#sarah strohmeyer

[beforevenice]

See that's what people don't get about food. It's never the food, it's the love that goes into making it. That' what's important.

// Sarah Strohmeyer

[hereticmorozova]

books i’ve read in 2019: the secrets of lily graves by sara strohmeyer

more often than not, it was the little things that brought you down.

[backlogbooks]

Just One More Page June Book Photo Challenge | Day Eight: Feel Good Read

The two on the outside are some of my “beach books,” which isn’t a genre so much as a vibe, and the middle is a romance that I thought was really cute. 

Books pictured: Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer, The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E Smith, and How to Be Bad by E Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, and Lauren Myracle 

[backlogbooks]

Just One More Page June Book Photo Challenge | Day Twenty One: Hello, Summer!

All my favorite beach books, including The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls, which I just finished last night! 

Books Pictured: The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls by Jessika Spotswood, Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand, Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer, How to Be Bad by E. Lockhart Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle, and The Accidental Best Seller by Wendy Wax 

[faitzreviews]

Book Review: A Mother Always Knows

Author: Sarah Strohmeyer

Release Date: July 1, 2025

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Disclaimer: A big thank you to Harper Perennial and Paperbacks and Netgalley for an ARC of this title. All opinions are my own.

A twisting cold-case murder mystery with a splash of cultism for flavor.

Raised by her mother in a backwoods cult, Stella O’Neill has tried to put her childhood behind her. Even now, she has nightmares about the night she found her mother violently murdered in the woods, of the man in the antlers she saw near her mother’s corpse. In the present day, Stella’s mundane life is disrupted when she receives an email telling her that her time may be running out. Now Stella is on the run from the cultists who raised her while trying to uncover just what happened the night she found her mother murdered.

Meanwhile, Priti, a former runway model and now wife to one Ben Winslow, starts to uncover secrets that her husband may not be who he pretends to be. Twenty years ago, Ben was seen arguing with Rose Santos on the night she was murdered. Now, he claims to be wining and dining new potential investors while instead he’s in another state trying to contact Stella O’Neill.

Interspersed with Rose’s actions the night leading up to her murder, A Mother Always Knows follows Stella and Priti as they work to uncover their family’s secrets while trying not to be the story’s next victim.

A Mother Always Knows is a nice take on the traditional murder mystery format. There’s a lot of moving pieces to this story that, for the most part, Sarah Strohmeyer handled deftly. The book throws a lot of information at the reader constantly, and it’s up to the reader to piece them together. The pacing is well done; nothing felt superfluous, and I was constantly waiting on the next big reveal.

I appreciated the use of Rose’s chapters to really lay out the atmosphere and inner workings of the cult. This allowed Stella to have the foggy memory that comes with childhood while still giving the reader the much needed detail and context around Rose’s actions and Stella’s apprehensions. They also give a of humanity to Rose and better justify her actions both in joining the cult and wanting to leave it.

Stohmeyer did fantastic work in keeping the novel twisting and the atmosphere uncertain. When Stella’s paranoia starts setting in later in the book, I felt that with her. I, too, wondered who could be trusted and who couldn’t. I kept anticipating new forks in the road; this novel really takes to heart the idea that things aren’t always what they seem.

My only real criticism of this book is that because there were so many moving pieces, some of them were dropped. While there’s a couple of continuity errors, there are two that really bothered me and kept this from being a five-star read for me.

Characters are allowed to make bad decisions, but the ones made by these characters weren’t even logical.

Overall, a solid four star book for me. It's interesting and fast-paced with a solid atmosphere. A Mother Always Knows is definitely a fun read, especially if you're into the murder mystery genre, and sometimes fun is all that really matters anyway.

[musicalangel12]

“The Cinderella Pact” by Sarah Strohmeyer

Title: The Cinderella Pact Author: Sarah Strohmeyer    Publisher:  Dutton Adult     Year: 2006     Genre(s): contemporary fiction, roma

Magazine editor Nola Devlin enters a pact with her two best friends to lose weight and transform their lives by following a plan set out by famous advice columnist Belinda Apple.

There's only one problem - Nola is Belinda Apple and her secret may soon be discovered.

[musicalangel12]

My Books of 2024 - "The Cinderella Pact" by Sarah Strohmeyer

From Goodreads:

In this funny and big-hearted story by the author of The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, three best friends make a pact to transform themselves into the glamorous women they've always wanted to be. Nola Devlin has a secret identity. By day she is an overweight, frumpy, and overlooked editor at Sass! (the "celebrity magazine with an edge!"), but by night she slips behind her keyboard and into her alter-ego: Belinda Apple. Belinda is thin, gorgeous, British and the author of a trendy advice column- she is, in effect, the latest Carrie Bradshaw. Not even Nola's two best friends or her self-absorbed sister (who worships Belinda as the "sister she never had") know her secret. When "Belinda" jots off a column about how easy it is to lose weight, Nola is shocked when her best friends take her own lies to heart and urge her to follow Belinda's weight loss program. Since Nola can't reveal herself as the real Belinda Apple, she bites the bullet and joins her friends in making the "Cinderella Pact"- a last ditch attempt to lose weight (again!) and transform their lives for good. But as the pounds come off, things don't turn out the way the three friends expect. Their journey of self-discovery leads to the return of an old love and the unmasking of new problems. Meanwhile, Nola finds herself torn between two different men as she stomps out fires caused by her deception as Belinda Apple and falls in love with the man who just might be her prince - or the rat in coachman's clothing.

Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore: historical fiction

Today We Go Home by Kelli Estes: historical fiction, contemporary

Not Your Ex's Hexes by April Asher: paranormal romance

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce: historical fiction, adventure

Not Your Crush's Cauldron by April Asher: paranormal romance

The Spanish Daughter by Lorena Hughes: historical fiction

[forgetmenct]

has anyone else read Smart Girls Get What They Want?

it’s really good and you should