Book Review: The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson
Lindsey Lee Johnson takes readers deep inside the high school ecosystem in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Actually, the first chapter occurs in eighth grade, but the remainder are during high school. Her main characters are students, and one first-year...Book Review: Grief is a Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
Max Porter takes grief and gives it the face of a crow in Grief is a Thing with Feathers. You think I mean figuratively. But no, in this prose poem slash novel, there is literally a Crow character. The less fantastical characters are a dad with two sons, whose mom and...Book Review: Pickle’s Progress by Marcia Butler
Pickle’s Progress is a quintessential modern New York City novel. In it, Marcia Butler gives us identical twin brothers and the women in their lives. But it’s much more dysfunctional and convoluted than that. Fundamentally, that’s a good thing. Butler’s taut...Book Review: There There by Tommy Orange
There There by Tommy Orange wasn’t the book I’d hoped it would be. Where Heart Berries was a deep dive in one woman’s psyche, There There is a shallow dip into the lives of many, many characters. That they both center on the varied experiences of Native Americans in...Book Review: We Love Anderson Cooper by R.L. Maizes
R.L. Maizes tells stories of discovery, haunting, and the everyday rhythms of life. Her writing is by turns eloquent, poignant, and groaningly funny. And her characters are as unique as you’ll find in contemporary short stories.Maizes’ tales feature teenagers, grown...Book Review: The Exile by Gregory Erich Phillips
Gregory Erich Phillips takes on a main character very different from himself in The Exile. First, Leila del Sol is a woman. Second, she’s a Colombian immigrant living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. But they both work in the chaotic bubble-bursting mortgage loan...Book Review: The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid
After listening to her nonfiction book, Forensics, reading Val McDermid’s psychological thriller series was an easy choice. I liked her detailed writing style, and was glad to see it here also. The Mermaids Singing is told from two points of view. First we have the...Book Review: Dark of the Moon by John Sanford (Virgil Flowers #1)
I’ve been a fan of John Sanford mystery / thrillers for many years. My brother-in-law introduced me to the Prey series, featuring Lucas Davenport, back when there were just a few books in the series. Dark of the Moon is Sanford’s first entry in a spin-off series...Book Review: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Delia Owens crafts a genrebusting debut novel. It’s primarily a Bildungsroman—coming of age story. But Owens throws in elements of romance, adds a treatise on nature, plus a strong mystery and courtroom procedural.Her main character Kathryn Danielle Clark, nicknamed...Book Review: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid creates an iconic—and entirely fictional—band in Daisy Jones & The Six. It’s set in the wild and wooly 1970s in California. Daisy is everybody’s spoiled little sister, and a singer songwriter. The band is six musicians trying to collectively...Book Review: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Bel Canto, published in 2001 by Ann Patchett, is a melodic story of an extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome. It’s an elegant and meaningful exposition of kidnapping, but also of love. A group of businessmen, diplomats, and important people gather in an unnamed...Book Review: Murder in the Marais by Cara Black (Aimee Leduc #1)
This was my first venture into the Aimée Leduc series from Cara Black. So, I started with book one and took an armchair trip to the neighborhood in Paris called the Marais. Aimée is the owner of a small private detective agency in Paris. She’s the daughter of a French...Book Review: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
In Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver mixes two story lines chapter by chapter. The first focuses on Willa Knox and her present-day family. The second focuses on Thatcher Greenwood, who lived in the same neighborhood as Willa in the 1870s. Both are faced with...Book Review: Paris Time Capsule by Ella Carey
Like imaginative authors everywhere, Ella Carey based Paris Time Capsule on a real-life occurrence. In late 2010, a Paris apartment that had been uninhabited for 70 years was opened after its owner’s death. She had left Paris during World War II and never returned....Book Review: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
In Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, Matthew J. Sullivan introduces us to Lydia. She’s a bookseller just trying to live an uneventful life. I’m envious of her bookstore life, if not the rest of it!Sadly, one of her customers takes his own life in the...Currently reading
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