Dick Van Dyke was a wonderful part of my childhood, and this lovely audiobook has put a little more bounce in my step. It’s not really about rules, of course, but the format is a perfect scaffold for a combination memoir and self-help book. My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy; this book is for sale now.
Van Dyke entered my consciousness when I was a kindergartener, and the original movie Mary Poppins brought droves of families to theaters. I was not the only family member that was entranced, and all of us sang along to the sound track once the record was on our stereo turntable. The movie, and its lead characters, played by Julie Andrews and Van Dyke, glowed with humor and optimism. What a wonderful message to share, the idea that the best we can give our children is our time and our attention. In the early 1960s, the suggestion that adults ought to listen to children was ahead of its time and much needed.
Many of the anecdotes the author conveys have to do with experiences shared between him and Arlene, his current wife. Despite the May-December romance, it sounds like a wonderful union. He talks about the recent and horrific events with the Santa Ana fires that took the homes of so many—though his own was spared. My favorite parts, though, are the ones in which he discusses the future roles he’d like to play, because he isn’t really retired from the industry. Way to go, Dick!
Reader Tom Bergeron does a nice job, and as a bonus, he sounds quite a bit like the author.
I recommend this little gem to everyone that could use some positive energy, and to all that love the author.
John Grisham and Otto Penzler have teamed up and compiled a delightful, high-quality collection of short mystery stories to entertain you. My thanks go to NetGalley, High Bridge Audio, and Penzler Publishers for the review copies. You can buy this book now.
All told, there are 20 stories that made the cut, plus a “bonus” story at the end. This mystifies me; why not just say there are 21 stories? Maybe there’s a tradition of only selecting 20. At any rate, I liked all of them except one, which I’ll explain in a moment. They are all well written, and they encompass a wide variety of subgenres. My favorites are “Home Game,” by Craig Faustus Buck; “Only a Story,” by Kai Lovelace; and “Effie’s Oasis,” by Casey Stegman. I had never even heard of any of these writers, so now I have three new authors to watch for. I was not as fond of “Dream Stuff,” by Lou Manfredo, but that’s because I dislike noir mysteries for the way that women are disrespected. Here’s an example: “Mary Lou, my previously noted overpaid secretary, poked her cute little head into my office…” and it goes on in that vein. I haven’t deducted anything from my rating, because I know that the aspects that I find problematic are part and parcel of noir mysteries, and so I can’t see penalizing this one author in the collection, or Grisham and Penzler, when I know that there are a considerable number of readers that love these stories, and not all of them are men.
One other minor irritation is that I was provided with both the digital and audio versions of the galley, but the stories aren’t in the same order in both books, which led to a fair amount of panicked flipping around my digital copy to try to match up with the story being read. If they’re going to edit the order in one format, I’d appreciate it if they would do it in both so that they match; hopefully this is straightened out in the finished copies.
But while I’m talking about the audio version, I should also mention that the readers, Marnye Young and Jamie Renell, are top notch. There’s a great deal of dialogue in most of these stories, and they are both pitch perfect in reading the characters’ voices.
Whether you prefer a print or digital copy to read with your eyes, or an audio book that can follow you around while you do other things, you can’t go wrong with this collection. Highly recommended to all that enjoy the genre, and perfect for Halloween.
Author Katie Yee makes her novelistic debut with Maggie, or a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar. A mother of two young children is blindsided when her husband reveals that he is having an affair with a woman named Maggie; almost simultaneously, she learns she has breast cancer, and so she decides to name her cancer Maggie, too. Now she and her soon-to-be-ex each have a Maggie. This novel is a vivid, authentic, utterly believable narrative that hijacked my attention from the other books I was reading. My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book will be available to the public on July 22, 2025.
“They talk about women’s intuition…I never suspected a thing.”
The way that she contends with the news is completely different from how I would respond, and yet I believe her entirely. There’s no drama, no crying; at least, not when anyone is there to see her. Instead, she eats a lot and tries to maintain some dignity for herself. The scales are so badly skewed against her; Sam comes from heart stopping wealth, the sort of family that has multiple houses peppered around the U.S., and a couple of favorite places they like to stay in Europe. Our protagonist, whose name I am fairly sure is never provided, hails from the hardscrabble working class. And in leaving, her husband tells her that she can have the house as well as a generous chunk of alimony. If it were me and I were inclined to be nasty about it, all that money might stop me dead in my tracks, since clearly, the guy could get away with giving her far less if she really wanted to push him.
So instead, she sets some hard new boundaries. She won’t tell Sam about the cancer, at least not yet. She doesn’t want the awkwardness, the one where she witnesses him struggling with what is the right thing to do, versus what he’d rather do. No, she decides, it’s not his business anymore. And then she names the cancer after his girlfriend.
Maybe she’s a little passive aggressive, but who can blame her? It’s all she has left.
This novel has some power behind it, and if this is Yee’s debut, I can hardly wait to see what she writes when she has more experience. I recommend this book to any woman that enjoys contemporary fiction, especially those that have been jilted, and to progressive-minded men as well.
Amy Poeppel is the queen of intelligent feel-good novels. Her newest work, Far and Away, is about two women that have never met, one in Dallas, one in Berlin, who exchange houses for several months. The deal is done fast, as both of them have a short time to line something up, and soon they will both regret their hasty decisions.
My thanks go to NetGalley and Emily Bestler Books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.
One of the things I love best about Poeppel’s writing is her ability to create a complex plot with a lot of moving pieces, along with believable, sympathetic characters; yet somehow, the whole thing is easily understood, never confusing. Our story starts with Lucy and her family in Dallas, Texas. Her eldest child, Jack, is about to graduate from a private high school, then attend M.I.T. At the last minute, however, he is expelled unceremoniously. He’s done something dumb, and it’s been interpreted as something more sinister. He isn’t even offered a chance to explain or to defend himself. And though there is a lot of other business involving other characters, I enjoy this part most for the message it sends us at a time it’s desperately needed. Before you judge someone, take a moment to listen. Ask some questions before you hurl accusations and seek vengeance. If the behavior is as deplorable as you think it is, there’s still plenty of time to accuse and avenge afterward. We in the U.S. and also Europeans can benefit from this one tasty nugget. Plenty of others can, too.
On the other side of the world in Berlin, Greta’s husband Otto has been invited to teach for a term at a college in Texas. He’s accepted without even discussing it with Greta; he has to go right away! Where will they even live? Otto suggests a hotel; Greta is having none of it. In her desperate search for last minute housing, she is connected with someone that knows that Lucy has decided, quite suddenly, to relocate for the summer. The accusations against Jack have turned to harassment and vandalism, and she’s ready to get out of Dodge. Her husband is incommunicado, performing a simulation for NASA, a part of which is to be cut off from everyone else. Mason still thinks that Jack graduated, and that M.I.T. is Jack’s next step.
And so it is that Lucy and her brood relocate to Greta’s apartment in Berlin, and Greta and Otto take up residence in the massive experimental home in Dallas owned by Lucy and Mason. Not a lot of details have been exchanged about either place; there hasn’t been time. So, they get on the plane, and everybody gets what they get, to their sometimes consternation.
There are many hilarious moments here; I especially enjoy the foreign language errors made, both English to German, and German to English.
If there were one thing I could change, I’d rework the epilogue. There’s a considerable jump in time, but the chapter heading doesn’t tell us, and so I am taking in details while doing some mental calculations. That’s not so bad when it’s at the start of a book, but at the end, it’s disorienting and breaks the flow. I also feel as if there were too many things tied up with too many bows. A kindergarten teacher told me once that the key to having a kindergartner paint, was to know when to stop them. It may also apply to adults and their writing.
Nevertheless, I loved this book! Part of the magic is due to Poeppel’s understanding of human nature, which is inherently good, and part of it is her hilariously quirky humor that often drops in, seemingly out of nowhere. Highly recommended.
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.
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!
It’s a good sign when I finish reading a book, and I’m smiling. Alison Espach’s new novel, The Wedding People, not only left me smiling at the end; it made me laugh out loud almost from the get-go, and it will do the same for you.
My thanks go to NetGalley, Henry Holt, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This book is for sale now.
I’m not usually fond of romances, but a friend mentioned the premise of this one, and I couldn’t resist. In a nutshell: Phoebe, the protagonist, worn down by the pandemic and devastated when her husband leaves her, heads off to the posh hotel where they’d intended to spend their vacation. She takes no luggage or even her phone, because she plans to kill herself once she’s inside that lovely place.
Upon arrival, it’s clear that a mistake has been made. The entire hotel has been reserved for a wedding. But Phoebe’s room hasn’t been double booked, and so she is allowed, with apologies, to proceed to her room. However, the bride—wealthy, entitled, Bridezilla—learns of Phoebe’s presence, goes to her room, and orders her to leave. As they argue, Phoebe discloses her reason for coming, and assures her that she’ll be gone—so to speak—by the time the wedding takes place. But Lila, our bride, is having none of it. How dare Phoebe spoil her wedding! Absolutely not. She isn’t going to have guests gathering just as a corpse is being wheeled out to the morgue, right through the lobby! Phoebe must change her plans.
I won’t share any further developments, but I will tell you this: Espach can write.
Long ago, I decided that five star reviews should not be reserved for the rare gem bound to become a timeless classic. I give five stars to any novel that makes me unusually happy, and that represents the best being published within its genre. This book is one of those.
Helen Laser is the voice actor narrating the audio version, and she makes it even funnier. If you are strictly a visual reader, that’s fine, but if you like both formats, go with the audio this time, or use the audio and print versions together, which is what I did.
Highly recommended to those that enjoy a good romance, a good laugh, or both.
Summers at the Saint is the latest novel by veteran author Mary Kay Andrews. I am not usually a fan of what I think of as light and fluffy books, but over the last couple of years, I’ve developed an appreciation for this author’s work. This story centers on a fashionable beach resort hotel and those that run it, with the focus primarily on the women. It’s a good summer read—not a bad choice to take to the beach, actually. My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public May 7, 2024.
Our protagonist is Traci Eddings, the young widow of Hoke Eddings, heir to the Saint Cecilia resort. Traci has inherited part of the business from her late husband, but there is a power struggle in play as the book opens. The old man is dying, and the surviving heirs are scheming. The business seems to be on the rocks, or near to it, and Traci can’t figure out why. She makes several smart changes, hires good people, and yet…
We have interesting side characters. Parrish is Traci’s niece, whom she persuades to postpone her studies for one more summer as Traci implements the changes that are needed. We have the new cook, Felice, as well as Livvy, a capable young woman that Traci hires away from the diner where she is waiting tables; and we have Livvy’s mother Shannon, who used to be Traci’s best friend. Shannon completely dumped Traci many years ago, leaving Traci bewildered and hurt; she still feels that way. Lastly we have Whelan, who is working at the Saint as a pretext while he tries to unravel the circumstances that led to the death of his younger brother at the resort’s pool many years ago.
The book’s strongest aspect is the side characters, particularly Felice, Shannon and Livvy. Other characters are one dimensional, either entirely good or entirely awful. Rather, this is a plot based book. There are a great many moving parts, with a blend of genres that include romance, mystery, beach reads, women’s fiction, and contemporary family drama. It is in weaving the many pieces of this story that Andrews’s experience shines through. If there is a plot element that conflicts with another, or that is simply illogical, I didn’t spot it. At the end, everything and everyone is accounted for; in fact, I might have preferred not to have every single aspect resolved, and every positive character quite so perfectly happy. I seldom argue in favor of ambiguity, but in this case, it wouldn’t hurt.
I was fortunate enough to receive both the Kindle and audio versions, and once more, Kathleen McInerney does a fine job of narration with all of the women characters and the internal monologue. Her voice isn’t deep enough to voice the men’s characters well, and I suggest adding a second, male narrator next time around.
The story held my attention quite nicely as I did my morning bike ride, and I recommend it to Andrews’s loyal readers, and to those that enjoy a good beach read.
I tend to avoid heartwarming holiday stories and romances because so many of them are infused with saccharine and require the reader to put their I.Q. in a box until the book is over. But two years ago, I was happily impressed with Mary Kay Andrews’ The Santa Suit, and so when I was invited to read and review Bright Lights, Big Christmas, I happily agreed. My thanks go to Net Galley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This book is for sale now.
The Tolliver Christmas tree farm is an institution, not only at home in North Carolina but as far north as New York City. As a child, Kerry sometimes accompanied her family to New York to set up a tree stand and sell the trees, but as an adult, she’s had other priorities. This year, though, she finds herself unexpectedly jobless, while at the same time, her father’s health prevents him from executing the task. Kerry must take his place, traveling to the Big Apple with her brother, Murphy. They set up the stand, and they sleep in the ancient pink trailer nicknamed “Spammy” because of its resemblance to a canned ham. Adventure awaits.
Kerry’s love interest pops up before we’re even ten percent into the story, but it appears that the author planned for us to know that, and it doesn’t hurt anything. Over the weeks they are in New York, various small (and large) crises present themselves and are worked out with team work, ingenuity, and the occasional well-placed bribe. They have Murphy’s dog Queenie with them, but she is primarily left in the background where she belongs.
What I appreciate most about this novel is how well grounded the plot is, and the author’s restraint in not permitting any elements to go over the top. There are a host of stereotypes possible, but every time I see one coming, Andrews chooses a different path, and it keeps the story fresh and original. Small details that might be overlooked by someone less detail oriented are seen to, and it keeps the narrative credible. Examples are the need for a shower or bath, given the length of their stay in a trailer without working plumbing; the cost of living in New York; the hazards of theft and vandalism, especially active at Christmas. None of these sidetracks the plot or slows the pace, but the questions a reader might have are tidied away, and this makes for greater enjoyment.
One small criticism involves a situation where theft and vandalism occur at a time when Murphy has to be away, and immediately, other men folk clamor over the need to have someone—someone with a Y chromosome, folks—to do lookout duty, protecting the fair damsel, her trees, and so on.
Apart from that, this is a delightful story. However, for awhile I wasn’t sure I liked it, because I was listening to the audio version, which is poorly done. The male characters are voiced in a way that is choppy, wooden, and unconvincing; but worse is Kerry’s voice, which is performed in a high-pitched, girly-girl voice so off-putting that it took me awhile to realize that the problem wasn’t the author’s, but rather the voice actor’s. The children’s voices are much better, and I actually howled with laughter when the baby in a stroller wailed!
As the story reaches its climax, Kerry has to make some serious choices, and I admire the way this part is resolved. The side character Heinz, an elderly man that lives in the neighborhood and often stops by the tree stand, is terrific.
When all is said and done, I rate the printed version of this novel 4+ stars, and the audio version 3+ stars, with an overall score of 4. I recommend the print version of this book, but not the audio.
Nina Simon’s debut novel, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, marks a fine beginning to an auspicious career. My thanks go to Net Galley and William Morrow for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
The story unfolds with three generations of women—Lana, Beth, and Jack—solving a murder mystery together. Lana, the grandmother, has just received dreadful news from her doctor, and she’s forced to rely upon Beth, her estranged daughter, for help to and from chemo appointments. Jack is her granddaughter, Beth’s daughter. Although all three are important characters, Lana is the protagonist.
Lana doesn’t deal well with helplessness.
No sooner has she moved into the little beach house in central California where the other two reside, than Jack, a teenager with a job as a kayak tour guide when not in school, finds a dead body while she is working. Suspicion initially falls on Jack, and so Beth and Lana dive in, first seeking to prove that Jack is innocent, and then, led by Lana, to find out who actually did it.
Amateur sleuth books come with an inherent challenge to the author, because obviously, civilians that have never worked in law enforcement are badly outmatched by actual cops. They don’t have the tools, the connections, or the experience to carry it off, and so such mystery novels sometimes end up looking ridiculous. Simon holds her own here nicely. Another issue I see frequently is with characters that are children. Jack is a teen, and she’s a bright girl, but Simon doesn’t fall into the trap of creating an unbelievably smart teen in order to justify making her walk and talk exactly like an adult. Jack has the naivete and occasional bad judgement common to kids her age, and because of this, the story rings true.
There are a couple of things that I’d change if I could. First, the whole “fiercely independent” and “tiny firecracker” personas are badly overused and becoming a cliché. The second may be partially due to my own false assumptions. Between the cover and the title, I initially thought this would be a comic caper, with the women planning to mete out some vigilante justice with hilarious missteps and hijinks along the way. Although the book has its moments, it’s not as funny as I anticipated.
Nonetheless, this is a fun read, easily followed, and with more character development than one usually sees in a novel of this nature. The chemo occasionally seems a little too easy on Lana, but it’s not beyond the pale; after all, different people tolerate these things at different levels. There’s never a moment where I slam down the book due to disbelief. I appreciate the working class realism in Beth and Jack’s lives.
I recommend Mother-Daughter Murder Night to those that enjoy the genre, and I look forward to seeing what Simon writes next.
Seattle Book Mama 