Book Review: "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America" by Erik Larson

It may be nonfiction, but boy, it reads like a thriller.

How have I gone this long without reading this book? I’ve thought about it so many times and read other Erik Larson books, but for some reason, this has been one I’ve never picked up. I got it a few weeks ago when my colleagues and I did a book swap—one friend had the unenviable task of picking a book out for me. He hit this one out of the park!

The subtitle of this book is “Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.” It’s about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and Larson tells the story of two men, Daniel Hudson Burnham, the famed architect behind the Fair, and Henry Holmes, a doctor and serial killer who used the Fair as a way to lure women to their deaths.

This was such a fascinating read, and I’ve heard that they’re finally adapting it into a movie with Keanu Reeves as a star. If you’ve never read this, give it a shot!!

Book Review: "Hello, Goodbye" by Kate Stollenwerck

Hello, Goodbye is an emotional, sweet story about family secrets, the beauty of connection, and The Beatles.

Hailey’s summer plans fall apart when her best friend gets in trouble and is sent to a wilderness camp. And then things get worse when her parents ask her to spend a few days a week with Gigi, her grandmother. Even though Gigi lives 15 minutes away, they don’t see her often, so Hailey has no idea what to expect.

She’s in for a surprise when she learns that Gigi is a woman who lives life to the fullest, who believes that the trinity of a perfect day is a good book, a cool car, and a great song. It’s not long before Gigi has taught Hailey about The Beatles, her favorite band, and shared some secrets about her ancestors. Hailey doesn’t understand why her mother doesn’t know these stories, or why she won’t spend any time with her grandmother.

When tragedy strikes, Hailey is left to question whose version of the truth is more correct—Gigi’s or her mother’s. And when she finds a letter from her great-grandfather, she’s determined to solve the mysteries of her family once and for all, even if she has no idea what she’s getting into.

I loved Gigi’s character. She reminded me a lot of my Grandma Gloria, who was a dynamo in her own right. There is lots of emotion in this story as well as the opportunity to try and heal old wounds.

Thanks so much to BookSparks, Kate Stollenwerck, and Spark Press for the pop-up review opportunity!

Book Review: "The Heist" by C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose

With The Heist, this fun, glamorous caper series set in the late 1950s comes to a close.⁣

⁣ I’ve really enjoyed this series of novellas, which started with The Steal and The Bait. In this book, Ania Thorne has been hiding as she plots her next move to try and take down the notorious jewel thief, the Leopard. And she’s figured the perfect bait—she’ll design special jewelry for the Oscar-nominated actress of a major film.⁣

⁣ Jerome Curtis has been living a bleak existence in London, mourning the end of his relationship and the fact he threw away his career for the woman who abandoned him. A friend offers him a security job at her father’s movie studio, but unbeknownst to him, this job will put him right in the middle of Ania’s plan to trap the Leopard, who has gotten the jump on both of them before.⁣

⁣ This is really a series you should read in order, but since each book is less than 200 pages, it’s not that huge of a commitment. I love the glamour of old Hollywood that runs throughout the series, as well as the relationships and characters.⁣

⁣ Thanks so much to Get Red PR Books and Blue Box Press for the complimentary copy of the book. Here's hoping that C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose team up again, or at the very least give us another installment in this series! ⁣

Book Review: "The Swimmers" by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka's first novel since 2012, The Swimmers is a uniquely told book about our obsessions, but it’s also a poignant story about aging, memory, and loss.

I’ve been wanting to read this for a while but wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s so beautifully written, although the way it’s structured, it feels like two separate stories with one narrative link.

In the first part of the book we hear from a collective group of people who swim at a community pool. Some have been swimming for years, some are newer, but all share an obsession with their lives at the pool, preferring to be there than anywhere else. The chapter is told in a collective “we” voice, almost a Greek chorus, reciting the litany of rules and routines, providing vignette-like descriptions of the swimmers.

When a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, the swimmers are dismayed. Some see it as a sign that they should find another pool or stop swimming altogether. And when the pool closes, they are sent back into their “real lives,” their pleasures and routines ended.

One such swimmer is Alice, a woman in the early days of dementia. Swimming gave her comfort, a circle of friends, a structured routine when everything else in her life is starting to fade away. The remainder of the book follows her as the dementia worsens, as she remembers some things and not others, and tells of her relationships with her husband and daughter, and their feelings of loss.

There is an enormous amount of emotion in this book, so if you’ve had a loved one encounter dementia, this may be triggering. It definitely feels a bit semi-autobiographical, as the daughter is a writer trying to better connect with her mother as she slips away. Just an intriguing and beautiful read.

Book Review: "The Last White Man" by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid's latest novel, The Last White Man, is powerful, thought-provoking, and so timely.

“One morning Anders, a white man, woke up tofind he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.”

So begins the latest book by the author of Exit West, a book I absolutely loved. Anders doesn’t understand what happened to him, and for a while he can hardly believe he is the person looking back at him in the mirror. He feels totally different and feels everyone is judging him differently (although that could just be his paranoia).

He keeps his secret from everyone around him except Oona, an old friend with whom he’s recently become much closer. But as the same phenomenon starts occurring to many others, people wonder what could be causing this and what it means.

This is a fascinating story, with a walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes feel, and it’s tremendously thought-provoking. How often do we feel like strangers in our own skin when nothing has changed, so this is pretty profound.

I wanted a bit more from the book, but I honestly just love the way Hamid writes and captures both emotion and the zeitgeist of the moment. This would definitely be a great book for book club discussion.

Book Review: "Immoral Origins" by Lee Matthew Goldberg

How far would you go to help those you love? That's the question Lee Matthew Goldberg raises in Immoral Origins.

Thanks so much to Suzy Approved Book Tours, Lee Matthew Goldberg, and Rough Edges Press for inviting me on the tour for this book. It was wild!

Jake is a petty thief living in New York City in 1978. He mostly sells stolen goods, but he does it to help Emile, his younger brother, who has a host of health problems. He wishes there was a better way.

And then he finds her—a woman with a Marilyn Monroe mask at a Halloween party. It turns out she works for The Desire Card, a shadowy organization that promises to fulfill its high-paying clients’ wishes—for the right price.

As always, what seems too good to be true usually is. Jake finds himself falling for Marilyn and getting drawn deeper and deeper into The Desire Card. But little by little he realizes that it’s not only magnanimous wishes the organization is fulfilling—some of them are actually deadly. In that someone winds up dead.

Having read Goldberg’s Runaway Train trilogy, which so accurately captured the music and ethos of the 1990s, it came as no surprise that the late 1970s setting, complete with the excesses of Studio 54, felt so right. But the thriller elements of the book worked so well, too, that I couldn’t put this down.

This is the start of a brand new series worth reading. It’ll make you think twice about how much you’d sacrifice for those you love.

Book Review: "Ben and Beatriz" by Katalina Gamarra

Ben and Beatriz is a modern-day YA retelling of Much Ado About Nothing.

Do you like Shakespeare? While I’ve not read or seen a ton of his plays, Much Ado About Nothing is definitely one of my two favorites. I’ve read and seen it, I love the 1990s film adaptation, and also enjoyed the 2012 updated adaptation, so when Graydon House Books invited me on the tour for this retelling, I was all over it.

Beatriz and Ben are both students at Harvard. Beatriz is fiercely intelligent and blunt, a queer, biracial woman in a world that doesn’t quite get her. Ben is handsome, the son of privilege, known for hooking up with nearly every girl who looks his way. Beatriz loathes Ben and what he represents; she gets under his skin but he hasn’t been able to get her out of his mind since they hooked up freshman year.

The last place Beatriz wants to spend spring break is at Ben’s family’s mansion on Cape Cod, but her cousin and best friend Hero is dating Ben’s best friend Claudio, and she’d do anything for Hero. And it’s not long into the trip before Ben and Beatriz are tearing into each other, fighting over every remark and false assumption they make about one another. But of course, they’re also intensely drawn to each other.

The more time they spend together, the more they discover how vulnerable the other is. Beatriz has nightmares from childhood trauma and is trying to find her place in a country that recently elected Trump president, and Ben is tired of the expectations of his conservative family and his abusive older brother, John. Can the two break through the walls they’ve built around them and find happiness?⁣

I enjoyed this very much. It’s fascinating to experience the themes of the original play with modern twists. This is definitely darker and angstier than the play, but these characters are so beautifully complex. I love the creativity of retellings!