Evelyn, After
Kindle First , Suspense , Women's Fiction / October 25, 2016

Evelyn After. Victoria Helen Stone.  2016. 258 pages. Lake Union Publishing. [Source: Kindle First Program.] A girl was dead. A marriage was ruined. And the world just kept going on as if that were all okay, when it wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay. Evelyn lived a tidy, suburban life. Until the one evening when her husband revealed that he’d been in an accident, one of his patients was involved, and nobody could know a thing about it.  That evening sparked a change in Evelyn and the way she interacted with the world around her. Once a super-PTA parent, she becomes a sulking shell of herself, bent on finding out truth about the husband she thinks she knows.

The Woman on the Orient Express

The Woman on the Orient Express. Lindsay Jane Ashford. 2016. Lake Union Publishing. 332 pages. [Source: ARC provided courtesy of NetGalley.] I selected this because I love Agatha Christie. I fell in love with her writing as a teenager and was excited to read a fictionalized account of her tumultuous life.   The Woman on the Orient Express doesn’t disappoint. It is based on several high-profile aspects of Christie’s life, such as her failed first marriage and her subsequent trip to Baghdad on the Orient Express.  Despite being fiction, it manages to fill in gaps that are not only believable but seem authentic. As noted by Ashford, these events simply form a frame for the book. The author’s take at recreating the experiences Christie had on her trip and the people she encountered are frighteningly believable.   Agatha is still reeling from her failed marriage and the reality of her ex-husband moving on so quickly to start a new family.  Her two-month trek is meant to give her a boost in moving forward; she goes as far as to travel under an assumed name to do so.  An unexpected bunk-make, Katherine, has her own secrets as she mourns the death of her husband and…