Category: General Fiction

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Fiction)

Writing: 3/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters:2/5

Not sure why this book is so popular — the writing was abrupt and cliched, the plot predictable, and the greatest insight any character came up with was “family is so much more important than wealth and fame.” Well, duh.

OK, that’s a lie. I do know why it’s popular. It’s easy to read, there is plenty of money and glamour and, of course, the real story behind all those husbands! If you like reading People magazine you’re going to love this! There is also a big LGBQT theme serving as a good reminder of what life was like when there were few professions where being “out” wouldn’t result in that profession being yanked away regardless of your talent / merit / success. We still have problems today, but nothing like what people in that community faced before.

For me it was just kind of trash literature without the requisite (IMHO) happy ending and feel good vibes. The big reveal at the end didn’t work for me — too pat, too unbelievable in many ways, and simultaneously too predictable.

I don’t write many negative reviews — maybe 3 in the past 5 years? If I don’t like a book, I simply stop reading it. And this isn’t a fully bad review. The writing is readable, the characters obviously weren’t meant to be deep, and the plot does keep you reading. It’s just disappointing in face of its popularity and not the kind of book I would normally waste my time reading…

The Catch by Alison Fairbrother (Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 4/5

A humorous, well-written, millennial coming-of-age story (to be clear, the coming of age to “real” adulthood in your twenties, rather than the rocky road through puberty). Ellie is 24 when her father dies suddenly. As the eldest of his four children from three different wives, she has always felt she was his favorite, but when she is left an insulting object in his will while the “lucky baseball” she craved went to a complete stranger, she began trying to track down the truth about her father. In the meantime, she is a budding journalist trying to write something meaningful while employed at a D.C. media start-up focused solely on clickbait measures and is seeing a deeply nerdy (and deeply married) man who is (surprise) not always available when she needs him. Somehow this all comes together with a story on the local Osprey cam as a leading indicator of ecological disaster in a way that is both comical and deeply insightful. Very good writing.

I really did love the writing — so many good quotes!

“Exclamation points had become little signposts announcing, I mean well! and had become so normalized that in their absence I felt a deep sense of foreboding. But every now and then you found yourself up against someone who refused to give in to exclamation points, who typed what they meant with zero reassurances, making the rest of us look like overzealous clowns.” (My favorite quote as I am one of those clowns!)

“D.C. was like that. You were always one step away from a cockroach.”

“It was like my mother always said: ‘If you’d just lose some weight, you could enjoy your young body.’”

“It was true that I was proud of the life I’d started to make, getting on my bicycle in the morning, dismounting lightly at a glowing little start-up, then returning home to my ad hoc salon of housemates, whose drive and purpose and hopefulness about the world, I hoped, might spur me on too.”

“The earth had been diagnosed with end-stage cancer, and every morning I learned that diagnosis anew.”

“That was another thing I was learning — I had to read how much people could handle; I had to tuck in my sadness when too much of it showed. I picked the orange peel from my glass and sucked the bitter alcohol from its flesh.”

“If only Katherine hadn’t seen us on the stoop at that exact moment, with her kale body and her hornet’s nest judgement.”

“Talking to him was like getting tapped repeatedly on the shoulder by an octopus with one wet tentacle.”

“Stories could have such unsatisfying and unlikely outcomes. More and more, I felt we willingly built entire worlds on very little information. Like sandcastles, if you poked them anywhere, the whole structure would revert to its components. It was our nature to do that, to fill in the details and become convinced they were true and not our own fantasies and imaginations bumping up against someone else’s reality.”

“At points all over the earth, people were advancing toward each other and away from each other, and this was just one instance in the vast history of these of these moments. I thought that the collection of all such trajectories must make up the most complex atlas in existence.”

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 21st, 2022.

V for Victory by Lissa Evans (Fiction)

Completely heartwarming novel about London in the latter stages of WWII (taking over where Crooked Heart left off). Noel Bostock (15) and his “pretend” Aunt (Vee) are living in the large house Noel inherited from his “pretend” godmother, the famous suffragette Mattie Simpkin. It has become a boarding house where boarders pay rent in both cash and tutoring for Noel. When a room becomes vacant, they search for a boarder with specific knowledge to impart. Noel is the most wonderful character — smart, capable, kind, and curious about absolutely everything. Mr. Reddish teaches him math while quoting his own rather bad poetry; Dr. Parry-Jones teaches science (giving him a dissectible rat for his birthday); the one-eared Mr. Jepson teaches him Latin; and Miss Appleby mixes her French lessons with more personal lessons about the heart (her heart to be precise).

In the odd way different lives seem to come together haphazardly, an American GI drives a lorry on the wrong side of the road, the more fashionable (and obnoxious) twin of an air-raid warden writes a surprising novel about her sister, and Noel’s origin story comes out of hiding.

I really like her writing — some nice quotes below:

“He didn’t have a family tree, he had a Venn diagram, in which none of the circles overlapped.”

“Impossible to explain Vee’s myriad antipathies, her constantly updated list of prejudices and judgements.”

“She had fallen for Romeo and now found herself padlocked to the editor of Modern Homes and Gardens.”

“Since the end, just a year ago, of his own, terrible marriage he found himself studying other couples, like someone conning an aircraft recognition chart — spotting those tics and phrases that signaled contempt or boredom or fear, and when he saw those, he wanted to take one or other of the pair aside, and say, ‘Finish it now.’

“Jepson was present but unlit, so that in the dining room he was more furniture than inhabitant, talked around and over, but never to. But in lessons there were glimmers — he had seized Noel’s first essay and pushed the words around the page like backgammon counters, showing him how to introduce a subject, how to make a neat and satisfying ending, how to prune, and rearrange the content.”

“It was so easy, she thought, as he led her towards the music; he was so easy — a printed postcard, when every other man she’d ever known was a sealed letter filled with blank pages or mystifying codes”

The House in the Orchard by Elizabeth Brooks (Fiction)

Plot: 2/5 Characters: 3/5 Writing: 3/5

A story within a story — in 1941 Peggy inherits the house in the orchard (in Cambridgeshire) from her husband’s Aunt Maude (her husband died in the war). Her rather difficult father-in-law (Maude’s brother Frank) hates the place and encourages her to sell. The bulk of the book is Peggy reading Maude’s diary (beginning in 1876) — a rather horrific tale of how Maude came to own the place.

I wanted to like this book — I love English historical fiction, and there was the potential for a good story. “Victorian era girl brought up to be proper in a home devoid of warmth makes good” is the story I wanted to read, but it was not to be. Instead I disliked her more and more until I thought I couldn’t dislike her any more (I was wrong). By the end, I had to ask myself what was the point of the book? What lesson should I have learned? Who was I supposed to empathize with? And was the story at all believable?

The story moved slowly, and there was a lot of description which I kind of skimmed over, but my main objection is the insidious way the story went downhill into darkness. Luckily (for me) it was not written in a melodramatic way, so I was able to finish the book with my emotional state intact, but I can’t say I gained any wisdom or enjoyment from reading it.

Thank you to Tin House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on September 27th, 2022.

We Are The Light by Matthew Quick (Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 4.5/5 Plot: 4/5

I’m blown away by this book and the way the author has managed to write about an incredibly difficult subject so powerfully without once becoming maudlin, trite or descending into Hallmark territory. I can tell you that I out and out cried (and not quietly) through the last third because of the way the author managed to capture the essence of such deeply felt and universal core emotions in mere words. I’m not doing this justice because I don’t have that skill — you’ll have to just trust me!

The story is about a town which has experienced an inexpressible tragedy. It does not focus on the tragedy itself but on the slow process of healing — for everyone — and the way Lucas Goodgame — a high school counselor led the way while simultaneously struggling himself. The narrative is contained in a series of letters Lucas writes to his Jungian analyst who inexplicably closed his practice after the event and stopped responding.

For all that I can’t remember the last time I cried so much at a book, I was never once depressed by it — far more inspired by it. The last line was a brilliant pulling together of the whole.

I was introduced to a new (for me) word which I just loved: numinous — having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.

While there are a lot of great quotes in this book, I don’t feel that I can include them without ruining the flow of the book, so … you’ll have to read them in context yourself!

Thank you to Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book was published on November 1st, 2022.

The Shop on Royal Street by Karen White (Mystery / Fiction)

I love Karen White’s Tradd Street series — ghosts, mysteries, and the kind of characters you’d want to befriend (while simultaneously being tempted to wring their little high maintenance necks at times). This book is the first in a spin-off series about Nola Trenholm (step daughter of Tradd Street’s protagonist) who is setting up shop on her own in the Big Easy (where I am conveniently visiting atm for the first jazz fest in three years — hooray!)

Nola buys an historic fixer-upper that comes complete with dissatisfied spirits, a long festering mystery and plenty of architectural pearls.

Well-written and plenty of fun. High in puzzle solving but low in stress.

Tne World of Pondside by Mary Helen Stefaniak (Audio Book / Fiction)

Writing: 3/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5
A rather bizarre story about an “old geezers” home, an online game designed to allow players to experience things their (old geezer) bodies no longer allow, and Robert (the game’s designer) — a (youngish) man near the end of his battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

While initially appearing as a murder mystery (Robert’s body — in wheelchair — is discovered in the pond at the very beginning), it’s really more of a novel following the lives of a set of pretty interesting characters ranging from the “kitchen boy” to the facility’s frustrated director, the nurses and CNAs, and of course, the many inhabitants — all in different states of physical or mental decline.

I listened to this on audio — the reader was very good. It was a little bit slow with more filler than I like, although once I realized it wasn’t actually a murder mystery, the filler magically turned into character development and I was happier. Quite a bit of the story revolved around the “kitchen boy” — who had helped Robert implement the game. A high school dropout who was a bit of a loner, I found him likable but kind of slow for my taste. Still, he did develop nicely giving a kind of hopeful view about those who don’t have an easy time making their way in our society.

Overall an interesting listen (I would probably have preferred to read as I could have made my way through it much faster, and it wouldn’t have felt so slow paced).

Thank you to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book was published on April 19th, 2022.

Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson (Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 3/5

This latest from the author of the uber bizarre The Family Fang and Nothing to See Here is another tale of weirdness focussed on two lonely and awkward teens (Frankie and Zeke) with nothing to do one summer in Nowheresville, Tennessee. Together they craft a poster with the captivating phrase “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” and distribute it anonymously throughout the town with gobsmacking (British for astonishing) and kind of scary results. Decades later,a reporter tracks Frankie down, somehow having discovered her role in what became known as the “Coalfield Panic” and sends Frankie into a tailspin of fear.

It’s a coming-of-age story packed with trauma, art, young maybe-love, and some eye-opening insight as to how one can inadvertently have a big impact on the world. Wilson’s books tend to be unconventional stories with somewhat broken characters that you like in spite of yourself. To be honest, while I did enjoy reading this, the story didn’t feel like it was enough to keep my interest for as long as it took to read the book, and the characters were broken (as expected) but somehow less appealing than in previous books. I got kind of bogged down in the middle. The phrase — albeit an interesting phrase — didn’t fascinate me quite enough to make the constant repetition anything other than dulling.

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on November 8th, 2022.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth (audio book)

Once their mother heads to the nursing home with an advanced case of early onset Alzheimers, sisters Tully and Rachel are shocked to find their father planning to marry a (much) younger woman — Heather. That is the basic premise of this family drama, but what starts as one kind of story rapidly turns into something else. Or does it? Rotating narration among the three girls, what emerges is gripping, surprising, and a little insidious. The chapters for each woman are narrated by a different reader, and they are all good (lovely Australian accents for those of us who like that kind of thing).

Good writing, lots of character depth, and plenty of slowly creeping plot twists.

Great for fans of Liane Moriarity.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 12th, 2022.

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley (Fiction)

A cheerful, happy, just-what-I-needed book. A series of commutes on the Waterloo lines (London) leads to a burgeoning group of friends centered on one larger-than-life Iona Iverson — previously an “It Girl” alongside Bea, the love of her life. Iona is a popular “magazine therapist” (not an Agony Aunt!) plying her trade at a women’s magazine, but her clueless boss is pushing her towards the door due to her advanced age (57). Meanwhile, her unofficial and unpaid break-all-the-norms-of-commuting business is thriving.

Watching the group coalesce, each facing his/her own problems (a teenage girl afraid to show her face at school, a successful banker rapidly losing his money, a husband so dull his wife can’t stand him, and a male nurse without the confidence to approach the bookworm with an overbearing boyfriend) is funny, poignant, and uplifting. Big kudos to the author for actually bringing out the assumptions we make about people we don’t know and showing how wrong we can be. Rather than taking the easy way out and subscribing to the always popular white male bashing, she lets the person who appears to be the “smart but sexist Manspreader,” turn out to be a pretty decent guy (see one of the quotes below). Kudos!

Some fun quotes:
“Sanjay wound the tape back in his head, re-examining it from a different angle. Perhaps Piers hadn’t actually been flaunting anything. Perhaps that was just what he’d wanted to see. Was he just as guilty of stereotyping as everyone else? The thought lodged in his brain like a festering splinter.”

“…peering at him through narrowed eyes, giving him the impression of being scanned by a supermarket checkout machine before being declared an unexpected item in the bagging area.”

“He was like an electrical appliance on standby — still plugged in, but not functioning — and she had no idea where to find the remote control.”

“Emmie, why on earth did you decide to go into advertising if you have such an inflexible conscience?”

“Shakespeare, she’d discovered, never used four words when twenty-six would do. He might be good at the whole play thing, but he’d be useless at writing the emergency evacuation instructions for an airline.”

Thank you to Penguin Group Viking, Pamela Dorman Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 7th, 2022.