Monday Mini-Reviews: Four Winners This Week

 I've got four great books that I devoured this past week - all of them very different from each other.  So, hopefully there is a little bit of something for everyone. I'm back at summer school for the third week - and anxiously awaiting the week we have off after this.

Here are the four winners:

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams - this book has been everywhere. Sometimes that's a deterrent for me, but after listening to an interview with Tia Williams on a podcast, I decided I needed to pick this up and see for myself what all the fuss is about.  This is a solid romance (something I don't read a ton of).  Eva writes erotica novels and is busy raising her teenage daughter.  Shane, also an author, and Eva's worlds collide at a publishing event- and then it comes out that back in high school the two spent a week together- a week neither of them has ever forgotten.  Both of them have pasts that they managed to move beyond but their feelings for each other have not gone away - even after fifteen years have passed.  There are some open door s*x scenes, so if that's a deal breaker for you, just know that you might have to skip a page or two.  This is a smart romance that I thoroughly enjoyed.

While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams -if you enjoy legal thrillers, this would be  a perfect book to pick up. Justice Wynn is a controversial figure, who slips into a coma.  His law clerk, Avery Keene, finds that she was given his power of attorney -and that Wynn was researching some interesting medical procedures that have long reaching implications for the entire world.  This is a complex and tangled mystery that requires some attention while reading.  I loved the twists and turns and the DC setting.

Yoga Pant Nation by Laurie Gelman - this is the third book by Gelman featuring Jen and the various roles she plays in her son Max's elementary classrooms. Every book in this series is a fun book that also has a little substance.  In this installment Max is in his final year of elementary school and Jen is in charge of raising money to purchase some technology for the class. She's started teaching spinning classes and her daughter Viv is now in a custody dispute with her daughter Maude's daughter.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope that even though Max is graduating from elementary school, Gelman will keep writing about this family.

The Drowning Kind- Sometimes Jennifer McMahon's books are a little too dark and creepy for me, but The Drowning Kind is the favorite book I have read by this author yet.  When Jax finds out her twin sister Lex has drowned in the pool at the house she inherited from her grandmother, she returns home immediately. She is intent on discovering what actually happened to Lex, who was a good swimmer.  There have long been rumors about the pool and sightings of a girl and woman beckoning others to come and swim with them.  A portion of this story takes places in the late 1920s when a hotel with was opened near some natural springs whose water had some healing properties to it.  When a fire burns the hotel down, the whole area is closed down because people have noticed that for every good thing that happens with those who use the water, something bad also occurs.  I loved the secrets in this book and the resolution is one that I found discussion worthy.  If you are someone who likes some suspense, secrets and also a rather dark story, this is one you should pick up.

And that's the four books that occupied me last week. I'm not sure if I can manage that many books again this week, but I plan on giving it a good try.