Ella Maude by Nicholas Nicastro is a mystery thriller that gripped me from the first page until the last. This book contained subtle plot twists which kept the mystery moving, and me as reader immersed and trying to figure out where it was all going. Characterization and scene settings are well drawn. Whether it was an author oversight, intended or my lack of comprehension, not until well into the book that did I realize exactly who Ella Maude was.
Nell Copsey disappeared around midnight on November 1901. The scenarios around her disappearance and subsequently realized death make the mystery. The Prologue sets the tone and draws the reader in by describing what Nell’s sister Ollie becomes at the culmination of the action. Nell’s disappearance and death are like tossing a pebble into water; none of the main characters escape misery and havoc in their lives. Nell was her mother’s favorite and in the North Carolina town of Elizabeth, she was perceived as being an ideal of womanhood, sort of a will ‘o the wisp. Readers find in the last chapter that Nell really was an amusing tease and flirt.
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"I Need To Get Over You" by K. D. Black is a perfect book to curl up with on a rainy weekend. It shows that initial appearances are not everything. The action is on romance and not so much on character development. Well written except for a few items misspellings here and there.
Three characters - Brooke, Hayden, and Darren (Dad) form a triangle - in which Brooke has a hard time dealing mentally and physically with the two men. Hayden’s sister and niece, plus Ashley, director of an animal rescue center play supporting roles. The shelter and Hayden’s Fortune 500 office are the main action sites with Hayden’s luxurious apartment as an ancillary site. Author Black cheerfully answers for me, the proverbial question “what if” we put a seemingly uptight businessman together with an intelligent, charmingly sexy, but eccentric woman?
