ANY TROPE BUT YOU – Victoria Lavine

I wanted a cute, candy read.  A Hallmark movie in book form.  Set in the remote wilderness of Alaska with a romance author from California and the hunky lumberjack son of the proprietor of the resort she’s staying at? That sounds like a delicious candy book.

And Victoria Lavine’s Any Trope But You (Atria 2025) IS cute, don’t get me wrong, but parts of it just hurt my teeth.

Margot is a very famous romance author who had a bit of fall from grace when her secret files of alternate endings become public. Since the world now knows she doesn’t believe in HEA, maybe it’s time for a murder mystery. She is tiny and gorgeous, a biting ray of sunshine and very much a fish out of water in Alaska .

Forrest is the compilation of every leading male in all her novels. He works at the Alaskan resort, a towering lumber jack of a man, who just so happens to be a doctor studying breast cancer. He is wicked intelligent – a true Doogie Howser with a heart of gold. He’d left a prominent position in California to return to Alaska after his father became injured.

It’s insta-lust when Margot launches herself into his arms after being scared by a half-tamed moose she thought was a bear.  (Let’s be real – there should have been more Bullwinkle.) The tropes stack up, as expected, and her cheeky reaction to the tropes as they unfold in her actual life are pretty fun, but that loses steam by the midway mark.

They become unreasonably head-over-heels in love with each other, without even knowing much of anything about each other. (Hate it.) The focus on the “he’s so big” element also grew tiresome; if I had to read one more time about how tiny she was and how massive he was, I would have vomited. (The business end of a ball bat, eh?)  Both of them need hardcore therapy, and this relationship is a bandaid over their broken bits.  (Fix yourself, people. Just because he fills your holes, doesn’t mean he heals your soul.)

That brings me to the spice.  Margot jokes that her and Forrest’s love story is Hallmark meets Pornhub – and that kind of nails the novel as well. (Pun intended.) I’m sorry – it was just as cringe as the spice scenes Margot and her sister mock early on in the novel.  Not all of them – but a lot of them.  (I loved the tent scene – but I enjoy one bed tropes.)

In conclusion, it’s cute. It’s a quick read. You know there will be a HEA (but let’s be real, one of Margot’s alternate endings is more likely with two people so in need of selfwork) and there is some heat.

MY FRIENDS – FREDRIK BACKMAN

“Twenty-five years later he still wishes for the same thing, that he was fourteen years old and that the world was full of broken clocks.

“As seventeen-year-olds they would sleep next to each other almost every night in the foster home, with ice cream stains on their clothes and each other’s laughter in their lungs, a chest of drawers against the door, each clutching a screwdriver  in case anyone tried to get in.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Fredrik Backman is my favorite hearthug & heartbreak author – no one else can shred my heart into a million pieces in the span of five words before following it up with a fart joke that has me chuckling through burning eyes, lump still in throat.  He writes humans and life better than anyone. Life is gritty and bloody, and trust is to be guarded. But we laugh.  We laugh through bruises and broken bones, through dark days and stolen innocence.  And there is nothing more beautiful than when you find one of yours and there’s more laughter than before, and My Friends (Atria 2025), a novel about four fourteen-year-olds and the events that unfolded that last summer before they turned fifteen, is beautiful.  You’ll cry. But you’ll laugh.  Hard.

I don’t want to spoil this novel, so I’m not going to talk about the actual plot.  I will say that even with the Donna Tartt reference, My Friends is likely going to be in my top five at the end of year. (I don’t like the literary brat pack. We’ve discussed this before.) This novel was reminiscent of Beartown and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell you She’s Sorry – pulling at some of the very things that made me fall in love with Backman’s writing to begin with. Unsurprisingly, it gave me echoes of Stephen King and, surprisingly, Fried Green Tomatoes.

If you haven’t read Backman, I’d recommend starting with My Friends or Beartown or My Grandmother Asked me to Tell You she’s Sorry – or, what remains likely my favorite, A Man Called Ove.

Read this book.  And remember, life will break your heart, but if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be living.

“I love you and I believe in you.”

RHYTHM OF WAR – Brandon Sanderson

“If we slow down,” Jasnah said, “the past catches up to us. History is like that, always gobbling up the present.”

The year of Sanderson continues and while I may have had a rather slow month of reading in May, I did finish Rhythm of War (Tor 2020).  Book four of The Stormlight Archivemay very well be my favorite.  I’m still Bridge Four forever, but Adolin…  somehow the non-Radiant became my heart.

We get more of Venli and Eshonai, as well as seeing the rebellion brewing amongst the Fused, but this novel seemed too much like two novels for me.  I wish the occupation of the Tower, the Rhythm of War tone and the discoveries of Navani, while captive, and Raboniel were the dedicated focus. That would also include Venli and Eshonai and the flashbacks there, which I appreciated but wanted more flesh because I couldn’t reconcile what I was being presented with Eshonai’s viewpoint in earlier works.

The storyline with Adolin and Shallan on a mission to Shadesmar to convince the honorspren to bond with humans again, particularly the role of the Dead Eyes, is such great storytelling.  While I understand why these storylines happening at the same time were important for the evolution of the story and how the two plots work together,  both are such great storylines that interrupting one to give a taste of the other annoyed me every single time.

The portrayal of mental health, most noticeably with Kaladin and Shallan, is respectfully and talentedly done.  Suicidal ideation is prominent throughout the series, beginning with book one.  In Rhythm of War, they name it and claim – and a healing starts while the world continues to burn down around them.

I love these characters, and I do not regret starting my Sanderson journey with Stormlight.

THE MADWOMAN OF SERRANO – Dina Salústio

Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we are now in the C’s!!!

Country: Cape Verde
Title: The Mad Woman of Serrano
Author: t
Language: Portuguese
Translator: Jethro Soutar
Publisher: Spleen Ediçũes (1998), English translation Dedalus (2019)

The Mad Woman of Serrano was the first novel by a female author to be published in Cape Verde, and the first to be translated into English. It’s a magical realism novel about Serrano, a rural village set apart from the city, and what happens when the village is thrust into the world. When the village is “discovered” and the men forced to join the military as required by all citizens, their way of life changes because their dreams change.  Perhaps the biggest change comes from a plane crash with a sole survivor who winds up in the village, pregnant and confused.  The novel primarily follows her daughter, Filipa, who is raised in Serrano, but eventually taken from her home. In the city, she attempts to come to terms with her identity and decisions made by her mother’s prominent family, while struggling with the  memories of her childhood, her adopted father, and her only friend – the village’s madwoman. 

The history of Serrano and the stories about the folks who called it home are my favorite.  The lore of the midwives, the women who birth every child of the village (except for Filipa, which is part of the problem) and who take the virginity of every boy years later, is a well developed thread. It can get a little  confusing, likely due to the translation and the magical realism aspects, but it’s well worth the journey.

TOUGH LUCK – Sandra Dallas

When I read John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry, I called it Lonesome Dove  meets Calamity Jane.  I loved everything about it. When I saw he’d blurbed Sandra Dallas’s Tough Luck (St. Martin’s Press 2025), which is marketed as a homage to True Grit, the new release was immediately placed on my radar.  (A huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a finished copy for review.)  I can see why Larison weighed in as there are some similarities between his Jessilyn/Jesse and Dallas’s Haidie, but Larison is gritty and unflinching, a liquor that burns.  Tough Luck is more akin to sweet tea, going down easy but at times too saccharine.

Several times while reading, I had to double check that the novel was not a middle grade novel.  IMHO, that’s the target audience and how it should have been marketed.  There’s nothing wrong or lesser than about middle grade novels, and had Tough Luck been marketed as such, most of my concerns would have vanished.  But it’s not a middle grade novel and therein lies the rub.

When Haidie’s mother dies, her older brother, Cheet (unfortunate name for a gambler) sells the family farm and takes her and their younger brother, Boots, to an orphanage. She lies about her age because 14 is too old for the orphanage, and she needs to be there for Boots. The orphanage isn’t a bad place, but Haidie begins to plot for their escape.  She plans to go to Colorado, to find their pa.  With a series of adventures and characters that have a Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn taste to them, Haidie, masquerading as a boy, and Boots eventually make it to Colorado.

It’s cute, easy to swallow, and action packed. I think a 11-13 year old would love it.  Are there “hoors”?  Yeah, but they barely kiss the page.  Indian shootout?  Yeah, but again, it happens in a blink. Is she discovered as female and almost raped? Yes, but that is even less than a blink. The weight of those scenes is what remains unwritten.

Now let’s talk about the cover.  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  And it is absolutely  the incorrect choice for this novel.  Give me a girl with “hacked off” hair, britches and a mule.  Don’t give me a cowgirl with a braid.  I don’t know who is on the cover, but it’s not Haidie.

HOMESEEKING – Karissa Chen

Karissa Chen’s Homeseeking (Putnam 2025) is a novel of choices and resilience, spanning 1938 – 2008 in the lives of dual souls divided by distance and circumstance. Suji/Suchi/Sue and Doudou/Haiwen/Howard became ready friends as children and that friendship quickly blossomed into a deep love that would act as a magnetic force, pulling them toward each other their entire lives. If you recall my review of The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, I called it the saddest book because it took too many years for Augusta and Irving to reconnect and get their happily after all.  Homeseeking is sadder.

Through dual POVs and jumping timelines, Chen takes the reader on a historical journey of war, famine, and chance through Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York, and California.  Languages and histories blend and break along with their lives. Mandarin. Cantonese. Taiwanese. Shanghainese. English. Suchi and Haiwen dance between languages with ease – even their early years had been marked by a multi-lingual relationship.  (Please read the author’s note at the beginning!) For decades, their lives ran adjacent, with each just seeking to survive.  Sometimes, those lines were perfectly parallel, other times they kissed next to each other, same place and the right time to prevent someone from ending it all.

Homeseeking is a novel of the Chinese diaspora – a search for happiness and home while rebuilding from the ruins. It’s sad, there’s no denying that.  But there’s a beauty in the ruins, a beauty of survival, of self, of living.  With a comfortable writing style, Chen will readily have you captivated.

It’s a BOTM selection, a GMA Book Club pick, and Laura Beth will be hosting a virtual author chat with Karissa Chen on 5/19 – plenty of time to pick it up! (I should warn you – she’s deliciously chunky!)

Read this book!

HAPPY LAND – Dolen Perkins-Valdez

I’ve been sitting on this review for a bit, trying to figure out how best to condense my thoughts into a relatively small space. (I’ve also been toying with the possibility of changing how I review/react, but that’s really neither here nor there.) As per usual, it’ll likely just be bookish babbling, but I encourage you to keep reading.

I’m from NC. I may have been born across the state line, but NC is my home and has been for over four decades. Never once was I told that a kingdom, with its own king and queen, a palace, subjects, treasury, and industries existed in my state. That remnants of this kingdom still exist. That ancestors of the subjects still walk those grounds.  The Kingdom of the Happy Land (or just Happy Land), in Henderson County, NC, was almost erased, a whitewashed history with a legacy of stealing lives and stories. And while there has been scholarship surrounding Happy Land and interest in its history and stories has increased in recent years, I’m not sure when I would have become aware of this remarkable part of my state’s history but for Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s fictional account in Happy Land (Berkley 2025). You may recall how hard I pushed her first novel, Take My Hand (based on a real account of forced sterilization in black, brown and poor communities in the 1970s – which, considering the attention being put back on eugenics, I’d encourage everyone to read again).

There are a lot of unknowns about the kingdom, including where the former slaves came from. Some say South Carolina and others say Mississippi; Perkins-Valdez’s account has them flee the Klan in South Carolina. What I love about how Perkins-Valdez has set up the story is that it’s the story of Happy Land and its kingdom, focusing primarily on the Queen, and a present-day story of a middle-aged woman who has been summoned by her estranged grandmother to North Carolina. As the reader learns about Happy Land and its history, so does Nikki, a descendant of Queen Luella. (Luella is based on the real woman who built this kingdom and community; Nikki is the fictionalized storyline.)

It’s a story of strong women, forgotten histories, matrilineal lines and loyalties, and resilience. Part of the plot involves real property law, and this is where the novel hiccups. Ownership issues are misrepresented, possibly intentionally to create more of a villain, but the solution is not some obscure law like it is presented. My attorney brain read those sections and thought they should have been reworked to be both clear and realistic while also maintaining the integrity of her plot. (And there can be some confusion as the family would likely be confused – but an attorney shows up.)   That could just be a “me problem” because I’m a licensed NC attorney – who knows.

Regardless, this is a slice of history that is remarkable and fascinating. And Perkins-Valdez has packaged it in a compelling novel with characters seeking happiness.

Read this book.

SO DISTANT FROM MY LIFE – Monique Ilboudo

“My mind ran off as soon as I opened my eyes. I have always had a vagabond mind.”

Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – this marks the last of the Bs.

Country: Burkina Faso
Title: So Distant from My Life
Author: Monique Ilboudo
Language: French
Translator: Yarri Kamara
Publisher: Le Serpent á Plumes, 2018 English translation published by Tilted Axis Press 2022

Coming in at only 123 pages, So Distant from My Life is certainly one of the shortest of the Tommi Reads the World selections to date. But make no mistake – it packs quite the punch.  Set in Ouabany, a fictional city in West Africa and France, the novel centers around migration and sexual orientation – the resounding cry is one of the right to choose not only where one lives, but how they live.

Jeanphi’s life is derailed as a teen when his close friend is killed in a bike accident. Jeanphi has a bit of survivor’s guilt as he was supposed to be on that bike with his friend but had refused at the last moment.  He spirals into drugs and homelessness for several years before his mother finally convinces him to come home and gets him in treatment. He’s too old to return to school, and he flounders a bit as he tries to find his way.  He finds some success as a letter writer until a cyber café with secretarial offerings opens. Once again, despair threatens to find him. He sees himself as an embarrassment to his family, especially his father.  His repeated attempts to migrate to another country have been thwarted.

A chance meeting with an older French man opens new doors for him.  He becomes accustomed to the life of luxury Elgep provides, but upon learning Elgep is a homosexual, Jeanphi feels backed into a corner.  Is he gay or is he willing to do anything to escape to France?  After some hesitation, Jeanphil agrees to join Elgep. In France, Jeanphil begins to reconcile his identity, but he still struggles with how his father handled the news.  He eventually marries Elgep, resigning himself to the commitment because it wouldn’t really change anything for him. But it does.

After his father’s death, Jeanphil elects to return home, to Ouabany.  The novel wraps up in a bruised and broken tragedy.

Slim and unassuming, So Distant from My Life is a powerful novel. If you can get your hands on it, it’s certainly worth the read.

THE ASHFIRE KING – Chelsea Abdullah

The long awaited second book in Chelsea Abdullah’s The Sandsea Trilogy will be released on Tuesday, April 15th.  A huge thanks to the publisher for gifting me an advanced uncorrected proof of The Ashfire King.  I loved The Stardust Thief and had high hopes for the second installment of the trilogy. The publishing delay concerned me a little (it was initially supposed to be out Fall 2023), but I shouldn’t have worried; The Ashfire King is a solid follow-up that sets the scene for the final installment.

Abdullah blends magic and stories within stories to create something that continues to be quite special. We still have our relic hunter, Loulie; the now-dead sultan’s son and banished prince and storyteller, Mazen; and Aisha, a former jinn-killing member of Mazen’s brother’s forty thieves whose life is now tied to a relic and ifrit. Along with Mazen’s brother, Hakim, the map maker, and a cast of other memorable characters, once more we’re off on an adventure.  Adventures, to be exact. Aisha is hellbent on revenge against Omar.  Loulie wants to find and save Qadir. And Mazen, well, Mazen is struggling a bit, but his adventure will always be being there for Loulie.

Noticeably absent is Qadir, Loulie’s bodyguard and the so-called Ashfire King.  The plot centers around Loulie trying to find and save him while she operates from within his former world beneath the Sandsea and he is imprisoned by the now sultan, Mazen’s brother, Omar, in the human world.

It’s a story of found families, lasting loyalties, and legends that breathe life and fire.  I can’t wait for the final installment.

SAY YOU’LL REMEMBER ME – Abby Jimenez

This is going to be a difficult review to write. Abby Jimenez’s new novel, Say You’ll Remember Me ( Forever 2025), just didn’t live up to my expectations. I really enjoy Jimenez’s work. I’ve said before that I don’t really read romance – that’s mostly because I’m just very particular about what I want in a book and romance books don’t always deliver that. Jimenez usually does, however.  Her books have heart.  But this one? I could feel its heart every once and again, but it mostly let me down.

I’m going to start with the cover because it annoys me – I do not think it fits the narrative. The backdrop is fine, the colors are fine though a bit cotton candy-ish, but the wardrobe choices on the characters just feel wrong (why is this man not in blue?) Both of them are supposed to have black hair, and she’s supposed to be curvy. The cat should have been on the cover moreso than Jake, the dog who rarely features in their relationship.

That leads me to my next complaint.  I love that Jimenez has dogs in her works, and I’ve never felt that the dogs were there just because she felt she needed to add a dog.  Until this novel.  Both Jake and Pugsly seem misplaced – serving for a  storyline and then being ignored until needed again.  Neither character seems to be a responsible pet owner, if we’re being real, and it annoys me that they were just abandoned plot devices.

The plot here is an insta love that must immediately face a long distance relationship.  Add the fact Samantha’s mother is suffering with early onset dementia and Xavier’s abusive upbringing and you have two folks who cling to each other in a way that teeters on unhealthy.  Both of them need a good therapist.  And Xavier’s friends and Samantha’s family just seem disregarded. Shells of people that deserved to be fleshed out, especially Samantha’s family.  (But also, Xavier is a crap friend when he gets in a relationship, eh?)

As for the good stuff?  The writing is sharp and fun. There are some hilarious and unique moments as expected with Jimenez.  I hate that the final product fell short for me.  I also know I’m in the minority so…

Also, the repeated ACOTAR references early on did nothing but annoy me.