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.

Death of the Author

 Fiction by Nnedi Okorafor

https://www.audible.com

Zelu is a Nigerian-American woman who has been partly paralyzed since age 12. She is the second born of a large and loud family, and a child of parents from two different African tribes: Ibo and Yoruba. All of these things make up part of who she is, but none of them define her as much as this: Zelu is an author.

This book is about both Zelu and her writing, combining elements of her novel, scenes from her life, and interviews of her family and close friends about her. It has wonderful and believable characters, and I would give it a very high rating… except for the ending. 

Without resorting to spoilers, I can’t tell you the ending of course. Let me just say it was ambiguous and anti climactic. So this book is well written, and the narration on the audiobook is stellar, but it’s been demoted down to one thumb, or less. 

Burn After Reading

 Fiction by Catherine Ryan Howard

https://www.amazon.com

Emily Joyce is a writer who can’t seem to write anymore. She wrote a bestselling novel and accepted a large advance to write a follow up book. Then, somehow, six years went by without said follow up book materializing. Now she’s surviving on a dead end job and just hoping that Morningstar, the publishing house, has forgotten about her. 

But then Morningstar decides they need a ghostwriter and that Emily is going to have to repay them by being one. So Emily ends up interviewing a famous athlete who may or may not have killed his wife. 

This was an exciting thriller with several surprises. I love this author!

I also read recently by this author: Rewind

The Break Up Artist

Audible Original Fiction by Erin Clark and Laura Lovely

https://www.audible.com

Zelda is a wheelchair user and an assistant in an advertising firm. She is hoping to move up into a more creative role as soon as she can, but her boss seems uninterested in promoting her. Besides that, she’s still reeling from her mother’s death and her father’s hasty remarriage. She needs an outlet, and she finds it in the role of The Break Up Artist, anonymously writing scathing letters for people who want to quickly end their relationships.

But what happens if she actually meets a real person who has been on the receiving end of one of her angry missives? And what if it’s a good looking guy she just might fall in love with?

It’s obvious what will happen here; still this story was engaging and had some funny parts. It’s a pretty good straight romance. 

I also listened to recently by Audible Originals: The Kaiju Preservation Society 

The Rules do not Apply

 Nonfiction by Ariel Levy

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At one point in this story, the author attends a small party where a new acquaintance asks, "Are you the Ariel that all the bad things happened to?" Unfortunately, she has to say yes to that question. 

Ariel begins this book at a low point: her spouse has left her, her baby died, and she has to leave her beloved home. Then she goes back in time, and she tries to explain to the reader how she started out to be "the kind of woman who is free to do as she chooses." She ended up finding out how many things that she decidedly did not choose happened anyway, and that sometimes the rules do indeed apply, whether you want them to or not.

This was a really interesting memoir, honest and touching and very readable.

The Rom Commers

 Fiction by Katherine Center

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

After reading over five hundred pages of a heavy and depressing book, (see The Best Minds) I recommend lightening up!

This was a fun story with great characters! It follows a girl called Emma who gets a chance to live her dream of writing a screenplay while collaborating with her favorite screenwriter. It's a straight romance, but it has enough real plot to be enjoyable. I really love this author.

I also read recently by this author: Everyone is Beautiful

Thief River Falls

Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Brian Freeman

https://www.amazon.com

Lisa Power is a bestselling author whose new mystery/thriller Thief River Falls is causing a stir in book clubs everywhere. But when she gets caught up in a mystery of her own, will she be able to handle it like the heroine in her book?

This was a pretty good thriller, but I didn't like the ending.

I also read recently by this author: The Deep Deep Snow

I also read recently (for free!) by Amazon Kindle Prime: An Unwanted Inheritance

Yellowface

 Fiction by R.F. Kuang

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

 Fiction by Tom Hanks

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I couldn't get interested in this book for some reason.

The Book of Lost Names

 Fiction by Kristin Harmel

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Eva is an old woman in Florida when she sees an article about a Berlin librarian looking to reunite books stolen by the Nazis during World War Two with their rightful owners. She recognizes the book in the picture as one she herself had once held in Paris. Eva is determined to get to Berlin and see this book. But her family in America knows nothing about her past during the war...

This was a good story with some surprises.

I also read recently by this author: The Winemaker's Wife

The Writing Retreat

 Fiction by Julia Bartz

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Alex is a writer who hasn't been able to write since she and her best friend Wren broke up. Friend breakups are brutal, and in this one Wren took all of their mutual friends with her, leaving Alex high and dry. It's been a year, and Alex still isn't over it. But then she gets a chance to go on a month-long writing retreat with her favorite author as a mentor! Maybe this will un-clog her writer's block.

Unfortunately, Wren is also going. But that won't turn out to be Alex's biggest problem on this writing retreat! There are a lot of plot twists coming...

I thought it was pretty good. Although some elements were WAY over the top, it was entertaining. This book is not for everyone, though. See below for another reviewer's poetic take that I found hilarious. It's posted at https://www.barnesandnoble.com.

Train Wreck

Angry black woman? Got it

Token other brown person? Got it

Four woke lesbians? Got it

Gratuitous lesbian sex scenes? Well yeah

Irrelevant sex with a demon scene? Sounds good

Maybe I’ll take this psychological thriller and turn it into horror halfway through? Done

Implausible forced writing during significant trauma? Why not.

Oh hey let’s try to kill everyone off! Of course!

Happy ending? Well yeah!

LDWReviews

Gulf Coast, LA

The Plot

 Fiction by Jean Hanff Korelitz

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Before Jacob Finch-Bonner turned twenty-five he had written a promising first novel. Unfortunately, after failing to write anything else, a few years later he ends up stuck teaching creative writing at a second-tier college. That's when he encounters a student called Evan Parker. Evan is an arrogant entitled jerk who insists he has the best plot for a thriller novel ever. It HAS to be a best seller, Evan says. And once Jacob hears the plot idea, he actually agrees.

Will Evan write this fabulous thriller? Will Jacob steal the plot and write it himself? Will the reader EVER find out the specifics of this fabulous plot?

This was partly a thriller and partly a novel slogging through writer's angst. I mostly enjoyed it but I didn't particularly care for the character of  Mr. Finch-Bonner, poor tortured artist.

I also read by this author: You Should Have Known

Who is Maud Dixon?

 Fiction by Alexandra Andrews

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

The answer to the titular question is: a pseudonym for the author of Mississippi Foxtrot, the best-selling novel of the year. But only her agent knows for sure who "Maud Dixon" really is.

Meanwhile, Florence Darrow is an assistant in a publishing house --not the lucky one who publishes Maud-- but what she really wants to do is write novels. (Just like every other assistant at the publishing house, actually.) Can Florence figure out how to get herself published, and maybe become as famous as Maud Dixon? Maybe...

Obviously Florence will be meeting up with Maud somehow, but how it happens is unexpected. This was an interesting story with a few surprises!

The Other Emily

 Fiction by Dean Koontz

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Emily disappeared ten years ago and has been presumed dead, likely murdered by a convicted serial killer. Her fiancé David has long been torturing himself over her memory, visiting the killer in prison and trying to get the creep to admit where he'd hidden the rest of his victims’ bodies. Then David meets a woman who looks just like Emily. But she can't BE Emily... can she?

This story was a little slower-moving than I've usually seen from Dean Koontz, but it definitely had the weird twist at the end that you'd expect!

I also read recently by this author: Elsewhere

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

 Fiction by Elle Cosimano

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story begins with Finlay Donovan. a recently-divorced romantic-suspense writer, having a lunch meeting with her agent. Their conversation, a fractured discussion of a murder plotline, is overheard by a woman at a nearby table and misunderstood. She thinks Finlay is an actual killer! Also... this woman has an abusive husband, and she wants him to disappear...

This a fun little set-up, and I'd call it more of a caper story, although the author did perform a bit of a stretch to make it into a mystery. 

Dream Girl

 Fiction by Laura Lippman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Gerry Anderson is a writer whose most popular book was called Dream Girl, a novel that distinguished itself because Aubrey, the eponymous "dream girl," rose beyond her status as the protagonist's love interest and seemed a believable character in her own right.

Now Gerry has moved back home to Baltimore and is suffering from a severe case of writer's block. Then he has a bad fall and ends up confined to a hospital bed in his expensive apartment. Then the mysterious phone calls begin; a woman claiming to be the "real" Aubrey is claiming Gerry owes her something for her contribution to his work. But Gerry knows that Aubrey is entirely fictional. Isn't she?

This was an interesting book, suspenseful, but more of the slow creepy type than what one expects from a thriller. The ending was a surprise.

I also read recently by this author: No Good Deeds

The End of the Affair

 An Audible Exclusive

Fiction by Graham Greene

https://www.audible.com

This story, set in the 1940's, is about a love affair between a writer an a married woman. It's also about her husband, and quite a bit about whether or not God exists. (Are you thinking: wait, what? Because I was.)

It was almost entirely interior monologue, with very little plot, and everyone is very very SAD. This was not a good story.

Colin Firth's narration was the only good thing about it.

I also listened to recently by Audible Originals: Unhappenings

The Other Story

Fiction by Tatiana de Rosnay.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

I disliked the main character of this book most of the time; however, that doesn't mean I didn't like the book. That's an interesting thing, because usually I wouldn't want to read about an unsympathetic character.

This was an unusual story, as it was basically about a guy with writer's block, but I enjoyed it.


I also read by this author:  Sarah's Key, A Secret Kept, The House I Loved

The Opposite of Fate

Nonfiction by Amy Tan.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

I don't often really enjoy "musings" type books. I tend to think, WHERE'S THE PLOT? But I gave this one a chance, because I figured, if anyone can pull off "musings", it's Amy Tan.

I enjoyed this book because it gave some interesting information about the author's life, and about what parts of her published stories were inspired from her real life. But it's not nearly as good as one of her novels.


I also recently read by this author: The Hundred Secret Senses  and  The Valley of Amazement.

You should have known

Fiction by Jean Hanff Korelitz

http://www.barnesandnoble.com

Grace is a psychologist who's just written a book called You Should Have Known. It's a different kind of marriage self-help book, one that teaches the reader to recognize the clues a potential partner gives early in the relationship that will let her know he is wrong for her. Grace wants to help couples in crisis BEFORE the crisis happens, before they even become a couple. By carefully looking at a potential partner before marriage, a woman can avoid being blindsided later by a husband with a gambling problem, a secret homosexual relationship, or the like. After all, this problem was there all along, and the wife should have known it was coming. Right?

Her publisher is very excited about the book, saying it is perfect for release in the new year. It's just what the women of America need: someone who has it all together to explain to them what they should have known all along, someone like Grace. But then, just before Christmas, karma comes in to bite poor Grace in the butt.

Her own husband has a secret. A big one. One that she should have known...