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...
In the current surge of books written about the Post-Impressionist painter, Vincent Willem Van Gogh, author Debby Beece presents a somewhat unique view. She writes of the triad formed by Van Gogh himself, his brother Theo, and Johanna, Theo’s wife, seen primarily from...
Elektra follows three different women through the Trojan War. First are Clytemnestra and Elektra herself, a mother-daughter duo that demonstrates the tragic interconnection between their fates. Cassandra, the “mad” daughter of King Priam and his wife, Hecuba, is...
The Doctor’s Daughter is World War II fiction at its best. It shows how families can be divided by war and by political beliefs—and even misconceptions. The point of view alternates between the two protagonists, Sofia Amsler and Isaac Cohen, though Sofia's story...
I started out not liking Optic Nerve, an “autofiction” book, feeling it read as the rather self-indulgent memoir of a neurotic woman. However, I soon changed my mind. The author, María Gainza, is an Argentine art critic, and her insights into herself and the paintings...
Rewrite the Stars is about a failing marriage—one that is complicated by the husband’s post-Afghanistan PTSD. Sadie and Theo are watching their true love and dream marriage dissolve, and they must decide whether to give up or dig in and retrench. Sadie, a working...
If you love literature, art, photography, exclusive sneek peaks, author giveaways, and things that light up the soul, you will want to sign up for Suanne's low-volume newsletter...
