Tag Archives: family stories

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!

Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward*****

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Reading Jesmyn Ward always hurts so good. In Let Us Descend, she conveys the heartbreak and sense of betrayal a young girl, Annis, faces when she and her mother are sold separately by their owner—who is also her father–and the ways that she copes, and also the ways she is helped by the spirits of her ancestors.

My thanks go to Scribner and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review. I’m sorry to be so late here, and am grateful that the literary world has recognized this book for the masterpiece that it is.

You may have seen other reviews in which I complain and gnash my teeth over historical inaccuracies; sometimes I rant over an author’s failure to portray a child in a way that is developmentally inaccurate. There will be none of that here. Ward has taken the time and done the research, and so her well crafted characters aren’t compromised by sloppy background details. I had to take this story in small bites because it is excruciatingly sorrowful.  For part of it I listened to the audio version; this is a treat in itself, as Ward reads her own novel.

Some reviewers have taken issue with the amount of magical realism Ward employs. I disagree with them. How can any novelist portray such a story and such a character as Annis with any glimmer of hope, unless they employ these literary devices? Does anyone really want to read a book that is miserable at the outset, miserable in the middle, and miserable even at its bitter, wretched conclusion? Without hope, there’s not much incentive to keep reading, nor would it have been satisfying to write; but Ward will not and does not revise history simply to make her readers more comfortable. There was only one way to tell this story and be true to history and her characters, and Ward found it.

Yes, it’s a rough read, but it’s so well written that many readers must have smiled through their tears. Know that, of necessity, this story is absolutely loaded with triggers; assuming that you can navigate them without coming undone, I highly recommend this story to you.

Like the Appearance of Horses, by Andrew Krivak****

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I first read Andrew Krivak in 2017, when The Signal Flame was published. His glorious prose is something few authors can match. Here we have another novel involving many of the same characters and to an extent, the same setting. I am happy to get back to it.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Highbridge Audio, and Bellevue Literary Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

One of the things that initially drew me to Krivak’s writing is that he occupies a sparsely populated niche with his historical fiction. Who else writes about the Romani Resistance of World War II? Who writes about Romani refugees? Most authors are as susceptible as anyone else to trend following and bandwagonism. Krivak is not. He sets his own course, and he does it with spellbinding prose and sterling self-discipline.  

Here we see three generations of men that go to war, starting with World War II, then to a P.O.W. camp during the Vietnam War, and finally, to Iraq. This is a rough read, friends. There’s just about every possible trigger, so if you’re protecting the more tender parts of your mind, you may need to pass on this one. On the other hand, if you are looking for a catharsis to bring about a good ugly cry, rush out and get this book right this minute.

Krivak doesn’t write page turners; instead, he draws me in and makes me forget where I am and what I was doing a minute ago. His work is deeply absorbing and at times, moving.

Narrator Jamie Renell gives a flawless performance here. The book is tightly plotted enough, however, that the listener needs to pay careful attention. I had both the audio and ebook formats, and I still got confused once in awhile and had to backtrack.

If I could add one more thing to ice Krivak’s literary cake, it would be a well developed female character. The women that appear here seem to have been planted for the purpose of developing the male characters. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Krivak has crafted this story around a set of actual people and events, though he says it’s a loose representation, and so I can see why he chooses to focus on the men that go to war; yet, since he is taking a few liberties anyway, would it hurt so very much to send off a soldier girl?

This complaint is a minor one. Krivak is a badass, and I do recommend this book to you.

The Morningside, by Tea Obreht****

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In 2019, Tea Obreht blew me away with Inland, a work of historical fiction—alternative history actually—so creative that I haven’t stopped thinking about it to this day. Her new book The Morningside is a dystopian novel that, while not as remarkable as the previous effort, is both intriguing and memorable.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Our protagonist is Silvia, and she and her mother are refugees from a homeland made dangerous by violent political turmoil. They were invited to live in The Morningside, a once grand old building fallen into disrepair by the flooding that comes with climate change. Silvia’s aunt, who arrives first, and her mother are to be caretakers and participate in the resettlement program.

At eleven, Silvia is full of questions. Her mother never talks about her father or about the past. Her aunt has photographs and stories; her mother is like the librarian that just wants everyone to stop talking. She is consumed by her fears. We readers have to wonder which of them is more realistic. Should the aunt stop blabbing, or should Sil’s mother get a grip? Silvia clearly prefers her aunt’s approach, but then, Sil is just a kid.

There’s a considerable wait list to get into school, so in the meanwhile, Silvia is bored, and bored kids have a tendency to get into trouble. Silvia becomes obsessed with the reclusive artist that lives in the penthouse. Nobody talks to her, because nobody is supposed to bother her. The one obvious thing about this neighbor is that she leaves home at the same time each day with her three dogs.

Silvia becomes convinced that the woman is a sorcerer whose dogs transform into humans—her three sons—for a portion of each day. My initial reaction is the same as her mother’s: don’t be ridiculous, Sil. Leave that poor woman alone. But then it dawns on me that this is fiction, after all, and this is Obreht, so…could the woman have supernatural powers?

Silvia is assisted twice in her spying mission, first by a neighbor that goes by Lam, and that is willing to exchange a pass key to enter the artist’s home for mail that was sent to him after he moved out.  I wonder about this; an eleven year old is approached by an adult man for secret purposes. What could possibly go wrong?

Her other confederate is a girl her own age whose family moves into The Morningside.  How starved Silvia has been for a peer!  Yet this girl is even gutsier than Silvia, and she leads her into dangerous waters more than once.

That’s all I’m going to tell you, except that the story is fresh and original, and although I tend to be skeptical when it comes to this genre, there is never a moment when I find myself stepping back and saying, no way.

With a young protagonist, one might be tempted to say this is for young adults, and that’s possible; yet the vocabulary is advanced enough that the younger reader had better have extraordinary skills in reading and comprehension, not to mention stamina.

I recommend this novel to those that love the genre.

The Great Divide, by Cristina Henriquez*****

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I found The Great Divide, by Cristina Henriquez, on a short list of most anticipated novels of 2024. I don’t like to get shut out when a book gets this much buzz; then there’s the added draw of an unusual setting. The U.S. doesn’t see a lot of fiction published that’s set primarily in Panama during the early 1900s, and so that sealed it. My thanks go to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the review copies, both audio and digital. This story lives up to the hype, and I recommend it to you.

I am not so sure about it at the outset. There is a robust quantity of characters that are important to the story, and each of them is given a brief chapter all to themselves. I wonder whether they will ever intersect, or if this will turn out to be a collection of short stories, but before much longer, characters are meeting other characters. They don’t all end up together in the end, but we can see the ties that have formed. There are a lot of people to keep track of, and for me, having both the print version and the audio is tremendously helpful. Robin Miles narrates in a way that is natural and fluid, and I don’t notice much of what is around me when I listen to her. But once in awhile a character is mentioned and I draw a blank; here is where the Kindle version is essential, because I highlight the names of each of the characters, and this enables me to instantly flip back to where they were introduced to us without having to stop listening. Eventually, of course, I no longer need to do so, but knowing that I can makes for stress-free reading.

I am engaged with these characters, each of whom feels real to me, and I groan when I see them get into trouble, and sigh with relief once they are in the clear again. The ones that I care about most are a father and son that are estranged from each other, neither wanting to stay that way, yet both of them incorrectly interpreting the silence of the other. As we reach the climax, I can tell there are three ways for this situation to resolve: they can reconcile; one of them can die; or the son can decide to follow another character back to the U.S.A. without reconnecting with his dad.  It only now occurs to me that there was a fourth possibility, which was to leave them still estranged at the end; but by this time, Henriquez had shown herself to be a better writer than that, and while I won’t tell you how they wound up, I will say that she didn’t leave her readers dangling.

Because this is an intricately woven tale with a lot of equally important characters, I’m not including any quotes, but I will say that Henriquez is a talented writer, and anyone that loves good historical fiction should get this book and read it. This applies even more so to those interested in Latin American history and the building of the canal. I hadn’t read her work before, but she’s on my radar now, and I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

After Annie, by Anna Quindlen*****

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After Annie tells the story of a family that is changed by the sudden death of the mother, a woman still in her thirties. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public Tuesday, February 27, 2024.

I’ve read a number of books by this author, and I have come to notice a pattern. I read the synopsis, like the sentence I used to begin this review. I see what it’s about and shrug. Doesn’t sound like it would be all that special, but hey, it’s Quindlen, and I have liked her work before, so let’s give it a shot. After all, in past novels, the topics also didn’t seem engaging at the outset. One novel is about a family being forced to relocate due to eminent domain; another has to do with parking spaces in New York City. There’s a memoir about grandparenting, and another about—I kid you not—her dog. Nothing here seems all that appealing.

Yet in some ways, it is the very ordinariness of her subjects that draws us in. So many of us have had to move when we didn’t want to, and so we fought it; or we became so angry with a neighbor’s thoughtlessness that we fantasized about terrible revenge; or we dealt with a death that came out of the blue, striking down someone that was perfectly healthy, or that seemed to be. If we haven’t done any of these things, chances are excellent that someone else we care about has. By tapping into every day experiences and crises of various sizes, Quindlen finds commonalities.

But perhaps the most important feature of her books, particularly her novels, is the way that she crafts characters that are so visceral we would know them if we saw them on the street. Young Ali, the daughter who’s just beginning middle school, yet suddenly finds herself burdened by all of the things her mother did for the family, from child care to meals to housework, is so real to me that I nearly climb inside of her skin, and when Annie’s best buddy tries to tell Bill, Annie’s husband, Ali’s dad, that this isn’t okay and he blows her off, I want to cry out. We can see that he’s behaving selfishly, whether he knows it or not, because he is so poleaxed with grief. It’s hard to prepare a meal when you can’t stop crying. Hell, Bill can hardly go into the kitchen, because that’s where she died.

Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it, and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.

I began reading this story because I like the author, but it also serves as a grief book. I found this out when my sister died about halfway through. Unlike Annie, my sister was not in the prime of her life, nor was her death unexpected. She’d been horribly ill and in great pain for years on end. Her death was a relief, ending her pain, and ending the anguish of others that had been constantly seeing her that way, helpless to improve her life in any way. So I am not poleaxed like poor Bill. She didn’t leave behind a houseful of small children and a middle schooler trying to pick up all of the pieces. She didn’t have a six year old who would explain to everyone that his mommy wouldn’t be dead anymore once she came home from the hospital. But what I am saying is that I find this book more soothing than I would have guessed. If you or someone near to you is dealing with loss, After Annie may help you too.

Highly recommended.

Sharks In the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn*****

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A story like this one only comes along once in a rare while, luminous, intimate, and deeply affecting. My great thanks go to NetGalley and also Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for the review copy. This book is available to the public, and you should get it and read it.

Initially I was drawn to this book for several fairly superficial reasons. The cover is certainly arresting; the title is perplexing. But the biggest draw for me was that it was set in Hawaii, and all of the characters are native Hawaiians. In my corner of the world, the Pacific Northwest, there are a lot of Pacific Islanders. Why anyone would leave such an idyllic climate for the dark, soggy winters we see here used to be a mystery to me, but ultimately, people follow the jobs, and so many Seattle residents come from there.

As a history teacher, I’ve always felt that my students deserve to be included in the curriculum, and so in addition to teaching about Caucasians during whatever time period we’re examining, I work in African-Americans, Latinx, Native peoples, and a variety of Asian ethnicities, but time and again I hit a wall when I tried to find something for my Islander students. And when I’ve taught literature, it’s been the same struggle. Islander kids get shut out every time.  And so now I am retired, and here’s my appeal to other educators out there. Put this book in your classroom.

For the rest of you: apologies. Let’s get on with it.

As we open, the setting is Hawaii in 1995, and the protagonists are two parents and three children, all members of the Flores family. They’re on vacation when seven year old Noa falls into the ocean where sharks are circulating. But instead of devouring the boy, one of the sharks delivers him back to his family, carrying him gently in its jaws, “Like you were made of glass, like you were its child.” The first chapter is told in the second person, with Malia, the mother, recalling the event, speaking to Noa. She tells him, “The gods were hungry for change, and you were that change.” It’s obviously a miracle, and others see it happen also. Their lives will never be the same.

As the story continues, we hear from all of the family members. At first, Noa appears to be gifted with a magical healing ability, but he is still a child, and the demands on him are grueling, exhausting. But this is not the only change his magical abilities produce. Noa is the youngest child in the family, but now the siblings’ hierarchy is completely flipped, and the resentment felt by his brother and sister is dreadful. At one point Kaui, who is academically talented, fumes that she is “just his shadow, shaped like a sister.”  And his brother Dean, who is an athlete, explains:

You’re out at breakfast without him, eating cereal and joking with Mom and Dad, Kaui coming in, and you get them all laughing and smiling, just because of you. But then Noa shows up right, and suddenly it’s all questions about what’s happening with his day and did he sleep okay and here’s some thoughts about which extracurricular program he should enroll in…Hard not for get angry at that. I felt it like a fist flexing inside my own chest.

To make matters even more fraught, there’s an economic downturn that makes it impossible for the parents to support the family. They begin charging people that come to be healed by Noa, and so the youngest child is not only the golden favorite because of his miraculous ability; he’s also the family breadwinner. And again: it’s an awful lot to put on the shoulders of one small child.

The dialect combines with the authorial voice to create characters that I swear I would know if I ran into them, and in many ways, they remind me of the adolescents that I taught. Because I was so unconscionably late here, I checked out the audio version at Seattle Bibliocommons, and I have never heard an audiobook I loved more. The voice actors are so convincing that I can hear them now, more than a month and several other audiobooks, after I finished it.

For me, that would be enough. Create visceral enough characters and I don’t even care much about the plot. But the plot is also gobsmackingly brilliant! I believed I could track where it was headed up until perhaps the 60% mark, and then there’s one surprise turn, and another, and another, till at the end I was simply sitting with my mouth open and my eyes on the text as the audio gave way to the afterword and credits. I had to remind myself to breathe.

This is one of those rare galleys that I could see reading again just for the love of it. This review is my 923rd for NetGalley, and I have chosen to reread fewer than 10 of them, so let that indicate the measure of esteem in which I hold this novel.

I Did It for You, by Amy Engel****

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Amy Engel is the author of The Roanoke Girls and The Familiar Dark, both of which were unrelentingly creepy, and I loved them. When I saw that she had written another, I had to read it. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Dutton for the review copy of I Did It for You. This book is for sale now.

Greer Dunning’s sister, Eliza and her boyfriend, Travis, were murdered when they were teenagers. One minute they were making out in his car, and the next, boom. Someone shot them dead, right through the window. The guilty party was eventually caught and charged, and eventually admitted what he’d done, but it never made sense, especially not to Greer. She had a hunch that the killer, an intellectually disabled fellow with little imagination, had not acted alone. But he has said nothing about it, refused to provide a motive, and what he knew, he took with him to the electric chair.

Greer moved on. She finished school, moved from her hometown of Ludlow, Kansas to Chicago, where she works as a middle school counselor. But now a similar crime has occurred back in Ludlow, and Greer feels the pull, the urge to turn toward home and find out for real just what is going on.

This is a solid mystery, though not one with the sort of page turning urgency as the other two. It’s deeply atmospheric, and there’s a melancholy, brooding mood that’s thick and rich, and this is becoming Engel’s signature quality. The internal monologue is an absorbing one.

The choices that she makes while she is home make sense in a strange way, and parallels form in the most unexpected of places.

The solution itself doesn’t work for me. What? No. But the journey we take to get there makes this novel worth reading.

The only problem with writing a big-deal debut novel is that you’ve set the bar high, and readers develop stratospheric expectations for each subsequent book. So it is here. I Did It for You is a decent read, but it isn’t The Roanoke Girls, and it isn’t The Familiar Dark. Instead, it is simply a good book.

For mystery lovers that have never read anything by this author, this book is recommended. For those that have, you may want to get this one free or cheap, rather than paying full cover price.

Unlikely Animals, by Annie Hartnett*****

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There are indifferent writers; good writers; outstanding writers; and then there are writers like Hartnett, that leave me with my jaw dropped down to my knees, thinking that I like to write, and you probably do, too, but friend, neither one of us will ever write like this. Not ever.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy.

Emma Starling is our protagonist, and she was born with healing powers in her hands. She went away to medical school, but was expelled for reasons that we don’t understand until later, and her healing touch is gone. She has quietly left school without telling a soul back home. She hasn’t even returned for a visit, but now she has been summoned unequivocally; her father is dying, and her mama wants her to come home. NOW.

There are enough points of view in this story to make your head spin. We have the graveyard crowd, for example, and since Everton, New Hampshire is such a tiny town, everybody knows everybody, dead or alive. When I first see that the dead are discussing the affairs of the living, I am dismayed, because the legendary Fannie Farmer has already done this in The Whole Town’s Talking. But soon it becomes obvious that this story isn’t derivative in the least; Hartnett takes this device and uses it in a different way, and it doesn’t dominate the story as Flagg’s does; these characters are there to provide a slightly more objective perspective than those that still live.

There are several points of view from among the living, too. And there are references throughout to the writings of Harold Baines, a naturalist instrumental in shaping the town and in particular, the iconic yet bizarre Corbin Park, which is open only to a chosen few. There are points of view offered from the critters as well; not all of the critters are real, however. And at the EXACT moment when I begin to think that the author should have pared this thing down, for heaven’s sake, because the organization appears to be all over the place, the narrative explains that “A good story doesn’t always follow an arrow, sometimes it meanders a little instead, so we hope you’ll excuse this tangent…It might seem unrelated, but sometimes a minor character doesn’t become important until later…The lives of the living often get tangled up in unexpected ways, especially in a town as small as ours, even when a ten-foot electrified fence splits it up.”

I howled, because it felt as if the author had read my mind!

An important plot point is the disappearance of Crystal Nash. Crystal was Emma’s best friend, and had lived with the Starling family as sort of an informal foster child. Crystal developed an addiction and disappeared; Emma and Crystal had had a falling out, and Emma tries not to think about her too much now. Clive, Emma’s father, seldom thinks about anybody else. He’s turned over every rock; slapped a poster on every telephone pole.

To say the least, it’s an interesting homecoming for Emma.

As if the many points of view don’t make for a complex enough story, Hartnett takes us back in time—sometimes just a few years, at other times, way back in the past—and I am awestruck at the way she pulls all of it together at the end, with no loose ends hanging. At the outset I had been sure that this story should have been streamlined, but at the end, when I look back to see what, if anything, could be cut without detracting from the story, there is nothing that’s superfluous. Not one thing. All of these odd bits and pieces are essential to the story she is telling; “meandering,” indeed.

Because I had fallen behind in my reading, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons, and it is brilliantly performed. Usually a story this complicated doesn’t work for me as an audiobook, but this one is outstanding and not hard to follow (although I did go back over the DRC for some quotes.)  Mark Bramhall and Kirby Heyborne do an exceptional job as narrators.

This is undoubtedly one of the finest novels we’ll see in 2022. Highly recommended in whatever format makes your heart happy.