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My 6 Favorite Debuts of 2021

December 20, 2021

debut

  Happy Monday and welcome to my first yearend best-of lists. Today is a favorite category: best debuts. Finding new authors is one of my greatest reading pleasures and 2021 proved to be a very good year. Of all my reading, 38% was debut authors and of those debuts I rated 36% 3.5 stars or higher, with 3.5 being my baseline for a book I’d recommend to others. Finally, of ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Feature, Reading Tagged: book clubs, childhood, debut, favorite books, historical fiction, literary, mystery

The Chosen and the Beautiful

December 17, 2021

chosen

Wouldn’t you know it—as soon as I post my overlooked books of 2021 another slips in under the wire. I finished The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo Wednesday morning after my post went live. This marvelous novel is a retelling of The Great Gatsby but from the perspective of Jordan Baker, seen in the original story mostly as Daisy Buchanan’s sidekick. Now, she is Asian and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1920s, debut, historical fiction, literary

The Survivors: A Novel by Alex Schulman

November 22, 2021

survivors

Alex Schulman is a well-known Swedish author with The Survivors being his first book to be translated into English. The novel begins with a policeman arriving at a lakeside cottage where three men wait, bloody and exhausted. Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre are brothers who came to the house to dispose of their mother’s ashes, a plan that fell apart as they began revisiting the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: childhood, family, literary

Firekeeper’s Daughter: A Novel

November 12, 2021

firekeeper

As a biracial member of the Ojibwe tribe Daunis Fontaine lives in the uncomfortable in-between space of not belonging to any one community. What bought her acceptance from everyone were her  incredible skills as a hockey player. After graduating high school she was looking forward to a bright future as a player at the University of Michigan until family events caused her to ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, debut, mystery, Native Americans, young adult

All Together Now

October 29, 2021

together

After State of Terror I was in desperate need of reading that would unclench my jaw. I was grateful to find it with Matthew Norman’s All Together Now, an entertaining novel about a group of high school friends now in their 30s, coming back together for the first time in almost a decade. Robbie is a math whiz, the kind of guy who can do algebra in his head (I hate that!). His ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, friendship, vacation reading

In Every Mirror She’s Black

October 7, 2021

mirror

I was pulled into In Every Mirror She’s Black by the premise of three Black women who end up living in Sweden. Kemi is a marketing executive who’s been recruited by a phenomenal compensation project and a leadership role to a Swedish agency. Brittany is a flight attendant who is swept away by the owner of the agency when he becomes obsessed with her. Muna is a Somali refugee ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: chick lit, contemporary life, debut

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