Driftwood #17: Recommended Reads

Girl A
by Abigail DeanLooking for another gripping novel that will keep you flipping through page after page? Abigail Dean gifts us with Girl A, a psychological thriller that explores the relationships between siblings of a broken family, while revealing the difficulty of overcoming trauma. Dean leaves you grasping for answers with each chapter, and you’re left trying to piece the past together up until the last page.After years of forgetting her past and trying to move forward, Lex Gracie has to return to London as the executor of her mother’s will, to distribute what her mother left Lex and her siblings before she died in prison. Now, with the help of her sister Evie, Lex wants to turn their childhood prison, otherwise known to the public as the “House of Horrors,” into a community center for anyone in need of solace or acceptance. Lex must reconnect with her siblings, after being separated for years, to obtain their signatures for the transformation of the house, and this task unravels more family secrets than she would have hoped. Stalked by her past, Lex’s trauma catches up to her and she is no longer able to hide from her own secrets. Girl A had me on the edge of my seat the entire read as more and more of the family secrets were revealed. Lex’s journey with accepting what really happened in the House of Horrors tugs at your heartstrings and really makes you empathize with the children’s gruesome experiences.

Annie Lucas’s world is entirely upended when her single father, a former baseball player whose dreams of an illustrious career in the majors were dashed by bone cancer, is offered the job of a lifetime. Soon, he’s the new pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals. Excited for the adventures ahead, Annie soon finds herself halfway across the country, winning races for her new high school’s prestigious track program and learning to navigate the strange do’s-and-dont’s of professional sports. Perhaps the biggest surprise to Annie, though, is the friendship that blossoms between her and Jason Brody, the Royals’ smoking hot nineteen-year-old rookie pitcher. Brody, with his rocky past and reputation as a ladiesman, should be totally off-limits. Not to mention, their relationship would be forbidden by club management, and Annie’s father would kill them both. But the longer the attraction between Annie and Brody simmers, the harder it becomes for them to ignore…and when they finally give in to their feelings, both know full well that if their secret affair is ever discovered, it could have disastrous consequences. Annie never would’ve guessed her move to Missouri would result in her falling in love with an up-and-coming MLB star, but when life throws her a curveball, she knows the only thing she can do is adjust her swing and hit it out of the park.