🌟🌟🌟🌟 Packed with sardonic humor (Note to reader: watch where you read this book. I found myself laughing out loud in several places) pop culture (many of which were obscure to this reader), faux fur, and pink velvet, this ode to growing up a literary-wannabe in the exploding world of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 I adore this series. Having followed (and loved) the work of this brilliant and prolific author for decades, it is this series in particular - Isabel Dalhousie, her essential “goodness”, and her gorgeously-welcoming literary world - that has earned a very special place in my heart. An indulgence of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 How would you handle it - in the blink of an eye, your entire world turned upside down? Not once, in fact, but actually, twice - first, the overwhelming (and somewhat expected) devastation driven by grief-stricken loss, followed by a revelation, hidden and spectacularly unsuspected for decades, life-altering in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.” What is play, or gaming, but “the possibility of a different world”? “The possibility that you might walk through the door and reinvent yourself as something better than you had been before.” An epic of a read,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Easily my favorite feel-good series, this, the penultimate book in the #HedgehogHollow series, may just be the best of all. With all the gang back, settling into this story (as is the case with this entire gorgeous series) is a familiar and comforting visit with dear friends, a journey…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A softly graceful look at what could be called destiny, fate, or simply the lucky encounter of two troubled Londoners, looking for escape, a second chance, and the healing embrace of a gorgeous (if somewhat decrepit) country mansion in the magnificent Sussex Downs. The first in a trilogy, this…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gentle and charming book, the final in the trilogy, brimming with the bluest skies of summer; a houseful of noisy, dusty renovations; budding romances; troublesome tenants; family secrets, loss and grief, and last but certainly not least, forgiveness, love and the long-overdue tranquility of solace. Abigail Carey, winding…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gritty and haunting look at the ravages of shame and abuse extending from childhood into the life-long decay of self and identity, this book is somewhat reminiscent of the also magnificent “Shuggie Bain”. A graceful and compassionate triumph - a brilliant book that will hurt to read -…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Wildly original, this all-verse rendering of an age-old story hits so many notes on so many levels that to attempt to define it would be to constrain it. Profoundly moving, lyrical and beautiful, tragic and infuriating - a feminist tribute to every woman (literally “every” woman) who has been…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2 A reunion (long overdue) with Tracy Flick, heroine from the 1998 novel “Election”, and the character played so compellingly by Reese Witherspoon in the film adaptation. Perhaps less darkly comic and even more poignant and affecting in its satiricism, this latest installment re-introduces us to Tracy, now in…