The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline Also by this author: Orphan Train Published by Custom House on August 25, 2020 Genres/Lists: Fiction, Historical Fiction Pages: 370 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) You know those books that have such great characters that they crawl into your heart and settle there? The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline is one of them. Spanning years and distance and set against the backdrop of British colonization, it tells the stories of three women on the receiving end of that brutality. Evangeline, Hazel, and M ..read more

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Published by Viking Adult on September 29, 2020 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 304 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Do you ever think about where you’d be if you did that ONE thing differently? If you, say, changed your major to match your passions, rather than your expectations? Or if you’d taken that leap of faith and moved to that far off city where you knew no one? The possibilities for how your life could have unfolded are endless, and it’s hard not to think about them, sometimes. That’s the prem ..read more

The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker Published by Riverhead Books on May 18, 2021 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 352 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) When Chrissie was 8, she killed a little boy. Twenty years later, she’s a mom trying to do what’s best for her daughter. But how do you forgive yourself for something so awful? Or are some acts so terrible that there’s no coming back? Do the standards for redemption change if you killed someone as a child, rather than adult? You had to hurt people when they annoyed you, to teach the ..read more

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave Published by Simon & Schuster on May 4, 2021 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 320 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Let me start off by saying I really enjoyed The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. My last few books have been duds so I was nervous about continuing my “losing streak”, but this one hit the spot. On its face, the story is tried-and-true: girl meets boy, boy has secrets, girl seeks truth and surprises abound; but Dave infuses freshness into it by going in an unexpected direction ..read more

The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker Published by Riverhead Books on May 18, 2021 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 352 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) When Chrissie was 8, she killed a little boy. Twenty years later, she’s a mom trying to do what’s best for her daughter. But how do you forgive yourself for something so awful? Or are some acts so terrible that there’s no coming back? Do the standards for redemption change if you killed someone as a child, rather than adult? You had to hurt people when they annoyed you, to teach the ..read more

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave Published by Simon & Schuster on May 4, 2021 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 320 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Let me start off by saying I really enjoyed The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. My last few books have been duds so I was nervous about continuing my “losing streak”, but this one hit the spot. On its face, the story is tried-and-true: girl meets boy, boy has secrets, girl seeks truth and surprises abound; but Dave infuses freshness into it by going in an unexpected direction ..read more

Writers and Lovers by Lily King Also by this author: Euphoria Published by Grove Atlantic on March 3, 2020 Genres/Lists: Fiction, #30Authors Pages: 320 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Lily King is back with a new novel, Writers and Lovers. Her previous book, Euphoria, is one of my favorites to recommend, so I was a bit worried about Writers and Lovers living up to my expectations. Thankfully, it did not disappoint. Set in Boston in the late 1990’s, it tells the story of Casey, a woman trying to decide what her next chapter in life ..read more

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler Also by this author: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald Published by St. Martin's Press on March 10, 2020 Genres/Lists: Fiction Pages: 311 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Several years ago, I read a book titled Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler. I described the reading experience as floating down a lazy river, for the story ebbed and flowed in a way that was, for lack of a better term, peaceful. When I learned that Fowler had a new book coming out, I was eager to pick it up ..read more

The Leavers by Lisa Ko Published by Algonquin Books on May 2, 2017 Genres/Lists: Fiction, Diverse Pages: 338 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) In the fifth grade, Deming’s mother disappeared. An undocumented Chinese immigrant, she went to work one day and never came home. It’s easy for us, the readers, to speculate about what happened, but for Deming, the disappearance was as shocking as it was nonsensical. Soon, he was adopted by a white family in another city and taken away from the only home he knew. These events resulted in a spl ..read more

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok Published by William Morrow/HarperCollins on June 4, 2019 Genres/Lists: Fiction, Diverse Pages: 336 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) Sylvie Lee was 9 when she returned home from the Netherlands to her parents and sister in New York City. She, like many children of Chinese immigrants, spent the first third of her life abroad while her parents got their footing in a new country. The dichotomy between her two lives – the before and after – turned Sylvie into somewhat of a loner. Smart, beautiful, a ..read more