Marybeth WhalenBesprekingen

Beautifully written story of the bond community in the wake of tragic events and the secrets we all keep.

So glad my wish was granted with this one through Netgalley it is an outstanding read. I am an avid reader of all things interesting. This tops the list for interesting.
A spider's intricately spun web blocks the entrance to the neighborhood swimming pool on opening day, a portent of some sticky situations in store for the residents of Sycamore Glen. There isn't a person in the group who doesn't have a secret. And yes, those secrets will all be laid bare before summer's end. The draw back to living in a small town everyone knows everyone and sometimes everything.
Each character is very well developed almost like the author is making this book a dress that fits the reader perfectly from start to finish. That being said Zell is my favorite character we all have someone like her in our lives. The DO GOODER. Always the one to bring food to a family dealing with a tragedy, lend support when it is needed, quietly observe what is going on around her. Yet she has her own secrets, things she hopes never come to light despite the fact that they might help someone else. Trying to put a puzzle together yet she doesn’t have all the pieces together just yet.
Then you have Jancey the welcome home girl. The girl who has everything growing up in this lovely town then she grows up and comes back with nothing. A husband in jail and two girls who need her to keep them together. Lance was a sweet character in my opinion I truly think the two of them are a cute couple I think the author’s choice to implement the love scene was well positioned and gave you a way to cut the tension of the town.
If you like books that leave you guessing and wanting to put everything back together for the people in this town you will love it. It reads like a television miniseries where each characters chapter is an episode that brings you closer to the end.

Whalen makes you feel at home with her characters and in all honesty this is an easy breezy beach read that you could do in one sitting it was very well done.

Great book told from many different viewpoints, this story takes place in a small town in the heat of the summer, where a near-tragedy in their community pool brings the neighbors closer together.

And exposes many secrets they'd rather keep hidden.

I like the various characters POV's, which had to have been a writer's nightmare! Male, female, and child POV's told stories that ripped at my heart, intrigued me, and kept me guessing.

A very good read!

LOVED THIS BOOK.....started out a little on the slow side for me but once it picked up, i couldnt put it down. Makes you think about where your marriage is right now and what state it will be in if we dont try to communicate and fix the smaller issues.

Plot holes, one-dimensional characters, ridiculous storylines. Waste of time.

Wow, much better than I had thought. I liked all of the subplots swirling around. The story is a little predictable and things wind up solved to nearly everyone’s liking, but the build of the story was believable, and with a story like this, that becomes seriously important.
I would definitely read another book by this author.

It was a bit slow for my tastes. There were a lot of characters and POVs and I feel like I never really got to know any of them on more than a superficial level.

Not a book I'd recommend.

It’s not all bad news, but I think of “The Things We Wish Were True” as “The Book I Wish I Liked More.” Some people may read this story and love it, might even find it uplifting, but I expected a level of darkness from the blurb on which the author failed to deliver. Had the copy been written differently I’d probably have skipped this Kindle First read in favor of something more my style.

To start with the good, the prose was well written enough to pull me along even when I felt the plot fall short of its potential. The author did a great job managing a large cast of characters and intertwining their past and present. She captured the southern charm of suburban living with an expected authority (given that her bio says she’s from NC).

That’s as many compliments as I can manage because (for me) the cons outweigh the pros. While the large cast was managed, it was too big for all the characters’ stories to be given equal weight. In particular, the “creepy neighbor” (who was more of a one-dimensional trope than a genuine element of fear) should’ve been deleted altogether because while the author writes uplifting and romantic well, she shies away from the inherent darkness of villains and the danger associated with a potential pedophile in the midst of southern suburbia.

Callie was a hero in her own right without him.

The couples, and there are several, don’t have what I would exactly call “out of the ordinary” problems. I think the last sentence of the blurb should’ve clued me in that this was a book more about acceptance and forgiveness than the unearthing of any particularly nefarious secret. The danger felt contrived, and the final chapters seemed rushed, like in the author’s attempt at closing so many threads she couldn’t find it in herself to write anything but tidy, happy endings. That’s fine, if it’s your thing, but I read this expecting a dark, mysterious, thriller, not a thinly veiled romance novel. For that reason, I feel duped.

Back in July, I was prepping for my annual week-long vacation trip to Cape San Blas, FL and I needed a few things to read. Now, I'm not lacking for things to read of course but when I go to the beach I like light reads. I think most of us do.

Thanks to a pre-vacation lunch date with Alison Law of Literary Atlanta she gave me the perfect beach read.

Whalen's Only Ever Her wasn't astounding by any means and it had some typical storylines but for the beach it got the job done. There was much of it that was predictable and I totally saw some of the plot twists coming. I'm not going to give any spoilers.

I was expecting a suspense and thriller novel but what I got was more of a story about a small town and all the happenings going on within its society. There was an old crime that had not been solved and now a missing girl that was about to be married. The whole town is upset. They are all looking for her, but there are so many things going on in the background. You do have to finish the entire book before you find out what happened to her.

I'm calling this a light mystery. No gore. Not fast-paced. A lot of characters in this story and I totally see a sequel coming with the main character's cousin, Clary. There is a whole other story to be told there.

The ending does provide closure for all of the characters including the mystery of Annie’s mom (didn’t see that one coming).

This is a look at life in one neighborhood, that we can all relate with. Whether with friends or family, the cycle of life, the ups and downs are all the same. There are always secrets and confessions and coming together in the end. A very good book.

This book was a little slow and predictable for me.

Powerful. The one word that comes to mind after reading this book, my first by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen. How quickly life can change, no warning whatsoever. We have all known the popular kids in high school who seem to have it all. When a group is getting ready to go out for the school football game, they have no idea it will be their last night alive.
The ripple effects are profound and so many in the town are affected regardless of their place in life. I personally enjoyed the ghostly element to the book especially since it was not overdone.

This follows the lives of several people in the same town. It's told from all of their points of view, all different ages. There are secrets and self-discoveries, sweet parts, sad scenes. Mysteries and relationships play the biggest parts. It kept me interested.

Not what I anticipated

Wasn't at all what I thought the book was going to be about when I started. The cover and synopsis made me think it was a thriller but it was more a mystery and the stories of the characters surrounding Annie. I wasn't necessarily disappointed but it was slower than I would have liked in some parts. I was going to give it 3 stars but putting more thought into it I am going to give it 4.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. You know a book is good when it keeps you up past your bedtime!

So this book in the end did not live up to the hype I kept seeing all over the place with it. With shifting perspectives (there were six people to track in this book) and the author choosing to make 5 out of 6 told in the third person there was way too much going on for me to even really care about all of these characters.

In addition, due to the plethora of characters, the development of almost all of these characters was shallow. The only exception to this was the character of Cailey. Ms. Whalen shines when she tells Cailey's POV in the first person. Maybe if she had stuck with her throughout this book it would have worked better.

The book goes from Memorial Day through August 2014 in Sycamore Glen, North Carolina. With everything that is going on with North Carolina right now I thought how weird it was the book I finally got around to reading was set there.

The book is told in the third person point of view by these characters: Everett and Bryte (long time best friends and husband and wife) Jencey (former best friend to Bryte and high school girlfriend of Everett), Zell (neighbor of Everett and Bryte and Lance), Lance (neighbor of Zell, Everett, and Bryte).

The author chose to have the character of Cailey (pre-teen) told in the first person.

We have a lot of unexplained tension between Everett, Bryte, and Jencey. The backstory behind these three was boring as anything. Bryte was always secretly in love with Everett and jealous of Jencey. Once Jencey had to move away, Bryte and Everett got together. Now that Jencey is back home, Bryte feels jealous of her previous relationship with Everett.

Jencey is home with her two daughters trying to deal with the fallout from her marriage.

Lance is dealing with the fact that his wife Debra has walked out on him and his two children.

Zell is feeling guilty regarding something dealing with Lance's wife (it was a doozy and I ended up hating this character even more by the time the book was finished) and helps out Lance with his two kids.

Cailey feels out of sorts in the new neighborhood she and her mother and brother have moved into. Since her mother works all of the time, it is up to Cailey to watch her younger brother Cutter. She wishes that their house looked like all of the other houses nearby and feels very set apart from the nice houses with families that surround them.

The characters meet at the local pool and from there after a tragic incident, they find themselves thrown together. I wish that we had got any sense of these people by the time the book ended.

The storyline between Everett and Bryte was pretty awful. I just kept reading and shaking my head. And in the end, things are forgiven though most people would need more than a few hours to shake off the revelations that Everett found out about his wife. And what gets me is that I think the author is portraying Bryte as noble. Instead, Bryte really needs to see a therapist or someone. Because her justifications for everything that she were messed up. She is in love with her husband (yeah okay girl) and she still feels like she's in a competition with a friend she hasn't even seen in years, who she apparently gloats over because she got the guy. Bah.

Jencey I felt for a little bit. Because her life is turn upside down. She also had to move away from her home and the boy she loved because of circumstances outside of her control. I wanted to see a reawaken of this character, a sense of her growing up and realizing that all that glitters is not gold (she was a wealthy man's wife) and get a sense of who she is. Instead we have her running around crushing on someone that is still technically married. The "relationship" that she and Lance had didn't do a thing for me. It felt like she was replacing him with her absent husband because she needed someone to be strong for her.

Lance was a waste of a character. A few times he had some insights into maybe why his wife left, but once Jencey comes on the scene that is all over. He is focused on getting the girl and does not seem to be around much to actually father his two kids.

Zell annoyed me from beginning to end. She has a secret she knows about Debra and once readers are privy to it, I ended up feeling sorry for Debra. Probably because in one of Zell's chapters we are flashbacked to an incident several years before Debra leaves when one of the children is hurt. She bares her soul to Zell about how overwhelmed she is, how she just needs a second or two to herself. That her husband doesn't get it, and he gets to get away from it at least. I felt Debra in that moment and felt sympathetic to her. Maybe because two of my best friends recently had something similar going on with them. They are the best mothers that I know, but they constantly beat up on themselves when they are tired or want alone time from their husbands and kids. They beat up on themselves when they get sick and don't want to cook dinner. I don't know why women do this to ourselves, but I wish that we all gave ourselves and each other breaks.

Cailey just wants to belong, and for a few moments during the summer she does when she gets to interact with other kids and Zell.

We also have some secondary characters, local neighborhood people as well as Zell's husband who barely seems to be around.

A lot of neighborhood mysteries get solved, but the resolutions didn't really ring true (especially regarding Jencey) and I had a hard time believing that any of these people would interact with each other.

The writing was just okay. The flow was awful though. Each chapter was maybe 2-3 pages long and you would jump to another character. Why the author chose to have 5 characters "speak" in the third person boggles my mind. At least there are chapter headings to keep people straight, because the women's voices all started to blur after a while. It didn't help that many of the children seemed to be seen and not heard except for Cailey. I wanted more interaction between all of the characters and their families. These people seemed to talk to each other for maybe ten minutes and move to another scene.

If the book synopsis didn't say that this took place in North Carolina, I would have had no idea. This feels like a faceless suburban neighborhood with no real personality. I don't expect characters to talk "Southern" but there was no real difference between this town and many others.

The ending was wrapped up with everyone practically skipping through gardens together. There are no real discussions to be had, and things that would kill most normal and healthy relationships are ignored. I will probably pass on future books by this author.

Small town, Friday night lights, football players are gods, cheerleaders are popular, one accident and 3 lives are lost, but others are destroyed. Author does a great job of explains life in a small town, especially when lines are drawn. Told by different characters so you can see all positions. Great read, couldn’t put it down.

🌟🌟🌟 1/2 Stars for this fast-paced myster. . Small towns are tough..everyone knows everyone, but certain secrets can be kept for years. A young mother is murdered with only her 3 yr old daughter as a witness. A man is sent to prison what the child says. This child, Annie, grows up as a favorite in Ludlow, SC. The town is excited about Annie’s upcoming wedding. Then, Annie goes missing. Old mysteries, new mysteries, Southern elite and outcasts come together with Annie’s family to search. By the end of the story, all secrets are answered.

This book, while a page turner, wasn’t quite as good as the author’s previous novel ‘When We Were Worthy’. Quite a few little secrets were thrown in that I felt were never truly developed, and characters were introduced but didn’t go anywhere, Just dying out.

If you are looking for a fast-paced mystery...good for a weekend getaway, plane trip or beach read, this will foot the bill.

Thanks yo the Author, Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC. Opinion is my own.

I am torn on how to rate this book. The character's names are uniformly ridiculous; the writing is pedestrian; the "surprises" can be seen coming from a mile away, etc. So I really feel like I shouldn�Ûªt give it more than three stars.

But I my rating is based on how much I enjoyed it, what a hoot it was to read, and the certainty that I would buy another book by this same author - so 5 stars it is!

I devoured this in a few days. A boatload of characters interact with each other in a seemingly perfect little slice of suburbia. But there are secrets, drama and intrigue behind every door. There is just enough sex and violence hinted at to make it interesting, but nothing is graphic or cringe-inducing. All in all, the perfect read for when you just want some mindless entertainment.

A solid 3 1/2 stars. This was an engrossing read, but it had the potential to be a lot more than it was. I thought the ending was a serious let-down. The author also could have built a little more suspense by exploring some of the blind alleys she merely hinted at and developed some of the secondary characters a little more fully; this bordered more on a novella than a full-on novel.

Sometimes, books are free on amazon for a reason.

The book was a little too religious for my taste but despite that it held my interest and was entertaining.½

A sweet story that held my attention while doing my make up.½

Three quick reads in one book: "A June Bride" by Marybeth Whalen, "A July Bride" by Beth Wiseman, and "An August Bride" by Debra Clopton. All were very different situations, and all were fun to read.

In "A June Bride" you have Wynne Hardy getting engaged on a reality TV show and set to marry on a seaside ceremony on live TV. The problem is she can't forget that man who broker her heart years ago. Now he is back, making sure she is making the right choice. What will Wynne decide?

In "A July Bride" Alyssa has been left at the altar on her wedding day by Brendan. Now he realizes his mistake, but can he win her back and get her to trust him and her heart again? I give the guy a lot of credit for trying so hard.

In "An August Bride" Kelsey Wilcox has had her heart broken by a cowboy, so wants nothing to do with cowboys. So when Brent Corbin rescues her from nearly drowning in the ocean there is an immediate attraction, until she discovers he is a cowboy. Brent is determined to change her mind about cowboys. (If you have read any of Debra Clopton's 'Mule Hollow" books, you will be happy to know the "Matchmakin' Posse" shows up in this Corpus Christi location).½

I was sent and early copy from the publisher, and I was excited to jump into this one based on the synopsis. When this started, I thought it was going to be a thriller that would keep me guessing, but unfortunately it fell flat.

This starts off with several different perspectives: Annie, Faye, Clary, Kenney, and Laurel. I thought this was going to get confusing, but it was really easy to keep each character and their story separate. However; this was more of a story about the surrounding characters than it was about Annie missing. We never really got to know Annie before she ends up missing. The rest of the story is her missing (nothing really to it until the reveal) and what the other characters have been going through. I do not feel any were really developed the way I would like and I never found myself connecting to any of them.

There were several things thrown in that needed to be fleshed out even more. For example, I do not understand why Annie and Kenney had to end their friendship once she was married or why they kept it hidden since high school. This was hidden from everyone in a small town who seemed to know Annie’s every move, yet they had no clue Kenney was her best friend? I also feel like there was little to no information around Annie and her relationship with her fiancé Scott. All we know is that he was off with her best friend while she was missing and possibly dead. It just did not work for me.

The ending was also just blah for me. It was random with no thrilling reveal or story around what really happened. I would have liked to see this more of a thriller around Annie missing.

Overall, this was ok. I left feeling disappointed.