Book of the Month by Jennifer Probst

 

Aspen is a writer who had the unbelievable luck of writing a bestselling novel right out of the gate. Her readers flock to her signings…but all they are interested in is that first novel. Even though Aspen knows her next one is technically better, it doesn’t have the power of the first one, and no one is buying it.

The trouble is, that first novel came from her own heart… her own agony and he own breakup. She created a character that so many related to, that’s what they want to read. But Aspen got over that heartbreak, and now her writing has lost its spark. And the deadline for her next book, the one she has to succeed with, looms.

Convinced by her agent to get out of the city, Aspen heads to the Outer Banks to spend time with her sister and let the beauty of the beach nurture her muse. Along the way, she determines that the only way to get her mojo back is to fall in love and get her heart broken … again. Then she meets breathtaking Brick Babel, the local bad boy.

This was a different kind of romance, with the pitfalls of novel writing, the fragile environment of the Outer Banks and dealing with emotional fallout of both past heartbreak and reputations. Anyone interested in writing will find it fascinating and may want to take notes!  But the writing is great, and I was thrilled to learn that there is another book following this one. Thanks to NetGalley and Blue Box Press for the introduction to Jennifer Probst’s work. Book of the Month was released October 22, 2024.

 

The Christmas Inn by Pamela M. Kelley

   

Riley is an up-and-coming wizard at digital content creation and loves her work. When she’s called into a meeting after a successful campaign, she expects a promotion. Instead, she learns that she, and the entire department, are being replaced by AI.

It’s barely December when she gets a call from her sister that her mother has broken her leg and needs help running the struggling Cape Cod B-n-B she owns, at least through the holidays.

Reluctant to leave her hot shot …and hot… lawyer boyfriend, but he’s too busy to spend much time with her anyway, so she decides to take the time off to regroup. She can look for jobs from the Cape as easy as NYC. She drives to the Cape and the magic of the location and lifestyle swallows her up.

This is an ideal Christmas romance, with warm and interesting characters from three different generations. Also, a cat and charming little boy, plenty of hot chocolate and enough lovely décor, beaches and ocean and even songs to delight anyone who loves a good romance and idyllic Christmas book.

My only problem with the book as that it was deep in details that I wanted to skip over: cookie ingredients, wine brands, every meal and the cost of everything. Still, it was an easy, comforting read and perfect for busy season!

The book was published by St. Martins on September 24, 2024. Thanks to them and NetGalley for giving me the chance to review.

 

A Reason to See You Again

 

“Family secrets are such a waste of time,” Shelly tells her niece as they search through their mother’s hidden treasures for the good wine. And this family has secrets and trauma that they desperately need to resolve. Beginning with the patriarch, a holocaust survivor’s death, their mother’s alcoholism and the subsequent distance, physical, philosophical and emotional, that grows between Shelly and her sister Nancy, I Came All This Way to See You is a complex novel told in Jami Attenberg’s fascinating, if sometimes difficult to follow style. This family makes misery itself seem like company.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for the review copy. A Reason to See You Again was released September 24, 2024.

A Winter Wish by Emily Stone

 

Emily Stone has established herself as a dependable and creative author of the Christmas rom com, and A winter wish doesn’t disappoint. When Lexie’s estranged father dies and leaves her half of his successful travel agency, with, of course strings attached, she is confused. To benefit from the value of the company, she must attempt to participate in the business for one year. The catch is, her father left the other half of the company to Theo, a young man who has worked in the company shoulder to shoulder to Lexie’s father. He’s smug and angry and grieving in ways Lexie can’t imagine. In fact, she’s grieving the father she knew before he divorced her mother, and those memories complicate both her ability to accept the gift, and Theo, as she learns more of who her father, Theo—and herself—really are.

There are great settings in lovely cities that will not only make you swoon with romance but want to book tickets with the agency! A Winter Wish was released on October 16, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Random House/Ballantine for the review copy.

Holiday Books! Christmas is All Around

 

As the holidays approach, I like to get in the mood with many of the holiday books, mostly romances, that show up in the late fall. It’s still in the 90s with no hint of “snow” in Houston, so I needed these books!

The first one, Christmas is All Around by Martha Waters is the story of Charlotte Lane, and accomplished artist, who happened to have appeared in a beloved Christmas rom com as a child, and as an adult, hates Christmas. So much so that she runs away from NYC, which she loves, to spend the holidays with her understanding sister in London. Unlike past years, her sister has given birth, and now wants to experience everything Christmas with her infant. And by default, Charlotte.

Graham Calloway, a serious young man trying to save his family’s ancestral home by capitalizing on every possible occasion he can think of to get guests pay for tickets to see it. It happens that the estate was the set for the very same film in which Charlotte appeared. When her sister takes her, unknowingly, to the tree lighting at Graham’s family’s house, the scene is set for a lovely rom com with all the elements. It’s a fun book, sure to be beloved by fans of Christmas and rom coms. The book will be released October 22, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC.

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

 

Meg Shaffer has an ability to create magic and adventure with characters who are fully drawn and charming. She won me over with The Wishing Game and kept the promise of her talent and skill in The Lost Story. Told as a fairy tale, including the insertion of explanatory chapters by The Storyteller, Shaffer tells the story of two boys who are lost as teenagers in the West Virginia wilderness. Jeremy and Rafe are sensitive and talented and when they suddenly return home after being missing for six months, things have changed in their lives. Then Emilie comes along, seeking Jeremy’s special gift of finding lost girls, as she’s just discovered that she had a sister who was lost in the same wilderness where the boys were lost. She wants to find her sister’s remains.

The story unfolds from there, with travel back to the woods and the creation of a glorious, fantastic world. But is it fantasy?

The book reads at times like a middle grade novel, but it is immensely readable. It is hard to put down. As with all good fairy tales, there are moral issues to deal with, and the treatment of that subject matter is not juvenile. I appreciate the way this author breaks down complex issues to our level and that is both hopeful and infinite.

The Lost Story was released July 16, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for this delightful ARC.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

 

It’s been exactly two years since we visited Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William, isolating on the coast of Maine from the pandemic. Tell Me Everything is the story of Bob Burgess, who met in The Burgess Boys. Bob has retired from full time law practice to Crosby, Maine. He takes an occasional criminal case, pro bono, and through the representation, we become familiar with Bob’s keen mind, big heart and sentimentalism. While this is going on, Bob and Lucy Barton, the novelist living down the peninsula, and they go for soul searching and finding walks. And Lucy also befriends Olive Kitteridge, who is now 93 and resident of a local nursing home.

What Tell Me Everything does best is entangle characters we know and love (don’t worry if you’ve not read the other books. You’ll understand that you know and love them) with each other in emotional relationships that are irresistible. In her plain-spoken prose, Strout shows us that there is nothing plain or simple in human relationships, and she gives us permission to accept that, especially in the bounds of marriage.

Tell Me Everything is not a can’t put down book, but it is the kind you will finish, and flip to the beginning to read again and again. I miss these characters when I’m not reading them.

Tell Me Everything was released September 10, 2024, by Random House. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune (excerpt)

 

I was so delighted to be revisiting the world of The House on the Cerulean Sea that I devoured this excerpt. Our Beloved Arthur has returned to the island after a 28 year absence and hopes to revive the love and community of magical children. All of our favorites are in this excerpt, from lovable Chauncey the bellhop to Lucy, who can’t help his parentage and impulses. I would encourage readers to read the House on the Cerulean Sea first, (in fact, it is one of my most often recommended reads) because the fiction of Beyond the Sea will be even more lovely. I can’t wait to finish this book when it is released!

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the excerpt!

The Thirteenth Husband by Greer Macallister

 

Aimee Crocker was a real-life heiress to California Railroad wealth. Inheriting millions at only ten years old, Aimee is probably as close to American Nouveau royalty as they come. She did a good job of being the spoiled rich girl, going through husbands, and continents along with the money. She’s been affectionately dubbed the queen of Bohemia.

Though Greer Macalister did an admirable job of staying true to the facts in this historical fiction, the facts were just too much for me. Aimee made stupid mistakes, with marriages and the things she enjoyed, including her sexual escapades. She believed in mystics and often took their advice and predictions to heart, in ways that boggled common sense. I was tired of her antics, before we got to the fourth husband, and the rest of the book felt tedious to me. The sprinkling of supernatural references, though I’m sure were completely accurate, just was over the top for me. Much, I assume, like Aimee Crocker herself.

As a woman in 2024, I have to admire her independence, strength and curiosity. Having money let her explore the limits of each, and I never felt that she truly ever found what she was looking for.

The Thirteenth Husband was released on August 6, 2024. Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the review copy.

 

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult ...five stars plus

 

I admit that when I read the description of this book, I was afraid that it wasn’t for me. I’ve followed Jodi Picoult for years and have watched as she’s transitioned from her fascinating fiction to forays into live theater. I worried that this book would be so focused on “behind the scenes” that I wouldn’t find it interesting.

I was wrong!

 By Any Other Name is a split narrative novel, with the narrators being Melina Green, in 2024, and Emilia Bassano, 1582 to her death in 1645. Both women are playwrights, though neither are recognized for it. The difference is, though slim, Melina can legally and morally be a playwright, while Emilia cannot. Women simply do not have agency or rights in Elizabethan England.

But as writers know, when called to write, there is no option. So, despite her inability to get her plays produced, Melina continues to write. She stumbles upon an ancestor who published one of the first books of poetry by a woman author, Emilia Bassano. The more she learns about Emilia, the more she is convinced that Emilia found a way to get her own plays produced, by selling them to a man who had access to the theater, when she did not. The man? William Shakespeare.

The more we learn about Emilia, through Melina’s (i.e. Jodi’s!) research the more we are also convinced. Any woman today who’s ever had a man take credit for her work will understand. We do it because it is the way things are done. The young lawyer asked to write an opinion letter for her boss to sign understands. The medical professional who is granted a sub byline on the paper she has spent all her time researching yields to the doctor in charge. The TA who spends her time in the classroom and her free time making discoveries for her “mentor” understands. It is common, and there is no reason not to accept that it happened in the 1500s either.

Jodi Picoult is an amazing writer, and she brings these characters, and all the people they interact with, to life. Those characters are diverse: from the gay roommate, also an undiscovered talent, to her neurodivergent critic who opens his mind.

I love this book. I wanted to rush through it to publish this review on the publication day, but found myself too engaged, to invested in the text to rush. The author’s note and acknowledgements are fascinating and not to be missed as well.

I always feel more informed when I read a Jodi Picoult book, as she doesn’t shy from the controversial issues of the day. I suspect there will be controversy over this too, though it won’t make journalistic headlines. Nor will the theories and conclusions she’s reached disappear from the minds of those who read it. This is fiction, and historical fiction, at its finest.

The book was released on August 20, 2024, by Random House/Ballantine. Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston.

We Burn Daylight

Bret Anthony Johnston is an author whose work leaves me breathless. Taking on difficult—impossible—human experiences and tragedies, he narrows perspective to one or two people. In We Burn Daylight, those perspectives come from two teenagers experiencing a Branch Davidian-like charismatic leader, law enforcement and the inevitable destruction of what each represents.

Roy is the second son of the small-town sheriff father and hospice nurse mother. There older son is in Iraq, first as a marine, but after his deployment, as a contractor. Roy is close to each of his family members, in the realistic way a teenage boy has. They don’t shelter him, but his parents and grandparents clearly cherish him. Jaye, a teenage girl who wants to be desired by her peers, is ripped from her California home when her mother, perhaps in a midlife crisis of her own, wants to be closer to Perry, also known as the Lamb.

 

Through the two of them, we meet townspeople and followers of The Lamb. We go to prayer meetings and gun shows and abandoned malls. Life in rural Texas in the early 90’s, before cell phones and iPad and social media, is engagingly depicted, and our imperfectly perfect characters, ultimately wanting mostly to be loved. In Johnston’s words, “Love is equally dyed in faith and fear. One life is always another life, another thousand lives.”

Along with the engaging story, Johnston’s writing is exquisite.

While I wanted to put the book down at the halfway point, where the downward spiral accelerates and leaves the reader believing there is only one end, as there was in Waco 1992. I admit to reading the author’s note before I went any further, where it was clarified that this was in fact fiction, though reliant on many of the details of reality. So, I kept reading, and found myself speeding through to find out what happened, I won’t spoil it, but I encourage you not only read the book, but by all means, to finish it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. We Burn Daylight was published on July 30, 2024.