Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

336 pages

Published November 2013 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Publisher’s Summary: 

Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act, and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks don’t forget…

Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William’s life, his fortunes begin to turn—and the terrible and unforeseen consequences of his past indiscretion take root. In a desperate bid to save the only precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner. Together, they found a decidedly macabre business.

And Bellman & Black is born.

My Thoughts: 

This one has been sitting in my virtual TBR pile since before it was published. For some reason, it just never managed to rise up to the top of the pile. But, since I had gotten it originally through NetGalley and never written a review, I decided it was time to remedy that. 

This was my third book by Setterfield (I previously read The Thirteenth Tale and Once Upon a River. Going back over my reviews of those two books, I find that I feel very much the same about this one as I did those two. There are parts that are very intriguing and drew me in; but, overall, I felt that it was uneven. In this one, I also felt that I never quite "got" what Setterfield was trying to tell me. Why would a man, who as a young boy had done something that so many young boys do, be punished for the rest of his life for it? Why does the source of his misery also allow him to become so very successful in his career? Why does it kill off the people his was with that fateful morning - why do they deserve to die to punish him? And why spread their deaths out so far as to appear as though they were not related at all? And why take so long to punish him at all? Why wait until he is a grown man, happily married, with a family he adores and a career he excels at? 

Far more questions than answers for me. I'm not opposed to having a book raise questions that stick with me after finishing the book. But this doesn't strike me as the type of book that's aiming to do that, nor the types of questions that an author would typically raise to cause a reader to think more deeply. 

So I'm sorry to say that this isn't a book I'd recommend, although I did enjoy much of the writing and a great deal of the story. 

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

256 pages

Published February 2026 by Random House 

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

Publisher's Summary: 

No one knows you like your book club.

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.

But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.

My Thoughts: 

I'm pretty sure I say this every time I read one of Quinlen's books, but it's true that she's one of my go-to authors. I haven't always loved one of her books; but they always given me plenty to think about and depth and there is always so much truth to them. This one falls into the category of not being one of Quindlen's books I loved, but also a book that I would recommend because there is so much to think about (and talk about, making it a good book club choice). 

While there is a lot going on in this one (infertility, mental health, friendship, death grief, dementia, family dynamics, and family secrets), there also isn't much of a plot, It's absolutely centered on its characters.  Some things feel a bit forced and some characters are a bit stereotyped (could Mark be any more perfect?). But most of those characters? I really liked them, even the ones that had sharper edges and the relationships between them. There's a gentleness to this story that I really enjoyed and an easy flow that pulled me along. 

Despite what I perceived as its flaws, this is a book I can easily recommend for those who enjoy character-driven novels and novels about relationships and what makes a family. 

Truth and Beauty: a friendship by Ann Patchett

Read by Ann Patchett

8 hours 6 minutes

Published 2004 by HarperCollins

Publisher’s Summary: 

What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when that person is not your lover, but your best friend? In her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett shines light on the little-explored world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about the first half of her life. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans 20 years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

My Thoughts: 

As you’re well aware, I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s fiction writing and I loved her essay collection This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage. But I might like her even better as a human being. Not that I actually know her, but I do watch her every posts every week. Did you know that when Nashville was hit with the ice storm last week, Patchett paid for the hotel bills of every employee who had to leave their home due to lack of power and paid employees even if they couldn’t get into the store. The store remained open every day as a place people could come to warm up. That’s a good human. 

She was also an incredible friend to Lucy Grealy, a woman who, in my opinion, often made it difficult. Lucy could be very self-centered and was terrible roommate. She took out loans she had no intention of ever paying back, wouldn’t do any work that wasn’t writing, fretted incessantly about never finding love or not getting the grants or positions she wanted. To be fair, Lucy’s life was tough – she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma which led to the removal of part of her jawbone; in an effort to repair the damage caused by that and chemotherapy, Lucy underwent dozens of surgeries. She suffered from the cruelty of children while in school and adults when she was older. 

Patchett and Grealy were only slightly familiar with each other when they became roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but Patchett had admired Grealy in college. Grealy had that “it” factor that seemed to draw people to her and Patchett was no exception. As roommate the two agreed that Patchett would do all of the cooking and cleaning while Grealy would leave plates of food on the floor and borrow Patchett’s clothes without asking. But Lucy was fun and Patchett needed someone to pull her off of her straight and narrow path and into the fun. Lucy loved Ann and it’s hard not to love someone back who loves you so much they jump into your arms regularly. 

Over the next nearly two decades the two stayed incredibly close and Patchett traveled regularly to spend time with Grealy. But Grealy began to check in less and less often as her depression deepened and then her addition to oxycontin and heroin consumed her. Patchett began more and more to have to mother Grealy, to be the voice of reason. In those final years, loving her became more and more difficult. Still, two years after losing Lucy, when this book was published, Patchett was clearly still grieving and feeling that Grealy was worth the hard times. 

This is an incredible story of love and friendship, written beautifully. Read by Patchett, it becomes all the more heartfelt and heartbreaking. 

Wreck by Catherine Newman

Read by Helen Laser

5 hours, 26 minutes

Published October 2025 by HarperCollins

Publisher’s Summary: 

If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.)
Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.

It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.
With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be.

My Thoughts:

Apologies for no picture of the book. Blogger is not playing nice since I uploaded the most recent software update. I thought I had it figured out on Sunday, at least a work around; apparently not. 

“It’s like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it.” - Alison Espach, Wedding People

Newman's Sandwich was one of my favorite books of 2024 so I was thrilled to see that she had written a follow up. While Wreck didn't quite measure up to Sandwich for me, it's still a wonderful read. Rocky is very much the same woman I so related to in that first book. This time it was all about living with anxiety - the constant worrying about everyone you care about, the constant concern about everything else happening in the world, and the constant thought that every medical symptom you have is definitely something more serious. 

Smart, quirky, sad – Newman knows what it’s like to live life with anxiety and how easy it is to lose yourself in it. This time, Rocky's anxiety is justified. 

The accident raises the question of how to separate a person you love from the work that their company (and, by extension, your loved one) does. And the weird rash that Rocky begins experiencing turns into one of the situations where medical experts remain baffled as more and more symptoms begin piling up. 

Add to that worry about Willa's crippling anxiety and Rocky's 92-year-old father's decision to move out of the guest room behind their house and back into his own home alone. I could just feel the weight of it all and how hard it would be to carry all of it. 

I highly recommend this one. But first, read Sandwich. And maybe talk your book club into reading both of them. 

Mini-Reviews: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; Go Gentle; Wild, Dark Shore; Broken Country; Between Two Kingdoms

 All caught up now and ready for the new year! 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Jessica Guerrieri

282 pages

Published May 2025 by Harper Muse

Publisher's Summary: 

Leah O'Connor is torn between her current existence and the allure of a phantom life that can no longer be hers.

Swept off her feet by the gentle charm of Lucas O'Connor, Leah's unexpected pregnancy changes the course of her carefree and nomadic existence. Over a decade and three children later, Leah is unraveling. She resents the world in which her artistic aspirations have been sidelined by the overwhelming demands of motherhood, and the ever-present rift between herself and her mother-in-law, Christine, is best dulled by increasingly fuller glasses of wine.

Christine represents a model of selfless motherhood that Leah can neither achieve nor accept. To heighten the strain, Lucas's business venture, a trendy restaurant that honors his mother, has taken all his attention, which places the domestic demands squarely on Leah's shoulders. Seeking an ally in her sweet sister-in-law Amy, Leah shares a secret that, if made known to the wider family, could disrupt the curated ecosystems that keep the O'Connors connected.

As Leah dances with the devil while descending further into darkness, her behavior becomes more erratic and further alienates her from both Lucas and the wider family. Leah's drinking threatens the welfare of her family, prompting Amy to turn to Christine for support. A duel for loyalty ensues. When the inevitable waves come crashing down, it's the O'Connor women who give Leah a lifeline: the truth of what they've all endured. But Leah alone must uncover the villain of her own story, learn how to ask for help, and decide if the family she has rejected will be her salvation or ultimate undoing.

My Thoughts: 

Despite the fact that this one was only 282 pages, I still felt like it could have been edited down and I did feel like there were options for the O'Connors that would have allowed Leah to continue with her artwork while also allowing Lucas to pursue his dream of recreating his parents' former restaurant that would have avoided the conflict that fueled much of Leah's active addiction.

Still, this one felt like a good depiction of addiction, told from a couple of viewpoints and a good examination of what happens when a woman has children she wasn't planning on having. In this case, Leah very much loves her children, but she never stops feeling like she lost a part of herself when she had them. The publisher's summary seems to insinuate that Leah is the villain of her own story; that's untrue. The only villain here is addiction. 

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

384 pages

Published April 2026 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a "coven"—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.

Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard to bury—lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.

My Thoughts: 

I first encountered Semple's writing in 2010 and might never have picked up another of her books. But then came Where'd You Go Bernadette and the promise that I'd seen in that first book came to fruition in Bernadette. Going into this book, I wondered which version of Semple I'd get and was pleasantly surprised to find that, once again, I felt like Semple more than lived up to my expectations. 

There are some jarring jumps, which some readers may struggle with. There are also a number of things that will be tough for some readers. But once again, Semple's written satire that works on many levels and this is an intelligent read. Adora is a great character and it's nice to read a book about a middle-aged woman that allows her to be a full-fledged person. It's not a book for everyone but it is a book that I'll be recommending to a lot of my reader friends. Jump on board for the ride! 

Wild, Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

320 pages

Published March 2025 by Flatiron Press

A Reese's Book Club pick 

Publisher's Summary: 

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. 

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

My Thoughts: 

One of my favorite books of 2025, which those of you who have been around a while will find surprising when I tell you there's an element of science fiction to this one. Climate change is having a devastating impact on the planet with drought resulting in fires and dying crops and rising sea levels devouring islands and the borders of continents. 

The Salts have to get off the island soon, before it's entirely devoured. Their job is to finish collecting seeds from the seed bank to bring back to the continent before the seed bank is flooded. But members of the family are all dealing with grief following the loss of their wife/mother and they're also harboring a secret they hope will never be discovered. When Rowan is found washed up after a boat wreck, she's also harboring a secret. Despite that, the family and Rowan begin to form an alliance that might just be what it takes to get them all off of the island before it's too late...as long as those secrets stay hidden. This would make an excellent book club selection. 

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall 

320 pages 

Published March 2025 by Simon and Schuster

A Reese's Book Club pick

Publisher's Summary: 

“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

My Thoughts: 

Another of my favorite books of 2025, one I recommend to everyone. Hall's writing is marvelous and if I could have, I might have read this on in one sitting. 

There's a mystery to that death of the farmer, one that is slowly revealed as Hall moves readers from the past (Beth's and Gabriel's youthful love story) to Beth's and Frank's life together to glimpses into the trial of the accused murder of the farmer. These are well-written characters placed in a story line that allows each character room to explore why they are who they are. This one has everything I love in a novel - terrific writing and characters, a lovely setting both physically and in time, an emotional impact that stayed with me long after I'd finished the book. 

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Read by Suleika Jaouad

13 hours, 2 minutes

Published February 2021 by Random House Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch-first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward-after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant-she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it's where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal-to survive. And now that she'd done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked-with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt-on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who'd spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. 

My Thoughts: 

I was familiar with Jaouad as the wife of musical virtuoso Jon Batiste, and familiar with her recent battle with leukemia through Batiste's movie American Symphony. But I knew nothing about how her battle had begun, how she had beaten leukemia previously, or how she and Batiste had come together. 

Jaouad writes in detail about how her symptoms first appeared, how she battled to keep moving forward with her personal life before she was finally diagnosed, the man she nearly married who stayed with her through much of her battle until it just became too much for him, and the treatments she endured as she fought the cancer. It brings home that fact that battling cancer requires a team far beyond the professionals in the medical buildings and how hard it is for patients to deal with that. It makes it clear how important finding a community that understands is, and how much someone has to want to live to be willing to go through what it takes to come out on the other end. Even though my family members have battled (and some lost that battle to) cancer, I learned so much from this book about what it takes out of a person and their loved ones and about cancers themselves. Jaouad was fortunate to be a skilled enough writer to find work that allowed her to work as much as she could and even to travel the country in search of other stories as she felt able. We are fortunate to have all of those stories. 

Mini-reviews: Ejaculate Responsibly, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, The Bright Years, Our Spoons Came From Woolworths

 More mini-reviews in a mad rush to be able to start 2026 all caught up!

Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way To Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Blair

Read by Gabrielle Blair

3 hours, 8 minutes

Published October 2022 by Workman Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America. In a series of 28 brief arguments, she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from*controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies. 

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.

The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility-and burden-of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.

My Thoughts: 

Don't look at that one word in the title and decide this isn't a book for you. In fact, if that word bothers you, there's even more reason to read this book. Blair (who I follow on Instagram for many reasons), has written a book full of ways the number of abortions can be vastly reduced. It's eye-opening and well-reasoned and I really wish the people who need to read and heed would do just that. I definitely recommend it, but you might want to hide the cover if you don't want people in the doctor's office waiting room to look at you strangely. 

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston

Read by Tim Carroll 

10 hours, 49 minutes

Published September 2024 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

“Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I'll take excellent care of it.”

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he'd return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is, at age eighty-two, there's nobody left in Fred's life to borrow from, and he's broke and on the brink of eviction.But Fred's luck changes when he's mistaken for Bernard Greer, a missing resident at the local nursing home, and takes his place. Now Fred has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head-as long as his look-alike Bernard never turns up.

Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.

As Fred walks in Bernard's shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.

My Thoughts: 

I learned about this book at my local library's annual Book Bash and I will say that the premise that sold me on picking it up lives up to my expectations. It is a unique idea that is the "feel-good...novel about grief, redemption, forgiveness and finding family" that the publisher's summary proclaims it. Unfortunately, it's not quite a clever as they also proclaim it. 

Being as the lead character is male, Johnston seems to have felt like she needed to throw some things in that made it feel more like a story a man has told - there are so many references to farts, peeing, and other bodily functions, most of which could have easily been left out. It does require that readers suspend disbelief (which, for the most part, I was willing to do), but it also gets repetitive frequently. Overall, I enjoyed it; it just required my forgiving the faults I found. 

The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff

Read by Ferdelle Capistrano, Joy Osmanski, and Lee Osorio

8 hours, 50 minutes

Published April 2025 by Simon and Schuster

Publisher's Summary: 

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

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

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life debut that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.

My Thoughts: 

This one suffered, for me, from having had my listening broken up by several weeks. To the point where it took me a good 20 minutes, when I got it loaned again, to remember that I'd even started it before. I think if I would have listened to it straight through, it would have been a book I would have liked a lot more. Which is not to say that I didn't like it; I did. 

The characters are interesting, the relationships feel real, and I liked (even though I didn't think I would when the last narrator began), the way Damoff finished the book. This book is much more a novel about grief, redemption, forgiveness and finding family than is The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife. I would definitely recommend it for book clubs - so much to discuss! 

Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

224 pages

Published 1950 by Eyre and Spottiswoode originally

Publisher's Summary: 

“I told Helen my story and she went home and cried.” So begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns’s beguiling novel is far from tragic, despite the harrowing ordeals its heroine endures. 

Sophia is twenty-one and naïve when she marries fellow artist Charles. She seems hardly fonder of her husband than she is of her pet newt; she can’t keep house (everything she cooks tastes of soap); and she mistakes morning sickness for the aftereffects of a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and the money Sophia makes from the occasional modeling gig doesn’t make up for her husband’s indifference to paying the rent. Predictably, the marriage falters; not so predictably, Sophia’s artlessness will be the very thing that turns her life around.

My Thoughts: 

First published in 1950 and set in the 1930's, this is the kind of British book that's become a modern classic, even if you've never heard of it. It's also largely autobiographical, which I was not aware of until I was pulling the information about the book. In many ways that makes the book even more poignant. 

Sophia really is quite naive through most of the book, particularly vulnerable to society's mores and the belief that Charles isn't the bum he actually is. When Sophia gets pregnant, she is no longer able to work (because it's the 1930's and just not done, for the most part), throwing their little family into poverty. Charles doesn't want the baby and is the terrible father you'd expect. Sophia hungers for someone who cares, throwing her into an ill-advised affair. As terrible as things get for Sophia, as the publisher says, things turn around for her, just as I'd hoped they would. Thanks for the recommendation, Ann Patchett! 

Mini-Review: The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose

The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose

2 hours, 38 minutes

Read by Lauren Ambrose

Published October 2024 by Random House Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly's mofinst joyful yet.

But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential-and personal-mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince?

My Thoughts: 

I've read and enjoyed the first two books in the A Maid series so when I was looking for a quick listen and saw this one available, I grabbed it, despite it being early spring. Which may have tainted my feelings about the book, not being in the least in the festive spirit because I was so looking forward to warm weather. 

There's nothing much new here to be learned about the characters. Molly is as prone to misunderstand things as ever, Juan Manuel is as loving (and maybe a little clueless about how literally Molly takes everything), the former head maid is as cruel to Molly as ever. Unfortunately some of the lesser characters have backslid a bit in their understanding and appreciation of Molly, which seemed a little unlikely to me. And I never for a minute believed that Juan Manuel would be cheating on Molly; it's just not that kind of book. 

In the end, this is an homage to O'Henry's The Gift of the Magi, which ends, as is to be expected, with everyone living happily ever after. 

There is one more book in the A Maid series, which I'll pick up as soon as I can get it in audiobook, because Lauren Ambrose is terrific at reading these books. 

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

352 pages

Published June 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

My Thoughts: 

That publisher's summary also calls this book "fast-paced," which I found interesting because I didn't find it fast-paced at all. It starts off with a literal bang, but then we go back in time and find out how Joan found herself sitting at CAPCOM when STS-LR9 was on its mission, which slows things down considerably. Which was not necessarily a bad thing. It gives readers time to get to know Joan, her sister, Barbara, niece Frances, and her NASA friends. But there is also a lot in this book that could easily have been trimmed out; I often felt like Reid was stuck in "tell" not "show" mode. 

Taking readers back to the beginning of the space shuttle program allows Reid a chance to not only dig into the science of that program, but the norms of that time as well. Barbara, who found herself a single mom early, spends the rest of the book trying to get to the life she expected - married woman with an easy life. Joan, on the other hand, has never had any interest in having a man in her life, absorbed as she is in science and the universe, a life that was still new for women in that time. But it's when Joan finally finds love that she really blazes a trail far different from her sister, one that might risk her career. 

I applaud Reid taking that risk in the book (although it's not the first time that risk has appeared in one of her books) and I felt like she had really done her research when it came to the space program. All of the training and things that happened on the flights felt very real. There are some really interesting (for the most part) characters in this book and I really liked "watching" the astronauts come together as a family. As the book reached the climax, I thought I knew how it would end and felt that was the right ending. At the last minute, Reid veered away from that and I'm still not sure I like the way she ended the book. 

The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware

The Woman In Suite 11 by Ruth Ware

400 pages

Published July 2025 by Gallery/Scout Press 

Publisher's Summary: 

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman...and if she can even trust her?

My Thoughts: 

This is my eighth book by Ware. I found myself, from the start, wondering if it might be my last. 

It's a sequel of sorts to Ware's hit, The Woman In Cabin 10, in which Lo Blacklock finds herself locked in a cabin on a boat, certain she is going to die there. This book opens giving readers the belief that the same thing has happened to Lo again. And that's where Ware first lost me. Could this woman seriously have found herself in exactly the same position ten years later? Didn't Ware have any better story ideas than to rehash the same story? 

By the time this story finally caught up with the teaser opening chapter, I had spent too much time being frustrated with idea that this would be the same story to be very much relieved that it wasn't. 

I will say that the story picked up and I did find myself racing through it. Did I figure out all of the plot twists? No, I didn't; although to be fair to myself, that was partly because some of the plot points felt so preposterous that they never would have occurred to me. But also, yes, I did figure out some of the twists and you'll know by now that if I've figured it out ahead of the denouement, it's pretty obvious. Another problem I had with the book was that there were so many loose threads. Now you might say they were red herrings, but they didn't feel like that and they never got explained away. 

Overall, a disappointment. But let's be honest, I've like Ware enough in the past to give her another chance when her next book comes out. 

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

448 pages

Published May 2025 by Atria Books

Publisher's Summary: 

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

My Thoughts: 

I've been going back and forth on this one. On the one hand, it is very much what readers expect from Backman. On the other hand, it's a very different story from his usual stories. I've seen some readers say that it's their favorite of his books. For me, it's not, which is not to say it's not a very good book that will give Backman fans much of what they want from his books. 

Like Backman's other books, My Friends deals with loss, grief, friendship, and the ways life can be hard and complicated at times. While this book has plenty of Backman's usual humor, it felt to me that it was more weighed down by life's difficulties than his other books. 

The book is told from two time periods and two points of view through most of the book. In present time, we are following Louisa who has led a really tough life, including the recent death of her only friend. Her only solace is a postcard of a famous painting, a painting she finally gets to see in person. In the past, we follow four friends, who live equally difficult lives, as they live their final summer together, the summer that resulted in that famous painting. Their only real joy is the time they spend together, time that ends each evening with the word "Tomorrow," a promise to each other. 

Louisa's life becomes intertwined with one of the friends and as the two of them travel across the country, the friend tells Louisa the story of that summer. Finally we come to the town the friends grew up in and Louisa is given the chance to restart her life, with new friends and opportunities she never would have had without that postcard. 

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

224 pages

Published February 2025 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

My Thoughts: 

""Is this the home of Tony Horowitz?"

   Yes. 

   "Who am I speaking to?"

   This is his wife. 

   That is exact. The rest is a blur.

   "Collapsed in the street...tried to resuscitate at the scene...brought to the hospital...couldn't revive him..."

   And, so, now he's in the OR. And, so, now we've admitted him for a procedure. And, so, now we're 

   keeping him for observation.

   So many things that logically should have followed.

   But she said none of these things. Instead, the illogical thing. 

   He's dead. 

   No."

How's that for packing a punch to open a book? 

I'd forgotten that this was a memoir when I started it. As I read these words, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this is the way to make the death of a loved one sound real." Well, of course it was. Even so, I'm so impressed by Brooks' ability to make that moment, six years ago, still feel so very real and raw. 

Brooks writes about her own grief, about helping her sons and in-laws deal with their grief, about trying to understand how a person as healthy as Tony appeared to be could die so suddenly, about their lives together. She didn't make a saint of him. All of it brought Tony to life and made it even easier to understand why his loss was so difficult to bear. 

This book really resonated with me, for the storytelling, for the writing, and because I could so relate to it. No, I have not lost my husband. But I have faced the diagnosis of my husband's cancer and lived through figuring out how to tell my children, how to comfort them while also facing my own possible future, of having to manage the shock and sadness of others. I have dealt with the very sudden loss of my mother and all of the strategic decisions that had to be made for months afterward that put off of my own grief to an extent. I could understand the need to step away from it all to have time to allow myself to feel everything. 

Brooks did all of that while trying to finish the novel she was working on at the time of Tony's death, Horse. Because life moves forward, no matter how much we need it to stop for a little while.