Beautiful Shining People: The extraordinary, EPIC speculative masterpiece… by Michael Grothaus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow what an unusual book this was. I don’t really even know what to say about it without spoiling anything. Let’s just say John meets a woman in a cafe who turns out to be more enigmatic than he originally thought. There’s a retired sumo wrestler and a peculiar dog.

There’s a future where deep fakes are so common that it’s causing regular disruptions in the world economy. There’s quantum coding. There’s so much in this unusual, interesting book that you’ll have to pick it up and check it out yourself.

with gratitude to Orenda Books and edelweiss for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

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The Honeymoon Crashers by Christina Lauren
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn’t realize this was an audio-only companion but I loved it and it was a wonderful palette cleanser. Christina Lauren are always fun to read.

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Translation State by Ann Leckie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

This was my first Ann Leckie. Even though it was hard to follow at times, I loved the themes of belonging and family in this unusual novel. I also loved the seamless diversity in the book while it’s a topic of discussion inside a story. I think this one would have been better read vs listened to but I am still glad I picked it up.

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The Heart of It All by Christian Kiefer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“In some life other than this one, his words might have been condescending, but what she knew, beyond his touch, beyond the warmth of it, the feeling of his hand so gentle upon her, was that he had just said two words her mother had never said to her and never would. And it was all she had ever wanted to hear. Nothing less. Nothing more.”

This is one of the best novels I’ve read this year. It’s about several families in a small town. A local factory owner, several workers in the factory, their families, workers in the local grocery store and how their lives intertwine and how they hold each other and help each other through grief and loneliness and form a community.

There’s so much covered here: immigration, loss, grief, racism, sexism, patriotism, politics, love, family, loneliness, poverty, drugs, i can go on and on. None of it feels too much, though, it just feels like ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

“She did not know how to tell them how much these nights meant to her and did not want to admit that they had had such meaning, that bowling had saved her from a loneliness so deeply rooted in her soul that she had ceased to think of it as something that could change but instead had come to understand that it was the very center of her, that she would always feel this way, that she would always be alone. “

The characters are three-dimensional and real and flawed and you can’t help but love each of them and their vulnerability and the difficulties they are having to endure. I loved spending time with them. I rooted for each of them, cheered them on, laughed out loud and cried and cried.

“And there they were at the heart of it all: himself and, just ahead, his father and his son, the two of them laughing, talking lightly about dinner now, about their day in Columbus. Khalid knew he would remember this moment all his life and he wondered if Rashid too would recall it one day, perhaps when he was Khalid’s age and had children of his own, time wheeling on and the people who ran upon that wheel plucking an occasional moment from its turning like a pearl stolen from the sea. That he had once been Rashid’s age was difficult to fathom.”

I will not forget this book for a long, long time. Highly recommended.

with gratitude to edelweiss and Melville House for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I am finally calling it. I am very sad to say that this book will be a DNF for me at 41%. I tried it five different times across several months and I just could never get into the story. It’s not just that there are a lot of characters, it’s also that their voice isn’t different enough to keep the story interesting. It’s also that I couldn’t get myself to care about any of the characters and that’s tough for a character-driven story. I love and adore Acevedo and I will still read anything she writes no matter what. I am sure I will be in the minority on this one so if you’ve loved Acevedo and her work as much as I have I still recommend you give this a try because it’s full of her beautiful, poetic writing.

with gratitude to netgalley and Ecco for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human.”

This is a really unusual book. It starts with Ivy who gets pregnant as a teenager by a college kid who is not interested in having anything to do with her. She then joins a commune that’s more like a cult and has her kid. The story then shifts to the kid who ends up growing up and running away partly as a result of reading The Scarlet Letter.

“Ivy had begun to think that life was made up of a series of accidents and drastic errors. The unexpected became the expected, you made the right turn or the wrong turn, and all of it added up to the path you were on.”

I don’t want to give away spoilers but there is some suspension of realism here around what happens next. This book is about the magic of books and stories and how they can save people. (And sometimes even the writer himself.) It’s also about motherhood and about cults, and about libraries.

“It was a perfect night, a heavenly night, a night that could convince you that miracles were possible, if you still had faith, if you loved one person above all others, if you told yourself you hadn’t made a terrible mistake.”

I love reading Alice Hoffman’s writing. Even though this one was slower for me than some of her previous ones, I still loved reading it.

with gratitude to edelweiss and atria books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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