King immerses the reader in a sometimes-claustrophobic situation while providing enough character connection and appealingly messy complications to keep you hooked for whatever unfolds. Casey Peabody is an aspiring writer struggling with her novel, her mother's recent death, crushing financial debt, and a love life that's in upheaval. She's in the awkward, sometimes painful age and stage of shifting from young adulthood to being a grown-up, with all of the conflicting pushes and pulls on her attention, emotions, and energy. For much of the book Casey is unraveling--her mother has died, she's estranged from her father, her grim financial state is overwhelming, her health is in question, her career path is uncertain, she lives in a forlorn former potting shed, and her love life is shifting from post-breakup-nonexistent to confusingly complicated. It was tough to witness Casey's struggles and pain (even fictionalized, the disastrous trifecta of money, health, and love woes raise my blood pressure unpleasantly). Yet King offers enough glimpses of joy and growth and promise to help you hold on. King also wrote Euphoria, which I read with my book club a few years ago and which I gave four stars. That was suuuuch a different book (dark historical fiction set in 1933 New Guinea), but as in Writers & Lovers, the characters felt sometimes-competing professional desires and clashing romantic tensions that roiled throughout. In both of these books King immerses the reader in a sometimes-claustrophobic situation while providing enough character connection and appealingly messy complications to keep you hooked for whatever unfolds. There's a constant tension (one that exists in both of these King novels) that made me worry whether the presented situation would explode in tragedy or fizzle into something calmer. In neither case did I feel confident at all that I could bank on a happy ending. I breathed sighs of relief as Casey began to come into her own and listen to herself, and as her life started to look like one she could fall in love with. King must be a former waiter; Casey's experiences working in a restaurant and the twisted but familial community forged among the stresses and frantic pace of that world felt so real. And I loved how much book talk (both writing and reading) took place in this story. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? I listened to this as an audiobook read by Stacey Glemboski, and her narration was wonderful. File under "I did not realize this, but I like it": King was an English major at UNC. I mentioned this book (along with Marie Lu's Skyhunter and Lily King's Writers & Lovers) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/17/20 Edition.

Valpy's detailed Scottish setting and character development are wonderful, and I was equally invested in and engaged by both of the interconnected timelines. The Skylark's Secret has a dual timeline; the story is set in rural Scotland during World War II and decades later in the same village. Flora and her village are supporting the war effort, temporarily taking in children from Great Britain's cities, driving supplies and ambulances, knitting, and anything else a scrappy community can do to help. Flora's brother as well as their childhood friend, the laird's son, are both serving in the military, and as luck would have it, they're both stationed nearby to make use of their familiarity with the area. The more modern storyline concerns Flora's grown daughter Lexie, whose London stage career has ended suddenly and whose mother has died. Lexie has returned to the village with a bairn of her own, Daisy. She's eager to dig in and learn more about her mother's wartime history, yet desperate not to be defined and constrained by the small town and sometimes claustrophobic neighborly interest that she was once determined to escape. Valpy's detailed setting and character development are wonderful, and I was equally invested in and engaged by both of the interconnected timelines. The author winds old Scottish folk songs throughout the book, using it as a fluid way of binding the main protagonists to their country and fellow countrymen. There's a low-key mystery Lexie is set on unraveling--key players are keeping secrets about events decades past--and initially hesitant attempts to reclaim love, song, independence, community, and general fulfillment. Not everything turns out happily in both timelines, but Valpy leaves the reader with a reassuringly satisfying ending. I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK in exchange for an honest review. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? Valpy also wrote The Dressmaker's Gift, another World War II-era story (this time, set in Paris) with dual timelines; The Beekeeper's Promise, set in 1938 France with a second timeline decades later; and Sea of Memories, set in 1937 France and Scotland...with a modern timeline! She's also written other books. So if you're in for Fiona Valpy historical fiction like I now am, you have lots of lovely reading to look forward to.

Spoiler alert: If you're someone I give gifts to for a fall birthday or for the holidays, this roundup might be a surprise ruiner! Or maybe it will whet your appetite for the beautiful books that might be coming your way? Anyway, peruse this list at your own surprise-destroying peril. A Bossy book-buying note: If you're buying books this holiday season, please support your local independent bookstore. They need and appreciate our business now more than ever! (The book covers on this site link you to Bookshop, a site that supports the beloved indies that keep us swimming in thoughtful book recommendations and excellent customer service all year round.) Happy early holidays! Bossy Bookworm 01 One Last Song: Conversations on Life, Death, and Music by Mike Ayers I've given this book to two of my most music-loving people for their fall birthdays this year. In One Last Song, Mike Ayers asks various musicians which song they'd choose to be the last one they ever heard. Is reading various accounts of "to die-by" songs morbid, or is this fun? At the very least it's an intriguing peek at what makes certain songs pivotal to people who choose to make music their life's focus. 02 Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount Jane Mount is an artist and the creator of Ideal Bookshelf. Through that venture she beautifully paints books and bookshelves of books, and she creates other book-focused items perfect for gifting to a bookworm. (Ahem!) In Bibliophile, Mount offer gorgeous illustrations of some of the world's most beautiful bookstores, illustrates "lovingly curated" stacks of books, and presents this book as a giant "love letter" to people who love books. Sold! 03 The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson Bill Bryson can write about almost anything and make it interesting and comprehensible (as evidenced by his Short History of Nearly Everything). In The Body, Bryson offers astonishing facts and striking stories to illustrate the miracle of the human body, its ability to heal, and the confounding and brilliant ways its complicated systems somehow generally work successfully. This book is the perfect gift for someone who likes accessible, remarkable science factoids about the bodies we all inhabit, with some Bryson-type humor mixed in. 04 Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld For the multiple rabid Seinfeld fans in my circle, a new Jerry Seinfeld book--his first in twenty-five years--is gifting gold. Is This Anything? is a decade-by-decade look at Seinfeld's favorite notes from his career in stand-up comedy, featuring selected material he's saved over the years. Together, the excerpts provide a peek at his evolution since his Catch a Rising Star stand-up debut as a college student in 1975. 05 C. S. Lewis' Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love, and Literature This stocking-sized paperback is full of brief, manageable nuggets of thoughts and reflections from novelist and lay theologian C. S. Lewis. His sentiments are arranged by theme and are heavily faith-focused. If that's your giftee's cup of tea, this book offers small doses of Lewis' comfort and wisdom that can be read in multiple sittings. 06 Milk Street Fast and Slow: Instant Pot Cooking at the Speed You Need by Christopher Kimball For years I adored Kimball's Cook's Illustrated magazine illustrations and his in-depth, extensively tested recipes and meticulous product reviews, and last year I gifted a subscription to his wonderful newest magazine, Milk Street, to myself. Milk Street puts recipes and flavor combinations through an exhaustive testing process, so you know you can trust the recipes Kimball and his team are putting out there. And if you've run up against faulty pressure cooking recipes online like I have, knowing Kimball and friends are behind this cookbook is reassuring. Milk Street Fast and Slow also offers the option for slow cooker directions for each recipe, in case you need to be hands off at dinnertime but can set yourself up for success earlier in the day. (And I admit that I am irrationally proud of myself when I manage to do this.) I bought a copy for myself and one for someone else on my gift list! What books are you gifting this holiday season? I've got lots of e-reading giftees on my fall and holiday gifting list--and I already offer many of my fiction and nonfiction book recommendations through this blog. But I love love love to give books as gifts, so they tend to be books that can be read in short bursts (One Last Song; Bibliophile, C. S. Lewis's book) and/or books related to a specific interest of my giftee's (cooking, comedy, science). I hope the ideas here (and those in the lists to come) will help you with ideas for beautiful book gifts for anyone on your list!

I loved this first installment of Young's two-book series, which features pirates, a brave young heroine, a little romance, and lots of adventure. There's a freckle-faced young lady staring unflinchingly at the reader from the striking cover of Adrienne Young's young adult fantasy book--with a pirate ship reflected in her blue, blue eye. After a terrible storm that took her mother's life, young Fable was abandoned by her father, who's a powerful trader, to survive on an island filled with thieves and not much else. (Daaaad!) She's had to rely on her survival skills to make it through the past four long years, and if she can get off this blasted island and find her father again, she'll have to make her way in a rough world made for men--and fight to set her own path. Fable, the first in a planned two-book series, offers pirates, a little forbidden romance, a handful of interestingly dysfunctional relationships, a plucky young heroine who rejects her expected place in society, and atmospheric descriptions of imagined twisted seaside towns, deserted islands, and adventurous ocean travel. I loved this, and I'm all in for the next one. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? This suited my reading mood perfectly. Young doesn't make things too easy for her characters, but she offers the reader complicated yet satisfying developments. I mentioned this book (along with One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London and Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/10/20 Edition.

01 Skyhunter by Marie Lu My copy of the book unfortunately does not have this gorgeously mesmerizing cover. But I'm still excited to read Marie Lu's latest young adult science fiction/fantasy book, the first in the Skyhunter series. Lu offers a story about refugees desperately trying to escape becoming conscripted into the Federation army; elite Striker fighters trying to salvage society despite the Federation's widespread and evil efforts; and the demonization of the "other." When a mysterious prisoner from the front arrives who could be friend or foe, our main protagonist Talin must figure it out before things potentially unravel for her and her fellow warriors. Lu has written the Legends, Young Elites, and Warcross series. 02 The Skylark's Secret by Fiona Valpy The Skylark's Secret has a dual timeline; the story is set in rural Scotland during World War II and decades later. Flora and her village are supporting the war effort, temporarily taking in children from Great Britain's cities, driving supplies and ambulances, knitting, and anything else a scrappy community can do to help. Flora's brother as well as their childhood friend, the laird's son, are both serving in the military, and as luck would have it, they're both stationed nearby to make use of their familiarity with the area. The more modern storyline concerns Flora's grown daughter Lexie, whose London stage career has ended suddenly and her mother has died. Now Lexie is returning to the village with a bairn of her own. She's eager to learn more about her mother's wartime history, yet desperate not to be defined and constrained by the small town she was once determined to escape. I love love love this so far--Valpy's detailed setting and character development are wonderful. I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK in exchange for an honest review. 03 Writers & Lovers by Lily King Casey is an aspiring writer struggling with her novel, her mother's recent death, crushing financial debt, and a love life that's in upheaval. King must be a former waiter; Casey's experience working in a restaurant and the twisted community forged in the stresses and frantic pace of that world feel so familiar and real. Casey is in the awkward, sometimes painful age and stage of shifting from young adulthood to being a grown-up, with all of the complicating pushes and pulls on her attention, emotions, and energy. I'm listening to this as an audiobook, and it's flying by so far. What are you reading now? Last week I offered a roundup of Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism; this week I'm bravely branching out a little more, although I'm still in an odd pandemic-era, post-election stage when I want all the books to have happy endings, and I have some doubts about Writers & Lovers. What's working (or not working) in your reading life right now?

This is an appealingly cozy and old-fashioned mystery, with the flavors, sights, and sounds of colonial India underlying everything. It's 1892 in British-controlled Bombay, and Captain Jim Agnihotri is recovering in a military hospital from an injury sustained in the line of duty. He becomes obsessed with an unsolved mystery he keeps reading about in the newspaper: two young ladies from the same household plunged from a clock tower to their deaths. Jim decides to set himself the task of determining what happened. As he becomes involved with the family whose daughter and ward died, Captain Jim's endearingly strong sense of duty complicates his mission as he tries to save those in need and avoid becoming emotionally entangled with a smart young woman who is socially out of his league. March's 400-page book is an immersive story, with the flavors, sights, and sounds of colonial India underlying everything. The story keeps a patient pace as Captain Jim uncovers clues, uses deduction, and emphasizes loyalty and moral purity. He is able to use his knowledge of different castes, British and Indian political machinations, and society to assist his investigations. There are disturbingly dark issues underlying the mystery (including strict rules about caste and class, a deadly fear of scandal, and terrible mistreatment of those in lower castes, especially women). But Murder in Old Bombay largely feels like an appealingly cozy and old-fashioned mystery: as Jim works to unravel the facts, he dons elaborate disguises; there is a refreshing lack of violence beyond fistfight-level conflicts; and the forbidden love and romance are chaste and charming. I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? Nev March won the Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award for this, her debut title. I mentioned this book (along with One to Watch and Fable) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/10/20 Edition. You might also like some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You.

01 Fable by Adrienne Young There's a freckle-faced young lady staring unflinchingly at the reader from the striking cover of Adrienne Young's young adult fantasy book (with a pirate ship reflected in her blue, blue eye). After a terrible storm that took her mother's life, young Fable was abandoned by her father, who's a powerful trader, to survive on an island filled with thieves and not much else. She's had to rely on her survival skills to make it these long four years, and if she can find her father again, she'll have to make her way in a rough world made for men--and fight to set her own path. Fable is the first in a two-book series, and the blurb promises "romance, intrigue, and adventure." Pirates, a plucky young heroine who rejects her expected place in society, and atmospheric descriptions of Young's imagined world. Yes, yes, yes. 02 One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London In Kate Stayman-London's One to Watch, Bea Schumacher is a popular plus-size fashion blogger who has Instagram fame, wonderful friends--and an unhealthy obsession with a male friend who's attached to someone else. After she drunk-blogs scathing comments about the unrealistic body images of the stars of Main Squeeze (a reality TV show in which a single woman dates strangers hand-picked by the producers and aims to marry one of them), Bea is surprised when a show producer reaches out to her with an unexpected question: Would Bea consider starring in a season of Main Squeeze? Bea finds the proposal laughable, then considers what it might mean for her career, for promoting body positivity, and maybe even for her lackluster romantic life. She's in--for a fantastic wardrobe, incredibly awkward moments, scripted romance, and a beautiful Malibu backdrop. What could go wrong? (I finished this book! For my full review, see One to Watch.) 03 Murder in Old Bombay: A Mystery by Nev March It's 1892 in British-controlled Bombay, and Captain Jim Agnihotri is recovering in a military hospital from an injury sustained in the line of duty. He becomes obsessed with an unsolved mystery he keeps reading about in the newspaper: two young ladies from the same household plunged from a clock tower to their deaths, minutes apart. He's retiring from the military and has done some reporting, and Jim decides to set himself the task of determining what happened. He becomes involved with the family whose daughter and ward died as he works to find clues, donning disguises, playing up his knowledge of different castes and social roles, and attempting to head off further disaster from those responsible for the deaths. His endearingly strong sense of duty complicates his mission as he tries to save those in need, avoid becoming emotionally entangled with a smart young woman who is out of his league socially, and keep to the job at hand. This is an immersive story, with the flavors, sights, and sounds of colonial India underlying all of it. Nev March won the Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award for her debut title. I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review. Murder in Old Bombay will be published November 10, 2020. What are you reading now? I haven't read a young adult fantasy book lately, and Fable is getting great reviews (Reese Witherspoon also picked it for her Hello Sunshine book club). Plus: pirates. One to Watch intrigued me from the first murmurings I heard about it. It's a wonderful opportunity for a romantic story involving unapologetic body positivity, and I hope Bea doesn't fall into the somewhat common light fiction trap of having her self-esteem determined by men. Murder in Old Bombay is my middle-of-the-night can't-sleep e-reader book, so I'm on cozy terms with it. I adore the colonial Indian setting and the emotionally closed off but exceptionally kind and wise main protagonist Captain Jim.

01 Head Over Heels by Hannah Orenstein Nineteen-year-old Avery Abrams was set to be the next big gymnastics Olympic champion. She had the training, the talent, and the drive. But during the Olympic Trials, she sustained a career-ending injury. For the next few years she dabbled in college, she partied, she drifted, she dated a professional football player, but she didn't find peace and wasn't able to truly come to terms with her new reality. When she hits a version of rock bottom and moves home, Avery's former teammate and crush Ryan (who did become an Olympic champion) talks her into helping him coach Hallie, a young phenom at the gym where Avery spent much of her youth. With lots of gymnastics details that made the setting come to life, Head Over Heels was the engrossing, light fiction book I needed. Orenstein didn't hit any false notes for me and kept me satisfyingly wrapped up in the elite gymnastics world of the story. For my full review, see Head Over Heels. 02 Dear Emmie Blue by Lia Louis ​ Sometimes in order to delve into a lighter fiction book I find that I have to suspend my disbelief about human behavior. But letting go of expectations about realistic cause and effect in order to buy into a romantic setup (see my review of What You Wish For) is far more difficult for me than suspending my disbelief to buy into the outlandish or supernatural aspects of a romantic but otherwise truly oddball book (see my review of My Lady Jane). The premise of Dear Emmie Blue made me wonder if the story would feel too far-fetched. Lia Louis's Dear Emmie Blue characters are appealingly faulted, sometimes selfish and foolish. Unlikely bonds are forged and reforged. There's a love triangle that I adored. For my full review, please see Dear Emmie Blue. This book was also mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Now. 03 Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center ​ This book hit the spot for me. Katherine Center's Cassie is a tough-as-nails firefighter who has closed herself off emotionally to protect herself. Her life is orderly and regimented and under control. So clearly everything is about to be upended so that Cassie will be forced to alter her plans and careful schedule and figure out how to come through it all. Although you may see some of the big plot events coming, Center makes the journey so enjoyable that I just didn't care. This is satisfying escapism, but it's not silly or outlandish. Things You Save in a Fire is a quick read that addresses serious matters—betrayal, loyalty, duty, trust, and love, with a little sleuthing and romance to round out things. I thought it was great. For my full review of this book, please see Things You Save in a Fire. 04 Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating totally fits the bill as light-fiction escapism--in this case, with lots of sexy talk and sexy scenes and sexy thoughts and sex. Hazel is a strong personality, and I found myself bristling at her questioning whether she's too much sometimes. Yet the authors clearly care deeply about their characters, and the characters care deeply about each other. It all makes for a heartwarming read in which everyone is trying to love and live and be happy. You can see a satisfying version of happily ever after coming, but I didn't predict the circumstances. I first mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/16/20. For my full review of this book, please see Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating. 05 Beach Read by Emily Henry ​ Is it fair for a person (me) with particular requirements for light fiction (ideally: not too outlandish of a hook and premise, characters who follow somewhat logical steps in their lives, inner voices that feel real, human connections that warm my heart, and a little romantic something-something) to continue reading light fiction while kind of expecting disappointment? Yes. Yes, it is. Because I suspected that Emily Henry's Beach Read might be a major gem on my light fiction-escapism-pandemic-era reading list and a book that might bring me fully into the bosom of this genre. Fortunately, I was correct. The initial scene-setting didn't feel as authentic to me as the rest of the book. But after that, Beach Read met all of my criteria above and more; it's sweet and funny, it's about writing and books, there are wonderfully faulted love-crossed main protagonists with a shared history, and they share a sexy-playful-obsession that might lead to heartbreak or might lead to love. I mentioned this book in Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/3/20 Edition. For my full review of this book, see Beach Read. 06 One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London ​ In Kate Stayman-London's One to Watch, Bea Schumacher is a popular plus-size fashion blogger who has Instagram fame, wonderful friends--and an unhealthy obsession with a male friend who's attached to someone else. After she drunk-blogs scathing comments about the unrealistic body images of the stars of Main Squeeze (a reality TV show in which a single woman dates strangers hand-picked by the producers and aims to marry one of them), Bea is surprised when a show producer reaches out to her with an unexpected question: Would Bea consider starring in a season of Main Squeeze? Bea finds the proposal laughable, then considers what it might mean for her career, for promoting body positivity, and maybe even for her lackluster romantic life. She's in--for a fantastic wardrobe, incredibly awkward moments, scripted romance, and a beautiful Malibu backdrop. What could go wrong? For my full review of this book, please see One to Watch. What are some of your favorite lighter fiction books? I've been particularly drawn to these types of stories lately because the chances feel slim that things could go seriously or painfully, irrevocably awry for the characters. That's not to say that real, weighty issues aren't raised within these pages, because they are. In the books above, characters cope with abuse or alcohol abuse; they struggle to feel self-respect, a healthy body image, or to establish a true and real sense of self; and they find themselves capable of demonstrating strength in difficult circumstances. But all of these issues are explored within what feels like a safe space--amid swirling attraction, burgeoning romance, self-discovery, some temporary heartbreak, and, typically, a satisfying ending. I love this balance, especially right now. So here's the greedy question: What are some other lighter fiction stories I should be reading?

One to Watch is engrossing escapism into a world of reality TV, romantic possibilities, and luxurious fashion, where things don't always go according to plan. In Kate Stayman-London's One to Watch, Bea Schumacher is a popular plus-size fashion blogger who has Instagram fame, great taste and wit, wonderful friends--and an unhealthy obsession with a male friend who's attached to someone else. After she drunk-blogs scathing comments about the unrealistic body images of the stars of Main Squeeze (a reality TV show in which a single woman dates strangers hand-picked by the producers and aims to marry one of them), Bea is surprised when a show producer reaches out to her with an unexpected question: would Bea consider starring in a season of Main Squeeze? Bea finds the proposal laughable, then considers what it might mean for her career, for promoting body positivity, and maybe even for her lackluster romantic life. She's in--for a fantastic wardrobe, incredibly awkward moments, scripted romance, and a beautiful Malibu backdrop. What could go wrong? I was especially intrigued by how Bea navigated multiple suitors and her attempts to give each his due while simultaneously dating and honestly considering the others. She didn't lose sight of embracing each new experience while reflecting on what she wanted her future to look like after the show, above and beyond what others attempted to script or suggest. Bea's body inspires a few cruel comments from petty characters or online trolls, and her self-esteem flags briefly at times, but she is strong, resilient, and appealingly her own woman, not reliant on men for her self-worth. Stayman-London allows Bea to sink fully into the romance, fashion, and reality television ups and downs--while allowing room for the strong young woman's emotional growth, stumbles, and her creation of a new version of a happy ending. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? Stayman-London has written for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Malala, Anna Wintour, and Cher, but this is her first book. I listened to this as an audiobook read by Kristen Sieh, and it was great. I mentioned this book (along with Fable by Adrienne Young and Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/10/20 Edition.

With lots of engrossing gymnastics details that made the setting come to life, Head Over Heels was the engrossing, light fiction book I needed. Here's the premise of Hannah Orenstein's latest book: nineteen-year-old Avery Abrams was set to be the next big gymnastics Olympic champion. She had the training, the talent, and the drive. But during the Olympic Trials, she sustained a career-ending injury. For the next few years she dabbled in college, she partied, she drifted, she dated a professional football player, but she didn't find peace and wasn't able to truly come to terms with her new reality. When she hits a version of rock bottom and moves home, Avery's former teammate and crush Ryan (who did become an Olympic champion) talks her into helping him coach Hallie, a young phenom at the gym where Avery spent much of her youth. Avery has to figure out quickly if she can come to terms with her potential new role in the gymnastics world as a coach and create a new path for her future. She'd like to be kind where her own coach was cruel and still lead Hallie to the success she's capable of achieving. As a scandal breaks and multiple revelations of abuse within the gymnastics community are made public, what can Avery do for the girls who've been harmed, for her former best friend, and for herself? With lots of gymnastics details that made the setting come to life, Head Over Heels was, as I'd hoped, the engrossing, light fiction book I needed. Orenstein didn't hit any false notes for me and kept me satisfyingly wrapped up in the elite gymnastics world of the story. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? Orenstein has published two prior books, Love at First Like and Playing with Matches, neither of which I've read. I mentioned this book (along with the epic science fiction/fantasy To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and a young adult historical fiction story set during the Gold Rush, How Much of These Hills Is Gold) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/3/20 Edition.

01 To Sleep in a Sea of Stars I'd like to mention up front that To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is 878 pages, so if you never hear from me again, just know that I'm still out there in the world, and I'm probably still reading this book. I actually love a nice long science fiction tale to dive into, and this is the first adult title from Christopher Paolini, the author of the popular young adult book Eragon and its three sequels (dragons!). And Paolini reportedly worked on this epic story for nine years. Hopes=high. Kira, a xenobiologist, is readying to leave the uncolonized planet where she and her longtime love have been stationed with a small team for four months. She just needs to run out really quickly to check on a downed drone on the morning of their departure before packing up to leave for good--and that's when she encounters something that changes everything. 02 Head Over Heels Just listen to this premise from Hannah Orenstein's latest book: nineteen-year-old Avery Abrams was set to be the next big gymnastics Olympic champion. She had the training, the talent, and the drive. But during the Olympic Trials, she sustained a career-ending injury. For the next few years she dabbles in college, she parties, she drifts, she dates a professional football player, but she doesn't find peace and isn't able to truly come to terms with her new reality. When she hits a version of rock bottom and moves home, Avery's former teammate and crush Ryan (who did become an Olympic champion) talks her into helping him coach a young phenom at the gym where Avery spent her youth. There's more to Head over Heels, but I think this is going to be the engrossing, light fiction book I need right now. (I finished this one; click here for my full review.) 03 How Much of These Hills Is Gold I'm listening to How Much of These Hills Is Gold as an audiobook. I love a Gold Rush story, and a young adult story, and a story about "otherness" and about brave young women meeting challenges. But right now I'm struggling with this one. The detail is wonderful, but the circumstances are continually difficult. Covid-era, pre-election, pre-pandemic-modified holidays might not be the best timing for me to be reading an often-grim (though valiant) struggle for survival. It's not you, book, it's me. I put my big-girl pants on and buckled down to finish this one; click here to read my full review. What are you reading now? My library holds and due dates have dictated another interesting mix of books for my current reading life with a fantasy title, a lighter fiction story, and a young adult historical tale with magical realism mixed in. Are you reading any great escapism right now? I feel like mysteries, light fiction, memoirs, and fantasy are working well for me--plus historical fiction if it's not too heavy. What's working for your reading life during these odd times?

01 Where the Forest Meets the Stars Joanna is feeling adrift after her mother's death, and she disappears into the constant attention her ornithology research commands, living in her sparse rental cabin and tuning out the rest of the world. That is, until a young girl appears, battered and bruised, and is resistant to help but clearly in need of it. Ursa says she is from the stars and cannot return until she has witnessed five miracles. Joanna and her reclusive neighbor Gabe become drawn into Ursa's orbit and drawn to each other as they try to protect her--and they discover more about themselves and their capabilities for love than they'd imagined. I love love loved this. Ursa, Jo, Gabe, Tabby, the ornithology storyline, the makeshift family, and the (maybe slightly too easy but lovely and satisfying) resolution. Highly recommend! For my full review of this book, see Where the Forest Meets the Stars. 02 Darling Rose Gold ​ What a wonderfully twisted little tale this was from Stephanie Wrobel. In Darling Rose Gold, she offers readers a story involving Münchausen syndrome by proxy, lies, betrayals, and double-crossing, all within a claustrophobic, isolated, and codependent mother-and-daughter relationship. Yet the tone is often playful as the characters keep things chatty and light while striving to manipulate each other. I was totally hooked on this fast read and couldn’t wait to find out who was the better strategist and who might be tricking who. There are some wonderfully devilish dark twists and turns as events evolve and as the characters' layers of plotting become evident. NetGalley and Catapult provided me with an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. For my full review, see Darling Rose Gold. 03 When We Were Vikings ​ Zelda is in her twenties and lives with her older brother Gert. She is obsessed with Vikings, she's a stickler for the Rules of the House, and she follows highly structured routines. On certain days she finds her own way to the community center where she and other young adults with challenges and disabilities play and learn social and practical skills; on other set days she visits the library; twice a week she visits her trusted therapist, Dr. Laird. But there’s a dark undercurrent throughout When We Were Vikings. Zelda has to figure out what it means to live her own legend, and whether she can save Gert or even save herself. I loved this. The characters, the story arc that isn’t too easy but leaves you in a promising place after all, and the dialogue—love love love. For my full review of this book, see When We Were Vikings. 04 Nothing to See Here I was very glad to realize that the striking premise itself was not the most powerful element here. Wilson's story stars combustible children and the low-key, unambitious misfit who sticks with them, making them feel unequivocally safe and understood for the first time. Kevin Wilson provides some heartbreaking disappointment about family members' emotional limitations and conditional loyalty, and he allows characters to craft chosen relationships into a beloved pod that functions like family. Nothing to See Here is a short book but it packs delightfully odd, satisfying, and sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny punches. I just loved this. For my full review of this book, please see Nothing to See Here. 05 A Woman Is No Man In A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Rum explores the often powerless and essentially voiceless status of her female characters within their conservative Arab culture, both in Palestine and as immigrants and first-generation Americans in New York. Much of this is dark. Yet there are bright points: rare friendships emerge, sisters build intense loyalty to each other, girls and women find joy in secret reading and in books, and there are occasional breaks to freedom. The details Rum provides as a thread throughout the book--the food, spices, and meals that are a framework for much of the structure of the women’s days--are wonderful. A Woman Is No Man explores the incredible drive and bravery required by Rum's female characters to write a new history, one in which they enjoy freedoms and a voice. For my full review of this book, see A Woman Is No Man. 06 In Five Years ​ Dannie is on the path to achieving her five-year goals in spectacularly efficient fashion. She goes to sleep one night feeling satisfied, but she wakes up in another life: in a strange apartment, with a different boyfriend, and with an alternate set of choices behind and before her. And perhaps most confusingly of all, she's happy. Very very happy. Dannie returns to her original reality, but she can’t shake the possibilities raised and the uncertainty created by what felt like an actual temporary shift in her existence. What do those vastly different circumstances and her satisfaction within them mean about how she can and should live her life now? Serle's In Five Years totally hit the spot for me, and it also wasn’t exactly what I expected. The setup seems like it’s a romance, but it’s really a story about loyalty and devoted friendship without easy or saw-it-coming resolutions, and not everything is as it seems. I loved it. For my full review of this book, see In Five Years. If you like books that play with timelines and realities, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes. What were some of your favorite fiction reads this year? I was reading many of these books as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shape life in the United States this year, and I can vouch for all of these very different stories as great escapism. Heartwarming or quirky fiction are the types of books that have really been fitting the bill for me lately. If you're looking for more great fiction, you might also want to check out the Greedy Reading List My Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads.

Zhang's detail was wonderful, and her characters make noble sacrifices and face impossible choices. The book's frequent heartbreak was a challenge for me. I listened to How Much of These Hills Is Gold as an audiobook. I love a Gold Rush story, a young adult story, a story about brave young women meeting challenges. And I love historical fiction set in the Western United States. (If you do too, take a look at my Greedy Reading List of Six Great Historical Fiction Stories Set in the American West). In How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Lucy and Sam are orphaned siblings who must become tough as nails to make their way in the world and to boost each other through rough times. There's courage, and fighting racial inequality any way they can, and never accepting defeat. Zhang layers the kids' current circumstances and journey with stories of the youth and origins of the siblings' recently deceased parents--their beloved mother and very difficult, hard-drinking, rough-fisted father Ba. (Ba shares sensitive reflections, regrets, and advice with Lucy in his own sections of the story--but, maddeningly, she never hears them). I struggled to finish this book. Zhang's detail was wonderful, but the pacing was slow--detailing Lucy and Sam's (and their parents' long-ago) long journeys and extended memories. The characters' circumstances were often intensely difficult, and they endure horrific tragedies with few bright spots. Characters make noble sacrifices and face impossible choices, make heartbreaking missteps, and come to terms with challenging realities. Covid-era, pre-election, and while facing pre-pandemic, depressingly modified holidays might not be the best timing for me to have read an often-grim (though valiant) struggle for survival. It just felt like too much. Any Bossy thoughts on this book? This is Zhang's first novel. I mentioned this book (along with To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and Head Over Heels) in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/3/20 Edition.

01 The Exiles Christina Baker Kline, who authored Orphan Train (which I really liked) and A Piece of the World (which I loved), tells the story of three women's lives in nineteenth-century Australia: Evangeline, a British governess who becomes pregnant and is ultimately sent to prison in “the land beyond the seas"; Hazel, a savvy young woman who is a midwife and an herbalist, sent across the ocean for stealing a silver spoon; and Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of an Aboriginal chief, adopted by a white British family in Australia. Kline writes a story of friendship, despair, and hope with a richly drawn Australian backdrop--while laying bare the country's often-painful history. She exposes the raw truths of tough situations in character-driven historical fiction so deftly, I have high hopes for The Exiles. (I finished this one! For my full review, please see The Exiles.) 02 The Comeback Grace Turner was one movie away from Hollywood’s A-List. So no one understood why, at the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, she disappeared. Now Grace is back and ready for her comeback, but she's realizing that the only way she'll be able to exorcise her demons may be to meet them head-on. This is a novel about justice and power and finding the strength to have a voice. The Comeback is an interesting book to read on the heels of A Star Is Bored. The books' tones are very different, but the dark side of stardom is present in both novels. 03 Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes Jessica Pan is an introvert who lost her job and found herself friendless and lonely. So she decided to deliberately put herself into extremely uncomfortable social situations for a year--doing improv, talking to strangers on the tube, taking a vacation alone, and more. She regretted this plan almost instantly. In her memoir, Pan explores whether life really is better for the extroverts, or whether she was on the right path with her introverted life all along. This is a book my book club is reading, and we were recently saying that the concept reminded us of MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend--although that book had a premise that didn't really make sense, since the author seemed surrounded by family, friends, work friends, and didn't seem particularly lonely. Here, Pan seems earnest about giving a different approach to life an honest try. (I finished this one! For my full review, please click here.) What are you reading now? I'm really greedily excited about reading all three of these books--historical fiction (Austraaaaalia!), celebrity-focused fiction, and a memoir with a quirky hook. Was this a masterminded plan to have three disparate books going at once, or did these just happen to be the three books from my stack that are due back to the library next? Ahem! So, what books are you reading and liking now? I always want more more more ideas to add to my idea-hoarding to-read book list.

01 The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Not to be confused with another "seven/Evelyn" book, Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.) The premise and structure of Stuart Turton's The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle are fascinating: Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and thereby break the cycle. But every day Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. Let the playing with points of view and the time-turning begin! This book had many moving parts, evolving points of view and senses of self, shifts between days and times within a day, major but mysterious supernatural undercurrents, important characteristic revelations, and complicated past entanglements between parties. I was just glad to roll with it. (Although I really would have enjoyed having a futuristic ability to create fact webs, detailed maps indicating various characters’ hourly movements, and interrupted timelines in the air as I read. Ahem!) But being able to track every detail and how it fit wasn't required (I kept reminding myself that I was not in fact the editor here); the book held my curiosity, and I gladly gave up trying to unpack the characters’ complicated interconnectedness or potential individual motivations past Turton's assertions. I was happy to go along with the denouement to this intriguing book and trust that all the moving pieces fit beautifully. 02 Things in Jars ​ Jess Kidd offers a creepy, dark mystery tale gloriously steeped in details of Victorian London with seedy, sordid characters, all built on a framework of heroes with heart. Along with the kickass, whip smart, savvy, kind, and irresistible Bridie are her striking and unfailingly loyal sidekick Sadie and also Ruby, who is both a tender tie to her hardscrabble past and a devoted and helpful apparition. Various depraved and frighteningly cruel characters help drive the story of Things in Jars and add to the mystery. Bridie is a strong female protagonist, and Things In Jars offers solid historical fiction details of Victorian London within a creepy mystery with dark twists and turns. Yes on all counts! For my full review, please see Things in Jars. 03 A Curious Beginning ​ This fantastic book is the first in Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell series. Veronica is a curious young Victorian-era lady with progressive ideas, and I adore how matter-of-factly and innocently she presents her wild-for-the-times views and the way she questions power structures and injustices. Raybourn may allow Veronica to benefit from the author's own modern sensibilities in A Curious Beginning, but Veronica is a strong and unorthodox main protagonist, and for me this aspect of her character works wonderfully. Veronica finds herself entangled in a dangerous set of circumstances, complete with intrigue, a traveling show (!), butterfly expertise, and fascinating references to her past worldwide adventures—all alongside a dark and brooding and heavily tattooed adventurer and naturalist who becomes a loyal friend. I loved it! For my full review of this book, please see A Curious Beginning. 04 The Clockmaker's Daughter In 1862, a group of artists arrive at Birchwood Manor to relax and allow inspiration to strike, but odd tragedy and destruction unfold instead. A hundred and fifty years later, a young archivist, Elodie Winslow, is drawn to the mystery. She's determined not to stop until she finds out what really happened that summer. This one took a little page time to start moving along for me, but I love Kate Morton’s writing and her rich detail. I’m glad the circumstances of what led to the mystery—yikes!—didn’t become plain until toward the end. With dual story lines, multiple generations, assumed identities, otherworldly beings, wonderful chance (and life-changing) encounters, and a rich English countryside setting. I thought this was lovely. 05 Jackaby ​ Jackaby is the first in a young adult supernatural mystery series, with memorable main characters and great pacing and banter. It's 1892 in New Fiddleham, New England. R. F. Jackaby investigates the mysteries of the unexplained, and Abigail Rook has just arrived in town and needs a job. Her keen eye for details leads her to become his trusty assistant. Abigail is clever, and her strong role in her partnership with the wonderfully odd Jackaby is satisfying. The story is dark, mysterious, and feels Gothic, yet there's humor too. This book had me so hooked that realizing that I'd figured out the basic facts behind the mystery (although I hadn't figured out the many great details surrounding the events) didn't diminish my reading enjoyment in the least. Also: that eerily beautiful cover! 06 The Night Tiger ​ The Night Tiger is a wonderful historical fiction mystery and love story shaped by superstition, fables, and tales. Ji Lin is a young girl who would have dreamed of becoming a doctor if society would allow it, but she's stuck working off her mother's Mahjong debts by being a dance hall girl. She encounters a Chinese houseboy Ren on a bizarre mission, and their paths become intertwined around a superstition that men can turn into tigers. Ji Lin speaks her mind and ruffles feathers even as she exploits assumptions about women, sexual attraction, and power. She doesn’t fit the mold of a typical woman from 1930s Malaysia or that of the British colonists living there—in all wonderful ways. She’s itching for (and finds) adventure, knowledge, and more than a loveless match. There's magical realism at the heart of this book, and Choo also examines colonialism, superstition, and young love. I thought it was fascinating. What are your favorite historical fiction mysteries? I love an intersection of historical fiction and mystery, two genres I adore. Some of the books listed here also have supernatural elements, which takes them into another genre as well. Trifecta! Something about detailed settings from the past just sets off a mystery beautifully for me. Right now I'm reading another one set in 1892 Bombay that has immersive detail I adore. So here's the greedy question: What are some other historical fiction mysteries I should read?

The mystery moves along at a nice clip, with Ivy and her loyal friends making plucky efforts to uncover the truth to save Autumn--while grappling with serious issues. In Meredith Tate's newest book, Ivy and her gloriously nerdy friends play in the school band and love board games. They have a name for their group, the Nerd Herd. (I adored all of this.) But her older sister Autumn has been emotionally closed off since their mother died and has become involved in a mysterious, shadowy scene. When Autumn disappears, Ivy gamely plunges into the sinister underbelly of her sister's life to try to save her. The Last Confession of Autumn Casterly is a young adult mystery, and the main protagonists are high schoolers--mainly charmingly caring, funny, quirky, honest ones who add a lovely levity to the story. But there's a darker side here, too: Tate addresses sober, sometimes fury-inducing circumstances such as date rape, he said/she said, cyclical bullying, parents' deaths, drug use, and disastrous downward spirals brought upon by coping with and taking part in various combinations of the factors above. The mystery moves along at a nice clip, with Ivy and her wonderfully loyal friends making plucky efforts to uncover the truth (along with the evolution of a love triangle; Ivy's reinforced comfort with her weight even as she notices others' judgments about it; and young people living as their authentic, varied selves). Meanwhile Autumn takes on an omniscient role, and her ability to witness everything going on allows for honest personal reflection that was immensely appealing. But is it too late for her soul-searching to be of any use? What did you think? I was impressed by how Tate managed to balance the tone of the lighthearted friendships with the weighty issues that shape the story. This title was listed in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/13/20 Edition, as well as in Six Newish Young Adult Mysteries I Want to Read.

Many of her characters find themselves in despairingly difficult situations, but Kline offers glimmers of hope as well. Christina Baker Kline tells the story of three women's lives in the nineteenth century: Evangeline, a British governess who becomes pregnant and is ultimately sent to prison in Australia, “the land beyond the seas"; Hazel, a savvy young woman who is a midwife and an herbalist, sent across the ocean for stealing a silver spoon; and Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of an Aboriginal chief, adopted by a powerful white British family in Australia. Kline deftly exposes the raw truths of tough situations in her character-driven historical fiction. In The Exiles, she writes a story of friendship, despair, and emergences of hope with a richly drawn Australian backdrop--while laying bare the country's often-painful history. She offers uncomfortably vivid details of prison life, sea voyage, male-female power structures, the tiny glimmers of hope characters try to kindle into sustaining flames, and the deadly influence of negative societal judgment. Many of the characters in The Exiles find themselves in despairingly difficult situations, and I trust that Kline reflected the grim details of many realities. To be fair, she offers glimmers of hope as well. But the dark injustices were tough for me to read; some of this may have been personal timing. About halfway through the book Kline takes the reader through a plot twist that dramatically affects one main protagonist's life path. It threw me for a loop and I'm not sure I recovered from it; when I woke in the night after reading this section, my mind immediately began worrying over it. The women's discoveries of their inner strength during their desperation are wonderful lights in the darkness here. As Evangeline reflects during the months-long boat journey to Australia, "The sheltered, unworldly governess who'd entered the gates of Newgate [Prison] was gone, and in her place was someone new. She felt as flinty as an arrowhead. As strong as stone." Hazel arrives in the story fully formed as a tough, clever, street-smart character; I loved seeing her heart open bit by tiny bit--as well as the details of the poultices, healing herbs, teas, and midwifery and other medical care with which she assists others. The (limited) Mathinna story line was particularly fascinating to me. The tragic destruction of her indigenous clan at the hands of the British mirrors the horrors enacted against Native Americans in the United States, and the book touches on how the British took advantage of a vastly different culture and obliterated it. There was no word for property among her people, yet the British stole her people's land and asserted ownership to drive the native peoples out. The story arc concerning Mathinna focuses on her life within the white culture and how it both does and does not break her spirit and her sense of self. The girl's confusion about the word "savages" was particularly poignant; she hears it used by the British to refer to her and her people, whereas she had heard it from her people accurately used to describe white men who were whalers and sealers, who "seemed...half men, half beast." Kline offers an enactment of justice in one egregiously unfair and horrible situation that is satisfying, if anticipated. (However, why this evil character would continue seeking out and lingering around the others was not clear to me; I imagined that this person would likely light out for other places and wreak random havoc elsewhere.) What did you think? Kline also authored Orphan Train (which I really liked) and A Piece of the World (which I loved). I had a tough time with the injustices here, although I understand and respect Kline's reflection of reality. I think some of my reaction was just bad reading timing on my part. Kline's research and resulting detail is fantastic, and I'm in for all the Christina Baker Kline books. I mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/22/20 Edition.

Roberts reflects upon her identity and place in the world in a raw and genuine way that I found gripping. Keena Roberts grew up splitting her time between a primate research camp in Botswana, where she felt at home, and an elite Philadelphia girls' school, where she did not. In Philadelphia, she navigated the social hierarchy and her preppy classmates' cruelties and curiosities. In Africa, she spent months sleeping in a tent, cooking over a campfire, carrying out tasks essential to her family's safety and existence, and remaining ever-vigilant about giving most creatures as wide a berth as possible. She was comfortable among the baboons her parents spent years studying, and she was fascinated by the other creatures living nearby. Yet the necessary vigilance required to survive in the bush was so ingrained, years later she instinctively scanned back and forth for danger as she walked--even on city sidewalks. Elephants trundled through camp, tearing down trees and structures; a nearby buffalo herd always carried a threat of stampede and trampling--plus they attracted lions; the lions themselves were stealthy, deadly, and lightning quick; and the dumb but treacherous hippos living along the river not infrequently bit and sunk boats and killed people. Wild Life's subtitle, Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs, felt whimsical and light. But Roberts's memoir doesn't merely explore her culture shock, as interesting as that is. She reflects upon her identity in a raw and genuine way that I found gripping. Her disparate life experiences ultimately lead her to think deeply about her place in the world, her responsibility to humans and animals, and how she might better the lives of others. For years Roberts said affectionately and with confidence that Botswana was "home," but factors eventually lead her to grapple uncomfortably with this claim. When the AIDS crisis decimates the Botswanan population; farming and development begin to push animals into new areas and force troubling contact with humans; and circumstances highlight the stark contrast between her family's own great privilege and the limited opportunities of most Botswanans, Roberts has a series of reckonings that profoundly change her life. Her parents' primatology research is touched upon and is fascinating (my husband got to hear about this at more length than he may have been counting on). Roberts's desire for self-sufficiency and her powerful instincts, even as a young girl, are captivating and interesting, especially alongside her social naivete. And I felt privileged to read as her convictions led her toward a life path of service and life-changing work. What did you think? This memoir was more than I'd hoped for. I love a peek at wildlife and living in the wild, and I adored reading Roberts's account of her journey from acting in a supporting role for her parents' research to discovering her own challenging, meaningful, and important career and calling. I first mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Memoirs I'm Reading Now, 10/7/20 Edition.

01 Vengeance Road I loved this young adult Western, and not just because of its amazing cover. Kate is a tough young woman posing as a male cowboy. She's got revenge on her mind, and she and her unlikely band of allies aren't afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. But Kate also slowly, reluctantly finds a little bit of love to soften her hardened heart. Erin Bowman offers up great action along with what I thought were perfect amounts of self-actualization and character development, without ever being heavy-handed. Vengeance Road is a rough and tumble story with enough suspense that I wasn't ever confident that the main characters would emerge alive. I wished a little more care had been taken with the resolutions at the end, and I would have liked some more justification for characters' decisions late in the book, but I loved this. The cowboy dialect didn't distract, although it was notably distinct throughout. Vengeance Road is the first book in Bowman's Vengeance Road duology; Retribution Rails is the second. (I didn't love that one quite as much.) 02 These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 ​ My advice is to ignore the title on this one. The syntax seems to indicate something altogether different than the beautifully written "grown-up Little House on the Prairie" (as my friend Kirstan called it) that I adored. Turner's story is inspired by her family's memoirs, and her Sarah Prine is a strong woman living on the unforgiving frontier of the Arizona Territories near the turn of the twentieth century. The details Turner provides of life at that time and in that place bring to life Sarah's stories of growing up, struggling, finding love, and persevering. Sarah's voice is just wonderful. There are additional books in the Sarah Agnes Prine series: Sarah's Quilt and The Star Garden, neither of which I've read yet, as well as Light Changes Everything. Turner has also written a couple of other historical fiction books that look promising. 03 West ​ This isn't strictly a Western, but the main protagonist does travel west, and the feeling of it is in line with the genre, so I'm bossily including it on this list. Cy is a widower in a small Pennsylvania town who is drawn in by a newspaper article about enormous ancient bones found in a swamp. He feels unshakably compelled to travel west to find out if the mammoth animals he's heard described are still roaming the area. So Cy leaves his ten-year-old daughter Bess with his sister, Bess's short-tempered aunt, although he expects to be away on his irrational, foolish travels for two years. (Two years!) Bess, stuck at home, traces Cy's optimistic travel route on a map (and, disturbingly, struggles multiple times with being preyed upon by a man--I needed her aunt to tune in on this horrifying situation, stat). Cy isn't a sympathetic character (Bess is the one I was feeling for here), but his ill-fated journey is full of misplaced hope, then mistakes and regret, but over all of it, a compulsion to continue toward an end. It's compelling, and Bess's faith in her faulted father is heart-wrenching. West is a quick read with an important case of implausibly (but satisfyingly) impeccable timing that saves the day, twice. The ending is beautifully wrought. Davies includes fantastic details of amateur Western exploration that I adored. 04 One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow Oh, I loved this book! In Wyoming in 1870, the Bemis and Webber families have no other neighbors for miles, so they're not only inextricably interconnected to the land, they're connected to each other. When a sudden upheaval results in both husbands' absences, their wives must face their hard feelings toward each other and forge an unlikely alliance if they and their families are to survive the brutal winter. This was a slow build and a beautiful story, satisfying and often sweet, complete with young love. Hawker includes rich details of farming and rural life. I loved the explorations of the spirits of various creatures and the characters’ awareness of the spirals and cycles of nature and of life. I adored the character of the fiercely unique Beulah. I received an advance copy of this book from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Hawker is also the author of The Ragged Edge of Night. 05 The Widow Nash ​ Dulcy has traveled all over with her beloved, quirky father Walton. He's wealthy beyond all reason, fascinated with natural disasters, obsessed with wandering the globe--and determined to identify an as-yet-undiscovered cure for his syphilis. His mind seems to be failing him just as the proceeds from his gold mines go missing, and Dulcy is suspected. She must decipher his enigmatic notebooks and codes to clear her name. Or could she simply disappear, be presumed dead, and escape unwarranted attention--and avoid the clutches of unwanted matrimony? In a small Montana town Dulcy reinvents herself as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow. If she's lucky, she can build a new life and shed the limitations of her real identity. The before and after of certain pivotal events almost felt like two separate books, but I was hooked on all of it--the early twentieth-century settings (Seattle, New York City, Montana, various clinic sites); Dulcy's deranged but maddeningly intriguing syphilitic mining magnate of a father; the layers of smart dialogue; the undercurrent of fear beneath the soothing comfort of the details of everyday life. I loved this. 06 Walk on Earth a Stranger ​ Gold is in my blood, in my breath, even in the flecks in my eyes. Walk on Earth a Stranger tells the story of Lee, a young woman with a powerful secret: an ability to sense gold. Her gold sense has kept her family fed and sheltered, but it's dangerous too. If others knew of it, they'd likely use it--and Lee--to their own advantage. When Lee's power is discovered, she has to run, and she runs toward the gold. I thought this was great: an adventure story of a teenaged girl fleeing from Georgia to California during the gold rush. This was really nicely paced with gripping details of the trek and of Lee's life on the road. This is the first book in Rae Carson's young adult Gold Seer trilogy set in Gold Rush-era America; the second is Like a River Glorious, which I gave 3.5 stars, and the third is Into the Bright Unknown, which was a great final book and satisfying-revenge wrap-up. Carson is also the author of the Fire and Thorns series, four young adult fantasy books plus related novellas and a prequel. Do you have any favorite books set in the American West? Endless brutal and terrible things happened to indigenous peoples because white people explored and settled in the West. Yet I'm also fascinated by the optimistic explorer spirit--and I do love reading about strong female characters in a time when the world around them didn't always support women's strength and determination. What do you think, is this a setting and a setup you're drawn to?

"I'm still trying not to be the daughter of a murderer. I'm still trying to redeem [my parents]. I carry the structure of their bones around my insides...and try to tell the world, '...They were more than that.'" Allison Moorer is a Grammy- and Academy Award- nominated singer-songwriter whose father killed her mother when Allison and her sister were young. A longtime musical storyteller, Moorer examines her parents, her youth, and that pivotal tragedy, considering how it has shaped her into her adult self and how much of her identity is (and how much can be) separate from that horrifying event and its endless repercussions. I didn't know of the author before her memoir began garnering attention. Blood: A Memoir reads like her journal; Moorer sifts through memories, looks through photos, celebrates her parents' joyful moments, curses their weaknesses, and feels devastation at the horrific tragedy that in some ways felt inevitable; in hindsight, her parents' relationship was like a train speeding down a track toward a cliff. She does all of this gorgeously, sharing feelings, mental snapshots, carefully considered possibilities, and frank reality. There's a lot of pain here. But Blood doesn't read as though Moorer is flogging her significant sorrow and anger or highlighting dramatic events for memoir or record sales. I felt like I was following her on her honest, zigzagging, messy journey toward gaining more of an understanding of the people her parents were and the forces that shaped their lives (and their daughters' lives)--as though I was witnessing her step-by-step movement toward something that more closely resembles peace. Late in the book Moorer notes, "I learned to hold my fists up to the world to try to protect myself from being seen...." and says that she has often found it impossible to let down her protective wall and be vulnerable. Yet she is sentimental about the people who made her, instilled a love of music in her, and raised her--although not always competently--until she was a young teenage woman. They weren't perfect, but they were her parents, and she still sings their songs, tries to redeem them, and lives out some of their dreams. The foreword was written by Allison's sister, singer and songwriter Shelby Lynne. Regarding their talking through their past together, Moorer says, "So many memories we share and purposely keep well-oiled. We keep them alive even if they hurt us and suck up all the air in the room. They are all we have of our folks and the family we were." In Blood, Moorer, after years of therapy, reflection, and working through her enormous rage and loss, sets a goal of trying to be gentler with herself. As far as trying to sort through the addiction and abuse that led to her parents' early deaths, she notes, "I do know I can't spend all of myself on it, for there are, with any hope, a lot of days left to be reckoned with, work to do, real love to be learned about, and a son to raise." Moorer's love of music (including her passion to write, sing, and harmonize) links many of these memories and pages. I listened to Lynne and Moorer's joint album, Not Dark Yet, while reading this book, and it was a beautiful backdrop. What did you think? I first mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Memoirs I'm Reading Now, 10/7/20 Edition. You might also like the list Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year.

Schwab's stories take place within her detailed fantasy worlds, but her characters' conflicts, hopes, and fears feel real and true for any genre. A Conjuring of Light is an epic finish to V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic series. There are four Londons in Schwab's trilogy, and in this final book, darkness threatens to upend the delicate balance the few, essential, magical Antari have struggled to establish among the worlds. The fantastic main players are back: Kell, the ward of the Red London's royal family who once thought he was the last Antari alive; Lila Bard, the gloriously contrary, mischievous pickpocket from Grey London who is learning to control her considerable magic; Holland, White London royalty Lila loves to hate; Rhys, Kell's prince and brother; and one of my favorites, Captain Alucard Emery. Then there's Osaron, Black London's villain who's trying to destroy everyone and everything the whole world over through his shadows and dark control. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows; as crisis after crisis erupts, situations require ingenuity, teamwork, selflessness, and a more sophisticated mastery of magic, skills, clever thinking, and politics than any of the characters could have imagined. Schwab's stories take place within her detailed fantasy world (with some historical fiction elements of London and life at the time mixed in), but her world-building never feels manufactured or self-conscious. Her characters' dynamics, conflicts, hopes, fears, and determination feel real and true. There's a great layer of twisty-turny love/denied feelings/ confusion/misunderstanding (Lila and Kell; Alucard and Rhys) that comes into play and adds nice depth. A small detail: the cutthroat magical bartering and "shopping" scene was a standout. The series is adult fantasy but would be appropriate for a young adult reader--if not averse to Lila's occasional and wonderfully foul-mouthed fury in the face of various indignities. The book is 600+ pages; I listened to the audiobook, and the dual narrators Kate Reading and Michael Kramer are spot-on. What did you think? The first two books in the Shades of Magic series are A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows, each of which I gave four stars. Schwab is also the author of the Villains trilogy, which I really like. The first book in that series is Vicious and the most recent is Vengeful, with a third not yet published. Schwab also recently published The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, a stand-alone book I'm eager to read.

Lane's story is zany and wonderful, with lots of glimpses into behind-the-scenes celebrity details--and a layer of heart and poignant reflection that surprised me. "This book is not about Carrie Fisher." Author Byron Lane was Carrie Fisher's personal assistant in real life, and in this novel, Byron's main protagonist Charlie is assistant to a sci-fi-blockbuster-famous actress who played Priestess Talara. Kathi Kannon is a character with a big, wacky personality who also struggles with addiction. She's Hollywood royalty, and her former movie star mother lives in a home on the same compound. So I was definitely picturing Carrie Fisher as Kannon throughout this story. I heard the dialogue in her voice, I had a mental image of Debbie Reynolds as her mother, and Star Wars was in my mind as the enormously popular movie series that made the actress famous. This is a novel, but the spirit of the book felt authentic to what we know about Carrie Fisher's strong, wonderfully unique personality and some of her life challenges. Charlie is searching for meaning and direction--and he doesn't much mind the social cachet of being assistant to a high-profile celebrity. Kathi tends toward outrageous excess and could use a loyal companion who cares enough to set limits toward a goal of her self-preservation. We see practical Charlie learning to roll with and embrace Kannon's spicy banter and often outrageous wishes. The story is zany and wonderful, with lots of glimpses into glamorous (and often tedious) celebrity details. There are fun and frenetic scenes about meeting the varied demands of an enormous star, and Lane explores the characters' challenges of striving to maintain balance in an odd employer-assistant relationship that blurs the lines of the professional and personal. As Charlie becomes more deeply involved in the ups and downs of Kathi's life, he finds himself more and more reluctant to drop her name into conversation to wow a party crowd, or to use tidbits of her life to perk up his first-date conversations. He's growing loyal to her and fully entrenched in her life, and it's not clear whether he could ever move on without hurting himself or Kannon or both. I would have been happy with a fake behind-the-scenes look at celebrity and the star-assistant dynamic. What surprised me was how much heart and reflection Lane injected into the story to flesh out a deeper, poignant relationship. I very much cared about Kathi and Charlie's struggles together and as individuals, and I laughed a lot. I adored this. What did you think? I loved this fictionalized peek at life with a beloved star. Have you read anything like this? What other titles might fit the bill? I mentioned this book in my Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/13/20 Edition.

01 Apeirogon: A Novel This is beautiful, powerful, illuminating, and heart-wrenching. The first part felt a little slow, but I'm so very very glad I stuck with it. Apeirogon is structured into 1,001 (this sounds overwhelming, but the book doesn't feel that way) short segments in varied points of view surrounding a Palestinian and an Israeli family on two especially fateful days in their lives. The story builds to show how individuals on opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and opposite sides of the wall) are at heart the same in their pain, their desires, and their love. It's 480 pages, and ultimately that felt like an appropriate length for settling into the points of view and experiences that are built over a lifetime. The subject matter is weighty and emotional, and McCann manages to make the story both personal and political, which perfectly suits the subject matter. Really a wonderful book. I love McCann's thoughtful writing. For my full review of this book, see Apeirogon. 02 The Light After the War ​ I’m dying to know how closely Anita Abriel’s book traces the inspiring events from her mother’s incredible experiences before, during, and after World War II. The author offers a vivid account of the fear and dread—intermixed with sparks of hope—that sustained Vera and Edith in Hungary and Germany during the war; in Naples as they adjusted to post-war floods of food, fashion, and joy; as they found themselves in more settled situations; and during the evolutions of their careers and love lives. Abriel introduces an enormous shift that shakes things up enormously for both young women before the book’s end. Vera and Edith are such a complementary partnership, and I loved spending time with these strong young women. I was completely engrossed. For my full review, see The Light After the War. 03 The Book of Longings ​ This was a fascinating story from the point of view of an imagined wife for Jesus, including an exploration of gender roles, a reimagined faith, the frustrations of societal expectations for women, great adventure, strong female loyalty and friendship, love, and lots of fantastic details of life at the time. Much of the fever pitch of support and hatred for Jesus occurs when the main character of Ana is off having other experiences (and often-dangerous adventures). This is an intriguing structure for the story: Jesus as a supporting cast member. Jesus's role in Ana's story is as a faithful man who disagrees with the politics of the faith at the time. He primarily serves as a character who cares for, understands, and supports the woman he loves. For my full review of this book, see The Book of Longings. 04 Florence Adler Swims Forever The Atlantic City setting just before WWII, with its giant hotels, piers, and general hubbub, is the backdrop for the story of a few summer months in the life of an extended family. There’s an undercurrent of concern about Hitler and his increasingly punitive behavior toward Jewish families’ businesses and emigration in Germany. I loved watching the book’s events unfold—even if I could predict some of them. Anything that was wrapped up a little too neatly didn’t bother me at all; I was all in and satisfied. Beanland based some of the basic events of her debut novel on her ancestors’ experiences. Fascinating. For my full review of this book, please see Florence Adler Swims Forever. 05 Call Your Daughter Home ​ I worried during the first chapter that Gertrude was going to feel like a caricature of a backwoods Southern woman. But she and the other characters were developed fully. And although the three interconnected female characters faced sometimes staggeringly tragic challenges, Spera injects moments of joy—often related to their relationships to each other. You can see where one of the storylines is going before the character involved understands it, and it might make your blood boil to see the evil situation go on unchecked. But the details of cooking, strong women's determination to survive, race relations, and life in 1924 South Carolina were wonderful, and I still think about this book although I read it almost a year ago (technically, at the end of last year). For my full review, see Call Your Daughter Home. 06 The Pull of the Stars ​ Set in Ireland in 1918, The Pull of the Stars follows a nurse, Julia; a doctor, Kathleen; and a young volunteer, Bridie, over the course of three tumultuous days as the fiery, complex, capable women work desperately to help the patients at their understaffed hospital who are about to give birth while suffering from the devastating new influenza. Donoghue immersed me fully in the moment-by-moment health and emotional crises; the women's determined, sometimes desperately creative attempts to preserve lives; and their occasional triumphs. The rest of the world fell away for me as I was reading, and I couldn't wait to get back to this book. The author of the disturbing, fascinating story Room knows how to craft a tale of survival and of finding hope in the most dire situations. For my full review, see The Pull of the Stars. What's some of your favorite historical fiction? I could make one meellion lists of my historical fiction loves (and I might). Any favorites I should add to my outrageously unmanageable to-read list?

Although the three interconnected women faced sometimes staggeringly tragic challenges, Spera injects moments of joy and wonderful details of 1924 life in South Carolina. I worried during the first chapter that Gertrude was going to feel like a caricature of a backwoods Southern woman. But she and the other characters were developed fully. And although the three interconnected women faced sometimes staggeringly tragic challenges, Spera injects some moments of joy—often related to their relationships to each other. You can see where one of the storylines is going before the character involved understands it, and it might make your blood boil to see the evil situation go on unchecked. And I wasn’t sure I bought into the reasoning for a character’s drastic and sudden turnaround in thinking—it seemed that she’d had reminders of this reasoning without being inspired to shift course. But the details of cooking, surviving, race relations, and life in 1924 South Carolina were wonderful, and I still think about this book although I read it almost a year ago. What did you think? We read this in my book club, and I think we generally agreed that the scene with the diphtheria and the feather was horrifying and absolutely fascinating. I think it's going to haunt me forever! This is Deb Spera's first novel. I mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year.

The beautifully complementary, mismatched partnership between Devlin and Falco was my favorite aspect of the book. Detective Kerri Devlin is stuck with a new partner who has a reputation as a loose cannon; the pair is on a homicide case that is turning out to be more layered and complicated than it first seemed; and Devlin can't seem to keep her teenage daughter happy or her ex-husband off her case. Webb provides multiple mysteriously missing persons, mixed motivations, naive characters who might be ruined by the sinister people in power, and an occasional first-person narrator who isn't what they first seem. I thought the periodic emergence of that point of view was really intriguing. A few nitpicky notes: Some vital events occur off screen and are then summarized by Devlin, and I was confused as to why, because this largely takes the punch out of them. I wasn't sure the repeated foreshadowing that everything was about to go to hell worked without backing it up sooner with actual havoc. The multiple villains felt almost interchangeable in that they were equally reprehensible. And a very minor issue: the "Hey, pretty girl" greeting from the recently met grown-man male detective partner to Devlin's thirteen-year-old daughter was jarring and puzzling. To a lesser extent, so was the daughter's telling her traumatized aunt how pretty she is (while soothingly brushing her aunt's hair). I didn't feel as though the detectives' conclusions or police work were always logical. (No one checked the medications or searched the baby's bedroom after the crime? Police and family are worried about a teenage character who disappeared, yet they don't go by her workplace, where she says she is reporting each day, because they don't want to compromise her internship? A detective says to someone who is about to confess something potentially related to the case, "I won't tell anyone"? No one thinks to offer protection to a loved one who's about to potentially fatally antagonize a culprit? Rule-follower Devlin's behavior at one crucial moment goes against her solid training and against her character as shown to us thus far--will there be repercussions in later books, or is this considered renegade justice she's suddenly taking part in?) The beautifully complementary, mismatched partnership between Devlin and Falco was my favorite aspect of the book. I also loved Falco's back story and his mysterious contact Cross, and I'd love to see more of both of them in future books. Webb has written 150 novels. One hundred and fifty. But this is the first book I've read of hers, courtesy of NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer in exchange for an honest review. What did you think? I'm a sucker for an unlikely detective partnership, and this was a good one. Are you a Webb fan? Where have I been without knowing about Webb and her books for all this time? I mentioned this title in Three Books I’m Reading Now, 10/13/20 Edition. If you like mysteries, you might also want to look at the Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries I Read Last Year.

01 A Star Is Bored Author Byron Lane was Carrie Fisher's personal assistant in real life, and in his novel, main protagonist Charlie is assistant to the sci-fi-blockbuster-famous actress who played Priestess Talara. Kathi Kannon is a woman with a big, wacky personality who is also Hollywood royalty. I love picturing Carrie Fisher as Kannon in this funny, zany, bighearted story. Charlie is searching for meaning and direction, and Kathi could use a friend in this crazy life of hers. This is fun and great escapism so far. 02 The Last Confession of Autumn Casterly In Meredith Tate's newest book, Ivy and her gloriously nerdy friends play in the school band and love board games. But her older sister Autumn is involved in a darker scene, and when Autumn is abducted by people connected to a drug ring, Ivy must plunge into the sinister underbelly of her sister's life to try to save her. If Ivy can unravel the snarl of dangerous clues and uncover the secrets Autumn's been keeping, maybe she'll be able to help her sister survive. This title was listed in the Greedy Reading List Six Newish Young Adult Mysteries I Want to Read. 03 Trust No One (Devlin & Falco #1) Detective Kerri Devlin is stuck with a new partner with a reputation as a loose cannon; the pair is thrust into a homicide case that's turning out to be more layered and complicated than it first seemed; and Devlin can't seem to keep her teenage daughter happy or her ex-husband off her case. Webb provides multiple mysteriously missing persons, mixed motivations, naive characters ruined by sinister people in power, and an occasional first-person narrator who isn't what they first seemed. The beauty of the complementary, mismatched partnership between Devlin and Falco is my favorite aspect so far. Webb has written 150 novels. One hundred and fifty. But this is the first book I've read of hers, courtesy of NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer. What are you reading now? I'm alternating between a fictionalized celebrity story with heart; a young adult mystery with a nerdy heroine and a dark plot twist; and a prolific mystery author's first in a series, where almost everyone is a potential suspect. I kind of love reading such different books at one time--a book for every mood. What books are you reading and liking now?

01 Deadly Waters Rebecca Sorley is a college student, and she's trying to get good grades, spend time with her friends--and keep an eye on her hot-tempered roommate, Ellie. Ellie's sick of what many of her fellow female students put up with from young men who won't hear no and don't treat women with respect. Then some of their most offensive and reportedly abusive male classmates start turning up dead. It seems a vigilante killer is on the loose, taking justice into his or her own hands. And it's starting to look to Rebecca as though Ellie might possibly be responsible. Could she--would she do such a thing? I'm reading this book courtesy of NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer. For my full review, see Deadly Waters. #mysterysuspense, #deadlywaters 02 Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook ​ It's 1945. Edith Graham is a small-town schoolteacher who wants to do more: she wants to help the British Control Commission rebuild what they can in Germany after the war--and maybe even help them prosecute war crimes. But because Edith has a degree in German (and a tenuous connection to a hunted war criminal), she's recruited by the Office of Strategic Services instead. Edith comes up with a brazen way she can be both visible and invisible--by establishing her alter ego, cookbook author Stella Snelling, who writes a magazine cooking column--and include essential intelligence within her recipes and chatty notes. World War II historical fiction, a tough female protagonist, a mission of uncovering war criminals in Nazi Germany, ordinary citizens being heroic in the name of justice, and an outlandish plan for a spy to hide in plain sight? Sign me up! For my full review, see Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook. #historicalfiction, #WWII, #spy, #missgrahamscoldwarcookbook 03 The Silent Companions Elsie thought she married out of her hardworking life and into a life of wealth and leisure. But when her kind husband passes away suddenly just after the wedding, pregnant Elsie and her husband's tedious spinster cousin must head from London to the family's neglected country estate to bury him and set the house to rights. Behind a door without a key that is sometimes locked and sometimes mysteriously not, a silent companion (a painting cut out and supported as a freestanding figure) waits, bearing a shocking resemblance to Elsie. Mysterious noises, inexplicable goings-on, haunting stories of the past, and the superstitious hatred of the village folk are beginning to make Elsie think something is not right at the house--and that maybe her husband's death wasn't natural at all. This is a good old Victorian ghost story so far. I love it. For my full review, see The Silent Companions. #historicalfiction, #mysterysuspense, #gothic, #dualstoryline, #silentcompanions What are you reading now? One spooky suspense story, one World War II historical fiction title, and one combination: a spooky historical fiction book. This assortment feels like it suits the hints of fall we're getting around here lately. What are you reading these days?

Rees does an excellent job of taking us through Edith's amateur spy struggle and provides fascinating details of life in Germany at the end of World War II. It's 1945, and Edith Graham is a small-town British schoolteacher who is thrilled to sign on with the British Control Commission to help get schools back up and running for the children in war-torn Germany. Edith has a degree in German (and, more importantly and unbeknownst to her, an old connection to a hunted war criminal), and she's recruited by the Office of Strategic Services. She'll keep her cover by assisting with schools while actually trying to help locate Nazis. Smart but inexperienced Edith quickly finds that she must negotiate the various British intelligence groups purportedly working together--some of whom are unofficial--who have vastly different goals. One faction wants to use the horrifying knowledge of Nazi doctors who enacted abuse and torture upon Jews during the war; others want due process for these criminals; still others want to assassinate the monsters without delay. Edith must constantly determine who to trust as she seeks the truth and tries to ensure that justice is served. Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook alludes to the way Edith includes coded intelligence within her letters' recipes and chatty notes. Although I wasn't completely clear on how the clever messaging worked at a level of detail that would have been useful, it was easy to suspend my disbelief because I loved it so much. But even more interesting to me were the detailed snapshots Rees offers into the foods of the place and time--for struggling regular Germans as compared to the privileged, occupying British and Americans. The scarcity of supplies and necessary improvisations, as well as black-market riches, together served as a vivid backdrop for the story. The details Rees provides of this confused time in the world are wonderful: the complicated workings of different groups' postwar efforts; the bombed--or jarringly lush and untouched--settings; the creative, sometimes alarming dietary options; and the clothes and fashion. It's clear that she thoroughly researched all of these aspects. There are some implausibly long, expository soliloquys that explain the machinations of the Nazis or offer background on the politics of the American and British postwar factions. Toward the end of the book, I stumbled at some awkward scene transitions, and there is a late, abrupt point of view shift. I sometimes confused the various British men attempting to serve as puppet masters, but I raced to the conclusion of the increasingly interconnected, complex story lines because I couldn't wait to find out what happened to the key players. Rees does an excellent job of taking us through Edith's amateur spy struggle to determine what information to entrust to whom, how to extract the details she needs from unsuspecting sources, and how to stay alive once she's embroiled in a situation that turns out to be far more dangerous than she could have imagined. What did you think? I found the author's note about her inspiration for the book's hook and story line really interesting. Rees has written other books that look fantastic: Pirates! (obviously yes to this one), Witch Child (again, yes), and its sequel, Sorceress (yes). I first mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/22/20 Edition.

Wizenberg struggles to reconcile her identity, sexuality, love, and duty into an honest lifestyle that can work for her and those closest to her. When The Fixed Stars begins, Molly Wizenberg has a husband of almost a decade (with whom she owns two restaurants and a bar in Seattle) and a toddler daughter. Her life is messy, busy, and full. She had never recognized any curiosity or attraction to women before, but in this memoir, Wizenberg recounts how she is struck by a sudden, paralyzing desire for a female defense attorney during jury duty. She strives to be honest with her husband, who is, she feels, understandably hurt, confused, and angry. Yet Wizenberg finds it impossible to brush off her strengthening feelings. Wizenberg explores what she realizes may be a more complex sexuality than she had previously understood, and she fears that her marriage will unravel if she pursues a path in which she satisfies her curiosity. But she is even more terrified of not attempting to live honestly, burying what she is realizing may be her true identity. She also begins to recognize the parts of her life and relationship that she had compromised on for others' happiness. For a time, Wizenberg is at a loss to explain much more than the power of her shifted desire. "I wanted to be believed," she says, "though I struggled to explain myself." Because it is difficult for her to elucidate, it is at times also a challenge for the reader to fully understand, but the author's determination to find truth and fulfillment are the touchstones here. Wizenberg retraces key points of her life, trying to find a pattern toward homosexuality that she hadn't acknowledged. Her marriage and her love had been real, she determines, as are her guilt and pain at potentially upending it all. She looks at studies, accepted knowledge, and understanding of sexuality (she includes some footnotes), desperately trying to establish whether there were signs, or if she has simply changed. Wizenberg struggles to look at herself unflinchingly and reconcile her identity, sexuality, love, and duty into an honest lifestyle that can work for her and those closest to her. What did you think? Wizenberg is also the author of A Homemade Life, a home management book that I adored the cozy idea of in my early married days (my love of and time spent reading and my vague desire for a cleverly organized house were forces already at war). She also wrote Delancey, about opening the restaurant by that name with her husband. This book was mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Three Memoirs I'm Reading Now, 10/7/20 Edition. If you like memoirs, you might also like Six Illuminating Memoirs I Read This Year.

01 The Witch Elm A Tana French mystery is usually a pretty good bet for me, and I plowed through The Witch Elm to find out what was happening under French's layers of story. In The Witch Elm, French dips her toe into exploring how privilege, luck, (sometimes blind) loyalty—and, in several instances, a shocking absence of guilt and potentially skewed sense of justice—shape lives and carry events. In case her books aren't already on your radar, French is the author of six Dublin Murder Squad books (In the Woods, The Likeness--this is my favorite of hers, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser). She has also written another stand-alone book in addition to this one, her newest book, The Searcher. For my full review of this book, see The Witch Elm. 02 The Lost Man ​ Nathan and Bub come together to grieve the loss of their brother Cam. Cam had been bothered by something before dying unexpectedly in the Australian outback desert, but was his death suicide--or did someone kill him? Nathan is no detective, but he owes it to Cam not to give up until he figures it out. Harper skillfully builds the pool of potential culprits for Nathan to examine in this story of uncovering truths, family history, loyalty, stubbornness, and love. Harper's books read like Westerns to me, and her sometimes spare tone suits the setting, the situations in which she places her characters, and the characters themselves. Things aren’t what they seem in The Lost Man, but Harper isn’t manipulative or tricky, either. I thought this was great. Harper has also written two books in her Aaron Falk series so far, The Dry and Force of Nature. 03 Disappearing Earth ​ Julia Phillips's interconnected stories follow in chapters that take place each month for a year after the disappearance of two girls on the edge of Russia. The rural Siberian settings are exquisitely wrought, with stark, rugged, lush landscapes serving as the backdrop for a mystery that shakes a small community. The story is as much about the varied cast of characters, the closed-off community, and the vivid sense of place Phillips imagines as it is about the mystery itself. It isn't a police procedural; this is a starkly beautiful book that happens to be a mystery. Disappearing Earth is Phillips's first book, and she builds the story's pace steadily toward a crescendo. The ending doesn't necessarily provide all the answers, but Phillips provides enough pieces of the puzzle to create closure. I still think about this book from time to time, and I read it over a year ago. 04 The Last Child I loved John Hart's brusque, determined Clyde Hunt, the scrappy and unstoppable young Johnny Merrimon, the sinister underbelly of their rural North Carolina town, and basically everything about this intricate literary mystery-thriller. Hart knows how to masterfully build a story around unforgettable characters with layers they reluctantly reveal. I didn't expect the resolution Hart allows to unfold at the end. But I was in for whatever he was dishing up, and I was fascinated all along the way. Hart has written many other books, including The Hush, which is the second in the Johnny Merrimon series, and Redemption Road (see my notes about that book at the end of this Greedy Reading List, below). For my full review of this book, see The Last Child. 05 City of Windows (Lucas Page #1) ​ This was a really compelling mystery/thriller—with a smart underlying commentary about gun ownership, violence, and the factors complicating these issues, including societal malaise, ignorance often overpowering facts, and longstanding patterns of power and fear. I loved the balance of clues and revelations Pobi lays out; they didn’t make me feel manipulated or red-herringed to death. Lucas Page is a fantastic character (as are Whitaker, Kehoe, Erin, and Dingo). The elaborate climactic scene was creatively gruesome—and I felt realistic disgust as a result. I haven't yet read the second in this Lucas Page series, Under Pressure--and I didn't even realize this was a series until after the fact, it stands so well on its own. For my full review of this book, see City of Windows. 06 Bull Mountain ​ Clayton Burroughs is sheriff of a small town in North Georgia. But the rest of his family is a well-known, entrenched, powerful bunch of moonshiners (they operate in even darker avenues too) on and around Bull Mountain. Clayton's law enforcement career and the rest of the Burroughses' relentless lawbreaking make for difficult family dynamics and some impossible professional dilemmas. Panowich offers a story about a complicated family and sense of duty, with ruthless mountain gangsters, twists and turns, dark elements, interconnected stories, and quite an ending. I thought it was great. Panowich also wrote Like Lions and Hard Cash Valley, the next two books in this series. What mystery/suspense reads have been your favorites lately? It feels like the time of year to be stocking up on spooky books and mysteries. These were all so good and so different--they were my favorites from 2019, in the general order of when I read them. Honorable mention goes to Redemption Road by John Hart. I'm captivated by Hart's stories, but I admit that I had difficulty sitting through the horrific cruelties perpetuated by multiple characters in the book. I loved his imperfect, brave, relentlessly tough protagonists, and Hart is a gifted storyteller, but the rock-bottom depravity and evil underpinnings of much of Redemption Road story were upsetting and difficult to read.

The Icelandic landscape is vividly evoked, the characters feel faulted and real, and the story is compelling. Burial Rites is a beautiful, haunting story inspired by the true events surrounding the last person put to death in Iceland, in 1829. Hannah Kent’s book explores the cold, brutal winter as convicted murderer Agnes awaits her execution at a remote farm, living with a family there. They are instructed by the authorities to take her in, but they aren’t happy about it. Agnes befriends a local priest who is sympathetic to her situation, and in time it becomes clear that Agnes and her circumstances are complicated. The landscape is vividly evoked, the characters feel faulted and real, and the story is compelling. I still think about this book from time to time, and I read it years ago. This book is part of the Greedy Reading List Six Captivating Nordic Stories. What did you think? I thought Hannah Kent skillfully captured the setting, the accused's feelings of futility in fighting back, and the panicked realization of those surrounding her that the truth might upend the events already in motion. Kent has also written a book based on true events in 1825 County Kerry, Ireland, called The Good People.

Harper's small-town Australia dark secrets and twists and turns have me totally hooked. In small-town Kiewarra, the Australian community is shaken when three members of a local family are found murdered. Aaron Falk is a federal investigator who dreads returning to his hometown; he had hoped he was shut of the people and the place altogether. I love a "hero has to return to a hometown; complications ensue" setup. Here, Falk has to dig into secrets he thought were long dead, including a secret he'd shared with his childhood friend Luke Hadler. Harper's writing and tone remind me of a more spare Tana French. I knew immediately that I would definitely read the next in the series. I loved being along for the ride as Harper's story unfolded, and I was all in for the main protagonist of Falk for this and future books. What did you think? Harper is also the author of Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2) and The Lost Man, which I mentioned in my Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries I Read Last Year. Her small-town Australia dark secrets and twists and turns have me totally hooked.

01 Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs Keena Roberts grew up splitting her time between Botswana and an elite Philadelphia girls' school. In Philadelphia, she navigated the social hierarchy and her preppy classmates' expectations. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and worried about giving elephants, lions, and hippos a wide enough berth. Roberts details what it was like as a sensitive young girl whose unusual life was shaped by her parents' primatology careers and family travel, and she shares how she sometimes struggled to fit into either of these settings. 02 Blood: A Memoir Moorer is a Grammy- and Academy Award- nominated singer-songwriter whose father killed her mother when Allison and her sister were young. A longtime musical storyteller, Moorer examines her youth and that pivotal tragedy, considering how it has shaped her into her adult self and how much of her identity is separate from that horrifying event. I didn't know about Allison Moorer before her memoir began getting good reviews. Blood: A Memoir is said to read like a personal journal. The foreword was written by Allison's sister, singer and songwriter Shelby Lynne. 03 The Fixed Stars Wizenberg is the author of A Homemade Life, a cozy home management book (which I loved with a few reservations in my early married days; my love of and time spent reading and my desire for a cleverly organized house were forces already at war). During jury duty, Wizenberg is struck by a sudden, paralyzing desire for the female attorney on the case. She has a husband (with whom she owns restaurants) and a toddler, and none of this confusing complication was part of the plan. Wizenberg fears that her life will unravel if she explores her complex sexuality--but she is even more terrified of what it will mean for her life if she doesn't attempt to live honestly rather than allowing traditional expectations to subsume her true identity. Have you read some captivating memoirs lately? The order of my library holds is dictating what I'm reading at the moment. We are still in pandemic-era no-late-fee dreamland, but the memoirs I greedily put on my holds list are due back ASAP. These three women's stories seem like they couldn't be more disparate, and I imagine the tones will be refreshingly varied too. If you like memoirs, you might also like to take a look at the Greedy Reading List Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year.

I read this young adult mystery in a day, it was so good. I loved Pippa and Ravi, and I'll definitely read the three other books planned for the series. It's been five years since a local young woman, Andie Bell, was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh. Andie has been well established as the martyred victim; Sal was the villain. His family is ostracized; their home is regularly vandalized. But high school senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi, an excellent student, workaholic, and perfectionist, has been wondering whether Sal killed Andie after all. A little digging shows that Andie wasn't the saint she is painted as, and Sal knew something about her secret life that he refused tell the police. Someone was lying about the details of Sal's alibi, and was the search of Andie's house conducted correctly? Everything doesn't add up, and Pippa becomes determined to find out if the killer is still on the loose. But what if the real murderer finds out Pippa is stirring up suspicion about what really happened? Pippa is gloriously and unapologetically nerdy and relentless in her search. She really needs to be writing her college application essays, but she is doggedly determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. Author Holly Jackson lays out the many possibilities before Pippa and takes us realistically through her thought process as she considers anyone and everyone, sometimes backtracking and often pushing the limits of legality and safety in order to dig up more information. Oh, and it's probably unwise, but she's got Sal's brother helping her with her murder board, clues, and research. I wondered if this would be a sort of young adult fiction version of the Serial podcast, and it IS, in all the best ways. I accidentally let this go back to the library before I had read it, but when I checked it out again I read the whole thing in a day. It's so good. What did you think? I mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Six Newish Young Adult Mysteries I Want to Read as well as in Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Now, 9/3/20 Edition. I love Jackson's writing and the characters of Pippa and Ravi, and I'll definitely read the sequel, Good Girl, Bad Girl (and the two additional books planned for the series as well).

Within a suspenseful mystery structure, French explores privilege, interconnectedness, and the many shades of gray that complicate her characters' fraught situations. This is a lurking, suspenseful Tana French mystery, so I was plowing through it as usual, eager to find out the story behind the story. But French also dips her toe into how privilege, luck, (possibly somewhat blind) loyalty—and, in several instances, a shocking absence of guilt and potentially skewed sense of justice—shape lives and carry events. Some of these characters felt lacking in humanity on some level, yet French made me sympathize with their plights. Others seemed to take a sensitive look at their places within the world but became embroiled in ugly business and somewhat tragic ends anyway. French explores how interconnected everything is, how many shades of gray there can be in a situation, and how few people are without dirty hands or without any blame. What did you think? French is the author of six books in the Dublin Murder Squad series: In the Woods, The Likeness (my absolute favorite of hers), Faithful Place, The Trespasser, Broken Harbor, and The Secret Place (which I haven't yet read), plus this stand-alone book and another, The Searcher (publication October 2020).

The young men Orenstein interviewed share their experiences with intimacy, yearn for bigger conversations about love and relationships, and are in many cases desperate for evolved ideas about masculinity. Orenstein, who also authored Girls & Sex, wrote Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity because she had read many articles about boys and sex but hadn't heard from the boys themselves. So she spent two years interviewing young men ages sixteen to twenty-two of different races, straight and gay, from different parts of the United States. She engaged in hours-long conversations about pressures, expectations, and experiences with sex and intimacy. And somewhat to her surprise, the boys really opened up, considering and sharing their own past and present attitudes about love and sex and reflecting on their sexual activity and intimacy and related matters, including pleasure, consent, asserting limits, hearing others' wants, trust, safety, care, coercion, harassment, and rape. Orenstein found that many of the boys had never had even a basic conversation with their parents about making sure that a partner wants to be intimate or about how to be "a caring and respectful sexual partner." Orenstein mentions that the Making Caring Common Project backs up these findings with data from three thousand high school students and young adults, 60 percent of whom said they and an adult had not had a conversation on these topics. (Note that most of the boys Orenstein interviewed who had had such conversations said the talks had been somewhat or very influential.) Social constructs of masculinity get deserved page time--along with many boys' stories of toxic masculinity and its harm. Orenstein pushes parents and trusted adults to "challenge the unwritten rules of male socialization, the forging of masculinity through unexamined entitlement, emotional suppression, aggression, and hostility toward the feminine," noting that "masculinity" is a trap that sabotages young men, obliterating their vulnerability, communication, connections, and emotional expression--and producing fallout that extends to their intimate partners. I would have liked more more more concrete suggestions of how to combat our societal norms here, but this may possibly be a situation in which I would be difficult to please with the amount of information that would and could fall within the scope of Orenstein's book. In her chapter "Deep Breaths: Talking to Boys," Orenstein proposes ways to ask questions to set up valuable conversations. She emphasizes that it's essential to have frequent and ongoing conversations with our boys that range far beyond "the sex talk." In Boys & Sex, Orenstein lets young men's voices create their own argument for more knowledge, bigger conversations, greater gender socialization, increased fluency in building relationships and achieving mutually pleasing sexual intimacy, and expectations of consent, respect, and joy. What did you think? Orenstein offers additional resources, including her website's list of relevant books, websites, and essays: www.peggyorenstein.com/positive-sexuality. Three other books she mentioned look especially promising to me: Talk to Me First; Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between; and For Goodness Sex.

This is a spooky, atmospheric, gothic Victorian ghost story perfect for the season. Elsie thought she had married out of her hardworking life and into a life of wealth and leisure. But when her kind husband passes away suddenly just after the wedding, pregnant Elsie and her tedious cousin-in-law Sarah must head from London to the family's neglected country estate, The Bridge, to bury him and set the house to rights. Behind a door without a key--a door that is sometimes locked and other times mysteriously not--a "silent companion" (a realistic, freestanding painted wooden figure) sits eerily, as though waiting. Impossibly, the centuries-old figure bears a shocking resemblance to Elsie. Mysterious noises, inexplicable goings-on, the appearance of additional silent companions, haunting stories of the past, and the superstitious hatred of the village folk for the family make Elsie begin to believe something is not right at The Bridge--and that maybe her husband's death wasn't natural at all. In the mid-1600s, the family living in The Bridge is readying for a royal visit, but there seems to be something dark at work--and immense power that's spiraling out of the control of those who first wielded it. In the book's 1865 timeline, our main protagonist has recently been placed in a mental institution, trying to piece together what is real and what is imagined--with the help of a modern-thinking young doctor who's determined to help her. Horrors from her childhood are alluded to and contribute to her fear, her reluctance to trust, and her doubts about what is fact and what is fiction. Then everything in this good old Victorian ghost story kicks up ten notches to become even more spooky. Purcell takes us through the disturbing events surrounding one family living two hundred years apart in the same house, making you wonder how reliable any of our main protagonists are. (And there's a twist and a double twist I loved.) What did you think? Purcell has also written other gothic novels I'd like to read: The Poison Thread, Bone China, and her newest, The Shape of Darkness. I first mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/22/20 Edition.

Deadly Waters was not the book I thought it was going to be. It's a revenge fantasy, but the issues at the heart of the story are real and weighty and important. Rebecca Sorley is a responsible, even-keel college student in Florida, and she's trying to get good grades, keep her scholarship, spend time with her friends--and keep an eye on her hot-tempered roommate, Ellie. Ellie's vocally open about her fury at what many of her fellow female students have to put up with from young men who won't hear no and don't treat women with respect. She's known for getting into tussles with men trying to prey upon women. But the men's behavior seems to be getting more aggressive, more entitled, and more dangerous, and Ellie can't fight off every man on behalf of every woman who needs protection. Then some of their most offensive and reportedly abusive male classmates start turning up dead--killed by alligators, but under suspicious circumstances. It's starting to seem like a vigilante killer may be on the loose, taking justice into his or her own hands. And the response from the college community isn't completely damning--young women begin speaking publicly about their attacks and attackers rather than only whispering in bathrooms to trusted friends. The women are becoming less afraid--but the young men who have behaved abominably and often criminally are rightfully growing terrified. It's starting to look to Rebecca and their other roommates as though Ellie's fight against injustice and predation might have taken a turn toward homicide. Could she--would she do such a thing? The college friends have strong bonds of loyalty; they sometimes behave impulsively; and they are appropriately young and wild at times. But the group has two young women connected closely to them who have been permanently debilitated related to attacks by men, and the women's primary concern is keeping themselves and each other safe. They sometimes have to go to great lengths to do so because everyday dangers loom around every corner in the form of men who feel entitled to use women however they want. This book was not what I thought it was going to be. I imagined that the alligator angle might make for a campy revenge fantasy. And it is revenge fantasy. But the issues Hutchison explores are very real and weighty, and there is far more meat to this story than I expected. The author builds a framework in Deadly Waters of brutalized women's fear and anger, establishes the problematic societal "conversation" between some men and women (males' groping, lewd comments, and entitlement; females' rejection presented as rude, unacceptable, or simply ignored), and she reinforces how infrequently men are prosecuted for their abusive actions. Hutchison is setting the stage for an enraged fire of backlash--and she delivers on it. The deaths are brutal, yet they do feel like some version of justice to those who have been victimized. And the homicides seems to be shifting the tide of power and changing men's behavior in general. Even the most reasonable and calm friend in the group is pushed to ask at one point, regarding suspicions that Ellie may be behind the deaths of the men, "How do I condemn Ellie for taking a terrible action--maybe taking a terrible action--when I'm so damn grateful for the results?" Deadly Waters was really interesting in ways I didn't anticipate, and I also like Hutchison's writing style very much. (A horrifying side note: did you know alligators can climb trees?!? I almost fainted when I confirmed that this was true. Make it stop. No.) I received a prepublication copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer. What did you think? Hutchison wrote The Collector series, which I haven't read, but it looks well received, and I intend to. (The Butterfly Garden is the first book.) I also saw in the author's bio that she once worked at the Renaissance Faire as a human combat chess piece, and I believe this is information that should be shared, because it is clearly amazing. I first mentioned Deadly Waters in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/22/20 Edition.

Donoghue immersed me so fully in this world that everything else fell away for me. Set in Ireland in 1918, The Pull of the Stars follows a nurse, Julia; a doctor, Kathleen; and a young volunteer, Bridie, over the course of three tumultuous days as the fiery, complex, capable women work desperately to help the patients at their understaffed hospital who are about to give birth while suffering from the devastating new influenza. The country is reeling at the end of World War I. Permanent holes have been created in families, and the loss of men has left medical and other support systems overloaded. Our heroines are sometimes trapped by the chauvinistic framework they're working within, and we see them try to create their own solutions to crises, follow tradition or improve upon it, and fly under the radar to instinctively and knowledgeably help their patients rather than rely on, for example, young, untested, book-smart male doctors. And then there's the no-nonsense, scandalous Sinn Fein activist and doctor Kathleen Lynn, who bursts onto the scene to Handle It left and right. She is unusual in that she trusts and delegates power to her nurses, who have long been hamstrung by rules and limitations (so that in many cases all they may offer a birthing or dying woman is diluted whiskey as they wait for the few doctors to come by the ward). Donoghue weaves a good amount of fact into this story. She offers sometimes horrifying particulars of early twentieth century medical care and exquisitely detailed glimpses into daily life and the workings of society at the time. And Doctor Kathleen Lynn was a real, formidable figure. I wasn't sure how wise it was to read about a pandemic during a pandemic. Donoghue doesn't pull any punches with the sometimes horrific details of the flu's devastation (or the varied life-threatening dangers of childbirth). There's a constant push and pull of life and death--a microcosm of what is occurring on the battlefields and in the world. Yet for the book's characters, the life-and-death wartime and influenza crises bring laser focus to the most essential everyday matters: living life as truthfully and joyfully as possible, fighting against unjust systems, and offering grace to others. The author allows her practical characters to imagine glorious possibilities beyond the scope of what is known to them, and this added immense heart to the story. Donoghue immersed me so fully in the moment-by-moment health and emotional crises; the women's determined, sometimes desperately creative attempts to preserve lives; and the occasional triumphs that the rest of the world fell away for me as I was reading. I couldn't wait to get back to this book when I was away from it. What did you think? I was engrossed. The author of the disturbing, fascinating book Room knows how to craft a story of survival and of finding hope in the most dire situations. I recently mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/16/20 Edition.

This is sexy, sweet, great escapism from Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. Josh and Hazel were college acquaintances, and they shared some showstopper-level past encounters (see: his walking in on her with his roommate, in flagrante delicto; her throwing up on his shoes; her deliriously e-mailing him while on painkillers from surgery). He's fresh from a breakup and she hasn't been serious about anyone since her college boyfriend showed his true colors. But Josh turns out to be her newish best friend's brother, so they're thrown together again and again. Josh is calm and collected, and Hazel is uninhibited and free-spirited. They're becoming good friends who bring out the best in each other. So naturally they'd keep setting each other up for blind double dates. Hijinx ensue! Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating totally fits the bill as light-fiction escapism--in this case, with lots of sexy talk and sexy scenes and sexy thoughts and sex! Hazel is a strong personality, but I found myself bristling at her questioning whether she's too much sometimes. She wavers between being an unapologetically big personality bursting with joy and essentially asking "Uh-oh, was that too Hazel-ish?" I liked how Josh became the first to come to her defense--both against her own periodically doubtful thoughts and against others who might question her. But I didn't love that a man was swooping in to help cement that who she was as a person was acceptable, and I didn't think Hazel would really need that, either. Some of Hazel's reported past antics are over-the-top absurd (She attempted to adopt a tiger? She argued to try to house chickens inside her tiny apartment?). Those took me out of the story a little bit. But the authors clearly care deeply about their characters, and the characters deeply care about each other, which makes for a heartwarming read where everyone is trying to love and live and be happy. You can see a satisfying version of happily ever after coming, but I didn't predict the circumstances. I listened to the audiobook, which was read in alternating chapters by a female and a male narrator. It's tough for me when a male narrator provides "the female voice" of the dialogue, and the male account of Hazel's voice here felt almost caricatured. I found it distracting. What did you think? Light, romantic fiction like this is a genre that's working well for me during Pandemic Times. I loved the authors' (Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings write together under the pen name Christina Lauren) book Autoboyography. They also wrote Love and Other Words. I first mentioned this book in my Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/16/20 Edition.

I loved this book. If you're in for a new character-driven, superhero-focused, smart, wicked, and action-packed book, this is it. I loooooved this book. Walschots hooked me immediately and completely, and I was going to be heartbroken if the story didn't hold up. But it did--and I was gleefully talking about the highlights of this book to the other people in this house frequently enough that they were likely a leetle irritated and ready for me to finish. If you're in for a new character-driven, superhero-focused, smart, wicked, and action-packed book, this is it. Anna is a hench. She's an expendable part of a data entry pool and works boring temp jobs...for villains. It's not like she's in the line of fire or taking part in dastardly plots. She sits behind a computer, she needs the steady paycheck--and she's got a grudging respect for the purity of the revenge missions of the "bad guys" (and girls, and others, including their sidekicks) who help her pay rent. She wears winged eyeliner, she doesn't put up with any good old boy chauvinism from heroes or anyone else, and she's so smart, her talents are probably going to waste. Then she's unexpectedly and accidentally involved in a violent clash of good and evil and is badly injured by a gallingly shiny superhero. She doubles down on her contempt for the good guys and her annoyance at how others see them as infallible when they're far from blameless. She digs into determining the actual costs--in lives and financially--of heroes' clumsy bashing around in the name of duty, and she sets out to reveal the details of the dark side of the superhero myth. (This part reminded me, in a good way, somewhat of the cost analysis of heroes that takes place in Incredibles 2.) Her clever behind-the-scenes revelations catch the eye of the darkest and most mysterious villain of all, Leviathan, who wants Anna on his staff full time. She's uncomfortable with commitment, but her new employer is giving her a blank check of resources to enact clever, systematic, whole-scale revenge on heroes. It's too incredible an opportunity to pass up. She assembles a team dedicated to her and to their (dark, brooding, sometimes surprisingly kind, and often silent) boss, building a "cruel little department" that begins to shoulder a large portion of the organization's work. Anna starts to believe that her talents (she has discovered a flair for data mining, moving around information, manipulating social media, and knowing her superhero foes' habits and weaknesses) might allow her to teach some of these golden boys and girls a lesson--even if it also requires her to reluctantly come out from behind the desk for some old-fashioned battling now and again. She's growing closer to her boss Leviathan, and sometimes her taste for hero destruction seems to be overpowering even his own. Walschots's writing and pacing in Hench is wonderful. She builds the world in her book gracefully--her job as a game designer probably plays into this ability. She provides lots of action; sometimes poignant internal conflict; some dark humor; and she builds history for the characters by retracing old superhero and villains' rivalries. Anna's singular, ruthless mission of revenge shapes her emotionally and physically and affects her interpersonal relationships. At times she doesn't recognize herself much anymore. But she can't stop trying to destroy the heroes' false perfection that is devastating so much of the world, and her struggle feels noble in many ways, even if her methods are not. She emerges as more brave than she had believed herself to be, and as she evolves, Walschots is able to make the reader question what good and evil really mean by having us view the hero/villain construct through Anna's eyes. I was delighted by the superheroes' and villains' names, their various supernatural abilities, and their complicated relationships--as well as how henches and sidekicks continued to crop up in others' employ, following the money and reinventing themselves as people might in any profession. There are performance reviews; the need for higher-ups to sign off on manpower requests and project plans; and other mundane concerns--except for the entertaining fact that they all center around superheroes and villains and their passion for mutual destruction. The one problem I have here is that while the tone of the ending feels like an appropriate level of wrap-up, issues remain (regarding June--!; Leviathan; Quantum; and Anna and her future, her mission, and her potential supernatural abilities) which deserve more delving into and will require another book in order to satisfy ME personally. Yet there is no number on this book, nor is there any mention of a sequel. I just hope that Walschots is with me on this and is already hard at work on the next book. I read a prepublication copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and William Morrow; it's scheduled for publication on September 22. What did you think? Walschots is a game designer who has published two books of superhero-focused poetry (!), but although this is her first book, I thought her story-building and the story's depth felt effortless. More, please! This book brought to mind The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee. Both offer unlikely heroes, action, and some dark humor, although Yee's young adult book is more playful, as are its examinations of good and evil. The dry humor in Hench also reminded me in a way of the Murderbot series (I review the first three books here). If you like this book, you might like those as well. I first mentioned Hench in my Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/16/20 Edition.

01 Leaving the Witness In Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life, Amber Scorah takes the reader into her confidences and lays bare her sheltered experiences, religious indoctrination, societal and gender pressures, hearty evangelism, and her eventual questioning and subsequent freezing out from the Jehovah’s Witnesses—which meant she was cut off permanently from almost everyone she knew. Scorah retraces her steps from being a covert, illegal proselytizer in Shanghai through the implosion of her marriage and her realization that she is stranded--without her husband, without formal education, and without her faith any longer--and therefore really without any framework at all. She’s thoughtful and helps readers track her mindset as she moves from control to freedom and how jarring and cruel and wonderful and odd a “worldly” life can be. I'm intrigued by stories of those who have left constricting faith systems. Scorah tells a fascinating personal story of growth and fear and change. #memoir, #faith, #dysfunctionalfamily, #fourstarbookreview, #leavingthewitness 02 The Unexpected Spy ​ I love a peek at a secret world, and in The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists, Tracy Walder offers fascinating glimpses of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent, including training details, political machinations, and significant and rankling discrimination. Walder explores her own glowing pride in doing her job well and protecting others from danger—even when anyone without security clearance remains necessarily ignorant of the invaluable nature of the work and the imminent dangers she and her fellow agents manage to help our country avoid. Her evolution as a person and transition into her current profession was satisfying to witness as well. St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley provided me with an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. For my full review of this book, see The Unexpected Spy. #nonfiction, #memoir, #spy, #politicssocialjustice, #fourstarbookreview, #theunexpectedspy 03 The Unwinding of the Miracle ​ Wow. Julie Yip-Williams is a beautiful writer who is so smart, reflects deeply, and candidly shares the many heartbreaking aspects of facing her own imminent death from metastatic colorectal cancer. This book serves as her powerful farewell to her family but also holds meaning for anyone considering the way they live and how they might choose to face their own mortality. I feel like a meditation on dying is a heartbreakingly beautiful way to consider how we live our lives and a poignant reminder of what makes our one life so special. That said, I have a tough time reading memoirs in which someone is fighting cancer, and this one may not be everyone's cup of tea. For my full review of The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything that Comes After, click here. #memoir, #nonfiction, #heartwarming, #fourstarbookreview, #theunwindingofthemiracle 04 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone ​ This book really hit the spot for me. I was going to be happy with a light, surface-level look at therapy and the ins and outs of a therapist's providing and receiving therapy. But the book quickly grows into a network of sometimes interconnected and consistently meaningful searches for purpose and peace. This book was so much more meaningful than I had counted on. Gottlieb was honest about her own situation and showed herself to be wonderfully faulted, and she also delved into the details of others' struggles and journeys and joys. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed offers a beautiful exploration of dying, death, appreciating the beauty of the impermanence of our lives, planning for loved ones after our death, and living life fully. For my full review, please see Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. #memoir, #fivestarbookreview, #maybeyoushouldtalktosomeone 05 Know My Name Chanel Miller is a beautiful, powerful writer with clear and sophisticated arguments and with a compelling identity that is separate from the pivotal attack that led to her being in the spotlight. She also has a strong, passionate grasp of widely experienced inequalities—and ideas of how to chip away at some of the injustices and faulty norms that should be excised from society. I began reading Know My Name because I thought I should, not because I wanted to. Miller surprised me with the delicately balanced tone she was able to strike, her passionate belief in right and wrong, her emotional reactions to her situation, and her measured arguments and calm determination. I was fascinated by her. Now I'd like Miller to write more books about varied topics, because I like spending time in her head. #politicssocialjustice, #memoir, #fourstarbookreview, #knowmyname 06 Open Book ​ In Open Book, Jessica Simpson explores her life, her ups and downs, her drinking-related missteps, and her failed loves. She tracks her scrappy and determined rise to stardom, her religious faith, her reliance on and love for her friends, her deep familial attachments and conflicts, and her path to therapy, sobriety, and a happy marriage and parenthood. I've liked JS since Newlyweds, and she takes us back to the show here too. At times there is some silliness and some superficial focus, but I felt as though Simpson was laying it all on the table and going through some real self-examination. Interestingly, she spends a lot more page time on John Mayer than Nick Lachey—and provides what ultimately amounts to a takedown of Mayer that explores his extensive emotional manipulation, his elaborate interview accounts of his sexual escapades with her and others, and, incredibly and most damningly, his use of the N-word during an interview. #memoir, #fourstarbookreview, #openbook What are the most interesting memoirs you've read recently? I do enjoy a celebrity memoir if it feels like an honest examination and doesn't have too much ego coloring the author's version of events. But I'm also drawn to the life stories of everyday people--especially when they find their lives shaped by extraordinary circumstances.

01 Surrender Your Sons This summer stinks. Teenage Connor's elderly friend died, his boyfriend talked him into coming out, and now his mother thinks he's going to hell because he's gay, and she's grounded him indefinitely. But Connor doesn't know that things are about to get a lot worse. Middle-of-the-night kidnapping-to-a-conversion-camp-level worse. I don't have a bead on the tone of this one yet; Connor is a little snarky, but I believe the plot is going to include mystery/thriller elements. (For my full review, see Surrender Your Sons.) #LGBTQ, #youngadult, #mysterysuspense 02 A Very Punchable Face ​ Has Colin Jost lived long enough to fill out a memoir with fascinating anecdotes? He started A Very Punchable Face with a story that is really his mother's (to be fair, it's interesting--she was the chief medical officer for the New York City Fire Department and in NYC during 9/11), which makes me worry that he won't have enough experiences of his own. So far there are also a surprising number of scatologically focused tales, which I am not fully invested in. I'm counting on enough behind-the-scenes Saturday Night Live peeks to keep things rolling. (For my full review, see A Very Punchable Face.) #memoir, #nonfiction 03 Simon the Fiddler ​ Simon the Fiddler is set at the end of the Civil War. Scruffy, hot-tempered, baby-faced Simon evaded a position in the Confederate Army for years by passing as too young...and by running away on occasion. But he's finally been conscripted into the military and is desperately hoping that his post in the regimental band keeps him out of danger. As the Confederates' surrender looms and Simon's band plays for officers of both sides at a celebration marking the end of the war, he lays eyes on an Irish governess for a Union colonel's family. He falls hard for Doris despite their brief, indirect conversation. They part ways, but the thought of her keeps him strong during the hardships and uncertainty that follow. He's playing in a "scratch band" near the Texas coast with other big-hearted characters to try to make ends meet, but he's desperate to get back to her and figure out if the reality of Doris lives up to the mental pedestal he's placed her upon. Jiles provides wonderful details of 1865 Texas and life at the end of the War Between the States. I'm listening to this as an audiobook and the narrator of Grover Gardner is wonderful. Paulette Jiles also wrote two other Civil War-era historical fiction books I loved, News of the World and The Color of Lightning, as well as one I haven't read but intend to, Enemy Women. (For my full review of this book, see Simon the Fiddler.) #historicalfiction, #civilwar What are you reading now? Concurrently reading a young adult LGBTQ mystery, a comedian's memoir, and a historical fiction story set during the Civil War--I'm keeping the wacky reading combos going! What types of books are you reading, and have you found that your reading habits have changed during Pandemic Times?

I love Jiles's richly imagined Civil War-era historical fiction, and I'm in for her other books. Simon the Fiddler is set at the end of the Civil War. Simon is scruffy and hot-tempered, headstrong but kind. He tends toward brawling, but he is a loyal and measured friend. As the Confederates' surrender looms, Simon's ragtag band plays for officers from both sides of the conflict at a celebration marking the end of the war. That's where Simon lays eyes on the Irish governess for a Union colonel's family. He falls hard for young Doris despite their brief conversation. They part ways, but the thought of her keeps him strong during the hardships and uncertainty of life after war's end. Simon and his "scratch band" eke out a meager living near the Texas coast and begin to cautiously make plans for the future. Meanwhile Simon makes excuses to write to Doris and eagerly awaits her replies, and over time their friendship blossoms. Simon remains desperate to get back to Doris and figure out if the reality of her matches up to the mental pedestal he's placed her high upon. Significant page time is spent on descriptions of music and performance, which seems like it could potentially be tedious, but Jiles handles these passages deftly, and I found them soothing. Simon's significant musical ability and ear for arrangement help to build him as a layered character. Simon is shown to be faulted but true, and Doris emerges as a more full, brave character once she occupies more of the active story. Jiles provides details of the couple's burgeoning relationship while placing us squarely in a rich 1865 Texas setting, and she immerses readers in the mayhem of mixed joys and sorrow that one can imagine makes up life at the end of war. I might have liked a little more character development, but in a way, the slightly emotionally distant characters suited the conventions of the time, and I didn't feel a lack of connection. The action scenes, when they occur, are fast and furious, with aftershocks the characters scramble to cope with. Simon and Doris's paths are shaped by villains I loved to detest as well as heroes I adored. As the story wended its way toward the end, I was unable to tell whether Jiles was going to lead the bighearted characters toward destruction or if she would save them from heartbreak. I trusted her not to leave me in complete despair, yet things didn't unfold too easily or positively for long enough that I was on pins and needles. This is the kind of richly imagined historical fiction I adore, and I'm in for each of Paulette Jiles's books from here on out. I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narrator of Grover Gardner is wonderful. What did you think? This is the third Paulette Jiles Civil War-era historical fiction book I've read. She also wrote News of the World, which I loved. (In Simon the Fiddler there's a cameo from Captain Kidd, a character I adored from News of the World.) She also wrote The Color of Lightning, a book I adored. Next on my to-read list from her is Enemy Women. I first mentioned Simon the Fiddler in my Greedy Reading List Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/12/20 Edition.

This is character-driven historical fiction at its best. Captain Kidd has fought in three wars, and after the Civil War's end, he serves as a traveling news reader, providing eager listeners along his route with news of the world. He somewhat reluctantly ends up agreeing to transport a young recently rescued Kiowa captive 400 miles to her extended family. They'll have to pass through lawless lands to get to San Antonio, and Johanna isn't exactly a cooperative traveling companion. (You can almost hear Kidd grumbling "I'm too old for this" in the movie version I'm envisioning.) I adored every bit of Jiles's story--Captain Kidd's reluctant but gentlemanly involvement and his voice; Johanna as a tough young woman; the vivid Texas setting; the fits and starts of adventure; the noble heart of the story; the humor; the heartbreak. This is character-driven historical fiction at its best. I loved loved loved it. What did you think? Not everyone in my book club adored this as much as I did. But for me, Jiles's story struck all the right chords, and I delighted in watching the tough characters slowly reveal their vulnerabilities. Jiles also wrote Simon the Fiddler, set after the Civil War, in which Captain Kidd makes a brief appearance, as well as The Color of Lightning, which I adored. I haven't yet read Enemy Women but definitely intend to. #historicalfiction, #civilwar, #southern, #fivestarbookreview, #newsoftheworld

01 The Pull of the Stars Set in Ireland in 1918, The Pull of the Stars follows a nurse, Julia, doctor, Kathleen, and a young volunteer, Bridie, over the course of three days as they work desperately to help both the women giving birth and those suffering from the devastating new flu at an understaffed hospital. Is it appealing to read about a pandemic during a pandemic? We shall see. Donoghue weaves a good amount of fact into this story--Kathleen Lynn was a real, formidable figure--and the author of Room certainly knows how to craft a story of survival and of finding hope in the most dire situations. #historicalfiction, #WWI, #thepullofthestars 02 Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating ​ Josh and Hazel are college friends. He's fresh from a devastating heartbreak and she's zany and free-spirited. He's calm and collected, and she's uninhibited. So naturally they'd keep setting each other up on blind dates with other people as they stand by for each other as friends. This is a promising read in the #lightfiction category, a genre that's been working well for me during Pandemic Times. I loved the authors' (Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings write together under the pen name Christina Lauren) book Autoboyography but did not feel as strongly about Love and Other Words. I'm listening to this as an audiobook. #lightfiction, #joshandhazelsguidetonotdating 03 Hench I'm so in love with this book so far, I'm going to be heartbroken if it doesn't hold up. Anna does data entry and works boring temp jobs...for villains. It's not like she's in the line of fire or taking part in dastardly plots. She sits behind a computer, she needs the steady paycheck--and she's got a grudging respect for the bad guys who are paying her. When she's unexpectedly involved in a violent clash of good and evil and is injured by a gallingly shiny superhero, she doubles down on her contempt for the good guys and her annoyance at how others see them as infallible when they're far from blameless. Anna's flair for moving around information might be able to teach some of these golden boys and girls a lesson--and it just might get her out from behind the desk for some old-fashioned battling too. I'm reading this one courtesy of NetGalley and William Morrow; it's scheduled for publication on September 22. #fantasyscifi, #hench What are you reading now? Historical fiction, light fiction, and fantasy/science fiction is the wacky concurrent combo working for me right now.

Beach Read is a gem for your light fiction-escapism-pandemic-era reading list. Is it fair for a person (me) with particular requirements for light fiction (ideally: not too outlandish of a hook and premise, characters who follow somewhat logical steps in their lives, inner voices that feel real, human connections that warm my heart, and a little romantic something-something) to continue reading light fiction while kind of expecting disappointment? Yes. Yes, it is. Because I suspected that Emily Henry's Beach Read was going to be a major gem on my light fiction-escapism-pandemic-era reading list. And fortunately, I was correct. It took five (short) chapters to take off for me, with some minor early grumbles on my part. The very early scene-setting didn't feel as authentic to me as the rest of the book. We kept hearing about the person January was before her father's death and before his affair was revealed, but no glimpses of that personality were apparent, so I kept feeling told without believing it. The hints at this prior, whimsical person were jarring to me and maybe I was too grumpy for the idea of her, because she felt more off-putting than charming. For example, she meets the small-town barista and within moments thinks, "Honestly, I liked her so much that it sent a little pang of longing through me. For the old January. The one who...couldn't go to the gas station or stand in line at the post office without winding up making plans to grab coffee or hit up a gallery opening [with strangers]..." Just afterward, she says "...that [old] January probably would've slathered herself in glitter, put on her favorite velvet loafers, and shown up at the front door [of a next-door stranger having a loud party] with a bottle of champagne..." But January soon shows herself to be a character capable of overcoming great pain, engaging in wise self-examination, and achieving messily hard-fought resilience, all of which I cared about. Beach Read met all of my criteria above; it's sweet and funny, it's about writing and books, there are wonderfully faulted love-crossed main protagonists with a shared history, and they share a sexy-playful-obsession-maybe-heartbreak-maybe-love. Henry's characters make references I adored (Veronica Mars!), and their banter is so smart and funny, it made me laugh repeatedly. They're perfectly imperfect, not over-the-top light-fiction perfect with fake flaws, nor are they wholly broken and in need of saving. They are complex characters who have been through tough experiences and are at interesting tipping points in their lives. January's reflections are surprisingly deep; for me, the "real," messy, vulnerable character of January far exceeds the impact of the fanciful sense of self she keeps telling us once existed, and which she purports to miss. The examination of the writing process and the feelings evoked by falling into writing a story were lovely. The sections of this light fiction book that are about writing light fiction felt very true and real. And I loved spending time with Gus and January. What did you think? Henry has four other books, but I haven't read any of her others yet. Another light fiction book I enjoyed this summer, but which had characters with job-interview-level fake faults (too caring, too beautiful, too artistic) was The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez. I mentioned this book in Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/3/20 Edition. #lightfiction, #heartwarming, #booksaboutbooks, #fourstarbookreview

Colin Jost retraces his journey toward and through his fifteen seasons at Saturday Night Live and offers insights that I found absorbing. I do like a thoughtful memoir if I can get it, and in A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir, Colin Jost offers interesting reflections about his life, how he's lived it so far, and what he wants from it. (I also like behind-the-scenes peeks, and Jost supplies some of these in his non-gossipy way.) Jost begins A Very Punchable Face with a story that is really his mother's (to be fair, it's gripping--she was the chief medical officer for the New York City Fire Department and was in New York City during 9/11), which made me worry that he wouldn't have enough experiences of his own to share. But his mother's story helped Jost set the scene for his own origins and his strong Staten Island roots. He retraces his journey toward and through his fifteen seasons at Saturday Night Live, from early tryouts, through his position as head writer, and his tough start and ultimate success as Weekend Update co-anchor. He talks through some of the workings of the show, which I found absorbing. (I didn't know a SNL sketch writer is automatically the sketch's producer, for example, a dynamic whose implications Jost explores somewhat, and he also shares other logistical and specific processes I found interesting.) He shares his adoration of and admiration for his coworkers, dishes a little bit about hosts and some high and low moments with them, and I loved his fake, ferocious rivalry with SNL's Aidy Bryant. Jost is driven and is an appealingly hard worker with a real dedication to the business of creating funny, thoughtful comedy. I didn't realize he had long been a stand-up comedian--and that he pursued this aggressively even during busy SNL seasons; for a long time he left the SNL office multiple times a week to put on late-night stand-up sets. There are a surprising number of scatologically focused tales, which I was not a huge fan of, although I do appreciate the spirit of letting it all hang out and offering up zany escapades for a reader. (Side note: let's maybe get Jost to a gastroenterologist for a checkup.) I'm not sure I ended up knowing Jost much better through reading his book--for all of his shared tales, he remains a little closed off, which is probably healthy and wise for a celebrity. But he offers up entertaining stand-up, show business, and personal anecdotes. I enjoyed listening to Jost read the audiobook (and enjoyed his many compelling pitches for buying the book in order to see the incriminating or otherwise captivating photos he described to listeners). What did you think? Memoirs have been hitting the spot for me during Pandemic Times even more than usual. I mentioned this book in the Greedy Reading List Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/12/20 Edition. #memoir, #nonfiction, #threestarbookreview

Some aspects of Surrender Your Sons felt deeply real and intimate, but I couldn't get past the challenges of details, character behavior, and leaps in logic that didn't seem to fit. The heart of this book is lovely: Connor is a young man figuring out who he is; he feels afraid of the consequences of coming out; he's looking for love; and he's discovering inner bravery and emotional vulnerability, which will allow him to live honestly and fully. Connor's SAT scores stink, his best friend is pregnant and everyone seems to think he's the father of the baby, he's trying to find his way in his first relationship, and he came out to his homophobic mom, so now he's grounded. But things are going to get much worse: he's about to be kidnapped and taken out of the country to Nightlight, a secret conversion camp for homosexual minors, because of his mother's rigid religious beliefs and her blind faith in the Reverend and his thinking. Adam Sass's beautifully heartfelt Acknowledgments mention that the essence of his story remained intact through years and "a million" versions (including a fantasy version--which I'm intrigued by--as well as one set in England and other versions geared toward adult audiences) before he landed on a young adult approach. It seems as though Sass feels deeply about the character of Connor. And I wanted to dive into this story. But I was challenged by frequent issues with story elements, tone shifts and uneven pacing, and character choices that didn't seem to fit. These ranged from details that didn't mesh to what felt like large, irrational leaps in logic, sometimes within the same paragraph. Why would Ricky send a cryptic, desperate, last-minute warning but not have tried to communicate anything to Connor in months of exchanges? (We see Ricky recognize the Reverend's likely intent of spiriting off Connor to Nightlight at the diner when Ricky and Connor first meet.) Why would the Reverend actively put Connor and Ricky together at all, if Ricky has made the life choices he has (which are presented as abhorrent to the Reverend)--but even more importantly, why would he link them if Ricky clearly has dangerous knowledge of Nightlight and the troublesome goings-on that occurred in his life after his own stint there? The Reverend is ready to literally kill in order to preserve the details of that information from becoming known. Minor things stopped me so often that I stopped making note of them, but a few issues that didn't feel like they worked, even within the disturbingly irrational setting: Why would the kids be made to shower with carefully hoarded rainwater and immediately afterward go on a long forced run? Why would they hold their hands over their hearts (as though saying the Pledge of Allegiance) during a sung blessing? Connor is able to keep a thick, bulky Playbill folded and hidden in the pocket of his short shorts at breakfast? In a life-and-death moment, the kids laugh and try to insult the woman who is threatening them and possibly about kill them? And the repeated use of I instead of me is a copyediting-level issue, but it stopped me every time I saw it. Connor's grasp of his mother’s involvement in shipping him off seems confused to an unlikely extent. Could he realistically have the emotional ability that we're told he possesses immediately after his kidnapping to anticipate that he and his mom (who sanctioned and paid for this kidnapping to another country and the ensuing brutal attempts at scrubbing his homosexuality) would eventually be close again, so that he would want to hurry and get home to her to bandage their relationship? He’s a teen with the potential for having a temper, and I would expect some measure of rage from anyone at the injustice of his situation, the time she's robbing him of (he is expected to stay for months), and her horrifying neglect—she has no idea what these people might do to him and has placed him in grave danger. It would be easy to imagine that as a kidnapped teen who has demonstrated a rebellious streak and an increasingly strong sense of self, he might imagine in these moments that he is through with her--even if he might feel compassion for her ignorance later, and even if it's more difficult to cut the cord on their relationship when (if) he returns. Some aspects of Surrender Your Sons feel deeply real and intimate: the fumbling scenes with Ario, the growing affection for Marcos, the other friendships powerfully forged during trauma and danger, and the ultimate emergence of the Nightlight BBs as wonderfully flamboyant characters living true lives. But I couldn't get past the confusing elements. What did you think? I received a prepublication copy of Surrender Your Sons through NetGalley and Flux. I mentioned this book and its captivating premise in Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/12/20 Edition. #LGBTQ, #youngadult, #mysterysuspense, #dysfunctionalfamily, #twostarbookreview

Robots, time travel, teen angst, and this gorgeous cover. Yes to all of this. I didn't anticipate the twists Johnson provides, and I was delighted by each of them. Goddess in the Machine is more than just a gorgeous cover. Lora Beth Johnson had me hooked immediately by the premise and Andra's voice. Teenage Andra finally wakes up after being cryogenically preserved for a century-long journey to a new planet. She's a little creaky and sore, sure, but she's ready to be reunited with the team, which includes her mother and the rest of her family, plus many others involved in the complex project. They'll begin the work of bravely populating and building a new life on this planet. Except...Andra soon realizes she wasn't sleeping for 100 years. She was asleep for 1,000. The people, terrain, and language are not what she studied for or expected, everyone she once knew has already lived and died--oh, and the general population, whoever they are, thinks she's a goddess, and they've been waiting excitedly for her to wake up and save them. Andra is trying to fake her way through the minefields without being killed, then about halfway through the book, she has an enormous realization about the reality of what has occurred. Then there is another even bigger jaw-dropper later in the book. Eeeee! Johnson explores how magic and technology are often the same thing in the new world, but which word is used and by which person determines whether it inspires reverence or contempt. She supplies enough introspection and reflection for her characters to provide depth, and I loved that. The language spoken by those in the future world is slightly shifted, as though it has evolved over 1,000 years (the -ish suffix is used instead of -ly; -ful instead of -ous; "firm" or "certz" is used for "yes"). It takes a little getting used to but doesn't take away from the story. There are some funny exchanges because of the differences in characters' languages. At one point Andra calls her friend Zhade (who is from a time 1,000 years past her origin time) an insult ("a-hole"), which horrifies and fascinates him. He says "That is a massive yet disgusting insult. I reck [reckon] I was born about a thousand years too late. I missed all the best words." What did you think? I didn't anticipate the twist/double twist here, and I loved being surprised again and again. I mentioned this book in Three Wackily Different Books I'm Reading Right Now, 9/3/20 Edition. #fantasyscifi, #youngadult, #series, #robots, #postapocalypticdystopian, #timetravel, #fourstarbookreview