Six Singles Under One Roof

Tags: Korean, movie and TV actors, reality show

Drat. I'm hooked again on a Korean reality show with 6 TV and movie actors almost and in their 40s and never been married except one male. They lived alone for between 7 and 20 years. It's like Roommate  for older singles. Once again Jang Keun-Suk is the main reason I am watching. But I have seen the works of the other 2 males and one female, Lee Da-Hee. Jang Keun-Suk has been a favorite of mine since I first saw him in You're Beautiful and Beethoven Virus. He disappeared from KDramas for several years making only 2 or fewer series a year to focus on his solo music career. I only found out from this show  that he had thyroid cancer 3 years ago. That's probably the reason he looks bloated and unhealthy. He takes a cocktail of vitamins, minerals, and a variety of supplements daily like a 90 year old person.

The first episode is hilarious. Keun-Suk ordered an almost 50 pound live octopus for their first night dinner together and it started crawling out of its box. Everybody was shouting and running away from it as though it is a monster. They had a wonderful dinner cooked by Keun-Suk, using all the parts of the octopus.

One of the funniest housemates is Choi Daniel who has no filter and just blurts out his observations of his new roommates without thinking if he might offend them. But these actors are very polite and they don't quarrel or argue at all. 

Lee Da-Hee is the oldest among them at 42. She is tall at 5'8" and very thin, almost skeletal although she eats a ton, very slowly, that she's the last to finish eating. She is also a neat freak, cleaning up everything while they were still cooking, washing and wiping surfaces and walls, all the pans and pots once they have served their purpose. I've only seen her in several series and movies and I have the impression that she is a bit anal in her neatness from just watching one of her reality shows.  

The third male is the "unfortunate" actor Ahn Jae-Hyun who had a very public wedding and nasty divorce story and maybe the reason the shaman proclaimed he had lost his former self and needs to rediscover it. Poor guy. 

There are 5 an hour and 30 minutes episodes with subtitles so far. Episodes 6 and 7 are already out but still raw (no subtitles). 

This reality show is surprisingly airing simultaneously on HBO, Amazon, and Apple TV. I wonder why Netflix didn't join the party.. 

The cast

 

Murder By Design

Tags: Amazon First Reads, humor, murder mystery, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads

In a world carefully constructed for murder, solving crimes takes a keen mind and eye in a witty, clever, and fresh reinvention of the whodunit.

Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible.

Enter Wally a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets. Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable. Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.

I'm glad Amazon First Reads included a male writer in maybe 6 months of nothing but female authors. Month after month all the free books for First Reads are written by untalented female authors. The only other time I downloaded was 2 years ago in 2024 Dean Koontz' The Bad Weather Friend. When I visit the First Reads page, I look at the authors' names and if the choices are written by a sea of females, I just skip it. Why bother downloading when they are 99% stupid. Sorry for the rant. 

I didn't expect to like this humorous short novel but I did and recommend it highly.  The pair a la Sherlock and Dr. Watson complement each other very well. Very funny duo. Bixby is a combination of Sherlock Holmes, M. Auguste Dupin, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Agatha Raisin. Teaming with the failed actor Wally as his assistant is brilliant IMHO. There's a twist at the end that I guessed early on. Still a great read for readers who have a sense of humor.

Nobody's Fool

Tags: murder mystery, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads

In this stunningly twisty thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce’s college days comes back to haunt him.

His memory is clear, but all these years later, the facts don’t add up…which is something he cannot ignore. Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts.

For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day. His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past—and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.

This is the second book in a series featuring Sami Kierce, and ex NYC cop. I read the first book, Fool Me Once, in 2017 and I don't recall Detective Sami Kierce at all. He was not prominent in the book nor in the Netflix series. 

Harlan Coben decided to write a series that has him as the lead character together with a bunch of students who are wannabe amateur sleuths. They help him in their own way to solve mysteries, crime, and murders. Kinda like the ongoing trend similar to Thursday Murder Club. I like the story of one of the students, Golfer Gary. If the book is successful and the  author continues with the series, he might feature the students' personal stories one book at a time. I like that idea because Golfer Gary's story is almost a heartbreaking tragicomedy IMO.

Sami Kierce's trauma from the "dead" Anna lasted more than 20 years until she appeared in his classroom. He is of course relieved that he didn't murder her after all but he wants to find out why he was made to believe that he killed her. Any normal person who suffered from the guilt for 20 years will have the same reaction. At the same time, he is dealing with a murderer who was let out of prison and a missing girl from 20 years ago. The novel is definitely twistier than pretzel and very entertaining.

Recommended for Harlan Coben fans.