Book Review: "The Invisible Husband of Frick Island" by Colleen Oakley

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island is a beautiful, emotional story about love, loss, determination, family, and an unforgettable community.

I’ve made it a goal to read more backlist titles this year, so I’ve been reading books I bought and never got around to before. And when I read a book like this, I want to slap myself and say, “What took you so long?”

Piper’s husband Tom is a waterman, like his father and grandfather before him. They live on Frick Island, a small island in the Chesapeake Bay you can only get to by boat. (This is inspired by Maryland's Smith Island.) When Tom’s boat doesn’t come back one day and his body can’t be found, Piper and the 90+ residents of the island are devastated. But it’s not long after that Piper begins acting as if Tom is still alive—so everyone on the island follows suit.

"'If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.'"

Anders is a young reporter who has always dreamed of making a name for himself, as a reporter and podcaster, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. He’s sent to Frick Island to cover their annual Cake Walk event and he is intrigued by the unique community. And while he feels that there’s a story in the island’s residents staying put despite the effects of climate change on their home, he realizes the biggest story is the fact that the entire town is pretending that a dead man still exists.

The deeper Anders gets into the story, the more attached to Piper he becomes. Is he really just interested in helping her? And when his podcast goes viral—along with Piper’s story—he has to decide what’s more important to him, fame or the possibility of something more.

I loved this story. It reminded me a little of a movie with Ryan Gosling called Lars and the Real Girl. The Invisible Husband of Frick Island was a poignant and fascinating story with some interesting little twists, and I couldn’t get enough.

Book Review: "The Girl I Used to Be" by Heidi Hostetter

Heidi Hostetter's new book, The Girl I Used to Be, is an emotional story about rebuilding and finding one’s way again.

Jill fell in love with Marc and knew she wanted to be with him. She knew he had been married before, and but she was determined to make their marriage stronger than his previous ones. Sure, Marc was a little controlling, telling her how to dress, how to look, what to do, but he loved her, and they had a picture-perfect life together.

Or so she thought. Her whole life comes crashing down when she learns of Marc’s infidelity. She didn’t care about his money, but she also doesn’t want to be taken advantage of. With Marc claiming everything were assets of his business or covered by the prenup Jill signed, the only thing she gets is a beach house on New Jersey’s Dewberry Beach.

She really wants nothing to do with the house and plans to sell it right away. But she’s thrown for a loop when she discovers that everything to do with the house isn’t on the up-and-up, and she might have had unknowingly been involved.

As she tries to get to the bottom of Marc’s deception and make good on the wrongs he left behind, she falls in love with the beach town where her house is. But more than that, she starts to find herself again—the real her, not the person Marc tried to mold her into.

Sometimes it’s hard to stand on your own two feet after you’ve been knocked down. But Jill is realizing the strength to do so comes from within yourself. Her story is powerful and relevant, and even if all of the characters aren’t likable, the story is.

Thanks to Bookouture for a complimentary copy of The Girl I Used to Be in exchange for an unbiased review!

Book Review: "Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune" by Roselle Lim

What a wonderful book this was, full of emotion, hope, food, love, and even a little magic. But be warned, you'll be craving Chinese food long after the book has ended!!

Seven years ago, Natalie left her home in San Francisco's Chinatown after she and her mother disagreed about Natalie's choice to become a chef. She wasn't willing to give up her dream and her mother forbade her, so Natalie left and hasn't spoken to her mother since that day. While Natalie hasn't quite succeeded, she has had the chance to cook in many different parts of the world and realize how important cooking really is to her.

"The best cooks doubled as magicians, uplifting moods and conjuring memories through the medium of food."

She is summoned home when her mother dies suddenly. Although she had emotional problems and was agoraphobic, her death came as a surprise to those friends who cared for her. Natalie is devastated that she never had the chance to make amends and let her mother know how much she loved her despite their disagreement.

She is also surprised at how much her neighborhood has declined—all of the businesses that used to flourish are now in decline and disrepair, and a overly zealous real estate agent is pressuring the tenants to sell so the neighborhood could be gentrified and converted into something new.

Natalie's biggest surprise, however, is that she has inherited her grandmother's small restaurant, which occupied the ground floor of the building she and her mother lived in. Natalie's mother refused to follow in her grandmother's footsteps, but in her will she decided to encourage Natalie's dreams after all, and encouraged her to reopen the restaurant, which was once the anchor of their community.

The local seer tells Natalie she must cook three dishes of her grandmother's for three of their neighbors who are having trouble. How can Natalie figure out which dishes to cook, and for whom? Will cooking these dishes actually make a difference? And why should Natalie care, when her neighbors left her and her mother to fend for themselves throughout her childhood?

Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune is a story about finding the courage to pursue your dreams no matter who stands in your way, and not giving up even when it seems every obstacle is trying to thwart you. It's also a book about finding your place in your community, and recognizing that caring about a person doesn't always mean agreeing with all of their choices. In the end, this is also a powerful story about secrets and how surprising it can be to learn the truth about things.

"Dreams, even modest ones, had a steep price. Mine had cost me my mother and given me the silence of seven years. Now that silence could never be breached."

I tend to enjoy books with a little bit of magic thrown in to the plot. Roselle Lim uses evocative imagery to convey the healing and restorative power of Natalie's cooking, as well as to describe emotions. Her words are truly gorgeous and create such wonderful mind pictures. Parts of this story warmed my heart, and parts made me cry.

Sure, the story gets a little bit melodramatic from time to time, and you pretty much can predict nearly everything that will happen in this book. But that barely mattered for me because of how much charm Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune had, how it tugged at my heart, and how the recipes included in the book made my stomach growl.

This is a quirky, sweet, tremendously endearing book that may be the perfect change of pace you're looking for. It's definitely a book I'll remember!

Book Review: "The Wonder Garden" by Lauren Acampora

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Driving through a neighborhood, looking at the houses you pass by, do you ever stop and wonder about the lives of those who live there? Looking from the outside in, we never know about the problems people face, whether their lives are mundane or full of excitement and tension, what their desires and regrets are, and what drives them forward.

Lauren Acampora's intriguing, well-written collection of linked stories, The Wonder Garden, strives to give us insight into the lives of strangers, as she focuses on the residents of Old Cranbury, a well-heeled suburb not far from Manhattan. From John, the home inspector whose intense attention to detail in his professional life hasn't seemed to translate into his personal life; to Madeleine, whose life is upended when her husband leaves his corporate advertising job to pursue a career as a healer; from Harold, whose fascination with the brain veers into bizarre territory after he forms an alliance of sorts with a surgeon; to Camille, whose frustration with motherhood and life after divorce fuels her desire for a life elsewhere, these stories chronicle hope and disillusionment, happiness and hurt, desires realized and desires thwarted.

Acampora does an excellent job creating a sense of a community, and although it's difficult at first to remember which characters were which as they showed up in future stories, once I did, I enjoyed catching another glimpse of them through the lens of another character or situation. Some of the characters are tremendously flawed, some of them are simply caught up in an unexpected or strange situation, and some are just trying to go about their daily lives.

Among my favorite stories in the collection were: "Ground Fault," which followed a home inspector whose personal life is more in disarray than his professional one, but some spillage is inevitable; "Floortime," about a woman struggling to reach her autistic son and willing to consider any means to do so; "Elevations," about a couple struggling with the separate needs of each person; "The Umbrella Bird," which chronicles a woman who must reconcile a drastic change in her husband; and "Moon Roof," in which a woman's inability to move into traffic underscores issues in the rest of her life.

I really enjoyed this collection and think Acampora is a terrific writer. A few of the stories didn't work for me, either because I found the main character so unlikeable or because I found the premise of the story less interesting, but on the whole this is a really strong collection, and definitely signals the arrival of a fantastic new talent.