🌟🌟🌟🌟 “This was it, forever! Maybe!” Equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking, a memoir-like fictional rendering raising the question: Just how far is one Millennial willing to go towards (or away from) a newly adjusted life, uncoupled? Maggie, our first person POV narrator, is 28 yrs old, - a smartly sarcastic…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A book awash with yearning, love, and the simple sweetness of family, - held afloat by ties as deep as time, now tested by the ravages of dementia. For Joey Green, our first person POV narrator, a trip back to Beaufort, South Carolina, to visit his parental home, is…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ As heartbreaking as it gets, this story, from the first page to the absolutely riveting ending, completely captivated this reader, - so much so that my lump in the throat test (a sure fire predictor of my very favorite reads) echoed feelings left both stirred and shaken. A slowly…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A heart-rending look at love (for others and mostly, for self) and survival, and the not-always-lucid path we may take in service of both. As this character-based narrative slowly reveals (gracefully and with pitch-perfect pacing), plagued with insecurities, unable to shed uniquely devastating pasts, emerging into the light comes…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Lewis Madigan is, or rather, was, a twenty-four year old software developer. Now Lewis, unemployed and desperate, has the dubious task of caring for Chester Wheeler, his terminally-ill and decidedly unpleasant next-door-neighbor. Chester is homophobic, mean-spirited and totally dependent on external care - a situation made all the more…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ With a main protagonist calling to mind apple pie and sunshine, (still at that difficult stage, but at his essence, a gentle optimist, so clearly packaged up with love), a plot oozing with the bittersweet essence of interminably-awkward high-school ardor, and a backdrop of equal parts excruciating and heart-melting…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ One of my absolute favorites this year, this book is an absolute treasure - a reading experience to be cherished, and in all likelihood, revisited. A great big book, - not in volume, but in absolute capacity to charm and engage, this book held this reader captive from the…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Part murder-mystery, all character-based slow reveal, this story oozes sweetness and danger in a delectable unwind, a gradual pooling of cloying tension, fear, and poignant urgency as we are forced to question - what do we really know, after all, about those we cannot help but love? Set in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A quick and interesting read, this story has the feel of a longish short-story - a fable of sorts - telling the tale of a complicated family, steeped in love, sacrifice, loss and ultimately redemption, but of a form as unexpected as it is long and exceptionally overdue. Told…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gorgeously-written emotional mine-field, so impeccably crafted these characters will sit with you, telling their stories and holding your heart, long after the final reading. Told from alternating third-person POVs, the story opens us to the world of our main protagonist, Yasmin Ghorami, a London-based junior doctor of Bengali…