I loved her 2014 release Euphoria and author Lily King has written another great one, although quite different, Writers & Lovers (Grove Press). We follow Casey Peabody, a writer, on a journey to find herself. “I am 31, and $73,000 in debt. I’ve moved 11 times, had 17 jobs and…
Jennifer BlankfeinMay 7, 2020
Trust Exercise (Henry Holt & Co.) by Susan Choi is a challenge when it comes to making sense of it all, but I highly recommend it for book groups as it allows for interesting discussion. The book is in three distinct parts, similar to Assymetry by Lisa Halliday. Part One is…
Jennifer BlankfeinMay 6, 2020
The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré (Dutton) is a special book; a powerful story of a young girl with hopes and dreams and bravery beyond her years. Adunni is an optimistic, kind-hearted 14-year-old. Before her mother died, she instilled in her the importance of education and Adunni took…
Jennifer BlankfeinApril 28, 2020
Oak Knoll, the quaint North Carolina community in A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler (St. Martin's Press), is slowly turning over and older homes are being built into mansions. Wealthy, charming and successful Brad Whitman, his wife Julia and their daughters, Lily and Juniper move in next-door to single…
Jennifer BlankfeinApril 6, 2020
I have recently read wonderful books by Vietnamese authors, Ocean Vuong's On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Thannha Lai's Butterfly Yellow along with Chris Bohjalian’s new book The Red Lotus, which partially takes place in Vietnam. Each of these books pieces together for readers how beautiful the country is and how…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 25, 2020
From the bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant comes a twisted and timely new mystery/thriller. In The Red Lotus (Doubleday), Chris Bohjalian presents a blossoming love sprinkled with lies — one that causes us to ask ourselves how well we know the people we care about. Alexis, an…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 20, 2020
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Adrienne Brodeur is a story of a mother’s love, what not to do and the long journey to recover from the damage done. Rennie’s mom, Malabar, and her second husband, Charles, spend a lot of time with friends…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 13, 2020
In The Stationery Shop (Gallery Books), author Marjan Kamali tells a love story gone wrong among political unrest in Iran 1950s. We begin in 2013 in Massachusetts when an older woman, Roya, is visiting an old man in a nursing home. Then we go back in time to the 1950s…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 13, 2020
On the heels of the American Dirt conversations, Kate Elizabeth Russell's novel, My Dark Vanessa, has been met with its own controversy. Another highly anticipated novel — one that garnered its author a six-figure book deal — has entered the conversation on the gap in opportunities available to Latinx authors. My…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 10, 2020
Emotional, heartbreaking and hopeful, The Yellow Bird Sings (Flatiron Books) by Jennifer Rosner touches the music of your soul. It is 1941 Poland; Roza and Shira, mother and daughter, are Jews, hidden in a barn by farmers. After their family was violently taken from them, they have no choice but…
Jennifer BlankfeinMarch 3, 2020
"The tale I’m going to tell is of a summer long ago. Of killing and kidnapping and children pursued by demons of a thousand names. There will be courage in this story and cowardice. There will be love and betrayal. And, of course, there will be hope. In the end,…
Jennifer BlankfeinFebruary 18, 2020
Kindness, compassion, generosity, acceptance … this is what we all need and deserve, and this is what author Catherine Ryan Hyde serves up in her novel, Have You Seen Luis Velez? (Lake Union). Raymond is in high school, a good student with divorced parents of different races. He struggles with…
Jennifer BlankfeinJanuary 31, 2020
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, (Bloomsbury) a stunning memoir, is T Kira Madden’s story. A school girl’s coming of age in wealthy Boca Raton, Florida, the author struggles with her identity and shares with us the good the bad and the ugly. T Kira was born to a…
Jennifer BlankfeinJanuary 27, 2020
Author Christy Lefteri is a daughter of refugees, and spent several summers volunteering with refugees in Greece. There is no doubt she beautifully and accurately taps into the suffering of her characters with the heartfelt storytelling of the plight of Syrian refugees in The Beekeeper of Aleppo. This emotional story…
Jennifer BlankfeinJanuary 22, 2020
There is a barber showing photographs and a banker in a motorcar in Deborah Levy’s new novel, and this may remind you of a popular tune. “Penny Lane” was in my ears and in my eyes as I read this short yet complex story sprinkled with Beatles references by this…
Jennifer BlankfeinJanuary 15, 2020