Candace's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 19 Feb 2025 17:47:59 -0800 60 Candace's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Names 217245618
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Candace 0 to-read 4.33 2025 The Names
author: Florence Knapp
name: Candace
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> نازلة دار الأكابر 55460099 لقد شبّهتُ مرّاتٍ قصّةَ تونس غير المكتوبة بالفسيفساء البديعة لثرائها وفرادتها. وأكبر ظنّي أنّ رواية أميرة غنيم هذه، إذ تروي ببراعةٍ ومعرفةٍ عميقة شيئًا من قصّتنا التونسيّة، ستحتلّ، ولا ريب، موقعا ممتازًا ضمن مدوّنة السرد العربيّ، وهي إذ تعرض علينا قصّتنا تمنح النساء الصوت الأعلى لروايةِ فصولٍ من تاريخ البلاد السرّيّ، أَفَلَسْنَ هُنّ حافظات الذاكرة الحقيقيّة وفاضحات الذكوريّة البائسة؟]]> 460 أميرة غنيم 9938241409 Candace 0 to-read 4.24 2023 نازلة دار الأكابر
author: أميرة غنيم
name: Candace
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Second Coming 198563704
When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in 2011, her estranged dad, Ethan, seems like the furthest thing from her mind. A convicted felon and recovering addict, Ethan has always struggled to see past himself. But then a call from his ex makes him fear their daughter's in deeper trouble than anyone realizes. Believing he's the only one who can save her, he decides to return to New York with a the whole of his life, its hard-won triumphs and harrowing mistakes...

So begins the intimate epic of Jolie and child and adult, apart and together, different yet the same. Their journey toward each other will face opposition from grandparents and siblings and friends. It will strain connections with roommates and benefactors and a probation officer desperate to help. It will push Jolie out past her depth with a mysterious admirer, and Ethan in over his head with his first love, Jolie's mom. But as father and daughter struggle to find their footing, new vistas from a surf break in mid-'90s Delaware to group therapy during the Great Recession, from an encampment at Occupy Wall Street to a HoJo on Maryland's Eastern Shore, from the heights of the Brooklyn Bridge to horizons seldom seen in fiction.]]> 608 Garth Risk Hallberg 0593536924 Candace 2
Hallberg is a gorgeous writer, but there is too much of this book. It reminded me of Infinite Jest, another novel that it was very hard to get through; in fact, I'm not sure I did. I stuck with The Second Coming (the title has no religious significance but refers to a book by the artist known at that time as Prince.) There are some readers who may fall in love with this novel--I suspect they are guys who also love David Foster Wallace. There are some plangent observations about the human condition but the premise did not pay off for me.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a DRC of this novel.]]> 3.04 2024 The Second Coming
author: Garth Risk Hallberg
name: Candace
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
Teen depression, estranged parents, a holiday road trip, and a lifetime of trouble form the framework for Garth RIsk Hallberg's second novel. Dad Ethan moved from New York to California in an attempt to get a grip on his addiction. Already a convicted felon and divorced from his daughter's mother, he heads east when he learns that Jolie seems to have considered throwing herself in front of a subway train. He sees himself at age 13 and fears he knows what might be to come.

Hallberg is a gorgeous writer, but there is too much of this book. It reminded me of Infinite Jest, another novel that it was very hard to get through; in fact, I'm not sure I did. I stuck with The Second Coming (the title has no religious significance but refers to a book by the artist known at that time as Prince.) There are some readers who may fall in love with this novel--I suspect they are guys who also love David Foster Wallace. There are some plangent observations about the human condition but the premise did not pay off for me.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a DRC of this novel.
]]> <![CDATA[Everybody Says It's Everything]]> 214986238 Twins growing up in America in 1999 unravel larger truths about identity and sibling bonds when one gets wrapped up in the war in Kosovo, in this unforgettable novel from the award-winning author of Brass

Growing up in Connecticut adopted twins Drita and Petrit (aka Pete) had no connection to their Albanian heritage. Their lives were all about Barbie dolls, the mall, and roller skating at the local rink. Though inseparable in childhood, their paths diverged as teenagers; Drita was a good girl with and good manners who was going to go to a good college, Pete was a bad boy going nowhere fast. Even their twinhood was not enough to keep them together.

Fast forward to their twenties and Drita has abandoned her graduate studies to move home and take care of their mother, giving up her dreams for the future. She hasn’t heard from her brother in three years when Pete’s girlfriend and their son show up unexpectedly without him and in need of help. Realizing that his child may offer the siblings a second chance at being family, Drita becomes determined to find Pete. But what she ends up discovering—both about their connection to their Albanian roots, the war in Kosovo, and the story of their adoption—will surprise everyone, and will either be the thing that brings them together, or tears them apart for good.

From the award-winning author of Brass, Everybody Says It’s Everything tells the story of a family both fractured and foundering, desperate to connect with the other and the world at large, but not knowing how.]]> 320 Xhenet Aliu 0593732278 Candace 4
When "Everybody Says It's Everything" begins, Drita has dropped out of her Master's program to take care of their adoptive mom. She hasn't thought much about Pete for a while, but then his girlfriend shows up, fighting to stay sober, and needs Drita to look after her son Dakota while she world at the Dollar Store. Drita is being drawn into this little family but where's Pete? Why isn't he taking care of his family? Pete, in the meantime, has connected with a bunch of local Albanians and Albanian Americans who are educating him and on his birth country and its current struggle.

This novel is poignant, funny, and tough at the same time. Xhenet Aliu is a lovely writer and this book has it all including the added spice of the Albanian history and struggle in the Balkan wars. It's a good engrossing read and will keep you thinking about Drita, Pete, and their circle long after the last page.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of Xhenet Aliu's latest in return for an honest review.

]]> 3.52 Everybody Says It's Everything
author: Xhenet Aliu
name: Candace
average rating: 3.52
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
review:
Twins Drita and Petrit (known as Pete) grow up in Connecticut as typical 90's kids with no ties to their Albanian heritage. They are close, although different from the start--Pete will know exactly the perfect gift for his sister and will get it by shoplifting whereas Drita would save up for his perfect gift. Their lives veer in different directions. Drita graduates from college and begins a Master's program. Pete dives headfirst into the world of addiction, abandoning his girlfriend and his little boy.

When "Everybody Says It's Everything" begins, Drita has dropped out of her Master's program to take care of their adoptive mom. She hasn't thought much about Pete for a while, but then his girlfriend shows up, fighting to stay sober, and needs Drita to look after her son Dakota while she world at the Dollar Store. Drita is being drawn into this little family but where's Pete? Why isn't he taking care of his family? Pete, in the meantime, has connected with a bunch of local Albanians and Albanian Americans who are educating him and on his birth country and its current struggle.

This novel is poignant, funny, and tough at the same time. Xhenet Aliu is a lovely writer and this book has it all including the added spice of the Albanian history and struggle in the Balkan wars. It's a good engrossing read and will keep you thinking about Drita, Pete, and their circle long after the last page.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of Xhenet Aliu's latest in return for an honest review.


]]> Three Days in June 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life,Three Days in Juneis a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 Candace 5
The three days in June encircle the wedding of Gail Baines' daughter Debbie. Gail is having a crappy time. That Friday, she loses her job (she lacks people skills, she's told,) she wasn't invited to the spa day hosted by the mother of the groom, her ex-husband wants to stay with her (and bring a cat!) and she is generally feeling dowdy and unappreciated. She also receives a shocking piece of information about the groom that brings up her own deceptions in the past.

The story is rich in revelations about completely ordinary people and their mundane lives. Anne Tyler's gift is showing us the wonder and complexity of even the most plain-seeming lives.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for a digital review copy of this novel. This is an honest review.]]> 3.62 2025 Three Days in June
author: Anne Tyler
name: Candace
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
review:
In 176 brief pages, Anne Tyler gives us the complete lives or ordinary people with depth, humanity, humor, and heart. How does she do it? How is every new book just as satisfying as her early novels from the sixties and seventies?

The three days in June encircle the wedding of Gail Baines' daughter Debbie. Gail is having a crappy time. That Friday, she loses her job (she lacks people skills, she's told,) she wasn't invited to the spa day hosted by the mother of the groom, her ex-husband wants to stay with her (and bring a cat!) and she is generally feeling dowdy and unappreciated. She also receives a shocking piece of information about the groom that brings up her own deceptions in the past.

The story is rich in revelations about completely ordinary people and their mundane lives. Anne Tyler's gift is showing us the wonder and complexity of even the most plain-seeming lives.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for a digital review copy of this novel. This is an honest review.
]]> Awake in the Floating City 217453585 An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.� —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.]]> 320 Susanna Kwan 0593701402 Candace 4
Bo lives in future San Francisco, which is so flooded that people live in the very top floors of high rises and travel to markets on various rooftops. She is an artist and also a registered caregiver. She's stayed in the city even though her cousin and uncle have tried repeatedly to rescue her and bring her to safety in Vancouver, because she is hoping that her mother, who disappeared in the flood, will re-appear. Just as she's ready to sail north, she gets a caregiver job with an elderly neighbor and decides to stay.

The neighbor is Mia, a 130-year-old woman. As the two get to know each other, they share stories. With her great age, Mia is able to reach back to the past century to tell some of the stories of her life. Her discussions of the past bring Bo to appreciate the time they're in and what will be lost if San Francisco is abandoned.

"Awake in the Floating City" moves slowly, gently gathering up neighbors and stories of grief and loss. It is deliberately paced, giving readers time to settle on the world the characters face.

3.5 stars rounded up. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.91 2025 Awake in the Floating City
author: Susanna Kwan
name: Candace
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves:
review:
So, you're a writer. You're torn between wanting to write a dystopian novel and wanting to write about the Chinese-American experience in 20th century America. Can you do both? How? Susanna Kwan has found an answer to that, and it mostly works.

Bo lives in future San Francisco, which is so flooded that people live in the very top floors of high rises and travel to markets on various rooftops. She is an artist and also a registered caregiver. She's stayed in the city even though her cousin and uncle have tried repeatedly to rescue her and bring her to safety in Vancouver, because she is hoping that her mother, who disappeared in the flood, will re-appear. Just as she's ready to sail north, she gets a caregiver job with an elderly neighbor and decides to stay.

The neighbor is Mia, a 130-year-old woman. As the two get to know each other, they share stories. With her great age, Mia is able to reach back to the past century to tell some of the stories of her life. Her discussions of the past bring Bo to appreciate the time they're in and what will be lost if San Francisco is abandoned.

"Awake in the Floating City" moves slowly, gently gathering up neighbors and stories of grief and loss. It is deliberately paced, giving readers time to settle on the world the characters face.

3.5 stars rounded up. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Six Days in Bombay 212368741
When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she's living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party with all of Bombay society and invites Sona along. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn't know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira's childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira's history, she learns that the charming facade she'd come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she'll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.]]> Alka Joshi Candace 4
Sona is an Anglo-Indian nurse who falls under the spell of one of her patients, a famous artist who regales her with stories of her travels and life. Once she's released from the hospital, Mira invites Sona to a party at her home where the nurse meets the artist's fascinating circle of friends. But Mira has a relapse and dies the next day in hospital, with suspicion falling on Sona. She loses her job--a tragedy for someone barely hanging on.

But Mira leaves Sona with a challenge, to deliver three paintings to her friends across Europe. With encouragement from a former patient, Sona takes on the challenge to learn more about the woman who influenced her so much. Of course, she also learns a great deal about herself.

Things fall into place a little too easily for Sona, and I would've liked for her to give the strategic mind that Mira admired a little more of a workout, but Six Days is still a good read that will have Joshi fans looking forward to her next novel.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for digital access to "The Paris Express" in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.27 2025 Six Days in Bombay
author: Alka Joshi
name: Candace
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves:
review:
Readers of Alka Joshi's Henna Artist will eat Six Days In Bombay up with a spoon. It offers an appealing heroine, lots of international travel, personal revelations, and a focus on an particular part of Indian society, much like she did in her earlier series.

Sona is an Anglo-Indian nurse who falls under the spell of one of her patients, a famous artist who regales her with stories of her travels and life. Once she's released from the hospital, Mira invites Sona to a party at her home where the nurse meets the artist's fascinating circle of friends. But Mira has a relapse and dies the next day in hospital, with suspicion falling on Sona. She loses her job--a tragedy for someone barely hanging on.

But Mira leaves Sona with a challenge, to deliver three paintings to her friends across Europe. With encouragement from a former patient, Sona takes on the challenge to learn more about the woman who influenced her so much. Of course, she also learns a great deal about herself.

Things fall into place a little too easily for Sona, and I would've liked for her to give the strategic mind that Mira admired a little more of a workout, but Six Days is still a good read that will have Joshi fans looking forward to her next novel.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for digital access to "The Paris Express" in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Paris Express 214151304 Emma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring� (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station.

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy� (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.]]> 288 Emma Donoghue 1668082799 Candace 4
It's 1895. The Paris express leaves Brittany, hurtling toward the capital with all three travel classes full. Donoghue introduces us to various characters across the classes, including a terrified little kid, a black American, an anarchist (with bomb) a woman doctor, a Cambodian priest, a visionary who sees the future of moving pictures, and several politicians. But what's going to happen? Will one of them cause the accident? Who will get off the train in time to survive?

Besides creating tension, Donoghue is gifted at revealing complex characters with just a few words. I recommend not researching the event before you start reading and letting yourself just join the passengers on this ride.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for digital access to "The Paris Express" in exchange for an honest review.

]]> 3.29 2025 The Paris Express
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Candace
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves:
review:
Emma Donoghue offers a master class in creating tension and suspense from first page to last. She lets us know at the very start that this train is going to crash, but how, when and why are stretched across each page and will keep readers stuck to each one of those pages.

It's 1895. The Paris express leaves Brittany, hurtling toward the capital with all three travel classes full. Donoghue introduces us to various characters across the classes, including a terrified little kid, a black American, an anarchist (with bomb) a woman doctor, a Cambodian priest, a visionary who sees the future of moving pictures, and several politicians. But what's going to happen? Will one of them cause the accident? Who will get off the train in time to survive?

Besides creating tension, Donoghue is gifted at revealing complex characters with just a few words. I recommend not researching the event before you start reading and letting yourself just join the passengers on this ride.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for digital access to "The Paris Express" in exchange for an honest review.


]]> Our Evenings 209891406 From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.

Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.

Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.

This is “one of our most gifted writers� (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.]]> 496 Alan Hollinghurst 0593243064 Candace 2 to-read
Hollinghurst is a beautiful writer, but I did not connect enough with Dave and his unappealing friends for it to matter. I thought there would be more about his background, his Burmese father, his mother, but the novel focuses on Dave's upperclass connections and boarding school milieu over the decades. The book is dense, which is something I usually love but which in this case left me cold.

Alan Hollinghurst has many, many avid readers who will savor his latest. But in my promise to give an honest review in exchange for a digital review copy from the publisher and Netgalley, it was a two star read for me.]]> 3.93 2024 Our Evenings
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Candace
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:
Fans of Alan Hollinghurst will love "Our Evenings." It has all the elements of what pulls readers to his work--class and queer struggles in modern Britain, artistically rendered sex, and boarding school culture, the outsider "Our Evenings" is stuffed with all this, revealing the story of David Win, a Burmese/British scholarship student who becomes an actor.

Hollinghurst is a beautiful writer, but I did not connect enough with Dave and his unappealing friends for it to matter. I thought there would be more about his background, his Burmese father, his mother, but the novel focuses on Dave's upperclass connections and boarding school milieu over the decades. The book is dense, which is something I usually love but which in this case left me cold.

Alan Hollinghurst has many, many avid readers who will savor his latest. But in my promise to give an honest review in exchange for a digital review copy from the publisher and Netgalley, it was a two star read for me.
]]> The Queens of Crime 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]> 310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 Candace 4 3.82 2025 The Queens of Crime
author: Marie Benedict
name: Candace
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Strange Case of Jane O. 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 Candace 5
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.92 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Candace
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
review:
Come into this novel cold. There are twists and surprises galore, interesting psychiatric developments and a sense of discomfort, disbelief, and menace. Karen Thompson Walker has written a thriller that will make you question everyone and everything that happens. I'm being careful of spoilers, but "The Strange Case of Jane O" is a mystery like any other.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Granddaughter 199340852 'Anyone who wants to understand contemporary Germany must read The Granddaughter now' Le Monde
'The great novel of German reunification' Le Figaro
'A masterpiece' Maurice Szafran

May, 1964. At a youth festival in East Berlin, an unlikely young couple fall in love. In the bright spring days, anything seems possible for them - it is only many years later, after her death, that Kaspar discovers the price his wife paid to get to him in West Berlin.

Shattered by grief, Kaspar sets off to uncover Birgit's secrets in the East. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, and to a young girl who accepts him as her grandfather. Their worlds could not be more different - but he is determined to fight for her.

From the author of the no.1 international bestseller The Reader, The Granddaughter is a gripping novel that transports us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to contemporary Australia, asking what might be found when it seems like all is lost.

Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins ]]> 324 Bernhard Schlink 1399614886 Candace 4
He does find her, a grown woman living in a rural Volkish (neo-Nazi) community with a 14-year-old daughter. Kaspar manages to wrangle a promise of visits from the girl in exchange for a bequest, allegedly from Birgit.

The first quarter of "The Granddaughter" is not slow, but deliberate. Once the two meet at Kaspar's house in Berlin, the s tory takes off and we wonder whether this was a good idea for either of them. But their desires for connection lead them to strange places and an awakening for them both.

What's fascinating is how Bernhard Schlink picks at the painful scabs of modern German history--WW2, the Cold War, and now the rise of the alt-right, their beliefs and their need for "room." This novel is an education on what's currently happening in Germany, especially in areas of the former East.

Deep characterizations and an unfamiliar equal a compelling reading experience. Thanks to Edelweiss for offering this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.32 2021 The Granddaughter
author: Bernhard Schlink
name: Candace
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
review:
Newly widowed Kaspar learns that his beloved but troubled wife had a child she had given up at birth. Brigit gave birth when she lived in East Germany, before she joined Kaspar in the west. There are few clues as to who or where this child might be, but must try to connect with this last bit of his beloved wife.

He does find her, a grown woman living in a rural Volkish (neo-Nazi) community with a 14-year-old daughter. Kaspar manages to wrangle a promise of visits from the girl in exchange for a bequest, allegedly from Birgit.

The first quarter of "The Granddaughter" is not slow, but deliberate. Once the two meet at Kaspar's house in Berlin, the s tory takes off and we wonder whether this was a good idea for either of them. But their desires for connection lead them to strange places and an awakening for them both.

What's fascinating is how Bernhard Schlink picks at the painful scabs of modern German history--WW2, the Cold War, and now the rise of the alt-right, their beliefs and their need for "room." This novel is an education on what's currently happening in Germany, especially in areas of the former East.

Deep characterizations and an unfamiliar equal a compelling reading experience. Thanks to Edelweiss for offering this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Candace 4
There are whispers of various fairy tales but no exact one you can pin the story on. The real star of "Black Woods, Blue Sky" is the Alaskan wilderness, its delicate and mighty beauties. The first half of the novel moves slowly but picks up when the locals are torn between what they know to be true even though such a thing could not be possible.

There is so much beautiful about this book. Eowyn Ivey is an artist. I look for ward to her next novel. Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the DRC in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.69 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Candace
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves:
review:
Both "The Snow Child" and "To the Bright Edge of the World" are wonderful novels, so Eowyn Ivey's third book is highly anticipated. Again, she takes us to the Alaska wilderness where a young woman named Birdie works at a local bar. She has a young daughter named Emaleen who lives surrounded by "aunts" and "uncles" who give her a sense of safety even when her mother has a wild night. Of course, there is that one day when Emaleen wanders too far and is brought back to camp by a large stranger named Arthur. Arthur is not actually a stranger---he's the son of a local family who lives most of the year in a remote forest camp. He is treated with kid gloves in town, and there is a lot of concern when Birdie and Emaleen join him in the deep forest.

There are whispers of various fairy tales but no exact one you can pin the story on. The real star of "Black Woods, Blue Sky" is the Alaskan wilderness, its delicate and mighty beauties. The first half of the novel moves slowly but picks up when the locals are torn between what they know to be true even though such a thing could not be possible.

There is so much beautiful about this book. Eowyn Ivey is an artist. I look for ward to her next novel. Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the DRC in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Antidote 214537790 FromPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Candace 5
The novel opens on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, the day when a tsunami of dust rolled over the Great Plains, nearly smothering the town of Uz, Nebraska, suffocating people and adding to the crisis of dust pneumonia. Karen Russell looks at this phenomena using five set of eyes: a prairie witch known as the Antidote, whose body serves as a receptacle for the nightmares and dreams of the local populace; a Black New Deal photographer assigned to photograph the dust's devastation, but whose camera reveals the land in the past and the future; a farmer whose Polish family recreates the injustices done to them in Europe on the Nebraska prairie; his niece, daughter of a murdered mother; and a sentient scarecrow. Every one of these voices is so fully realized that they could spark their own book.

"The Antidote" constantly surprises and excites. Russell is wonderful to read and hard to leave behind once you've turned the last page. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a digital review copy. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.02 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Candace
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves:
review:
I am so excited to share how remarkable "The Antidote" is. Is it historical fiction? Yes. Is it horror? Absolutely. Is it impossible to put down? Just look at the bags under my eyes.

The novel opens on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, the day when a tsunami of dust rolled over the Great Plains, nearly smothering the town of Uz, Nebraska, suffocating people and adding to the crisis of dust pneumonia. Karen Russell looks at this phenomena using five set of eyes: a prairie witch known as the Antidote, whose body serves as a receptacle for the nightmares and dreams of the local populace; a Black New Deal photographer assigned to photograph the dust's devastation, but whose camera reveals the land in the past and the future; a farmer whose Polish family recreates the injustices done to them in Europe on the Nebraska prairie; his niece, daughter of a murdered mother; and a sentient scarecrow. Every one of these voices is so fully realized that they could spark their own book.

"The Antidote" constantly surprises and excites. Russell is wonderful to read and hard to leave behind once you've turned the last page. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a digital review copy. All opinions are my own.
]]> The Jackal's Mistress 214537772 In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy � but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?
A vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.]]> 336 Chris Bohjalian 0385547641 Candace 4 Chris Bohjalian is a master at research and connecting that research to believable characters in compelling situations. He found the germ of this story through a friend and created "The Jackal's Mistress" from that fragment of a story. The characters are believable and appealing. I especially liked young Jubilee who calls Weybridge jackal because this is what she thinks Yankees are. She's a full on confederate, but she matures realizing that the two people she most respects, Joseph and Sally, would be mere property if her uncle hadn't freed them. Her observations at the end of the story ask the toughest question of the struggle.

I found the relationship between Libby and Jonathan to be problematic--how much is it real attraction and how much just the pleasure of having someone new in a mix of people who has been worn by exhaustion and deprivation?

This is a well-crafted and skilled historical novel that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes thoughtful stories with complex characters. I learned a lot in "The Jackal's Mistress," which for me is one of the pleasures of quality historical fiction.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.


]]> 4.11 2025 The Jackal's Mistress
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Candace
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves:
review:

Chris Bohjalian is a master at research and connecting that research to believable characters in compelling situations. He found the germ of this story through a friend and created "The Jackal's Mistress" from that fragment of a story. The characters are believable and appealing. I especially liked young Jubilee who calls Weybridge jackal because this is what she thinks Yankees are. She's a full on confederate, but she matures realizing that the two people she most respects, Joseph and Sally, would be mere property if her uncle hadn't freed them. Her observations at the end of the story ask the toughest question of the struggle.

I found the relationship between Libby and Jonathan to be problematic--how much is it real attraction and how much just the pleasure of having someone new in a mix of people who has been worn by exhaustion and deprivation?

This is a well-crafted and skilled historical novel that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes thoughtful stories with complex characters. I learned a lot in "The Jackal's Mistress," which for me is one of the pleasures of quality historical fiction.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.



]]> Snakewoman of Little Egypt 9398962 350 Robert Hellenga 1608193233 Candace 4 3.72 2010 Snakewoman of Little Egypt
author: Robert Hellenga
name: Candace
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/01/04
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Romanovs: 1613-1918 26545860 The acclaimed author of Young Stalin now gives us an accessible, lively, wholly revelatory account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries.

In this fascinating chronicle, Simon Sebag Montefiore focuses his gifts as historian and storyteller on the greatest and most complex of the emperors and empresses of the Romanov dynasty (1613-1917), on how their courts worked, and on the meeting of personality and power in each reign. Scouring archives that opened up only after the fall of the USSR, the author reveals the real world of the most storied and myth-shrouded rulers--Catherine the Great, Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra--and introduces readers to the lesser-known but even more scandalous Elizaveta (daughter of Peter the Great) and Alexander II (whose wild sexual passions were bestowed upon a teenage mistress). The author illuminates the eighteenth-century Age of the Imperial Petticoat; makes clear the full extent of the remarkable political-amorous partnership between Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin; and uncovers a deep vein of decadence and stupidity underneath the accepted, romantic portrait usually presented of Nicholas II, the last of the Tsars. As with all of his previous and widely acclaimed works of history, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives an absolute scholarly and archival foundation to a book that is both exceptionally informative and dazzlingly entertaining from first to last.]]> 764 Simon Sebag Montefiore 1101946970 Candace 4
The Russian archives are freshly open, and Montefiore gets in and digs. The new information adds dept and humanizes the dynasty, which is one of the longest-ruling in history

It's a giant book, but what else would you expect for a history of a family that played large upon the world stage for so long? And if anyone is going to make it readable, it's probably this writer.

I recommend dipping in and .exploring one or two Romanovs at a time. You will come back, but this way you'll be able to absorb one piece at a time, giving this complete and remarkable history its due.

!!Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader]]> 4.04 2016 The Romanovs: 1613-1918
author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
name: Candace
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
SImon Sebag Montrfiore has written several unforgettable novels about early soviet Russia ("Sashenka" is unforgettable) and he now takes on the history of the Romanov dynasty, whose rule lead up to the Russian Revolution.

The Russian archives are freshly open, and Montefiore gets in and digs. The new information adds dept and humanizes the dynasty, which is one of the longest-ruling in history

It's a giant book, but what else would you expect for a history of a family that played large upon the world stage for so long? And if anyone is going to make it readable, it's probably this writer.

I recommend dipping in and .exploring one or two Romanovs at a time. You will come back, but this way you'll be able to absorb one piece at a time, giving this complete and remarkable history its due.

!!Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
]]> <![CDATA[American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts]]> 40396413
Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.

The starting point for McGreal's deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of "drug dealers in white coats."

A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry's coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers--resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.]]> 336 Chris McGreal 1541773772 Candace 5 4.15 2018 American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
author: Chris McGreal
name: Candace
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/14
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Playworld 211025439
“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.�

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.]]> 528 Adam Ross 0385351291 Candace 3
Adam Ross fleshes out his characters well, and "Playworld" reminds us not to idealize the past. It also reminds us how hard it is for young people to navigate the world with no empathetic role models, and the kind of adult that results.

This is the sort of book that waxes and wanes with me. I was engaged, on and off, but ultimately, "Playworld" was not for me. Do I think there is a readership for this novel? Absolutely.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a DRC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.79 2025 Playworld
author: Adam Ross
name: Candace
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
Set in the 1980s New York City, Griffin is a total theater kid who's discovering himself as an artist and a person. He is not top of mind for the adults who surrounded him--they're all too busy with their own stuff--and the one adult who seems interested in him will lead him to a place that readers forty years later will find really squirmy. In fact, a lot of this novel will make you uncomfortable.

Adam Ross fleshes out his characters well, and "Playworld" reminds us not to idealize the past. It also reminds us how hard it is for young people to navigate the world with no empathetic role models, and the kind of adult that results.

This is the sort of book that waxes and wanes with me. I was engaged, on and off, but ultimately, "Playworld" was not for me. Do I think there is a readership for this novel? Absolutely.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a DRC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Stargazer's Sister 26805588 The Last First Day, here is a beautiful new period a nineteenth-century story of female empowerment before its time, based on the life of Caroline Herschel, sister of the great composer and astronomer William Herschel and an astronomer in her own right.

This exquisitely imagined novel opens as William rescues Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music making and stargazing. Lina, as Caroline is known, serves as William’s assistant and the captain of his exhilaratingly busy household. William is generous, wise, and charismatic, an obsessive genius whom Lina adores and serves with the fervency of a beloved wife. When William suddenly announces that he will be married, Lina watches her world collapse. With her characteristically elegant prose, Carrie Brown creates from history a compelling story that interweaves familial collaboration and conflict with a haunting exploration of the sublime beauty of astronomy and our small but essential place within a vast and astonishing cosmos. Through Lina’s trials and successes we witness the dawning of an early feminist consciousness—a woman struggling to find her own place among the stars.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 352 Carrie Brown 0804197946 Candace 4
Lina was a drudge in her home in Germany, stunted by fever and pocked by smallpox, abused by her mother and one brother. But her father and brother William recognized her intelligence and after her father's death, William returns from England to take her back with him. There, grateful for rescue, she sees to his every need, which are many. He is by profession a musician, but his real passion is astronomy. With Lina as his amanuensis, he explores the sky with telescopes of his own making. It is exciting and exhausting, and Lina is another sort of drudge, although a more satisfied one.

Then William marries, and Lena's life is turned upside down. No longer at the center of her brother's universe, the question is whether she will be able to create a life outside of his orbit and perhaps find some happiness for herself.

Carrie Brown is a lovely writer, and this is a fine novel. The science is sophisticated but accessible, and she is not afraid to show Lena's life in an honest light. I only wish she had spent more time on showing why Caroline Herschel deserves a place at the table.]]> 4.01 2016 The Stargazer's Sister
author: Carrie Brown
name: Candace
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2015/09/19
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves:
review:
Caroline Herschel has a place at Judy Chicago's landmark feminist artwork the Dinner Party as a woman who made a valuable contribution to the world. When you read "The Stargazer's Sister" you might not be clear about what that contribution is, since the book focuses intensely on Lina's relationship with her brother, the early astronomer William Herschel. It slowly comes around to revealing that Lina did more than support her beloved brother's obsession with the night sky and his insane personal schedule. She was the first woman to be paid for scientific work, received the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and discovered a number of comets. So there!

Lina was a drudge in her home in Germany, stunted by fever and pocked by smallpox, abused by her mother and one brother. But her father and brother William recognized her intelligence and after her father's death, William returns from England to take her back with him. There, grateful for rescue, she sees to his every need, which are many. He is by profession a musician, but his real passion is astronomy. With Lina as his amanuensis, he explores the sky with telescopes of his own making. It is exciting and exhausting, and Lina is another sort of drudge, although a more satisfied one.

Then William marries, and Lena's life is turned upside down. No longer at the center of her brother's universe, the question is whether she will be able to create a life outside of his orbit and perhaps find some happiness for herself.

Carrie Brown is a lovely writer, and this is a fine novel. The science is sophisticated but accessible, and she is not afraid to show Lena's life in an honest light. I only wish she had spent more time on showing why Caroline Herschel deserves a place at the table.
]]> <![CDATA[Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century]]> 56899010 Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, and NPR

In this genre-defying work of cultural history, the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time.

Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman.

Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keaton’s life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Over the course of his action-packed seventy years on earth, his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini, the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams, the television legend Lucille Ball, and literary innovators like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett.

In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs. Far more than a biography or a work of film history, Camera Man is a wide-ranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist.]]> 447 Dana Stevens 1501134213 Candace 4 4.20 2022 Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century
author: Dana Stevens
name: Candace
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bright Years 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Candace 4
Damoff handles the damage from these hidden decisions with delicacy and strength. She has an assured hand for a first time novelist, and readers will respond to the emotional rawness of her story. What would have happened if Ryan and Lilian had been honest with each other? Would the outcome have been different? This is a writer to watch.

I received a digital review copy iof this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.]]> 4.47 2025 The Bright Years
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Candace
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:
Sarah Damoff's heart-first debut novel will strike a lot of chords for readers. It's primarily concerned with secrets held by parents Lilian and Ryan and how they impact their daughter Georgette.

Damoff handles the damage from these hidden decisions with delicacy and strength. She has an assured hand for a first time novelist, and readers will respond to the emotional rawness of her story. What would have happened if Ryan and Lilian had been honest with each other? Would the outcome have been different? This is a writer to watch.

I received a digital review copy iof this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.
]]> The Berlin Letters 180352054 368 Katherine Reay 1400243068 Candace 4
After binging four seasons of the brilliant German TV series "The Weissensee Saga" (on MHZ Choice) I was craving a thriller covering Berlin during that period between the building of the Wall and its collapse. "The Berlin Letters fits that bill perfectly.

Luisa Voelker grew up with her grandparents in the Washington DC area, believing that her parents were killed in an automobile accident. Her grandfather played elaborate cryptic puzzle games with her ,which come in handy in her job as a CIA cryptologist. Luisa finds some old letters from her grandfather to someone she is shocked to realize is her father. She recognizes the code the letters use and is able to confirm that her father was recently alive. Using her contacts and wits, she plans to break him out of prison.

The most interesting character in the book is not Luisa, but her father, a man who was dedicated to the East's new order to the point that he was the Party newspaper's top reporter. Because his in-laws defected, he is gradually demoted until he is left writing one-sentence filler news. Watching his political and social feeling evolve mirrors the feelings of so many East Germans at the time.

There's a little romance, a little family drama, and characters who appear briefly and then are never heard of again, but overall there is plenty in the Berlin Letters to keep readers glued to the page. Such a fascinating period of history, and Katherine Reay made the most of it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital review copy in exchange of an honest review.]]> 4.15 2024 The Berlin Letters
author: Katherine Reay
name: Candace
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:
3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

After binging four seasons of the brilliant German TV series "The Weissensee Saga" (on MHZ Choice) I was craving a thriller covering Berlin during that period between the building of the Wall and its collapse. "The Berlin Letters fits that bill perfectly.

Luisa Voelker grew up with her grandparents in the Washington DC area, believing that her parents were killed in an automobile accident. Her grandfather played elaborate cryptic puzzle games with her ,which come in handy in her job as a CIA cryptologist. Luisa finds some old letters from her grandfather to someone she is shocked to realize is her father. She recognizes the code the letters use and is able to confirm that her father was recently alive. Using her contacts and wits, she plans to break him out of prison.

The most interesting character in the book is not Luisa, but her father, a man who was dedicated to the East's new order to the point that he was the Party newspaper's top reporter. Because his in-laws defected, he is gradually demoted until he is left writing one-sentence filler news. Watching his political and social feeling evolve mirrors the feelings of so many East Germans at the time.

There's a little romance, a little family drama, and characters who appear briefly and then are never heard of again, but overall there is plenty in the Berlin Letters to keep readers glued to the page. Such a fascinating period of history, and Katherine Reay made the most of it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital review copy in exchange of an honest review.
]]> Rooms for Vanishing 214537705 A prismatic mind-bending epic about the splintering of a familyinto different worlds

Everyone had been survived into different futures and I would never see any of them again. I could sense this. I would hear them in their separate rooms, within their separate lives, but I would not be able to cross over to meet them.

In Rooms for Vanishing, the violence of war has fractured the universe for the Altermans, a Jewish family from Vienna. Moving across decades, and across the world, the novel finds the Altermans alone in their separate futures, haunted by the loss of their loved ones, each certain that they are the sole survivor of their family.

Sonja, the daughter, has gone in search of her husband, who has disappeared into London; Fania, the mother, is confronted with her doppelgänger in the basement of a Montreal hotel; Moses, the son, is followed by the ghost of his best friend; and, finally, Arnold, the father, dares to believe that his long-lost daughter might be alive after he receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be her.

Spellbinding and profound, Rooms for Vanishing is a singular work that explores how—amid profound loss and the madness of grief—ghosts are made momentarily real.]]> 460 Stuart Nadler 059347547X Candace 4
Sonja Alterman is sent to Britain on the Kindertransport with the belief that her family will follow. They do not. She marries a respected conductor and they have a daughter who dies at age nine. Her husband sees a photo of a woman he believes is their daughter, grown, and disappears.

There were four members of the family and we will meet all of them as if they lived, and perhaps they have. Mother Fania is in Montreal where she meets a woman who may be herself, or someone who moved into their Viennese apartment after her family was deported. Arnold is turning 99. a friend encourages him to take a DNA test, and he is contacted by a woman who says she is his daughter, Sonja. Moses was a baby when the family was taken, and now he is shadowed by a ghost who asks to be taken back to Prague where he can rest.

Are any of these people alive, or is this story about the madness of grief? What kept me turning the pages is the gorgeous writing and the hope that somehow, this family can connect, that someone will learn that they are not alone.

The story moves across time periods, generally following one societal upheaval or another. It is filled with aching hope and despair and some of it is hard to take. But Rooms for Vanishing is a remarkable achievement. Even writing this review gives me chills.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.00 2025 Rooms for Vanishing
author: Stuart Nadler
name: Candace
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:
I wrestled with myself for days about how to review this novel, rolling the stories around in my head. It's not like anything I've ever read before, like a puzzle that will break your heart. Let me try to explain how I think this book works and how it impacted this reader.

Sonja Alterman is sent to Britain on the Kindertransport with the belief that her family will follow. They do not. She marries a respected conductor and they have a daughter who dies at age nine. Her husband sees a photo of a woman he believes is their daughter, grown, and disappears.

There were four members of the family and we will meet all of them as if they lived, and perhaps they have. Mother Fania is in Montreal where she meets a woman who may be herself, or someone who moved into their Viennese apartment after her family was deported. Arnold is turning 99. a friend encourages him to take a DNA test, and he is contacted by a woman who says she is his daughter, Sonja. Moses was a baby when the family was taken, and now he is shadowed by a ghost who asks to be taken back to Prague where he can rest.

Are any of these people alive, or is this story about the madness of grief? What kept me turning the pages is the gorgeous writing and the hope that somehow, this family can connect, that someone will learn that they are not alone.

The story moves across time periods, generally following one societal upheaval or another. It is filled with aching hope and despair and some of it is hard to take. But Rooms for Vanishing is a remarkable achievement. Even writing this review gives me chills.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> House of Correction 50547854 In this heart-pounding standalone from the internationally bestselling author that People calls “razor sharp,� a woman accused of murder attempts to solve her own case from the confines of prison—but as she unravels the truth, everything is called into question, including her own certainty that she is innocent.


Tabitha is not a murderer.
She knows she’s not.

She thinks she’s not.

She hopes...

Tabitha moved back to her childhood hometown in Okeham, England, a few weeks ago, quietly taking up residence in a fixer-upper house. Reclusive and absorbed with home improvement, she hardly had a chance to reacquaint herself with familiar faces around the village. Then her handyman discovers a dead body in her shed. The police arrive to investigate—and shockingly, Tabitha finds herself being placed in handcuffs and taken into custody. It is a mistake. The police and her lawyer will sort it out and let her go. But as Tabitha is shepherded through the system, she becomes less confident of her imminent release. Everything about her past is called into question—her history of depression and medications, her decision to move back to a town she supposedly hated, and of course, her relationship to the victim, Tabitha’s former teacher. And most unsettling, Tabitha’s own memories of that day are a blur.

Waiting passively for justice to run its course is no longer an option, so Tabitha takes matters into her own hands. From the isolation of the correctional facility, she dissects every piece of evidence, every testimony she can get her hands on, matching them against her own recollections and memories from her childhood. The deeper she digs, the more peculiar the case becomes. Her guilt seems undeniable—so much so, that Tabitha begins to question whether she might have committed this horrible act after all. But if she did not, someone has gone to great lengths to make it seem that way.

Crackling with suspense and packed with emotion, House of Correction is a subversive twist on a locked-room mystery, perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Paula Hawkins.]]> 528 Nicci French 0063021366 Candace 4
At first Tabitha seems like a bewildered victim, but as the real Tabitha is slowly reeled out before us, we see someone who is deeply depressed, prickly, difficult, reactive, strange. She bought a house in the village she grew up in and has returned to remodel it and live there. It's a funny choice because Tabitha was never happy in Oakham and she left behind some difficult relationships including one with the dead teacher who abused her in high school. Things are pretty stacked against her, and then she decides to defend herself. Foul-mouthed and screechy, she refuses any help.

"House of Correction" scoops you right in and keeps you there until the end. The novel is full of unpleasant people, and even though Tabitha seems to be at the top of that list you will wonder where this is going. All the evidence is stacked against her, and the entire village turns out to blast her, even though the dead man was not liked either. Tabitha seems bright, but can't get out of her own way.

This is my first Nicci French and I'll be back for more. The writing is smooth, the characters surprising, and the plot plenty quirky. A delicious escape when we need it!

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader]]> 4.03 2020 House of Correction
author: Nicci French
name: Candace
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/21
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:
Tabitha Hardy is in prison, charged with murder. She's in shock. She can't believe this has happened to her, and she can't really remember how she got here. There was a dead man in her shed, her former teacher. What could she have to do with this?

At first Tabitha seems like a bewildered victim, but as the real Tabitha is slowly reeled out before us, we see someone who is deeply depressed, prickly, difficult, reactive, strange. She bought a house in the village she grew up in and has returned to remodel it and live there. It's a funny choice because Tabitha was never happy in Oakham and she left behind some difficult relationships including one with the dead teacher who abused her in high school. Things are pretty stacked against her, and then she decides to defend herself. Foul-mouthed and screechy, she refuses any help.

"House of Correction" scoops you right in and keeps you there until the end. The novel is full of unpleasant people, and even though Tabitha seems to be at the top of that list you will wonder where this is going. All the evidence is stacked against her, and the entire village turns out to blast her, even though the dead man was not liked either. Tabitha seems bright, but can't get out of her own way.

This is my first Nicci French and I'll be back for more. The writing is smooth, the characters surprising, and the plot plenty quirky. A delicious escape when we need it!

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
]]> Gabriel's Moon 215198466 In his most exhilarating novel yet, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy�, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.]]> 272 William Boyd 0802164870 Candace 4
Gabriel Dax is trying to untangle a couple of mysteries in his life. The first is how he survived the tragic house fire that killed his mother, a fire officials say was started by his lunar nightlight, known in the family as "Gabriel's Moon." Orphaned at the age of six, he was raised by an uncle who owns a fine art business. Now a travel writer, living in London, he wonders why he was chosen to interview Patrice Lumumba, the elected leader of the freshly independent nation of Congo. He and Lumumba barely have a language in common, so he records the interview so he can check it as he writes his article. The article never sees the light of day because Lumumba is assassinated in January 1961, just a few months later. Why does a woman he sees reading one of his travel books on the flight from Brazzaville approach him asking a "favor" that includes a visit to a Spanish artist?
Why has an arcane magazine offered him a large commission to write a travel article? What are all these questions about the tapes from Brazzaville?

William Boyd has a way of peeling layers away from a character that reveals even more about them, but leaves readers with more questions. "Gabriel's Moon" is complex and complicated with plenty of twists and trips to Iron Curtain countries and Fascist Spain. Boyd keeps the action and moving as questions deepen. Set in the early 1960s, you'll see the seeds of many conflicts in the modern world.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this intriguing and exciting thriller. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.88 2024 Gabriel's Moon
author: William Boyd
name: Candace
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:
This latest thriller from contains many of William Boyd's favorite themes--Africa, psychology, spycraft, unlikely loves, and a complicated protagonist. It's a fine spy novel as well as an adept examination of memory and loss.

Gabriel Dax is trying to untangle a couple of mysteries in his life. The first is how he survived the tragic house fire that killed his mother, a fire officials say was started by his lunar nightlight, known in the family as "Gabriel's Moon." Orphaned at the age of six, he was raised by an uncle who owns a fine art business. Now a travel writer, living in London, he wonders why he was chosen to interview Patrice Lumumba, the elected leader of the freshly independent nation of Congo. He and Lumumba barely have a language in common, so he records the interview so he can check it as he writes his article. The article never sees the light of day because Lumumba is assassinated in January 1961, just a few months later. Why does a woman he sees reading one of his travel books on the flight from Brazzaville approach him asking a "favor" that includes a visit to a Spanish artist?
Why has an arcane magazine offered him a large commission to write a travel article? What are all these questions about the tapes from Brazzaville?

William Boyd has a way of peeling layers away from a character that reveals even more about them, but leaves readers with more questions. "Gabriel's Moon" is complex and complicated with plenty of twists and trips to Iron Curtain countries and Fascist Spain. Boyd keeps the action and moving as questions deepen. Set in the early 1960s, you'll see the seeds of many conflicts in the modern world.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this intriguing and exciting thriller. All opinions are my own.
]]> Briefly, A Delicious Life 60749648
In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants.

Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).

Charming, original, and emotionally moving -- gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.]]> 304 Nell Stevens 1982190965 Candace 5
The family is not really a family, just the cross-dressing writer George Sand, her lover, Chopin, and her two kids. It's unfortunate that George couldn't Google "winter in Mallorca" before they left Paris, because she would have learned that winter on the Spanish island is freezing and wet, not at all the right place for tubercular Chopin to shore up his health.

Blanca was only fourteen when she died and had not understood her attraction to women, but when she sees George she is definitely in love. In the story she will fully explore the possibilities of being a ghost, entering the heads and bodies of George, her lover, and children, experiencing their emotions from inside. She cannnot change anything, but she has the opportunity to experience something of the life she was denied.

"Briefly, a Delicious Life" is a delightful novel.

]]> 3.84 2022 Briefly, A Delicious Life
author: Nell Stevens
name: Candace
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/08
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
When Blanca died in 1473, she thought she'd just be dead, but somehow, she is not. She haunts the monastery where she breathed her last, making modest mischief, keeping tabs on her increasingly distant relatives. But then, four hundred years later, a family comes to stay. It's a strange group, but after centuries in a nearly empty building, they're a welcome diversion.

The family is not really a family, just the cross-dressing writer George Sand, her lover, Chopin, and her two kids. It's unfortunate that George couldn't Google "winter in Mallorca" before they left Paris, because she would have learned that winter on the Spanish island is freezing and wet, not at all the right place for tubercular Chopin to shore up his health.

Blanca was only fourteen when she died and had not understood her attraction to women, but when she sees George she is definitely in love. In the story she will fully explore the possibilities of being a ghost, entering the heads and bodies of George, her lover, and children, experiencing their emotions from inside. She cannnot change anything, but she has the opportunity to experience something of the life she was denied.

"Briefly, a Delicious Life" is a delightful novel.


]]> The Invisible Bridge 7274337
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter’s recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena, their younger brother leaves school for the stage—and Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty.

From the Hungarian village of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s garret to the enduring passion he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of a Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the unforgettable story of brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family’s struggle against annihilation, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war.

Length: 27 hrs and 51 mins]]> 28 Julie Orringer 0307713547 Candace 4
It's a Holocaust story, but different because it is based in Eastern Europe with the brothers traveling to Paris and Turin to escape Hungarian restrictions on Jews. Lots of great train station scenes, exploration of education and the arts. So why am I not giving this novel 5 stars?

Remember, I'm a moody reader. I've got to be right in the mood for a book. I want to be in the place where I will do ANYTHING to continue reading. "The Invisible Bridge" did not do this for me. I recommend it highly as a quality work and hope that you will be swept away by its story.

]]> 4.17 2010 The Invisible Bridge
author: Julie Orringer
name: Candace
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/01
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
"Old fashioned" is a phrase I'm seeing applied to "The Invisible Bridge" and it is completely appropriate. Julie Orringer does not fear taking her time to develop characters and situations and setting her scenes. Why has this become "Old fashioned"? That's a question to ask. As someone who loves a long book, this kind of breadth is a pleasure to experience.

It's a Holocaust story, but different because it is based in Eastern Europe with the brothers traveling to Paris and Turin to escape Hungarian restrictions on Jews. Lots of great train station scenes, exploration of education and the arts. So why am I not giving this novel 5 stars?

Remember, I'm a moody reader. I've got to be right in the mood for a book. I want to be in the place where I will do ANYTHING to continue reading. "The Invisible Bridge" did not do this for me. I recommend it highly as a quality work and hope that you will be swept away by its story.


]]> The Invisible Bridge 8200557 The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.]]> 786 Julie Orringer 0307593711 Candace 4
It's a Holocaust story, but different because it is based in Eastern Europe with the brothers traveling to Paris and Turin to escape Hungarian restrictions on Jews. Lots of great train station scenes, exploration of education and the arts. So why am I not giving this novel 5 stars?

Remember, I'm a moody reader. I've got to be right in the mood for a book. I want to be in the place where I will do ANYTHING to continue reading. "The Invisible Bridge" did not do this for me. I recommend it highly as a quality work and hope that you will be swept away by its story.

]]> 4.21 2010 The Invisible Bridge
author: Julie Orringer
name: Candace
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
"Old fashioned" is a phrase I'm seeing applied to "The Invisible Bridge" and it is completely appropriate. Julie Orringer does not fear taking her time to develop characters and situations and setting her scenes. Why has this become "Old fashioned"? That's a question to ask. As someone who loves a long book, this kind of breadth is a pleasure to experience.

It's a Holocaust story, but different because it is based in Eastern Europe with the brothers traveling to Paris and Turin to escape Hungarian restrictions on Jews. Lots of great train station scenes, exploration of education and the arts. So why am I not giving this novel 5 stars?

Remember, I'm a moody reader. I've got to be right in the mood for a book. I want to be in the place where I will do ANYTHING to continue reading. "The Invisible Bridge" did not do this for me. I recommend it highly as a quality work and hope that you will be swept away by its story.


]]> The English Problem 212806722 A young Indian man is tapped to help his country’s fight for freedom—but his heart engages him in a different war.

Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their laws, and then return home and help drive the British out of India. Before he leaves, his family insists he fulfill his arranged marriage, and he is hastily betrothed to a young woman he hardly knows.

He arrives in London and soon discovers a world he is both repelled by and drawn to. Shiv knows his duty: get in, learn the letter of the law, get out. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell you, “the English Problem� is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of “the empire on which the sun never sets� seeps into everything—not just landed territories, but territories of the mind: literature, language, religion, sexuality, self-identity. Soon the people Shiv sought to be liberated from will be the people he desperately wants to be a part of. In the end, Shiv must fight not only for his country’s liberation but also his own.

Set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement, with appearances by historical figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Mahatma Gandhi, The English Problem is so self-assured and ambitious, it is hard to believe it is a debut.]]> 480 Beena Kamlani 0593798465 Candace 5
So it is with Beena Kamlani and The English Problem. It's a first novel but Kamlani has been active in other genres and as an editor for a while. All of that plays into the assurance of the novel, and how expertly the story plays out.

Shiv Advani comes to England in 1931 to study law at the Inns of Court. He has been personally chosen by Gandhi to become a Barrister and use English law in the cause of independence. Shiv will stay with the Polaks, a couple who have been involved in the struggle with Gandhi since his days in South Africa. As a Barrister, Henry Polak will guide Shiv through the arcane traditions and pathways of the British court so that he truly knows how to use the system to support the cause. He's only eighteen, and his family quickly arranges a marriage to a 16-year-old who gets pregnant before he leaves.

The English Problem approaches Shiv's story from two directions--part of the narration begins at his arrival and the other starts in 1941, when Shiv is on a ship returning to India after being shot while giving a speech. How those timelines come together is a real pleasure to discover. The story has an open ending, and I would LOVE a second book tracing the characters through Indian Independence.

Many, many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review. I highly recommend this exceptional historical novel.]]> 3.59 2025 The English Problem
author: Beena Kamlani
name: Candace
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
There is something marvelous about a writer who can bring you into the story, the characters, the setting from the first line of a novel. As a reader, you know you're in good hands and that this reading experience will be involving and memorable.

So it is with Beena Kamlani and The English Problem. It's a first novel but Kamlani has been active in other genres and as an editor for a while. All of that plays into the assurance of the novel, and how expertly the story plays out.

Shiv Advani comes to England in 1931 to study law at the Inns of Court. He has been personally chosen by Gandhi to become a Barrister and use English law in the cause of independence. Shiv will stay with the Polaks, a couple who have been involved in the struggle with Gandhi since his days in South Africa. As a Barrister, Henry Polak will guide Shiv through the arcane traditions and pathways of the British court so that he truly knows how to use the system to support the cause. He's only eighteen, and his family quickly arranges a marriage to a 16-year-old who gets pregnant before he leaves.

The English Problem approaches Shiv's story from two directions--part of the narration begins at his arrival and the other starts in 1941, when Shiv is on a ship returning to India after being shot while giving a speech. How those timelines come together is a real pleasure to discover. The story has an open ending, and I would LOVE a second book tracing the characters through Indian Independence.

Many, many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review. I highly recommend this exceptional historical novel.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ghosts of Rome (Rome Escape Line, #2)]]> 208431230 In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Rome Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls from the sky, The Choir is plunged into lethal danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

The Choir is riven with internal tensions and infighting. The organization is in danger of falling apart, which would leave thousands of escaped allied soldiers, POWs, Jews, and objectors stranded in a Rome that is ruled with vicious efficiency by the Nazis. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the architect of the Escape Line and acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, seemingly paralyzed by what he sees as the intolerable risks of keeping the Escape Line in operation.

One man has been given the task of definitively destroying the entire operation and the price of his failure is high—SS Commander Paul Hauptmann’s wife and children are under Gestapo supervision in Berlin. Hauptmann is ordered to stay on in the city he both loathes and loves and to dismantle the Escape Line, or watch his family perish. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps the Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann’s authority.

A beautifully written and expertly crafted historical suspense novel that is bursting with action, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters, The Ghosts of Rome is the thrilling follow-up to Joseph O’Connor’s best-selling My Father’s House.]]> 362 Joseph O'Connor 1529933765 Candace 5
The Choir, as the people who run the escape line for allied soldiers, Jews, and anyone on the wrong side of the Nazis in occupied Rome are known, are hunkered down in Vatican City. Father Hugh O'Flaherty has managed to keep them safe from Germans and Vatican officials as they do their work of saving lives. The focus of the story has moved from Father Hugh to Countess Jo Landini, who has attracted the attention of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptman. It's now 1944 and the situation is growing even more dangerous as Hauptman is pressured by Hitler to get a grip on Rome and flush out the Choir.

Eternal Rome is always in the background as bombings scatter ancient artifacts and the city's great age brings old shadows to the streets.

"The Ghosts of Rome" works as a stand-alone novel but you will definitely want to have "My Father's House" ready to go when you turn the last page. Superb storytelling.

Thanks to Europa Editions and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.06 2025 The Ghosts of Rome (Rome Escape Line, #2)
author: Joseph O'Connor
name: Candace
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:
"The Ghosts of Rome" is the second in Joseph O'Connor's Escape Line Trilogy, and thank goodness there's another book in this story to come. O'Connor builds on the complexity of each character and the danger of their situation in a novel that is simply impossible to put down.

The Choir, as the people who run the escape line for allied soldiers, Jews, and anyone on the wrong side of the Nazis in occupied Rome are known, are hunkered down in Vatican City. Father Hugh O'Flaherty has managed to keep them safe from Germans and Vatican officials as they do their work of saving lives. The focus of the story has moved from Father Hugh to Countess Jo Landini, who has attracted the attention of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptman. It's now 1944 and the situation is growing even more dangerous as Hauptman is pressured by Hitler to get a grip on Rome and flush out the Choir.

Eternal Rome is always in the background as bombings scatter ancient artifacts and the city's great age brings old shadows to the streets.

"The Ghosts of Rome" works as a stand-alone novel but you will definitely want to have "My Father's House" ready to go when you turn the last page. Superb storytelling.

Thanks to Europa Editions and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Empty (Elvis Cole and Joe Pike #20)]]> 201750163 Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, face a cryptic case and a terrifying, unpredictable killer in this twisty, satisfying thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.

Traci Beller was thirteen when her father disappeared in the sleepy town of Rancha, not far from Los Angeles. The evidence says Tommy Beller abandoned his family, but Traci never believed it. The police couldn't find her dad and neither could the detectives her mother hired, but now, ten years later, Traci is a super-popular influencer with millions of followers and the money to hire a new detective: Elvis Cole.

Taking on a ten-years-cold missing person case is almost always a loser, but Elvis heads to Rancha where he learns an ex-con named Sadie Givens and her daughter, Anya, might have a line on the missing man. But when Elvis finds himself shadowed by a deadly gang of vicious criminals, the simple missing persons case becomes far more sinister and dangerous. Elvis calls in his ex-Marine friend, Joe Pike, to help, but even Pike might not be able to help.

As Elvis Cole and Joe Pike follow Tommy Beller's trail into the twisted, nightmare depths of a monstrous evil, the case flips on its head. Victims become predators, predators become prey, and when everyone is a victim, can Elvis Cole save them all?

In a case that tests Elvis Cole's loyalty to his clients and himself, the truth must come out no matter the cost. Elvis must face The Big Empty and see justice done.]]> 373 Robert Crais 0525535799 Candace 5
"The Big Empty" features both his private eyes--I think Pike is a PI, but maybe not. Just inscrutable. A young woman known on social media as "the baker next door" hires Cole to find out what happened to the father who vanished without a trace ten years ago. Traci Beller is juggling a lot as she has people around her demanding that she do more and more, more baking, more appearances, open stores, write books. But finding an answer to something that has haunted her since childhood. Cole asks her if she wants to know no matter what the answer is. She says yes.

This launches him on journey into brutality, violence, cruelty, surprising villains and even more surprising heroes. The action is non-stop, and your apprehension for the characters will grow with every chapter. I love the relationship between Cole and Pike, Pike who rarely speaks and Cole who can't shut up. They have each other's backs and fill in the attributes the other lacks.

Nothing in this thriller is what you expect, which is what makes it such a satisfying wild ride. What a treat. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.56 2025 The Big Empty (Elvis Cole and Joe Pike #20)
author: Robert Crais
name: Candace
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves:
review:
By my count, Robert Crais has written twenty-four novels including "The Big Empty"; twenty of them featuring Elvis Cole and/or Joe Pike. I think I've read every one and one thing I can say about Crais is that he never disappoints.

"The Big Empty" features both his private eyes--I think Pike is a PI, but maybe not. Just inscrutable. A young woman known on social media as "the baker next door" hires Cole to find out what happened to the father who vanished without a trace ten years ago. Traci Beller is juggling a lot as she has people around her demanding that she do more and more, more baking, more appearances, open stores, write books. But finding an answer to something that has haunted her since childhood. Cole asks her if she wants to know no matter what the answer is. She says yes.

This launches him on journey into brutality, violence, cruelty, surprising villains and even more surprising heroes. The action is non-stop, and your apprehension for the characters will grow with every chapter. I love the relationship between Cole and Pike, Pike who rarely speaks and Cole who can't shut up. They have each other's backs and fill in the attributes the other lacks.

Nothing in this thriller is what you expect, which is what makes it such a satisfying wild ride. What a treat. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Songs for the Brokenhearted 203956664
1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing that her skin was lighter, that her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music was quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.

Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.

The debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.]]> 352 Ayelet Tsabari 0812989007 Candace 5
It's 1950. Yemenite Jews have joyfully accepted the opportunity to come to Israel. A highly traditional people with clothing and practices that would seem at home in the 15th century, they are shocked to be dumped in a refugee camp with shoddy tents, meager food and skimpy (to them) donated clothes. Their children spend most of their time in communal childcare. The Israelis seem too secular, too western. It is a bitter disappointment.

Yacub hears something beautiful for the first time since leaving Yemen--a young woman singing a Yemeni song. He wants to respect her modesty, but he cannot resist returning to hear this beautiful song.

In 1995, Zohara returns to Tel Aviv following the death of her mother Saida. Zohara is at a rough spot in her life and has a grating personality that, well, grates on her Israeli family. She takes on clearing her grandmother's house and finds a box of cassette recordings of a woman singing Yemeni songs., some traditional, some she has never heard. She doesn't remember ever hearing her mother singing, so who could this be?

Put some of the great Yemeni singers on your Spotify and prepare to be astonished. This full-throated singing has been women's art for centuries, with songs passed down orally since most Yemeni women were illiterate. Women created their own songs to express the things they could never have in a rigid society where girls were often married as children.

Life in Zohara's Israel is as fraught as life in Saida's. Many Israelis are outraged at Yitzhak Rabin for signing the Oslo accords while others see it as a chance for peace. Where will the Yemenis fall, with their sense of otherness?

"Songs for the Brokenhearted" is a glorious reading experience. Don't miss it. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.27 2024 Songs for the Brokenhearted
author: Ayelet Tsabari
name: Candace
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:
This is a marvelous novel, filled with music, stories, and a deep-dive into several little-known aspects of if Israeli history.

It's 1950. Yemenite Jews have joyfully accepted the opportunity to come to Israel. A highly traditional people with clothing and practices that would seem at home in the 15th century, they are shocked to be dumped in a refugee camp with shoddy tents, meager food and skimpy (to them) donated clothes. Their children spend most of their time in communal childcare. The Israelis seem too secular, too western. It is a bitter disappointment.

Yacub hears something beautiful for the first time since leaving Yemen--a young woman singing a Yemeni song. He wants to respect her modesty, but he cannot resist returning to hear this beautiful song.

In 1995, Zohara returns to Tel Aviv following the death of her mother Saida. Zohara is at a rough spot in her life and has a grating personality that, well, grates on her Israeli family. She takes on clearing her grandmother's house and finds a box of cassette recordings of a woman singing Yemeni songs., some traditional, some she has never heard. She doesn't remember ever hearing her mother singing, so who could this be?

Put some of the great Yemeni singers on your Spotify and prepare to be astonished. This full-throated singing has been women's art for centuries, with songs passed down orally since most Yemeni women were illiterate. Women created their own songs to express the things they could never have in a rigid society where girls were often married as children.

Life in Zohara's Israel is as fraught as life in Saida's. Many Israelis are outraged at Yitzhak Rabin for signing the Oslo accords while others see it as a chance for peace. Where will the Yemenis fall, with their sense of otherness?

"Songs for the Brokenhearted" is a glorious reading experience. Don't miss it. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> A Thousand Times Before 199373441 A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.

Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.

Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold. As Ayukta unspools these generations of women—whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival—she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.

What would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?

Sweeping, deeply felt and intergenerational, A Thousand Times Before is a debut as poetic as it is propulsive, as healing as it is heartbreaking, as it examines what it means to carry our past with us and to pass it on. Rooted in a tender love story, and spun with a tremendous amount of care, this book is a rare, remarkable feat from an incredible new literary talent.]]> 368 Asha Thanki 0593654641 Candace 5
For Nadya, Aykuta relives the life of her grandmother Amla, The family has lived in Karachi for centuries, but following Indian Independence Karachi will be part of the Muslim nation of Pakistan and her family must flee to her mother's Indian state of Gujarat. Giving up her home is crushing to young Amla, but even more devastating is the loss of her dearest friend, a Muslim girl. Her mother had begun to explain the responsibilities of the tapestry and now Amla must maneuver the meaning of her inheritance alone. Does this impact the way she passes it to her daughter Arni, who should never have received it at all? Maybe.

"A Thousand Times Before" I richly written with each character vividly, with flaws and heart. The story encompasses two important historical periods in Indian history--the 1947 Partition and the student actions of the mid-1970s--and Asha Thanki's writing brings them blazing to life.

The Ayukta and Nadja section of the novel are the weakest part, but the stories of her mother and grandmother more than make this book a must read. It's hard to put down as it weaves tales of women's friendships and love.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.63 2024 A Thousand Times Before
author: Asha Thanki
name: Candace
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
review:
For some time, Ayukta has been dancing around her wife's question of whether she wants children. To answer Nadya's question, Ayukta must open up to someone outside her bloodline about a generations-old tapestry allows her to access the memories of her mother and generations of women before her.

For Nadya, Aykuta relives the life of her grandmother Amla, The family has lived in Karachi for centuries, but following Indian Independence Karachi will be part of the Muslim nation of Pakistan and her family must flee to her mother's Indian state of Gujarat. Giving up her home is crushing to young Amla, but even more devastating is the loss of her dearest friend, a Muslim girl. Her mother had begun to explain the responsibilities of the tapestry and now Amla must maneuver the meaning of her inheritance alone. Does this impact the way she passes it to her daughter Arni, who should never have received it at all? Maybe.

"A Thousand Times Before" I richly written with each character vividly, with flaws and heart. The story encompasses two important historical periods in Indian history--the 1947 Partition and the student actions of the mid-1970s--and Asha Thanki's writing brings them blazing to life.

The Ayukta and Nadja section of the novel are the weakest part, but the stories of her mother and grandmother more than make this book a must read. It's hard to put down as it weaves tales of women's friendships and love.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[Fatal Gambit: A Novel (Rekke Series)]]> 202468411 When a dead woman appears—very much alive—in a recent photograph, mismatched crime-solving duo Rekke and Vargas are drawn into a dangerous mystery, from the bestselling author of The Girl in the Spider's Web.When Samuel Lidman spots his wife—who was confirmed dead fourteen years ago—in the background of a friend's holiday photo, he brings it to disgraced former professor and government consultant Hans Rekke and his unofficial partner—and temporary roommate—Detective Micaela Vargas. Their initial skepticism gives way to cautious belief—but where will this case lead them?Meanwhile, Rekke's daughter, Julia, has a new boyfriend she's determined to keep secret. When word gets out, Micaela's world collapses around her, and Rekke is forced to confront a powerful nemesis from his youth.Plunging us back into the political upheaval and financial crisis of the 1990s, as the iron curtain is finally lifted, the second Rekke and Vargas Investigation sees our heroes grapple with a fiendish case that affects them both in profoundly personal ways.]]> 352 David Lagercrantz 0593319230 Candace 4
This novel does stand alone, but will be better appreciated if you read "Dark Music," the first book in the series, "Fatal Gambit" is a nail biter but will be much more terrifying/exciting/thrilling with the solid stage setting of the first novel. David Lagerkrantz proved himself a worthy successor to Stig Larsson as he continued the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series, and how he proves himself with a series of his own. Read "Dark Music" before "Fatal Gambit" and put yourself in a good place to indulge in what promises to be a strong, chilling series.

Thanks to The publisher and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 stars rounded up.
]]> 3.48 Fatal Gambit: A Novel (Rekke Series)
author: David Lagercrantz
name: Candace
average rating: 3.48
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves:
review:
"Fatal Gambit" drops readers in the center of already pulsating relationships in a noirish world. A man spots what looks like his dead wife in one of a friend's holiday pictures. The man is dumbfounded, and hires Hans Rekke, a disgraced professor and his unofficial partner Detective Michaela Vargas to find out whether his wife might still be alive. Rekke is a mess of drink and drugs and Vargas is wrangling possibly criminal family issues, so poor Sam Lidman has certainly picked himself a team. The story weaves through iconic events of the past--the 1990s financial crisis and the fall of the Berlin wall--on top of the return of old friends and enemies. It's a rich, sticky brew.

This novel does stand alone, but will be better appreciated if you read "Dark Music," the first book in the series, "Fatal Gambit" is a nail biter but will be much more terrifying/exciting/thrilling with the solid stage setting of the first novel. David Lagerkrantz proved himself a worthy successor to Stig Larsson as he continued the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series, and how he proves himself with a series of his own. Read "Dark Music" before "Fatal Gambit" and put yourself in a good place to indulge in what promises to be a strong, chilling series.

Thanks to The publisher and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 stars rounded up.

]]> Homeseeking 211025407 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593712993.

An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen Candace 5
This structure is only one of the unusual elements that Chen tosses into the story; Their names change from Shanghainese to Mandarin, to Cantonese, to Taiwanese to English as teach moves across the Chinese world, each new language making it harder to for families to find them and for them to return to the family and city they long for.

"Homeseeking" is completely engrossing, exciting and heart-tearing at the same time. The story is rich in exploring the impact of history on the lives of regular people and the struggle to emerge from trauma. You may want to shake Suchi and Haiwen for the way they handle some of their challenges, they, like all of us, are all too human. An immersive and unforgettable.

Thanks to NetGalley, Edelweiss, and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.24 2025 Homeseeking
author: Karissa Chen
name: Candace
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:
"Homeseeking" is a novel that you will want to savor, rationing each chapter so that it lasts longer. For all intents and purposes it's a love story about the impact of the Chinese Civil War on the two families of Suchi and Haiwen, who have loved each other since childhood. Karissa Chen follows each of them in different directions--Suchi's life is followed from childhood to adulthood and Haiwen's story begins as a senior and travels backwards t childhood.

This structure is only one of the unusual elements that Chen tosses into the story; Their names change from Shanghainese to Mandarin, to Cantonese, to Taiwanese to English as teach moves across the Chinese world, each new language making it harder to for families to find them and for them to return to the family and city they long for.

"Homeseeking" is completely engrossing, exciting and heart-tearing at the same time. The story is rich in exploring the impact of history on the lives of regular people and the struggle to emerge from trauma. You may want to shake Suchi and Haiwen for the way they handle some of their challenges, they, like all of us, are all too human. An immersive and unforgettable.

Thanks to NetGalley, Edelweiss, and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Dressmakers of London 214151644 The author of The Lost English Girl returns with a heartfelt new novel about estranged sisters who inherit their late mother’s dress shop in World War II London.

Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open. Realizing this could be her one chance at reconciliation with her sister, Sylvia is determined to save Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions from closure—and financial ruin.

Through letters, the sisters begin to confront old wounds, new loves, and the weight of family legacy in order to forge new beginnings in this lyrically moving novel.]]> 432 Julia Kelly 1668032724 Candace 4
There's a lot of rancor between the sisters, especially from Izzy's side. Why, when Sylvia is making the changes Izzy always dreamed of making? The story carefully unwraps their pasts and events that created this situation. "The London Dressmakers" is a very readable story of resilience and growth set in a time period that seems fresh in Julia Kelly's hand. The exploration of how women got creative
under clothing rationing adds depth and historical interest to the novel.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.29 2025 The Dressmakers of London
author: Julia Kelly
name: Candace
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves:
review:
Sisters Isabelle and Sylvia have been estranged since 18-year-old Sylvia left Izzy and her mother to marry a wealthy doctor. Years have passed and while Izzy has stayed by her mother's side running their dressmaking shop, their mother leaves the shop to both sisters upon her sudden death. Isabelle is shocked that her mother would add her sister as co-owner after all her hard work, and the sisters agree that Izzy should buy Sylvia out and run the business. But it's World War II and Izzy is conscripted. Sylvia agrees to handle the store until Izzy gets back.

There's a lot of rancor between the sisters, especially from Izzy's side. Why, when Sylvia is making the changes Izzy always dreamed of making? The story carefully unwraps their pasts and events that created this situation. "The London Dressmakers" is a very readable story of resilience and growth set in a time period that seems fresh in Julia Kelly's hand. The exploration of how women got creative
under clothing rationing adds depth and historical interest to the novel.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> They Dream in Gold 196841871 A “luminous� (Tara Conklin) literary debut following two dreamers, one intercultural family, and the diasporic pursuit of home.

When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968―his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away―their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour’s soaring Senegalese melodies continue to break new ground, keeping time with the sound of revolution and taking him and Bonnie from Paris to Rio and Switzerland, it seems as though happiness might finally be around the corner for them both.

Then Mansour goes missing. His Spanish tour was only meant to last three weeks, but three months later, he and his band have not returned. In his absence, Bonnie reckons with her memories of him, and comes to understand that the hopes of so many women―her mother and grandmother; his mother, aunt, childhood friend―rest on her perseverance. Stirred by the life growing inside her, Bonnie puts a plan in action to find him.

Spanning two decades and moving through the hotbeds of the African diaspora, They Dream in Gold is an epic yet intimate exploration of the migrant hunger for belonging and a powerful, intergenerational testament to our shared humanity, for lovers of Tara Stringfellow’s Memphis and Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice.]]> 432 Mai Sennaar 1638931100 Candace 4
The story covers two generations of their families and revolves through Senegal to Paris to New York to Switzerland. There are lots of arresting characters in interesting places, which is both great and confusing. It could be the formatting of the digital review copy, but It was initially hard to follow whose story was being told and where they were. Mai Sennaar's writing is warm and rich, and once I caught on to the rhythm each story was rewarding. The story matter is a fresh and engrossing look at the African diaspora and Black experiences around the world in the 1960s and 70s.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for access to this novel in exchange for an honest review. Since this is a first novel, I look forward to following Sennaar's career.]]> 3.67 They Dream in Gold
author: Mai Sennaar
name: Candace
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
review:
This is a rich, complicated story about Bonnie and Mansour who meet in 1968 New York, bound by their love of music. Monsour is a Senegalese musician who is exploring music that weaves jazz with traditional African beats. He's lived in both Africa and Europe, set adrift by his family. Bonnie is similarly unmoored with a neglectful mother who "raised" her in Paris. Bonnie becomes pregnant and stays with his family in Switzerland while Monsour goes on tour of Spain. All's good until he goes silent, not calling and, most concerning of all, missing gigs.

The story covers two generations of their families and revolves through Senegal to Paris to New York to Switzerland. There are lots of arresting characters in interesting places, which is both great and confusing. It could be the formatting of the digital review copy, but It was initially hard to follow whose story was being told and where they were. Mai Sennaar's writing is warm and rich, and once I caught on to the rhythm each story was rewarding. The story matter is a fresh and engrossing look at the African diaspora and Black experiences around the world in the 1960s and 70s.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for access to this novel in exchange for an honest review. Since this is a first novel, I look forward to following Sennaar's career.
]]> Love Can't Feed You 204640558
A beautiful, tender yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the United States from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires Love Can't Feed You is a stunning, heartbreaking, and compressed look at coming of age, shifting notions of home, and the disintegration of the American dream. It asks What does it mean to be of multiple cultures without a road map for how to belong?]]> 336 Cherry Lou Sy 0593474546 Candace 3
What they find is not what they expect. Mom Mel has changed. She's more glamorous, concerned about money, and does not seem happy to have them there. She insists that Queenie and her father go to work immediately to pay off the debt of bringing them there, and finds them crappy jobs. Besides that, she is rarely home and while she's away the household becomes unmoored.

With no one to guide her, she slides down several wrong paths. One of the few people to help her is a local librarian who advises her what she needs to do in order to start college in the US. She makes a few friends, but most of them are toxic.

Queenie is never a completely appealing character and becomes less so as "Love Can't Feed You" progresses. She's pressured by the expectations she remembers for Filipino girls to be virginal and to avoid gossip in a culture that thrives on it. In New York she is uncertain about how to respond to behaviors around her.

Themes of being a struggling immigrant, dysfunctional families, cultural and sexual expectations and more are laid out here. This is not an easy novel, I enjoyed the first half more than the second, when Queenie begins a sexual exploration that seems out of character. Or maybe not. What is her character? That's where this book falls short.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a DRC of this intriguing novel from a promising new writer.

]]> 3.25 2024 Love Can't Feed You
author: Cherry Lou Sy
name: Candace
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves:
review:
When Queenie spends the entire flight from Manila to New York needing the flight's entire stock of barf bags, it's an indication of how misguided this relocation will be. She is seventeen and would prefer to stay in the Philippines for college. But her mother's been in the US for a long time and she's sent the money for Queenie, her father, and younger brother to join her.

What they find is not what they expect. Mom Mel has changed. She's more glamorous, concerned about money, and does not seem happy to have them there. She insists that Queenie and her father go to work immediately to pay off the debt of bringing them there, and finds them crappy jobs. Besides that, she is rarely home and while she's away the household becomes unmoored.

With no one to guide her, she slides down several wrong paths. One of the few people to help her is a local librarian who advises her what she needs to do in order to start college in the US. She makes a few friends, but most of them are toxic.

Queenie is never a completely appealing character and becomes less so as "Love Can't Feed You" progresses. She's pressured by the expectations she remembers for Filipino girls to be virginal and to avoid gossip in a culture that thrives on it. In New York she is uncertain about how to respond to behaviors around her.

Themes of being a struggling immigrant, dysfunctional families, cultural and sexual expectations and more are laid out here. This is not an easy novel, I enjoyed the first half more than the second, when Queenie begins a sexual exploration that seems out of character. Or maybe not. What is her character? That's where this book falls short.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a DRC of this intriguing novel from a promising new writer.


]]> Daughter of Fire 196218541 For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel.

Catalina Cerrato is raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche people.

Urged on by her mother’s spirit voice, and possessing the gift of committing the invaluable stories to memory, Catalina embarks on a secret and transcendent quest to rewrite them. Through ancient pyramids, Spanish haciendas, and caves of masked devils, she finds an ally in the captivating Juan de Rojas, a lord whose rule was compromised by the invasion. But as their love and trust unfolds, and Don Alonso’s tyranny escalates, Catalina must confront her conflicted blood heritage—and its secrets—once and for all if she’s to follow her dangerous quest to its historic end.]]> 280 Sofia Robleda 166251798X Candace 4
There's a YA vibe to much of this book, with romance, complicated clothes, handsome Mayans and Spaniards and ghostly voices. Robleda creates a heroine who is more 21st century than 16th, but the history is compelling and the Mayan and Spanish worlds are wonderfully realized. Definitely worth a read.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. ]]> 3.91 2024 Daughter of Fire
author: Sofia Robleda
name: Candace
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves:
review:
The Popul Vuh is the Mayan sacred text, their origin story and their book of the dead. All copies are believed to have been destroyed by the Spaniards but one copy exists, and it is in the hands of Catalina Cerrato, the daughter of a Spanish grandee and a Mayan noblewoman. In 1550's Guatemala, Catalina occupies an awkward place in society where her father supports her in Spanish society, the spirit of her deceased mother pulls her in another direction. Not to give anything away, but Sofia Robleda explains how the existing versions of the Popul Vuh are written in Spanish, not Mayan.

There's a YA vibe to much of this book, with romance, complicated clothes, handsome Mayans and Spaniards and ghostly voices. Robleda creates a heroine who is more 21st century than 16th, but the history is compelling and the Mayan and Spanish worlds are wonderfully realized. Definitely worth a read.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Lotus Shoes 213888887 THE CAPTIVATING, HEART-RENDING STORY OF TWO WOMEN IN 1800S CHINA

Love and loss. Sisterhood and betrayal. Little Flower and Linjing's fates are bound together.

As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing's wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden's ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society.

Despite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing's marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends.

Until scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower's lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing's fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower - but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?]]> 400 Jane Yang Candace 4
Their relationship is a fraught one and it's no surprise since Linjing is a little too mean girl and Little Flower a little too good girl to be real, but you know what? I didn't care. The story is filled with all sorts of turns and twists and the end is quite a surprise. "Lotus Shoes" is one of those novels that entertains and educates. Many thanks to Edelweiss to the DRC in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.23 2025 The Lotus Shoes
author: Jane Yang
name: Candace
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves:
review:
Set in late 19th century China, lotus shoes, which fit women's tiny bound feet, play a major role in this story. Little Flower, whose mother binds her feet i in an attempt to earn her daughter a better future, is sold to a wealthy family as a slave to their daughter Linjing. Linjing is already betrothed to a progressive family and her feet are not bound. But the status of having "golden lilies" is still so great, and Linjing's jealousy at her slave's skill at embroidery to deep, that she demands that Little Flower's feet be unbound.

Their relationship is a fraught one and it's no surprise since Linjing is a little too mean girl and Little Flower a little too good girl to be real, but you know what? I didn't care. The story is filled with all sorts of turns and twists and the end is quite a surprise. "Lotus Shoes" is one of those novels that entertains and educates. Many thanks to Edelweiss to the DRC in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Letter Writer 26162769 From the acclaimed author of Winter Work comes a gripping novel about a disgraced New York City cop in 1942 whose latest investigation will thrust him into a citywide web of possibly traitorous corruption from which he may not get out alive. "Addictive, fast-paced, and thrilling.� —San Francisco Book Review February 9, 1942. Southern cop Woodrow Cain arrives in New York City for a new position with the NYPD and is greeted with smoke billowing out from the SS Normandie, engulfed in flames on the Hudson. On Cain’s first day on the job, a body turns up in the same river. Unfamiliar with the milieu of mob bosses and crooked officials in the big city, Cain’s investigation stalls, until a strange man who calls himself Danziger enters his life. Danziger looks like a miscreant, but speaks five languages, has the manners of a gentleman, and is the one person who can help Cain identify the body. A letter writer for illiterate European immigrants, Danzinger has a seemingly boundless knowledge of the city’s denizens and networks—and possesses information that extends beyond the reach of his clients, hinting at an unfathomable past. As the body count grows, Cain and Danziger inch closer toward an underground web of possibly traitorous corruption...but in these murky depths, not even Danzinger can know what kind of danger will await them.]]> 384 Dan Fesperman 1101875070 Candace 4
"The Letter Writer" is a very readable novel, despite the fact that is is not very convincing. The reason for the satisfaction aspect is the character of the letter writer himself, a shabby fellow who calls himself Danziger. He makes a living reading and writing letters for people in the Lower East Side who can't do these things for themselves. He has a deep understanding of people and events going on in New York in those weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Every time he narrates a chapter the story flares--he's got secrets, this guy. What can they have to do with a series of murders happening now?

The main character is a North Carolina detective come to join the NYPD after a tragic scandal back home. There's not a lot to Woodrow Cain. His backstory is not very convincing; he's given a bland daughter for some reason, and a girlfriend who is uncharacteristically careless in giving away Danziger's deepest secret.

It's full of holes, but the story will keep you going to the end. How about a novel abut Danziger? That would be grand!]]> 3.97 2016 The Letter Writer
author: Dan Fesperman
name: Candace
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2015/12/19
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars.

"The Letter Writer" is a very readable novel, despite the fact that is is not very convincing. The reason for the satisfaction aspect is the character of the letter writer himself, a shabby fellow who calls himself Danziger. He makes a living reading and writing letters for people in the Lower East Side who can't do these things for themselves. He has a deep understanding of people and events going on in New York in those weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Every time he narrates a chapter the story flares--he's got secrets, this guy. What can they have to do with a series of murders happening now?

The main character is a North Carolina detective come to join the NYPD after a tragic scandal back home. There's not a lot to Woodrow Cain. His backstory is not very convincing; he's given a bland daughter for some reason, and a girlfriend who is uncharacteristically careless in giving away Danziger's deepest secret.

It's full of holes, but the story will keep you going to the end. How about a novel abut Danziger? That would be grand!
]]> The Lion Women of Tehran 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.�

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]> 327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 Candace 0 to-read 4.47 2024 The Lion Women of Tehran
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Candace
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There Are Rivers in the Sky 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Candace 5
What ties the three together is water and the power of rivers. Elif Shafak has written an unforgettable story of history, personalities, and the risks people take for knowledge. Highly recommended.

If you're in Southern California, there's an outlet mall off the 5 freeway that began life as the Samson Tire factory. Built in the late 1920's in the Assyrian style, the plant entrance features winged bulls with human heads --the lamassu in the book---intended to guard the structure. The building is junked up with digital advertising now but it is still gorgeous and an impressive thought of what Nineveh must have been.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.39 2024 There Are Rivers in the Sky
author: Elif Shafak
name: Candace
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
The ancient city of Nineveh is at the heart of this fine novel, which weaves three narratives together with remarkable skill. All are compelling, but I liked the Arthur Smyth thread the best. A kid from a Dickensian world (DIckens actually gives him a suit, understanding that unragged clothing can open doors.) his extraordinary mind brought him to Victorian prominence despite the societal belief that the lower classes lacked the mental capacity to succeed. He is able to intrinsically understand the cuneiform on ancient Assyrian tablets, sparking national interest in the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Water engineer Zaleekah moves onto a houseboat on the Thames when she separates from her husband. She meets an unconventional tattoo artist who reignites her interest in cuneiform and Nineveh. Finally, there is a Yazidi girl names Nair, who's being raised by her grandmother on the banks of the Tigris. Her grandmother wants her to be baptized in her religion at a sacred site in Iraq, which coincides with the ISIS attack on the Yazidi people.

What ties the three together is water and the power of rivers. Elif Shafak has written an unforgettable story of history, personalities, and the risks people take for knowledge. Highly recommended.

If you're in Southern California, there's an outlet mall off the 5 freeway that began life as the Samson Tire factory. Built in the late 1920's in the Assyrian style, the plant entrance features winged bulls with human heads --the lamassu in the book---intended to guard the structure. The building is junked up with digital advertising now but it is still gorgeous and an impressive thought of what Nineveh must have been.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts]]> 209462723 From the bestselling author of The Pale Blue Eye, Louis Bayard, comesAtonement meets The Paris Wife,a brilliantly original, profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and World War I.

InSeptember of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his familyretreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charmingand affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually—and then all at once—comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.

The A Novel in Five Actsrevolves around that fateful what happened, and what might have been. When it was exposed, Oscar's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas—Bosie, as he was known—led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality, and the financial and emotional ruin of his family. In Act Two, Bayard revealsConstance and their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan,in exile, forced to sell their possessions, leave England, and hide their identities. ActThree, from the perspective of Cyril, brings readers into the French trenches of World War I, where Cyril must grapple with the kind of man he wants to become,while Act Four reveals Vyvyan in London, years after the war, searching for answers from those who knew his parents. And in a brilliant act of the imagination, Act Five brings the entire cast back together in a surprising, poignant, and tremendously satisfying tableau.

With Louis Bayard's trademark sparkling dialogue, paired with his deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters—and based on real events�TheWildescould almost have been created by Oscar Wilde lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramaticstory about the human condition.]]> 300 Louis Bayard 1643755315 Candace 4 4.07 2024 The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts
author: Louis Bayard
name: Candace
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mesmerist 203608516
Refusing to allow scandal to cloud the home's important mission, Abby tasks Faith's roommate, May, with tracing Faith's path to Bethany Home.May is desperate to end her year at Bethany Home engaged and on track to her happily-ever-after—even if her prince charming is Hal, a man she's not sure she can trust. As she digs into Faith's shadowy background, May uncovers a Minneapolis she never expected, and her investigation brings her closer to polite society and to Hal. The more she learns, the more she questions the motives of everyone around her, including Abby and Faith, and as more women turn up dead May must reevaluate the future she wants, and which lies she's willing to tell and for whom.]]> 336 Caroline Woods 0385550162 Candace 4
That's where Bethany House comes in, a home for unwed mothers where women were able to stay for one year, and keep or give up their babies without judgement. "The Mesmerist" follows the "inmates" of the house and how they got there, the struggle to keep the place open and the mystery surrounding Faith, who arrived soaked and mute, but possibly not pregnant.

Caroline Woods serves up lots of historical detail and a great sense of place, digging into what might be America's first serial killer. She also reveals how the prostitution business worked in a place that was just one step beyond a prairie boomtown. Interest in the supernatural continued after its heyday following the Civil War when mediums sought to contact those lost in the war. Not surprisingly, silent Faith is viewed with suspicion by the other women at Bethany House, something she learns to take advantage of.

In the words of another writer, being a woman is a dangerous business. Woods adds paranormal beliefs into the mix to create a solid historical mystery that will keep readers engaged from start to finish.

Thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.60 2024 The Mesmerist
author: Caroline Woods
name: Candace
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves:
review:
Minneapolis in 1894 was still a raw city, booming and drawing young women from a variety of backgrounds looking for jobs as maids or clerks. Sometimes that didn't work out and they ended up in other jobs, the kind that often result in pregnancy.

That's where Bethany House comes in, a home for unwed mothers where women were able to stay for one year, and keep or give up their babies without judgement. "The Mesmerist" follows the "inmates" of the house and how they got there, the struggle to keep the place open and the mystery surrounding Faith, who arrived soaked and mute, but possibly not pregnant.

Caroline Woods serves up lots of historical detail and a great sense of place, digging into what might be America's first serial killer. She also reveals how the prostitution business worked in a place that was just one step beyond a prairie boomtown. Interest in the supernatural continued after its heyday following the Civil War when mediums sought to contact those lost in the war. Not surprisingly, silent Faith is viewed with suspicion by the other women at Bethany House, something she learns to take advantage of.

In the words of another writer, being a woman is a dangerous business. Woods adds paranormal beliefs into the mix to create a solid historical mystery that will keep readers engaged from start to finish.

Thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Mighty Red 199793431
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.]]> 384 Louise Erdrich 0063277050 Candace 5 3.78 2024 The Mighty Red
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Candace
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Candace 2 to-read
Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for digital access to Kaveh Akbar's fiction debut in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Candace
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:
"Martyr!" Is a patchwork of points-of-view and levels of potential. It was hard to get going on it, but I did make it through. My thought: it needed more editorial work in development to bring all those elements together. What's good: Cyrus' struggle with addition is poignant as well as exasperating, and some of the writing is truly fine. I still think that Martyr! Will be up for awards. I just wish it was all it could be.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for digital access to Kaveh Akbar's fiction debut in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[Maria: A Novel of Maria von Trapp]]> 201102253 Maria von Trapp. You know the name and the iconic songs, but do you know her real story? This dramatic novel, based on the woman glamorized in The Sound of Music, brings Maria to life as never before.

In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. What should have been a ten-month assignment, however, unexpectedly turned into a marriage proposal. And when the family was forced to flee their home to escape the Nazis, it was Maria who instructed them on how to survive using nothing but the power of their voices.

It’s an inspirational story, to be sure, and as half of the famous duo Rodgers & Hammerstein, Hammerstein knows it has big Broadway potential. Yet much of Maria’s life will have to be reinvented for the stage, and with the horrors of war still fresh in people’s minds, Hammerstein can’t let audiences see just how close the von Trapps came to losing their lives.

But when Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he’s busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary, Fran, instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life, contradicting much of what will eventually appear in The Sound of Music.

A tale of love, loss, and the difficult choices that we are often forced to make, Maria is a powerful reminder that the truth is usually more complicated—and certainly more compelling—than the stories immortalized by Hollywood.]]> 310 Michelle Moran 0593499484 Candace 4
In the story, Maria von Trapp comes to New York to correct the script for the "Sound of Music," especially the part where the von Trapps flee Austria over the Alps to safety in Switzerland. She's also concerned about the characterization of her husband as a humorless disciplinarian. Hammerstein sends a member of his staff to meet with Maria and soothe her, not wanting her to make a fuss about the show right before it opens.

Fran is surprised to note that every time she meets Maria to talk, she is surrounded by adoring fans who love the family's records and performances. She's also captured by the real story of Maria and the von Trapps, so much that she's torn about what to tell Hammerstein. She decides to just write it all down and present it to him.

The combination of the von Trapp story we think we know, the real story, the workings of building a Broadway show, and a satisfying dual timeline makes for a tasty read. Maria's character is a treat, as she is the one who drives the family's survival and success. The family always sang, even more once she introduced Bach, early music, and classic Austrian music to their repertoire. And by the way, Maria did make playclothes for the kids out of the the curtains.

Thanks to Random House publishing and NetGalley for a digital review copy of "Maria" in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.20 2024 Maria: A Novel of Maria von Trapp
author: Michelle Moran
name: Candace
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
How many times have you seen "The Sound of Music?" The iconic movie has brought joy to millions and launched cosplay singalongs at major venues across the US as well as productions ranging from high school musicals to professional revivals. Michelle Moran takes the story we all think we know and given Maria von Trapp the revision she always craved. And by setting "Maria" at the time Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers were in the process of opening the Broadway production she also offers a tantalizing peek into what it was like to create those huge, delicious musicals that team produced.

In the story, Maria von Trapp comes to New York to correct the script for the "Sound of Music," especially the part where the von Trapps flee Austria over the Alps to safety in Switzerland. She's also concerned about the characterization of her husband as a humorless disciplinarian. Hammerstein sends a member of his staff to meet with Maria and soothe her, not wanting her to make a fuss about the show right before it opens.

Fran is surprised to note that every time she meets Maria to talk, she is surrounded by adoring fans who love the family's records and performances. She's also captured by the real story of Maria and the von Trapps, so much that she's torn about what to tell Hammerstein. She decides to just write it all down and present it to him.

The combination of the von Trapp story we think we know, the real story, the workings of building a Broadway show, and a satisfying dual timeline makes for a tasty read. Maria's character is a treat, as she is the one who drives the family's survival and success. The family always sang, even more once she introduced Bach, early music, and classic Austrian music to their repertoire. And by the way, Maria did make playclothes for the kids out of the the curtains.

Thanks to Random House publishing and NetGalley for a digital review copy of "Maria" in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Candace 5 to-read 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Candace
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Magnificent Ruins 209456186 Vikram Seth and Thrity Umrigar meet Rebecca in this sweeping multi-generational debut novel by accomplished television executive Nayantara Roy, about a young Indian American book editor from Brooklyn who returns to Kolkata when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home, and the secrets that lie within it.


It’s the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family she thought she left behind sixteen years ago. Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author� and occasional lover� is suddenly determined to make things more serious.


As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of keeping everything under the surface. For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.]]> 448 Nayantara Roy 1643755846 Candace 4
Lila deeply loved her grandfather and immediately arranges for an eight-week leave to manage things in Kolkata. She's lovingly welcomed by her family, even though they are concerned that she'll sell the house and leave them without means to find a new place to live. You's think that they'd be reassured by the improvements Lila has made it clear that she will not sell the house because it would not bring enough for everyone to be able to buy new housing. They question. Will they counter-sue, saying that her grandfather was not in his right mind when choosing her as his heir? Will they work with her? There's a lot going on, her cousin's wedding, possible romance with people her family would not approve of, her mother's brilliance and temper, authors to edit and manuscripts to read in a completely different time zone. Can she wrangle all this in eight weeks? Will she even go home to Brooklyn?

Up until the final quarter of "The Magnificent Ruins," the POV has been Lila's. Now there's a terrific chapter where outsiders view and comment on the Lahiri family with a completely different lens. Gathered in are the corps of maids, watchmen, beggars, and tea stall waiters, who have lots to say regarding Lila's "modern" behavior with men and the family''s general attitudes.

Nayantara Roy creates memorable characters, bound tight by the ties of family. Lila is particularly complex. She lived in Kolkata, in the house, until she was sixteen and understands the vibe and expectations, yet she chooses to dress inappropriately for special events, poking at traditions she knows better than to disrespect. She's sympathetic in how she manages to maneuver between worlds and personalities, absorbing revelations about family secrets. This novel is an engaging read that will keep readers eager to find out what's next.

Many thanks to Algonquin Books and Net Galley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.83 2024 The Magnificent Ruins
author: Nayantara Roy
name: Candace
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:
In this very readable novel, Lila is a 29-year-old living in Brooklyn and working for a publisher. Her Indian grandfather dies and to her shock (and that of her family) he leaves Lila the ancestral home in Kolkata, a massive, crumbling historic pile that is also home to her huge extended family. The Lahiri family's alarm in having their communal home in the hands of someone who left India at the age of 16 to live in the US with her father runs deep. Lila is estranged from her mother and her parents' divorce continues to be a scandal that taints the Lahiris to this day.

Lila deeply loved her grandfather and immediately arranges for an eight-week leave to manage things in Kolkata. She's lovingly welcomed by her family, even though they are concerned that she'll sell the house and leave them without means to find a new place to live. You's think that they'd be reassured by the improvements Lila has made it clear that she will not sell the house because it would not bring enough for everyone to be able to buy new housing. They question. Will they counter-sue, saying that her grandfather was not in his right mind when choosing her as his heir? Will they work with her? There's a lot going on, her cousin's wedding, possible romance with people her family would not approve of, her mother's brilliance and temper, authors to edit and manuscripts to read in a completely different time zone. Can she wrangle all this in eight weeks? Will she even go home to Brooklyn?

Up until the final quarter of "The Magnificent Ruins," the POV has been Lila's. Now there's a terrific chapter where outsiders view and comment on the Lahiri family with a completely different lens. Gathered in are the corps of maids, watchmen, beggars, and tea stall waiters, who have lots to say regarding Lila's "modern" behavior with men and the family''s general attitudes.

Nayantara Roy creates memorable characters, bound tight by the ties of family. Lila is particularly complex. She lived in Kolkata, in the house, until she was sixteen and understands the vibe and expectations, yet she chooses to dress inappropriately for special events, poking at traditions she knows better than to disrespect. She's sympathetic in how she manages to maneuver between worlds and personalities, absorbing revelations about family secrets. This novel is an engaging read that will keep readers eager to find out what's next.

Many thanks to Algonquin Books and Net Galley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Peggy 202102027 A dazzling novel about Peggy Guggenheim—a story of art, family, love, and becoming oneself—by the award-winning author of Under the Bridge, now a Hulu limited series starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone

“Godfrey brilliantly resurrects the avant-garde adventurer Peggy Guggenheim as a feminist icon for our times.”—Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation

Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She’s in a reflective mood, thinking back on her thrilling, tragic, nearly impossible journey from her sheltered, old-fashioned family in New York to here: iconoclast and independent woman.

Rebecca Godfrey’s Peggy is a blazingly fresh interpretation of a woman who defies every expectation to become an original. The daughter of two Jewish dynasties, Peggy finds her cloistered life turned upside down at fourteen, when her beloved father perishes on the Titanic. His death prompts Peggy to seek a life of passion and personal freedom and, above all, to believe in the transformative power of art. We follow Peggy as she makes her way through the glamorous but sexist and anti-Semitic art worlds of New York and Europe and meet the numerous men who love her (and her money) while underestimating her intellect, talent, and vision. Along the way, Peggy must balance her loyalty to her family with her need to break free from their narrow, snobbish ways and the unexpected restrictions that come with vast fortune.

Rebecca Godfrey’s final book—completed by her friend, the acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, following Godfrey’s death in 2022—brings to life the woman who helped make the Guggenheim name synonymous with art and genius.]]> 384 Rebecca Godfrey 0385538286 Candace 4
"Peggy" covers her life to the point where she shifts her focus to supporting art, but before she actively helped Jewish artists escape Europe in the late 1930s and become the post-war final word on art and artists. In the slice of life explored here, she marries unsuitable men and sews lots of wild oats. Most surprisingly, she offers shelter in France to anarchist Emma Goldman in one of the finest parts of this novel. After the war, her focus is different, and I feel that Peggy Guggenheim became her real self.

I think the most important parts of Peggy's life happened after this novel ends. Perhaps that was Rebecca Godfrey's plan, but unfortunately she died of cancer before "Peggy" was complete. She left detailed notes and the novel was sensitively completed by Leslie Jamison.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.51 2024 Peggy
author: Rebecca Godfrey
name: Candace
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:
Life as a Goog was tough. The Guggenheim family, despite their wealth, never quite gelled with the golden Jewish families of 1900s New York as the nickname would suggest. Peggy was the middle daughter of three, and by the time her father died on the Titanic (returning to New York with his mistress, who survived) her end of the family had already been cut off from the more traditional part of the Guggenheim clan. The Titanic scandal, and subsequent lawsuits from the mistress dogged the lives of Peggy's mother and sisters.

"Peggy" covers her life to the point where she shifts her focus to supporting art, but before she actively helped Jewish artists escape Europe in the late 1930s and become the post-war final word on art and artists. In the slice of life explored here, she marries unsuitable men and sews lots of wild oats. Most surprisingly, she offers shelter in France to anarchist Emma Goldman in one of the finest parts of this novel. After the war, her focus is different, and I feel that Peggy Guggenheim became her real self.

I think the most important parts of Peggy's life happened after this novel ends. Perhaps that was Rebecca Godfrey's plan, but unfortunately she died of cancer before "Peggy" was complete. She left detailed notes and the novel was sensitively completed by Leslie Jamison.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740
Amerika, 1975. In het dorpje Monta Clare, Missouri, wordt tiener Joseph 'Patch' Macauley ontvoerd. Saint Brown, zet alles op het spel om haar beste vriend te vinden.

Patch ligt alleen in een pikdonkere kamer totdat hij een hand in de zijne voelt. Ze heet Grace en in het donker is haar stem zijn redding. Als Patch ontsnapt, is er echter geen bewijs dat ze ooit heeft bestaan, dus begint hij een grootse zoektocht om haar te vinden.

Terwijl jaren decennia worden en hoop een obsessie, jaagt Patch's jeugdvriendin Saint op de man die de twee ontvoerde en daarmee de enige jongen van wie ze ooit heeft gehouden een doel in het leven gaf.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Candace 3 to-read
I'm not as enraptured by this book as other reviewers. The first part of terrific, a great establishment of characters and situation, class and setting. You love Saint and Patch, and I loved Misty. Whitaker does a beautiful job in putting his characters on that hero/villain tightrope that keeps you guessing.

The novel is too long, and the short chapters interrupt the opportunity for greater development. Too many jump-cuts--I think his readers have a longer attention span for story development and character growth. He's such a good writer that I wish an editor had taken an x-acto and sliced out a hundred pages which would have helped maintain the tension. I liked "All the Colors of the Dark" to take a chance on another of his novels, perhaps a shorter, tighter one.]]> 4.23 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Candace
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:
"All the Colors of the Dark" has so many ecstatic reviews from fans of Chris Whitaker that I simply had to read it. Thanks to Crown publishers and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not as enraptured by this book as other reviewers. The first part of terrific, a great establishment of characters and situation, class and setting. You love Saint and Patch, and I loved Misty. Whitaker does a beautiful job in putting his characters on that hero/villain tightrope that keeps you guessing.

The novel is too long, and the short chapters interrupt the opportunity for greater development. Too many jump-cuts--I think his readers have a longer attention span for story development and character growth. He's such a good writer that I wish an editor had taken an x-acto and sliced out a hundred pages which would have helped maintain the tension. I liked "All the Colors of the Dark" to take a chance on another of his novels, perhaps a shorter, tighter one.
]]> Jackie 201816294
The world has divided my life into three:

Life with Jack
Life with Onassis
Life as a woman who goes to work because she wants to.

My life is all of these things, and it is none of these things. They continue to miss what’s right in front of them. I love books. I love the sea. I love horses. Children. Art. Ideas. History. Beauty. Because beauty blows us open to wonder.
Even the beauty that breaks your heart.

Jackie is the story of a woman—deeply private with a nuanced, formidable intellect—who forged a legacy out of grief and shaped history even as she was living it. It is the story of a love affair, a complicated marriage, and the fracturing of identity that comes in the wake of unthinkable violence.

When Jackie meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy in Georgetown, she is twenty-one and dreaming of France. She has won an internship at Vogue. Kennedy, she thinks, is not her kind of adventure: “Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy.� Yet she is drawn to his mind, his humor, his drive. The chemistry between them ignites. During the White House years, the love between two independent people deepens. Then, a motorcade in Dallas: “Three and a half seconds—that’s all it was—a slivered instant between the first shot, which missed the car, and the second, which did not. . . . A hypnotic burst of sunlight off her bracelet as she waved.�

This vivid, exquisitely written novel is at once a captivating work of the imagination and a window into the world of a woman who led many lives: Jackie, Jacks, Jacqueline, Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie O.]]> 496 Dawn Tripp 0812997212 Candace 5
I loved this novel. Jackie is surprisingly relatable figure, with her ragged fingernails, old jeans, and pilled sweaters she wears at home. Her intellect was blazing, her intuition was finely tuned, and she lived a life lonely of people, but filled with books, art, and a love of beauty. Who could she have been if she were born thirty years later?

A fine and encompassing novel, and I thank NetGalley, Dawn Tripp, and Random House Publishing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review]]> 4.22 2024 Jackie
author: Dawn Tripp
name: Candace
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:
I didn't know Jackie was such a dedicated bookwoman, someone who read about books and read books where ever she was. Jack would circle books in the New York Times Book Review to buy each week, and they read and discussed eveything. Dawn Tripp's elegant and passionate novel lets us in on the kind of electric attraction they felt for each other, and the trauma Jackie never recovered from after 11/22/63. Her flight to Onassis was because he could protect her from the Kennedy family, the politics, and the demands that were crushing her after the assassination. She never really had a home, and spent much of her life in briefly rented properties, some with horses, some with a beach. occasionally with both. Her focus was protecting her children, sharing with them the love of beauty that gave her life glow.

I loved this novel. Jackie is surprisingly relatable figure, with her ragged fingernails, old jeans, and pilled sweaters she wears at home. Her intellect was blazing, her intuition was finely tuned, and she lived a life lonely of people, but filled with books, art, and a love of beauty. Who could she have been if she were born thirty years later?

A fine and encompassing novel, and I thank NetGalley, Dawn Tripp, and Random House Publishing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Candace 4
This is the first novel I've read by Rufi Thorpe and I will certainly read more. "Margo's Got Money Troubles" Is a pick-me-up as well as an example of creativity and pluck in the face of adversity. Loved RIgoberto the Roomba, among other charmingly weird things.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Candace
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves:
review:
This novel is a delight. Margo is a 19-year-old who is pregnant by her English professor. She's naive but also driven by the desire to be a good person and do the right thing. She has the baby with no support, followed by no job, and no idea what comes next. Things approve when her father, Jinx, a retired pro-wrestler moves into her apartment (her roommates have mostly moved out because of baby Bodhi's screaming.) Jinx is great with babies so that is a huge help. But how to make money? She is tied to her apartment with limited skills, but boy, can she write! What and how she ends up writing so clever and funny I giggled at every page.

This is the first novel I've read by Rufi Thorpe and I will certainly read more. "Margo's Got Money Troubles" Is a pick-me-up as well as an example of creativity and pluck in the face of adversity. Loved RIgoberto the Roomba, among other charmingly weird things.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Here One Moment 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Candace 5
There's a delay on a flight from Hobart to Sydney, and a woman, in her sixties and therefore invisible, begins telling passengers the causes and dates of their deaths. She seems to be in a trance and is unstoppable. Most of the deaths are predicted for the distant future but a few are not. They are actually quite soon. Everyone gets off the plane and goes their own ways, and Liane Moriarty follows them, including the woman who will become known as the Death Lady.

The Death Lady's story is the most touching and detailed, and you will be all-in. Fleshing out a variety of characters is one of Moriarty's greatest gifts, creating appealing and believable people.

I highly recommend this novel. It is an enormous reading pleasure and satisfies on all levels. Thanks to the publisher and NewGalley for a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.99 2024 Here One Moment
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Candace
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:
If you're in a book slump or that awful thing where you pick one book up and put it down, pick one books up and . . .same, "Here One Moment" will fix you up good. It's deep, witty, involving and impossible to put down.

There's a delay on a flight from Hobart to Sydney, and a woman, in her sixties and therefore invisible, begins telling passengers the causes and dates of their deaths. She seems to be in a trance and is unstoppable. Most of the deaths are predicted for the distant future but a few are not. They are actually quite soon. Everyone gets off the plane and goes their own ways, and Liane Moriarty follows them, including the woman who will become known as the Death Lady.

The Death Lady's story is the most touching and detailed, and you will be all-in. Fleshing out a variety of characters is one of Moriarty's greatest gifts, creating appealing and believable people.

I highly recommend this novel. It is an enormous reading pleasure and satisfies on all levels. Thanks to the publisher and NewGalley for a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
]]> By Any Other Name 203337138 From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Honey comes an “inspiring� (Elle) novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name.

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.]]> 528 Jodi Picoult 0593497228 Candace 4
Although there is little question that Shakespeare wrote his own plays "By Any Other Name" does raise the question of how many women might have done such a thing with their choices so limited in life. I enjoyed Emilia's story more than Melina's, which felt especially raw and painful. What a short distance we have come.

Picoult has thrown herself into the study of modern and Elizabethan theater, both of which are filled with spark and spicy info. This is one of my favorite things about her writing--she takes on a topic, fully immerses herself in the subject, and shares it with readers by reaving it into her story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.12 2024 By Any Other Name
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Candace
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/12
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves:
review:
Jodi Picoult loves to stir the pot, bringing up sensitive and controversial topics and putting characters right in front of them to deal. In the case of "By Any Other Name," she's taken on misogyny in two time periods. The first is Melina, a young playwright whose first attempt to put herself out there in her writing (as encouraged by her professor) nearly leads to the end of her career. Her ancestor, Emilia Bassano, is also a playwright, but in her time period women did not write plays or appear on the stage. Emilia needs to make a living and she needs a beard--someone whose name she can use in order for her plays to be produced. She meets a semi-successful playwright named Will Shakespeare, and you can guess what happens.

Although there is little question that Shakespeare wrote his own plays "By Any Other Name" does raise the question of how many women might have done such a thing with their choices so limited in life. I enjoyed Emilia's story more than Melina's, which felt especially raw and painful. What a short distance we have come.

Picoult has thrown herself into the study of modern and Elizabethan theater, both of which are filled with spark and spicy info. This is one of my favorite things about her writing--she takes on a topic, fully immerses herself in the subject, and shares it with readers by reaving it into her story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[Spirit Crossing (Cork O'Connor, #20)]]> 199798007 A disappearance and a dead body put Cork O’Connor’s family in the crosshairs of a killer in the twentieth book in the New York Times bestselling series from William Kent Krueger­, “a master storyteller at the top of his game� (Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

The disappearance of a local politician’s teenaged daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O’Connor’s grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman—but nobody seems that interested. Nobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. As Cork and the tribal officers dig into the circumstances of this mysterious and grim discovery, they uncover a connection to the missing teenager. And soon, it’s clear that Cork’s grandson is in danger of being the killer’s next victim.]]> 318 William Kent Krueger 1982179244 Candace 4
That being said, this is not the best book to begin your immersion into his world. I've read a few of the Cork O'Connor books but felt I was being dropped into the middle of something important with people I couldn't quite place. There's enough depth to this series to read the whole thing and be satisfied at the development of the characters.

Krueger is such a fine writer that it's a pleasure to explore a part of the country I didn't know with him. If you are a long time reader, you'll love "Spirit Crossing." If you're new to the writer, enjoy a few earlier reads first.

Many thanks to the publisher and NewGalley for an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.02 2024 Spirit Crossing (Cork O'Connor, #20)
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Candace
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:
William Kent Krueger writes with the most remarkable sense of place. His novels blend indigenous beliefs and concerns into the lives of modern Minnesotans, Native or not. This combo is magical, fresh and fascinating.

That being said, this is not the best book to begin your immersion into his world. I've read a few of the Cork O'Connor books but felt I was being dropped into the middle of something important with people I couldn't quite place. There's enough depth to this series to read the whole thing and be satisfied at the development of the characters.

Krueger is such a fine writer that it's a pleasure to explore a part of the country I didn't know with him. If you are a long time reader, you'll love "Spirit Crossing." If you're new to the writer, enjoy a few earlier reads first.

Many thanks to the publisher and NewGalley for an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Shanghai 196021126
Daniel is immediately plunged into his uncle’s seductive and corrupt world, and becomes involved in the launch of a new nightclub, the biggest, the best and most glitzy in town. When violence breaks out and lives are at risk, Daniel is drawn irrevocably into the terrifying underworld that is wartime Shanghai.

Beautifully atmospheric and intricately plotted, this masterful thriller marks exciting new ground for an author hailed by the Sunday Times as ‘the most accomplished spy novelist working today�.]]> 384 Joseph Kanon Candace 4
Gripping his one suitcase and the ten Marks Nazis permit to fleeing Jews, he boards a luxury ship and travels first class to Shanghai, where he is embraced by his uncle who is a gangster, running nightclubs and gambling halls for anyone who cares to come. Nathan does not want Daniel to join his endeavors but he insists, diving into a world that runs on "squeeze"--kickbacks, and packed with Nazi-like Japanese, deep-rooted Chinese gangsters, White Russians, Communists, desperate Jews and an entrancing woman he met at the Jewish table on the ship. Daniel has jumped from one sizzling frying pan to another.

I love the way Kanon puts pretty regular people into the highest stakes situations and lets them figure it out--or not. If you haven't read him before you have a banquet ahead of you. Start with "Shanghai" and keep going. Great reading.]]> 4.13 2024 Shanghai
author: Joseph Kanon
name: Candace
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/09
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves:
review:
Joseph Kanon's historical thrillers never disappoint. He takes a compromised man and places him in sometime around World War II and shows us even more complexity around the war in ways we never imagined. "Shanghai" takes Daniel Lohr, who's been working with Communists to kill Nazis (even though he is not a believer) and gives him the opportunity to join an uncle in Shanghai. It's a miracle. This is just after Kristallnacht, Daniel's father has been arrested and killed in prison, and his resistance group has been broken and he's sure he'll be picked up at any second.

Gripping his one suitcase and the ten Marks Nazis permit to fleeing Jews, he boards a luxury ship and travels first class to Shanghai, where he is embraced by his uncle who is a gangster, running nightclubs and gambling halls for anyone who cares to come. Nathan does not want Daniel to join his endeavors but he insists, diving into a world that runs on "squeeze"--kickbacks, and packed with Nazi-like Japanese, deep-rooted Chinese gangsters, White Russians, Communists, desperate Jews and an entrancing woman he met at the Jewish table on the ship. Daniel has jumped from one sizzling frying pan to another.

I love the way Kanon puts pretty regular people into the highest stakes situations and lets them figure it out--or not. If you haven't read him before you have a banquet ahead of you. Start with "Shanghai" and keep going. Great reading.
]]> The Bullet Swallower 123847255 A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio’s timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors� crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.

A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.]]> 272 Elizabeth Gonzalez James 1668009323 Candace 5
How these two stories come together is fascinating and hard to turn away from. The supernatural elements are handled so artfully that they are truly magical.

Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review. ]]> 3.75 2024 The Bullet Swallower
author: Elizabeth Gonzalez James
name: Candace
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/23
shelves:
review:
Here's a novel with dual timelines where both work! "The Bullet Swallower" is set in 1895 and 1964 following two men in the Sonoro family. Antonio is the sole survivor of a violent and wealthy family whose actions lead to the deaths of hundreds in a mine explosion. Antonio is now poor, living in a shack with his family, using crime to marginally support them. In the 1960s, Jaime is an actor in those musicals about charros that were so popular at the time. A woman turns up at his front door (strange, because his popularity means security) with a reeking, ancient book about the crimes of his family. Jaime's father, who lives with them, tells him to get rid of it ASAP.

How these two stories come together is fascinating and hard to turn away from. The supernatural elements are handled so artfully that they are truly magical.

Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> The Black Crescent 176442895
Hamou Badi is born in a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains with the markings of the zouhry on his hands. In Morocco, the zouhry is a figure of legend, a child of both humans and djinns, capable of finding treasure, lost objects, and even water in the worst of droughts. But when young Hamou finds the body of a murdered woman, his life is forever changed.

Haunted by this unsolved murder and driven by the desire to do good in the world, Hamou leaves his village for Casablanca to become an officer of the law under the French Protectorate.

But Casablanca is not the shining beacon of modernity he was expecting. The forcible exile of Morocco’s sultan by the French sparks a nationalist uprising led by violent dissident groups, none so fearsome as the Black Crescent. Torn between his heritage and his employers, Hamou will be caught in the crossfire.

The lines between right and wrong, past and future, the old world and the new, are not as clear as the magical lines on his palms. And as the danger grows, Hamou is forced to choose between all he knows and all he loves.]]> 400 Jane Johnson 1668017504 Candace 5
This writer is new to me but I'm so impressed with "The Black Crescent" that I'm eager to read more. I highly recommend this novel.
]]> 3.73 The Black Crescent
author: Jane Johnson
name: Candace
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves:
review:
This excellent mystery is set in post-war Casablanca, with it's main character a city policeman names Hamou Badi. He's driven by the desire to do good in the would, but has found that it is hard to fulfill that desire under the French Protectorate. Author Jane Johnson's sense of place is rich and strong, and she beautifully balances Hamou's conflicted loyalties as the political scene becomes more chaotic. "He was alone again, stranded in that no-man’s land between the rock of the French regime and the hard place inhabited by his own people," she writes.

This writer is new to me but I'm so impressed with "The Black Crescent" that I'm eager to read more. I highly recommend this novel.

]]> I Cheerfully Refuse 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Candace 4
This is a drear dystopian novel where people have just given up. It's also my first Leif Enger novel, and I really fell for his wholehearted characters. He's created a setting that is so sad, yet there are still people who can seize bits of joy. I never doubted that I would finish "I Cheerfully Refuse". but at times it wasn't easy. Fortunately, Rainey if a lovely character, a bear of a guy with a big heart, humor and courage. Watching him navigate this new world with just his wits and decency is a lesson learned.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.96 2024 I Cheerfully Refuse
author: Leif Enger
name: Candace
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:
In "I Cheerfully Refuse," the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. It's the future. Climate is wild, people are handing on to tiny scraps of normalcy, although it's been so long since things were normal that the ideas are skewed. Most people are illiterate, living like it's the 18th century instead of whatever century it is. Rainey and Lark live on the edge of Lake Superior in a settlement where she runs a bookstore of volumes she has scrounged or traded. Rainey plays the bass in a popular band which brings most of the population together on Saturday nights. A scroungy young man appears with a few books to trade, including a book Lark has been looking for for decades, a novel by a mysterious author called "I Cheerfully Refuse." The young man becomes part of their lives until a strange bookbuyer comes to town and Rainey finds himself in a boat looking for refuge in other settlements. He has to survive the weather, these eerie leftover towns, and stay away from large ships that scoop people up to use for experiments.

This is a drear dystopian novel where people have just given up. It's also my first Leif Enger novel, and I really fell for his wholehearted characters. He's created a setting that is so sad, yet there are still people who can seize bits of joy. I never doubted that I would finish "I Cheerfully Refuse". but at times it wasn't easy. Fortunately, Rainey if a lovely character, a bear of a guy with a big heart, humor and courage. Watching him navigate this new world with just his wits and decency is a lesson learned.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
]]> <![CDATA[The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Candace 5 4.13 2024 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
author: Erik Larson
name: Candace
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 202951635 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize � a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 324 Kate Atkinson 1473568757 Candace 4
And what brings these people together? Stolen art. It seems that a young woman has been taking jobs as companion to elderly women, making off with a piece of art when the woman dies or the situation shifts. What's so hard is that this (these) women were so kind and fun, definitely improving the lives of their employers, so caring until they just vanish. Brodie has been hired by the heirs of one women to find a painting now missing.

The first half of "Death at the Sign of the Rook" fights to keep your interest. There's a lot of introduction of characters who are not that compelling. There's not enough Brodie or Reggie. But stick with it, because the payoff is sublime.

Atkinson is such a gift. She can write period spy thrillers like "Transcription," extraordinary works like "Life after Life" and the Jackson Brodie series. She never disappoints--her use of language and creation of characters is marvelous, whole hearted and a little bit off, which keeps you paying attention.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review. ]]> 3.95 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Candace
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:
This novel is delightfully funny. Kate Atkinson puts Jackson Brodie and DC Reggie Chase at a murder mystery weekend at a devolving estate with a vicar, an army major, a Countess, a sparky dowager, and a crew of actors who manage this sort of entertainment. Oh! and a blizzard. Can't forget the blizzard. The result is hilarious, with people coming and going through doors and rooms with the verve and timing of a Feydeau farce.

And what brings these people together? Stolen art. It seems that a young woman has been taking jobs as companion to elderly women, making off with a piece of art when the woman dies or the situation shifts. What's so hard is that this (these) women were so kind and fun, definitely improving the lives of their employers, so caring until they just vanish. Brodie has been hired by the heirs of one women to find a painting now missing.

The first half of "Death at the Sign of the Rook" fights to keep your interest. There's a lot of introduction of characters who are not that compelling. There's not enough Brodie or Reggie. But stick with it, because the payoff is sublime.

Atkinson is such a gift. She can write period spy thrillers like "Transcription," extraordinary works like "Life after Life" and the Jackson Brodie series. She never disappoints--her use of language and creation of characters is marvelous, whole hearted and a little bit off, which keeps you paying attention.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Candace 4
Elizabeth is a Ph.D in Psychology, I think, and she works for Wellness, a research company that studies the effects of placebos which they discover are pretty much the same as the impact of actual medicine. Patients are cured simply because they believe in the cure, they have found. If you can imagine where this will lead, it does.

Jack is an artist, whose work is based on his access to leftover art supplies because he can't afford to buy anything new. It's the '90s, and both have taken refuge from godawful families to live their own lives in Chicago. They fall in love, marry, and have a child. Nothing is easy for them, but each character is compelling enough to keep you settled in their noggins and following their life stories.

But being in their heads means that you get EVERYTHING going on with them. There's a huge
digression into the Facebook algorithm and how it entraps Jack's dad in the Flint Hills of Kansas into
becoming a conspiracy extremist. Some of it is entertaining but I suspect you'll be skimming.

There's so, so, so much to "Wellness" that it's almost suffocating. There's a lovely scene where Jack's older sister takes him out to the prairie to sketch. Evelyn is a college art student and Jack is a wretched 9-year-old trying too hard to please. Evelyn's sketch expresses the heart of the land, while Jack tries to get everything exact. "You have to let it breathe," Evelyn tells him about his work.

I'd say that about this novel. A great deal of it is so marvelous, but there are parts that are equally numbing or bewildering. This would be an incredible book club pick--the conversation would go on till the wee hours--but it would be difficult to get enough people who made it through the 600 pages to have that sparky chat. "Wellness" is not for everyone, but there is enough to appeal to everyone. If that seems like an impossible comment, you get this book.

Many thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for a digital reply copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinions.]]> 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Candace
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:
Before going any farther, I want you to know that I made three charges at "Wellness" before it caught with me. I didn't DNF it or delete it because I knew it would be good. And it is. Once I get in Elizabeth and Jack's heads I wanted to stay there and see where we went.

Elizabeth is a Ph.D in Psychology, I think, and she works for Wellness, a research company that studies the effects of placebos which they discover are pretty much the same as the impact of actual medicine. Patients are cured simply because they believe in the cure, they have found. If you can imagine where this will lead, it does.

Jack is an artist, whose work is based on his access to leftover art supplies because he can't afford to buy anything new. It's the '90s, and both have taken refuge from godawful families to live their own lives in Chicago. They fall in love, marry, and have a child. Nothing is easy for them, but each character is compelling enough to keep you settled in their noggins and following their life stories.

But being in their heads means that you get EVERYTHING going on with them. There's a huge
digression into the Facebook algorithm and how it entraps Jack's dad in the Flint Hills of Kansas into
becoming a conspiracy extremist. Some of it is entertaining but I suspect you'll be skimming.

There's so, so, so much to "Wellness" that it's almost suffocating. There's a lovely scene where Jack's older sister takes him out to the prairie to sketch. Evelyn is a college art student and Jack is a wretched 9-year-old trying too hard to please. Evelyn's sketch expresses the heart of the land, while Jack tries to get everything exact. "You have to let it breathe," Evelyn tells him about his work.

I'd say that about this novel. A great deal of it is so marvelous, but there are parts that are equally numbing or bewildering. This would be an incredible book club pick--the conversation would go on till the wee hours--but it would be difficult to get enough people who made it through the 600 pages to have that sparky chat. "Wellness" is not for everyone, but there is enough to appeal to everyone. If that seems like an impossible comment, you get this book.

Many thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for a digital reply copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinions.
]]> <![CDATA[Red Side Story (Shades of Grey, #2)]]> 199353348 Shades of Grey—in an exclusive edition for North American readers, complete with a never-before-published short story

“Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett.� —The Independent

Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened� five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City.

Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny’s color-viewing potential with Eddie’s gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won’t hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure. Meanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole—some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens.

New York Times bestselling author Jasper Fforde returns to his fan-favorite Shades of Grey series with this wildly anticipated, laugh-out-loud funny and darkly satiric adventure about two star-crossed lovers on a quest to survive—even if it means upending their entire society in the process.]]> 459 Jasper Fforde 1641296283 Candace 0 to-read 4.41 2024 Red Side Story (Shades of Grey, #2)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Candace
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Southern Man (Penn Cage, #7) 58884700
As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes continue to burn and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic sweeps through the tourist communities, driving them inexorably toward a race war.

But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White, a Southern war hero who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. Dubbed “the Tik-Tok Man,� and funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, Bobby White rides the glory of his Special Forces record to an unprecedented run at the White House—one unseen since the campaign of H. Ross Perot.

To triumph over the national party machines, Bobby evolves a plan of unimaginable daring. One fateful autumn weekend, with White set to declare his candidacy in all fifty states, the forces polarizing America line up against one another: Black vs. white, states vs. the federal government, democracy vs. Fascism. Teaming with his fearless daughter (now a civil rights lawyer) and a former Black Panther who spent most of his life in Parchman Prison, Penn tears into Bobby White’s pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss.

In Southern Man, Greg Iles returns to the riveting style and historic depth that made the Natchez Burning trilogy a searing masterpiece and hurls the narrative fifteen years forward into our current moment—where America itself teeters on the brink of anarchy.]]> 966 Greg Iles 0062824694 Candace 3
Now this seems to be an interesting take on handling race relations in another Mississippi crisis, but it all goes to hell in a handbasket and quickly devolves into stereotypes and lots of shooting.

Penn, a sensible, thoughtful man, is missing a leg and has severe multiple myeloma, but he is constantly hopping into and out of helicopters and large military vehicles, joining gunfights, being seriously wounded twice, and then there's the grenade. I thought this must be the end of the series! He can't survive! You'll find out.

Some of the characters are pretty believable, but none of them are women.

This novel is very busy. It takes place in the course of a week and I can't imagine anyone, especially someone in late middle age like Penn, surviving it. But if it's a fast-paced book you want, this is it. let me add that I read it from start to finish--quite a commitment for a novel of that length.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of "Southern Man" in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.92 2024 Southern Man (Penn Cage, #7)
author: Greg Iles
name: Candace
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves:
review:
I was so interested in this novel, and never having read a Greg Iles book that I jumped in with both feet. "Southern Man" gets off to a promising start, with a police shooting at a mostly-Black-attended music festival, which is followed by fires at several of the historic plantation houses in Natchez. Penn Cage, an attorney who has turned to writing fiction and history, thinks the fires are false flag operations, and he wants to get to the bottom of it. One of the people who keep popping up is Bobby White (that's Robert E, Lee White) a war hero, conservative talk show host, and possible presidential candidate who seems to be pretty balanced and sensible. Penn's dubious, but Bobby approaches him with a solid plan to quell the growing unrest.

Now this seems to be an interesting take on handling race relations in another Mississippi crisis, but it all goes to hell in a handbasket and quickly devolves into stereotypes and lots of shooting.

Penn, a sensible, thoughtful man, is missing a leg and has severe multiple myeloma, but he is constantly hopping into and out of helicopters and large military vehicles, joining gunfights, being seriously wounded twice, and then there's the grenade. I thought this must be the end of the series! He can't survive! You'll find out.

Some of the characters are pretty believable, but none of them are women.

This novel is very busy. It takes place in the course of a week and I can't imagine anyone, especially someone in late middle age like Penn, surviving it. But if it's a fast-paced book you want, this is it. let me add that I read it from start to finish--quite a commitment for a novel of that length.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of "Southern Man" in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Mina's Matchbox 202102049 From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, here is a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of the second world war, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.]]> 282 Yōko Ogawa 0593316088 Candace 4
This lovely novel focuses on 12-year-old Tomoko who spends a year with her aunt's family in 1972. Her cousin, Mina, is the one who collects matchboxes with tiny, elegant stories pasted within them. Beautiful and asthmatic, she also rides a pygmy hippo to school, and loves books.

It's all strange to Tomoko, whose father died young and whose struggling mother needs the time for a course to improve her dressmaking skills so she can earn a better living. The change from Tokyo to the lovely house in the coastal town of Ashiya is great, but her aunt, cousin, and handsome German uncle make her part of their family.

She's a kid, of course, and wants to snoop in order to understand her aunt's distance and drinking and her uncle's long periods of absence from the house. She's curious about Mina's German grandmother, who gently shares photos of her family, who are lost. Tomoko will make no momentous discoveries because no. matter what she suspects, her love will temper her need to know.

I loved that there was no resentment of Tomoko, and she is not jealous of what Mina has that she does not. How refreshing.

And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.

Many thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review of this deceptively simple novel. ]]> 3.75 2006 Mina's Matchbox
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Candace
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves:
review:
"If you wanted to distinguish her from everyone else in the world, you'd say that she was a girl who could strike a match more beautifully than anyone."

This lovely novel focuses on 12-year-old Tomoko who spends a year with her aunt's family in 1972. Her cousin, Mina, is the one who collects matchboxes with tiny, elegant stories pasted within them. Beautiful and asthmatic, she also rides a pygmy hippo to school, and loves books.

It's all strange to Tomoko, whose father died young and whose struggling mother needs the time for a course to improve her dressmaking skills so she can earn a better living. The change from Tokyo to the lovely house in the coastal town of Ashiya is great, but her aunt, cousin, and handsome German uncle make her part of their family.

She's a kid, of course, and wants to snoop in order to understand her aunt's distance and drinking and her uncle's long periods of absence from the house. She's curious about Mina's German grandmother, who gently shares photos of her family, who are lost. Tomoko will make no momentous discoveries because no. matter what she suspects, her love will temper her need to know.

I loved that there was no resentment of Tomoko, and she is not jealous of what Mina has that she does not. How refreshing.

And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.

Many thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review of this deceptively simple novel.
]]> The Road from Belhaven 150247348 New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in late 19th century Scotland.

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures� foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.

Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.

Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven once again displays “the marvelous control of a writer who conjures equally well the tangible, sensory world... and the mysteries, stranger and wilder, that flicker at the border of that world.� - The Boston Globe]]> 272 Margot Livesey 0593537041 Candace 4
There is so much fine about this novel, but the pacing is off. It moves gently toward resolution and then cracks the whip and rushes to get there. Disconcerting.

Thanks to Knopf and NewGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinions.

]]> 3.62 2024 The Road from Belhaven
author: Margot Livesey
name: Candace
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves:
review:
Margot Livesey is a beautiful and mysterious writer, with the gift of gently probing her characters' psyches, revealing all sorts of wonder. "The Boy in the Field" and "The Flight of Gemma Hardy" are two lovely examples of her skill, and as much as I enjoyed "The Road to Belhaven," it's not one of her strongest. She writes delicately of the seasonal magic in 19th century Scottish farm life and the vagaries of Lizzie Craig's second sight. From childhood Lizzie has been able to foretell certain events but not others, and she is not able to change the outcome. She tries to hide her visions but her family knows that this gift, or curse, runs in the family.

There is so much fine about this novel, but the pacing is off. It moves gently toward resolution and then cracks the whip and rushes to get there. Disconcerting.

Thanks to Knopf and NewGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinions.


]]> Spitting Gold 199797612 A deliciously haunting debut for fans of Sarah Waters and Sarah Penner set in 19th-century Paris, blending gothic mystery with a captivating sapphic romance as two estranged sisters—celebrated (and fraudulent) spirit mediums—come back together for one last con.

Paris, 1866. When Baroness Sylvie Devereux receives a house call from Charlotte Mothe, the sister she disowned, she fears her shady past as a spirit medium has caught up with her. But with their father ill and Charlotte unable to pay his bills, Sylvie is persuaded into one last con.

Their marks are the de Jacquinots: dysfunctional aristocrats who believe they are haunted by their great aunt, brutally murdered during the French Revolution.

The scheme underway, the sisters deploy every trick to terrify the family out of their gold. But when inexplicable horrors start to happen to them too, the duo question whether they really are at the mercy of a vengeful spirit. And what other deep, dark secrets may come to light?]]> 304 Carmella Lowkis 1668024950 Candace 3
Novels about mid-19th century women spiritualists are sort of a trend now and If you are enjoying these stories, dig right in. Otherwise, this is an enjoyable read with plenty of nice period touches.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a digital advance review copy of this diverting novel.]]> 3.46 2024 Spitting Gold
author: Carmella Lowkis
name: Candace
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves:
review:
I think "Spitting Gold" will appeal more to fans of Sarah Penner than Sarah Waters, and I thought of a connection to Laura Shepherd-Robinson, too. The first part of the novel is the most immersive: Sylvie, the older sister, has left the family grifting business to marry a baron, an older man who she loves. Her sister Charlotte appears to convince her to help the family out with one more spiritualist con. This decision costs Sylvie everything and she is stuck back in the swirling vortex of the father she despises and her twisty sister. Once Charlotte takes over the POV, "Spitting Gold" loses traction.

Novels about mid-19th century women spiritualists are sort of a trend now and If you are enjoying these stories, dig right in. Otherwise, this is an enjoyable read with plenty of nice period touches.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a digital advance review copy of this diverting novel.
]]> Ghost Girl, Banana: A Novel 74832474 Set between the last years of the “Chinese Windrush� in 1966 and Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother’s homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.

Hong Kong, 1966. Sook-Yin is exiled from Kowloon to London with orders to restore honor to her family. But as she trains to become a nurse in cold and wet England, Sook-Yin realizes that, like so many transplants, she must carve out a destiny of her own to survive.

Thirty years later in London, having lost her mother as a small child, biracial misfit Lily can only remember what Maya, her preternaturally perfect older sister, has told her about Sook-Yin. Unexpectedly named in the will of a powerful Chinese stranger, Lily embarks on a secret pilgrimage across the world to discover the lost side of her identity and claim the reward. But just as change is coming to Hong Kong, so Lily learns Maya’s secrecy about their past has deep roots, and that good fortune comes at a price.

Heartfelt, wry and achingly real, Ghost Girl, Banana marks the stunning debut of a writer-to-watch.]]> 426 Wiz Wharton 0063239779 Candace 4 4.12 2023 Ghost Girl, Banana: A Novel
author: Wiz Wharton
name: Candace
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Pachinko 53331127 "There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones."

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Candace 5 currently-reading
In the most basic sense, this is a family saga, about a young Korean woman who moves to Japan when she marries a Korean Christian minister. The story of Koreans in Japan is fascinating and Min Jin Lee wraps Sunja and her family into history in the most human way.

Once I finished "Pachinko" my husband picked it up and is now happily putting his Saturday tasks on the back burner so he can finish. If you are after an engrossing, satisfying, fine novel to dive into, this is it.]]> 4.43 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Candace
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:
"Pachinko" pulls you in from the first page and kept me there to the final sentence. I was so excited about this novel that it would have been easy to be disappointed, but I certainly was not.

In the most basic sense, this is a family saga, about a young Korean woman who moves to Japan when she marries a Korean Christian minister. The story of Koreans in Japan is fascinating and Min Jin Lee wraps Sunja and her family into history in the most human way.

Once I finished "Pachinko" my husband picked it up and is now happily putting his Saturday tasks on the back burner so he can finish. If you are after an engrossing, satisfying, fine novel to dive into, this is it.
]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Candace 4
Things change when she actually falls in love which gives her hope. In college she begins to explore what it means when people call her a sociopath and sees that little work done to understand the condition. Gagne digs into her studies but is derailed when her father, who sees an advantage to her pathology, invites her into the music industry.

This is where "Sociopath" lost me. There's too much about the industry and celebrity and not enough about Patric learning how to manage her urges to stalk, steal, and offend in the workplace. Her story gets back on track when she decides to go to graduate school in psychology for her doctorate.

What's fascinating is how self-aware Gagne becomes and how she strives to understand herself, what she can change and what she can't. She still is something of a time bomb, but her honesty and forthrightness make "Sociopath" a remarkable exercise in personal transparency.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a DRC of this fascinating memoir. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Candace
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves:
review:
The photo on the cover tells it all--an awkward school picture of an off-kilter-looking little girl with strangely menacing eyes. As a child, Patric Gagne wondered why other kids didn't want to play with her and teachers grimaced when she was assigned to their classes. Her parents try to mitigate the lying, stealing, hitting, and nastiness; they send her to therapy but nothing helps. This is not just acting-out behavior but stuff that will make you cringe. Patric would like to change but does not seem able to do anything to change her own behavior.

Things change when she actually falls in love which gives her hope. In college she begins to explore what it means when people call her a sociopath and sees that little work done to understand the condition. Gagne digs into her studies but is derailed when her father, who sees an advantage to her pathology, invites her into the music industry.

This is where "Sociopath" lost me. There's too much about the industry and celebrity and not enough about Patric learning how to manage her urges to stalk, steal, and offend in the workplace. Her story gets back on track when she decides to go to graduate school in psychology for her doctorate.

What's fascinating is how self-aware Gagne becomes and how she strives to understand herself, what she can change and what she can't. She still is something of a time bomb, but her honesty and forthrightness make "Sociopath" a remarkable exercise in personal transparency.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a DRC of this fascinating memoir. All opinions are my own.
]]> Storm Child (Cyrus Haven, #4) 209523725 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN 9781668030998 can be found here

The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price?]]> 336 Michael Robotham 1668030993 Candace 5
Not surprisingly, Evie is a difficult character and the fact that she is now an adult and should be able to live independently creates more challenges in her life as well as that of Cyrus. Their relationship is fascinating, as are the developing revelations about Evie's past.

"Storm Child" is not for the faint of heart but it delivers an exciting and multilayered story that will glue readers to the page. Michael Robotham is a master and "Storm Child" does not disappoint.

A huge thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for a DRC of this thriller in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.12 2024 Storm Child (Cyrus Haven, #4)
author: Michael Robotham
name: Candace
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves:
review:
The fourth installment in Michael Robotham's Cyrus Haven series brings some resolutions and even more questions in Evie Cormac's case. She's now a young adult and still living with her former foster parent, psychologist Cyrus Haven. Evie was found hiding in a house where a man had been tortured to death. She has no memory of who she is or what happened before, and Cyrus, who has his own hideous childhood trauma, works with her to manage the psychological issues resulting from her experience.

Not surprisingly, Evie is a difficult character and the fact that she is now an adult and should be able to live independently creates more challenges in her life as well as that of Cyrus. Their relationship is fascinating, as are the developing revelations about Evie's past.

"Storm Child" is not for the faint of heart but it delivers an exciting and multilayered story that will glue readers to the page. Michael Robotham is a master and "Storm Child" does not disappoint.

A huge thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for a DRC of this thriller in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own.
]]> The Princess of Las Vegas 90587135
Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never gains an ounce, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, hair feathered into a style thirty years old, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap. On top of that, Crissy’s daily diet of Adderall and Valium leaves her more than a little tipsy, her Senator boyfriend has gone back to his wife, and her entire career rests on resembling a dead woman. And yet, fans see her for the gifted chameleon she is, showering her with gifts, letters, and standing ovations night after night. But when Crissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, and when Richie Morley, the owner of the Buckingham Palace Casino, is savagely murdered, Crissy’s carefully constructed kingdom comes crashing down all around her. A riveting tale of identity, obsession, fintech, and high-tech mobsters, The Princess of Las Vegas is an addictive, wildly original thriller from one of our most extraordinary storytellers.]]> 400 Chris Bohjalian 0385547587 Candace 4 3.39 2024 The Princess of Las Vegas
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Candace
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Künstlers in Paradise 60784564 There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed that fairy tale into a nightmare, and in 1939 the Künstlers found their way out of Vienna and into a new fairy tale: Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

For years Mamie Künstler, ninety-three-years-old, as clever and glamorous as ever, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City. Like many a twenty-something, he has come to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the global pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight.

Mamie was only eleven when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way, stunned and overwhelmed, to sunny, surreal Los Angeles where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, faced with months of lockdown and a willing listener, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her early years in Los Angeles: her escapades with eminent émigrés like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann. Oh, and Greta Garbo. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him. They reveal to him just how much the past holds of the future.]]> 272 Cathleen Schine 1250805902 Candace 5
All three of these people are funny and wholehearted, and the story is a gem. "Kunstlers in Paradise" is elegant and spicy, and filled with hope, heartache, and love. Thank you to Edelweiss for an E-Arc of this lovely book.]]> 3.40 2023 Künstlers in Paradise
author: Cathleen Schine
name: Candace
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/17
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:
Cathleen Schine's new book is a treasure for its humor, and a treasure for its exploration of loss. The Kunstlers of the title are a Viennese family who have the extraordinary good fortune to get visas and a job in Los Angeles at the last minute in 1939, leaving everything behind. Eleven-year-old Mamie is fascinated by her new home is Venice, Ca, but understands what this escape has meant to her grandfather and parents. Flash ahead to 2020, when Mamie's unlaunched grandson lands on her doorstep after his parents in New York refuse to give him any more money. She's always liked the kid, and she and her mysterious housekeeper/companion/friend Agatha plan to keep him busy. But the lockdown grounds them, and Mamie begins to tell Julian her story, and he latches on her tale, writing it in his own words and creating dialog. Could he have found a passion that works?

All three of these people are funny and wholehearted, and the story is a gem. "Kunstlers in Paradise" is elegant and spicy, and filled with hope, heartache, and love. Thank you to Edelweiss for an E-Arc of this lovely book.
]]> The Limits 179546868
From Mo’orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia’s imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband in New York. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen’s luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new, younger wife, Kate, she has been shuttled between her parents� disparate lives—her father’s consuming work as a surgeon at an overwhelmed New York hospital, her mother’s relentless drive against a ticking ecological clock—for most of her life. Fluent in French, intellectually precocious, moving between cultures with seeming ease, Pia arrives in New York poised for a rebellion, just as COVID sends her and her stepmother together into near total isolation.

A New York City schoolteacher, Kate struggles to connect with a teenager whose capacity for destruction seems exceeded only by her privilege. Even as Kate fails to parent Pia—and questions her own ability to become a mother—one of her sixteen-year-old students is already caring for a toddler full time. Athyna’s love for her nephew, Marcus, is a burden that becomes heavier as she struggles to finish her senior year online. Juggling her manifold responsibilities, Athyna finds herself more and more anxious every time she leaves the house. Just as her fear of what is waiting for her outside her Staten Island community feels insupportable, an incident at home makes her desperate to leave.

When their lives collide, Pia and Athyna spiral toward parallel but inescapably different tragedies. Moving from a South Pacific “paradise,� where rage still simmers against the colonial government and its devastating nuclear tests, to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York City, The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family. Heart-wrenching and humane, a profound work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.]]> 368 Nell Freudenberger 059344888X Candace 4
None of them are at their best, and this is what pulls the novel together. It made me remember how bewildered we all were about what would happen and how we would manage until there was a vaccine. Freudenberger skillfully portrays those feelings of confusion, but the main characters are hard to empathize with. The only one wrangling quarantine, caring for a toddler nephew, keeping away from her sister's "fiancee" is Athyna, one of the stepmother's students. She's the most at risk, and we can see how her coping skills come up against those of the wealthy family. The book gets its first spark when Athyna appears, but she's not in it enough to give "The Limits" what it needs. I found myself curious about the outcome without feeling driven to get there.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a DRC of this novel in exchange for my opinions. 3.5 stars rounded up.]]> 3.29 2024 The Limits
author: Nell Freudenberger
name: Candace
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:
Come to "The Limits" for the challenge of unraveling the difficult relationships Nell Freudenberger places on the page. Set at the start of Covid, teen Pia is sent to Manhattan to stay with her father, a doctor. Pia's mom makes the decision to send her child from Tahiti to one of the epicenters of the epidemic because she fears Pia may be becoming too close to another scientist on her team. Arriving in New York, She finds her father at the hospital nearly all the time and her new stepmother pregnant and having to teach her public high school students via Zoom.

None of them are at their best, and this is what pulls the novel together. It made me remember how bewildered we all were about what would happen and how we would manage until there was a vaccine. Freudenberger skillfully portrays those feelings of confusion, but the main characters are hard to empathize with. The only one wrangling quarantine, caring for a toddler nephew, keeping away from her sister's "fiancee" is Athyna, one of the stepmother's students. She's the most at risk, and we can see how her coping skills come up against those of the wealthy family. The book gets its first spark when Athyna appears, but she's not in it enough to give "The Limits" what it needs. I found myself curious about the outcome without feeling driven to get there.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a DRC of this novel in exchange for my opinions. 3.5 stars rounded up.
]]> Our Evenings 209576781 Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the Hadlows, the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school where their son Giles is his contemporary. For Dave this weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to Giles’s envy and violence. As Our Evenings unfolds over half a century, the two boys� careers will diverge dramatically, Dave a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.

Our Evenings is Dave Win’s own account of his life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security; but it is also, very movingly, the story of his hard-working widowed mother, whose own life takes an unexpected new turn after her son leaves home.

Both dark and luminous, poignant and wickedly funny, Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel gives us a portrait of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from the finest writer of our age.]]> 487 Alan Hollinghurst 1447208234 Candace 0 to-read 3.99 2024 Our Evenings
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Candace
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Strange Eventful History 201187765
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters� rich interior lives amid the social an]]> 448 Claire Messud 039363504X Candace 5
But there's a strangeness--their Gaston's anxious daughter Denise will spend her whole life wondering who and what she is. Francois, their son, marries a woman so different that it's hard to imagine them on the same astral plane. There's anxiety, depression, paranoia in the Cassar family, not so different from many families, yet somehow very different indeed. What if the grandparents' deep and abiding love is more than the family understands?

I was embraced by "This Strange Eventful History" from the first paragraph. Claire Messud's expression of Algeria in the 1920s when Gaston and Lucienne's unlikely love blossoms is entrancing, as is raising their family around the middle east before WWII, and taking refuge in Algeria during the war and seeking a place in the world that has changed. Messud smoothly changes the POV between the characters at different stages of their lives with deep and satisfying result.

I am grateful to WW Norton and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> 3.50 This Strange Eventful History
author: Claire Messud
name: Candace
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:
This completely enveloping story tells the tale of three generations of a French-Algerian family from the 1940s to 2010. Gaston and Lucienne wonder if their love is the masterpiece of their lives and little do they know that the perfection of their relationship will set a standard for following generations. As a member of the French Navy, he and his family live around the Mediterranean with the plan to return to their beloved Algiers, But even though the Cassar family has lived in Algeria for more than a century, they must leave when Algeria becomes independent of France. They are unmoored, even though son Francois is gathering advanced degrees across Europe and North America; his attempt to free his family from what he sees as their genteel poverty.

But there's a strangeness--their Gaston's anxious daughter Denise will spend her whole life wondering who and what she is. Francois, their son, marries a woman so different that it's hard to imagine them on the same astral plane. There's anxiety, depression, paranoia in the Cassar family, not so different from many families, yet somehow very different indeed. What if the grandparents' deep and abiding love is more than the family understands?

I was embraced by "This Strange Eventful History" from the first paragraph. Claire Messud's expression of Algeria in the 1920s when Gaston and Lucienne's unlikely love blossoms is entrancing, as is raising their family around the middle east before WWII, and taking refuge in Algeria during the war and seeking a place in the world that has changed. Messud smoothly changes the POV between the characters at different stages of their lives with deep and satisfying result.

I am grateful to WW Norton and Netgalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

]]> The Librarian of Burned Books 59851315 Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts—and herself.

Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live—or die—for.

New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives—including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator’s propaganda with a story of her own—at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn.

As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever.

Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime—the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as “weapons in the war of ideas”�The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word.]]> 384 Brianna Labuskes 0063259249 Candace 0 4.32 2023 The Librarian of Burned Books
author: Brianna Labuskes
name: Candace
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Fayne 61335885 734 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0735276641 Candace 0 to-read 4.38 2022 Fayne
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: Candace
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Murder 60466391 What if the murder you had to solve was your own?

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.

Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed--she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.]]> 304 Katie Williams 0593543785 Candace 0 gave-up 3.83 2023 My Murder
author: Katie Williams
name: Candace
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: gave-up
review:

]]> Mercy Street 58661458 The highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh is a tense, riveting story about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston.

For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care; for many, it is a second chance.

But outside the clinic, the reality is different. Anonymous threats are frequent. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia's days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy's, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11--the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.

Mercy Street is a novel for right now, a story of the polarized American present. Jennifer Haigh has written a groundbreaking novel, a fearless examination of one of the most divisive issues of our time.]]> 331 Jennifer Haigh Candace 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Mercy Street
author: Jennifer Haigh
name: Candace
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family]]> 177058784 A heartrending and unforgettable memoir of an unlikely journey to parenthood through America’s broken foster care system.

What does it take to keep a child safe?

As a long-time strategist and activist fighting for better outcomes for foster children, Mark Daley thought he had the answer. But when Ethan and Logan, an adorable infant and a precocious toddler, entered into their lives, Mark and his husband Jason quickly realized they were not remotely prepared for the uncertainty and complication of foster parenting.

Every day seven hundred children enter the foster care system in the United States, and thousands more live on the brink. Safe offers a deeply personal window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most vulnerable parties of all—the children themselves. Daley takes us on a roller coaster ride as he and Jason grapple with Ethan and Logan’s potential reunification with their biological family, learn brutal lessons about sacrifice, acceptance, and healing, and face the honest, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious challenges of becoming a parent at the intersection of intergenerational trauma, inadequate social support, and systemic issues of prejudice.

For fans of Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know, Stephanie Land’s Maid, and Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family, this touching and suspenseful memoir highlights the impossible choices all parents, in the foster system and beyond, face in raising children today. Safe shines a much-needed spotlight on how this country treats the most vulnerable among us, sounding a vital call to overhaul a thoroughly broken system.]]> 300 Mark Daley Candace 0 to-read 4.60 Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family
author: Mark Daley
name: Candace
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rescue 60828899 A new and beguiling thriller from three-time Edgar Award-winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker.

While reporting on a Tijuana animal shelter, journalist Bettina Blazak falls in love with one of her story’s subjects—an adorable Mexican street dog who is being treated for a mysterious gunshot wound. Bettina impulsively adopts the dog, who she names Felix after the veterinarian who saved him.

In investigating Felix’s past, Bettina discovers that his life is nothing like what she assumed. For one thing, he’s not a Mexican street dog at all. A former DEA drug-sniffing dog, Felix has led a very colorful, dangerous, and profitable life. With Bettina’s story going viral, some interesting people are looking for Felix, making him a target—again.

Bettina soon finds herself drawn into a deadly criminal underworld from which she and her beloved dog may not return.]]> 368 T. Jefferson Parker 1250793580 Candace 3 4.28 2023 The Rescue
author: T. Jefferson Parker
name: Candace
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Last House 196774466 "An ambitious historical epic that doubles as an intimate family saga. Jessica Shattuck captures and connects it all—the imperial ambitions of the postwar generation, the rebellion of their offspring in the Sixties, and the fallout we’re still sifting through today. . . . This is a wide-ranging novel to savor.� � TOM PERROTTA

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle comes a sweeping story of a nation on the rise, and one family’s deeply complicated relationship to the resource that built their fortune and fueled their greatest tragedy, perfect for fans of The Dutch House and Great Circle.

It’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, WWII veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. He takes the train into the city for work and returns to the peaceful streets of the suburbs and to his wife, Bet, former codebreaker now housewife, and their two children, Katherine and Harry. Nick comes from humble origins but thanks to his work for American Oil, he can provide every comfort for his family, including Last House, a secluded country escape. Deep in the Vermont mountains, the Taylors are free from the stresses of modern life. Bet doesn’t have to worry about the Russian H-bombs that haunt her dreams, and the children roam free in the woods. Last House is a place that could survive the end of the world.

It’s 1968, and America is on the brink of change. Protestors fill the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War to racism in the wake of MLK’s shooting—to the country's reliance on Big Oil. As Katherine makes her first forays into adult life, she’s caught up in the current of the time and struggles to reconcile her ideals with the stable and privileged childhood her Greatest Generation parents worked so hard to provide. But when the Movement shifts in a more radical direction, each member of the Taylor family will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the choices they’ve made for the causes they believed in.

Spanning multiple generations and nearly eighty years, Last House tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and even greater downfalls. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s history, this is an emotional tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance and what we owe each other—and captures to stunning effect the gravity of time, the double edge of progress, and the hubris of empire.]]> 321 Jessica Shattuck 0062979892 Candace 4
I can see this book sparking conversation and and possibly heated discussion. The characters are empathetic, but I found the earlier parts of the story more interesting than the latter. The ending filled me with trepidation--what if I don't have my own Last house when everything Nick and his buddy set in motion pays off in unexpected ways? This story does what fiction does best; provoke thought while laying the case before us , even if it may be too late.]]> 3.53 2024 Last House
author: Jessica Shattuck
name: Candace
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves:
review:
A smart, ambitious novel, Jessica Shattuck's "The Last House" is about oil. From the first page where she lists everything made of oil-based products. The novel begins in 1953, when WWII veteran Nick Taylor, now a corporate lawyer, hooks up with an old friend who leads him into the international world of Big Oil. Nick's wife Bet, a code breaker and artist, now a housewife, She's busy raising their two children while Nick, a thoughtful man, travels with an old friend all over the world to secure oil for the US in the post-war world. He is not open with Bet about what he does, but the income keeps them well, including the purchase of the Last house; Last being the surname of former owners. Their children come of age in the 60s and join the opposition without quite realizing their father's role in what they are protesting. "The Last House" touches on just about every important event from 1945 to the near future.

I can see this book sparking conversation and and possibly heated discussion. The characters are empathetic, but I found the earlier parts of the story more interesting than the latter. The ending filled me with trepidation--what if I don't have my own Last house when everything Nick and his buddy set in motion pays off in unexpected ways? This story does what fiction does best; provoke thought while laying the case before us , even if it may be too late.
]]> Caledonian Road 199126293 A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising―and declining―fortunes.

Campbell Flynn, art historian and biographer of Vermeer, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public―yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. Entangled with a brilliant student, he begins to see trouble brewing for his family and friends. All his worlds collide―the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet―as dangerous forces enter his life and Caledonian Road gives up its secrets.
Andrew O’Hagan has written a social novel in the Victorian style, drawing a whole cast of characters into company with each other and revealing the inner energies of the way we live now.

“Not only a peerless chronicler of our times, O’Hagan has generosity, humour and tenderness, which make this novel an utter joy to read.”―Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage and Brick Lane]]> 614 Andrew O'Hagan 1324074876 Candace 5
The main characters are Campbell Flynn, an art historian and "celebrity academic," as O'Hagan describes him. The other is Milo Mangasha, one of Campbell's graduate students at the University of London, who has a BS in computer science. Campbell grew up in Glasgow public housing, and Milo still lives with his father in council housing. His late mother, an Ethiopian immigrant, is still revered in the community as a teacher and activist. Both men have dear childhood friends who are involved in bad stuff. Both have connections to all sorts of people, nobility, human traffickers, mobsters, artists, drug dealers, you name it, and no one's head is resting easily.

There is such an air of nastiness beneath this modern world that you feel that those new energies Moira describes are just about to blow everything apart. O'Hagan describes a party as being like filthy litter on a windy day, spinning in circles and ready to lift off. Will Milo's computer brilliance and the activism instilled by his mother be able to bring some of the worst down? Will Campbell be able to find his way out of the nightmare he's created? The humanity of every character will keep you glued to the page, and their discoveries will keep you up at night.

Many, many thanks to WW Norton and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest. Read this book. It will both infuriate you and break your heart.]]> 3.74 2024 Caledonian Road
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: Candace
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/26
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves:
review:
"People have has enough and there are new energies in the world," says Moira Flynn, a Member of Parliament and attorney in Andrew O'Hagan's magnificent new novel. Like a book by Dickens, "Caledonian Road" brings people together from different strata of current London society. None are unblemished, but boy, are they all compelling and worthy of books of their own.

The main characters are Campbell Flynn, an art historian and "celebrity academic," as O'Hagan describes him. The other is Milo Mangasha, one of Campbell's graduate students at the University of London, who has a BS in computer science. Campbell grew up in Glasgow public housing, and Milo still lives with his father in council housing. His late mother, an Ethiopian immigrant, is still revered in the community as a teacher and activist. Both men have dear childhood friends who are involved in bad stuff. Both have connections to all sorts of people, nobility, human traffickers, mobsters, artists, drug dealers, you name it, and no one's head is resting easily.

There is such an air of nastiness beneath this modern world that you feel that those new energies Moira describes are just about to blow everything apart. O'Hagan describes a party as being like filthy litter on a windy day, spinning in circles and ready to lift off. Will Milo's computer brilliance and the activism instilled by his mother be able to bring some of the worst down? Will Campbell be able to find his way out of the nightmare he's created? The humanity of every character will keep you glued to the page, and their discoveries will keep you up at night.

Many, many thanks to WW Norton and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest. Read this book. It will both infuriate you and break your heart.
]]> The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1) 57690123 A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed. Solving the mystery will turn her once orderly world upside down in this utterly original debut.

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misinterprets the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has had to navigate life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly’s orderly life is turned on its head the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself very dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.]]> 385 Nita Prose Candace 0 4.03 2022 The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1)
author: Nita Prose
name: Candace
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Finding Margaret Fuller 171680310 An epic reimagining of the life of Margaret Fuller—America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.

Massachusetts, 1836. Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated “Sage of Concord,� to meet his coterie of enlightened friends shaping a nation in the throes of its own self-discovery. By the end of her stay, she will become “the radiant genius and fiery heart� of the Transcendentalists, a role model to young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures into the woods of Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson himself. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and she finds her restless soul in need of new challenges and adventure.

And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a women-only literary salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to the editorial meetings of The Dial magazine, where she hones her pen as its co-founder; to Harvard’s library, where she is the first woman to study within its walls; to the gritty New York streets where she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on the writings of Frederick Douglass. Margaret defies conventions time and again as an activist for women and an advocate for humanity, earning admirers and scathing critics alike.

When the legendary Horace Greeley offers an assignment in Europe, Margaret again makes history as the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with luminaries like Frederic Chopin, Walt Whitman, George Sand, and more. But it is in Rome where she finds a world of passion, romance, and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover—and sparking an international scandal. Evolving yet again into the roles of mother and countess, Margaret enters a new fight for Italy’s unification.

With a star-studded cast and epic sweep of historical events, this is a story of an inspiring trailblazer, a woman who loved big and lived even bigger—a fierce adventurer who transcended the rigid roles ascribed to women, and changed history for millions, all on her own terms.]]> 416 Allison Pataki 0593600231 Candace 5
The first of nine children, her father educated her like the son he hoped for (note that he did not educate his sons to the level he did Margaret.) His death put her in the pickle of so many women in a time when women could not work outside the home--the need to support the family, a large family. She does this my teaching and writing, coming up with ideas like holding groups from women, charging tuition to educate them and teach them to speak up for their ideas and beliefs. She finally teams with Horace Greeley at the New-York Tribune, becoming the first woman to edit a paper. He sends her to Europe to cover changes happening there with the idea that she will report on the struggle to unite Italy.

All of this happened between the age of 26 and her death at 40 in a shipwreck off the coast of Fire Island. With money the great issue it always was, she, her Italian husband and child traveled by cargo ship as opposed to a passenger liner. Upon hearing the news, Emerson asked Thoreau to go to the crash site to see if the bodies and a copy of her most recent manuscript could be recovered. Nothing was found.

Pataki wisely writes in the first person, humanizing Margaret and showing her as someone more than a genius whose words inspire and spark thinking, but as someone who would make a wonderful friend.

Perhaps too many pages are spent on her increasingly uncomfortable visit to the Emersons in Concord but it reveals the struggle of even the most open-minded men to understand this challenging mind in the head of a young woman.

I was so excited to be approved to read and review this novel and I was engaged in every page. Thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.03 2024 Finding Margaret Fuller
author: Allison Pataki
name: Candace
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves:
review:
Allison Pataki's excellent historical novel puts the remarkable Margaret Fuller in the spotlight, a place she certainly belongs. Dubbed "the best read person in America" in the 1830s, Margaret was a brilliant scholar, one of the few women in America with the education to match wits with her friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne and other Transcendentalists in America, and such Europeans as George Sand, and Elizabeth Barrett. Her books and essays were read and discussed all over the world.

The first of nine children, her father educated her like the son he hoped for (note that he did not educate his sons to the level he did Margaret.) His death put her in the pickle of so many women in a time when women could not work outside the home--the need to support the family, a large family. She does this my teaching and writing, coming up with ideas like holding groups from women, charging tuition to educate them and teach them to speak up for their ideas and beliefs. She finally teams with Horace Greeley at the New-York Tribune, becoming the first woman to edit a paper. He sends her to Europe to cover changes happening there with the idea that she will report on the struggle to unite Italy.

All of this happened between the age of 26 and her death at 40 in a shipwreck off the coast of Fire Island. With money the great issue it always was, she, her Italian husband and child traveled by cargo ship as opposed to a passenger liner. Upon hearing the news, Emerson asked Thoreau to go to the crash site to see if the bodies and a copy of her most recent manuscript could be recovered. Nothing was found.

Pataki wisely writes in the first person, humanizing Margaret and showing her as someone more than a genius whose words inspire and spark thinking, but as someone who would make a wonderful friend.

Perhaps too many pages are spent on her increasingly uncomfortable visit to the Emersons in Concord but it reveals the struggle of even the most open-minded men to understand this challenging mind in the head of a young woman.

I was so excited to be approved to read and review this novel and I was engaged in every page. Thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post]]> 58018175
Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds. Marjorie had an insatiable drive to live and love and to give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar’s treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood’s biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine.

Marjorie’s journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father’s barn as a young girl. No one could have predicted that C. W. Post’s Cereal Company would grow into the General Foods empire and reshape the American way of life, with Marjorie as its heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother, and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history in the process. Before turning thirty she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the United States. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion, and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy.

And yet Marjorie’s story, though full of beauty and grandeur, set in the palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult. A wife four times over, Marjorie sought her happily-ever-after with the blue-blooded party boy who could not outrun his demons, the charismatic financier whose charm turned to betrayal, the international diplomat with a dark side, and the bon vivant whose shocking secrets would shake Marjorie and all of society. Marjorie did everything on a grand scale, especially when it came to love.

Bestselling and acclaimed author Allison Pataki has crafted an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life woman, a powerful story of one woman falling in love with her own voice and embracing her own power while shaping history in the process.]]> 400 Allison Pataki Candace 4 4.33 2022 The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post
author: Allison Pataki
name: Candace
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Real Americans 62929342 Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? ]]> 399 Rachel Khong 0593537254 Candace 5
The Washington Post ran an article about "If you liked this, you'll love that," comparing loved books from last year with new books this year. I unexpectedly adored "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" and here it was shining light on "Real Americans" a novel I might have skipped. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Don't be deceived. "Real Americans" is a treat. Dig in!]]> 3.94 2024 Real Americans
author: Rachel Khong
name: Candace
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves:
review:
I had to devour this delicious book in tiny nibbles to make it last longer, it's that good. It's a mystery, a romance, a coming-of-age story, a historical novel, all of which are expressed in the most compelling way.

The Washington Post ran an article about "If you liked this, you'll love that," comparing loved books from last year with new books this year. I unexpectedly adored "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" and here it was shining light on "Real Americans" a novel I might have skipped. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Don't be deceived. "Real Americans" is a treat. Dig in!
]]> The Turtle House 158649877
Both women are at a turning point: Mineko, long widowed, moved in with her son and daughter-in-law after a suspicious fire destroyed the Cope family ranch house, while Lia, an architect with a promising career in Austin, has unexpectedly returned under circumstances she refuses to explain. Though Lia never felt especially close to her grandmother, the two grow close sharing late-night conversations. Mineko tells stories of her early life in Japan, of the war that changed everything, and of her two great a man named Akio Sato and an abandoned Japanese country estate they called the Turtle House, where their relationship took root.

As Mineko reveals more of her early life—tales of innocent swimming lessons that blossom into something more, a friendship nurtured across oceans, totems saved and hidden, the heartbreak of love lost too soon—Lia comes to understand the depth of her grandmother’s pain and sacrifice and sees her Texas family in a new light. She also recognizes that it’s she who needs to come clean—about the budding career she abandoned and the mysterious man who keeps calling. When Mineko’s adult children decide, against her wishes, to move her into an assisted living community, she and Lia devise a plan to bring a beloved lost place to life, one that they hope will offer the safety and sense of belonging they both need, no matter the cost. A story of intergenerational friendship, family, coming of age, identity, and love, The Turtle House illuminates the hidden lives we lead, the secrets we hold close, and what it truly means to find home again when it feels lost forever.]]> 304 Amanda Churchill 0063290510 Candace 5
When the book opens, Lia has abandoned her juicy job with a top architecture firm to return to her tiny Texas hometown and share a room at her parents' with her Japanese grandmother, who's there because she burned her house down. It's pretty clear that Minnie did this on purpose but everyone is blaming it on her age. Minnie is a tough chain-smoking gal who does not fit the classic image of a Japanese war bride.

But as Churchill begins to explore Minnie's past, we see that she has never been typical, challenging her family's expectations of a daughter. But these traits will bring her to her great love, the elegant son of a wealthy family with whom she an almost magical bond. They meet at an abandoned house they call the Turtle House, a place of great beauty and peace. So how did Mineko transform into Minnie, on her way to a Texas ranch with a nasty husband and two small children?

Lia and Minnie are a turning points in their lives and the way they challenge and support each other makes for a captivating story. As it always seems, one story line is stronger than the other. Minnie is an irresistible force, but Lia's stream will hold your interest as well. A delicious read, "The Turtle House" is the work of a fine new talent.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a DRC of this book in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.98 2024 The Turtle House
author: Amanda Churchill
name: Candace
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves:
review:
It's hard to believe that "The Turtle House" is a first novel. It's very confident, and Amanda Churchill skillfully manages the dual timelines of 1999 Texas and 1930s and 40s Japan.

When the book opens, Lia has abandoned her juicy job with a top architecture firm to return to her tiny Texas hometown and share a room at her parents' with her Japanese grandmother, who's there because she burned her house down. It's pretty clear that Minnie did this on purpose but everyone is blaming it on her age. Minnie is a tough chain-smoking gal who does not fit the classic image of a Japanese war bride.

But as Churchill begins to explore Minnie's past, we see that she has never been typical, challenging her family's expectations of a daughter. But these traits will bring her to her great love, the elegant son of a wealthy family with whom she an almost magical bond. They meet at an abandoned house they call the Turtle House, a place of great beauty and peace. So how did Mineko transform into Minnie, on her way to a Texas ranch with a nasty husband and two small children?

Lia and Minnie are a turning points in their lives and the way they challenge and support each other makes for a captivating story. As it always seems, one story line is stronger than the other. Minnie is an irresistible force, but Lia's stream will hold your interest as well. A delicious read, "The Turtle House" is the work of a fine new talent.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for a DRC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Days of Wonder 192778259 320 Caroline Leavitt 164375128X Candace 5
The novel opens with Helen driving to the state prison to pick up her daughter who is being released early. Ella was sentenced to twenty-five years for the attempted murder of her boyfriend's judge father, but her case has been thrown out. She entered prison at fifteen and is being released at six years later, and she the thing she wants most is to find the baby she gave birth to in prison, who has been adopted in a closed adoption. This seems like such a bad idea, more and more after you learn more about the circumstances of the child's birth. Helen is just to happy to have Ella with her and promises herself to let Ella make her own way.

There is so much emotion and compassion in this book, which touches on issues of class, religion, and family abuse. There are so many ingredients in Caroline Leavitt's novel that it consistently surprises. I ached for the characters found the end satisfying and believable.

I was so glad to be approved to read and review this novel by NetGalley and Algonquin Books. This is my honest review.

__Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader]]> 3.64 Days of Wonder
author: Caroline Leavitt
name: Candace
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves:
review:
"Days of Wonder" is like a bowl of heaped bowl of spaghetti with each noodle a different story strand. These is so much to this book and it is so masterfully paced that you will dig in with gusto and enjoy every bite.

The novel opens with Helen driving to the state prison to pick up her daughter who is being released early. Ella was sentenced to twenty-five years for the attempted murder of her boyfriend's judge father, but her case has been thrown out. She entered prison at fifteen and is being released at six years later, and she the thing she wants most is to find the baby she gave birth to in prison, who has been adopted in a closed adoption. This seems like such a bad idea, more and more after you learn more about the circumstances of the child's birth. Helen is just to happy to have Ella with her and promises herself to let Ella make her own way.

There is so much emotion and compassion in this book, which touches on issues of class, religion, and family abuse. There are so many ingredients in Caroline Leavitt's novel that it consistently surprises. I ached for the characters found the end satisfying and believable.

I was so glad to be approved to read and review this novel by NetGalley and Algonquin Books. This is my honest review.

__Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
]]> Mother Doll 195660554 A kaleidoscopic novel about the shadow of trauma in Russian history that follows four generations of mothers and daughters

Zhenia is pregnant, her marriage is languishing, and Vera, her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world, is dying. Enter Paul, a famous psychic medium who’s been approached by Irina, mother of Vera and great-grandmother of Zhenia. Irina is an interdimensional being who lives in a cloud of ancestral grief. She hopes Paul will be a willing conduit for her epic story of doomed revolt and nation-rending heartbreak, and that through him Zhenia will be her confessor and grant her absolution for her greatest shame: abandoning her daughter in a Soviet orphanage for children of spies.

But does either woman have what the other needs to understand the predicament they’re in? Or will the very legacy of trauma that they carry be what damns them both forever?

Accompanied by a chorus of fellow Russians also stuck in the cloud of grief, Irina decides to forge ahead. She speaks of the unspeakable, answers forbidden questions, and excavates repressed memories. And Zhenia decides to join her on the journey. Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll is, ultimately, a bold and irrepressible depiction of generational trauma and the shifting expectations of womanhood and motherhood.]]> 320 Katya Apekina 1419770950 Candace 5
Zhenia wanders through her life without paying much attention. She's now pregnant, which she and her boyfriend had decided was not in their future. She can't quite arrange a termination and he moves out. The only person who can bring her to the surface is her grandmother Vera, who now has dementia and is dying.

Out of the blue Zhenia receives a phone call from Paul, a respected psychic, who tells her that he's been contacted by an insistent spirit who needs to talk to Zhenia. It's her great grandmother Irina, who wants to explain and be absolved for abandoning Vera at an orphanage for the children of spies. Irina is unrelenting, speaking through Paul at the most inopportune times. What she learns is heartbreaking, but will she be able to shake off her ambivalence to share Irina's message? And who would believe her?

The pages fly by in this funny, painful, unpredictable novel bursting with idiosyncratic characters and the anguish of history. Many thanks to Overlook Press and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of this marvelous novel.

]]> 3.74 2024 Mother Doll
author: Katya Apekina
name: Candace
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves:
review:
This innovative novel has it all, and readers will absolutely eat it up. "Mother Doll" is a complete meal, with multiple timelines, irresistible characters, both living and dead, and a protagonist you will root for and want to shake until she snaps out of it. So, so good.

Zhenia wanders through her life without paying much attention. She's now pregnant, which she and her boyfriend had decided was not in their future. She can't quite arrange a termination and he moves out. The only person who can bring her to the surface is her grandmother Vera, who now has dementia and is dying.

Out of the blue Zhenia receives a phone call from Paul, a respected psychic, who tells her that he's been contacted by an insistent spirit who needs to talk to Zhenia. It's her great grandmother Irina, who wants to explain and be absolved for abandoning Vera at an orphanage for the children of spies. Irina is unrelenting, speaking through Paul at the most inopportune times. What she learns is heartbreaking, but will she be able to shake off her ambivalence to share Irina's message? And who would believe her?

The pages fly by in this funny, painful, unpredictable novel bursting with idiosyncratic characters and the anguish of history. Many thanks to Overlook Press and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of this marvelous novel.


]]> Tiananmen Square 201924482
As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances.

But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works-Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others-that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.

A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party's insistence on conformity-and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air�

Drawn from her own life, Lai Wen's novel is mesmerizing and haunting-a universal yet intimate story of youth and self-discovery that plays out against the backdrop of a watershed historic event. Tiananmen Square captures the hope and idealism of a new generation and the lasting price they were willing to pay in the name of freedom.]]> 528 Lai Wen 1954118392 Candace 5
There is a gentleness to this story that is irresistible. Lai Wen is a beautiful writer, showing, not telling us what it was like to grow up in that time and place. The humanity of her tale makes every page a treasure, very much like the classic world literature Lai discovers in the old bookstore.

I highly recommend this novel, and I hope that Lai Wen is working on another novel. Lai's story is not over, and I would love to know more.

Many thanks to Spiegel & Grau, NewGalley and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book.]]> 3.97 2024 Tiananmen Square
author: Lai Wen
name: Candace
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/22
shelves:
review:
"Tiananmen Square" is a moving novel about a young girl, names Lai, coming of age between China's Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre. Lai is a compelling narrator, part of a unsettled family living in a crowded apartment building in a poor neighborhood in Beijing. Her father is a shadow following his detention during the Cultural Revolution. Her mother is brittle and critical, her beloved grandmother earthy and inappropriate. When Chinese citizens are ordered to stay indoors and away from windows during the visit of Zbigniew Brzezinski to Beijing, Lai and a friend sneak out to see the motorcade, a misstep that will haunt her for years. She wins a scholarship to the prestigious Beijing University which may be in her home city, but is a world apart. There, she begins to understand what made her so frightened and recognize her real self.

There is a gentleness to this story that is irresistible. Lai Wen is a beautiful writer, showing, not telling us what it was like to grow up in that time and place. The humanity of her tale makes every page a treasure, very much like the classic world literature Lai discovers in the old bookstore.

I highly recommend this novel, and I hope that Lai Wen is working on another novel. Lai's story is not over, and I would love to know more.

Many thanks to Spiegel & Grau, NewGalley and Edelweiss for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book.
]]> Off the Books 198902253 A captivating debut following a cross-country road trip that will make you believe in the goodness of people, Off the Books sheds light on the power in humanity during the most troubled of times.

Recent Dartmouth dropout Mei, in search of a new direction in life, drives a limo to make ends meet. Her grandfather convinces her to allow her customers to pay under the table, and before she knows it, she is working as a routine chauffeur for sex workers. Mei does her best to mind her own business, but her knack for discretion soon leads her on a life changing trip from San Francisco to Syracuse with a new client.

Handsome and reserved, Henry piques Mei’s interest. Toting an enormous black suitcase with him everywhere he goes, he’s more concerned with taking frequent breaks than making good time on the road. When Mei discovers Henry's secret, she does away with her usual close-lipped demeanor and decides she has no choice but to confront him. What Henry reveals rocks her to her core and shifts this once casual, transactional road trip to one of moral stakes and dangerous consequences.

An original take on the great American road trip, Off the Books is a beautifully crafted coming of age story that showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the power of doing the right thing. The spirit of Frazier’s characters will stay with readers long after they have arrived at their destination.]]> 224 Soma Mei Sheng Frazier 1250872715 Candace 4
"Off the Books" is a fun, different kind of road trip that entertains from start to finish. All the characters in this book are intriguing and appealing, and I see a bright future for Soma Mei Sheng Frazier. I would certainly read anything by her and look forward to. being an avid follower of her career. Her combo of world issues, mystery, and a touch of romance are winners.

Thanks! to NetGalley and the publisher for a DRC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.]]> 3.62 2024 Off the Books
author: Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
name: Candace
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
review:
The moral of this story might be not to take career advice from a morally quirky old-country grandfather who seems to think that things work the same in the Bay Area as they do in China. Mei drops out of Dartmouth in her last semester because of a family tragedy. Her grandpa sets her up as a limo driver, which she used to do to earn money on her college vacations. He ups the earning power by telling her to transport people off the books, which opens her up to a lot of shady business. Much of her business comes from ferrying sex workers, mostly Chinese from one date to the next. If your Spidey-sense is screaming "trafficked women," so is Mei's. She accepts a cross-country trip with a handsome guy who is toting a strange black suitcase, a suitcase you just know Mei is going to poke. Is Henry a human trafficker or a kidnapper?

"Off the Books" is a fun, different kind of road trip that entertains from start to finish. All the characters in this book are intriguing and appealing, and I see a bright future for Soma Mei Sheng Frazier. I would certainly read anything by her and look forward to. being an avid follower of her career. Her combo of world issues, mystery, and a touch of romance are winners.

Thanks! to NetGalley and the publisher for a DRC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
]]> Like Mother, Like Daughter 199347234
When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.

But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control� emotions and “unsafe� behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.

Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . .

Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.]]> 320 Kimberly McCreight 0593536428 Candace 3
The crux of the story turns out to be concern over a pharmaceutical company's attempt to hide birth defects caused by one of their drugs. Daughter Cleo peels back the layers to see of this has anything to do with her mother and how this knowledge can help her find Katrina.

I didn't click with the characters and found the ending contrived and unsatisfying. Kimberly McCreight has written a number of books with lots of fans so I might try another. I'm still grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for putting this author on my radar!]]> 3.64 2024 Like Mother, Like Daughter
author: Kimberly McCreight
name: Candace
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves:
review:
I expected to be swept up in this novel like so many reviewers, but that just didn't happen. The relationships between Katrina, the disappeared one, her daughter and the husband Kat's divorcing. Then there's the guy she met online dating who Kat is interested in. Everyone's lives are messy and their relationships filled with rancor.

The crux of the story turns out to be concern over a pharmaceutical company's attempt to hide birth defects caused by one of their drugs. Daughter Cleo peels back the layers to see of this has anything to do with her mother and how this knowledge can help her find Katrina.

I didn't click with the characters and found the ending contrived and unsatisfying. Kimberly McCreight has written a number of books with lots of fans so I might try another. I'm still grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for putting this author on my radar!
]]> The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia 200555174
Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When an old woman begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.]]> 416 Juliet Grames 0593536177 Candace 4
Soon, Franca is fully embroiled in questions about the skeleton, asked by various villagers because, as an outsider, she can ask these questions. Or can she? Franca finds a surprising collaborator in her cranky landlady and the two of them ask those questions and incur rancor on all sides.

As a "fish out of water," the young American will make you cringe with embarrassment as she runs roughshod over traditions and beliefs, certain that she knows better. She delves into the men who've gone to America, and often vanished. Her sense of superiority is irritating, but the moments when she connects with people in her town are delightful.

Juliet Grames' world building is complete and entrancing, especially when we realize that such a town as Santa Chionia can no longer exist, at least in that form. This novel lacks the shock factor that made "Stella Fortuna" so unforgettable. Still this is a appealing look at a time, place, and attitude that will carry you along to the end of the tale.]]> 3.54 2024 The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia
author: Juliet Grames
name: Candace
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves:
review:
Francesca Loftfield arrives in the isolated Italian village of Santa Chionia, chomping at the bit to create the nursery school she's been trained to build by a British entity. It's 1960, and the goal is to raise a generation of literate children in an area that has never had a school. She's prepared for a village clinging to a mountain side with no electricity or running water. She's not prepared for massive flooding that will wash out the only bridge connecting Santa Chionia to anything, or that her mission will be derailed by the discovery of a child's body when the flood waters recede.

Soon, Franca is fully embroiled in questions about the skeleton, asked by various villagers because, as an outsider, she can ask these questions. Or can she? Franca finds a surprising collaborator in her cranky landlady and the two of them ask those questions and incur rancor on all sides.

As a "fish out of water," the young American will make you cringe with embarrassment as she runs roughshod over traditions and beliefs, certain that she knows better. She delves into the men who've gone to America, and often vanished. Her sense of superiority is irritating, but the moments when she connects with people in her town are delightful.

Juliet Grames' world building is complete and entrancing, especially when we realize that such a town as Santa Chionia can no longer exist, at least in that form. This novel lacks the shock factor that made "Stella Fortuna" so unforgettable. Still this is a appealing look at a time, place, and attitude that will carry you along to the end of the tale.
]]> The Night Tiger 41124373 A sweeping historical novel about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.

When 11-year-old Ren’s master dies, he makes one last request of his Chinese houseboy: that Ren find his severed finger, lost years ago in an accident, and reunite it with his body. Ren has 49 days, or else his master’s soul will roam the earth, unable to rest in peace.

Ji Lin always wanted to be a doctor, but as a girl in 1930s Malaysia, apprentice dressmaker is a more suitable occupation. Secretly, though, Ji Lin also moonlights as a dancehall girl to help pay off her beloved mother’s Mahjong debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir: a severed finger. Convinced the finger is bad luck, Ji Lin enlists the help of her erstwhile stepbrother to return it to its rightful owner.

As the 49 days tick down, and a prowling tiger wreaks havoc on the town, Ji Lin and Ren’s lives intertwine in ways they could never have imagined. Propulsive and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores colonialism and independence, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and first love. Braided through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.

]]> 380 Yangsze Choo 1250175445 Candace 5 4.02 2019 The Night Tiger
author: Yangsze Choo
name: Candace
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Within Arm's Reach 203019737 A tender and perceptive debut novel about three generations of an Irish American family jarred into crisis by an unexpected pregnancy—from the bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“This stunning . . . exquisite, skillfully written gem addresses serious issues–e.g., guilt vs. loyalty, the past vs. the present—[but] remains hopeful and includes ample doses of humor and wit.”—Library Journal (starred review)

No one in my mother’s family ever talks about anything that can be categorized as unpleasant or as having to do with emotions. . . .

This spellbinding debut by bestselling author Ann Napolitano is a poignant reminder of how connected we are to those we love, even when we cannot find the words to say it. The unforgettable story of three generations of a large Irish Catholic family, Within Arms Reach is another rich and deeply satisfying novel from the author who captured the many dimensions of grief in Dear Edward and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood in Hello Beautiful.]]> 352 Ann Napolitano 0593732499 Candace 4
Is it still enjoyable? Yes, as long as you don't expect the same impact as the later books. There are a number of disappointed reviews on GoodReads but if you take "Within Arm's Reach" for a trajectory, you'll enjoy it a lot more. And, come on, who doesn't like a novel about a very large, unruly Irish family?

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.]]> 3.41 2004 Within Arm's Reach
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Candace
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/10
shelves:
review:
"Within Arm's Reach" is the perfect example of how Ann Napolitano has grown as a writer. Her most recent novels, Dear Edward and Hello Beautiful, slug you right in the solar plexus with their power, tenderness, and heart. This novel, which is being republished based on the success of her two latest, has those elements in development but it is not there yet.

Is it still enjoyable? Yes, as long as you don't expect the same impact as the later books. There are a number of disappointed reviews on GoodReads but if you take "Within Arm's Reach" for a trajectory, you'll enjoy it a lot more. And, come on, who doesn't like a novel about a very large, unruly Irish family?

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.
]]>