🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “How had she become so old, so young? … It was as if she had taken over the body of another character - and now was expected to play its part.” A book I absolutely didn’t want to end, (definitely topping the list of favorites read this year), this…
🌟🌟🌟💫 A very mixed bag for this reader — first, the good (which is actually very good). This book starts with an interesting premise, featuring a detailed set of characters, each with their own POV, in a gorgeous island setting. The story is somewhat centered on a fascinating and horrifying…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A creepy and compelling peek into the not too distant future, where multiple acts of procreation (from those who can) are prioritized in a beat-up world struggling to preserve alarming population levels. Facing escalating climate pressures and mysterious viruses, (a world not too significantly unlike our own), our narrator,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Cleverly plotted, this fun (and often funny) detective story has an intriguing twist — the story focuses mostly on our trio of detectives themselves, and their backstories, with the crimes they are to solve an added “bonus” mystery for the reader. Based in Edgar Mills (fictional small-town Massachusetts), in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Breezy and candid, intimate and expansive, this memoir, by non-fiction writer Susan Orlean, refuses to be typecast. The author, an expert in the art of a quirky sort of storytelling, featuring uniquely interesting real-life characters, places or topics, each of which is are not quite what you’re expecting, will…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A comprehensive, compassionate look at the specific challenges and approaches targeted to assist patients with early-onset cancer (diagnosed in one who is eighteen to forty-nine years old). As unbelievably challenging as a cancer diagnosis at any age is, the author, a clinical psychologist who has focused her practice exclusively…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 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 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,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A terrific all-around read — combining a mystery, a love story and a whole lot of historical intrigue — all wrapped up in a multiple-POV, multiple-timeframe narrative that makes for a unique and mesmerizing experience. Greta Schneider and her family are native East Germans, living in Berlin in 1982,…