Welcome, book friends!
If you’d prefer to listen to this list and why I chose these books, you can check out the full episode on The Bookmarks ‘n Blankets Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or listen below.
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I thought it would be fun to share with you 11 of the NetGalley ARCs (advanced reader copies) that I’ve been approved to read ahead of their publication dates. I have a wide range of genres that I’m eagerly anticipating to be great books. These are all new releases coming out this spring and summer. To read/listen to my thoughts about them once I’ve read them, stay tuned for monthly reading wrap-up episodes. (Note: I’m planning to get to the majority of these books in April and May.)
11 Approved NetGalley ARCs Coming This Spring & Summer
The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Publication Date: March 26, 2024
Learn more on GoodReads
GR Description: TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm—except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can’t get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator.
But one night, TJ’s world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he just murdered one of the clients, an accountant he’d confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.
TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first.
The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie
Genre: Middle Grade Mystery
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
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GR Description: Crack the codes. Find the treasure. Escape the house. From the acclaimed author of Scritch Scratch and What Lives in the Woods comes an action-packed adventure novel about three friends who team up to find a hidden treasure in an abandoned 1950s funhouse.
Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West, and Hannah. But when a foreclosure notice shows up on Sarah’s front door, everything changes. Since her father became ill two years ago, things have been bad, but not lose your house bad…until now. Sarah feels helpless until the day Hannah mentions a treasure rumored to be hidden in the walls of an abandoned funhouse.
According to legend, Hans, Stefan, and Karl Stein were orphaned at eight years old and lived with different families until they were able to reunite as adults. Their dream was to build the most epic funhouse in existence. They wanted their experience to be more than mirror mazes and optical illusions, so they not only created elaborate riddles and secret passages, but they also claimed to have hidden a treasure inside the funhouse. Once in, Sarah, West, and Hannah realize the house is unlike any escape room they’ve attempted. There are challenges, yes, but they feel personal. Like the triplets knew who would get in. It seems impossible, but so does everything about the house. As soon as they’re in she immediately worries that attempting the funhouse is a bad idea but Sarah has no choice but to continue, since her future is at stake.
Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Publication Date: April 23, 2024
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GR Description: For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.
But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?
Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
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GR Description: Everyone refers to the St. Cecelia as “the Saint.” If you grew up coming here, you were “a Saint.” If you came from the wrong side of the river, you were “an Ain’t.” Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn’t rich enough or connected enough to vacation here. But she could work here. One fateful summer she did, and married the boss’s son. Now, she’s the widowed owner of the hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days, even as staff shortages and financial troubles threaten to ruin it. Plus, her greedy and unscrupulous brother-in-law wants to make sure she fails. Enlisting a motley crew of recently hired summer help—including the daughter of her estranged best friend—Traci has one summer season to turn it around. But new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threatens to come to light, and the tragic death of one of their own brings Traci to the brink of despair.
Traci Eddings has her back against the pink-painted wall of this beloved institution. And it will take all the wits and guts she has to see wrongs put to right, to see guilty parties put in their place, and maybe even to find a new romance along the way. Told with Mary Kay Andrew’s warmth, humor, knack for twists, and eye for delicious detail about human nature, Summers at the Saint is a beach read with depth and heart.
The Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publication Date: July 2, 2024
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GR Description: A near-death experience catapults workaholic junior editor Kelsey Worthington into changing her life–one yes at a time.
Kelsey Worthington always dreamed of being a writer, but she’s settled into a routine of helping other people tell their stories in her job as a junior editor. She doesn’t go outside of her comfort zone. Her relationships are safe. Her job is secure. Her existence is stable. And she’s great with that.
And then, the accident.
While she’s in the hospital overnight, she meets an older woman named Georgina Tate–a glass-ceiling-shattering, wildly successful businesswoman. Georgina sacrificed everything to become the woman she is today, but now, with a pair of failing kidneys and only a handful of months left to live, Georgina is forced to come face-to-face with her regrets. Kelsey is forced to reckon with her own list of “things I’ll do someday,” and she starts to ask a simple but life-changing What if I said yes to all the things I normally say no to? And The Yes Plan is born.
It takes some convincing, but Georgina finally agrees to go along with Kelsey on her Summer of Yes adventures. The two of them set off to see what might be out there waiting for them if they simply open themselves up to it. Together, they say yes to whatever comes their way–a whole day being tourists in their own New York City, dinner with strangers, a convertible that is far from practical but so much fun. But when Kelsey springs a surprise visit to Georgina’s son Hayden and Georgina’s ex-husband (who is not so much of an ex), the older woman is less than thrilled. But this is where the true journey begins.
Two stories of love, forgiveness, regret, romance, and finding a way to live a fearless life intertwine as these two women make an indelible impression on each other. And it all starts with a simple “yes.”
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Genre: Fantasy | Magical Realism
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
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GR Description: As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell vanished in a West Virginia state park, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Jeremy is a famous missing persons investigator with an uncanny ability to find the lost, while Rafe is a reclusive artist unable to stop creating otherworldly paintings and sculptures he shows to no one. He bears scars inside and out from his disappearance but has no memory of what happened while they were gone.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth behind their time in the woods. While the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons.
But the time for burying secrets comes to an end when vet tech Emilie Wendel hires Jeremy to find her long-lost sister . . . the long-lost sister he and Rafe knew while living in that hidden kingdom. Now the former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories. Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy return to the enchanted world they called home for six months . . . for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Genre: Historical Romance
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
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GR Description: A young woman wins the role of a lifetime in a film about a legendary heroine — but the real drama is behind the scenes in this sumptuous historical epic from the author of Mexican Gothic.
1950s Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times.
So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
Two actresses, both determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood—a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue—make for a sizzling combination.
But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.
Before the curtain comes down, there will be tears and tragedy aplenty in this sexy Technicolor saga.
One Year Ago in Spain by Evelyn Skye
Genre: Contemporary Romance | Magical Realism/Fantasy
Publication Date: July 30, 2024
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GR Description: Claire Walker has always had her life in perfect order, including her high-powered job at one of Manhattan’s top corporate law firms. Yet the one thing she cannot seem to find is a perfect love to complete it, until fate pushes Matías de León into her path. Matías is a Spanish artist who is everything that Claire is not: free-spirited and creative, chaos to her order. She falls for him, hard—and he for her.
A year later, however, Claire begins to question everything about their relationship. How can they possibly work long-term when they’re so different? Might it be best to end it before they are both in too deep?
Then tragedy strikes while Matías is visiting family, leaving him gravely wounded in a Madrid hospital. And when Claire drops everything to race to his side, she finds she is the only one who can see and talk to Matías’s soul, detached from his comatose body. But that soul has no memories of his year in New York, of her, or of their relationship. Claire soon realizes that in order to lure Matías back to his body, she will have to convince him to fall in love with her all over again. But can lightning strike twice? Can the same magic that brought them together once do so again?
Beyond Ivy Walls by Rachel Fordham
Genre: Historical Romance | Christian Fiction
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
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GR Description: Beauty and the Beast meets A Light Between Oceans in historic small-town America where a wealthy reclusive bachelor and an unlikely ally join forces to solve a family secret and inadvertently find belonging along the way.
Early 1900s. When an accident leaves Sadie West’s family in dire financial need, she nervously leaves the land she loves to work in the Hoag duster factory. But sending all her money home means that she has nowhere to board, and she’s forced to take up residence in an abandoned building–a choice that throws her in the path of the town’s mysterious bachelor.
Recently returned from exile, and determined to keep his arrival a secret, Otis Taylor makes the impulsive decision to hire the woman he finds hiding on his family’s property with the strict instructions she tell no one he has returned. The dark halls of his boyhood flood him with memories he’s long tried to forget. The only bright light is the woman he has hired. Can the optimistic Sadie teach the wounded Otis to trust again? To love? Can the pair unravel the family secrets that have long cast a shadow over the mansion and those who reside within?
With the same heart as Rachel Fordham’s fan-loved previous historical novels, Beyond Ivy Walls takes readers on an emotional journey full of character development, historical nuance, and a deeply satisfying happily ever after.
Till Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
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GR Description: Ten years ago, June’s beloved husband drowned on their honeymoon, his body never found. Now, a decade later, June is finally ready to move on. She owns a natural wine bar in Brooklyn and is engaged to a patient, supportive man named Kyle. She’s excited to finally begin a new chapter in her life and start a family.
But out of the blue, she sees him—Josh, her first husband. Is this just a hallucination from the guilt June carries about finally moving on, or is it possible that her husband never died in the first place?
June tries to forget about this vision, chalking it up to grief and nerves, but soon enough, she stumbles across a website for a winery in Napa, and the owner in the photo is identical to her dead husband. With her upcoming wedding looming and a fiancé who’s already worried she hasn’t quite left her past behind, June secretly flies to Napa for answers. But she’s not prepared for all the secrets she’s about to unlock because everything she thought she knew about her first love is a lie.
The Housekeeper’s Secret by Iona Grey
Genre: Historical Romance | Mystery & Thriller
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
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GR Description: Duty, desire, and deception reside under one roof.
Standing in the remote windswept moors of Northern England, Coldwell Hall is the perfect place to hide. For the past five years, Kate Furniss has maintained her professional mask so carefully that she almost believes she is the character she has Coldwell’s respectable housekeeper.
It is the summer of 1911 that brings new faces above and below the stairs of Coldwell Hall―including the handsome and mysterious new footman, Jem Arden. Just as the house’s shuttered rooms open, so does Kate’s guarded heart to a love affair that is as intense as it is forbidden. But Kate can feel her control slipping as Jem harbors secrets of his own.
Told in alternating timelines from the last sun-drenched summer of the Edwardian Age to the mud-filled trenches of WWI, The Housekeeper’s Secret opens its door to a world of romance, the truths we hold onto, and the past we must let go.
