Book Review: "A Forty Year Kiss" by Nickolas Butler

Poignant and emotional, Nickolas Butler’s newest book is about second chances. It’s also about the ways we never stop learning about ourselves and seeking to find our place in the world.

Charlie and Vivian were married for four years. They were young and definitely infatuated with each other, but they faced an uphill battle. Charlie left and Vivian eventually built a new life for herself.

Now, 40 years later, Charlie has returned to their small Wisconsin town and is excited to find that Vivian is still there. He reaches out and they feel both nostalgia and the remnants of a love that ended too soon. They tentatively take steps toward one another again, unsure of where things might go.

After 40 years apart, there are a lot of things that have gone unsaid, hurts that haven’t quite healed, and fears that arise again. But if they are to have any chance at starting over, they have to accept each other for whom they are—and are not—and address some of the issues that caused problems all those years ago. It also means that there are secrets which will need to be brought out into the open.

The characters are definitely flawed, but I found myself rooting for them all the same. It’s natural to think about the one that got away or the one you lost, but the range of emotions both Charlie and Vivian felt were raw and powerful.

I’ve been a huge fan of Butler’s since I read his debut, Shotgun Lovesongs, a number of years ago. His storytelling is so self-assured; there were a few places where the plot could have veered into melodrama in the hands of a less-talented writer. His books leave me thinking about them long after I’ve finished, and this will be no exception.

Book Review: "Make Sure You Die Screaming" by Zee Carlstrom

Thanks so much to Flatiron Books for the complimentary advance copy of this book! This definitely is a bleak yet well-written book that will stick in your mind.

If you think your life is out of control, it’s nothing compared to that of our unnamed narrator. They’ve recently come out as nonbinary, lost their corporate job in fairly spectacular fashion, and probably suffered a brain injury in a fight with their ex-boyfriend.

“I guess you could call me the World’s First Honest White Man, but I don’t identify as a man anymore, so you’d probably call me other things first…”

To top it off, their mother called to let them know that their father, an ultra-conservative conspiracy theorist, has gone missing. So now they’re headed from Chicago to Arkansas (no culture shock there) in a fancy car they’ve stolen from their ex-boyfriend.

Their partner on this road trip from hell is Yivi, whom they met when they were both crashing at an illegal Airbnb. Yivi has her own issues: she screams in her sleep, she’s constantly high on something, and there’s apparently someone following her.

This book taps into some really raw emotions. The narrator has been avoiding dealing with some real emotional baggage beyond their father’s disavowal of their sexuality. There’s loss, trauma, and addiction, but there’s also real rage at the inequity that exists. This isn’t a lighthearted book but it’s a good one.

It will publish 4/8/2025.

Book Review: "How to Read a Book" by Monica Wood

I’ll admit this book was a bit different than I was expecting given the title but it was very special all the same.

“We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done. Or, more exactly, we are both the best thing and the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are all of it, all at once, all the time.”

Harriet is a retired teacher who volunteers to lead a book club for female inmates. It is there she meets Violet, a 22-year-old woman serving a nearly two-year term for killing a woman while driving drunk. The inmates all love Harriet (whom they call “Bookie”) and love the books she has them read, as well as the discussion that follows.

After Violet’s early release, she finds herself living in Portland, Maine. One day she goes to a bookstore to buy the book they were reading when she was released, and she not only encounters Harriet, but also Frank, the widower of the woman Violet killed. The encounter shakes all three of them in different ways.

This is a story about second chances. It’s about taking the next step in your life, whether it’s being released from prison, dealing with an empty nest, recovering from grief, even finding love. And of course, this is a story about how books affect us and change us, and help us find our own words.

I thought this was beautifully written and moving. There were a lot of moving parts, and some threads were introduced and never fully explored, but I really enjoyed the relationships at the book’s core. I’ve read one of Monica Wood’s previous books and loved it, so she’s definitely a storyteller I admire.

Book Review: "The President's Lawyer" by Lawrence Robbins

Wow, this was so good! I don’t read a lot of legal thrillers because I feel that they are often too slow or too melodramatic. But this—amazingly, a debut novel—kept me hooked every step of the way.

There is tremendous shock when former president Jack Cutler is accused of murdering his mistress, Amanda, who had worked in his administration’s office of legal counsel. Jack reaches out to his childhood best friend Robbie, a successful lawyer, to defend him.

Initially, Robbie is reluctant to take the case. He knows that Jack has always been a philanderer. But the bigger issue is that Robbie also had an affair with Amanda, and he was in love with her, even after she ended their relationship to be with Jack.

There are lots of salacious details that come out before the trial, one being that Jack had a penchant for rough sex—even light bondage and restraint. Robbie maintains his friend’s innocence but wonders if there are secrets Jack is hiding that might provide motive rather than reasonable doubt.

Like with most thrillers and mysteries, I suspected nearly everyone who popped up in the book. There even were a few times when I offered not-so-silent pleas that certain characters weren’t the killer. (I get attached.)

What a read this was!! It definitely kept me guessing and rapidly turning the pages. This could be adapted into a television movie and be as riveting as the book itself. I hope Lawrence Robbins had another book in him!!

Book Review: "Liars" by Sarah Manguso

“Agreeing to be someone’s wife should be done only if you can’t help yourself, I thought, but of course no one can help herself.”

When Jane meets John, she is an aspiring writer and he is a filmmaker. Jane loves the fact that they’re both artists, that they’re both committed to their craft, and want to achieve success. She definitely is in love with John, but she isn’t entirely sure if she should marry him—there are signs that he is irresponsible with money, not good at following through on his commitments, and is fairly lazy.

But eventually they do marry, and Jane quickly sees that John prioritizes his career and his happiness over hers. There are wonderful moments, however, so she believes that successful marriage is about compromise and occasional sacrifice. She loves John and is tremendously attracted to him.

Eventually, Jane gets pregnant and gives birth to a son. For the most part, John abdicates almost all responsibility for taking care of the baby, and has very little sympathy that Jane is exhausted and unable to write. And at the same time, John’s constant trouble keeping jobs results in their moving back and forth across the country, leaving Jane to do all the work and find child care.

Little by little, John’s constant gaslighting, neglect, and refusal to help Jane leaves her continually angry and at times makes her physically sick. She’d like to leave but doesn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with her son. And then one day, John tells her he wants a divorce, and she learns the extent of his deceit and manipulation.

This was a heavy read, frank and graphic, and written in a stream-of-consciousness style. I wanted to shake Jane to make her see what a monster John was, and at times, this is an emotional journey for Jane. But it’s a very powerful look at a woman’s struggle to survive a bad marriage and motherhood.

Book Review: "Sandwich" by Catherine Newman

In case you’re wondering, this book is not about sandwiches (although the characters do eat a bunch of them). Am I craving a sandwich now? Yes. Yes I am.

There’s something about a family vacation. Rocky’s family has been going to Cape Cod every summer for two decades, and now that her kids are grown, she’s looking forward to spending time with them. They stay in the same rental cottage every year, and they all have so many memories—laughs, triumphs, tears, tragedies—through the years.

Rocky and her husband, Neil, are part of the sandwich generation, halfway between their adult children and their aging parents. They truly love each other, but lately their relationship has been experiencing some friction, in part because of Rocky’s menopause-related mood swings, and partly because of Neil’s ability to wall himself off from emotional or stressful situations.

When a secret is revealed to Rocky, it triggers memories of a particularly sad time in her life, memories which she has borne alone. That is part of the tension she feels toward Neil, but if she didn’t share, how could he have known?

This is a quiet, character-driven book that is so full of funny and emotional moments. It draws so much of its power from not only the beach trips, the conversations, the random meals, but also the glimpses of how the passage of time affects each of us. I really thought this was beautifully written.

“This is how it is to love somebody. You tell them the truth. You lie a little. And sometimes you don’t say anything at all.”

Book Review: "Summers at the Saint" by Mary Kay Andrews

Pack your bags and join Mary Kay Andrews at the St. Cecelia (better known as “The Saint”), a famous resort on the Georgia coast. The Saint has been a haven and a playground for wealthy travelers for decades, and its exclusivity rankles those who can’t afford to stay there.

When Traci first saw the pink building that looked like a fairytale castle, she wanted to go there, but as a local “ain’t,” her kind wasn’t welcome. She was able to land a summer job there for several years, which led to her meeting and marrying one of the heirs to the resort. Now, a widow in her 40s, she’s determined to return The Saint to its glory days, before the pandemic took its toll.

Faced with unprecedented staff shortages, she increases salaries, provides housing for employees, and recruits new staff, including the daughter of her former best friend, who worked with Traci years ago before ending their friendship. Traci even convinces her niece to abandon her study-abroad plans and work at The Saint for the summer.

What Traci doesn’t fully grasp is how the deck is stacked against her. She has to deal with the machinations of her brother-in-law, who wants nothing more than to wrest The Saint from her hands. And it turns out there’s a lot of nefarious goings-on behind the scenes, which threaten to take the resort down for good. When a member of the staff is killed, and someone comes looking for answers about an incident at the hotel years ago, Traci realizes she can only depend on herself—and maybe one or two others.

There’s no shortage of family dysfunction, drama, people behaving badly, even murder and violence. Who’s responsible for the chaos that has broken out, and why? Can Traci turn things around at The Saint before she winds up in danger—and/or loses a place that reminds her of her late husband?

Andrews knows how to tell a story and paint an evocative scene, and this hooked me from start to finish. It's definitely a little darker than many of her books. There’s suspense, romance, intrigue, grief, even rehashing old memories. I definitely enjoyed my time at The Saint!

Book Review: "Welcome Home, Stranger" by Kate Christensen

Bleak and emotional, but beautifully written, Welcome Home, Stranger is a story about the scars we bear from our family, the resentments and misunderstandings we never voice, and the feeling that our lives are headed in directions we never wanted or expected.

“There are two ways to look at your family. The first way, the so-called normal way, is that you owe them everything just because you’re related. But I believe that you owe them nothing even though you’re related. It’s not obligatory, it’s voluntary.”

Rachel is an award-winning environmental journalist who is more comfortable with research and science than interaction. When her estranged mother dies, she returns home to Maine for the first time in a number of years, she’s hit with a wall of unpleasant memories and the resentment of her sister Celeste, who cared for their mother in her last days.

Both sisters must come to terms with the loss of a woman who viewed her daughters as competition for her and pitted them against one another. Rachel is also dealing with the inevitable loss of her job, reuniting with an old boyfriend, and a health crisis for her ex-husband. Meanwhile, Celeste also wants more out of the life she’s feeling stifled in.

For a relatively short book, the pacing was a little slow. There’s so much crisis and angst in this book and very little to truly be joyful about, so it was difficult to read at times. But ultimately, I think the message the book conveyed was that there is always hope.

Book Review: "Your Driver is Waiting" by Priya Guns

Your Driver is Waiting is a darkly satirical, thought-provoking look at our culture of protest and selfishness.

Damani is a rideshare (like Uber or Lyft) driver who lives in an unnamed city. Since her father died at his fast-food job, she’s been taking care of her mother, barely scraping by, living paycheck to paycheck. (In order to eke out a living, she has to drive constantly, despite the rules set by her employer.)

All throughout the city there are protests for every conceivable cause and issue. At the same time, the rideshare drivers are banding together to protest their pay constantly getting cut and other adverse conditions.

One day, Damani picks up Jolene, a beautiful white woman. Their attraction to one another is evident and their chemistry is palpable. Damani has never dated anyone with money before (especially a white woman), but Jolene seems to get her. They quickly fall into a relationship, which seems perfect—until Damani discovers that Jolene isn’t quite who she seems to be.

I’ve heard this book is a gender-flipped adaptation of Taxi Driver, but I didn’t feel that. It seemed to me like the book wanted to provide sharp social commentary but at the same time be a romance, and those two styles didn’t quite mesh. I’ll admit I don’t love when authors play coy with the locale of their book, so I found it difficult to completely settle into the culture.

I’ve seen some strong reviews of this, so it might just be me. Give it a shot if the description intrigues you.

Book Review: "After I Do" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

What happens when love fades? That's the question at the core of After I Do.

When Lauren and Ryan meet in college, they fall for each other right away. Their relationship is full of fun, passion, and love, so it’s only natural they get married after graduation. They become a part of each other’s families and their own family, with their dog, Thumper.

But somewhere along the way, they’ve started getting angrier at one another, not enjoying each other’s company, not having sex. They honestly don’t even like each other, and it’s not one thing causing these feelings, it’s a combination of things. So one night, with their marriage at the breaking point, they decide to go their separate ways for a year. They can see other people, do whatever they want, and in a year, hopefully they’ll be ready to try again. The only catch is they’re not to contact each other for the full year.

At first, Lauren can’t believe she’ll survive without her husband. Can’t they just put more work into their marriage? But the more time they spend apart, she realizes that they took each other for granted, took their love for granted. And as she sees herself as a person separate from Ryan for the first time, she needs to decide what’s important to her relationship-wise. Can she and Ryan truly be happy if they start again, or has their chance at love and happiness passed?

Taylor Jenkins Reid brings such poetry and emotion to her books. This story was all-encompassing, a look at love when it’s hot and when it goes cold, the way we are so inexorably connected to one another, and how we must find ourselves and each other in order to make a relationship last. This was a truly thought-provoking book. It made me smile and, of course, it made me cry.

With completing After I Do, I’ve read the last of her books. I’d been holding on to this one for so long because I didn’t want to be without any TJR books, but I couldn’t resist. Now I have to wait until her next one comes out!

Book Review: "The Lucky Ones" by Liz Lawson

Liz Lawson's The Lucky Ones is an emotional, timely story that packs such a powerful punch.

When a deadly shooting occurred at her school, May survived by hiding in a closet. But her brother and her friends were among those killed. She knows she should feel lucky but she doesn’t. No one understands the guilt, the hurt, the anguish she feels as her life is falling apart around her. All she wants to do is lash out, but one friend tries to keep her close.

After the shooting, Zach’s life changed in a different way. When his mother decides to become the shooter’s defense attorney, he loses everything. His girlfriend dumps him, his friends ostracize him, and he spends most of his time with only his little sister and the one friend who still cares about him.

Neither May nor Zach feels like they are really living anymore, and both wonder if it’s worth going on with life. But when the two meet, it’s the first time in a long while they’ve felt something other than grief or anger or guilt or pain. Can two people barely surviving help each other live again?

I thought The Lucky Ones provided a really interesting perspective on the survivors of a school shooting. Sadly, there are far too many of these shootings occurring these days, so this story is really relevant.

At times, as you’d imagine, this book got a bit heavier than I could handle, but it was a really well-told and moving story that definitely made me think.

NetGalley, Random House Children's, and Delacorte Press provided me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!!

Book Review: "The Road Trip" by Beth O'Leary

Can forced proximity help a former couple recapture the magic or will it just make things worse? This is the question addressed in Beth O'Leary's new book, The Road Trip.

Dylan and Addie were in love. It was an intense relationship, but Dylan’s indecisiveness about his future and his constantly choosing his longtime best friend Marcus, who had wanted nothing more than to break them up from the start, dooms them. But when a betrayal occurs, it shatters everything.

Two years later, they know they’ll see each other at their mutual friend Cherry’s wedding. They've not spoken since the day their relationship ended. But the last thing they’re prepared for is when Dylan accidentally rear-ends the car Addie and her sister are driving to the wedding.

While the logical choice would be to let Dylan and Marcus fend for themselves, they’ll never make it to the wedding on time. So instead Addie and Deb invite them to drive with them to Scotland. In a Mini. Along with another random wedding guest, Rodney. What could go wrong?

Of course, hijinks ensue. And amidst crises and traffic and arguments about the trip playlist, Dylan and Addie realize their feelings for each other haven’t changed no matter how they try to fight them. But are feelings enough to overcome the hurt and guilt and betrayal? Have they changed that much?

The story alternates between present and past, tracing the trajectory of their relationship and what brought them to this point.

I’ve loved Beth O’Leary’s previous books, The Flat Share and The Switch, so much, so I had high hopes for The Road Trip as well. I loved Dylan and Addie and their story, but much like the trip itself, the book took a long while to get going. And honestly, Marcus was one of the most ridiculously insufferable characters and he took up far too much space in the story. But in the end, I still got teary. Lol.

NetGalley and Berkely provided me with a complimentary advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

The Road Trip publishes 6/1.

Book Review: "The Push" by Ashley Audrain

I don’t think I’ve ever had a more "Bookstagram Made Me Do It" book than Ashley Audrain's new novel, The Push. Seeing all the raves from friends I had such FOMO, even though some said, "Larry, I don't know if this one is for you!" But boy, did it live up to every ounce of the hype I had built for it in my head—and then some!!

“You know, there’s a lot about ourselves that we can’t change—it’s just the way we’re born. But some parts of us are shaped by what we see. And how we’re treated by other people. How we’re made to feel.”

This is a story about motherhood. It’s about the beautiful moments when you’re blissfully in love with this life you’ve helped to create. But it’s also about the difficult moments—the exhaustion, the pain, the fears, the sorrow and even resentment when you feel your spouse has more of a connection with your baby than you do.

But what happens if you feel your child doesn’t like you, and you’re not sure that you don’t feel the same? Is that even possible, or is it indicative of a larger problem you're having? What happens if you start to think your child may actually be dangerous? What if no one believes you? Are the things you're seeing really happening or have you convinced yourself they are?

This is such a tremendously powerful, suspenseful, slightly creepy book I stayed up until nearly 1:30 a.m. to finish because I couldn’t put it down. It packs quite a punch as you catch glimpses of three generations of mothers, each affected in different ways by the lives they live and those who came before.

I’ve read some good books so far this month but I hadn’t yet found a 5-star read. The Push sure did fit that bill for me. It’s definitely one I won’t forget anytime soon, and I’d imagine it would be great discussion fodder for book clubs!

Book Review: "Concrete Rose" by Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas' new book, Concrete Rose, is simply amazing. This is a powerful look at the life and challenges faced by a young Black man.

This prequel to The Hate U Give (but you don't need to have read that book first) takes us back to Garden Heights 17 years earlier. Maverick Carter knows his responsibility is to take care of his mom while his father, a former gang legend, is in prison. But the only way for a 17-year-old to truly help his mom is to sell drugs on the side for his gang, the King Lords.

While Maverick knows his life could be better—he’d love people to stop looking at him as a pale imitation of his father—he’s happy with his girlfriend and he has a cousin who looks out for him. And then his life is completely upended when he finds out he’s the father of a three-month-old boy.

How can he be a father when he’s still a child himself? While it completely changes his life, he’s determined to be a better father than the one he had. But he can’t be a father if he’s dealing drugs, so as much as “real work” pains him, when he’s given the chance to walk away from the gang life, he does.

When tragedy strikes and Maverick makes a foolish mistake, he’s faced with a decision: does he do what he needs to in order to survive and take care of his family, or does he continue to walk the right path, even if it may be the harder one?

Concrete Rose was just a fantastic book. I will never know the challenges faced by young Black men, but Thomas takes the reader into that world and gives a glimpse of the struggle between right and wrong, between boyhood and manhood, between being tough and being right.

Thomas never ceases to dazzle me with her power as a storyteller, her ability to make you think and make you feel and make you root for her characters. With this book, she has created another masterpiece that will resonate for long afterward.

Book Review: "This Close to Okay" by Leesa Cross-Smith

Wow. Leesa Cross-Smith's upcoming novel, This Close to Okay, is so emotional and thought-provoking.

One rainy October night therapist Tallie Clark is driving home from work when she sees a man standing on a bridge, looking ready to jump. She gets out of her car and runs to the man, begging him not to jump. Miraculously, she is able to get him to come down and he agrees to go with her to get some coffee and perhaps talk about his feelings.

After coffee, the man agrees to come back to Tallie’s house with her. He’s not interested in talking about what pushed him to contemplate suicide, but he does tell her that his name is Emmett.

Over the course of the weekend, Tallie tries to help Emmett, to try and get him to open up so she can determine whether he’s still thinking about dying, and he does in small doses. But over this same weekend, the two form an intense bond, despite the fact that both are hiding things from one another.

This was an intense, beautiful, moving book. Alternating between Tallie and Emmett’s narration, it’s a story of grief, anger, hope, recovery, and secrets, and how sometimes the right person comes along at the moment we need them most.

There are a lot of things happening in this book but I was immersed completely from the first few pages. I didn’t love everything the characters did but I wonder how I might react in these situations. The funny thing is, I picked this as my Book of the Month club choice on the strength of its description (and its cover) but I knew nothing about it. Sometimes that gamble pays off!!

Cross-Smith is an amazing writer, and I have to read more of her work!!

This Close to Okay publishes 2/2/2021.

Book Review: "The Bridge Club" by Patricia Sands

If you like stories of strong female friendships, Patricia Sands' The Bridge Club is one for you!

“The Bridge Club: eight women, close to hitting their sixty-five-year speed bump. They were never anything remotely resembling Desperate Housewives or Ya-Ya candidates but simply great friends since their footloose days of finding the way through their early twenties.”

Eight women—Bonnie, Cass, Danielle, Dee, Jane, Lynn, Marti, and Pam—have been friends for more than five decades. What started out as a monthly bridge game turned into something much deeper. They’ve celebrated momentous occasions in each other’s lives, and have provided comfort and even more substantial help in times of crisis.

In the story each character recounts their “SOS”—the moment when each felt they could only rely on the Bridge Club to help them. These stories range from marital troubles and divorce, illness, addiction, and many others, and each chapter reinforces the intense bond they have. (For those of you who actually play bridge, there are even bridge hands at the end of each chapter.)

The Bridge Club was originally written in 2010, and marked the celebration of everyone’s 65th birthdays, as well as one sad note in an epilogue. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sands includes the epilogue as part of the book and writes an updated final chapter that takes place in 2020. It's a very interesting decision which really works.

This was a really well-told story. I love books about strong relationships and these friendships truly weathered some storms. It made me grateful for the friends in my life!

I was grateful to be part of the blog tour for this book. Kate Rock Book Tours and Patricia Sands provided me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks so much for making it available!

Book Review: "Bitter Falls" by Rachel Caine

I think my heart rate needed a few hours to return to normal after reading this book!

Gwen Proctor and her family are back in Bitter Falls, Book 4 of Rachel Caine’s Stillhouse Lake series.

While Gwen and her children, as well as her partner, are trying to put all of the past horrors of their lives behind them, everyone around them won’t let them forget. Her kids are constantly bullied at school and their neighbors want them gone, because the more attention they attract, the more it hampers everyone else’s unsavory activities. And of course, they're subject to constant online harassment and horribly violent threats.

Still, Gwen is working as a private investigator and hoping the hubbub will eventually die down. She lands a cold case of a young man who went missing three years ago in Tennessee, after telling his family he was trying to help a girl he met at church. The family has no clues but they’ve not given up hope even if it seems they should.

What Gwen stumbles into is far more lethal and widespread than she even imagined. Once again, those she loves wind up in the crossfire, and the result could prove deadly. It’s going to require every last bit of strength and cunning she has, not to mention an alliance with an unsavory group of people. But Gwen will stop at nothing to save those she loves, and perhaps solve the case at the same time.

I’ve really enjoyed this series, and find Gwen in particular a fascinating character. These books are intense but I can’t get enough of them, and Caine ratchets up the pace and the tension throughout.

The one thing that is starting to frustrate me with the last few books is that so much trouble is caused by Gwen's kids. I get that they have been through so much trauma and are chafing from all the restrictions on their lives but after a while it gets annoying when one of their actions sets trouble in motion.

I found out today that Caine lost her battle with cancer earlier this month. I'm so sad to hear this news, as I've really been enjoying her books. The good news is that Book 5 in this series will be published in the spring of 2021.

If you love thrillers, this is a great series to explore. Gwen is definitely a badass!

Book Review: "Memorial" by Bryan Washington

Bryan Washington's new novel, Memorial, is an intriguing look at relationships and the things we don’t say to those we care about.

“...loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.”

Benson and Mike have been together for a few years. When things work, they’re good together, but it seems lately those moments have been fewer and farther between. But neither wants to start a conversation about what they want from each other.

Mike’s mother Mitsuko arrives from Japan, and at the same time he learns his estranged father is dying in Osaka. He decides he needs to go to Japan to be with his father, so he leaves his mother with Benson, despite the fact the two have never met before.

As Benson and Mitsuko try to negotiate the strange arrangement they’ve been left with, Mike begins to better understand his father and their relationship, and see how his memories differ from reality. At the same time, both Benson and Mike think about their relationship and its potential longevity, or what they might want from the future.

Bryan Washington is such a talented storyteller and I love the way he writes. There is definitely some beauty and emotion in this book. That being said, I kept waiting for a big revelation or moment in the story, and it never quite happened.

I felt like so much of the interactions between the characters were shaped by the things they didn’t say, and that was frustrating at times. It was almost like we were viewing Benson and Mike’s relationship through a window, and everything wasn’t quite clear.

This is one of those books that will resonate more for some than others, and it probably would benefit from some discussion. Still, reading Washington’s work is a real privilege.

Book Review: "The Two Lives of Lydia Bird" by Josie Silver

Gotta love a book that has you sobbing in the wee hours of the morning!! Such was the case with Josie Silver's new book, The Two Lives of Lydia Silver.

Life can change in a split second. One second Lydia was waiting for her fiancé, Freddie, to arrive at her birthday dinner; the next second she learns that he was killed in a car accident on the way.

"It's probably for the best if the last time you do something momentous passes you by unheralded: the last time my mother collected me at the school gate, her hand reassuring around my smaller one, the last time my father remembered my birthday. The last time I spoke to Freddie Hunter as he dashed back to see me on my twenty-eighth birthday. Do you know what the last words he said to me were? Over and out."

Lydia and Freddie have been a part of each other’s lives since high school, and she has loved him since she was 14. She doesn’t know how to get through a day, let alone the rest of her life without him, but her family and friends try to help her navigate her grief.

One day she discovers a world where Freddie is still alive, and there, her life goes on from that fatal night. She cherishes every additional moment with Freddie and gets to envision picking out her wedding dress, the simple moments of sharing a life together. Little by little, though, she begins to see that even the fairytale life she's witnessing has its rough spots in unexpected places.

As she takes tentative steps to regain control of her life, she has to decide: live for what could have been despite its challenges, or live for now, and be present for those who love you. It’s a difficult decision for Lydia to make.

"There isn't a handy grief blueprint. You don't get over losing someone you love in six months or two years or twenty, but you do have to find a way to carry on living without feeling as if everything that comes afterward is second best."

Sure, the premise of the book is a little unrealistic, but I just found it so moving and beautifully told. I didn’t always love Lydia’s character but I just loved this story, and I so enjoy the way Josie Silver writes, having been totally besotted with her debut novel, One Day in December.

Book Review: "The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried" by Shaun David Hutchinson

Dino and July were best friends, absolutely inseparable. Until everything changed, and their friendship ended. For a year, July was dead to Dino, and he focused on his new boyfriend, Rafi, and Rafi's group of friends, although he couldn't help feeling like something was missing. When July died suddenly, Dino was left with unresolved emotions about their friendship and why everything went wrong.

And then the unthinkable happens—July awakens the day before her funeral while at Dino's parents' funeral home. She's not dead, but she's not quite alive, and she's not happy to find herself in Dino's company again. But what could be the reason for her coming back to life, of sorts? As much as they're angry with each other, they team up to figure out what's going on, especially as they realize this problem may have wider implications than they could even imagine.

As July struggles with the side-effects of once being dead, Dino has his own struggles—trying to convince his parents that he doesn't want to go into the funeral business, and feeling like he's not worthy of being loved, which complicates his relationship with with Rafi. More than that, however, he wants to understand why his relationship with July went so wrong, because he knows that as much as she aggravated him, he has missed her more than anything.

What if you got a second chance with someone who once meant so much to you? Would you try to understand what went wrong and resolve your feelings, or would the hurt and the anger be too intense to forgive and forget? Would you be willing to accept some responsibility for what transpired, or would your pride get in the way?

In his newest novel, The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried, Shaun David Hutchinson brings his trademark mix of the surreal and the emotional. While there are some crazy elements to the plot, at its heart this is a book about friendship, belonging, regret, self-worth, and accepting our own shortcomings. It definitely made me wish for another chance with some people who used to be an important part of my life.

Hutchinson is one of my favorite authors—We Are the Ants and At the Edge of the Universe are two of the best books I've read in recent years. I love the characters he creates and I find his storytelling mesmerizing.

That being said, this book didn't work as well for me as his previous ones. Even though there was poignancy in the story, I found July's character so off-putting and unsympathetic that I couldn't understand why Dino even wanted to be friends with her, and I felt that there were too many instances of her being mean to Dino, his getting angry, and then coming back to her again.

You can always count on Hutchinson for a story that doesn't seem like all the others, as well as one that touches your emotions. While I didn't feel this book was among his best, it's still another example of why I think he's one of the best YA authors out there right now.