ancestry tests | Seattle Book Mama

Those Who Are Gone is the second installment in the Raquel Liang mystery series by Laurie R. King. I read and enjoyed the first in the series, and then found this one when I was in need of an audio book. I came away feeling a bit conflicted about it.

My thanks go to NetGalley and RB Media for the review copy. This book is available to the public now.

The story opens with Raquel’s sister, Dee, in a tailspin. The women’s parents are dead, and the two sisters live together and are close. Growing up, they believed that Raquel was adopted, but Dee was the biological child of their parents. Now Dee has used an ancestry kit and discovered that she was also adopted. She’s not taking it well.

So, the mystery…? The crime…? The….you see my concern.

In many, many reviews, I have defended authors of long-running mystery series that delve deeper into character development as their series progress. There are readers out there that expect every mystery to focus exclusively on catching a serial killer or whatever sort of baddie is the culprit, yet once a series is well underway, the only way to keep it fresh—there being only so many ways and reasons to kill someone—is to make it feel more personal to the protagonist.

In this case, however, we’re only on the second book of the series, and not only are we spending time—a lot of it—on character development, but this is how the book opens, and it takes its time to get moving.

Once the thing is well underway, it does become compelling, and the last ten percent or so has me on the edge of my chair. So please don’t think I’m calling this a boring read; but if I weren’t already a fan of this author’s, and if I didn’t owe a review, I might not have stuck around long enough to find this out.

Here is the tricky part. I became a huge fan of King’s mysteries back in the 1990s, when she published the Kate Martinelli series. Merely mentioning that series, all these years later, makes my heart pound. The adrenaline rush of that series is unmistakable; in fact, now that I am older, I might even find it stressful, it’s so dynamic. And so I ask myself if it is fair to compare these books to the ones she’s writing now. Would I be so critical if I had read nothing else by this author? Is a good book still a good book when it’s not as good as what came before it? If this was a debut novel, surely I would be kinder and more encouraging. Instead, I find myself grumbling about the slow build-up.

This audio book has two narrators. The first is Vivienne Leheney, who reads most of the book and voices Raquel’s internal monologue, and she does a fine job. The second is Luis Moreno, the bad guy; his reading is smooth, but almost stereotypically sinister.

Would I recommend this book to those that enjoy the genre? Sure I would, but I would recommend the Martinelli series more, if you can find it.

More Than Enough, the new novel by Anna Quindlen, packs a great deal of intimacy into a relatively short book. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. This book will be available to the public February 24, 2026.

The story arc here is not a traditional one in that there are several threads relating to the protagonist, and it’s hard to identify one as central. Instead, all of them are interwoven around a theme of knowing how to let go and move forward. Our protagonist, Polly Goodman, wants a baby desperately. She and her husband, a zoo veterinarian, have been trying for years. They’ve done blood tests, fertility treatments, and even in vitro procedures, but in the end, she comes away with an empty womb and no baby. The hardest thing is when she feeling vulnerable and someone is gentle with her: “I was one kind impulse from a kidnapping or a crying jag.”

In the midst of it all, she is momentarily distracted by the results of a gag gift given to her by her book club buddies. They present her with an ancestry kit, and the results are surprising. At the same time, she struggles with her parents. Her mother, a judge, is wedded to her career, and Polly has never been able to connect with her emotionally. Her father, whom she loves more than nearly anyone, suffers from dementia and lives in a facility. She visits him nearly every day.

And the best friend she has—one of the book club pals—has cancer, and it’s not going well.

All of these threads blend seamlessly within the narrative; Quindlen has such an engaging writing style that I’m not thinking about a central storyline because I feel as if I’m hearing from a friend. Usually I don’t enjoy reading stories about people that might be called upper middle class, because I cannot relate to them at all, but Quindlen magically bridges that gap.

I could go on, but I’m not sure I should, because I love this story enough that I want to tell you every single thing that happens, and that’s not a good idea. The one additional thing you should know, if you don’t already, is that Quindlen has a great heart for teachers and for teens, and so she portrays both in a way that is authentic and immediate. Again, I should not relate well to the private school where Polly teaches girls that come from well to do families, but Quindlen reminds me that all children have needs, and all children deserve not only an education, but an adult sensitive enough to understand them.

I hope Quindlen lives—and writes—forever, but when she goes, as we all must, she should be made the patron saint of high school teachers.

Highly recommended.