Map to Paradise

Author: Susan Meissner
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter's agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He's her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation.

Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood's sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don't see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who never leaves the house possibly have gone?

As they try to find out if something has happened to him, unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they can still call their own. But it's a fragile pact and one little spark could send it all up in smoke. . .

Review: Susan Meissner is a reliably good author. This wasn't my favorite novel that she's written, but it was still very good reading. Some of the events/circumstances were far-fetched and I didn't love a couple of the characters. That said, Meissner knows how to tell a story.

Susan Meissner novels
As Bright as Heaven
Only the Beautiful

Fire and Bones

Author: Kathy Reichs
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Scribner, 2024
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Always apprehensive about working fire scenes, Tempe is called to Washington, D.C. to analyze the victims of a deadly blaze. The devastated building is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and when Tempe delves into the property's history, she becomes suspicious about the ownership.

The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and sending a good story, Tempe teams up with a new ally, tele journalist Ivy Doyle. Soon the duo learns that back in the 1930s and 40s the home was the hangout of a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang. While interesting, this fact seems irrelevant, until the son of a Foggy Bottom gang members is shot dead at his home in an affluent part of the district. Coincidence? Targeted attack? So many questions.

As Tempe and Ivy dig deeper, an arrest is finally made. Then another fire claims one more victim, and slowly, Tempe's instincts begin pointing to the obvious. But her moves since coming to Washington have been anticipated - and every path forward seems to bring a lethal threat.

Review: I had just a few minutes to browse the library's selection of books on CD, and this one sounded interesting. I should have, but I didn't realize this was part of a series until I popped the CD into my car's player. I had nothing else to listen to so I rolled with it.

Not only is this part of a series, it's book #23!

However, I actually enjoyed this and while I know I'm missing the backstory to some of the characters, it wasn't a problem. It remains to be seen if I'll read any of the books leading up to this, but at least I liked this a whole better than some of the novels I've chosen lately.

The Golden Couple

Author: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 352
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all - until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn't stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide though Avery's door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it's no longer simply a marriage that's in danger.

Review: Yay! After a dry spell of many books that I simply did not enjoy, I loved this book. Definitely the best book this team of authors has ave written.

Other novels by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
An Anonymous Girl
The Wife Between Us

Save What's Left

Author: Elizabeth Castellano
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: When Kathleen Deane's husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage, Kathleen is confused. They live in Kansas. They've been married thirty years. Who said anything about being happy? But with Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thought lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year. 

It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie's letters. Kathleen's new neighbor, Rosemary, is cantankerous, and the town's supervisor won't return Kathleen's emails, but worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen's absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in a fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairytale, but it's exactly what she needed.

Review: My book picker is broken. This is another book that I simply didn't love. It's a GMA Book Club pick and People magazine posted rave reviews as well, but real people aren't rating it favorably on Goodreads and elsewhere.

It had the potential to be cute or even funny, but it wasn't either. Ugh.

The Unexpected Diva

Author: Tiffany L. Warren
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2025
Pages: 432
Rating: 

Synopsis: Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia's Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza's happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza's world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Eliza's inheritance is contested by her mother's white cousins, leaving her few options. She can marry her longtime beau, Lucien, though she has no desire to be a wife and mother. Or she can work as a tutor for rich families. Her mother's dying wish was for Eliza to pursue her talent and become a professional singer, but that grand vision now seems out of reach.

When a chance performance on a steamboat to Buffalo, New York, leads to a surprising opportunity, fearless Eliza seizes her moment. Within a year she is touring America, singing to packed houses, and igniting controversy wherever she goes. In a country captivated by "the Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, Eliza is billed by tour promoters as "the Black Swan." An unlikely diva, Eliza is tall, dark-skinned, and robust of figure compared to the petite European prima donna, but even the harshest critics can't deny Eliza's extraordinary gift. Menaced by racist crowds, threatened by slave-catchers who kidnap free Black people, Eliza lives a public life full of risk, but one which holds the promise of great riches, and the freedoms those buy.

Review: A fictional account of a real person, this novel started out slow. Just as I was thinking I could not endure 432 pages whining about a man she was engaged to marry, but did not love, the author put Eliza on a boat bound for Buffalo and the novel was off to the races. I really enjoyed this novel.

The Story She Left Behind

Author: Patti Callahan Henry
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Atria Books, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington's magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother's lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother's vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London's most deadly natural disasters - the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson's family retreat nestled in the Lake District. Is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her m
other and the story she left behind.

Review: I wanted to love this novel, but I really didn't. The build up was slow and the resolution was weak. Everything was just a little too neat and tidy. It had The Secret Book of Flora Lea vibes, whereas I think I would have preferred something more along the lines of Surviving Savannah. Both of these are novels also written by Patti Callahan Henry.

I waffled on how to rate this novel. I loved Flora Lea, but was I ready for a book so similar to it by this author? I don't think so. I also struggle with books that venture into the imaginary and mystical and I just finished Peony in Love (by Lisa See) which was a lot that. 

Maybe The Story She Left Behind was the right book, just at the wrong time.

Patti Callahan Henry Novels
Surviving Savannah
The Secret Book of Flora Lea

Peony in Love

Author: Lisa See
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2007
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: In seventeenth-century China, an elaborate villa on the shores of Hangzhou's West Lake, Peony lives a sheltered life. One night, during a theatrical performance in her family's garden, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony's unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorry, the living world and the afterworld.

Eventually expelled from all she's known, Peony is thrust into a realm where hungry ghosts wander the earth, written words have power to hurt and kill, and dreams are as vivid as waking life. Lisa See's novel, based on actual historical events, evokes vividly another time and place - where three generations of women become enmeshed in a dramatic story, uncover past secrets and tragedies, and learn that love can transcend death.

Review: I have read Lisa See before and loved her novels, but I didn't care for this one. Lisa's strength as an author is her knowledge of Chinese culture, and I did learn a lot, but the plot wasn't my cup of tea. Let's file this under "meh."

Other Lisa See Novels:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane