REVIEW: PLEASE JOIN US, BY CATHERINE MCKENZIE

At thirty-nine, Nicole Mueller’s life is on the rocks. Her once brilliant law career is falling apart. She and her husband, Dan, are soon to be forced out of the apartment they love. After a warning from her firm’s senior partners, she receives an invitation from an exclusive women’s networking group, Panthera Leo. Membership is anonymous, but every member is a successful professional. It sounds like the perfect solution to help Nicole revive her career. So, despite Dan’s concerns that the group might be a cult, Nicole signs up for their retreat in Colorado.

Once there, she meets the other women who will make up her Pride. A CEO, an actress, a finance whiz, a congresswoman: Nicole can’t believe her luck. The founders of Panthera Leo are equally as impressive. They explain the group’s core philosophy: they’re a girl’s club in a boy’s club world.

Nicole is all in. And when she gets home, she soon sees dividends. Her new network quickly provides her with clients that help her relaunch her career, and a great new apartment too. The favors she has to provide in return seem benign. But then she’s called to the congresswoman’s apartment late at night where she’s pressed into helping her cover up a crime. And suddenly, Dan’s concerns that something more sinister is at play seem all too relevant. Can Nicole extricate herself from the group before it’s too late? Or will joining Panthera Leo be the biggest mistake of her life?

 

 

When Nicole’s life and her job begin to fall apart, an invitation from a group offers an answer. Please Join Us reveals how this group takes over the lives of its participants, and while the benefits seem large, the downside becomes apparent soon enough.

I couldn’t stop turning the pages, wondering what would happen next, and finding no way out for Nicole and others caught in the grip of something beyond their control.

Would there be escape from the structure that seems to hold them captive? How would it all end for them? The extent of the group’s control soon becomes apparent. A twisty tale that held me captive. 5 stars.

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REVIEW: AN HONEST LIE, BY TARRYN FISHER

Lorraine—“Rainy”—lives at the top of Tiger Mountain. Remote, moody, cloistered in pine trees and fog, it’s a sanctuary, a new life. She can hide from the disturbing past she wants to forget.

If she’s allowed to.

When Rainy reluctantly agrees to a girls’ weekend in Vegas, she’s prepared for an exhausting parade of shots and slot machines. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn’t come back to the hotel room.

And then Rainy gets the text message, sent from Braithe’s phone: someone has her. But Rainy is who they really want, and Rainy knows why.

What follows is a twisted, shocking journey on the knife-edge of life and death. If she wants to save Braithe—and herself—the only way is to step back into the past.

 

Alternating timelines in An Honest Lie introduce Rainy, our protagonist, and take us on her journey from the past into the present. I knew we were in for trouble when she agrees to go along on a trip with the wives of her boyfriend’s friends. The trip will take her back to the past, a place she would never want to revisit.

As she senses something dark about the women, especially a couple of them, and how this darkness is about to pull her back to her own dark past, I kept hoping that she would just leave. No good could come of this time spent with women who had their own agendas.

I kept reading, wanting everything to work out for her, as there was something about her life, past and present, that stirred up memories of my own, reminders of lives everyone hopes to stay buried. 4.5 stars.

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