🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ A memoir unlike any you will read, this is a gorgeously written, unputdownable look at the life of Maggie O’Farrell, one of my favorite novelists, and in particular, the seventeen times this particular life has almost ended. If Maggie appears to have more than the “normal” amount of brushes…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A lively cozy mystery featuring the colorful cast of characters introduced in the first Meredith Island mystery, “Secrets in the Water”, also reviewed by this reader. The series is set amidst a charming Welsh remote island inhabited by a tight knit community, including Kate Galway, a retired teacher and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Filled with passion and angst, this is a book tailor-made for anyone who has ever aspired to write - or rather, to be a “writer” — a seemingly innocuous label that, for those in the literary “know”, carries an inordinate amount of weight. A label that can invoke literary…
A memoir and a somewhat complicated review — for a story beginning with horrific child abuse and leading to what will become a life-long adult search for healing — that could not help but raise all sorts of emotions in this reader. Empathy, pain and compassion. Curiosity and hope. Wonder,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A charming cozy mystery, the third in a series featuring Miranda Abbott, and the first experienced by this reader. Miranda Abbott is a former TV detective, a sort of everyone’s favorite Jessica Fletcher, who traded in her sophisticated acting chops to star in a blissfully cheesy, but highly popular,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A fascinating look at the hidden dangers of glucose spikes, and what we can do to avoid them. Written by a biochemist, (aka the @GlucoseGoddess), this is an accessible and terrifically informative introduction to our metabolism, — the effect the food we eat (and a number of other surprising…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Is there anything more terrifying than a panic-laden run through a dark and desolate woodland, heavy footsteps not far behind? This fast and dread-inducing literary run leads us through two timelines — the first encompassing a horrific crime, twenty years ago, irreversibly damaging to the victims, participants, and all…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An absolutely charming regency romp, hilarious in parts and thoughtful in others, that totally captured the heart of this reader. In an early nineteenth-century era when women are chattel (beholden to their male counterparts), when Lydia Hayworth, the low-born daughter of a now-wealthy gentleman, finds herself “accidentally” betrothed to…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A really interesting premise that comes out of nowhere, messes with a readers brain, and leaves one more than a little awed at the creative mind that inspired it. With a writing style that reminds this reader of Joanne Trollope, this story is a blend of family and relationship…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An engrossing and immersive trip to an exotic South African safari-compound, — Leopard Sands — second-home to an uber-wealthy family from Florida, that is teeming with things that creep, stalk, and kill (and I don’t mean the wildlife). Family matriarch Odelia Bach is in her sixties, undoubtedly a narcissist,…