in residence

loving lately: summer sun

2026-06-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

Happy June! Kicking off the summer with one of my recent favorite colors, as I get to pull out the items I've acquired over the last year (with one new notable addition) and put them back into regular rotation. Here's what's bringing some extra sunshine to sartorial life lately, along with one of my very favorite warm-weather activities: reading outdoors!

1. Espadrilles: finally decided to try the mesh flat trend with these too cute espadrilles, because how could I resist this color, not to mention the comfort soles. Excited to take them for their first spin soon, and I know I'm going to be wearing them all summer with my sun dresses, and to dress up shorts.

2. Lightweight blouse: a casual, lightweight blouse is great for limiting over-exposure to the sun... mine from last year actually looks more like this, but I kind of still want this cropped button-down version. How many yellow shirts is too many yellow shirts?

3. Athletic dress: I could live in these for daytime, so easy to wear and look put together but stay cool and be ready for anything with kids - going for a scooter-walk, playing at the park, you name it. I have a variety of cuts (including high-neck, v-neck) and colors but am of course partial to the yellow.

4. Unseen sunscreen: goes without saying that sunscreen is the central component of any sunny day outfit! This is my fave - goes on super smooth and no weird color cast, plus on your face it serves as such a great primer that helps any foundation go on nicely for a barely-there look.

5. Bombas socks: admittedly I'm just coveting this particular summery pair and don't actually have them (it is my birthday month though!!), but I am wearing a lot of these quarter height socks so I can look hip and young to my college-aged babysitters.

6. Tank: love a simple tank tucked in to high waisted jeans or a cute little skirt/skort, and you can't beat the price of this one.

reading lately: May roundup

2026-06-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

When I sat down to compile my May reads, I was surprised at how many books I got through this month - almost forgot about some of them! The numbers were upped by having done 3 audiobooks (a huge number for me in this span of time), and maybe a couple of books that I wasn't super loving, so I read them kinda fast. I had a mix of new books from top-favorite authors - though not my favorite from them for the most part, unfortunately - and some exciting new finds too.

Literary/contemporary fiction

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder: 1986 was a big year - the Challenger disaster, the return of Halley's Comet, the Chernobyl disaster, the televised wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. And as she experiences these things from her home in small-town Wyoming, Georgie also experiences major upheaval in her life: her uncle, aunt, and cousin come from India to move in with Georgie, her parents, and her older sister Agatha. They try to be welcoming, as family does, until Agatha decides that it is time for her uncle to go - and she and Georgie are going to take care of it. We soon learn that the reason for this is incredibly sad and difficult: they see no other way to escape his abuse. But Georgie's narration, making their "case" and telling about the months leading up to/following their uncle's death, is both cheeky and sardonic, sometimes directly addressing the (white) reader and confronting their assumptions about immigrants and Indians (vs the other "Indians" - Native Americans) and their experience, and also interspersed with teen magazine-like quizzes that bring up all of the conflicting emotions Georgie faces regarding her crumbling relationship with her sister and her guilt about her uncle. I feel like the end of the blurb captures really well the genre mash-up, the themes, the darkly comedic approach, and Georgie's general tone/voice: "At its heart, the tale she weaves is: a) a vivid portrait of an extended family; b) a moving story of sisterhood; c) a playful ode to the 80s; d) a murder mystery (of sorts); e) an unexpected and unwaveringly powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence. Or maybe it’s really: f) all of the above." There were some parts where the timeline felt a tad confusing, but overall I found this such a refreshing read, dealing with something really sad and difficult but in a unique way, involving both dark humor and deep empathy. The way Georgie talks about sexual abuse by a family member is not graphic, but it is heart-wrenching in the emotional and physical pain, and in how terrible it must be to feel that silence is the only option - until Agatha comes up with a permanent solution, that is. It's a short read and worth it if you can read it in that spirit (I've seen other reviews on Goodreads that maybe tried to read it more "straight", and those readers didn't like it...). There are tons of themes to ponder beyond this too - racism, prejudice/bias, colonialism, privilege, family bonds, healing, and more... Made me think of some of the themes in Good People as well, though this is much more of a dark comedy approach. ★★★★.25

Evensong: In this character driven, quiet, and quotidian novel, Stewart O'Nan revisits some characters from earlier works (most notably Emily Maxwell and her sister-in-law Arlene from Emily, Alone and Wish You Were Here) in the post-covid years. This group of women-of-a-certain-age who attend the same Pittsburgh church are also part of a group they call the Humpty Dumpty Club, which is organized around helping other aging people with whatever care/tasks they might need, like rides to a doctor's office, picking up prescriptions, etc. Four of the most prominent members have to pick up some slack when their indominable leader, Joan, has a fall and requires rehab in a nursing home, and the book follows them through a year as they care for others in their community, as they become closer as friends, and as they also face their own challenges with aging The book has an intimate feel because of how it portrays the minutia of their lives as aging/widowed/divorced women, but also how well it evokes the real feelings that can come with that stage of life, from regrets about rifts with their children to fear/denial about the onset of dementia, to the indignities of how loss of abilities requires relying on others and the feeling of being at the margin of society and perhaps not having anything useful to offer. This gives it a bit of a melancholy feel, but the women and their foibles and idiosyncrasies still give it levity, and overall there is a feeling of hope and warmth thanks to community and care, both of which give meaning to life in spite of its difficulties (whether major or minor). If you are looking for a book/a fastidious character that feels like The Correspondent, I definitely suggest Emily, Alone (a 5-star read as well) - but also Evensong has similar themes and considerations and overall episodic and so very human feel to it. Also would suggest for fans of Elizabeth Strout, especially her Olive Kitteridge character. It was sometimes a bit confusing which character was being referenced as each chapter often jumped among them rather than focusing on one character, and having several protagonists doesn't allow you such a close feeling to any one character, so that maybe prevented me from loving it 100%, but overall it was still a book that I wanted to give a melancholy yet contented hug when I finished. The end is so poignant and overall it is just so human, and I loved the use of Evensong as the title/metaphor for this twilight time of life, in parallel to the evensong services of certain church traditions, which provide a reflective and meditative end-of-day worship time (and of course the church-going ladies in this book attend these services too). ★★★★.5

American Fantasy: With the bubble-gum cover and the tagline about "what happens when your teenage fantasy becomes reality as an adult", Emma Straub's newest book, about a 50-year-old woman who goes on a cruise featuring performances by and meet-and-greets with the 1990s boyband obsession of her youth, sure seems like it should be frothy fun... but I think the marketing of this one leads to disappointment in the reading experience. It's not a rom-com by any means, nor is it simply a romp about a woman finding herself via her past as I was led to believe in the blurb. Instead, it's more of a character study of 3 different people - Annie, the divorcee who reluctantly goes on this cruise full of rabid fans; Keith, one of the Boy Talk members, who loves the singing but is super drained by the whole being "on" part of fame, especially when it comes to a cruise where he can't escape the fawning fans; and Sarah, a 30-year-old cruise line employee tasked with wrangling the band members and making sure all of the planned performances and appearances go smoothly yet preoccupied with following the social media accounts of the girl she just got dumped for - and of how these people face a kind of "how did my life turn out to be this" situation. At different ages/stages all three of them are confronted on this cruise, sometimes in a bit comedic of ways (which is how the overall tone stays light), with how their regular lives are not working for them, and figuring out how to take back the reins in their lives and pursue their own happiness. I love Emma Straub's writing and the way she captures an ensemble cast and makes such wry and true observations about the foibles and flaws of modern life/humanity/relationships - but also infuses it all with big-heartedness - but this one just did not work as well for me as her previous books. I think it's partly because the ensemble cast in this case is a bit disparate - unlike in something like All Adults Here, where it's a group of grown siblings who all have their own lives and concerns but converge in the family home, this book's protagonists are 3 different characters who barely intersect in terms of plot/interactions, so it just feels like there's too much going on... yet at the same time, nothing's happening. (Seriously, especially the beginning - so slow!) A bit disappointing, but still worth a read if you are interested in tapping into some feelings of nostalgia, or exploring a bit what it would be like to be a 50-something whose heyday was as a teen idol, and what that does to the psyche. I did like the themes/reflections on youth and aging, fame and fandom, nostalgia and starting anew - but the delivery just fell a bit flat with how slow things moved and how many characters were involved. (Such as the advertised "befriending of a band member" from the blurb - there isn't even a hint of anything along these lines happening until more than halfway through the book.) ★★★.25

Porcupines: Sonia is a single mom who stays at a remove from other parents (while having plenty of internal sassy commentary about suburban PTA moms); she is always prickly and vague about her personal life/family history and instructs her tween daughter, Mila, to act the same - until Sonia is forced into proximity with parents and students alike when Mila surreptitiously signs her up to chaperone a school orchestra trip to San Francisco. The orchestra trip, the follies that happen along the way, and Sonia's snarky attitude about it all are interspersed with chapters about Sonia's upbringing in Cold War-era Budapest, to her immigration to the US as a teen, and her unexpected pregnancy. These chapters slowly reveal the reasons Sonia has for concealing her past, all while the walls she has built are coming crashing down thanks to some "who is my dad?" sleuthing by Mila. I like a snarky and singular narrative voice, but at times this one felt like it was trying a little *too* hard - sometimes I had to go back and re-read sentences because the actual meaning of it could get lost within the snarky observational comparison. And I think the way Sonia's character is developed is done in part to demonstrate the lack of connection that can come from being an immigrant (especially an undocumented one), but that doesn't really make for an enjoyable reading experience for me as I feel completely held at remove from the characters too. To add to that, while the sections set in Sonia's past felt like a character exploration that included delving into soviet-era upbringing and Jewish family history, the present-day ones felt more like a madcap comedy of errors slash PTA mom send-up. That type of zaniness can make me feel disconnected from characters sometimes, and also it just didn't mesh with the rest of the book in some ways. After finishing, I was reading through some Goodreads reviews to try to make sense of the ambivalence I was feeling - appreciating parts of the message but finding that the reading experience was meh. I saw these comments in a review from user Greg and thought they were very helpful/illustrative: "Rather than driving forward on an engaging plot, Fabriczki seems to build a kind of emotional anthropology. Viewed this way, one can be more generous. Its slowness can be viewed as a reflection of Sonia’s own dislocation: immigration, generational tension, and identity aren’t experienced as neat arcs but as long stretches of uncertainty punctuated by small, often ambiguous encounters. It may seem to cohere more if one approaches it as a study of friction—between cultures, and between mothers and daughters.... Her struggles with her daughter, mother, and sister aren’t framed as problems to be solved but as tensions she must endure. This has an unsatisfying feel, but it also resists the kind of tidy resolutions the novel seems to want to avoid." ★★★

Mystery/thriller

Last One Out: Five years ago, Ro's son Sam went out to interview some fellow townspeople for his oral history thesis project, preserving memories of their rural Australian town that had been slowly crumbling away as a mining company set up operations and took over land, but that evening he didn't show up at home for his 21st birthday dinner, and he was never seen again. In the years since, Ro and her husband, Griff, have separated, and the town has become essentially a ghost town, with very few but the most loyal/entrenched families left, and almost all businesses, even the health clinic where Ro worked, shut down. On this 5-year anniversary of when Sam went missing, Ro has returned to the town for a memorial with Griff and their daughter, Della, and as she is back in the place where it all happened and is going over Sam's notes and final movements for the millionth time, there are finally some hints to what might have happened, and as Della pulls at those threads, what's remaining of the old friends/families in town starts to unravel... I really like when a mystery involves real-feeling people who I can relate to, so Ro and Griff's grief as parents, along with the relationship struggles that come with grieving differently feel true to life and worth exploring, as does the psychology of this dying town and how the loyalty to it or readiness to move on from it affects both Ro and Griff's story and the rest of the people in the town - but that's pretty much all this book is until about 200 pages in. Clearly it's a mystery what happened to Sam, but the focus is more on the grieving process, with little flashbacks/memories of Sam and other friends/family members from before his disappearance that you assume will play a part in solving this mystery but feel much more reflective than anything else. I like Jane Harper's sense of place as a character unto itself + her slow build of suspense, but while this one has the sense of place, it has very little suspense overall. Really none of the feeling of tension that I'd usually expect to pull me along, with the overall mood being much more about grief and longing for the "before". Also, I really like a mystery that peels back layers of the story and slowly reveals what characters know or remember, but there's a fine line between that and feeling like the author is deliberately withholding information as kind of an easy out. This sometimes felt a bit borderline. Overall a solid read if you are in the mood for a family drama that has a bit of procedural mystery solving to it, but not my favorite Jane Harper book by any stretch - and she has some really excellent mysteries, if you haven't tried her yet! ★★★.75

Dissection of a Murder: Leila is a barrister who has received her first murder case - but there are a couple of twists: the victim is a well-known judge, the client is someone she worked with before and has always felt guilt about not getting him out of jail time, and, in the biggest twist of all ... the prosecutor? Her professional mentor. And her husband. The plotting was interesting and intriguing at first, though I found the plot generally slow moving. I did like the courtroom scenes, especially learning about the British system, but when a book ends up hinging on things like deliberately withheld information, unreliable narrator, and/or total personality about-face, I end up feeling so annoyed at the end. Feels like a cop out? Perhaps mea culpa for wishing it would be a legal drama a la Defending Jacob or Presumed Innocent. Instead it was a legal thriller, and I did not enjoy the thriller aspects at all. In fact hated the "Witness X" interludes; from the get-go it was clear to me that a big twist was going to hinge on them, and it was deliberately obfuscating who this person was in order to make the twist - meanwhile, they felt like they had nothing to do with the actual plot. This one is getting buzz and lots of 5-star ratings on Goodreads, but based on how it ended, I honestly felt annoyed that I had finished it. Might have liked as a Netflix series, not as a book unfortunately. ★★.75

Romance/rom-com

The MASH Up: If you're looking for something a bit unique and a lot nostalgic to read by the pool this summer, here's an idea for you: a rom-com in which a rule-following, routine-abiding accountant celebrating her 35th birthday is reminded by her best friend of a M.A.S.H. game from seventh grade in which her results predicted growing up to live in a mansion, driving a tie-dye jeep, running a roller-disco restaurant and living with 13 pet goldfish... plus her romantic match, Penn. Ruby is amused in the moment, aside from the whole Penn part. He's her twin brother's best friend from childhood, and Penn and Ruby have always had a bit of a frictional and sarcastic relationship, especially as she sees his adult lifestyle as a bit wild and irresponsible compared to her life of long-term goals and plans. But then it becomes far less amusing when she wakes up actually IN that MASH world. Experiencing a different adulthood than her real life teaches her a lot - especially as she examines how she became so much less carefree and willing to dream or try new things than she had been - and of course as her eyes are opened to these things, she also becomes more open to who Penn really is underneath their sparring. The nostalgia factor continues as Ruby reminisces with her best friend as well as Penn about their growing up years, a timeframe that aligns with my age, and the unique factor of course comes from the magical realism but also the "breakup" portion not revolving around some dumb miscommunication but instead this alternate universe situation. I appreciated that there was just as much personal growth as romantic growth in the story, but sometimes the about-face felt a little unrealistic. I found that it lagged a bit in the middle, especially the physically flirty scenes - for me, coulda skipped some of that and still gotten the same effect of the relationship build - and the writing/characters didn't capture and charm me quite as much as my very favorite rom-coms (I often struggle with a enemies to lovers trope as the animosity can feel a little tiresome), but it was overall a fun ride and will be a great beach read when it publishes in July (I read an advance copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review). ★★★.5

Nonfiction/memoir

The Anxious Generation: Though it won't by any means make you feel good about the mental health of our teens/twenty-somethings, or about the social media landscape in general, the information in this book is invaluable and compellingly presented. The bottom line in Jonathan Haidt's argument, after he presents all of the hard data and studies that prove it in various ways: we are overprotecting our children in the real world, and we are underprotecting them in the virtual world. And as a result, the kids are not okay - in terms of anxiety/depression, as well as capacity to take on relationships and risks and new things in the real world (basically, capacity to become a full-fledged adult, I'd say), today's teens are suffering as their hours are more and more filled with phone/internet use and social media. If I'm honest, I found the book a tad long, but that's partly because right before I read it I attended a presentation in which a local psychology professor (who has actually worked with Haidt and even more so with Jean Twenge, who is also working in this space related to teens/social media) succinctly presented the data-driven portions of the argument. And as I trusted that, I didn't need allll of the nitty gritty. But I really appreciated the concrete suggestions that Haidt brings from the data - especially no smartphones before high school and no social media before age 16 - and even more appreciated all of the insights into the importance of a play-based childhood (versus a phone/screen-based one) and the importance of giving kids more real-world freedom to roam, to have unstructured (no parent/teacher direction) time with other kids, and things like that. I also appreciated the concrete suggestions around making this happen, and especially around how we can act collectively as society and, what feels even more doable, by banding as parents of kids in a particular school/city. For starters, if we agree on some restrictions, fewer kids will have phones/social media, then our kids won't feel left out/FOMO when they're not allowed to... In our family we already had planned to wait on these things, so an even bigger take-home for me was the portions about play-based childhood and about extending freedoms and making sure to leave plenty of time/space for unstructured in-person hangouts with peers for our middle schooler, and about thinking of the age-appropriate equivalents we can give to our preschooler. It seems like our collective mentality has moved away from these things, but individual families and schools can start the process of correcting them! Along these lines, next we're picking up Free Range Kids (which somewhat inspired the play-based childhood portions of this book) as well as Jean Twenge's 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, which has additional concrete suggestions. ★★★★★

London Falling: In late 2019, Rachelle and Matthew Brettler's 19-year-old son Zac went to stay with a friend, and when he didn't come back the next day they grew concerned and filed a police report. A few days later his body was pulled from the Thames river, and building surveillance footage was identified that showed him jumping from the balcony of the riverside luxury apartment building he had been staying in. It was an apparent suicide, but as they learned more about the life Zac had been hiding from them - that he was pretending to be the son of a Russian oligarch to these wealthy (and potentially dangerous) men was just the tip of the iceberg. This so wild it feels like it should be a movie story is then fully fleshed out with an economic history of London and how it has led to the current situation, where it is a haven to displaced oligarchs who seem to face no repercussions for any law breaking, along with a who's who in the underworld of gangsters, fraudsters, money launderers, etc. Though I have followed his work via The New Yorker and associated podcasts, this is the first of Patrick Radden Keefe's books that I have read, and as a typical non nonfiction reader, this is the kind of nonfiction that can get me interested! Super well researched and engaging in terms of a story arc, really well written too - but what I liked even more was the personal touch and empathy he adds. It's not just a stranger-than-fiction true crime story; it also honors the parents' confusion and grief about their son and their (rightful) frustration and anger with the police force for not thoroughly investigating, and makes them feel like the real people that they are, rather than characters to gawk at in a true crime story. And my very favorite part of the book, the final section, actually brought Patrick himself into it, as he described how he came to meet the Brettlers and how he researched for the book. It's fascinating but also has a really human and personal side that grounds this super detailed in the research yet also super big picture in the exploration of socioeconomic/crime history. Good on audio, though hard to keep track of some of the gangster people and their connections to the story - so many names and in-depth details! ★★★★

No One's Coming: This fascinating and at times jaw-dropping book tells the story of two American volunteer medical workers caught up in the incredibly deadly 2014 Ebola epidemic in Liberia, and the history and ingenuity of the aviation company that was contracted to evacuate them after they test positive for the virus and are at death's door within days. The account of the illness is harrowing, and the hurdles surmounted and red tape surmounted by the eccentric and maverick types working for Phoenix Air to plan and pull off this rescue within a matter of days is pretty amazing. I think the author of this book set out to write page-turning narrative nonfiction, and I think he absolutely achieved it with the way he writes in short chapters, alternates between the two storylines - the health declines of Kent and Nancy in Liberia, and the rush to get an evacuation plan in place with the Phoenix crew - and keeps to just the necessary details (in contrast to the Patrick Radden Keefe book I just read, which had soooo many names to keep track of!). And he makes the main players in the story feel like quite the characters (probably not that hard to do with some of the Phoenix Air people especially, with their unique individual backgrounds). What comes along with this though is that sometimes it feels a tad melodramatic and feels like it's bordering on hero worship. Having a spouse who is a doctor, I got the sense that he found some of the medical stuff, written in a way that keeps a lay audience feeling like it's a page turner, a tad overblown, and that he thought his former pilot colleague would find some of the aviation stuff to be the same way. But there's no denying it's an engaging read and a unique topic. And even more timely in a world where epidemics/pandemics are much more in our consciousness and experience versus when this story was happening in 2014, where there's currently an active Ebola outbreak again, and where (horrifyingly, for the people who are suffering and dying because of it, and for our own health and safety in light of possible pandemic) US-AID has been dismantled and the CDC/US public health approach is a joke. As for who I'd recommend this to - a pretty broad audience! Totally a dad book recommendation as father's day approaches, or for anyone who is into narrative nonfiction or even someone who is into medical dramas. Also probably of interest for fans of books like Everything Is Tuberculosis or Mountains Beyond Mountains that take an epidemiology or public health topic and give the history but also personalize it in terms of introducing us to some of the people dedicating their lives to making a difference in this area. Definitely held my attention on audio too. ★★★★.25

I've got more books from beloved authors on the docket this month - most notably Ann Patchett and David Sedaris, and I'm counting on them being more successful than this month's new releases by some of my go to authors... you know I'll report back!

loving lately: tulip time

2026-05-11T08:00:00.086-04:00

The local annual tulip festival has just wrapped up, and notwithstanding the clogged roads and sidewalks with the influx of visitors to town, it is one of my favorite times of year - the city plants hundreds of thousands of bulbs every year and they are just gorgeous. Tulips have long been my favorite flower (my wedding bouquet was just a huge bunch of them and I still think it's the loveliest thing ever), and this year I've decided to really embrace my tulip era and become a collector of all things tulips.

1. Lego tulip bouquet: My role with building Lego sets is typically "piece finder" for my kids, but I really loved putting together a bouquet as an at-home date with Peter, so their botanicals collection stays on my radar, which is how I spotted this newly released set a couple of months ago I immediately told everyone in my household that if they don't get it for me for Mother's Day or my birthday, what are they even thinking?!

2. Tiny tulip baseball hat: Rey-to-Z is a hat go-to for personal use for me (and my kids!) and also for gifting. Typically I've purchased the initial hats, but how cute is their new embroidered tulip version?

3. Tulip basket: I really don't need another basket, but actually I think I might need this basket...

4. Painted candles: I love painted taper candles - in fact, I organized this as a very fun DIY at the Galentine's Party I hosted this year, using these wax pens on these tapers - but my local ladies and I found that our skills were just not quite there for recreating a tulip design, so I might just have to splurge on this Pottery Barn version.

5. Rollneck sweater: Like the Lego tulips, this one made me gasp aloud when I first spotted it. The J.Crew rollneck sweater in a tulip design, AND in my light spring color palette?! Much as I coveted it though I couldn't pull the trigger on full price, and it kept being excluded from promotions... until my patience was rewarded when it was put on clearance + extra 40% off. You better believe I sported it almost daily during Tulip Time last week (I guess that was one good thing about the weather being cooler than one would like for May).

6. Jigsaw puzzle: How pretty is this painting-turned-puzzle?

7. Washable doormat: I have a couple of Ruggable doormats and love being able to wash the covers, as well as change them out seasonally. They just came out with this tulip design and it's going to have to be the next one I add to my collection for sure.

reading lately: April roundup

2026-05-01T08:00:00.293-04:00

April reading was bookended by the latest release from two authors whose work I have loved for years - Tana French and Lily King - and both absolutely lived up to my high expectations of them. And in between, all but one of the books I read were new-to-me authors, and some that I would definitely like to see more from soon. Here's the recap:

Literary/contemporary fiction

Heart the Lover: This novel opens in the narrator's senior year of college, when she gets noticed by star students and best friends Sam and Yash in a 17th century literature class, and she is pulled into their orbit of generous, gregarious friendship, ambitious scholarly discussions mixed with smart banter, and - eventually - a love triangle situation. Then 20 years later, when she is settled into life as a mother, a wife, and a writer, this short but extremely formative period of her life comes rushing back with some sad news and unexpected reunions, both of which force her to confront some of the decisions and (self)deceptions she made in that period. It's very much a character-driven novel but propulsive thanks to the voice of the narrator, the way that the friends, especially Yash, are so charming, and the way that the novel packs in so many emotions: infatuation, love, aspiration, angst, longing, nostalgia, grief. It made me feel a lot in a small number of pages, and that kept me turning them for sure, and left me feeling bereft when I finished, partly because of what happens in the story, and partly because when a book is such a well-done thing of beauty it's a certain kind of grief to be done with it. It's literary fiction but done in an accessible way (aside from a few of the especially philosophical/academic discussions - do real college students ever converse like that?) because the characters feel real, and the writing is infused with empathy and wisdom. The "look back" nature of it, with the narrator reflecting from later adulthood on her college years, adds to it, because it brings perspective to the angst or self-absorption of the characters in that section, things that are pretty normal for 21-year-olds but can feel tiresome to read if not handled with this kind of touch. Definitely recommend for readers who loved Lily King's Writers & Lovers, with some of the same themes and the overall general feel/emotions (not to mention a through-line on one of the characters), but also for readers who liked last year's Deep Cuts and also The Rachel Incident (similar nostalgia feeling, and the college friends/coming of adulthood), for readers who were total college English major nerds like me (or who like a literary campus novel with English-major types), and those who enjoy a novel about the writerly life; additionally, some of the grief themes/feelings made me think of the reading experience of books like When Breath Becomes Air and We All Want Impossible Things. ★★★★.5

Search: Though entirely fictional, this book is written in the format of one of those "my year of..." memoirs; in it, restaurant critic and food writer Dana recounts her time serving on the pastoral search committee for her progressive Unitarian Universalist church in southern California. The tone is lightly comedic - not satire exactly, but definitely pokes some fun at the foibles of churches and their congregants, and amusingly presents the range of typical people you'd find on a committee (the one who knows all of Robert's Rules, the one who doesn't come prepared and then asks a million questions that everyone who did read the packet already knows, etc.). While also showing some friendships as well as conflicting relationships that develop on the search committee, especially the opinions of the "youngs" versus the "olds" (with 50-something Dana being caught in the middle), it's mostly a recounting of the various stages of the process, from writing the mission statement to going on a group-bonding retreat to reading candidate bios/listening to sample sermons to inviting the shortlist for trial runs. It feels accurate to the way a process might go, and in showing it also makes you think about the purpose of church (especially the community that it creates), the different needs people have from their church and whether it's possible to suit everyone, the relative importance of different functions of a church (preaching, outreach, social justice, etc.), and more. I could maybe have gone for a bit more emphasis on these aspects as some of the nitty gritty got a little dull (as real meetings do - I could never be on this committee as I claim an allergy to meetings...) and I could hardly keep straight (nor did I *entirely* care) which prospective candidate we were learning more about. Or maybe I could have used the book being just a tad bit shorter (didn't really need the excerpts from the prospective candidates' sermons, for example). But overall I found it amusing, a bit thought-provoking in terms of church communities in general and the Unitarian Universalist perspective in general. You don't have to be a church-goer to enjoy it, as many of the interactions and ways that the committee works are representative of people in general, bit of a comedy of manners in this way. Also included in the "nitty gritty" is all of the food that they ate at their meetings, and that Dana reviewed for her newspaper job during the year, so it's kind of a foodie "memoir" too, if you like that kind of thing. ★★★.5

Yesteryear: Natalie is a influencer with thousands of followers, living on a lovely farm in Idaho with a passel of kids and an apparently perfect life in which she bakes her own bread in her gorgeous kitchen, etc. - I'm sure you can imagine the tradwife of it all. Behind the scenes though there's actually an army of helpers that actually make "having it all" possible, a persona that slips and reveals kind of a nasty, narcissistic woman underneath, and big PR/personal trouble brewing on the horizon - until one day she wakes up in "yesteryear", in the 1800s version of her farmhouse, which if far from perfect. Yesteryear actually comes with food that tastes bland, clothes that have to be handwashed in freezing cold water, aches and pains that can't be escaped, and more. This book is getting lots of buzz right now, and it definitely feels like one I need to discuss after finishing. Partly for the interesting issues it brings up about women's roles and whether they can be satisfied in any version of them, the "manosphere", the resurgence of patriarchal values in some communities, the craziness of the influencer/social media world and whether it's complete fakery (not to mention what it does to their children), the things that are done in the name of God/church, and more - but just as much for the whole WTF was that?! aspect of the plot in general. It starts out feeling like a satire/social commentary of the tradwife influencer concept, and it could be interesting to read for the melodrama of it all, along with the absolute cattiness of Natalie's voice, though I think the caustic nature of it would have been too wearing to read an entire book of. Then it veers into the past, and you're wondering what in the world this book even is - is it a time travel or horror book? A tale of some sort of crazy reality TV hidden camera situation? Or a wild fever dream? It's a wild ride, and though I was intrigued along the way, and I managed to stick with a dislikeable character more than I normally would (be prepared - I'm not sure I found any redeeming qualities in her,), I also left with kind of a depressed feeling, seeing the world through Natalie's eyes for so long, and through them seeing no way for a woman to be happy no matter what direction she chooses for her life. I think it's well written, but the whole thing is also just kind of bonkers, so I'm not quite sure what I think overall! It does feel like something totally different, and sometimes there's something to be said for moving away from "sameness" in one's reading life... ★★★.5

Mystery/thriller

The Keeper: Tana French does it again with writing the epitome of a literary/character driven and atmospheric mystery. By this conclusion of her trilogy about small Irish town Ardnakelty, I feel like I really know and have a lot of affection for Chicago transplant and former police officer Cal Hooper, teenaged Trey who ends up as kind of his surrogate daughter, and the cast of locals from gossipy shopkeeper Noreen to the somewhat grizzled old sheep farmers Cal meets up with at the pub (these guys are great - I actually laughed out loud at some of their ribbing/bantering at each other). So from page one of this book I was already right in, back to a familiar place with familiar people - and also a familiar feel of a dark undercurrent. Because while things seem to be going great as the townspeople have started to accept Cal as one of their own, his relationship with local woman Lena is going steady, and Trey seems to be headed for good things after her rocky childhood, there are long-held grudges and generational feuds in this small community, strongly held relationships to the farmland and distrust (and worse) toward people who might try to take it away... these things that usually simmer just below the surface boil over when a young woman is found dead in the river, and when related to this a scheme cooked up by local businessman Tommy, whose son was dating this young woman, is made public. Different factions take sides, and the town seems ready to come to blows as a whole, plus on the personal level this introduces many complications for Cal. To maintain his relationships in the town, he has to show that his loyalties lie with the farmers, but on the other hand Lena is not happy with some of his decisions in this regard. This reading experience felt totally immersive to me - this town feels like a real place, and the land/community are a character in themselves - but it is not fast-paced at all. Definitely character-driven and more focused on psychological tension than action, think of it more as noir than as thriller for sure. But the way that individual characters might fear for their standing or safety, or the way that the collective of the community could envelop or ostracize a person for any "offense" provided me with plenty of tension to keep me hooked (not to mention that with my affection for these characters I was biting my nails worrying about how things were going to turn out okay for them). Not a short book by any means, but I could have kept reading for even longer. ★★★★★

Brimstone Hollow: Last year I enjoyed the introduction of PI Annie Gore in The Witch's Orchard for her badassery and tenacious investigation style, and for the general slow-burn, atmospheric mystery aspects of the book. The Kentucky/Appalachian setting in particular, along with how it brought in (dark) local lore made it stand out as unique, so I was pleased to get an advanced copy of the next book in the series (via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review) and picked it up when I was hankering for a procedural. This installment furthered Annie's interesting/somewhat mysterious backstory with childhood flashbacks brought on by the father/daughter relationship (or lack thereof) in her client and her client's estranged snake-handling minister father whose death seems a bit suspicious - despite the snake handling of it all - and overall the book again was very evocative of the small Appalachian town atmosphere/characters as well as the particular natural world surrounding it, with the sulfur springs and hidden hollers. It was a bit slow moving at times (repetitive in Annie's musings about the case and her theories) and perhaps a bit overly descriptive (blow-by-blow of everything she does in the day, down to what she orders at the diner), but that part also seems to go with the genre at times. Overall though another solid and satisfying (slow-burn) mystery, and again I'd be happy to read more in the series especially if we peel back more of the layers of Annie's past along with it. ★★★.5

This Story Might Save Your Life: On the brink of a major money network deal for best friends Benny and Joy and the cult favorite podcast they have created, Benny shows up to their recording studio at Joy's house to find that windows have been smashed, and neither Joy nor her husband, their producer Xander, are anywhere to be found. As we follow Benny forward from "missing" day one, with his fears and confusion about what has happened and about his relationship with Joy, the police investigation, etc. we also get Joy's story from the beginning of their relationship and launch of their podcast, in chapters of an unpublished draft memoir. And for both characters, the disaster/near-death survival theme of their usually jokey and comedic podcast called This Story Might Save Your Life takes on a more literal and serious tone as they use it to try to survive or send messages to each other in real life... I like a thriller with a stand-out format (like 56 Days, which tells the story in reverse-ish), but while the present day alternating with journal entry/memoir entries can shake up format a bit, it feels kind of done to me - and also tends to feel rather convenient that we're getting just the info that the present-day character needs to know about what was going on with their missing friend/family member... At least in this book, the memoir sections, which I can often find a bit boring compared to the actual plotline, were quite engaging, as I liked Joy's voice from the start and was curious to find out where her story would go, as it started to peel back the veneer of what other people knew and give a real glimpse of her relationships. Of course, being a thriller, the story went to pretty unbelievable lengths. And even though I really connected with the character in the beginning (necessary for me to have any interest in a thriller type book), that began to distance a bit as the plot started to feel more unrealistic or convoluted, and I found the back half to be less strong than the front, especially as the characters' sometimes poor decisions got to me a bit. However a protagonist with narcolepsy did feel stand-out and different, interesting how that played into things. Overall though a twisty read that kept me guessing on a few aspects, didn't go too far into the ick factor of domestic relationships (though there still may be some trigger warnings to check, it typically tells about these things in a more detached way than a happening in the moment way, which I appreciate), had a friendship that I was rooting for, and kept me turning the pages even if it isn't going to go down as one of my favorites ever in the genre. This is a buzzy one right now, and I can see people loving it as a beach read this summer; it feels like a Netflix-ish miniseries waiting to happen, especially with the California setting. ★★★.25

Romance/rom-com

Annie Knows Everything: At the start I was afraid that this wouldn't be for me as I don't love a super chaotic main character, as Annie seems to be when she shows up late and disheveled for work at a productivity app startup only to find out that her keycard doesn't work because her job has been eliminated. She connives with her best friend, an HR rep, to get moved to an open slot in the data strategy department, which she is not at all qualified for, but at least is a job! The head of this department seems a bit curmudgeonly and totally tech nerd but also happens to be rather attractive. Annie decides at once that she wants to win him over by being the best data strategist she can be - whatever a data strategist even is. She manages to weasel her way in and become essential to this little department, all the while developing a friendship with this group of guys, and undeniably finding chemistry with Connor... In the end Annie endeared herself to me, especially as she brought her strengths in problem-solving related to relational/personnel aspects of work (rather than the nerdy tech tunnel vision of her new workmates), and her personality and Connor's complemented each other well. But the conflict that brought about the big problem in their relationship was entirely caused by Annie's rash actions (which is a trend by her, plus her know-it-allness of the title), and gah that can be annoying in a character for rule-follower like me. This is for people who enjoy a workplace romance, a New York city rom-com, tech workplace foibles, great friendship/workplace banter with the charming side characters. I also really liked that it had an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers arc - I find that enemies to lovers often makes the story feel tiresome in the antagonism, and then doesn't feel realistic when all of a sudden the characters are all over each other... but this was character friction of the amusing variety, and then a fun friendship, and then I totally bought in to rooting for them to get together romantically. (Also, pretty low on steam overall - I just skipped about 1 chapter that was hot-n-heavy.) Cute and fun; I'd read more from this author in future! ★★★.75

Nonfiction/memoir

Strangers: This memoir starts out with a bang: in the early days of Covid lockdown, just after they have vacated their Manhattan apartment for the relative safety of their Cape Cod home with their preteen daughters, Belle Burden receives a message from an unknown number, telling her, "your husband is having an affair with my wife". It would be hard enough to figure out how to handle this marriage bombshell when you're with your kids 100% of the time (and hyped up on pandemic anxiety to boot) but what about when suddenly your spouse of 20 years wants out of both the marriage and parenting all of a sudden? In that moment he becomes a total stranger to Belle; in the following section she then goes through their relationship from its inception to tell their love story but also to comb through it with us as her readers for whether she should have seen any signs of this along the way. I thought this was a good audio selection, kept me quite engaged (and sometimes agog, at the behavior of her ex), though there were a few times that I wondered what the bigger picture was, why this story in particular should be out in the world for everyone to read. She definitely addresses this at the end, but it took a little while to get into that, and I might have liked to see it woven throughout a bit. I did appreciate that while we are getting Belle's side of the story, the telling of it gave the depth of her grief and emotion but also managed to give a bit of nuance to her husband, even when my brain wanted to just write him off as stereotypical midlife crisis man ick. Real life is rarely that simple. I don't know much about Truman Capote's "Swans", but part of why many people might pick up this book is that Belle Burden's grandmother was one of these New York socialites. She does go into her family history a bit with some tidbits that may intrigue, but it's really Belle's own story. I think a better literary connection would be Pete and Alice in Maine, a novel about a marriage falling apart at the beginning of the Covid lockdown, and about the challenges of parenting during that particular time + the ways that parenting can affect a marriage over the years. Like with this novel, Strangers is a story about a family with plenty of wealth and privilege, which on the one makes it kind of conflicting to consider because of the ways that even with these issues their lives are so much better off than others' - but also a reminder that everyone is human and can face heartbreak and betrayal and renewal, and a reminder that even if you could always say someone else has it worse, that doesn't mean that your difficulties aren't difficult. ★★★★

Excited to have new books from even more of my favorite authors on the shelf for May reading - here's hoping Emma Straub and Jane Harper come through as well as this month's ladies!

reading lately: kid reads roundup

2026-04-24T08:00:00.124-04:00

Four year olds have a particular brand of humor all their own, and that's been on full display lately with what types of things make Freddie laugh, and with what types of (completely mystifying to the rest of us) jokes that he makes up. Happily, we've happened upon a few books lately that really lean into the silliness or the imagination of a four year old but are also amusing to the adult in the room. Passing them along in case you, too, just cannot read The Book With No Pictures aloud to them one more time, even if it is clever...

1. Bored: Freddie can often be the kind of kid who flops around moaning, "what can I doooooooo" if someone isn't actively playing with him at the moment, so this book about Rita and how she is so boooooored is very relatable from page 1. She's so bored that she repeats the word over and over until it doesn't even sound like a word - something I now do every time Freddie tries to tell me he doesn't know what to do. The illustrations in this one are great, and the way Rita ends up using her imagination to make herself so busy, coming up with this whole island for bored people, is captivating and quirky funny for both parents and kids. The twist and the end is cute and made us smile too.

2. Bear and Bird: for kids who are ready to bridge from picture book to chapter book read-alouds, this series is an excellent level and length of writing. I saw it described as Frog & Toad meets Narwhal & Jelly - so you have this sweet friendship but also realistic conflicts/resolutions between the characters, in a book that feels both classic yet charmingly zany and humorous. We have borrowed 2 of these from the library and I kind of want to own them all, they're so cute and full of wit.

3. The Future Book: this humorous book comes to you from the future, where certain things are opposite (the sun is called the moon, and the moon is called the sun), but certain things have changed in entirely unexpected ways. For example, instead of saying "bless you" when somebody sneezes, you say, "forgive me, Susan." The zaniness continues, with fun, bold illustrations, and the effect is a spot-on for kids whose humor aligns with The Book with No Pictures variety. Often Freddie won't let me read him a library book if Daddy already read it to him, but this is the kind of book that he requests to return to again and again (and then "reads" it to us himself, ad libbing in some additional funniness).

4. Doctor Ted: an oldie but goodie we rediscovered at the library recently, after reading it with Hendrik years ago. The saying goes to be the change that you want to see in the world... and this teddy bear Ted embodies that, dressing up and role-playing different careers when help is needed, and he "helps" others on the playground or at school in actually not-so-helpful but hilarious ways. Though in the end, he usually does actually manage to save the day. We also find Firefighter Ted quite amusing.

5. The Bureau of Misplaced Dads: this one is slightly surrealist in a way that appeals to preschooler humor, turning the idea of "losing" your parent (such as getting separated from them in the grocery store or something like that) into this quirky idea (and illustrations that suit it perfectly) of a Bureau of Misplaced Dads where a whole variety of fathers who are missing their children are waiting to be found back and picked up.

reading lately: March roundup

2026-04-01T08:00:00.521-04:00

The bad news of my March books roundup is that the reading month felt a bit hampered by having 3 selections in a row that I just could not finish for one reason or another. I have included those books at the end - not trying to be mean about them, but I do sometimes find that hearing reasons why a person didn't finish a book can be just as informative in deciding whether I want to pick it up. But the good news is that I still managed quite a variety of books, including my first middle grade, audiobook, and literary fiction in a while, and even better, there are a couple of new-to-me authors here who provided excellent reading experiences - which means they go on my to-be-read list for whatever they come out with next!

Literary/contemporary fiction

Love Is an Algorithm: Eve is unconventional and arty and passionate, bucking her wealthy New York family's wishes to become a songwriter and musician. Danny is her brother's best friend and dating app co-creator, a computer-minded kind of guy who is always a bit anxious about his relationships and his standing, having come from less means and experience, growing up with a single dad out west. While the fledgling app isn't making great dating matches for Danny, when he and Eve get together it just feels *right* - but he's still anxious about whether she's happy, whether he's enough, whether there's anything he can do to make sure she stays (unlike his mother... baggage!). This prompts a major change to the dating app's approach, and he develops it into something that can help users quantify and monitor their relationship health/potential, complete with a friendly AI assistant that can provide suggestions for how to handle situations in their relationships. At his heart he just wants to make Eve happy in their relationship, but does his his "outsourcing" to the AI end up making him feel more distant? The narration goes back and forth between Danny and Eve's relationship with snippets of their past that show the baggage they bring into it, whether from how they were raised or from how past relationships went. I'd say it's more character-driven - the plot of the app development is more as a tool for exploring relationships and the idea of whether/how we can fully know someone, and how we handle the uncertainty of putting ourselves out there to love someone, when there's a possibility they may not love us back - but the dialogue and character development is smart and sharp while also being charming, so it moves along nicely. This is definitely not a rom-com - I feel like I have actually read the rom-com version of this (The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren), and the tone/story is much more straightforward, the characters a bit more caricature, the plot predictable in terms of the normal arc of a rom-com. This book is a modern love story for the AI age, but just as much as romantic love its about the love and relationships friends and of family, and how to navigate those things in a world that's uncertain, and when our innermost selves can sometimes be impenetrable to others. It felt fresh so enjoyable to read, yet smart and thought-provoking and also kind of interesting in terms of structure/timeline (though occasionally this felt a tad gimmicky, I mostly loved how the structure choices propelled my reading experience in a mostly character-driven story). I would love to see it as a Netflix series, I imagine it would feel kind of like how I found Nobody Wants This to be current and fresh and great banter with characters who have real feeling insecurities about relationships, and a relationship I really rooted for without it seeming cheesily rom-commy. Thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience and would be interested in other work by this author. (I received an advance copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.) ★★★★.25

Dream Count: This is a Covid pandemic book that rather than feeling triggering about lockdown uses it as a good jumping off point for exploring the reactions/self-reflections it brought about in a group of women: Chia, a Nigerian travel writer from a super wealthy family who is living in the US, spends the time of isolation reflecting on all of the romantic relationships she's had and why they didn't work (and why she feels like there's no one who has actually known her). Her friend Zikora, a lawyer in DC, has recently been abandoned by her partner while pregnant and must lean on her mother for help during this period despite their previously fractured relationship. Meanwhile her cousin Omelogor, a powerhouse in the financial world and very independent woman who has resisted marriage thus far, weathers the time in her home in Nigeria also reflecting on her past relationships. And Katiadou, her Guinean immigrant housekeeper, is facing an incredible hardship brought on by a powerful man that threatens to unravel the life she has worked so hard to achieve for herself and her daughter in America. I'd call this a great "window" book - while it explores many facets of female experience in general in terms of love and friendship and more, for me it also is a window into Nigerian culture and to the varying experiences of women of color, immigrants, people shaped by being from a place that was colonized. I also appreciated the (pointed) way it is a reminder that not all of Africa is the same thing, with characters who come from great wealth dispelling assumptions that Americans they encounter have about Africans being poor, etc. Very character driven, but the characters are so vivid that it moves along, especially as I found it interesting to see the characters from each other's eyes in the different sections. It's been a long time since I read Americanah, so I cannot say this with certainty, but to me Dream Count felt like the grown up/middle-aged version of it, dealing with some of the same themes of the female Nigerian experience (especially living in America), friendship, racism/post-colonialism, academia, and so on - but with older protagonists rather than a college student. The writing style and strong character-driven story made for a similar reading experience, so I think if you liked Adiche's earlier work, you will probably appreciate this one too. That said, I would say I liked/appreciated, but didn't love this one like I did Americanah, maybe something to do with covering so many themes and occasionally feeling in the weeds in terms of philosophizing about them, or struggling a bit to feel like there's any redemption in the male characters (and as such, why the female characters even want partners?!). ★★★★

Mystery/thriller

Good People: The Sharaf family has suffered a devastating loss that has everyone talking - members of their Afghan immigrant community, neighbors in their wealthy community, classmates of their children, investigative reporters, social media users across the country - about what led up to this, and the biggest question of all: was it a crime, or simply a terrible tragedy? Through a documentary-style narration all of these voices offer their opinions and evidence about the Sharaf family's history and misfortune. This is about as much as I knew about the plot going in, and I think this is the way to go, rather than reading the details in the publisher's blurb - it doesn't give anything away per se, but it offers enough that you might miss some of the reading experience of watching it all unfold. While it might be categorized as "mystery" this book is more of a genre mashup that reminded me of ones from Celeste Ng (especially Everything I Never Told You) or Angie Kim (especially Happiness Falls) where we know there has been a loss, and the buildup to this loss is slowly revealed to us; however, the story is just as much a family drama about the characters and their reactions to tragedy, and the effect of the loss on their relationships and community (whether family or broader community). I wanted to keep reading to find out what this big event was that everyone was gossiping about or investigating (and though it was definitely slow burn, the very short chapters in the documentary style kept it moving for sure) - but just as much I was intrigued by the competing viewpoints, the ways that communities and news outlets and social media make meaning out of a situation, gawk at others' misfortune and run trials in the court of public opinion, perpetuate or fight cultural stereotypes, and so on. Also was so intrigued by the choice to never include the voice of any of the actual family members involved, so there always remained this mystery of what they did or what they were thinking, with so much being hearsay. The documentary style made me a bit confused at times with all of the different voices, until I realized it didn't matter *that* much which friend/neighbor was talking - don't necessarily need to keep them all straight - and the timeline feel a tad convoluted at times, but overall an excellent read that I can't stop thinking about and found tons to discuss in - would be a great bookclub pick. ★★★★.5

The Unquiet Grave: We know I'm on record as a lover of character-driven Irish detective books; I picked up the first in this series several years ago thanks to a Tana French comparison, and I wasn't disappointed. I liked The Ruin for the detective procedural mixed with atmospheric Irish setting, good character development, and the slow-burn plot delving into an old case from the detective's past that is meeting a new case + dilemma in his present. This fourth book in the series was a pretty satisfying procedural as well, though admittedly if I wasn't already familiar with/attached to the characters I'm not sure that I would have loved it - the writing didn't feel as strong (felt more genre simplistic, and over-explaining of unnecessary things like the weather or the tea). The two seemingly separate murder plotlines did come together in a satisfying way in the end, and I actually also really appreciated that there was some ambiguity. The detectives figure out whodunit, but true to life there is some doubt in people's minds as to the why of it all, and as to whether the justice system really is just, and what police officers can or should do about it when they are in a moral quandary. Though not my favorite of the series (really not helped by the poorly formatted Kindle version that led to confusion about who was speaking in dialogue sections...), it's worth picking up if you like these books and are in the mood for a procedural - and if you are an Irish detective novel lover who hasn't yet read The Ruin, put it on your list! ★★★.5

Romance/rom-com

How to Lose a Lord in 10 Days: For a Regency-era romance with an unconventional, take-charge heroine and the appropriate amount of swoon/lack of steam (I always find it so jarring when books set in the Austen era have hot & heavy scenes - I guess I expect them to be more like hers when it comes to romance and propriety!), I have really enjoyed Sophie Irwin's books, especially A Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting. So when I happened upon this recent one I was excited to pick it up without even knowing much about it. Like her earlier works, it has a heroine who is fighting to make the marriage/inheritance system, where she can't really pave her own way or make her own money, work for what she (or her sibling/extended family) need. But unlike the others, which were fun reads while still having some seriousness or substance, this one really went light. Lydia's family expects her to marry well to help bring up their "new money" cache in society - and will ship her off to her spinster aunt in the country if she doesn't acquiesce; conversely, Lord Ashford's father is a romantic who will approve only a match that has love in it, but Lord Ashford knows that their failing estate needs a good dowry, and soon. He sets his sights on Lydia, and then she sets her sights on trying to get him to back out of the engagement by any means necessary. Soon they're in a battle of antics and pranks, trying to trick and embarrass and goad each other into breaking off their engagement . I have to be in just the right mood for something that feels this madcap - if you can lean into that part of it, then you'll have fun. For me it started to feel a bit long, and it felt a bit lacking especially in the first half with not getting to know Lydia as a real person at all before she starts acting nutso in order to scare off Ashford - so I didn't have a real basis for rooting for her and it took me a while to hope for any romance to work out until pretty late in the game (at which point the madcap nature also calmed down a bit and I got more invested). ★★★.5

Young adult/middle grade

The Unlikely Tale of Chase & Finnegan: This is a sweet animal friendship story that will be great for fans of books like The One and Only Ivan or The Eyes & the Impossible. Chase is an anxious cub in training for a zoo's cheetah demonstration/conservation program; Finnegan is a rescue dog with self-doubt about his worthiness to live with his family who is brought in to be Chase's training companion. Along with the friendship they develop, the book handles themes of anxiety and how to help others/ourselves with it, and it models developing self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-forgiveness. For me it felt a bit too predictable/over-anthropomorphized and didn't sweep me away with the characters' singularity (like The Eyes & the Impossible, or like Jasmine Warga did with A Rover's Story), but that shouldn't take away from how much the right set of middle grade readers is going to love this book - I think kids might be less likely to be looking for novelty with a book like this and will be pleased with these sweet friends to root for. And I think young animal lovers are going to love the cheetah + dog facts included at the end of the book, along with the information about how real zoos actually do sometimes pair rescue dogs and cheetahs in programs like this. I do think it is best for readers on the younger side of middle grade spectrum)For me it was still a nice light read to add some sweetness to the month and balance out some more dense and/or disappointing selections... ★★★.5

Nonfiction/memoir

Family of Spies: In the mid 1990s, journalist Christine Kuehn received a letter from a screenwriter asking about her family's history, specifically her German grandfather and aunt's involvement in WWII as Nazi spies. Her father had always told her that her grandfather died in a car accident in Germany, so the idea of him as a spy in Hawaii, paid by Japan to help with reconnaissance to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor, was mind-blowing to say the least. This set off a 30-year journey of finally getting some of the truth from her father about his family, researching everything related to her family's Nazi involvement (including her grandmother and uncle as well), and struggling with how to acknowledge her family's involvement in things she abhorred (as did her father - who, amazingly, joined the US army as a 19-year-old, a couple of years after Pearl Harbor, completely defecting from his family, and fighting in the Pacific, the very part of the war that they helped usher in). I thought the best parts of this book were when the author reflected on how finding out about her family's secret history affected her, and how she went about finding answers, so I appreciated how that was woven through the book. And the other most interesting parts - which actually had me on the edge of my seat a bit - were the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, in terms of learning what happened to each of the family members. Because the parts specifically about Christine's family were the ones I found the most engaging I wished for a bit more of them, like more about actual conversations she had with her dad, or even some more details like how her aunt came to live in the US after all of this, despite being known to the US government as someone with Nazi ties. And thus I could have done with a bit less of the pre-war history about the rise of Hitler, or some of the side stories about particular Japanese soldiers, etc. However, it was all very well researched, and if you really like history/WWII books you will appreciate all of it. And if you are more of an occasional nonfiction reader who is most interested in memoir like I am, this is a good foray into narrative historical nonfiction since it includes elements of memoir. I learned a lot of details about Pearl Harbor that I hadn't known, and I think this particular family's story is one that is very worth being in the historical record, as we learn from history and as we all decide what we will do in the face of rising hate/discrimination. I enjoyed it on audio as it was engaging enough to keep my mind from wandering (a hazard of audiobooks for me), though sometimes the narrator's affected accents got on my nerves I have to admit. ★★★.75

DNFs

The Displacements: I thought Bruce Holsinger's most recent novel, Culpability (dealing with AI in our world), was an excellent read on vacation, and I had also enjoyed his first, The Gifted School (dealing with college admissions scandals). So when I was reminded that I never picked up the one he published in between, I was looking forward to diving in for another mix of social commentary and juicy storytelling, this time looking at a (fictional) huge hurricane and its aftermath. I was prepared for the cli-fi nature of the story, but not fully prepared for the "after" chapters, in which thousands of families are living in FEMA camps. And in the current anxieties of the real-life newsfeed, mixed with the feeling that this type of extreme weather is all-too-likely and fully out of our control at this point, it just was not the kind of book I could do right now, so I put it down. But I still think it's one that would be a page-turning and interesting read just like his previous ones, if you aren't too stressed out by the topic/plot.

The Name Game: I have really enjoyed some of Beth O'Leary's previous books (especially The Flatshare) as romances with heart and characters to root for and not too much steam, but unfortunately I'm wondering if her books are going to go for me the way of some other romance authors I have liked. When they start going a book a year, the reading experience suffers, feeling underdeveloped... I was drawn in by the plot summary of two characters named Charlie Jones, both looking for a fresh start in life, who (accidentally) get offered the same job on a small British Isle and have to compete to be the one to keep the job. It's a fun and quirky start for a romance, and a fabulous setting for the small town and idyllic vibes, but promised to bring some depth as we unpack the struggles that have brought both to seek a new start far away from their old lives. Unfortunately, though, it just felt contrived, especially the fact that most of the story was told via journal entries (the female Charlie) and emails-to-self (the male Charlie). Did not enjoy how much of the story was told via the informal tone/voice of this, and when Charlie was writing a diary entry WHILE stranded on a large rock in high tide? I had to put this one aside. I think I could have enjoyed it more along the lines of The Flatshare if the format had been different, but in this format it didn't work for me at all. Sorry, but maybe should have judged this one by its cover...

The Homemade God: another author whose work I have previously loved - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and the follow up, Maureen, were heartwarming but with enough grit to avoid cheesiness but unfortunately has had less success for me in more recent books. Despite not finishing Miss Benson's Beetle (historical fiction that was just too light/overly plucky for me) I still wanted to try her most recent as I was interested in the beachy Italian setting, the adult sibling dynamics, and the undercurrent of mystery as they try to locate their artist father's final painting. But again I just couldn't make it in very far as the tone just felt too light and the characters too 2-D (for purporting to be a complex family drama) and the narrative voice too scattered and confusing as it switched among the 4 siblings willy nilly - they were so hard to keep track of. Might have improved, but I have too many books on my shelf to stick around just in case.

reading lately: February roundup

2026-03-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

As a lot of my reading was vacation reading, this roundup is a bit shorter, but my February non-beach reading managed to have a lot of variety and a few solid picks. Even the ones that were not my faves still got me interested in reading other books from these new (or new-to-me) authors.

Literary/contemporary fiction

Lost Lambs: The Flynn family is descending into chaos - Bud and Catherine's open marriage is an open secret in their family/town, but it's not quite giving them the satisfaction they hoped for. Eldest daughter Abigail is a high schooler who has started dating an ex-soldier with Crohn's disease nicknamed War Crimes Wes, middle daughter Louise is in an online relationship with someone who turns out to be a religious zealot and terrorist, and Harper, the youngest and insanely smart daughter is convinced that sculptures in the town center are filled with cameras that are monitoring the citizens. Add to that a gnat-filled church under fumigation, a priest in a passive-aggressive battle with a church lady who leads the "Lost Lambs" support group, an Inner Beauty pageant, and so much more - and you've got a zany and sharply observational read about a family and a community in chaos. The tone of this dysfunctional family story is absurdist and campy and incessantly quick-witted and clever (I loved the constantly mentioned punny store and business names in their town, and some word spelling choices that made me actually LOL), but underneath there's a charm to and (author's) care for the characters that drew me to them even if everything felt too zany and overboard to make them feel like real people. There's some plot related to a local conspiracy theory and corrupt local billionaire which gets a bit wild at the end, but it's much more about the characters and their dynamics, and they were all interesting enough to carry it. Mostly it was straight-up fun, but if you want to dig deeper there's also some reflection on more personal things like the importance/power of human connection and of being seen for who you are, how we justify our actions or our complacency to ourselves; also satire and social commentary about religion, misdeeds of the rich and powerful. The book won't be for everyone or for every mood, but if you're craving something different, something light in a nutty (rather than fluffy) way, or if you are a fan of Kevin Wilson, Kristen Arnett, Carl Hiassen (honestly some of the insanity made me assume at first the book was set in Florida like the latter two authors' books, because Florida books are sometimes just downright weird!), or quirky Indie family movies, pick this up. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this family, even if I had a couple of quibbles with loose ends and somewhat rushed development toward the end of the book - though I wouldn't have wanted it to be longer, as the short-ish length was just right for a fun ride but not getting exhausted by the absurdity. ★★★★.5

The Orchard: After walking away from her career in academia, where she was well-respected for her translations of Chinese poetry from the Tang dynasty, Frith's mother Hayley decided to raise her in a rustic cabin in Vermont. Everything about this upbringing was pretty unconventional - or "noncompliant", as they jokingly termed it - from the way they muddled through making a living to the games of horseshoes they played with the local biker game, but for precocious and exuberant Frith, life was secure in her mother's love and affection, and in their deep friendship with neighbor Rosie, who taught her about the land, birds, fishing. Now that she is early in her own first pregnancy, Frith reflects on the time from their move to Vermont through her mother's death, both the joys and the hardships/heartaches of that life, and reminisces on particular events and interactions along the way as they relate to the theme of a particular poem from a stack of her mother's translations (a really lovely structure to the book that manages to be quite compelling reading, though it is quiet and relatively slow moving). This book is definitely a departure from other recent ones I've read by Peter Heller (such as The River, The Guide) that feature male protagonists and combine slow-burn literary suspense that has a mounting sense of dread along with excellent nature writing. The Orchard is about a mother-daughter relationship, and is entirely character-driven, with a reflective feel. I loved how that reflective quality, Frith telling her own story as an adult, captures the full range of emotions and understanding - we get the unbridled joys and the fears of her childhood, but we also get the new view she has on these stories as an adult, now that she can understand the undercurrents in a way she couldn't as a child (why her mother left academia, what their financial situation was really like, etc.). That rang very true to experience. Maybe occasionally the womanhood part didn't ring quite as true, being written by a man, but overall I really liked this book. More than a Peter Heller book, the setting, characters, and tone reminded me of reading Elizabeth Strout's works. A lovely book about the enduring power of love and of grace, the bond of the mother-daughter relationship as well as female friendship, about the grand and the everyday poetry of nature (and nature poetry!), and about the shared human experience over centuries and the ability of the human spirit to go on in spite of loss. ★★★★.5

The Future Saints: Hannah is the lead singer of a middling-successful band that is wrapping up its tour in a downward spiral after the tragic loss of their manager, and with her coping mechanism of alcohol she is about to go down in self-destructive flames. Theo is a record company exec who is sent in to get the band to produce their contractually obligated 2nd album before the company gives them the axe. But when a video of Hannah's raw emotional moment at their final concert goes viral, Theo's job becomes to manage their rocketing ascension to new heights - appearances on late night shows, at prestigious theaters and music festivals - as they write new music, have internal band squabbles, and as Hannah's wild antics continue to go social media nuts while on the inside she's clearly haunted by the ghost of her loss. Books run a risk when they get compared to the epitome of their sub-genre - this book was (unsurprisingly) recommended for fans of Daisy Jones & the Six - but while that can draw in an interested reader (me), they don't always live up to the comparison... Probably for lack of novelty. This book was set in a different era (current day) and had a different format (not an oral history) to Daisy Jones, but it didn't feel like it really added anything new and fresh to the books about fictional bands sub-genre. And maybe didn't successfully marry the band drama + the romance aspect - would have worked better to focus on just one or the other? With trying to weave together both, the emotions of the band drama portion didn't feel that impactful, the industry characters lacked nuance, and the drugs/booze-fueled antics of musicians made them feel like caricatures. And the romance part felt both unlikely and predictable at the same time. Felt very one-sided because Theo was just such a people-pleaser/fixer, and yet also predictable because of COURSE the record company exec that gets brought in falls for the band lead and has to choose between his loyalty to his job and his love. All that said, I would still find this satisfying beach reading for being easy reading (despite the heavy mental health/grief aspects it addresses) and by the end I was drawn in despite my reservations, partly because I like a "behind-the-scenes"/fame story so much. ★★★.25

Mystery/thriller

Darkrooms: When I see a publisher blurb that tells me a book is perfect for fans of Tana French, you know I am interested... I hadn't seen anything about this debut novel elsewhere, but that was enough to get me to pick up the story of two young women who are grappling with and investigating, in their own way, the disappearance of 9-year-old Roisin 10 years earlier, never seen again after she ran off from a summer solstice celebration and into the woods in their small Irish town. Deedee, her older sister, who is now a rookie police officer, and Caitlin, who was Roisin's best friend at the time and was the last one to see Roisin before she disappeared. The reading experience with this one was interesting. The characters doing their own investigations came to so many wildly wrong conclusions at each stage, and made such seemingly bad decisions, that what was going on with them became just as much a mystery as what happened to Roisin. I couldn't decide if they were delusional, mentally ill, lying, just kind of bad people, or what - but in the end I think it all comes down to the psychology of trauma. With that, the culprit (predator, really) became obvious to me somewhat early on - though I am not usually a person who cares about or tries to "solve" the mystery of a mystery novel - which I thought was actually an interesting and perhaps intentional choice by the author, as it makes you think about how small communities can allow things that are open secrets to fester, and about repressed trauma and what it does to people when they grow up. The girls in this story might have thought that Roisin's disappearance was a mystery, but deep down they knew about this predator in their midst, something that they covered up in their own minds and coped with through their issues (stealing, lying, drinking, drugs, envisioning monsters in the woods), even if they didn't have all of the puzzle pieces to exactly what happened to Roisin. Definitely has the atmospheric Irish vibes and slow-burn psychological suspense I like about Tana French, but not as strong in terms of character development and plotting. The timelines and motivations felt a bit convoluted at times. I am interested to see what else this author does though, especially if future books could lean a bit more into the procedural to balance out the psychological aspects. I maybe needed a bit more of that to keep me fully invested, because I found the characters hard to like, even if I did have empathy for how they were dealing with trauma. ★★★.5

Better the Blood: I like finding detective books with female protagonists, especially ones who are mothers, as it adds an interesting element/depth, and something for me to connect with, so I was interested in this one about a Maori detective in New Zealand who juggles single motherhood with rising the ranks in Auckland’s Central Investigation Branch (where by the way she also works with her ex), and she also juggles being part of the police force with her Maori background, with her family considering her a sell-out for joining an institution that disproportionally arrests brown people. A good base for a detective series in my opinion... in this first installment Hana is led to a gruesome crime scene by an anonymously emailed video, and after seeing a particular Maori symbol near the scene, she connects some other seemingly unrelated murders to it. The link turns out to be based on someone seeking retribution for a historic crime committed against a Maori elder by the colonizing British force, targeting the descendants of those soldiers. In general it felt like a genre book with the type of writing and plot, more "tell" than "show", sentence structure a bit basic. It's clear early on to the reader, and to the detectives as well, who the killer is, and so more than a procedural it's a thriller feel, with a race to try to identify/protect the next victim before the killer strikes again. If the series went more into detective investigation aspect I'd be interested in reading more from this character (and her second-in-command - really liked that working relationship), but other than the interest I had in the Maori history/culture (as well as the injustices/systemic racism they have faced) presented in the story, I thought the plot was just fine. The thrillery stuff gets a bit outlandish to me, and I didn't love the pacing, especially with how the interludes from the killer's perspective broke up the story. ★★★.25

Romance/rom-com

Most Eligible: Georgia Rose one of those contestants who is going on a hit reality dating show for the wrong reasons - but not the ones you'd expect. She is an undercover journalist looking to write an expose about the executive producer and the terrible working conditions and expectations she creates for contestants. But when she arrives to filming the first episode she finds that Love Shack's new host is none other than country singer Rhett Auburn, with whom she had an unforgettable one-night stand a year earlier, and her plans to woo the show's bachelor lead in order to write her article (and in exchange finally get the job promotion of her dreams) are thrown into internal chaos. Admittedly not many romances have been working for me lately, but one with a behind-the-scenes of a Bachelor-like show is a hook that draws me in, so I picked it up. Though I have never actually watched more than one episode of The Bachelor, I have loved dating show-based books like One to Watch, The Charm Offensive, and If the Shoe Fits for how they give this fascinating behind-the-scenes view of reality TV mixed with the drama of it, reframing things to empower the women, and maybe some swoony romance to boot. But this one was a real disappointment for me because I actively disliked the romantic pairing I was supposed to be rooting for. The expose part was intriguing and carried the plot along, but then the flashbacks that Georgia had to her one-night stand with Rhett kept coming in and being an annoying distraction. It seemed like the author was looking to get in some hot-n-heavy stuff and this was the only way to do it. At base, I didn't buy the connection between Georgia and Rhett, especially because their re-meet at the show just went from animosity to sex with nothing substantial in between. I need more charm and actual relationship development. I finished reading to find out what happened with Georgia's article, but I didn't feel like I got payoff. Overall it felt like the author was trying to do too much - the expose about a reality dating show, exploring the relationships formed by the women who are contestants on the show, and then some over-the-top backstabbing and crazy date situations, then tacking on this romance with a famous musician. It actually could have been a good book if it weren't a romance at all. Focusing on just the first two items, it could have created enough drama/tension in exploring what finding out that Georgia was there for the wrong reasons would do to the friendships she developed with other contestants, without needing the romantic relationship at all. And it would be more interesting to reframe a dating show to have people realize they are good enough for themselves, not needing this dopey guy... ★★

That's a wrap on this month. Any good books or new authors you found in February that I should add to my March list?

reading lately: vacation roundup

2026-02-18T08:00:00.057-05:00

I believe that any book can be a beach read if you take it to the beach and read it there - but there are still certain kinds of books that I find most pleasurable and satisfying when it comes to vacation selections, so with a 10-day (!) all-inclusive Caribbean stay to celebrate our 20th (!!) anniversary, I saved up a particular stack of fun brain candy, gossipy intrigue, twisty plot, or slow-burn suspense reads from my to-be-read pile... and happily plowed my way through them. Here's a recap of everything I read by the pool in Punta Cana (or in the airport - sadly there were winter season travel issues on the way).

Literary/contemporary fiction

Culpability: At the story level, Culpability is a family drama with slow burn suspense - a car accident with 17 year old Charlie at the “helm” of an autonomous vehicle, and his father riding shotgun but fully preoccupied with working on his laptop at the time of the collision, has killed the two passengers in the other car. What will the fallout be for his future/his college athletic scholarship, for his family in terms of legal and moral guilt and the dilemma that the AI involvement creates, for his parents’ relationship as the temptation to blame/be defensive about parenting roles and responsibilities arises? (Especially with his mother happening to be one of the leading academics studying the ethics of AI.) As the family and legal tensions mount, this is enough juiciness to drive the book along and make for an intriguing read, but then on top of that, so many interesting and timely themes to consider: the role of AI in our world, where moral responsibility and culpability lie with its development and use, what the infusion of technology/screens does to family life and to childhoods, the parenting dilemma of wanting to protect your kids while also wanting them to learn responsibility through facing consequences. I thought the themes were woven into the story in a natural and non-preachy way, giving depth to a book that is great beach reading in terms of pacing/tone, and great discussion fodder when you finish. ★★★★.5

The Force of Such Beauty: I was in a juicy royal family read kind of mood after loving The Heir Apparent, so when I heard about this "princess book" on Sarah's Bookshelves Live, I requested it right away. While overall I found it compelling and interesting, it should be noted right away that this is a different kind of princess book - it's not a romance, most definitely not rom-com, and while there are plenty of lush and extravagant palace settings and parties, it is more heart-wrenching, with how the princess is misguided (internally and externally) and mistreated, than it is juicy. Olympic record marathoner Caroline's running career comes to an unexpected and devastating end after a fall that requires major surgeries to put her body back together. While convalescing at an exclusive hospital, she meets tall and handsome Finn, a number of years and educational degrees her senior - but they strike up an interesting conversation, and there's a certain spark. It isn't until later that she learns he's the crown prince of a small European nation (fictional but clearly modeled on Monaco), but by then she is captivated, and soon swept away literally and figuratively as his bride. The honeymoon period doesn't last long though, as the extreme expectations to produce an heir and a spare fall on her, along with the extreme expectations about her looks, actions, and so on. The story is told from Caroline's perspective, starting from when she has tried (unsuccessfully) to escape this royal life, then going back to recount her childhood, courtship with Finn, marriage, life as the princess, up to the current untenable situation she finds herself in. What's extra fascinating about this book is that it is somewhat based on the story of a real woman who married into the royal family in Monaco, and it also draws a bit on some of the things that Megan Markle dealt with after marrying into the British royal family. For all that it's fun to imagine and read about a royal life, fictional or not, this is more a look at the underbelly of monarchy that makes one feel like royalty shouldn't be a thing any longer... Overall solid read, interesting perspective as well as commentary on how society/royalty subjugates women's bodies, and an ending that actually made me gasp, but it's maybe a tad longer than it needs to be, Caroline is hard to root for at times (so impetuous about insisting on this marriage after like 3 dates and knowing nothing about the country she is about to join the monarchy of!) and parts of it are quite slow moving even though it starts out with a bang - good things to prepare your expectations for if you're interested in picking it up. ★★★.75

June Baby: This debut novel is both a coming-of-age and coming-of-adulthood story, as Ruth returns to the house of renowned photographer Diana Beckett on Block Island where she spent formative summers in her teens after her mother's death. Now 10 years later Diana has died, and Ruth is looking back at her teenage grief as well as her first love (Diana's nephew, Charlie), while in the present grappling with this new grief and also facing the reality that her life is in stasis, is not fulfilling the dreams that Diana had for her, and realizing that in not committing to Charlie earlier she may have lost him forever. Along with this she learns more about her mom, and starts to question the foundation of their relationship. While there is some plot happening over the course of this current summer, it's more character driven (and not a romance as the description might make it seem), fairly slow moving and a bit angsty; as the writing and tone walk the line between commercial and literary fiction, it is pretty well written and developed, but also pretty straightforward, realistic feeling, and mostly enjoyable reading. Though I did struggle at times to love Ruth because of some dumb choices she was making in her immaturity and self-focus, she shows emotional growth in the end. And adding to the reading experience, the east coast island feel with the sand dunes, sunsets, hidden paths to the beach, and even the "summer people" vs. locals/working class atmosphere is all a great backdrop for this story and will make it a good summer read (it releases in May - thanks to Netgalley for my advance e-copy). Would recommend this for readers of J. Courtney Sullivan, Lily King (Writers and Lovers), or Emma Straub (though tone is more bittersweet/emotional than hers). ★★★.75

Mystery/thriller

Heartwood: When 42-year-old Valerie Gillis goes missing on the Appalachian Trail near the end of her summer-long trek, Lt Bev, one of the first female game wardens in Maine, who has had a decades-long career with high success in finding lost hikers, is called in to manage the search team. As the days tick by without any clues and with mounting suspicion that foul play might be to blame, Lena, a disabled retiree, follows the case online playing armchair detective - but with her prickly and off-putting personality it’s hard to know if her own mounting suspicions are legitimate or delusional. The reading experience reminded me a bit of Peter Heller’s books like The River - though a bit less intense overall, it similarly has great nature writing combined with slow burn literary suspense + a missing person in the wilderness plot that makes a somewhat character-driven/introspective book feel propulsive through both the plot and the underlying sense of danger (even dread). In this case I liked it even more though for the female perspectives, for the interesting variety of the different formats for their voices (1st person for Lt. Bev, journal entries for Valerie, and 3rd person for Lena), for the procedural feel to the search portion (including interview transcripts, etc) and for the additional exploration of the theme of mothers/daughters in each character’s life experiences. I plowed through this on one day on vacation and found it to be a great combination of beach read + depth of subject matter. ★★★★.5

Missing Sister: Penny was training to be a chef when the loss of her twin sister changed her life path - now she's a rookie cop, trying to live out Nix's dream of making the world a better and safer place. When she's called to her first murder scene, a rare occurrence in their small Georgia town, Penny's worlds collide as she immediately recognizes the victim as one of the men that she personally holds responsible for Nix's drug addiction and death. He's the kind of well-to-do white frat boy who is unlikely to be brought to justice by the actual justice system, so her shock at seeing him dead in this seedy alleyway, mixed with satisfaction for her sister's vengeance, leads her to make a decision that sets this page-turner in motion - letting the bloodied blonde woman who clearly was the perpetrator of this crime run off into the night, rather than alerting her fellow police officers. Joshilyn Jackson is an auto-read author for me, and this new book did not disappoint, delivering her signature mix of twisty page turner + a character I want to root for (the rest of the members of her family too). Because I tend to like procedurals better than straight-up thrillers I especially loved that the protagonist is a police officer who is weighing the responsibility of her profession against the grief and desire for (vigilante?) justice in the loss of her sister. The combination of the sister relationship and the exploration of what it's like to lose a loved one to addiction reminded me a bit of reading Long Bright River, though overall the tone on this one is maybe more thrillery, less literary slow-burn than Long Bright River. As usual, Joshilyn Jackson hooked me from page 1 with the narrative voice and the intriguing story, so I was glad that I saved this for vacation when I had plenty of time to read - I devoured it in just a few sittings and found it a thoroughly satisfying experience. Recommend if you like the tone/variety/pacing of page turners by authors like Gillian McAllister, Julie Clark, Laura Dave. I received an advance e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review; publishes March 3. ★★★★.25

The Impossible Fortune: Unsurprisingly, the 5th book in the Thursday Murder Club series was a great pool read - actually kind of a treat to be able to just sit and read it all in one day rather than spread out over a week, because it is so fun to be in the world of these retiree friends and their excellent repartee. The previous (4th) book was more poignant than usual, with the storyline related to the usually brusque Elizabeth brought low by grief; this one returns to mostly fun as Elizabeth is brought out of her fog by a new case and all its puzzling elements - an unexploded car bomb gone missing, an underground storage bunker - you know, the usual for the crew and their quiet English countryside. In addition to the mystery (which admittedly felt a tad convoluted at times), we get a bit more focus on Joyce and her relationship with her daughter, which I enjoyed; the newly introduced characters in this book weren't as great as in previous ones, but I thoroughly enjoyed the continuation of some of the more established side characters' relationships (Donna and Bogdan being a real favorite) and certainly do not find my interest/enjoyment in this series waning. ★★★.75

Romance/rom-com

Dolly All the Time: 39-year-old single mom Dolly is the bedrock for her whole family, having stepped up in her teens when her mom took off, and again when when she got pregnant in her 20s and her boyfriend wanted nothing to do with it. Now she and her 13-year-old son are returning to her coastal Rhode Island hometown for the summer to help her dad who is juggling the family business, the house that is falling apart, and caring for her disabled brother. No surprise that she’s had no inclination or time for a love life, with so much focus on practicality and problem solving. But when she comes to the aid of Stuart, eldest son of the storied, uber-wealthy family the town is named after, to change his flat tire, a fake dating scheme is somehow born - he needs his family to believe he’s not 100% about work and is finding some balance with a relationship, and she needs $50,000 to replace her dad’s roof… you know what commences with this trope - which honestly isn’t always my favorite - but in Annabel Monaghan’s hands it is pretty much pure delight with a couple whose romantic arc felt believable and who I 100% rooted for. Annabel Monaghan’s debut, Nora Goes Off Script, is pretty much the highest bar in rom-com for me but this one was good enough to become my 2nd favorite Annabel Monaghan book. Similarly it has a protagonist who is established in her life and has kids - admittedly it is nice to read about someone in a stage of life more like mine, but in general the angsty coming of adulthood part of rom-coms feels a bit tired to me right now. I like a character who has her stuff together (aside from her love life of course or there would be no story). This one was a great mix of escapism with the beachy town setting and the mansions and fancy parties and yacht outings that come with the fake dating scheme, along with a feeling of reality through the fully formed characters who are facing real-life issues and handling them in real-life ways. Dolly and her family/friends feel like actual people I could know, albeit with way more delightful banter and repartee, and I just enjoyed and rooted for them all. The love story on the other hand felt a bit movie-ish but because I was so invested in the characters I was way invested in the relationship too - way to refresh the tired fake dating trope for me, Annabel Monaghan. Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy, and definitely pick this up for your summer reading when it releases late spring. ★★★★.5

Historical fiction

Meet the Newmans: The Newmans are America's most famous family, starring in an 1950s-60s wholesome sit-com where they play themselves: savvy dad Del, domestic maven mom Dinah, sporty and steady older brother Guy, and heart-throb musician brother Shep. Behind the scenes, things aren't what they seem on TV though: Del is over-mortgaged and losing interest/investors in the show, Dinah actually can't cook at all and feels entirely numb about life, Guy is having to pretend to go on dates with other actresses because he's actually in love with his "roommate", and Shep is struggling to maintain the "clean" image that the studio expects of him, wanting to veer more into rock-n-roll. When Del is in a car accident and unable to write the final episode for what will likely be their final season, Dinah takes over and in the process she starts to rethink what it means to be a woman, and a family, in the changing culture of the 1960s. While there are plenty of real issues brought up (feminism, civil rights, gay rights, paparazzi/pressure on celebs) the tone of this book is as light and sugary as the bubblegum on the front cover... and unfortunately the way these things mixed just didn't work for me. The characters felt pretty surface level, and there were way too many of them. It might have worked if it focused just on the 4 Newmans, but then it also went into detail about a reporter, their agent, their maid, and so on. And it didn't quite manage to blend the "issues" parts into the generally lighthearted behind-the-scenes of a TV family; there was nothing subtle in how the issues were discussed, and the way they were handled also didn't seem very accurate to the time period but instead seemed to impose a much more modern take on gay rights, feminism, etc. I love a behind-the-scenes of Hollywood, so those aspects of the story were fun and kept me reading to the end, and while I don't generally love historical fiction, this time period on the verge of the free-love era of the 1960s and what it was like to live through the changing attitudes of the era was interesting, especially as related to women's roles/agency. In this way it is purported to be a good pick for fans of Lessons in Chemistry, so that made me want to pick it up, but overall I thought the character development and general charm/freshness didn't live up to Lessons in Chemistry for me. ★★★

Memoir/non-fiction

Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship: I am not generally a fan of spending my reading time on nonfiction of the self-help/psychological/parenting variety as I'd much rather use the time to escape via fiction... but with more than ample reading time on vacation, it was less of an ask to pick up this book that Peter was reading after hearing the author, a long-time family therapist, on a podcast episode. And in fact it was great to tandem read it and discuss while we had ample time for conversation uninterrupted by kids. What a healthy way to kick off the next 20 years of marriage ;-) This book about marriage/long-term relationships takes the perspective that whether we realize it or not, our culture of individualism has seeped into relationships, and to have more healthy, loving, and long-lasting relationships we need to stop trying to improve ourselves and instead get into an "us" mentality of collaboration, in living together and interacting with each other. I appreciated this insight, and especially the framework/suggestions that he offers for having fruitful and frank conversations with your partner when there is conflict/disrepair in the relationship (whether big things or small, everyday things). As we both identified ourselves as the type of people who avoid conflict (versus those who will have it out in an argument or fight), this feels really practical and helpful for framing conversations and re-gaining harmony when it is needed. Beyond this, I found the book okay - I guess I was hoping for more hands-on application? The insights about patriarchy and racism and childhood trauma, and the real-person stories of couples who underwent therapy in his practice, were all valuable for understand the range of experiences people go through and the social influences on our psyches, but they didn't feel applicable to my own life/experience. Kind of felt like those parts were a different book more about understanding society and how individualism affects relationships, and I wanted just the short book on a collaborative, compassionate way to approach my marriage. That part of the book was great. ★★★.5

So that's 9 books for 10 days of vacation - not bad at all! Apologies if I have been inducing jealousy regarding the time in the sun to read, but I can at least offer that when you get to summer reading, there are going to be some excellent beach reads just published and ready for you - definitely pick up Annabel Monaghan and Joshilyn Jackson's new ones then!

reading lately: January roundup

2026-01-26T08:00:00.178-05:00

It's a little early to be coming out with a January roundup, but with a 20th anniversary (!!) trip to an all-inclusive resort - the kind of place where I can often go a book a day, with no kids along - I decided go ahead and recap what I've read so far so that I can put together an entire vacation reading post. I've been saving up some Netgalley advanced reader copies from favorite authors (Joshilyn Jackson and Annabel Monaghan!) to devour then. Meanwhile, the start of the year had some fairly quick reads, a couple of disappointments, some human depravity... but also some delight.

Literary/contemporary fiction

Heart, Be at Peace: This novel about a small, rural Irish town that is starting to see peace after the economic and social storms it has weathered - only to have a new one is brewing, with the production and distribution of drugs in the community and the addiction and violence that comes with it - is told in 21 voices, so it almost reads like interconnected short stories. While quite character driven, especially driven by the individual voices and how they are furthering or reacting the state of things in their community, it still manages to build a bit of narrative tension as we lead up to the breaking point with the fears and anger about what the drug trade is doing/could do to the town and its young people. Each voice felt unique and grabbed me from his/her first paragraph, but the difficulty of 21 narrative voices in a community with generations of history/grudges/marriages/everyone knowing everyone's business in a small town is that I struggled to remember who was related to whom, and if this new narrator was one I had encountered in a previous chapter yet (and then the nicknames on top of that!). I loved the writing, themes, structure, and evocative emotions, but wished that I didn't occasionally feel completely lost. Maybe I needed a family tree or character sheet to truly appreciate this work, but I thought it was excellently done (Ireland and your slate of amazing writers - again!) and will be reading other books by this author for sure - in fact, learned after finishing that it's a companion to an earlier book, The Spinning Heart. I do think it can be read as a standalone, but if the characters are in both maybe better to start with the first in order to keep them all straight. Either way, worth a read for sure. ★★★★.25

Dominion: A family + a church drama set in small-town Mississippi in the early 2000s, this book is told from the perspective of two women who are involved with the two "leading men" of the town - Priscilla, wife of the megachurch pastor who has his hand in every aspect of society in Dominion (religious, social, and economic) and Diamond, girlfriend to "Wonderboy", youngest of the pastor's 5 sons who is star of the high school football team, a musician performing in church, generally considered to be the most handsome and perfect in all ways... except it's immediately clear to the reader he's very much not. While there are a few major inciting incidents, this is a mostly character-driven story of how Priscilla and Diamond are sort of subsumed by their relationships with these men, and how they reconsider and grapple with their flaws. It started out with such promise for me - the voice of "First Lady" Priscilla has just the right amount of snark to point out the hypocrisy of her philandering pastor husband and to provide an interesting commentary on the Black church in the south, both the foibles of church lady life and the more serious issues, as well as the misogyny and violence of the "boys will be boys" attitude. But her character just ended up not feeling consistent with this as she seemed to work hard to be willfully ignorant of the terrible things her son was doing. In general I struggled a bit to get at the (very worthwhile and interesting) themes because of how ick all of the characters ended up feeling - honestly, just completely depraved in terms of the main male characters, and enabling of this behavior in terms of the female characters. Made me feel kind of depressed about humanity... Early on in the book there were a couple of random chapters interspersed into the ones that were told from Diamond and Priscilla's perspectives that recounted sexual assaults - nothing super duper graphic, and clearly trying to illustrate a point, but still felt gratuitous and yucky and also just made for narrative structure that felt off, just one of the loose threads I found that the book left for me. ★★★

Mystery/thriller

The Last Devil to Die: I just love this series. A comedic cozy mystery would be easy to turn too much toward shtick or feel phoned-in by the fourth book, but I grow to love the beloved original 4 in the Thursday Murder Club crew even more with each book, as well as the new characters that are introduced across the series. While the plotting/solving of the murder (of an elderly antiques dealer, and the mystery of a bunch of missing heroin that seems tied to his death) that the crew takes on in this book is clever as always, it almost takes a backseat to the characters in this book - but in a good way. Relationships and friendships deepen, and there is a lot of poignant exploration of the grief of dementia and the feeling of loss that comes from losing that person (or losing oneself, as the one with the dementia) before they are gone. I cried at parts, but then of course I also laughed at the idiosyncrasies of my favorite characters, their always-delightful repartee, and their cunning way of playing up being doddering old people to exhaust suspects into coughing up information. Looking forward to book 5! ★★★★

Boundary Waters: After a few heavier reads I was in the mood for the structure and puzzle of a police procedural, so I thought I'd finally pick up the second book in the Cork O'Connor series about a northern Minnesota small town sheriff. In the first book of the series, Iron Lake, I enjoyed the introduction of the sheriff character who has troubles on the homefront yet is super dedicated to his job and his community, and the procedural plot in combination with the nature writing about the woods/lakes of Minnesota as well as its native peoples and their stories. But perhaps I remembered it as more "procedural" than it was, because this second book wasn't that at all - much more nature thriller. I still liked the nature writing about the wilderness that borders Canada as well as the Anishinaabe characters/stories, but overall a tad disappointed by the lack of procedural, and more so by how convoluted the background of the missing person case and why so many people - good guys and bad guys - would be trekking through the wilderness to find this one person. Overall the plot of encountering dangerous people out in the remote woods + the nature writing reminded me of Peter Heller's books like The River (though his are more literary and a bit more post-apocalyptic than commercial thriller), and some of the native stories/characters in a mystery/thriller setting reminded me of the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman, or even Angeline Boulley's YA books. My husband has read about 20 books in this series now, so they are enjoyable escapist reading - perhaps especially with appropriate expectations about the thriller vs. procedural - but I think I will probably stick to William Kent Kreuger's non-Cork O'Connor books from this point (which I have found to all be excellent). ★★★

Historical fiction

Buckeye: Historical fiction of the sweeping, character-driven variety, this story is set in a small town in Ohio in the WWII years through the Vietnam era. Against the backdrop of the war years, the changes in American culture more broadly as well as the development of this small town in general, the book focuses on two couples whose lives become intertwined for an unexpected reason. We see how the characters handle a big secret among them and the repercussions of it for their marriages and their families. With a character-driven novel I'd say it's best to go in knowing only a little about the plot, because a plot summary will tell most of what's going to happen, so I'll leave it at that and focus more on vibes. Which for me were... fine. It was easy and overall enjoyable reading, but a little basic and a lot long. It was phrased as feeling "network tv" on a Sarah's Bookshelves Live podcast episode, and that describes it well. Sometimes I can get a sort of simplistic vibe that for a good story or one where I really love the characters, but I just didn't here, perhaps because the "sweeping" aspect makes it feel like I don't really get to know the characters, as we're covering so many years of their lives rather than really settling in somewhere. I can see why people would love this one, especially if they like the historical fiction genre more than I do, but for me, a bit underwhelming. ★★★.25

YA/middle grade

The Poisoned King: After going on an island-hopping quest in the magical Archipelago to figure out why its magic was fading and save its fantastical creatures, Christopher has returned to his ordinary life in London. He dreams of going back though, and so even though it's because of a poison spreading across the Archipelago and killing the dragons that usually cannot be felled by anything, he is filled with joy to receive the summons of tiny, pompous dragon Jacques and fierce, wise sphinx Naravirala to return. This time he meets Anya, princess of one of the islands, who needs help rescuing/avenging a family member. When they realize that their two quests are actually inextricably linked, they form a strong friendship and partnership, and they put their bravery and loyalty into action, along with a whole cast of magical/mythological creatures. Impossible Creatures was the first middle grade book I read last year and remained as one of my favorites for the entire year - so what a delight to get to start off this year with the sequel, which was just as wonderful. Maybe even more so because it meant returning to a familiar place with this vibrant and creative world that Katherine Rundell, along with familiar characters who charmed me just as much, and some great new characters + mythological beasts too. I was engrossed the whole way and enjoyed the journey, even more so when I got to discuss favorite parts with Hendrik when I finished. I'm not sure whether there are more books planned in this series, but much as I love the characters and the world of it, I actually felt quite satisfied with the story told here and might like it just left here with the way it is... ★★★★.5

Nonfiction/memoir

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home: My mom handed me this memoir-in-letters a while back, and I saved it for when I needed something easy to pick up and put down - as in the week of January that had a snow day every. single. day. With all that nuttiness I needed something diverting and easy, and these amusing little observational letters that Nina Stibbe wrote to her sister in the early 1980s, after moving from their smaller town to London to work as a nanny. It starts with plenty of awe and descriptions about her new place and her new city, but as she settles into the role taking care of precocious Sam and Will, we quickly see that this isn't just any nanny gig - she's working for the deputy editor of the London Review of Books. This means that in addition to the family's quirks and repartee (she records lots of amusing short conversations), the letters contain all kinds of appearances of literary and theatre people - writers, editors, critics, directors, etc. - most frequently playwright and actor Alan Bennett, a neighbor who comes for dinner almost daily. Just when I thought it was getting a tad long to be just missives about the quotidian (if not interesting who's-who of the London literary scene), in the letters in part 2 Nina starts also writing about starting college in her early 20s, and we also get a picture of student life (former nerdy English majors like me will love this part) as well as a picture of someone trying to figure out who and what she wants to be in life, from the big picture to the small (loved how we see her gradually getting better at cooking and exploring new cuisine as she makes dinner for the family and reports back to her sister on the recipes she has tried). I didn't find it laugh-out-loud hilarious like the blurbs on the cover would lead you to believe, but I did find plenty to amuse me, and even more so, I couldn't stop being so fascinated by the real people - like Wikipedia page legit - that became part of Nina's everyday life during her nanny years. She sounded like she held her own so well with them, even as an inexperienced 20-year-old, and I found that so fascinating. Would recommend this if you like epistolary books, especially the literary variety like 84, Charing Cross Road, and if you like the work of Kim Fay (Kate & Frida or Love & Saffron), which has the epistolary format as well as the young person finding her way and the budding culinary aspects both of the young person learning to cook/explore interesting ingredients as well as the developing food scene and philosophies of the early 1980s (also made me think a bit of Ruth Reichl's memoirs in this way). ★★★★

Hope everyone who has had crazy winter weather has been able to turn it into cozy reading time... but also can't wait to share my non-cozy, hot weather beach reading soon 😉

reading lately: December roundup

2026-01-05T08:00:00.140-05:00

I ended November with an absolute dud of a book and went into December really hoping I could redeem that experience and add to my 5-star count for the year. Pleased to report that I pulled it off - two more for the list! Plus a couple of other really solid reads to boot (never mind the total disappointment that also made it onto the December stack).

Literary/contemporary fiction

Before I Forget: In this coming-of-adulthood story, Cricket is the younger sister who has dropped out of college, hops from job to job (until this crazy Goop-like wellness influencer she's working for now), and is slightly estranged from her parents - in comparison to her older sister who has a PhD and has been caring for their father after his early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis. When Nina decides to move to Sweden for her career, Cricket returns to her father's small cabin in the Adirondacks that she hasn't visited in a decade after a tragedy in her high school years, and she ends up staying to be her father's new caretaker. This was all I knew going in, and it was a delight to have the characters and scenarios unfold along the way. So I won't say anything else about plot, just say that if you liked Goodbye, Vitamin and Unlikely Animals (both of which I ADORED and still recommend all the time), you will like this for the similar setup and vibes - daughters in their "quarter life crisis" going home to take care of an ailing father, slightly weird sense of humor, family drama that endears you to characters and makes them feel real (and feel like the author cares about them and is rooting for them along with you the reader), and a bit of mystical/magical realism. Like those books, it deals with a heavy topic in terms of Alzheimer's - what it's like to have it, and what it's like to see a loved one go through it - but with a light, and ultimately hopeful, touch. With this, it's funny, quirky and heartwarming in a slightly weird but not too cute way. An enjoyable read and a lovely look at things that hold us back, (self) forgiveness, and moving forward. A couple of quibbles with the "past" chapters, which felt a tad weaker, and the whole thing maybe wrapping up a tad pat that kept me from giving it 5 stars, but close, as I loved the voice, was charmed by the characters, and really did enjoy my reading experience and flew through it. (Also appreciated that it was under 300 pages - it was just right, no unnecessary padding, yet the characters still felt fully fleshed out.) ★★★★.5

Woodworking: In a small South Dakota town, English teacher Erica Skyberg is recently divorced and recently out - though only to herself - as a trans woman. As she grapples with identity and what to do about it in a community where this would cost her job, she tries to befriend the only other trans person she knows - a student. Abigail is like a crochety old character in 17-year-old form, prickly and blunt, and is totally annoyed about being "trans mom" guiding her teacher through this time... but maybe it's a bit of a facade and they actually both need this friendship. The book is a nice mix of character and plot driven, with great narrative voice from both of the main characters, and a nice mix as well of emotional depth/heart and wry humor. It reads pretty easy, though overall felt a tad long and "issues" to me - especially with the pointed 2016 politics (even if I agree with them!) and the addition of a 3rd voice at the end though I see what the author was doing). It celebrates different experiences of womanhood, and it explores from different angles the idea of "woodworking", when a person transitions and then just blends in to their gender rather than being known as "trans", and the effect this has on the psyche of the person living the experience. I really loved how the author used varying narrative tense (but not in a confusing way) to explore what it's like to live as one's true self vs. as society genders the person, and even vs. hiding from oneself. Overall a read that I enjoyed as well as appreciated for the insights it gave me into potential different trans experiences; it reminded me of reading Under the Rainbow, with the Midwest setting and different experiences of LGBTQ people in a not-so-accepting community - I'd recommend that book as well if you haven't read it yet. ★★★★.25

The Heir Apparent: In her second year of her medical residency, Lexi is celebrating New Year's by camping in the wilds of Tasmania with her friends Jack and Finn. Her will-they-won't-they relationship with Jack is about to take the next step into their first kiss when suddenly a helicopter arrives. Out steps a steward from the British palace, coming to inform Lexi that her father and her twin brother have tragically died in a skiing accident, and that Lexi, despite her estranged relationship with her family and the new life she has tried to create for herself in Australia, is now the heir apparent to the throne. She goes back to England and agrees to a one-year timeline in which she is going to take on some royal duties and decide whether she will remain in London to take on her duty to family and country, or whether she will renounce it for her self (and her love?!). This book came to me at just the right time - a bunch of days with a kid home sick from school, and I just needed something juicy like this for escaping when I got a minute to myself. On that front I was extremely well satisfied. I thought overall it was perhaps a bit long, but generally I found the pages flew by, and I loved the slight alternate history of it all. It had enough of reality - the handbag carrying granny queen echoing Elizabeth, the tumultuous marriage/divorce/mistress/tragic death reminiscent of Charles and Diana (and Camilla), the experiences of the young royals losing their mother, etc. - to make intriguing comparisons to the current royal family, but then enough interesting twists, with the heirs being boy/girl twins, with the princess having tried to completely leave the life but then having to weigh that vs. her duty when she becomes the heir apparent. Also loved bringing the Australian setting into it. It didn't particularly read like a romance; though that is part of it, you really don't get much in terms of relationship until well into the book. You get a lot more of Lexi's torn feelings about whether to choose her life as a med student or come back to serve as royal, of her backstory and the secrets it holds/why she ended up running off to Australia a decade prior, of her conflicted grief of losing her brother/father when she had been estranged from them. It prompts thinking about the lasting effects of colonialism and sexism, what is the point of having a royal family in the modern age, and so on. But it all goes down so easy because with it you get plenty of opulent royal palaces and gatherings, and juicy drama thanks to a conniving uncle who wants to be next in line to the throne, the rift caused when Lexi's former best friend married her brother, and so on. And a dash of "how will it ever work to have a relationship with a commoner??" romance to top it all off. Would recommend this for people who love all things royal family, whether that's the People Magazine version, the Netflix "Crown" version or the Prince Harry memoir version. Also for fans of books like The Royal We and Red, White, and Royal Blue. ★★★★

Happy All the Time: Guido and Vincent are best friends who have sailed through their college days and now turn their sights to whom they will marry (this is almost a direct quote from the book - what a great setup). Guido finds love at first site with Holly; even though he can also immediately tell that she will be very particular, quirky, maybe hard to live with, he is completely taken by her. At work, optimistic and cheery Vincent falls for his opposite, gloomy and misanthropic Misty. The story looks at their wooing, marriage, work life, and friendship, but it is much more about the characters, their idiosyncrasies that can sometimes make relationships go awry even with good intentions. This comedy of manners type book reminds me of contemporary authors like Katherine Heiny (an apt person to write the forward in this edition) and maybe a bit of Emma Straub, but it reads a bit differently simply from having been published originally in 1978. At first it took me a while to actually "get" the comedy of manners setup because the writing/setting for the era felt a bit foreign, but I actually also appreciated how that felt a bit novel/different for me, compared to recent reading. I actually enjoyed some of the side characters even more than the main ones, finding them quite quirky and comedic indeed, as I found the main female characters to be so enigmatic and impenetrable. That was kind of the point of them though, as their husbands are so in love with them but sometimes so frustrated by not being able to figure them out. The friendship between the couples was and the overall theme of finding love in spite of their foibles were great; overall I liked rather than loved this book, but I can imagine how it would be one that would get better on reflection, especially if I could discuss it with another reader. I've heard that Laurie Colwin's foodie-type memoirs are great, and I am looking forward to trying them after overall enjoying the writing, and seeing hints of food writing in this one, describing the couples' meals. ★★★.75

Mystery/thriller

The Professor: Picking up after an investigation into a University of Georgia fraternity where Detective Marlitt Kaplan got a bit too personally invested and went rogue in her tactics to solve the murder, this sequel finds her living with her parents, disgraced and resigned from her job. But then a student dies of an apparent suicide and a Title IX investigation is opened into a supposed inappropriate relationship that Professor Verena Sobek had with him as a student in her German classes. Verena is the younger colleague/mentee of Marlitt's mother, who pressures Marlitt into helping to clear Verena's name. Easier said than done to prove the absence of a relationship, especially when one of the parties is deceased, but Marlitt feels the investigative urge come back even as she has to navigate around her rocky relationship with her former detective colleagues. Not being bound by the official rules of the force now though, she finds an unexpected way to get close to the victim - moving in with his former roommates who are subletting out his room. This leads to slow burn, ratcheting suspense reading as the reader wonders what will happen if she is found out, and whether the apartment is safe. It's billed as being for fans of Tana French, and it definitely has vibes of French's books that have academic settings, especially The Likeness, with the undercover police officer living with college students as she tries to investigate the roommates for murder. The setting is evocative and the build-up in pacing is great; though it has similar vibes to Tana French in all those ways, I'd say it's not as strong in terms of character/plotting (or as dark), but I did find that my craving for a procedural type book starring a moody detective with a past was generally satisfied. The academic part maybe gets a bit in the weeds in terms of the pressures on professors to publish, or on the difficulties they face with student ratings, low funding, etc. and might make parts feel slow to some readers - but as I work in academic publishing I have more background information and interest in this. I enjoyed the slow burn of the first book in this series (The Resemblance), also set on/around the campus of Georgia State but delving more into the dark underbelly of fraternity culture, and I'd suggest starting there if you are interested in this dark academia/slow burn procedural/flawed detective type thing. ★★★.5

All the Other Mothers Hate Me: Florence Grimes is a broke and floundering 31-year-old girl-band has-been who is mother to 10 year old Dylan, whose classmate goes missing on a school field trip. The boy had bullied Dylan, and all the other private school mothers already hated Florence (she doesn’t fit in at all with these posh ladies - but also she is kind of terrible) so suspicion falls their way and Florence decides she has to do whatever it takes to find the boy and clear Dylan’s name. Even if Dylan is not seeming so innocent as a mother would like to believe of her precious kid… Super snarky tone (I mean, this opening line! "The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he's a little shit.") which promised to be a fun read, but Florence’s constant selfishness/immaturity/bad decisions got a tad tiresome to me. I did think that having her be so dislikeable did make me think more about how we judge mothers, what makes a “good” mother, and who “deserves” the role, which was about the only depth that the tale had. If you want entertainment though, I’d say this is for fans of mysteries involving moms and some slightly bonkers situations, things like Finlay Donovan Is Killing It or the Netflix show Dead to Me, but be prepared for more snark. ★★★

Her One Regret: The idea of a thriller exploring the idea that a woman is not "allowed" to express her regret over having become a mother, or how she would be vilified a million times more than a man for leaving her child if she felt she was not cut out for parenthood - right up my alley. Unfortunately this really was mis-marketed (or mis-edited?) as a thriller and instead was a not subtle, repetitive, mommy drama bore with too many characters/perspectives, no depth or nuance or redeeming qualities to the male characters (which does a disservice to the topic of discussing how we can allow mothers to explore their true feelings, I think), and some crazy twists tacked on to the end. The author's note about why she wanted to explore this topic was more interesting and compelling than the whole book - a great seed, but I just wish it had been approached differently. Some books that I think do this type of exploration of motherhood + thriller (lite) well are Joshilyn Jackson's Mother May I and Never Have I Ever and even Laura Dave's The Last Thing He Told Me. I also feel like Not That I Could Tell by Jessica Strawser had a fairly similar plot to this book and was more engaging. ★★

YA/middle grade

The Eyes & the Impossible: I honestly don't want to say too much about this book because I thought it was such a delight to go into it with barely any information - other than that it's a middle-grade story narrated by a dog who lives in a nature reserve/park and is the "eyes" for all of the other animals, to keep them informed on the comings and goings of the park visitors, environment, etc. - and to discover for myself the story. I was instantly charmed and captivated by Johannes' narrative voice, and the story of him and his fellow park animals (except the ducks - all the animals know the ducks are nuts-o) as they navigate their little ecosystem and the new things that arrive to the park. They captured my heart and also made me laugh out loud. I read this in two days and was sad when it was done - but it was just what I needed after reading 2 duds that I was kind of mad that I had actually finished (and then maybe even more mad after this one, because if this book for middle-grade readers - but actually for everyone to be honest - could be such a thing of timeless beauty and also entertainment at the same time, then what are these other books even for?!). I do think this is for all ages, but specifically for middle grade readers would recommend it for kids who love animal stories like The One and Only Ivan, Odder, A Wolf Called Wander. Also for fans of A Rover's Story and The Wild Robot for the charm and heart. ★★★★★

Pretty good end to the 2025 reading year with two books that made it onto my top 10, plus one of my honorable mentions too. But now looking forward to launching my new reading year with a vacation at the end of January/beginning of February - I have been planning for MONTHS which books I'm bringing and can't wait to read them and report back!

2025 top reads

2025-12-31T08:00:00.001-05:00

After reading 100 books over the last year, it's always a bit hard to narrow down to a top 10. I've managed to do it with a slight cheat - an honorable mention list follows - because though (as is often the case) the top several books on my list stand out as obvious top picks for their amazing writing and characters, the kind of books that make me say "this is going to be one of my top books of the year" as soon as I finish reading, the rest are hard to rank exactly. They, along with the honorable mentions, are books that I loved reading, that I can't stop thinking about, that hit me at just the right time, that I want to recommend to lots of people, that I'll remember beyond this year. While they all have great writing and characters, they don't necessarily have to be literary masterpieces to be in my personal top picks - it's just as much about vibes and experience of reading.

Several of these appeared in the "halfway top 10" list I posted in July; the others on that list got nudged off by some excellent books I picked up later in the year - including my #1 and #2.

1. The Correspondent: Sybil Van Antwerp is a 70-something retired lawyer who has been a letter-writer her whole life; through a collection of her correspondence, current and past, we get a picture of her (as an adopted daughter, a mother, a divorcee, a lifelong reader), her relationships (long-term friendships, sibling bonds, ongoing contentions with her adult daughter, even some budding romance with her sweet neighbor), her career, her strong opinions, and her biggest tragedies/regrets. I think that's about all you need to know going into this, because it's just absolutely lovely to have it unfold, and to get immersed in Sybil's (slightly crochety yet delightful) voice as it comes through her letters.

2. The Lincoln Highway: a modern (of the 1950s variety) epic story that will 100% be considered a "modern classic", with echoes of American cross-country roadtrip classics and mythological quests. Even after 500 pages I didn't want to leave these characters - I can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading it!

3. The Death of Us: I almost didn't read this because I don't do serial killer books any more, but this one really turns the genre on its head and makes it a story of the after-effects of crime/trauma on a person and a marriage. The unique approach of telling it through a "victim impact statement" for the courtroom + the drama of what actually happens in the courtroom was super impactful as well as engrossing, and cinematic in the way of a great miniseries like Broadchurch. I won't forget this one.

4. Sandwich: Catherine Newman packs so much into such a short book about a family's annual stay at a costal cottage - it's a family drama, but rooted in the family's love for one another, and so spot-on and insightful in terms of emotions and observations about motherhood, marriage, middle age. And darkly funny to boot. The sequel is out now, and I can't wait to read it because while normally a sequel would make me nervous after loving a book like this, if anyone can pull it off, she can.

5. Wild Dark Shore: a genre-mashup of cli-fi, family drama, slow burn mystery that is a great combination of character driven, emotionally resonant, and propulsive (there is this sense of dread with the mystery and the climate change that really drives it - excellently done but you do need to be in the right frame of mind to read that!). I couldn't put it down.

6. Ordinary Time: A memoir in essays that illustrates how an "ordinary" life can be worth a memoir just as much as one with "big" adventures, plus behind-the-scenes of owning a bookshop. I found this to be a personal "mirror" book in a lot of ways as someone living in my home town, and it went even deeper into self-reflection and meaning of life than I expected while still being light (in a good way). Excellent on audio.

7. Everything is Tuberculosis: John Green makes the history of tuberculosis pithy, personal, and poignant - and super relevant to us all. Also great on audio.

8. Maggie: or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar: This is one of those books with a lot going on - motherhood, illness, grief, friendship, an unraveling marriage, weaving in comparisons to mythology as the protagonist tells them as bedtime stories for the kids - but that all works thanks to the character's singular voice and the relatable complications and gray areas of emotions and life. It's witty and smart, tad snarky, and poignant at the same time.

9. Before I Forget: with the daughter in quarter-life-crisis coming home to care for her ill father, and the combination of weird humor + big-heartedness, this book reminded me of Unlikely Animals and Goodbye, Vitamin - and as those are 2 of my all-time favorites, I was thrilled that this author pulled off a similar story/vibe that also still felt like its own thing. Really enjoyed this reading experience.

10. The Eyes & the Impossible: I read several excellent middle grade books this year, so it's hard to decide if this was my very favorite or if it's recency bias, since I just read it in December. But Johannes the dog who is the "eyes" of the park he lives in, reporting on all of the comings-and-goings of the humans, construction sites, weather, etc. to keep the other animals living there in the loop, is a character who absolutely captured my heart. His narration is delightful, and the story is an adventure but also sweet and poignant.

And now for the honorable mentions! I made up some categories to fit books that I wanted to make sure got a little extra attention this year, whether because they were just a pleasure to read, or because they are under the radar enough that I want to make sure they don't get missed.

Rom-Com: I struggled a bit with reading rom-coms this year because while I enjoy the genre and the fact that it has a specific arc (requiring that happy ending, among other things), there was just a feeling of sameness to the books for me, and also a few with cringey dialogue/steamy bits. But Emily Henry's latest, Great Big Beautiful Life, broke the mold a bit with feeling like a cross between one of her regular books + Evelyn Hugo, and I loved it for that. Gave me that didn't want to put down experience. And Matthew Norman's latest, Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon, took a heavy theme (grief) to bring together two people who felt so real and I wanted to root for all the way. Reminded me of Annabel Monaghan's best work.

Slow-Burn: I love an atmospheric, slow-burn literary mystery - even better if it's British/Irish and has comparisons to Tana French. The Wolf Tree very much fit that vein, and I'm looking forward to its sequel coming soon. Trust Her is the sequel to Northern Spy, an Irish spy/informant novel that is also an excellent look at motherhood/doing whatever it takes to protect your child.

Historical Fiction: I'm sort of shoe-horning these books into "historical fiction" because I wanted to get in another mention of them - Kate & Frida is early 1990s Paris and Seattle, coming-of-adulthood, and written in letters. Loved being immersed in this era/pen-pal relationship. And speaking of fun: The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies is regency-era England at its most fun, with a combo mystery/romance and the cheekiness (but less steam!) of Bridgerton. The sequel is very fun too.

Middle Grade: Among the other excellent middle grade I read this year, Impossible Creatures stood out as a favorite for the creative world-building and adventure story - cannot wait to read the sequel - and A Wish in the Dark stood out for being such an excellently done twist on Les Miserables, with a Thai fantasy/folklore inspiration. My middle schooler loved them both too.

Cozy Mystery: though this is not always my genre, sometimes too cutesy, too slow, or - let's be honest - too poorly written for me to get into, the Thursday Murder Club series stands out as so excellent with the retirement village setting, the hilarious characters and repartee, the clever plotting, and the sweet relationships. I read books 2 and 3 this year and loved them both. And Welcome to Murder Week was a very fun library grab - combining a nod to the genre as a whole with armchair travel, a family mystery, and a little romance to boot.

Genre Mashup: I often find a lot of success with books that combine multiple genres, as they tend to feel familiar yet unique at the same time, something that makes my reading experience feel satisfying. Broken Country is historical fiction that also has a love triangle, courtroom drama, and murder mystery. It isn't high literature but it is immensely enjoyable reading to peel back the layers on the mystery and the relationships among the characters. And The Strange Case of Jane O. mashes up medical (psychiatric) mystery, speculative fiction, and an epistolary format with an exploration into motherhood and memory and more. So intriguing, so great for discussion.

Pure Pleasure: The last category is definitely not least, because my reading life greatly benefits from books that are maybe a bit on the lighter side but are just such a pleasure to get lost in. Yours, Eventually is a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion set in a modern-day Pakistani American community in California. It is done to perfection and just brought me so much joy. And The Heir Apparent was the perfect escapist reading for when I had a sick kid home a bunch of days in December - British royal intrigue with a new twist, the heir to the throne being a princess who has tried to leave behind that life and become a doctor in Australia.

I hope I have passed along some gems for your 2025 reading and beyond - and would love to hear what your top books for this year were too!

2025 best buys: kid stuff

2025-12-22T08:00:00.029-05:00

Last favorite things round up for 2025 - kid stuff. Some of these tried-and-trues will be getting some extra use over the next couple of weeks with kids home on break for sure... time will tell when I start counting down the days until the lunch box gets used again 😛

1. Balance beam set: I already included this in my family gift recommendations post, but it bears mentioning again given how much use the endlessly-configurable set of beams/stepping stones has gotten since Freddie received it in August: obstacle courses, floor-is-lava, gymnastics, even courses for driving little monster truck toys on. Will be great to have for the winter months for sure.

2. Wireless headphones: we have definitely reached the middle school own opinions + music/band obsessions stage - and these wireless headphones have been great so that he can keep his on-repeat songs going when the rest of us would prefer not to join in (though then the adults are just stuck with the preschooler's selections...)

3. Light up football: we actually gave this as a birthday gift to a fellow middle schooler but for how much fun the kids had playing with it, Hendrik will be getting one of his own for Christmas. Lights up on contact, so very fun to throw around the back yard, especially these days when it gets dark sooo early.

4. Sun Bum Kids gel face stick and sunscreen: this stuff is clear and spreads on much more smoothly and silkily than regular sunscreen, so I already liked it for ease of application on kids - but then it became the only sunscreen that Freddie would allow to be applied without a fuss, so it is now the only one I buy!

5. Plastic golf balls 24-pack: for my golf-obsessed 4 year old this set of plastic balls used in our backyard "driving range" (with no chance of damage to house/windows or people...) turned into one of the best value-for-money purchases of my whole year. I bet we're down to pennies per use after his daily sessions of hitting 50+ tee shots.

6. Walker Goods lunch box: in his second year of preschool with a couple of afternoon sessions a week added to his daily morning schedule, Freddie finally got to be one of the "lunch kids" that he always was jealous of last year - and that meant a back-to-school outing to buy a lunch box of course. Picked out this one at a local shop and have found it to be great quality, fits his bento box perfectly, and he could not be cuter toting it into school in the mornings.

7. Sharpie brush tip pens: Hendrik was gifted these last Christmas, and they were a fun addition to his art supply arsenal for something a little different. Also great for entertainment in the winter months...

8. Gingerbread house advent calendar: my kids love (and expect!) advent calendars, but in middle school Hendrik has been getting to a trickier stage to find a good one; our go-to Lego advent calendars are too simple for him these days, so instead I thought we'd try this building kit with mini bricks. You add on to the adorable (and surprisingly detailed) gingerbread house build each day, and in the end it's a great piece of holiday decor. Definitely more challenging and thus enjoyable for him at this stage - would recommend for older kids in a similar boat.

2025 best buys: home & life

2025-12-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

Next up in the best buys series - some of the most worth-it purchases/gifts in 2025 for use in the home and life in general. A few things purely for fun, and a few things for function that also happen to be as nice to look at as they are to use...

1. Silicone lids: we have lots of glass pyrex containers for leftovers, etc. and they are great to replace plastic versions. I think they'll last forever. The lids, unfortunately, not so much. These silicone replacement ones have held up great and they come in fun colors too.

2. The Correspondent: I requested this for my birthday, read it, hugged it, and wanted to gift it to everyone else (I loaned my copy anyway). Probably will end up my #1 read of the year when I make my list (see full review).

3. Pool/ping pong table: for our new garage upstairs rec room, we got a ping pong / pool combo table, and it has been great for family fun as well as for turning our place into more of a middle school hangout draw. This was a big purchase that my family will tell you loomed even larger in my mind. It can be nerve wracking to buy furniture online, but this one had good reviews on quality, and indeed it is very sturdy (and HEAVY - if you get it you need to have 3 high school/college age boys living next door like we do to help you move it).

4. Solar-powered lights: we've had a set of these by our front walkway for a while, and they're so nice I bought them twice. They've held up great and are super easy to install for a bit of classy walkway lighting, no electrician needed.

5. Christmas tree storage bag: last Christmas was our first with an artificial tree (got a great deal on this one and it is great), but then come January I had to figure out how to store it in the basement... this bag is great, easy to move around on my own thanks to the wheels. I got a second to hold all of our garlands too, plus matching ornament box and was quite pleased with my organizational choices when it came time to decorate this year.

6. Maldon sea salt flakes: I'm actually a couple of years into my obsession with this and it continues to be a great buy - makes for fancy recipe finisher (these cookies were Hendrik's birthday request - amazing) and I also sprinkle it on apple slices every morning. So good!

7. Lego wildflower bouquet set: I bought this as a Valentine's/anniversary gift for us. Very fun to have a little activity to do together as a way to connect, and a set like this is great because you can build the same thing simultaneously (with duplicates of most of the flowers), and it's something you can pick up for 10-20 minutes at a time when you only have small pockets (as parents of young kids often do). And it's actually pretty cool looking in a vase!

2025 best buys: style & beauty

2025-12-11T08:00:00.019-05:00

As the year comes to a close, but gift giving season is still in full swing, it seemed like a great time to do the annual look-back posts on my favorite purchases (or indeed, things I received as gifts!) from the past year. First up, style and beauty related items:

1. Calpak sling bag: I upgraded the size of my sling bag this year, and it has been great for travel and for daily life with kids - holds all of my needs plus plenty of snacks, sanitizer, etc. and is easy to clean. Lots of pockets for organization to boot.

2. Straight leg jeans: while trying to keep up with the (denim) times, I am struggling to go all the way on wide-leg jeans. They're just a bit much on a short lady and also don't bring back the fondest middle school style memories... so I was quite pleased to find this pair at an amazing price - and in petite length - that feels a bit more of the moment but suits me better.

3. Adidas Barreda Decode shoes: cool kid sneakers to rival the ones my college-age babysitters wear. Plus they fit my old lady orthotics. HA!

4. Denim skort: I wore this thing almost daily in the summer. I feel too casual in denim shorts but also wanted an easy option that's not athletic wear - perfection with a simple tee or tank (similar / similar)

5. Laneige lip mask: this stuff is the best for slathering on before bed at night to keep your lips soft, especially in the dry winter months when mine tend to get cracked. Smells amazing too.

6. Elta MD UV daily tinted moisturizer: daily sunscreen wear (even in winter!) is a must, and this is my go-to thanks to Peter's recommendation via the dermatologist bro YouTube videos he watches. It does triple duty as moisturizer, sunscreen, and nice light tint (great for a minimal makeup wearer like me), feels good going on, and has no weird scent like some sunscreen moisturizers.

7. Peloton/Lululemon active dress: when not wearing my denim skort, an active dress was my favorite summer wear. Again just feels a tad more polished than some other options but still kept me cool and worked for any kid type of activity, outing to the park, etc. The great innovation in this one vs. ones I owned previously is the ability to pull down the built in shorts to use the bathroom... IYKYK.

Stay tuned for some best buys of the year in home/life and kid stuff too.

reading lately: November roundup

2025-12-01T08:00:00.208-05:00

I started and ended November with some very seasonal reads - spooky season to start, festive season to end! While one of my Christmasy reads was unfortunately a total dud, I'm pleased to report that the other was an absolute delight and suggest you grab a copy for some cozy holiday break reading for sure.

Mystery/thriller

Welcome to Murder Week: I happened upon this in the library new release section, categorized as a "cozy mystery", and while I'm on record as not usually loving these, I was pulled in by the names of the authors who wrote blurbs for the cover (Catherine Newman and Annabel Monaghan especially) along with the mentions of "genre-defying" - and they didn't let me down! The elements of whodunit, rom-com, family mystery, meta-fiction, armchair travel, and grief exploration all came together for a fun time. Practical, routine-oriented Cath is struggling with how to grieve for her mother, who basically abandoned her to be raised by her grandmother, when she discovers that before she died her mother had planned a trip for the two of them to take part in a small English town's "Murder Week" event - in which wannabe sleuths can try their hand at solving a fictional mystery (it's like a murder mystery party on a village-wide scale with townspeople acting out the parts, and clues planted along the way). Despite her misgivings, Cath decides to go solo, when her friends convince her that a break from the usual might be what she needs, and she just might learn a bit more about her mother in the meantime. She is paired up with quirky and loveable Wyatt and enthusiastic romance-writer Amity to traipse about the quaint town to interview "suspects" and so on; this fiction-within-a-fiction setup made for fun, sometimes cheeky, often meta reading, but it doesn't veer too light/silly/one-note because it has these real-feeling explorations of grief and of reinventing/finding oneself, as well as the "family mystery" of why Cath's mom would have booked this totally unexpected trip. And then of course there's a side rom-com bit when Cath meets local bar owner Dev, which was delightful in itself. This is for fans of British mysteries of the cozy/classic variety (Agatha Christie, Masterpiece Mystery series like Grantchester, etc.), for literary Anglophiles in general (plenty of other mentions of Jane Austen, the Brontes, and the setting in their landscape), for readers looking for romance-ish books that are a bit outside of the mold (and not steamy). I liked Cath, loved her partners-in-crime (er, sleuthing), and generally was charmed by the whole setting and setup. ★★★★

The Jills: According to the blurb: "In this propulsive debut, a Buffalo Bills cheerleader will stop at nothing to solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate, navigating the dark underbelly of a hardscrabble city, the grime and glamour of professional cheerleading, and her own tangled family history." I was sent an advance copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, and in the pitch there was a comparison to Long Bright River - an instant in for me when combined with that blurb about a propulsive debut. Unfortunately, while I can see the similarities to Long Bright River with the sister relationship and one trying to rescue/protect the other from an addiction, I didn't feel The Jills to be as moving or as satisfying of a reading experience, partly because I just felt stressed out by Virginia's poor decisions and felt confused as to why she seemed to be handling her anxiety/difficulties with so much alcohol and even drugs when her whole M.O. was trying to get her sister off of drugs, and partly because it felt like The Jills was trying to cover too much - thriller plot with a missing person, mob connections, drug dealers, and murder PLUS exploring sister relationships, addiction, and the dark side of NFL cheerleading. I would say the cheerleading part - detailing the difficult labor conditions, low compensation, and strong bonds among the women - was the most interesting (and fresh) topic, especially when I read the author note that discussed how much of this was based on reality. That part was fascinating and had tons of plot/themes/etc. to mine, so I wish she had leaned more into making this the book, rather than trying to do so much in addition. ★★★

The First Time I Saw Him: I really enjoyed Laura Dave's The Last Thing He Told Me for an easy, twisty, not too dark thriller-lite read (plus I'm a sucker for one that also delves into the theme of motherhood) so despite being quite disappointed by her most recent release (The Night We Lost Him) I was eager to pick up the advance copy of The First Time I Saw Him, which continues Hannah's story from the earlier book. I was hoping this could bring back her mojo - and I think overall it did. It was maybe a tad slow in parts, but my familiarity with the characters made me predisposed to have interest in the continuation of their story, and the familiarity also helped them feel like fleshed-out characters (unlike how I felt about the characters in The Night We Lost Him). In this continuation of the story, we pick up 5 years after Hannah's husband, Owen, disappeared, by which point she and her stepdaughter Bailey have settled into a new life - until one day Owen shows up at Hannah's art gallery, and she knows that they are in danger again. As she and Bailey enact their safety plan and go on the run all while trying to figure out whether there is a way back to Owen, the story is interspersed with some "before" chapters about what Owen has been up to for the last 5 years, and about Bailey's grandfather Nicholas and how he became involved with the "organization" that is putting them in peril in the present. I quite liked how these chapters gave some context to the story and brought it all together. Overall a satisfying read for when you want something quick and engaging, if not super deep and memorable (definitely need to read the first book first though, if you haven't!). Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review - publishes January 6. ★★★.75

Historical fiction

Bog Queen: Agnes, an American post-doctoral forensic anthropology researcher, is called in to help identify the body of a young woman found in a northwest England bog that turns out to be much older than expected - and amazingly well preserved. Agnes becomes consumed by the feeling that she needs to figure out how this ancient Celtic woman died and why she was buried in the bog, but at the same time having to contend with protesters who want to protect the bog from digging/peat harvesting, her father who wants her to come back to the US, the family of a modern murder victim who was also buried in that bog (and brilliant as she is, social interactions are not at all her strong suit). In alternating chapters, the book tells the story of this ancient Celtic young woman, who was her community's druid (kind of a priest figure but also dispute arbiter and medicine woman), who lived in a liminal time between carrying out the old traditions of her community and exploring new (and feared) expansions to their figurative and their literal/geographic understanding of the world. It reminds me a bit of the Ruth Galloway mystery series with the marshy England setting and the (socially awkward) forensic anthropologist who comes in to help the police identify remains from the bog - but this is the less procedural, more literary version with a historical fiction twist. The activist/protester townspeople and general climate/ecological discussions + nature writing also gave vibes of Once There Were Wolves (Charlotte McConaghy). There's a bit of archaeological mystery to how this body ended up in the bog, but it's much more about the characters than the plot - not fast-paced, but still engaging. Normally the "past" chapters of a past/present storyline like this are not my favorite, but I really liked them in this book, partly because I found the character of the druid so compelling, and partly because it's a totally different historical era/setting than commonly encountered in fiction. While I really liked the characters and settings though, I somehow felt like something was a bit missing in terms of being able to really know the characters or delve into their stories - just felt a bit opaque or surface-level at times. I rarely say a book should be longer, but maybe I needed a bit more time with the characters to really make the book feel like a *great* reading experience. Overall interesting and well-written (and totally different vibe from Anna North's previous book, which I really liked). ★★★.75

The Lion Women of Tehran: Spanning the decades from the 1950s to present, this story traces the friendship between two young girls in Tehran, and how their relationship/their lives evolve over the tumultuous decades. It gives a vibrant picture of Iran - culture, food, landscape, and political history - while exploring themes of friendship, betrayal/forgiveness, political activism, and female strength/solidarity in spite of barriers. The writing is very straightforward, so it's easy reading, though it felt too long for the little amount of plot that actually happened (did more telling than showing), and the dialogue was pretty basic. I appreciated the look at Iran from women's eyes, and from a different era- very different view from way it has been portrayed/politicized in collective US opinions in recent years - and I can see why lovers of historical fiction would rate this one highly but the "tug at your heartstrings" parts almost felt a bit pander-y (or maybe it's just that historical fiction just isn't 100% my thing) so I didn't find it as emotionally resonant as advertised. ★★★.25

Romance/rom-com

Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon: Blunt, no-nonsense Grace became a single mother to her elementary-aged kids when her husband died of cancer in January, right around the same time that Henry lost his wife in a tragic accident. Neither is ready to move on out of their sadness, but as their first widowed Thanksgiving arrives, their meddling mothers try to push them together. They reluctantly decide they could get out of their ruts and spend some time together as friends, figuring that no one quite understands their sadness like each other. But as they start watching old favorite holiday movies together, they start to realize that maybe they could actually even be happy again... together. Holiday rom-com books often end up feeling a bit contrived, or Hallmark-level cheesy, but I was willing to give this one a try based on how much I enjoyed Matthew Norman's previous book (Charm City Rocks). The protagonists were a bit older (which means parenting was also a theme, which I like rolled into my rom-coms), the conflict/resolution felt real, the dialogue was great, the story felt fresh and low on eye-roll-y tropes, and I was charmed by the descriptions of the Baltimore neighborhood settings too. Pleased to report that this new book came through on all of those things and more (plus a cameo from Charm City Rocks, which was a delight!). Rather than feeling contrived, the holiday season setting made sense, as one theme was exploring grief and growth during the first holiday season without a loved one, and as holiday movies were a "thing" the couples had done together and made sense to reminisce on. (And don't worry - while grief was treated tenderly, this really is not a sad book. The characters are amusing and charming, and the story is ultimately hopeful.) Thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience and didn't want to put it down - it's one of those romances that is just a delight to get immersed in because the setting and characters feel so real and I am rooting so hard for them. Different subject matter, but the vibes, the well-written banter/repartee, the older protagonists and the real-feeling kids (I am sensitive to kids being written poorly) all reminded me of the things that I loved about Nora Goes Off Script, which is one of my all-time favorites in this genre. ★★★★.5

Yours for the Season: I enjoyed this author's first book, Ayesha at Last (a modern-day take on Pride & Prejudice with Muslim characters living in Toronto), but unfortunately this Christmas rom-com about a Muslim Indian woman on a fake dating scheme with a white guy, as their families spend the holiday together in his Alaska hometown for some convoluted reasons, was a let-down for me. The characters all felt manufactured for a cheesy rom-com, rather than feeling like real people, and while I really appreciated the cross-cultural aspects, there was so much more telling than showing in the story, making it feel like a cultural lesson rather than an interesting way to explore relationship/culture/family dynamics. In general the dialogue and chemistry didn't capture me, and while I finished, I was just not invested - perhaps because it was more of a family drama than a rom-com, with some other convoluted business dealings folded in, and so much repetitive internal dialogue with the main character. ★★.5

Fang Fiction: Tess is a 20-something who frequently immerses herself in her favorite fantasy series, Blood Feud, as an escape from her difficulties - her anxiety, the trauma that caused her to drop out of grad school, her estrangement from her best friend (also a huge "Feudie"). But then vampire Octavia from the books turns up in real life at the hotel Tess manages, looking for help to get back to the Isle where all of the vampires live. It turns out that Tess' favorite fantasy world is real, dangerous, and also intoxicating and life-giving in a way that gives Tess back a sense of self-worth and purpose (not least because series villain Callum turns out to be sexy and attracted to Tess...). This book is a genre mash-up of romance, fantasy/paranormal, even a bit of mystery. It's like Twilight and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and a bit of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches rolled into one maybe? Normally I'm not into vampire stuff and also usually don't love a book-within-a-book setup as I often find the "within" book to be boring - but I thought it would be fun to give something labeled "darkly glamorous" a try in the Halloween season. And overall, it was a fun read for something out of my norm, even if I never fully warmed to the protagonist. To be honest the romance part was not very interesting to me, but I got into the worldbuilding and the bit of mystery around how these vampires came to be imprisoned on their island, along the secret identity of the Blood Feud author. More action-packed than your usual romance for sure, and the book-within-a-book ended up being interesting because of the mystery of who actually knew about the secret vampire island to write about it (passing off as fiction), and because of how the representations of the vampires within it shifted when Tess met the real versions. ★★★.5

YA/middle grade

The Door of No Return: This middle grade historical fiction novel in verse is narrated by Kofi, an 11-year-old boy growing up in Upper Kwanta, where he loves hearing his grandfather's stories, swimming in the river, and spending time with his best friend Ebo. One night when he and his beloved older brother are walking home through the forest though, the unthinkable happens - he is captured by men from the rival village, and along with a group of other boys is trekked to the coast to be handed into the slave trade. It is well written (though admittedly not my favorite cadence/style of middle grade verse I have read) and important work but hard to read at times - packs an emotional punch, seeing the horrors of violence, loss, separation, and dehumanization through a child's eyes, especially in the verse format. And I found the contrast between the beginning, his super relatable, regular kid life - where his big concerns are things like complaining about annoying things he's stuck having to learn at school, getting closer to the girl he adores, and being able to finally show up his cocky cousin by outswimming him - and the later parts of the book where regular life is just 100% cut off forever. We never get to see the culmination of some of the earlier plotlines because that part of his life is over abruptly and violently. Reading this as the mother of a boy who just turned 12 the tragedy of it all feels even more so. Hendrik has read it twice and would highly recommend, but note that there are some harrowing scenes that make this better for older middle grade readers. I didn't realize until finishing, but this is the first in a planned trilogy that then looks at the next generations in Kofi's family; in that way it's kind of a "Roots" or a read-alike for Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing in middle grade/verse form. ★★★★

Nonfiction/memoir

What in the World?!: A Southern Woman's Guide to Laughing at Life's Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings: I'm late to the game on Leanne Morgan, but after recently watching her comedy specials and listening to some delightful podcast interviews (on Good Hang with Amy Poehler and Breaking Bread with Tom Papa), I learned she published a book about a year ago and thought it would be great selection to get me back into audiobook listening. Covering her small farming town upbringing in Tennessee to wild(ish) college years, young motherhood and ups-and-downs of moving around for her husband's work, to working hard to achieve her stand-up dreams in the hours after she put her kids to bed. Aside from her life story, some of the very relatable themes she covers are navigating stages/communication in marriage, finding your calling, being a woman in today's world, and hilariously - menopause. Of course she narrates it herself, and hearing her delightful turns of phrase in her delightful accent had me just charmed; I also loved how infused with emotion her voice was when telling about something that clearly made her happy or sad. It made me feel like I was hanging out with her. Though it's not a memoir that had quite the impact on me as some other amazing lady ones (go listen to Dinners with Ruth and to Be Ready When the Luck Happens!!), I love a view into a woman's life in the unique path she takes through motherhood + her dreams, and she's so funny to boot. Fun but also warm/cozy listening experience for sure. ★★★★

Not planning any other season-specific reading (other than 24 kids' books in our annual book-a-day advent calendar!) but I am hoping to get to a couple of particular books on my shelf before the year ends - would love to add to my 5-star count for 2025. Any must-reads from your 2025 reading I should know about?

gift grid 2025: team Hoekman recommendations

2025-11-25T08:00:00.277-05:00

One month until Christmas... already?! I don't like to get ahead of things with holidays until we've celebrated Thanksgiving, but the season is going to sneak up on us with it landing so late this year. So while my tree isn't coming out till Friday, I have been planning/shopping for gifts and thought I'd share some Hoekman family recommendations in the form of a "gift grid" for anyone who needs 'em. The "mom" ones happen to be my wishlist; the rest are items that we have and have loved in this household that would make great gifts for things your family might want/need or that they could wear/read.

for the mom - want: the Evie charm necklace is top of my wishlist as I love everything I have purchased from this jewelry company and have been wanting to add this personalize-able delicate necklace to my collection | need: mini tongs are more indispensable in the kitchen than you might guess (but mine have gone missing) | wear: shearling-lined Birkenstock clogs would be such cozy and comfy house shoes! | read: Wreck is the just-released follow-up to one of my favorite reads of the year (Sandwich)

for the dad - want: the yardball is a fun/unique ball that "combines the form of a baseball with the function of a leather glove - perfect for playing catch, anytime and anywhere!" and my crew enjoys it for sure | need: a sport sunscreen that is dermatologist recommended and has cool packaging | wear: LL Bean's insulated utility gloves get a lot of use for colder-weather yardwork around here | read: the Thursday Murder Club series is great for all kinds of readers and has been a favorite in Peter's 2025 reading year

for the big - want: The Great Wave Lego set looks so cool in person, and Hendrik really enjoyed putting it together | need: a Yeti water bottle that's a good size for carting around all day | wear: a hoodie in black is what my middle schooler thinks is just the thing; he has this exact one and loves how soft the inside is | read: Impossible Creatures was last year's Christmas book for Hendrik, and he and I both loved the fantasy world and friendship/quest of the main characters (the sequel is going in his stocking this year!)

for the little - want: this re-configurable balance beam set is excellent for an active kid on an indoor day, whether setting up an obstacle course/"floor is lava" type game or repurposing it as a monster truck driving course | need: garden tools in a preschooler size have gotten a lot of use here alongside mom and dad in the yard | wear: an apron for little baking assistants with a cute personalized leather patch | read: Bulldozer's Big Rescue is the perfect selection for a kid who is ready for simple chapter book read-alouds but requires a vehicle to be part of any story...

for the whole fam - want: this indoor putting green was actually Freddie's birthday gift (he is so golf obsessed!), but it has been fun for the whole family and is another good indoor winter activity | need: personalized placemats protect the table from kid spills but also are great dinner conversation pieces as we reminisce about the various photos on them | wear: matching cozy socks are my favorite stocking stuffer | read: The Art of the Minifigure is the kind of coffee table book that the whole family finds fun to page through and will return to again and again

Some tried-and-true recommendations from us to you - and there are more where those came from in the archives!

reading lately: October roundup

2025-11-03T08:00:00.056-05:00

October's reading roundup continues my September reading trends of spontaneous library grabs (Songs for Other People's Weddings and Hidden Treasure) along with Netgalley advance copies of favorite authors (Caller Unknown and Cherry Baby), this time with decent success. Across the month there are a lot of 3.75 star reads - enjoyable enough to read, but feeling like they had some flaws or just lack of something to take them up a notch on the success level for me. Oh, and hot take on a popular author incoming...

Literary/contemporary fiction

Songs for Other People's Weddings: J is a Swedish musician of minor renown who is best known for a song that includes the lyric "If you ever need a stranger / To sing at your wedding / A last-minute choice, then I am your man". And thus begins an accidental career as a wedding singer with a twist - he interviews the couple before their big day and writes a sweet and witty original song to perform at their reception that highlights their relationship. As we follow him to a new wedding each chapter (with some pretty amusing wedding couples and themes, my favorite of which was a wedding where everyone was to come in costume, dressed as the title of a love song) where he views the ultimate "culmination" of a relationship, we also see the opposite trajectory of a relationship playing out as he and his girlfriend of several years start to go separate ways. Even as he writes songs to wish couples the best as they embark on marriage, he starts to wonder if he really even believes in love. I have to admit that usually when song lyrics show up as part of a story, I don't actually read them (I just don't much see the point to un-sung lyrics?), so the fact that these feature in this book, as written by a real-life singer-songwriter, wasn't a selling point for me when I picked it up - but in this case I rather liked them. I actually picked it up because of Emma Straub comparisons; the narrative voice is pretty straightforward, a bit wry, exploring themes in ways that having Emma Straub write a (glowing) blurb for it made sense to me. I didn't find it quite as compelling as her work, but it's in that family. The book is rom-com adjacent but not quite, as it's more about a relationship on the rocks. More of a dramedy (a dram-rom-edy?) I haven't yet read Good Material by Dolly Alderton, but I wonder if that would be a comp title. Otherwise reminds me of something like Shotgun Lovesongs for the vibes (though this one is a bit more wry/comedic) or Colton Gentry's Third Act for the male protagonist in a rom-com-ish story (though this one has better depth and none of the 2nd chance romance trope). ★★★.75

My Friends: This mostly character-driven book centers around Louisa, a girl aging out of foster care and grieving the loss of her (friendship) soulmate; a famous and moving painting of the sea that figuratively (and then literally) is her safe harbor; and the group of teenaged friends that created/featured in that painting 25 years earlier. This priceless painting is unexpectedly placed into her hands, and as she travels across the country on an also unexpected train journey with one of those (now grown) boys, she hears the story of the painting and the traumas and hardships (parental abuse both physical and emotional, mental illness, alcoholism) and also the deep friendships behind it. Admittedly I have found that the style of Fredrik Backman books is not quite to my taste other than the Beartown series, but I decided to give this one a try because I was intrigued by the art/painting aspect. But... unfortunately still not for me. I can see people liking the straightforward style and the pointedly redemptive stories, but I just find the tone to be so UNsubtle. The lessons to be learned about love, friendship, art are made *very* obvious through the dialogue and plot, and especially through the narrative style that is constantly pointing these things out. I would like a little nuance, yes, but also, this narrative style makes me feel at a distance from the characters, so I don't really end up feeling for them in the way that I'm basically being told I'm supposed to. It was just so long and a weird combination of saccharine and sarcastic... not for me, but I imagine people who like Fredrik Backman will like it, so don't let me take away from your enjoyment! ★★.5

Mystery/thriller

Caller Unknown: Gillian McAllister is one of my favorite "thriller lite" authors; I especially like how she weaves a real and relatable exploration of motherhood into a fictional story with intriguing and juicy twists + turns. So of course I jumped right on the chance to read this advance copy of her next book thanks to Netgalley. This one starts out seeming like it's going to be story of a mother traveling from the UK to Texas to meet her college-age daughter who is finishing up an acting camp, and then it quickly twists into a kidnapping story and then a fugitive story, all highlighted with seemingly impossible choices related to morality and motherhood. Overall a satisfying read, and a pretty good amount of character development mixed in with the racing plot - this type of feeling like I know and care about the characters is essential to the success of any thriller-type book. While I couldn't put it down, to be honest it was actually a bit stressful to read at times, with the characters on the run and facing impossibly difficult choices, but the pacing was helped a bit by some interludes that reflected on motherhood + marriage as Simone (the mother) thinks back on her life - gives the reader a bit of a breather and explores the themes that are very relatable to many experiences of motherhood/marriage even while this crazy fictional situation is not. However, I feel a bit put off by depictions of motherhood that show it as the end-all-be-all in this way (such as Simone couldn't possibly bear to have another child because she loved this one so much, couldn't bear to be away from her for more than a few minutes), so occasionally the whole "mother would do anything for her child" theme felt over the top, even if in general I agree with the sentiment. Still, I liked the movie-ish feel to the plot and pacing, and found the scenarios to be an interesting (if far-fetched, see movie-like feel...) exploration of what a parent would do if faced with needing to break some serious laws in order to save/protect their child. This one doesn't publish till the spring - but plenty of time to read her backlist if you haven't yet. Wrong Place Wrong Time is my favorite for sure, but most similar to this one I would say is Just Another Missing Person (which also has a bit of a police procedural feel, so I liked it even more for that). I'd say also for fans of The Last Thing He Told Me. ★★★.75

The Bullet That Missed: The Thursday Murder Club crew charms again! Same delightful repartee and heartwarming with a side of espionage/murder as the previous books, though I found parts of the mystery a tad convoluted, so it wasn't my favorite of the series plot-wise. The characters' further relationship development (including one romantic one that I am loving) that builds on the previous books is great though, and I really enjoyed the new characters on the scene, especially the way that being among the Thursday Murder Club friends charmingly convinces them that their power/wealth seeking wasn't worth nearly as much as a good group of friends. I am still impressed by how well Richard Osman does clever and charm without being cheesy in this series, and I look forward to picking up the next book soon! ★★★★

Romance/rom-com

Cherry Baby: Cherry's husband Tom is the creator of a semi-autobiographical webcomic that has hit it big, and he has gone off to LA to screenwrite the movie adaptation - but as very few people know yet, he's not coming home. With the rise of his success has come the end of their marriage. Cherry is bereft and frozen in a holding pattern in life, but at least kind of functioning, until the movie trailer comes out, and suddenly even more people recognize her as the comic's character that she had mixed feelings about even before her impending divorce - Baby, with a caricatured version of Cherry's plus-sized body. She finds solace, and finds herself again, in rekindling an old college flame, but it's hard to reconcile this fiery love with the steady history of her love with Tom, especially when he comes back home to box up some of his things... Though I wouldn't quite characterize it as a rom-com (more "women's fiction" with the plot focusing so much on navigating the end of a marriage, reinventing oneself, pursuing career goals, getting second chances at love in mid-life), it was still less melancholy feeling than Rainbow Rowell's previous book (Slow Dance), so felt like a bit more of a return to her previous style. While there are serious things happening, the tone is generally pretty light, there's a realness to the characters/dialogue but with a bit of extra bantery fizz, and there's a bit of wryness and plenty of tenderness with characters that are flawed but that you want to root for. Though I do have to add that this is decidedly not like Rainbow Rowell's style in her YA books, in that this one has some serious steam. I appreciate the messages about body size and confidence (or lack) that went into it, stuff that feels super real to life but doesn't get brought up in a fictional bedroom scene much, but otherwise those scenes were a bit much for me, to be honest, bordering on a little ick (one involving pee?). Cherry was a great character with fabulous style and creativity, so despite how much she cried throughout the book she never seemed too sad-sack. I'd say this is for fans of One to Watch by Kate Stayman London, for general vibes but also specifically the front-and-center exploration of body size; also for readers who enjoy a then/now format that explores the current status of a relationship as well as how it came about. It's also a good pick for people of a certain age (mine - ha!) who like to have a protagonist around their age who is encountering things like middle-marriage, raising kids, being established in a career, etc.; other picks in this category would be Nora Goes Off Script or Romantic Comedy. ★★★.75

YA/middle grade

Hidden Treasure: Bo is a poor girl who has always searched the Thames river for little "treasures" that she can give to her mother to use around the house or sell for pocket money, but on the day her brother is set to leave for the front lines in France, the river actually calls out to her and brings her an actual treasure - encrusted in jewels - as well as a new friend from the "posh" side of the river, Billy, an orphaned boy who works in the kitchen of a crumbling manor. Together they realize that this item is only half of a priceless brooch that when put with its missing half is purported to bring back a loved one from the dead - setting off a quest to find the other half and the lost ballad that tells the story of this jewel, all while keeping it safe and secret from Billy's master, who would do anything to have it for himself. While clearly set in the WWI timeframe, it almost feels older, like reading a classic (but not at all a slog to get through - actually quite page-turning at times) with Dickensian vibes and characters, and it feels a bit gothic too in some of the supernatural/river folklore elements it brings in. I was super intrigued by all of those parts, even if a bit of the denouement felt a tad rushed or convoluted. It's creative in its plot/storytelling, fun to read, but also a great exploration of family identity and love, the power of grief and the work of living beyond it. A great pick for a middle grade reader (or grownup!) who enjoys real-world settings with a fantasy/supernatural/folklore twist, historical fiction, or books that read like a classic. It's not exactly a read-alike for any of these, but I can see it for fans of A Place to Hang the Moon (wartime England, classic feel), the Narnia series (again, wartime England + fantasy elements), A Wish in the Dark (fantasy/folklore element, feel of a classic, sweeping story), or even Impossible Creatures (writing style, sweeping feel, boy/girl friendship). ★★★★

Sisters in the Wind: Knowing nothing about this book other than that I think this author does super well with writing YA mystery/thriller/romance/Native American culture/current social issue exploration mashups, I jumped in blind. That's often a good way to go with a thriller, but as a general overview: the story follows Lucy's journey from daughter of a single father who grew up being told she was white, to foster care kid who found out her mom was actually Native American, to present day where she is on the run from something sinister and dangerous in her past - which we unravel in some fast-paced storytelling. In the present timeline, Lucy is being helped by Daunis and Jamie, friends of Lucy's birth family and also people who work to get justice/family support for Native kids not treated properly in the adoption/foster system As readers we learn about this history and ongoing social issue alongside her, even as she struggles with her desire (need?) to escape at the same time she really wants to continue this relationship with people who finally care about her for who she is and want to help her both connect with her past and have the future she had dreamed of before entering foster care. The back-and-forth timeline construction for the book was well done, really keeping me intrigued about Lucy's past/character development and also ratcheting up the tension, but in the end, especially the culminating scene, I felt like the thriller-y part went maybe a tad off the rails in feeling quite far-fetched - which can happen with thrillers, so it's not a major knock against it, if it makes for a good story - but on top of that feeling like it was a bit unnecessarily sordid in some of the actions of the foster parent characters. For me, this + the pretty high body count for a YA book took away a bit from the overall success in exploring important themes at the same time as providing a thrilling ride - some of it could have been toned down a tad to make the central themes and characters shine a bit more. But I will read anything she publishes next, as Angeline Boulley grabbed me from page 1 of this story, just as with her previous two books. And note for if you haven't read any of them yet - you should start with Firekeeper's Daughter, which happens to be my favorite of the three, but also important to read that one first because Sisters in the Wind takes place after it and gives away pretty much everything that happens in Firekeeper's Daughter. There was a parallel (in the way that this serendipity of theme/topic sometimes happens in publishing) to the recently published To the Moon and Back, which had a storyline about controversial adoption of a Native American girl by a white family (otherwise the books are pretty different, but for me the adoption story was the most interesting part of that book). Would also recommend for fans of YA thrillers that have a bit of depth on a social issue, and especially ones with a girl-on-the-run type of scenario like The Girls I've Been or Sadie. ★★★.75

On the reading docket for November: trying a new-to-me author (Laurie Colwin), and finally getting around to the latest by a beloved author (Leif Enger's I Cheerfully Refuse). And then we'll see where library whims or shiny new releases take me. What's on your list?

reading lately: September roundup

2025-09-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

My September reading choices had kind of an unusual emphasis for me: spontaneous library grabs. Our library finished a remodel not too long ago, and now there are several well curated and nice to browse tables by the entry - it's like browsing a bookstore, but I can bring home anything that strikes my fancy, for free! Plus thanks to the library Big Read program I have my new favorite middle grade fantasy read to share. Also a couple of free Netgalley advance copies in here - books I would recommend for sure, so check 'em out:

Literary/contemporary fiction

Run for the Hills: Kind of wild that two authors I would classify as "read-alike" for their weird/offbeat characters and scenarios (but also big-heartedness) had new books published within about a month of each other with the same general plot: a cross-country roadtrip with a crew of unexpected characters (in that they are quirky characters and also in that the characters hadn't previously known of their relations). After reading Annie Hartnett's slightly zany but ultimately endearing The Road to Tender Hearts, I thought I'd better give some time before I picked up Run for the Hills, lest having too-similar books dampen the reading experience. But much as I like Kevin Wilson, especially after his previous book, I think this one was a bit of a let-down for me either way. Started out promising with the premise and the personality of these only children of single moms - who find out that actually their dad created this whole next family after he left theirs and thus they have several half-siblings - meeting for the first time and immediately roadtripping to California in a PT Cruiser to find their dad. But the writing style felt a little stream-of-consciousness as the various characters recount/remember things about their childhoods or their newfound sibling - not my favorite - and it just didn't feel like it had that much of a broader point beyond this roadtrip, unlike the interesting things about art, family, etc. that I have found Kevin Wilson to convey though his kinda weird but ultimately likeable characters in previous books. It's a good read if you like this type of offbeat thing, but not the first Kevin Wilson book I'd recommend (this would be). ★★★.25

To the Moon and Back: I was a bit disappointed by Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere, so when another novel about a lesbian astronaut published just a few months after it, I hesitated at first but ultimately decided to give To the Moon and Back a try based on the angle of the protagonist trying to be the first Cherokee astronaut, and based on the descriptors of "epic" and "expansive". And... I'm not sure it was a whole lot more successful for me, unfortunately. This one is much more character-driven and literary in writing approach compared to Atmosphere, with pretty much no actual space travel, just Steph's relentless quest to make it to NASA and all of the relationships she casts aside in this pursuit. I struggled with her single-mindedness about this and with her seeming to self-sabotage when she was finally getting close. Rather than an astronaut book, it's a coming of age tale for someone who is also trying to navigate her native heritage and her queerness, an exploration of relationships of mothers/daughters/sisters, an exploration of family and generational trauma, a fraught (toxic?) love story, and an exploration of belonging/culture. While I appreciated all of these things/themes, it was a 448-page book that definitely felt long, and it felt a bit all-over-the-place in terms of narration and characters that would just kind of drop out, plus insertions starting late in the book of things like Facebook posts or dating site profiles that I didn't love as a way to further the story - reading a descriptor of a photo that is non-existent just holds no interest for me. If you're up for a story spanning decades and don't mind characters a bit dislikeable in their ambition/single-mindedness, I did think it came together pretty well in the very end, just felt too long to get there. ★★★

Mystery/thriller

Wildwood: At the end of the (otherwise very satisfying) slow-burn police procedural/mystery Northwoods, there are some things left open-ended as far as the opioid-related corruption investigated by mother/son duo Sheriff Marge North and Deputy Eli North in their small Wisconsin town - and now I see why... the plan for a (just as satisfying) book #2. As with the first book, I really liked the Midwest setting and the relationships between the characters; this one had pacing that worked really well for me (finished in 2 days), and I liked delving a bit more into the backstory of the third main character from book #1, FBI Agent Alyssa Mason. I also thought the continuation of book #1 was nicely done - often these small-town procedurals can feel a bit weird in that you have to wonder, just how many crazy murders can happen in one idyllic little place? So I liked that it felt like it made sense for the team to be digging deeper into a criminal network, rather than two different episodic plots. For fans of books like Long Bright River and the Cork O'Connor series by William Kent Kreuger. Sorry to report that this one doesn't publish until January (thanks to the publisher for sending me this advance copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review though!), but you can get your hands on Northwoods right now and start there if you haven't read it yet. Definitely recommend for a satisfying procedural with good character development. ★★★★.25

The Witch's Orchard: It has become well known among my online book friends that I love an atmospheric, slow-burn detective story, and while I love to recommend the good ones I've read, I love it just as much when somebody passes one along to me! Thanks to Kelsey I picked up The Witch's Orchard and was immediately pulled in by the narrative voice of former Air Force Special Investigator, now private investigator, Annie Gore. Because of her connection to Appalachian towns and their culture, she is contacted by a young man whose sister was one of 3 girls who went missing from their small North Carolina mountain town 10 years ago and who feels he can't move on with his life until he has some answers. When Annie arrives in town asking questions to get those answers, secrets that have been buried for a decade start to be revealed, but tragedy reawakens too. As a good detective/PI story lead should be, Annie is smart and resourceful but a bit down on her luck and carrying baggage from her past; I thought the character development was well done, even if some of the narration occasionally felt cheesily folksy. I also appreciated that while she had the tropes I like in a lead, the author didn't lean too hard into the ones I don't like (the self-destructive tendencies and the overmuch regrettable one-night stands). Overall a very satisfying slow-burn, atmospheric read, with the atmosphere enhanced by the local lore of the witch's orchard, where crows still gather and their screams echo nightly. Thought it was very clever how the author wrote each local character as having their own slight variation on the story of the witch, illustrating something about their own character as well as illuminating something new about the mystery of the missing girls. I would guess this is the start of a series, and I would definitely be interested in reading more books with this protagonist. Meanwhile, if you like the small community, atmospheric setting mystery with this twist of sort of dark local lore, definitely check out The Wolf Tree (another recommendation from Kelsey!) or Night Will Find You; if you can go even a bit supernatural/paranormal along with it, check out The Gates of Evangeline. I received an advance e-copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Out now! ★★★★

Murder at Gull's Nest: This cozy mystery was a spontaneous library table grab; I don't usually go for a cozy mystery, but with really enjoying a few lately about amateur sleuths of a certain age (thanks, Richard Osman and Jessie Sutanto!), I thought I would give this one a try. Nora Breen leaves her vocation as a nun after about 30 years and moves to Gulls Nest, trying to figure out what happened to her missing friend (after which, naturally for a cozy mystery, some bodies turn up, and Nora goes about her busybody ways to solve the case, to the annoyance of the local constable). There's an interesting cast of characters in this post-war England boardinghouse, and generally I loved the atmosphere and the historical setting, but overall I would say this one was just fine for me. I can see how people who really like the genre would enjoy it, especially with an interest in a 1950s England setting (feels a bit Masterpiece Mystery, which is a plus in my book), but I just couldn't get into Nora's character unfortunately. She didn't endear me like the Thursday Murder Club characters or Vera Wong, and she just seemed kind of off in terms of character development in general - she was a nun for the last 30 years, but then she seems to immediately be rather worldly and knowledgeable about detective stuff, and some of her dialogue seemed rather anachronistic (random one that bugged me - and who knows if I'm wrong about the 1950s England usage of the term, but it just felt like it would be so out of character when she refers to God as "The Big Man"). ★★★

Romance/rom-com

Great Big Beautiful Life: I had heard that this latest Emily Henry book is a bit different from her usual, and that actually made me more interested in picking it up - much as I have loved her previous books, the standard rom-com/contemporary romance just hasn't been working for me lately. This story-in-a-story offering was such an enjoyable reading experience though. It's like Beach Read and Book Lovers meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. In a delightful small town/beachy setting, we have these enemies-to-lovers writers, Alice and Hayden, who are competing for the same job - to be selected as the official biographer for a tell-all of an infamous socialite who disappeared from the public eye 20 years ago. Margaret's story of being heiress to the wealthy, media magnate Ives family as well as her paparazzi-chased marriage to a rock-and-roll star, not to mention family drama, a cult, a tragic car accident... normally I get bored with a story-in-a-story and wish that I could just get back to the main plot line and characters, but I really loved these chapters (as "written" by Alice) and found that the slow reveal toward what the public has never known about Margaret's interesting and tumultuous life (and disappearance) kept me turning the pages, and the interest also perhaps made me have more patience with some of the romance tropes that I've been a bit eye-rolly about lately. (Admittedly what I still didn't have patience for was the hot-and-heavy open-door scenes; I don't usually have much time for these anyway, and when they pulled me out of both the Margaret and the Alice/Hayden writerly competition, I really didn't need them.) A couple of other things I appreciated - Alice has a really bubbly personality, and often in a rom-com this can turn a protagonist a bit flaky. But for her the relentless optimism made sense in terms of character development, and her seriousness/skill with her work as a pop culture writer kept her grounded and made me like and root for her. Also, in the enemies-to-lovers trope, the "enemies" part didn't get too drawn out and drag things down; plus, the inevitable conflict in the story arc felt like a real reason for "we can never be together" than some manufactured miscommunication. I recommend if you enjoyed Beach Read, Book Lovers, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - or if you want a romance with a bit of a "more" element to it. ★★★★.5

Historical fiction

Kate & Frida: In this epistolary novel, young, free-spirited American-in-Paris Frida writes to a Seattle bookshop to request a particular selection, and when steady and quiet but friendly bookseller Kate writes back, these 20-somethings begin a years-long correspondence and deep friendship in which they bond and support each other through big and small things - love of certain books, relationship advice, self-doubt, finding their purpose in life, and finding joy in tumultuous times. Admittedly, I wasn't sure at first that it was going to be a success for me; while it hearkens to the epitome of this bookish epistolary genre and an absolute favorite of mine (84, Charing Cross Road), I was afraid it might turn out to be a bit of a rip-off... And I also wondered if the characters and their initial perkiness would get a bit tiresome. Luckily the direction the author took with some of the difficulties and doubts the characters faced gave the story and the reading experience some depth and weight, while the characters still charmed with their often zippy, chatty correspondence. I really appreciated the theme of choosing joy in spite of (even because of) the tragedies in the world. As one of the characters quoted Madeline L'Engle: "It is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance." This exploration made it feel very relevant to life in 2025 - since of course we still have tragedies, personal and global - while still feeling very rooted in the current events and culture of 1990s US west coast and Europe. This was clearly the author's intent - as she writes in her note at the end of the book, her wish was to tell her younger self: "During the darkest times, not only is it possible to feel joy, it is your duty to embrace it fully, to share it far and wide, and to never lose hope that joy, along with compassion and love, will win in the end." At times the book gets maybe a bit overt to the point of cheesy along these lines, but for the most part I found it buoyant and really quite enjoyable/fast reading. This format and the 2 characters were also a nice way to explore the coming-of-adulthood pull between home and between flying away to do grand things, with each character embodying that and writing about the excitement/satisfaction of this but also the wondering if it's right for them. This theme would actually make the book a great pairing with one of my favorite nonfiction books of the year, Ordinary Time, a memoir that really goes into this, such as the feeling that young women who want to go into journalism must end up in New York to live big lives... but then the reality of being a person who stays in her hometown and makes a life she loves there, but still can't help comparing it sometimes to the "should" of her peer set. This is a book for book/bookstore/literary lovers and I would also recommend for people who like food writer memoirs such as Ruth Reichl's or Laurie Colwin's (which I haven't read, but were mentioned a ton in the book and I definitely want to try now), or people who came of age in the 1990s and are interested in some nostalgia. ★★★★.25

YA/middle grade

A Wish in the Dark: Our area's Big Read program chose this book as their middle grade selection for 2025, and I was excited to pick it up after Hendrik really loved it - and even more so when I learned that it's a Thai-inspired fantasy twist on Les Miserables. I have actually read the unabridged version of the original, and (even more importantly?) it is my favorite musical of all time... and I would say in this book the author delivers a performance worthy of it. Unlike parts of the unabridged original, this one is quite fast paced with a prison escape, a cat-and-mouse chase across mountains and city canals, a budding (peaceful) revolution; at the same time, it develops characters with real depth and realistic flaws/blind spots/mixed emotions and it shines a light on those who are suffering while also infusing warmth and hope and heart into the characters and their relationships. The worldbuilding is great for people who don't normally read fantasy as their first choice - the story just starts right in, and the world builds around you as it goes, in quite a seamless way. I thought the fantasy elements were creative, and almost folklore-ish in feel (the author's heritage is Thai, and I also liked the cultural and place-based elements she brought in with the monks, particular fruits and landscapes, etc.), but it also had such relevance to modern life, bringing up themes of privilege, social justice, bias/prejudice, becoming one's own self and believing there is goodness inside of all of us despite what the world tells us/how it categorizes us. Some particularly memorable and poignant lines: “Well, sometimes light shines on the worthy. But sometimes it just shines on the lucky ones. And sometimes… Sometimes good people get trapped in the dark.” “You can’t run away from darkness. It’s everywhere. The only way to see through it is to shine a light.” While I had some minor quibbles with an end that felt rushed, I can see why this would be a Big Read (and Newbery Honor) pick with the timeless story, creative elements, and really well done themes/parallels to our world that are important for middle schoolers (and all of us) to discuss. This is for fans of Les Miz for sure; while you don't need to know the original appreciate this as a great story, for my reading experience it added a bonus dimension that made me love it even more, and I also appreciated that not every single element/character aligned, so it felt like its own, fresh story too, not shoe-horned into being exactly parallel to the original.) It also reminded me of books like Erin Entrada Kelly's Lalani of the Distant Sea with the cultural/folklore emphasis. ★★★★.75

reading lately: preschool recommendation roundup

2025-09-08T08:00:00.136-04:00

Both kids are back in school, but they had a pretty great summer reading season as well, including countless walks to the library to bring home stacks of books - graphic novels and comic strips for Hendrik (he's reading some that I grew up loving in the actual newspaper, which is fun), and any and all (and only) "vehicle books" for Freddie from the kids' nonfiction section. Great for him to page through, not enjoyable to read aloud, in my opinion. Such is his commitment to them that he declined to select any free book as his summer reading challenge prize at the library, with no vehicle books on offer... I've been working on getting some actual stories into the mix though, surreptitiously adding some picture books with vehicle-related stories in at the checkout counter. Here are some recent favorites:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

1. Construction Site: Garbage Crew to the Rescue: Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site has long been a beloved read in our house, and now they've got a whole bunch of spinoffs, adding in even more kinds of vehicles. The airport and garbage crew selections have been ones that Freddie likes too.

2. Towed by Toad: Aside from being a very cutely illustrated and phrased story about a tow truck driver gettin' the job done, it's also a sweet lesson about how everybody needs help sometimes, and how we can ask for/accept the help we need.

3. Every Monday Mabel: This will resonate with so many parents of toddlers/preschoolers - every Monday morning, Mabel drags her chair out to the driveway, while her parents and sibling are completely oblivious to the amazing thing they are missing: the arrival of the garbage truck. Extra fun that garbage day on our street happens to be Monday too.

4. The Ultimate Book of Vehicles: With the interactive features (flaps, pulls, pop-ups, etc.) of a book like this, it's a lot more enjoyable to look at with your kid than some of the inane narration in the nonfiction vehicle books that Freddie usually chooses. And it's one that a kid can come back to again and again to explore - worth the investment.

5. Bus! Stop! This one is a bit zanily creative in the fantastical variety of buses that keep coming through the bus stop after the character misses his bus, yelling for it to stop. It's a fun ride, waiting at this bus stop :)

6. Little Freddie Two Pants: Okay, if it's not a vehicles book, I thought I could at least get him on board trying out a new book that has a character with his name! And this one has just the right amount of preschool-level silliness that it was an instant hit, getting him to laugh out loud; I thought it was adorable myself, a great read-aloud option if you need something to share with a class perhaps.

Below are even more recommendations for vehicle-related storybooks that we've also enjoyed from the library over the last few months; over here we might need to see if our branch has a copy of Fred and Ted's Road Trip so we can combine the name AND the vehicle love.

reading lately: August roundup

2025-08-31T08:00:00.001-04:00

August was a different type of reading month for me as evidenced by almost nothing in the "literary/contemporary fiction" section... Instead: two nonfiction reads that I would call a mix of memoir, journalism, and self-help/inspiration in how they apply to my personal life, a book by a favorite author from several years ago that I clearly waited too long to pick up, and a couple of new forays by mystery writers I have enjoyed in the past. Here's what I thought of them:

Literary/contemporary fiction

The Art of Vanishing: Jean's day-to-day life has been the same for the last 100+ years - frozen in time in a painting by his father, Henri Matisse, Jean spends the daytime hours watching museum patrons and curators come and go; in his evening hours he's free to move about the various paintings, but he generally keeps to himself. A bit of ennui, perhaps. His existence is forever shaken up though when a new cleaner comes in for the overnight shift, and Jean feels an instant connection with the mesmerizing Claire. Though she can't know that he is really observing her in the same way she is him, Claire feels the same pull toward Jean as he feels - until one day it literally pulls her into his world. Each night as she steps through the frame of Jean's painting and they explore this lush behind-the-scenes world of all of the museum's paintings together, their love grows, but the impossibility of it working out never lessens... It's a love story, not a rom-com, but the magical realism vibes are similar to something like Casey McQuiston's One Last Stop, or Ashley Poston's work, so I'd recommend it if you enjoy those. I'd say the writing felt a bit basic in terms of character development/dialogue as well as really engaging with the purported themes of art and the enduring power of love, but it was a quick and easy read with a fun genre-bending twist on a love story given the magical realism and (art) historical fiction and even a bit of a heist element added in as well (though I found this to be a bit tacked-on at the end, with the stakes not quite making sense). In this way the genre mashup, love story "out of time" angle also reminded me of The Ministry of Time. Normally I'm not much of a questioner when it comes to fiction, and I'll go where the author takes me, but I did think there were a lot of gaps or vague spots in the construct in terms of things like why these painting subjects came to "live" inside of their paintings, how they had as much understanding of the modern world as they did despite having been "frozen" in the paintings in the 1800s, etc. ★★★.25

Historical fiction

The Lincoln Highway: One of those books that I can't believe it took me this long to pick up, because by about a quarter of the way in, I felt like it was going to be a 5-star read... and it most definitely was. I have loved Amor Towles' previous books, but something about the length and the historical fiction / 1950s / brothers on a road trip general synopsis I had heard made it not call out to me from my shelf. A road trip is just the start of it though - it's really a modern(ish) epic. I loved so much how Towles wove in epic stories, myth, and larger-than life historical figures (Homer, Lincoln, etc.) as a parallel to the journey of these more everyman characters. Though covering only a 10-day span, the story is sweeping in the sense of characters on quests and cross-country journeys, and also in themes - retribution and redemption, hope, friendship, authoring our own stories. The characters have lots of detours on the way in the literal and figurative sense, ending up in cities they didn't expect, almost a wild goose chase feel at times, and also as they recount their pasts and learn about their friends' pasts and understand them in new ways. The mastery of characterization and storytelling made it feel like an instant classic, and on top of that it was just a pleasure to read. At first I was worried that jumping between characters each chapter would feel distracting or get tiresome, but it made the reading experience propulsive, provided this multi-layered feel in terms of character perspective (and each character felt unique and fully formed - it wouldn't have been so immersive if we had been missing any of their viewpoints), and gave different angles on the same scene in a way that really made the story rich. I'd call it cinematic in that sense, both for the cutscene storytelling and for the scenic and iconic views as the characters drive across the country and through New York City. After finishing, there are characters I miss (Woolly! Billy!), and I also have found myself imagining what paths their stories might take after the novel has drawn to a close. This is super rare for me, so an excellent indicator for how real the characters felt and how much I loved being with them, even after almost 600 pages. I laughed, I cried, I plan to recommend it to everyone, hence the gushing review with very little plot synopsis... (And since I know that I'm way behind the times on getting to it: if you have already read and want something along these lines, it made me think a bit of the vibes of William Kent Kreuger, especially This Tender Land for the escapee friends road trip vibes but also a bit Ordinary Grace for the brothers and the themes and general feel.) ★★★★★

Mystery/thriller

The Ghostwriter: Once a sought-after ghostwriter for celebrity and athlete memoirs, Olivia has now been blacklisted in the industry after calling out a powerful male colleague; she's desperate enough to pay the bills and to get her career back on track that she is willing to take on a completely unexpected request that arrives to her agent: to ghostwrite the memoir of prolific horror writer Vincent Taylor, who is also infamous for being a suspect in the 1970s murder of his two teenage siblings in their home and who is now ready to tell his side of the story. And who also happens to be Olivia's estranged father. This is a thriller-lite type book, which I like for the twists and turns and intrigue, and for not having over-the-top suspense or ick. In this one Julie Clark plays with the unreliable narrator trope in some interesting ways as Olivia listens to her father recounting his relationship with his siblings, by layering on the potential angles for untrustworthiness - memory is already a faulty thing, with each individual having their own perceptions and even sometimes completely misremembering/recharacterizing things in their own minds, and on top of that we have the potential that he's just a bad guy telling lies plus the onset of dementia that is making it unclear whether he actually remembers anything or whether he is hallucinating, one of the symptoms of his disease. Some of the twists were convenient (as discovering a long-lost diary always is), but it was overall a satisfying read if you like a thriller-lite and you are looking for something easy to get into, though I didn't love it as much as Clark's earlier books. I think partly because of the narration from the 1970s interspersed in - just didn't think those voices were as convincingly done - and partly because the motivation of the main character for concealing her identity from everyone in her life (her agent and boyfriend in particular, in this case) didn't quite feel compelling, and you just know it's going to come crashing down... whereas in Clark's earlier books there was sort of a con artist angle that made the secret past/hidden identity portion of the story really integral. As a side bonus, I found the behind-the-scenes on the career of a ghostwriter to be an interesting part of the story; it felt like it aligned with what I learned previously about a real-life ghostwriter in a great podcast interview on Sarah's Bookshelves Live. ★★★.5

We Solve Murders: Steve is a widower and retired detective who prefers to stick to his small English village life and routines. His daughter-in-law Amy is a kick-ass private security guard who travels the world for her job protecting the rich and the famous. Though their taste for adventure and adrenaline is polar opposite, they are each other's favorite phone call at the end of the day. When Amy suddenly finds the tables turned and she is the one in need of protection from a hitman (not to mention being framed for 3 murders), she ends up on the run with her latest client, super wealthy and flamboyant mystery novelist Rosie D'Antonio, and calling the only other person she can trust to help her clear her name - Steve. He is not so sure about missing quiz night at the pub, but he loves Amy, and this sets off a trip around the world in Rosie's private jet, collecting an eclectic cast of characters along the way. This is definitely for fans of Richard Osman's brand of cozy mystery with characters of a certain age, delightful repartee, and kind of wacky situations that don't go *too* zany. It manages to be heartwarming and fun at the same time that the body count piles up. I wasn't quite as endeared to the characters in this one - there were a lot of them, and some felt more caricature than in the Thursday Murder Club series, so I didn't feel like I grew to know and love them as well - but while waiting for my turn in book 3 of my preferred series, I was happy to be back in a Richard Osman world, even if this one felt a tad overpopulated/convoluted at times. Definitely also reminded me of Killers of a Certain Age with the jet-setting, hitmen, and older protagonists (plus wit and sass) and it also reminded me of the multi-generational family solving murder in Mother-Daughter Murder Night. ★★★.75

Young adult/middle grade

All the Tomorrows After: From the publisher's blurb: "Each night, Winter Moon counts her earnings dreaming of escape. Once she’s saved enough, she and her grandmother can finally take flight and disappear. But when her spiteful mother steals her money and blows through it all in one day, Winter is forced to turn to her estranged father, who recently reappeared in her life after being absent for more than a decade. They agree upon a simple contract: she spends time with him in exchange for payment." Though it felt a bit bleak at times with all of the challenges that Winter faces - her neglectful mother, grief, guilt, poverty, loneliness and the stress of holding it all together - overall I appreciated this coming-of-age novel for the themes of finding self-worth, what it means to be a family, first love, and more, and I also enjoyed the Korean cultural angle. The beginning felt a bit forced in terms of characterization, but it hit its stride. It reminded me of books like I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter or Oye, where the main character is pretty prickly and maybe a bit hard to like at first, but I really came to have empathy for her, could see where she was coming from with the difficulties and hurt she had faced from family and peers, and appreciated her growth in the story. I think this could also be for fans of Mary H.K. Choi or David Yoon's YA books for the Korean American angle; though this one is not rom-com, those books would be similar in terms of cultural elements and also more of a gritty narration/life rather than a sparkly YA tone. ★★★.5

Nonfiction/memoir

A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting: This book reached me at the right time - reaching my 40s and being fed lots of Instagram content about the importance of strength training during this stage of life for women, along with reaching a breaking point with my body not handling the high cardio, low calorie lifestyle that diet culture trained me in, I was primed and ready to be inspired by how Casey Johnston's life changed so thoroughly when she started weight lifting, from body composition to relationship with food to confidence and self-assurance. She outlines her journey starting from a totally burnt-out, underfed, weight-obsessed, and chronically injured runner (though she would have admitted to only the final one) to a totally bad-ass sounding power lifter. She goes through the nitty-gritty on the way, what it was like to start from scratch, face a personally intimidating gym scene, and to gradually completely change her mentality about bodies and exercise and eating. I personally related to more of the mentality and diet culture-induced practices than I really want to admit publicly, but seeing that I was not alone in those difficulties made me even more inspired to pursue some of the mental and physical positives that Johnston demonstrates about strength training. I would maybe take issue a bit with how much focus on calorie counting and body appearance there still is - but then it's kind of impossible to escape in our culture, isn't it? Even if we're trying to get away from appearance as the reason to exercise, it isn't surprising to me that it would be a big part of the motivation to do strength training, once on board with the concept. Overall I thought it was a great listen on audio, recommend for any woman who is curious about reframing an exercise/lifestyle approach, or who is just interested in a powerful, engaging memoir about a woman literally and figuratively finding strength. ★★★★

BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity: As the publisher describes it, "Combining painfully honest memoir, cultural analysis, and reporting, BoyMom is a humorous and heartbreaking deep dive into the complexities of raising boys in our fraught political moment." And as a mom to two of them, I would recommend this read! (Actually, it was my husband who read it first, after hearing the author on a podcast, and it led not only to great discussions about how we want to handle certain aspects of parenting especially as we have a kid nearing the teen years, and about how our experience as the mom vs. the dad influences (perhaps subconsciously) our perspective or assumptions on raising boys. I think this is a really useful dive into some of the current cultural moments that could feel like a bit of a crisis when it comes to figuring out how to raise kids, such as #MeToo, online incel forums, social media leading to in-person disconnect, etc. And I thought useful as well the reframing of feminism and the patriarchy in these moments to remind us that it's not just about building girls up - though things like girls in STEM camps, etc. are great - but also about opening up gender expectations and challenging how we value certain things as "masculine" versus "feminine" and how they apply to people of any gender. Her research and personal experience prompted me to think about how our culture tends to socialize boys in ways that don't give them the emotional and personal connections needed for a happy life because of our assumptions about nature/nurture, and about how we (feminists in particular perhaps) could talk differently about dismantling the harm of the patriarchy in a way that provides more empathy and understanding to boys as they grow up. I appreciated the tone, the perspective, the information, and the prompts to (re)think about certain aspects of raising boys, though a bit repetitive at times. But if I'm honest it all made me feel a bit bleak. I suppose that's not the author's fault - it's the society we live in with the downsides of the internet and the patriarchy - but I was wishing for a bit more concrete what can I do about this in my home and in the world... ★★★★

reading lately: July roundup

2025-08-01T08:00:00.066-04:00

If June's theme was the reliability of previously-enjoyed authors, July had the opposite side of the coin - high expectations of a reliable author can sometimes lead to disappointment when their next work just isn't as good as the last... one real notable one to report below, a couple of other just fine books from repeat authors, unfortunately along with a couple of DNFs of rom-com authors I really liked before (it's a little bit my relationship to the genre at the moment - I need something different/stand-out right now, otherwise all of the steaminess honestly just makes me roll my eyes). On the bright side, though, were my absolute easy-to-award 5 star reads, both from debut authors!

Literary/contemporary fiction

The Correspondent: Sybil Van Antwerp is a 70-something retired lawyer who has been a letter-writer her whole life; through a collection of her correspondence, current and past, we get a picture of her (as an adopted daughter, a mother, a divorcee, a lifelong reader), her relationships (long-term friendships, sibling bonds, ongoing contentions with her adult daughter, even some budding romance with her sweet neighbor), her career, her strong opinions, and her biggest tragedies/regrets. I think that's about all you need to know going into this, because it's just absolutely lovely to have it unfold. I loved Sybil's voice as it comes through her letters, and I found some of the developing relationships/new people in her life so lovely too, providing this really nice mix of a woman reflecting on the past but also finding new and unexpected things even late in life. It's a slow and quiet kind of book by nature of the letter format, but I also was so engaged with it that I did not want to put it down and finished in a couple of days. I've been missing some of the "show, don't tell" adage in some recent reads; this one, though, does that excellently. The format being entirely in letter/email correspondence is really well done, not gimmicky at all, and has you reading between the lines of what is said in the correspondence (or gaps between dates in the letters) to understand more about Sybil and to explore the themes of forgiveness, love, living well, finding meaning and purpose in life, and more. I heard comparisons to 84, Charing Cross Road, one of my all-time favorite books, so that definitely encouraged me to pick it up. I would say after reading though that it's not that similar - though if you are someone who enjoys 84, Charing Cross Road you are likely to like this one! - aside from the epistolary format and the book lover vibes (one of my favorite tidbits about The Correspondent, actually, was the occasional insertion of letters that Sybil writes to well-known authors, as well as the last paragraph of every letter to/from her friend Rosalie in which they share what they are currently reading). What this book really reminded me of was Emily, Alone - another 5-star read that I hadn't thought of in a while but is well deserving of a revisit. It doesn't have this correspondence format but similarly focuses on a woman who is approaching the end of her life, a character you will come to adore, flaws and all, as she navigates life in this new stage and reflects on some of the joys of her years as well as the regrets, broken relationships, etc. Overall both excellently developed and unforgettable protagonists, quiet books that are still really compelling and fast reading, a great mix of the everyday and the prof and so many feels in the best of ways. ★★★★★

Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar: A woman goes out to dinner with her husband and instead of the date night with delicious samosas she expected, she gets a confession: he's having an affair with a woman named Maggie. She still finishes her samosas, but then thus begins our narrator's recounting of the next few months of her life - as her marriage comes apart, as she adjusts to a life of single parenting, and as she simultaneously deals with her own "Maggie", the name she gives to her tumor as a funny coping mechanism after a breast cancer diagnosis. I found it smart and witty (almost snarky), fresh and yet also familiar in the observations about what it's like to be a mother to small children, especially when the mundanity of their constant questions and needs contrasts with the big issues/worries that grownups have to simultaneously worry about. It's one of those books with a lot going on - motherhood, illness, grief, friendship, an unraveling marriage, weaving in comparisons to mythology as she tells them as bedtime stories for the kids - but that all works thanks to the character's voice and the relatable complications and gray areas of emotions and life. Through one woman's life, it explores the stories we tell to ourselves and to others about our own lives, about the mythology and legends of our family, our culture, and humanity. It's a super short book but packs all of the emotions and comedy and tragedy into poetic little anecdotes and observations; when I finished I had lots of page corners turned down to mark very apt, almost poetic (in a good way!) lines about life and motherhood that I connected with. This book has been compared to Crying in H Mart and Joan Is Okay; those are still on my TBR, but I can see how the comparisons arose based on the commonalities of Chinese/Asian immigrant daughter experience, exploration of motherhood/daughterhood, look at grief and dealing with cancer. Of books I have read, this reminded me of the darkly funny, observational, maybe even kind of stream-of-consciousness of something like Goodbye, Vitamin (also has the grief, illness, daughter elements), and of the voicey, character-driven, self-reflective story that delivers a combination of super mundane motherhood + profound or poignant observations about life/illness/grief of Catherine Newman's work, especially We All Want Impossible Things. Also, it was blurbed by Emily Habeck (Shark Heart) and Allison Espach (The Wedding People, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance), and if you liked those I would recommend this too. ★★★★★

What Kind of Paradise: Jane has grown up off the grid in Montana, interacting pretty much only with her father and his blend of practical and philosophical education. She is just starting to yearn for a bit more of the world as a teen in the mid-1990s, at the same time her father is starting to think bigger about bringing his Luddite/anti-technology manifesto to the world. He gets their remote cabin hooked up to the internet so that Jane can make a website to post his work, and suddenly her world expands, both figuratively, as she now has access to news, pop culture, even to peers in chat rooms, and literally, as she is emboldened to beg her father to come along on one of his usually solo trips away from the cabin. An inciting incident ensues that makes her accomplice to a crime her father commits, and Jane flees to San Francisco, where she comes to question everything about her history/identity as well as the values that her father always instilled in her about nature/anti-society, now that she sees the fledgling internet blooming and the community and considerations that go along with it. I feel like 90s nostalgia books are becoming a bit of a thing (as the 90s kids become adults of a certain age perhaps), and so reading this made me think of some other recent ones like Deep Cuts (California setting, pop culture, coming-of-age in the age of the rising internet) and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (rise of online technology, male-female friendship working in a tech job setting). But this one adds to the "coming-of-age in the internet era of the 90s" with a bit of fake identity mystery and a couple of twists. It is not a thriller by any means, with a relatively slow pace and fair bit of character development/philosophizing about the societal impact of technology, both good and bad, vs. living/interacting in the real world - but it does have a mystery that unfolds as Jane learns the truth about her father's past at the same time she is trying to figure out how she can prevent him from wreaking havoc in the present (his character is loosely based on Ted Bundy, which tells you plenty). It reads pretty easy, with the writing more on the "commercial" than literary side, even with the nature writing/philosophy, making it a good summer read. I'm not sure it was stand-out or unique enough for me to remember forever, but I liked the setting, a couple of the twists, and how it makes you think about how some of the AI-related societal worries we're having now are the kinds of debates and concerns that were also happening with the dawn of the internet. ★★★.75

Atmosphere: This one seems like it's getting plenty of high ratings from my Goodreads friends and from other readers in general, so it might be just a me thing or a timing thing - but I was honestly disappointed. I have sung the praises of previous TJR books, and I think she's doing fine enough that I can add my honest thoughts to the conversation here, for people debating picking it up... I especially loved TJR's most recent book, Carrie Soto Is Back, for how it was super readable and delved deep into one woman's experience with relentless pursuit of being the top of her field/an expert in something (tennis, in this case) and the barriers she faced - but the read also managed to be fresh and stand-out with characters that felt super real. I thought this new one about Joan, who is pursuing her dream to be one of the first female astronauts in the new NASA shuttle program in the 1980s could do the same, but unfortunately the scenarios felt like nothing new, instead felt like an amalgam/rehash of things I've read before, and the characters didn't jump off the page as much as real people. The dialogue and the abundance of factoids about space/space travel that were worked into the dialogue felt like overkill (one of those situations where it seems like an author learned a ton about something to write a book and then tried to get every bit of that knowledge into the book). Overall the effect of these was that it felt a bit too heavy on the "tell" over the "show" and I was honestly a bit bored despite the (maybe kind of forced?) tense "now" situation in space that is woven throughout the story of the "before" for Joan and her relationships. Overall, it was a fine read and will be a good beach book for lots of people; I might have liked it more without my high expectations, as this one felt like a step down in story/writing quality to me compared to her last few. ★★★.25

Romance/rom-com

The Austen Affair: Tess is a Jane Austen devotee, but as an American actress best known for a teen dramedy she's not the person that purists think should get the starring role in a new adaptation of Northanger Abbey. Her co-star Hugh is of British actor lineage and perfect for the role - except that straight-laced Hugh refuses to be won over by fun and slightly messy Tess, and their on-screen chemistry is terrible. It's already a good book setup for someone who likes rom-coms and Jane Austen adaptations, but things go in unexpected (and more fun, to make this book stand out from the crowd!) directions when an on-set incident somehow zaps them into the actual Regency period where Hugh is mistaken for a relative of his who was thought killed in a Napoleonic war. The time travel part adds a historical fiction with modern twist element to this rom-com that I really liked, both for the setting (like being dropped into the real thing of a Jane Austen movie! There were some great descriptions of the house, clothing, food, etc.) and for the scenarios. It made the rom-com tropes that I've found a little tiring lately - enemies-to-lovers and fake dating - feel fresher and somehow more believable even in spite of the unbelievable time warp. Being forced to get engaged because of the impropriety of being seen together unchaperoned while at the same time being people with modern sensibilities about feminism and such? That's a bit more interesting! And being fully taken out of their regular lives and forced to navigate proper society as a team? There's a more believable getting to know each other and starting to develop new feelings. It wasn't the best writing (I noticed some verb tense discrepancies, and I thought the dialogue for the historical vs. modern characters could have been better differentiated, for example) and I could have done without some my pet peeve swooning over forearms (and honestly the one bedroom scene in general - I often skim them based on my personal preferences, but this one felt like we could have left it more closed door to better suit the rest of the book, instead of just tacking that one chapter in there), but overall a good escapist fun with protagonists I liked and rooted for. Best for readers who like Jane Austen adaptations (both the miniseries/movie kind, many of which get referenced in this book, and the fun kind such as Curtis Sittenfeld's Eligible), also for fans of the enemies to lovers trope and rom-coms with a Hollywood twist, though I really do think it best if you start with a base love of all things Austen. (I received an advance e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review; publishes in September.) ★★★.5

Mystery

All's Fair in Love and Treachery: In this second installment of the Lady Petra Inquires series, billed as "Bridgerton meets Agatha Christie", Lady Petra is faced with two mysteries: a personal one, in which she has received a tip that her paramour Duncan was responsible for the death of her fiancé a couple years prior, and one that she is tasked with by the queen herself, related to the murder of the matron at an orphanage in London and how it might be connected to a political, anti-monarchist uprising. Having read in the last couple of months the first two books in the Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies series by Alison Goodman, which have a very similar vibe in terms of time period, lad- of-means solving mysteries, romance, plus a dash of cheekiness (and even very similar asylum rescue plot in the first book), I would probably recommend that series over this one. Perhaps a recency bias, as I do remember finishing the first Lady Petra book in a whoosh because I could not put it down (but that was 2 years ago, and the side character details really didn't come back to me well for the purposes of reading a sequel...), but I found that the general plot and the politics-based mystery of this second book were convoluted, cryptic, and confusing, so I just wasn't as into it and never felt like I understood or believed the stakes of the situation (especially when the supposed danger/high stakes intermingled with constant innuendos in the conversation - these things didn't mesh); plus I like the added element of the sister interaction in the Alison Goodman series. In general, if you like the Regency time period with a feminist, crime-solving, and even a bit suspenseful twist, these are both great series, but start with book 1 of either, and perhaps stay there with this series... ★★★

YA/middle grade

A Day at the Beach: Made up of 28 short vignettes about different kids visiting Rockcastle Beach throughout one day, from dawn until dusk, this book celebrates the pleasure and play and general sense of "here and now" that a day at the beach can bring, but it also captures the real feelings of angst and conflict as well as connection among tweens. I could definitely pick up echoes of the Gary Schmidt writing/characterization that I love in some of them (and it did make me curious about the co-author, Ron Koertge, both to check out his own work, and to wonder about what their co-writing process was for this book), but while I appreciated the broad swath of kids and their cultural/life experience that were packed into just a couple of pages each, and I liked how even though each was quite different as a whole the book gave a vivid picture and feel of the setting of this particular beach, it just never felt like enough to sink my teeth into in terms of story and backstory (this is my complaint with short stories, which I generally don't read, so it might just be a me thing). Also there was maybe some magical realism woven in to a couple of them that I just wasn't sure what to make of. Not my favorite Gary Schmidt, but still enjoyable as a quick, very seasonal read that is mostly breezy like a day at the beach but also shows how tweens experience and handle the duality of seeing the dark parts of the world/human interaction at the same time they see the wonders of the world and connection. I will say that I grabbed it at the library just because of seeing Gary Schmidt's name on the cover, and Hendrik happened upon it at home, sat down with it, and read the whole thing in about 2 sittings, so there's the target demographic vote. ★★★.5

After the mixed-bag month with some high highs and some mehs, I'm honestly having a bit of trouble deciding what to read next. Nothing on my (very full) shelf is calling to me; even though new-to-me authors were the best of the bunch for July, sometimes it's hard to commit to picking up something when I don't have a reference point for that author's writing. Perhaps I'll reset with an absolutely going to be reliable pick - the 3rd book in the Thursday Murder Club series, which I've been saving for a metaphorical rainy day - and then I need someone to highly recommend me a new author!

reading lately: top 10 of 2025 (so far)

2025-07-09T08:00:00.001-04:00

How is your reading year going? I think it's nice to take stock halfway through, partly as a little reminder of the great books I have read so far (and an excuse to sing their praises again and recommend them here), and partly to see if I should make any adjustments in the rest of the reading year based on what has and hasn't been working for me. This year a lot of regular genre stuff (ahem, rom-coms) is not working great, but things that feel like a unique/different approach or format - some genre-mashups and certain types of nonfiction on audio especially - are the things getting me jazzed about reading. So here's to more of those in the rest of 2025.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

These books aren't necessarily ranked in an official order, but more like placed in tiers - the first 4 are probably my favorite fiction of everything I've read this year, and then the next two top my nonfiction - and they were so good that they broke into my top 10 overall list, rare for a nonfiction selection for this novel-preferring reader.

For the final 4 selections, I had a bit of trouble filling those slots, as there were some other books that landed with a similar ranking (see the widget below for a peek at some other favorites) of reads that might not stick with me forever but were really enjoyable in the experience and also are ones I would recommend to a wide variety of readers thanks to their generally very readable/broad appeal (the genre-mashup categorization for several of them definitely adds to the broad appeal).

1. The Death of Us: I almost didn't read this because I don't do serial killer books any more, but this one really turns the genre on its head and makes it a story of the after-effects of crime/trauma on a person and a marriage. The unique approach of telling it through a "victim impact statement" for the courtroom + the drama of what actually happens in the courtroom was super impactful as well as engrossing, and cinematic in the way of a great miniseries like Broadchurch. I won't forget this one.

2. Sandwich: Catherine Newman packs so much into such a short book about a family's annual stay at a costal cottage - it's a family drama, but rooted in the family's love for one another, and so spot-on and insightful in terms of emotions and observations about motherhood, marriage, middle age. And darkly funny to boot. Apparently there's a sequel coming out, and normally this would make me nervous after loving a book like this, but if anyone can pull it off, she can.

3. Wild Dark Shore: a genre-mashup of cli-fi, family drama, slow burn mystery that is a great combination of character driven, emotionally resonant, and propulsive (there is this sense of dread with the mystery and the climate change that really drives it - excellently done but you do need to be in the right frame of mind to read that!). I couldn't put it down.

4. Kareem Between: this middle-grade novel-in-verse selection about an American-born kid with Syrian-born parents - who is in this cultural "between" as well as the between of being a middle child and in the middle of middle school - was excellently done and gave me all the feels. Recommend for fans of sports-related novel-in-verse reads like The Crossover, as well as fans of books like Other Words for Home. This is one of those books just as impactful for adult readers as for its middle grade intended audience.

5: Ordinary Time: A memoir in essays that illustrates how an "ordinary" life can be worth a memoir just as much as one with "big" adventures, plus behind-the-scenes of owning a bookshop. I found this to be a personal "mirror" book in a lot of ways as someone living in my home town, and it went even deeper into self-reflection and meaning of life than I expected while still being light (in a good way). Excellent on audio.

6. Everything Is Tuberculosis: John Green makes the history of tuberculosis pithy, personal, and poignant - and super relevant to us all. Also great on audio.

7. Penitence: This debut novel is a great pick for fans of William Landay or Angie Kim; it's a genre-mashup of legal drama and family drama; for me it managed to walk that line between character and plot driven with the emotionally resonant look at the messiness of family and the ways parents have to face impossible choices + the slow burn of the legal part. It is not really a mystery but tries to get at the "why" that leads up to a terrible tragedy - while still feeling very real in that real life doesn't always give us a clear answer about the why of things.

8. Broken Country: another genre-mashup! With the mix of historical fiction, slow-burn mystery/legal drama, and family/love triangle drama, it's already going to appeal to a lot of people; add to that an interesting structure and writing that make the reading easy and propulsive, and I can see why it had a lot of commercial hype. I want Masterpiece Mystery to make this into a series - it would be great with the English countryside and historical setting!

9. The Man Who Died Twice: the second in the Thursday Murder Club series, even more delightful than the already delightful first (though obviously read them both) - it's a cozy mystery with characters of a "certain age" that manages to be endearing in the scenarios and repartee without being cheesy or gimmicky.

10. Yours, Eventually: a retelling of my favorite Austen novel (Persuasion) in a modern setting that makes so much sense - a Pakistani American community in California. It sticks very closely to the original story but never feels shoe-horned; it also is a great completely closed-door second chance romance/coming-of-adulthood for people who enjoy that, whether or not they like or are familiar with Jane Austen.

If you missed any of these, obviously I recommend adding to your reading list for the remainder of the year. Any excellent ones I should add to mine?

reading lately: June roundup

2025-06-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

The unintentional theme of this month's reading: revisiting authors I have enjoyed before. These authors made for a good reading month, with the new-to-me ones unfortunately being my two meh reads of the month. For July I'm actually planning to continue this "theme" partly as I got the new Taylor Jenkins Reid book for my birthday (+ the new Fredrik Backman as my BOTM birthday month freebie) and partly as I am not going to be able to wait much longer to continue in the Thursday Murder Club series - the 2nd one was my favorite book of June!

Literary/contemporary fiction

The Strange Case of Jane O.: When her son is only a few months old, Jane suffers from a couple of strange, amnesia type episodes that present a total mystery to the detectives who found her after she was missing for a few days, and also to the psychiatrist she comes to for help. Between this psychiatrist's case notes about his sessions with Jane, and Jane's journal in the form of letters to her son, Karen Thompson Walker again presents a character-driven yet unputdownable speculative mystery. What I really love about her books is that at the same time as being fascinating in their speculative fiction genre (real world with just one or two sci-fi type of tweaks) they are also insightful and real in their human emotions. She does that again here - with profound and also relatable reflections on motherhood through Jane's journal - and on top of it she gives the reader a super interesting twist on the "unreliable narrator" reading experience. What are we to make of Jane's account - is it an overwhelmed new mother with legitimate anxieties about the world "falling apart"? Is it mental illness or delusion speaking? Is she faking things? And then the psychiatrist's case notes too - can we trust everything here, or are there biases at play based on the warm feelings he has for Jane? And as he acknowledges, we all have our own version of events, with memory being an ephemeral and influenceable thing. All of this makes for an interesting puzzle-like reading experience and one that very much invites discussion on the themes of love, memory, identity, and fate. I'd say go in with only those details and see how it unfolds! ★★★★.25

Once There Were Wolves: After finding her new release (Wild Dark Shore) to be a 5-star read for me, I was eager to look into Charlotte McConaghy's backlist. This book, her sophomore novel, while quite different in setting and plot, definitely was immediately recognizable as being by the same authors, as it focused on themes of climate change and its affect on human life; scientific research/conservation; remote and rugged geographical setting; the wildness of the world, which humans erroneously think they can/have tamed; and the place human love and relationship have in this. In Once There Were Wolves, Inti Flynn leads a team of biologists who are re-introducing wolves to places they have gone extinct, in an effort to reinstate the natural ecosystem/regenerate the land, and the team arrives to a rugged and remote area of Scotland facing the resistance of the local sheep farmers, in addition to the tenuousness of this project of getting 14 wolves to survive and thrive in their new home. As the wolves settle in and the project seems to be going successfully, Inti also starts to settle a little, coming out of her protective shell and developing relationships with local community members. But then when tragedy strikes and a farmer is found dead, Inti knows the wolves will be blamed - and she is ready to do whatever it takes to prevent this. There's a little bit of a mystery/crime investigation element that drives the plot, in addition to great nature writing + eerie cli-fi vibes, as well as exploration of themes around love, grief, and connection in family (especially sisters, but also motherhood). Definitely a well-done story and intriguing plot even if I didn't find it quite as strongly developed/well written as Wild Dark Shore (it maybe felt a bit more "commercial" and Wild Dark Shore leaning more literary?). It was perhaps a bit related to the alternating "before" timeline in Once There Were Wolves that delves into the trauma that Inti and her twin Aggie went through that drove them to move from Alaska to Scotland for this project. That part sometimes felt a bit too drawn out or like it was leading the reader on; I thought the present-day storyline was the better part and couldn't put it down in the last 50 pages. ★★★★

Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?: Regina is a former celebrity chef known as Queenie B who burned all her bridges and flamed out in a big way a decade ago, with ego and substance abuse issues galore. She's now in recovery and lives incognito, running a soup kitchen as a self-imposed way to atone for her past. Gale is an up-and-coming chef who is trying to maintain his own sobriety while he fights guilt over the death of a friend and while he tries to make ends meet in the low-paying start of working his way up to sous chef. He meets prickly Regina when he goes to her soup kitchen for a meal, and when he starts volunteering to help he starts to thaw her icy demeanor, while she starts to become an important mentor for him. But will her identity stay secret, and will they both stay on the straight-and-narrow when life is throwing a lot their way... I like a look behind-the-scenes of chef life (my favorite episode on Top Chef is often "restaurant week", when you see the ins-and-outs of launching a restaurant from concept to menu to opening night), so I liked that aspect of this book, but in general for me there was way too much "tell" (vs. "show") to the writing in terms of the characters' emotions and lessons learned; it made the whole thing feel too drawn out and unsubtle. It's light, heartwarming reading that's not a romance - rare to find - the slow plot and choppy/repetitive sentence structure just didn't quite work for me, though I managed to get invested just enough to stick it out to the end. However, if you liked Colton Gentry's Third Act, this one might be a hit for you - similar in the general second-chances themes, as well as this intermingling of grief, substance abuse, and recovery with working in a restaurant being part of that journey. ★★★

Mystery/thriller

Trust Her: In the follow up to Northern Spy, sisters Tessa and Marian have built a new life under new identities after escaping their role as MI5 informers in Northern Ireland, but they can't evade the IRA forever. They are drawn back into The Troubles as IRA operatives threaten their lives and their children's' lives, unless they find their old MI5 handler and try to turn him informant. This literary suspense/spy novel is full of character depth and emotion, at the same time the tension is super high with all of these potentially shifting loyalties; it's nearly impossible for Tessa to figure out who they can trust and how they can navigate the situation and protect their children at the same time - making this book hard to put down and a very quick read. I think Flynn Berry does such a good job of keeping this taut feeling the whole time as the reader is with Tessa in waiting for the other shoe to drop, and not having any idea of who is trustworthy as there are so many potential double agents in the picture - and yet in the midst of all of this Tessa still has such mundane things to deal with, the school dropoffs and time at the playground and meltdowns over mealtime pickiness. It's an extreme contrast of the juggle that motherhood is - the woman who has a past and responsibilities and conflicts outside of her child, and at the same time has to balance this with being that child and his focus on the present moment. Makes for some profound thoughts and also a more interesting/better read than your average spy thriller, as with Northern Spy. (Also it does not have the type of ick/torture that make me avoid most spy books, which I appreciate.) ★★★★.25

The Man Who Died Twice: Despite their great friendship, the Thursday Murder Club crew Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are starting to find life at their retirement community a tad boring again after all of the excitement of the mysteries they solved in book one, when 2 new projects fall in their laps: the unfortunate attack on Ibrahim by some local hoodlums (and the version of revenge that his friends want to exact), and the return of some people from Elizabeth's MI-5 spy days, bringing with them a mystery caper with stolen diamonds and safe houses and international thugs. Somehow this was all even more delightful to read than book 1?! There's a lot going on, but the plot comes together, and it perfectly walks the line between being fun and zippy without being too zany. I adore each of the friends' individual personalities, and how they come together with such great banter, and as with the first book it's just delightfully amusing how get the best of unsuspecting law officials, etc. with their witty repartee, wearing down anyone who tries to converse with them, or they play on the invisibility of the elderly and/or the assumptions that people have about them to get stuff done in their own way. Some of the side characters from book 1 get bigger parts and a bit more character development, and I love them too, especially police officer Donna and contractor/tough guy Bogdan; adding them in makes it feel like the series can continue to be fresh and fun in book 3, and I can't wait to pick it up soon. If you liked this one, try Killers of a Certain Age - it has the "certain age" and more of the spy/assassin angle of that one, beyond just the amateur detective part. ★★★★.5

Historical fiction

Go As a River: I'm not a huge reader of straight-up historical fiction, but the time and location of this debut novel - beginning in 1950s rugged Colorado - felt like it would be different from settings I've read about before, and definitely a shake-up from what I've been reading lately. Unfortunately the "sweeping" and "epic" that the cover copy promises fell a little flat for me. The story follows Tori, a motherless teenager who is in charge of all of the "women's" work at her family's peach farm, who runs into an outsider arriving into town one day- after which their brief love affair changes the course of their lives forever. What felt "sweeping" to me was not something in a grand sense, but instead a sense that felt like we skipped over a bunch of character and relationship development, with very little dialogue and fairly big jumps in time. Most of all, this love between Wilson and Tori was supposed to be so grand, but the "instalove" part of it was so unconvincing to me, and their subsequent time together was barely fleshed out (and was such a minor part of the book) that it didn't seem like it was something that should set the course of the rest of the book. And all this buildup to what end? The nature writing was evocative, but the characters lacked depth in terms of feeling like I connected with them or at least that they could be real people, and the slow moving plot was a bit ho-hum for me. I know of some people who loved this one, and I can see how readers of historical fiction who don't mind slower plots would like it, but for me as a non-regular historical fiction reader, it didn't have enough pull to reel me in to the genre. ★★★

Now that we're halfway through the year I thought I'd put together a halfway top 10 - stay tuned next week to see if any of my June reads made it under the wire for that list...

40 things I loved at age 40

2025-06-20T08:00:00.239-04:00

Turning 40 felt like a big milestone, but also milestones can be fun (excuse for a reading party, anyone??), so I wasn't bothered per se. Turning 41 on the other hand? What a weird, kind of old sounding number.

Reframing it with a look back on 40 things that were great in my life at age 40, in no particular order...

Listening to the stories of amazing ladies of a certain age, especially via the Wiser Than Me podcast and the delightful memoir The Third Gilmore Girl.
A couple of new favorite NYT Cooking recipes added to the regular rotation that are easy and delicious: spiced roasted chicken with tangy yogurt sauce, white chicken chili, ssamjang pork meatballs.
Discovering/devouring 2 super fun new-to me book series: Thursday Murder Club and Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies. Fantastic summer reading!
Using these date night conversation cards with Peter, whether at home or on a dinner date outing.
Building a Lego set with Peter for spending some quality time in a fun different way.
Spring break in Punta Cana with the immediate and extended fam!
Our new garage - the building process was a bit trying, but finally parking in it?!?! What a better attitude I had about winter/snow this year.
My adult tap dance class.
The Quince cotton fisherman sweater - cost-per-wear is turning out to be amazing on this thing as I am always wanting to reach for it, and it has held up great.
Seeing Moulin Rouge the musical.
Seeing Wicked the movie in the theater with Hendrik, his Christmas gift to me.
Hendrik's multiple new friend groups from his first year in middle school.
Hendrik absolutely rocking his first piano recital.
Freddie starting at the same (beloved) Montessori preschool where Hendrik went.
Watching Freddie cheer Hendrik on at a track meet - so
Baking so many batches of one-bowl blueberry muffins with Freddie that I have the recipe memorized - and he nearly does too.
Taking Hendrik to a couple of concerts and seeing his face any time the band launches in to one of his favorites from their catalogue.
Celebrating Peter's 40th at a baseball game in Seoul, a cultural experience we'll never forget.
Seeing Freddie's face when I surprised him by a bike pickup rather than a car pickup after school one day.
Seeing Freddie's face when he lays eyes on any kind of treat.
Taking Hendrik on a big kid trip to DC for his birthday.
Being surprised at the end of my conference last year by being presented with the only occasionally given "president's award" by my organization.
A "golden ticket" Mother's Day weekend (i.e. 40 hours completely to myself!).
Doing a flower bouquet workshop with my mom and a wreath workshop with my friend, and laughing at ourselves for struggling with these endeavors in our Enneagram 1 perfectionist tendencies.
Becoming a Patreon supporter of 2 favorite podcasts (Sarah's Bookshelves Live and Girl Next Door), and loving the bonus content.
Re-watching the entire series of The Closer. Some of the early 2000s attitudes don't hold up, but still really fun to revisit this detective series that I loved when it first aired.
My new go-to massage person. Ahhh.
Lifting heavier weights with more of a planned focus - especially liking the Peloton split training programs for this - and leaning into the recommendations for ladies in their 40s to focus on muscle building. That + more protein have me feeling stronger and proud of myself for the exercise/body mentality shift + the doing hard things.
Active dresses - and this is key - with the innovation of the open back waistband on the built-in shorts, so that you can actually use the bathroom... Will be wearing this one and this one a lot this summer, great for running around the kids and showing off some toned arms from #15 💪
Topping my usual lunchtime spinach salad with these meatballs for a quick and easy midday upped protein intake.
This "natural finish" full face kit, easy to use for the makeup-stupid and gives a nice glow.
These little rubber spatulas that I still use and appreciate every single day.
Finding a new perfume that I love and wear daily.
Finding some daily wear jewelry from Hello Adorn that adds just the perfect amount of interest and personality to every outfit (because I literally never take it off, no need to in water or anything): horseshoe earrings, satellite choker.
Maldon sea salt flakes, which are just fancy, and I sprinkle all over all kinds of things to make them even more delicious, from apple slices to my morning eggs to baked goods. They even make the only 2 grams of sugar protein bar option that has become my go-to taste like a treat rather than a slightly-off flavor that protein bars sometimes have.
Adding this cheery yellow color to my wardrobe in several formats.
Doing face masks and watching Netflix comedy specials with Peter. Hot date night, anyone?
Letterloop family newsletter. My sister-in-law set this up for us to all submit our individual responses to questions that run the gamut of mundane (what are you up to lately, what's your current favorite book/tv show), silly, and deep/profound, and then Letterloop compiles it into a newsletter emailed to us every 2 weeks. Such a great way to stay connected, and I absolutely love how everyone's personality always shines through in the way they answer questions. I end up laughing out loud a lot.
Setting a goal of figuring out Substack, doing it, AND having a whole bunch of people subscribe when I mentioned that I am going to make the transition. Thanks, guys!
Getting to be alive another year, and getting to have the people I love with me another year. I've got some complaints about the aches and pains and hormones of it all, but how lucky am I to have been 40, and now to be 41?!

(Quick note: I'm posting this in both places during the transition, but to keep up-to-date on all things books and maybe-occasionally-updated on other stuff with me, come check out my Substack!)

working on lately: move in progress!

2025-06-16T08:00:00.083-04:00

I was flattered and gratified that in my last "anyone still out there reading this?" query, there were several responses - I have loved writing and sharing books + more here for years, but with evolving family life it just hasn't happened as much. I'm not managing to read blogs these days either, so I don't feel connected to the community like I once really enjoyed. These days it seems like Substack is a pretty good substitute for it - and I will actually read posts that show up in my email inbox versus having to remember to visit a blog... All of that to say, with the waning usage here, a renewal payment on my blog domain name coming up in August, and the easy-to-use options over at Substack that are decently blog-like anyway (such as comments sections), I am working on transferring my content over there and continuing my occasional pop-ins on that platform instead of here.

So if the anyones who are still out there are interested in me and my book recommendations in your inbox from time to time, come subscribe (free!) on Substack! I do hope you will.

Not planning on doing a paid subscription route at present, but basically just using it as a different version of a blog platform to house posts that you can visit and/or have sent directly to email your inboxes, with the same types of book review posts and (hopefully) some sporadic bonuses, like the summer work trip packing post I have marinating in my brain at the moment. (As with here, posts will include referral links for products, and I have switched as many as possible over to Bookshop.org so that if you want to click through and buy any of them, you can support indie bookstores at the same time - yay!)