Shari Lapena published this juicy family story in 2023, and I recently reread it for fun. A young girl is missing and the clock ticks while investigators scramble to find her. Complicating matters is the fact that the girl was troublesome not only at home and in school, but also throughout her own neighborhood. Everyone has a secret, but the one with the most devious lie will make your blood boil until the last page. Then it’s cathartic. By the way, don’t bother peeking to the end because Lapena made sure it won’t make sense unless you savor every twist along the way!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emma Cline’s psychologically rich, The Guest follows a manipulative freeloader with no empathy as she searches for a place to live. You do not want to find yourself in this girl’s path! Her increasing desperation for survival plays out in delusional thinking. As a reader, I wanted to tell her to wake up and take a look at herself. As a writer, I was fascinated by Cline’s ability to present a character with no backstory about how she got that way, and whose thinking just didn’t make sense–just like a few real people I’ve been unlucky enough to encounter! When her pursuits finally came to a conclusion, I wanted to ask out loud, “Now do you get it?” Truly a pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Liv Constantine (the blended name for two sisters who collaborated on the thriller) gives us a socially ambitious woman, determined to marry “up.” Instead of looking for an eligible guy, she befriends a woman solely to move in on her wealthy husband. Except that she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into, or that the jilted wife will turn out to be anything but a pitiable victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks for visiting! By the way, if you haven’t read my free short story, The Eavesdrop, <\/em>get it here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome back, dear friends! I just finished reading a book by Shari LaPena that delivered justice in the most unexpected and memorable way. (I’ll tell you about it in a moment.) There’s nothing like seeing the character who gets away with everything, relentlessly bashes our beloved main character, and utterly lacks empathy finally get what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.judyhock.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EveryoneHereIsLying-198x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Guest<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Last Mrs. Parrish<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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