🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A bar-hopping, disco-dancing, beer-swilling nostalgic tale outlining the terrors and tribulations of growing up, finding one’s authentic self, and claiming a sexuality problematic in the 1970’s of one’s youth. It’s 1975, and Nicky DeMarco, our third person POV narrator, is an eighteen-year-old freshman, away from his Long Island family…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A haunting, undulating look at the ebbs and flows of love, of aging, of loss - of ordinary life, made extraordinary, then settling back (over time, and pain, and anger and grief) into what is, after all, a life-story maybe live-able after all. Kathleen, one of our two main…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 “If you have gold, you're good for the rest of your life so long as you hide it.” Three generations of women are brought to life on these pages, a strangely hopeful tale of family, class structures, and solace — as each woman’s life, and experiences, indelibly affects the…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Every now and then one of those books comes along that makes you stop, take a beat, and reset. This is just such a book - a heartbreaking, gorgeous compendium of interviews, journal entries, and notes concerning who must be (and still is) “the greatest Canadian hero ever”. This,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Written by an author, — a voice-over actress, food-blogger, and tomato-sauce entrepreneur — who has learned to manage her health (and her celiac disease) with a no-sugar-no-grains approach (NSNG), including elimination of processed foods, and a focus on real, low-carb, and metabolically-friendly foods. This is the third cookbook in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A truly magical (and incredibly original) middle-grade book that this reader found thoroughly enchanting. With humor, pathos, and a highly relatable heroine, this book also contains a potential triggering happening and its follow-on effects (portrayed very sensitively) that younger readers may need help in understanding. To that end, there…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An enthralling read by the Icelandic author Ragnar Jonasson, the first of his that this reader has experienced, but certainly not to be the last. This sequel to “The Darkness” can be read and enjoyed successfully as a standalone novel, (as I did,) with the loss of some backstory…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “This is for whoever cores the poison apple, reelingSeeds for a newborn forest, and for whoever waitsTo clench, at those aged canopies,God in the mist at dawn” From the very first note, rapture, a fissure opening in my chest, as everything stills, and a lump, deep in my throat,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 The first I’ve read in this immensely popular series, featuring Lt Eve Dallas, — this will definitely not be the last. With an appeal that crosses genres, this story is as much about Dallas and her “tribe” - beginning with her ongoing romance with her spouse, the mega-rich and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “Houses remember” A gorgeously-narrated audio book, providing a sumptuous peek into the lives of two pairs of women, one in current day, and the other in 1974. In each case, the story told by one of the women is intricate, richly textured, and compelling - in particular as it…