I read The Half-Drowned King because I embarked on a spree of reading Viking/Norse related books. Some time ago, I read all thirteen of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series, and more recently, I've read The Real Valkyrie by Nancy Marie Brown, The...
Where Wild Peaches Grow is set in Natchez, Mississippi, and depicts the dissolution and resolution of the Davenport family, primarily through the eyes of Nona. Thinking she has been betrayed by her family, she leaves them and heads to Chicago. There, she becomes a...
West with Giraffes has been on my to-be-read pile since it came out, and I regret taking so long to get to it. For some reason, the title made me think of Beryl Markham’s marvelous memoir, West with the Night, so I was expecting something along the lines of a safari...
The Silence in the Sound is a dual timeline novel, switching back and forth from the story past to the story present. It vividly portrays the effects of addiction on families. George (short for Georgette) has an alcoholic father and a mother who enables his behavior....
My Secret to Keep is the second novel by Barbara Conrey, who writes lovely women’s fiction. The book spans decades in the life of Maggie Bryan. She expects to follow the route of virtually every woman in her old-fashioned hometown: finish high school, marry, perhaps...
A Venom Dark and Sweet is the second book in Judy Lin’s duology, The Book of Tea. It stands alone, but to get the full sense of the world building, you should read them in consecutive order. Lin develops a truly original system of magic and carries it through both...
Sixth grader Ina definitely doesn’t fit in with her fellow sixth graders: she lives in the worst possible apartments in her school district; her mother is suffering from depression and has lost her job; the family is having financial difficulties; Ina’s got some...
Wild is the Witch is set in the Pacific Northwest, the perfect place for an atmospheric young adult novel about witchery and its connection with the Earth. It is a genre-blending confection that pulls off a young adult enemies-to-lovers trope well. Both the...
Author Jeannée Sacken draws upon her experience as an international photojournalist to heighten the reality she creates in Behind the Lens. Annie Hawkins Green is a veteran photojournalist who's been embedded during wars around the world. While in Afghanistan, she and...
Camile DiMaio is an author well known for giving her readers beautifully-written, well-researched books centered on historical events while providing a story all her own. Until We Meet brings together two close-knit sets of friends during World War II. Margaret,...
Dead Drop is the first in Author James L’Etoile’s Detective Nathan Parker potential series. I’ve read and enjoyed his earlier Detective Penley series. Readers who enjoy noir, thrillers, police procedurals, and suspense will like these books. James L’Etoile uses his...
The Rot is a YA fantasy story that reads like a Norse myth. The story combines fantasy with a young adult love story in the classic hero’s quest. The protagonist is Hirka, a now-sixteen-year-old girl, who is different from everyone else she knows: she was born without...
The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi is an amazing fantasy/fiction/scifi novel that is the first in a trilogy. This first book is an exciting read for many reasons. The world-building is excellent. A lot of time is spent delineating the various racial groups that...
A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder is the fifth in the entertaining Countess of Harleigh cozy mystery series in which readers follow both the exploits of the heroine, Frances, the Countess of Harleigh (an American bride) and her romance with George Hazelton, her...
I finished The Actual Star a couple of days ago and have had to consider how to write this review. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with this book. It was not an easy read; however, I found it fascinating and thought-provoking, enough so that I discussed it...
The first book in this series, Our Child of the Stars, lingered on my Kindle for far too long. Having read it and loved it, I wasted no time devouring its sequel, Our Child of Two Worlds. Like its predecessor, it is a gem of a book, an underlying quiet, emotional...
The Lava Witch, by Debra Bokur, is the third in the Dark Paradise Mystery Series, but it reads well as a standalone novel. I like it enough to consider going back and reading #1 and #2. There are enough hints as to the background of Kali Māhoe, a detective with the...
The Midcoast, Adam White’s debut novel, is a small town with dark secrets family saga. He tells the story of Andrew, who as a teenager, worked for Ed Thatch, a down-and-out lobsterman. Andrew leaves for college. Later as a coach and teacher, he and his family return...
Gail Meath brings a legendary Spanish woman to life in this historical women’s fiction, Agustina de Aragón. The novel is based on the life of Agustina Raimunda Maria Saragossa, the Spanish Joan of Arc. The novel appears well-researched and to accurately depict the...
The Memory Keeper of Kyiv is the second book I’ve read recently (the other being The Doctor's Daughter by Shari J. Ryan) dealing with genocide. The Memory Keeper is particularly apt these days as Putin invades the Ukraine. The Memory Keeper deals with Holodomor, the...
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