Category: Highly Recommended

Best Reads of 2022 (so far)

I’ve read 65 books so far this year.  Of these, StoryGraph characterizes my reading as predominantly “emotional”, then “reflective”, “funny”, “mysterious”, “light-hearted”, and “informative”. My most frequent categories of books are romance, historical, contemporary, memoir, and literary (as categorized by StoryGraph, which isn’t necessarily the way I’d categorize each book). I’ve read more nonfiction than…

Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I loved this novel about a strong, opinionated woman in the early 1960s who is a chemist, a single mother, and the star of a cooking television show. This sort of novel could easily become trite but it never did. Elizabeth Zott has to deal with sexism, harassment, and assault, as she navigates the world of science…

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: A Deadly Fortune and The Unquiet Dead by Stacie Murphy

I was offered a review copy of Stacie Murphy’s new novel, The Unquiet Dead, a historical mystery set in 1893.  Since it was a sequel, I decided to read A Deadly Fortune first. I loved both of them and highly recommend them for anyone who likes historical mysteries.  A Deadly Fortune, Murphy’s debut novel, introduces…

Review: Laundry Love by Patric Richardson and Karin Miller

This will seem an odd choice to some readers – read about doing laundry? I’d heard rave reviews of this book, especially from Modern Mrs. Darcy, so I picked it up. Not only is this a surprisingly fun read but it’s incredibly practical. I found myself highlighting, bookmarking, and re-reading. Then I made a shopping list, went…

Review: Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu

This is the kind of historical novel I love – it’s a decades-spanning family saga that builds on the author’s own family history.  In this debut novel, Fu tells a story that parallels that of her father, who is born in China during the Japanese War of Aggression in the 1940s and the Chinese Civil…

Review: Mala’s Cat by Mala Kacenberg

In some ways, every Holocaust story is like every other: the horrors endured, the unbelievable cruelty, watching family members die, and having to make unimaginable decisions to survive. But in other ways, every Holocaust story is unique, as is this one. Born in 1927 in Tarnograd, Poland, Mala had a happy childhood until 1939, when…