Whiplash

Author: Janet Dailey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2022
Pages: 336
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: When Val Champion returns to the family ranch, she's ready to put her past behind her. Her dreams of a Hollywood acting career have become a nightmare of fear. But once she sees rodeo man Casey Bozeman facing down a bull in the arena, she knows she's no safer at home. Face to face with her one and only true love, Val can't deny her still powerful feelings for Casey. Feelings she can never act on again.

Val's the one who got away, the woman who broke his heart so hard he still feels the sting. But there's no denying Casey's still drawn to the fiery beauty. And there's no way he can stand by when the high stakes Professional Bull Riding finals in Vegas bring out the danger Val's been running from. Suddenly the rugged cowboy is willing to risk it all for her once more, even if it means facing down those secrets lurking in her unforgettable eyes.

Review: My obsession with Texas and the rodeo life continues. I love this book even more than the first, and based on the teasers in this book, the third (and final) book will be great too.

Whirlwind

Author: Janet Dailey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2020
Pages: 272
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Everyone's talking about Whirlwind at this year's Professional Bull Rider's Competition. But the promising young bull is the last thing on Shane Tully's mind once he lays eyes on the lady responsible for bringing Whirlwind to the arena. Beautiful, smart, and sexy as hell, Lexie Champion has this rodeo man hungry for more than the thrill of his next competition. But the daughter of bull rancher Bert Champion wants nothing to do with a daredevil, despite the powerful attraction between them.

After losing her beloved brother to a bull riding accident, Lexie is not stranger to the dangers of rodeo life. Which is why resisting Shane's rugged allure should have been easy. But nothing is simple about her reaction to the handsome cowboy, from their first kiss, to the terrifying moment Lexie watches Shane go down in the ring. Faced with a devastating decision, will Lexie make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love?

Review: I'm still on a Texas kick, but not in the mood for historical fiction so I opted for this Janet Dailey novel. Ever since I saw the movie 8 Seconds back in college, I've been more than a little interested in rodeos. When we were in Wyoming a few years ago we saw a statue in Cheyenne dedicated to Lane Frost, the subject of the movie. It was a moment.

One small detail in this books threw the story off for me, but I can't say any more than that without spoiling it. I just wish the author had been a little more creative. I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

This book had me googling upcoming rodeos in Texas, but it seems out of the question for 2024. I watched plenty of reels and youtube videos to make up for it.

Hidden Potential

Author: Adam Grant
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: We live in a world that's obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travle. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn't knock, there re ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirtations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess - it's about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

Many writers have chronicled the habits of superstars who accomplish great things. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you've reached, but how far you've climbed to get there.

Review: This book was a voted on by members of a corporate-wide book club. It's our first book selection, and I have to say, a disappointing one at that. My supervisor and I were discussing it, and I think she said it perfectly, this should have been condensed into a long essay.

In a different place in my career maybe this book would have unlocked some secrets, but I have almost 30 years of professional working experience behind me. There was one key takeaway for me though, "strive for excellence, not perfection." Perfection is unattainable. Excellence is a goal. 

I also strongly agree with his conclusion that giving yourself permission to try and even fail is okay. Some personalities do a lot better with this concept than others. I'm a person who grew up believing that failure is not an option. I haven't failed to catastrophic levels, but I've learned a lot in my "failures," when outcomes weren't what I expected, in my missteps. 

It was a lot of reading to be affirmed in areas that I didn't need it.

Paper Roses

Author: Amanda Cabot
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group, 2009
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Her future is stretched out like the clear blue Texas sky. But a storm is coming. Leaving the past behind in Philadelphia, mail-order bride Sarah Dobbs arrives in San Antonio ready to greet her groom - a man she has never met but whose letters, her paper roses, have won her heart from afar. But there is a problem - Austin Canfield is dead, and Sarah cannot go back East.

As Sarah tries to reconcile herself to a future that is drastically changed, Austin's brother Clay wants nothing more than to shake the Texas dust from his boots, but first he must find his brother's killer.

And then there's Sarah.

Something is blooking out in the vast Texas landscape that neither Clay nor Sarah is ready to admit, and the promise of redemption blows like a gentle breeze through the prairie grasses.

Review: There is something about Texas that captured my imagination when I was young, I suspect it was an old book called Old Blue about an longhorn so black he looked blue, but regardless, there's something about cowboys, the wild west, longhorn cattle, ranching etc that just appeals to me. I even took a semester long class on the history of Texas and its independence from Mexico in college.

I had been to Texarkana a few years ago. We were in Hot Springs, Arkansas and the Texas border wasn't far so we hopped on over. Over Spring Break last month we decided to return to Texas. We flew into Hobby Airport, spent a couple days in Galveston, and then went to Houston for the Astros Home Opener.

This trip especially reignited my interest in Texas so you may see a few more books set in Texas pop up in blog over the next few weeks and months.

Paper Roses also touched on another of my interests, mail-order brides. I cannot imagine taking a train from the East to some unknown place to meet a stranger and get married. It's wild, and women did it. I imagine most out of desperation.

The Enchantment

Author: Kristin Hannah
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1992
Pages: 416
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Emmaline Hatter was a beautiful, brilliant, and rich Wall Street financier in the nineteenth century until the crash of 1893 wiped her out completely. Desperate to recoup her losses, she joins Dr. Larence Digby in his search for the legendary lost city of Cibola, rumored to be rich in gold. Emmaline was used to getting her own way, but Larence was not about to give up control of his expedition to a woman. Somehow, in a world of enchantment, each would have to learn to believe - to trust the other with their lives, their secrets, and their hearts.

Review: I've been reading Kristin Hannah for years, even before she published The Nightingale, which I felt was her best book to date at the time. After reading The Women, I wanted to read some vintage Kristin Hannah. What were her earliest books like?

I enjoyed The Enchantment, her second novel as far as I could tell, and it felt like a novel that was published in the 1990s. She's always been a storyteller, but her style and characters have matured over the years. 

Other Kristin Hannah Novels
Angel Falls
Home Front
Summer Island
The Four Winds
The Great Alone
The Nightingale
The Women
True Colors

The Haunted Showboat

Author: Carolyn Keene
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Younger Readers, 1957
Pages: 192
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Bess and George invite Nancy on a trip to New Orleans, to help their relatives solve a mystery. Their uncle wants to restore an old showboat, the River Princess, but no one will go near it. Mysterious occurences are making everyone believe the boat is haunted.

Review: My mom read The Little House books to me when I still pretty young, and they certainly captured my imagination. However, Nancy Drew were the first chapter books I remember reading on my own, and I flew through my mom's many books that she had kept from her pre-teen years. She didn't own all of them though, and I recently decided to see if Nancy still held the same appeal now, 70 years after they were first published and decades after I read them.

They do.

I enjoyed reuniting with Nancy (and Bess and George), and going on this adventure. They certainly read different now that I'm not years younger than Nancy her and pushing Hannah Gruen's age.

The Haunted Showboat is book #35.

The Berry Pickers

Author: Amanda Peters
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Catapult
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: July 1962. Mi'kmiq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister's disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Normal slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

Review: I've seen some comments that this is the best book a person has read, or it will be their favorite this year, all sorts of rave reviews. For me it was good, not great. I read most of it on a plane and it was a good distraction on a bumpy flight. I will likely not remember it in December when I start thinking about my favorite books.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Author: George Saunders
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2018
Pages: 368
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, the president says at the time time. "God has called him home." Newspapers reprot that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commisterate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state - called in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo - a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Review: I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but this book was challenging to follow. I had read that it's a complex and sort of twisted novel, so I opted to listen to it thinking the different voices would help. I was wrong. I was in and out of following the plot. What I liked was the historical references and the unique look at the afterlife. On the downside, there were entirely too many characters.

Interesting concept; failure to fully execute.

The Bookshop by the Bay

Author: Pamela Kelley
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Jess loves her work as a high-profile lawyer in Charleston. But when her husband cheats, she retreats to her childhood home on Cape Cod with her thirty-year-old daughter, Caitlin, hoping to regroup wit her longtime best friend, Alison. 

Alison's career has taken a hit after twenty years as an editor for the magazine Cape Cod Living. But when she learns her beloved bookstore on the Cape is looking for new ownership, a new dream starts to form. 

As the two friends reopen the bookstore, they also open themselves up to the magic of second chances.

Review: I'm still not ready to dive into a heavy novel since reading The Women. Additionally, a reading group's March Reading Challenge is to read a book with a book club or book store in the title.

This was a fun read for the genre, and put me in the mood for summer.

Go Home for Dinner: Advice on How Faith Makes a Family and Family Makes a Life

Author: Mike Pence and Charlotte Pence Bond
Genre: Christian / Non-fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2023
Pages: 256
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Go Home for Dinner is an in-depth, practical guide to balancing the demands of life with the long-term satisfaction that only a commitment to your family can bring. In this personal account, former Vice-President Mike Pence champions one of his most deeply held beliefs: that faith makes a family, and family makes a life. And, through straightforward advice and personal storytelling, he shows readers how to do the same.

Review: I liked this book. I had no idea what I was going to read a follow-up to The Women so I had to choose a non-narrative genre. Go Home for Dinner worked because it's chapter was its own anecdote and it was a easy reading. 

The title resonated with me when I saw it on the library shelf. Growing up we ate dinner as a family, and although my dad was out of time or away quite often, the majority of the time, my mom still cooked for and ate with us kids. Despite having kids in sports and crazy schedules in general, we eat dinner as a family almost every night. Even when a kid has to eat by themselves due to her schedule, I sit with her while she does.

I remember a dinnertime a couple years ago, we were all just sitting at the table, each of us lost in our thoughts, and my youngest said, What's going on? Why isn't anyone talking about their day?"  We all kind of looked at him in surprise. It struck me then that the kids have expectations for our dinnertime, and we do generally talk about our days and ask about the kids'.

There's more to this book than dinnertime conversations, and I enjoyed each chapter.

I agree with most of Mike's lessons learned and advice, and learning more about him was interesting. You forget sometimes that there are real people with actual lives behind the persona we see on tv. I liked this book. 

The Women

Author: Kristin Hannah
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 480
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets - and becomes one of - the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protestors, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

Review: While I have loved Hannah's last few novels, I wasn't 100% onboard with reading a novel set in Vietnam. However, I had loved Robert Dugoni's, While the World Played Chess so I knew I needed to give The Women a chance. 

From the first few pages, I was hooked. Really hooked. I started reading in late afternoon, and I had to set the novel down to sleep, but otherwise I would have been able to read the whole thing in one day. 

The novel opens with a graduation party on Coronado Island, a place I just visited this past October, and Hannah does a great job describing the characters and the setting. I felt like I was at the party, and I so wish I had been. From there, her characters travel to Vietnam and eventually back home again. What a story! How does one follow up reading a novel such as this? This novel is perfection.

Other Kristin Hannah Novels
Angel Falls
Home Front
Summer Island
The Enchantment
The Four Winds
The Great Alone
The Nightingale
True Colors

The Proposal

Author: Jasmine Guillory
Genre: Chick Lit
Publisher: Penguin Publishing, 2018
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hardest part - they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans.

At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik's rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He's even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik's social media blows up - in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes.

Review: The Wedding Date was cute so I knew I wanted to continue with this series. The Proposal was good and did not disappoint.

The Lying Game

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller 
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press, 2018
Pages: 416
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten, along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrive that first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister.

The next morning, three women in and around London - Fatima, Thea, and Isa - receive the text that they ahd always hoped would never come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, "I need you."

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second-rate boardnig school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in her own way, the four become inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty. But their little game had consequences, and as the four converge in present-day Salten, they realize their shared past was not as safely buried as they had once hoped.

Review: Maybe it was a mistake to listen to two books back-to-back written by the same author and read by the same narrator. However, I loved The It Girl so much that I couldn't wait to dive into another Ruth Ware novel. Unfortunately, The Lying Game was good not great.

Ruth Ware Novels
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
The It Girl
The Turn of the Key
The Woman in Cabin 10

The Wedding Date

Author: Jasmine Guillory
Genre: Chick Lit
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2018
Pages: 336
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Agreeing to go a wedding with a guy she gets stuck in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's hard to resist. 

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible. Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collison course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century - or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...

Review: This was my choice for the February reading prompt in one of my Facebook's group reading challenge, "Read a debut novel by an author of color."

The Wedding Date was the right book at the right time. A little spicy, fun, and light reading as a whole. Alexa and Drew's meeting is improbable, but not impossible, and I think that's partly the appeal of this novel. 

The Gales of November

Author: Robert J. Hemming
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Contemporary Books, 1981
Pages: 248
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Immortalized in song by Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot and still argued over by Great Lakes experts, the fate of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew has attracted more widespread attention than other thousands of shipwrecks recorded on the Great Lakes. The 729-foot ore freighter and its entire crew mysteriously and suddenly disappeared during a violent November storm on Lake Superior in 1975. 

Review: I knew the song, Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, from childhood. It's haunting melody and tragedy of the shipwreck stayed with me for years. At some point I learned that the bell from this ship was located at The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Last summer we vacationed in northern Michigan and added this museum to the itinerary. My then 8 year old son was fascinated, by all the ships lost in the Great Lakes. 

This book alternates between intense, sad, and back to intense. Such a tragedy. Had these men lived the oldest would "only" be in their 80s, still possibly alive had fate dealt them a different hand.

Impossible

Author: Nancy Werlin
Genre: Teen Fiction
Publisher: Dial Books, 2008
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Lucy Scarborough is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or fall into madness upon their child's birth. But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents beside her. And she has Zach, whose strength amazes her more each day. Do they have enough love and resolve to overcome and age-old evil?

Review: Reading this was what I'll call a happy accident. My daughter and I went to the library together. I didn't realize some of her books were mixed in with mine. Then, after the book drew me in, I noticed the big pink "TEEN" label on the spine.

Right away this book gave me A Witch in Time vibes, a book I hadn't expected to even like, let alone love. Novels like these are ground in reality, with a bit of the supernatural, and the plot is solid.

I always say that when one is in a reading slump, the best way out is to choose something you wouldn't typically read, a genre that you don't normally read.

Tomorrow's Promise

Author: Sandra Brown
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Mira, 1983
Pages: 296
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Thousands of feet above the ground on a crowded flight to Washington D.C., radio personality Keely Williams feels the irrestible pull of handsome congressman Dax Devereaux. The two are on their way to a congressional hearing about Vietnam soldiers listed as MIA. Tragically, Keely's husband is among the missing. He had been her childhood sweetheart, her future, her love - and then the unanswered question she dedicated her life to solving.

Until she begins to entertain the possibility of a new future with Dax. But can Keely allow herself to love again while still honoring the man of her past?

Review: I'm in some kind of reading slump lately, but I have found myself venturing into the smutty romance genre. This isn't a genre to which I typically gravitate.

Predictable and somehow still a poignant read, Tomorrow's Promise hit all the right notes for whatever I have going on in my life or my head right now. I was transported to the 1980s, when the Vietnam War wasn't something we learned about in history books yet. It was a recent event that still impacted the day-to-day lives of everyday people. Eeryone had a memory of Vietnam, whether in Asia or the United States.

Tomorrow's Promise takes place in both Washington D.C. and New Orleans, a city we plan to visit in June so that was a fun surprise. I enjoy reading novels set in places I've been, and where I am going.

Long Time Coming

Author: Sandra Brown
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2006 (first published in 1988)
Pages: 208
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: He arrived out of the blue - a flesh-and-blood phantom from the past in a sports car sleek and sexy as Law Kincaid himself. The world-famous atronaut was as devastatingly attractive as the first time Marnie Hibbs had laid eyes on him, seventeen years before. But she well knew the perils of falling for a ladies' man like Law. And this time she had someone besides herself to protect. Law is dtermined to discover who is sending him anonymous letters claiming he'd fathered a son he knows nothing about. Showing up at the Hibb's return address from the letters seemed like a step in the right direction. Marnie swears she isn't the guilty party, but shen Law meets her son, it's like a one-two punch to his solar plexus. The boy is nearly a spitting image of Law. Law can't remember sleeping with Marnie - then again, he can't remember much about his crazy past. But there's more to it than Marnie claims the boy isn't biologically hers.

As the tension between them becomes unbearable and the attraction undeniable, Marnie is forced to reveal a long-held secret...one that might cause her to lose both the boy she loves more than anyone - and the man she desires more than anything.

Review: I had no trouble listening to The It Girl, but getting into a print version of a book, any book, has been a struggle recently. Historical fiction wasn't doing it for me, which is usually my go-to genre, I tried reading a fiction novel and while it was good, it wasn't grabbing me and my mind drifted. I decided to try a light book by an author I'd heard of, but hadn't read.

This novel was published in 1988, and that is an important detail. I don't know what women were like in the 1980s, but novels published during that decade or something else. By today's standards it's problematic - women are made to look like idiots, or as this novel flat-out calls them, "bimbos," and the ones who aren't "bimbos" need to be rescued by a wildly successful male who oozes toxic masculinity.

However, if you're able to let yourself be transported to the 80s and realize this was typical for novels of that time, and apparently what women wanted to read, or did read then, it's an entertaining book and I couldn't put it down. I read this novel in a few short hours, and now I want to seek out more by this author.

If you need a bit of smut in your life or to break a reading slump, this may be just the book. 

Suspension of belief - required!

The It Girl

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press, 2022
Pages: 464
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. 

Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends - Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily - during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead.

Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah's world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide. . .including a murder.

Review: While I have trouble getting into print versions of Ruth Ware's novels, I love her books on audio. Imogen Church, the narrator, brings them to life. The It Girl may be my favorite yet. This novel had everything - great plot, characters, setting. And for once, I didn't guess the ending. Just so good.

Ruth Ware Novels
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
The Lying Game - review coming soon
The Turn of the Key
The Woman in Cabin 10

The Seamstress of New Orleans

Author: Diane C. McPhail
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2023
Pages: 352
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: 1900: Though the dawn of a new century promises social progress, there are few options for women like Alice Butterworth, pregnant and abandoned by her husband. In desperation, Alice leaves Chicago's bitter cold and travels to New Orleans, where she offers sewing lessons at an orphanage. 

Young widow Constance Halstead has thrown herself into charity work since her husband's death. Seeing Alice's skill, she offers lodging in exchange for help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all-female krewe of Mardi Gras. Leap Years offer women a rare opportunity - to turn the tables on men, upending convention. As the breathtaking gown takes shape piece by piece, it becomes a symbol of empowerment for them both.

Review: Since we are planning a family vacation to New Orleans this summer, I wanted to read a book set in the Crescent City. It will be our first time and we're super excited. I loved the cover of this novel. However, the story was very lacking, and very predictable. I knew where the plot was going early on, and I just found it boring. There also wasn't a lot of New Orleans specific details to set time or place, or to get a person excited about visiting.

This Crazy Thing Called Love

Author: Susan Braudy
Genre: Biography
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992
Pages: 480
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: In 1955, Anne Woodward shot her husband, Billy, in their Oyster Bay, Long Island, home. While she was cleared by a grand jury, which believed her story that she had mistaken Billy for a prowler who had recently breaking into neighboring houses. New York society was convinced that she had deliberately murdered Billy and that her formidable mother-in-law, Elsie Woodward, had covered up the crime to prevent further scandal to the socially prominant family. The incident became fiction in Truman Capote's malicious 1975 Esquire story, leading to Ann's suicide, and later was the subject of Dominick Dunne's The Two Mrs. Grenville's. Now, after years of research, Braudy reveals the truth behind the legend. Tracing Ann's life from her difficult Kansas childhood through her early years as a model and aspiring actress to her stormy exile after his death. Braudy shows how Ann, a victim of cruel gossip and class snobbery, could not have deliberately killed Billy.

Review: I recently watched a quick 10-15 minute blurb on Ann Woodward's dress on an episode of Mysteries at the Museum (which originally aired February 21, 2013). The little bit the show shared was compelling so I went in search of a biography. 

A Crazy Thing Called Love reads more like a family saga than a traditional biography. The story of Billy and Ann Woodward begins with each of their grandparents, and ends with Elsie Woodward's death in 1981. One of my favorite aspects of this book was the historical context of their lives, The Gilded Age, The Great Depression, World War II and beyond. It's a comprehensive read, and I surprised myself by not wanting to put it down.

The Thorn Birds

Author: Colleen McCullough
Genre: Family Saga / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1977
Pages: 560
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: The Thorn Birds is a chronicle of three generations of Clearys - an indomitable clan of ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrates their family. It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Cleary's only daughter, Meggie, and the haunted priest, Father Ralph di Bricassart - and the intense joining of two hearts and souls over a lifetime, a relationship that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.

Review: I have never met a family saga that I didn't love, until I read The Thorn Birds. I chose this for a January Reading Challenge and the prompt was, "a book written the year you were born." I had seen The Thorn Birds mentioned with rave reviews many times in various FB reading groups, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

First and foremost, I didn't care for the format/layout of this saga. Rather than a fluid novel, the book is divided into "books" by character with no common theme or plot to tie them together. Throughout the novel events take place and impact a character, but the same events seem to have no lasting impact or are never mentioned again. Characters are killed off at will to fit the narrative and again, no thought or attention is paid to them again in the context of another's character's struggle or growth. This is a novel that wants to be cutting edge, and maybe at the time it was because of the few scenes of (for the time, I suspect) graphic sex, but it translates into a soap opera, and not a compelling one at that.

To be fair, this was written in a different time and place for a different reader, but I can honestly say that even acknowleding that fact, the novel is still problematic.

Off the Map

Author: Trish Doller
Genre: Chick Lit
Publisher: St. Martin's Group, 2023
Pages: 272
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Carla Black's life motto is "here for a good time, not for a long time." She's been traveling the world on her own in her vintage Jeep Wrangler for nearly a decade, stopping only long enough to replenish her adventure fund. She doesn't do love and she doesn't ever go home.

Eamon Sullivan is a modern-day cartographer who creates digital maps. His work helps people find their way, but he's the one who's lost his sense of direction. He's unhappy at work, recently dumped, and his one big dream is stalled out - literally.

Fate throws them together when Carla arrives in Dublin for her best friend's wedding and Eamon is tasked with picking her up from the airport. But what should be a simple drive across Ireland quickly becomes complicated with chemistry-filled detours, unexpected feelings, and a chance at love - if only they choose it.

Review: I'm sick with some kind of virus, but not so sick that all I want to do is sleep. This book was the perfect escape, and I was carried off into a wonderful fictional road trip world. Just a bit of warning through - this book has some spice so if that's not your jam, proceed with caution.

This is also third in a series, which I didn't realize until it was too late. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, but since I didn't read the previous two yet, I can't say for sure.

The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Author: Ariel Lawhon
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday, 2014
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: One summer night in 1930, Judge Joseph Crater steps into a New York City cab is never heard from again. Behind this great man are three women, each with her own tale to tell: Stella, his fashionable wife, the picture of propriety; Maria, their steadfast maid, indebted to the judge; and Ritzi, his showgirl mistress, willing to seize any chance to break out of the chorus line.

As the twisted truth emerges, Ariel Lawhon's wickedly entertaining debut mystery transports us into the smoky jazz clubs, the seedy backstage dressing rooms, and the shadowy streets beneath the Art Deco skyline.

Review: I was a few chapters into this novel, and was watching Mysteries at the Museum one evening with my husband and they did a segment on Judge Carter. Lawhon wrote a 320 page story that took the show 10 - 15 minutes to tell. This is why books are (almost) always better.

I found this author when I read The Frozen River in December 2023, and I hope to read the rest of her books in 2024.

Other Ariel Lawhon Novels
The Frozen River