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.