Book Review: The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz
Tiffany Reisz combines one part romance, one part mystery, and two parts family dysfunction in this Kentucky bourbon themed novel. At its center are Paris and Tamara, both women driven to have what they want, logic be damned. It pulled me along like the distillery...Book Review: Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Elizabeth Wetmore crafts a multi-layered debut novel in Valentine. To me, it reads like a book written by a more experienced author. She takes many points of view and melds them together into a narrative as slick and sticky as unrefined oil. Which is fitting since...Book Review: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Dear Kevin Wilson: Thank you for giving me something to laugh at while on lock down in my house. Nothing to See Here offered me hours of escape, into the world of kids who catch on fire and the pliable definitions of parental love and family. It was a life saver for a...Book Review: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo writes a prose poetic novel, honoring a wide-ranging group of black British women in her 2019 book Girl, Woman, Other. The women represent many walks of life, various generations, and diverse personalities. They connect with each other, but the...Book Review: Women Talking by Miriam Toews
In Women Talking by Miriam Toews, a group of women sort life out after experiencing terrible assaults. What makes this unique is that the women are all conservative Mennonites living in the isolated, fictional colony called Molotschna. But this isn’t strictly a work...Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant is the oddest of odd ducks, created by Gail Honeyman in her 2017 debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Thanks to my IRL book group for suggesting it, as I probably wouldn’t have read it without them. Eleanor has a way with words. In fact,...Book Review: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Laurie Frankel brings us inside a raucous and somewhat unconventional Wisconsin family in This Is How It Always Is. Rosie and Penn, respectively a doctor and a writer, are the parents of four boys when she gets pregnant again. Every time she’s expecting they hope for...Book Review: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
I wanted to love the new Gilead book from Margaret Atwood. I wanted that so much. And it didn’t happen for me. She tells a tale that pales in comparison to both The Handmaid’s Tale book and television series. It’s not gritty, suspenseful, or driven by compelling...Book Review: [Dis] Connected: Poems & Stories of Connection and Otherwise, Volume Two
Editor and publisher Michelle Halket showcases work from ten poets in [Dis]Connected: Poems & Stories of Connection and Otherwise Volume 2. Each of the ten poets submitted three poems, which are interspersed between short stories from the same writers. Halket...Book Review: The Overstory by Richard Powers
Richard Powers weaves the stories of nine disparate people’s lives together like tree branches on the ground after a strong storm. There’s a college student, a software genius, an engineer, a soldier, an artist, a researcher, a scientist, an actuarial attorney, and a...Book Review: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Mary Beth Keane is a new author for me and her latest book, Ask Again, Yes, has rocketed into the public consciousness lately. I couldn’t resist giving it a listen after a friend commented on its emotional ending. Plus, it was chosen for The Tonight Show’s Summer...Book Review: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline
Christina Baker Kline opens the doors and invites us into the farmhouse in Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting, Christina’s World. This fictional work offers readers a chance to understand the world of the Maine residents he painted. It’s not about Wyeth very much,...Book Review: The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Matthew Quick provides a window into the mind of his unique Everyman main character in The Silver Linings Playbook. Pat Peoples is a thirty-something guy who has just been sprung from “the bad place” by his mom and her legal team. And he tries hard to reintegrate...Book Review: Winter Hours by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is widely accepted as a master of the written word. Before her death in 2019, she published regularly and with plenty of acclaim. Winter Hours was published in 2000, in what might be considered a simpler American time.Yet, Oliver keeps her writing simple...Book Review: Your Heart is the Sea by Nikita Gill
Nikita Gill is a twenty-something poet, of British-Indian heritage. She’s an Instagram poet, which is a social media phenomenon of the our new century. And, as such, I’m not really her audience.But, since I read another of her books earlier this year, her publisher...Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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