Review: Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Robots are having a moment, especially with the rapidly evolving AI tech happening right now. What is our world going to look like with this amazing and potentially troubling technology in ten years, twenty, more? Well, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer dows not answer this question, nor does it really even try, despite being poised to do so.

Doug has designed and paid for his "Cuddle Bunny" robot, Annie. She is modeled after his ex-wife, just whiter and bustier (and ostensibly more compliant). Her purpose is to please her master in all ways. She is to satisfy him sexually, keep his house, and follow his orders. In order for her to intuit his desires, she is programmed to be autodidactic, learning his reactions, needs, and wants. This keeps her in a pereptual state of varying anxiety as she strives to be exactly what he wants at all times. As she learns for his pleasure, she does start to acquire her own human-like desire to act for herself, which is in direct contravention of Doug's desires. Obviously this removes the novel from the realm of AI and robotics to the thornier issues of female automony and self-determination. Unfortunately neither issue is really handled in depth here.

The world of the novel is essentially our world so there's no impact of sentient robots other than as sexual toys. Annie herself is so human-like as to be pretty indistinguishable from an abused wife to a controlling husband. Yes, she does need to be plugged into an outlet to recharge and her back unzips for maintenance but that's it. This, coupled with her somehow legitimate emotional range and increasing ability to think for herself (despite programming tweaks), makes her a superficial symbol of a world that does not value women for more than sex and housework. Owner Doug is controlling, abusive, and nasty while Annie is naive and sympathetic. Doug's punishments for Annie are devious and horrible but serve the plot. What doesn't serve the plot are the inconsistencies in what Annie can and cannot do based on a free will that only appears periodically. There were many uncomfortable sex scenes dominating the first half of the book, which did cement the misogny here but really didn't continue to add to the story beyond that. And the second half's about face into therapy and a carefully controlled freedom for Annie feels incongruous given what went before. Even if Greer didn't want to fully examine robots and AI's impact on society, she had the germ of a great novel investigating the objectification of women, desire, unequal power dynamics, freedom, and identity; too bad she didn't flesh it out. In the end, I was grateful the novel was short because it dragged much more than it should have given the topics at hand.

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.

Libby Lost and Found by
Stephanie Booth.
The book is being released by Sourcebooks Landmark on October 15, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love. It's about the stories we tell ourselves and the chapters of our lives we regret. Most importantly, it's about the endings we write for ourselves.

Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-best-selling fantasy series, The Falling Children--written as "F.T. Goldhero" to maintain her privacy. When the last manuscript is already months overdue to her publisher and rabid fans around the world are growing impatient, Libby is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Already suffering from crippling anxiety, Libby's symptoms quickly accelerate. After she forgets her dog at the park one day--then almost discloses her identity to the journalist who finds him--Libby has to admit it: she needs help finishing the last book.

Desperately, she turns to eleven-year-old superfan Peanut Bixton, who knows the books even better than she does but harbors her own dark secrets. Tensions mount as Libby's dementia deepens--until both Peanut and Libby swirl into an inevitable but bone-shocking conclusion.

Review: The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring

Every person you meet is living a life that is simultaneously public and private. We see the surface of people but can't see into their hearts and minds unless they let us in. This is true in big cities and small towns alike. People are people everywhere. Shannon Bowring shows us this in her devastating, heartbreaking, and yet somehow hopeful, debut novel The Road to Dalton.

Set in 1990 small town Dalton, Maine, this is the story of a handful of people in the town whose lives are intertwined in so many ways and whose actions, big and small, impact each other and the town as a whole. There's Richard, the town's dependable only doctor who has never loved his job but who holds so many of the town's secrets, Trudy, his wife, the town librarian who is best friends and more (a fact conveniently ignored by Richard) with Bev. Bev is married to Bill, who might or might not know about Bev and Trudy. They have one son, Nate, who is married to his high school sweetheart Bridget, who is suffering quietly from severe post-partum depression after giving birth to their daughter earlier than expected. There's Rose, a waitress at the local diner, who is being abused by the deadbeat father of her two boys, and there's Greg, a young teenager who is confused by his feelings about himself and his closest friends. These struggling people are all a part of the tapestry of the town; some are fraying and ome are pulled too tightly but all are important to the overall story.

Although there is a major event that effects all of the characters lives, this is a character study with an ensemble cast. Even before the major event, so many of the characters stand at a crossroads in their lives, facing huge decisions and changes that will change everything for them. Each of them are shaped by very personnal and interior secrets they all keep to themselves quietly. Bowring writes her characters skillfully, showing the push and pull of community, empathizing with the heavy and hard things that they are facing: post partum depression, suicidal ideation, domestic abuse, marital problems, job/life dissatisfaction/apathy, homophobia, and more. So many of these characters cannot live their lives openly, with joy and fulfillment and yet there is still hopefulness in the end, quite a feat for any writer but certainly one for a debut author. Readers who like quiet, complex novels and don't mind slower pacing will find much to enjoy here.

Review: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Although dystopian novels arent usually something I seek out, author Leif Enger writes so beautifully that I was eager to see how he handled such a topic. His newest novel, I Cheerfully Refuse, is not just a dystopian novel but an odyssey for our time.

In a world ruled by the wealthiest, subject to devastating weather events, and populated by small outposts of people living hard scrabble lives, Rainy (short for Ranier), a musician and odd jobber, and his beloved wife Lark, a bookseller, live mostly contented lives. They are good, resourceful people, liked by their community, and still capable of occasional dreams. When Lark brings home a refugee named Kellan who is being pursued by dark forces, Rainy looks the other way, especially since Kellan gives Lark a copy of I Cheerfully Refuse, the sole and rare novel she has yet to read by an author named Molly Thorn, who has played a large part in Rainy and Lark's life. But Kellan's presence and then absence brings Rainy into the crosshairs of those in charge of this terrible, not too future world, forcing him to flee on a small sailboat named Flower, into the uncertain, warming waters of Lake Superior searching for Lark.

As Rainy sails around, he encounters the remnants of civilization with people who are desperate, evil, rebellious, con artists, beaten down, and occasionally good and kind. He also rescues a young girl named Sol along his way and the two of them form an awkward sort of partnership as time goes on. They are battered by catastrophic weather events, faced with direct evidence of the great inequality of their society, and presented with true evil on their long and meandering odyssey.

Enger does a masterful job protraying the menace of a society that is crumbling, one that is governed by the amoral and the uncaring, that sees its people as dispensable and disposable. His characters are complete and worthy guides to his story. The setting of the novel, on the shores and waters of Lake Superior, is absolutely integral to the novel. And Enger has found an effective and disturbing way to highlight the impact of climate change on the world of the novel (and our own if we don't change course quickly!): Lake Superior, which famously does not give up her dead, is in fact, giving them up in this novel as the drowned of past decades and centuries bob to the surface in a regular, macabre display. It's not a comfortable story but it's not as bleak as it can sometimes seem either. Enger's writing is beautiful, easing the reader through the story, towards an earned and yet unknowable end. The novel is both grim and hopeful, centering oppression and the destruction of our planet and our society, but also celebrating love and chosen family. The novel can be a tad confusing at times but then the possible end of times would be, wouldn't it?

Review: This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

Dystopian fantasy/sci fi is not my general reading preference but Mateo Askaripour's novel This Great Hemisphere sounded interesting. At least it did until I discovered that it felt like nothing so much as a mix of The Hunger Games and our own current racist world.

Opening in 2028 with a young black woman who faces terrible racism before she gives birth to the world's first invisible baby, the novel then moves 500 years into the future where society is bifurcated between the Dominant Population (DPs) and the second class Invisibles. Institutionally, the entire Northwestern Hemisphere (ostensibly including the former US) discriminates against the Invisibles, shunting them off to live away from the DPs, employing them in low level and menial tasks, providing them with addictive and life and energy restricting fast foods, rounding them up for tracking annually, etc.

Sweetmint, a young Invisible woman who goes by Candace in the greater DP world, is determined to rise beyond expectations and use her incredible intellect not only to help herself, but help the people she loves and lives with. She has, against all odds, earned an internship with the hemisphere's great inventor, giving her a glimpse into a world she's only dreamed of. But when the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere is assassinated and the murder is pinned on Sweetmint's older brother Shanu, who has been missing and presumed dead for the past three years, she sets out on a quest to find him before the police and politicians do, jeopardizing everything she's earned so far. At the very least, she must find Shanu before one politician in particular, bloodthirsty and ruthless, does. Her search ultimately makes her question the truth as she knows it and question the people she thought she knew.

The world building here is rather uneven. There are pieces that are incredibly detailed, like the rumoyas (scents) that the Invisibles use to recognize each other, the elaborate ways instituted so that DPs can "see" Invisibles, and the mandated annual registration. There are other pieces that are vague or incomplete, like the reader is missing steps in a formula. On the whole though, the world of the novel is not appreciably different than our own. The parallels are obvious and unsubtle. Sweetmint's discovery of a resistance movement is a bit haphazard and comes out of nowhere, and the ending to the novel is incredibly rushed. The novel feels like it's trying to be a future novel but instead it comes across, in most ways, as one firmly grounded in our own present. There are aspects that could have been interesting if they had been more developed but over all, it was disappointing, derivative, and obvious. Hunger Games fans looking for a read-a-like might enjoy this but I didn't.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book for review.

Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

After reading Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, there was never any doubt that I'd read whatever Verghese wrote in the future. The compelling novel, The Covenant of Water, while slightly daunting in size, is an engrossing, transportative epic spanning three generations and seven decades Kerala, India and serves to cement Verghese as one of our most talented writers working today.

A twelve year girl grieving the death of father and a forty year old widower with a young son, both Malayali Christians, marry as the novel opens in 1900. This marriage establishes the family that we follow throughout the next 77 years. The girl, eventually known as Big Ammachi, lives a life filled with sorrow and tragedy (the family she's married into appears cursed, at least one member dying by drowning in each generation) but also one of expansive love. In parallel to the story of Big Ammachi and her family, is the story of a Scottish doctor named Digby Kilgour who comes to British India to work for the Indian Medical Service. How the two seemingly disparate plot lines come together is quite intricate and well done.

Because of the long time frame of the novel, Verghese has the chance to see his characters through enormous changes politically and socially, from the British Raj to an India that stands on its own. Some of these historical events have larger impacts on Big Ammachi's family than others do but all are woven seamlessly into the domestic story at the heart of the novel. The scope of the story is both broad and narrow, resulting in a colorful and diverse tapestry of a novel. There are some side plots that are more interesting than others (likely fully dependent on the reader) and some are more well developed than others but each has certainly earned its place in this wide-ranging, personal novel. Readers looking for an immersive experience filled with love and grief, tradition and novelty, colonialism and self-determination, and all of the history and variety that has forever characterized India will thrill to this impressive reading experience.

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.

Interpretations of Love by
Jane Campbell.
The book is being released by Grove Press on August 20, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: During the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's daughter's wedding, each of the eleven attendees in the small family gathering brings their own simmering tensions. Agnes's uncle, Professor Malcolm Miller, has harbored a family secret since Agnes's parents died in a car crash when she was a young girl. Dr. Joseph Bradshaw, who married into the family, has nursed a private obsession with Agnes since his brief stint as her therapist. Agnes herself is returning to her ex-husband's home for the first time, just as she's trying to extricate herself from a potent new love affair. Each one of these three has the tools to analyze the love lives of others, yet find themselves challenged to recognize the love in their own lives. As they all emerge from painful years in emotional isolation, Malcolm considers where better to lay bare the failures and secrets of one's advancing age than at an intimate celebration of love?

In this incisive and lively novel, Campbell parses the inner lives of ordinary people doing their best to process aftershocks of war, the parenting they do and don't receive, and the many different forms love can take in one family.

Review: The Life O'Reilly by Brian Cohen

When someone has the "life of Riley," they are said to have a comfortable, stress-free, and completely enjoyable life. It's not a stretch to be jealous of someone like that. Then again, how does one actually know that their life is so enviable behind the scenes? Brian Cohen's novel, The Life O'Reilly, shows that things are not always as they seem and that we should grab onto the only life we've been given while we still can.

Nick O'Reilly works for a high-powered Wall Street law firm and is very good at his job. He might have to defend crooks and liars but that's given him a Central Park apartment and the financial security that his parents never had. The only thing missing is a personal life. When his law firm gets some bad press, they elect him to do some pro bono work to rehabilitate their image. In representing Dawn Nelson, a victim of domestic violence fighting for sole custody of her young son, Nick gets a different view of life from the one he's been living and he starts to reevaluate what he wants in his own life and future. But the course of life does not always go smoothly.

The novel is told in the first person by Nick, making it rather odd when he describes his own expressions and actions: "I offered not a word, but a close-mouthed smile" and "I sighed heavily with agitation..." The writing is distractingly and overly descriptive and the language choices are often off, such as when describing a beautiful bride as having a "florid complexion." The story line is fine, a little predictable, but fine. All of the conflicts in the story are pretty easily dispensed with and the nuance of real life is missing. Cohen saves his elaboration for the set dressing (rooms, character descriptions, etc.) instead of for the pieces that move the plot forward, a technique better suited to movie or tv writing than in a novel. This, and the odd language, coupled with insta-love and what felt like an unearned, emotionally manipulative ending meant this book did not really work for me.

Review: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

If you haven't been living under a rock the past few years, and you have any connection to or interest in the publishing world, you will have watched a major controversy erupt over the question of identity, who is allowed to write which stories, and the marginalizing of writers of color. R. F. Kuang's complex and well-written novel Yellowface examines authors, publishing, and these very timely controversies.

June Hayward is a struggling writer. She went to Yale with current literary darling Athena Liu, with whom she's always had a complicated relationship. Are they friends or enemies? Whatever they are, June is with Athena at her apartment when Athena dies in an accident. And then June, whether in shock or in a calculated move, steals the only extant copy of Athena's recently finished manuscript about the neglected contributions of Chinese labourers on the WWI front, rationalizing that she will edit the rough manuscript to make it publishable. Only she rewrites so much in the editing process that she ultimately submits the manuscript to her agent as her own work. The book, which goes on to be a runaway bestseller, is published under the name Juniper Song (which is actually June's name: Juniper Song Hayward) with a racially ambiguous author photo. June is not, however, of Chinese descent, which raises the question of who gets to tell certain stories and highlights the lie of marketing. As the furor over June's identity escalates, she is also working hard to conceal the fact that the novel itself was Athena's and that she stole it.

June narrates the novel, making bad choice after bad choice, arguing that she herself would have found great success as a writer (her one book was published with a whimper) if she was not white. She is a complicated and eminently unlikable character with her wrong ideas and her grasping to hold onto the fame she has found, by any means necessary. She is not the only unlikable character here though. All of the characters are spiky and flawed, as is publishing itself. The industry is the subject of wicked, pointed satire, showcasing its penchant for choosing a single literary darling to be the voice of all people of a certain race. The dramatic narrative tension, as June scrambles to try and stay ahead of the rising backlash and finds herself terrorized by the perfect anonymity and hate of social media, is very well done.

This is very much a novel of our time, one of secrets, cultural appropriation and identity politics, racism, and diversity in publishing. That Kuang has made a novel with no likable characters so very readable is masterful. And let's not forget the delicious irony of an Asian American writer writing a novel centering a white author pretending to be an Asian American author. Layers upon layers upon layers.

Review: The Great British Bump Off by John Allison, Max Sarin, Sammy Borras, and Jim Campbell

I don't really watch television. And I don't really read graphic novels. Somehow I still thought it would be fun to read a graphic novel send-up of The Great British Bake Off where one of the contestants is poisoned. I do suspect that fans of the show who regularly read graphic novels will find this entertaining. I think I missed too much of what I imagine to be good natured satire because I don't have the background to catch it and I found the plot line without that background knowledge to be very thin.

Shauna Wickle is a contestant on the newest season of UK Bakery Tent. She's young and enthusiastic and quirky. When the story opens, Shauna is meeting and befriending two other contestants, an older grandmotherly white woman and a cool, gay man of color. The three new friends then witness a confrontation in the test kitchen. Neal, the classically handsome and impossibly insufferable contestant, clashes with the other bakers over the right to be in the test kitchen. When Shauna and her friends return to the tent later to try and befriend Neal, they discover him face down in a bowl of battered, poisoned. Rather than cancel the show, the producers allow Shauna to take over investigating who the poisoner is as the contest continues to play out.

Shauna is a completely bumbling investigator and is so distracted by trying to decide which of her fellow contestants is a poisoner that she performs terribly on each baking challenge. The trails she follows as she suspects several of her fellow bakers are thin at best and abruptly discarded without any evidence other than her deciding without cause that they are deadends. The characters here are all pretty intentionally cliched, which probably allows readers who are fans of GBBO a nice feeling of being in on the joke. One of the judges is the famous tv cook, the late Fanny Cradock who is a characature portrayed as rude, condescending, and as fearsome as the real critic was based on her very public late career downfall. This is probably the only joke that I, as a non-GBBO watcher, got. For some reason, there is a talking cat who is one of the co-hosts of the fictional show, a strange touch of magical whimsy in an otherwise goofy but straightforward whodunit. Sarin's artwork is exaggerated and over the top, with an almost anime feel to it, which is well done, playing into the cliches written by Allison.

Apparently this is the first in a series but it missed the mark for me so I won't be continuing with it. I am, however, sending it to a friend who is a huge GBBO fan and will be curious to hear her take on it.

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 Break-Up Pact by
Emma Lord.
The book is being released by St. Martins Griffin on August 13, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Two best friends who haven't spoken in ten years pretend to date after break-ups with their respective exes go viral, in this delightfully fun and deeply emotional novel from New York Times bestselling author Emma Lord.

June and Levi were best friends as teenagers--until the day they weren't. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they've barely spoken in years.

But after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own--a photo of them together has the internet convinced they're a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June's shop get back on its feet and make Levi's ex realize that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they're in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.

Two viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn't come with real feelings. Right?

Review: The Excitements by CJ Wray

I have discovered that I really enjoy books about feisty older people, especially older women. I don't know if it's because I myself am getting older or if there's some less obvious reason, but I do delight in the way that women who are looked over, underestimated, and treated as harmless manage to be expansive and wickedly intelligent and, by the end of their novels, the undisputed heros of their worlds. In short, they are just being the same women they were when they were younger, only sporting wrinkles and grey hair now. Getting old doesn't mean turning into a sweet old lady, not in books, and not in real life either. The two nonagenarian main characters in CJ Wray's delightful novel, The Excitements, prove that in spades.

Penny and Josephine Williamson are in their nineties. The sisters served their country during WWII and are about to go to Paris with their much beloved great-nephew Archie to be awarded the Legion d'honneur for their wartime efforts. This trip is not just a trip to France for any of the three as all of them have other connections to and memories of Paris that make the trip a fraught one.

The narrative swings back and forth from Penny and Josephine's time in the FANYs (Penny) and WRENS (Josephine) during the war, the post-war years, and the present. The story centers on the women but great-nephew Archie's past and how he came to be so connected to his aunts is also covered. Archie adores Penny and Josephine, devising "excitements" to keep their days entertaining, worrying about perceived cognitive declines, exasperated by the trouble that seems to follow the sweet, little old ladies, and dreading the day that these much loved women won't be there anymore. The aunts took Archie under their wings when he was young and have doted on him forever. But that doesn't mean that they have told him their many secrets. He has no idea what their wartime service included, no ideas about their most important loves and losses, and not a full picture of their current day activities either. All three characters are charming and as each of their backstories unfold, the various plot threads thicken deliciously and havoc ensues.

The novel starts off as pure entertainment but turns out to be filled with joy and great sorrow, touching on heavier topics than the reader might suspect. Despite that, it still maintains a madcap, caper-like feel. There's a supporting cast of irrascible elderly women veterans, shenanigans, love lost, DNA testing, social justice, the mores of the war years, especially as applied to women, and the occasional shoplifting and jewel theivery. The ending is a bit chaotic but fun, as is the spirit of the book as a whole. Reading about the Williamson sisters and their adventures is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

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 Divorce by
Moa Herngren.
The book is being released by Harper Via on August 6, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: There are two sides to every story . . .

Bea couldn't be more excited to trade the stifling Stockholm summer heat for vacation on Gotland Island. She’s looking forward to spending quality time with her beloved husband of thirty-two years, Niklas, and their two moody teenage daughters, and recuperating from the stress of daily life in the company of her beloved in-laws. One night shortly before their departure, Bea and Niklas have a seemingly mundane argument over a trivial issue, and Niklas goes out with a friend to blow off steam. As the hours pass, Niklas doesn’t come home, and Bea’s irritation soon gives way to panic as she imagines what kind of disaster might have happened to delay his return.

What she soon learns will change her life forever: while her husband is fine, their marriage is not. Her kind, gentle pediatrician husband wants to leave her. But while this might seem like sudden insanity to Bea, for Niklas, it’s anything but…

Written with the warmth and empathy that have made her insightful, page-turning family novels bestsellers in her native Sweden, Moa Herngren raises thoughtful questions about why relationships fall apart: Is the person who leaves always the bad guy? What emerges once you begin scratching the surface of what seems like a clear-cut situation? Told from dual perspectives, The Divorce is a gripping domestic drama that deftly explores the complexities of modern marriage.

Translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies

Review: The Hedgerow by Anne Leigh Parrish

Anne Leigh Parrish showed readers the losses women suffered when men came back from WWII and resumed their lives in society in her novel, an open door (lower case intentional). Now she's back with a sequel, The Hedgerow, named for the poetry press her heroine Edith wants to open in conjunction with her bookstore.

It's 1949 in Cambridge, MA. Edith may have escaped her unsatisfying and soul-sucking marriage to Walter but she cannot escape society's expectations for women quite so easily. Having moved into her wealthy British peer friend Henry's spacious apartment, she drifts into an affair with him and then subsequently into an engagement she's not sure she wants simply out of obligation and gratitude to him for his support during her separation and divorce. What she really wants is to devote herself to her bookstore and the fledgling poetry press she is launching but Henry's neediness continues to overwhelm her as she falls back into the habit of putting her own wants and needs second until things come to light that change her trajectory.

Edith inches her way to living the life she wants but it really is slow and incremental inching. Her character feels more lethargic and trapped than she was in the first book, trapped by society's expectations, Henry's money and the ease it brings to life, and by the surprising weight of the past, both her own and Henry's. She seems to have (and accept) an inability to feel deeply and passionately about anyone, even telling both Henry and his mother that she doesn't love him despite agreeing to marry him. There is a real feeling of lassitude arching over the story as a whole and Edith rarely breaks out of her entrenched ambivalence, finding a well of determination and courage only when she chooses to publish a poet whose work she knows will be controversial and potentially censored. Like in an open door, the tone of the novel is quiet as it examines the idea of duty and what roles are available to women. And also like an open door, the novel ends with Edith facing bigger, more surprising concerns that could force her to reevaluate her chosen path once again. I felt like this sequel was a little more plodding than the first novel and I'm a bit ambivalent myself about whether I'd follow Edith any further although I continue to think Parrish is an exceptional writer.

Thank you to the publisher and author for a copy of this book to review.

Review: Clear by Carys Davies

I fell in love with Carys Davies' writing when I read her short story collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, many years ago and I'd always meant to read more of her work but somehow never did until now. Her newest novel, Clear, is impressive, quiet, and an almost indescribable work of beauty.

John Ferguson is a Presbyterian minister who has chosen, with many others, to break away from his church and to protest the practice of wealthy landowners having the power to appoint ministers. His rebellion against the established church leaves him and his wife, Mary, destitute though, so in an effort to earn a small amount of money, John agrees to take on the task of evicting the sole tenant left on a remote Scottish island in the waning years of the Scottish Clearances. But this is not the uncomplicated and easy assignment that the devout John envisions and his life will never be the same.

Opening with John sighting the forbidding island and lamenting his lack of swimming ability, it is clear that what he is facing will challenge and test him. Once he has landed on the island, he takes up residence in the old Baillie house and starts to explore his surroundings before trying to make contact with Ivar, the only remaining inhabitant of the island, and the man he is there to evict. When John meets with an accident and Ivar rescues him, the two men cannot communicate, each speaking a language very far removed from the other. Each man keeps secrets from the other even as John starts to learn Ivar's language and ultimately those secrets will change everything.

All three major characters, John, Ivar, and John's wife Mary, come into focus as the narrative moves back and forth amongst them, telling their histories as well as the history of the Clearances and of the rift in the Presbyterian Church. Davies is a spare writer, evoking much in few words. As the reader would expect on a remote and forbidding island, landscape and nature dominates in this haunting work. The characters drive the story along as they mirror the bleakness of the world around them. This is a spectacular, quiet novel of loneliness, connection, love, and the importance of shared language; a novel to be savored.

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.

Off the Books by
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier.
The book is being released by Henry Holt and Co. on July 30, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: A captivating debut following a cross-country road trip that will make you believe in the goodness of people, Off the Books sheds light on the power in humanity during the most troubled of times.

Recent Dartmouth dropout Mei, in search of a new direction in life, drives a limo to make ends meet. Her grandfather convinces her to allow her customers to pay under the table, and before she knows it, she is working as a routine chauffeur for sex workers. Mei does her best to mind her own business, but her knack for discretion soon leads her on a life changing trip from San Francisco to Syracuse with a new client.

Handsome and reserved, Henry piques Mei's interest. Toting an enormous black suitcase with him everywhere he goes, he's more concerned with taking frequent breaks than making good time on the road. When Mei discovers Henry's secret, she does away with her usual close-lipped demeanor and decides she has no choice but to confront him. What Henry reveals rocks her to her core and shifts this once casual, transactional road trip to one of moral stakes and dangerous consequences.

An original take on the great American road trip, Off the Books is a beautifully crafted coming of age story that showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the power of doing the right thing. The spirit of Frazier's characters will stay with readers long after they have arrived at their destination.

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 Faculty Lounge by
Jennifer Mathieu.
The book is being released by Dutton on July 23, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: By the acclaimed author of Moxie, a funny, bighearted adult debut that is at once an ode to educators, a timely glimpse at today's pressing school issues, and a tender character study, following a sprawling cast of teachers, administrators, and staff at a Texas high school

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows readers a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal--it's not like it's the worst (or even most interesting) thing that has happened within the building's walls. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

In the midst of the ensuing hysteria and threats of disciplinary action, the novel peeks into the lives of the implicated adults who, it turns out, actually have first names and continue to exist when the school day is done. We meet: a former punk band front man, now a middle-aged principal who must battle it out with the schoolboard to keep his job; a no-nonsense school nurse willing to break the rules, despite the close watch on their campus, when a student arrives at her office with a dilemma; and a disgruntled English instructor who finds himself embroiled in even more controversy when he misfires a snarky email. Oh, and there's also a teacher make-out session in a supply closet during a lockdown.

As these people continue to manage the messiness of this school year, there is the looming threat of what will become of their beloved Baldwin High. Ultimately, at the heart of this unconventional workplace novel is a story of the power of human connection and of the joy of finding purpose in what it is we do every day.

Review: Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal

Interconnected short stories are my favorite way to read short stories and as a lady of a certain age who would like to lunch (sometimes, if I'm feeling social enough), how could I resist this collection by Lore Segal?

Ruth, Bridget, Farrah, Lotte, Bessie are Manhattanites in their eighties and nineties. They've been friends for decades, lunching together as they share their lives' trajectories. The stories tell of their current situations, including the move to assisted living of one of their number, aging, loss, COVID, frustration with aging children, and more but also of their long history together, the ups and downs of longstanding friendships, and the perspective and wisdom that comes from a long life. There are a few stories that may or may not be connected to the bulk of the other stories but they too tackle the transitions of life.

The stories are both bittersweet and filled with life, even if the acknowledgement that life is much shorter at the ladies' end is never far away. There is humor and sadness here but what these stories capture is the beautiful mundanity of life, the value and support of friendship, and importance of living every day. Segal's characters live forward; they look back but they always move onward. The stories are not all equally interesting and some can feel a little muddled at times. The elderly main characters are unique and unusual in literature. Over all, this was a strong and readable collection centered on an underrepresented demographic.

Review: The Curious Secrets of Yesterday by Namrata Patel

We've all felt the weight of expectations. Some expectations are heavier than others. Some are very small things while others affect your whole life and its trajectory. Some people rise to meet expectations. Some revolt against them. And some chafe against them quietly, wondering how to live life on their own terms no matter what the expectations on them are. This latter group of people includes the main character of Namrata Patel's newest novel, The Curious Secrets of Yesterday.

Tulsi Gupta is in her thirties. She lives with her mother and grandmother in Salem, Massachusetts. The Gupta women run a spice shop and practice Ayurvedic healing, tracing their family lineage back to the Vedic Hindu Goddess of Earth, Dharti. Tulsi's grandmother Aruna started the shop and her mother, Devi, has taken over most of the running of it. Both older women are waiting for Tulsi to take her final test as a spice healer and assume her rightful place, taking over from her mother. The problem is that Tulsi doesn't want to be a spice healer. She wants no part of this family tradition and has no idea how to tell her mother and grandmother the truth: that she feels stuck and wants out, out of the store and out of Salem. So instead of admitting these feelings, Tulsi maintains the status quo, quietly unhappy. But change comes to people's lives whether they seek it out or not and change is barreling down on Tulsi. She uncovers evidence of a major family secret, the new cafe next door has a very attractive chef/owner, and an anonymously run social media account first catapults the Gupta's store into the spotlight and then notoriety. All of these things pile up, forcing Tulsi, Devi, and Aruna into some hard reckonings.

The cover of this book suggests to the reader that this is going to be a lighthearted story, and in many ways it is, but it also tackles some difficult topics like abandonment, lies, and devastating family secrets. Tulsi, as a character, struggles to find herself because of her instinct to be a caretaker and a mediator, to defend her mother and grandmother, even when their choices are indefensible and have caused her pain or to miss out on things in her life. It is painful to watch Tulsi stifle her own needs and wants for so long and the constant repetition of her unhappiness with the expectations placed on her in the first part of the book does wear thin. (I'm obviously not as patient and understanding as Tulsi.) The beginning of the story also contains many explanations of Ayurvedic healing, perhaps trying to make the concept more accessible to an unfamiliar audience but it felt much more than necessary and slowed the pace of the story down. As the story progressed, this became less of an issue though as it focused more on the characters and the plot. The romance subplot stays fairly lowkey centering Tulsi finding herself as the focus of the story so don't go into this thinking it is a romance. It's not. There might be a touch too many plot threads here: a family curse dooming the Gupta women to single motherhood, Ayurvedic healing and the role of spices in it, complex family dynamics, a budding romance, the mystery of Tulsi's father, the mystery of grandmother Aruna's rift with a former friend, the rewards and perils of social media, and a coming of age to name a few. The novel needed to either focus tighter, eliminating some of these, or go into more depth to make them all equally relevant to the story. Even with the busy-ness of the plot though, ultimately this was a warm and pleasing novel that makes for a different and generally likable, happily ever after summer read.

Thanks to Amazon for sending me this book to review.

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.

What Would Jane Austen Do by
Linda Corbett.
The book is being released by One More Chapter on June 18, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: When Maddy Shaw is told her Dear Jane column has been cancelled she has no choice but to look outside of London’s rental market. That is until she’s left an idyllic country home by the black sheep of the family, long-not-so-lost Cousin Nigel.

But of course there’s a stipulation… and not only is Maddy made chair of the committee for the annual village literary festival, she also has to put up with bestselling crime author –and romance sceptic – Cameron Massey as her new neighbour.

When Maddy challenges Cameron to write romantic fiction, which he claims is so easy to do, sparks fly both on and off the page…

Review: Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall

We see women's rights debated daily in the news. (How has this even become a debate?) We see people working hard to remove rights from fully half of the population, in accordance with nothing so much as their paternalistic ideas of what is right for everyone. (It goes without saying that they are incorrect on every front on which they might argue.) Any decision about pregnancy, abortion, adoption, or fertility treatments should be made by the woman whose body is the one in question. I trust her to make the best decision for herself and her future life. Anyone who doesn't should examine why not a little (a lot) closer. As we step backwards, closer to a time when women were not allowed to choose for themselves, a time that feels awfully, terribly like the present right about now, there will be more and more stories, fiction and non, reminding us of what we risk when we lose personal choice. Heather Marshall's novel Looking for Jane is one of these. It's a triple stranded narrative set in Canada in 2017, 1971, and 1980, about secrets, choices, women's bodily autonomy, and the brave network of women determined to ensure the government treated women as fully adult human beings capable of making their own decisions about their health and lives.

Angela Creighton, who manages an antiques and used bookstore, finds an unopened letter which was misdelivered to the shop almost 10 years prior. After reading the life-changing message inside it, she decides to find the intended recipient, partly as a way to distract her from the fertility problems she and her wife are currently experiencing. As Angela searches for the letter's addressee, she learns about the Jane Network, an underground network of women, including abortion providers, who offered safe procedures for women before abortion was legalized in Canada in 1988.

In addition to the search for the intended recipient of the letter, two other stories weave through the narrative as well. The first follows Dr. Evelyn Taylor, who, as a teenager, was sent to a Catholic maternity home for unwed mothers and forced to give up her baby. Having never recovered from the trauma of this, she trained as an ob/gyn and joins the Jane Network in order to offer other women more choice than she was ever given. The second is that of Nancy Mitchell, a woman raised in a family crippled by silence and secrets. When she finds herself pregnant two decades after Dr. Taylor's experiences, her choices are still very limited but she finds the Jane Network and Dr. Taylor. She joins the Janes herself to help the women who find themselves in the same situation she herself was in, always keeping her involvement a secret, even from those she loves the most.

The stories of these three women come together in ways that are perhaps not very surprising (except in one case) but Marshall's story of life for women without unfettered access to health care is increasingly important as our sovereignty over ourselves and our reproductive care is slashed, hacked, eroded and legislated against by a faux moralistic minority. Although the Jane Network and abortion are a significant piece of the books, Marshall also includes adoption and fertility struggles as they are also important choices for women to have. Marshall captures the shame of a society that judges women (and only women) for pregnancies out of wedlock. She touches on the great harm, both immediate and lifelong, done to young women without their consent by organizations purporting to be in their best interests. She brings the whispers out into the open, into the light of day. The story is engaging and fast paced and while the end might be a little tidy, it is a good and pertinent read.

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 God of the Woods by
Liz Moore.
The book is being released by Riverhead Books on July 2, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn't just any thirteen-year-old: she's the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region's residents. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara's older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore's multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore's most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

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.

Lies and Weddings by
Kevin Kwan.
The book is being released by Doubleday on May 21, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus's scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister's wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who's-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.

Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong? When a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans--and their reputation--go up in flames.

Can the once-great dukedom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist? In a globetrotting tale that takes us from the black sand beaches of Hawaii to the skies of Marrakech, from the glitzy bachelor pads of Los Angeles to the inner sanctums of England's oldest family estates, Kevin Kwan unfurls a juicy, hilarious, sophisticated and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex, and the lies we tell about them all.

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.

Every Time We Say Goodbye by
Natalie Jenner.
The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on May 14, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome's Cinecitta Studios. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary, from the incomparable author who charmed the world with her novels The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls.

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 Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by
Helen Simonson.
The book is being released by Dial Press on May 7, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: timeless comedy of manners--refreshing as a summer breeze and bracing as the British seaside--about a generation of young women facing the seismic changes brought on by war and dreaming of the boundless possibilities of their future, from the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or--horror--a governess, she's sent as a lady's companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet's daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies' motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy's recalcitrant but handsome brother--a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle--who warms in Constance's presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.

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.

Real Americans by
Rachel Khong.
The book is being released by Knopf on April 30, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao's Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance--a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

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.

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by
Catherine Mack.
The book is being released by Minotaur Press on April 30, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series--is that too much to ask?

Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor's life--the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can't get out of her life--Eleanor's enlisted to help solve the case.

Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker--and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly--theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who's really trying to get away with murder?

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is the irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour that turns into a real-life murder mystery, as her life starts to imitate the world in her books.

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.

Every Time We Say Goodbye by
Natalie Jenner.
The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on May 14, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome's Cinecitta Studios. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary, from the incomparable author who charmed the world with her novels The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls.

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 Titanic Survivors Book Club by
Timothy Schaffert.
The book is being released by Doubleday Books on April 2, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: From the author of The Perfume Thief, a remarkable tale about the life-changing power of books and second chances, following the Titanic librarian who opens a bookshop in Paris where he meets a secret society of survivors.

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship's second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail he was left stranded at the dock.

After the ship's sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn't board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through heated discussions of The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Of this ragtag group, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the glamorous Zinnia and the mysterious Haze, and a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms among them. Yet with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store. Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.

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 Trail of Lost Hearts by
Tracey Garvis Graves.
The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on March 26, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Thirty-four-year-old Wren Waters believes that if you pay attention, the universe will send you exactly what you need. But her worldview shatters when the universe delivers two life-altering blows she didn't see coming, and all she wants to do is put the whole heartbreaking mess behind her. No one is more surprised than Wren when she discovers that geocaching--the outdoor activity of using GPS to look for hidden objects--is the only thing getting her out of bed and out of her head. She decides that a weeklong solo quest geocaching in Oregon is exactly what she needs to take back control of her life.

Enter Marshall Hendricks, a psychologist searching for distraction as he struggles with a life-altering blow of his own. Though Wren initially rebuffs Marshall's attempt at hiker small talk, she's beyond grateful when he rescues her from a horrifying encounter farther down the trail. In the interest of safety, Marshall suggests partnering up to look for additional caches. Wren's no longer quite so trusting of the universe--or men in general--but her inner circle might argue that a smart, charismatic psychologist isn't the worst thing the universe could place in her path.

What begins as a platonic road trip gradually blossoms into something deeper, and the more Wren learns about Marshall, the more she wants to know. Now all she can do is hope that the universe gets it right this time.

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 Divorcees by
Rowan Beaird.
The book is being released by Flatiron Books on March 19, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce--except in Reno, Nevada.

At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno's famous "divorce ranches," Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcees, all in Reno for the six weeks' residency that is the state's only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it's as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, is prim and stifling. But it isn't until Greer Lang arrives that Lois's world truly cracks open. Gorgeous, beguiling, and completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met--and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. How far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?

Set in the glamorous, dizzying world of 1950s Reno, where housewives and movie stars rubbed shoulders at gin-soaked casinos, The Divorcees is a riveting page-turner and a dazzling exploration of female friendship, desire, and freedom.

Review: Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Diane Setterfield draws misty trails across her stories in ways that both obscure and illuminate, challenging her readers to uncover the truth she writes. Her settings are the otherworldly that sit opaquely on top of a solid reality and her characters draw a reader in through fascination and curiousity. She is a master of language. I first encountered her work through The Thirteenth Tale and then in Bellman and Black, the former of which I liked more than the latter, and I bought Once Upon a River several years ago in order to once again immerse myself in her work. And then as is common with books I buy, it languished, unread, on my shelf for literal years, until now, when I picked up this unsettling, dreamy, and immersive fairy tale of a story about the power of storytelling and want and loss.

In 1887, on the evening of the winter Solstice, at The Swan, a rural inn on the banks of the River Thames, as a public room full of people drank and listened to the publican's storytelling, a man three quarters frozen through, and dripping river water, burst into the room carrying the body of a four year old girl and promptly collapsed. The child had drowned and was beyond help but the man could still be saved. Rita, a local nurse, was called to assist with the unconscious man. She saw the body of the child and confirmed to herself by all measures that the small girl was dead, only to then witness the girl come back to life with a gasp. The man who saved her regains consciousness but has no idea who the child is, leading to confusion and speculation. Was she the missing child of the Vaughns, wealthy local landowners whose baby was kidnapped several years before? Was she the missing daughter of a thief from a local farming family who disappeared when her mother died by suicide and was last seen being led to the river before her mother's death? Was she the young sister of the parson's cleaning lady? Each of these three possibilities diverge and then come together just as the River Thames and its tributaries meander toward the sea. Each of these missing girl stories is like a tributary of the great river--sometimes taking over and sometimes meandering slowly like a trickle but always weaving inexorably back to the main story. There is a fourth, and supernatural, possibility as well. Could this mute child be the daughter of Quietly the boatman who is said to haunt this stretch of the river? Threaded through these larger tales are smaller stories that also flow into the greater story, that of Daunt, the photographer who saved the girl and who finds himself falling in love with his nurse; that of the local farmer, the son of royalty and a Black maid, who has created his own wonderful, much loved family; and that of the solitary, haunted woman who cleans for the parson, keeping quiet about the history of abuse she has suffered and continues to suffer.

The line between the realistic and the supernatural is a thin one and this story straddles it well with its slowly rising tension, its lush descriptions, the ongoing question of the child's identity, and the hypnotic feel of the prose itself. In the person of the reanimated little girl and the various characters' great desire for her to be their missing child, all of the characters are all faced with the secrets and heavy guilt each carries. Setterfield has taken a complex plot, stirred in elements of magical realism, Victorian sensibilities, the hold of superstition, and questions of belonging and identity in this paean to the power and importance of storytelling. The ending of this mesmerizing tale starts to come apart a bit, as if the answer to the question of the child's identity must be hurried along so that all of the other plot threads could be neatly tied up too. Despite this oddly curtailed conclusion after so many pages of slowly heightening the suspense, the story as a whole was an engrossing one that keeps a reader turning the pages hoping for the truth, or at least a satisfying resolution to each of the major and minor story lines.

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 Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County by
Clare Swinarski.
The book is being released by Avon Books on March 12, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Armed with a Crock-Pot and a pile of recipes, a grandmother, her granddaughter, and a mysterious young man work to bring a community together in this uplifting novel for readers of The Chicken Sisters.

Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the "funeral ladies," she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed--it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can't fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days.

Iris, Esther's whip-smart Gen Z granddaughter, would do anything for her family and her community. As she watches her friends and family move out of their lakeside town onto bigger and better things, Iris wonders why she feels so left behind in the place she is desperate to make her home. But when Cooper Welsh shows up, she finally starts to feel like she's found the missing piece of her puzzle.

Cooper is dealing with becoming a legal guardian to his younger half-sister after his beloved stepmother dies. While their celebrity-chef father is focused on his booming career and top-ranked television show, Cooper is still hurting from a public tragedy he witnessed last year as a paramedic and finding it hard to cope. With Iris in the gorgeous Ellerie County, though, he hopes he might finally find the home he's been looking for.

It doesn't seem like a community cookbook could possibly solve their problems, especially one where casseroles have their own section and cream of chicken soup mix is the most frequently used ingredient. But when you mix the can-do spirit of Midwestern grandmothers with the stubborn hope of a boy raised by food plus a dash of long-awaited forgiveness--things might just turn out okay.

Includes Recipes