Fiction by Catherine Banner
This story was about the Esposito family, who lived on a small (probably fictional) island off the coast of Italy near Sicily called Castellemare. It takes place over the course of most of the twentieth century.
It was okay but...the characters just didn't hold my attention. I finished it but felt like it hadn't been worth it to push through to the end. I can't really articulate why.
Youth Fiction by Christopher Healy
This fantasy themed, locked-room mystery was okay but I didn’t love it.
Nonfiction by Cathy Glass
This is the 32nd book I've read by this author. In this story, Cathy has sort-of retired from fostering to be a family support worker, spending her time trying to help an at-risk family keep their children OUT of foster care. Cathy devotes herself to single mother Janie and her three children (aged 7, 5, and 3), but it's an uphill battle.
The story was well-told, but kind of depressing. People's problems are so much bigger than social work agencies can handle.
I also read by this author: Unsafe
Fiction by Jennifer Weiner
This was a fun little romance that turned into a mystery. The main character is an Instagram "influencer" with a page on plus-size fashion and also one for her dog Bingo. (The dog has more followers.) The story is mostly about her love/hate relationship with her longtime friend Drue Cavanaugh, beautiful rich girl.
This was an interesting story with some surprises.
I also read by this author: Golden Hills
Fiction by Francine Rivers
This was a good-enough straight romance set in California around 1875. Kathryn Walsh leaves the sophistication of Boston to come to a small mining town. She plans to claim an inheritance from her uncle, and to get away from her controlling stepfather, but she will find true love instead.
I also read by this author: Leota's Garden
Audible Original Fiction by Alexander Kane
If alien oppressors took over the Earth and forced all humans to slavery (or death), would you work for them? Or would you try to fight against them?
This is an interesting philosophical question; but for our fictional hero Ezra Barker, it's a real choice when the Merg invade the planet. And he chooses the safe route: he collaborates with the Merg and works at a nice office job instead of being killed or sent to the work camps. But deep inside, Ezra wishes he had joined the Resistance instead.
This was a really exciting adventure story with great characters. It had funny moments but wasn't necessarily as humorous as the other books I've listened to by this author. It's an imaginative and engrossing story!
I also listened to from Audible Originals: The Forever Part 2
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
At the beginning of this book, a widower named Aaron and his young son Buddy are heading to the local diner. They're going to have dinner, of course, but they are also going because Aaron has developed a tendresse for Virginia, who is a waitress there, and he's thinking of finally asking her out. But Aaron and Virginia's happy ending together will get derailed by what is coming next...
This was a sweet character story that didn't go the way I expected. It was a little sad.
Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson
Ro Grandee has decided to kill her abusive husband Thom, sure that if she doesn't, then he will kill her. She saw a gypsy woman who told her, "It's him or you." But will she be able to actually do it?
This was an interesting story with several surprises.
I also read recently by this author: Between, Georgia
Fiction by Karin Slaughter
This is book number six in the Grant County mystery series, in which detective Lena Adams goes to the rural town of Reese, Georgia, to check on her Uncle Hank and gets accused of murder. Soon her boss, Police Chief Jeffery Tolliver, and his wife Sara Linton show up, but can they help? Or is Lena a lost cause this time?
This was an exciting story but very dark. The ending was a surprise.
Fiction by Michelle Sacks
Audible Original Fiction by Craig Robertson
This is the sequel to The Forever, Part 1, unsurprisingly. It was a fun continuation of the first audiobooks, which was actually two novels just as this one is.
In this part of the story, immortal android space pilot John Ryan tries his hardest to save humanity from extinction. This is particularly difficult because Earth has already been destroyed and the remaining population of humans is travelling through space to a new home world.
As long as you're willing to go along with the premise behind these stories, they are great fun.
Fiction by Agatha Christie
I've been re-visiting the classic Agatha Christie stories in sequential order, listening to them on audiobook. I have read them all before; however, much of the time I can't remember what the final solution to the mystery was until I get to the end of the book.
In this book, though, I remembered the end almost immediately for some reason. I still kept listening, of course, and it gave me the opportunity to watch for the real clues in a way that I'm not usually able to do. It's amazing how the author weaves in both important and unimportant information to both obscure and also hint at the killer's true identity.
This was a really good mystery, as usual.
Fiction by Scarlett Thomas
Luke is twenty-five years old and has never been outside his house. He has some sort of disease that his mother vaguely defines as being "allergic to the sun." Staying inside has been okay for Luke, especially because he has accumulated a motley group of friends who visit him a lot. But he's been increasing obsessed with the idea of Going Out...
This was an interesting character story, but it was pretty strange, I'm not sure about the ending.
Fiction by Julia Claiborne Johnson
In 1938 Ward was a young man with an unusual job; he was a resident "cowboy" at a divorce ranch for women in Reno, Nevada.
Wait, what?
Yes, apparently there were such things at that time; Nevada could grant a quick, no-fault divorce to state residents, and only a six-week stay inside state lines would make you a "resident!" So well-off ladies from anywhere in the USA could stay at the ranch for the requisite six weeks with witnesses to attest to their continued presence there, and then a judge could grant their divorce quite easily. Plus there were the cowboys for entertainment...
This was a good character story. I enjoyed it!
I also read by this author: Be Frank With Me
Nonfiction by Louise Allen
Twelve-year-old Marilyn comes to foster carer Louise looking uncannily like the American film star she was named for. It's a little disturbing when a child so young looks like an adult woman in red lipstick, but it gets worse. Louise asks for help from the state but gets more trouble instead.
This was an interesting story but also kind of upsetting.
The author states in the afterword of this book that he has been telling the story of his maternal grandparents in their first year of marriage around 1900. The book follows Julie and Hank, aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, as they try to start their married life in a little house in Gap Creek, South Carolina.
It’s a really wonderful story with great characters. The hardships that the couple, especially Julie, faces, are so big as to seem almost insurmountable. It’s amazing to think of the things our ancestors had to overcome.
In 1882, an unknown young woman tries to kill herself just off the coast of Maine. She doesn’t succeed; instead she ends up at a mental institution nearby, one with only a few forgotten patients and run by Ian Carrick, a lonely doctor who needs his own healing. It’s obvious to the reader that Ian and the amnesiac woman he names Serena will fall in love, but many contrived plot devices will stand in their way.
This is a romance novel is one of Kristin Hannah’s early writings, and it is not nearly as good as her later works. I didn’t really like it.
Fiction by Brian Freeman
Dylan and his wife Karly are in the midst of an argument and driving through a storm when a tragic car crash occurs. Karly drowns and Dylan is left bereft, wracked with the guilt of being unable to save her. But when he meets a psychiatrist named Eve and hears of her “Many Worlds” theory, he begins to hope that there may be a way to somehow save Karly after all.
This was an okay thriller but I didn’t love it.
I also read recently by this author: Thief River Falls
Fiction by Lisa Gardner
In this story, detective D. D. Warren has to solve a mystery involving Tessa Leoni, a woman who has apparently shot and killed her abusive husband after a severe beating. But she is more concerned about her nine year old daughter, who is inexplicably missing from the house.
But the picture doesn’t add up: Did Tessa’s husband actually beat her? And where is her little daughter?
This was a pretty good mystery story.
Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson
Nonny is from Between, Georgia, a small town where her birth family and her adopted family both live in an uneasy truce that could erupt into a full scale war at any time. Meanwhile she is trying to make a life in nearby Athens, and wavering about finalizing her divorce from Johnno, her charming but unfaithful estranged husband. But a crisis will call Nonny back to Between, and she will have to finally make some hard decisions.
This was a really good story with great characters.
Non fiction by Louise Allen
Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson
Fiction by Katherine Center
This is a romance about a bodyguard and a celebrity who are destined to fall in love. But the twist is: SHE’S the bodyguard and he’s the celebrity!
This was a fun little story with good characters.
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Fiction by Ratika Kapur
This was a strange little story set in India. Renuka Sharma is a married lady who lives with her teenaged son and her elderly in-laws in a small city apartment while her husband works overseas to try to earn money for a better life. But when Renuka gets lonely she doesn't want to admit it. Instead she begins a weird sort-of relationship with a younger man that the reader can tell will not end well.
