Good morning, dears. Anyone else feeling that the universe has gone into overdrive after being at standstill for COVID? I try to keep this all about books, but the past two weeks have pressed me hard. Normally, I’d have a review for you, but instead I’m going to get personal. Feel free to skip down to the book covers if you’re not in the mood and just want something ... Read More...
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Taylor Jenkins Reid it’s that she exerts a magnetic force on readers (I’m looking at you, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & the Six). Her latest, Malibu Rising, is no different, because, once again, she’s crafted a novel that once started needs to be finished without interruption. In this case it’s about the Riva ... Read More...
Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty
It was only a matter of time before the Ivy League college admissions scandal was memorialized in fiction. I was happy to see that the first responder is a favorite contemporary chronicler, Lauren Weisberger, of The Devil Wears Prada fame. She’s back with Where the Grass is Green and the Girls Are Pretty and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a world where entitled white ... Read More...
Jennifer Weiner: Fiction and Fact
Daisy Shoemaker lives one of those perfect-on-paper lives. She has her own small successful cooking business, her marriage and life are comfortable, and she has a reasonable relationship with her teenage daughter, Beatrice. All good until Jennifer Weiner scratches the surface and removes the shine in her new novel That Summer. The cracks start to show when Daisy and ... 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...
Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
Right now, fast paced books are my favorite kind of reading. Normally, I love diverse, literary fiction, but it’s not enough to hold my COVID/post-election attention. This is also my backlist reading time of the year, when I’m less about striking out on my own—reading new books you may not know about—and more about reading older books I’ve heard about. The bookish stars aligned ... Read More...
