Book Review: "Black Woods Blue Sky" by Eowyn Ivey

I love it when an author can make you experience the setting of a book with all of your senses. In her third book, Eowyn Ivey takes us back to Alaska and immerses us fully in its beauty and its danger.

Birdie is a single mother to her young daughter, Emaleen. She’s far from perfect—she drinks a bit too much, and doesn’t always watch Emaleen as closely as she should, but she brings Emaleen to work with her as a waitress at an Alaskan roadside lodge.

One of the men who comes to the lodge every now and again is Arthur. He’s quiet, keeps to himself, and he is the type of person that people talk about without knowing what his whole story is. He lives in a cabin in the woods, far from town, and he knows the woods quite well, so when Emaleen gets lost one day, it is Arthur who finds her and brings her back safely.

Birdie is tremendously grateful to Arthur for saving her daughter. The more she gets to know him, she is drawn to his quiet ways and his secrets, not to mention his love of Alaska’s natural beauty. Despite the warnings of many, she and Emaleen move into Arthur’s cabin with him.

“It was impossible, what Birdie wanted. To go alone, to experience the world on her own terms. But also, to share it all with Emaleen.”

This book is a very loose take on Beauty and the Beast, but it is also a story all its own. It’s powerful and emotional, with touches of magical realism and a little suspense. While it doesn’t surpass Ivey’s first book, The Snow Child, in my opinion, it’s still such a beautiful and satisfying read.

Book Review: "Beautiful Ugly" by Alice Feeney

I know I’m a huge outlier here, as I’ve seen so many rave reviews for this book. But despite an immensely promising start, this absolutely didn’t work for me.

“Marriage is made of a million beautiful and ugly moments stitched together into a shared tapestry of memories, all of which are viewed and remembered slightly differently, like two people staring at the same painting from opposite ends of a room.”

Grady is an author who is expecting to hear some exciting news. He’s eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife, Abby, so they can share the moment together. When he calls to see how far away she is, she tells him she’s seen a body lying in the road ahead. Although he begs her not to stop, she does anyway; when he arrives at the scene shortly afterward he finds Abby’s car still running, her purse and phone on the passenger seat, and Abby nowhere to be found.

A year later, there’s not been a sign of Abby. Grady has completely fallen apart; he hasn’t been able to sleep or write since that night. With his financial situation becoming worse by the day, Grady’s publisher encourages him to get away to the small Scottish isle of Amberly, where he can hopefully be able to focus on his writing once again.

Amberly is definitely isolated. When he arrives Grady is sure he has spotted his missing wife, but he becomes convinced it’s grief and too little sleep that is making him see things. But strange things keep appearing in—and disappearing from—his cabin, and the island’s residents definitely seem to be hiding some secrets of their own.

I found the characters all really unlikable and it took a long while for things to start heating up. The twist was wild but didn’t quite sit well with me, and I felt like the book veered in a direction I didn’t enjoy. But don’t pay me any attention if you’re intrigued!!

The book publishes 1/14/2025.

Book Review: "City Under One Roof" by Iris Yamashita

City Under One Roof is a compelling crime novel that gives a new twist to the locked-room mystery.

During the summer, the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, is full of tourists. But in the winter, the population of this town—only accessible via a tunnel that closes for bad weather—shrinks to about 200 people. And they all live in the same high-rise building, where nearly everything is located.

When local teens find a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore, the police believe it’s the remains of someone who jumped off a cruise ship. The case raises the suspicions of Cara, a police detective from Anchorage, who comes to Point Mettier to investigate. But her reasons for investigating aren’t entirely above-board.

She is stranded in the town during a blizzard, and has to stay in the same condo building as everyone else in town. When a severed head is found, Cara, who teams up with local policeman JB, realizes the killer may be someone they’re all staying with. More and more, she discovers that everyone in Point Mettier is hiding something. And the arrival of a dangerous gang from a nearby Native village only complicates matters further.

First of all, the book had me at Alaska. It’s one of my favorite settings for books. And I loved the concept of the town and the condo—I totally felt claustrophobic.

This reads like a movie, which makes sense because Yamashita is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, and it’s definitely full of unusual characters, some of whose stories definitely felt incomplete. I’m guessing a second book is in the works, especially given the twist Yamashita threw in at the end?

Book Review: "One's Company" by Ashley Hutson

One's Company is dark, quirky, and unique.

After a series of tragedies and traumas, Bonnie lives a fairly solitary existence, and she’s fine with that. She has all 174 episodes of the classic 1970s sitcom Three’s Company to, well, keep her company.

One day she wins the lottery, the biggest payout in U.S. history. She’s decided how to spend her earnings: she wants to move somewhere private, somewhere she can literally build the set from Three’s Company and create the world outside the apartment, where most of the show takes place.

She moves to an isolated compound atop a mountain and brings her obsession to life, recreating the set in painstaking detail. And then she plans to settle into her fantasy. But as she retreats from the world completely, her estranged best friend, Krystal, is determined to keep her from slipping away.

This was a tremendously unique story in many ways, but at its core it is a reflection on trauma and how we process (or fail to process) it. It’s a fascinating and sad look at how something we enjoy can become an obsession and how easy it is to avoid our problems and get lost in our obsessions.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, so Three’s Company was definitely a show I watched frequently. But even if you’ve never heard of the show, Ashley Hutson gives you enough details to understand what it was about.

This is a thought-provoking book you’ll want to discuss with others. I felt at times Bonnie was an unreliable narrator, which is a trope I cannot stand, and that took me out of the story a bit. But I couldn’t help but be immersed in the sadness and uniqueness of this story.

Book Review: "These Silent Woods" by Kimi Cunningham Grant

These Silent Woods was an excellent book—emotional, suspenseful, and it packed a real punch. Definitely one of the best I've read all year.

Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived off the grid in a remote cabin in the Appalachian woods for eight years now, since Finch was an infant. They survive off the land, raising a few chickens, and Cooper’s best friend Jake delivers a massive amount of supplies once a year. The only other person they see is their neighbor, Scotland, who seems to be a thorn in Cooper’s side more than anything. Is he spying on them for a reason?

It’s not an optimal existence, particularly not to raise a young girl in, but it’s all Cooper can do. Because to come out of hiding would mean the secrets he’s kept would be revealed, and it would jeopardize his ability to raise, or perhaps even see, his daughter.

“A small and insulated world for both of us, and there is a simplicity to it that makes it difficult to explain the complexities of life. The unreliable and often shifting line between right and wrong.”

This year, Jake doesn’t show up. They knew this could happen one day but it necessitates Cooper taking actions he wasn’t prepared to. And when a stranger appears in the woods, a stranger Finch becomes fixated on, the whole life Cooper has so carefully prepared for him and his daughter could be totally upended.

I’ve been waiting to read this for so long, since so many others on Bookstagram received advance copies. And boy, it lived up to the hype in every way. (There are some very brief scenes of animal death but you can skim them easily.) What a gorgeous, lyrical, suspenseful, thought-provoking book.