A biracial little girl is the main character and the namesake in Tiffany McDaniel’s shattering novel, Betty. Born in 1954 and raised in Appalachian Ohio, the novel follows her and her five siblings, a Cherokee father, and White mother as their lives are acid-etched with racism from the outside and tragedy from within. The South of the 1950s and 1960s was not known for its ... Read More...
Zorrie by Laird Hunt
Towards the end of last year, the only reading that worked for me was fast paced thrillers. More plot, more action, less literary. This year is taking a turn (or a return) to the fiction that’s always drawn me in, the kind where the words matter more than anything else. Laird Hunt’s latest, Zorrie, epitomizes this style; the power of simplicity. Zorrie is a young girl in ... Read More...
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
I’m wrapping up what has been an odd reviewing week for me. One Monday I wrote about a book I loved, but which I read so long ago I had trouble sharing my thoughts. On Wednesday, my experience was a very good novel that would probably have been great if I could relate to the subject. Finally, here I am with a popular author who I’ve decided is not for me: Kristin Hannah. I ... Read More...
The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
For ten years Lakshmi has worked hard to build her own business. Now, at 30, she hopes to use her connections among the wealthy women of Jaipur to score a financial payout large enough for her to finally finish her own home and bring her parents from their small village to live with her. They’d married her off when she was fifteen, but she’d disgraced them by running away from ... Read More...
Five Best Debuts of 2020
Welcome to the last week of the longest year in history. I’m going to avoid any rehashing of what a nightmare it was for so many and stick to the easy stuff: my best books of 2020! Today I have five debut books that really stood out for me. Normally, I’d have more, but there was nothing normal in 2020. Like a lot of other readers, my taste and what worked for me was ... Read More...
November Reading
November? Seriously, how is 2020 not over yet?! This year has aged me a decade and not just because I’ve stopped coloring my hair. Even my bookish news is not great—my November reading fell off. There was still some great nonfiction, but my waning attention span (thank you doom scrolling) made great fiction harder to find. I finally let go of trying to read diverse, ... Read More...
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