August 3.0

Dominicana by Angie Cruz
A Book of the Month club choice, I probably would not have picked this book up without encouragement from the publicist. Why? Let's face it, I live in a majority white college town in the upper left hand corner of the states. Reading about a 15 year old Dominican Republic girl who marries an older man and moves to New York City in 1965 doesn't sound like my gig. Which is EXACTLY why I needed to read it. This book, and others like it, give us a window into a world we are not a part of, the life of an immigrant, the life of poverty and dreams of escape, the life of hard work, language barriers, losing one's way in the neighborhood, wanting more from life but feeling trapped. Angie Cruz has written a deep character study of young Ana Ruiz and encased it in gorgeous language and sentence structure, at times making me gasp, and at other times laugh out loud. I felt a part of Ana's life, and isn't that the magic of literature?

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
In my constant attempt to learn about the world through books, this novel is an eye-opening one on the tragedy of Syria over these last eight years. As the world watched the protests devolve into civil war, as the world stood by and watched chemical poisoning and the government bombing their own people, as we all became numb to the terrible loss of life, this book reminds us how so many lives were destroyed. Lefteri tells the story of Nuri, who with his cousin Mustafa, operates an incredible honey business in the fields of Aleppo. Moving back and forth in both time and place, we see the beginnings of this terrible conflicts, as the hives are burned by government soldiers, bombs land in back yards, and dead children become commonplace. It is a story of how normal people, through circumstances beyond their control, flee and become refugees. That word, refugee, seems to have become a curse, a wound upon the society where they enter, a bargaining chip, a way to insult the 'other.' Read this book and you will be reminded what a refugee is...someone fleeing great danger at enormous peril, in such desperation to find a place of safety, to find a home.

After the End by Clare Mackintosh
Having read many of her thrillers (I Let You Go, etc.) , I stupidly assumed this would be another great thriller. I was waaaay wrong. This book is a deeply personal, incredibly gripping story of a couple grappling with a life and death decision over their critically ill son. Do they follow the doctor's advice and let their child die rather than exist in a body that cannot move with a brain that is permanently damaged? What is life, and what is existence? Do they pursue other treatments, hoping both for more time and a possible miracle? And what if the parents disagree?? This is a wrenching look into a difficult issue, with no completely right or wrong answers. Mackintosh uses a unique plotting structure to show the complexity of all the "what ifs" that is highly provocative and filled with tension. Highly recommend this one:)

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
Did you like Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty? If so, just wait - the parents in The Gifted School makes those women look like pussycats. What happens in a predominately white, privileged area when the school district decides to partner with surrounding districts and create a magnet school for gifted students? Oh, and test the kids for admission? Can you say craaaaazy parents??? Each one is uniquely vile: the doctor who makes excuses for her bad behavior; the widow whose only reward seems to be living life through her children; the non-working wealthy mother with the perfect only child; and the free-spirited mom with boisterous twins. I was fascinated by these mothers - I had met them on soccer fields, been questioned by them in parent-teacher conferences, and yes, had occasionally been them. While the ending was a bit too 'pat' for me and a bit implausible, I thoroughly enjoyed this mean look into modern day parenting.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
With all the violence in today's world, it seems as if the past of Northern Ireland has been pushed back into the annals of history, but it was a terrible and dangerous time in Belfast and other areas of Northern Ireland. This well-told, well-researched book is a fascinating listen on librofm (this service benefits your independent bookstore instead of Amazon, just sayin). It begins with the horrific kidnapping of a young Irish mother, leaving numerous children behind, as she becomes one of the 'Disappeared' in the Troubles, the oddly named time period of the conflict in the last decades of the 20th century. The reporter then focuses on two sisters, particularly Dolours Price, and IRA leader Gerry James, and all the murder and mayhem created by the conflict. I learned a ton and was utterly fascinating by this piece of history, particularly in mind of Brexit and what could happen with a 'hard border' between the Republic of Ireland and the north, still owned and operated by the English.

Knife (Harry Hole, #12) by Jo Nesbo
Good grief, Nesbo has written a LOT of books about Harry; I wasn't sure how I would feel about this last one. Clocking in at well over 400 pages, it is a commitment. However, it is also his best Harry Hole novel, in my opinion. Harry, the most intelligent and skilled murder detective in the Oslo police department, has always been a hot mess. Yet in the final few books, life had settled down a bit while he was happily married to Rakel and being a stepfather to Oleg. All good, right? Not quite. Not to give anything away, but literally everything hits the fan in the first fifty pages and the hunt for a murderer is on. Once again, Nesbo has us chasing him down long rabbit holes, ending with a finale that is deeply satisfying. So if you have loved his books before, I highly recommend picking this one up. And if you've never read this detective series, think about it but be prepared for a dark, creepy, Scandinavian tale.

The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
This is a gorgeous mix of historical fiction and mystery and family drama, written by a very talented writer. Set in the deep south of Louisiana, a dead body is found in the first chapter, one of a young female field worker at Belle Vie, an old family plantation. Caren is the manager, living with her young daughter and dealing with her ex partner who is soon to be remarried up in Washington, D.C. As workers get pulled into the murder investigation, the old history of Caren's family ancestors who were slaves on this land gets pulled into play, as well as her own past history of her relationship with her mother, the plantation cook, her time in law school, her relationship with Eric, as well as the plans the owners have for Belle Vie's future. It is a complicated story with lots of twists and turns, and has a great narrator from Librofm.

August 2.0

Thirteen (Eddie Flyn #4) by Steve Cavanaugh
Mystery. Legal Thriller. Police Procudural. Page Turner. Yup, my new favorite series! How has America not thoroughly discovered and embraced Irish writer Steve Cavanaugh?? His Eddie Flynn series (quite popular in the UK) is highly entertaining. Flynn is a conman turned lawyer, whose personal life is a hot mess, who has an intriguing collection of friends, who only defends the innocent, and who will literally do anything, legal and otherwise, to get his client free (in this case, a famous movie star entangled with a serial killer). Cavanaugh wraps his story in intelligent, thoughtful prose with a snappy sense of humor thrown in just when it is needed. Both my husband and I are obsessed with Eddie Flynn and are waiting breathlessly for Book #5. Seriously, get this entire series.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Okay, so I never read the hugely popular Eat, Pray, Love by Gilbert - it's that whole lemmings thing, and not wanting to follow the crowd + it just sounded too "New Age-y" for me:) I was talked into reading this one and wow, wow, wow, I am glad I picked it up and did not put it down (I was tempted). The story begins with young Vivian Morris, a Vassar drop out, who goes to live with her aunt in NYC. Aunt runs a theater company with the most wonderfully eclectic group of characters, and the aunt herself is a hoot (I think I'd like to be her - living life on my own terms, never giving two sh#$s about what others think). Now Vivian, well, she drove me insane for the first 100 pages. Selfish, self-absorbed, vain, shallow...yet midway through the book, my brain clicked in and said "yep, that's the point." This book is really about what society tells us, women, to be and what life can be like when we turn off those voices and just LIVE. Loved this one!

Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short by William D. Cohan
Admittedly, this was like reading a really good, really well-researched People magazine article -but there's a reason that mag is so popular:) The author attended the very privileged, very old, very WASPy east coast boarding school of Andover. Four of his classmates died freaky, tragic, early deaths so Cohan researches and writes about these four friends: one is the child of Holocaust survivors, one is Harry Truman's grandson, one is the scion of a hugely wealthy Chicago family, and one is President Kennedy's youngest child. Their lives both at the boarding school and afterward are strangely fascinating, and yes, their deaths came at young ages and were varied in their causes. As I listened to this one, I had quite a few "you've got to be kidding me" moments. It is an entertaining book.

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Chosen by Today host Jenna Hager for a book club read, I found this story to be a fascinating look into the expectations placed on children, and the fallout of these parental dreams. The focus is on two sisters: Amy, the shy and retiring youngest child of Chinese immigrants, born and raised in Brooklyn, now terribly worried about her older sister Sylvie; and Sylvie herself, the child left behind in the Netherlands when her parents left for America, not returned to the family home until age nine, married, Ivy league education, successful...or is she? Sylvie has disappeared and Amy flies to the Netherlands to try and track down what happened to her beloved sister. I found this story to be quite intriguing, perhaps because I have been in Amsterdam and this author really nails the directness of the Dutch, the beauty of this bike-riding community, as well as the push and tug of immigrants and expectations.

Homes: A Refugee Story by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah
Named one of Canada's top books last year, this one has been on my radar for awhile. Haunted by images from Syria over the last six years, I realized I knew very little about this tragic war. Rabeeah is a young boy who comes to Canada as a refugee and tells his story to his ELL teacher; that story becomes this book. He tells of how the war begins, the bombings, the soldiers, the massacres, the family moving from city to city trying to find a safe place, the process for becoming a refugee, how they search for a country to take them in, and provide them REFUGE. He makes the most horrifying images normal, as seen through a boy's eyes when the life of war is normalized. This book would be a fantastic memoir to use in a school setting, either middle school or high school, as it is such an authentic voice of a young boy just trying to find a home.

The Binding by Bridget Collins
If you like fantasy and magic intertwined with history, you might like this book. In this conception of old English history though, a new type of person is present, a bookbinder. As in a person who can bind one's painful memories into a book, and removing them from a person's mind. Hmmm...not bad if it is a tragic event. But don't those tragedies make us who we are? And what if a parent wants to stop their child from loving a particular person? Just have them bound and it takes care of all the problems...or does it? This is a surreal story, wrapped up with friendship and forbidden love. A bit too long, quite honestly, but a unique and intriguing concept.

Stone Cold Heart (Cat Kinsella, #2) by Caz Frear
I loved Frear's first book Sweet Little Lies; her London-based detective Cat Kinsella is an intriguing woman with lots of skeletons in her closet. In the latest installment in this series, she and her partner are investigating a murder of a young Australian woman, with all the evidence pointing to the guy that runs the coffee shop she frequented. More of Cat's own issues with her family's past rears its ugly head as well as she tries to track down the murderer. It's a fine mystery, but I did not find it as tense as the first one so it's a 'meh' for me.