Ten Bossy Spring Favorites
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 4 hours ago
- 11 min read
Spring Bossy Book Favorites
On Fridays I love to post Greedy Reading Lists of my favorite books. I recently gave a talk to a wonderful group of book lovers who wanted to hear about newly published books they might want to check out, and I thought I'd share my list of ten books with you Bookworms as well.
Talking about books and showcasing my Bossy favorites is one of my favorite bookish things to do, and for this talk I chose recent favorites in a range of genres. There's a book of short stories; one nonfiction book; a memoir; an atmospheric, mysterious novel; historical fiction; contemporary fiction; a rom-com with a historical fiction element; a story about music and sisters told in two timelines; a mystery that's full of surprises; and a historical fiction mystery.
Stay tuned for more more more Bossy books I've loved.
If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite recently published--or recently read--books?
01 The Jackal's Mistress by Chris Bohjalian
The deep bond that builds between an injured Union soldier and the Virginia woman who secretly takes him in is touching and complicated, and Bohjalian doesn't make Libby's dangerous choices feel too easy. The author was inspired by a true story.
In Chris Bohjalian's newest historical fiction novel, Libby Steadman lives in Virginia on the edge of the Confederate-Union Civil War conflict. Her husband has been away fighting for the Confederacy since soon after they were married,
Then Libby finds a gravely injured Union officer in a neighbor’s abandoned home. Because she hopes that a Union woman would take pity on her husband in the same situation, she secretly cares for Weybridge's injuries, realizing that if Confederate soldiers were aware of his presence in her home, the family would be considered traitors.
The decision to take in Weybridge is morally clear to Libby, but the realities of the potential harm it could bring aren't lost on her. Bohjalian never makes the decision-making too easy, and the ending was not the neatly tied-up bow of a resolution I had begun to anticipate.
The story is based upon a real account of a Southern woman who helped a Union soldier during the Civil War.
I received a prepublication edition of The Jackal's Mistress courtesy of Doubleday Books and NetGalley.
For my full review, check out The Jackal's Mistress.
02 Show Don't Tell: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld
In Curtis Sittenfeld's wonderful second short-story collection, we meet imperfect characters, often fortysomething women, in moments large and small that push them to determine what they're made of as they consider friendship, betrayal, fear of failure, the power of memory, art, parenthood, and more.
In Curtis Sittenfeld's first short-story collection, You Think It, I'll Say It, she offered ten stories of fully realized, fascinating characters that stuck with me. I loved it and rated the collection five stars.
In her second fantastic short-story collection, Curtis Sittenfeld explores middle age, fame, friendship, artistry--and "Lost but Not Forgotten" is a story featuring Lee Fiora, a character from Sittenfeld's novel Prep, in which Lee attends an alumni event at her boarding school.
My favorite writing often turns expectations on their heads, and In Show Don't Tell, Sittenfeld draws us into crucial stages of faulted characters' lives, in which they figure out what they're made of.
Throughout the book, characters, often middle-aged women, consider art, expression, love, respect, friendship, and limitations as they live their fascinatingly imperfect lives. This is more excellent Curtis Sittenfeld; I'm a forever fan.
You can click here for my review of Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, here for my Bossy take on American Wife, and here for You Think It, I'll Say It: Stories.
If you enjoy short story collections, you might like to check out Six Short Story Collections to Wow You and Six More Short Story Collections I Loved.
Click here for my full review of Show Don't Tell.
03 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
In John Green's nonfiction book Everything Is Tuberculosis, he tells his story of befriending a young man, Henry, who was suffering from tuberculosis and living in a hospital in Sierra Leone.
Green uses his tender eye and piercing analysis to explore the health care inequalities that allow the world's poorest citizens to disproportionately contract the incurable disease tuberculosis and to advocate for greater access to quality care and a search for a cure.
John Green is also the author of the nonfiction collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed (which was one of my six favorite nonfiction reads the year I read it) as well as the young adult novels An Abundance of Katherines, Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns.
Please stay tuned for my upcoming full review of Everything Is Tuberculosis.
04 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Henry's story-within-a-story adds a historical fiction element to her signature big-hearted, banter-driven, steamy, intriguingly complicated interpersonal dynamic exploration in Great Big Beautiful Life. This is an excellent rom-com with enough weighty themes to offer appealing depth.
Alice Scott is a celebrity feature writer for The Scratch in LA. She's got a sunny disposition, wears bright, cheery colors, and is hoping for her first big writing break. Hayden Anderson, from New York, has won a Pulitzer Prize and is humorless, highly scheduled, and work-obsessed.
They're both currently on Georgia's tiny Little Crescent Island, vying to become the memoir author for the reclusive former tabloid darling Margaret Ives, whose whereabouts have long been unknown to the general public. But each writer has what feel like the opposite approach, manner, and voice from the other--and they're not sure how they became the two trial candidates for the job of a lifetime.
But the writers can't deny that opposites are attracting in inconvenient fashion in their case. They're drawn to each other and discover unexpected joy, emotional intimacy, steaminess, and maybe even a promise of something real together.
Henry brings her signature warmth, great banter, and sultry romance to this story within a story. I loved the historical fiction aspect of Margaret's recounting of her history. This is an excellent rom-com with weighty themes that make it all feel anchored in something real. I got a little teary during some of the characters' vulnerability at the end, and I laughed out loud at times too.
Henry's Beach Read was one of my favorite books the year I read it, and it also made it onto the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.
People We Meet on Vacation was another great Henry story; you can check out my review here, and you might like to check it out on the Greedy Reading List Six More Great Light Fiction Stories. Emily Henry is also the author of Funny Story (one of my Favorite Reads of the Year), Happy Place, and Book Lovers.
Please click here for my full review of Great Big Beautiful Life.
05 This American Woman: A One-in-a-Million Memoir by Zarna Garg
Comedian Zarna Garg lived several lives before falling into comedy in midlife and realizing it was where she'd belonged all along. Her memoir is candid, poignant, funny, and always entertaining. I loved this peek into her fascinating life.
Zarna Garg fled her comfortable lifestyle and her widower father to avoid an unwanted arranged marriage at age 14. She begged places to stay from friends and acquaintances in Mumbai, homeless.
Desperate for food and shelter and tired of overstaying her welcome and never having security, she was returning home and on the verge of agreeing to be married off, until her long-hoped-for visa to the US came through. Instead of becoming a child bride, she ran from home and began a dramatically different new life in Akron, Ohio. In midlife, she reimagined her future again and became a hard-working comedian who opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and then warranted her own headliner spots.
Garg offers an honest, funny account of overcoming sobering challenges and determining her own destiny after years of struggles and constant worries about being a burden on those who might help her. Her intense push to achieve is accompanied by doubt, periods of low self-esteem, and feelings of unworthiness that stem from her childhood.
At the very beginning the pacing felt a little uneven to me, but then Garg hit her stride, and I was taken with her frank narrative, her relentless optimism and drive, her self-deprecating accounts of her imperfections, and her poignant reflections.
I love an honest memoir that lets a reader into the author's inner world, and Zarna has lived a fascinating life that I wanted to learn more about. I laughed out loud repeatedly while I was reading this charming memoir by this strong, funny woman.
For more memoirs you might like, please check out these Bossy reviews as well as Greedy Reading Lists of my favorites.
For my full review of this book, please see This American Woman.
06 The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
In this heartwarming story of wonderfully faulted characters who face tragedy and often make a mess of things, loyalty and steadfastness overcome all and allow a makeshift family to heal, find adventure, discover their individual strengths, and realize that they're meant to be together forever.
PJ Halliday is 63 and won the million-dollar lottery. Now he's about to set off on a cross-country road trip to track down his high-school sweetheart following the death of his former nemesis and rival.
But not everything in his life has been luck and adventure. PJ has weathered terrible tragedies in his life.
Before he can set out for Arizona to try to win back his young love, his estranged brother dies, and PJ becomes the guardian for his brother's grandchildren. So he packs them into the car, enlists his grumbling grown daughter to help him, and hits the road.
Tough situations are real but are surrounded by lighthearted, zany circumstances; characters are faulted and make missteps but learn to forgive themselves and those around them; loyalty and steadfastness serve as bridges to love and caring; and animals work with magical realism to shift and affect outcomes.
While the characters in The Road to Tender Hearts face sometimes devastating turns of events, the tone of the story is such that you won't wonder whether a happy ending is coming. Past hurts aren't erased, but love overcomes, and the ending is sweet sweet sweet.
Annie Hartnett is also the author of the wonderful novel Unlikely Animals, which was one of my Bossy Favorite Fiction Reads of the Year when I read it.
Click here for my full review of The Road to Tender Hearts.
07 The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner
Jennifer Weiner's newest novel offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the music business, songwriting, and the pressures of fame, layered with complications from clashing sisters, devastating tragedy, and a messy path toward reconciliation.
Cassie and Zoe Greenberg are sisters who have always been opposites. Cassie, a musical prodigy, loved losing herself in and expressing herself through playing and singing, but avoided the limelight. Zoe dreamed of stardom since she was a child and was driven more by fame than the music itself. But Zoe realizes that Cassie is key to any musical future, and she convinces Cassie to join her on stage, beginning their meteoric climb to stardom.
For one year when they're young adults, the sisters reach mindboggling heights of fame as the pop duo The Griffin Sisters--featured in Rolling Stone, performing on Saturday Night Live, and making videos for MTV. Then their run abruptly ended, and for the public, the reasons for their breakup were a mystery.
Twenty years later, Zoe is a housewife and Cassie is a recluse who hasn't spoken to her sister at all. But when Zoe's headstrong daughter Cherry becomes determined to become a star, she digs into the past and forces a confrontation between the estranged sisters at last.
This is a great behind-the-scenes look at the music business, musical creativity and songwriting processes, and body-image pressures on women earning a living by being in the limelight. Griffin Sisters also takes on deep familial conflicts, coping with loss and a devastating blow for future plans, lies and betrayals, and, finally, a messy but hopeful chance for reconciliation.
If you like to read fiction about music, you might also like the titles I included in the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music.
Click here for my full review of The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits.
08 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Mysteries abound within McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore, but the story is largely an atmospheric story of isolation and loss set against the drama of climate change, tragedy, and finding the will to trust again.
The description of Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore immediately ticked several of my reading-interest boxes--the setting is an isolated island (Antarctica is the closest land mass), the climate is cold (check out these other Bossy reviews of titles with cold settings), and climate change and shifting weather patterns are bringing matters to a head.
When a mysterious woman washes up half-dead on the remote island of Shearwater, home of the world's largest seed bank and formerly a research hub, she finds only Dominic Salt and his three children manning the lighthouse. The lonely, broken characters reach out to each other. Although hesitant because of past hurts, they begin to form intense bonds.
With violent storms on the horizon, no line of communication open with the outside world, and enormous secrets being harbored on all sides, the disjointed group seems doomed to fail each other. But regardless of their interpersonal complications, they may collectively be the only hope of saving the precious, preserved seeds for the future--if they can trust each other long enough to work together for the good of the world.
There are mysteries at the center of the story, but for me this was a captivating, atmospheric dive into the pressures, pain, and hope within extreme isolation, the power of external forces, and the push to protect each other at all costs. I was intrigued throughout.
Charlotte McConaghy is also the author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves.
For my full review of Wild Dark Shore, please check out this link.
09 Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
The author of the fantastic Wrong Place, Wrong Time is back with a smart, twisty mystery that's wonderfully heavy on character development and a story that hooked me.
Famous Last Words is another smart, twisty mystery from Gillian McAllister.
Camilla is a new mother who has just dropped off her baby for her first day of daycare when the police arrive at her London office. It seems that her fun, carefree ghostwriter of a husband is involved in a hostage situation--as the one wielding the gun.
Camilla, shocked, mostly cooperates with the police and the negotiator--until the hostages are shot and her husband escapes--then disappears.
But in the ensuing years, Camilla can't stop obsessing over the unusual aspects of the siege: the violence is so out of character for Luke, the hostages are never identified, and Luke was behaving strangely beforehand and left her a cryptic note the morning of the horrifying events. Are the strange coordinates she's receiving on her phone after seven years a message from Luke? And if they are and could lead her to Luke, would her love possibly overcome her devastation at knowing that somehow her beloved partner became a coldhearted killer?
I loved this smart mystery that relies heavily on character development and mental agility for our narrator. I saw some plot points coming but not others, and a couple of essential details worked quite conveniently, but I didn't mind. The ending offers answers and resolution. Sign me up for all the Gillian McAllister books, please.
Camilla is a literary agent, and I loved her escapes into books and her love for them.
For my full review, please see Famous Last Words.
10 Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
In Hall's Broken Country, characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively, and reel from the consequences of all of the above. A mystery surrounds a deadly moment, and the book ends with a hopeful, imperfect, heartbreaking way forward.
Beth and her kind husband Frank live and farm outside the small English village where they grew up. They love each other, but they are able to stay married only because they push down the memories of tragedies that could haunt them, and because secrets from the past stay buried.
But when Frank's brother shoots a dog going after the family's sheep, the gunshot sets into motion events that will change everything.
The dog belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's childhood love, and his return to town brings back long-suppressed complications around jealousies, love, choices, and the weighty consequences of the past.
Broken Country is a study of an extreme, life-and-death-stakes fallout after heartbreaking tragedy, but it's also a story of young love blossoming, then shriveling under the first pressures of the outside world; it's a mystery in which duty overpowers the difficult truth; and it's a hopeful view of how an imperfect set of characters can find their clumsy, sometimes beautiful, way forward.
I read this immersive story in a flash.
For my full review of this book please see Broken Country.
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