🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Achingly beautiful, a book that builds from a gentle start, pooling silently like sunlight as the story takes hold, gradually revealing a radiating luminosity that made this reader, upon reaching the final page, long to begin the story all over again. Drenched with nostalgia that sets a tone that…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A pitch-perfect UK-based thriller with a pair of fabulous main characters, and a kickoff of a whole new series to boot. Written in 2019, this author and his work had previously somehow passed this reader by — a misstep that will now be quickly corrected. Dr Cyrus Haven is…
🌟🌟🌟💫 A book that has been incredibly well-reviewed, and for this reader, unfortunately, fell more than a little flat. A sweeping, ambitious story, this tale begins with the friendship between Patch, a thirteen year-old boy with one eye, and Saint, his best friend, complete with single braid and dungarees. The…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A fascinating, meticulously-researched story starring both William Shakespeare, and a real-life sixteenth-century convicted murderess, Alice Arden. Told in alternating first-person voices of each of the main protagonists, the story oscillates between the timeline leading up to Alice’s involvement in the historical murder, which took place in 1551, and Shakespeare’s…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 An easy read with a fast-paced plot and lots of intrigue. The perfect read for an afternoon lie-in during a blizzard (or any reading day at all). Megan - our first-person-POV narrator - is a twenty-eight-year old recent widow - an ethereal beauty with white-blonde hair and an aversion…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Edgy and raw, this is Book 4 in the Black Harbor series, and the first this reader has had the pleasure to read. Hazel Rydelle, our first-person POV narrator, is an ex-police-transcriber and and ex-occupant of Black Harbor, Milwaukee, — by her accounts a terrible place; black at heart;…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Beautiful and intricate, this is both a character-driven novel and a tantalizing mystery, — and one of epic proportions, in every way imaginable. A haunting story that unfolds from multiple perspectives, all centering in and around the inhabitants (local or summertime) of a tiny rural town in a wild…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A thoughtful and penetrating look at multicultural identity - the not-so-simple task of blurring and integrating who we feel ourselves to be, as we assume new roles in new countries, and in doing so, both chip away and attempt to fortify elements of our deepest being. When a young…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Absolute perfection, this is a book that simply could not be better. Best described as the comfortable puzzling of Agatha Christie meets the sweet, gentle protagonists of Alexander McCall Smith - but thicker, more immersive, with characters and imagery so evocative, layered, and expertly drafted you absolutely know these…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A read for my library book club, I found myself reading this gorgeous novel pretty much straight through. A story that sharply, without apology or sugar-coating, cuts through it all — our global predilection for NIMBY-ism, hate, and hypocrisy, underscored by generations of war and conquest — to lay…