Life: It Goes On - March 30

Happy Sunday! You know that saying, "March come in like a lion and goes out like a lamb?" Well, we've had the exact opposite this month. Today is grey and cold and there is snow forecast for our area in the next couple of days. Think I'll be drinking a lot of hot coffee today. Mind you, Friday it was 81 degrees and we had dinner and drinks in short sleeves on the patio of a local brew pub. 

Bit of a strange week ahead for me: the Big Guy is doing a lot of traveling this week so it will largely be the cat and me, plus I'm taking care of Mini-him's and Miss C's cats while they are out of town for the next five days. I'm going to be a real cat lady! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time. Really interesting premise. 

Watched: As much college basketball (men's and women's) as I could. Also a couple of episodes of Shrinking, which is just so very good. 

Read: The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George and Twist by Collum McCann. 

Made: This morning I made cheesecake French toast (delicious but very rich for breakfast!), a recipe I found on Facebook from Applesauceandadhd (she of the aggressive tutorials). 

Enjoyed: Last night I really wanted some good mozzarella sticks for supper. Off we went; first place was packed so we left and went to a second place which is NOT a place I wanted to go (and I was kind of a whiny baby about it). But BG was sure they would have mozzarella sticks so we ordered them and a pizza. When I tell you they were terrible, I am not exaggerating. Even BG wouldn't eat them; we left them on the table. About now you're wondering why I enjoyed this, right? Here's why: when I fall into a mood like I was in at that point, I'm typically irretrievable. But last night I was able to enjoy everything else about the dinner and laugh about how horrible the mozzarella sticks were. I was glad I was able to come home in a good mood and enjoy the rest of my evening and I was proud of myself for not wallowing. 

I do still want good mozzarella sticks.

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I'm still way behind on 40 Bags. Part of the reason is because I've been working hard on clearing out spaces in the past few months so a lot of places have already been gone through. But this week, I'm bound and determined to get to the basement, which always needs more decluttering. The woman who started this considers it part of the sacrifice of Lent; I don't agree. I'm not sacrificing anything; this is for me. But it times up well with Lent and I'm always in the mood to declutter this time of year, so I join up. 

Thinking About: What to watch while I have the t.v. to myself so much of this week. It's definitely time for another viewing of Hamilton. 

Feeling: Pretty blue about the state of our democracy. 

Looking forward to: Once Mini-him and Miss C return from their trip, Mini-him will take off on some work travel. Since Miss C and I will both be without our guys, we're planning on doing a lunch or dinner and some shopping, a first for us. I can't wait. 

Question of the week: If you got to choose what to watch, without having to consult a significant other, what would you choose? 

The Hunter by Tana French

The Hunter by Tana French

Read by Roger Clark

16 hours, 24 minutes

Published March 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.

Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less: he's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey's long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn't want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

My Thoughts: 

Tana French is one of the author's whose books I will pick up without having the slightest idea what they are about. I read all six of the books in her Dublin Murder Squad series and there wasn't a weak link in the bunch. Five years ago she introduced us to Cal Hooper in The Searcher; I was so excited to find that she was writing a second book about Cal and couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. And now I'm crossing my fingers that this is not just a two book series. I'm looking this series as much as I did the Dublin Murder Squad series; possibly even more. 

I was recently trying to describe this book to someone, to put it into a neat genre. But it's not a book that easily falls into any one genre. Yes, there is a murder...eventually. It's a bit of a Western (and it is set in western Ireland)...there's even a bit of a gold rush.  I suppose it could be characterized as a crime novel, there's plenty of crime to be had in it. But it's far more about its characters and their relationships and an exploration of the grey areas between good and bad. 

It's a slow build of a book, but I was perfectly fine with that as we are reintroduced to the inhabitants of Ardnakelty, with all of their eccentricities, humor and long history. Relationships deepen and change. Hidden agendas are uncovered, motives revealed. Ardnakelty is much like a family - they can tease and hold grudges amongst themselves, but outsiders beware. More than two years after he's arrived, Cal is still something of an outsider, which is fine with him. As a former police officer, he struggles with the law of the land he now calls home. But in protecting Trey, and the others in the community he has grown fond of, he has to learn that sometimes things aren't just black and white. 

This one will still be on my best-of list at the end of the year, both as a novel and as a audiobook. Roger Clark does an incredible job. Clark is an Irish-American actor who easily handles the different accents and the storytelling. 

Life: It Goes On - March 23

Happy Sunday! The sun is out but it's chilly and the wind is gusting - which I suppose is all fairly typical for March in Nebraska. As is the fact that Monday and Tuesday last week we ate dinner on the patio and then Wednesday we had a blizzard with 6" of snow. By this morning, all but the biggest piles of snow have completely melted. It's a strange month. But I can see spring from here so that's a good thing. Later this week, we'll get everything uncovered on the patio and begin moving things to their fair weather homes. Then I'll really be able to start envisioning my flower plan for the year. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: A couple of hours of Jennifer Niven's All The Bring Places, which has been on my TBR for a long time. But I quickly realized something that I've long suspected - I'm just generally not a fan of young adult books. Which is not to say they aren't great books; they just aren't books that appeal to me. So I moved on to Therese Anne Fowler's Z, which I'm loving. Next up is Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time. 

Watched: So much basketball. I LOVE March Madness - both the men's and women's tournaments! We had four teams from Nebraska make it to the NCAA tournament; sadly all four have been knocked out, but we certainly had fun cheering for them and it won't stop our watching the rest of the tournaments. 

Read: I finished Ruth Reichl's The Paris Novel for book club and then got back to Colum McCann's Twist. Tomorrow I'm picking up five books from the library - time to get ready physical books! 

Made: We spent most of the week grazing on leftovers from last weekend's festivities. I did make potato soup from the mashed potato leftovers and yesterday we made a chicken soup from the leftover rotisserie chicken. 

Enjoyed: Book club on Tuesday and last night we went out for Ruebens and basketball with friends. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: The other day I realized that I had missed the kick off of this year's 40 Bags In 40 Days so I'm working to get caught up on that. Lord knows I have plenty of areas that I still want to work on, which is crazy with as much as I work to keep us from living in a hoarder house. 

Thinking About: Ways to use up all of the lettuce I bought for last weekend that didn't get used. 

Feeling: Like my back might finally be starting to get better. Still can't sit for an extended period without having pain but we're getting there. I need to be back up to speed before it's planting season!

Looking forward to: I have nothing on my calendar for this week (not that we usually have a busy schedule!). 

Question of the week: What's your favorite salad? 

Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding by Lian Dolan

Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding by Lian Dolan

288 pages

Published May 2025

My copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Penelope and Chase make a lovely couple. She’s a bubbly Southern California girl with killer work ethic. Chase is smart and charming and has political aspirations. They’re planning a spectacular California wedding, wrapped in peonies and thousands of little white lights, soaked in custom cocktails and romantic hashtags. Everyone’s excited about Penny and Chase’s wedding­­­­­­—except their mothers.

The Mother of the Bride, suave Greek-born Alexa Diamandis, doesn’t understand why any woman would get married. Ever! Raised in Athens and now perfectly situated in sun-splashed Montecito, California, she raised Penny as single mother by choice, supported by Lord Simon Fox, her old college friend who just happens to be an English aristocrat, and a wealthy circle of lady friends who call themselves the Merry Widows.

The Mother of the Groom, Abigail Blakeman, is a garden club stalwart firmly planted in coastal Connecticut. She thinks the whole enterprise would be so much easier if the wedding was at their golf club. Especially because the Blakeman’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse—not that you would ever know it by looking at Abigail. Keeping up appearances is exhausting, but it is everything.  

But when a sudden twist of fate calls them into action, these two very different women are forced to take over the wedding planning. Despite their differences, Alexa and Abigail charge in to save the day. How far will two moms go to make their children’s dream wedding a reality?

My Thoughts: 

This is Dolan's sixth novel and I've read them all. Her last, The Marriage Sabbatical, didn't work as well for me as her others, but I never considered that I was done with her writing and I'm glad I didn't. Abigail and Alexa brings Dolan back to what enchanted me with her writing in the first place. Dolan writes with a light touch, even when she's tackling some tougher subjects, her books are focused on her female characters and all of their relationships, and her locations always come alive. 

I love the way Dolan writes relationships between women: mothers and daughters, mothers and other mothers, and especially friend groups. In this book, Alexa, through her work, has earned a place in a friend group called The Widows; these women have formed their own family and will do anything to help family (and have the means to do so!). Abigail doesn't have that kind of friend group. She's spent her life trying to live a very particular kind of life and when finances chased her to the edges of that life, it meant that she had to give up the people she'd always spent time with and now feels friendless. Fortunately, as Abigail becomes more comfortable with who she is now, she also finds she has friends she can depend on when she needs them. And when Chase and Penelope call off the wedding, just as Alexa and Abigail begin to understand each other, they will both need all of their friends and connections to get the couple back together. 

In Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding, Dolan is back to California and I always feel like I'm getting a tour of the area by a friend who's lived there and loves it. Which is not to say that Connecticut and New York City don't always get their share of attention, but it's the Montecito area that's the star location of this one. 

Perhaps my favorite part of this book were the bridal columns (written by a friend of Abigail's) inserted throughout the book. As a person who is hoping to be a mother of the groom in the coming year, I actually found them to be packed with good information...and also really funny! 

Dolan's books are always the kinds of books that you know will have happy endings and when I pick them up, I pick them up looking forward to that. Characters I can cheer for, some quirkiness, all of the lovely details that make things come alive but never too many, and love (there is always love!) - Dolan never disappoints! 

Three Days In June by Anne Tyler

Three Days In June by Anne Tyler

176 pages

Published February 2025 by Knopf

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

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

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

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

My Thoughts: 

I've been a fan of Tyler's for more than forty years now. While the past couple of her books that I've read have not had that spark for me that her work once did, they still had more than enough to recommend them and to keep me reading. So I'm always going to be ready to pick up another of her books, which is why I was excited to find this one available. 

Guys, Tyler is back for me! 

This book is only 176 pages long but it has everything in it that I've come to expect and appreciate from Tyler. Not only that, the compactness of it might very well be what makes it work best. We get the full story of Gail's life as we travel through only three days of her life. 

Gail is a bit of a prickly person. She wasn't the greatest mother (which puts her kind of out of the loop when it comes to her own daughter's wedding) and she wasn't the greatest wife. And just on the eve of her daughter's wedding, she finds out that she's also not the greatest people person, which is one of the reasons she's just found herself out of a job. But in just 176 pages, we come to really understand Gail and hope that things will work out for her. Not only that, but Gail comes to really understand Gail, which might seem implausible in such a short time, but with everything that's happening in that period, it's entirely believable. 

 It is lovely to see Gail reminisce about why she fell in love with Max and to forgive herself. Although there's a big event at the center of the story, it's the intimate details and the mundane that give the book its heart, which is where Tyler is at her best.

Life: It Goes On - March 16

Happy Sunday! It was spring like all last week...until this weekend when we dropped back into the 40's. But at least the sun is shining and by this time of year, I know that the colder temps won't last long. I was pretty excited to look out my kitchen window the other day and see that my plants are starting to creep up from the ground! 

Running on fumes today. We've had company in town since Thursday to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday. The Missouri and Kansas contingents have all headed south and the northern contingent is off visiting friends so we have a little respite from having extra people around for a couple of hours. I love having my family around, but I'm so used to a quiet house (and such an introvert) that I need to have some down time by day four! Have taken advantage of the break to get laundry going, run the vacuum, and tidy up so I can head into this week without so much to do. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Katherine Center's How To Walk Away, listened to a couple of hours of Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places (before deciding to DNF it - just not for me) and started Therese Anne Fowler's Z, which I'm very much enjoying. 

Watched: Some college basketball but mostly my great niece and great nephews running around like crazy people. I'd forgotten how much energy little kids have! 

Read: I finished Lian Dolan's latest, Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding, which was a lot of fun and gave me everything I've come to expect from Dolan's books. Today I'm starting Ruth Reichl's The Paris Novel, which I'll be racing through because I forgot that I have bookclub on Tuesday and it's this month's selection. 

Made: Marry Me Chicken Soup, lasagna, coffee cake, and yesterday my sister and I tag teamed to make pot roast with carrots and onions and mashed potatoes and gravy for my dad's party (his request). For a change, I took the advice of everyone who told me not to try to make the desserts myself and ordered pies (which my dad also requested, in lieu of birthday cake). 

Enjoyed: Family! My dad's facility had a great room that we could use for our party that held all 18 of us and opened on to a big patio so the kids could get out to run and play. My sister had done a lot to decorate and created a B-I-N-G-O game that all ages could play with a lot of prizes so we had fun with that. Almost everyone came to our house after to hang out and have supper, which was a little more relaxing, especially once I got a glass of wine in my hand!  

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Not a whole lot other than book club. For a bit last week, we thought we were going to end up having the party at our house so we raced to finish up a few small projects and do more cleaning, so I'm tired and may take it pretty easy this week. 

Thinking About: While we have been happy to have him with us for this long, we know that my dad is ready to be done. I used to think it was really great that my grandparents all lived to at least 90; but the older I get, the more I realize that's only a great thing if you're body still allows you to have a good quality of life. 

Feeling: Did I mention that I'm tired? 

Looking forward to: A quiet week. 

Question of the week: My dad prefers pie over cake so we had four different kinds of pie. Which would you have picked: strawberry rhubarb, lemon meringue, blackberry, or chocolate French silk? 

Isola by Allegra Goodman

Isola by Allegra Goodman 

400 pages

Published February 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

My Thoughts: 

In 2011 I read Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector and enjoyed it enough that when this book began getting buzz and I recalled Goodman's name, I was eager to read it. Not sure if Reese Witherspoon had read Goodman's work before, but after she read this one, she was eager to put it into other readers hands.

Truthfully, I just saw the author's name and requested this one - without even looking at what it was about.  So I started reading, feeling sorry for this little orphaned little girl who was entirely reliant on a guardian who was never around, who was left in the care of her nurse and the other servants in the castle her parents had left her. I'm thinking that the really terrible thing that's going to happen to Marguerite is that her guardian is going to marry her off to some icky older man when she turns 15 and that's a bad enough fate. But no! Jean-Francois Roberval, her guardian, uses the money that should go toward Marguerite's dowry to recoup losses from his shipping business; then he leases out her home to gain the money he needs to rebuild his fleet. 

Without any money to wed her off, and a deep-seeded need to manipulate and own Marguerite, Roberval insists that she join him on the 8-week journey to New France (Canada) along with a group of pilgrims looking to start a new life. But Roberval is unaware that Marguerite and his secretary have begun to develop a relationship. When he discovers it, just as they begin to spot land, he deserts the two of them and Marguerite's nurse on an island. There is no wood to speak of on the island and not much in the way of wildlife to hunt. The only saving grace is that Roberval has left them with some food, bedding, knives, guns & powder, and some clothing. It's enough to get them started but they won't survive without finding shelter and how to get more food and fresh water. It's grueling work that eventually forces Marguerite to pitch in and leave her sheltered ways behind her. Two years later, she is finally saved. But finding her way home and to safety turns out to be almost as difficult as the past two years have been. 

It's a tough read, with things going from bad to worse and worse. I sometimes felt like I couldn't go on; I often wondered how Marguerite did. The human will to survive to always astonishing. 

I'm not always one to read the author's notes at the end of books (and why not since I'm always interested in learning what inspired author's to write their books?), but this time I was glad that I did because I had entirely missed that this novel was inspired by the real life of Marguerite de la Rocque, who was stranded by her guardian on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with her lover, in 1542. Goodman found a reference to this in a book about explorer Jacques Cartier 22 years ago and thought it would make a great story. Let that be a lesson to aspiring authors - hang on to those book ideas, you never know when you'll finally figure out how to make them work! 

The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields

The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields

Read by Meredith Mitchell

14 hrs, 2 mins.

Published January 2012 by Pamela Dorman Bks

Publisher's Summary:

They say that behind every great man is a woman. Behind Edith Wharton, there was Anna Bahlmann-her governess turned literary secretary, and her mothering, nuturing friend. When at the age of forty-five Edith falls passionately in love with a dashing, younger journalist, Morton Fullerton, and is at last opened to the world of the sensual, it threatens everything certain in her life-but especially her abiding friendship with Anna. As Edith's marriage crumbles, the women must face the fragility at the heart of all friendships. 

The Age of Desire takes us on a vivid journey through Wharton's early Gilded Age world: Paris with its glamorous literary salons and dark secret cafes, the Wharton's elegant house in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Henry James' manse in Rye, England. Edith's real letters and intimate diary entries are woven throughout the book. The Age of Desire brings to life one of literatures most beloved writers, whose own story was as complex and nuanced as that of any of the heroines she created.

My Thoughts: 

This one has been on my TBR list for at least a decade. I'm not sure that I ever got any further than the name Edith Wharton in the publisher's summary before I added this one to the list. As a huge fan of Wharton, I felt certain I'd enjoy anything that taught me more about the woman behind the books I loved, even if it was fiction. 

I feel that listening to this one might have really had a negative impact on my impression of the book. Mitchell does a perfectly acceptable job of reading all of the book except in her voicing of Morton Fullerton; Fullerton was, we learn early on, originally from Boston and Mitchell struggles trying to voice not just a man but a man from Boston. Every time his character "spoke" I was so focused on the reading that it overtook the actually words he was saying. 

But that wasn't my only issue with this book. Was it a book about Wharton's affair with Fullerton and the end of her marriage? Was it a book about the relationship between Wharton and Bahlmann? Of course the answer to both of those is "yes." For me, though, I would have preferred a book that chose one over main story line over the other. In the end, Anna is with Edith from the beginning of the book to the end. So it's their story. But a great deal of the book focuses on the interactions between Wharton and Fullerton, and a fair amount of the time is spent working up to them consummating their relationship and then their various times together. Kirkus Reviews calls those passages "excellent erotic writing." I must admit to having sped up the book to get through those parts of the book; they felt a bit out of place to me. But I imagine that Fields felt like she needed to include them to make readers understand why Wharton was so enthralled by a man who most people warned her away from, a man who frequently ghosted her, a man who was clearly not as attached to Edith as she was to him, a man who obviously scams people. 

One last quibble - in my opinion, the book would have benefited from culling 50 or so pages. Some "scenes" could have been omitted entirely without losing the point of the book. I understand that Fields drew heavily from Wharton's diaries and letters and it may be that she wanted to hew to those documents as she made her way through the story she wanted to tell. Perhaps less of the back and forth between Edith and Morton; perhaps less detail about Teddy's manic or depressive episodes. 

All of that and I still believe that had I read this book in print, I would have enjoyed it more. I certainly learned more about Wharton's character - some that made me feel for her and some things that made me think that she was frequently a person that she might have skewered in one of her books. 

Life: It Goes On - March 9

Happy Sunday! Wow are we having a March! Tuesday we had rain most of the day that turned to snow late in the day that turned into a blizzard that shut down most of the town Wednesday. Today it will be 64 degrees and most of the snow has already melted. Seems like a lot of the country is seeing this crazy weather lately! 

We have officially entered my happy time of year with the arrival today of daylight savings time. I know a lot of people struggle with springing forward and it does take me a hot minute to adjust. But it's well worth it, in my opinion, for that extra hour of sunlight when I get home from work. May our state legislators who want to end daylight savings time \

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have A Family (that was not at all what I was expecting!) and started Katherine Center's How to Walk Away.

Watched: Some college basketball, some Renovation Aloha (our latest Sunday morning guilty pleasure) and Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy. It's not up to the original, but it does bring in all of the cast from the previous movies and ties things up nicely. 

Read: I'm reading both Claire Lombardo's Same As It Ever Was and Lian Dolan's Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding. 

Made: I had a mental flashback to days of blizzards when my kids still lived at home and decided I need to back something to munch while we were shut in (for the whole whooping 24 hours that we didn't leave the house!) and made monster cookies. Then yesterday I made a gooey butter cake to redeem myself for the last one I made that was overcooked. 

Enjoyed: We were invited to Mini-him's and Miss C's apartment for dinner last night. Mini-him made Thai and I brought that cake; afterwards we played a couple of games - Utter Nonsense (where we discovered that none of us are very good at accents even after a couple of drinks!) and I Should Have Known That (which was great fun because I won!). 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Getting the house ready for company this weekend and getting a meal plan in place. 

Thinking About: Gardens and flowers. 

Feeling: Strangely accomplished. I haven't gotten anything big done but have been knocking off a lot of little projects, including some I hadn't planned on doing, like polishing some brass pieces that I had never seen polished. 

Looking forward to: Friday my family arrives to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday (which is actually on Thursday), sixteen of us in all. We haven't had so many of us together in four years, since my mom died. 

Question of the week: How do you feel about Daylight Savings Time? 

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

496 pages

Published July 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

My Thoughts: 

This is one of those books that's gotten so much buzz in the last few months that I'd almost convinced myself not to read it, knowing there was no way it could live up to that hype. But I'd read and loved Moore's Long Bright River in 2020 (a series adaptation of which is set to premiere March 13th on Peacock) and knew that she could write a book that would make me want to stay up late reading. So as soon as I thought I could manage a 500 page book, I checked it out. 

I tried to give my husband a quick summary of this once I was done and he felt it sounded like one of those movies where there is just too much going on, too many characters, too many terrible things happening. You know the kind of movies I'm taking about, the kind where the character's phone runs out of battery just as her car dies on a dark road with a killer somewhere on the loose nearby. And I get that. There are a lot of characters, the book bounces back and forth in time, there are a lot of relationships that play out different ways over time, there actually is a mass murder on the loose, and we're getting the narrative from a lot of different perspectives. Not many people could make it work. Liz Moore does. 

"A long novel that at first is hard to put down. By page 200, impossible." —Stephen King

I couldn't have said it better than Stephen King (well, of course I couldn't!). I got into work later than usual every day last week because I couldn't put this one day once I started reading it while I ate breakfast. The hubby had to pitch in to make dinners because once I sat down to read after work, I couldn't be bothered to cook. It all worked for me and the closer I got to the end, the more I could justify letting the wet laundry sit in the washer a few hours, the dirty carpet go unvacuumed. 

If there is a flaw at all, it's that some of the rich male characters are a little too stereotyped. But most of the characters in this book are so well developed, particularly most of the females (whose points of view are the ones we get most of). The area the story is set in comes alive: the woods, the camp, the danger of the area, the struggle of the locals once the only factory around shuts down. 

I'm pretty darn glad that this one is on my book club's list for 2025. I can't wait to discuss it with them, even if that is months from now. This one is going on my Best of 2025 list, where it will likely remain at the end of the year.