eleven year-old gifted loner who is determined to find out what happened to Linsey; and
Timmy, Linsey’s ex-boyfriend, who is left grieving as he embarks on his own college career.
My Review: 3.5 stars
Without hearing from Linsey’s point of view, the main character in this book, we instead hear from a fabulous cast of characters and their actions during the 5 days that Linsey “was gone”. This title leads you to believe this is more a mystery genre than what it actually is. This is a wonderful microscopic look into the lives of the family and neighbors who knew or saw Linsey in some capacity. Secrets are kept and sometimes unveiled during this tumultuous time. It’s interesting to see what happens behind closed doors especially with the excellent descriptive writing from this author. I felt the wrap to the mystery was not realistic although that was what kept the pages turning. Great, quick summer read!
Quotes I liked:
She wasn’t in love with this boy, she told herself, she couldn’t be, but she wanted to eat his history, suck him up, be a girlfriend.”
– “Until high school, I thought she was a snob, but she was just busy doing, while I was busy thinking. Wasteful. Mental masturbation.”
– “…his parents bought him a used Nikon camera he’d coveted from the camera shop in town. Its silvery body was an empty notebook awaiting possible poetry.”
– “He wasn’t even listening. She could open her mouth and birds could spill out onto the table, mockingbirds, crows, raptors, and he’d just get up and leave his dish on the counter and go sit down in his permanently pleated work pants and beige cashmere sweater reading a travel magazine and she’d never know what he was thinking-because he could never know what she was thinking.”
– “…it was as though he walked inside parentheses, keeping him from other words of the sentence, just a bit off from everyone else.”
– “ -maybe there was something about this queen bee she could rely on. Or maybe she was just being lulled by the honey and the wing beats.”
Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor. I try to ignore how Nina makes a... read more
Review:Strangers in the Night by Heather Webb was an intimate introduction to Frank Sinatra and his lifelong love, Ava Gardner. Admittedly, I knew next to nothing about the man or the woman behind their star status. I for sure have heard Frank’s music as my parents were, and still are, fans of his songs.The good news is that by writing in the first person from Frank’s POV and Ava’s POV, the reader is introduced to them in an accessible way. It didn’t matter if you’ve been a lifelong fan or not familiar with either of them, we all start the book as equals.I was shocked at the at how fast their relationship could go from cold to hot. The way they could both love and fight with such passion and acrimony was crazy. Yet they always, well almost always, came back to one another.Learning about how they were raised, the struggles they went through, and the allowances given to men (not women) were all addressed throughout the book. Depression, alcoholism, addiction, and infidelity were commonplace in star-studded Hollywood.Fans of movies and old Hollywood will adore this book and folks like me, who knew little to none about Frank and Ava will enjoy it too!Heather Webb, Author @msheatherwebb @williammorrowbooks 📘 What's your favorite song? 📘#newreview#bookreader#bookreview#goodbookfairybookreview #tbr #AddtoTBR#goodbookfairy... See MoreSee Less
