Leah Franqui’s Mother Land isn’t quite as interesting as her first novel (America for Beginners), but in its messy, wonderfully insular sense of family, culture and the notion of rebelling against both, it’s quite the unique gem. Rachel Meyer, recently moved to Mumbai with her new husband Dhruv, is experiencing severe culture shock. She doesn’t…
What You Wish For is the first book I’ve read by Katherine Center, and it pretty much knocked my socks off. By turns funny, sad, introspective, and joyful, it was like opening a box of chocolates and realizing I actually liked all the different flavors. (Which never happens, there’s always something weird, right?) And like…
She’s Faking it is one of those novels that has a great idea and an interesting, timely concept, which is complicated and sometimes blighted by the heroine through which the story is told. Bree Botzman has been stumbling through life without an ambition or clue. When in college, she hoped for a bright future; now…
The Heir Affair is an unexpectedly tragic but affecting sequel to Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s The Royal We, which liberally reimagined Kate Middleton’s early years with Prince William. Rebecca and Nick, Duke and Duchess of Clarence and future monarchs of the United Kingdom, are, at the start of the book, in an “Airbnb, which…
It took me around six hours to read Jenny Colgan’s easy and comforting 500 Miles From You, a split Scotland/England story that I’m counting as my global travel for this year of lockdowns and quarantine. Lissa Westcott is a “nurse practitioner liaison” in London. One day, returning from a home call, she witnesses the murder…
One of the joys of reading is finding new favorite novels. I’ve discovered a few great books in 2020 but Abbi Waxman’s I Was Told It Would Get Easier has easily carved itself a spot in my top ten list. Jessica Burnstein is in the midst of a kid-life crisis. She can barely speak to…
When you google The Sight of You, it comes up with the subheading ‘The Love Story of 2020’ a grandiose statement about a book that is the opposite of grandiose in the most lovely way. The Sight of You is very tender, and there’s a sense of humility in it and in its main characters,…
Kristan Higgins’ most recent offering, Always the Last to Know, is a pitch-perfect picture of a family in crisis. That might sound a bit depressing, but Higgins is able to infuse the story with exactly the right amount of humor which, while not necessarily going to cause you to laugh out loud, will at the…
The biggest problem The Lonely Fajita has is that you’ve seen ninety percent of the things that happen between its covers in other books. Import Bridget Jones into Fried Green Tomatoes, transport the whole thing to London and ladle in some cursing and you have its general formula. It’s the supporting characters that bring the…
I don’t consider myself to be an overly sentimental person, but every once in a while, I feel the need to get lost in a frothy story where absolutely everything will turn out perfectly. Summer Longing, the latest novel from Jamie Brenner, is just such a book, and though I struggled with certain aspects of…
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