Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson

The book is being released by Sourcebooks Landmark on May 3, 2022.

The book's jacket copy says: Bestselling historical fiction author Kim Michele Richardson is back with the perfect book club read following Honey Lovett, the daughter of the beloved Troublesome book woman, who must fight for her own independence with the help of the women who guide her and the books that set her free.

In the ruggedness of the beautiful Kentucky mountains, Honey Lovett has always known that the old ways can make a hard life harder. As the daughter of the famed blue-skinned, Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian, Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life. But when her mother and father are imprisoned, Honey realizes she must fight to stay free, or risk being sent away for good.

Picking up her mother's old packhorse library route, Honey begins to deliver books to the remote hollers of Appalachia. Honey is looking to prove that she doesn't need anyone telling her how to survive. But the route can be treacherous, and some folks aren't as keen to let a woman pave her own way.

If Honey wants to bring the freedom books provide to the families who need it most, she's going to have to fight for her place, and along the way, learn that the extraordinary women who run the hills and hollers can make all the difference in the world.

Review: The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

Jane Austen's characters are unmistakable. Just how these characters would get along together has always been a fascinating thing to consider. It goes without saying that Mr. Wickham would be no one's favorite (not even Lydia's, as we already know long before the end of Pride and Prejudice) but would any reader imagine that one of Austen's other characters would murder him? That is exactly the premise here. Emma and George Knightley throw a house party for a who's who of Jane Austen's characters in this excessively diverting mystery where, good news (and spoiler alert!) Mr. Wickham, more odious than ever, is murdered.

The Knightleys, having determined to host a month long house party, have invited a rather disparate collection of people to Donwell Abbey. There is Emma Knightley's cousin Colonel Brandon and his new bride Marianne; George Knightley's old school chum Mr. Darcy with his wife Elizabeth and son Jonathan; Juliet Tilney, the teenaged daughter of novelist Catherine Tilney and her husband Henry; Knightley's relations Edmund and Fanny Bertram; and Captain and Anne Wentworth, who are letting Hartfield from the Knightleys but who have had to move out because of a collapsed staircase. What starts as a slightly awkward party promises to smooth out over the month, at least until Mr. Wickham arrives uninvited and unwelcome. A terrible storm ensures that he must stay in the Abbey despite his being reviled by almost everyone at the party. The Darcys have long had reason to dislike him but he has caused even further grief and destruction in their family. As for the others, he had unsavory or ruinous financial or personal dealings with almost all of them so they found him no more welcome than the Darcys do. But they all endured him until the morning that Juliet Tilney stumbled over him quite dead.

Jonathan Darcy, who has been making a hash of the party, and specifically of his interactions with Juliet Tilney (he's very definitely neurodivergent), ends up teaming up with Juliet, to try and solve the murder. Their investigating has to stay within the acceptable bounds of interactions between unmarried young men and women of the time but in and amongst the eavesdropping, conjecture, and otherwise creative ways to be a part of magistrate Frank Churchill's questioning, there is also a blush of courtship. Jonathan and Juliet are the only two members of the house party who can be ruled out as suspects as each of the other characters' histories with Wickham and fibs about their movements the night of the murder start to come to light. The murder also exposes the state of the marriages of Austen's beloved characters, who did not all go off to have completely untroubled happily ever afters as it turns out. From misunderstandings to doubts, anger to shame, these marriages are not perfect and the underlying tensions complicate the search to uncover the murderer. The novel is full of secrets and misdirections and as the reader turns the pages, they wonder just who killed Wickham, changing their mind several times as the story progresses. The characters retain their personalities from Austen's stories and it is interesting to see how those personalities interact, how they sometimes judge each other by the standards of their time, and how they might possibly have been able to commit murder. One of the storylines was just a bit too anachronistic but it served its purpose in creating a reason for one of the characters to fear Wickham's presence. The mystery as a whole was a delight and the resolution was thoroughly satisfying. Wickham deserved what he got and the reader gets to enjoy this tale of Wickham's richly justified demise.

For more information about Claudia Gray and the book, check our her author site, like her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, look at the book's Goodreads page, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Laurel Ann from Austenprose and publisher Vintage Books for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past two weeks because I'm full on in a reading slump are:

The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Grey
Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton
Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan
Chivalry by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathan Scott Fuqua
Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones
The Finder by Will Ferguson

Reviews posted this week:

Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Last Noel by Michael Malone
Travels in Mauritania by Peter Hudson
Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
Fire and Ice by Rachel Spangler
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tiddas by Anita Heiss
The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler
Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead by Elle Cosimano
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin
If I Were You by Lisa Renee Jones
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
McMullen Circle by Heather Newton
Dangerous Alliance by Jennieke Cohen
Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau
Twenty-One Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks
Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
Home Repairs by Trey Ellis
Skinny Bitch in Love by Kim Barnouin
Looking for a Weegie to Love by Simon Smith
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Love and Saffron by Kim Fay
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron
Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard
Shady Hollow by Juneau Black
Four Gardens by Margery Sharp
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges
Jane of Hearts by Katharine Weber
Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton
Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan
Chivalry by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

Search by Michelle Huneven

The book is being released by Penguin Press on April 26, 2022.

The book's jacket copy says: From critically acclaimed, award-winning author Michelle Huneven, a sharp and funny novel of a congregational search committee, told as a memoir with recipes

Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Just as she’s finishing the book tour for her latest bestseller, Dana is asked to join the church search committee for a new minister. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. That memoir, Search, follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation.

Dana had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of Unitarian Universalist congregants, and their candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Ultimately, the committee faces a stark choice between two very different paths forward for the congregation. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she cares deeply about the fate of this institution and she will fight the entire committee, if necessary, to win the day for her side.

This wry and wise tale will speak to anyone who has ever gone searching, and James Beard Award–winning author Michelle Huneven’s food writing and recipes add flavor to the delightful journey.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Kew Gardens Girls at War by Posy Lovell

The book is being released by G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 19, 2022.

The book's jacket copy says: Inspired by real events, a touching novel about a new class of courageous women who worked at London’s historic Kew Gardens during World War II.

In the face of war, gardening is their duty…

When Daisy Cooper’s new husband joins the RAF to fight the Battle of Britain, she’s terrified she’s going to lose him. So when her mother Ivy suggests she join the gardeners at Kew to keep busy, Daisy’s intrigued. After all, Ivy worked at Kew during the last great war and made lifelong friends along the way.

Louisa Armitage, not ready to hang up her gardening gloves just yet, and Beth Sanderson, an aspiring doctor looking to make a difference, decide to enlist as well. When tragedy strikes, the women are forced to come together to support one other during their darkest hours. But can the Kew Gardens Girls survive the horrors of war-torn London this time?

Review: Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais

Apartheid. It's a word we here in the US have heard (if we're old enough or perhaps through history in school) but we don't actually know much about the reality of it. We know that it means systemic racism, segregation, inequality, and racial violence. It means white-minority rule enforced by brutality and limited suffrage. It means the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. It means the murder of Stephen Biko. But of the major and minor clashes and the fight for equality and representation over the almost 50 years that it was enshrined in South African politics and law, most of us know very little. Until I read Bianca Marais' Hum If You Don't Know the Words, I didn't remember anything about the 1976 Soweto Uprising, a peaceful, 20,000 strong student-led demonstration that the government suppressed by firing on school children, killing and injuring many (official accounts and the presumed actual count vary wildly). This important and horrific event forms the backbone of Marais' well written debut novel.

Nine, almost ten, year old Robin lives with her parents in a mining town outside of Johannesburg. Her life is one of privilege and whiteness and the biggest divide in her world is that between the Dutch Afrikaner children and herself. She rides her bike, schemes about how she can join the boys-only gang in the neighborhood, and plays hopscotch. In short, she's living a normal, untroubled childhood. Until the night that her parents go to an event and don't come home, leaving Robin an orphan in the care of her glamorous, single, flight attendant Aunt Edith.

Beauty Mbali is a single mother who has struggled to raise her children after her husband's death. She is a teacher in the Transkei, where she grew up a member of the Xhosa people. Beauty is strong and smart but she is not spared from the unrest of the nation even in her rural home. She receives a letter from her brother, who has taken in Beauty's 17 year old daughter Nomsa so that she can get a better education than is offered her in the rural Transkei. The letter alarms Beauty, who leaves her sons behind and illegally undertakes the arduous journey to Johannesburg to save her daughter, only to arrive in the middle of the Soweto Uprising. In the aftermath of the uprising, Nomsa, who was one of the student leaders and organizers, is missing and Beauty will do anything to find her. This is how she comes to be Robin's caretaker whenever Aunt Edith is flying elsewhere in the world. Caring for Robin gives her the papers to stay in the city and search for her daughter.

The novel alternates between Robin and Beauty narrating their own chapters. With the first person narration, the reader can see and understand the deep sorrow and fear that both Robin and Beauty feel for their respective situations. Robin's narration is often immature, just as she herself is but it also shows how she is developing opinions and beliefs, ones that are formed by the love and care of the people who surround her, all of whom are "others" of some sort, Aunt Edith's gay friends, the Jewish family in the building whose young son is her only friend, and, of course, Beauty. Her lack of understanding of the outside forces of Apartheid, her refusal to embrace the racism of the time, and her growing humanity are hopeful, shining pieces of her character. And her delightful malapropisms give the novel some much needed levity. Beauty's narration is gorgeously wrought, a mother desperate for her daughter no matter the consequences. Her own growing understanding of what drove Nomsa and her pride in that fight, even if she wished that her daughter had just put her head down and avoided such attention, was beautifully rendered. Despite the hardship and tragedy and uncertainty she has faced, Beauty remains a woman full of love, for her children, for her people, and even for orphaned little Robin.

This is a story of injustice, intolerance, and prejudice. But it's also a story of grief, love, and resilience. The violence shown towards homosexuals and Jews provides additional evidence of the bigotry and racism of the time but it might also serve to dilute the bigger issue of the world of Apartheid and the story didn't really need additional evidence. Robin's inquisitive nature makes it a guarantee that she would initially want to help Beauty find Nomsa but the caper-like events at the end were completely unrealistic and felt a little like Harriet the Spy with far bigger stakes. Over all though, this was a wonderful read, one that sucked me in and kept me turning the pages and if it was a little hard to suspend disbelief at the end, what came before made it forgivable.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past two weeks because I'm full on in a reading slump are:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges
Jane of Hearts by Katharine Weber

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathan Scott Fuqua

Reviews posted this week:

Bleaker House by Nell Stevens

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Last Noel by Michael Malone
Travels in Mauritania by Peter Hudson
Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
Fire and Ice by Rachel Spangler
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tiddas by Anita Heiss
The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler
Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead by Elle Cosimano
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin
If I Were You by Lisa Renee Jones
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
McMullen Circle by Heather Newton
Dangerous Alliance by Jennieke Cohen
Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau
Twenty-One Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks
Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
Home Repairs by Trey Ellis
Skinny Bitch in Love by Kim Barnouin
Looking for a Weegie to Love by Simon Smith
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Love and Saffron by Kim Fay
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron
Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard
Shady Hollow by Juneau Black
Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais
Four Gardens by Margery Sharp
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges
Jane of Hearts by Katharine Weber

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Birds of California by Katie Cotugno came from Harper Perennial.

Two former child actors, one who dropped out of Hollywood and one who is desperate to revitalize his career, reunite for a potential revival of the show that made them stars in the first place in this rom com. Sounds delicious, right?

The World According to Color by James Fox came from St. Martin's Press.

Color fascinates me so this book about the role it plays in our world should be so very interesting.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: Bleaker House by Nell Stevens

If you could go anywhere in the world for three months on a fully paid internship in order to write a book, where would you go? Some people would choose to go somewhere glamorous and bustling, living and experiencing the people and place they landed in. Nell Stevens, on the other hand, chose to go to the remote and isolated Faulkland Islands, and specifically to Bleaker Island, in the middle of winter in hopes that the emptiness she'd find there would give her nothing to do but to write and finish a novel. This book is not that novel; it is instead a documenting, a recounting of Stevens' failure to write a novel.

When Nell Stevens finishes her MFA at Boston University, she has the chance to go anywhere in the world for three months and write. Other class members choose vibrant locations like Paris but Stevens thinks that she needs to go somewhere there won't be any distractions from her purpose, choosing Bleaker Island in the Faulklands, in part because of its name (she loves Dickens' Bleak House). She is sure the extreme isolation will focus her and she will come away from her time at the end of the world with the novel she so dearly wants to write. But it turns out that loneliness, gnawing hunger, tramping in a stark, unpeopled landscape, and bone chilling cold are not the best of muses. When she chose Bleaker Island, she researched it just enough to know how to get there and to have accomodation once there but not enough to know that she could have had food deliveries rather than relying on whatever she could pack in her strictly limited by weight suitcase. She was under prepared both physically and emotionally for where she'd landed herself.

This book is not for the reader who wants something, anything to happen in their reading. It is a slow, contemplative look at not writing a novel, an examination into the writing process, and an inconclusive investigation into why she failed at the task she'd set for herself. There is some beautiful nature writing in here and Stevens evokes the desolation, the cold, and the emptiness and immensity of the winter landscape quite well. And no one who reads about her restricted diet and the gift of a perfect, untouched potato will forget that potato for quite a while. Weaving her experiences in the Faulklands with snippets of her unfinished novel, short pieces from her MFA days, and brief forays into her life before Boston, this is not a novel, not quite a memoir, nor is it nature writing. It is a strange, uncategorizable amalgam of all three. Her fiction lacks the seemingly effortlessness of that of her lived experience and often comes across as filler because of the lack of other happenings to write about. Although she doesn't manage to write her novel, her time on Bleaker could still be considered a win of sorts. She did get a book from it, this book, even if it's not the one she set out to write.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon

The book is being released by Atria on April 12, 2022.

The book's jacket copy says: The self-appointed mayor of a tiny Italian village is determined to save his hometown no matter the cost in this charming, hilarious, and heartwarming debut novel.

Vacuum repairman and self-appointed mayor of Prometto, Italy (population 212) Signor Speranza has a problem: unless he can come up with 70,000 euros to fix the town’s pipes, the water commission will shut off the water to the village and all its residents will be forced to disperse. So in a bid to boost tourism—and revenue—he spreads a harmless rumor that movie star Dante Rinaldi will be filming his next project nearby.

Unfortunately, the plan works a little too well, and soon everyone in town wants to be a part of the fictional film—the village butcher will throw in some money if Speranza can find roles for his fifteen enormous sons, Speranza’s wistfully adrift daughter reveals an unexpected interest in stage makeup, and his hapless assistant Smilzo volunteers a screenplay that’s not so secretly based on his undying love for the film’s leading lady. To his surprise—and considerable consternation, Speranza realizes that the only way to keep up the ruse is to make the movie for real.

As the entire town becomes involved (even the village priest invests!) Signor Speranza starts to think he might be able to pull this off. But what happens when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t show up? Or worse, what if he does?

A “hilariously funny and beautifully written” (Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Better Luck Next Time) novel about the power of community, The Patron Saint of Second Chances is perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Maria Semple.