Recent Reads

For a brief period of time yesterday, I was caught up at work, but that came too late for me to get these book reviews into my Unraveled Wednesday post. Lucky for you, I have time for them today -- and the delay allowed me to finish another book!

One of the first books I read this year was Love & Saffron, so I've been (somewhat) patiently waiting for the follow-up. Last I checked, my library hadn't yet gotten it, so I took advantage of a Kindle deal to add it to my shelf. Kate & Frida isn't really a sequel and you don't need to have read the other book to enjoy it (you'll just know who Frida is), but it's also an epistolary novel about two women who form a friendship through their letters. This time we're in the early '90s. Frida is in Paris, trying to figure out if she has it in her to be a "real" journalist, and connects with Kate when she writes to a Seattle bookstore in search of a particular book and gets a response to Kate. Over the next several years, the two women bond over books they love, give each other love advice, and help each other through hard times. Though there are both sad and scary moments, I found this novel to be delightful and an excellent palate cleanser after some heavier reads. I gave it 4 stars.

Bonny's recent review of Run for the Hills reminded me to check Hoopla for it again, as that's where I found two of Kevin Wilson's previous books that I listened to earlier in the fall. In his newest novel, we start out with Mad, who runs an organic farm in Tennessee with her mother after her father left them when she was younger. One day a man in a PT Cruiser shows up at the farm with the news that he's her half-brother and that their father left his family in Boston before showing up in Tennessee. What's more, their father apparently repeated this pattern at least twice more. The two siblings, Mad and Rube, set out on a road trip to find their father in California, along the way picking up their other two half-siblings, though they're not sure what they'll do when -- if -- they find him. The characters are all quirky but charming, and their journey leads them not only to finding their father but to understanding more about themselves and their personal narratives. I listened to this one, and the narration was great. I gave it 4 stars.

Bonny also inspired my next read. Finding Grace is a book that you can't really describe without giving too much away, so it's difficult to write a review with any discussion of plot. There is a dramatic and tragic event that occurs at the end of the very first chapter that drives the rest of the narrative, and it's something that's very unexpected, so I can't even hint at it. This book deals with a lot of topics that might necessitate trigger warnings, so if you'd like to avoid any of those, I'd recommend researching them before picking up this book. I thought the storyline was unusual and creative, certainly unlike anything I've read before, but I also was cringing regularly at the actions of one of the main characters and thought the story wrapped up a little too neatly, given the complexity of the rest of the plot. I gave it 3.5 stars.

Even though the Booker Prize for this year has already been awarded, I'm still reading some of the titles on the list that didn't win and that only recently became available here. The Land in Winter is one of those. Set in rural England in the early 1960s, this novel focuses on two couples who live near each other. Eric Parry is one of the local doctors and lives in a cottage with his wife, Irene. Across the field is farmer Bill Simmons, whose wife, Rita, seems an odd complement to him. Both women are pregnant and dealing with different challenges in their personal lives when an unusually cold winter sets in. I listened to this book, read by the author, and found the writing to be good -- "atmospheric" is the best word I can think to describe it. But I found it hard to keep track of the characters and their storylines and backgrounds. Perhaps the format caused some of this difficulty, but I not going to reread with my eyes to know for sure. I gave it 3 stars.

And there you have it! If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you thought of them.

I hope to do some more reading this weekend -- hope it's a good one for you!