I have been utterly TRAGIC at posting my review of late, but I promise, I’ve been reading! I have oodles (and oodles!) of reviews to post, which I’ll do over the next few days. I don’t know how fall got away from me… actually, I do. A vacation to Italy, a bout with COVID, year-end work duties… suddenly, it’s crisp and cold outside, but the reading is still hot – let’s do this!
–Marissa
The Summer We Ran by Audrey Ingram was an audiobook listen, a romance novel about two former lovers who are now pitted against each other in the race of Governor of Virginia. Of course, we have flashbacks to their steamy teenage romance, then present day politics and unburying of long ago secrets. This was… fine, but didn’t stick with me after I listened to the last minute of it.
No One Knows You’re Here by Bryn Greenwood was an automatic read after their debut (All the Ugly and Wonderful Things), but this was just… eh. Beatrice is kidnapped and forced to become a caretaker to various trafficked children (usually the children of influential people around the world) in an isolated mansion, with little hope for escape. I liked the premise, the combination of hope and horror, the “romance” Beatrice finds inside, but I found the story a bit flat and the end a bit anticlimactic. An okay read, but not a barn burner.
Discontent by Beatriz Serrano was getting buzz, so I grabbed a copy of this slim novel. Marisa appears to have a fabulous life and job in Madrid, but secretly, she HATES it, and most of her career has been built on lies and laziness. All this takes a turn during the annual company retreat, when things really go off the rails. I liked how dark and funny this was, the snark of Marisa and all the lies that pile around her, and wondering how she was going to get out of this. This is a weird one, but in a really good way.
Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger is just in my wheelhouse… the space race, the 1960s, this time with the focus on Gemini, the “middle sibling” of the space race (not the first in space like Mercury, not on the moon like Apollo, just… the middle). I loved reading about all the missions, the people who made it happen, and the astronauts. Kluger is a heavyweight space race writer, and I dug this.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is another not quite the future, not quite now, novel that combines human emotion with stark observances of nature and our place in it. In this novel, the Salt family are the last inhabitants of Shearwater Island near Antarctica, which is about to disappear due to climate change. When a woman washes ashore – still alive – everything shifts. This novel packs in a feeling of dread, a suspense, a romance, a building of family, tragedy, grief and isolation, and I didn’t know what to expect from one page to the next! This novel has been lauded everywhere this year!
Awake by Jen Hatmaker was kind of a wild card for me… I don’t follow Hatmaker and know little about her, other than that she made her name in evangelical spaces, but this memoir blew my thoughts on her wide open. This memoir is about the end of her 26-year marriage due to his affair, and then her navigation through divorce, questioning her religious background (and abandoning it), single parenting, all the things – and she writes so honestly and humorously! I can see why everyone would want to be friends with Hatmaker – I really enjoyed this one!
With Friends Like These by Alissa Lee is listed as a suspense novel, but I found it… boring and not that compelling. I didn’t get thriller vibes, the characters gave me no one to cheer for, and it was just… eh.
stubbornsunshine.com 