Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
I remember just enough of The Kite Runner to know that Khaled Hosseini would break my heart in A Thousand Splendid Suns. And so he did, over and over and over. It’s the story of two women in Afghanistan who each forge a path for themselves, despite and because of the...Book Review: Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Jewell Parker Rhodes mixes hard, cold reality with imagination in her middle-grade novel, Ghost Boys. It’s the story of a young African American boy, just 12 years old. And he dies by the gun of a police officer. So, going in I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy...Book Review: A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
In A Ladder to the Sky, John Boyne and his main character, Maurice Swift, take us inside the world of a writer. And a sociopath. It’s so completely wrong that it’s right. This is the follow up to Boyne’s fabulous 2017 book, The Heart’s Invisible Furies....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: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter is a Norwegian literature classic by Sigrid Undset. In fact, Undset is so revered that she won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, after Kristin was published. But, let’s also clarify that this is actually a trilogy, now published as a 1100+...Book Review: The Bonjour Effect by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Freelance journalists Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau moved with their daughters to Paris for a year to write this book. As native Quebecers they were already fluent in French, and in fact had already lived in Paris some years earlier. And yet, they found that 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: Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
Terese Marie Mailhot bares it all in her memoir, Heart Berries. Nothing’s off limits—abuse, mental illness, dysfunctional family and relationships. I often say that a good memoir lets me slide inside the author’s skin. This is a rough skin to spend time in, and I give...Book Review: Forensics by Val McDermid
Val McDermid covers exactly what’s in the subtitle for this book, and much more. The full title is Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime. Expect plenty about each sub-topic.In Forensics, she explains many (if not all) of the common ways...Book Review: Moloka’i by Alan Brennert
Moloka’i is both beautiful and bittersweet. Alan Brennert shows us the human side of institutional health care. In the late 19th century, Hawaii was still a sovereign country. But the haole (non-Hawaiians) were making their way there. And bringing their diseases, most...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: The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory
The Other Queen is everything I want in a Philippa Gregory book. Massive amounts of political scheming, told from three viewpoints, and details, details, details. I loved it. Gregory tells the story of when Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in Elizabethan England in...Currently reading
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