I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is the new novel by Marisa De Los Santos. Although this isn’t my favorite of hers, I love all her books. Twenty-something Clare is engaged to the seemingly perfect man, but has cold feet on her wedding day, when she meets Edith, an older woman, who with her gentle wisdom shows Clare she doesn’t have to go through with the wedding if it doesn’t feel right. Three weeks later, Edith is dead and has left…
A Man Called Ove is the debut novel by Fredrik Backman. I decided to go back and read this after reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. Although not as good as his later novels, I still found this to be a worthwhile read. Ove is a very grumpy older man whose wife has just died, and with nothing left to live for he’s decided to take his own life. However, things like nosy neighbors keep getting…
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a novel about four siblings in NYC who go to a fortune teller her when they are all very young and she tells them each the day of their death. What enfolds is each one’s life story and the creepy end predicted by the fortune teller. Is it fate? Self fulfilling prophecy? This story was so far fetched I had a hard time finishing the book, I found it ridiculous, depressing and pointless. A…
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is the latest book by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. It follows seven year old Elsa on a journey of discovery as she attempts to give letters to all the people her Grandmother wants to apologize to after she dies. Her Grandmother was her very best and only friend, and she was a little bit crazy. They shared a made up world and language, and now Elsa is left on her own…
The Oleander Sisters by Elaine Hussey is a novel set in Biloxi Mississippi on the Gulf Coast in 1969 as hurricane Camille fast approaches. Sis, Sweet Mama, Beulah, and Jim all rally around Emily when she decides to marry a man they all know to be abusive. There is little here that is original and I thought I’d die if I had to read the words Amen Cobbler one more time. This is one to skip.
LaRose by Louise Erdrich is another of her novels about the Ojibwe people of North Dakota. This one opens with Landreaux, a recovered alcoholic, out hunting deer, and mistakenly shooting and killing his neighbors five year old son. As everyone involved is devastated by this accident, Landreaux turns to an old Ojibwe tradition of giving his five year old son LaRose to his neighbors in retribution. What follows is one of the most painful, brilliant and ultimately redeeming novels I’ve…
The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jeffries is a historical fiction set in Ceylon during the 1920’s. A young Englishwoman marries a tea plantation owner and moves to Ceylon, only to discover that his family has many dark secrets she is unaware of. It is a novel about race and culture, prejudice, guilt and family, and of course, tea. Jeffries captures the cultural tensions between the locals and Europeans as well as the tension between the Sinhalese people and the…
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie is one of the most famous mystery novels of all time, so I finally got around to reading it. Full of wonderful characters and a wonderful story, Christie weaves a tale of intrigue that only Poirot could untangle, as I certainly could not. Although I don’t usually go in for murder mysteries, this was a very clever and entertaining read.
My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith is another witty little novel by perhaps the worlds most prolific writer. A food and wine writer heads to Tuscany to work on his latest book after his girlfriend of four years leaves him for her personal trainer. In a bizarre twist, he is unable to hire a rental car and is offered a bulldozer to use to get around while he is there. Along the way, he meets interesting characters, samples food…
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show, is his memoir about growing up in South Africa. He was six when apartheid ended. Born to an African mother and a white European father, his very existence was a crime. His mother kept him indoors for most of his early life. The book is full of incredible stories that Noah lived through and it is an in depth look at what the end of apartheid was like for…