EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS – Jennifer Ann Shore

Everywhere, Always (2021) is the first non-vampire novel by Jennifer Ann Shore that I’ve read.  Admittedly, romance isn’t my genre of choice as I prefer it to be more of a subplot.  When I do read a novel where the love story is the central plot, I want it to be quick and sweet with non-cookie cutter characters.  Everywhere, Always certainly delivers.

Despite having zero vampires, a lot of the aspects I enjoyed from Metallic Red show up in these pages as well.  It’s partly Shore’s writing style, but it’s more so in her characters; Shore writes extremely likable and unique young adults who are consistent in their actions and whose growth organically happens.

Everywhere, Always quickly sets up a Gilmore-Girls-esque relationship between Avery and her mother. Within the first ten pages, the reader is presented this beautiful relationship that has defined Avery’s existence.  That quick insight is necessary to further emphasize the fish-out-water experience Avery has when her mother dies and she finds herself in her extremely wealthy (and until now unknown to her) father’s home.  Avery is thrust into a world that is so foreign to her, but she adapts with relative ease because her mother has taught her how to adjust her stance when life switches up the pitches.

The romance is sweet, but the relationships Avery creates with her brother and his friends are even sweeter.  From Scrubs references to Shakespeare quotes to bags of candy and crossword puzzles, she opens herself to love and be loved and finally allows herself to heal.

If you’re looking for a sweet, YA romance, look no further.  Everywhere, Always is certainly sweet, but not cloyingly so.

Read this book.

MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE’S SORRY – Fredrik Backman

“But they do what they can.  They construct words of forgiveness from the ruins of fighting words.”

I’ve read countless books over the years.  Countless. There have been books I loved, books I hated, books I enjoyed, and books that were entirely forgettable.  I am a reader, and every reader knows that once in a while, there is a book that finds you when you need it most.  A book that gets in your blood, your heartbeat finding the cadence of the words as if they were intended just for you. A book that soars with the power of storytelling. Readers forever seek these gems out, each one fondly etched in a memory.

This book was that.

Swedish author Fredrik Backman is a talent who remained unknown to me until a little over a year ago when A Man Called Ove found its way to my shelves.  It was absolutely brilliant, and I made a mental note to add more Backman to my TBR.  I finally got around to My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry (2013, translated 2015) and can confirm that Backman is firmly rooted in this reader’s heart. 

Elsa is 7, and a bit different.  Her grandmother is 70 years older and quite crazy.  Elsa’s granny has shattered gender norms and societal norms, as well as the patience of numerous doctors, nurses, and police officers.  (The novel opens after Elsa’s granny threw “turds” at police officers following a B&E at the zoo.  I’d explain why, but it’s complicated, as Elsa would say – and it would break your heart.)

Elsa has been raised on a steady diet of absurd and fantastical, with her granny giving her the stories that define her young life.  When her grandmother dies, Elsa finds herself cast as a character in her grandmother’s most heartbreaking and courageous of fairytales.  In the role of protector, she begins a treasure hunt to find and deliver the letters that contain her grandmother’s apologies.  With each letter, more of the fairytale and Elsa’s role in it is unveiled.

It’s a beautiful book about life and death, mothers and daughters, love and forgiveness, and the power of stories.

Read this book.

AMERICAN ROYALS – Katharine McGee

What if America was a monarchy? What would our royal family look like?

Katharine McGee’s American Royals (Random House 2019) is a lukewarm, soapy YA novel that reads like a PG-13 Bridgerton without the sizzle.  One blurb referred to it as Crazy Rich Asians meets The Crown, but I didn’t get either.  The short-lived The Royals may have been a better comparison, but this didn’t have the opulence – the sex, drugs, delicious decadence – that I expected.  It may have been written for a much younger audience than I anticipated.

Expectations aside, the prologue was the best part of the entire novel and it was only a page a half.  I wish that cheeky narrator had interjected at more parts throughout the work as I think that would have brightened certain spots and provided a continual thread of levity that would have worked well with these overly dramatic tropy-soapy romances.

Beatrice, heir apparent, is in love with her bodyguard.  Torn between duty to country and her heart, her sections had potential to have significantly more heat than they did.

Samantha, the spare heir, is in love with the man the Crown has earmarked for Beatrice.  She’s the wild child, never feeling good enough for her parents or for America.  I expected more drinking and bad decisions from her.

Nina, a commoner, is Samantha’s best friend and in love with Jeffrey – the golden only male child of the throne.  She’s grown up with Samantha and Jeffrey, and she knows what the family is really like.  She loathes the spotlight and tries to blend into the background as much as possible.  I wanted to like her, but she was written to be as mousy a character as she’s described.

Daphne has been groomed her entire life by power hungry parents to take her seat next to Jeffrey.  She is polished and everything America thinks Jeffrey should be with, and she will not let anything or anyone stand in her way.  The villain of the book, her sections were some of the more interesting.  I wish, however, that the line between “mean girl” and “criminal mastermind” had been a bit more firmly crossed.

I recognize that I was not the intended audience and that the trope-filled soap opera was the intent, but I wish it had been a little more nuanced.  I doubt I’ll read the second one, but it’s an okay cutesy read.

CREATURES OF PASSAGE – Morowa Yejidé

“Nepthys listened to the frightened calls of creatures of passage, their fearsome tales of happenings in the darkest of dark, unaware that she held the light of the path in her hand…”

(261)

Creatures of Passage (Akashic Books, available 3/16/2021) by Morowa Yejidé is unlike any book I’ve encountered before.  There are echoes of other authors and other works; early praise draws a comparison to Toni Morrison. (I heard Morrison, particularly in Rosetta’s sections, and I also found the entire novel a bit Faulknerian.)  But those echoes are nods to what came before, evidence of a solid foundation upon which an author is nurtured, a foundation of traditional canonical literature, but more importantly, a foundation that includes the voices that were largely silenced by an industry that did not wish to hear them.

  Creatures of Passage is inherently unique in both construct and execution.  It is a lyrical magical realism work with mystical fog, twins born conjoined at the knuckle, mythological elements, talking animals, and Frankenstein’s monster of vegetables.  It’s a ghost story with a dead white girl in the trunk of car, a young Vietnamese girl killed in the war, and a black man murdered because a white woman said he touched her.  It is a crime drama with murder, pedophilia, sexual assault, drug dealers and druggies, and an incident involving the police and a mentally ill young black man.  It is beautiful and brutal, terrific and terrifying, all in the same breath.

The novel is set in 1977 in Anacostia – an area of DC called the “capital’s wild child east of the river that bore its name.”  In the eastern most quadrant, where “anything was possible,” Nepthys Kinwell tries her damnedest to drown her losses and guilt in booze, avoid her niece, and ferry those who need her most to their desired destinations. Nephthys is a special type of taxicab driver, her 1967 Plymouth Belvedere travels with the fog and comes when summoned, the dead white girl in the trunk a constant but harmless passenger.  When Nepthys’s niece’s son, Dash, shows up at her door with a note from school, everything changes. 

It’s a novel of things that are lost and things that are found -things that are freely given and things that are stolen.  And sometimes what is lost, found, given and stolen are the people who end up in the back seat of that Belvedere, eating candy from a sack handed to them by a woman who lives up to her goddess namesake, just as her brother, Osiris, lives up to his.

Read this book.

THE FOUR WINDS – Kristin Hannah

“Hope is a coin I carry, given to me by a woman I will always love, and I hold it now as I journey west, part of a new generation of seekers.”  (The Four Winds 448).

Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) was one of the year’s most anticipated releases.  Hype for the historical fiction novel set during the Great Depression is what prompted me to read my first Hannah novel, The Nightingale, last fall.  I wanted to get a feel for her writing style before The Four Winds was published; I suppose I’m a couple decades late to the Kristin Hannah party, but here I am.

I stated in my review of The Nightingale that the writing was “simple and comforting” and that the “familiar simplicity” is how Hannah is able to destroy her readers.  The Four Winds is written in that same style, making it a quick and easy read that toys with those heart strings.  This novel did not sucker punch me like The Nightingale did, but the last sentence, that beautiful full circle, brought me to my knees – I can’t speak as to the rest of her catalogue, but this was my favorite of the two I’ve read.

It is the most depressing book about the Great Depression.  Elsa is tragically broken -constantly told she’s not good enough, pretty enough, worthy enough.  She only wants to be loved.  Rafe is a young man who sees a willing a girl.  A choice is made.  A choice that manages to give Elsa all the things she’s ever wanted.  Readily discarded by her family, Elsa is taken in by Rafe’s and she finally feels love.

The bond between Elsa and her mother-in-law, Rose, with the backdrop of the wheat field, easily calls to mind Naomi and Ruth.  It’s a beautifully depicted relationship.  The strongest writing in both The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes from these gorgeously nuanced relationships between women.  In this novel, that’s Elsa and Rose, Elsa and Jean, and Elsa and Loreda.

The first half of the novel is set in Texas during the Dust Bowl, and the despair settles on the reader like silica in the lungs; there is no romanticizing this time in American history that destroyed so many and so much.  The second half of the novel follows Elsa and her two children as they head west to California, and this section vibrates with a sense of urgency that is absent in the first.  The despair and hopelessness continue in this section, but there are more sparks of joy and sparks of life – particularly in Elsa.  My main criticism is that I wish her awakening had happened earlier.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I liked the history, but I particularly enjoyed the relationships.  I thought it got a little rushed and glitchy toward the end, and there are certain plot bunnies I wish were allowed to hop around a bit more, but it’s a solidly good read.

Read this book.

THE SCENT KEEPER – Erica Bauermeister

“We are the unwitting carriers of our parents’ secrets, the ripples made by the stones we never saw.” 

And so begins Erica Bauermeister’s The Scent Keeper (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), one of the most tender and magical bildungsroman tales I’ve ever read.  Elements of this coming-of-age story reminded me of Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, or rather reading the novel made me feel as I did the first time I read Big Fish – it’s a feeling you don’t forget.  There’s something about the magic and the sweetness and the sorrow in a book like this that settles on the reader, an unassuming delight.

The novel opens and ends with the narrator, Emmeline, speaking to her unborn child, and the story sandwiched between the prologue and epilogue is one we imagine will be the child’s most favorite of fairytales; it is certainly one of mine.

Emmeline grew up on a remote island with her father.  She doesn’t remember a time before the island.  Her father teaches her how to use her senses, especially scent, to survive and thrive on their little island.  She remembers the joy.  The forager’s feasts. The mermaid parties. Cleo. The smell of the cabin and the air as the first violets bloomed.

And she remembers the magic.  The Nightingale.  The scent paper.  The memories trapped in bottles.  The moment she learned her father had lied.  The moment she betrayed him.  The madness.  The loss.

Following an unspeakable tragedy, Emmeline is forced to leave the island.  She is taken in by an older couple at Secret Cove, and Colette’s warmth and Henry’s gruff tenderness are exactly what the fragile girl needs.  As she emerges from her grief and settles into a routine, she becomes haunted by her father’s secrets.  Who was he?  Who is she?

In her quest to find answers, she falls in love.  But neither the answers nor the love are easy, and both lead her into the city.  There, memories and the secrets collide.  Emmeline is reminded that “people lie, but smells never do” and she knows the smells, the cedar, the sea salt, the cinnamon, will take her home.

The Scent Keeper is a quick and easy read that is full of warmth and heart.

Read this book.

AMERICANAH – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Love was a kind of grief. This was what the novelists meant by suffering.” (Americanah, 583)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (Originally published in the US by Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) has been around a bit but only recently made its way to the top of my TBR.  The novel puts forth some Zadie Smith White Teeth and On Beauty vibes simply due to plotlines of immigration, multiracial relationships, and relationships in academia, and much like both of those novels, I would readily recommend it. Well, I’d recommend it to the booklovers like me who have a DTM TBR (difficult to manage to be read pile) and haven’t gotten to it yet.

Americanah is about love.  Romantic love.  Lust masquerading as love.  Love of country.  Fragile and fleeting love.  Love of family. Forever love. Love of self.  It’s a hard-hitting love story, and one of the best I’ve read.

The relationship between Ifemelu and Obinze is the heart of the novel, but they spend the majority of the 588 pages disconnected and oceans apart.  Their story shows the strength of the ties that bind, and how some love can go dormant while other types of love simply die.

Obinze’s love story with America is one of longing, an unrealized obsession akin to a high school crush.  He grows up and the American dream loses its luster and appeal; when he can have it, he doesn’t want it anymore.  He fails in England and is deported back to Nigeria, a crushing experience that laid the groundwork for the powerful and corrupt man he becomes.

Ifemelu loses a part of herself when she arrives in America, but she carves out an identity and a voice as a Non-American Black.  When she returns to Nigeria, she does so having been marked by her years abroad – the good, the bad, and the ugly. She struggles with reconciling who she became in America with who she was growing up in Nigeria and who she’s supposed to be now that she’s back.  Her love story for Nigeria is a tortured one, but one she romanticizes the further removed she is from her home. 

Ifemelu was never fully happy in America, never fully happy with Curt or Blaine, because something was always missing – like eating a banana without peanuts. That something may have been Obinze or it may have been Nigeria, but it was most certainly love.

Read this book.

THE MASK FALLING – Samantha Shannon

Samantha Shannon’s The Mask Falling (2021 Bloomsbury Publishing), the highly anticipated fourth book of the Bone Season series, is without question my favorite of the series.  The series is now more than half-way complete (there will be seven books), and we’re getting the thump! thump! of its heart in this novel.  I have said since the first of the series that Shannon is an extremely talented writer, and each book is better than the one before it.  Her writing was already noteworthy back in 2013, but how she’s grown as an adult and as an author is noticeable evident in this fourth installment.

Shannon is a master at world building, but what pulls me to her writing has always been how she writes her flawed and brilliantly broken characters – especially her women.  Paige Mahoney turns a mere twenty in this book, but Scion was never a place to be a child or a teen and she’s wrapped in the brittle hardness and distrust common of a forced early adulthood.  The Mask Falling starts to show the chinks in her mask as the reader sees just how fragile she is both physically and mentally. 

Paige was tortured in The Song Rising, and she’s suffering both from pneumonia due to the water aspiration and from PTSD.  The Mask Falling affords her some brief time to rest and heal in France, where she falls further in love with Arcturus and that flame continues its slow burn.  But she’s not on a romantic holiday, and she knows she is expected to assist the Domino Program to earn her keep.  She also knows that their financial assistance would be crucial to the success of the Mime Order and she must convince them that their two causes can fluidly coexist.  Driven by a sense of duty and a rashness of youth, she sets out before she is ready.

It’s reckless, and Paige’s emotional fragility results in her doubting something she’d always believed to be true.  By the time she remembers the red drapes, the wheels are already in motion.  It would seem a bit out of character had Shannon not done such an excellent job of character development – by the time Paige makes that particular misstep, we know she’s physically and mentally spent.

The Mask Falling is both the warmest and the most chilling of the series.  As with the other three, I’m avoiding too much detail as these books deserve to be devoured without spoilers.

Read this book.

THE SONG RISING – Samantha Shannon

In August of 2012, I read about this young woman, an unpublished unknown still at University, who signed a 6-figure deal for the first three books in a proposed seven book series.  In October of 2013, I read that book.  I moved the review/reaction over to this blog and it should be linked below, but a quick summary is that I absolutely loved Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season.  In August of 2015, I read and reviewed the second installment, The Mime Order.  Again, I absolutely loved it.  In 2017, I order a signed collector’s edition of the third installment, The Song Rising.  I thought I hadn’t read it because I hadn’t reviewed it, but I quickly realized that I had indeed read it (and rated it on Goodreads!) I went through a couple of years where I didn’t post consistently.  Pity.  But that’s neither here nor there as I’ve read it again to prepare for the fourth installment, The Mask Falling, which arrived on my doorstep on pub day last month! And let me just say that I love Paige Mahoney.

Shannon is an extremely skilled author.  She excels at character development and world building (her talents are on splendid display in this series and her high fantasy), and how she’s maintained the heart of these characters and Scion over the course of so many years is simply remarkable.  Where so many series tend to quickly fall apart after the first book, The Bone Season series continues solidly along. 

The slow burn of Paige and Warden over three books is such a welcomed delight.  The romance, the heat, doesn’t get in the way of the plot, and it moves organically with the rebellion. (Unlike in some books that shall remain nameless!)

The tortured relationships between Paige and her father and Paige and her father-figure in Jaxon are brought to a head in the third book, and Shannon gives us one scene in particular, a scene where Paige refuses to look away, that I’d forgotten then remembered.  That particular scene, to me, is one of the hardest hitting, albeit relatively brief, scenes in a book that is littered with bruises and blood.

Much like the first two of the series, The Song Rising doesn’t get bogged down in the darkness and despair. The circumstances that positioned Paige as Underqueen and leader of the Mime Order have certainly left their marks, but there remain some wonderfully endearing moments and gestures that breathe a lightness and joy into this bloody and bruised steampunk dystopian world.

Neither this nor high fantasy are genres I read a lot of, but I will read anything Samantha Shannon writes.

Read this series.

HIEROGLYPHICS – Jill McCorkle

Photographed on a quilt made by my grandmother.

Jill McCorkle’s Hieroglyphics (2020 Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) is a patchwork quilt made with scraps of guilt, trauma, secrets, family, survival, and mortality.  At its heart, it is a novel of the things we cling to to remember and be remembered.

Lil and Frank have retired to North Carolina from the brisk winters of Boston.  Frank had spent half his childhood in the state, and his childhood home has been calling to him.  He hopes the current residents, a young woman and her son who are renting the home, will let him come inside.  Despite his requests, he hasn’t had much luck and his time is running out.

Lil worries about him.  She’s concerned about his obsession with the house, but she’s more concerned about his health and forgetfulness.  In an effort to help him and herself remember, she leaves written reminders throughout their home and spends her days sifting through old diary entries and bits and pieces she’s written over the years – her immortality finding life in the words she leaves behind.  All but one word.  Their word.

Shelley doesn’t know what to make of the old man when he asks if he can come inside and see the house.  As a court stenographer, she’s seen the horrendous things even the most harmless looking folks have done.  More importantly, her own childhood experiences of trauma and abuse have her question intentions. She doesn’t let him in.

Harvey is an interesting kid.  He’s obsessed with murders and murderers, Lizzie Borden in particular, and he thinks there is a ghost in the house.  He was born with a facial deformity, and he hides his scar behind fake mustaches.  Shelley does her best, but she’s a single mom struggling to overcome the crap hand she was dealt, and she’s overwhelmed.

This is McCorkle at her best, and Hieroglyphics will settle around your shoulders like a faded and worn quilt passed down from generation to generation.

Read this book.