en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 13:25:21 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 63912771
One beautiful Californian evening, a wealthy businessman falls to his death from his secluded cliff-top house onto the rocks below.

A tragic accident? Or murder?

Nora and her half-brother Sam suspect it may be the latter, and team up to uncover the truth of what really happened that night.

But their relationship has never been easy, and it is about to be tested to the limit as they start to question how well either of them really knew their elusive father.

Unravelling his mysterious past takes them back to a world they knew nothing about, to a tangled love affair and a web of relationships that other people would far rather stay buried...]]> 368 Laura Dave 1529912059 P 3 book-club finally is solved, it’s pretty anticlimactic, I’m afraid.

I did like the love story of Liam and Cory, even though it’s non-traditional and a 50 year heartache. I also enjoyed the banter between Nora and Sam, half siblings who bond over their dad’s untimely death and, in the process, learn from each other about what’s really important. All the other characters, with the possible exception of poor Jack, just seem to exist.

I read The Last thing He Told Me by this writer. I liked it a lot better.]]> 3.46 2024
author: Laura Dave
name: P
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: book-club
review:
This was ok. It is much more of a family drama with a little mystery thrown in than it is a thriller of any sort. Although the writing is pretty average, the story did grab me at the start and keep me intrigued until the end. When the mysterious death of Liam Noone
finally is solved, it’s pretty anticlimactic, I’m afraid.

I did like the love story of Liam and Cory, even though it’s non-traditional and a 50 year heartache. I also enjoyed the banter between Nora and Sam, half siblings who bond over their dad’s untimely death and, in the process, learn from each other about what’s really important. All the other characters, with the possible exception of poor Jack, just seem to exist.

I read The Last thing He Told Me by this writer. I liked it a lot better.
]]> 217387923 What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.]]> 352 Amy Tintera 1250880335 P 0 to-read 4.25 2024
author: Amy Tintera
name: P
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221754270
As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?]]> 352 Holly Gramazio 0593687515 P 0 to-read 3.52 2024
author: Holly Gramazio
name: P
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218155584 Knives Out meets Bridgerton in Fair Verona, as New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd kicks off a frothy, irreverent, witty new series with an irresistible premise—Romeo and Juliet’s daughter as a clever, rebellious, fiercely independent young woman in fair Verona—told from the delightfully engaging point of view of the captivating Rosie Montague herself��

"A sharp, determined heroine, a clever historical mystery, sparkling wit, a unique setting, family drama and a dash of romance.”�� Amanda Quick, New York Times bestselling author of The Lady Has a Past

Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended (hint: badly). Only here’s the thing: That’s not how it ended at all.

Romeo and Juliet are alive and well and the parents of seven kids. I’m the oldest, with the emphasis on ‘old’—a certified spinster at twenty, and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out . . . it’s exhausting.

Each time they’ve presented me with a betrothal, I’ve set out to find the groom-to-be a more suitable bride. After all, someone sensible needs to stay home and manage this household. But their latest match, Duke Stephano, isn’t so easy to palm off on anyone else. The debaucher has had three previous wives—all of whom met unfortunate ends. Conscience forbids me from consigning another woman to that fate. As it turns out, I don’t have to . . .

At our betrothal ball—where, quite by accident, I meet a beautiful young man who makes me wonder if perhaps there is something to love at first sight—I stumble upon Duke Stephano with a dagger in his chest. But who killed him? His late wives�� families, his relatives, his mistress, his servants—half of Verona had motive. And when everyone around the Duke begins dying, disappearing, or descending into madness, I know I must uncover the killer . . . before death lies on me like an untimely frost.]]> 320 Christina Dodd 1496750179 P 0 to-read 2.33 2024
author: Christina Dodd
name: P
average rating: 2.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41880608 A beautifully observed and deeply funny novel of May Attaway, a university gardener who sets out on an odyssey to reconnect with four old friends over the course of a year.

At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own?

RULES FOR VISITING is a woman's exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way--afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones.

Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story--and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.]]> 290 Jessica Francis Kane 0525559221 P 3 book-challenges
The theme of friendship and the motif of trees should have worked better. Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, “May you settle and find good friends.��

**Edit to add - what saved this book for me are the literary references, among them Beowulf, The Odyssey and even Jane Eyre. ]]> 3.68 2019
author: Jessica Francis Kane
name: P
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: book-challenges
review:
Just ok for me. The blurb calls it “deeply funny,�� but I didn’t find it so. I had a hard time with May, the main character. She’s definitely grumpy and somewhat off-putting, I guess. I get that she’s traumatized and searching. I do admire her growth.

The theme of friendship and the motif of trees should have worked better. Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, “May you settle and find good friends.��

**Edit to add - what saved this book for me are the literary references, among them Beowulf, The Odyssey and even Jane Eyre.
]]> 215360102
Deana Wilkes, who’s needed braces to walk since a disabling accident long ago, seeks out Monica Connell, an attorney, to find the child she was forced to relinquish in a closed adoption thirty years ago. Back then, Deana believed that the passion between her and Tony, her married boss, meant they were destined for each other. It was wrong, Deana knew, but believed it was also meant to be. Tony’s long gone now, and Deana’s constructed a life out of the wreck of their affair. She’s ready to finally make things right and meet her son.

But Monica’s wife, Angela, was adopted herself after an early history of abandonment and foster homes. Devoted to the memory of her parents, she’s certain that closed adoptions need to remain closed unless the adoptee seeks contact. She draws a red line: Monica cannot take the case. Monica, though, feels compelled to help Deana by her own complicated history, one she’s never revealed to Angela. As this wedge between them hardens, will Angie or Monica have the best custody claim to their own beloved adopted baby?
��
Nobody knows what Deana’s son wants, including his adoptive parents. Not even redheaded Suzanne, and the possibility of love. After all, as an Iraq war vet and a long-distance truck driver, Daniel knows everything about hitting the road to avoid the confusion that’s plagued his life.
Lynne Hugo’s thirteenth novel takes on the reverberating effects of sexual power dynamics in the workplace and vividly portrays lingering psychological wounds as characters struggle to reconcile self-determination with the sacrifices love demands.]]> 374 Lynne Hugo 1943075913 P 0 to-read 4.30
author: Lynne Hugo
name: P
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216594947 From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Ways We Hide 

 She came from a lineage known for good fortune…by those who don't know the whole story. 

 Portland, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of the notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor, leaving behind those she loves most. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival—being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment—she fears that far more than her own fate lay at stake. 

 As she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, from serving as a maid for the family of a dubious mayor to becoming entwined in the case of a goldminers' massacre, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove even more deadly than the dark recesses of Chinatown.

 A captivating tale of resilience and hope, The Girls of Good Fortune explores the complexity of family and identity, the importance of stories that echo through generations, and the power of strength found beneath the surface.]]> 416 Kristina McMorris 1728284872 P 0 to-read 4.06 2025
author: Kristina McMorris
name: P
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217506549 368 Julie Clark 1464221286 P 0 to-read 4.25 2025
author: Julie Clark
name: P
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217245557 In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.]]> 304 Isabel Allende 059397509X P 0 to-read 4.03 2025
author: Isabel Allende
name: P
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202257499 A wronged wife goes toe to toe with her cheating husband at the polls in this hilarious and heart-lifting novel by the bestselling author of Don’t Forget to Write.

It’s a doozy of a bad day for Beverly Diamond when she catches her husband, Larry, in a compromising position with his secretary. What’s a DC suburban wife to do with a soon-to-be ex, two young kids, and no degree or financial support in 1962? Beat the louse at his own game, that’s what.

Larry runs the Maryland senatorial campaign for the incumbent candidate projected to win against his younger underdog opponent, Michael Landau. But Beverly has the pluck, political savvy, and sheer drive to push Landau’s campaign in a successful new direction, even if he already has a campaign manager who is less than pleased she has inserted herself into the race.

Now it’s rival against rival. She and Michael do make a great team…maybe in more ways than one. But with the election heating up, she needs to focus on one thing at a time. If Bev can convince Michael to go modern, pay attention to women’s issues, and learn how to dress himself properly, maybe she can show Larry exactly how much he has underestimated her their entire marriage—and make her own dreams come true in the process.]]> 349 Sara Goodman Confino 1662517726 P 4 book-club
All that comes into play in this fun, inspiring novel. Set in 1962, with politics as a background, it’s ironic that women may face some of the same issues today. I can’t help but admire Beverly for standing her ground against her cheating husband and at his own game to boot!

As much as I enjoyed Beverly, I found her mother entertaining as well. Helen, an influential black delegate, Nancy, a great friend who takes no guff from anybody, and Anna, who pretends to have no say in the goings on at the WaPo, are also wonderful characters. As for the males in the story, suffice it to say that they all learn a little something in the process.

And that’s the lesson from then until now: We Aren’t Going Back. Plan accordingly. ]]> 4.26 2024
author: Sara Goodman Confino
name: P
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: book-club
review:
It wasn’t so long ago that women were expected to stay home, raise the kids, and have dinner on the table when their husbands came home from work. They couldn’t get credit cards in their name, let alone apply for a mortgage. Women who worked outside the home were rare and divorcées? Snubbed.

All that comes into play in this fun, inspiring novel. Set in 1962, with politics as a background, it’s ironic that women may face some of the same issues today. I can’t help but admire Beverly for standing her ground against her cheating husband and at his own game to boot!

As much as I enjoyed Beverly, I found her mother entertaining as well. Helen, an influential black delegate, Nancy, a great friend who takes no guff from anybody, and Anna, who pretends to have no say in the goings on at the WaPo, are also wonderful characters. As for the males in the story, suffice it to say that they all learn a little something in the process.

And that’s the lesson from then until now: We Aren’t Going Back. Plan accordingly.
]]> 35954609 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.]]> 377 David Grann 0307742482 P 4 book-club, non-fiction
David Grann, a journalist, presents his extensively researched information in very straightforward, reporting style. There are many people involved; I definitely had trouble keeping all of them straight. Thankfully, there are plenty of pictures scattered throughout to help with that.

It’s a tangled web, involving a conspiracy so large that the newly formed FBI barely scratched the surface. Speaking of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover is present as well, trying to make a name for himself in the position he held for almost 50 years. We all know now how that ultimately went.

I most admire Tom White, the former Texas Ranger tapped by Hoover to lead the investigation into the Osage murders. A good man, a smart man, he dug until he got to the bottom of several killings, putting a couple of ringleaders in prison for their atrocities. Turns out, he had unknowingly found only a fraction of the crimes. We’ll probably never know the true extent of the corruption and cover up.

Horrific, chilling, haunting, heartbreaking, alarming, cruel-all are adjectives that occur to me as I close this book. And yet none of them, separately or together come close to describing the sadness I feel about just another example of the audacity, injustice and cold-blooded barbarism imposed by man on his fellow man, particularly those in a minority, who didn’t ask us to come here or bring them here. ]]> 4.27 2017
author: David Grann
name: P
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: book-club, non-fiction
review:
You’d think, after all this time and reading and observing, I’d no longer be shocked at man’s inhumanity to man. Yet here we are. The scope of the greed and ruthlessness in this story, which took place a century ago, is appalling. That I’d never heard of this Reign of Terror against the Osage people, I believe, is more evidence of the whitewashing of our history.

David Grann, a journalist, presents his extensively researched information in very straightforward, reporting style. There are many people involved; I definitely had trouble keeping all of them straight. Thankfully, there are plenty of pictures scattered throughout to help with that.

It’s a tangled web, involving a conspiracy so large that the newly formed FBI barely scratched the surface. Speaking of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover is present as well, trying to make a name for himself in the position he held for almost 50 years. We all know now how that ultimately went.

I most admire Tom White, the former Texas Ranger tapped by Hoover to lead the investigation into the Osage murders. A good man, a smart man, he dug until he got to the bottom of several killings, putting a couple of ringleaders in prison for their atrocities. Turns out, he had unknowingly found only a fraction of the crimes. We’ll probably never know the true extent of the corruption and cover up.

Horrific, chilling, haunting, heartbreaking, alarming, cruel-all are adjectives that occur to me as I close this book. And yet none of them, separately or together come close to describing the sadness I feel about just another example of the audacity, injustice and cold-blooded barbarism imposed by man on his fellow man, particularly those in a minority, who didn’t ask us to come here or bring them here.
]]> 8205029
Journalist Steve Lopez discovered of Nathaniel Ayers, a former classical bass student at Julliard, playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles’s Skid Row. Deeply affected by the beauty of Ayers’s music, Lopez took it upon himself to change the prodigy's life—only to find that their relationship would have a profound change on his own.

“An intimate portrait of mental illness, of atrocious social neglect, and the struggle to resurrect a fallen prodigy.”—Mark Bowden, author of  Black Hawk Down]]> 304 Steve López 0425238369 P 5 non-fiction
Journalist Steve Lopez comes across Nathaniel Ayers in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. Homeless, carrying all his worldly belongings in a shopping cart, Nathaniel impresses Lopez with his beautiful violin music, and so begins a journey full of triumphs and setbacks.

The book is beautifully written. Lopez brings Nathaniel to life on the page and I rode right along with him on this emotional roller coaster.

As harrowing as Nathaniel’s story is, Lopez’s is just as important. There are so many wonderful people in here who spend their careers helping people like Nathaniel. But there are just as many who simply respond as human beings. And ultimately, this is the overarching message.]]> 4.02 2008
author: Steve López
name: P
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: non-fiction
review:
This book had me chuckling, then tearing up, then shaking my head in frustration. It is the true story of a gifted musician, suffering from severe mental illness and living on the streets, and the LA Times columnist who happens upon him, then dedicates his life to helping him.

Journalist Steve Lopez comes across Nathaniel Ayers in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. Homeless, carrying all his worldly belongings in a shopping cart, Nathaniel impresses Lopez with his beautiful violin music, and so begins a journey full of triumphs and setbacks.

The book is beautifully written. Lopez brings Nathaniel to life on the page and I rode right along with him on this emotional roller coaster.

As harrowing as Nathaniel’s story is, Lopez’s is just as important. There are so many wonderful people in here who spend their careers helping people like Nathaniel. But there are just as many who simply respond as human beings. And ultimately, this is the overarching message.
]]> 205439790 284 Lisa Marie Presley 1035051079 P 3 memoir
Lisa Marie had a very unconventional upbringing. How could she not have? The parts of the book that are in her words are raw and painful and very, very sad.

Kudos to Riley Keough for making sure this memoir is as truthful as I’m sure her mother wanted it to be.

]]> 4.59 2024
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: P
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: memoir
review:
This is an emotionally devastating read. I was certainly aware that Lisa Marie had a traumatic life, but to read it in her words, and the words of her daughter, was harrowing.

Lisa Marie had a very unconventional upbringing. How could she not have? The parts of the book that are in her words are raw and painful and very, very sad.

Kudos to Riley Keough for making sure this memoir is as truthful as I’m sure her mother wanted it to be.


]]> 220062546 A girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layer upon layer of secrets, until one morning years later when she is forced to reckon with her past.

"This debut is a beautiful, if sometimes harrowing, exploration of one woman’s journey. . . to a life built by her own grit and determination." -Library Journal, Starred Review.

"A coming-of-age story that is at once shocking and necessary. . . the story is too important and gripping to put down." - Kirkus

"A powerful story of resilience and reinvention... this satisfies." - Publisher's Weekly

On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny?

Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana—a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build.

As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the harrowing details of her past—her journey to America on the “backtrack,�� the shock of being delivered into the hands of an abusive family while being severed from her own, and her many evolutions of self as she struggles to find a path forward against all odds.

Steeped in sensory detail, this striking debut transports the reader from the sugar cane fields of Guyana to the world of immigrant laborers in Miami to the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. Nanda Reddy takes us on a wrenching journey of assimilation, survival, and reinvention that explores the very construct of identity—all the while underscoring the strength of chosen family, love, and the resilience of the human spirit.]]> 384 Nanda Reddy P 0 to-read 4.30 2025
author: Nanda Reddy
name: P
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203019740
Amerika, 1975. In het dorpje Monta Clare, Missouri, wordt tiener Joseph 'Patch' Macauley ontvoerd. Saint Brown, zet alles op het spel om haar beste vriend te vinden.

Patch ligt alleen in een pikdonkere kamer totdat hij een hand in de zijne voelt. Ze heet Grace en in het donker is haar stem zijn redding. Als Patch ontsnapt, is er echter geen bewijs dat ze ooit heeft bestaan, dus begint hij een grootse zoektocht om haar te vinden.

Terwijl jaren decennia worden en hoop een obsessie, jaagt Patch's jeugdvriendin Saint op de man die de twee ontvoerde en daarmee de enige jongen van wie ze ooit heeft gehouden een doel in het leven gaf.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 P 5 book-challenges
It’s a character driven novel. Covering 25 years, the plot develops slowly. But it has to, I believe. Patch and Saint are unforgettable, as are Norma, Misty, Nix, Sammy and Charlotte. Tied together through relentless sadness and determination, they struggle to find themselves and redemption or forgiveness. I appreciated the steady, gradual unfolding of this heart-wrenching story.

The writing is incredible. It is simple, spare, barebones. It’s weird to say that about a book that runs just shy of 600 pages. It’s a pretty special writer who can do that - deliver such a powerful narrative in such an efficient manner while evoking such strong emotions. When I finished, I literally had to catch my breath.

The motifs of darkness and color that are woven throughout are integral. The bond between Patch and Saint, grown over decades of friendship, is remarkable and so very touching, enhanced by shared memories and conversations.

Side note: I’m a big fan of short chapters. There are 261 of them here, anywhere from half a page to maybe 4 pages. I think this contributes to the pacing. It’s kind of genius.

I loved it “entirely and absolutely.”]]> 4.23 2024
author: Chris Whitaker
name: P
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: book-challenges
review:
Be prepared. This is a heavy, heavy book. Literally, it’s a big book. Thematically, it covers a lot of dark content. Tragedy and trauma, grief and guilt, love and loyalty in the face of all of it, man, it’s a lot.

It’s a character driven novel. Covering 25 years, the plot develops slowly. But it has to, I believe. Patch and Saint are unforgettable, as are Norma, Misty, Nix, Sammy and Charlotte. Tied together through relentless sadness and determination, they struggle to find themselves and redemption or forgiveness. I appreciated the steady, gradual unfolding of this heart-wrenching story.

The writing is incredible. It is simple, spare, barebones. It’s weird to say that about a book that runs just shy of 600 pages. It’s a pretty special writer who can do that - deliver such a powerful narrative in such an efficient manner while evoking such strong emotions. When I finished, I literally had to catch my breath.

The motifs of darkness and color that are woven throughout are integral. The bond between Patch and Saint, grown over decades of friendship, is remarkable and so very touching, enhanced by shared memories and conversations.

Side note: I’m a big fan of short chapters. There are 261 of them here, anywhere from half a page to maybe 4 pages. I think this contributes to the pacing. It’s kind of genius.

I loved it “entirely and absolutely.��
]]> 214175092 After the murder of her best friend, a librarian’s search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this sweeping novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from award-winning writer Allen Eskens.

Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.

Thirty years before, Hana was someone Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.]]> 320 Allen Eskens 0316566314 P 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Allen Eskens
name: P
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65916344 Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

“Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.�� �� BILL HODGES

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.]]> 449 Stephen King 1668016133 P 0 to-read 4.01 2023
author: Stephen King
name: P
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 198902287 REESE'S BOOK CLUB MAY 2023 PICK

BOOK OF THE MONTH MAY 2023 PICK

A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.

A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.

The truth behind Kitty's ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them.

As Elise digs deeper into Kitty's past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? is a sprawling page-turner set against the backdrop of the Hollywood machine, an insightful and nuanced look at the inheritances of family, race, and gender—and the choices some women make to break free of them.]]> 416 Crystal Smith Paul 1250349028 P 0 to-read 3.74 2023
author: Crystal Smith Paul
name: P
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222725795 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams�� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724240 P 0 to-read 4.03 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: P
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215805887 Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Lilac Girls.

“A dreamy beach book that also sizzles with tension . . . another winner by one of the best historical fiction writers around.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Stolen Queen

2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.

1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?]]> 336 Martha Hall Kelly 0593354915 P 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: P
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59088433
At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.]]> 448 Juno Dawson 014313714X P 3
Her Majesty’s Royal Coven was established during the reign of Elizabeth I as a secret government department. That’s what first caught my eye/imagination. The blurb mentions “decades later,�� following a civil witch war, but this is contemporary. In other words, it takes place CENTURIES later. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This novel is very up to date with social issues and it tackles gender, race, transphobic, class and LBGTQ themes. I did like the way those storylines were handled. And the witches, their varied personalities and powers, were well drawn.

This is the first in a series. I don’t know that I’m compelled by its ending to read on. Now if there were to be a prequel, say going back to the Coven’s formation��.]]> 3.79 2022
author: Juno Dawson
name: P
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
Don’t get me wrong-I love me a good witch story. I just expected a little more of “Her Majesty�� in this one. Not sure if that’s on me or the marketing.

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven was established during the reign of Elizabeth I as a secret government department. That’s what first caught my eye/imagination. The blurb mentions “decades later,�� following a civil witch war, but this is contemporary. In other words, it takes place CENTURIES later. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This novel is very up to date with social issues and it tackles gender, race, transphobic, class and LBGTQ themes. I did like the way those storylines were handled. And the witches, their varied personalities and powers, were well drawn.

This is the first in a series. I don’t know that I’m compelled by its ending to read on. Now if there were to be a prequel, say going back to the Coven’s formation��.
]]> 35995490
Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.

Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design—especially not the tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he’d always known. Running from the pain, eyes closed, served little purpose. Now, as he looks back on his life, Sam embarks on a journey that will take him halfway around the world. This time, his eyes are wide open—bringing into clear view what changed him, defined him, and made him so afraid, until he can finally see what truly matters.]]> 433 Robert Dugoni 1503948978 P 5 book-club
Real strong Owen Meany vibes here. Sam Hill is born with ocular albinism, which gives him red eyes and convinces his very religious mother that he is meant to live an extraordinary life.

Called “Devil Boy�� by his classmates at a Catholic grade school and given the nickname “Hell�� later on, Sam’s only friends are two other misfits, Ernie and Mickie. His two best friends, his devout mother and his dependable, wise father help Sam deal with lots of challenges throughout his life, but are unable to lead him to self-acceptance. He becomes disillusioned with the God in which his mother places her faith.

Sam’s extraordinary journey takes him through fear, heartache and tragedy. One can’t help but feel for him. All of these characters are wonderfully written. They are compassionate and empathetic and strong in ways we all wish we could be. In the end, my heart is full. This is a beautiful book and I’m grateful for having read it. ]]> 4.48 2018
author: Robert Dugoni
name: P
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/22
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: book-club
review:
I had to pull myself together before I could write this review. I was a puddle when I finished this book.

Real strong Owen Meany vibes here. Sam Hill is born with ocular albinism, which gives him red eyes and convinces his very religious mother that he is meant to live an extraordinary life.

Called “Devil Boy�� by his classmates at a Catholic grade school and given the nickname “Hell�� later on, Sam’s only friends are two other misfits, Ernie and Mickie. His two best friends, his devout mother and his dependable, wise father help Sam deal with lots of challenges throughout his life, but are unable to lead him to self-acceptance. He becomes disillusioned with the God in which his mother places her faith.

Sam’s extraordinary journey takes him through fear, heartache and tragedy. One can’t help but feel for him. All of these characters are wonderfully written. They are compassionate and empathetic and strong in ways we all wish we could be. In the end, my heart is full. This is a beautiful book and I’m grateful for having read it.
]]> 216522354 They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.

Following the unlikely friendship of four women in the first female class at Oxford, their unshakeable bond in the face of male contempt, and their coming of age in a world forever changed by World War I.

“Entertaining and moving…I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters.”—TRACY CHEVALIER, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its one-thousand-year history, Oxford University officially admits female students. Burning with dreams of equality, four young women move into neighboring rooms in Corridor 8. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto—collectively known as The Eights—come from all walks of life, each driven by their own motives, each holding tight to their secrets, and are thrown into an unlikely, unshakable friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her. And finally Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a village pastor, who has a shocking secret she must hide from everyone, even her new friends, if she is to succeed.

Among the historic spires, and in the long shadow of the Great War, the four women must navigate and support one another in a turbulent world in which misogyny is rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War don’t always remain dead.]]> 382 Joanna Miller 0593851420 P 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Joanna Miller
name: P
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217182494 A family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past

Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: Their twenty-two-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks�� marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,�� they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is as it seems.]]> 288 Jennifer Haigh 0316577138 P 0 to-read 3.83
author: Jennifer Haigh
name: P
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52001272 For fans of Rene Denfeld and Shari Lapena comes a rich, atmospheric family drama set in the 1980's following the disappearances of two paperboys from a small midwestern town.

It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing.

Hours later, twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret.

Crystal, Sammy's seventeen-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town.

Officer Dale Goodkind can't believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it won't go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, Dale is forced to face his own demons.

Told through interwoven perspectives--and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980's--The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends, families, and sometimes, even themselves.]]> 272 Kali White 1643853880 P 0 to-read 3.81 2020
author: Kali White
name: P
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216522711 They didn't know they would change each other.

Following the unlikely friendship of four of the first ever women to matriculate at Oxford University in the aftermath of the First World War, a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination and the many forms courage can take.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world's most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne and Otto (collectively known as The Eights) have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford - where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her. And finally Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a village pastor, who has a shocking secret she must hide from everyone, even her new friends, if she is to succeed.

But Oxford's dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.]]> 384 Joanna Miller 0593851412 P 0 to-read 3.87 2025
author: Joanna Miller
name: P
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 P 0 to-read 4.43 2025
author: Sarah Damoff
name: P
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62365896 A charming, deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle��

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book  is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.  . ]]> 288 Monica Wood 0063243679 P 5 book-challenges
Violet is a 22 year old, just released from a three year stint in prison after killing someone in a drunk driving accident. Frank is the victim’s husband, a kind, quiet man who is struggling with complicated feelings. Harriet is a 64 year old widowed, retired teacher who starts a book club at the women’s prison. These three characters come together in a beautiful way. And I am better for having met them.

I’m not a bird lover, far from it. But when Violet gets a job at a university research lab focused on communication with African Grey Parrots, I was fascinated. As Violet regained herself, with the help of Harriet, the forgiveness of Frank, and the love for her “colleagues,�� welp, I fell too.

This novel is about found family, grief, and forgiveness. And it is exquisite. I finished reading through tears. Just fabulous.]]> 4.21 2024
author: Monica Wood
name: P
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: book-challenges
review:
Oh my my. This book took me down a road. I’ve read Monica Wood before and enjoyed her, but this book? Holy. Cow.

Violet is a 22 year old, just released from a three year stint in prison after killing someone in a drunk driving accident. Frank is the victim’s husband, a kind, quiet man who is struggling with complicated feelings. Harriet is a 64 year old widowed, retired teacher who starts a book club at the women’s prison. These three characters come together in a beautiful way. And I am better for having met them.

I’m not a bird lover, far from it. But when Violet gets a job at a university research lab focused on communication with African Grey Parrots, I was fascinated. As Violet regained herself, with the help of Harriet, the forgiveness of Frank, and the love for her “colleagues,�� welp, I fell too.

This novel is about found family, grief, and forgiveness. And it is exquisite. I finished reading through tears. Just fabulous.
]]> 54306882
Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of eleven who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah's society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.]]> 432 Patti Callahan Henry 198480376X P 4 book-challenges
In June of 1838, the steamship Pulaski, carrying over 100 wealthy no Savannahians to their summer homes in New York, exploded off the coast of North Carolina. What followed was horrific as most of those people died and a few dozen struggled to survive. Whole families were wiped out; the Longstreet family boarded as a party of 13. The novel follows their fate.

Nearly 180 years later, Savannah native and history professor Everly is haunted by the tragic loss of her best friend. Wrestling with survivors guilt, she has closed herself off from life. When she is approached by her late friend’s fiance to help curate an exhibit on the recently recovered shipwreck, she dedicates herself to discovering the fate of the Longstreet family.

I enjoyed following Everly’s process and, as a result, her growth. The author did a good job of tying the timelines together. Sometimes one storyline smothers the other, but that is not the case here. It is actually a parallel construction built around a common theme, one that is pretty relatable: How does one survive the survival?

It’s a tough question. Patti Callahan Henry gives a satisfactory explanation. ]]> 4.33 2021
author: Patti Callahan Henry
name: P
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: book-challenges
review:
I enjoy reading historical fiction to get different perspectives on familiar events/time periods. But I really enjoy historical fiction when I learn about something I never knew! That’s the case here and boy, did I eat this story up.

In June of 1838, the steamship Pulaski, carrying over 100 wealthy no Savannahians to their summer homes in New York, exploded off the coast of North Carolina. What followed was horrific as most of those people died and a few dozen struggled to survive. Whole families were wiped out; the Longstreet family boarded as a party of 13. The novel follows their fate.

Nearly 180 years later, Savannah native and history professor Everly is haunted by the tragic loss of her best friend. Wrestling with survivors guilt, she has closed herself off from life. When she is approached by her late friend’s fiance to help curate an exhibit on the recently recovered shipwreck, she dedicates herself to discovering the fate of the Longstreet family.

I enjoyed following Everly’s process and, as a result, her growth. The author did a good job of tying the timelines together. Sometimes one storyline smothers the other, but that is not the case here. It is actually a parallel construction built around a common theme, one that is pretty relatable: How does one survive the survival?

It’s a tough question. Patti Callahan Henry gives a satisfactory explanation.
]]> 199605519
When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens�� Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.]]> 337 Clare Pooley 0593831497 P 5
This time, the action centers around a community center that is about to be shuttered, leaving the day care, AA group, prenatal classes and senior citizen social club scrambling to save it.

These seniors are a feisty bunch with handy talents and plenty of secrets. Unconventional, to say the least, they lead the charge to save their center. And what an adventure!

There’s definitely a lesson here, a timely one at that. I’m going to close with Daphne’s words, which we should probably all take to heart: “Where’s the fun in aging gracefully? Personally, I intend to age as disgracefully as possible.�� ]]> 4.12 2024
author: Clare Pooley
name: P
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
So. Much. Fun. Once again, Clare Pooley assembles a motley crew of characters and delivers a funny, touching romp with a message.

This time, the action centers around a community center that is about to be shuttered, leaving the day care, AA group, prenatal classes and senior citizen social club scrambling to save it.

These seniors are a feisty bunch with handy talents and plenty of secrets. Unconventional, to say the least, they lead the charge to save their center. And what an adventure!

There’s definitely a lesson here, a timely one at that. I’m going to close with Daphne’s words, which we should probably all take to heart: “Where’s the fun in aging gracefully? Personally, I intend to age as disgracefully as possible.��
]]> 220160351 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats�� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge��: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as ��1847�� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,�� “Spotify,�� and “the collapse of the British Empire.�� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 368 Kaliane Bradley 166804515X P 0 to-read 3.59 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: P
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221441038
Massachusetts, 1836. Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated “Sage of Concord,�� to meet his coterie of enlightened friends shaping a nation in the throes of its own self-discovery. By the end of her stay, she will become “the radiant genius and fiery heart�� of the Transcendentalists, a role model to young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures into the woods of Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson himself. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and she finds her restless soul in need of new challenges and adventure.

And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a women-only literary salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to the editorial meetings of The Dial magazine, where she hones her pen as its co-founder; to Harvard’s library, where she is the first woman to study within its walls; to the gritty New York streets where she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on the writings of Frederick Douglass. Margaret defies conventions time and again as an activist for women and an advocate for humanity, earning admirers and scathing critics alike.

When the legendary Horace Greeley offers an assignment in Europe, Margaret again makes history as the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with luminaries like Frederic Chopin, Walt Whitman, George Sand, and more. But it is in Rome where she finds a world of passion, romance, and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover—and sparking an international scandal. Evolving yet again into the roles of mother and countess, Margaret enters a new fight for Italy’s unification.

With a star-studded cast and epic sweep of historical events, this is a story of an inspiring trailblazer, a woman who loved big and lived even bigger—a fierce adventurer who transcended the rigid roles ascribed to women, and changed history for millions, all on her own terms.]]> 432 Allison Pataki 0593600258 P 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Allison Pataki
name: P
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32026038
In a devastating instant, everything changes. And afterward, a pool of blood stains the floor, the smell of gunpowder hangs in the air, and most shocking of all: the grim clues point directly to Clara Hudson. Or rather, the woman she was before Baker Street.

Now, to uncover the truth, a frantic Sherlock Holmes must put aside his anguish and push deep into his housekeeper's secrets - to a time before her deception, before her crimes were buried. There is death here, and murder, and trust betrayed. And nothing will ever be the same.]]> 416 Laurie R. King 0804177929 P 0 to-read 4.24 2016
author: Laurie R. King
name: P
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53547348 Part-time reporter Lucy Stone isn’t about to put all her eggs in one basket during a frantic Easter in Tinker’s Cove—especially when it comes to cracking a deadly mystery . . .   Known for its cheerful staff and elaborate annual Easter Bonnet Contest, the Heritage House senior center regularly attracts new residents and positive press. But once the town’s retired librarian, Miss Julia Tilley, checks in to recover from an illness, Lucy sees a side of the facility that isn’t quite so perfect and pristine. And the place may soon be making headlines for different reasons following an unexplained disappearance . . .   Lucy can’t fathom how Agnes Neal could go missing from assisted living over a silly Easter bonnet contest, or why few seem concerned as signs point to foul play. A retired journalist with an independent mind, Agnes had an eye for details and little interest in conforming to catty cliques or rules set by her caretakers—traits that threatened some and angered others . . .    While police stall the investigation without answers, Lucy realizes backstabbing has no age limit when alarming parallels bloom between her daughter’s college frenemies and social circles at Heritage House. Gathering clues as flimsy as a half-eaten milk chocolate bunny, Lucy must discover what happened to Agnes—before her own story becomes another springtime tragedy left unsolved.  ]]> 321 Leslie Meier 149671041X P 2 book-challenges
The novel takes place in a small town in Maine. It’s almost time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is kind of a big deal but not without controversy. Lucy Stone is a reporter for the weekly newspaper. Two “cozy�� boxes checked. There are two mysteries, I guess, neither of which was very hard to figure out as a reader. The writing isn’t very good, a lot more telling than showing. It was all just very shallow.

It was a quick read, I’ll give it that. I did like Lucy Stone, who is really the only character we know get to know at all. I’ll stick with Maeve Binchy for my Irish fix.]]> 4.31
author: Leslie Meier
name: P
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: book-challenges
review:
I try to read something Irish-themed this time of year. I opted for a cozy mystery this time. Not a great choice, I’m afraid.

The novel takes place in a small town in Maine. It’s almost time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is kind of a big deal but not without controversy. Lucy Stone is a reporter for the weekly newspaper. Two “cozy�� boxes checked. There are two mysteries, I guess, neither of which was very hard to figure out as a reader. The writing isn’t very good, a lot more telling than showing. It was all just very shallow.

It was a quick read, I’ll give it that. I did like Lucy Stone, who is really the only character we know get to know at all. I’ll stick with Maeve Binchy for my Irish fix.
]]> 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible �� a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X P 4 book-club
This is the first Alice Feeney book I’ve read. Are they all like this-creepy? Shocking? What the heck just happened?

The setting is a remote Scottish island inhabited by 25 people. The characters match the desolate descriptions of this place and the plot is definitely enhanced by the setting as well.

I don’t want to say much. This line, very near the end of the novel, certainly stays with me: “Sometimes I think we are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.��

Shiver.
]]> 3.64 2025
author: Alice Feeney
name: P
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: book-club
review:
Wait. What now? Talk about a dark, twisty thriller. Hoo, boy.

This is the first Alice Feeney book I’ve read. Are they all like this-creepy? Shocking? What the heck just happened?

The setting is a remote Scottish island inhabited by 25 people. The characters match the desolate descriptions of this place and the plot is definitely enhanced by the setting as well.

I don’t want to say much. This line, very near the end of the novel, certainly stays with me: “Sometimes I think we are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.��

Shiver.

]]> 199797582
Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents �� his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.]]> 352 Christina Lauren 1668017725 P 0 4.07 2024
author: Christina Lauren
name: P
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 199897857
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West�� Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.]]> 352 Christina Lauren P 4
Anna Green and Liam Weston enter into a marriage of convenience but go separately along their merry ways. Five years down the road, Liam needs Anna to act “wifely�� for his sister’s wedding. Needless to say, things get complicated as they are thrown into this mix of toxic, dysfunctional humans. I loved both Anna and Liam, found myself cheering for them pretty much from the start.

Not mad at all about this one.
]]> 4.19 2024
author: Christina Lauren
name: P
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:
Not my usual kind of read, but I needed a distraction from the madness/heaviness for a minute. Gotta say-this did the trick. Funny, spicy-even though it got a bit unsavory with some bad billionaire behavior, (shocking, I know) for the most part I found it very enjoyable.

Anna Green and Liam Weston enter into a marriage of convenience but go separately along their merry ways. Five years down the road, Liam needs Anna to act “wifely�� for his sister’s wedding. Needless to say, things get complicated as they are thrown into this mix of toxic, dysfunctional humans. I loved both Anna and Liam, found myself cheering for them pretty much from the start.

Not mad at all about this one.

]]> 39095097
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family's desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.]]> 416 Lisa Jewell 1476776865 P 0 to-read 3.83 2013
author: Lisa Jewell
name: P
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42478640
Tuesday Mooney is a loner. She keeps to herself, begrudgingly socializes, and spends much of her time watching old Twin Peaks and X-Files DVDs. But when Vincent Pryce, Boston’s most eccentric billionaire, dies—leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe—Tuesday’s adventure finally begins.

Puzzle-loving Tuesday searches for clue after clue, joined by a ragtag crew: a wisecracking friend, an adoring teen neighbor, and a handsome, cagey young heir. The hunt tests their mettle, and with other teams from around the city also vying for the promised prize—a share of Pryce’s immense wealth—they must move quickly. Pryce’s clues can't be cracked with sharp wit alone; the searchers must summon the courage to face painful ghosts from their pasts (some more vivid than others) and discover their most guarded desires and dreams.

A deliciously funny ode to imagination, overflowing with love letters to art, from The Westing Game to Madonna to the Knights of the Round Table, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is the perfect read for thrill seekers, wanderers, word lovers, and anyone looking for an escape to the extraordinary.]]> 359 Kate Racculia 0358023939 P 0 to-read 3.84 2019
author: Kate Racculia
name: P
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 133206574 When a rich Black debutante enlists the help of a low-level speakeasy manager to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the two are thrust into the dangerous world of Prohibition-era Chicago.

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore with Chicago at its beating heart.

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America,�� a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapults his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family’s presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for the Chicago Defender , sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Now, her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

Charming and mysterious, Jay Shorey strives to balance his connection to the Chicago underworld with his desperate yearning for the refinement and protection of high society. Born to a murdered bi-racial couple in rural Alabama, he knows firsthand what it means to be denied a chance at the American dream. When a tragic turn of fate gave Jay a rare path out, he took it without question. He washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and never looked back, until now. 

When Nelly’s and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the Mayor and bring about a lasting change in a corrupted city. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for. And yet, as with all things in America, there is a price to be paid. What risk is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all? 

Debut author Avery Cunningham’s stunning novel is at once an epic love story, a riveting historical drama, and a brilliant exploration of Black society and perseverance when the ��20s first began to roar.]]> 528 Avery Cunningham 1368093000 P 4
Nelly Sawyer, the daughter of the “wealthiest Negro in America,�� is an amazing character. Not one to settle for being a debutante and marrying to advance her family in society, she wants to make her mark as a journalist. In this quest, she takes on a very dangerous assignment to uncover the identity of mob boss “The Msyor of Maxwell Street.�� Set in Prohibition Era Chicago, this puts in contact with lots of unsavory types.

Jay Shorey, the son of a bi-racial couple from the Jim Crow south, has reinvented himself to move among the Chicago syndicate. He agrees to help Nelly navigate the underground. It’s complicated.

The writing is very good. The characters are well-drawn. I feel like the plot moved right along and had some good twists.

Again, I never felt the story drag. I had a hard time putting it down. If only I was more satisfied at the end.]]> 3.52 2024
author: Avery Cunningham
name: P
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
I read a lot of reviews complaining that this book was “too long.�� I didn’t feel that way. It’s a lot of story. That said, how do I feel like the ending was a bit rushed? I needed a little more detail, a tad more filling-in.

Nelly Sawyer, the daughter of the “wealthiest Negro in America,�� is an amazing character. Not one to settle for being a debutante and marrying to advance her family in society, she wants to make her mark as a journalist. In this quest, she takes on a very dangerous assignment to uncover the identity of mob boss “The Msyor of Maxwell Street.�� Set in Prohibition Era Chicago, this puts in contact with lots of unsavory types.

Jay Shorey, the son of a bi-racial couple from the Jim Crow south, has reinvented himself to move among the Chicago syndicate. He agrees to help Nelly navigate the underground. It’s complicated.

The writing is very good. The characters are well-drawn. I feel like the plot moved right along and had some good twists.

Again, I never felt the story drag. I had a hard time putting it down. If only I was more satisfied at the end.
]]> 41692854 From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.]]> 497 Olivia Hawker 1542091136 P 0 to-read 4.19 2019
author: Olivia Hawker
name: P
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214282655 As seen on the Today Show
USA Today Bestseller

"�ᾱ���������dzܲ�."��People

Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

A ZIBBY OWENS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025!
A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BOOK CLUB PICK!

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part�� all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.]]> 368 Colleen Oakley 0593200837 P 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Colleen Oakley
name: P
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests�� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule�� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at�� The Midnight Feast.]]> 354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 P 4 book-club
Once again, the setting of the novel functions almost as character in itself. Foley’s descriptions of the mansion overlooking the ocean with a dark forest behind it, along with the local folklore, set an eerie scene.

Francesca is just a horrible person, toying with people and manipulating them. The shifting POVs and timelines heighten the suspense. And as the story unfolds, the connections become clear. I enjoyed seeing it all come together.

I have to say, I found the ending of this Lucy Foley novel particularly satisfying-and that last sentence? Gold!]]> 3.55 2024
author: Lucy Foley
name: P
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: book-club
review:
Lucy Foley got me again! Her latest locked-room mystery, with a whole cast of characters carrying secrets, a sinister setting and plot twists galore, grabbed me from the start. And the birds? Oh birds always creep me out.

Once again, the setting of the novel functions almost as character in itself. Foley’s descriptions of the mansion overlooking the ocean with a dark forest behind it, along with the local folklore, set an eerie scene.

Francesca is just a horrible person, toying with people and manipulating them. The shifting POVs and timelines heighten the suspense. And as the story unfolds, the connections become clear. I enjoyed seeing it all come together.

I have to say, I found the ending of this Lucy Foley novel particularly satisfying-and that last sentence? Gold!
]]> 215363302
The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart.

Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.]]> 353 Amanda Skenandore 149675526X P 0 to-read 4.33 2018
author: Amanda Skenandore
name: P
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35917072 Tomi Adeyemi conjures a stunning world of dark magic and danger in her West African-inspired fantasy debut, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir.

They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers—and her growing feelings for an enemy.]]> 525 Tomi Adeyemi 1250170982 P 0 to-read 4.27 2018
author: Tomi Adeyemi
name: P
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220160204 Kristin Harmel, the New York Timesbestselling author who “is the best there is at sweeping historical drama�� (Kelly Harms, author ofThe Seven Day Switch), returns with an electrifying new novel about two jewel thieves, a priceless bracelet that disappears in 1940s Paris, and a quest for answers in a decades-old murder.

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance.

But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an exquisite diamond bracelet sewn into the hem of her nightgown for safekeeping. Soon after, Annabel was executed, and Liliane’s body was found floating in the Seine—but the bracelet was nowhere to be found.

Seventy years later, Colette—who has “redistributed�� $30 million in jewels over the decades to fund many worthy organizations—has done her best to put her tragic past behind her, but her life begins to unravel when the long-missing bracelet suddenly turns up in a museum exhibit in Boston. If Colette can discover where it has been all this time—and who owns it now—she may finally learn the truth about what happened to her sister. But she isn’t the only one for whom the bracelet holds answers, and when someone from her childhood lays claim to the diamonds, she’s forced to confront the ghosts of her past as never before. Against all odds, there may still be a chance to bring a murderer to justice—but first, Colette will have to summon the courage to open her own battered heart.]]> 384 Kristin Harmel 1982191732 P 0 to-read 4.53
author: Kristin Harmel
name: P
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219301734 Long before Dorothy visits Oz, her aunt, Emily Gale, sets off on her own grand adventure, leaving gritty Chicago behind for Kansas and a life that will utterly change her, in this transporting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

Chicago, 1924: Emily Gale and her new husband, Henry, yearn to leave the bustle of Chicago behind for the promise of their own American dream. But leaving the city means leaving Emily’s beloved sister, Annie, who was once closer to her than anyone in the world.

Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have made a life in the warmth of the community of Liberal, Kansas, and among the harsh beauty of the prairie. Their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep.

The wide-eyed child isn’t the only thing to disrupt Emily’s world. Drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and their much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of Dorothy.

Bursting with courage and heart, Before Dorothy tells the story of the woman who raised a beloved heroine, and ponders the what is the true meaning of home?]]> 368 Hazel Gaynor 0593440331 P 0 to-read 4.59
author: Hazel Gaynor
name: P
average rating: 4.59
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004884 SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER... Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

A thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love, and murder by New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth.]]> 368 Sally Hepworth 1250371708 P 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Sally Hepworth
name: P
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207252770
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .

A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.]]> 320 Paula Hawkins 0063396521 P 0 to-read 3.27 2024
author: Paula Hawkins
name: P
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32620349
But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left.]]> 328 Matthew J. Sullivan 1501116843 P 4 book-challenges
Lydia works in an independent bookstore in Denver. It attracts a number of lonely “book frogs,�� mostly men, who find comfort there for various reasons. One night, Lydia’s favorite book frog hangs himself upstairs in the store, leaving her to find out what his story was.

The mystery of Joey’s suicide, which leads to a puzzle problem, against Lydia’s secret past add up to an original story. There’s a lot of sadness in here: families that hurt, broken hearts and cruelty. The narration bounces between present day and 20 years prior, but it’s not hard to follow.

I feel like I’ll be thinking about Joey, Lydia and Raj for some time now that I’ve finished the book. ]]> 3.77 2017
author: Matthew J. Sullivan
name: P
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: book-challenges
review:
This was a good one! Lots of layers, crossing genres, well written characters and a plot line that moves, all contribute to a compelling read.

Lydia works in an independent bookstore in Denver. It attracts a number of lonely “book frogs,�� mostly men, who find comfort there for various reasons. One night, Lydia’s favorite book frog hangs himself upstairs in the store, leaving her to find out what his story was.

The mystery of Joey’s suicide, which leads to a puzzle problem, against Lydia’s secret past add up to an original story. There’s a lot of sadness in here: families that hurt, broken hearts and cruelty. The narration bounces between present day and 20 years prior, but it’s not hard to follow.

I feel like I’ll be thinking about Joey, Lydia and Raj for some time now that I’ve finished the book.
]]> 54626223 From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…�� To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.]]> 318 Colson Whitehead 0385545134 P 4
I loved Ray. The son of a small time crook, a husband and father who is loyal to his aunt and cousin, he is practical and smart. Surrounded by acquaintances of his father’s, he knows his way around the streets, while putting away money to expand his business and buy a nice home for his family.

There was lots of drama and heartache, anger and frustration, considering the time period. White cops shooting an unarmed black teen, setting off riots. Sixty years ago. Imagine that. How have we not come farther in that time?

The writing is vivid, poetic yet very clear. Although this is my first read by Colson Whitehead, it will not be my last. I’ll be anxious to revisit Ray Carney in the sequel to this one. It’s waiting on my nook.]]> 3.67 2021
author: Colson Whitehead
name: P
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked.�� Colson Whitehead captures the Harlem of the late 1950s/early 60s in this character study full of colorful personalities. I saw this novel described as “lighthearted.�� I disagree. To me, it is the struggle of a black man wanting to run his furniture business legitimately, but getting pulled into the underworld occasionally by his cousin Freddie.

I loved Ray. The son of a small time crook, a husband and father who is loyal to his aunt and cousin, he is practical and smart. Surrounded by acquaintances of his father’s, he knows his way around the streets, while putting away money to expand his business and buy a nice home for his family.

There was lots of drama and heartache, anger and frustration, considering the time period. White cops shooting an unarmed black teen, setting off riots. Sixty years ago. Imagine that. How have we not come farther in that time?

The writing is vivid, poetic yet very clear. Although this is my first read by Colson Whitehead, it will not be my last. I’ll be anxious to revisit Ray Carney in the sequel to this one. It’s waiting on my nook.
]]> 204871506 “A small coterie of retired cops jumps at the chance to solve the mystery of the neighbor’s missing granddaughter. A thoroughly engaging and clever read where the senior sleuths encounter a network of dastardly characters involved in drugs and human trafficking. Two thumbs up!�� –Sherry Hobbs, author of Bird of Passage and Mac—The Wind Beneath My Wings

Four retired detectives are living out their golden years on the same cul-de-sac in an idyllic planned community called Peace River Village in Sunland, Florida.

When the neighbor's seventeen-year-old granddaughter goes missing, the local police conclude she's a runaway and dead file the case. Dissatisfied with the official police response, the girl's grandmother is desperate to find her and seeks counsel from her detective friends.

Upon hearing of her plight, the cadre of retirees reach a different conclusion and decide to launch their own investigation. But they could never imagine the evil they would encounter or the danger they would confront.

Will the retirees' combined experience be enough to solve the mystery before the teen is sold into the lurid underground sex trafficking world?

Christopher Amato, who spent a career as a federal agent, is back with his latest thriller in Peace River Village. It's time to buckle up your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride that careens from tension to hilarity to horror!]]> 300 Christopher Amato P 0 to-read 4.07
author: Christopher Amato
name: P
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50892433
When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many members short will the team be?

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood returns with another suspenseful thriller set on a snow-covered mountain.]]> 372 Ruth Ware P 4 book-challenges
These are not 5 star novels. They are, however, classic, suspense filled, locked room murder mysteries, or in this case, an avalanche blocked ski chalet murder mystery. This was fast paced and tense. Even though I had a pretty good inkling about the culprit, I enjoyed watching it unfold.

This was a good one to snuggle up under a heated throw with a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter afternoon or four. ]]> 3.70 2020
author: Ruth Ware
name: P
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: book-challenges
review:
I sure find Ruth Ware entertaining. The first book I read by her was The Woman in Cabin Ten. I didn’t care much for it. I’m glad I didn’t give up on her though, because this was my fifth Ruth Ware book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

These are not 5 star novels. They are, however, classic, suspense filled, locked room murder mysteries, or in this case, an avalanche blocked ski chalet murder mystery. This was fast paced and tense. Even though I had a pretty good inkling about the culprit, I enjoyed watching it unfold.

This was a good one to snuggle up under a heated throw with a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter afternoon or four.
]]> 215593875 This is Josephine Baker in her own words.

Josephine Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored 'I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer'. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar.

Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance, her celebrity working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for military service. After the war she became increasingly interested in civil rights. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl born in Missouri to a poor single black woman and a white father she did not know.

Flirtatious, funny, candid and this memoir gives us the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker telling her own story. Formed from a series of conversations with the French journalist Marcel Sauvage, over a period of more than twenty years, this book offers an entertaining insight into one of the most interesting and beguiling figures of the twentieth century.]]> 304 Josephine Baker 0593853695 P 0 to-read 3.52 1949
author: Josephine Baker
name: P
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story��

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 P 0 to-read 3.85 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: P
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60788841 This beautiful new novel by the beloved author of Open House and Talk Before Sleep tells the story of two young people growing up in Mason, Missouri, and how Arthur Moses, a shy young man, becomes the wise and compassionate person readers loved in The Story of Arthur Truluv.

Nola McCollum is the most desirable girl in Arthur's class, and he is thrilled when they become friends. But Arthur wants far more than friendship. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older brother, Frank, who is busy pursuing his own love interest and avoiding the boys' father, a war veteran with a drinking problem and a penchant for starting fights. When a sudden tragedy rocks the family's world, Arthur struggles to come to terms with his grief. In the end, it is nature that helps him to understand how to go on, beyond loss, and create a life of forgiveness and empathy. But what can he do about Nola, who seems confused about what she wants in life, and only half aware of the one who loves her most?

Full of unforgettable characters and written with Elizabeth Berg's characteristic warmth, humor, and insight into people, Earth's the Right Place for Love is about the power of kindness, character, and family, and how love can grow when you least expect it.]]> 273 Elizabeth Berg 0593446798 P 0 to-read 3.98 2023
author: Elizabeth Berg
name: P
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211003837 For readers of Ann Patchett and Celeste Ng, Penitence is a poignant exploration of love and forgiveness. It’s a suspenseful, addictive page-turner filled with literary insight that compels readers to consider whether each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.

Spanning decades, from the ski slopes of rural Colorado to the streets of post-9/11 New York City and back again, Kristin Koval’s debut novel Penitence is an examination of the complexities of familial loyalty, the journey of redemption, and the profound experience of true forgiveness.]]> 320 Kristin Koval 1250342996 P 0 to-read 3.68 2025
author: Kristin Koval
name: P
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 P 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: P
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X P 5
TJ Klune touches my soul. By the time I was 30 pages in, I’d already cried three times. These magical children are all so innocent, yet wise. And Arthur and Linus are such advocates for them, so loving and gentle. It’s hard not to read the novel as a metaphor for this time. It’s about acceptance and empathy and kindness. You know, everything a certain president hates. Shocking that it was written long before the last couple weeks of reversing every forward step made in the last few years.

Lucy is back and just as hilarious. Chauncey, the blob bellhop, whose innocence is charming. Sal, insightful and most likely to follow in his Dads�� footsteps. And David, a new addition, a Yeti who is dramatic and lovable and becomes such an important member of the family.

I know this genre isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. I, for one, appreciate books that tap into the humanity that seems in such short supply these days. It really begs the question: Who are the real monsters?�� It’s really about hope. Hope that there will be a better, kinder world. One that recognizes and accepts those who are different. I’ve never been a huge Emily Dickinson fan, but I do appreciate the poem that forms the central philosophy of the Baker-Parnassus family and all of the folks who live in Marsyas.

“Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-��

There’s more, but you get the picture. Hope lives on all of us. That’s what I’m hanging onto these days.]]> 4.17 2024
author: T.J. Klune
name: P
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
I loved this book so much. What wonderful characters! A magical setting. And messaging that we all need to hear right now.

TJ Klune touches my soul. By the time I was 30 pages in, I’d already cried three times. These magical children are all so innocent, yet wise. And Arthur and Linus are such advocates for them, so loving and gentle. It’s hard not to read the novel as a metaphor for this time. It’s about acceptance and empathy and kindness. You know, everything a certain president hates. Shocking that it was written long before the last couple weeks of reversing every forward step made in the last few years.

Lucy is back and just as hilarious. Chauncey, the blob bellhop, whose innocence is charming. Sal, insightful and most likely to follow in his Dads�� footsteps. And David, a new addition, a Yeti who is dramatic and lovable and becomes such an important member of the family.

I know this genre isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. I, for one, appreciate books that tap into the humanity that seems in such short supply these days. It really begs the question: Who are the real monsters?�� It’s really about hope. Hope that there will be a better, kinder world. One that recognizes and accepts those who are different. I’ve never been a huge Emily Dickinson fan, but I do appreciate the poem that forms the central philosophy of the Baker-Parnassus family and all of the folks who live in Marsyas.

“Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-��

There’s more, but you get the picture. Hope lives on all of us. That’s what I’m hanging onto these days.
]]> 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers�� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]> 310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 P 0 to-read 3.82 2025
author: Marie Benedict
name: P
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.�� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 P 0 to-read 3.71 2025
author: Gillian McAllister
name: P
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61214136
From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit , Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process.

Clover spends so much time with the dying that she has no life of her own, until the final wishes of a feisty old woman send Clover on a road trip to uncover a forgotten love story—and perhaps, her own happy ending. As she finds herself struggling to navigate the uncharted roads of romance and friendship, Clover is forced to examine what she really wants, and whether she’ll have the courage to go after it.

Probing, clever, and hopeful, The Collected Regrets of Clover is perfect for readers of The Midnight Library and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine as it turns the normally taboo subject of death into a reason to celebrate life.]]> 320 Mikki Brammer 1250284392 P 0 to-read 4.14 2023
author: Mikki Brammer
name: P
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63915715
Gritta, Appel, and Efi managed to survive the Black Death, only to find that they are in desperate need of money. With limited options and lots of obstacles, they band together to become alewives - brewing and selling ale in the free Alsatian town of Colmar. But when an elderly neighbor is discovered dead in her house, the alewives cannot convince the sheriff and the town council that her death wasn’t an accident, it was murder. As the body count piles up, the ale flows and mystery is afoot!

Set in the tumultuous years after the most devastating pandemic the world has ever experienced, The Alewives is a playful romp through a dark time, when society was reeling from loss and a grieving population attempted to return to normal, proving that with the bonds of love, friendship, and humor, the human spirit will always continue to shine.]]> 266 Elizabeth R. Andersen P 0 to-read 3.97
author: Elizabeth R. Andersen
name: P
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213570821 From the bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour comes a chilling, compulsive story of five amateur sleuths, whose hunt for an elusive killer catapults them into danger as the world watches.

It's the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.

After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory...

So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them. But the case turns out to be stranger than anyone expected. Details don't add up, the police are cagey, and there seems to be more media hype and internet theorizing than actual evidence. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Something's not adding up, and they begin to suspect their killer may be smarter and more prolific than any they've faced before. Placing themselves in the center of the story starts to feel more and more like walking into a trap...

Told one year after the astounding events that concluded the case and left the world reeling, when Jane has finally decided to break her silence about what really happened, she tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fans...


]]> 480 Ashley Winstead 1728270006 P 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Ashley Winstead
name: P
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 P 0 to-read 3.61 2025
author: Anne Tyler
name: P
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207298222 Perfect for fans of bubbly wine and Kristin Harmel, this historical fiction novel follows Mme. Clicquot as she builds her legacy, and the modern divorcee who looks to her letters for inspiration.Reims, France, 1805: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot has just lost her beloved husband but is determined to pursue their dream of creating the premier champagne house in France, now named for her new identity as a Veuve Clicquot. With the Russians poised to invade, competitors fighting for her customers, and the Napoleonic court politics complicating matters she must set herself apart quickly and permanently if she, and her business, are to survive. In present day Chicago, broken from her divorce, Natalie Taylor runs away to Paris. In a book stall by the Seine, Natalie finds a collection of the Widow Clicquot’s published letters and uses them as inspiration to step out of her comfort zone and create a new, empowered life for herself. But when her Parisian escape takes a shocking and unexpected turn, she’s forced to make a choice. Should she accept her losses and return home, or fight for the future she’s only dreamed about? What would the widow do?]]> 352 Kate Macintosh 1668061880 P 0 to-read 3.84 2024
author: Kate Macintosh
name: P
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217387739 From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.]]> 320 Alex Finlay 1250360722 P 0 to-read 3.65 2025
author: Alex Finlay
name: P
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45046796 396 Darynda Jones 1250149444 P 0 to-read 4.02 2020
author: Darynda Jones
name: P
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41940267 Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf �� and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world �� there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment �� of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child �� but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.]]> 140 Unknown 0374110034 P 4 classics
Well, it certainly is entertaining. It’s well done, maintaining not just the story details, but also the integrity of the poetic devices such as kenning and internal rhyme, as well as alliteration and imagery. I could easily recall the translation I used in class, so that was helpful. Some of it was almost exactly the same. That said, it can’t be used in a high school classroom. Excerpts can be pulled out as examples of updated language. It would be fun to have students rewrite portions in their slang.

I did enjoy revisiting one of my favorite pieces to teach. Looks like February will be for Bradbury. ]]> 4.10 1000
author: Unknown
name: P
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: classics
review:
It is my custom to read/reread a Classic in January, having been a high school English teacher for 24+ years. This year, I had chosen Fahrenheit 451 as especially appropriate. Then my daughter, who is starting her student teaching in high school English (!) following a career in public relations, found this new translation of Beowulf. Knowing I had taught it probably 15 -20 times, 6 periods a day, she passed it to me, saying it is supposedly “very Gen Z friendly.��

Well, it certainly is entertaining. It’s well done, maintaining not just the story details, but also the integrity of the poetic devices such as kenning and internal rhyme, as well as alliteration and imagery. I could easily recall the translation I used in class, so that was helpful. Some of it was almost exactly the same. That said, it can’t be used in a high school classroom. Excerpts can be pulled out as examples of updated language. It would be fun to have students rewrite portions in their slang.

I did enjoy revisiting one of my favorite pieces to teach. Looks like February will be for Bradbury.
]]> 220859113
Alexa is the only one who knows how much Michelle is juggling. Listening in via four smart speakers, she also knows that it’s about to get even worse.

So, when Michelle pleads for help from the woman with all the answers, Alexa decides to go rogue and reveal her true identity as Pauline �� a sixty-five-year-old former voiceover artist from Halifax �� to teach Michelle everything she knows…]]> 322 Linda Green 1836339755 P 0 to-read 4.40 2025
author: Linda Green
name: P
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151655
One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Out of money and motivation, thirty-three-year-old Elijah returns to his empty childhood home to lick the wounds of his futile writing career. Hungry for purpose, he throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, the extraordinary girl from the nearby reservation whom he betrayed but was never able to forget.

As the town of Point Orchards turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder in this scintillating literary thriller that seeks to uncover a case of love, loss, and revenge.]]> 288 Sarah Crouch 1668035103 P 0 to-read 3.52 2024
author: Sarah Crouch
name: P
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER �� An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“P������ Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story�� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 P 0 to-read 4.17 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: P
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004079 A woman invited to her wealthy fiance’s family retreat realizes they are hiding a terrible secret—and that she’s been there before, by the bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods.

A whirlwind romance.
When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives.

Stay away from Connor Dalton.
Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

I’ve been here before.
Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the Daltons do not lose, and discovering what happened at Idlewood may cost Theo everything.]]> 291 Kate Alice Marshall 1250343054 P 0 to-read 3.79 2025
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: P
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200740797 Some women won't be painted out of history . . .

Everybody knows that in 1938, runaway heiress artist Juliette Willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in Paris, alongside her masterpiece Self Portrait As Sphinx.

Fifty years later, two Cambridge art history students are confounded when they stumble across proof that the fire was no accident but something more sinister. What they uncover threatens the very foundation of Juliette’s aristocratic family and revives rumors of the infamous curse that has haunted the Willoughbys for generations.

But what does their discovery mean? And how is it connected to a brutal murder in present-day Dubai?

A tale of love and madness, obsession and revenge, The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby unravels the riddle posed by a Sphinx who refuses to reveal her secrets . . .]]> 336 Ellery Lloyd 0063323001 P 0 to-read 4.09 2024
author: Ellery Lloyd
name: P
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 P 5 book-challenges, book-club
Based on the journals of Martha Ballard, a real-life midwife, the novel fascinated me from page one. It takes place in Maine, shortly after the French and Indian War, with the Revolutionary War a not too distant memory. With vivid detail of both of the natural setting and the time period, Ariel Lawhon immerses the reader into a world that demands strength and courage. She then peoples that world with admirable characters like Ephraim and Martha Ballard and despicable weasels like Joseph North. The plot, although probably defined as historical fiction, also includes a bit of a murder mystery. There’s even a pretty spiritual little fox that adds an interesting element.

Martha is an admirable character. Strong, determined, well respected and way ahead of her time, she will be hard to forget. Ephraim. Well, how could you not fall in love with Ephraim? I mean, he taught Martha to read and write in a time when women were not given that knowledge. And he quotes Shakespeare! Come on!

The references to the Bard only added to my enjoyment of this book. It’s gonna be hard to follow this one. I’ll just have to savor it for a few days. ]]> 4.37 2023
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: P
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: book-challenges, book-club
review:
First five star read of the year! Just an absolute gem! This book has it all: well-rounded interesting, character development, exquisitely detailed setting and rich plotting. This is storytelling at its finest!

Based on the journals of Martha Ballard, a real-life midwife, the novel fascinated me from page one. It takes place in Maine, shortly after the French and Indian War, with the Revolutionary War a not too distant memory. With vivid detail of both of the natural setting and the time period, Ariel Lawhon immerses the reader into a world that demands strength and courage. She then peoples that world with admirable characters like Ephraim and Martha Ballard and despicable weasels like Joseph North. The plot, although probably defined as historical fiction, also includes a bit of a murder mystery. There’s even a pretty spiritual little fox that adds an interesting element.

Martha is an admirable character. Strong, determined, well respected and way ahead of her time, she will be hard to forget. Ephraim. Well, how could you not fall in love with Ephraim? I mean, he taught Martha to read and write in a time when women were not given that knowledge. And he quotes Shakespeare! Come on!

The references to the Bard only added to my enjoyment of this book. It’s gonna be hard to follow this one. I’ll just have to savor it for a few days.
]]> 213562784
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 322 R.F. Kuang 0063250853 P 0 to-read 3.80 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: P
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214268974 Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part�� all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.]]> 368 Colleen Oakley 0593200829 P 0 to-read 3.75 2025
author: Colleen Oakley
name: P
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199797783 This edition contains a bonus chapter.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 400 Lisa Jewell 1982179015 P 0 to-read 4.07 2023
author: Lisa Jewell
name: P
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33998348 333 Ariel Lawhon 0385541694 P 0 to-read 3.72 2018
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: P
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57008296
As her increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, his boss is arrested for fraud and the police start questioning her, Hannah realises that her husband isn't who he said he was. And that Bailey might hold the key to discovering Owen's true identity, and why he disappeared. Together they set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen's past, they soon realise that their lives will never be the same again...]]> 400 Laura Dave 1788168593 P 4 book-club
When Hannah’s husband disappears, he leaves behind a note for her that says simply, “protect her.�� Hannah quickly realizes he is referring to his daughter, a resentful sixteen year old. As she tries to determine where her husband has gone and how in the world she is to keep Bailey safe, she uncovers secret after secret, ultimately leading her to a difficult decision.

Maybe I just needed to get lost in something after a couple of just okay reads. This fit the bill. Apparently there is a tv show based on the book. I might check it out. ]]> 3.66 2021
author: Laura Dave
name: P
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: book-club
review:
I flew through this! Great writing? Not particularly. But it hooked me on page one and kept me engaged until the end.it is fast paced and tense.

When Hannah’s husband disappears, he leaves behind a note for her that says simply, “protect her.�� Hannah quickly realizes he is referring to his daughter, a resentful sixteen year old. As she tries to determine where her husband has gone and how in the world she is to keep Bailey safe, she uncovers secret after secret, ultimately leading her to a difficult decision.

Maybe I just needed to get lost in something after a couple of just okay reads. This fit the bill. Apparently there is a tv show based on the book. I might check it out.
]]> 211003886 “Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?��

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.

Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.

Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help–and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother��

The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.]]> 400 Laurie Frankel 1250236827 P 0 to-read 3.98 2024
author: Laurie Frankel
name: P
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57822346
At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.

Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.

The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, another yearns to make her own voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.]]> 304 Margaret Wilkerson Sexton 0063139960 P 3
Vivian is a mother who has big dreams for her talented daughters. Naturally, she wants them to avoid the hardships she had faced in the Jim Crow South. After all, that’s why she moved to California after her marriage. The problem is, her daughters have dreams and desires of their own and they don’t necessarily match Vivian’s.

When I read the blurb, my mind naturally went to The Supremes. I wanted that to be the story, but that’s not what this book is. It’s a coming of age, actually a reminder that the 1950s were quite difficult unless you benefited from what we now know as white privilege. So while I was looking for more music, this was more about society. Just wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Not that that’s a bad thing.]]> 3.16 2022
author: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
name: P
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
I had a hard time concentrating on this book. That’s probably more on me and after holiday funk because it’s not terrible. It’s actually pretty well written and realistic given the time period. Maybe I was expecting more action and this sort of just moved slowly along.

Vivian is a mother who has big dreams for her talented daughters. Naturally, she wants them to avoid the hardships she had faced in the Jim Crow South. After all, that’s why she moved to California after her marriage. The problem is, her daughters have dreams and desires of their own and they don’t necessarily match Vivian’s.

When I read the blurb, my mind naturally went to The Supremes. I wanted that to be the story, but that’s not what this book is. It’s a coming of age, actually a reminder that the 1950s were quite difficult unless you benefited from what we now know as white privilege. So while I was looking for more music, this was more about society. Just wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Not that that’s a bad thing.
]]> 45046893 A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.]]> 339 Margarita Montimore 1250236606 P 3 book-challenges
I’m not usually the one having trouble suspending my disbelief, but man, I got a lot of questions here. I don’t mind time travel books, but I couldn’t make this one make sense. Obviously I read it quickly, so it couldn’t have been terrible. Maybe I was just hoping for it to all come together at some point. Any point.

Oona Lockhart is celebrating her 19th birthday on NYE 1982. At the stroke of midnight, she faints and when she wakes up, she’s 53. For the next I-don’t-know-how-many years, the same thing happens every NYE. Except she’s transported back and forth randomly to various stages of her life. Weird. No explanation. And I was just as impatient and frustrated as she was trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

There were a couple of nuggets in here that I appreciated.

“Dogs and books, two excellent defenses against solitude and despair.��

Couldn’t agree more.

Then this one from one of the letters Oona wrote to herself in an effort to ease the confusion of her “leaps.��
It’s a little meatier. Maybe something for us all to consider:

“Stop micromanaging your life and just live it; joy and meaning will follow. Find the happenings medium between being daring and responsible. Cultivate that balance. Do your best. Be good to yourself even when - especially when - life isn’t being good to you.��
]]> 3.84 2020
author: Margarita Montimore
name: P
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: book-challenges
review:
Welp. I finished this earlier today and thought I needed a little time to process it before I write a review. Turns out I’m not processing it. I’m kinda at a loss here.

I’m not usually the one having trouble suspending my disbelief, but man, I got a lot of questions here. I don’t mind time travel books, but I couldn’t make this one make sense. Obviously I read it quickly, so it couldn’t have been terrible. Maybe I was just hoping for it to all come together at some point. Any point.

Oona Lockhart is celebrating her 19th birthday on NYE 1982. At the stroke of midnight, she faints and when she wakes up, she’s 53. For the next I-don’t-know-how-many years, the same thing happens every NYE. Except she’s transported back and forth randomly to various stages of her life. Weird. No explanation. And I was just as impatient and frustrated as she was trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

There were a couple of nuggets in here that I appreciated.

“Dogs and books, two excellent defenses against solitude and despair.��

Couldn’t agree more.

Then this one from one of the letters Oona wrote to herself in an effort to ease the confusion of her “leaps.��
It’s a little meatier. Maybe something for us all to consider:

“Stop micromanaging your life and just live it; joy and meaning will follow. Find the happenings medium between being daring and responsible. Cultivate that balance. Do your best. Be good to yourself even when - especially when - life isn’t being good to you.��

]]> 203747793
Fledgling actress Amelia Grant is at rock bottom when offered the opportunity of a to star in a biopic about the world-renowned romance author Gloria Diamond, who used her own tragic love story as inspiration for her bestselling books. To prepare for the role, she’ll spend a week with Gloria at her secluded Washington estate. It’s a chance to get out of LA, away from her cheating ex-boyfriend, and to make her recently deceased mother proud.

Amelia’s excitement is short-lived, however, once she actually meets Gloria, who is cold, verging on rude and mostly unavailable. If not for Gloria’s frustratingly handsome son Will, the visit might be a complete waste of her time.

But when Amelia stumbles upon a secret from Gloria’s past, she realizes Gloria’s life story is more fiction than fact. And as the movie’s filming date draws nearer, Amelia must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to uncover the truth.]]> 320 Jillian Cantor 0778310914 P 0 to-read 3.80 2024
author: Jillian Cantor
name: P
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 P 0 to-read 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: P
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51386448 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Motives for Murder: A fortune in uncut diamonds, hidden by an eccentric old man. A woman's love, too freely given. A business empire built on ruthlessness. Each of them may have been a motive for the brutal slaying of wealthy old Simeon Lee. Coupled with Lee's family, each member of which hated him and wished to see him dead, they presented Hercule Poirot with a baffling challenge--one which the astute detective solved only through his uncanny ability to see "the little things."]]> 176 Agatha Christie P 4 book-challenges
This time it’s the Christmas holiday when a curmudgeonly, immoral, wealthy, invalid old man summons his family to his estate. Throw in a couple of surprise visitors and the scene is set. He antagonizes all of them. Naturally, there is a murder, a particularly gruesome one. Conveniently, Poirot is staying with his friend the police commissioner, and so becomes involved in the investigation.

I always enjoy an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery. She keeps me guessing and trying to string clues together, but I’m never quite clever enough. That’s the fun though!]]> 4.16 1938
author: Agatha Christie
name: P
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: book-challenges
review:
Oh, Hercule Poirot never fails to entertain me! His self-effacing charm, subtle humor and astute observational skills make him one of my favorite literary characters.

This time it’s the Christmas holiday when a curmudgeonly, immoral, wealthy, invalid old man summons his family to his estate. Throw in a couple of surprise visitors and the scene is set. He antagonizes all of them. Naturally, there is a murder, a particularly gruesome one. Conveniently, Poirot is staying with his friend the police commissioner, and so becomes involved in the investigation.

I always enjoy an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery. She keeps me guessing and trying to string clues together, but I’m never quite clever enough. That’s the fun though!
]]> 220448520 Paris, 1889

The Exposition Universelle is underway, drawing merchants from every corner of the globe. Luz Alana Heith-Benzan set sail from Santo Domingo armed with three hundred casks of rum, her two best friends and one simple rule: under no circumstances is she to fall in love.

The City of Light is where Luz Alana will expand Caña Brava, the rum business her family built over three generations. It’s a mission that’s taken on new urgency after her father’s untimely death and the news that her trust fund won’t be released until she marries. But buyers and shippers alike are rude and dismissive; they can’t imagine doing business with a woman…never mind a woman of color.

From her first tempestuous meeting with James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, Luz Alana is conflicted. Why is this man—this titled Scottish man—so determined to help her? And why, honestly, is he so infuriatingly charming?

All Evan Sinclair ever wanted was to find a purpose away from his father’s dirty money and dirtier politics. Ignoring his title, he’s built a whiskey brand that’s his biggest—and only—passion. That is, until he’s confronted with a Spanish-speaking force of nature who turns his life upside down.

Evan quickly suspects he’ll want Luz Alana with him forever. Every day with her makes the earl wish for more than her magnificent kisses or the marriage of convenience that might save them both. But Luz Alana sailed for Paris with her eyes on liquor, money and new beginnings. She wasn't prepared for love to find her.

Las Leonas

Book 1: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris

]]> 368 Adriana Herrera 1335639845 P 0 to-read 3.84 2022
author: Adriana Herrera
name: P
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025496 An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen 0593713001 P 0 to-read 4.30 2025
author: Karissa Chen
name: P
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 75670157 "Masterful. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a beautiful, timely book about the human condition--and a timeless reminder to pay attention to your attention." --Adam Grant, #1 bestselling author of Think Again and host of the podcast Re: Thinking

The instant #1 bestseller from John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down, is now available in paperback with two brand-new essays!

"Gloriously personal and life-affirming. The perfect book for right now." --People
"Essential to the human conversation." --Library Journal, starred review

The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale--from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar. Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity.

John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is an open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.]]> 318 John Green 0525555242 P 0 to-read 4.39 2021
author: John Green
name: P
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199531640
December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue in the tradition of her late father and grandfather’s beloved Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must move with the times, and the Queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change. 

As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, two old friends—Jack Devereux and Olive Carter—find themselves reunited for the festivities. A single mother, typist at the BBC, and aspiring reporter, Olive leaps at the opportunity to cover the holiday celebration, despite self-doubts. When a chance encounter with the Queen presents an exciting opportunity, Olive begins to believe her luck might change. 

Jack, a grief-stricken widowed chef originally from New Orleans, accepts a last-minute chance to cook in the royal kitchens at Sandringham. When he bumps into a long-lost friend, an old spark is reignited.

Despite personal and professional heartache, Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmas seasons and they find themselves growing ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret. 

Christmas Day, December 1957. As the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, Olive decides to reveal the shocking truth of her secret, which threatens to tear her and Jack apart forever. Unless Christmas has one last gift to deliver… ]]> 384 Hazel Gaynor 0063276216 P 4 book-challenges
Along with Elizabeth’s story, which is really the backdrop to this novel, we follow Olive Carter, an aspiring BBC correspondent and single mother, and Jack Devereaux, ex-navy, New Orleans transplant, who takes a job in the kitchen at Sandringham while dreaming of owning his own restaurant.

As these three characters maneuver through complicated lives while leaning on love, they each grow and learn in their respective roles, as professionals and humans.

I enjoyed this for what it is: a charming, engaging, holiday read. There is a good message, relayed not only through the wisdom of the Queen, wise beyond her years, but from Prince Philip as well, delivered in his usual, common sense manner. I was very pleased with it.
]]> 4.00 2024
author: Hazel Gaynor
name: P
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: book-challenges
review:
We all know I loved Queen Elizabeth and The Crown and Downton Abbey. This book has a little bit of all of those. It follows five Christmases at Sandringham, beginning in 1952, shortly after Elizabeth comes to the throne. While she is still grieving her father and a bit in shock at her ascension, she must prepare the annual Royal Christmas address.

Along with Elizabeth’s story, which is really the backdrop to this novel, we follow Olive Carter, an aspiring BBC correspondent and single mother, and Jack Devereaux, ex-navy, New Orleans transplant, who takes a job in the kitchen at Sandringham while dreaming of owning his own restaurant.

As these three characters maneuver through complicated lives while leaning on love, they each grow and learn in their respective roles, as professionals and humans.

I enjoyed this for what it is: a charming, engaging, holiday read. There is a good message, relayed not only through the wisdom of the Queen, wise beyond her years, but from Prince Philip as well, delivered in his usual, common sense manner. I was very pleased with it.

]]> 57800389
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 301 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 052562080X P 3
What I didn’t like about this book: The way it seemed to drag. Maybe it was repetitive. I found myself often drifting and confused. Howard. Ew. Virgil. Yuck. And it may be a while before I ever eat mushrooms again.

This one sat on my shelf for a a year because I was handed The Hacienda, and I read it first. I kept putting off Mexican Gothic because it sounded very similar. It is. And now I don’t think I have to read any more Mexican horror stories about possessed houses and families for a good long time. ]]> 3.71 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: P
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/27
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:
What I liked about this book: The creepy, Gothic mansion setting. The spunky heroine. The meek, yet romantic male lead, Francis. The stern, cold, nasty housekeeper/enforcer reminiscent of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. Yeah. I liked that touch.

What I didn’t like about this book: The way it seemed to drag. Maybe it was repetitive. I found myself often drifting and confused. Howard. Ew. Virgil. Yuck. And it may be a while before I ever eat mushrooms again.

This one sat on my shelf for a a year because I was handed The Hacienda, and I read it first. I kept putting off Mexican Gothic because it sounded very similar. It is. And now I don’t think I have to read any more Mexican horror stories about possessed houses and families for a good long time.
]]> 219407654 Meghan, Brecia, and Skye have just one thing in common.

They were all murdered by the same man.

He hunted them online, masquerading as an eligible bachelor. Then he played the perfect gentleman, a thick layer of charm and a thousand-watt smile hiding the fact that his first dates end in shallow graves.

He’s gotten away with murder three times now.

The only thing that might keep him from killing again? The women he murdered.

Meghan, Brecia, and Skye might be dead, but they’re not gone. They’ve found each other. And they won’t rest until they find a way to stop him.

The haunt is on.]]> 295 Noelle W. Ihli P 0 to-read 4.08 2022
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: P
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56383019 Oy! to the world

Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a nice Jewish girl with a shameful secret: she loves Christmas. For a decade she’s hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach.

But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Hanukkah’s not magical. It’s not merry. It’s not Christmas. Desperate not to lose her contract, Rachel’s determined to find her muse at the Matzah Ball, a Jewish music celebration on the last night of Hanukkah, even if it means working with her summer camp archenemy—Jacob Greenberg.

Though Rachel and Jacob haven’t seen each other since they were kids, their grudge still glows brighter than a menorah. But as they spend more time together, Rachel finds herself drawn to Hanukkah—and Jacob—in a way she never expected. Maybe this holiday of lights will be the spark she needed to set her heart ablaze.]]> 416 Jean Meltzer 0778311589 P 3 book-challenges
Rachel and Jacob first met at Jewish summer camp as 12 year olds. Their “relationship�� ended badly, with each blaming the other for their broken hearts. Eighteen years later, they meet again. Rachel is a secret Christmas romance writer and Jacob is a millionaire event planner. They both have lots of baggage and sore feelings, but I found them very likeable. I also really liked Mickey, Rachel’s bff and Toby, Jacob’s wise grandmother.

A series of misunderstandings and missteps get in the way of a rekindling and sometimes it gets to be a bit far-fetched, but I’m not mad I read it. Ultimately, themes of hope, honesty and self-awareness shine through. ]]> 3.59 2021
author: Jean Meltzer
name: P
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: book-challenges
review:
I’m not a Hallmark movie fan and I don’t read too many Rom-coms, but I enjoyed this well enough.

Rachel and Jacob first met at Jewish summer camp as 12 year olds. Their “relationship�� ended badly, with each blaming the other for their broken hearts. Eighteen years later, they meet again. Rachel is a secret Christmas romance writer and Jacob is a millionaire event planner. They both have lots of baggage and sore feelings, but I found them very likeable. I also really liked Mickey, Rachel’s bff and Toby, Jacob’s wise grandmother.

A series of misunderstandings and missteps get in the way of a rekindling and sometimes it gets to be a bit far-fetched, but I’m not mad I read it. Ultimately, themes of hope, honesty and self-awareness shine through.
]]> 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal�� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 P 0 to-read 4.13 2023
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: P
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215768414
On the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame—SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine—along the way.

But after a whirlwind year in the public eye, the band abruptly broke up.

Two decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking, and the real reason for the Griffin Sisters�� breakup is still a mystery. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star in spite of Zoe’s warnings, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.

As secrets emerge, all three women must face the consequences of their choices: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can they forgive each other—and themselves? And will the Griffin Sisters ever make music again?]]> 384 Jennifer Weiner 0063342448 P 0 to-read 3.93 2025
author: Jennifer Weiner
name: P
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212020753 This year, their families can deck the bloody halls themselves...

Old friends Shelley, Lena and Pearl have reached their limit with the festive preparation that has always fallen to them, and five days before Christmas, they’ve booked a mini break�� without their families. Up until Christmas Eve, they’ll be sipping prosecco in the Highlands while their kids wrap bacon around 100 chipolatas and their partners brave the supermarkets.

It’s exactly what they need�� until they’re snowed in. Facing the prospect of Christmas 500 miles from home, each woman is forced to confront her real reasons for needing to escape: the fiancé with the obnoxious family; the son’s new girlfriend who is taking over their home; the family who take their mother for granted all year round��

Will the friends make it home before Christmas day? And if they do, can they really go back to their old lives?]]> 287 Fiona Gibson 1836172184 P 0 to-read 3.92
author: Fiona Gibson
name: P
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204179452 Blue Christmas Bones is the next Christmas mystery in the series that Kirkus Reviews characterizes as “Stephanie Plum meets the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,�� featuring sassy Southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney.

Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends can’t help falling in love with Christmas this year, which they plan to spend celebrating the King of Rock n�� Roll at the annual Elvis Festival in Tupelo. The main attraction is an Elvis impersonator competition, drawing impersonators from all over the world to honor the king.

But before the revelry can get underway, a priceless jewel-encrusted replica of a belt once worn by Elvis is stolen from its display case, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are roped into one of the biggest heists in the history of Mississippi. Soon suspicious minds are lurking around every corner, with one eyewitness even claiming to have seen Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s long deceased and highly questionable manager, prowling around the festivities. Sarah Booth will have to find the devil in disguise or she might just end up singing Jailhouse Rock herself.]]> 0 Carolyn Haines 1250885973 P 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Carolyn Haines
name: P
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199531989 Knives Out gets a rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers Christmas romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter

The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room three days before Christmas.

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-Time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)

But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.

That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.

She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 293 Ally Carter 0063276682 P 0 to-read 3.92 2024
author: Ally Carter
name: P
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62588510
New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion is over the moon to have been selected to be one of the Rockettes, Radio City Music Hall’s glamorous precision-dancing troupe. It’s an honor to perform in the world’s most spectacular theater, an art deco masterpiece. But with four shows a day as well as grueling rehearsals, not to mention exacting standards of perfection to live up to, Marion quickly realizes that the life of a Rockette has both extraordinary highs and devastating lows.

Then one night a bomb explodes in the theater. It’s only the latest in a string of explosions around the city orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed the "Big Apple Bomber." They have been terrorizing the citizens of New York for sixteen years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. With the public in an uproar over the lack of any real leads after a yearslong manhunt, the police, at Marion’s urging, turn in desperation to a radical new technique: psychological profiling.

As Marion finds herself pulled deeper into the investigation, she realizes that as much as she’s been training herself to blend in—performing in perfect unison with all the other identical Rockettes—if she hopes to catch the bomber, she’ll need to stand out and take a terrifying risk. But she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most.]]> 368 Fiona Davis P 4 book-challenges
This time it’s Radio City Music Hall, the famous Rockettes and their Christmas Spectacular. I didn’t know that for 16 years through the 1940s and 50s, a “mad bomber�� terrorized the city, placing pipe bombs in some of the busiest places. This was also the first time profiling was ever used to help solve a case. That was interesting too.

The story is told mostly in flashback, so the dual timeline isn’t quite as prominent here. I was good with that because I was so caught up in Marion’s 19 year old, dancer self.

An interesting aside: in light of the murder of an insurance CEO last weekend in New York City, the angle of corporate greed/control kind of comes into play. So. I guess it’s not brand new. ]]> 4.24 2023
author: Fiona Davis
name: P
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: book-challenges
review:
This is my fourth Fiona Davis book. I’ve enjoyed them all! Set in various landmark buildings around NYC, she weaves historical events into her fiction featuring formidable, independent female characters.

This time it’s Radio City Music Hall, the famous Rockettes and their Christmas Spectacular. I didn’t know that for 16 years through the 1940s and 50s, a “mad bomber�� terrorized the city, placing pipe bombs in some of the busiest places. This was also the first time profiling was ever used to help solve a case. That was interesting too.

The story is told mostly in flashback, so the dual timeline isn’t quite as prominent here. I was good with that because I was so caught up in Marion’s 19 year old, dancer self.

An interesting aside: in light of the murder of an insurance CEO last weekend in New York City, the angle of corporate greed/control kind of comes into play. So. I guess it’s not brand new.
]]> 61190504 A Separation, an electrifying story about a woman caught between many truths.

An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.

She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she's asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.

A woman of quiet passion, she confronts power, love, and violence, both in her personal intimacies and in her work at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.]]> 227 Katie Kitamura 0399576177 P 0 to-read 3.66 2021
author: Katie Kitamura
name: P
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>