Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Reviews by Janet Gardner

If you'd like to be able to easily share your reviews with others, please join BookBrowse.
Order Reviews by:
Go as a River: A Novel
by Shelley Read
Lovely book and very well written (12/16/2023)
Our book club has just finished this book, which was chosen because the author is from our area. The book is beautifully written and the love story is a tribute to anti-racial beliefs.
The Divorcees
by Rowan Beaird
An Interesting Subject (11/18/2023)
I have just finished "the Divorcees" and I am smiling about the subject matter, which seemed to be so frowned upon in the 50's. We have arrived at a whole different era in 2023, with divorce being very common and not something to hide. I admire the author for her research of the "divorce ranches" in Nevada and the need for them.

The book was overall quite entertaining. However, I thought there were too many characters to keep straight. Of the women living at the ranch only Mary Elizabeth stuck with me and that was because she and Lois met on the train. Of course, there was Greer but she wasn't just a minor player.

The first chapter made me consider not reading the book. That was because of an abundance of "cute" and "different" descriptions. Sometimes I can almost picture an author searching for a clever way to just say something like the casino was dirty. Instead I read "she began to see how the frenetic, repeating pattern could camouflage all manner of refuse". Or, looking at her clothes I read, "she stares at the slack shapes of her shirts and dresses spaced out wide as the teeth of a comb."

Thanks for the opportunity to read the book and also send my review. This isn't my favorite book but I didn't hate it and I wish the author success. Wish I could do as well.
  • Page
  • 1

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.