lisa6's 3 favorite reads in 2024

The book starts off with a bang. Right away, Dickason had me wondering what was up with local law enforcement. The sheriff clearly has history with Riley, and it isn’t good. And when the dead body goes missing, his glib dismissal of the case as closed is positively criminal. (I know there are some bad/useless cops in the world, but the sheriff here seems to take that to a whole new level.) The deputies “working” the case aren’t much better. Billy Thatcher seems pleasant enough, almost apologetic for his fellow officers, but Mickey Bennett sure feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Cody is a great addition to the Tracker team. He’s good at what he does, and I expect his unique abilities will prove incredibly useful. And while romance definitely isn’t the focal point of the story, the relationship growing between him and Riley has me hoping we see more of the two of them in future Tracker novels.

Dickason’s characters, as always, are well written, and the mystery is compelling. I didn’t see the big reveal coming until it smacked me upside the head. This is definitely a “keep you up past your bedtime” read, so I don’t recommend starting it on an evening where you have to be up early the next day!

The Iris Code is a fantastic read, and I’d suggest it for anyone who loves a good mystery, a story told by someone who really knows her stuff, and a book that will leave you thirsty for the next in the series.

This book is a love letter to language and the people who wield it. Daphne, a stickler for grammar and its proper usage. Laurel, a kindergarten teacher who falls in love with the beauty of words used in figurative forms. It's also a story of twin sisters and the connection they share, and what happens when life strains that bond. I absolutely loved it, not in part because I'm a word nerd like Daphne and it's fun seeing yourself in a character.

The story starts at the end, and then reveals the events through Lily’s storytelling. That threw me a little at first, but once I was caught up in the tale, there was no getting out of it.

Joanna Davidson Politano spins as marvelous a tale as anything Gordon Makepiece told Lily in the book. She gives us historical details of a real place (St. Anne’s Well Gardens) and a real person (George Albert Smith, one of the earliest filmmakers), and she wraps those details in a story that is by turns whimsical and wistful.

Lily truly is a mystery, as Peter learns. Lily isn’t her given name, but one of many she’s used in the past. What is she running from? How did she get the Briarwood Teardrop? Why is a magistrate sending Scotland Yard after her? Politano unwinds Lily’s story and weaves it together with Peter’s with humor, tension, language that positively glows, and moments of tension where I held my breath waiting to see how they’d get out of THIS jam.

But the real beauty of this story is Lily’s realization that, even when she thought God was nowhere to be found, He never left her. And through her beloved garden, He who created the very first Garden is drawing her back. When Lily started paying attention, she realized that God had been there all along, even when she couldn’t see Him. This story points us squarely to “the truest story. The largest. The one we try to express in the tales we spin.” Just as she used light as the metaphor underlying The Lost Melody, here Politano uses storytelling to show us the Truth that forms the foundation for every tale ever told.

If you love a good mystery, beautiful prose, and a story that will make you weep with its beauty and its parallels to THE Story, you’ll want to pick up The Elusive Truth of Lily Temple.