The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow

genre: fantasy

Owen Mallory has studied the life of Sir Una Everlasting ever since he was old enough to know that it was a choice.  Una is the knight of Dominion's legends, she is the woman who saved the country and reminded soldiers for centuries who and what were worth dying for.  So when an ancient manuscript lands in Owen's lap that tells her story in the hand of someone who witnessed it, it feels like an actual dream come true.

And he's not completely wrong.

Because time in this book is a slippery thing.  So slippery that it can become hard to know what happened when.  For Owen and Sir Una, there is both time and memory but can their paths ever cross without tragedy?  Owen is determined to find out.

I genuinely enjoyed this beautiful book.  I love that it is an adult fantasy with adult feelings and problems.  I loved the gender-y romance with a large and complex and wicked strong and capable person still having feelings for a skinny scholary bookworm.  I believed all of this.  The time travel stuff is a LOT and enough for a time slip novel, it is a bit hard to keep things straight, but it was SO worth it for me to do so.  I feel completely for the romance here and the plot twisted the perfect amount to keep things interesting but never feel TOO much.  

If you like dragons and time travel and lady knights and ancient books, I do recommend this one highly.

A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

Life on a station in western Australia is mostly a very solitary existence. At a time when sheep are your livelihood and school is conducted over the wave radio, Warren, Rosie and Matt have each other for company. As they grow, there is boarding school and of course there are the helping hands around the property but mostly there is home, Meredith Downs station. When tragedy strikes their family like lightening, everything that matters collapses into the most essential and even that feels broken. Inside this black hole, choices are both made and not made and the consequences could be the final breath to make everything fall down permanently.

OH THIS BOOK. It was so hard to listen to sometimes I almost had to stop. It was that painful and uncomfortable. But I am so genuinely glad I stuck with it because there is also so much humanity. There is a reality here that I couldn’t look away from and the journey from beginning to end left me exhausted but also fulfilled. People are horrible and people are so beautiful. Humans commit horrible wrongs and humans survive horrible wrongs that they’ve done or had done to them and humans sometimes don’t know how to survive well and humans sometimes make things right in the best ways they can.

It will make you sick and make you cry and stitch you back up. This book is not for everyone. But I’m glad I pushed through my discomfort because although I’d wondered if the author could salvage any good from all the sadness, she absolutely did.

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary mystery

Joy and Benny have got a good thing going with their podcast This Story Might Save Your Life.  It's a huge hit and their following has gotten huge, so much so that it's gotten a little overwhelming for Joy, who lives with severe narcolepsy.  When Joy and her husband Xander aren't home one morning when Benny comes over to record, it feels like it must just be a miscommunication until it is clear that they are truly missing. Benny is soon desperate to find out what happened to his best friend and her husband.

This one snagged me from the first chapter. There are a few little tropes in here but for the most part I just had no clue what was going to happen next, in the best way.  I am SO glad I did the audio, the podcast episodes were a fun narrative device.  The writing never dragged and it felt just tight enough.  I appreciated reading about a character with narcolepsy and thinking about how that would impact one's life on a moment to moment basis.  This never felt like a thriller but it was a solid mystery for me and kept me invested from beginning to end.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (audiobook)

 genre: science fiction

When Earth needs to save itself from the aliens that have already nearly destroyed it, it looks to the children to find a new commander.  The child they think can complete the task?  Ender Wiggins.  Precious Ender who is capable of so much and whose training will run the razor's edge of breaking him.

I read this book LONG ago, as a teen and LOVED it.  So many good twists and you get SO invested in Ender and what is being required of him.  This time, on a long road trip, I listened to a full cast audio version with my two 13 year old sons.  I had hoped they'd like it as much as I did and they LOVED it as well.  They were surprised by the good twists and reveals, they cared about Ender and his friends, and I loved that at the heart of this story is the decisions we make: who do we want to be?  How do we want to show up in the world and how do we want to handle what is asked of us?  Motivation and Intent plus Behavior - all of these things make up our character and it's so clear what Ender is made of, despite what he has to DO.

Excellent production.  I love that I get to give it five stars again 30 years later.

My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney

genre: thriller

Eden Fox and her husband Harrison have just purchased a beautiful new cottage on the coast of Cornwall, the perfect place for a new start.  But when Eden gets home from a run one evening, the door is locked and when Harrison arrives at the door - he doesn't know her.  Scrambling for a way to figure out what's happening, Eden turns to the police but no one in town seems to know who she is.  It's a nightmare scenario with no easy solution.  But Eden's not the only point of view we read this story from and soon this story has more narrators and more reveals to uncover.  And that's before the body even ends up on the scene.

Well, turns out I can be really critical when it comes to mysteries and thrillers.  My brain could NOT handle the plot holes and dangling threads.  The story was so whiplashy and with so many bait-and-switches that I actually had a hard time keeping them straight.  And then the last few chapters just blew it ALL out of the water and I wasn't left feeling satisfied, unfortunately.  Also, I'm sorry, but the writing is just not good.  Super repetitive and clunky.  It felt slapdash, honestly.  However, despite all that, I did want to finish reading it so, two stars for that.

Vigil by George Saunders

genre: fiction

Jill Blaine arrives at the bedside of K.J. Boone as he is nearing death.  As a sort of an angel, Jill knows that her role is to provide comfort as K.J. moves from this world to the next.  But, it turns out, K.J.'s life, while full of prestige and wealth and power, was actually a fairly destructive one.  And there are those on the other side who would like him to make it right before he passes over.  

I don't know how to categorize this Christmas Carol kind of story.  I enjoyed being in this in between space between life and death with Jill, as she remembers who she was as she tries to remember what her new purpose is.  K.J. is beyond caricatured, which got a bit annoying, but I honestly could imagine that there really are people in this world like that - people who do not care for the planet or for the people and animals trying to live on it.  I do really think that there are people who only care about the bottom line and that's a deeply upsetting thought.  I'm not sure I completely understand the author's point at the end.  I DO think personal responsibility matters, but I also can admit that no one is raised in a vacuum and that nature AND nature will make us who we are.  It wasn't fast moving but it was engaging.  Kinda wish I'd done the audio because I'm sure I would've gotten through it a lot faster.

Eradication: A Fable by Jonathan Miles (audiobook)

genre: fiction

This short novel is subtitled "a fable." Now that I am finished reading it, I've dug a little bit into the actual definition of a fable and I am intrigued by this label. There are no anthropomorphized animals in this book but there is definitely a moral and it's one I am still pondering.

We first meet our main character, Adi, while he's on a boat heading out to a remote island. He's been charged with a specific task: save the island's wildlife by eradicating it of the creature that's destroying it. Adi finds that this is a task much easier considered than actually performed. The goats that he's meant to disappear off the island are *also* wildlife and unfortunately, Adi can't just turn off his brain to do the thing. What we end up reading is the circular thoughts of a man who has experienced great tragedy and yet somehow can't stop wanting to live and let live. What deserves to die or go extinct and what deserves to be saved? And are humans even the right creatures to make that choice? It's a gritty and sometimes upsetting story (most especially if you are a serious animal lover) but I don't think it's going to leave me any time soon.

The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillian (audiobook)

genre: thriller

Dr. Anya Brown has just done the impossible: she's managed to translate the elusive Folio 9 and this achievement has set her up to get a job wherever she could want in academia.  With her love of languages and exceptional memory, she is great at making connections other folks cannot see.  Elsewhere, the body found on a remote Scottish beach will start a cascade of circumstances that won't affect just Anya but might somehow lead to an even deeper mystery.

Okay, do LOVE dark academia and I also do LOVE stories about ancient things, a la Indiana Jones or the Da Vinci Code, so keep that in mind.  If you do NOT like those types of stories, this book will not be for you.  If you DO like stories where you never know who is on your side or not as you race to put pieces of a puzzle together, then this might be worth trying.  I liked that it completely centers capable and intelligent women, and overarching crux of the plot is women finding ways to create the kind of world they want, even if it does sometimes require you to suspend your disbelief a little more than you'd want.  This is not a short book and I listened to the whole thing over a weekend, I was that engaged it in.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

 genre: contemporary fiction

When Theo arrives in the small Southern town of Golden, Georgia, he doesn't really have any huge plans.  He appreciates that it's warmer than his New York home and the way the river flowing by reminds him of his Portuguese childhood.  Although he is no longer a young man, by any measure, his heart is youthful and he finds pleasure in beauty wherever he can find it - and there is much to find in Golden.  When he sees some hand drawn portraits in the local coffee shop, soon his mind is occupied by both the faces in these pictures and the hand that drew them.

Theo's way of showing up in the world is a lovely thing to read. His interest, his kindness, his appreciation, all of this made him an interesting person to get to know.  Are the characters in this book a little simply drawn?  Maybe, but not so much that I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief and slide into the story. It got a little long and sometimes a bit too theologically preachy but I liked how it wrapped up at the end and I did like the cozy community Theo created.  Probably for the writing it deserves a three but for the cozy factor and some of the beautiful images I'm still thinking about I'm giving it a four.

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë (audiobook)

genre: classic fiction

Our Professor, William, does not start off in his profession.  In fact, in a Dickensonian way, he has to pull himself up by his bootstraps with hardly a friend in the world to care for him.  His loveless youth, however, does spur him to invest in himself and with determination he finds his way to Brussels.  In this fashionable city he chooses his path and tries to create a life for himself with good work and, hopefully, with someone by his side to join him.

The Professsor is Charlotte's first book, published after her death.  I am a devotee of Jane Eyre but this came no where near to that work of art.  There are so many caricatured and rather horrible people and the last half an hour of the book could literally just not exist and the story wouldn't have changed.   There is a LOT of French here, which I can handle, but there is no translation, which I can imagine would be irritating.  And YET.  You can still see her genius in there.  The romance, although dripping with Patriarchal drivel sometimes, also was also sometimes exactly what you'd want.  A few quotes that I had to listen to twice, they felt that lovely:

"I supposed the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are felt but once.  Treasure them, memory.  Seal them in urns and keep them in safe niches."

When I looked at her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew had consulted jealousy as an advisor and employed treachery as an instrument.  

I loved her as she stood there, penniless and parentless.  For a sensualist charmless, for me a treasure -- my best object of sympathy on earth.

That is my little wild strawberry, Hunsden, whose sweetness made me careless of your hot-house grapes.

So, not a complete wash but not great.

The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave (audiobook)

genre: thriller

In this follow up to The Last Thing He Told Me, we start of knowing a few things.  Owen is still gone.  It's been over five years and now Hannah and Bailey have set up a new life together.  Bailey's grandpa is even a part of it and despite missing Owen like crazy, life isn't completely bad.  What Hannah knows, though, is that this kind of peace can never last, not when you're caught up in a web like they are.  So when she gets the slightest hint that things are getting shifty, all bets are off. And the only two things that keep her going are #1 keeping Bailey safe and #2, the possibility that Owen could be a part of their lives again.

This was a quick and interesting listen.  I was all in from the start and the multiple points of view helped move things along - maybe it helps that I did really enjoy the first book.  I  I like when people aren't just straight up good or bad, it makes my brain buzz with trying to figure out if I can root for them or not.  I DO know that I like Hannah as a character, I like her desperate love as a step-mamma for Bailey and the twists in this short book were just good enough.  

I Hope You Find What You're Looking For by Bsrat Mezghebe (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

For middle schooler Lydia, DC is home.  For her mother Elsa, however, "home" will always be Eritrea in Africa, a tiny country under the thumb of Ethiopia that has struggled for decades to win its independence.  This story goes back and forth in time as we experience the tightly knit Eritrea immigrant community in DC as well as Elsa's upbringing and experiences as a rebel fighter in the war.  When a distant cousin comes to live with them, Lydia is forced to look closer at her own mind and at the things she's always taken for granted.

The "current" time in the book is actually my own high school years and Lydia was born the same year I was, so it is crazy for my brain to make sense of her world versus my own, at the same time period.  Lydia wants so much to understand her own family, that yearning for herself making her show up as a really frustrating teenager sometimes. But I became so invested in these characters.  I adored Mama Zewdi, the matriarch of the family and as much as Elsa was like a closed book much of the time, I felt so much compassion for the trauma she'd endured.  I liked that this is a DC story, with so many of the places familiar haunts to me.  And I think, in the end, this story is about the triumph of human nature finding empathy and kindness even in the face of true horror.  It is about what we do for the family we're given and the family we choose and it is about love of country and culture and the ties that can bind us even from a world away.

Excellent narration.

The Unveiling by Quan Barry

genre: fiction

Even with all of the world she's already seen, Striker's still amazed by the vastness and beauty of Antarctica. Despite most of the people on the cruise ship drive her crazy, it's hard not to be awed by the scenery. When her kayaking excursion goes wrong, though, the lines around reality seem to blur.

This book was like a fever dream. I did not like it. It starts off like an actual story taking place in this actual world. But soon it's like I'm reading through a curtain, and I have no idea of what is real and what is not and sometimes it's so gross but then the gross thing isn't real or it's a ghost but in this world are ghosts real? I have no idea. It was just not fun to piece it together. When Striker's talking about the past, I was solid and I felt compassion for her childhood experiences. But then you zip back almost mid sentence to the present and the present is a s**t show. I don't hate books like this in theory, sometimes they come together and I'm awed by how things click, but this was not the case. I kept reading, thinking at some point it would coalesce in my brain but no. The writing is not bad, I just still can't even tell what I actually read.

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

The Last of Earth is a story of Tibet in the 1860s, a harsh and rugged land that has forbidden outsiders to cross its border.  But for two travelers from England, the belief that this rule does not apply to them means that they find themselves with tents and local guides helping them traverse this unfamiliar country.  Told from two different points of view, we see the world through the eyes of colonialism, racism, and even classism.  One of narrators is a the surveyor for a blustering English captain whose goal is to chart a particular river the runs through Tibet.  He has a large band of paid labor to help him cart all his stuff and aide him with his surveying.  The other narrator is a 50 something year old woman who just has desperate dreams of exploration.  

I'm just not feeling particularly literary right now in my thoughts about this book.  It was slooowww going for me, unfortunately.  I appreciated learning about Tibet and some of the geographical features of the area.  I liked when the two storylines would just occasionally intersect for a hot minute before going separate ways again.  It definitely made me think about the impact of British colonization, both in huge and small ways - and then to see the flip side of it, where the Tibetans were having NONE of this, refusing to have their land and culture be Anglicized.  The superiority complex of the British over the native people is so hard to look at, it's so deeply offensive, even though I know it is accurate to the time period.

Am I glad I stuck it out?  I can't decide, honestly.  The ending was rather blah and so the whole thing, while definitely a journey with a few lovely minutes, just leaves me feeling only spent, not exhilarated or redeemed or really anything other than meh.

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

 genre: magical realism

The Avallon Hotel and Spa is a special kind of place, it's elegance might as well be a world away from the closest town in the hills of West Virginia.   With its' trusty General Manager, June "Hoss" Hudson, it survived the Depression intact and now June is confident it can withstand a world war as well.  Until a curveball is thrown at her that she could have never seen coming: the State Department is going to take over her hotel to house Axis Diplomats until they can be repatriated.  And there really isn't anything June can do about it - except continue to do her job the only way she knows how.

This was a fast and interesting read for me, a love an upstairs/downstairs story, a hotel story, a wartime story, a love story.  Also, I do love some magical realism sprinkled in and in this one, the magic lies in the sweetwater that flows through the pipes and fountains at the Avallon.  June knows the sweetwater, can feel what it needs to keep the hotel humming with the kind of happy energy required to make it as special as June knows it can be.  I genuinely enjoyed the historical fiction aspect, I've never thought of what America did with all the German, Italian and Japanese folks who were living here as America entered the war.  I liked thinking about wealthy versus luxury and how different that can look for every individual.  I liked June's spunk and capability and compassion.  All the little threads interested me enough that while I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars, it deserves four shiny solid ones.

Bog Queen by Anna North

genre: historical fiction/contemporary fiction

A patch of mossy bog.  A forensic anthropologist.  A Celtic Druid living on the cusp of a new historical age.  As we switch between storylines in this sparse and interesting story, we don't just have to imagine the life of a bog body, we get to experience it as threads between time uncover mysteries that have sat untouched for centuries.

This scratched a particular itch for me, as someone who is strangely fascinated by bog bodies and other crazy old human remains.  Our anthropologist is far more comfortable with the dead than with the living but as she finds herself a part of a conflict over land-use and the preservation of an ancient living organism, the issues become far less clear cut than her mind would like.   I liked the directions this book took me and the things I got to think about while read.  Just a good story that ties us both to our past and to the ground we stand on.

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary romance/time slip

Clementine is a career-focused publicist, good at her job and proud of how far she's come.  Even with all the pleasure she's finding at work, though, a gaping loss is leaving her at odds with everything she's always loved.  Here is where the time slip part of the book comes in: the apartment that her aunt left to her in her will is actually a finicky portal in time that takes certain residents back in time seven years.  And seven years ago, in Clementine's apartment, is a young and ambitious cook who wants to be a chef - and soon seven years seems like hardly anything at all and also everything, at the same time.

This is a fast paced romance with a dreamy love interest and a deeply grieving main character.  Her grief is a big part of this story and how Clementine shows up in the world and in her relationships.  I have to be honest, this book's writing is super repetitive.  I heard certain phrases SO many times that I just really wanted the author to stretch.  I just could NOT suspend my disbelief enough, for some reason. I think because my brain just had so many questions about how the time slip could work and I couldn't sort them out.  So for a fun story to pass the time, it really did that.  My weekend chores flew by as I listened.  But as a written work, it didn't live up for me as much as other books in the genre.

The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories by Ladee Hubbard

 genre: fiction short stories

This compilation of stories have just enough familiar threads between them that people and places pull at strings in your mind as you read.  There are neighborhoods where it seems like second chances don’t exist and homes with love that takes the edge off all the hard outside the door. Drugs and poverty and everyone cheating on everyone else but sometimes a tiny ray of hope.  I’m not a particular lover of short story collections in general, so my hot take should be taken with that in mind.  I actually wanted more connection, I think, more familiarity so I could dig a little deeper into their experiences.  What I do know is that it is always good for me to spend time in my mind with lives that are both so different than mine while also built of the same longing for community and family and the kind of stability that can be a foundation to build on. 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (audiobook)

 genre: epistolary fiction

When we meet Sybil Van Antwerp, she has already lived most of her life.  She has retired from her work in the law, her children are grown and she takes pleasure in all the ways one can entertain one's self.  What makes Sybil's life unique, though, is that for hours each week, Sybil dedicates herself to her correspondence.  With a piece of stationary and a pen, her life is expounded and explored and, like other epistolary novels, we as the readers are left to piece together what is said and unsaid as we read both what Sybil puts out into the world and what comes back to her.  And the task is such an engaging one.

I know I'm the last person ever to listen to this book and yes, you all were right, the audio is absolutely the way to go.  The voice of each of our letter writers and recipients and how these people interact with the indomitable Ms. Van Antwerp make the book move along quickly.  Keeping everyone straight does take a little brainpower but soon I felt like these were familiar old friends.  As much as Sybil can be a tricky person, as the book goes on we can understand why and my heart filled with so much compassion for her and for the people that she loves and that love her back.  I just kept FEELING so much as the years of letters went by: grief, hope, more grief, joy.  I think what I also really loved about this book is that it reminds me that life can constantly be full of surprises - new people and new experiences - and that it is never to late to find peace.

Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards

 genre: historical fiction

In medieval Bruges, the Church is the scaffolding on which a life is created.  And if you want to be close to God, you'd better have a man with some kind of authority to be your guide.  For Aleys, who is raised on the stories of female saints, Jesus is more than a tale.  He is a real presence that she soon realizes she needs to dedicate some part of her life to - but its not as though a medieval woman can just go ahead and do what she wants without everyone around her having an opinion about it.  And the weight of some opinions can lead to disaster.  

The lovely book centers, first and foremost, women who have a desire to have their own kind of relationship with a divine being that feels tangible to their own lives.  Aleys is a gorgeously written protagonist.  She is passionate and capable and her journey as a religious person is such an intriguing one. While Christianity is no longer my spiritual home in the way it once was, my grandmother prayed to the saints for me and my heart still knows the pathways of belief in a divine being.  There is so much of value in this pages that reach toward the realms of miracles and saints and things we cannot understand but dearly want to.  I loved the focus on the written word and how it is so powerful that popes and kings lost their minds over common people having access to it.  Canticle is a slow read, and while there is definitely plot there is mostly Aleys's inner life and the inner lives of the men of the church that have power of her mortal body - but what you come to realize is that no one has power over Aleys's beautiful soul.