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. 

Erasure by Percival Everett

Erasure by Percival Everett

Read by Sean Crisden

8 hours, 16 minutes

Published January 2001 by University Press

Publisher's Summary:

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies-his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.

In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is-under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh-and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.

My Thoughts: 

In December 2023, almost a year before I became aware of Percival Everett, this book was made into the film American History, starring Jeffrey Wright. It's one of those movies that I had every intention of watching (and still do), but had no idea until I began looking for more books by Everett (after loving his James last year) that Everett was the author behind that movie. Movie I want to see? Author I'm newly admiring? Heck, yes. 

This was a rare experience for me. While I thought Crisden did a terrific job reading the book, I also felt like I would have enjoyed this one had I picked up a physical copy of the book. I think. Because there is a part of this book where we read the book that Monk ends up writing and it's probably much better experienced by listening to it. Still, I think I would have paid better attention, felt more attached to the characters. And as much as Monk annoyed me, with his snobbish attitudes about literature, I did want to care about him. 

Despite his literary skill, it's not been a lucrative career; and with two siblings, a father, and a grandfather who are/were doctors, he's something of the black sheep of the family. Sister Lisa is a doctor at an abortion center and takes care of their aging mother until tragedy strikes. Monk's brother is an addict with a failing marriage (and an awakening to the fact that he's gay) and a busy career so he can't be counted on. Clearly Monk has to step up. 

Fortunately, that book he didn't mean to write has actually given him the fiscal comfort to be able to do that. The problem is that Monk hates the book, doesn't want to have anything more to do with it. But the public is eating it up and the critics love it. Stagg R. Leigh is in big demand and Monk has to decide how whether or not it's time to fess up and risk losing continuing income from the book, or to take on Leigh's persona and dig in. 

It's an excellent satire that I imagine has an even bigger impact on those who live that life, who understands the line that Monk is walking as he writes about something he actually knows nothing about. Is Monk empathetic to the plight of his characters or has he written an exploitative work? This one certainly gave me a lot to think about. I just wish I had read it, rather than listening to it. I think. 

James by Percival Everett

James by Percival Everett

320 pages

Published March 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

My Thoughts: 

In 1968 my family moved into the house my parents would live in for 54 years. In that house there was a bit of wall between the room my sister and I shared and our parents' room. After my siblings and I were bathed for the night and in our jammies, my dad would lean against that wall, with the three of us leaning into him, and read to us. We read the usual kid fare (Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle was a particular favorite) and books my dad had grown up reading. But the real treat was when my dad pulled one of the red leather-bound classics off of the shelves and read a chapter of that to us each night. One of those books was Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I loved that book, in no small part, I'm sure, as much to the setting and my dad's wonderful reading as for the book itself. But that book pulled me into another world, where children were the center of the world and had marvelous adventures. It never occurred to me then, a girl growing up in the late 60's/early 70's and in a smallish city with very few persons of color, to question Twain's use of the "n" word or his depiction of Jim. 

For Percival Everett, Huckleberry Finn was a very different book. Fortunately for us, he decided there was another story to be told about Twain's characters, a story where the enslaved Jim is an intelligent, well-read family man who protects himself by code switching and playing ignorant. 

Having read Huckleberry Finn more than once, I couldn't help but track that book against the action in this one and I was pleased to see Everett follow that original story line; it allowed me to get an entirely different take on both novels (although reading Twain's work is not essential to enjoying this book). Here Huck is what he is, an largely uneducated, naive young man who relies almost entirely on Jim's ability to survive, even as Jim is forced to allow Huck to believe he is the one doing the thinking. With Jim as the central character in the events, though, slavery plays a much greater role - from Jim's usage of it to try to make the pair some money to the risk Jim is constantly in along the way to the way readers get a real impression of how enslaved people were used and abused to the abuse that James must watch others suffer in order for him to survive. 

“White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.”

Everett doesn't stick entirely to Twain's outline, though. Through all of the book, Everett finds room for humor, generally at the expense (justifiably) of the white characters. He also has some real surprises in store for readers and an ending that I couldn't help cheering for, even as I feared what would happen beyond the final pages of the book. This one is going on the best-of list for 2024 when it will likely end the year at the top of the list. It's a book I would reread, a book I want to discuss with other readers. 

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Published June 2013 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor.


On Nick’s arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.

My Thoughts:
I finally decided it was time to read this book after catching the movie adaptation on t.v., which I thought was a lot of fun, if somewhat hard to keep track of who was who. I felt the same way about the book…for the most part.

Kirkus Reviews suggests this book is “Edith Wharton goes to Singapore” – which is funny because that’s exactly what I was thinking as I was reading the details of every dish served at every meal. That's actually one of my favorite things about Wharton’s The Age of Innocence; I could vividly picture the dining tables laden with silver platters of rich foods, could imagine the tastes of those foods, get a picture of the kinds of people who would sit around a table that overloaded with food. The problem here is that I have no idea what most of the dishes Kwan’s describing are – I can’t picture them on the table, can’t conjure up the flavors. So I skimmed the paragraphs where he described the meals. Yep, I get it – long paragraph about food equals lots of food on the table. Moving on. Ditto his descriptions of designer clothes, high-end automobiles, exorbitant jewelry, and private planes. I’m sure there are readers who will recognize all of the names; but I didn’t for the most part, so the only way I knew that the characters thought nothing of buying the most expensive clothing was because Kwan attached a name to it.

All that being said, I absolutely enjoyed learning about a part of the world which is so unknown to me. Kwan did a terrific job of making me feel the claustrophobia of these Asian cities that have had such tremendous growth along with tremendous wealth, of bringing his settings to life, and of explaining the complexities of the relationships between the various cultures. And, yes, of giving me a vivid image of what a room full of people dressed to impress looked like. I could also easily imagine how overwhelmed Rachel would have been amongst all of those people. Rich or not, I could easily picture a room full of those "aunties" bearing down on me and the struggle it would be to be "on" all of the time. Add to all of that terrific satire and some wonderful one-liners and you’ve got yourself a book I raced through. I really appreciated all of the footnotes as another tool for learning and because it meant that Kwan didn’t “Americanize” his characters speech and make it feel less authentic.

Will I read the next book in the trilogy? The verdict’s still out on that one. I have it on hold at the library but I feel like there are too many books I’d rather get to instead. I enjoyed that characters in this book; I’m just not sure I enjoyed them enough to read more about them.

The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett

The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett
Originally published July 1998
Source: bought it for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
The Ransomes had been burgled. "Robbed," Mrs. Ransome said. "Burgled," Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though "burgled" was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything.

When the sedate Ransomes return from the opera to find their Notting Hill flat stripped absolutely bare—down to the toilet paper off the roll, they face a dilemma: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly the world is full of unlimited and frightening possibility.

My Thoughts:
All it took for me to decide to buy this one was that name - Alan Bennett. The guy who's written screenplays I've loved, including The Madness of King George. The guy who wrote one of my favorite reads of 2009, The Uncommon Reader (my review here). I picked it to read now because at under 200 pages, I assumed it could keep my interest for that long, even if I'm suffering from the reading doldrums. And, again, Alan Bennett.

Bennett did not disappoint. The Ransomes are so set in their ways, so staid, that Mr. Ransome's first name sounds odd to Mrs. Ransome's ears. "Set in their ways" may not be the right phrase. It's more a case of set in Mr. Ransome's ways. Not until everything they had every had, right down to the casserole baking in the oven, was stolen, does Mrs. Ransome realize that "their" ways might not be her ways. In fact, she feels a certain unexpected lightness and a joy in exploring new places and meeting new people as she sets out to pick up the things they need to get by until the insurance settles up. The television they've never had until now opens her eyes to new ways to think and speak. Mr. Ransome carries on, determined to benefit from the event only financially.

When The New York Times reviewed this book, the reviewer felt it would not do as well in the U.S. as it had done in Britain because Americans would not be able to connect to Mr. Ransome's "emotional constipation" and Mrs. Ransome's "pathological diffidence." Well, perhaps those are more British traits than American but that's not to say that we don't all know people like the Ransomes. Besides, I think we can all relate to the very mixed feelings the Ransomes have about their "stuff" and, British or not, appreciate Bennett's terrific wit.

If nothing else, The Clothes They Stood Up In will make readers think about their attachment to their "things" and the weight those same things can put on us.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
120 pages
Published September 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

When The Queen goes in search of one of her Corgis, she inadvertently comes across a mobile library on the palace grounds. Feeling that she must check out a book now that she's there, she takes the advice of Norman, one of the kitchen workers.

"She had never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn't have hobbies. "

The first book doesn't necessarily grab her but now she must take it back, and once she's back, she again feels compelled to check out another book. Bennett takes us along as the Queen becomes an avid reader, much to the chagrin of her entire staff and even the Prime Minister when it begins to effect her work.

"Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else. "

The Queen has to sneak books in, her chief of staff keeps assisting in making them disappear, and the Prime Minister sends an aide to see to it that the Queen cease and desist immediately.

This book is charming and witty and it's easy to see why Bennett is so popular in England. He is able to skewer the whole of the system of royalty and while still making the Queen look good. He even has a go at writers, as well. When the Queen hosts a party for writers, she finds them to be quite boring. And he's able to throw in a surprise ending, just in case you weren't enjoying the book enough all ready! At 120 pages, this is novella is the first thing I have read in a very long time that ended much too soon for me.

Friday Favorite

About now you're probably starting to wonder if I read any books that aren't made into movies because, once again, my Friday Favorite has been made into a movie, Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Although I'll bet most of you haven't heard of the movie. The movie, released in 1996, stars Kate Beckinsale, Rufus Sewell, and Ian McKellan. I love this movie so I was excited to see that it was originally a book. Then I was nervous. What if I hated the book and it ruined the movie? Hurray! The book had every bit of the charm, wit and whimsy of the movie--or, more accurately, the movie had every bit of the book's charm, wit and whimsy since the book was originally published in 1932.

Flora Poste is a young society lady who suddenly finds herself an orphan. She most definitely does not want to get a job so decides she will need to live off her relatives. But which ones? After rejecting a number of offers, Flora chooses to move to Cold Comfort Farm, home of the Starkadders because she feels that they will provide her with a project. To say that the people on Cold Comfort Farm are a bunch of country bumpkins is an understatement. But Flora immediately sets to work to make their lives "better," although her motives are not altruistic.

The book is a wonderful satire of the melodramas of D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy and a parody of the rural novels so popular at the time it was written. Okay--that sounds boring doesn't it? Pretend like you didn't just read the names Lawrence and Hardy because you don't have to have been depressed by them to enjoy this book. The characters in this book are wonderful--a recluse aunt, a hellfire preacher, and an oversexed cousin obsessed with the "talkies" (who also happens to be in charge of the farm's bull). Even the names will make you laugh: Ada Doom, Elfin, Urk and the cows are Feckless, Pointless, Aimless and Graceless while the bull is Big Business. This book is just great fun! It's a shame that Gibbon's other works are no longer in print.