Bianca Sloane

☆☆☆☆☆ One of my top 2022 reads! Don’t miss this one.
The utterly twisted plot and the unpredictable ending are the perfect way to heat up a cold and snowy day! Ms. Sloane does a fantastic job at keeping her readers flipping pages until the very end. I didn’t come close to guessing the conclusion!

This is a fairly long book and I didn’t realize it until I picked it up. I try to keep my books under 400 pages but I was delighted that I was entertained throughout.

Teenage girls can show more be mean. They can be best friends one day and enemies the next. And money adds a whole new level of wickedness. It’s crazy how most girls will follow the cues of the most popular girl. Although when you’re that age it doesn’t seem so crazy.

The setting was one part of this book I found fascinating. I spent part of my childhood around that area so I was familiar with places that were referenced. Ms. Sloane is an excellent storyteller!

Thanks to Kate Rock Book Tours for the invitation and e-ARC of this five-star book!

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Live and Let Die by Bianca Sloane is a psychological thriller wrapped around a murder mystery. The novel opens with a mysterious woman named Paula needing hospitalization in a mental institution. Then we meet Sondra Ellis. Sondra wants nothing but happiness for her younger sister, Tracy, as she marries Phillip, but that happiness is short lived. Tracy is found brutally murdered, which has left Sondra, their parents, and Phillip to try to recover and pull their lives back together.

After a show more year has passed, Phillip sends a letter to Tracy's mother saying that he has remarried, which re-opens the family's grief. Sondra always though Phillip was weird, but if Tracy loved him then she must have saw something in him that the family missed. However, Sondra runs into an old boyfriend of Tracy's and discovers that Tracy may not have been as happily married as everyone thought, which leads her to look more closely at Phillip and her sister's marriage. Meanwhile Phillip is happily married to Paula, who is slavishly devoted to precisely following his every order.

For a debut novel, Live and Let Die flows very smoothly - or perhaps I should say "gallops" because I was reading at a frantic pace to discover what happens next. It certainly is a well written mystery that kept me engaged throughout and doesn't quite follow a predictable formula. Oh, I thought I had things figured out, and my conclusions seemed to be close, but were soon proved incorrect. Plus, there is an extra twist at the very end that I was not expecting at all. The unpredictability of the ending is another sign of a debut writer who deserves success and I expect to hear a lot more about her in the future.

I liked the characters, especially Sondra's determination and attitude. Phillip and Paula were disturbing, but I don't want to say much more about that. I will have to admit that in the beginning of the novel if Sondra ran her fingers through her dark, tangled hair and then frantically needed a cigarette one more time I was considering setting the book aside.Then, as the action picked up and things started to get very intriguing, those actions seemed to stop, or at least they no longer bothered me.

Currently Live and Let Die is available as an eBook. Bianca Sloane has two other novels coming out: Sweet Little Lies and Every Breath You Take. (Check out her website.)

Very Highly Recommended

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the author for review purposes. show less

I picked this book up because of the title (it fit a Goodreads challenge) and I really didn't know what it was about. I was pleasantly surprised. This book grabbed my attention and didn't let go. From the conversation at the beginning with the doctor all the way to the big reveal, I knew something odd was happening. The book wasn't too obvious but there were subtle clues. However, you didn't get the full extent of what really happened until much later in the book. The author did a wonderful show more job in building up the mystery without letting too much be revealed until the end. I will be looking for more by this author. show less

Live To Tell by Bianca Sloane is a recommended thriller.

At first glance Dr. Charles Morgan has it all. He came from a wealthy privileged family, has a successful practice, beautiful wife, and two sons who are also on their way to success. The problem is his wife, Jillian, is toxic. Nothing Charles does suits her. The two are barely civil to each other. It seems that Charles job is to bring home the paycheck for Jillian to spend while she belittles him. It seems like divorce or counseling is show more in order, but the two stay in their rut. Charles is seriously considering having an affair, but it needs to be with a woman who won't upset his current lifestyle but will provide him with the excitement he craves.

Charles meets Tamra, a cocktail waitress, quite by chance and starts an affair with her that he thinks will satisfy his desires. His affair provides him with a whole lot more than excitement though as he becomes obsessed with her.

Live To Tell is well written, and a seriously dark and sexy novel. Once the action starts it will grip most readers and keep you entertained. This is a perfect airplane book and I'm rating it based on the addictive factor - you will want to see what happens next. 3.5 stars

For me personally, I was less of a fan of this novel. I know other readers were surprised by the twist, but I wasn't and pretty much predicted everything that was going to happen very early on, when Charles was whining about his wife and we were shown that she really is a horrible bitch. Therein lies some of my problems with the novel: the characters felt like stereotypes to me and I didn't really care for the subject matter. Also, this is a part one of what will be at least two part series. Issues are left unresolved and there will be another novel to finish the story. I'm not a fan of that for thrillers either. It's not that Live To Tell is bad, but I would recommend Bianca Sloane's previous novels before this one.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes. show less