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Reviews

Library Lines

June 13, 2025

New Fiction

The Expat Affair by Kimberly Belle – Rayna Dumont came to Amsterdam for a fresh start.  She’s never been the type for a one-night stand, but this move is all about adventure, and Xander is handsome and successful and more than willing to go along for the ride.  Until the morning after, when Rayna finds him dead, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds missing from his safe.  Willow Prins is captivated by the news.  Her husband is Xander’s former boss and heir to a diamond house, and the scandal strains their already – rocky marriage.  As the house comes under scrutiny, Willow wonders how much of the blame she can place on Rayna.  Soon, the two women are dragged into the dark underbelly of the diamond market, where they’ll have to uncover the truth to survive.  Who killed Xander?  Where are the missing diamonds?  And who can you trust in a city thousands of miles from home?

The Lost Book of First Loves by RaeAnne Thayne – Raised by her literary icon father Carson Wells, Alison Wells always felt loved, even though her mother died when she was a teen.  But when she takes a DNA test on a whim and discovers she has a sister she never knew about, it’s clear there are things her father didn’t tell her before he died.  Determined to meet Juniper – her half sister – and unravel the truth of what happened all those years ago, Ali finds herself taking a job as Juniper’s intern.  She’ll eventually figure out a way to tell Juniper the truth of their relationship.  But she never could have imagined what would happen next…  Juniper Connolly has always been incredibly healthy …until she wakes up in the hospital after experiencing cardiac arrest, with her new – and recently fired – intern to thank for saving her life.  It’s clear June needs to de-stress her life a little, so when Ali offers her the use of her family’s cabin is a small Wyoming town, June has no reason not to go.  But when she arrives, her life will never be the same.  Under the wide-open spaces of the Wyoming summer sun, Ali and June will untangle the secrets and lies their lives were built on to discover who they really area and what family really means.  But even more than that, they’ll build a real relationship with one another and finally become sisters.

Blonde Dust by Tatiana De Rosnay – Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614.  Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her.  This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what would be her last movie.  Over the course of a few weeks, an unexpected friendship unfolds between the most famous movie star in the world and a young woman who grew up tending to wild mustang horses whose life will soon be changed forever.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid – Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember.  She is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program.  Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.  Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates; Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, easygoing even when the stakes are high; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer who can fix any engine and fly any place.  As they become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a love she never imagined.  In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.  Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Krista Law