Teen/YA Review: Scythe

My husband, son, and I are big fans of Neal Schusterman, author of dozens of outstanding middle-grade and YA novels. Two of our favorites are the middle-grade Skinjacker trilogy (starting with Everlost), an imaginative look at the afterlife, and the YA dystopian series that starts with Unwind, which is still a family favorite, many years later. Schusterman doesn't just write fantasy and science fiction, either. Bruiser is a mostly realistic YA novel about abuse, with a bit of a supernatural twist, and Challenger Deep is a creative, powerful YA novel about mental illness, based on the author's own son's experiences with schizophrenia. So, I wanted to read Scythe even before I heard all the rave reviews. I don't know why it took me so long! It was just as good as I expected.

Scythe takes place in a far-off future, where technology has evolved to the point where there is no more suffering. The Thunderhead (which began with the present-day "cloud") has evolved into intelligent AI that oversees every aspect of life, so there is no more need for government or politics. Disease has been eradicated, and nanites in each person's bloodstream automatically heal injuries, treat pain, and even control mood to prevent anger or despair. Even middle seats on airplanes have been abolished! Sounds like a pretty great way to live, right? The only problem is that with no natural death and humans now essentially immortal, the world needed a way to control population so it wouldn't outstrip the world's resources (which are carefully apportioned by the Thunderhead so everyone gets what they need). The answer to that problem was to designate certain humans as Scythes who are tasked with gleaning (i.e. killing) a certain number of people each year to keep the world in perfect balance. Ideally, these Scythes operate under a strict moral code and are revered for their role in society, but as is always the case where humans are involved, not all Scythes follow the rules and aspire to ethical behavior.

In this world, two ordinary teens, Citra and Rowan, have recently been selected by Scythe Faraday (each Scythe chooses a historic name) to train as Scythes. Neither of them wants to dedicate their life to gleaning, but that--along with evidence of honesty and compassion--is precisely why Scythe Faraday chose them to be his apprentices. He's one of the good guys and begins to train Citra and Rowan rigorously in killing techniques, as well as old world history and philosophy and the moral code of the Scythes. Their training is interrupted, though, as some of the Scythes with more selfish motives intervene.

As in all of Schusterman's dystopian novels, he has created a thoroughly unique and fascinating future world, where you can easily see the chilling links back to our own world. His novels are always gripping and suspenseful, yet thought-provoking, and Scythe is no exception. The reader quickly comes to like Citra and Rowan--and Scythe Faraday, too--and all of the characters are interesting and three-dimensional. It's an action-packed story, full of surprising twists, that kept me turning the pages. Schusterman has done it again, with another thoughtful, high-stakes dystopian thriller. I can't wait to read book two, and I've already moved Scythe onto my husband's to-be-read pile, because I know he'll love it, too.

435 pages, Simon & Schuster

Audible Studios

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

Mount TBR Challenge

Big Book Summer Challenge

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

    (as an Audible production, it seems the audio is only available through Audible)

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

Nonfiction Review: Seabiscuit

Laura Hillenbrand is my personal hero. She has the same immune dysfunction disease I have, yet she has written and published two best-selling nonfiction books requiring years of research, interviews, and writing that were both turned into top movies. She wrote her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, while at her sickest and mostly bedridden and housebound. My husband and I both thought Unbroken, her second novel, was fantastic and powerful, and he enjoyed Seabiscuit. So why did I wait over ten years to finally read Seabiscuit while it waited patiently on my shelf? My only excuse is that I didn't think I'd be interested in reading about horse racing. But, as usual, Hillenbrand's enormous talent for storytelling pulled me in from the first pages and kept me rapt.

In June 1936, a horse trainer named Tom Smith met a three-year-old colt named Seabiscuit. Tom, who had learned about horses in the wild West and was known by the Indians there as the Lone Plainsman, didn't talk much, but he knew horses. He'd been in search of just the right horse for his employer, Charles Howard. Howard was now a wealthy Californian, but he'd come from the East in 1903 as a penniless bicycle repairman and made his fortune by getting into automobiles at just the right time. Seabiscuit didn't look like a winner to most people. His legs looked somewhat deformed and weak, and he had a bad reputation for a wild temperament. But Smith saw something in the horse, so he urged Howard to purchase him, which he did, for a bargain price. At that time, a short, muscled redhead named Red Pollard was 12 years into working as a jockey, and his career seemed to be over. Born into a large, boisterous Irish family in Canada in 1909, Red, whose real name was Johnny, had been through years of scraping by as a jockey and part-time prizefighter, two physically punishing careers. He'd had some wins early on as a jockey, but those years seemed to be behind him. After a terrible car crash in Detroit, Pollard and his agent, Yummy, dirty, injured, and out of cash, went to the local track where Yummy tried to get Red a job. Smith let Pollard meet Seabiscuit, Red offered the horse a sugar cube (the last thing in his pockets), and the man and horse immediately began to bond. The rest is quite literally history. By 1938, the number one name in newspapers across the nation wasn't Roosevelt or Hitler or Mussolini; it was Seabiscuit.

This isn't just a book about a horse. It's also about Howard, Smith, and Pollard, Seabiscuit's close-knit team, and many others surrounding them. Hillenbrand brilliantly portrays a time in history, and the unique relationships and events that made Seabiscuit such a household name. Most importantly, Seabiscuit's rise to fame was not a straight line, but a rocky road filled with enormous challenges. Pollard and Seabiscuit both faced unbelievable trials; at one point, it seemed certain that neither of them would ever race again. Hillenbrand's research is thorough and fascinating, but the key to this compelling book is how talented she is at telling a story, weaving together historic events, people, and horses into a propulsive narrative that is completely engrossing. I still have little interest in horses or horseracing, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about a remarkable horse and his remarkable rider.

339 pages, Ballantine Books

Random House Audio

Check out the excellent movie adaptation of Seabiscuit.

This book fits in the following 2022 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge (I should get extra credit for this book that sat on my shelf for 10 years!)

Nonfiction Reader Challenge

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, narrated by George Newbern, and/or download it from Audible. The audio sample is from the preface and the start of chapter one and provides a nice overview of why this story is so special.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

     

 

 

Or you can order Seabiscuit from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Fiction Review: The Verifiers

One of many outstanding books I read for this year's Booktopia event (see my video wrap-up here) was The Verifiers by Jane Pek. And I not only got to meet the author and hear her speak at Booktopia, but she sat at our table for dinner Friday night, so I got to know her a bit (she is excellent at book trivia, by the way!). Her debut novel is a fun, suspenseful mystery with a great sense of humor.

Claudia Lin is sort of the black sheep of her "model minority" family, so it makes sense that she hasn't told her mother, brother, or sister about her new job (or that she quit the big corporate job her brother got for her). This new job is a bit ... unconventional. She works for a small start-up company called Veracity. Clients can hire them to look into their "matches" on the various dating sites, to see if they are lying or hiding something about themselves. One of Claudia's first clients is Iris, who is hiring Veracity to look into two men she's met online. One of them seems like a great match but refuses to meet in-person (big red flag!) and the other is a man that Iris is actually seeing and really likes, but she wants to be sure he isn't too good to be true. Claudia does indeed learn some interesting things about both men, but Iris dies suddenly, under what Claudia feels are mysterious circumstances. Her bosses at Veracity tell her in no uncertain terms to forget about Iris, but Claudia just can't. As a huge fan of mystery novels, especially her favorite Inspector Yuan series, Claudia launches her own secret (supposedly) investigation, but things soon turn dangerous ... and even more mysterious. The more Claudia digs, the more complex and intriguing Iris' story becomes. Along the way are plenty of dead ends, red herrings, and other mystery-novel-like aspects to keep Claudia engrossed, but the danger grows.

This is such a fun novel! There is the mystery, which is wholly unique and twisty, but also Claudia's relationships with her immigrant family, which have emotional depth but are also very amusing. In fact, the entire story is imbued with a wonderful sense of humor, as Claudia applies her mystery-novel knowledge to the case and stumbles through both her detective work and her family interactions. The mystery itself has some technical aspects to it, as the algorithms used by online dating websites are a big part of it, but even when I couldn't completely follow the details, I got the gist of it ... and kept laughing with almost every page!

To give you an idea of the humor woven throughout the novel, here is an early scene with Claudia's family:

"As always, I'm the second-to-last person to arrive at Golden Phoenix, befitting my role as the feckless youngest child of the Lin family. Charles and his girlfriend, Jessie, and our mother are already there, sitting side by side at one of the large round tables in the middle of the room. Charles is frowning down at his phone. Jessie is trying to make small talk with my mother, who is blatantly uninterested in anything she might have to say. Also befitting their roles.

"Hi, Mom," I say as I drop into a chair across from the other three of them. I smile at Jessie, who looks at me the way the Spartan three hundred might have at reinforcements making it to Thermopylae in time. She and Charles have been dating for the past several months, and Charles has recently started subjecting her to Lin family events. They matched on Bubble Meets Tea, an invitation-only matchmaker for overachieving Asian Americans. My primary impression of her so far is that she's too nice for our family."

I absolutely loved reading this novel, filled with humor and suspense and a wonderfully unconventional female heroine, and have moved it into my husband's stack on our bookcase. And I learned at Booktopia that the publisher has requested 2-3 more books from Jane, so I can't wait to see what's in store for Claudia next!

354 pages, Vintage Books

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2022 Reading Challenges:

Diversity Challenge, plus May mini-challenge: Southeast Asian

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It's a fun excerpt, including the passage above, where Claudia considers the interesting aspects of her first case.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

 

Or you can order The Verifiers from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

 

Fiction Review: Mercy Street

I have been a fan of author Jennifer Haigh for many years now. Sometime in the early 2000's, I read Baker Towers, a novel set in a 1940's Pennsylvania coal town, and I absolutely loved it. I wondered if it was a "right time-right place" sort of situation, but when I re-read it a few years later for one of my book groups, I enjoyed it just as much. Enough, in fact, to name it to my list of Top Ten Favorite Novels in 2009! Later, I read Mrs. Kimble, another Haigh novel, about the three different women who each married one man, and enjoyed that one, too. In 2011, I read Haigh's The Condition, about a family whose daughter has a genetic condition, for one of my book groups, and the next year, my neighborhood book group read Faith, set in Boston during the priest molestation scandal. So, when I saw that Jennifer Haigh had a new novel being released February 1, for the first time in several years, I jumped at the chance to review it. I listened to Mercy Street on audio and found it as immersive and engrossing as Haigh's other novels.

Mercy Street is a women's clinic, offering a wide variety of services, in Boston, and the novel follows several different characters whose lives intersect at some point, many of them related to the clinic. Claudia is a woman in her 40's who works as a counselor at the clinic. She grew up poor, in rural Maine, the only child of a mother living in a trailer who took in dozens of foster kids during Claudia's childhood. While her mother worked two jobs, Claudia ended up being the primary caregiver for most of the children, even though she was very young herself. Her background allows her to understand many of her young, poor clients' lives. Anthony grew up in the Boston area and was injured while working construction as a young adult. His head injury has had lingering effects, so he is on disability and living in his mother's basement. He spends all of his time attending daily mass at the neighborhood Catholic church and being involved with their anti-abortion efforts, which includes protesting at Mercy Street. Timmy grew up with Anthony and has known him since childhood. Now he supports himself, and his son in Florida, by dealing weed. Both Claudia and Anthony are customers of Timmy's, and they meet one day at his apartment. Victor lives in rural Pennsylvania and is a racist and an extremist, stockpiling guns and food. His reasons for being anti-abortion are very different than Anthony's: he believes that women of color are reproducing faster than white women, and therefore, any white woman who aborts her baby should be shamed and brought to justice. He meets Anthony online and asks him to set up a website with a "Hall of Shame," featuring photos of women going into clinics, including Mercy Street (even though many women are there for other reasons). Anthony is committed to the cause for moral reasons, but Victor is clearly dangerous.

The novel follows each of these characters individually, in separate chapters, as their lives unknowingly intersect and affect each other. I have given a lot of thought to why I love Haigh's novels so much and what makes them so compelling. As in Mercy Street, she mostly writes about ordinary people living ordinary lives, but she's such a talented writer that she brings those characters to life on the page. By the end of this novel, you really care about Claudia, Anthony, and Timmy (maybe not Victor!) and want to know what happens to them. Each of these characters is something of a loner, so this novel doesn't have the same focus on a single family as many of her previous novels, but you get their family backgrounds and (limited) current relationships through flashbacks and the present narrative. In writing from so many different perspectives, Haigh gives the reader insight into each of their lives, motivations, and values. The audio book was read by a single narrator, but she did a great job, and I was thoroughly immersed in the story. Of course, as in Faith, there is a controversial issue at the heart of this novel, but it's about the people, not the issue. And I think that's what makes Haigh's novels so compulsively readable and engaging: the people, who feel entirely real on the page.

352 pages, Ecco

HarperAudio

You can watch/listen to an interview with Jennifer Haigh about Mercy Street, interviewed by author Jess Walter and hosted by Parnassus Books (which is owned by author Ann Patchett). She talks about how she got the idea for the novel, the cover, and the class issues in the novel.

This book fits in the following Reading Challenges:

M in the Alphabet Soup Challenge

Massachusetts in the Literary Escapes Challenge

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, from the start of the novel and one of Claudia's chapters, and/or download it from Audible.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   

 

Or you can order Mercy Street from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Memoir Review: No Time Like the Future

While I have always enjoyed Michael J. Fox's performances in TV and movies, I am an even bigger fan of his memoirs. I read Lucky Man while visiting my mother-in-law years ago (she also had Parkinson's) and was blown away by his open, honest sharing of the difficult details of his life. Years later, I listened to Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist on audio, and loved every minute. The memoir was even better read by the author in his familiar voice, and while he still shared his life openly, including his battles with Parkinson's Disease (PD), he was also very, very funny. I laughed out loud while walking around the neighborhood with my earbuds in and also cried. Last month, I listened to his latest memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality on audio and loved it just as much.

As with his earlier memoirs, Fox shares details of his growing challenges with PD, but that's not all this book is about. He talks about both aging parents and being a parent of adult children, topics I can relate to as I am about the same age as him. He also addresses his own signs of aging, which in his case are heaped on top of PD. Alongside his very relatable stories of family life, the empty nest, and aging are often hilarious stories of being a Hollywood star. He covers both his triumphs, like continuing to act with PD in outstanding roles like Louis Canning on The Good Wife, and his failures, as his PD, a spinal cord issue, and a terrible fall kept him from promptly managing a job he'd committed to, plus his growing difficulties with movements and remembering lines. Through it all, that stark honesty shines through, as well as his great sense of humor. And while he referred to himself as "an incurable optimist" in his last memoir, here he shares the times when that optimism failed him. He is very open and real, and it feels like a close friend is sharing his deepest thoughts and feelings (especially on audio, listening to his own voice reading).

I absolutely loved this memoir on audio, as I did his previous one. Fox is both completely relatable and also the Hollywood celebrity we all know and love. Some passages were so good and so funny that I popped my earbuds out, rewound the audio, and played it out loud for my husband. He especially liked the sections on attempting golf with PD and on Fox's experiences playing Louis Canning (we both loved the show and his role on it). At other times, though, Fox's honest sharing of his challenges and pain and of hitting a low point brought me to tears. Any book that can make me feel that much and get so engaged with the author and the story is an outstanding read for me. As always, Fox is captivating, hilarious, and very inspiring.

256 pages, Flatiron

Macmillan Audio

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It's a fairly long sample, read in that familiar voice, that provides a glimpse into two different parts of the book.

 

You can purchase No Time Like the Future from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

 

You can also buy through indie bookstores using Bookshop.

 

  

Or you can order No Time Like the Future from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Fiction Review: Three New Novels

With such a busy spring and summer here, I got a little bit behind in sharing my book reviews that appeared on Shelf Awareness, so here is a little catch up. I reviewed these three novels this spring. They are each very different from each other, but I enjoyed them all.

A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas (full review at the link) is a slow-burn psychological thriller. Ruth is a therapist who works in London for the National Health Service, but she is suffering at least as much as her patients because her own son went missing a year ago. When a young man is assigned to her reminds her of her son, she knows she should ask another therapist to take the case, but she is drawn to helping him. You know all along that something bad is going to happen, but the tension of this suspense novel keeps you reading, with flashbacks to before her son's disappearance and plenty of creepy foreshadowing.

Abi Maxwell was one of the wonderful authors featured at Booktopia 2019 in Vermont this May, and I had the chance to read and review her second novel, The Den, in time for the event (full review at the link). This is the story of two sets of sisters, set 150 years apart on the same piece of land in New England, one modern story and one historical one that are interwoven in a clever way. You can read the details in my review; I enjoyed this atmospheric and intriguing novel. I also enjoyed meeting Abi at Booktopia and talking to her about the novel (including that haunting picture on the cover!). Now, I'm interested in reading her first novel, Lake People.

Last Day by Domenica Ruta (full review at the link) is an entirely different kind of novel. The world that Ruta has created in this novel is pretty much the same as ours, with one big difference: every year on May 28, the whole world celebrates Last Day. This unique holiday assumes that the world will end the next day, and while some cultures still celebrate the spiritual aspects of the day, in the modern Western world, the day is mostly celebrated with beer and barbecues and all kinds of excess. Despite the oddity of the plot, this is a character-driven novel, about several different people in the Boston area whose paths cross on this particular Last Day. It's a thoughtful novel that I enjoyed.

So, that finally catches me up (and I can finally close those windows in my browser!).

Have you read any of these books yet? Or any other new releases that you enjoyed recently?

Fiction Review and Author Interview: Evvie Drake Starts Over

As I have mentioned here before, I am a big fan of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and I listen to it (and look forward to it) every week. So, when I saw that the host of PCHH, Linda Holmes, had written her debut novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over, I pitched an author interview to my editor at Shelf Awareness. I was absolutely thrilled when she said yes, and last month, I had the chance to chat with Linda on the phone about her new novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My review of the book is below, and you can read my interview with Linda here.

Evvie Drake is packing her car to leave her husband when she gets a phone call that he’s been in a serious car accident. Before she can get to the hospital, he dies…and no one – not even her best friend, Andy – knows that she was about to leave him. This leads to a rather awkward and extra-difficult time for Evvie, as everyone sees her as the inconsolable, grieving young widow, when in fact, her emotions are also mixed up with guilt and the pressure of keeping her secret. One year later, she still feels stuck in a kind of limbo when Andy asks her if his friend, Dean, might rent the apartment connected to her house. Dean is a professional baseball player, a star pitcher with a bad case of the “yips.” As Andy explains to Evvie, “Well, he was a very good pitcher, and then all of a sudden, he was a very bad pitcher.” Dean is looking to escape the nonstop media attention, and this small town in Maine seems like a good place to lay low and figure out what’s next in his life. So, Dean moves into the apartment, and he and Evvie become friends. They both vow not to mention the others’ problem (i.e. dead husband and baseball), but as they grow to care about each other, they each want to help the other.

On the PCHH podcast, Linda Holmes often talks about her love of romcoms, so it’s no surprise that she chose to write one as her first novel. What is a bit of a surprise is just how good it is. She nails the witty banter and will-they-won’t-they of all romcoms, but, as she explains in her interview with me, she gives the story a much-needed twist. Neither Evvie nor Dean actually fix each other; both of them need to fix themselves before they can even consider a future together, and that’s a nice, realistic change from the typical girl-meets-boy-and-he-fixes-her romcom trope. I was hooked on this story and its likeable characters right from the first chapter. Holmes is very talented with the witty banter, and I was often laughing out loud while reading, but it is also a very warm, tender story with plenty of emotional depth, delving into grief, friendship, love, and moving forward. She’s working on a second novel now, and I can’t wait to read it!

289 pages, Ballantine Books

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

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Listen to  sample of the audiobook, narrated beautifully by Julia Whelan (who also narrated best-sellers The Great Alone and Educated).

You can purchase Evvie Drake Starts Over from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

Or you can order Evvie Drake Starts Over from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

 

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Booktopia 2019

Northshire Welcomes Booktopians!

Finally! It was over a month ago now (a busy month!), but here is my summary of the annual Booktopia event, held the first weekend in May each year at Northshire Bookstore in lovely Manchester, VT.

Ann and Michael, who started Booktopia, in 2015

A little history: Ann and Michael of the sadly now-retired Books on the Nightstand podcast (you can still listen to or download episodes at the link) began Booktopia almost a decade ago. It was always hosted at the amazing Northshire Bookstore, but at its height, they were coordinating 3 Booktopias each year, in different parts of the country. Listening to the podcast every week, I yearned to attend one of these incredible book-centered weekends, and in 2015, I invited my mother along (as a joint birthday gift for me and her), and we were blown away! We skipped it in 2016 when it fell on Mother's Day but attended again in 2017, 2018, and most recently, 2019. Ann and Michael ended their wonderful podcast a few years ago, and with it the 3 Booktopia events each year (can you believe they were too busy with full-time jobs, kids, the podcast, and hosting 3 major events a year??). Luckily, Northshire Bookstore decided to pick up the reins on their own and continue hosting the Vermont event.

My mom and I at Booktopia 2019

So, what is Booktopia? It's a wholly unique gathering of book lovers, booksellers, and authors. Unlike trade shows like BEA or the typical author events at bookstores, here the readers and authors spend the weekend together, sharing meals and conversation, and the author sessions are more like book groups, with in-depth discussions and Q&A's. If you love books and love to read, it's paradise! You can read more about our experiences at Booktopia 2015, Booktopia 2017, or Booktopia 2018, including photos and lists of the books and authors featured.

Booktopia 2019 was just as amazing! By now, we've gotten to know lots of other Booktopians, so we look forward to reconnecting with old friends (and meeting new ones) just as much as meeting the authors and hearing about great books. There are many of us who return every year (or most years). This year's list of featured books and authors included:

• The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
• Leading Men by Christopher Castellani
• The Den by Abi Maxwell

• Soon the Light Will Be Perfect by Dave Patterson
• Baby of the Family by Maura Roosevelt
• Lives Laid Away by Stephen Mack Jones

• Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
• Damascus Road by Jay Parini
• Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais (one of the featured books/authors from Booktopia 2018 who returned to act as host/MC this year) 

I read all but two of the books for Booktopia this year, and you can read my reviews at the links. As always, every book I read - chosen by the brilliant booksellers at Northbrook - was excellent.

Author Bianca Marais kicks off Booktopia 2019

So, the event began Friday morning with an introductory talk that was interesting and funny by Bianca Marais, who after her 2018 appearance at Booktopia now feels like an old friend. If you haven't yet read her first novel, Hum If You Don't Know the Words, you must! It is moving, powerful, funny - one of my favorites of this year. Her second novel, If You Want to Make God Laugh, will be released on July 16 - I've already pre-ordered it through Northshire!

Next the Northshire booksellers each took a turn recommending 4-6 of their favorite recent books, adding many new books to everyone's TBR list! The attendance fee for Booktopia includes a $50 gift card to the store, and those gift cards don't last long. Mine was spent before the event even began.

Me with Christopher Castellani, a Delaware native, after his session

All day Friday and Saturday are author sessions. You can choose which ones to attend. As I said, these are less like typical author talks/book signings and more like a book group discussion with the author present. Usually, many people have already read the book, so the author talks about his or her inspiration in writing it, the writing process, and answers questions from the group.

Our table Friday night - lots of old friends & a couple of new ones!

Friday night, there's always a big group dinner for everyone - readers, authors, and booksellers - where we play book trivia and do a Yankee book swap. For other meals, you are on your own, but Manchester is filled with wonderful restaurants, and smaller groups of Booktopians get together to share meals.

Readers with Stephen Mack Jones after the Yankee Book Swap

Saturday is more author sessions and then the big wrap-up in the evening, where each author gets 10 minutes to talk to the entire crowd - this portion of Booktopia is free and open to the public. Veteran Booktopians always laugh when every year, each author stands up there and says something to the effect of, "I had no idea what Booktopia was - this is such an amazing event! I've never been to anything like it." It is truly unique, and I think the authors love it as much as the readers who attend - after all, they are rock stars to this crowd of bookworms! Finally, all of the authors are available to sign their books.

Me with Sarah Blake (no, not sitting on her lap, just awkwardly crouching!)

On Sunday, exhausted but happy, we headed for home (an 8-hour combination drive and train ride for me!) after one last breakfast at Manchester's incredible Up for Breakfast restaurant. Mmmm...

It really is a unique and wonderful event. If you can manage the trip (people come from all over the country - and a few from other countries!), put it on your calendar for the first weekend in May 2020 - I'll see you there!

Fiction Review & Interview: Where the Crawdads Sing

I have been waiting until I could tell you about a wonderful novel I reviewed this summer, and now it's finally been released!

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is a moving, suspenseful, immersive novel set in the North Carolina coastal marshes that I absolutely loved. Its heroine, Kya, is a kind, strong girl forced to grow up on her own when all of her family abandons her. The novel also jumps ahead in time to when Kya is a woman and accused of murdering a local man, so the story combines mystery with family drama, nature, romance, and a lovely coming-of-age story.

Besides reviewing the debut novel for Shelf Awareness, I also had the opportunity to interview the author, who is known for her nonfiction books about wildlife in Africa. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Delia and hearing about her background and why she wrote this lyrical, poignant novel.

You can read both my interview with Delia Owens and review of Where the Crawdads Sing (scroll down a bit for the review) at this link.

I highly recommend this newly released novel and here is what Delia told me about her next novel, which she is working on now:

"I want to stay with this theme of a sort of socio-biological thriller. I bring the socio-biology into it, but I want a fast-paced story that brings people in on the first page and doesn't let go. The next book I'm writing is based in North Florida, which is also a beautiful, wild habitat that most people don't know about--it's not the sandy beaches and palm trees. The novel features another strong female character, but she's not isolated. She has a group, and the story is going to focus on the dynamics of a female group. All the female groups evolved for survival reasons, not for camaraderie. You look inside those groups, and there's as much conflict as there is camaraderie. So, the dynamics of a female group can be very interesting."

I can't wait to read that one, too!