BOOK REVIEW: IN FIVE YEARS BY REBECCA SERLE

Title: In Five Years

Author: Rebecca Serle

Genre: Romance

Published on: March 10, 2020 by Atria Books

 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick

“In Five Years is as clever as it is moving, the rare read-in-one-sitting novel you won’t forget.” —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

​Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.

 

When I came across this book in the Kindle Store, I thought the title was so intriguing. And the synopsis made it even more compelling. How many of us can be certain where we’ll be five years in the future? In Five Years is the story of Dannie Cohan, a lawyer from Manhattan. When she’s introduced, Dannie is about to go to the job interview she’s worked so many years for. Dannie dreams of working at Wachtell, which she believes is the best place for a corporate lawyer. After the interview, Dannie feels confident that she’ll get the job. Her boyfriend, David Rosen, takes her on a date where he proposes. Dannie accepts, feeling all the pieces of her five-year plan falling into place.

What happens next is something extraordinary and unexpected. Dannie wakes up in a strange bed, in an apartment she’s not familiar with. And there’s a man she doesn’t know. Did Dannie have a one-night stand? Of course not, she’d never cheat on David, much less on the same night he proposed. The stranger seems friendly enough, but Dannie is still cautious. She eventually discovers that she’s somehow moved forward five years into the future. Things are so different that Dannie doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s a woman with plans, and she can’t fathom how those plans will lead her to the new apartment with a different man.

BOOK REVIEW: THE SECRET CHILD BY CAROLINE MITCHELL

Title: The Secret Child

Author: Caroline Mitchell

Genre: Thriller, police procedural

Published on: March 7, 2019 by Thomas & Mercer

DI Amy Winter knows evil. She's lived through it

Four-year-old Ellen is snatched by a stranger in the dead of night. Her devastated mother, Nicole, receives four identical phials and a threatening note in a familiar scrawl that chills her to the bone. But she always knew this would happen. She’s been expecting it for years . . .

According to the note, one of the phials is poisoned. Nicole is given a deadly challenge: if she drinks one, the sadistic kidnapper will notify the police of Ellen’s location. The sender claims to be Luka Volkov but Luka is supposed to be dead, killed long ago in a fire that haunts all those involved.

DI Amy Winter is still reeling from the discovery that she is the daughter of a serial killer, and her childhood trauma only makes her more determined to bring Ellen home. When another child is taken, Amy finds herself in a race against time. To rescue the children, must she seek help from the one person she wants to forget?

 

This is the second novel in the DI Amy Winter series. I enjoyed the first book enough to continue with the next ones. The main character is Amy, a Detective Inspector. She works for the Notting Hill station. Amy heads a special unit that handles high-profile cases. After years in the force, she’s proved herself as one of the best investigators in the English police. Recently, Amy found out about a reason why she may be so good at her work. Amy happens to be the daughter of Jack and Lillian Grimes, a pair of serial killers known as the Beasts of Brentwood.

Since Jack is dead, Lillian took it upon herself to reveal the truth to Amy. She seems to be as wicked as you’d imagine. Now that Lillian has given up the burial sites of her and Jack’s victims, Amy expects she’s done with her. Unfortunately, Amy brought evidence to light that might set Lillian free. Amy hopes that won’t happen. At least one good thing came out of the experience. Amy reunited with Sally-Ann, the older sister she thought was dead. Sally-Ann is in a relationship with Paddy Byrne, an officer under Amy’s command. He's one of her most trusted colleagues.

BOOK REVIEW: EMPIRE RISING BY CHEYANNE YOUNG

Title: Empire Rising

Author: Cheyanne Young

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Published on: January 1, 2016 (first edition); February 8, 2022 by Quinova Press (latest edition)

Eighteen years ago, Maci Knight’s family was destroyed when Aurora Falcon killed her mother. Now Aurora’s partner, Felix, has kidnapped Maci’s brother. For five long months, there’s been no sign of Max. His Codex is offline and she can’t feel even the slightest trace of his power. Maci refuses to give up hope, but when a new threat on King City emerges, Maci is ordered to abandon her search.

Somehow Felix has managed to do the unthinkable: repower all the villains that Central has depowered over the years. Now they’ve banded together to get revenge on the Supers who wronged them. What feels like an arduous mission becomes an opportunity when Maci realizes that if she can stop the villains, she can get them to lead her to Felix—and her brother.

In the action-packed conclusion of the City of Legends trilogy, Maci vows to save her city and bring her family back together—no matter the cost.

Previously published by Amazon Publishing and Alloy Entertainment, LLC

 

Five months have passed in-story since the ending of The Valiant. This final entry in the trilogy sees protagonist Maci Knight handling her most important mission yet. The previous book ended with main antagonist Felix running away with Max (Maci's older brother) in tow. The entire Hero Brigade has been searching for him this whole time. They're starting to give up, though, which disappoints Maci. She feels that the Elders may even think Max dead, considering how long he's been missing. At least Maci has support in the form of her twin sister, Nova. The latter recently gained the trust of the Super community after she helped save a bunch of them from Felix.

Nova starts the book as a newly-minted member of the Hero Brigade. This means she can go on official missions and have her own Codex (a bracelet gadget only Heroes get that's kind of a glorified smartphone). Nova has a supersuit now as well. It's identical to Maci's but with reversed colors: white instead of black. I thought this was fitting, and not only because they’re twins. Black suits Maci because, whether she had the potential to turn villain or not, she still has a short temper and a fierce protective instinct for her loved ones. Nova’s white suit is likely a sign her loyalties have completely shifted to the Hero Brigade, as she was raised by villains.

STATUS UPDATE: POSSIBLE SOCIAL NETWORK CHANGE & MID-YEAR REDESIGN

Good morning, people! I'm here with another status update. First, as you have no doubt noticed, I redesigned Ivan's Insights one more time. I hope the change isn't too jarring. While I am not overly concerned about page views, I still care about people visiting my blog. I don't write book reviews just to keep them to myself. Judging by its stats, I'd say the last redesign I gave Ivan's Insights didn't go over too well. I admit it wasn't its best look. I was going for a modern/futuristic-ish design, but it ended up leaving a bit to be desired. So now I've gone for a cleaner, more traditional look. Admittedly, Google's Blogger has a dearth of themes (let alone good ones), but this is the best I could manage for now. I don't normally change my blog's theme midway through the year, but it was needed.

On another subject, Twitter has been all over the news lately. Ever since Musk bought it, things have been going downhill. The latest brilliant move? To introduce rate limits, which means that the number of tweets you can view on Twitter per day is now limited. It's a preposterous change if you ask me. And if that wasn't enough, you now need to sign up for Twitter to view anything on it now. Mr. Musk's intention is to keep AI companies from having unfettered access to Twitter's data to train chatbots like ChatGPT. Whatever his claims, I'm with those that feel like Twitter is going to seed. Several months ago, I made a personal Hive Social account to see if it would be a good alternative. I was preparing to jump ship from Twitter, but Hive still isn't as popular as I expected.

Last Wednesday night, a new competitor to Twitter was launched. It's called Threads, a social network created by a veteran in the field: Meta. Yep, it's the same company that owns Instagram. That means if you have an account on that app, you can use it to log into your own Threads profile. This makes it so you can follow Threads accounts that you already follow on Instagram. Having such a vast built-in user base makes Threads perhaps the most promising Twitter alternative yet. For now it's only available as an iPhone and Android app, but that doesn't seem to be hurting it. I'll be following news updates for the meantime to see where things go. But if Threads' first day is anything to go by, it's very likely I'll open a new Ivan's Insights account there. When I do, I'm not going to write a whole post for it; I'll just tweet about it (ha!) and add the link to my About page here.

That's it for today. As usual, I'll keep posting new book reviews every Wednesday morning. My latest one was Speak of the Devil by Allison Leotta. You can read it at this link. Thank you for stopping by, and have a good day!

BOOK REVIEW: SPEAK OF THE DEVIL BY ALLISON LEOTTA

Title: Speak of the Devil

Author: Allison Leotta

Genre: Mystery, thriller

Published on: August 6, 2013 by Gallery Books

In this gripping legal thriller by “the female John Grisham” (The Providence Journal), sex-crimes prosecutor Anna Curtis must stop a vicious street gang before it destroys more lives—and her own family.

On the very night she gets engaged to the man she loves, Assistant US Attorney Anna Curtis’s professional life takes a shocking turn that threatens everything she holds dear. A few miles away from where she’s enjoying her romantic dinner, two separate groups are gearing up to raid a brothel. A vicious killer known as Diablo—the Devil—leads one group. A few minutes later, Anna’s own investigative team heads in to search the brothel, as part of an ongoing fight against human trafficking in DC. Both groups are caught off guard, with deadly results.

As Anna investigates the bloody face-off, the boundaries between her work and home life begin to blur when she discovers a web of long-buried secrets and official lies that lead straight to her doorstep. And everything Anna counted on—the happiness she seemed so close to securing—comes into question as Diablo moves in for yet another kill.

Allison Leotta draws on her experience as a DC sex-crimes prosecutor to take you into the back rooms of the US Attorney’s Office, the hidden world of the Witness Protection Program, and the secret rituals of one of America’s most dangerous gangs. Universally praised by bestselling authors from Catherine Coulter and George Pelecanos to Lisa Scottoline and David Baldacci, Leotta weaves fact and fiction to create her best novel yet.

 

This is the third entry in a mystery/legal thriller series centering on protagonist Anna Curtis. She's an Assistant U.S. Attorney in DC. Anna has handled a couple of major cases so far. In Speak of the Devil, she'll work on her most dangerous one yet. The story picks up with Anna on a date with Jack Bailey, her fiance. He's the head of the Homicide Unit at the USAO (Anna's in Sex Crimes). Anna and Jack have had a somewhat rocky relationship so far. At least the interracial aspect of it hasn't been a big obstacle. It now seems as if Anna and Jack may soon get their happily ever after.

Several miles away, a group of MPD officers conducts a raid at a brothel. What was supposed to be a routine crackdown turns into a deadly confrontation. A couple of gang members manage to escape, but the cops are able to capture a third one. The guy's nickname turns out to be Psycho. Fitting for a dude involved with the MS, one of the most violent gangs in America. Psycho is found carrying something that causes MPD to bring Anna and Jack into the case. The former learns about it first, as she prepared a document enabling the police to conduct the raid. Detective Tavon McGee (a friend of Anna's and Jack's) is the one who brings the evidence.