It’s the first hour of Easter, and with this, I have four posts to write. Given how slow I’m typing, it will be a long day, but even like the steps of a turtle, I have faith I will make it. I wish I could stop pressing the wrong keys. By the way, I made it to 200 books read today, so if you want a reading stats post, let me know. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.
April 22: Books that Surprised Me (in a good or bad way)
Goodreads Blurb:
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.
Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
Interwoven with Bernice’s personal journey is her family’s history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women’s wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa’s handmade quilt.
As you know from last week’s post, I was pretty excited to read it, but it didn’t live up to it, and if it weren’t a memoir, I would have given it two stars.
Goodreads Blurb:
An introverted girl who just wanted to be left alone. A talkative little boy with a very important wish. Based on a true story, Noise is the heartwarming tale of finding joy in unexpected places. Short and sweet, this is a full-colour comic book for both children and adults alike.
I would never have guessed that a graphic novel so short would hit my heart so hard. It is a sweet one.
Goodreads Blurb:
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicious…but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door.
When Tracy Somerset, divorced mother from the small town of Covenant, CT, meets a handsome stranger in a midnight Wal-Mart, she has no idea she is speaking with Todd Norman, the former Wall Street financier dubbed “The Banker Butcher” by the New York tabloids. The following morning, on the beach by Norman’s back-under-construction lakehouse, another young woman’s body is discovered. Sheriff Duane Sobczak’s investigation leads him to town psychiatrist Dr. Meshulum Bakshir, whose position at a troubled girls’ group home a decade ago yields disturbing ties to several local, prominent players, including a radical preacher, a disgraced politician, a down-and-out PI―and Sobczak’s own daughter.
Unfolding over the course of New England’s distinct four seasons, The Lakehouse is a domestic psychological thriller about the wayward and marginalized, the lies we tell those closest to us, and the price of forbidden love in an insular community where it seems everyone has a story to tell―and a past they prefer stay buried.
I wanted an epic thriller, but it fell flat in my reader’s eyes.
Goodreads Blurb:
A smart-alec agnostic from Silicon Valley reaches the end of her rope after discovering her husband has been cheating with an eBay addict he met on Craigslist. Desperate, she signs up for an online marriage support site.
Enter Jamie Blaine, a scatter-brained former late-night suicide crisis responder from Tennessee. Blaine is about to take a job as a Kroger night stocker when he’s offered a chance to make some quick, easy cash serving as a “love coach” for a shady website for jilted spouses.
The story Vicky is not only dealing with a two-timing mate but also an abusive boss and parents who suggest that her relationships might improve if she’d slim down and buy lacy black underwear. Late one night, Vicky writes that the weight is too heavy and each day is a battle to survive. She admits there are pills and the note is written.
Jamie Instead of ending your life, why not try changing it first? What do you really have to lose?
Life is Crazy & We’re All Going to Die is the story of a woman who ditched her dead-end job, cut her cheating husband loose and went looking for hope in the last place you’d expect – with losers, drunks, and schizophrenic vets, prostitutes turning alley tricks for a Happy Meal and a fix…
It’s also the story of burnt-out Jamie Blaine, trying to and a way to help without losing his mind and realizing that even though it’s messy, even though people will let you down, if for nothing else but your own sanity, you get back up and try again.
The title is what drew me, but I seriously don’t get the hyper-focus on religion here.
Goodreads Blurb:
Dr. Richmond Dougherty is a renowned pediatric surgeon, an infamous tragedy survivor, and a national hero. He’s also very dead—thanks to a fall down the stairs. His neighbors angrily point a finger at the newest Ms. Dougherty, Addison. The sudden marriage to the mysterious young woman only lasted ninety-seven days, and he’d had two suspicious “accidents” during that time. Now Addison is a very rich widow.
As law enforcement starts to circle in on Addison and people in town become increasingly hostile, sides are chosen with Kathryn, Richmond’s high school sweetheart, wife number one, and the mother of his children, leading the fray. Despite rising tensions, Addison is even more driven to forge ahead on the path she charted years ago…
Determined at all costs to unravel Richmond’s legacy, she soon becomes a target—with a shocking note left on her bedroom You will pay. But it will take a lot more than faceless threats to stop Addison. Her plan to marry Richmond then ruin him may have been derailed by his unexpected death, but she’s not done with him yet.
The first chapters kept me, but after that, it hit rock bottom, and I’m upset about it since I had the audiobook.
Goodreads Blurb:
Joanne Hayes, at 24 years of age, concealed the birth and death of her baby in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1984. Subsequently she confessed to the murder, by stabbing, of another baby. All of the scientific evidence showed that she could not have had this second baby. The police nevertheless, insisted on charging her and, after the charges were dropped, continued to insist that she had given birth to twins conceived of two different men. A public tribunal of inquiry was called to examine the behavior of the police and their handling of the case. The police, in defense of themselves and in justification of “confessions” obtained, called a succession of male experts on the medical, social and moral roman catholic fiber of Joanne Hayes. Her married lover detailed the times, places and manner of her love making. Using the “twins” theory as a springboard, the question was posed and debated “Did she love this man or what was he and other men prepared to do with her?” After six months of daily discussion among the men, the judge declared “There were times when we all believed she had twins.” The treatment of Joanne Hayes, who stood accused of no crime, was a model for Irish male attitudes to woman. She was caught up in a time of rapid social change between two Irelands, an earlier Ireland in which the Catholic Church had held a moral monopoly and a new liberal and secular Ireland.
This one surprised me because I didn’t expect it to go the way it went. However, I’m in the middle, thought-wise.
Goodreads Blurb:
Violet dreams of becoming a midwife.
All that stand in her way are anxiety, self-doubt, and three years of training.
Can she overcome all obstacles and make her dreams come true?
Life Lessons is a new adult chick-lit medical drama, with splashes of clean romance.
Expect an unputdownable emotional page-turner that will take you deep into the life lessons of a student midwife.
Violet wants to be a midwife, but she has struggled with anxiety throughout her teenage years.
With her best friend Zoe at her side, she gets a place at University and starts training for her dream job.
Can she overcome her fears and find the self-confidence to make it through her first year?
Will Zoe’s romance with their housemate spell dating disaster?
Book one of the Lessons of a Student Midwife series.
I don’t think this novel was marketed well, which is why the inside was a surprise.
Goodreads Blurb:
UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY CHANGED THE COURSE OF HER LIFE FOREVER . . .
Tangie Killion had to grow up fast. Her childhood might not have been considered normal, but it was a happy one for the most part. After losing her mother to murder when she was just eighteen, she found herself with the responsibility of raising her younger brother and sister. Her dreams sidelined, she stepped up to do what she had to do. If only she could get justice for her mother, maybe she and her family could step out of the shadows that hovered over them. The case had gone cold and everyone outside the family seemed to have forgotten about her mother . . . until someone unexpected entered her life to help shine the light back into it.
HIS ONLY HOPE OF COMING OUT FROM HIS OWN SHADOWS
RESTS ON HELPING FAMILIES FIND THEIR LIGHT AS WELL . . .
Quinn Cullen—U.S. Army vet who has served in Afghanistan—suffered from PTSD. He was doing his best to get a handle on it. Moving to a small community near his hometown to take a position as a cold case detective on the local police force seemed a good way to get on with his life. He finds himself drawn to the murder victim’s daughter in his first case assignment. Can he chase her shadows away by helping to solve the mystery of her mother’s death?
The best way to describe this novel is a gem in a sea of books.
Goodreads Blurb:
A fascinating historical novel about Hilde, an orphan who experiences Berlin on the cusp of World War II as she discovers her own voice and sexuality, ultimately finding a family when she gets a job at a gay cabaret, by award-winning author Kip Wilson. On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde leaves her orphanage in 1930s Berlin, and heads out into the world to discover her place in it. But finding a job is hard, at least until she stumbles into Café Lila, a vibrant cabaret full of expressive customers. Rosa, one of the club’s waitresses and performers, immediately takes Hilde under her wing. As the café denizens slowly embrace Hilde, and she embraces them in turn, she discovers her voice and her own blossoming feelings for Rosa. But Berlin is in turmoil. Between the elections, protests in the streets, worsening antisemitism and anti-homosexual sentiment, and the beginning seeds of unrest in Café Lila itself, Hilde will have to decide what’s best for her future . . . and what it means to love a place on the cusp of war.
A novel in verse you should read if you are into Historical fiction.
Goodreads Blurb:
Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.
But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school’s star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers’ dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They’ll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems.
If this novel is read more, maybe some pain can be avoided.
Alex
Mybookworld24 