Halfway through The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, I was already confident that I was going to like it enough to recommend it. I trusted the voice and was so impressed that even if the ending was not satisfactory, there was still much to praise. I put it on my best reads of February blog,…
There is a list of reasons why readers think Stay True by Hua Hsu should not have won the Pulitzer (memoir). I think the most compelling (if also backwards) of those reasons is that the award builds expectations that this book cannot live up to. If it didn’t have that Pulitzer hanging over its head,…
Let me tell you, defending my opinion about this book at book club—despite the gal way across the circle who was one-hundred percent with me—got heated. Literally, my face was super hot, uncomfortably hot. Some people really love this book, turns out, and are willing to contradict anything I say in order to defend it.…
I’m not sure that A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende’s most lauded work. I have been meaning to read her, but I started here only because it was a book club thing. This is one of Allende’s more recent books (2019, out of the 28 listed on her site; she’s published four…
I wasn’t sure about this one by Jennifer Moorman because it’ didn’t really grab me. It wasn’t the characters, story, or setting, which were all cute right from the get-go, but the writing style. However, because I had an ARC in hand and wanted to give it a fair shot, I read on… until I…
A truly strange book, The Seep by Chana Porter is extremely short (for long-form) science fiction. In fact, it’s really a novella and has small pages, large margins, and space between the lines. And really, I suppose, the book itself isn’t that strange, but the feeling while reading it is of being among strangeness. It…
I really enjoyed Little Thieves by Margaret Owen. I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t even notice it was first person, present tense until I was practically done reading it, which is a testament to when that very thing works for YA. First-person is the most popular POV these days for YA and present…
*NOTE: The following review might make it sound like I hated this book. I didn’t. I enjoyed the first half or third, but by the end I was bored and exhausted, an experience I find is not uncommon. If I had rated this book and written about it halfway through, I would have had much…
A book club read, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is another great read of 2024, for me. I’m even going to call it a favorite. It has little things (and one big thing) wrong with it, but overall, it is an amazing book that deserves book club reads and awards and whatnot. It helps that I…
I felt like I was doing cartwheels while reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and I mean that in a good way. Or like I was watching Garmus do cartwheels. Her writing style, characters, and plot are so free-wheeling. The subject matter is often sad, serious, and even brutal, but somehow this book is…
Holy crap, this is an amazing book. I kinda feel like it’s been done—family at the outbreak of society’s collapse/civil war, or stream of consciousness, or modern family in dystopian times—but it also has not been done. For one, the maternal perspective in Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is pitch perfect, intimate, and novel (hard…
Oh boy. I might catch it for even reviewing (or reading) this series. And I might catch it for what I have to say about it, by a completely different readership. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered and avoided both forms of angry customers, but I have read and I have judged accordingly and there’s…
I kinda wish The Truth About Horses by Christy Cashman wasn’t titled The Truth About Horses. And I also wish the cover were different. Though it almost looks self-pubbed and the title is lackluster and maybe even cheesy, the book is pretty solid. Despite some rather specific things I will find to complain about, overall…
I am such a Harry Potter fan that I am almost always disappointed by J. K. Rowling’s other works, simply because they are not Hogwarts in the 90s. So let’s just take this children’s chapter book for what it is: a magical, Christmas journey into the Land of the Lost by one little boy and…
In the end, I loved this book. During the book, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. Is it a literary giant? Certainly not. It’s YA romance (or rom-com) of the typical (for now) type. Within those parameters, I thought it was perfect. So, if you like YA romance, or even just romance, then…
Never Let Me Go is science fiction, British, and YA (even though it is frequently also read and enjoyed by grow-ups). It is also written by a widely lauded author (Kazuo Ishiguro) and seems to always be around, “your next read.” But while I expected to like this book as much as, say, The Perks…
The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick is, yes, one of those books that appeals to readers by using a title and premise that are them, relatable. “Book people” is in the title. And it’s about, well, book people. Liv Green is about to be an empty nester. She married and had kids…
Full disclosure: I read this book as part of a pre-release group. I had already pre-ordered a copy for the January 24 release date when I was rushed a copy in early January to participate in an online discussion with the author. There is more to disclose. I went to college with author Sara Billups.…
Goodness sakes. This is a tough book, of a sort. It is not just like Kimmel’s other books. It is highly academic, religiously explorative, and takes place in Indiana, yes, but it is pretty dark and trippy, falling down a sort of well into ancient Greece (think the dark side of mythology) while standing planted…
I have now read six books by Haven Kimmel, this summer. I have two to go. I don’t know why, but I saved the novels till last, and I am in the middle of the “loose trilogy” of her first three (of four) novels. The (very) loose trilogy is The Solace of Leaving Early, Something…
the starving artist 