Category: Contemporary Fiction

Review: Pod by Laline Paull

If you loved Paull’s The Bees, you’ll probably love this one too. It’s not an easy read, for a couple of reasons.  One is that, like The Bees, you have to really get into the mindset of the ocean creatures in this book. There’s a fair amount of unfamiliar terminology, sometimes related to the biological functioning…

Review: What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez

I don’t think this is a perfect book, but I loved this story about a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island, New York. I found it a fantastic and moving first novel. The story revolves around the disappearance of Ruthy Ramirez, age 13, who never comes home after track practice. Ruthy’s mother, her older sister…

Review: Exiles by Jane Harper

I’m a big Jane Harper fan, so I was thrilled to pick up her new book on NetGalley.  Harper writes mysteries set in remote parts of Australia. In this third book of the Aaron Falk series, investigator Falk is visiting friends in the fictional Marralee Valley, in Southern Australia’s wine country.  I’ve actually been to…

Review: The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

I was afraid this book might be a little “sappy” for me. I like emotional reads but rarely read the kind of books described as “heartwarming”, and this book about a friendship between a dying teenager and an elderly woman fit that bill. But it came highly recommended by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Best Books of Summer 2022,…

Review: The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh

This is a humorous and emotional saga of a Vietnamese family in America. Though not a perfect book for me, I expect this book will resonate quite a bit with those who are mothers and who are Vietnamese-American. Generations ago, the family is cursed because a woman runs off with a man who isn’t her…

Review: By the Book by Jasmine Guillory

This book combined a lot of things I love about Jasmine Guillory, and a few things I didn’t love so much.  Isabelle is a likeable character, sympathetic and fairly well-developed. She works as an assistant in a publishing house, and I found the description of the work fascinating. Izzy actually gets to coach, prod, and…

Review: Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Stuart has written a second pull-your-heart-out-and-stomp-all-over-it book, one that did not disappoint for a minute, even considering how much I loved Shuggie Bain.  Stuart manages to write about very ugly things so beautifully. These two books are similar in a lot of ways, so if I can criticize anything it’s that Stuart isn’t breaking new…

Review: The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

I loved Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, although now, nearly 12 years later, I didn’t remember much about the book. Maybe I should have reread it before reading the sequel, The Candy House, but instead I read it much like a stand-alone book. Maybe that’s why I had trouble connecting with it. Both…

Review: Come As You Are by Jennifer Haupt

When asked if I’d be interested in reviewing this book, I was excited by the idea of a novel set in early 90s Seattle music scene. I was in college at that time and it may be cliché but the Seattle sound really did rock my world. There was something so personal and emotional about the…