Category Archives: family stories

Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall*****

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I am late to the party, but it would be a crime not to review Broken Country, the stirring love story by Clare Leslie Hall that can make even the hardest cynic weepy-eyed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The story is set in a small village in Britain during the mid-1900s. The setting bounces back and forth between the present day and the past; it’s easy to keep track of, partly because the author takes care to delineate which chapter is which, and partly because there are few characters to keep track of. Our protagonist is Beth, and she and her husband, Frank, are farmers, have lived in the same community for their whole lives. A farm accident claimed the life of their only child, Bobby, a few years before, but they are both still fragile, ragged in their grief.

Then, oh my my, who comes back to town but Beth’s old flame, Gabriel, a man that came from money and went on to make a name for himself as a novelist. Gabriel has inherited the family house and land, and in the wake of his divorce, has brought his son Leo to live here. Here. Right next door to Beth and Frank.  And to complicate old feelings all the more, his son Leo is about the same age as Bobby was when he died.

Is it possible to be in love with two men at the same time? Beth would tell you that it is. Frank can see what is unfolding, and he tries to reason with Beth, but she assures him that everyone is grown up now, the past is the past, and there’s no reason that they and their new old neighbor cannot be friends.

Well.

I seldom reach for novels like this one, wary as I am of schmalz and schlock, but reader, I see none of either one in this story. The writing is disciplined and restrained, yet oh, so intimate. When a formula or trope comes into view, Hall goes the other way instead. And though I may have thought I knew where we would all end up, I was mistaken; the ending is beautifully planned and executed.

Because I had fallen a bit behind, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons; reader Hattie Morahan does a stellar job with the narration.

Highly recommended.

Everybody Says It’s Everything, by Xhenet Aliu**-***

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2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

The Family Recipe, by Carolyn Huynh*****

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“We all need to feel needed. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”

Carolyn Huynh made her authorial debut in 2022 with The Fortunes of Jaded Women. It was one of my favorite novels not only of that year, but of all the thousand-plus galleys I have read since I began reviewing. She’s back again with The Family Recipe, and it’s every bit as good as the first. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review, but make no mistake: I would have hunted this thing down and bought it with my Social Security check if it came down to it. I wouldn’t have been sorry, either.

This book is available to the public now.

Once again, our protagonists are Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans, mostly women, and once again, they are siblings and other family members that must come together; it isn’t a voluntary reunion. And that’s where the similarities between the first book and this one end.

Duc Tran, the patriarch, has laid out the terms by which his children may inherit his fortune. Once upon a time, he was the Vietnamese sandwich king, and in order to become his heir, each of his four daughters must relocate to a city she doesn’t want to live in, and revive a down-at-the-heels restaurant in a now undesirable end of town. It’s a contest; that is, unless Duc’s one son, Jude, succeeds in getting married within the one year’s time limit of the contest. If he can do that, he wins. (His sisters aren’t worried; who would marry Jude?)

The story is told from several points of view; these include the siblings, their uncle—a shady lawyer, and Duc’s best friend; their mother, who abandoned them when they were small, when her mental health collapsed, and never went back; Duc’s second wife; and briefly, Duc himself, who mostly serves as a mysterious figure that doesn’t even return to the States to lay out his children’s requirements, sending their uncle as his proxy.  As the story unfolds, we learn more about each sibling, and about the traumas they have experienced, as well as their successes.

The thing that makes it work so well is Huynh’s unerring sense of timing. It’s a dramatic tale, but it’s shot full of humor, as we see at the outset, when we learn the sisters’ names. Their father was a huge fan of the Beatles, and so the girls are named Jane, Paulina, Georgia, and (wait for it…) Bingo!

There are plenty of twists and turns, and the dialogue crackles. The internal monologues are mesmerizing. This book would make a fantastic movie.

Since I was reading this galley digitally, I highlighted quotes that I thought I’d like to use in this review, but there are 28 of them. Obviously, I cannot share them all here, but let that inform you, if nothing else here has, how much I love this book.

Highly recommended to anyone that has a beating heart, at least a passing interest in Vietnamese-American culture and/or family stories, and can use a few good laughs.

The Road to Tender Hearts, by Annie Hartnett*****

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The Road to Tender Hearts is aptly named, possibly the most big-hearted novel of 2025. Author Annie Hartnett first came on my radar in 2022 when she published Unlikely Animals, which turned out to be one of my favorites that year. When I saw that she had a new one out, I tried to temper my expectations; not many authors can write more than one novel so hugely imaginative, genre defying, darkly funny, and yet heartwarming. And it’s true; not many can. As it happens, however, Hartnett can, and she has.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy; however, this is one of those rare instances where I would have paid full cover price if that was the only way for me to read it. It will be available to the public Tuesday, April 29, 2025.

Like Hartnett’s previous novel, The Road to Tender Hearts has quirky characters and at least one sentient animal with an internal monologue, but the structure of the plot is not as complex—a thing I am grateful for, near bedtime—and there are fewer characters and settings. Both are magical, and the distinctions show that Hartnett is not one to write the same book, more or less, over and over. She has more imagination than that; she may have more imagination than ten or twelve ordinary people.

Our protagonist, to the extent we can identify just one, is PJ Halliday. PJ was living the good life, a happy family, steady work, and the esteem of his neighbors in Pondville, Massachusetts, but then his elder daughter, Kate, died when she was eighteen, and PJ, and his marriage, came apart. Since then, he’s been doing two things: drinking, and giving away chunks of his huge lottery prize to every sad sack and every player that comes with an outstretched palm. But all that is about to change.

The son of PJ’s late brother, from whom he was estranged, dies, along with his wife, leaving two elementary aged children without a home or family. It seems that PJ is the only relative these little tikes have. Luna and Ollie aren’t sure that PJ can be trusted, since their own parents and skeezy grandpa never could be, but he actually has some strong if rusty parenting skills, and he is determined to clean up his act for them. There’s just one other thing he needs to do: his old high school flame, Michelle Cobb, has recently become a widow. He never forgot her, and now he intends to drive to her retirement community, Tender Hearts, in Arizona and see if he can try again with her. Two little kids in the car? No problem. And now, add his (still living) daughter Sophie, who figures she’d better keep an eye on him and the tots, and Pancakes, the cat that has adopted him.

Pancakes has a unique talent: he can tell who is about to die, and he goes to them, so that oftentimes, their last breaths are taken as they stroke a purring kitty. And so, Pancakes goes on the trip too, but every now and then, he disappears and is found on the lap of some elderly individual in poor health. (Or, not elderly. Hey, Pancakes just knows.) It’s no coincidence that the story begins and ends with Pancakes.

PJ is not always the best decision maker, and there are several times when I wince at the choices he makes. Sometimes, someone else swoops in and fixes his blunders, and at other times, they’re left hanging in the wind, and we have to wait to see how they will affect the story’s outcome.

Every single aspect of this book is golden. The dialogue flows naturally, and the internal monologues, all told in the third person omniscient, are authentic and full of character. In short—and I rarely say this—there’s not one single thing about this glorious redemption tale that I would change.

Highly recommended to everyone that loves fiction, and that has a beating heart.

The Second Coming, by Garth Risk Hallberg***-****

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Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of the epic, memorable novel City on Fire, which was among my short list of favorites the year it was published. My thanks go to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf for the invitation to read and review his new novel, The Second Coming. This book is for sale now.

The story begins in New York City when Jolie, who is thirteen years old, is nearly struck by a train. Her parents are divorced, and she hasn’t seen her father in quite a while. Ethan is addicted, and his cravings make him unreliable. He makes promises he won’t keep, and Jolie has more or less given up on him, but her brush with death convinces him that she is in a darker place than her mother realizes, and that only he can save her.

Heaven help the girl!

The episode is the beginning of a twisted, bizarre odyssey. Jolie’s mother is distracted, not paying a lot of attention to her daughter, and Jolie becomes involved with a complete stranger, young man much older than herself. As a reader, I became frustrated and wanted to shake Jolie’s mama and tell her to wake up and take care of her kid. Just because they look grown at 13, doesn’t mean they are grown.

On glorious display here is Hallberg’s remarkable word smithery. The man has a gift, and he’s not afraid to use it. Portions of this book were a joy to read, simply because his prose is matchless.

For me, however, the plot and characterization of Ethan got in my way. Addicts and alcoholics in literature are becoming a trope, and I had vowed to myself to steer clear of them. I read the synopsis of this one and knew what I was walking into when I accepted the galley; I had hoped the author’s talent and skill would take a tired old plot point and make it seem new. He partially succeeded; I didn’t throw my reader across the room as soon as the addiction material appeared. But I didn’t love it the way that I loved City on Fire. Also, large portions of this are in epistolary form, from letters that Ethan writes to his daughter, and although they have been edited down considerably between the galley I read and the polished, finished result, they still got in my way.

So, this is a competent effort, but not a magical one. If you enjoy fiction with addicted characters, or if you like books about fathers and daughters, this book may be a happier experience for you than for me. However, I was expecting great things, and I came away feeling somewhat disappointed.

The Maid’s Secret, by Nita Prose****-******

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Molly the Maid is back for the third installment of Nita Prose’s excellent and wildly successful series. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book will be available to the public April 8, 2025.

As in the first two books, we find Molly employed at The Regency Grand Hotel; she’s been promoted to Head Maid as well as Special Events Manager. She is engaged to chef Juan Manuel, a lovely fellow that helped fill the void in her life when her beloved Gran died. But everything changes when Brown and Beagle, art appraisers famed for their reality television program, come to do a show at The Regency Grand. Along with all of the “polishing to perfection” that is necessary for such a massive event, Molly decides to bring a few of her late grandmother’s trinkets along; you never know, maybe one of them will be worth something.

Oh, it most certainly is!

Once her rare and valuable object becomes public knowledge, Molly’s life changes completely. She no longer has privacy, which she holds dear; strangers are constantly in her face seeking autographs, and the press won’t leave her alone. Meanwhile, we are apprised of the circumstances leading up to this startling discovery. Gran comes to us from beyond the grave—so to speak—in the form of a diary that Molly didn’t know she kept. Chapters in this book alternate between the present day in Molly’s life, and the past, as told in epistolary fashion by Gran.

I wasn’t a big fan of this method, and I’m still a bit ambivalent, which is where the half star off the rating went. It seems like a lazy way to go about telling a story. However, if an author must use this method, it’s hard to imagine it being done better.

Of course things don’t go smoothly following the discovery of the heirloom; if they did, then there would be no novel. But I will leave the conflicts and resolution to the reader to discover.  As for me, I found the series of events, and the ending, believable enough for our purposes, and I enjoyed the story greatly, despite my misgivings about Gran’s storytelling method.

Recommended to those that enjoy the series; this book may be read as a stand-alone, but will be better enjoyed if you can read the first, second, or both earlier books first.

Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow, by Damilare Kuku

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When a novel written and set in Nigeria is so successful that it’s translated into English and sold in the U.S., you know it’s probably one hell of a good book, and Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow is clear evidence that this is true. My thanks go to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Our protagonist is Teme (TEE-mee), a young woman fresh out of college who is sure of her next course of action: she must develop a perfect body, starting with her backside. She works and saves her money so that she can have her buttocks enhanced surgically. Everybody loves a woman with a big butt, and once hers is augmented, she can marry anybody she wants. It will be a great investment!

This choice, not surprisingly, blows the roof off her family home. All of the women, her mother, auntie, sister, and others are adamant, and they scheme together, and bicker together, about how to prevent her from carrying out what they perceive to be a dangerous and foolish task. In the process, they reveal their own long held secrets, and also? They are hysterically funny!

The reader should know that the best material isn’t dropped in at the beginning, as is the unfortunate trend. Instead, it starts out fairly serious, and then I find myself snickering a little, and then a little more, and by the end, I am howling! There are quite a number of characters, and not recalling all of them won’t interfere with your enjoyment; however, it’s easier to catch up and also identify certain Nigerian terms that are peppered in, most of which are self-explanatory anyway, if you read digitally. However, because I had fallen behind, I checked out the audio version from the library and followed along as I did my morning exercises, and the audio version is brilliant as well. The lilting Nigerian dialect is mesmerizing!

Although it doesn’t seem like it at first, this novel packs a satisfying feminist punch. I highly recommend it to any reader that has eyes, ears, or both. Don’t miss it!

American Spirits, by Russell Banks*****

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American Spirits is a collection of three short stories that take place in the fictional New England town of Sam Dent. My thanks go to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I wasn’t sure this book would be up to Banks’s usual standard, as it was published posthumously, more than a year following his death. Sometimes a successful author will have a book that isn’t their best, and they’ll toss it in a drawer in hopes of improving and publishing it later. When they die, their heirs find the book and seeing dollar signs, send it off to a publisher. Still, though, Russell Banks’s sloppy seconds are still going to be vastly better than your average successful author’s best effort, so I decided to take a look. And holy crap, it’s actually one of his finest!

One thing any uninitiated reader must know is the Banks is brutal. If the story seems to be leading up to something pretty bad happening, the unwary might anticipate that the author will pull it out of the water at the last minute in order to send the readers away with smiles on their faces. Banks doesn’t do that. With stories by Banks, the main question is whether all of the important characters are going to die, or only some of them. He is unflinchingly brutal, but oh honey, he does it so well that I wish I could thank him for it!

One of the things that underlies everything Banks writes is his deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, the working class. His own hardscrabble background most likely plays a role, but one way or the other, the struggles of the ordinary man or woman, usually living in rural parts or small towns in New England are depicted with such care, distilling vast amounts of tiny details into the briefest of spaces that I believe the character and I believe the setting. Banks is also, to the best of my knowledge, the first to set a story in a manufactured home or mobile home court.

The first story, “Nowhere Man”, is about a man that sells off part of his land to a newcomer, partially because of a private agreement that the two make, but that isn’t ever codified. The new owner eventually goes back on his word; the original owner is having none of it; and then all hell breaks loose.

The second, “Homeschooling,” is about an average family whose life is changed when newcomers with a somewhat bizarre parenting style move in next door; when the emaciated children sneak over at night to beg for food, they become involved.

The final story, “Kidnapped,” is about a couple of senior citizens that are kidnapped and held until the drugs that their grandson’s addicted mother has filched are returned.

When I read Banks, I tell myself not to get attached to the characters, but he’s smarter than I am, so I can’t help myself.

There is something deeply satisfying in reading an author that has the confidence to buck literary trends. I wish that Banks, who was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, could have lived and written fiction forever, but the legacy he has left us is the next best thing. Highly recommended.

Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson*****

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Charmaine Wilkerson is the author of the massively successful Black Cake. Her sophomore effort, Good Dirt, carries some of the same components—an impending marriage, a family heirloom, secrets and betrayals—but is nevertheless a very different story, and it’s an even better one. My thanks go to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public on January 28, 2025.

Our protagonist is Ebby Freeman, which is short for Ebony. She lives with her parents in an affluent neighborhood in New England, but there was a fourth family member, her brother Baz, who was murdered during a home invasion; Ebby witnessed all of it, and has long carried the guilt of survivors. Could her ten year old self have done something to save Baz?

Now Ebby is grown, and plans to be married, but things don’t go as anticipated.

As in her previous novel, Wilkerson packs so many points of view into the story that I eventually stop counting, and although I am skeptical about this choice through much of the book, by the end I have to admit that she has carried it off nicely. Some points of view are urgently necessary to carry the plot forward; others, like that of the intended groom, Henry, are straight-up hilarious in places. Once again, we move not only between points of view, but time periods as well, reaching back into an earlier century, when some of her ancestors were enslaved. These passages aren’t entertaining, but they are necessary to provide clarity and urgency.

Ordinarily, I don’t read stories with wealthy protagonists, and make no mistake, Ebby’s family has a great deal of money; but having the family be African-American, and self-made rather than heirs to massive, often ill gained fortunes helped a great deal. Ultimately it was easy to bond with Ebby. When she experienced pain and rejection, I felt it, too. I carried her around in my head in a way that I usually don’t; over 1,000 reviews are in my rearview mirror, and only the truly special ones take hold of me as this one has.

Highly recommended.

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, by Kirsten Miller

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Lula Dean is a deeply unhappy woman. Neglected by her children, alone and unappreciated, she strikes on a way to gain the attention she knows that she deserves. She embarks on a crusade to remove books she deems objectionable from local libraries, and she sets a sterling example for her town by erecting a little library on her lawn, a collection of the wholesome material she thinks is most appropriate. Little does she know that one of the town’s youths has snuck out in the dead of night and inserted banned books inside the dust jackets of the books she originally placed there. Her library becomes wildly popular, and Lula hasn’t a clue why.

My thanks go to NetGalley and William Morrow for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The moment I saw the synopsis for this novel, I knew I had to read it. The First Amendment is a hot button for many people in the U.S., and as a language arts teacher, it’s been at forefront of my mind for most of my adult life. And I think I can safely say that Lula Dean is a soft sell; readers are generally a receptive audience, and so any novel containing the word “book” or “library” in its title should, I would argue, be held to a slightly higher standard. It’s not that hard to preach to the choir.

I love the premise of this story, and I laugh out loud more than once at the beginning. After that, though, things flatten out a bit. There are a lot of characters here, and whereas I have no difficulty keeping them straight, their numbers may have prevented author Kirsten Miller from fully developing them. I feel as if I am reading, for the most part, about cartoon cutouts rather than real people;  had I felt as if the characters were real, I would have been more deeply invested in their outcomes. However, everyone in this thing is either a fine, enlightened character or a despicable, ignorant blowhard. It accurately represents the way many Americans regard those around them, blue versus red, and that is not helpful. Two characters that stand out better than others are side character Beverly Underwood, and the young Elijah. However, even these are not dynamic characters. Nearly everyone here is the same going out as they were coming in.

Those looking for a short, funny novel to toss in their suitcase over the holidays could do worse; they could also do better. The sad thing is that had this been written in a more intentional way, with the literary standards one would hope to see in any novel, it could have been impressive, might even have changed a few hearts. This book isn’t going to do that, and so I see it as an opportunity squandered.