Books read in May and June

I was going to do a post of books written in May, June and July but it was taking me too long so I'm including May and June in this post and will hopefully do a July and August post later. 

The Shivering Sands by Victoria Holt- My blog friend Callie recommended this author and I really like her! (In rereading the sentence that I just wrote, I realized that the “her” in the sentence could be referring to Callie or the author. Rather than change the sentence, I’ll just add that I like both of them- Callie and Victoria Holt ;)) I’d never heard of Victoria Holt but after reading this book, I read some information about her. She was a prolific writer. She wrote seventy novels in her life! And of the three that I’ve read so far, none are super short and they are all about interesting topics that she would have had to do research about (before the internet) so I am in awe that she wrote so many books so well. Anyway, this gothic romance takes place in England in (presumably) the early 20 century. In this book, a  young widow takes a job on the Dover Coast to try to find out information about her sister who disappeared without a trace while on an archaeological site. The job puts her on the property of where her sister was last seen. The mystery, romance, and writing were all good. Throw in no foul language and clean content and there is nothing to not like about this book.

What We Have by Amy Boesky- this book is a memoir by a young woman whose family has a history of ovarian cancer. It killed her grandmother, aunts and great aunts when they were in their 40’s. When cancer comes to the most important woman in her life- her mom- in the form of the diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer, Amy’s idyllic life as an accomplished professor, happily married wife and mother to a baby girl comes to a crashing halt. Delightfully and poignantly written, it will bring you to tears but you will be glad that you read it. Highly recommend it!

The Leavers by Lisa Ko- This book won literary accolades when it was published in 2017 and I saw that some of my favorite authors wrote enthusiastic praise about it so I decided to read it. About half of the time that I read books that have won literary awards (in recent years), I don’t end up liking the book. So I read such books with a bit of trepidation. I do tend to love classic literary books; it’s these modern ones that are iffy for me. Anyway, this book was beautifully written and I can see why it garnered praise. It tells the story of a young man named Deming who lives with immigrant mom Pelian in New York City. One day Pelian/ Polly goes missing and Deming (renamed Daniel) is adopted by a couple in upstate New York. The story line shifts from two different POV’s and we get glimpses of Polly’s life in China before she emigrated to the US. We find out the reasons she disappeared and the effect that it has on Daniel as he struggles to handle being born of Chinese ethnicity, being abandoned by his mom and then spending much of his youth with an adopted family. The characters are complex and the writing is excellent- this book lived up to the praise. 

The Time of the Hunter’s Moon by Victoria Holt- Another good gothic romance- this was interesting because there were two storylines that appeared for the longest time to not be connected. Of course they were but it took some time to connect them. Two men seem interested in the heroine of the book, a young lady named Cordelia who attended a prestigious finishing school and hopes to return home to help her aunt run her own (less prestigious) finishing school. Her plans are thwarted when her aunt has to sell her school and Cordelia takes a job educating three young ladies at an estate of a wealthy land baron. This was another enjoyable read by Victoria Holt. 

The Gray Lady Winked- How the New York Times Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History by Ashley Rinsberg. This is a non fiction book and I did not finish it. Not because it wasn’t good but because I want to get a hard copy of it so that I can mark it up and highlight it. This book is disturbing. Long before the words, “misinformation” and “fake news” became part of our lexicon, the New York Times was actively engaged in misinformation. From practically ignoring the existence of the holocaust while it was occurring to denying that millions of Ukranians were starved to death by a Communist regime in the 20th century, the NYT has played a complicit role in misinforming its readers. 

One Little Secret by Cate Holahan- This psychological thriller takes place in the Hamptons.  A woman who’s just getting to know her neighbors invites several of them to vacation together, all sharing the same rented house. One of the guests gets murdered- all five of the houseguests are suspects. Numerous red herrings keep the suspense going. Speaking of suspense, you have to suspend belief about a lot of reality to make it through the book (for instance, it is not realistic that neighbors who don’t know each other well/ are not good friends would vacation together). Nonetheless, it was a quick, entertaining read. 

The Widower’s Wife by Cate Holahan- The story begins with a life insurance investigator looking into the death of a young woman who left behind a three year old daughter and seemingly doting husband when she again, seemingly, fell overboard on a cruise to her, seemingly death (ok, will not use “seemingly” anymore, promise!). The book was told from multiple points of view of events leading up to the cruise in which the woman disappeared. It was an easy, quick read and I definitely didn’t see all of the twists and turns the book took. 

The Turnout by Meg Abbott- I realized part way through reading this that I’ve read a book by this author before. That book was about a teenage competitive gymnast. It was a good book though I didn’t care for the ending. What I did like was reading about the world of competitive gymnastics. Most novels written in today’s times that feature families with kids will mention the kids’ activities tangentially. I really liked reading about a book that centered around a competitive sport since my own kids, at the time, were knee deep in the world of competitive sports. So in The Turnout, the book is based around a kid’s activity- the world of performance ballet. Two sisters, both former ballerinas themselves, along with one of the sister’s husbands, run a youth ballet school. The studio sustains damage in a fire and renovations must happen for the ballet studio to continue to operate. The unmarried sister begins an affair with the contractor hired to complete renovations after the fire. I loved the dance studio/ ballet theme and how the entire book drew parallels to the Nutcracker, the ballet that the students were working on throughout the book. I found the competitiveness/ jealousy relatable to what I know about dancing (Abby danced competitively for twelve years but her studio was just that- a competition one and not a performance based one. Being a “competition” based studio, there was plenty of that within the studio) though I found the examples of what the students did to each to be way too extreme to be realistic. I had trouble putting the book down but man, there were some hard to read parts. Some sections were very gratuitous which took away from the overall enjoyment of the book.

The Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt- I needed to cleanse my mental palate after reading The Turnout so I turned to an author who I knew wrote cleanly. This book, set in the 1880’s in England, centers around a young woman named Jessica who grew up in a mostly loveless house. Jessica’s family was formerly wealthy but fell on hard times due to her father’s gambling. The man who buys the mansion where the family used to live befriends Jessica and ends up leaving his estate to Jessica and his handsome son but only if they marry each other! They do so reluctantly and begin a search together for a missing opal that is said to curse whoever is in possession of it. This was another highly enjoyable, entertaining read book

Black Ice by Brad Thor- this thriller was ok. Apparently there are many other action/ thriller books by this author with this character. For me, this is a one and done. I liked that the character was an alpha male- I think we need more of those in real life. Of course this was fiction and our hunky hero dodged bullets and escaped death a few too many times to be realistic… but it’s fiction and of course our main guy can’t die!  The hero, Scott, is a spy for the government and he unearths a sinister plot regarding the Arctic and US enemies who want to take control of it. 

The Therapist by B.A. Paris- this suspense/ physiological thriller was really good! Lots of twists and good writing made it an enjoyable read. It tells the story of a couple who move into a gated community of nice homes (in London, I think?). Alice, the woman, discovers a grisly detail about the house- that the previous owner was murdered in the home. She decides to try to find out who committed the crime. The neighbors she meets and some of  whom she befriends have motives and secrets they are trying to keep about the victim. 

The Husbands by Chandler Baker- This was a bit over the top drama type thriller. I liked the inner dialogue of Nora, the main character. She’s an attorney, mother of one and pregnant with her second child. She still does the bulk of child rearing and house managing though her husband helps out some. She notices, when they start house hunting in a nice neighborhood that all of the husbands in the neighborhood are almost stepford-like in their helping out and devotion to their wives. Something seems off and when Nora is hired for some legal work pertaining to a fire that killed a husband in one of the homes, it becomes obvious that something is really off. This was a quick, easy read and it made me feel better about not having to have a career and work full time. So many women do it; while this book was hyperbolic with all that Nora had on her plate, it still brought home the difficult nature of trying to “have it all.”