A scuffle ensued when the owner thought Ava was stealing, and Ava ended up shot in the back of the head, bleeding out on the floor with two dollars in her hand. Her younger brother, Shawn, witnessed the entire incident, which was caught on tape, but the owner/shooter received only probation and no jail time.

In 2019, 27-year-old Grace Park is still living at home with her parents and working in the pharmacy they own. She’s the dutiful daughter, while her older sister is estranged from their parents for reasons unknown to Grace. One day something catastrophic happens, forcing Grace to reckon with the terrible secrets her family has kept from her.

Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay is based on the true story of Latasha Harlins, a teen shot dead in 1991 in a Korean-owned store. The fallout is believed by historians and Angelenos to have helped spark the L.A. riots the following year.

In chapters alternating between 1991 and 2019—and between Shawn’s and Grace’s perspectives—Cha peels back the layers of incendiary race relations in a city with people who can suffer only so much injustice. The Matthews and Park families, on opposite sides of the central conflict, are both depicted with deep insight and empathy—and their flaws intact.

There are no villains or heroes, only humans whose paths collided one tragic day and are still paying for the damage done. The ending is a bit abrupt, but it offers hope that healing and forgiveness can begin.

This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

The Chestnut Man is lurking

A year after her young daughter was abducted and murdered, Copenhagen’s Minister for Social Affairs Rosa Hartung returns to work. On the same day, a woman is found murdered and mutilated, with a nearby figurine of a man—made out of chestnuts.

Detective Naia Thulin catches the case and is partnered with Mark Hess, a detective recently suspended from Europol and sent back to Copenhagen for disciplinary reasons. Neither Thulin nor Hess is ecstatic about the work arrangement, but they must come together to chase a killer who makes it clear he has quickly escalating plans for multiple victims.

At each crime scene is a chestnut man, with a shocking link to an earlier case. How many women will die before Thulin and Hess stop the sinister figure, and what do the murders have to do with Minister Hartung?

Fans of the series The Killing should find The Chestnut Man up their alley since it’s written by Søren Sveistrup, creator of that international TV hit. The Chestnut Man has the same creepy, slow burn, and is headed by a dogged pair of detectives who don’t always agree but learn how to serve a common cause.

The torturous killings are not for the squeamish, almost every man besides Hess is a lecher who objectifies women and Hess’s logical ideas are frustratingly dismissed by colleagues, but Sveistrup offers commentary on adults who inadequately protect children and the lengths those children go to survive when the odds are overwhelmingly against them.

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This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

Never mind that it doesn’t pay minimum wage or in cash and makes employees work seven days a week—Cloud takes care of everything!

Paxton’s main motivator, however, is a chance to meet Cloud’s CEO, Gibson Wells. The man is responsible for the failure of Paxton’s small business, and Pax looks forward to giving Wells a piece of his mind.

Paxton befriends Zinnia, another applicant, but she’s actually a corporate spy hired to gather information on Cloud’s infrastructure and investigate whether the company is as eco-conscious as it claims. Neither she nor Paxton intend to stay at Cloud very long, but with the 24/7 surveillance, it might be impossible for them to get away with anything—or get out alive.

Rob Hart’s The Warehouse may be labeled sci-fi but feels unnervingly plausible. The bleak world he paints is rooted in reality, in how the rich get more powerful while the poor are crippled, financially and physically.

Hart writes convincingly in three points of view: Paxton’s hopeful voice, Zinnia’s no-nonsense determination and Wells’s “I’m a good guy” explanations. The understated prose doesn’t scream that the world is in trouble. It simply creeps up and whispers that perhaps the future is already here.

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This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

All these activities meant I didn’t read as much but I did manage to finish 6 books in August. Here are my brief thoughts on each.

The Favorites

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

This story about a British family imprisoned in their own home—by strangers who showed up one day and stayed for years—is disturbing yet riveting. Some scenes filled me with dread, and I was never sure where the plot was headed. Both the hostage family and the interlopers exhibit cruelty and weakness and selfishness and kindness. The result is a thriller that plumbs the dark and fragile corners of the human psyche. (The cover has changed but I like this one better.)

Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham

I cannot figure out why the Australian Robotham isn’t a bigger name in the US. His books are compulsively readable, with vivid characters who leave indelible impressions. GG, BG is a standalone, about a psychologist who becomes guardian to a teen girl with a troubled past. They become involved in solving the murder of a local teenage ice-skating sensation, and along the way change each other’s lives.

The Rest

Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh

Cavanagh knows how to keep readers on the hook with his fast-paced thrillers, but this one, about a serial killer who manipulates his way onto juries of murder trials, was too farfetched for me.

Even if you can steal someone’s jury summons and know how to answer questions to make yourself the perfect jury candidate, how do you control which trial you’re assigned to? There are several going on at a courthouse on any given day, and you’re randomly assigned to a courtroom. The motive for the killings in Thirteen isn’t compelling enough, and the murderer takes the most (unnecessarily) complicated and roundabout way possible to punish his victims.

Clear My Name by Paula Daly

I wanted to like this better, since it’s about a female investigator working to free wrongfully convicted people. For the first half of the book I was rooting for her, but then a plot development has her acting in cowardly and unprofessional ways. The revelations at the end aren’t surprising, and by that time I was no longer invested in seeing how everything turned out.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

This is a homage to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and is about a young English woman who becomes nanny to young children in a smarthouse controlled by technology. She can’t even close curtains or take a shower without using electronic controls. As expected, things go horribly wrong.

Ware kept me engaged but this isn’t nearly as spooky as James’s story, a major plot point had me thinking it likely couldn’t happen in the US without being illegal, and this thriller might have one twist too many.

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

I enjoyed Center’s How to Walk Away, and really wanted to like this tale of a female firefighter dealing with sexism at work while taking care of—and living with—her ailing, estranged mom.

Center’s prose goes down smoothly, but Tess, the firefighter, became exasperating after a while. Yes, she has to prove to her male colleagues she deserves to fight fires alongside them, but she’s constantly challenging them to pull-ups and basketball and an obstacle course when strength is only one aspect of being a good firefighter.

The point that she’s tough and doesn’t need anyone is hammered repeatedly, and I think an actually strong person knows when to ask for help. When she becomes attracted to a coworker, it seems forced—the person comes off more like a best pal than a lover.

Which were your favorite books last month? What are you reading now?

She learns there was an accident five years ago, and Tim has spent all that time devoted to bringing her back. But soon Abbie starts finding hidden items around the house that indicate their relationship wasn’t exactly how Tim describes it. As Abbie digs deeper into what happened before the incident, she realizes the truth could mean an end to her newfound life.

Plot points are minimal here because it’s best to dive into Perfect Wife with as little information as possible. Delaney (The Girl Before) has written a swiftly paced and thought-provoking psychological thriller, touching on complex issues such as how much technology should be allowed to run our lives and what defines humanity. It asks big questions about sentience and life and death itself.

Delaney is far from preachy, though; he wraps these big ideas in a spellbinding and suspenseful story that is constantly surprising and often makes the skin crawl. It’s also poignant in unexpected ways (based on some of Delaney’s personal experiences, according to the acknowledgments) and reminds readers that compassion is what separates humans from machines.

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This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

Because no one has reported a missing boy.

Aubrey fears the mother is dead, but she’s dismissed by police and the media as an attention seeker. Attention is the last thing she wants, however. She’s been living under an alias, hiding from her past. But as a mother, she can’t ignore what she saw, knowing a child has been abducted with no one looking for him. She sets out to find him herself, confronting not only very bad people but ghosts from her tragic childhood.

As usual with Kelley Armstrong’s books (This Fallen Prey, A Darkness Absolute), the standalone Wherever She Goes starts with a bang, and maintains a steady pace. Aubrey has shades of Detective Casey Duncan from Armstrong’s Rockton series; she’s far from perfect, even borderline criminal, but she’s righteous and sympathetic and never one to bet against.

While she searches for the boy, Aubrey is also dealing with the dissolution of her marriage, struggling to make the right decisions so her daughter won’t be taken away from her. Her relationship with her husband is complicated but refreshingly mature, heading in surprising directions. Armstrong’s characters aren’t superhuman, simply regular people who rise to the occasion in extraordinary circumstances.

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This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

Part of my losing track of time has to do with a busy spring, flying back and forth between L.A. and Atlanta to work on an HBO show. The good part is, the forced downtime on flights and sets allowed for lots of reading. I read 7.25 books in June, more than my average of 5. Below are some quick thoughts.

The Favorites

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book about a young woman working as a costume designer in the 1940s New York City theater scene is pure joy, full of sparkly banter reminiscent of the kind Rosalind Russell had with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday. (“What’s her husband like, by the way?” one Girls character says. Replies another: “Apart from being stupid and talentless, he has no faults.”)

You don’t have to be interested in theater to enjoy it. It’s more about a young woman finding herself in a pre-WWII world, eventually realizing she and her friends were feminists before they knew the word existed. The ending is unexpectedly moving and beautiful, a reminder that love comes in all forms.

Whisper Network by Chandler Baker. While reading, I bookdarted the crap out of this thriller, which is supposedly about who killed a toxic male boss but delves much deeper into what it’s like to be a working woman. Baker is so dead on about so many aspects that I shouted, “YESSSS!” quite a few times.

Like when she has the following response to the notion that some women are overly sensitive to certain comments and treatment in the workplace: “Believe it or not, we didn’t want to be offended. We weren’t sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to show up and offend us so that we would have something to do that day.” Or when she writes simply: “A job is supposed to pay an employee, not cost her.”

The Rest

The Furies by Katie Lowe. Can’t recommend this novel, about girls at a private school invoking the Furies from Greek mythology to exact revenge on people who done them wrong. The girls are horrible people who don’t elicit much sympathy, and the plot and prose are derivative of that found in better books.

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager. Tore through this thriller about a young woman who experiences strange things and hears weird noises at night, while apartment-sitting in a famous but creepy old Manhattan building. I stayed up late reading it in a hotel room, and then was certain I heard scary noises when I turned out the light. Full review to come in Shelf Awareness.

Never Have I Never by Joshilyn Jackson. This novel about a woman being blackmailed was readable, but I was frustrated that the protagonist remained weak throughout. Yes, the secrets from her past are serious, but if the relationships she has with her husband and friends are as strong as she claims, she should trust they wouldn’t abandon her. Allowing the blackmail to escalate puts the lie to her assertions that she now leads a healthy life surrounded by good, loving people. To whom she wants to keep lying. Oookay.

Never Look Back by Alison Gaylin. Gaylin’s previous book, the Edgar-winning If I Die Tonight, was one of my top reads of 2018 (see: review). This one, about a podcaster tracking down a serial killer from the 1970s, is also compelling but the last quarter lost me a bit. Gaylin’s very good at detailing the emotional trauma of violence, but some plot threads seem contrived and the climax felt rushed, with people taking sudden drastic, out-of-character actions just to escalate matters so the book could end.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman. I tried but couldn’t get into this one and bailed after 81 pages. Its description as an exploration of racism and sexism in 1960s Baltimore had attracted me, but the many POVs of major and minor characters, including a dead one, made the story seem disjointed and gimmicky.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart. This dystopian tale of an Amazon-like conglomerate controlling every aspect of our lives is thought-provoking and unsettling in its plausibility. The world-building is impressive, and Hart paints the bleak visuals in an understated style that quietly drives the messages home. Full review and interview with Hart to come in Shelf Awareness.

What did you read last month, and which books were your favorites? What are your reading plans for the Fourth of July weekend?

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Her debut, The Kiss Quotient, was a breakout hit in 2018 and acquired by Pilgrim Media Group for a movie adaptation. Kiss features a brilliant female lead with autism—which Hoang also has—and a sexy half-Vietnamese man as the love interest.

Read on for my review of Hoang’s follow-up, The Bride Test, and my chat with her. (Both originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers and are republished here with permission.)

Review: The Bride Test

Khai Diep is certain he has a stone heart, one that can’t feel love or sadness. During his cousin Andy’s funeral, Khai remains dry-eyed. It doesn’t bother him too much, though. Isn’t it a good thing grief can’t touch him? Who wants to wail like his aunties? Besides, he likes being alone with his routines, not dealing with messy emotions.

But his mother has other ideas. She knows Khai processes emotions and social cues differently because he has autism. She goes to Vietnam to choose him a bride and meets My, a feisty young single mother who cleans hotel bathrooms. Khai’s mother gives My a startling offer: she’ll pay for My to spend the summer with Khai in California and get him to marry her. Other than the possibility of a better life for her and her young daughter, My has another reason for accepting the offer: she wants to find her American father, whom she’s never known.

My renames herself Esmeralda, and her plan to win over Khai leads to unexpected discoveries about herself and what she wants from life.

Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test is even more affecting than her breakout hit, The Kiss Quotient. With heart and humor, she humanizes people who are routinely marginalized, and Esme especially is someone to root for–a woman born into poverty who knows her value even when the world looks down on her. By the time Hoang says in the author’s note that Esme is based on the author’s own mother, a war refugee who became a successful businesswoman, readers might find their eyes aren’t dry at all.

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Helen Hoang: Writing from the Heart

Photo: Eric Kieu

Helen Hoang lives in San Diego, Calif., with her husband and two children. In her author’s note in The Bride Test, Hoang mentions that her heroine is inspired by Hoang’s mother, a former Vietnamese refugee and successful businesswoman who passed away recently.

Did your mother read The Bride Test? How would she feel about Co Nga arranging a mail-order bride for her son?

No, my mom never read the book. But my aunt tried to arrange a wife for my cousin in much the same manner [as in the book], and my mom was aware of that. She didn’t seem to think the idea was that outrageous, though she was never very meddling with my siblings and me.

Why does Co Nga choose a woman from Vietnam, instead of from the local Vietnamese American community?

When my aunt tried to arrange a marriage for my cousin, she spoke to women in Vietnam because the Vietnamese American women she knew were either uninterested in her son or not up to her standards in terms of Vietnamese traditions and values.

What were some of those standards? And what was the result of her matchmaking attempt?

My aunt was unsuccessful. Her son refused to meet any of the girls she liked from Vietnam and eventually married a Filipino American woman. I believe my aunt wanted him to marry a woman who spoke Vietnamese and would be a homemaker, practice Buddhism, give her grandbabies and take care of her in her old age.

Your author’s note says you interviewed your mother for this book, about her experiences growing up poor and as a refugee. What was the biggest revelation for you during these discussions?

Growing up, I often thought my mom worked not only by necessity, but by preference. In other words, she was a workaholic, and sometimes I was resentful of this when I was a kid. Through these conversations with my mom, I came to understand why she was compelled to work so much and I could better empathize with her. Not only was she providing for her family and achieving financial security, but she was earning her own sense of worth. That was a heartbreaking realization for me–that her sense of self-worth was dependent on how much money she made.

How has writing about people with autism helped you in your daily life?

Writing these books has helped me process and understand my own autism so I can better communicate my needs with the people in my life and advocate for myself. For example, as I wrote The Bride Test, I finally understood why I bring books to wedding receptions. These events are truly overwhelming to me and because I’m physically trapped there, I read in an attempt to escape into myself. Now, instead of bringing a book to a wedding, I can leave early and it’s okay. People don’t get angry.

Your voice, and those of your protagonists, are specific and distinctive. What have readers told you they’ve learned the most from your characters and stories?

From what I’ve heard, it is eye-opening to read from the perspective of an autistic and/or Asian/Asian American character.

Regarding the autistic perspective, readers have appreciated learning about the specific challenges facing autistic people, but they’ve also remarked that they were happy to see that people of different neurotypes still have the same basic emotional needs and insecurities as most everyone else.

Khai’s brother, Quan, has made memorable appearances in The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test, and steps onto center stage in your next book. Anything juicy you can tell us about it?

I’ve been conceptualizing Quan’s book as a gender-swapped Sabrina, where instead of the chauffeur’s daughter and the two rich brothers, we have the chef’s son and the two rich sisters.

You write about people who rarely get to be the center of Westernized stories. The couple in The Kiss Quotient include a half-Vietnamese man (who’s hot, not nerdy!), while both leads in The Bride Test are of Vietnamese descent, though one is half Vietnamese. Any plans for a story with both leads being 100% Vietnamese?

For Quan’s book, his love interest is Chinese American, and my next contracted books after this feature Michael’s sisters from The Kiss Quotient, who are all half Vietnamese. I don’t have specific plans to write a story with both leads being 100% Vietnamese, but I’m certainly not ruling it out.

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I don’t have hard goals for the number of books I want to read each year, because it’s more important to enjoy what I read than to plow through books to reach a certain number.

But I do like to check occasionally to see how many I’ve read so far, and it’s fun to stack books in a pile and take pictures of them. (I recently started a books-focused Instagram account if you’re interested.)

The above snapshot shows 15 books I read between Jan. 1 and March 31, minus library books and the manuscripts I edited. Titles are listed below, some with links to reviews, others with reviews coming.

My favorites

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six (I also listened to the audiobook, which has a full cast)

Anthony Horowitz’s The Sentence Is Death

The rest 

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

Save Me from Dangerous Men by S. A. Lelchuk

The Secretary by Renee Knight

Call Me Evie by J. P. Pomare

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

Watcher in the Woods by Kelley Armstrong

More Than Words by Jill Santopolo

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

The Stranger Inside by Laura Benedict

The Lost Night by Andrea Bartz

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

If She Wakes by Michael Koryta

Everything Is Just Fine by Brett Paesel

Some stats about the 15

Debut novels: 6

Books read entirely for pleasure, not work: 6

Authors new to me: 6

Female authors: 12

Author of color: 1

International authors: 6 (British 4, Australian 1, Canadian 1)

Imprints: 12

Hmm. Apparently I like doing things in even numbers and multiples of 6. I won’t do a hard analysis—what am I, a scientist?—but it’s good to see the number of female authors is high, that I’m open to authors I’ve never heard of, and don’t limit myself to American writers. Not patting myself on the back, though. I want to read more by writers of color.

What does your reading roundup look like for 2019 so far ?

Afterward, one admirer invites her to his place nearby. The woman goes. And proceeds to teach the man a lesson he won’t forget: never lay a hand on his girlfriend again or he’ll be signing his own death warrant.

Meet Nikki Griffin, a motorcycle-riding, pugilistic guardian angel for abused women and star of S.A. Lelchuk’s debut thriller, Save Me from Dangerous Men.

By trade Nikki is a PI, hired by a tech CEO to follow an employee he suspects of stealing company secrets. Nikki discovers the case is much bigger–as in global–than what she’s been told, and if she doesn’t stop certain dangerous men, people will die, including her.

Nikki is not only a badass but a book nerd–an irresistible combination. She owns a bookstore called the Brimstone Magpie (a Dickens reference) and can quote Kierkegaard as fast as she can make a violent thug cry uncle. She’s part Lisbeth Salander, part Jack Reacher, part MacGyver.

Before readers start thinking she’s an unrealistic fantasy figure (Lelchuk is male), Nikki points out she intentionally plays into men’s images of an ideal woman in order to lure them to her. And she’s far from perfect: she had a tragic childhood and fears she lacks impulse control. Plus, she misses a couple of conspicuous clues until late in the game. But Nikki is a fiery, magnetic character, and thriller fans will race through this book faster than Nikki on her motorcycle.

Buy it now

This review appeared originally in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission. As an Amazon affiliate, PCN might receive a small commission if a purchase is made via the link.