🌟🌟🌟🌟 A sweet and sad story, told carefully and sensitively, with a message at its core that is grimly realistic and at the same time, somewhat hopeful. When Shelley Woodhouse comes to in a UK hospital, very few things are clear. For Shelley has suffered a significant brain injury, has…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A clever and turbulent story, paced largely by: an achingly slow character-driven build; a plot-driven puzzle that surfaces early, is tweaked and dangled and kept alive with tiny tantalizingly hidden clues (very much solvable, if the reader sticks with it); and a supremely chaotic, crazily consistent ending. Our story…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A spellbinding book, based on historical events, that broke my heart but also mended it, (craggily and with herbs, twine, and a whole lot of love). The year is 1936, and the world is reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. As the author evokes the sweeping desperation…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟A pitch-perfect spy thriller - so well-written, evocative, and gripping that this reader could literally not put it down. (My first by this very prolific author, and I cannot wait to read more). The epitome of “spook” fiction - with all the undercover terror, subterfuge, violence, duplicity, and psychopathy one…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ This brilliant book completely changed the way this reader will think about remembering. Written by a clinical psychologist who is also a neurologist, the author offers a sweeping perspective on memory : what it is and how it works (or why we remember); how we use memory to orient…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 This charming cozy mystery is clever, engaging and a tweak on the typical murder-in-an-exotic-location trope. With the madcap moodiness, sinister undercurrent, and dreamy gelato-soaked Italian-esque setting of the fabulous (and slyly referenced) “White Lotus”, this story is coupled with main characters who are themselves mystery authors, including (and a…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “Can I be a boy?” A question asked by a six-year-old, born a girl, to their mother - without guile - rooted in an innocence that is devastating in its clear-eyed belief in a world that can simply make things right. A world that does not unfortunately, and in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “All I wanted was for you to see me” How to capture the joy of reading this, this collection of more than two dozen tiny perfect literary gems? Each story distinct, but at its heart, this is a cohesive collection - tearing through layers of yearning and isolation, revealing…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Gritty and dark, this fourth installment in the Yorkshire Murders series is my first by this author, working well as a stand-alone read. With shades of Ian Rankin, this is a world of drug lords and bosses, rival gangs and enforced loyalties, haves and have-nots, the universally-suffering arm of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 When Big Bear has to leave on a trip, it’s clear that being apart from Little Bear could be hard on them both. Faced with that situation, this sweet and loving book shows us solace, in all its many forms. Little Bear learns that his interactions with the world…