Book Review: "Blade" by Wendy Walker

Maybe it’s because the Winter Olympics are about to start, but when I saw this mystery/thriller involving figure skating, I was ready to do a triple salchow. Luckily for all of us, I took the simpler route and just read Wendy Walker’s newest book.

As a teenage figure skater with Olympic dreams, Ana was accepted to train at The Palace, a famous skating facility in Colorado. Training was physically rigorous and emotionally draining, because the head coach believed that breaking down a skater’s fears could help them reach their goals.

By the time Ana turned 16, she left The Palace and her skating career behind. She found a new passion in law and now is a successful (and well-known) defense attorney specializing in working with minors. But the last thing she is expecting is to return to The Palace nearly 15 years later.

Grace, the talented daughter of one of Ana’s best friends from her skating days, is accused of brutally murdering The Palace’s assistant coach. This same man coached Ana and her friends back in the day, playing good cop to the head coach’s bad cop. Grace maintains her innocence even though the evidence certainly suggests her guilt.

But in order for Ana to defend Grace, she must confront her own traumatic memories of The Palace. What happened all those years ago? Could Ana have played a part in the coach’s murder? With a blizzard on the horizon, time is running out to find answers and unearth secrets long-hidden.

I love athletic drama, and there was no shortage of that here. The book shifts back and forth between past and present, contrasting Ana’s time at the Palace with her efforts to clear Grace’s name. I enjoyed the story although at times the back and forth confused me a little. But no characters were quite what they seemed!

Book Review: "The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World, Second Edition" by Alan Downs, PhD

I don’t read much nonfiction beyond an occasional memoir, but this was our book club pick for August. We read the second edition, which was revised in 2011; the original was written in 2005.

The book is organized in three stages that the author believes describes the journey of most gay men. The stages are arranged by the primary manner in which gay men handle shame, from being “in the closet” and fearful of their own sexuality, to overcompensating by being more “successful, outrageous, fabulous, beautiful, or masculine,” to building a life based on their own values instead of feeling like they have to prove themselves.

“While we are different, we are at the same time very similar to all others. We want to be loved and to love. We want to find some joy in life. We hope to fall asleep at night fulfilled from our day’s endeavors. In these aspirations and appetites we are like all men and women. The problem is, our path to fulfilling these basic human needs has proven to be fundamentally different from the well-worn paths of straight humanity.”

While I recognized moments from my own coming out journey in the book, I also felt at many times the author was making generalizations that didn’t necessarily apply to me. I do understand that some may have a poor relationship with their fathers because of their sexuality, but that wasn’t the case for me.

What we found from our book club discussion is—unsurprisingly—every person’s experience is different, so the book resonated in different ways with each person. Some felt this was a powerful and valuable resource; others didn’t feel as connected to the book.

I probably wouldn’t have read this if it weren’t for the book club, but it definitely made me think. And sometimes that’s what reading does for us.

Book Review: "The Happiness Thief" by Nicole Bokat

Nicole Bokat's The Happiness Thief is both a twisty mystery and an exploration of how guilt and memory can drag us down.

When Natalie was 13 years old she was in a car crash that killed her mother. She has flashbacks to the last seconds before the crash, and she remembers being told it was somehow her fault.

Even in adulthood, the guilt is a constant companion, causing panic attacks and depression. Her stepsister Isabel is a therapist known as The Happiness Guru, and she offers to try and help Natalie move on, as these feelings have ruined her marriage and could jeopardize her relationship with her teenage daughter.

Tagging along with Isabel to a conference in the Cayman Islands, one night they’re involved in a small car accident. Natalie is convinced they hit something—an animal, a person—yet no traces can be found. She can’t help feeling like she’s responsible for tragedy yet again, and this starts triggering memories of the night her mother died all those years ago.

When she returns home, a series of incidents motivate her to start looking into what really happened the night her mother died, and whether anything really happened in the Cayman Islands. Will she find that her memories are true, that she is responsible for her mother’s death? And if not, who was?

There’s a lot that happens in this book so I’m trying to be vague. It’s both a layered mystery and an interesting, well-written story about trying to find a way past guilt and sadness you’ve carried with you for far too long. There are lots of twists—some surprising and some less so—but it’s a satisfying, emotional, and thought-provoking read.

My thanks to Suzy Approved Book Tours, Nicole Bokat, and She Writes Press for inviting me on the tour for The Happiness Thief and providing a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review!!

Book Review: "Goodnight Beautiful" by Aimee Molloy

What did I just read? After finishing Aimee Molloy's Goodnight Beautiful, I'm left wondering if my health insurance will cover fixing my whiplash from all the twists and turns in this book!

Sam and Annie didn’t date long before they got married, and shortly thereafter they decided to leave New York City and move back to Chestnut Hill, Sam’s small hometown upstate.

Life is slow now—especially for Annie, since she doesn’t have a job or any friends in town. Sam’s days are full as his therapy practice is going like gangbusters. (He’s so handsome, one woman joked she needed to get a personality disorder so she could be one of his patients.)

One day in a little-used room in the house, it’s discovered that all of Sam’s sessions can be heard, word-for-word, through an air vent. This is an interesting discovery and one that’s hard to turn away from. When a young French woman begins sessions with Sam, things start to get a little risky. Then one night during a bad storm, Sam disappears.

I’ll leave it at that. Aimee Molloy throws some wild twists into the plot that kept me guessing—and at times made me re-read certain portions to be sure I understood what was happening. I don’t surprise easily but she really kept the tension and the pace up.

Goodnight Beautiful is a book I've seen lots of people raving about, and now I see why! It was really wild. Not everyone loves it, but this came at a perfect time for me.

Book Review: "Intimations: Six Essays" by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's new collection of essays, Intimations, may be short, but it packs such a punch.

“Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.”

This is another book I read because, as I like to call it, "Bookstagram Made Me Do It" — my second this week, in fact! I have three friends to thank for this one.

Intimations is a 100+-page collection of short essays by Smith. I’m a fan of her fiction and don’t normally read essays very often, but I was fascinated by her take on our world as it has been affected by COVID-19.

Her essays fascinated me, serving as a source of amusement and inspiration as much as they made me think. She talks about the compelling need to always be doing something that has been exacerbated even more since the pandemic. She talks about anger, privilege, race, relationships, economics, psychology. She even touches on why so many writers love addressing the question of why they choose to write.

But it is the essay that serves as the postscript, “Contempt as a Virus,” that was the most impactful for me. In it she equates COVID with the plague of racism, particularly following the murder of George Floyd. In just a few pages she communicates so powerfully.

“Has America metabolized contempt? Has it lived with the virus so long that it no longer fears it? Is there a strong enough desire for a different America within America?”

If you’re looking for a thought-provoking piece, this is a book for you. Smith is donating all the royalties to charity, so you’re doing a good deed, too, in purchasing this.