If there’s anything more fickle than the heart it’s got to be my reading mind as my light/dark trend continues. Tuesday’s review was about a poignant novel covering the expanse of human emotions, but today The Whispers, dwells solely in the realm of the seven deadly sins as they play out amongst four women in one affluent neighborhood. Rebecca, an ER doctor, longs to be a ... Read More...
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
J. Ryan Stradal’s new novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, employs his familiar template of families, food and drink, but once again he uses it to create a fresh canvas for two families in northern Minnesota. Each runs a restaurant, but the similarities stop there. Betty and Floyd run the Lakeside, a traditional supper club with a bar, dance floor, and musical ... Read More...
2022 Underrated Gems
Nothing like waiting until the last week of the year to put out best-of lists. Today I want to share five gems that I adored that didn’t get as much love and attention as they deserve. Hopefully, you got gift cards and pick up at least one of these remarkable novels. Title links go to my full review This debut novel from a Native American author ... Read More...
All the Broken Places
What better way to start the last month of 2022 then with a 5 ⭐️ book. It’s John Boyne’s mesmerizing novel, All the Broken Places. Where some novels entertain by skating along the surface, this book plumbs the deepest depths of the human psyche, hunting the meaning of complicity during one of history’s darkest chapters. Gretel is a widow in her 90s living in a ... Read More...
My 6 Favorite Debuts of 2021
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...
The Lager Queen of Minnesota
I absolutely loved J. Ryan Stradal’s debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest so was nervous about his second novel. Sophomore efforts can be notoriously underwhelming. Happily, this was not the case with The Lager Queen of Minnesota. The story is about two sisters, Edith and Helen, and the wildly different paths their lives take when Helen reneges on a promise ... Read More...
