Best Reads of February 2019

by staff

This month has been filled with one outstanding new release after the next. It may be difficult to choose your next read based on all of our glowing reviews. To help you out, Alison, MK, Susan, and Donna have named their favorite read of the month.

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The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

Alison chose CJ Tudor's debut novel as her favorite read. You may be thinking that her name sounds familiar and it should. Susan recently reviewed her newest book The Hiding Place. Susan had also reviewed The Chalk Man last year.

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

Buy The Chalk Man at Amazon

The Haunting of Henderson Close by Catherine Cavendish

I really enjoyed Sisters of the Fire (read my review) and The Haunting of Henderson Close (read my review). If I had to pick just one, I think I'll go with the timey wimey horror story, because I really thought the premise and execution of it were really good. ~MK

Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone…

In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released.

Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face?

The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.

Buy The Haunting of Henderson Close at Amazon

Until the Day I Die by Emily Carpenter  

It's a riveting novel about a mother and daughter separated by grief, secrets, and a conspiracy that threatens to destroy their lives.  It was a roller coaster ride of a story told by two strong women that kept me guessing until the end. Keep an eye out for this book that comes out March 12. My review will post on the 15th. ~ Susan

If there’s a healthy way to grieve, Erin Gaines hasn’t found it. After her husband’s sudden death, the runaway success of the tech company they built with their best friends has become overwhelming. Her nerves are frayed, she’s disengaged, and her frustrated daughter, Shorie, is pulling away from her. Maybe Erin’s friends and family are right. Maybe a few weeks at a spa resort in the Caribbean islands is just what she needs to hit the reset button…

Shorie is not only worried about her mother’s mental state but also for the future of her parents’ company. Especially when she begins to suspect that not all of Erin’s colleagues can be trusted. It seems someone is spinning an intricate web of deception—the foundation for a conspiracy that is putting everything, and everyone she loves, at risk. And she may be the only one who can stop it.

Now, thousands of miles away in a remote, and oftentimes menacing, tropical jungle, Erin is beginning to have similar fears. Things at the resort aren’t exactly how the brochure described, and unless she’s losing her mind, Erin’s pretty sure she wasn’t sent there to recover—she was sent to disappear.

Buy Until the Day I Die at Amazon

The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen

I love Rhys Bowen's stories. She is so talented at creating realistic characters and her attention to historical accuracy really makes her stories come off the page. Read my full review. ~ Donna

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong twenty-one-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage.

When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden. The journals inspire Emily, and in the wake of devastating news, they are her saving grace. Emily’s lover has not only died a hero but has left her terrified—and with child. Since no one knows that Emily was never married, she adopts the charade of a war widow.

As Emily learns more about the volatile power of healing with herbs, the found journals will bring her to the brink of disaster, but may open a path to her destiny.

Buy The Victory Garden at Amazon

Of the books that you read this month, which one was your favorite?


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