In Another Life by Julie Christine Johnson

(As always, please click on the title to be taken to the blog for the entire review!  Please leave me a comment if you decide to read this one too!)

I actually really liked this book!  I frowned at the cover's statement that this book was in the vein of Outlander - you know that is my favorite series EVER, right?  So, nothing compares to Outlander.  

However, this was a good twist - more modern, no time traveling back and forth, but only the idea that a soul lost in one life can find comfort and closure through another.  So, yeah, you have to have an open mind here.  I liked the parallels to a previous time and the flashbacks that explained what might be happening. I liked that the flashbacks contained real life historical figures, and a real life "yes it happened but maybe not the way history said it happened" murder.  I liked how well fleshed out our main character is, even if the men in the story remained sketchy (double entendre, I love it).  This is a passionate love story too, but not racy.  A perfect beach read, if anyone is actually going to the beach........

Hanging Mary by Susan Higginbotham

Very pleasantly surprised by this book!  I am a fan of historical fiction, but I don't read much US history.  (Shame on me)  But after finishing Dan Abrams' Lincoln's Last Trial (about Lincoln's law career before he became President) earlier this year, I felt it fitting to read this book that has been on my shelf for a year or two about Lincoln's assassination.  And it is not even about the assassination itself - it is about the people involved and not involved and partially involved in the plot to bring the South back into the war and get revenge on Lincoln.  Specifically, Mary Surratt, John Surratt, Nora Fitzpatrick and of course, John Wilkes Booth.  Very strange to read a story about Booth as a man rather than just a wicked assassin.  But the focus really is on Mary and her part in the plot.  Higginbotham imagines things from Mary and Nora's (a young boarder in Mary's boarding house) alternating perspectives in the months leading up to April 1865.  Was Mary guilty of conspiring to kill the President?  Was she complicit or an innocent bystander, or somewhere in between?  How guilty was her son?  Students of history know there is no spoiler here regarding the ending; this story is more about the journey to that end.  Very well done!!!