Book Review: "Love, Literally" by J.T. Tierney

I read a lot of rom-coms and romances, and one of the things I like best about that genre is when there’s banter between the main characters. So when I heard about Love, Literally, about two people who connect over their shared love of wordplay, language, and literature, how could I resist?

It’s 2020, a few months into the COVID pandemic. Hallie has been laid off from her set design job, her boyfriend has disappeared, and her roommate has left town to care for a sick relative. Unable to make ends meet, her best friend Maria comes to her rescue, offering her the opportunity to move in with her and her husband.

Not long after, friends of Maria’s decide they’d like to escape to their second home, a mansion on Cape Cod, and they invite Maria and her husband, as well as Hallie. Also included is Quinn, a professor of literature whose own life has been chaotic as well.

It’s not long before Hallie and Quinn begin engaging in intellectual one-upmanship, stemming from their shared fondness for literature, language, musicals, and puns. Not just their minds are sparked, of course—their playful flirting soon gives way to stronger chemistry, both emotional and sexual.

Both Hallie and Quinn have had their share of turmoil, pain, and sadness. They want to see where this connection may lead, but they both have issues dealing with their feelings and hopes, not to mention their ability to express what they want from one another.

There’s much to enjoy about this story, but there is far too much drama and indecisiveness, which leads to lots of tears and handwringing. The author also threw in a bunch of other subplots and social issues that made brief ripples and then were forgotten. I wish the focus of the book had stayed on the romance.

Book Review: "Leslie F*cking Jones" by Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones is a human dynamo. She has tremendous presence—her voice and her height make you stand up and take notice. She comes across as brave and brash, seeming almost impervious to any barriers that stand in her way. But as you learn in her new memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones (like it could be called anything else?), her confidence stems from the challenges she faced in her life, the battles she had to fight to achieve her dreams.

For the most part, whether or not you'll enjoy this memoir depends on how you feel about Leslie Jones herself. This is not a polished, obviously ghostwritten book; Jones' voice is authentic, her language is peppered liberally with curse words and slang, and at times the narration seems to go off on tangents, the way people often do when they tell stories. As she puts it, "Hey you guys—some of the stories about my childhood are vague because a bitch is fifty-five and I've smoked a lot of weed. A lot of it is hazy, but I will give you the best recollection of it that I can."

While parts of the book are definitely hysterical, it's an emotional read as well. Jones faced some very difficult things growing up: her alcoholic father moved their family around a lot, and in many places she faced racism as well as bullying for the color of her skin, her family's lack of money, and her lack of polish. And tragedy certainly followed her into adulthood, as did brushes with poverty, fighting for a chance onstage, and trying to pursue fame without changing who she was.

One of the things that surprised me about this book and Jones herself is the importance she places on being a role model for Black girls and women, letting them know they're beautiful and worthy. It's a lesson she learned when she was younger and it never left her, even in the toughest of times.

At times the book gets a little too specific and detailed so chapters drag, but it's still an entertaining and powerful read.

"In the end, what I learned in the pandemic, and since, is what so many of us learned: life is life. It's not supposed to be easy all the time, and it's never as easy as we want it to be."

Book Review: "Small Mercies" by Dennis Lehane

Man oh man, this guy can write.

I’ve been a fan of Dennis Lehane’s since his first book, A Drink Before the War, utterly blew me away. I’ve loved so many of his books—Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island, and of course, Mystic River, which is an all-time favorite of mine. (And an excellent movie, too.)

Although highly anticipated books by favorite authors have been hit or miss for me this year, Lehane’s newest book was definitely a home run for me.

“That’s what ghosts are—they’re testaments to what never should have happened and must be fixed before their spirits leave this world.”

It’s the summer of 1974. A heat wave is mercilessly punishing Boston, and everyone is on edge. But it’s not just the heat causing temperatures to rise—the forced desegregation of Boston schools is about to happen, and almost no one is happy about it.

Mary Pat Fennessy was born and bred in the housing projects of Southie, where she has raised two kids of her own. She’s struggling financially and she’s always been at least a little bit angry, a little bit proud, and, like most of her neighbors, at least a little bit racist.

One night, her 17-year-old daughter, Jules, doesn’t come home. That same night, a young Black man is found dead in a nearby subway station, apparently struck by a train. Are the two events interconnected?

The longer Jules is missing, the more suspicious Mary Pat becomes. And then she decides to get to the bottom of the matter herself—no matter whom she angers or what trouble she causes. Her nothing-to-lose, don’t-give-a-damn attitude and actions set off a powder keg in a city already on edge.

This is a tense (and intense), sometimes sad, and tremendously thought-provoking book. Mary Pat isn’t trying to be a hero; she just wants to figure out what happened to her daughter. And at the same time, she’s realizing how the way she was raised and the way she raised her children might have played a factor in all that occurred.

This will make one heck of a movie.

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: "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver's new novel is an immensely powerful retelling of David Copperfield which follows a young man’s struggles while growing up in Appalachia.⁣

⁣ Wow. I’ve been meaning to read this for a while but figured I’d hold off until I had some time to really get into it. Kingsolver has really created a masterpiece.⁣

⁣ “If a mother is lying in her own piss and pill bottles while they’re slapping the kid she’s shunted out, telling him to look alive: likely the bastard is doomed. Kid born to the junkie is a junkie.”⁣

⁣ Damon arrives in the world in dramatic fashion, born in a trailer to a teenage mother addicted to drugs. His orange hair, inherited from his dead father, makes him stand out, in a corner of the world where standing out isn’t what you want to do. With his mother in and out of rehab, he finds a surrogate family in the trailer next door. ⁣

⁣ But Damon, or “Demon,” despite being too wise for his age, doesn’t have an easy life ahead. His story is one of abuse, violence, loss, being shuffled in and out of foster care, child labor, and so much more. This is not an uncommon story in Appalachia, especially in the midst of the opioid epidemic.⁣

⁣ I’ve never read David Copperfield, but that wasn’t integral to the story. And make no mistake—this is a bleak story; I’ll admit that it did get a little repetitive at times. But Demon is a narrator and a character I won’t soon forget.⁣

Book Review: "How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water" by Angie Cruz

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (cool title, huh?) is an emotional and humorous book with a tremendously memorable narrator.

Cara Romero never dreamed she’d be looking for work in her mid-fifties. But when the factory where she’s worked for years moves to Costa Rica, she has to find work again before her unemployment checks stop coming. She enrolls in a program where she’ll meet with a job counselor and try to find the right type of job.

Over the course of 12 sessions, she defiantly tells the counselor she wants to work. (But she’s a little particular about what, and where, a potential job should be.) More than that, however, in each of the sessions, she gives her counselor far more than she bargained for in hearing about her life.

Cara tells her counselor about her early life in the Dominican Republic, the marriage that made her flee to the U.S. She talks about her best friend, Lulú, and her difficult relationship with her sister, Ángela, who resents her for many things. But what plagues her the most is that her son, Fernando, abandoned her. She was just being a good mother and trying to protect him and toughen him up so the world didn’t take advantage of him. Why was that so bad?

Her sessions become increasingly emotional as Cara shares secrets and fears—but she still wants to work, mind you. Cara is the type of woman who has faced life head-on and as much as she has experienced setbacks, she still believes in herself.

This was such a fascinating story. Cara is funny, proud, stubborn, and sad, and as the sessions go on, the layers of her life and personality are slowly revealed. She’s definitely a character I’ll think about for a long while!

Book Review: "All That's Left Unsaid" by Tracey Lien

This debut novel is a well-written family drama, as a young woman fights to find the truth about a family tragedy.

Ky was more than eager to leave her home of Cabramatta, a suburb of Sydney, to pursue a career as a journalist in Melbourne. Each time she returned home to visit her family, she became more depressed over the decline of Cabramatta, home to countless refugees from Vietnam and other countries, riddled by crime, drugs, and poverty.

Her parents summon her home with sad news: her studious brother Denny was apparently murdered at a restaurant after celebrating his high school graduation. The police don’t know what happened and don’t seem to care much about the fate of another refugee; amazingly, there were dozens of witnesses in the restaurant but no one apparently saw anything.

Wracked with guilt because she convinced her parents to let Denny go that night, and frustrated by their reticence to push for answers regarding his death, Ky is determined to uncover the truth. She sets out to track down the witnesses to Denny’s murder and find out what they know and why they won’t speak up.

In doing so, Ky uncovers a picture of a town under the vise of violence and anti-immigrant sentiment, where the police are ones to fear, not look to for protection. And at the same time, she learns more about her brother, and her family, than she ever knew.

This was sad and very insightful. It is told by Ky and a number of the witnesses, so the voice of the book changed often, and that kept taking me out of the story. But there was a lot to marvel over here for a debut novel.

Book Review: "The Floating Girls" by Lo Patrick

The Floating Girls is a lush, evocative coming-of-age story.

Kay is an outspoken and stubborn 12-year-old living in the marshes of Georgia. She’s excited to find a friend in Andy Webber, who lives in a neighboring marsh with his father. But Andy and his father are surrounded by rumors and gossip—they recently moved back to Georgia after fleeing to California for a while following the mysterious death of Andy’s mom.

Given all the rumors surrounding the Webbers, Kay’s father tells her to keep away from Andy. But what does a 12-year-old do when told to stay away from a friend? Spend more time with them, of course.

But when Kay’s older sister Sarah-Anne, who is usually non-verbal, disappears, the accusations fly and the secrets that Kay’s family has kept hidden for years—including those about the death of Andy’s mom—come to light. These secrets threaten to destroy Kay’s family and everything she’s known, so she and her brothers have to figure out how to survive through this crisis.

This book is both funny and sad, with a little mystery and some family secrets thrown in for good measure. I loved Kay—she knows she shouldn’t curse but she loves riling up her family—and she’s well aware of the poverty she’s growing up in.

I found this book tremendously affecting and memorable. If you love a good coming-of-age story, here’s one for you!

Book Review: "The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles

The Lincoln Highway is an ambitious story about fresh starts, righting wrongs, adventure, and big dreams.

Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow was one of my absolute favorite books when it was published a number of years ago, so I had very high hopes for his new book. And while I loved the story at its core, I felt it was so overstuffed with characters and meandered into so many side threads that it didn’t keep my attention the way I hoped it would.

In 1954, 18-year-old Emmett is being driven back to his Nebraska farm by the warden of the juvenile facility where he has spent the last 15 months. His father recently died and the farm has been foreclosed by the bank, so Emmett plans to pick up his 8-year-old brother Billy and go find a fresh start elsewhere.

What he doesn’t count on is that two of his friends from the work farm, Duchess and Woolly, have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car and have no intention of going back there. And they both have a different destination in mind than Emmett does.

The group agrees that Emmett will drop Duchess and Woolly off at the bus station as he and Billy start their journey. But a quick detour throws everything off-course, and sets everyone on a path to meet in New York, with adventures, danger, a little violence, and score-settling along the way.

The plot unfolds over 10 days and is narrated by a number of different characters. At times the story felt a little like This Tender Land, which I loved, but sometimes I found it so frustrating. But I know others loved this, so maybe you will, too!

Book Review: “The Girl with the Louding Voice” by Abi Daré

Abi Daré's The Girl with the Louding Voice lives up to all the hype and praise, and then some!!

Adunni is a 14-year-old girl growing up poor in Nigeria. Her mother recognized Adunni’s intelligence and fought for her to get an education, but that ended when she died. Regardless of what she wants from her future, because of their poverty, her father sells her into marriage as the third wife of an old man desperate for male children.

“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice. I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping."

Marriage, the demands of a husband, and the cruelty of one of his other wives are almost too much for Adunni to bear. And when tragedy strikes in her new home, she must flee, although she knows as a young woman most view her as nothing but property.

She winds up being taken to Lagos and is sold into servitude to a rich, cruel woman. She is treated horribly aand beaten routinely, but she tries not to let this woman or her philandering husband steal her dreams or make her believe she is nothing. It takes two people—the household chef and a woman in the same social group as her employer—to help try and save Adunni, but will it be too late?

What a book this was. It was brutal and emotional and utterly beautiful, but Adunni’s spirit is a shining light. She is honestly one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever read about. At times this is difficult to read and at times her broken English is distracting, but as she works to better herself it becomes easier to understand her.

Daré has created a masterpiece. The Girl with the Louding Voice is truly one of the best books I've read this year.

Book Review: "The Familiar Dark" by Amy Engel

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!! Amy Engel's new thriller was absolutely terrific.

“It’s never the thing you’re expecting that wallops you. It’s always something sneaky, sliding up behind you when your attention’s fixed on something else.”

Eve’s world is torn completely apart when her 12-year-old daughter, Junie, is found murdered. Living in the same poor town in the Missouri Ozarks where she grew up, Eve expected many paths her daughter might take, but she never imagined she’d be murdered alongside her best friend.

Although she is flattened by grief, Eve is determined to find who killed her daughter and make them pay. If that means riling up the town’s resident drug kingpin, with whom she has a volatile history, so be it. Her older brother Cal, a policeman, tries to keep Eve on the straight and narrow, but ultimately knows she'll do what she has to do to find justice.

Looking into Junie’s death will take Eve back to the trailer she grew up in, and her mother, an addict who is tough as nails and knows everything that goes on in the town. She raised Eve and Cal with alternating cruelty and neglect, and made it clear to Eve that she had very little desire to be a mother. Both siblings tried to veer as far away as possible from the path that their mother cut, Cal becoming a policeman and Eve trying to raise her daughter to have self-worth and opportunities. But above anything, they remember one thing about their mother: no one ever messes with her family and gets away with it.

The Familiar Dark is excellent and so worth the hype. It is full of twists and turns, emotion, and evocative imagery. I devoured this book and actually wished it was longer. It's certainly dark and sad, but it's a terrific thriller and I was really impressed with Engel's storytelling ability.

Book Review: "How to Build a Heart" by Maria Padian

When you’re getting pulled in a million different directions, how can you decide the right path?

Finding your own way, finding who you truly are can be difficult, especially for a teenager. Izzy tries to be a dutiful daughter, a good sister, a loyal friend, but she wants so much more. Her family’s life has been affected since her Marine father died 6 years ago, and she’s tired of moving into increasingly smaller and more depressing places.

But things are finally starting to fall into place. She’s a member of the popular a capella singing group at her school, and her family has been selected to get a house through Habitat for Humanity. And when she becomes friends with the group’s newest recruit, Aubrey, it comes with a side benefit: the girl’s handsome brother, a star athlete at another high school.

After a while though, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the pieces of her life together. She doesn’t want her friends—or Aubrey’s brother—to know her family is poor and that she's on scholarship, she doesn’t want her best friend to know she’s been spending time with someone she also has a crush on, and she wants to understand why her father’s family never contacts them.

When things come to a head, Izzy must find her own way and become the person she’s meant to be. Along the way she’ll find allies in unlikely places and anger and jealousy in others. But she’ll have to act fast before everything falls apart.

I really enjoyed How to Build a Heart. I found it so engaging and well-written. It’s so nice to read a YA book that isn’t entirely full of angst or seriously depressing situations, yet there was still a lot of emotion in the story. Maria Padian is a terrific writer. She had me hooked on this story from the first page, and I read it in just a matter of a few hours.

I’ve been looking forward to this since winning the book in a giveaway on Bookstagram. Thanks so much to Algonquin Young Readers for making it available!

Book Review: "Notes from a Young Black Chef" by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein

A memoir AND recipes? I’m so here for that.

Writing a memoir before the age of 30 may seem a little premature, but the life Kwame Onwuachi has led up to this point, and his accomplishments in the culinary world, a community not known for its diversity at the top, is noteworthy. (He is currently the chef of an acclaimed restaurant in Washington, DC, Kith/Kin, and he was recently named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine magazine.)

In Notes from a Young Black Chef, Onwuachi talks about his difficult childhood, shuttled between his mother, who struggled with making ends meet as a caterer, and his physically and verbally abusive father. When his mother was unable to control his trouble-making tendencies, he was sent to Nigeria to live with his paternal grandfather, and it was there he began to appreciate his heritage and the culinary delights of African cooking.

He was smart but rebellious, which led to him being kicked out of school after school. He followed a risky path—joining a gang, dealing drugs, always staying one step ahead of the law, until his drug-dealing operations led to him being kicked out of college. While he always had an affinity for food and cooking (even at a young age he used to help his mother in the kitchen), it wasn’t until he worked as a cook on a ship serving those cleaning up after the Deepwater Horizon disaster that he realized the culinary world was where he felt the most passionate, the most at home.

Onwuachi discusses starting a catering company, his journey through culinary school and learning from some of the greatest kitchens, being on "Top Chef," and the highs and lows involved with opening his first restaurant in Washington, DC, a tremendously ambitious project that taught him a great deal about the business and himself. (It was not the same restaurant he operates now.)

It’s funny; most of the memoirs I tend to read are those written by chefs, and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. As you might imagine, someone who has accomplished so much before the age of 30 isn’t always going to be humble, but Onwuachi never stops recognizing that were it not for the path he chose, he might not be alive now. (His "Acknowledgments" page is particularly poignant.)

I read this very quickly and, thanks to the descriptions of the food he cooked and the recipes he shared, I was really hungry afterward! If you enjoy books written by chefs or about the culinary world, definitely pick up Notes from a Young Black Chef.

Book Review: "Lot" by Bryan Washington

"It didn't take long to see that there's the world you live in, and then there are the constellations around it, and you'll never know you're missing them if you don't even know to look up."

Lot, Bryan Washington's new story collection, is raw, potent, and packs a powerful, emotional punch.

Taking place in Houston before and after Hurricane Harvey, many of the stories focus on one young man, the son of an erstwhile Latino father and a black mother, as he grows into adulthood, confronts the prejudice and the social and economic realities of the community he lives in, this community of immigrants.

At the same time, he comes to terms with his sexuality, although he never views his encounters with other boys and men as anything more than physical.

There are stories exploring the complicated relationships in broken families, the expectations of masculinity, the treatment of women as often little more than sexual objects and maids, and the menial and dangerous jobs boys and men living in these neighborhoods turn to. Washington's stories explore what makes a community, what makes a family, what makes a life.

Washington's stories aren't quite happy. Even those that appear to have a more positive spin have a tinge of sadness or elements of disaster or trouble just around the corner. But many of the stories work despite their tone because of Washington's tremendous writing ability—his use of language, his talent with imagery which conjures images of setting and character in your head.

While I didn't love all of the stories, some really stuck with me, including: "Alief," in which a community reveals a neighbor's affair to her husband but is unprepared for the destruction that might cause; "610 North, 610 West," where a son is brought face-to-face with his father's infidelity; "Shepherd," which tells of how the visit of a cousin from Jamaica causes chaos among family members; "South Congress," about an interesting relationship between a local drug dealer and a teenager who barely speaks English; and my favorite story, "Waugh," about a group of young hustlers.

I'm a big fan of short stories, although I've not read many collections this year. I was definitely struck by the power and poignancy of Washington's voice, and I think Lot hints at the amazing career ahead of him.

Book Review: "Lights All Night Long" by Lydia Fitzpatrick

Brooding yet hopeful, Lydia Fitzpatrick's debut novel, Lights All Night Long, is a gripping story about family, envy, and being caught between loyalty and the desire to make a better life for yourself. It is tremendously atmospheric, which is no mean feat considering the book really takes place in two completely separate places—Russia and Louisiana.

Ilya is 15 years old and lives in a small town in Russia with his mother, grandmother, and his older brother, Vladimir, whom he idolizes. Vladimir is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, more content to chase girls and commit petty crimes than go to school, but he knows Ilya is the smart one. The two dream of one day leaving their bleak surroundings for America, a country they only know through pirated VCR movies from the 1990s.

When an exchange program between the refinery in Ilya's town and an energy company in a small Louisiana town is created, Ilya's teacher knows there is only one student deserving of a chance to go to America, and it is him. Ilya is excited to finally go to America but is sad about leaving his brother behind, and Vladimir is torn between jealousy and wanting the best for Ilya. But the America that greets Ilya is very different than he imagined, and he's not quite sure what to make of his cheerful, religious host family, although they want him to feel comfortable.

Ilya tries to settle in and make the most of this new opportunity, but he can't stop worrying about Vladimir, who was arrested just before Ilya left for America, after he confessed to the brutal murder of three young women. Ilya knows there's no way that his brother could be a murderer, although he did fall prey to a powerful and dangerous new drug that started holding many in their town in its thrall. His mother wants him to forget about Vladimir and concentrate on building a better life, but he can't give up on a brother who taught him so much—good and bad—and with whom he dreamed of coming to America.

When Sadie, the oldest daughter of his host family, begins taking an interest in him, Ilya shares his worries about his brother and his suspicions that somehow Vladimir is taking the fall for someone else. The two of them begin to dig deeper into the facts and the innuendo surrounding the murders and the events leading up to Vladimir's confession, while at the same time, Sadie shares with Ilya some powerful secrets of her own.

Lights All Night Long shifts between Ilya's life in Louisiana and the year leading up to when he went to America. You see how Vladimir changed once Ilya was tapped to be the exchange student, how Vladimir wanted the chance for himself despite never having made the effort, yet he also was proud of his brother. Ilya's desperation to find the truth leads to painful discoveries, but ultimately, hope that he can save his brother from the things that might do him harm.

While I felt like the book took a while to really get moving, in the end I really enjoyed this story. It was definitely more of a mystery than I had anticipated, which is fine, and I thought the story would concentrate more on Ilya's life in Louisiana than recounting the past, but it all worked for me, mainly because Fitzpatrick is a terrific storyteller. As I mentioned earlier, she was able to vividly capture both the chill of Ilya's Russian town and the heat of the Louisiana bayou, and she deftly captured Ilya's experience adjusting to life in America.

It's often hard to realize how lucky we are when we're confronted with a crisis at the same time. Lights All Night Long is a moving story of the sacrifices we make for those we love, sacrifices which go unnoticed until it might be too late. With this book, Fitzpatrick proves that she's definitely an author to follow in the future to see what she does next.

Book Review: "Sugar Run" by Mesha Maren

There are some books which fill you with a sense of foreboding the minute you start reading them, sort of the way you may be poised to put your hands over your eyes when watching a scary movie—you know something bad will happen, but you just don't know when.

That's the way I felt while reading Mesha Maren's Sugar Run. This novel about a woman's quest for a new beginning even though she quickly falls into all of her old habits isn't scary, but you can just feel that things could fall off the rails at any minute, and you wish it wouldn't. (Or at least I wished it wouldn't.)

Jodi was sentenced to life in prison when she was 17 years old, in 1989. Unexpectedly, she is released 18 years later, and she has a plan for what to do with this newfound freedom: move back to her childhood home in rural West Virginia and live on her grandmother's land, where she spent the majority of her youth. But first, she is determined to fulfill a promise made before she went to prison: rescue the developmentally and emotionally challenged younger brother of an old friend.

"Coming home was like disappearing in a way, she thought, slipping back into the past. Until a week and a half ago she had thought she would not return here until death—a body shipped to a family that barely remembered it, a body to be laid back into the mountains to rest—but now here she was, not just a body but a jumble of wild thoughts and emotions, coming home."

Less than 24 hours after being released from prison, heading to a small Georgia town, she encounters Miranda, a beautiful but troubled young mother of three, with a taste for pills and alcohol and a complicated relationship with her ex-husband, a once-famous singer. Despite every sign pointing her in the opposite direction, Jodi falls for Miranda, and the two begin planning a future that includes raising Miranda's children and her friend's brother back in Jodi's hometown. It seems almost too good to be true.

But when they return home to West Virginia, nothing is quite as it seems. Jodi and Miranda's idyllic plans are quickly dashed, and it isn't long before Jodi finds herself caught up in her family's potentially dangerous dysfunction, which could send her back to prison, if not endanger her life. Helping care for four children—not to mention a flighty, unstable girlfriend—in an area where same-sex relationships are far from welcomed, leaves Jodi unsure of which end is up and what she should do next.

"She told herself this was different, this was new, but still she could feel the weight of those mountains, even unseen, the heaviness of all that familiarity."

Can you ever truly outrun your mistakes and get a chance for a fresh start, even in the same old place? Where do you find the strength to recognize the signs that you're being pulled down again into another potentially destructive situation, even if there are glimpses of good amidst the chaos? Why doesn't anything work out the way you hope it will?

Switching back and forth between the months leading up to Jodi's arrest and the present, following her release from prison, Sugar Run is a story of a woman searching for second chances but not looking very far, or thinking clearly about what the right decisions are. It's also a story of a woman who really had no chance given the environment in which she was raised, and returning to it doesn't seem like the smartest idea. But can you escape your past?

While nothing horrible happens in the book, there are lots of close calls, and I still had this pervasive sense that everything could fall apart in a matter of minutes. Even though Jodi certainly is to blame for her own situation, the complexities that Maren has given her make her an appealing character despite her faults. She definitely knows how to tell a story and create an environment with tremendously vivid, evocative imagery.

Strangely, given all of the tension I felt while reading the book, the pacing was very slow, almost plodding. I also wasn't sure what Maren was trying to say with her characters—was she saying it's okay to live life the way they did because of their circumstances, or was she simply depicting what happens all too often in impoverished, rural areas?

Sugar Run is quite a debut novel, and it definitely hints at a promising career for Maren. She definitely gives her readers lots to think about!

Book Review: "Soon the Light Will Be Perfect" by Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson's Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is spare, beautiful, and haunting. It's one of those books that feels a little like a ticking time bomb, because while everything that happens seems relatively benign, there's an underlying sense of tension that makes you wonder when, or if, everything is going to explode. But that doesn't detract at all from its appeal.

A 12-year-old boy and his family live in rural Vermont at the start of the Gulf War. For the first time in a long time, things are stable for their family—they finally have enough money to move out of the trailer park (which dooms you to ostracism, as even his fellow students in the gifted program at school want nothing to do with trailer park kids) and live in a home of their own.

It's not quite a comfortable existence, in that they still have to watch every penny, but with their father's job at a weapons manufacturing plant, things finally seem to be going their way. The boy's 15-year-old brother is rebellious, experimenting with girls, drugs, cigarettes, and mischief, but he still serves as an altar boy at their local church, so all is not lost. And then their mother is diagnosed with cancer, and everything starts to fall apart.

This is a family for whom religion is tremendously important, and as their mother's illness worsens, they depend more and more on their church. Whether it's attending anti-abortion rallies, which get increasingly more disturbing, or watching the members of the church pray for their mother's recovery, the boy doesn't quite understand the power of religion, but he wants it to work for his mother. (A segment where he finds his confirmation saint and tries to emulate him is a disturbing and emotional one.)

This is the story of a boy on the cusp of young adulthood, even if being an adult certainly doesn't seem all it's cracked up to be. When he meets a young girl named Taylor, he is intrigued by the way she seems so much more mature and worldly than he does, even if she may be only a year or two older than him. But he quickly realizes that Taylor's bravado is a mask for something else, although he isn't sure how to help her, or if she really wants his help.

Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is a poignant story about a family in the midst of crisis, in which two siblings are forced to essentially raise themselves without any real supervision or explanation of all that is falling apart around them. They toy with rebellion but truthfully want a "normal" life back—that is, anything that doesn't send their family back to the trailer park. It's a novel about family, about belief, about realizing your parents don't have it any more together than you do at times, but you still rely on them.

Patterson is a tremendously self-assured writer, and it's hard to believe this is his debut novel. At times it moved a little slower than I liked, and I felt like things were a little more graphic than they needed to be at times, but I couldn't pull myself away from the book, even though I read it expecting everything might go horribly awry at any second.

Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is the first real glimpse of Patterson's talent, and it's worthwhile to read. I can't wait to see what's next.

NetGalley and HARLEQUIN – Trade Publishing (U.S. & Canada)/Hanover Square Press provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Book Review: "Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover

Wow.

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant, Educated is at times difficult to read and not at all what I expected, but I couldn't tear myself away from it.

"Mother had always said we could go to school if we wanted. We just had to ask Dad, she said. Then we could go. But I didn't ask. There was something in the hard line of my father's face, in the quiet sigh of supplication he made every morning before he began family prayer, that made me think my curiosity was an obscenity, an affront to all he'd sacrificed to raise me."

Until she was 17 years old, Tara Westover never went to school. Her father was convinced that the government was out to get them in every way, so his children got their education at home—not through books and studying, but through preparing for the End of Days by making survivalist kits, canning endless jars of fruit, and being prepared for a siege at any time.

Tara's mother was a midwife and healer, so she helped her mother prepare the various tinctures and remedies she used. At other times she worked in her father's junkyard with her siblings, salvaging scrap metal and dealing with the various injuries that came with this work, because her parents didn't believe that doctors or hospitals could heal better than herbs and the Lord's power. The problem was, they were so isolated that there was no one to help ensure the children learned any actual facts, or protect them when behavior turned violent.

When one of Tara's older brother's left the family compound in Idaho to study at Brigham Young University, for the first time Tara realized there was a world outside her father's blustery preaching. Despite having never set foot in a classroom, she began to study for the ACT exam, teaching herself enough math, grammar, and science to achieve the score she needed to attend BYU herself. But this decision didn't please her father, who believed college professors were liars and hypocrites sure to take Tara down a blasphemous path.

In Educated, Westover shares her story about being caught between loyalty to family and God, and the desire to find your own way, to learn things on your own. She touches on learning about things like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement for the first time, and how difficult she found being on her own, dealing with the disapproval of her father.

While this book deals with the educational triumphs Westover ultimately achieves despite all of the obstacles thrown in her way, this is a tough story to read as well, because she also shares what it is like to constantly have your self-worth undermined by those who claim to love you and want what's best for you. How can you ever truly believe you deserve a life in which you don't have to worry about abuse, humiliation, and degradation, when it is your own family causing these things? Where do you find the strength to say you've had enough when you know doing so might cost you your family?

I'm late to the party in reading this, and I will admit this wasn't quite the book I expected, as I thought it would focus more on Westover's education than her upbringing and the emotional and physical abuse she endured for years. Obviously, this, too, was part of her education, but at times I found the continuous pattern of behaviors really difficult to keep reading about. I realize that those around her must have felt the same way—just when they thought she might be making a breakthrough she let the same things happen to her over and over and over again.

Even though this wasn't an enjoyable book per se, it was written so skillfully, and Westover's story was so compelling that I read the entire book in a day thanks to a flight and a long car ride.

This is an important, poignant, thought-provoking book which demonstrates how one woman found the courage to achieve despite being surrounded by those who told her she shouldn't or she couldn't. What a punch this packed.

Book Review: "Brass" by Xhenet Aliu

"...often the love your mother gives feels like it's being rejected by your body, as if you're the B-positive recipient of an A-negative blood donation."

The often-complicated relationship between mothers and daughters has been fodder for literature, movies, and music for many, many years. What is it about this type of relationship that can bring such fierce love, friendship, and loyalty, as well as resentment, anger, and frustration, often simultaneously?

Obviously, those questions are somewhat lost on me, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading about the dynamics of these relationships! Xhenet Aliu's first novel, Brass, examines the sometimes unfulfilling, tenuous bonds between a woman, her mother, and her daughter, and the result is moving and tremendously compelling.

Elsie is an unmotivated high school graduate unsure if she'll ever amount to anything much. Waitressing at the Betsy Ross Diner in her hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut, her mother is a frustrated alcoholic who has pretty much left Elsie and her younger sister to raise themselves, with occasional meddling. Constantly living hand-to-mouth, it's not hard to dream of something better, but she doesn't have many expectations in that regard.

When she meets Bashkim, a line cook who escaped the political unrest in his native Albania to work at his relatives' diner, she is drawn to his weary worldliness, and finds his anger, as well as his simultaneous bravado and despair, immensely magnetic. Her grandparents immigrated from Lithuania, so she thinks she understands Bashkim's situation and that of his coworkers. She knows he has a wife back in Albania, but she doesn't care, and it's not long before she has fallen in love with him.

"I didn't want to think about how it was unfair that some people had it so much worse when I'd already committed to fixating on people who had it so much better."

Elsie finds herself pregnant, and although Bashkim professes happiness for their situation, and promises to take care of her and the baby, she isn't completely sure that's what she wants. As he struggles with the troubles back home and what to do with his wife, Elsie realizes what she wants more than anything is a ticket out of Waterbury, away from the life she has had to date, and wonders whether Bashkim will be the one to help her achieve that.

Seventeen years later, Elsie's daughter Luljeta dreams of escaping her Connecticut hometown, just as her mother once did (although she doesn't know that). But when her plans to attend NYU don't materialize, she can't fathom the thought of spending her adult life with her mother, with not enough money or opportunities to enjoy life. For the first time, she starts to wonder what her mother has been hiding all these years where her father is concerned, and she's determined to uncover the truth.

When she finds out the truth is far from what she's been told through the years, she decides to find him, and see if perhaps that relationship might bring her more joy and promise than the one she has with Elsie. She doesn't know what to expect, and in fact, doesn't even know how to get there, but she knows she must do it on her own.

"She could have explained that he was a frightened man, and a frightened man, like a frightened dog, was a potentially dangerous thing. She could have said those things instead of repeating, if the topic ever came up, that your father was simply an asshole, the same term she applies to people who don't matter at all, like guys who cut her off in traffic and Bill O'Reilly. But if she lied about where he was, who's to say she wasn't lying about what he was? What if he wasn't just some asshole, and you weren't better off without him?"

Switching narration between Elsie and Luljeta, between past and present, Brass is a moving account of the sacrifices made for love and parenthood, and how often we ignore the signs that what we're running toward may be no more appealing than what we're running from. Instead of giving one side of the story, Aliu gives us both sides, which really deepens the poignancy of the narrative.

While at times the book moved a little slower than I would have liked, I thought Aliu was a terrific storyteller, and I was completely drawn into Elsie and Luljeta's stories. These are women accustomed to not having control of their lives, so there were many times when I wanted to shake them into action, into saying what needed to be said.

No one relationship is perfect, and it requires an equal amount of give and take to make it work. I'd imagine where mothers and daughters are concerned, finding that balance may be difficult for a while, if not forever. Brass is a fascinating look at two women whose lives need that balance, and who realize they need others to help them, too.

Book Review: "Elmet" by Fiona Mozley

Fiona Mozley's Elmet is one of the most lyrical, atmospheric books I've read in some time. The descriptions of this area of rural Yorkshire, and the environment that surrounds the main characters, are tremendously poetic and vivid, yet Mozley doesn't use more words than necessary to get the mood or her story across. It's almost as if she strove for a simple, no-nonsense tone befitting her salt-of-the-earth characters.

In the book's epigraph from Ted Hughes, we learn that Elmet was "the last independent Celtic kingdom in England...stretched out over the vale of York," as well as "a sanctuary for refugees from the law." This is where 14-year-old Daniel lives with his 15-year-old sister Cathy and their father, in a house their father built himself. They are self-sufficient, living off the land around them.

Their father, John, is known for his ferociousness as a bareknuckle fighter. He is a gentle giant yet a man not above using his fists to get what he needs or wants, or to punish those who have done wrong in his eyes. This behavior is inherited not by Daniel, who is happier tending to the family's dogs and serving as cook rather than protector, but by Cathy, who strikes back at her classmates who bully her.

Their life is a simple, happy one, until Price, the greedy tyrant who owns most of the land in the area, begins to cause trouble. The more he wants to bleed his tenants dry, the more it angers them, especially John, who finds himself assuming a leadership position among his fellow tenants, uniting them against Price. They decide on a rent strike, and John defends the group when the bailiffs come to enforce laws on Price's behalf.

As with any struggle between the haves and have-nots, the tension simmers until it hits a breaking point. And that's where Elmet loses its way somewhat, veering a bit into melodrama and slightly less plausible events. While the book's conclusion isn't surprising, it still seemed a bit far-fetched to me, and that was disappointing. I also found a few of the characters, including Price, seemed a little two-dimensional, where there was potential to make them complex, flawed people.

Amazingly, Elmet is Mozley's debut novel, and it was a finalist for this year's Man Booker Prize. A few glitches notwithstanding, Mozley's storytelling is so assured, so compelling, that I have little doubt she's going to have an amazing career ahead of her. Is the book perfect? No, but it is tremendously memorable and beautifully written. It's one that has haunted me since I read it a week or two ago.

NetGalley and Algonquin Books provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!