Book Reviews

Reigny Days is an 86 page Novella centering around the college years of the main character, her relationships with others, and her depression. This is book 1 of a series & there was a great cliffhanger and I’ll be looking for book 2! Thank you to Netgalley for the ADC on audiobook, unfortunately I was unable to download the audio version, so I read the story through kindle unlimited. 

I received The Young Survivors as an ARC ebook from Netgalley & Duckworth Books. It is written by Debra Barnes. This is her debut novel.  The book is fiction, but inspired by her mother’s experience of losing her twin sister at the age of six as well as her parents. She was a French Jewish child in an orphanage during WWII.   The Young Survivors is a story of the Laskowski Family. The Laskowski’s are Jewish living in France at the onset on WWII. The parents are abducted, one after the other, by the Germans.  The five children are left to fend for themselves.  The Young Survivors is written from the narrative of three of the children alternating in chapters. The writing style is quick and easy to read being that it comes from the perspective of children. What makes this book unique is that it’s focus is on children of France who were also Jewish. It’s important to know about the many who silently fought to keep the children safe and based on that, I would rec...

  For me, this is an odd story that left me feeling as if my car was stuck in the snow with wheels spinning. There just wasn’t much going on. It seemed there was more inner dialogue from the main character than meaningful conversations with the people around her. There was a lot of descriptives of sight, sound, and taste. Random sexual encounters. Drunkenness abounds.  Catherine house is a strange place for higher learning. The students willingly attend and cut themselves off from the outside world, family, and friends. No news, no movies, no radio. The clothes they wear are supplied by The House. Everything revolves around The House and what you are willing to do for The House.  I found the prose wonderful but the plot lacking. I felt there were opportunities to inject more intensity to the overall story, but it didn’t happen. 

I  received this as an ARC from netgalley/soho press. This is the first book I’ve read written by Thomas Maltman. This book has great imagination and creativity with some symbolism thrown in for good measure.  The main character, Lucien Swenson, has survived a car wreck to find that his married lover has robbed the bank they worked at and vanished. As he recovers, he finds a job as a housesitter with ambitions of completing the video game he is creating as well as discovering what happened to Maura, by attending the church where her husband is pastor prepping his flock for the end of times. Will Lucien find the answers to all his questions before the apocalypse?

ARC provided by publisher & Netgalley in exchange for honest review.  This book is not for the faint of heart. Many controversial topics: torture, graphic sex scenes, rape, abuse, alcoholism/drug use, oppression, war, slavery, the list goes on and on.  Much of this is described in shocking detail.  The 1700s were filled with people who were ruthless, uninhibited, and had a willingness to betray others for their own betterment. Peter the great was no exception. This appears to be very well researched and is very interesting to say the least.  This book centers around “Tsar of all the Russias” Peter the Great, the wars he fought, the women he loves and closest companions, the family hierarchy, and his visions for building and ruling a thriving Russia.

I may be biased, Louise Erdrich lives in my state & references our cities in her book, so right off the bat I’m a fan, a supporter of a hometown hero. Louise is a masterful story teller of Native Indian traditions, beliefs, lifestyles, words, and the wrongs they have suffered. Even though her books are fiction, the stories contained in them are influenced by true events. Add to that the fact that Indigenous people make up only 1.6% of the entire American Population, it underscores how important her books are. When there are no people who speak a given language and/or have no stories left to share, how will we know them?

  Oh my goodness! Bill Clegg has the “queen bee & wanna bee’s” of young girls down! “Oh the tangled webs we weave” (Sir Walter Scott) is what I kept thinking as I read this book.  There are several characters in this book with widely varying socio-economic backgrounds. At its center are 3 young ladies. Two of the girls are friends by bland matters of convenience, by that I mean one parent offered to have a girl over to their home to see their horses and meet his daughter. The girls live close to one another, one girl has envy, one girl has power. They both have an angle, they cling to each other, but the friendship never rings true.  In the beginning of the book it bounces from person to person in adulthood. I do admit to thinking, “Wait. Who is this now?” (But) Then it settles more into focus on the lives of Jackie & Dana continuing to flip back and forth reflecting on when they were young and considering how it brought them to “the end of the day” (current time....

  The Last Hoffman By Gwen Tuinman The Last Hoffman is Gwen’s first novel, with a heartfelt look into a town & the families in it keeping secrets from those they love and gossiping about those they don’t.  Main character, Floyd Hoffman, is a widower caring for his terminal teenage son with whom he struggles to connect. Floyd is busy keeping secrets he swore to keep as his wife, Bonnie, passed away. If only, if only..... Floyd’s son, Dean, is left in the dark about many stories of his family’s past and has become angry & bitter for the silence he doesn’t understand. Then, of course, there is the evil mother-in-law, Mrs. Brookman, who thinks she’s protecting her family. Mrs. Brookman is an entitled, power hungry, wealthy woman who only cares about what she wants. The town papermill, that employs the majority of the townspeople, is being scrutinized by Floyd as he believes toxins from the mill killed his wife & have left his son terminally ill. The townspeople are ups...