Category: General Fiction

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim (Literary Fiction)

Mia’s family is unusual to say the least. Half Korean, half white, a working mother and a stay-at-home father, wildly different fraternal twins (Mia and John), and a younger brother (Eugene) who has both Autism and Angelman’s Syndrome (also known as the Happiness Syndrome as it is characterized by a happy demeanor). While Mia is hyperlexic (new word for me) and ultra analytic (sinking often into her vortex mode as in “warning, warning you’re sinking into a vortex of over analysis”), her twin John is ADHD, with a heavy emphasis on the H. Their mother is a linguist (who once helped with the libretto of a Vulcan opera) and their father is engaged in some very interesting “Happiness” research while caring full time for the now teenaged Eugene.

One day, the father goes missing and a very distraught Eugene — the only witness — makes it home on his own in a disheveled mess — without the ability to communicate anything about what occurred. What follows is an intricate plot to solve the mysteries of both the missing father and the essence of Eugene, complete with detectives, crowdsourced clues, behavioral specialists, plenty of confusion and misdirection, and some real surprises. The plot is engaging enough to attract most readers on its own, but what intrigued me was the obsessively interesting characters. The inner meanderings of our narrator (Mia — explained in the first pages as her compulsive need to digress) traipsed through philosophy, neurology, linguistics, human perception, music and emotion, modes of communication, and most especially the tools and abilities for understanding oneself and others — especially those others who do not function in the same way as yourself. Lots of research on conditions such as Eugene’s woven seamlessly into the narrative. While none of this would get in the way of a plot-oriented reader finding fulfillment, to me it was a Disneyland of intellectual treats that actually propelled the story forward.

Apropos of nothing, the author had a fantastic working vocabulary — I particularly liked the phrase “titular panache” — tickled me.

Highly recommended!

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey (Literary Fiction / Mystery)

A coming-of-age story told by a precocious 12-year old set in the time of the Yorkshire Ripper (late 70s). Miv and her best friend Sharon decide to find the Ripper themselves when their world starts falling apart due to the constant threat. They start by compiling a list of suspicious things about the people around them, and as they pursue investigations on multiple fronts, they learn a great deal about life. The unfolding stories of various people in their community are always instructive — some in bad ways and others in good. Miv learns about bullies, racism, grief, and even domestic abuse, but also about the importance of standing up for yourself and others, doing the right thing, tolerance, curiosity, friendship and love.

I liked the writing a great deal — Miv’s voice is unique, appealing, often humorous, and a good deal more exposed than an actual person might agree to. Never overdone or overly dramatic, but also never, ever vapid. I loved the way we got to know characters who appeared one way but easily morphed into a more complex (and much more likable) person with a little time and exposure. The ending was a real surprise, but well done and thought provoking.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on December 2nd, 2025.

Before I Forget by Tori Henwood Hoen (Literary Fiction)

This is the long-delayed coming-of-age story of a 26-year old going home to care for her Alzheimer-ridden father. And let me immediately reassure you that there is absolutely nothing depressing in any of it. What I began reading with trepidation (I’m not looking for depressing stories!) pulled me forward with increasing amounts of humor, human insight, and beyond touching moments (so yes, I teared up frequently, but from seeing substance, not sadness).

Cricket quits her job as an underutilized gofer for an over-the-top healthcare company that peddles an infinite array of body rejuvenation at very high prices. Instead, she heads to her favorite place (their home in the Adirondacks) and her beloved father — neither of which she has seen since a decade old tragedy left her beyond bereft and thoroughly guilt-ridden. From here the story takes off in unexpected ways with engaging characters, possible connections to the spiritual world, some unexpected business opportunities, and many chances to rethink the past. Throughout all of it, Cricket moves toward self understanding, forgiveness, and a stronger connection to those about her.

The writing is very good — the prose, pacing, and plot elements all perfectly tuned to Cricket’s growth without demeaning the roles of others in her story. I loved the insight and the messaging and the way Cricket always behaved in a principled manner — even when she was confused or afraid. I loved the different out-of-the-box ways dementia was portrayed, without downplaying the difficulty and loss. I loved the way personality traits could be interpreted in opposites: was someone passive or patient? Complacent or content? Insatiable or intrepid?). And I loved the humor applied to the situations and characters — particularly the buffoonish commentary on new age health gurus and products (see some of my favorite quotes below).

One of my favorite books this year.

Some great quotes:
“I am only 26, which means I am essentially a larva. In contemporary America, childhood can last well into one’s 30s, 40s, and even 50s.”

“What if Alzheimers isn’t just a slow death? What if it’s another dimension entirely – an ascension even? Humans are so fixated on our minds that we see their loss as a tragedy. But what if it’s a gift? Maybe the erosion of memory clears space for something truer. Maybe the intellect gets in the way of the heart, until little by little, it doesn’t.”

“My mother once told me I was too passive, but I prefer to think of myself as patient. There are some problems that solve themselves if you simply wait a while.”

“I have a vague feeling that, when it comes to my life, not only am I sitting on the sidelines, but I’m playing the wrong game altogether. As I look around at the leftover mess from the weekend, I think: I’m ready to be something other than young.”

“I was impressed by her confidence and conviction – two things I was lacking. When you are full of questions, you are drawn to people who look like answers.”

“You could spend all day exfoliating, lifting, moisturizing, resurfacing, deep conditioning, buffing, harmonizing, depilating, and rejuvenating your bodily surfaces, but at the end of that day, your soul will still ache for what it really wants: freedom from the consumptive cycle of never feeling or looking quite good enough. We’ve conflated health with vanity. It’s not that I don’t believe in healing; I just don’t believe you can buy it for $78 an ounce.”

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on December 2nd, 2025.

Isn’t it obvious by Rachel Runya Katz (Fiction)

Yael: public school librarian, runs a queer teen book club, podcasts on books that should be banned (she is highly opinionated), searches for the right antipsychotic. Ravi: part-Trinidadian social media designer and tech wizard who uprooted his life to help his brother care for his young daughter. The opening scene in the book? Where the two “sort of” meet? Masterfully done and priceless.

It’s a mix of “you’ve got mail” and “enemies to lover” tropes immersed in a multi-racial, queer, social media saturated situation. Great dialog, fun epistolary (email based) segments that perfectly recreate the excitement of slowly emerging emotions, interesting characters who are both completely foreign to me and surprisingly relatable and likable. I enjoyed getting to know them, though I doubt I would have had any opportunity to do so in real life.

I liked that the book felt like a story, not an agenda. The characters spent more time trying to make things better and not being confrontational and argumentative (although snide comments were obviously both allowed and encouraged). I liked the phrase “competency crush,” which I hadn’t heard before (but which I have a lot of). I generally enjoyed it and picked up several new ways of looking at things.

BUT — some bizarre (to me) nasty asides about a couple of my favorites. Ray Bradbury racist and homophobic? I’ve read everything the man has ever written and can’t think of anything that would earn him those epithets. The author of the Five Love Languages? The ONLY self-help book I’ve found illuminating and helpful? Katz writes: “the guy who wrote the love languages book is actually an intensely conservative Christian, who basically thinks the solution to all marital problems is to conform to gender roles.” I have no idea about Chapman’s background or opinions of gender roles, but there is nothing in the book that suggests Katz’ opinion. For me this smacks of labeling anyone negatively if they don’t completely adhere to your way of thought. Still enjoyed the book, but those barbs hurt and made me wonder at a generation so willing to toss aside a whole person’s work because someone tossed an unpopular label on them.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Griffin and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on October 21st, 2025.

Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie

A well-written, insightful, and humorous story of a couple of reviewers (colleagues) attending three weeks of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Alex — the handsome, 30 something son of a famous actress who can’t keep the girls away — gives a one woman show a seriously scathing one star review… and then sleeps with the actress before the review is printed. With some pretty intense malice, she turns around and makes his life a living hell with a me-too style assault that happens to catapult her show into something extraordinary and incredibly popular. Sharing the trip apartment, his colleague Sophie is the only one who is kind to him during his ordeal, but she has insecurities (so many) and troubles of her own.

I appreciated the fact that the book did not proceed in any obvious way. Instead, we’re given insight into the many different perspectives on who Alex really is (including his own), we get to peep into a panoply of lives that are (quite) different from our own (or at least mine), and (multiple!) people actually grow and learn from their experiences. I found it ultimately uplifting, though some of the raw honesty in the middle was a little off-putting and at times cringeworthy (oddly enough, it was Sophie whom I found cringeworthy, not Alex).

Worth a read (and probably less cringeworthy for the younger set).

Thank you to Doubleday and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 8th, 2025.

The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay (Historical Fiction)

A warm story of duty, love, friendship, family, and survival set in the 1920s along the Santa Fe Railway lines in the chain of Fred Harvey restaurants. You may have seen the Judy Garland movie by the same name, but if you haven’t, the Harvey restaurants employed young, single, women — paid them good wages (especially for women at that time), held them to high standards of conduct, and offered passengers on the railway a clean, efficient, high quality and safe place to stop for refreshments on what were often very long train journeys.

Charlotte grew up in Boston with wealth and opportunity, but for her the job at Harvey house offered a place of safety where she could hide from a very big mistake; Billie is the eldest of nine, who sets off for the Harvey house at 15 — her six foot tall frame lending credibility to the fiction that she meets the minimum age requirement — to help earn desperately needed money for the family during the slightly less “Great” depression of 1926. With straightforward prose we follow these two dissimilar but each fiercely loyal and tough women, as they interact with an array of engaging, intelligent, and highly ethical characters — taking care of each other in what can only be described as tough times. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what the world was like before social safety nets, penicillin, and women’s rights. There are plenty of historical references that bring the story to life, and quite a bit about how the Harvey houses were run (which I found fascinating). Also, many beautiful descriptions of scenery and quite a bit about Native Americans, with individual characters depicting their status in the area, their way of supporting themselves, and their (quite understandable) attitudes towards tourists.

As an aside, the El Tovar Hotel featured in this story (the Harvey house near the Grand Canyon) is one of only two of the original 84 Harvey houses still in operation today. An easy and compelling read.

Thank you to Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on August 12th, 2025.

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths (Mystery / Speculative Fiction)

The first book in a brand new series from Elly Griffiths — one of my favorite mystery writers.
This book combines a mystery with speculative fiction (time travel). Ali Dawson’s cold cases are so cold they are frozen (thus jokes the team). Their secret? They can use time-travel to find out what actually happened. Now, to please a Tory Justice Minister whose grandfather was rumored (though never accused or brought to trial) of killing an artist’s model, Ali heads back to 1850 to see what she can find out. However, before she can return, a body turns up in the current day that is very much related to the case …

Griffiths is a great writer and brings all her powers of description and persuasion to the story, bringing the 1850s to life in exactly the way it would appear to someone born in our time. I liked the way Ali prepared for her “trip” — not just learning what to wear, eat, and say, but how to change the way she actually thought. A well-articulated differentiation between modern day and Victorian feminism ensued. I liked the cast of characters including Jones, the designer wearing communist physicist who is the time travel whiz (that’s the beauty of novels — characters don’t have to be internally consistent!). I’m sure they will be appearing in future books as there were some definite hints of stories left untold. Plenty of fun references — like using A Wrinkle in Time’s tesseract model (without actually stating such), and referencing the (real) match girls strike at the Bryant & May match factory (that’s how Christopher Fowler named his history obsessed, aged, detectives!). Lots of good history.

Really enjoyed this book — it won’t be available in the US until July 8th — I couldn’t wait and bought it on my (conveniently timed) trip to England. No regrets!

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (Happy Magic Fiction)

I loved this light, uplifting, quirky and unashamedly magic book, just as I did her previous book “The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.” Sera Swan is a young and powerful witch who resurrects her recently dead great aunt (a big no-no) and is stripped of her magic and guild membership. Reduced to managing the highly and eccentrically enchanted Inn, she tries to find her magic again with the help of an oddball collection of Inn denizens — a scheming witch trapped in a fox body, a geriatric oddball and part time Hobbit, a would-be knight in somewhat shiny armor, some undead rooster bones to name a few. It’s really about family, doing the right thing even when it hurts, understanding your own vulnerabilities and shifting life goals. I was very impressed with that last bit — there aren’t many real happy ever afters in the world, but by understanding what is actually important you can be awfully darn happy (A Rolling Stones song comes to mind…)

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 15th, 2025.

Austen at Sea by Natalie Jenner — Read by Rupert Graves (Historical Fiction)

An enthusiastic five stars for this marvelously fulfilling piece of historical fiction. The story manages to be both intellectually rich and emotionally pleasing. My perfect blend! In 1865, two daughters of the long-widowed Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice pen a daring request to the only surviving brother of their favorite author — Jane Austen. Meanwhile, two Philadelphia book collectors have similarly engaged with Admiral Austen about Austen memorabilia and editions. On the side, the Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Court have elected to read and discuss the entire Austen oeuvre over the very summer break that sees the four correspondents heading off to England. Their discussions are completely engrossing, putting into dialog multiple well crafted opinions and surprising me with their depth. The story itself takes the reader from Boston, across to the sea to Hampshire, and concludes with a courtroom drama spectacular spanning both countries.

On the surface, this could pleasurably be read as an engaging comedy of manners a la Austen herself, with the delightful development of surprising relationships etc. But under the tip of the romantic iceberg lies the depth, thoroughness, and insight of the literary, political, legal, and economic contexts of the time period. Equality, justice, freedom — these are topics on everyone’s tongues during the post-Civil War recovery period, the still relative newness of the United States, and the current battles in both locations for various forms of women’s rights (including, but not limited to, women’s suffrage). These issues are brought out with a number of different techniques. Those discussing Austen’s works have literary discussions about her characters, their roles, purposes, desires, and life lessons. Women’s rights are addressed (and argued) through a fascinating panoply of laws, Acts, and jurisdictions — exemplified by the situations and experiences of the various characters. It’s obvious to us today (I hope!) that women should have rights equal to those of men, but to hear the completely sensical arguments and rebuttals on both sides of the issue during that time period by people who were not inherently “evil,” was deeply interesting.

I both read and listened to this book. I actually preferred the audio in this case. It slowed me down enough to actually listen to different viewpoints and consider them carefully — I usually read too fast and often miss important details. Rupert Graves is the reader — a wonderful actor with a beautiful reading voice. I learned a lot about Austen’s life and her works (despite the fact that I’ve read each multiple times) and enjoyed a wide array of references from that time period — including Louisa May Alcott who appeared in a delightful cameo role. The cast of characters at the start of the book is quite helpful.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 6th, 2025.

The Winds from Further West by Alexander McCall Smith (Literary Fiction)

In this new, standalone novel, McCall Smith takes on the ethics and responsibilities of those caught up in cancel culture — including the perspectives and calculations of those willing to play along (on either side) for personal gain. We follow Neil, a University of Edinburgh public health lecturer and researcher, as he is accused of making an “insensitive” comment and is asked by an unscrupulous dean to apologize regardless of guilt. I’ll hasten to say that McCall Smith does not allow the book to slide into a Kafkaesque nightmare from which our hero cannot emerge unscathed (I almost stopped reading when I thought it was going in that direction). Instead, he focuses on how people react to “life experiences” such as these and how they can be used to further self (and world-at-large) awareness and growth. I found it insightful and inspiring.

I love that McCall Smith always brings the ethics of big social trends into how they play out in individuals. The book is full of pithy commentary as to the state of the world (or one’s university!) and one’s role within it. His characters are always interesting — one is caught reading a book called “A Brief History of the Smile.” Others contemplate and discuss such random (but IMO engaging) topics such as a recent theory about Neanderthals, people vs. microbes, the use of shaming in society, and as always, a lovely collection of quotations from (mostly Scottish) poets (my favorite is Auden’s line: “If equally affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” It made me cry. I also loved the discussion (minor argument?) about the democratization of science — while Neil’s girlfriend feels teachers should be less didactic, Neil points out that Bernoullis equation is not an opinion.

Honestly, I have loved almost all of McCall Smith’s books and really can’t believe he hasn’t run out of philosophical musings and expositions after all this time. Every book seems to cleanly dissect complex problems into clear and concise points to help you thread through them.

Some of my favorite quotes:
“One had to become indifferent to the things you could not do anything about, unless you were prepared to let them hurt you indefinitely.”

“He, and people like him, might do a little to change the basic rules of engagement between human beings and microbes, but here and there, in small corners of the battlefield, they achieve their largely unsung victories. And in the background, their research, sometimes painfully slow and seemingly entirely theoretical, built up the human armory against microbial defeat.”

“People say that the thing about poetry is its power to haunt.“

“The world’s in a sorry mess. People put so much energy into finding fault with others, with attacking them, with calculating personal advantage, with … with all of those things. We’ve broken the bonds that exist between us, with the result that we are all potential enemies of one another, locked in mutual suspicion and distrust. And do you know what? I’ve had enough of it, I can’t bear to be part of that any longer.”

Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this audio book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 29th, 2025.