Hiding In Plain View by Marcel Clarke

 

Synopsis

Hiding in Plain View is a gripping tale of resilience, redemption, and self-discovery. Entrepreneur, community advocate, and YouTube host Marcel Clarke shares his extraordinary journey from struggle to success, proving that adversity can be the catalyst for transformation.

Born in the streets of Philadelphia, Marcel honed his fearlessness and resourcefulness early on—skills that would later shape his path. But when his father’s poor choices thrust him into poverty, anger and uncertainty took hold. A chance encounter led him from suburban comfort to the dangerous world of drug dealing, forcing him into a relentless battle between survival and ambition.

Yet, his past did not define him. Determined to rewrite his story, Marcel found strength in faith, discipline, and a vision for a better future. His journey from the depths of hardship to entrepreneurship and financial success is both a cautionary tale and an inspiring roadmap for those seeking purpose and prosperity.

More than a memoir, Hiding in Plain View is a testament to the power of resilience and self-belief. Marcel’s story proves that no matter the obstacles, the power to rise above and forge a new destiny lies within.

Author bio:

Marcel Clarke, a serial entrepreneur from Philadelphia, transformed adversity into ambition. At 15, he overheard his family planning his life insurance policy, convinced he wouldn't live past 21. Instead of succumbing to their expectations, he used their doubts as motivation to redefine his future.

Translating street-learned skills—leadership, sales, marketing, and strategic thinking—into academia, he earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Strayer University and an M.A. in Organizational Communications from Bowie State University.

Today, Clarke's portfolio spans real estate development, commercial cleaning, stock market and cryptocurrency investments, and joint ventures.

Website: https://www.marcelclarke.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcelclarke_

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222448325-hiding-in-plain-view

Trigger Warning: This book contains mature themes, including strong language, depictions of violence, substance use, and references to challenging life circumstances. Reader discretion is advised, particularly for those sensitive to these topics.

The Spanish Daughter by Soraya M. Lane

 

My thoughts

Book 6 in The Lost Daughters series and each seems better than the last. Though I'm sure I could go back and read anyone of the previous and feel the same. 

This book is set mainly in Argentina. Both in the late 1930s and partly present day. It's also set in England in present day. 

A story of a girl and boy who loved each other for many years. They were in their early teens when they feel head over heels in love even though they both knew her mother would never allow it. Would never approve. 

A story of a young women who recently lost her mother. She had lost her grandmother the previous year and felt so alone. Then she received a box from a lawyer with clues to a past she had no idea about. And a fortune that she certainly never knew about. It was in Argentina. A sprawling ranch filled with so much beauty and history. And her heritage that she had no idea existed until now. 

Rose travels to Argentina and meets Benjamin. Benjamin has always been a part of this area. His father and his father before him worked for the Santiago family. Benjamin's great grandfather had at one time loved Valentina Santiago more than anything. But it seemed their love was not meant to last. Rose uncovers so much during her time in Argentina and she finds a love story of her own. 

What happens to Valentina in this story was so sad. Her whole life seemed to be set before it ever had a chance to start. Her mother was a cruel woman. Her step brother was selfish in every way. Valentina lived a full life and was kind beyond words. She loved some from afar and others close and personal. But my heart wept for her. For her and Felipe. For a child that had to be given up. And for what might have been.

Ms Lane takes us into this story filled with so much love, loss, and tragedy to find what was and what could have been. To a family torn apart after a tragic death. To a young lady who is stronger than she thought. To one who took on her family when she had nothing left to lose. I rooted for her strongly.

Well done. Loved the characters. This story developed perfectly and both love stories keep you on your toes. This book will make your heart ache and bring tears to your eyes. It will also give you hope and a knew belief in things. It was just that good.

Thank you #NetGalley, #Bookouture, for this ARC.

About

Argentina, 1939: “My darling Valentina, I beg you to not go through with this marriage. I know your duty to your family means the world to you, but I pray our love means more. Let us run away together, and never be parted again…”

London, Present day. Rose once thought she was alone in the world, having just lost her beloved mother a few months ago. So, when she is presented with a mysterious box containing a small figure of a horse, a scrap of glittering silk and the hope of a lost family being found, Rose will stop at nothing to find them.

When her search takes her to a sprawling and luxurious estate in Argentina, where the best polo horses in the world were once raised, Rose wonders if she’s mistaken. But when she meets a charming local, Benjamin, he takes her by the hand and encourages her to rediscover her roots.

As they spend long sunlit days riding horses, and cosy evenings eating dinner with his family, Rose wonders how she will ever return to the grey skies back home. But then she discovers a heart-wrenching story of two forbidden of a wilful Spanish heiress and a hardworking stable hand, ripped apart by an arranged marriage and one of the largest inheritances in the country, which intertwines Rose and Benjamin’s families in ways she could never have imagined.

As Benjamin’s family grow wary of the stranger in their home dredging up the pain of the past, Rose finds herself at a crossroads. Will her great-grandmother’s story give her the courage to fly in the face of convention and follow her heart? Or will she too have to give up the one she loves most to heal family ties…

A heartbreaking and page-turning novel about following your heart and never giving up love. Perfect for fans of Santa Montefiore, Lucinda Riley and Victoria Hislop. This novel can be enjoyed as a standalone. 

The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry

 

My thoughts

This author has never disappointed me. Her books always take me away from the crazy things going on. To an adventure that I keep close to my heart. This book was exceptional. The prose was beautiful and the fact that it is about a girl searching for her mother who was an author... Well that just makes it that much better. 

When Clara Harrington receives a strange phone call from a man in London, England she begins to think about the what ifs in her life. The what if her mother had not left. What if her mother is alive somewhere. Or what if she finds out things that she may not want to know. What if she finds out it was her fault her mother left twenty-five years ago. What will she do if she goes to England and finds this man only to have her heart broken....again. Clara has her own daughter now to think about. Her daughter Wynnie is her whole world. And she is the same age Clara was when her mother left. 

If there is a chance that her mother is alive somewhere though she wants to know. She wants to find her and find out why she left. Why she abandoned her and her father. So she decides to go to England. Meet Charlie and get what he has to give her. What she doesn't know is this trip will change her life in a huge way. Her's and her daughters. She is divorced from Wynnie's dad and given up on love. But could she find love again? Could it be in a whole other country? And will she find answers to her many questions?

Clara's daughter Wynnie is a very inquisitive child. She's very smart for an eight year old. She has tons of questions about everything. Including her grandmother who she's never met. She has an invisible friend who she swears came to her way before her mother read her the book that her grandmother wrote. She knows things about England. About them finding people there. Finding a life there. Things that to her are meant to be. She is a very bright little girl. 

Charlie is only doing what he thinks is right when he calls Clara. He has no idea what lays in store after her and her daughter arrive. How his life and his mother's life will be changed. They are still grieving the loss of his dad. But they have answers that even they didn't know about.

This book is just beautiful. It grabbed me right from the first page. The way this author writes keeps your imagination peaked all the way through. She always writes books that are just filled with magical prose and uplifting endings. This is her best book yet.

Thank you #NetGalley, #AtriaBooks, for this ARC. 

About

“Brilliant, riveting, so beautifully written, impossible to put down.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Inspired by a true literary mystery, New York Times bestselling author of the mesmerizing The Secret Book of Flora Lea returns with the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both.

In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn

 

My thoughts

I will be reading more by this author. This book is so good. One I highly recommend. It has so much in it. Ups and downs. Laughter and tears. History and more. And it has the TITANIC... Of course that is the part that makes this story come together. 

When Elinor Hayward falls in love with a man who is said to be above her, she is in for a lot of heartache. It seems to me that if he is marrying her for her father's fortune then how is she marrying up? I would say that he is. But alas that is not how it was in 1910 when Elinor married Frederick Coombes. Elinor is the daughter to a cotton king. A self-made man. He and her deceased mother had worked hard and made a great life. Worth millions. But he could not leave his empire to his daughter. I mean get reas. She's female. He had no male heir. So when she married Frederick he would have a son. In a way he would. 

When Elinor gave birth to a boy Frederick's family were ecstatic. A boy to carry on their legacy. Of course they had a big fine home that was many generations in their family. It was what they had to offer her. Well her son. Things were not at all as she had pictured. Frederick didn't love her though he had led her to believe he did before marriage. His family were cold towards her. She was so miserable. So when she was offered a trip on the Titanic with her father of course she jumped at it. We know what happened with that. But it's what came afterwards that will leave you staggering. Leave you holding your breath. 

When a young woman steps off the boat in the United States of America with a young boy in her arms there is family there waiting for her. Molly Mortimer was finally going to be with her family. But who was this young woman really. What was she running away from. Would they accept her with a baby. Would she be able to stay and make a life. Through lots of the hardest work she's ever done she can do this. 

This is such a well written book. It's fiction at its best. You truly do not want to miss this one if you love a good historical fiction story. Of love, loss, and new beginnings. It's truly beautiful and perfect and sad and happy. It's the book you will want to read.

Thank you #NetGalley and #RandomHousePublishing/Ballantine, for this ARC.  

About

An immersive historical drama about a young mother who starts a new life with her son in New York after faking their deaths on the Titanic—the U.S. debut of an acclaimed British novelist.

Sometimes it takes a disaster to change your life.

Marrying above your social class can come with unexpected consequences, as Elinor Coombes discovers when she is swept into a fairy-tale marriage with the son of an aristocratic English family. She soon realizes that it was the appeal of her father’s hard-earned wealth rather than her pretty face that attracted her new husband and his family. Curtailed by rigid social rules that include being allowed to see her nanny-raised infant son for only moments each day, Elinor resigns herself to a lonely future. So a present from her father—tickets for the maiden voyage of a luxurious new ship called the Titanic—offers a welcome escape from the cold, controlling atmosphere of her husband’s ancestral home, and some precious time with her little son, Teddy.

When the ship goes down, Elinor grasps the opportunity to take Teddy and start a new life—but only if they can disappear completely, listed among the dead. Penniless and using another woman’s name, she must learn to survive in New York City, a brash new world that couldn’t be more different from her own, and to keep their secret safe. But alas, it's not safe—she's been spotted by another survivor who's eager to profit from his discovery.

An absorbing historical drama set between the old world of the oppressive English aristocracy and the new world of opportunity and freedom, The Lost Passenger is a grippingly dramatic story about starting over in a brand-new world, triumphing over adversity, and finding hope in the face of great loss.

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

 

My thoughts

This is an incredibly beautiful story. It's also an incredibly sad story. It is filled with so much. So many lives lived. So many deaths. From so many years. Year after year of loving and dying. And not knowing why. Not remembering what happened to start it all. But when that final answer comes your jaw will drop. It will floor you. Unpend your heart. Break you in a way that you will not see coming. 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is my all time favorite book. It's just that good. This one is my second favorite book. Ever!!!

A boy and a girl. They love each other so deeply. It's an intense kind of love. But they never give themselves to each other in that way that would bind them forever. He can't. She can't. They can't. The unknown is to hard to fathom. 

A girl, Evelyn, and a boy, Arden, love each other. They can only live to be almost eighteen years old. Then one kills the other and they are reborn again in another place and time. This continues throughout but is not monotonous in any way shape or form. You turn the pages to find out why. What caused this. Each place they are different but the same. Different names. Different gender. Different in almost every way. Except they almost always fall in love and they always end up dead. Always. It has been thousands of years and still going. Until it's not.

The most frequent place and year in this story is Wales 2022. When you meet the Blythe family. When you meet a young girl who needs a bone marrow transplant. Her older sister is her only match. Will she be able to give her baby sister what she needs most? This is the place and the year that Evelyn finally finds out the truth of why this keeps happening. It's the year she finally get some kind of clouser if you will.. But at what cost?

This was such a good story. It held my attention and kept me turning the pages. I didn't want to put it down. I wanted answers. I wanted their love to prevail. I wanted evil to lose.

Thank you #NetGalley, #StMartinsPress, for this ARC.   

About

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.

They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn can remember all her past lives. She can also remember that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being linked to her soul. The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life before they find her first, figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse, and try not to fall in love . . . again.

The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller

 

My thoughts

This is a story of historical events that I have not heard much about. I have since finishing it read some of the info that this author left at the end. The links that is. This is a very emotionally charged story. It keeps the reader engaged and wanting to know why throughout. At least it did for me. I wish I could say that this country has come a long way and maybe in some ways it has. But in so many ways it certainly has not. So much hatred and bigotry still seems to run this country. 

This is the story of what happened in 1921 in a town in Oklahoma. What happened to a group of people who were doing nothing to warrant such hostility and hatred. Simply because of the color of their skin. That is a fact. A very sad fact. 

There were many black families living in an area called Greenwood. It was an all black area. All the businesses and homes belonged to these citizens. They were very successful and happy with their lives. But white people didn't like it. They didn't want these black people to be happy and successful. They used an excuse based on a black kid touching a white girl to invade this area and burn them to the ground. To terrorize and hurt these law abiding citizens because they were black and did not deserve to own anything. 

In this story you meet two young women who lived in Greenwood District. Sisters. Best of friends. They lived with their father. Their mother had died and he raised his girls. He taught them to respect people. To work hard. To get an education. Then one night they were attacked. A whole district turned upside down and people left with nothing. All they had worked for gone up in smoke. How can people truly be that cruel? I don't understand and never will. Reading this was heartbreaking but also I believe necessary. It's history. It happened. We don't need things like this to keep happening. 

These people were given very little help to rebuild their community. And they had to work for that. The Red Cross didn't want to help it seems. They did but the cost was the people's dignity.  Not one white man was arrested or reprimanded for this heinous crime. Not one. 

The people in Greenwood District did build back. They worked hard. They excelled again. The story is mostly about these two young women but also what happened in 1921 in the Greenwood District to the black people by white people. Isn't it sad that it happened at all? 

You meet several families and get to know another family. The Threatt family. They helped people out when they came to them. What this family did for Evelyn and Margaret was beyond what they ever expected. They were two young women alone when they happened upon the Threatt Filling Station. What a perfect name for this book.... 

Read this one. It's so worth it. It's history that you may not have heard about. It's sad and uplifting both. 

Thank you #NetGalley, #ThomasNelsonFiction, for this ARC. 

About

"The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is, shockingly, little more than a footnote in history . . . Miller's book, thankfully, reverses that egregious oversight . . . we viscerally learn how this vibrant Black community fought devastation with resilience, faith, and grit." --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Two sisters. One unassuming haven. Endless opportunities for grace.

Sisters Margaret and Evelyn Justice have grown up in the prosperous Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma--also known as Black Wall Street. In Greenwood, the Justice sisters had it all--movie theaters and entertainment venues, beauty shops and clothing stores, high-profile businesses like law offices, medical clinics, and banks. While Evelyn aspires to head off to the East Coast to study fashion design, recent college grad Margaret plans to settle in Greenwood, teaching at the local high school and eventually raising a family.

Then the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre upends everything they know and brings them unspeakable loss. Left with nothing but each other, the sisters flee along what would eventually become iconic Route 66 and stumble upon the Threatt Filling Station, a safe haven and the only place where they can find a shred of hope in oppressive Jim Crow America. At the filling station, they are able to process their pain, fill up their souls, and find strength as they wrestle with a faith in God that has left them feeling abandoned.

But they eventually realize that they can't hide out at the filling station when Greenwood needs to be rebuilt. The search for their father and their former life may not give them easy answers, but it can propel them--and their community--to a place where their voices are stronger . . . strong enough to build a future that honors the legacy of those who were lost.

The Secret History of Audrey James by Heather Marshall

 

My thoughts

I read and loved Looking For Jane. The debut novel by this same author. This is a brilliantly told story. The way this author weaves the two main characters together is nothing short of perfection. 

I loved this line in this story:

""Audrey nodded warily. "Yes. My name is Audrey. Audrey James."" It was just the perfect sentence at the time. It just broke me....

This is a story about two women who are childhood friends living in Germany during the time when Hitler was starting his reign of terror. As he was fooling people into believing that what he was doing was what was best for Germany and it's people. To get rid of any people that were less than. Any people who were considered by him to be unworthy. He made people believe that the Jewish people were causing trouble for Germany. That they were doing much harm to Germany. He started grooming young kids to be in his army. He was a horrible little man who caused so much destruction. 

Audrey was a German child who had hardly any friends. When the Kaplans moved in across the road Audrey ran over and introduced herself to Ilse. The Kaplans were Jewish. This was not a problem for Audrey. She and Ilse became fast friends. They were inseparable throughout their childhood. When things went crazy in Germany with the Nazi's rounding up the Jews Ilse was separated from her family. She saw her father gunned down by a soldier and her mom and brother taken away. She had no one. No one except Audrey. Audrey loved Ilse and would do anything to keep her safe. 

We meet Kate in 2010 and get to know her. She's going through a divorce after the loss of her parents in a horrific car accident. Kate was with them and was the only survivor. She carries a lot of guilt from being a survivor. Her husband and her were already having problems and she decided to move away and found a job at an Inn. The Inn is owned by Audrey. The two get to know each other and Kate gets Audrey to open up about her life.  This is hard for Audrey but also helps her. It also helps Kate to open up about the night she lost her parents. The two survived a lot and bond over their grief. 

This story gives a lot of info about what it was like to grow up in Germany when the horrors were happening. It shows how strong some friendships between a German girl and a Jewish girl were. How they endured during soldiers taking over the home of the Kaplans. What it was like hiding in an attic and fearing for the worst. You feel the fear and sadness that emmetts from Ilse. How Kate kept them both safe by lying and being a housekeeper for the soldiers. Then working for the resistance to try and help as much as she could. It shows how strong the bond is between true friends. So strong that lies told by a horrible man could not be broken. 

Then you find out how the two main characters lives intersect. How they know some of the same people. What happens to each. And in it all a love story happens. Audrey and Kate are two strong willed women. One survived Germany and the other survived a horrific car wreck. While one is way more horrific they are both essential to this story to bring the characters together and help each find closure. 

This book is told from two different times. In the late 1930s mid 1940s, and 2010/2013. I thought this book was so good. It made me do some weeping but it was suppose to do that. 

Do not miss the Author's Not at the end. It has a lot of great info and is so worth the read. 

Thank you #NetGalley, #RandomHouse #BallantinePublishing for this ARC. 

About

An astonishing historical novel of one woman’s dangerous journey through World War II Germany and her life-changing friendship with a young woman decades later—from the #1 international bestselling author of Looking for Jane

Northern England, 2010. After a tragic accident upends her life, Kate Mercer leaves London to work at an old guest house near the Scottish border, where she hopes to find a fresh start and heal from her loss. When she arrives, she begins to unravel the truth about her past, but discovers that the mysterious elderly proprietor is harboring secrets of her own.

Berlin, 1938. Audrey James is weeks away from graduating from a prestigious music school in Berlin, where she’s been living with her best friend, Ilse Kaplan. As war looms, Ilse’s family disappears and high-ranking Nazi officers confiscate the house. In desperation, Audrey becomes their housekeeper while Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic. When a shocking turn of events embroils Audrey in the anti-Hitler movement, she must decide what matters most: protecting those she loves, or sacrificing everything for the greater good.

Inspired by true stories of courageous women and the German resistance during World War II, The Secret History of Audrey James is a captivating novel about the unbreakable bonds of friendship, the sacrifices we make for those we love, and the healing that comes from human connection.