The Family Upstairs/ Lisa Jewell/ 340 pgs

Lisa Jewell's new book sets an interesting story. Twenty-five-year-old Libby has just learned that she inherited a multi million pound house in a posh area of London. Turns out that twenty-five years ago the police were anonymously called to the home and discovered three dead adults and one very much alive ten month old baby--Libby. Four teenagers were also missing from the home. No one seemed to have any idea what was going on in the home, but it looked as if it were being run as a small isolated cult. At the same time we are hearing Libby's story, we go back twenty-five years and hear from Henry, one of the teenagers. Concurrently, we also hear from a woman named Lucy, who is struggling to stay afloat in the south of France with her two children. The multiple perspectives are interesting and of course they converge at the end to reveal the truth of what happened so many years ago. Some of the story is easy to guess and I can't quite fathom how some of the characters react to each other at the very end of the story, but Jewell always writes an interesting read.

Among the Wicked / Linda Castillo / 306 pages

This novel is part of the author's Kate Burkholder series.  Kate Burkholder is the chief of police in Painters Mill, Ohio.  Kate grew up in the Amish community of Painters Mill, but left her faith and community when she was in her late teens.  She went to school and studied law enforcement only to return years later to become the chief of police.  Her Amish upbringing helps her in her many dealings with the Amish community.  In this book Kate is called on to go undercover in an Amish community in upstate New York.  Kate poses as an Amish widow to help solve the death of a teenage Amish girl.  In her infiltration of this Amish community Kate uncovers more than just a mysterious death of a young girl.  A lot of action and excitement.  I can't wait to read the next book in the series!

The Marriage Pact/ Michelle Richmond / 414 pgs

With The Marriage Pact, I probably should have paid more attention to the blurb. If I had, I probably wouldn't have read it, which in the end would have been best. Jake and Alice are a newly married couple in their mid to late thirties. They are invited to join the Marriage Pact, an exclusive "club" whose purpose is to make sure people stay married and stay happy. At first glance this seems like an okay premise but the Pact goes to such extreme lengths (monitoring, kidnapping, incarceration, torture) to achieve its goal that I just couldn't take it seriously. No one cares this much about another couple's marriage. The story is told in first person from Jake's point of view and while he wasn't an unlikable character, he also didn't seem very realistic. We also only got his view of Alice, which made her seem distant and again unrealistic. There is a twist at the end which some readers might like but the very end of the book is ambiguous, which many readers won't like.