The Lion Women of Tehran was an engaging historical fiction, set in Iran. The story starts in the 1950s, when Ellie’s father dies and she and her mother are forced to relocate from the wealthy suburbs to a much lower class neighborhood. There, she meets Homa and they become best friends. But Ellie’s situation soon improves and she moves away, losing touch with Homa. They reconnect as seniors in high school. The story continues as they move forward into their young adulthood.

The story does a good job of providing a sense of Iran under the Shah. It highlights the difference in the classes and the roles of women during the changing times. There was a big emphasis on the food which did help give a feel for their everyday life. Kamali does an equally good job of showing how things changed under the religious regime and the war with Iraq.

I didn’t initially take to Ellie. She berates her mother for being too status conscious, but yet she was just as much. And her lack of thought at a crucial time weighed on me. (I struggled with the blurb calling this an act of betrayal.) But she grew on me and was the perfect foil for Homa.

The book starts slow and it did take a while before I was truly invested in the story. But I loved what it had to say about being willing to fight for human rights, and how it’s the rare person who is willing to be a true activist. The character of Homa is very loosely based on a friend from Kamali’s youth, who still lives in Iran and works for a human rights organization. The book also has a lot to say about friendship and how our early friendships truly shape us.

I listened to this and was less than impressed by Mozhan Novabi. Her voice often seemed flat. I was happier with Nikki Massoud.

I have a hit or miss relationship with Alice Feeney. I’ve loved some, I’ve hated some. This one was getting so much buzz, I decided to give it a try.
Feeney is a master of creating tension and suspense.

Grady Green’s wife went missing a year ago. Ever since, he’s been unable to write, so his agent sends him to a cabin she’s just inherited on a small Scottish island. The island has just twenty five permanent residents. Yet, he keeps thinking he’s seeing his wife on the island. The reader is left to guess if Grady is losing his mind. Because let’s face it, grief, alcohol and lack of sleep will do that to you.

Feeney has created a great locale for this story. The title is truly apt. The place is gorgeous, but it’s also really eerie. The island lacks all communication with the mainland. And the residents all seem to be hiding something.

The story vaults between Grady’s POV and flashbacks to his wife, Abby’s. I was left not knowing whom to believe.

The strength of this book is Feeney’s ability to keep the reader off balance for the entire story. Grady is a great unreliable narrator. But then, as much as I was enjoying the story, it went off the rails at the end. It was OTT to the point of silliness. By the end, the only character I cared about was Columbo.

I listened to this and both Richard Armitage and Tuppence Middleton did great jobs.
My thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook.

I was really excited to read King of the Armadillos. I loved the premise of Victor, a Chinese teen sent to a leprosarium in Louisiana in the 1950s. The book was well researched and I felt I got a real feel for Carville National Leprosarium. But, it was a very low, slow burn of a story. It took me a while to become invested in the characters. The drama focuses on the consequences of multiple bad decisions by all the characters.
Victor’s father came to the US before WWII, served in the army and later brought his two sons over. Their mother stayed behind to care for her mother-in-law. His father has a long standing relationship with Ruth, a Jewish woman who becomes a surrogate mother for Victor. When Victor is sent for treatment, the decision is made not to tell his mother. While there, Victor becomes friends with several other teenagers and develops his first infatuation.
The story is told from multiple POVs, including Victor, his brother and Ruth.
Chin-Tanner does a good job of giving the reader an excellent feel for the leprosarium and what was considered cutting edge treatment for the day. As a closed society, the racism and social stratas of the outside world aren’t in play.
The story goes back and forth between Victor in Carville and his family in NYC. I was very drawn into Ruth’s story and the situation she found herself in. One of the book’s strengths is its look at the Chinese experience in America. I did feel like the story ended abruptly and I would have liked an epilogue to tell us how Victor’s life ultimately turned out.
The story is loosely based on the author’s father, who spent 7 years of his early life at Carville. There’s a fascinating interview between the author and her father at the end of the audiobook.
The book was narrated by Feodor Chin and he did an adequate job.

I have read both books that Victoria Christopher Murray wrote with Marie Benedict, but this is the first solo effort of hers that I’ve read. Unfortunately, I wasn’t totally impressed.

I love historical fiction that introduces me to people I wasn’t aware of. Jessie Fauset definitely is someone I’m glad I “got to know”. A brilliant woman, she became the literary editor of The Crisis, the preeminently black magazine of the early 20th Century. In that position, she came into contact with many of the black writers of the day, including a young Langston Hughes. In fact, Hughes called her “the literary midwife” of the New Negro Movement. I enjoyed the chapters that focused on the magazine and her work there. This was a poignant reminder that in earlier days, poetry held a much more esteemed position than it does today.

She was also the mistress of W.E.B. Du Bois. While I recognize it was a big part of her life, I would have liked a lot less emphasis on their affair. This reads like a romance novel. It felt like half the book either involved their time together or her thinking about their romance. And then another whole section involved how upset her family was about the affair. Du Bois comes across as one more important man with “a zipper problem” as my mother would say. In her Author’s Note, Murray indicated she struggled with how much focus to place on the affair. I believe she could have gotten her point across, which was that without the affair, she would never have had her job and discovered so many of these young authors, without spending so much time on their time together.

My thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for an advance copy of this book.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Libby Lost and Found. Twice, I debated giving up on it before finally getting invested in the characters.
Libby Weeks has written a spectacularly popular children’s fantasy book series. Think Harry Potter level of popularity. She’s trying to write the sixth and final book. But Libby has a case of rapidly progressing early onset dementia, and writing has become impossible for her. Her fans and her publishers are both becoming not just anxious, but angry. She turns to an eleven year old “superfan”. Peanut doesn’t have much going right in her life and relies heavily on The Falling Children books for comfort.
There were several plot points that just didn’t work for me. I know every case of Alzheimer’s is different, but Libby’s didn’t feel real. I also struggled that her fans would turn on her so viciously. What did work for me and what kept me listening was Peanut and her family. An orphan, disfigured and lacking friends, my heart just went out to her. The story flips back and forth between their two POVs which did help propel the story forward.

Booth provides just enough information about The Falling Children books to give you a feel for them. Obviously, with five books in the series it’s just going to be bits and pieces. So, the idea of saying there’s a book within a book feels a little forced. But I could see why they would have been such big hits. I found the writing a bit disjointed at times. The big reveal wasn’t a surprise but the fallout was. Overall, the story was heartwarming, if not a total success. But based on this, I will be curious to see what Bloom comes up with next.

I listened to this and brava to Mia Barron as a fabulous narrator.

Richard Osman’s new series introduces us to a whole new group of characters. And I enjoyed them just as much as the Thursday Night Murder crew. While the blurb would have you believe there are only two detectives, I beg to differ. Yes, there’s Steve, happy to maintain a low profile and Amy, who is an adrenaline junkie, both of whom are in the PI/private security business. But Rosie, the famous author, starts as a customer but ends up being just as big a part of the team. If anything, she was my favorite of all the characters.

It’s a convoluted, fast paced plot, with dead influencers being tied to Amy. The story takes the crew to multiple places around the world. There’s nary a bit of down time as everyone seems bent on knocking them off. There’s the same wonderful dry and sly sense of humor. Listen carefully, or you just might miss some of it, it’s often just that subtle.

And I will admit to not having a clue who was behind all the murders.
I listened to this and Nicola Walker was an inspired pick as narrator. I just love her voice!

I’m firmly on “team dog” but I love any story that proclaims the importance of animals in our life and the positive changes they can bring. The book involves a clinic for mental health that can only be found by people struggling and in need of help. Folks hear of it through the grapevine and who up when they are desperate. In each case, the prescription is a cat for a set number of days.

As the story goes on, there is a greater thread of magical realism that runs through it. I have mixed feelings about magic realism, but it works here. Each part involves a different person and their prescription cat. They are more like interconnected short stories than a straightforward plot. I can’t say I was equally enthralled with each individual story. But each is sweet and heartwarming.

I listened to this and struggled a little with the names. But the two narrators both did lovely jobs.

Interconnected stories live in that middle ground between novels and short stories. I'm not a fan of short stories so I was curious where I’d come down on The History of Sound. Luckily for my taste, there is enough connection between the stories to keep me intrigued. And the majority of the stories felt fully fleshed out.

Despite the stories traversing across three centuries, Shattuck does a good job of anchoring the reader firmly in time and place for each one. I listened to this and it helped that there was a whole cast to narrate the stories, which also helped to differentiate them. I found them mostly engaging. Knowing there were interconnecting threads, I was keen to discover them all. I was particularly drawn to August in the Forest and The Journal of Thomas Thurber.

The writing is beautiful, often with a poetic feel. Shattuck explores the full range of emotions - regret, love, fear, hope.

I will warn those that tend to listen while performing other tasks, that probably won’t work with this book. It demands your full attention.

I’m not a big fan of magical realism, but I had enjoyed The Midnight Library. So, I was willing to give The Life Impossible a chance. But the issues I had with The Midnight Library, philosophical ideas that were too simplistic and obvious, are magnified here. Haig tries to cover it all up with a lot of over complicated magical nonsense and mathematical equations.
Grace Williams is a 72 year old retired teacher who inherits a house in Ibiza from a woman she barely knew. The woman had died under mysterious circumstances. Grace can’t help but try to investigate what happened to this woman. But the book isn’t primarily a mystery. It veers from magical realism into the realms of fantasy. The longer it went on, the less I liked it. You have to have a real tolerance for the woowoo aspect to enjoy this. I don’t.
The story is told in the form of an email she sends to a former student, who is depressed over the loss of his mother. I struggled with the format as it came across as disjointed and lacking a sense of focus.
There’s also a decided lack of tension or energy to the book. It just sort of plods along until the very end. I was listening to this and I found myself speeding it up just to get it over with.
I can’t fault Joanna Lumley, she does an admirable job as the narrator.

3.5 stars, rounded down

I was so excited to read We Are Not Like Them and had hoped my book club would pick it to discuss. I loved the premise - two best friends, one black and one white, are on opposite sides of two cops shooting an unarmed black youth. Jen, the white woman, happens to be the wife of one of the cops. Riley, the black woman, is a news anchor of a local tv channel. My book club opted not to pick it, but I’m glad I took the time to read it, despite the fact that the book didn’t quite reach its potential.

The book flips back and forth between each woman’s POV. The book is not afraid to tackle the serious issues - unconscious bias, systemic prejudice, popular opinion, family vs. friends. And I will admit to highlighting numerous points. But it often felt like I was being told, not shown. As you would expect, the book is heavily weighted towards Riley. But I wanted to hear more from Jen, other than the emphasis on her pregnancy. It bothered me that she was such a milquetoast when it came to dealing with Kevin’s family.

The authors share an interview at the very end of the book (after the discussion questions) which is very worthwhile. Don’t miss it. They say that “it was important to us that each character earned and deserved both sympathy and frustration in equal measures.” They almost succeed in that regard. Where they did succeed was that I truly was rooting for the friendship to survive.

The book would make a great book club discussion and I give it points for bringing so many important points to the table. I just wish it could have also been a better story.

I should have known. I really don't do well with the avant garde. I want a plot, I want a story. I want character development. This offers none of the above. I felt lost. Vague memories of Ionesco and Beckett kept cropping up as I tried to plough through this. The book alternates between reading like a thesis, full of quotes from “other” sources and then almost more like a play. Ghosts come and ghosts go. They each have their own little mini-story but there is little continuity. Some ghosts appear more often; Blevins and Vollman act as narrators, moving the meager story forward. The Rev. Thomas provides a glimpse of a sort of Revelations style individual reckoning. There are sections that are enticing or interesting. But they are small glimpses of jewels.

I am clearly in the minority here. All the wonderful reviews had me doubting myself. But in the long run, reading is all about pleasure. And this book brought me very little of that.

I will admit to initially being drawn to Loot because of its beautiful cover. But overall, its interesting premise was what made me decide to actually read the book. In the 1790s, a young Indian woodcarver came to the attention of Tipu Sultan. He, along with a French clockmaker, created an automaton of a tiger eating an English soldier. A few years later, the English defeated the Sultan and took control of Mysore. An English colonel claimed the automaton as his prize and sent it home to his wife.

The tiger in the book truly exists and resides in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its creators have been fashioned by James. I was amazed that this is James’ first historical fiction because it is so smooth, so seamless. She weaves in the necessary details to allow the reader to envision each and every scene. I especially appreciated the part on the boat, bringing Abbas to Europe.

The two main characters, Abbas and Jehanne, are richly drawn. But even the secondary characters come though, especially Rum.

I adore historical fiction that teaches me something new and this totally fits the bill. While the story is made up, the history of the English vanquishing the Sultan is accurate, as is the French sending artisans to India. There’s plenty to keep all sorts of readers entertained - romance, war, inventions. A short book but I packs a big punch.
Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for an advance copy of this book.

One of my favorites of 2024

Liz Moore has once again crafted a dark, character rich mystery. A teenage girl goes missing from her summer camp in 1975. Fourteen years ago, her brother disappeared in these same woods. Barbara Van Laar is the daughter of the rich family that owns the camp. It’s a family that adheres to a strict set of social expectations and mores.
The story explores the class distinctions and misogyny of the day. Rich men called the shots, women and the lower classes are just meant to obey. The book goes back in time to the original disappearance of young Bear in 1961. Told mostly from the viewpoints of Alice, the mother, Louise, the blue collar camp counselor, Tracy, the bunkmate and friend of Barbara and Judyta, the criminal investigator. All were finely nuanced. But having started my career in a male dominated field in the 1970s, I especially engaged with Judyta.
Moore’s writing is richly detailed. The scenes of the camp, the woods, the Van Lear’s compound; they all were easy to envision. Short chapters kept the tension high. There were numerous times I shuddered over the way things played out. I was totally engrossed. Nothing else got done.

I thought I knew how this would play out but I was woefully wrong.

Saskia Maarleveld was excellent as the narrator.

The Last One at the Wedding is a weirdly unsatisfying mystery.

Frank has been estranged from his daughter for three years when she calls to announce her engagement and invite him to the wedding. But she’s not just marrying any old average guy. Her fiancé, Aidan, is the son of a billionaire. But things just aren’t adding up. Aidan seems just a little off. And then, Frank gets a disturbing photo in the mail which implies Aidan has something to do with a woman who has gone missing.
The book was filled with unlikeable characters. Now, that’s ok, if they manage to be at least interesting. This group failed that test. Even Frank, whose POV directs the entire story, was a bit of an ahole. His interactions with his sister’s foster child totally turned me off to him. And his unwillingness to ask for any help on basic issues (like getting an exterminator for the cabin) just made him seem stupid and bullheaded. His daughter came across as two dimensional and I wanted a better feel for what made her tick. His sister veers between being Susie Sunshine and a woman with no redeemable social values. The Gardners and their staff tended to be cliches. And we are meant to believe that out of 300 people at a wedding, everyone is happy to overlook a major incident.
The big problem with the story is that for long swatches, it’s just boring. There was a decent twist at about the 50 mark which I didn’t see coming. And what was the whole point with the Daddy Long Legs?

The story covers parental love and the decisions we make to protect our children.
John Pirhalla was a good narrator and captured Frank’s character.
My thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this book.

What a fitting title for a book that is exactly what it claims, a sequel. Jacob Finch Bonner is dead, the result of suicide. His wife, Anna Williams-Bonner is overseeing his estate, especially his last book, Crib, which was a success. Then, she writes her own book, The Afterword, which also becomes a success.

The book is a slow burn at the start. Anna is forced out onto a book tour, which is as tedious for the reader as the writer. On her stop in Denver, there’s a book to be signed with a post-it note “For Evan Parker, not forgotten”. Then when she gets home, in her mail is a copy of a chapter from a manuscript she thought she’d never see again. Her dead brother’s. And additional chapters keep showing up.

Anna is not a nice person and as the story goes along, we see exactly how unlikeable she is. Still, she is engaging. It’s a fine art for a writer to create an unlikeable character that you still want to spend time with. I was really torn over whether I wanted there to be justice.
I enjoyed the back and forth between Anna’s take on things and the manuscript’s. Korelitz slowly ramps up the tension with each new chapter sent. Anna is not going to let anyone disrupt the life she’s worked so hard to obtain.
This should not be read as a stand-alone. It will make much better sense if you have read The Plot beforehand. In fact, I had to go back and refresh my memory of The Plot.
I was lucky to have both the e-book and the audio for this story. Julia Whelan did a great job as the narrator. But I appreciated having the book to go back over some key points in the book.

Also, I wouldn’t have cottoned to the use of other sequels as chapter headings if not for the e-book (and the list in the back). I never knew there was a sequel to Catch-22.
My thanks to Netgalley, Celadon Book and Macmillan Audio for the advance copies.

With The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates returns to essays. Initially meant to explore the art of writing, the book broadens out into an exploration of stories - those we learn and those we tell ourselves.

In The first essay, he goes to Africa for the first time and finds himself consistently drawn not just into the myths told to sanction slavery but also the myths that Black Americans told themselves about their Afrocentric utopia.

Next, Coates addresses methods of teaching, the need to teach students to be active, not passive. As I’ve always said, we need to teach students how to think, not just memorize. But, of course, Coates points out that’s exactly what White Supremacists don’t want, especially the Orange One who wrote Executive Order 13950. Because god forbid, white folks feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race”. And while that Order was rescinded, way too many states have used it as a model.

And finally, Coates travels to Palestine, where he compares the Palestinian situation to the second class status of Blacks in America. He writes of the myth Americans are fed vs. the reality he sees. In light of the current war, I found this the most timely and thought provoking.

This is what I love about Coates. He makes me think, he makes me question things I thought I understood. Unlike the South Carolina politicians, I want to be made to feel uncomfortable. I want to be thinking about what I’ve read days later. Coates has accomplished that.

My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Once again, Paulette Jiles has crafted a story that grabbed me. Her stories aren’t fast paced but they are so character rich and situated in the time and place, you can’t help but get involved.

John Chenneville fought for the Union and suffered a serious head wound in 1863. When he finally recovers, he comes home to Missouri, he discovers his sister, her husband and baby were murdered. He sets off to find the murderer. Chenneville may have revenge and murder on his mind, but I just was so in his corner. As he travels south, he meets a variety of characters, both two and four legged. He meets the love of his life. This is a man with a strong moral compass. Flip side, the man he is chasing has no respect for any life.

Jiles’ writing was so strong and powerful, I was there for every minute of this story. It’s easy to envision every scene and every character. It’ll be interesting to see if this book is also optioned as a movie.

I had no idea how this would play out, but I wanted there to be a resolution that kept Chenneville out of prison and allowed him a future. And, having now finished the book, I know what I need to read next.

This novel also got me researching the French influence of Missouri. We always think of Louisiana as French, but I was shocked that Missouri was equally “creole” through the mid 19th century.

I listened to this and it was just an amazing audio experience. I only know Grover Gardner as Andy Carpenter but he was just wonderful here.

Elizabeth Strout is an acquired taste. She’s the queen of the interconnected, character rich stories. Many of her characters have shown up in multiple books and we, her readers, have gotten to watch them grow and age. Tell Me Everything has a whole slew of characters I’ve come to know and care about. Most of the characters are now in their 60s. Olive Kitteridge is now 90.

This isn’t a book where a lot happens (none of her books are). With age have come regrets, especially about marriages. One of the more interesting concepts is that of living with a ghost in a marriage. Characters tell stories about their pasts, others they have known, connections small and large. Olive and Lucy feel compelled to tell stories from the past - to have someone document these “unrecorded lives”.
Strout’s writing is always spot on, her ability to just describe a scene with just the right turn of phrase. Not lush, just succinct. It was a book where I found myself highlighting a lot of passages because they just made me think.

At times the book felt dark, but there are these flashes of lightness and hope. And love. It’s about folks doing the right thing, especially Bob Burgess. Or owning up when they didn’t do the right thing and asking forgiveness. Oh my, there was just so much meat to this book!

This is not a book that works as a standalone.

I was not a fan of Goodbye, Vitamin, but I appreciated this book much more. It’s a multi-part story that covers three generations of a Chinese American family - mother, son and grandmother. It starts off weak but gets more interesting with each section.
At the start of the book, Lily is a young woman - just graduated from college, eking out a bare existence in NYC when she meets Matthew. Matthew is everything she’s not - blond, rich, with a great job. It’s an opposites attract story with the added factor of race thrown in. I wasn’t enthralled with this section, it had more of a feel of a romance novel, but it sets up the drama. I would have liked more meat about her relationship with her parents, the guilt, the disappointment on both sides.

The second part is about her son, Nick, a young man in search of himself. His parents are long divorced, his mom has moved across the country and he has no interaction with his dad. In defiance of genetic expectations, he looks exactly like his tall, blond, blue eyed father. His only friend convinces him to do a DNA test which sets the ball rolling for him to finally meet his father.

The third part is told by his grandmother and relates her years in China and her life after she comes to America. I appreciated that Khong was able to effortlessly weave the history of China under Mao without slowing the story. This section delves deep into Mai’s research into genetic science but was easy to understand and did a good job probing the ethics. This book has a lot to say about identity, ambition, wealth, the desire to make something of one’s self vs. the desire for a peaceful life. “She had never wanted to be remarkable. Her life was small and rich and entirely hers.” It also has so much to say about the parent-child relationship - the love, the anger, how a parent’s desire to make things better so often goes wrong.

I am not a fan of magic realism and this book did nothing to dissuade my opinion. I felt it added nothing to the story and the reason to include it went right over my head.

There Are Rivers in the Sky is a big book in terms of ideas, writing style and plotlines. It combines science, religion, history and literature. It’s the very definition of epic. It’s like a huge tapestry, weaving people and objects across the time periods. And through each story, the power of water.

The story jumps back and forth between the Middle East, specifically the Tigris River in Turkey and Iraq and the River Thames in London, between 660 BC,1840, 2014 and 2018 and between three diverse characters.

In 1840, Arthur lands a job at a publishing house in London thanks to his photographic memory. He develops a fascination with the book, Nineveh and Its Remains, which in turn leads to him translating cuneiform tablets. Arthur is based on the real life George Smith, the first man to translate the Epic of Gilgamesh into English. His story was the most appealing, covering the discoveries of that time period.

In 2014, Narin, a 10 year old Yazidi girl, is slowly going deaf due to a genetic disorder. Her grandmother is determined that she be baptized in the temple in Iraq. This section taught me about the Yazid faith and the persecution of their sect.

And in 2018, Zaleekah is a hydrologist in London studying the effects of climate change on water. She has just left her husband, moved into a houseboat on the Thames and is looking to find meaning in her life. I loved learning about hidden rivers in her section.
All three of these characters and their stories immediately drew me in. And I was entranced by Shafak’s ability to interweave these stories together into a meaningful whole. The ending has literally left me a bit shellshocked.

Each different section taught me something new. It combines the best parts of historical and literary fiction. As much as it taught me, it also sent me down numerous rabbit holes trying to learn more. This may end up being my number one favorite book of 2024.

This is a book that begs to be read by a book club. I will also be amazed if it doesn’t end up on the lists for all the big prizes.