BookBrowse | Book Reviews and Recommendations

A Map to Paradise
by Susan Meissner

An Entertaining & Suspenseful Exploration of What It Means to Have a Home (3/18/2025)

Bestselling author Susan Meissner says she was researching the 1950’s when she learned “how fearful people were in the early years of the Cold War.” Americans were terrified that their way of life would be taken from them, and peace in the world was tenuous given that World …more

The Day Tripper: A Novel
by James Goodhand

Profoundly Thought-Provoking & Emotionally Elegant (4/11/2024)

The Day Tripper is author James Goodhand’s first published adult novel, but he has previously penned two young adult books, Last Lesson and Man Down. For about the past twenty years, he has earned a living as an auto mechanic, which he enjoys and finds satisfying. He is …more

After Annie: A Novel
by Anna Quindlen

Relatable & Compassionate Exploration of Grief/Mourning (3/10/2024)

Anna Quindlen is known for crafting relatable stories about ordinary people who find themselves facing unexpected challenges that leave them profoundly and irrevocably changed. The strength of her writing style is its understated simplicity and humanity.

“Bill, get me some …more Advil, my head is killing me,” thirty-seven-year-old Annie Brown says to her husband as she is serving dinner — meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas — to him and their four children on an otherwise unremarkable evening. “Bill,” she said again, “and then she went down, hard,” on the kitchen floor. Bill ran to her, scooped her into his arms, and carried her to the living room floor as he yelled to thirteen-year-old Ali to call 911. He took the telephone from her and began explaining what happened to the dispatcher as Ant, Benjy, and Jamie also watched helplessly from their seats at the kitchen table. Bill accompanied the ambulance to the hospital, leaving Ali, bewildered and frightened, to look after the younger children. Eventually, the two little boys ate some dinner, and Ali cleaned up the kitchen and got them into bed. She finally dozed off on the living room couch but was awakened at 3:11 a.m. by the sound of someone opening the back door.

Bill saw Ali on the couch and collapsed on the floor, crying. Neither of them was able to move. Finally, Bill said, “Oh, my God. What the hell am I going to do?” And any hope Ali still held out, dissipated. Bill did not need to say the words. She knew her mother was dead.

In After Annie, Quindlen examines the life of Annie’s family during the first year after her sudden death from a brain aneurysm as they grapple with loss, grief, and a future that looks nothing like it did immediately before that one pivotal moment. From her characters’ perspectives, Quindlen reveals their turbulent emotions, examines their search for peace and acceptance, and explores their efforts to adapt to a new sense of normalcy and routine.

For Bill, Annie’s death is overwhelming and, for a time, paralyzing. And not just because he loved her completely, even though they married “too fast and too young.” He depended upon her. He needed her. She was the center of his world, as well as his children’s. “Annie had been a natural mother” who was happy and content with her “lovely reliable life that went on day to day with the occasional occasion, a party, a new baby, dinner out, vacations.” She worked hard at the local nursing home where she was beloved by residents and staff alike. She adored her children and husband, as well as her best friend, Annemarie, with whom she had an unbreakable bond despite conflicts, resentments, and times that called for unyieldingly tough love. The life she and Bill shared was "enough," a fact that Annemarie could not always relate to or understand.

Even though Bill tries to “pull himself together” – he felt as though he was “leaving pieces of himself wherever he went, in every room, like he was dismembered by loss” – he has no idea how to do so. He must keep working to provide for his family – he is a plumber and Annie’s income was necessary to keep their household running – and take care of his children. He doesn’t know any of the details he relied upon Annie to remember and manage: the names of the kids’ teachers, doctors, and friends, their clothing and shoe sizes, when appointments are or need to be scheduled. He increasingly foists responsibility upon Ali and feels guilty about it, but incapable of handling things himself. And as his overbearing, self-centered mother, Dora, who owns the house in which they reside and with whom Annie had a fractious relationship, pressures him to “move on,” only making things worse, he reconsiders his life. “Was his life a choice or an accident?” Dora never liked Annie because she thought Bill could have fared better by marrying his high school girlfriend, Liz, a perky real estate agent who is eager to take Annie’s place . . . with Dora’s blessing. But a new relationship, along with all of the other changes Liz attempts to impose on the Brown family, is not what Bill – or his grieving children – need. He feels as though is life is “bring run by women” –wasn’t it always? – and he recognizes that he must find his own voice and be assertive, make appropriate choices for himself and his family, and stand on his own for the first time in his life.

Ali finds returning to school after her mother’s death difficult and Annemarie observes that Annie would be heartbroken that Ali seems to have become “a grownup in an instant.” Ali does not want to cry because that will make it “all true,” and she is displeased when forced to participate in sessions with the school counselor. Her best friend, Jenny, a secretive girl from a wealthy, overprotective family, reminds Ali not to share her feelings with the counselor. No good could come from it. Rather, the counselor would “become your extracurricular activity, and you would become that kid.” “I didn’t lose my mother,” Ali explains to Ms. Cruz, who is new to the school. “I hate it that people say that. I didn’t lose her, and she’s not gone, and she didn’t pass away. She’s dead.” Ali isn’t eating and is bothered by the fact that her father and brothers have stopped talking about her mother. She resents her father’s attempts to move on with his life, particularly the time he spends with Liz instead of at home, noting that he can find a new wife, but she and her brothers can never have another mother. Over the course of the next few months, Ali does open up to Ms. Cruz as she grows taller, developing into a young woman. Her understanding of the adults in her life and their shortcomings expands as she learns to trust her own instincts, forgive, and appreciate that although her mother may not be physically present any longer, their connection to each other can never be severed.

At the age of eleven, Annie’s death exacerbates Ant’s already-simmering anger. Unsure how to respond to his outbursts or comfort his oldest son, Bill proceeds with Annie’s plan to send him to camp where his behavioral problems amplify. With each passing day, Ant becomes crueler, hurling vile insults at others. Benjy requires a tutor because he is having difficulty learning to read and six-year-old Jamie just wants to know when his mother is coming home. He insists that she is “being patched up at the hospital.”

For Annemarie, the magnitude of the loss of the woman who has been her best friend since first grade defies description. Annie was Annemarie’s life compass. She knew the real Annemarie and, unlike others, was never fooled by her. Annemarie recalls how Annie literally saved her life, but accepted no excuses and threatened to turn her back on Annemarie forever if she failed to match Annie’s belief in her and efforts on her behalf. Fear of how desolate her life would be without her best friend and most stalwart supporter kept Annemarie clean and sober. But losing Annie has destroyed Annemarie’s equilibrium, and her already prickly relationship with Bill is “curdling” without Annie there to mediate. She is reeling, spiraling out of control, and veering toward abusing prescription drugs again. Will anything stop her from destroying her marriage, business, and life?

The story opens in winter and Quindlen’s narrative moves forward through the seasons until it is winter again and the first anniversary of Annie’s death. Quindlen’s riveting story compassionately details how the Brown family becomes utterly lost when Annie dies, unequipped to navigate the shocking and unspeakably profound departure of their wife, mother, and irreplaceable friend. Quindlen’s depiction of how they find their way through the haze of grief and sorrow that descends upon them is compelling and credible. Every one of Quindlen’s fully developed characters is flawed and vulnerable, their imperfections magnified in the wake of Annie’s absence. They are also sympathetic and, largely, likeable. Even Dora, pushy and domineering, is empathetic because she loves her son and wants the best for him and her grandchildren, and her worldview is the culmination of her own life experiences. So there are no villains in this story. Rather, the characters are a group bound together by their love for and relationships with Annie who must reevaluate and redesign their connections to and interactions with each other, and their own lives, without her. Once again, Quindlen, who the New York Times aptly alls an “anthropologist of domesticity,” probes the nuances of everyday life – shock, grief, mourning, and finding happiness again – with quiet, eloquent insight and tenderness. Small details, like the way characters continue calling Annie’s phone just to hear her voice and how scents evoke memories and longing, resonate. After Annie is a richly emotional story populated with characters about whom readers will care deeply as they contemplate their own reaction to and capacity to navigate loss and rebuilding.

Thank you to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

We Must Not Think of Ourselves
by Lauren Grodstein

Elevates the Genre: One of the Best Books of 2023 (1/11/2024)

Author Lauren Grodstein believes that had her great-grandparents not left Warsaw twenty years before World War II, she likely would not have been born. She first learned about the Oneg Shabbat Archive in 2019 when she traveled to Poland with her family and they “stumbled …more into” the Archive, one wall of which bears the words “What we’ve unable to shout out to the world.” Displayed there are notebooks, paintings and drawings, and one of the large milk cans in which those documents were buried so that they, fortunately, withstood the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Grodstein recalls that as they were leaving, she observed, “There are a thousand novels in that room,” to which her sister replied, “Maybe you should write one.” She then spent a full year researching and pondering the story because she wanted to be sure she could “do justice to those people and their stories, and honor them.”

“It is up to us to write our own history. Deny the Germans the last word.” We Must Not Think of Ourselves opens with that December 1940 entreaty to fictional Adam Paskow. He is enlisted to record “all the details, even if they seem insignificant,” as part of an archival project so that after World War II, the world will know “the truth about what happened.” Adam agrees, accepting the risk that if his activities are discovered, he will likely be executed. The archive group is called Oneg Shabbat, meaning “the joy of the Sabbath.”

Adam begins with his own history. In a first-person narrative, he explains that he is a Jewish English teacher living in a cramped apartment with two other families, teaching about four to six students in the basement of a bombed-out movie theater. He met his wife, Kasia, when they were both studying English literature in college. She was the Catholic daughter of a wealthy and influential official with the Polish government. They married in 1930 and were happy, even though they were never able to have children, until she died tragically. Even after her death, her father, Henryk, who at least ostensibly accepted his daughter’s marriage to a Jewish man, continued serving as Adam’s benefactor, enabling him to continue residing in their stylish apartment on his public teacher’s salary. After being forced to relocate to the Ghetto, Adam resolved to continue teaching, despite having no novels, short stories, or textbooks, and committed to assigning to his pupils only uplifting and joyous poems that he memorized over the years. His students attend class sporadically, largely because they are often engaging in forbidden bartering or stealing in an effort to gather enough food for their families to survive.

A year after Germany invaded Poland, Adam still struggles to understand world events and the purported logic behind them. He remains understandably baffled by the bombardment and decimation of his homeland, and the unbridled atrocities he has already witnessed. He cannot fathom what the Polish people may have done to provoke the “terrorizing of children, the stabbing of old men on the streets, the rape of our young women, and the public hanging of our soldiers.” He could have fled to Palestine to reside with his brother and mother, but like so many others, he stayed. “We had our lives and our livelihoods, and couldn’t envision starting over somewhere” else. “I’ll wait for the Allies, I suppose,” Adam told his father-in-law, when Henryk offered to secure a Polish kennkarte (passport) for him. (Henryk suspiciously sought to retrieve jewelry he gifted Kasia -- items Adam viewed as a potential safety net) Adam could not foresee, of course, that the Germans would rob him and his fellow Jews of much more than their money, prohibiting them from practicing their professions, forcing them out of their homes and synagogues, denying them basic civil rights, and, finally, taking their freedom, insisting they had to be relocated because they “carried disease.” Only when Adam arrives at his new apartment does he realize that he has been double-crossed by Henryk and the apartment he believed he would solely occupy will, in fact, also be home to the Lescovec and Wiskoff families and their total of five rambunctious sons. With no options, they all agree “to try to live our lives peaceably . . . until a better situation presents itself.” The gates to the new district in which they are forced to reside were locked on November 16, 1940.

To relate the stories of those he interviews for the project, Grodstein includes Adam’s notes. Their histories are fascinating, absorbing, and largely heartbreaking. As the days pass, their living conditions worsen and they do not have enough food. But there is a black market and Adam saved some valuable items to trade, a dangerous endeavor, in order to help feed the children who are part of his household. Adam’s narrative is straightforward and candid, his descriptions of the horrors of life in the Ghetto and the brutalities he witnesses unsparing, but essential to an understanding of his experiences and emotions.

Adam is principled, dedicated to his students, and likable. His story is completely gripping and sympathetic. His naivete is evident, as Grodstein illustrates, in part, through his interactions with other characters. He grows close to his housemates, especially Sala Wiskoff, who is focused on keeping her two sons alive. They are actively smuggling food, while her husband, Emil, has been leveled by grief over the death of his mother. Sala ponders whether they are “really are just waiting here to die.” Adam rationalizes that “they can’t kill all of us. What would be the gain in that? It’s illogical. And the Nazis pride themselves on being logical.” Isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, Adam and his fellow prisoners in the Ghetto have no idea what is actually taking place beyond the locked gates. But their musings and struggle to find reason in a world gone mad is fascinating, thought-provoking, and enlightening, especially when considered through the lens of history.

Grodstein has deftly created a cast of vibrant characters whose stories are mesmerizing. Szifra Joseph, a beautiful and intelligent fifteen-year-old who was Adam’s student before the war, is one of the most memorable. Her family was wealthy – her father owned a clothing factory which was commandeered by the Germans – but now her mother, on the verge of complete mental collapse, toils in a brush factory and her younger brothers risk their lives foraging for food. Her family has connections to the Warner Brothers in Hollywood, and she plans to use those connections to make her way to California once the Ghetto is liberated. Because of all she has been through, she is angry, outspoken, cynical, and jaded. She believes she can secure her family’s safety through manipulation and persuasion, relying on her charms to gain favor with their captors. She is certain she can obtain kennkartes that will enable them to escape. “It is my choice to take charge of my life and my goals and protect my family and rely on the good graces of whomever can help me,” she tells Afam.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves is moving and emotionally impactful because, remarkably, Grodstein manages, seemingly effortlessly, to craft an engrossing story that is both uplifting and life-affirming. Despite everything he must ensure, Adam finds love and it helps sustain him as, with each passing day, matters grow more dire. The relationship is undeniably born from the circumstances in which Adam and the woman find themselves, but the ways in which they cling to and comfort each other are believable, understandable, and deeply affecting. Grodstein says it was “very important to me to shine a light in the darkness. Even with material as serious as this, to provide some sense that life could get better at the end.” Indeed, as the late Harvey Milk wisely observed, “You cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living.” Despite his experiences, Adam – in part because he is too naïve and inherently decent to imagine the extent and types of evil the Nazis will eventually unleash – is able to maintain hope that the Allies will in fact rescue him and the others. His commitment to the archive is evidence of his optimism and belief that the world will someday know the truth about exactly what transpired in the Ghetto. Which is not to say that his confidence is unfailing. He fights not to fall into permanent dispair, at one point convinced that "we are creating a portrait of Polish Jews at the end of our history.” However, Grodstein credibly shows that holding on to optimism and hope leads to triumph, even if not without sacrifice.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves is one of the best books of 2023, a stand-out tale on bookshelves crowded with volumes of World War II historical fiction. Grodstein elevates the genre because of the compassionate, measured, and seamless way she relates the various ways in which Adam and the other characters refuse to give up, give in, or relinquish their identities and histories . . . or abandon their commitment to the truth. In addition to being an absorbing and deeply moving exploration of events that occurred in a particular time and place to a specific group of people, it is also both contemporary and timely, a warning against complacency and a conviction that history is incapable of repeating itself. She says her motivation for penning the book was a “desire to honor those who remained, who died, and who left us their words. . . . I did my best to hear, and to share, what they could not shout out to the world.” We Must Not Think of Ourselves is inarguably the loving and riveting homage she envisioned.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy and BookBrowse for a physical copy of the book in conjunction with its First Impressions program. (less)

Change of Heart
by Jodi Picoult

Another Thought-Provoking Meditation from Jodi Picoult (11/6/2023)

How do we achieve redemption? What role does forgiveness play in the process? Are some acts simply too abhorrent to be forgiven? Who decides — individuals or society? How expansive might your capacity to forgive be if the life of your child were hanging in the balance? …more Those are just some of the moral dilemmas Jodi Picoult asks readers to ponder in Change of Heart.

Shay Bourne is not fighting to have his sentence overturned. On the contrary, he has accepted his fate. But he is determined to donate his heart to Clare, ostensibly as a means of atoning for murdering her father and sister. He is adamant that he will be unable to rest in peace unless he is permitted to do so. His seemingly miraculous acts — including bringing a dead bird back to life — lend credence to his sincerity and cause those around him to begin questioning everything they have ever believed about religion, faith, and the path to heaven.

This is especially true of Father Michael whose past history with Shay, coupled with his current role as Shay’s spiritual advisor, brings into question his belief in the teachings of the Catholic Church and the strength of his faith. He was never comfortable with his vote as a juror, so plagued for the past eleven years by guilt and uncertainty that he is willing to violate ethical principles applicable both to the Priesthood and the legal system in order to counsel Shay now. His doubts lead him to search for answers to a variety of questions pertaining to Shay’s behavior, his knowledge of the arcane Gnostic gospels, and whether Shay is truly capable of performing divinely inspired miracles. Gnostic Christians believe that spiritual enlightenment is achieved not by good works, adherence to religious tenets or belief in Jesus as the Savior. Rather, they believe that Jesus serves merely as a guide to spiritual fulfillment because everyone is a divine part of God and must find his/her own path to salvation through questioning rather than obedience. Their secret texts were not included in the Bible because they were deemed heretic by Biblical scholars. For example, the Gospel of Thomas teaches, in part: “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.” Shay interprets that verse to direct him to donate his heart to Clare.

Maggie Bloom is the professed atheist daughter of a rabbi who also finds herself questioning not just her beliefs, but her motives, as she prepares to present Shay’s case. She argues that his right to the free exercise of his religion deprives the State of New Hampshire from authority to carry out the death sentence by lethal injection, given that Shay would be denied the right to donate his heart. She must not only convince the court that Shay sincerely ascribes to a specific religious ideal. She must also offer the judge a workable alternative method by which the death sentence can be carried out. Picoult’s reputation for meticulously researching her subject is secure as she provides a thoroughly convincing and believable description of Maggie’s quest and findings, including a charming doctor who offers to assist with the case.

In her signature style, Picoult asks readers to contemplate their own feelings about complex subjects ranging from the death penalty, to what it means to be a person of faith, to how one achieves salvation (assuming, of course, that it is even needed or desired), to the lengths to which a parent is willing to go to save his/her child. As is often the case in Picoult’s stories, there is an epic legal battle with a ruling that has enormous implications both for the characters and readers. Also in typical Picoult fashion, the plot twists are not only surprising, they also force her readers to reconsider the events and their factual bases that have transpired up to that point because it seems inconceivable that nothing was actually as it seemed. The characters, their fate, and the issues Picoult probes remain with the reader long after reading the conclusion.

“And if I could ask people to take away one thing from my book it would be this: to stop thinking of beliefs as absolutes . . .and to see them instead as an invitation to have a conversation, and maybe learn something from someone else’s point of view,” Picoult says. Once again, I find myself highly recommending her work. Change of Heart is an absorbing, thought-provoking examination of the criminal justice system, religion, spirituality, parental love and obligation, and the power of forgiveness. (less)

Lone Wolf: A Novel
by Jodi Picoult

A Story to Which I Relate Because of My Unique Perspective (11/5/2023)

As soon as I learned that acclaimed author Jodi Picoult had penned a novel focused on the issue of end-of-life decision-making, I knew that I would be reading it as soon as it was published. I am a member of a very exclusive fraternity: I am among the handful of attorneys …more in this country who have successfully litigated such a case. From 1995 to 2001, I represented Florence Wendland and her daughter, Rebekah Vinson, in their quest to prevent Robert Wendland’s wife from directing that his feeding tube be removed, thereby ending his life. In August 2001, the California Supreme Court agreed with my clients, ruling in Conservatorship of Wendland that Robert’s wife had not sustained her burden of proof that Robert, who sustained an anoxic brain injury in 1993 at the age of 42, would have wanted to die by dehydration and starvation. Sadly, by the time the Court issued its precedential decision, Robert had died the previous month, ostensibly from pneumonia.

PIcoult says, "The book began for me with a premise about the right to die and what happens when you have equal competing interests trying to make a decision about the health care of a loved one who is in a vegetative state. I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack."

Picoult fans will not be disappointed with her treatment of the novel’s themes: Who should have the right to speak for and make medical treatment decisions for an incapacitated loved one? And what factors should be taken into account both in selecting the decision-maker and evaluating whether or not he/she is able to make decisions in good faith? In typical Picoult fashion, there are no heroes or villains in Lone Wolf, but there is a splintered family whose members are all damaged in their own way and keeping secrets from each other.

Picoult tells the story of Luke Warren using an inventive and extremely effective technique. By making Luke a man passionately devoted to wolves, Picoult is able to not only educate her readers about those fascinating creatures, but continually draw parallels between wolf and human behaviors. Once again, Picoult’s narration flawlessly alternates with each of her characters providing his/her own unique perspective on the action while relating their own and the family history, revealing important developments, secrets, and motivations at expertly timed intervals that keep readers not only guessing, but compelled to continue reading to learn more.

Particularly intriguing is the story of Luke, a man who abandoned his family for two full years in order to live in the wild without food or shelter in order to understand how wolves behave. Singularly consumed by his quest for knowledge about his chosen subject, Luke risked his own life, as well as the stability and well-being of his family over his wife’s vehement objections. Before leaving, he signed a brief, handwritten medical directive appointing his then-fifteen-year-old son his surrogate decision-maker in the event that the worst might come to pass. He also instructed Edward to let him go should he be devastatingly injured. But that was more than eight years earlier and for the past six years, Edward has had no relationship with Luke, factors that the court-appointed guardian and judge must take into account when formulating their recommendation and decision, respectively. That Edward has remained angry with his father in the ensuing years is beyond dispute, but is his anger fueling his desire to discontinue Luke’s life-sustaining medical treatment or are his motives actually altruistic, informed by his desire to carry out his father’s previously expressed wishes?

Cara is hiding a secret related to the auto accident, but equally convinced that her father would want them to allow him more time to recover. She scours the internet, noting every story about miracle cases in which people suddenly awoke from comas and resumed meaningful lives. Luke told her more than once that every life is deserving of a chance, and she will do anything to stop Edward from robbing Luke of his opportunity to return to them. But how far is Cara willing to go? And is she truly mature enough, at just three months shy of her eighteenth birthday, to appreciate and shoulder the burden of making such a momentous decision about her father’s treatment and future?

Cases like Conservatorship of Wendland stand for one all-important proposition: No family should ever find its members pitted against each other in a life-and-death battle for control of another’s destiny. No one, including the parties, lawyers, guardian, judges and justices, and the patient’s treatment team, emerges from such a fight unscathed. It is imperative that family members discuss their views on the question of when the delivery of medical treatment serves only to prolong a life that should otherwise be allowed to reach a dignified end, what quality of life is acceptable, and who should make decisions, based upon sound medical advice, when they are no longer capable of voicing their preferences. Those desires should be expressed unambiguously in writing, and communicated to loved ones, treating physicians, and spiritual advisers. Picoult wisely asks her readers, "Do you have a strong position on how end-of-life decisions should be handled? My position is, have a conversation long before you ever find yourself in that situation, because you will be doing the greatest service to your loved ones by not making them make these decisions for you."

In Lone Wolf, Picoult once again accomplishes exactly what her fans have come to expect: she sensitively and entertainingly looks at the issue from many angles, allowing her readers to learn about the topic and examine it for themselves without ever becoming preachy or judgmental. Picoult includes surprising plot twists that keep readers guessing right up to the very end, and does not shy away from her story, allowing it to reach a well-rationed conclusion, even though it may not be one with which all readers agree. Most importantly, Lone Wolf offers readers insight into the topic of end-of-life decision-making and the opportunity to begin that critical dialogue with loved ones. (It would make an excellent book club selection.) For that reason alone, were the book not particularly well-written, I would recommend it. But that is not the case. With believable and empathetic characters, crisply realistic dialogue, deft pacing, and command of the technical aspects of the topics evidencing thorough research, Lone Wolf marks another milestone in contemporary literature from one of America’s most popular authors. I highly recommend Lone Wolf. (less)

A Spark of Light
by Jodi Picoult

Timely,Thought-Provoking, & Deftly Executed (11/5/2023)

Throughout her career, but particularly in recent years, Jodi Picoult has proven herself a fearless author, willing to fictionalize any controversial topic. A Spark of Light may well be her most risky, ambitious, and successful endeavor to date because she at last tackles …more the issue of abortion.

The setting is a women’s reproductive health services clinic where the staff offers services to anyone who comes through the door. In a story that could all too easily be ripped from any morning headline, it is a gunman who enters. He opens fire, immediately killing some and taking others hostage.

Hugh McElroy is the police hostage negotiator who initiates communication with the gunman and soon discovers that Wren, his own fifteen-year-old daughter is inside the clinic, along with her aunt, Hugh's sister. Also inside with the gunman is a nurse who calms her own panic in order to save the life of a wounded woman; a doctor who work at the clinic because of his faith; a pro-life protester who entered disguised as a patient but may now be a victim of the rage she has experienced herself; and a young woman who is there to terminate her pregnancy.

Picoult employs an unusual and highly effective technique to relate the day's events: They are set forth in reverse chronological order, hour by hour. Thus, the book opens at the point of the story's dramatic climax, and then the events that led up to that moment are revealed in reverse order. As Picoult traces the action back through the morning, showing how each individual came to be at the clinic, the characters' secrets and motivations are revealed. Heart-breaking, jaw-droppingly ironic details are explored that demonstrate how beliefs, assumptions, demands, fears, and, indeed, bravery converged to fatefully deliver each person to the clinic on that particular day.

Employing her signature style, through the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of her characters, Picoult asks readers to ponder the most difficult questions. How should the rights of a pregnant woman to autonomy and privacy be balanced against the rights of her unborn child? Can laws imposing absolute boundaries ever be workable? How do one's past experiences and upbringing undergird and inform one's opinions on the subject? And given the wide range of beliefs, values, and experiences Americans hold, is there any possible way that, as a society, consensus can ever be achieved?

A Spark of Light is a compelling, demanding, and thought-provoking story that provokes a deeply visceral reaction. The subject matter and story are timely, controversial, and provocative. In the hands of a less-skilled writer, the story could have become mired in preachy, judgmental rhetoric. But Picoult approaches the topic with sensitivity, and compassion and respect for all of her characters. Thus, she manages to tell the story in a balanced, understanding fashion. Picoult's extensive research on the topic is evident in the way she portrays the fragility of her characters and the monumental impact of beliefs and actions upon their own lives, as well as upon the lives of their loved ones.

For fans of Picoult's work, as well as those who have never read her previous books, A Spark of Light is, along with Small Great Things, a book that simply must be read by anyone seeking to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the competing viewpoints on abortion, and why those on opposite sides of the issue must find a way to peacefully co-exist.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

The Book of Two Ways
by Jodi Picoult

An Unusual but Compelling Story from Jodi Picoult (11/5/2023)

The inspiration for The Book of Two Ways first struck more than a decade before author Jodi Picoult actually wrote the book. Her son was majoring in Egyptology at Yale University. She happened to walk by and see him working on a translation of The Book of Two Ways, a road …more map to the underworld that is more than 4,000 years old. She thought to herself, "Great name for a novel." She discovered that the text is about choices: “The deceased could take either a land route or a water route to get to the field of offerings, which is the ancient Egyptian version of heaven. No matter which path you took, you wound up where you were supposed to be.”

Picoult came up with the story of a middle-aged woman on a fateful flight. She is a death doula traveling alone while her husband, Brian, is at home in Boston. As the plane is headed for a crash landing, the woman is surprised to find that what flashes before her eyes in what she believes will be her final moments isn't the life she has built with her husband and child. Rather, she sees the life she originally planned that never came to fruition as an Egyptologist with a different man she left behind fifteen years earlier. “She has to decide: What do I do with this information?” She scuttled the idea when a planned trip to Egypt to research her subject matter had to be canceled.

But she resurrected it some six years later as she conversed with her son's thesis adviser, telling her she still wanted to write the book. She had always known that she "needed to write about -- the construct of time, and love, and life, and death." She took her up on her offer to travel to Egypt, and also set about learning about the work death doulas perform. Picoult is known for her meticulously-researched novels, and The Book of Two Ways is no exception. She immerses readers in Dawn's world, especially the archaeological digs she is part of in Egypt.

Relating the story through a first-person narrative from Dawn, her protagonist, readers learn that Dawn wanted to be an Egyptologist after studying Ancient Egypt in fourth grade and falling in love with the culture. She earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago and fifteen years ago she was a Yale graduate student working in Egypt on her third archaeological dig when she learned that her mother was dying from Stage 4 ovarian cancer. Her brother, Kieran, was only thirteen years old, and their father, a U.S. Army captain, died in a helicopter crash when their mother was carrying Kieran. Unlike their father, their mother did not die alone. Left with responsibility for Kieran, Dawn could not resume her studies at Yale, much less go back to Egypt. Instead, she got a job at the same hospice facility where her mother died, eventually earning a Masters in Social Work and becoming a hospice social worker. A decade later, she became a death doula and for the past five years has run her own business, providing the same services as midwives, but at the other end of the life spectrum. After thirteen years, Dawn believes that she knows a lot about death, but as Picoult's story opens, she is about to learn that she is wrong. About a lot of things.

While working at the hospice, Dawn met her husband, Brian, and they welcomed a daughter, Meret. Brian, a physics professor, has always been steady, thoughtful, capable, as Dawn describes him. But now their marriage is in trouble as a result of Brian's flirtation with his post-doctoral student, especially when he misses Meret's birthday party. For Dawn, it was a betrayal. She is also struggling to balance the needs of her business and parent Meret, a fourteen-year-old who, unlike her thin parents, struggles with a weight problem.

After Dawn survives a plane crash, she is overcome with emotion. Impulsively, she opts not to return home. Instead, after thinking about Wyatt Armstrong, with whom she was in a serious relationship when she had to abruptly leave Egypt to care for her mother, she heads to Egypt. Theirs was a classic love story: he was arrogant, self-centered, and immensely talented, and they competed as graduate students, but eventually fell in love. When she arrives, she finds that in the intervening fifteen years, Wyatt as ascended professionally and is now the Director of Egyptology at Yale. Obviously, Wyatt is stunned to see her because Dawn didn't just leave Egypt. She never explained why she was leaving and did not remain in contact with Wyatt. Still, when he asks why she has come back, she cannot bring herself to tell him that he is the reason she has abruptly returned. They resume both working side by side and their relationship, even though Dawn is married and Wyatt is engaged to be married to another woman.

The story is told via dual timelines. In an alternate reality, Dawn survives the plane crash and returns home to work on her marriage, and parent Meret. She takes on a new client, Win, whose son died at the age of sixteen as a result of a drug overdose. She embroils Dawn in her quest to locate her son's father, a painter with whom she had an affair. And Dawn's musings about the life she could have chosen are not without guilt.

The Book of Two Ways moves at a steady, but not fast pace which is appropriate for the subject matter. Picoult invites readers to join Dawn, a compellingly flawed character, on her contemplative journey of reflection about the path she did not choose and what might have happened if she had. Her desire for a second chance at being a Egyptologist, and to find out if her relationship with Wyatt could have worked out had she not left him without a word of explanation, is inspired when she is unexpectedly thrust into a crossroads in her life. Brian's work is in quantum mechanics -- the theory that parallel universes can exist and two versions of the same life be lived within them. Has Dawn been living an alternate life within a parallel universe? Is that what one of Picoult's narratives actually means?

It all makes sense when Picoult seamlessly merges the two narratives. Secrets are revealed that require each character to come to terms with the truth. Dawn is forced to make decisions about what she really wants and how her future will unfold after she has been given an opportunity to discover how a reunion with Wyatt will play out and faced the problems in her marriage head-on. Just like the Egyptians who believed that in the afterlife they would traverse one of the paths depicted in The Book of Two Ways to the Field of Offerings to enjoy an eternal feast.

In the hands of a less skilled writer, The Book of Two Ways could have become bogged down in sentimentality, but Picoult elevates the subject matter, deftly taking Dawn on a journey of self-discovery that feels neither contrived nor heavy-handed. Rather, it is a thoughtful exploration of a middle-aged woman's re-evaluation of her choices as she works her way through the complexities of her life in an effort to find happiness and fulfillment without hurting those she loves. Picoult always crafts thought-provoking stories that examine and meld several themes into a cohesive whole and The Book of Two Ways showcases her unique ability to do so in a believable, uncontrived, and emotionally resonant fashion. In true Picoult style, the story is related with compassion, sans judgment, and with the expectation that her readers will contemplate the questions she raises and find their own answers. In this book, Picoult takes that approach to its ultimate conclusion with an ambiguous ending that provides plenty of fodder for argument at book club meetings.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

Doctors and Friends
by Kimmery Martin

Gripping, Emotional, & Believable (11/5/2023)

Author Kimmery Martin is a former emergency medicine physician, Readers may be surprised to learn that Doctors and Friends was not inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin actually studied the 1918 influenza epidemic and 2014 Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, and drafted …more an essay outlining her planned story in 2018. When her editor liked the idea, Martin proceeded with further research. In the process, she discovered Crisis in the Red Zone, a nonfictional account by Richard Preston of two physicians who contracted a strain of Ebola in 2014. The medical director was in possession of an untested, experimental drug -- but only enough of the medicine to treat one patient. That physician faced an ethical conundrum: whether to treat either of two colleagues and, if so, which one. That incident compelled Martin to have one of her characters face a similar ethical quagmire and the consequences of her decision in Doctors and Friends. But she upped the ante by contemplating what would transpire if those two people had been the doctor's children. Martin completed an initial rough draft of the book in January 2020, ironically, just as COVID-19 was on the horizon.

The fictional virus she devised bears no resemblance to COVID. Rather, she made up its virological characteristics and transmissibility long before the real pandemic took hold of the world. Martin's virus is even more terrifyingly deadly -- and strikes without warning. As the story opens, physicians Kira, Compton, Hannah, Vani, and Georgia, Martin's protagonist in The Antidote for Everything, are vacationing in Spain when news of a potentially deadly new virus begins filtering in. They first encounter and attempt to aid a little girl who is inexplicably burning up with fever and struggling to breathe. When the World Health Organization gets involved, they debate whether to continue their journey. Kira has no choice but to proceed to Seville where her fourteen-year-old daughter, Rorie, and son, Beau, age six, are staying. They decide to forge ahead and while sailing the Strait of Gibralter, a young woman suddenly falls to her knees, gasping for air. Sweaty, coughing, her gaze unfocused, and in obvious respiratory distress, the woman's nailbeds are bright blue, an unusual and telltale symptom. Kira springs toward the woman without thinking. She is seconds away from death and begins seizing. Compton urges Kira to step aside because it was Compton who held the little girl in an effort to stabilize her breathing and if the little girl had the virus, Compton has surely been exposed to it. Compton is unable to save her, and Kira knows what she has risked by not canceling the trip.

At the center of the story, Kira relates, via a first-person narrative, that she began her career in internal medicine with an aid organization. After her husband died suddenly of an undiagnosed illness, she then returned to the United States and completed a fellowship in infectious disease and specialized training in battling pandemics. She is a single mother in a relationship with Declan, whose biopharmaceutical laboratory is targeting the same virus that Kira studied at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). For him, everything is riding on the lab's upcoming request for a clinical trial.

Kira is the subject matter expert on artioviruses in the Viral Infections branch of the CDC and it is that type of virus that is fast spreading around the world. After quarantining, the women barely make it back to their respective homes and medical practices before travel is restricted. Martin's depiction of the impact of the disease is uncannily and eerily akin to what actually transpired in 2020. New York City becomes a ghost town and tragedy strikes more than one of her characters. Martin devotes successive chapters to each of them, relating, from their perspectives, their feelings, struggles, and the gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking decisions some of them must make as the pandemic sweeps the world and the number of fatalities climbs. The virus leaves few survivors and within a few months many of those who manage to survive their initial bout with the disease meet a horrific fate: rapid-onset dementia. Scientists scramble to develop and distribute an effective vaccine.

Through it all, the women keep in touch with and support each other, as some of them continue practicing medicine and some are forced by their circumstances to pivot. Hannah, who specializes in obstetrics/gynecology in San Diego, has been unable to conceive her own child. She must care for her patients while the virus rages with no knowledge of its long-term impact, if any, upon a pregnant woman who contracts the disease . . . or the unborn child. Hannah's previous efforts to become pregnant via invitro fertilization have failed, and she ponders the wisdom of one more attempt. Georgia revealed her own pregnancy while the women were in Spain and must take steps to protect herself and her baby. Meanwhile, Compton, who practices emergency medicine, is overwhelmed by the number of patients she treats and her inability to save them. She must carry on in spite of tremendous personal loss for the sake of her three children, but is profoundly and irrevocably changed by what she and her family go through. And Kira faces the aforementioned ethical conundrum, despite her vigilant efforts to keep her children safe.

Hindsight demonstrates that Martin's portrayal of the pandemic is starkly accurate and chilling, particularly her descriptions of a world in lockdown and the toll the disease takes on medical personnel. And the fast-paced story is riveting, keeping readers engaged to see who will survive and whether Declan's company will conduct a successful clinical trial. Likewise, Kira's plight is emotionally gripping and suspenseful. It is one of the most effective aspects of the story, told with just the right tone by capitalizing on but not unnecessarily enhancing the plot twist's inherent drama.

Equally credible is Martin's portrayal of the friendships that were forged years ago in medical school and have endured. Can they withstand the challenges each character faces? Their interactions are believable and endearing, imbued with familiarity, empathy, compassion, and stubbornness. They support each other even when they must do so from afar, and Martin's dialogue is crisp and witty.

Unfortunately, Martin contracted COVID in 2020 and suffered long-term symptoms, including parosmia, low blood pressure, and fatigue. Perhaps life imitated art a bit too perfectly because she says, "For my next novel, I think I will write about world peace."

Whatever topic she decides to tackle, if her next effort is as compelling and emotionally resonant as Doctors and Friends, it will also be well worth reading.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

The Current
by Tim Johnston

A Richly Moving, Evocative Crime Mystery (10/16/2023)

With The Current, Tim Johnston cements his status as a unique, unequaled voice in contemporary fiction. Simply put, The Current is a beautifully written, achingly heartbreaking story with authentic characters and a plot that grabs readers by the heart right at the outset …more and never lets go. The Current is an exploration of the enduring impact of a crime on innocent people set in the most American surroundings — a small town in the Midwest.

Caroline and Audrey started out as college roommates, found they were completely incompatible, and yet still managed to forge a friendship while living separately. They come from divergent backgrounds: Caroline hails from Georgia, while Audrey is the daughter of the former sheriff in a small town in Minnesota. Her father is ill and Audrey needs to get home, but she has no car and has maxed out the credit card her father gave her. Caroline decides that, rather than loan Audrey the funds to get home, she’ll go with her.

It isn’t the icy winter road that causes Caroline and Audrey not to reach their destination. It’s something much more sinister. And after she is released from the hospital, Audrey determines to find answers. Soon she discovers a connection to the death of sixteen-year-old Holly Burke ten years ago. She too plunged into the dark, icy waters of the river. Holly’s father, Gordon, still lives in town, leading a quiet life and keeping to himself for the most part, as he continues to mourn the loss of his only child. Many people in town suspected Danny Young had something to do with Holly’s death. Shortly after, Danny left town and has never returned, although his mother, Rachel, continues writing letters to him and hopes he might someday return. As Audrey proceeds with her investigation, she finds that her father took some secrets with him to his grave and his suspicions may have been well-founded.

Johnston employs a lovely economy of language and demonstrates a keen understanding of life in America’s heartland, which is not surprising considering that he is a resident of Iowa City, Iowa. With seeming effortlessness, he pulls readers into the small town lives of his characters. They reside where winters are long and treacherous, right is right, and there are no strangers. Against that backdrop, Johnston weaves an intricate tale about getting on with life in the face of unspeakable tragedy, the underlying rage that tremendous loss fuels, and the damage it can do. As Audrey’s father puts it, “A man doesn’t really ever know himself. He thinks he soes, but he doesn’t. There’s something in him that goes deeper than anything in his raising or his beliefs or his badge or whatever the hell he lives by. And once he reaches that place, well. Right and wrong are just words.”

The Current explores Audrey’s coming of age and gradual empowerment as she sees her hometown through adult eyes for the first time. However, the real strength and soul of The Current is its quiet examination of the unconditional, unending love of a parent for his/her child, exquisitely illustrated from the perspectives of Rachel and Gordon. The story’s pace is akin to the flow of the river — constant and steady, surging at particular junctures.

The Current is a haunting and poignant study of the ties that bind us to our loved ones and communities, and the power of events to shape our future. Johnston demonstrates the myriad ways in which small town life is not as uncomplicated as, at first glance, it appears. And confirms there is a current running through our lives that binds us together, even as it separates us in significant ways, and gives us strength when we need it most. Just as the current continues flowing under the ice when the river is frozen in the winter. “Despite the ice, it all flows on.”

The Current is one of the best books of 2019 and a contemporary classic.

A beautiful quote from the book:

“Life was organic and that was one kind of energy, ashes to ashes, but there was also energy between living beings, currents that traveled between them outside of biology, and that energy could not be buried, and neither could it fade into nothing, because energy never just ended, it transformed and recycled and you felt it even if you didn’t believe in it. Souls. Spirits. Whatever you called it there was a current and you were in it always and you couldn’t bury it.” (less)

The September House
by Carissa Orlando

An Impressive, Genre-Melding Debut (7/5/2023)

Debut author Carissa Orlando holds a doctorate in clinical-community psychology and specializes in working with children and adolescents. She is committed to improving the quality of and access to mental health care for children and their families. Orlando says she has …more

Falling
by T. J. Newman

A Polished & Terrifying Debut Novel (6/19/2023)

During a red-eye flight, debut author T.J. Newman, then a flight attendant, looked at the passengers, many of whom were sleeping, and really pondered the fact that passengers' lives are in the pilot's hands. For the first time, she thought about how the pilots have so much …more power and responsibility that they are vulnerable. She recalls asking a pilot, "'What would you do if you find out that your family has been taken, and you're told that if you don't crash the plane, your family will be killed?' Just based on the look on his face, I knew I had a story. He was terrified. He did not have an answer. There's wasn't a page in the manual for this." She knew she would not be "able to rest until I knew the answer to that question."

Even after Newman completed over thirty drafts of the book, success did not immediately follow. She began querying agents and received forty-one rejections. The agent who finally said "yes" -- lucky number forty-two -- turned out to be "a perfect fit," and helped her secure a publishing deal.

Newman's characters were inspired by the crew members and passengers she encountered over the years. At the heart of the story is Captain Bill Hoffman, the pilot who accepts a flight from Los Angeles to New York because he could not refuse a request from the Chief Pilot. His wife, Carrie, is displeased because Bill promised to attend their ten-year-old son, Scott's, baseball game and team pizza party. Things between them are tense, as Bill heads to the airport where he is happy to see that his friend, Jo, with whom he has flown for twenty years, is heading up the flight crew. She will be assisted by Michael Rodenburg, known to everyone at the airline as Big Daddy, and Kellie, a new flight attendant who has only recently completed her training. He's also happy to find that Ben, with whom he has flown before, will be serving as his First Officer (co-pilot). Bill plans to speak with Carrie before his flight begins in an attempt to smooth things over and assuage his guilt about having left Carrie at home with Scott, Elise, their ten-month-old daughter, . . . and a technician from the local cable company dispatched to repair their internet connection.

Carrie offers the repairman a cup of tea, but turns to find him holding a gun. Shortly thereafter, once the plane is in the air, Bill receives an email on his laptop. There is no message. There is only a photo attached. Bill recognizes his living room, but Carrie and Scott have their arms outstretched in the shape of a cross and black hoods over their heads. Strapped across Carrie's whole torso is a vest with brightly colored wires protruding from small bricks inside pockets. Bill immediately observes that it looks like the vests he has seen in photos of suicide bombers, but he can't "process the sight of something so perverse strapped across his wife's body." Another email arrives that says, "Put on your headphones." A FaceTime call is initiated, and Bill recognizes Sam, the purported cable technician, who is also wearing an explosive-laden vest and holding the detonator. Sam tells Bill, "You will crash your plane or I will kill your family. The choice is yours." Bill knows his cockpit has been breached and the plane is in jeopardy. Bill's response? "I'm not going to crash this plane and you're not going to kill my family."

Stories about kidnappings, airplane hijackings, and terrorist attacks are nothing new. But the way Newman has melded the concepts is new. She has cleverly combined the kidnapping of Bill's family, the fact that Sam is not working alone, and the revelation that he and his accomplice intend for Bill to crash the plane at a specific location for clearly articulated reasons into one terrifying tale.

Newman's characters are convincing. Bill is exactly the kind of pilot that every passenger wants to find in the cockpit of their flight. Competent, dedicated, and fully aware of the massive responsibility he shoulders every time he reports for work. He has never lost sight of what he learned in flight school at the age of just eighteen: why flight plans use the term "souls on board." Right then he had to evaluate his prospects as a pilot. "Could he bear the burden of duty Could he be the man the job demanded?" He reminds himself as he performs the pre-flight checks that he has "souls on board" . . . and after the kidnapper's demand is communicated to him, he is believably horrified that he is being asked to choose between the innocent souls entrusted to his care and his precious family. It is an impossible situation which is, of course, the kidnapper's point. Sam also warns him not to involve the authorities or try to warn the flight crew, further complicating Bill's predicament.

Carrie is a mother placed in a nightmare situation. It is her duty to protect her children. Little Elise is too young to comprehend the danger they are in, of course, but Scott is being traumatized before Carrie's eyes. And, in his father's absence, trying to be very brave. Carrie also knows her husband's character and assures Sam that there is no way Bill will crash the plane. He will never choose Carrie and the children over all of the souls on board his flight. All Carrie can do is remain as calm as possible, comfort the children, watch for an opportunity to take action herself . . . and have faith that Bill will figure out a solution. Because everything is at stake. He has to.

Jo, Big Daddy, and Kellie also play critical roles in the story. Jo is their leader and Newman convincingly portrays the events that unfold in the cabin from her perspective. As Newman explains, "Once the doors shut, that's your cabin." After 9/11, the design of cockpit doors and access procedures were revised. Now the pilot and copilot are literally locked in the cockpit behind a door that cannot be breached, leaving the flight crew on their own to manage whatever happens in the cabin. Jo has dealt with in-flight crises over the years, but nothing like the threat posed by Sam. And like Bill, she knows there is a strong likelihood that there is a co-conspirator onboard, ready to implement the kidnapper's backup plan -- whatever that might be -- if Bill does not comply with Sam's orders. But who might that be? A passenger? Or, worse, a member of the crew?

The book moves at a steady, relentless pace as Bill, Jo, and Jo's nephew, Theo, an FBI agent whose career already hung in the balance before he learned about the drama unfolding on Flight 416, frantically work to out-smart Sam and his co-conspirator. Theo has to convince his superiors that his Aunt Jo is indeed taking care of her cabin and the threat must be taken seriously, even though that means involving officials at the highest levels of government and invoking protocols that leave no margin for error.

Newman's narrative is tautly constructed and, because of her decade of experience in the airline industry, thoroughly, frighteningly believable. She explains why characters take particular actions and why protocols exist (with some dramatic license), enhancing reader's comprehension of the threat. And the kidnapper's motivation, once explained, is infuriating, shocking, and, with the benefit of hindsight, entirely predictable.

Falling is engrossing, entertaining, and a perfect choice for readers who enjoy fast-moving, plausible thrillers. It is a stunningly accomplished and polished effort from a first-time novelist, which bodes well for Newman's next effort, the details of which she has not disclosed. Set aside time to read because the book is un-put-down-able.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

Only the Beautiful
by Susan Meissner

Fiction Based on History That Must Never Be Forgotten (5/7/2023)

Author Susan Meissner says Only the Beautiful focuses on "a movement in history that has been all but forgotten." The eugenics movement led to state laws authorizing the sterilization of institutionalized citizens who had conditions deemed to result from genetic flaws for …more

City Under One Roof
by Iris Yamashita

A Riveting & Atmospheric Mystery Set in Alaska (1/23/2023)

Debut author Iris Yamashita says City Under One Roof was inspired by a documentary she viewed more than twenty years ago about the city of Whittier, Alaska where all of the residents lived in a single building. She knew there had to be a story to be told in such an …more intriguing setting.

Whittier, Alaska is about sixty miles southeast of Anchorage, at the head of Passage Canal. It is situated between the spectacular mountains and an ice-free port, surrounded by three glaciers. It serves as the gateway to the Prince William Sound wilderness. Snowfall in Whittier averages twenty-two feet per year, but every summer tourists visit the city, many arriving aboard cruise ships. The city is also accessible via the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel through Maynard Mountain. At two-and-a-half miles long, it is the longest highway tunnel in North America, built to withstand temperatures up to -40 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures and winds of one hundred fifty miles per hour. In 2000, the one-lane tunnel was made passable by cars in addition to trains, each navigating the tunnel in both directions. The tunnel is aired out between trips with jet turbine ventilation. The single lane of vehicle traffic travels directly over the slightly sunken railroad track, and there are safe-houses within the tunnel -- small buildings that can be used in the event of a severe earthquake, vehicle fire, or other emergency.

Whittier was once known as Camp Sullivan. During World War II, the U.S. Army built the port and railroad to transport soldiers there. Following the war, two high-rise buildings were erected and the Army continued operating the port until 1960. In 1964, the 9.2 magnitude "Good Friday Earthquake," still the largest on record in the U.S., caused over ten million dollars in damage, triggered tsunamis, and claimed forty-three lives. It also rendered one of the city's two large buildings uninhabitable. Incorporated in 1969, the city still boasts a three-person year-round police force and volunteer fire and rescue squad. The city's two hundred and seventy-two or so citizens all reside in a fourteen-story condominimum known as Beghic Towers Incorporated which also houses the hospital, school, and city government offices.

Yamashita set City Under One Roof in fictional Point Mettier, Alaska, modeled after Whittier but with some distinct differences, including additional pedestrian tunnels such as the one used by the town's children to get to their schoolroom. In the story, the shell of one building, destroyed by the 1964 earthquake, remains standing and the diverse group of two hundred and five residents all live in the Davidson Condos, known as the Dave-Co where the post office, a church, an infirmary, and a general store that sells "touristy tchotchkes" are situated. There is also an inn within the structure. Winter lasts for about eight months with temperatures as low as minus thirty-five degrees, and Alaska is thrust into darkness for nearly the entire day for several months of the year. Life in a place like Point Mettier does not appeal to everyone, and the permanent, long-time residents are there for very speciic reasons. Some love the scenic setting, the isolation, or living within such a closeknit community. But most are running away from something or someone, including her protagonist.

In fact, when Yamashita visited Whittier while researching the book, she discovered that when the tunnel only accommodated train travel, one of the female residents was protected by the train conductor who prevented her abusive ex-husband from boarding and traveling to Whittier. A disproportionately high number of women in Alaska have endured domestic violence, in part because of the scant police enforcement of laws and restraining orders designed to protect them in remote regions. She explores the theme of fictional Point Mettier functioning as a safe haven for victims by incorporating that history into the story. Even now that vehicle traffic flows into Point Mettier, the toll booth operator tells Cara that he maintains a list of "no-gooders" to watch out for, but acknowledges that other than checking identification and attempting to dissuade them with stories about the tunnel shutting down there is little he can do to prevent them from entering the city.

Yamashita relates the story from three perspectives. People who travel through the tunnel have the sensation of falling down a rabbit hole and ending up in a strange and crazy wonderland full of quirky characters. Cara Kennedy is an "otter," which is what the townspeople call outsiders. She is a detective with the Anchorage police who arrives in Point Mettier because she is investigating what might be a murder case. Yamashita likens her to Alice in Wonderland, chasing clues as to why body parts have been washing up on the area's shores. As the book opens, in fact, Amy Lin, a local teenager, has stumbled upon a hand and foot. More than a year ago, Cara and her husband, Aaron, decided to take a much-needed vacation with their young son, Dylan. They rented a cabin in Talkeetna near Denali National Park and on the third day, Aaron took Dylan, along with his camera gear, on a morning hike to see snowshoe hares. They never returned. Cara wants to investigate whether their disappearance could be linked in any way to the body parts. When an avalanche closes the tunnel, she is forced to remain in Point Mettier. She teams up with Chief Sipley and the town's only police officer, Joe Barkowski, but does not reveal significant details about what prompted her to travel to Point Mettier. Cara is a highly skilled police professional who has sustained a horrible tragedy. She is determined to get answers, and willing to take whatever risks are required in order to do so. She is also likable and empathetic, particularly as Yamashita gradually reveals more details about the events that compelled her to visit Point Mettier.

Seventeen-year-old Amy Lin has lived in Point Mettier for fourteen years with her mother, who operates a business serving "barely passable" Chinese food that Amy Lin is tasked with delivering. She has recently learned that the details about her family's history and origins that she always accepted as true were actually manufactured by her mother. That knowledge has stirred up perplexing feelings and emotions for her, even though the revelations have given her a new understanding of her mother and her motivations. Day-to-day life in Point Mettier is challenging for Amy Lin due to a lack of activities, even though there are occasional school field trips. She is certain that were it not for Internet access connecting the little town to the rest of the world, she would not survive. There is nothing perplexing, however, about her feelings for her boyfriend, Even Spence Blackmon, who moved to Point Mettier about seven years ago with his younger brother, Troy, and their mother, Debra, who is one of the schoolteachers. Amy and Spence sneak off, along with the other local kids, to the remains of the next-door Walcott Building which used to house a bowling alley, auditorium, movie theater, and indoor pool. When Even and his family go missing, Amy is determined to find them. She is intuitive, observant, and resilient -- the white rabbit to Cara's Alice, according to Yamashita.

Lonnie Mercer is Yamashita's Mad Hatter. She wears a different colored beret every day, speaks in what Yamashita describes as "word salad" (strings of free-flowing, internal word associations) and has an undisclosed mental disability. She lives in fear of being sent back to the Institute where she was forced to live for a time after her mother was killed by an abusive boyfriend. She orders the same thing from Amy Lin's mother every day -- fried rice -- and is devoted to her pet moose, Denny. Chief Sipley looks after Lonnie and instructs her not to speak to Cara, ask her any questions or answer any questions Cara might pose, reminding her, "You don't want to end up back at the Institute, do you?"

Yamashita surrounds her three main characters with an eclectic group of supporting players, including the innkeeper, the manager of the general store, a gang of criminals whose headquarters are located in a nearby village, and a lonely lounge singer who was once a successful recording artist in Japan. Point Mettier is, of course, a central character in the tale, as well -- brooding, claustrophobic, and holding the secrets of its inhabitants. Yamashita's prowess as a screenwriter translates well to a lushly descriptive narrative that brings to life not just her compelling characters, but also the fascinating little town of Point Mettier and the surrounding area. She convincingly details how a place as naturally beautiful as the region can also be eerily menacing and frightening. She effectively melds her characters' emotional struggles with the procedural aspects of Cara's investigation, keeping the action moving forward at a fast pace and accelerating the tension as Cara and Officer Barkowski grow closer to each other and to identifying the individual whose partial remains were discovered by Amy Lin.

In City Under One Roof, some of the mysteries explored are wrapped up in a cohesive, satisfying manner. However, as the story proceeds, Yamashita introduces intriguing additional details pertaining to others and refrains from providing a tidy ending to those plots. Indeed, City Under One Roof is just the first entertaining installment in what promises to be a riveting and atmospheric series featuring Yamashita's colorful and eccentric cast of characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

The Villa: A Novel
by Rachel Hawkins

Evocative and Highly Entertaining (1/3/2023)

About The Villa, author Rachel Hawkins says "there are a lot of stories happening all at once." She describes it as being about friendships and, more specifically, female friendships and toxic relationships. It is also about writing, art, sex and gender, and, or course, …more money.

The current-day story focuses on Emily, a published author of a cozy mystery series featuring an amateur sleuth named Petal Bloom who lives in a little town called Blossom Bay. Emily is nearly thirty-six years old, still living in Asheville -- the town in which she grew up -- and nothing in her life has been going well for quite some time. She was physically ill for more than a year while a definitive diagnosis and appropriate treatment plan evaded her physicians. Her seven-year marriage to Matt imploded and now she's having trouble focusing on drafting the next installment in the Petal series, "A Gruesome Garden," in part because Petal's love interest, Dex, was modeled on Matt. She needs to finish the book not just to fulfill her contractual obligation. She needs the money to pay her attorneys because her pending divorce has become toxically acrimonious. Matt is suing for a significant portion of her royalties and future earnings, based on Emily's assertion during an interview that the books would not exist without her husband.

Ironically, though, since separating from Matt, Emily's health has improved and she is feeling well enough to meet her childhood friend, Chess Chandler, who is in town for a book signing. The two women were childhood friends -- when Chess was known first as Jessica and, later, Jay -- but rarely see each other. Chess has become a wildly successful self-help guru, publishing books with titles like "You Got This!" Her career began when advice she doled out on a website launched by a friend went viral. Suddenly, Chess amassed hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, snagged jobs with Salon and the Cut, and landed a book deal. "Things My Mama Never Taught Me" (Chess did not have a good relationship with her mother, Nanci) became an instant bestseller, with Chess telling woman how to get their lives on the "Powered Path" and chatting with Oprah about it. In her first-person narrative, Emily admits that "somewhere around the time she started calling herself 'Chess,' I realized I might actually hate my best friend." Part of the reason may be that Emily's life is decidedly "not on the Powered Path."

Still, Emily agrees to meet Chess for lunch, and they fall back into their old dynamic. And, as always, Chess has a plan. She wants Emily to accompany her to Italy to stay at the sumptuous Villa Aestas just outside Orvieto for six weeks, during which they will work on their respective upcoming books. Emily can't resist the pull of six weeks away from her house and the rut she is in. "Six weeks to try and get my career back on track and reignite my sense of purpose." Of course, since the setting is gorgeous, she can also post beautiful photos on Instagram and Facebook that Matt will see. Chess is feeling pressured by her publisher to come up with her next volume of pithy advice for the masses.

Hawkins employs a parallel narrative focused on Mari Godwick, the author of "Lilith Rising," which was a publishing phenomenon in 1976. Mari was barely out of her teens when she joined the ranks of mostly male writers with the story of a girl named Victoria Stuart who "brings about the destruction of those she loves with no regret, single-minded in her focus in the way teenage girls certainly are in real life, but had not been permitted to be in the realms of horror fiction." By the time the book was released, Mari, inspired by Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, was already famous -- or perhaps, more aptly, infamous -- because of a tragedy that occurred at Villa Rosato (the prior name of Villa Aestas) during the summer of 1974. Mari traveled there with Pierce Sheldon, her would-be rock star boyfriend, as well as her stepsister, Lara Larchmont, as guests of Noel Gordon, a legitimate Scottish rock star and one of Pierce's idols, modeled after Lord Byron. Also staying at Villa Rosato is Johnnie Dorchester, whose relationship with Noel is murky, at best. At only twenty-six years old, Noel is the senior member of the group. Pierce is twenty-three and Johnnie is twenty, but Mari and Lara are only nineteen years old. And Mari, in particular, the daughter of literary royalty, has already experienced life events normally reserved for adults.

By interspersing excerpts from various articles and podcasts, Hawkins reveals some of the events that took place in 1974. The technique is highly effective, enticing readers to forge on in order to learn how and why those events unfolded. Hawkins has gathered an eclectic and multi-layered group of characters at Villa Rosato. Noel is an established star who has too much money and time to spend between engagements, so he rents Villa Rosato to keep the party going all summer. Purportedly, he and Pierce are there to compose songs together -- the chance to work with Noel could bring Pierce the career breakthrough he has been seeking. But as the weeks go on, not much music gets made, and Mari is increasingly frustrated. Her life with Pierce is supposed to be about the two of them pursuing their art -- his music and her writing. But art cannot be the focus of one's life when money needs to be made in order to survive. Drugs, and sexual experimentation and dalliances cause jealousy, resentments, and distrust, as Johnnie's purpose there gradually becomes clearer, along with his feelings about the other guests. Hawkins says that creating the character of Pierce was the most challenging aspect of drafting The Villa because she had to make him "appealing enough that we understand why both Mari and Lara loved him while also showing just how destructive and oblivious he could be . . ." Indeed, Pierce is both endearingly confused about his life and choices, and despicably self-centered and callous.

The most intriguing aspect of the storyline is Mari's journey, as she navigates her relationships with her housemates and ponders her future, while taking inspiration for the novel that will become her masterpiece from the villa itself, along with snippets of prose that come to her. "Houses remember. She has no idea where she's going with that thought, but it had popped into her brain and she's written it down, sure it was the beginning of . . . something. Something big, some story just sitting coiled inside of her, ready to spring out fully formed." She wants to focus on her writing and tell the story that she can feel taking shape in her imagination. Lara lurks on the edges of the group, craving attention. She has a history with and feelings for Pierce, and Mari does not trust her. Indeed, she and the others find Lara's cloying attempts to be noticed and desire for validation annoying. But Lara and Mari have been inextricably intertwined for years, and their bond grows stronger during that revelatory and life-changing summer.

In the present day, Emily is inspired to write, as well. But she has no interest in continuing Petal Bloom's story. Rather, she learns about the villa's notorious history and begins researching what happened. Like Mari's, her search proves consequential in a variety of ways. Emily, like Mari, is a fully developed character and her emotional struggle is palpable. She is well aware that she has arrived at a crossroads in her life, and is determined to carve out a happier future for herself. She is also intent on keeping Chess from co-opting her impending success. Like the relationship of Mari and Lara, Emily's long friendship with Chess is complicated and riddled with old hurts, resentments, jealousy, and distrust. Secrets and betrayals are revealed. But they are bound together through history and shared experiences, and neither of them has the desire -- or strength -- to completely untangle their relationship. As Hawkins details the history of their friendship, she reveals that Emily has always been more naive and gullible than Chess, who has parlayed her natural wit and charisma into an empire. Emily knows the real Chess, rather than the one who inspires other women to buy her psychobabble-laden advice. But Emily is not guileless and as she delves further into the history of the villa and its former visitors, the inherent unreliability in her narrative becomes apparent. Is Emily a hapless victim of others' manipulations or does she have a dark nature, as well? Can her friendship with Chess withstand bombshell revelations and calculated machinations? Should it? The story's pace never stalls as Hawkins injects surprising twists at perfectly timed intervals.

The Villa seamlessly combines two evocative storylines set nearly five decades apart but with eerie parallels. Hawkins examines artistry and the mysterious genesis of inspiration, as well as the mercurial nature of friendships and the destructive power of toxic relationships. Hawkins relates that she was inspired to explore "the idea of how art and life intersect, how great art can get made in the middle of chaos and the way artists inspire and also possibly derail one another." And she does so in an absorbing, suspenseful and, ultimately, entertaining mystery.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

Before You Knew My Name: A Novel
by Jacqueline Bublitz

Heartbreakingly Tragic, Yet Life-Affirming Featuring Characters Readers will Long Remember (12/9/2022)

Author Jacqueline Bublitz wrote Before You Knew My Name, her debut novel, after spending a summer in New York City where she "hung around morgues and the dark corners of city parks (and the human psyche) far too often." Her manuscript was rejected many times during a more …more

The Hero of This Book: A Novel
by Elizabeth McCracken

A Tender & Funny Homage to the Hero of a Grieving Daughter's Life (10/29/2022)

Is The Hero of This Book a work of fiction, a memoir, or a treatise on writing? It doesn't matter because it is an engaging, heartfelt tribute to a mother from the daughter who loved, admired, and was bemused by her. McCracken’s narrator considers various literary styles, …more insisting she is not a memoirist, and is not even sure about the difference between fiction and memoir. “Permission to lie; permission to cast aside worries about plausibility.” To her “emotionally autobiographical” fiction, the narrator has lent her secrets, but never her identity, out of fear of being found. Now she claims to have perhaps lost her inhibitions. Or not. (She equivocates about various topics throughout the narrative.) Her mother hated graves and therapy, and viewed memoirs with contempt, especially those replete with complaints about parents. But was fun-loving, adventurous, and “loved to tell stories about herself.”

The fictional narrator remains anonymous throughout the book, but acknowledges that the “actual me is the author.” She describes how she wandered the streets of London during a return visit in August 2019, "the summer before the world stopped," feeling every bit the motherless child she became ten months earlier when her mother died. Yet she neither grieved nor mourned the mother whose name she also conceals until late in the story. She rejects the words "grief" and "mourning," finding both terms "melodramatic. . . . I just missed her. I hated to see her go." Back in Boston, her parents' belongings had been sold during an estate sale, and their house was being readied to be put on the market. "In London, I found I wanted to hoard my little portion of her" -- perhaps in the same way that her parents hoarded objects, although the narrator never uses that word in relationship to their living conditions or the monumental task of hauling their amassed belongings out of the house. Those belongings were curated to serve as “a bulwark to keep people away and out.” Rather, the trip was a means of escaping those mundane details of finalizing her mother's affairs. The house -- and, more specifically, the squalor in which her parents needlessly lived -- had haunted her for years. “At first the house was untidy, then messy, then dirty, then a shame, a shanda, then squalid. Actual squalor. . . . It really was shameful, to be so educated, with such resources, and live in squalor.” She was happy to be away from it all and soon, hopefully, unburdened by it. "I was bereaved and haunted," she recalls.

As the narrator details walking around London, remembering her mother and the extraordinary life she lived, McCracken often employs a stream of consciousness style, permitting the narrator to veer off on tangents while relating a story. The technique makes the tale believable and authentic. Anyone who has experienced the grief of losing a loved one will recognize aspects of their own experience in the narrator’s recollections of family members and events, and her efforts to come to terms with who her parents were and their legacy. Ordinary objects, words, prictures or specific locations can trigger memories that flood one's consciousness in jagged, disjointed, seemingly random order, as they do the narrator's.

The narrator marvels at many aspects of her mother’s life and personality, as well as her physical characteristics. She remembers her mother saying she sustained a “birth injury” or “forceps injury,” but never a birth defect, and describes her mother’s refusal to let her body inhibit her lifestyle or accomplishments. She was formidable and personable, unique and memorable, and it is not until well into the story that the narrator names her mother’s condition – words she never heard her mother utter until she was fifty-eight years old and the narrator was twenty-six. Of course, to the narrator her “mother’s body was just her body,” and it surprised her when others noticed and/or commented about it, in part because of her mother’s personality. It was also just her body to her mother – never “something to overcome or accept any more than yours was.”

In some respects, her mother’s death came as a surprise. After all her mother had overcome and accomplished in her life, the narrator “was awaiting another resurrection.” When she had to accept that her mother would not survive, she and her brother had to make decisions about her mother’s last days and care. And they chose well, observing that both of her parents had “good deaths . . . from this angle especially, a quiet death in old age, people you love nearby: It feels like luck.” If the definition of being lucky includes being survived by a child who remembers the years spent with you lovingly, even in recognition of your flaws and missteps, the narrator's parents were indeed lucky. She “hated to see them go” and, through the process of losing and missing them, illustrates the various ways in which she knew and understood her parents, while acknowledging that there was much about them, their lives, and their relationship she did not know. And will likely never know. It's another aspect of the narrator’s feelings with which readers who have lost parents will identify. In her grief, the narrator realizes that she “only knew the stories my mother liked to tell, not the ones she’d prefer to forget,” which is, perhaps, a universal parental trait.

The Hero of This Book is an often hilarious and at times heartbreaking, beautifully crafted homage from an empathetic, bereaved daughter to her deceased mother (and, to a lesser degree, father, grandmother, and aunt). Thanks to McCracken's vivid and evocative prose, the narrator's parents and other family members spring back to life on the pages as McCracken details lives well-lived, along with personality quirks and eccentricities, and foibles. Her mother was ferociously private. The narrator wonders how her mother would react to the book, and ponders whether privacy outlives us. Ultimately, as with other weighty issues, she decides not to decide. Because concluding that the dead have no privacy might simply be a way to camouflage and justify her own self-centeredness. Besides, the narrator continues to keep many things secret and the book is her story -- a story she needs to tell -- even if her mother is the hero of it. And make no mistake: the narrator's brilliant, intellectual, stubborn, complicated, and unconventional mother is the undisputed hero of the book . . . and her daughter's life.

The narrator’s ruminations never hit a false or contrived note, revealing her particular worldview and sometimes cheeky philosophies about writing. “I hate novels with unnamed narrators. I didn’t mean to write one. Write enough books and these things will happen. I never meant to write a novel about a writer, either.” She believes that life is all about story: “Your family is the first novel that you know.” Adult readers who are, like the narrator, motherless or orphaned children, may find themselves fondly recalling and missing their own parents as they get to know McCracken's perhaps fictional ones. I certainly did.

Thenks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book, and to Ecco Books & Bibliolifestyle for a paperback copy. (less)

The Lies I Tell: A Novel
by Julie Clark

Another Absorbing Mystery from the Talented Julie Clark (7/19/2022)

Bestselling author Julie Clark was fascinated by a podcast about a con artist who "went to elaborate lengths to lure in his victims, gain their trust, and then steal everything they owned." She envisioned female con artists being even more effective because women are …more generally perceived as less threatening than men. She asked herself, "Would people be more inclined to trust them?"

From the outset, Clark makes Meg a richly sympathetic con artist. Early in the story, Meg reveals that her latest target, Ron Ashton, tricked her mother, robbed them of what was rightfully theirs, and is now a powerful politician. Meg's first-person narrative is highly effective and heightens her story's emotional impact. She explains that Ashton "tore my life apart, sending my mother into a downward spiral she never recovered from and leaving me to live alone in a car for my final year of high school and beyond." Meg describes how her mother longed for a true partner, believing women should stand on their own, but fell victim to the scheming, deceitful Ashton. Meg's dreams were crushed and she learned to take refuge in libraries, using the computers there to establish a dating profile that ensured at least three dinner dates per week in order to stay fed. Living in her car, she worked at the YMCA where she was able to shower before her shift and hide her true circumstances from her boss and coworkers. She was never quite able to save enough enough money to get a place to live due to car registration fees, rising gas prices, and parking tickets issued as a result of the ongoing search for a safe place to park and catch a few hours of sleep. She inadvertently fell into a life of grifting when she discovered the profile on a dating site of a math teacher, Cory Dempsey, at her high school. Crafting a fake identity and life story, Meg used her knowledge about the forty-eight-year-old, who had been promoted to high school principal, as a basis for her first scam. Initially, she was motivated by her need for a safe place to live. But as she learned more about him, she formulated a plan to extract revenge and found she enjoyed being someone else. Eventually, Meg reached the point that "harming someone who harmed someone she cared about felt right to her" and found a lucrative career as a con artist.

Meg explains how she creates elaborate, detailed backstories about herself, focuses on specific targets, and "plays the long game," taking time to study her prey. She methodically infiltrates her victims' lives, heavily using social media to establish connections with her victims' friends and business associates. That way, the mutual acquaintance can vouch for her when she finally meets the victim, corroborating details of the identity she has fabricated. And she reinvests in her business, using the money she makes from her cons to fund her future scams. She keeps meticulous records of her pursuits.

By the time Meg meets Kat, she has been spent ten years perfecting her techniques, all in preparation for and leading up to the one big con that will destroy Ashton, the man who ruined her life. As Meg compellingly explains, being a con artist is not just a role she never planned to play. It is a lonely existence and she has no intention of being a grifter indefinitely.

When Kat and Meg's lives intersected a decade ago, Kat's career as an investigative journalist was just beginning. Chasing the Cory Dempsey story, she saw a chance to score an interview with a reluctant witness. It could lead not only to the discovery of new and shocking information about the story, but also, perhaps, to details about Meg herself that would enable her to successfully pitch a story about her and allow Kat to advance in a highly competitive industry. Her risk did not pay off. Instead, her life quickly derailed. She was "collateral damage" as a result of a series of events set in motion by Meg. She has blamed Meg ever since, determined to expose Meg as the fraud that she is and put her life back in order. Clark also employs a first-person narrative to convey Kat's story, pulling readers into her innermost thoughts and motivations in chapters that alternate with Meg's account. Kat reveals that she knows blaming Meg for what happened to her is not entirely rational, but she embarks, like Meg, on a mission to "balance the scales."

Kat is living with her fiancé, Scott, a police detective with a gambling problem, when she learns that Meg has returned. Meg is posing as a real estate broker, and Kat secures a job as Meg's assistant. She plans to infiltrate Meg's life, ingratiating herself in much the way that Meg does with her victims, in order to gather enough evidence to finally write the exposé that will unmask Meg and establish Kat as a credible, respected journalist. She believes that Meg has no idea who she really is, but before long, Kat finds herself being reeled in by Meg, and doubting everything she thought she knew as she strives to keep her life from unraveling yet again. Trust is a theme Clark deftly explores through Kat's experiences. She made the mistake of trusting years ago and the consequences devastated her. But did she learn from the experience? Is her trust in Scott misplaced? Has she learned to trust her own instincts? And could her growing fondness for Meg, despite her knowledge of Meg's actions, undermine her efforts to get her life and career back on track?

The Lies I Tell is a smart, absorbing story about two women who craft false identities and attempt to con each other. Both are motivated by deep wounds inflicted by others who wronged them. In Meg's case, she lost her beloved mother as a result of Ashton's callous wrongdoing. Both women are intent on retribution, believing that they can exact justice and, in the process, free themselves from past hurts and forge for themselves the kind of futures they have long dreamed about. Clark cleverly keeps readers guessing "who is the cat and who is the mouse" in a tale that is simultaneously full of surprises and heart-wrenching. Clark has made Meg a relatable anti-hero for whom readers will find themselves rooting.

And The Lies I Tell is yet another cautionary tale about the dangers of social media. The methods Meg employs to gather insight into her victims and enable her to believably ingratiate herself in their lives illustrate the inherent dangers of posting personal details online. Posts detailing life experiences, birthplaces, current and past residences, jobs held, names of relatives, etc. can easily provide a con artist the entrée he/she seeks.

For Clark, The Lies I Tell is "about justice; it's about taking back what you think belongs to you.” And that theme is particularly poignant, resonant, and timely given that Clark's two protagonists are female and this is still "a world where women often get the short end of the stick."

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. (less)

The House Across the Lake: A Novel
by Riley Sager

The Less You Know in Advance, The Better! (6/21/2022)

Bestselling author Riley Sager firmly believes he is a thriller writer who injects some horror elements into his books. He says he began watching the movies of Alfred Hitchcock movies at an early, very impressionable age and loves the artful way Hitchcock blended suspense, …more secrets, and character studies. And inspiration for The House Across the Lake struck in October 2020 when Sager spent a week in a Vermont lake house to which he escaped following the pandemic lockdown. "The first night there, I poured myself a bourbon, sat on the back porch that overlooked the water, and stared at the lights of the houses on the other side of the lake," he recalls. "It got me thinking about who lived there, what their lives were like, and, since I write about such things, what dark secrets they were hiding." Although Sager was supposed to be on vacation, he found his thoughts returning to the story and plotting the book, and acknowledges that The House Across the Lake "is totally Rear Window on a lake," paying homage to Hitchcock's classic film. But he promises "there is a lot more going on" in the tale than it initially appears.

From a show business family, Casey Fletcher has enjoyed her own successful career as an actress . . . until recently, when a very public meltdown made her fodder for paparazzi and cost her a role she loved in a Broadway play. At her mother's insistence, she has retreated to the family's charming house on the shore of Lake Greene in Vermont, built by her great-grandfather in 1878. Only five houses sit beside the dark waters of the lake and, as the book opens, it is mid-October and Casey is being questioned by Detective Wilma Anson. It seems that Tom Royce, a tech innovator who, along with his wife, Katherine, a former supermodel, owns the house directly across the lake from Casey's, is missing. He appears to have vanished, leaving his car, keys, and wallet behind, and his house unlocked. Katherine is also missing, and Wilma knows that Casey has been spending time watching the Royce home, as well as its occupants, from her porch. But Casey insists she has no idea where either of them are, and has not observed anything unusual that evening . . . . . . even though she has the prime tied up in her bedroom.

The action immediately shifts to a few days earlier. In Casey's first-person narrative, she describes her exile to the lake house, and her mother's daily calls to check in and see if Casey is drinking. She is. A lot. Her days revolve around her rigidly scheduled consumption of bourbon and vodka, ducking her mother's calls, and thoughts of the career she destroyed, as well as memories of her late husband, Len, a screenwriter, who died in the lake. Casey loved him deeply and they had a happy marriage for several years. Her drinking problem developed after Len's death. Alcohol is her coping mechanism -- it makes it possible for her to avoid confronting and dealing with her emotions.

One evening, despite having had several drinks, Casey is convinced she sees someone struggling in the water, so she clumsily navigates her boat out to the middle of the lake where she discovers Katherine's motionless body bobbing on the surface. There is no one to help her since Eli, the lake's only full-time resident, is out for the night. Casey manages to dive into the icy cold water and guide the woman's body toward the boat, convinced she is dead. But she surprises Casey by regaining consciousness and a budding friendship is born from gratitude, on Katherine's part, as well as an immediate camaraderie punctuated by crisp, humorous dialogue. Casey is witty, with a sharply self-deprecating sense of humor that Katherine does not understand at first. Casey explains, "I make jokes because it's easier to pretend I'm not feeling what I'm feeling than to actually feel it." Casey recognizes that she and Katherine have much in common. "Ridiculously privileged, but self-aware enough to realize it. Yearning to be seen as more than what people project onto us." But their relationship is short-lived.

Soon, Katherine mysteriously disappears and Casey becomes obsessed with finding her. After all, because the Royce home is a modern glass, steel, and stone structure with massive windows fronting the lake, Casey was able to peer directly inside the Royce home and, using binoculars, observe interactions between Tom and Katherine that Casey found troubling, including one physical altercation. The night before she went missing, Katherine and Tom joined Casey and Eli for drinks, and the tension between them was palpable. The couple is "so at odds that it sucks all energy from the area, making the porch seem stuffy and crowded." Katherine confides in Casey about the problems in their marriage, revealing that she pays for everything with her substantial earnings from her former modeling career. "Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce," she tells Casey half-jokingly. "He'd kill me before letting me leave." Katherine also confides to Casey that she has not felt well for several days. "I feel weird. Weak." Exhaustion caused her to collapse while swimming and had Casey not discovered her, she would surely have drowned. The next day, there is no trace of Katherine.

Tom claims that Katherine returned to their New York City apartment, unnerved at the prospective of the forecasted storm passing through the area, Casey simply does not believe his explanation. Undaunted, Casey launches her own investigation, enthusiastically joined by handsome Boone Conrad, who is staying in the house next door while he completes renovations for the owners. Casey finds herself drawn to the former police officer and recovering alcoholic whose wife died under mysterious circumstances. Sager reveals that creating the character was motivated by his own struggle during the pandemic. "Everything was scary and uncertain and we were all stuck at home, so why not drink up?" But after a few months, he recognized that drinking every day could become a problem for him, so he "wanted Boone to be that voice of reason," he says. "He represents the part of me that realized my actions were close to getting out of hand." When Casey voices her suspicions, Detective Anson insists that Boone is a sincere voice of reason, and he is honorable and intent on putting his life back together. But could Boone be playing Detective Anson, along with Casey? Sager slyly brings his character and motivations into question, along with those of Tom and Eli, as the story proceeds and Katherine's whereabouts and fate remain unknown.

Casey is a deeply sympathetic and likable character. She is self-aware: she knows exactly why she is drinking too much and consciously chooses to continue doing so, even as she acknowledges that it does not solve any of her problems or resolve the past she is not yet ready to face. Her concern for Katherine and her well-being is genuine -- she is a loyal and supportive friend. As the story proceeds and Casey relates details about the past, explaining how she came to be a drunken voyeur, it becomes clear that she has experienced loss and profound disappointment, including the loss of the husband she loved under tragic circumstances, and has a strong sense of right and wrong. She is stubborn and resilient.

The House Across the Lake is replete with shocking revelations and surprising plot developments that keep the story moving forward at a relentless pace. And yes, Sager eventually demonstrates there is indeed "a lot more going on," with an inventive, mind-bending, and cohesive twist that readers will not anticipate. He acknowledges that anyone can dream up a plot twist, but the "hard part is making it work in a way that feels organic to the story that’s being told while also playing fair with the reader. The best twists are something you don’t see coming, even though the book has been secretly guiding you to that point the entire time." Sager seamlessly weaves the surprising twist into the story such that, once revealed, it is apparent that he injected clues throughout the narrative, but readers never saw it coming until he unveiled the truth at an expertly-timed juncture calculated to yield maximum impact. No hints can be revealed, but readers are reminded that Sager is devoted to writing thrillers that contain "some horror elements." And his observation "that you think you’ve read this story before. Trust me, you haven’t," is apt.

The House Across the Lake is an engrossing and entertaining thriller, at the center of which is an emotionally complex woman that readers will find themselves cheering on as she searches for her new friend, but the truth eludes her until Sager dramatically unveils a twist that feels completely organic and satisfying. But take Sager's advice and go "in blind, . . . The less you know, the better."

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book (less)

Take My Hand
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

An Eerily Time, Heart-Wrenching Must-Read (6/11/2022)

Take My Hand is a fictional work based on actual events. In 1973, Mary Alice Relf, age fourteen, and her sister, twelve-year-old Minnie Lee, both mentally disabled, were surgically sterilized after their illiterate mother signed with an "X," mistakenly believing she was …more

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