The One in a Million Boy

 Fiction by Monica Wood

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this story, a man named Quinn goes to help 104-year-old Ona Viktus with her yardwork. He is going in place of his eleven-year-old son, who had been assigned to work for Ona as a Boy Scout project. Ona has formed quite a bond with the boy and is disappointed. "He couldn't make it," Quinn says, because he cannot bear to tell her the truth. 

The truth is that the boy is dead. Quinn is tying to repay his son's debt to Ona, and also to somehow get to know something about the boy through the old woman the child had bonded with. Quinn feels he never really knew his son and regrets it. Meanwhile, the boy's mother Belle (Quinn's ex-wife) is drowning in grief, and Quinn wants to find a way to help her.

This story had wonderful characters that were very believable and likeable, but it was sad.  

A Calamity of Souls

 Fiction by David Baldacci

https://www.audible.com

It's 1968 in Freeman County, Virginia, and a rich white couple have just been murdered. Their black handyman, Jerome Washington, is quickly arrested and presumed guilty in the court of public opinion. Now it's up to Jack Lee, a white lawyer with little experience and some liberal views, to defend Jerome. 

But Jack admits that he's no Atticus Finch; he's going to need help. Enter Desiree DuBose, a black lawyer from Chicago who works for the legal defense fund of the NAACP. Can these two work together and save Jerome and his wife Pearl?

Well, we already know that the answer has to be yes. If Jerome gets convicted the readers would riot! We know he's innocent, and the big bad white legal system is just railroading the poor man. Jerome has to be exonerated, Jack and Desiree should become friends, and the real killer must be revealed!  

And there's the only problem with this otherwise very good novel: this theme has been previously explored a little too much and it somewhat makes the story feel like a predictably scripted formula slowly playing out.

Still, the characters are excellent and the plot twists are great. It's a solid novel, and the audiobook narration is very good.

I also read by this author: The 6:20 Man

This Story Might Save Your Life

Fiction by Tiffany Crum

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Joy and her best friend Benny have a podcast together called “This Story Might Save Your Life,” a show about the crazy ways that people (themselves or others) have survived life-threatening situations. Or, more precisely, that’s what the show is supposed to be about. It’s really just about Joy and Benny: their long-standing friendship, their amusing stories, and their fun personalities. 

The podcast is a big hit. Joy and Benny are also writing memoir together, and there’s a multi million dollar deal in the works as well. Their cute little show is worth big bucks, not just to them, but also to their producers, Joy’s husband and his sister. 

And here’s where the reader says, wait a minute, Joy has a husband who’s not Benny? Is Benny gay or something? Because it’s obvious that they are VERY close. But Benny is recently divorced from his wife, so… not gay…

Anyways you can see that this story is about the relationship between Benny and Joy, but it’s also a mystery, and there’s a slow reveal about the past through the vehicle of the joint memoir. 

This was a really good story with wonderful characters. I loved it. 

The Three Lives of Cate Kay

Fiction by Kate Fagan

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Cate Kay is a pseudonym for the bestselling author who wrote THE trilogy, the books-turned hit-movies that everyone is talking about. But her identity is a big secret; only her lawyer Sidney knows her real name is Cass Ford, and it used to be Anne Marie Callahan. 

In this book, Cate Kay tells her own story with some input from others who know her, and some excerpts from her bestselling novel The Very Last. This was a good novel with believable characters and a few surprises.

Yesteryear

 Fiction by Caro Claire Burke

https://www.audible.com

I had heard a lot about this book, and everyone was saying it was amazing. I was on the waiting list at the library for over six months, but then I gave up and instead purchased it on audible.com. I did not like it as much as I had anticipated. Actually, I didn't like it at all.

I knew the general premise: Natalie is a housewife and social media influencer who claims to be all about traditional values and going back to "yesteryear" as a wife who lives to support her husband and serve her family. But what happens when she actually wakes up in the year 1855 and sees what "yesteryear" was really like? 

The idea was promising, but in my opinion the execution was terrible. It turned out that I hated every character in the book (except the little kids of course). Natalie and the "trad-wives" were unpleasant; the feminist "angry women" were even more so. I kept waiting for the book to get better and it just got worse. I freely admit to skipping through the last 1/3 of the book to try to find out the ending, only to discover that it was also terrible.

I do not recommend this book.

The Calamity Club

 Fiction by Katheryn Stockett

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I languished over six months on the library waiting list for this book, so you'd better believe that I read it right away when I finally got it! (Not to mention it's a "seven-day-book" with no renewals.) It's 656 pages, so it took me more than one day to read, but it was worth it!

This story is set in Mississippi in 1933, and follows a young single woman named Birdie (considered an "old maid" at 24!) and a eleven-year-old girl in an orphanage called Meg. It's a lovely story with great characters and some exciting plot twists!

I also read by this author: The Help

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

 Fiction by Jonathan Evison

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Ben is at a low point in his life; his wife is divorcing him after the tragic death of their two children and he's understandably been very depressed. He takes a job as a caregiver for a wheelchair-bound young man named Trevor. Slowly the two men form a bond and they talk about taking a road trip across America. But Trevor is really very ill, and the idea is unrealistic. Or is it?

The characters in this book are well-drawn and believable, if not always sympathetic. I did like the story, but Ben was a difficult protagonist. There were some surprises.

Mad Mabel

 Fiction by Sally Hepworth

https://www.audible.com

Over sixty years ago, "Mad Mabel" was the youngest person ever convicted of murder in Australia at age fifteen. But now she's just an old lady who is living under the name Elsie Fitzpatrick in a quiet neighborhood. The last thing Elsie wants is for people to learn about her past, but unfortunately it's about to happen...

This was an amazingly good book from an author I love! The audiobook performance is also first-rate. I highly recommend it!

I also read by this author: The Soulmate

Hunted

 Fiction by Darcy Coates

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

A young college student named Eileen planned a short day hike in Ashlough Forest, but she never came home. Only her camera is found, days later and washed downriver. The local police conclude that she must have become lost and either drowned or died of exposure. Now her brother Chris and his friends have gone looking for her, refusing to accept that she is dead. But there is danger lurking in the forest. Will they come out alive?

This was an exciting story but very dark.

Closed Casket

 Fiction by Sophie Hannah

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lady Playford is a famous children's book author who has an assistant and a nurse in her household. She has invited two lawyers and two detectives (one of whom is of course Hercule Poirot) to spend the weekend at her manor, and her son and daughter will also be in attendance with their spouse and fiancé, respectively. She intends to stage a dramatic scene, but she doesn't anticipate that the result will be a murder!

This was a good story, faithful to the style of Agatha Christie's character Hercule Poirot. It definitely held some surprises.

I also read by this author: The Mystery of Three Quarters

Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose it

 Fiction by Brooke Averick

https://www.audible.com

Phoebe Berman is about to turn thirty years old, and she's never had a boyfriend. She has a good career and several close friends, but her crippling social anxiety has made it impossible for her to make any kind of romantic connections. Now she's terrified of tuning thirty when she's (gasp!) still a virgin! She's determined to "lose it" as soon as possible...

This was fun little straight romance that had a few surprises!

Her One Regret

 Fiction by Donna Freitas

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lucy Mendoza is a young mother and a successful real estate agent who disappears from a grocery store parking lot one day, leaving behind her phone, her groceries, and her baby girl Emma!

The police immediately suspected her husband, of course, and media speculation runs wild. Lucy's best friend Michelle is devastated, but she has a tiny seed of doubt in the back of her mind: recently Lucy had expressed regret about becoming a mother, and had confided that she wished to run away from Emma. As a mother herself, Michelle had been both sympathetic and horrified; now she reasons that everyone feels like that sometimes, don't they? Lucy wouldn't really do that... would she?

This was a good mystery story that gave me something to think about as well. The characters were great!

Out of the Easy

 Fiction by Ruta Sepetys

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Josie Moraine didn't choose New Orleans; her mother Louise dragged her there in 1940 when she was just a little girl. She certainly didn't choose to grow up there in the heart of the French Quarter with everyone knowing her mother was a prostitute. But now it's 1950, Josie is turning eighteen, and she's got big plans to leave the Big Easy and start fresh. Will she be able to break out of her mother's shadow and somehow gain respectability?

This was a good story with great characters.

I also read by this author: Ashes in the Snow

Culpability

 Fiction by Bruce Holsinger

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Noah and Lorelei live in the not-so-distant future where self-driving cars are commonplace. So when they take a road trip with their three kids, they aren't too concerned about their safety. Noah is on his laptop sending work emails and Lorelei is similarly absorbed, working on her phone. Seventeen-year-old Charlie is at the wheel, letting the self-driving system do its work, while his younger sisters ride in the back. Suddenly, inexplicably, there is a collision with another car. The family is injured but mostly okay. The couple in the other car dies.

Immediately the question is: who is at fault? Is it the AI system, who was supposed to be in charge? Is it Charlie, who was at the wheel? Is it Noah, who was in the passenger seat, nominally supervising his minor son? There is a serious investigation underway, and nearly everyone in the family feels weighed down by the cloud of suspicion and guilt.

The story is called "culpability," and it is indeed about finding out who is to blame for the accident, but it is more about the family themselves and their relationships. I think it's also about the idea that culpability is not so easily assigned; there can be many levels of fault and more than one person to blame in any situation..

This was good story that made you think; it was not perhaps a completely enjoyable read, however.

Picking up the Pieces

 Fiction by Amanda Prowse.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Nora and Kiki are sisters, but they are not very close. Not only are they separated by a twelve-year age gap, they were raised almost completely apart because of their parents' tragic death when Kiki was only a baby. Nora grew up in boarding schools while Kiki was raised by their grandmother, and each sister felt that the other one had the better situation. Instead, it turns out that both girls are struggling.

Now Nora is on the brink of divorce from her Army husband in Cyprus, and Kiki is back in England fighting major depressive disorder. Can the two sisters find their way back to each other and heal the relationship?

This was a very good story by an author I had not heard of. I will definitely look for more of her books.

Hallowe'en Party

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

https://www.audible.com

Mrs. Oliver, the famous writer of detective stories, is attending a Halloween party in small British village when an adolescent girl boasts that she had once seen a murder committed. Nobody believes her, but when the same girl ends up murdered herself by the end of the evening, Mrs. Oliver wonders if perhaps she had been telling the truth. She enlists her friend Hercule Poirot to come to town and solve the mystery.

This was a good story with a surprise ending.

I also read recently by this author: Endless Night

The Mystery of Three Quarters

 Fiction by Agatha Christie and Sophie Hannah

http://barnesandnoble.com

This book is one of a new series of Hercule Poirot books written by a modern author "in the style of" Agatha Christie. Sophie Hannah is apparently endorsed by the late author's estate, and she does a really good job of capturing the character of M. Poirot while coming up with her own story lines.

In this book, four strangers receive letter purporting to be from Hercule Poirot that accuse them of murdering a certain man, a man who died from what appeared to have been an accident. But M. Poirot had sent no such letters. Still, he will be enticed into investigating, of course.

This was a good story with a surprise ending.

I also read by this author: The Monogram Murders

Wanting Daisy Dead

 Fiction by Sue Watson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

It's been twenty years since Daisy Harrington died in her second year of university. Now her former housemates are being invited to celebrate what would have been her fortieth birthday by coming to a reunion at St. Luke's Campus, Exeter, and participating in a podcast called "The Killer Question."

And by "invited," I really mean "coerced;" each housemate receives a letter threatening to reveal the secret reason he or she wanted Daisy dead if they refuse to participate. And apparently, they ALL wanted Daisy dead. She was quite terrible, by all accounts.

This book was okay, but I didn't really like it. Every character was pretty unpleasant, and the convoluted plot stretched believability past its limits. But it WAS free.....

I also read recently by Amazon Prime Kindle: All the Lies

Wreck

 Fiction by Catherine Newman 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the sequel to Sandwich, which I read fairly recently. It was shorter, but similar to that book with strong believable characters and honest emotions, but not tons of actual plot. It also made made me vaguely sad, like its predecessor.

One thing I really liked about this sequel is that it showed how the relationship between Rachel, the protagonist, and her daughter Willa had grown closer; in the other book the child had been in a sulky-teenaged-I-prefer-dad stage that was heartbreaking for the mother. I loved seeing that.

The Secret Book Society

 Fiction by Madeline Martin

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In nineteenth-century England, women had few choices. Even highborn ladies with access to fortunes were subject to the whims of their husbands and fathers, and could be forced to obey these men. A woman could legally be bound to accept abuse, loss of autonomy, or even imprisonment, if the male in charge of her deemed it fit.

In this story, the Countess of Duxbury wants to do her small part to change that. She initiates the Secret Book Society and invites a very few close friends to join her is reading books together, book written by women like themselves. 

This was a pretty good book.

Too Old For This

 Fiction by Samantha Downing

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lottie Moore is an elderly woman who just wants to take it easy and be left alone in her old age. Unfortunately, when you have a criminal past, it can be difficult to truly relax. Complications can keep arising...

This book was surprisingly great fun! (Which you wouldn't expect, given that the protagonist is an old lady who happens to be a serial killer.)

I also read by this author: My Lovely Wife

The Soulmate Equation

 Fiction by Christina Lauren

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Jess Davis is doing fine at the beginning of this book. She has her loving grandparents, her daughter Juno, her best friend Fizzy, and her work-from-home consulting job. She's not really looking for love... but then she meets River Pena.

River is a hot guy who frequents Jess's local coffee shop and happens to own a company called GenteticAlly. This company claims they have discovered how to scientifically find your true soulmate! Will Jess and River find true love? Don't answer that; it's not the point. This book is good enough to make the reader (almost!) forget the predictable nature of romance novels.

This was a fun little straight romance, something this author team does very well.

I also read by this author: Something Wilder

The True Drama of the Gifted Child

Subtitled: The Phantom Alice Miller--The Real Person
Nonfiction by Martin Miller 

https://www.amazon.com

 Alice Miller was a Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland as Alicja Englard and lived through the German Occupation war years under the name Alicja Rostawska in order to hide her Jewish identity. She went on to earn a doctoral degree in psychology and to write several extremely influential books on the subject. I have only read a small amount of her writing personally, but I found in amazingly insightful.

In this book, her son Martin attempts to unravel the tragic mystery of how it is possible that Alice Miller, so kind and compassionate to patients and readers for many decades, was actually a neglectful and abusive parent to him and his sister. The only answer is that, like most of us, she simply could not escape her own life experiences, regardless of her intellectual ability. Alice was not capable of being a loving mother after what she had endured, and Martin is trying desperately in writing this book to understand that fact and forgive her shortcomings.

This was not an enjoyable book to read, and it had some stylistic problem as as well. The story itself is incredibly interesting, but (like most memoir writers) the author doesn't tell it in an interesting way. He casually reveals a whopper of a twist at the end, almost as an afterthought. I think Alice's true story would make a great book in the right hands, but this memoir is really about Martin and not his mother, whatever he intended.

Camila's Story

 Nonfiction by Louise Allen

https://www.amazon.com

I categorized this book as nonfiction because that's what it is supposed to be; however, it is at least half fiction. I like this author and her stories, but she writes about things that she can't possibly know the truth about as if they are facts. For example, much of this particular book is from the point of view of Camila's parents. It makes a good story, but it is not nonfiction.

That being said, this is still a pretty good story...

I also read by this author: Milo's Story

Stay

 Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1969, fourteen-year-old Lucas Painter discovers several new things: that he loves running, that his best friend is severely depressed, and that he (Lucas) can make a difference in the lives of others.

This was a lovely story with beautifully-drawn characters.

I also read recently by this author: Don't Let Me Go