Yes, it’s August first and this is a July reading recap but I like to make sure the month is well and truly over before I post something called a “recap”. That’s just me. July was an interesting month. Despite hitting a patch of reading blahs when I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read on my shelves (pretty sure that’s one of the signs of the Apocalypse) I ended up reading ... Read More...
The Fortune Hunter
Charlotte Baird has just become the heir to the Lennox family fortune and as she is unmarried she is now the most sought after young lady in England, despite the fact that she has no interest in dancing, needlepoint, horseback riding or even in being married (horrors!). Instead, she spends her days taking photographs—a new media that most find to be infinitely inferior to ... Read More...
How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky
For many, there are few ideas more compelling than that of perfect love. To meet the one person who understands you at your deepest level and loves you unconditionally; a true soulmate. Lydia Netzer takes this dream and puts it on the page in the quirky How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky. Irene Sparks is a prickly astrophysicist attempting to create a black hole in ... Read More...
Love and Chaos
Part two of my growing up series is book two of Gemma Burgess’s trilogy, Brooklyn Girls. In Love and Chaos, the focus shifts from Pia, the heroine in book one to her best friend, Angie, the rocker girl with the Keith Richards lifestyle. Angie is the type of person who is both scary and someone you want to be. On the surface, nothing gets to her. She could be seen as the ... Read More...
Before My Eyes
It is summertime in a beach town meaning there’s only one place to be if you’re a teenager. Unfortunately, Max is there but it’s behind the counter of the Snack Shack where his father has insisted he works so that he, an affluent politician, can say, “My son works” and make himself sound like the common man. Barkley is Max’s boss, a twenty-on-year old whose lack of any hygiene ... Read More...
Lookaway, Lookaway
I’ll do my best not to overindulge in Civil War metaphors but I tore through Lookaway Lookaway faster than Sherman went through Atlanta. Wilton Barnhardt has written an addictive novel of the contemporary south. He combines the best and the worst of old and new in a way that is expansive and intimate. The story is about the Johnston family. Matriarch Jerene is the epitome of ... Read More...
