Book Review: "The Perfect Home" by Daniel Kenitz

Wyatt and Dawn Decker are reality TV darlings. Their home renovation show, The Perfect Home,” is a cable favorite, and viewers love the way the two balance each other out—Wyatt’s handsomeness and goofy Southern charm, and Dawn’s sensibility and nurturing instincts.

Dawn would gladly trade her pseudo-celebrity status for motherhood. When tests reveal that their problems conceiving are related to Wyatt’s low sperm count, he tries an experimental fertility drug. Dawn gets pregnant with twins fairly quickly, and while Wyatt supposedly weans himself off the drug, he starts having mood swings, anger issues, and periods of unpredictability.

When Dawn uncovers Wyatt’s horrifying plan to create a tragedy which will raise their ratings and increase their celebrity, the only thing she can think to do is take the twins and flee. But Wyatt, the more popular member of the couple, turns the public against her and paints himself as the victim. Even her closest friends are convinced by Wyatt’s allegations.

With nowhere to turn and no one to count on for support, Dawn must find new allies if she has any chance of holding on to her children. But it’s going to require dredging up the past—both hers and Wyatt’s—and finding help in the unlikeliest of places.

What do you do when the person you loved turns into a monster, someone you don’t even know? How can you convince everyone that they’re being manipulated to believe you’re the problem? How do you know whom you can trust?

I liked the set-up of the story and enjoyed the reality show aspects. I found Wyatt’s about-face really disappointing and once the book focused more on his manipulating people to believe Dawn was a danger, I lost interest in the book. Given that I didn’t like the book version of Gone Girl (but loved the film adaptation), I should’ve known to avoid a book marketed as "Fixer Upper meets Gone Girl”!

Book Review: "How to Sleep at Night" by Elizabeth Harris

At a time where the tiniest thought of politics is enough to make me cringe, I chose to read a book that had a political campaign at its core. And I really enjoyed it, so, yay me!

Ethan and Gabe have been together for years, since Gabe was a senior in college and Ethan was a few years older. They’re happily married, raising a young daughter named Chloe. Politically, Ethan has becoming more conservative, while Gabe has remained progressive all these years.

One night, Ethan tells Gabe he’d like to run for Congress—as a Republican. He believes that being gay, married, a former Democrat, makes him an even more appealing candidate. But he’ll only run if Gabe agrees, so of course, Gabe supports his husband’s ambitions.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s sister Kate—a political reporter for a newspaper—longs to regain the passion for, and fulfillment with, her job. But two things—her brother’s nascent political campaign and the return of Nicole, a woman she loved in college—threaten to upend her. And Nicole, bored with her suburban life and her passionless marriage, tempts Kate with a second chance at romance.

As Ethan’s campaign gains momentum, Gabe starts feeling more and more out of sync with his husband’s ideas. He hates the fact that everyone seems to assume he feels the same way as Ethan about the issues of the day. This cognitive dissonance causes more tension in their marriage and the campaign.

This was tremendously compelling from the very start. I’ll admit I didn’t find any of the characters all that sympathetic, but I was completely invested in their lives, and wondered just how Elizabeth Harris would tie everything up. What a great debut novel!!

Book Review: "The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King" by Harry Trevaldwyn

Thanks so much to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the complimentary advance copy of this book!

Patrick (call him “Patch”) is ready for an amazing school year. The thing he’s most looking forward to is finding a boyfriend, one whom he can take to Prom. The challenge is, the only openly gay boys in school are dating each other. So what now?

And then two boys arrive at the first drama club meeting of the year. Peter, an American from New York (fabulous) moved to England to live with his best friend Sam’s family. Patch is determined that one of them will be his boyfriend. (He’s fine with either of them.)

The thing is, Patch is full of personality. Maybe too full? He desperately wants to make a good impression on Peter and Sam but mostly winds up tripping over his words and embarrassing himself. The quest to get one of them to be his boyfriend gets more complicated when Sam doesn’t appear to like Patch, and Peter (who is bi) starts dating Tessa, Patch’s former friend and current nemesis.

As Patch tries to negotiate matters of the heart without tripping over himself, he has his devoted best friend Jean to confide in, as well as Ms. Beckett, a former teacher he’s appointed his life coach. He also relies on his mother’s self-help books, but they’re not particularly helpful in his case.

Patch is one of the most hysterically vain and egotistical characters who made me laugh at every turn. (To try and land the lead role in Sweeney Todd, he decided to shadow some barbers, for example.) This is a fun and sweet book about being yourself no matter how wacky and annoying you might be.

The book will publish 1/28.

Book Review: "The Three Lives of Cate Kay" by Kate Fagan

This book was utterly fantastic. Hard to believe that this early in 2025 I’ve found a book that will be one of my absolute favorites, but there’s no doubt.

Cate Kay has written an explosive bestseller called The Very Last. It’s being marketed as “The Road, but a beach read.” The movie adaptation has already been lined up.

But Cate Kay doesn’t exist. It’s a pseudonym for Cass Ford, which isn’t even her real name. Her story, however, is one of friendship, love, found family, dreams, fear, guilt, and second chances.

This book is essentially Cate/Cass’ memoir, but she’s asked many people who’ve touched her life to share their memories, since each played a part. From her childhood best friend Amanda to those involved in creating the Cate Kay story, as well as those who had her heart, it’s fascinating to get their perspectives.

I’ve seen the book be compared to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but apart from the similarity in titles and the sexual orientation of the main characters, I don’t see it. This deserves to stand in its own spotlight.

There were so many moments in this book that took my breath away. While Kate Fagan has written several books, this is her debut novel. It is really just so good and will be so memorable.

Book Review: "Sea Change" by Gina Chung

One of my goals for 2025 is to read more books I own. Like many of you, I’m sure, I have lots of books at home that often get passed over for shiny new things, so I’m definitely going to try and shop from my stacks a bit more.

When I bought Sea Change, I’ll admit I was drawn in by the octopus on the cover. I was still riding the high of loving Remarkably Bright Creatures, so I was looking forward to another story about a relationship between the main character and an octopus.

I was wrong.

Ro’s life isn’t going the way she thought it would as she entered her 30s. Her boyfriend broke up with her to train for a space mission to Mars, her always-prickly relationship with her mother has grown into estrangement, and she probably has a drinking problem. The one thing that brings her solace is her job at an aquarium in the mall.

Ro enjoys spending time with Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus. She feels that Dolores gets her, plus the octopus was one of the last things her marine biologist father found before he disappeared on a trip when Ro was in high school.

When the aquarium sells Dolores to a wealthy private investor, Ro goes into emotional freefall. She misses her boyfriend even though she wasn’t the best girlfriend, she barely speaks to her childhood best friend, and she doesn’t know how to pick herself up and pull her life together.

This was a depressing book, and Ro isn’t the most sympathetic of characters. The book jumps around in time a lot, and other than Ro’s brief time with Dolores, there wasn’t much in the book that really grabbed me.

Book Review: "Holmes, Marple & Poe" by James Patterson and Brian Sitts

Many thanks to my friend Mandy for putting this series on my radar. What a fantastic and fun book this was!

Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple, and Auguste Poe are best friends and private investigators in New York City. Beyond the connection of their last names to famous people, their pasts are untraceable. Are these even their real names?

Whatever their background is, however, there’s no denying their investigative abilities. And when the trio is able to solve a missing person’s case before the police even have an inkling of what happened, their PI firm suddenly gets much busier.

NYPD Detective Helene Grey is both intrigued by the three investigators and irked that they always seem to be a step ahead of the police, and they’re not eager to share their findings. But even when she forbids them to get involved, they seem to find a toehold into a case, and information breaks their way. So she realizes it may be easier to join them, since she can’t beat them.

The trio finds itself in the middle of an assortment of cases—art fraud, kidnapping, the discovery of multiple skeletons beneath the city streets. They always try to have each other’s backs, but sometimes what faces each of them is more formidable.

I really thought this was a great book. It was full of twists and action and the characters are far more layered than I would have expected. The second book in the series just came out and you can bet I’ll be snapping that up!

Book Review: "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar

“Can you imagine having that kind of faith?” Cyrus asked. “To be that certain of something you’ve never seen? I’m not that certain of anything. I’m not that certain of gravity.”

This book was on lots of critics’ and Bookstagram friends’ 2024 best-of lists. I had meant to read it last year but didn’t get around to it, so it was my first read of the new year.

The son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus grew up under the specter of grief. When he was an infant, his mother was killed when her plane was inadvertently shot down over the Persian Gulf. His father, who worked at a farm killing chickens, died shortly after Cyrus left for college.

A recovering alcoholic and addict, Cyrus wants to be a poet and fancies himself a provocateur. He becomes obsessed with martyrs (unsurprisingly) as a topic for his poetry, and is drawn to a terminally ill artist whose final work is spending the rest of her life in a museum.

He also is inspired by his uncle, who was shattered by his time in the Iranian military. His uncle used to dress as the Angel of Death and ride through the battlefields, so that vision would be the last thing dying soldiers saw. And when Cyrus finds a painting of his mother in an art gallery, he realizes that all he was told about her may not be true.

Kaveh Akbar is a poet, so it’s not surprising that his prose is really beautiful. I just felt like the book was really disjointed; the narration shifted among many characters and between past and present. This was tremendously thought-provoking, however.