The Teacher by Freida McFadden

 

I listened to this audiobook while I was at the beach, taking walks around town and listening as I listened to Eve who seems to hate her job as a teacher and her teacher husband Nate, who really, really loves shoes and misses her mentor who lost his job due to rumors.  Then there was Addie, a student in both Eve and Nate, who is at the heart of last years rumors and is being shunned by her best friend and bullied by the most popular girl at school.  At times you get to hear it all from Nate's point of view as well.

As I was walking around town I was wondering if I liked any of them and who I disliked the most, no spoiler for which one  but by the end there was one of them that I really did not like and had little sympathy for.  I liked that we were seeing it from each of their sides so when you were in Eve's head you knew all she knew, when you in Addie's you knew all she knew, Nate didn't come in until a bit later, the beginning of the book was the other two, but you got a much clearer picture of it all when he was added in there too.

Since this is Freida I knew there would be some twists and some darkness and those are definitely there, I wanted to love it but have to say I did not which mainly had to do with some of the events and situations, the issues were just too much for me at times.

So who can you trust and who do you go to in a school when you are having trouble?  What do you do when what you think is real is not?  Or when you find out that you aren't the first one who has been in this situation?  

If you want to read this twisty story and make your own decisions about it you can reach it here

Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews

 

For many of us summer has started, it officially started last week, but for some school has been out for a bit longer.  One of my favorite things to do in the summer is read!  Of course, it is one of my favorite things to do in the other three seasons as well, but there is something about the lack of structure in the summer that makes it ideal for reading!

Last week I decided I wanted to read something to put me in the summer mood and I picked up Mary Kay Andrews book Summers at the Saint.  I loved that it was a mystery and brought best friends back together, I loved the underdog making it to the big time and I loved the setting!  I also discovered in listening to an interview with the author that she writes under a pseudonym  using her children's first names, which was a fun new fact for me.

So the hotel is in a small town and you can be from the right side of the tracks or the wrong one, and if you are from the wrong one the reason you might be at the hotel is because you work there.  Years ago Traci and her best friend were lifeguard there.  Traci fell in love with the son of the owner and her friend lost her job after a child died in the pool and lost touch with her friend.  Fast forward a couple decades and Traci has lost her husband and is fighting his family to keep running the hotel the way he wanted to while his brother manages the land interests for the family.  Add in a group of young people living in a dorm setting working at the resort, some drugs and murder, some missing mattresses and liquor, and some uncovering of family secrets and you have a fun summer read.  While I did not read this on a beach, it would make a great beach or poolside read.  I loved her summer book last year too!

I would give this four or five starts, I think on Goodreads I said 4 but thinking back I really liked the mystery element and might need to go back in and make a change.  I can recall many a summer that I would read library mysteries on my bed after coming home from the pool, warm and tired from the water and would immerse myself in solving a mystery.  This was a great start to my summer reading!

Link for Amazon:  here