The Briar Club

Author: Kate Quinn
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2024
Pages: 432
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation's capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman's daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women's baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy's Red Scare.

Grace's weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst.

Review: I've seen Kate Quinn's novels get great reviews in some of my Facebook reading groups, so I was eager to give this new release a try. After a chapter of introduction, the reader meets each character individually, with Nora being the first. I was fully absorbed in Nora's life, and then her chapter ended and the story continued from Reka's perspective. I was still living Nora's life so I was a bit resentful of Reka, but then I fell into her backstory. This author can write. I'm looking forward to more Kate Quinn novels, but I need a break from historical fiction while I continue to absorb this novel.

Help Wanted

Author: Adelle Waldman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc., 2024
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Every day at 3:55a.m., team members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day's truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn't schedule them for enough hours - most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies The members of Team Movement - including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her "cool kid" status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path - band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.

Review: This book was highly recommended to me by a my favorite librarian. She and I have similar tastes in books, and enjoy talking about the ones we've both read. I don't think I loved this book as much as she did, but there were laugh out loud moments. There were also poignant and relatable moments.

This book is about everyday people leading everyday lives. I liked it.

In a Dark, Dark Wood

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Galley/Scout Press, 2016
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Sometimes the only thing to fear. . .is yourself.

Leonora, known to some as Lee and others as Nora, is a reclusive crime writer, unwilling to leave her nest of an apartment unless it is absolutely necessary. When a friend she hasn't seen or spoken to in years unexpectedly invites her to a weekend away in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Forty-eight hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead. Wondering not "what happened?" but "what have a I done?", Nora tries to piece together the events of the past weekend. Working to uncover secrets, reveal motives, and find answers, Nora must revisit parts of herself that she would much rather leave buried where they belong: in the past.

Review: This is Ruth Ware's debut novel. Not my favorite of her novels, that honor goes to The It Girl or The Turn of the Key, but if you can let yourself fall into the story this was a solid book. My biggest criticism that I never really did get past, was why did Nora attend the girls weekend in the first place? She's reclusive, she hasn't kept in touch with Claire, and didn't seem interested in addressing events that happened 10 years ago. Had the author done a better job convincing me as the reader that this hen party was Nora's jam, getting into the story would have been easier.

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

A Happier Life

Author: Kristy Woodson Harvey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2024
Pages: 384
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: The historic houses in the seaside town of Beaufort, North Carolina, have held the secrets of their inhabitants for centuries. One of the most enduring refuses to be washed away by the tide: What happened to Rebecca and Townsend Saint James on that fateful night of their disappearance in 1976.

Now, the granddaughter they never knew, Keaton Smith, is desperate for a fresh start. So when her mother needs someone to put her childhood home in Beaufort on the market, she jumps at the chance to head south. But the moment she steps foot inside the abandoned house, which has been closed for nearly fifty years, she wonders if she's bitten off more than she can chew. Wading through the detritus of her grandparents' lives, Keaton finds herself enchanted by their southern traditions - and their great, big love. As she gets to know her charming next-door-neighbor, his precocious ten-year-old son, and a flock of endearingly feisty town busybodies, Keaton begins to wonder if the stories she has been told about her grandparents are true.

Keaton's grandmother, Rebecca "Becks" Saint James' annual summer suppers are the stuff of legend, and locals and out-of-towners alike clamor for an invitation to her stunning historic home. But, in the summer of 1976, she's struggling behind the facade of the woman who can do it all - and facing a problem that even she can't solve.

As Keaton and Becks face new challenges and chapters, they are connected through time by the house on Sunset Lane, which has protected the secrets, hopes, and dreams of their family for generations.

The historic houses in the seaside town of Beaufort, North Carolina, have held the secrets of their inhabitants for centuries. One of the most enduring refuses to be washed away by the tide: What happened to Rebecca and Townsend Saint James on that fateful night of their disappearance in 1976?

Now, the granddaughter they never knew, Keaton Smith, is desperate for a fresh start. So when her mother needs someone to put her childhood home in Beaufort on the market, she jumps at the chance to head south. But the moment she steps foot inside the abandoned house, which has been closed for nearly fifty years, she wonders if she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Wading through the detritus of her grandparents’ lives, Keaton finds herself enchanted by their southern traditions—and their great, big love. As she gets to know her charming next-door neighbor, his precocious ten-year-old son, and a flock of endearingly feisty town busybodies, Keaton begins to wonder if the stories she has been told about her grandparents are true.

Keaton’s grandmother, Rebecca “Becks” Saint James’s annual summer suppers are the stuff of legend, and locals and out-of-towners alike clamor for an invitation to her stunning historic home. But, in the summer of 1976, she’s struggling behind the facade of the woman who can do it all—and facing a problem that even she can’t solve.

As Keaton and Becks face new challenges and chapters, they are connected through time by the house on Sunset Lane, which has protected the secrets, hopes, and dreams of their family for generations.

Review: This book is so much better than the cover, and even the title, might suggest. A little bit of romance, a little bit of mystery, family drama, and still with a beach read feel.