Fiction by Katherine Center.
Sarah has been unexpectedly fired from her fabulous advertising job in New York City just before Thanksgiving. But she decides she won’t think about that problem until she gets back from visiting her sister Mackie in Houston; maybe some solution will present itself during the holiday….
This was another fun romance by this author whose style I’m really fond of. I love the characters!
Subtitled: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
Nonfiction by Mark Wolynn
This was an interesting psychology book about how the traumatic events our ancestors experienced can actually live on in our own DNA, even if we’re not aware of it.
I really liked the case studies, and I kind of skimmed the more scholarly parts…
Fiction by
Emily is a lawyer who hasn’t been back to her small hometown in twenty years. When a bad breakup and other circumstances send her there, nearly the first person she sees is her old high school boyfriend, and he’s being arrested for murder! Will she take his case? (Duh.)
This was an okay legal thriller, light on the “thrill” part. I was surprised by the ending.
Fiction by Diane Chamberlain
In the summer of 1962, young sisters Isabel, Julie, and Lucy went down to the New Jersey shore with their parents, as they had every summer before that. But that year something terrible happened, and by the end of the summer Isabel would be murdered and Julie and Lucy would never be the same.
Now it’s forty-one years later, and some new evidence comes to light about Isabel’s death now the whole thing will be raked up again. Will the truth be finally uncovered?
This was an interesting story with some surprises and great characters.
I also read recently by this author: The Shadow Wife
Fiction by R.F. Kuang
June and Athena are both writers and they’re sort-of friends. That is, they went to school together and have known each other for nearly ten years, going for drinks occasionally and hanging out. But they don’t appear to actually like each other.
The main problem is that Athena is successful and June is… not. Then one day June sees an opportunity to change that and she seizes it. What follows is a story that gave me a lot of secondhand embarrassment and Oh-No-I-Can’t-Look Syndrome.**
Still, it was an interesting story and I did finish it. I can't really say I liked it...
** Oh-No-I-Can't-Look Syndrome
(See After Anna by Lisa Scottoline)
That's when you know a main character is making a major error in judgement that's going to have huge and terrible consequences.
Nonfiction by Cathy Glass
This story has three separate storylines that I thought might intersect but really didn’t. Of course, I know that with nonfiction everything can’t line up neatly, but I was kind of disappointed.
The main story of this book was about three brothers aged seven and under, and about their mother who was having trouble coping with three small kids. At the beginning Cathy Glass was only fostering the oldest boy, but it seemed like all three would come into care eventually.
This was a pretty good book but definitely not one of this author’s best.
Fiction by Diane Chamberlain
This is a re-release of the book Cypress Point under a different title. Since I hadn't previously read that book before it didn't matter to me, but this seemed to be quite an issue in the reviews. So... heads-up, I guess.
Joelle is a hospital social worker who has recently discovered she is pregnant. The problem with that is: she's divorced and the father of this baby is married to someone else. Also he works at the hospital with her and she's in love with him.
This was a really good story.
Nonfiction by Cathy Glass.
In this book foster carer Cathy Glass takes in baby Arthur and his mum Lara. Arthur is only a year old and was seen by a pediatrician who suspected the child’s many bruises were not accidental. Lara insists that little Arthur is just accident-prone, but no one can be sure. Therefore a judge has ordered Lara be monitored in a foster home mother-and-baby placement at Cathy’s.
Lara is very young and has a tendency towards questionable boyfriends but she does seem to want to be a good mother. Will her good intentions be enough?
This was a pretty good story.
Fiction by Nicole Trope.
Beverly is a young single mother. Her son Riley is eight years old and she has told him that his father is dead. One day Riley begins receiving mysterious presents in the mailbox with unsigned notes, and he begins to nourish a hood that they are from his father, who might not be dead after all. But the real sender if this gifts is someone he doesn’t expect…
This was an exciting thriller with some surprises.
Subtitled: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
Nonfiction by Leah Myers
The author begins this story by identifying herself as the last member of her tribe in her family line. Since she is only one-eighth native blood (the smallest percentage recognized by the blood quantum laws of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe of the Pacific Northwest), and there are only 542 tribal members left in total (of which 297 are also 1/8 blood), this is probably true. Technically.
Still, I feel like part of the point of this book is that blood percentages are not necessarily the best gauge of tribal identity. Leah spends a lot of time spelling out exactly how her ancestors live on as a part of her; her great-grandmother Lillian, her grandmother Vivian, and her mother Kristy are all pieces of her tribal identity even as their blood is "thinned" by time and intermarriage.
I also feel like the author has a whole lot of anger rolled up into her tribal identity, not that I blame her. She is not wrong in asserting that native peoples have been systematically decimated through deliberate action by white people over the past several hundred years. It's a sad thing, and should not be overlooked. Attempted genocide has indeed been committed.
But here's the thing: Leah is still here. Those 541 other people are still here. And their thinned blood still lives on in countless others, whether they know it or not. Therefore the genocide was not successful, and I think that makes a difference. I don't know if Leah would agree; she's still pretty mad.
This book was interesting but not very enjoyable. It did give me something to think about.
Fiction by Kristin Harmel
In 1939 Juliette and Elise are two American women living in Paris. Both are married to Frenchmen and expecting a baby, and both of them will give birth to a girl. But war is on the horizon, and their daughters will be threatened in ways they can't yet imagine.
This was a good story with great characters. There was even a brief mention of some characters that were also in The Book of Lost Names(see below).
I also read recently by this author: The Book of Lost Names
