Some unsolicited thoughts and opinions from a mother and daughter who love reading and talking about books!

My husband Rufus and I just took an amazing trip to Ireland—a place I have wanted to visit my entire life.  Given how I fell in love with the country and my current fascination with Irish authors, it makes sense that I keep reading Irish books. Niall Williams’ This Is Happiness (read review here) and The Time of the Child are two of the best books I’ve read in the past few years.  So, I decided to dip into some of his earlier books.  History of the Rain (2014) is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read.

Perhaps not a completely typical beach read due to its darker subject matter, I nevertheless found myself unable to put The Pilot’s Wife down for the three days it took me to binge read it. The story begins with a knock at the door in the middle of the night, which is never good news for anyone, but especially not for the wife of an airline pilot.

I borrowed Sea Wife from my mom the minute she finished reading it because she strongly endorsed Gaige as a writer (read review of Heartwood here) and particularly this book. Gaige drew me in immediately with her premise of a family of four leaving their lives behind to sail around the Caribbean for a year.   

I loved Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations which was published in 2020.  So, when my friend Jane told me I would love her latest book, Wild Dark Shore, I got right on it.  And, although quite different than her first book, Wild Dark Shore is a must-read.  The novel is set on a very remote island close to Antarctica with nothing else around it for thousands of miles.

The most astonishing feature of The Names isn’t Knapp’s beautifully written story of one woman’s decision about what to name her son and how that decision affects the rest of his life and the lives of the other members of his family.  What is truly remarkable is that Knapp has written three different captivating stories about the same family, each one different from the others because the name she chooses for her son is different.

Heartwood gripped me from its first page and I was spellbound until the end. I didn’t want to stop reading even to sleep at night.  I’ve been recommending it to everyone and now recommend it to you our L&L readers!

Eddie Winston is 90 years old and volunteers at a second-hand store, sorting through donations, assigning prices and occasionally pilfering items for himself that he finds particularly touching or tender.  One day, he accepts a donation from Bella, a 20-something woman, who has suffered the loss of her boyfriend. 

Eve Chase sets The Daughters of Foxcote Manor in England in two time periods. She tells the story of the Harrington family who leave their London home in the early 1970s after it sustains a fire. They relocate to their deteriorating country manor for the summer. 

In Sweetness in the Skin, Ishi Robinson tells one of the most original and compelling coming-of-age stories that I’ve read in a long time.  Robinson, who was born and raised in Jamaica, sets the story of Pumkin Patterson in the city of Kingston. At eleven-years-old, Pumkin lives in a small apartment with her grandmother, mother and Aunt Sophie.

When my friend Gevvie recommended Good Dirt, I was excited to learn that Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake (read review here) had a new novel out. Then when I saw it on display at my local library branch, I knew it was time to scoop it up and dive in. As much as I loved Black Cake, I think Good Dirt is even better.

Real Americans starts out as a better-than-average love story between Lily Chen, a young, unpaid intern at a media company in New York City, and Matthew Allen, a successful, slightly older man.  Despite their vastly different backgrounds—she was born in America but her parents are from China and she struggles to get a financial foothold, and his family is wealthy and waspy—they end up marrying and having a child.

When I bought Julie Chan Is Dead at Hudson News in the Billy Bishop airport in Toronto, I was looking for a light read for my trip home to Boston.  Reading the book’s flap copy, I thought it would fit the bill.  And, although I am not recommending the book as a great piece of literature, I do recommend it as both an outstanding commentary on today’s phenomenon of social media influencers and a real page-turner.