Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

genre: magical realism

Birdie loves a rush, that thrill of throwing yourself headlong into actual, physical danger.  As a young single mom, this love of a thrill bumps up against having to care for her young daughter Emaleen in their tiny Alaskan town - where danger can be anywhere.  When Birdie becomes interested in Arthur, that silent and huge man who's lived off the land nearby for years, his calm manner and steadiness seems to be in contrast to Birdie's usual type.  Until we learn things about Arthur that make her growing interest in him make a lot more sense.

This is magical realism along the lines of a Selkie story or, even, the first book I read and adored by this author, The Snow Child.  The Snow Child has a different vibe though, that I liked better.  This book has dark undertones that ring not just of abuse but of the line between human and animal that can get blurred in a wilderness like Alaska.  Emaleen is a huge bright spot, she is so imaginative and clever - maybe a little immature for the six years old she's supposed to be, but understandable in the very adult world she has to navigate.  I longed for her to have a parent who could prioritize her, but Birdie is just that parent.

Even while part of me was upset by the story, I cannot deny that it is beautifully written, even the horrible parts are written with care and the ending actually fit in a way I couldn't have anticipated.  3.5 stars rounded up.

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction/paranormal fiction

Phoebe and her father live a quiet life in London.  She has her eye on a certain gentleman and her father is a respected scrivener in King James' court. Andrew Logan, a Scotsman and King's Messenger who lives nearby, is given a dangerous mission to find a man suspected of poisoning the king's son, Prince Henry, and quickly Phoebe and her father are both caught up in the intrigue.  A long journey will try everyone and if the secrets they are keeping don't land them in a dungeon, any other number of circumstances could do worse.

After two chapters, I was all in.  This is solid historical fiction that requires a reader to truly care as much about why things are happening as the fact that they DO happen.  So many political and familial factions, so many sides to a story and so many ways that royalty and their entourage create havoc that then people like King's Messengers and court scriveners have to manage.  The love story is a slow burn but a really good one, one of Susanna's best, I think, and this is the twelfth book of hers I've read.  There is some back and forth in time but it was no bother to feel grounded.  It is tender and it is exciting, and, as always, with a tinge of the supernatural  that keeps you on your toes in a way that doesn't distract from the historical setting.  Plus, her author note at the end was amazing for its detail.    Rounding up to stars for capturing my heart and making me want to listen nonstop until I was done.

The House of My Mother by Shari Franke

 genre: memoir

Despite the glossy image that Shari's mom posted on her YouTube Vlog "8 Passengers," Shari was not living in the perfect family. Actually, from her perspective, it was quite the opposite. Shari's perfectionist mother Ruby Franke didn't only expect perfection in the videos she posted online, she expected it from every member of her family, with the consequences for any misstep only increasing as their fame increased. When things really went off the hinge, though? When Ruby met and became enamored with the enigmatic "therapist" and life coach Jodi Hildebrande. From here, Shari's story went from being upsetting to being a genuine tragedy.

I'd already seen some about this story, while only glossing the surface. When a friend told me there was a documentary now and then I saw that Shari had written a book, I decided to start learning more by hearing what happened in the words of the eldest daughter who'd lived it. It's very readable, not juvenile but not particularly literary either. It's all still quite raw for her, you can tell.  It was hard to see the way her faith and how her religion was taught to her growing up, led to some serious mental and emotional consequences. That brought up some feelings in myself, having been raised in the same faith. And that Jodi? What a piece of work. Mostly, I just felt so sorry for the way Shari was raised in such an emotionally abusive home. I wish for her to have peace and for her younger siblings to get the help they need to feel safe again.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (audiobook)

genre: classic literature

Oh David.  Davy.  Trotwood.  Trot.  Daisy.  Doady.  Copperfield.  All of these are words that are used to name the boy that we watch grow into a man - David Copperfield.  David, whose early life is so painfully tragic, whose story is told in a first person narrative as our author remembers the small tendernesses that sustained him and the large injustices that plagued him as he tried to navigate the world without the kind of loving adult one so desperately needs.  And this is the same David who learns to ask for and accept help, who works things out, who finds his footing and turns into the kind of man whose compassion and patience make him a friend to all kinds of people - an an enemy of a few.   You aren't reading this book because you're dying to know what happens next, necessarily, you read because you start to care about David.  You feel protective of him.  You want him to find happiness.  You sometimes wish he wouldn't be so trusting and you sometimes think he's made a really poor decision.  And yet, in the end, you finish this monster of a story so surprisingly pleased with the journey.

I truly try not to shy away from particular books just because they are exceedingly long - but I absolutely do it.  I have read several of Dickens' books thus far and they've been both hit (Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities) and complete miss (Great Expectations).  I haven't had it in me to try another one - until I heard that Barbara Kingsolver was writing a modern retelling of this novel and that was enough to get the idea of trying another Dickens start to simmering in my brain.  Eventually I decided to go the audio route and I am so truly glad I did.  I listened to an edition narrated by Will Watt and he was phenomenal.  It made it so much easier to keep SO MANY CHARACTERS straight by the different voices.  There are villains and fools, school mates and companions, random neighbors that keep showing up, opportunists, mentors and family members and friends that become family.  I actually looked it up and there are 75 distinct characters in this book and they keep showing up!  That person from the beginning?  They are going to show up again!  And maybe again!  So many circumstantial meetings of the same people!  But in the end, I was able to roll with it.  Again, the different voices genuinely helped me to not just track people but to remember how I felt about them too, keeping me continually invested in the story.  Also, sometimes they were just actually funny - David's Aunt Betsy?  Eccentric and Redoubtable, she made me literally cackle out loud at one point, she's so snarky. 

I liked that this is not historical fiction - this is contemporary fiction from the PAST so that the life Dickens is telling me about is the actual kind of lives that people lived in that time from the point of view of a contemporary.  The things they worried about, the way they lived their lives, the ways people could cause harm to each other - those were real, even if the people doing them weren't flesh and blood.  I'm not going to gush.  This wasn't the best novel I've ever read. It is seriously longer than it needs to be - some of these characters just talk and talk and talk, using an entire page to say what could've been conveyed in two strong sentences.  But once I was invested in this character and his life, I was all in.  By the last two hours, I felt actual feelings for him and for how far he'd come in knowing himself.  

Gliff by Ali Smith

 genre: dystopian

Briar and Rose have had to leave their mother behind and their stepfather has hidden them away to keep them safe from an unknown something.  What IS known? That the red lines are not good.  That to be "unverifiable" is to be unsafe and that Briar will have to do something about their situation if their stepfather doesn't come back when he says they will.

This book threw me for a loop with it's indirect plotting and wobbly chronology - trying to figure out where in time I am and who is telling their story.  But I figured it out, and it floored me sometimes with it's wordplay and skillful use of language.  I mean, so beautiful, the ways that
words can be dissected and repurposed and used to help our human brains make sense of what is happening around us.  The Britain of this story is a fact-collecting, control-freak of a bad machine that has no compassion for difference or for not toeing the line of their rules.  The way that Bri's gender is handled is both lovely (with words) and terrifying (the way that power can make decisions FOR us).  Rose, this precious and precocious younger sister, I found nearly everything she said to be profound and yet obvious in the ways that truth just feels like solid ground sometimes.  Her innocence made all the dystopian crazy be in even starker contrast.

I even loved the actual physical layout of the words, the headings and the funky punctuation, it made me feel off balance just like the story did, just as I think it is MEANT to do.  This is a world that doesn't feel all too unfamiliar to the one we are in now, like we could BECOME this if we don't catch ourselves.

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

genre: memoir

Beryl's memoir of her life in Africa before the Second World War, both as a pilot and as a horsewoman, is a look into a place and time that no longer exist. We are with her in her childhood in the bush, living on a farm with her father and spending her days hunting and playing with her dog. It is a wild life, where danger genuinely lurks in the tall grass and where Beryl's own wild spirit is allowed to fly - in more ways than one.

What a unique life! I enjoyed the anecdotal stories and imagining living during this time of change, what guts Beryl had to have to do the things she did. Beryl is a thoughtful memoirist, if not sometimes blatantly revealing her own prejudices. The relationships between the colonizers and the colonized is a complex one here where there is, maybe, true care but also clearly a hierarchical understanding of status. I can appreciate the ways she broke barriers and found ways to pursue the things she loved. I will say, there is little here about personal relationships unless it is with a mentor or a childhood friend. It's not that kind of story. It is about animals and hunting, airplanes and the flying of them. The hunting parts were not my favorite but overall, I am once again grateful for Book Club that brought a new book into my hands. Three and a half stars.

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

 genre: historical mystery

This is a story told in two time periods - and in two very different worlds.  In the 1930s, Charlotte Cross's obsession with Egypt led her to get a dream summer job, working in the desert tombs, learning everything she can about the Pharaohs and the time when they lived.  

By 1978, Charlotte has a job at the Met, still obsessed with Egypt but now, a tragedy has kept her from ever returning to Egypt.  When a rare artifact unexpectedly turns up, it sends Charlotte into a tailspin of her own past and brings up huge questions that can change everything she thought she knew.

Charlotte's story is told in alternating chapters with the story of Annie, a young women who loves fashion and dreams of a life for herself outside of her tiny, fingers-to-the-bone life.  A chance encounter leads to her own open to the Met, but not in a way she ever could've imagined.  The way Charlotte's life intersects with Annie's and the mystery that wraps up them both, whether they want it to or not, is at the heart of this story of those who love art and discovery - and of women who know how to follow a hunch and take a chance.

This was engaging from the start!  I also have spent my life obsessed with history and with a deep longing to know more about ancient Egypt, so the story caught me on an intrinsic level.  I like that the strong women here want to make sure that other strong women get the acknowledgement they deserve and the storylines wove together in a way that made sense.  The writing didn't blow me away but several major plot points caught me by surprise and by the end, I was ready to believe it all. 

Do I want to go travel to Egypt now?  Yes.  Yes I do.

The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr

genre: short stories, fiction

The Shell Collector is a collection of short stories, all grounded in the power of the natural world. Snowstorms and rivers for fishing in, tide pools full of creatures, gardens in the forest and the kind of woodland trails you can get lost on - these are the places where lives play out. While short stories don't tend to capture me, several of these stories completely engaged me and instead of leaving me wanting, left me satisfied. In particular, The Shell Collector, The Hunter's Wife and Mkondo painted vivid pictures of environments where one can be stretched just enough to learn and grow - or pulled to the breaking point and snapped. There are images and characters here that will stick with me, even if while reading them I was never engrossed.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

 genre: science fictionish

Zelu's life has NOT turned out the way she thought it would.  Her dreams had to be shelved due to circumstances beyond her control, her job is beyond unfulfilling and she's living at home with her Nigerian parents.  One night, at her lowest, she finds solace in writing down a story that will take what she knows about herself and turn it upside down.

This a book with a story within the story.  It is about a woman who knows what she deserves and is willing to take crazy risks to get it.  It is about being the child of immigrants and having places that feel like home ever though you've only ever visited.  It is about family, how they both save us and drive us absolutely crazy.  I actually super liked the science fiction"story" in the book and found it just as engaging as the narrative.  Sometimes Zelu was a super frustrating character and other times I wished I had her courage and her ability to allow herself to FEEL what she FEELS, without pretending.

I feel like the pacing worked well, the ending fit so well, in my opinion, and the "interview' style of the narrative also just kept my attention.  I liked learning about this giant Nigerian family and I found myself online looking at maps and videos, wanting to see what I was reading about.  It's creative and unique and a solid 4.5 stars.

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

genre: contemporary romance

Up on the platform or down in the diving well has been where Scarlett has always felt most at home - until now.  An injury has made the pool into a space of deep frustration as a mental block is keeping Scarlett from performing how she used to.  Pile that on top of classes, stress about the MCAP and a general feeling of being unsettled in the world and Scarlett's time at Stanford is not at all happening how she'd hoped.  Then a new friend slips a secret about the boyfriend she just broke up with and suddenly a fellow athlete - an Olympic swimmer, no less - seems like he might be more her type than she'd even dared to hope.

Straight up - this is steamy.  The main thread involves power dynamics and kinks so if that is not something you'd feel comfortable reading out, this is not for you.  I'm gonna be honest - I don't mind reading about it except that all the dialogue feels cheesy to me and I don't love it (no shade on people who like it!).  There are several tropes at play but whatevs.  What I did like is the collegiate, elite athletic setting, the process of overcoming dive panic and how smart our main character is.  The love interest is too perfect for real life but I guess that's what we sometimes read stories like this for.  It was a super fast read and even with its faults it kept me up too late.  3 stars for that.