The Monsters of Templeton ~ Lauren Groff The corpse of a 50-foot underwater creature surfaces from Lake Glimmerglass. Like Nessie, there were stories about a monster in the lake, but no one really believed them before now. Willie Upton returns to her home in Templeton, New York, to her mother’s home near the lake shore. Willie has had a rough time of it lately. She’s a Stanford graduate student who is pregnant with the child of one of her (married) professors, whose wife she tried to run over with a prop plane in Alaska. Willie’s mother, Vi, drops a bombshell on her. Willie has been told her entire life that…

Playground ~ Richard Powers Todd Keane is a middle-aged white tech billionaire diagnosed with dementia. He had a privileged childhood in Illinois, and develops an extremely popular online app, Playground. Rafi Young is a worker with an NGO who went to prep-school and college with Todd. He is a black man from a poor neighborhood, whose parents sacrifice in order to give him the education he clearly craves, as his is a gifted mind. Ina Aroita is a sculptor from the South Pacific who meets Todd and Rafi in college. She and Rafi fall in love and start a tumultuous relationship. Evelyne Beaulieu is a gifted deep sea diver who…

The God of the Woods ~ Liz Moore Barbara Van Laar is a 13 year old girl at a summer camp owned by her wealthy parents. One morning in 1975, her bunk is empty, and she is discovered to be missing. Her camp counselor is worried that she will be blamed, and for just reason. The mystery behind The God of The Woods is what happened to Barbara. Her older brother, Bear, went missing at the age of 8, a year before Barbara was born, and was never found. Are their fates entwined? There are plenty of suspects. There is her camp counselor. There is the son of the family…

Margo’s Got Money Troubles ~ Rufi Thorpe Margo is a student at a local community college who makes the stupid decision to sleep with her English professor. This winds her in predictable trouble when she finds herself pregnant and dumped. She is encouraged to either have an abortion or give the baby up, but she wants to be a good mother. At least, a better mother than the one she was raised by, a former waitress at Hooters who has moved on to working at Saks Fifth Avenue. Margo tries to juggle it all, roommates, work, school, but soon reality sets in and she realizes that babies are disruptive and…

Yours Truly ~ Abby Jimenez This was a fun rom-com of a book. In it, emergency room doctor Briana Ortiz is in a bad place in her life…she’s in the midst of a divorce, her brother is in desperate need of an organ transplant, she is overwhelmed by life and back living in her childhood home, and she is hoping for a promotion at work, which appears to be in jeopardy due to a new physician, Jacob Maddox, who is also up for the same job. We all know where this is headed, right? As with any romance novel, it’s the getting there that is all of the fun. And,…

Homegoing ~ Yaa Gyasi Effia and Esi are half sisters who do not know each other, and they live in Ghana during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Effia is supposed to marry the chief of her village, but her mother thwarts her plans and she is instead married to a British governor decades older than her who is involved in the slave trade. Esi lives in the next village, and is captured by slave traders and sent to the British Colony of America. The story goes on from there, in alternating chapters, through seven generations of the descendants of Effia and Esi, as each generation tries to improve their life, to…

The River We Remember ~ William Kent Krueger Set in 1958 in the town of Jewel, Minnesota, The River We Remember is a murder mystery where the victim is so disliked, almost anyone in town could have done it. The prime suspect, however, is Noah Bluestone, a Native American army veteran who came home from the war with a Japanese wife, Kyoto. I’ll give you 1 guess as to why he’s the prime suspect. (If you said ‘racism’, you win.) The main characters are Brody Dern, the town sheriff, who still suffers the effects of his time at war; Connie Graff, who used to be sheriff, and is now sort…

Family Family ~ Laurie Frankel India Allwood, star of a TV show called ‘Val Halla’, lives in Los Angeles with her adopted twins, Fig and Jack. She has recently wrapped a film about the traumas of adoption, on the children, on the families, full of stereotypes about drug addled mothers and absent fathers. India makes a public statement supporting adoption, saying that it is not always about trauma and grief. She is suddenly held up as being pro-life and anti-choice, an impression that is only intensified when it comes out that India gave birth to a child near the end of High School (Bex), and again in college (Lewis), and…

Listen for the Lie ~ Amy Tintera Lucy is found wandering the streets with her best friend Savannah’s blood on her dress. Savannah has been murdered. Lucy is suspected of the murder, but not charged, and she has no memory of that night. Even her ex-husband and parents suspect she is guilty, but there was not enough evidence to charge her. Five years later, Ben, a true crime podcaster, features the murder on his show (Listen for the Lie), and he comes to her town to investigate. This was a fun murder mystery, and the question of did she or didn’t she was not at all obvious until the end.…

Leaving ~ Roxanne Robinson Sarah and Warren dated in college. He loved her completely, and while she also loved him, the ideas she has brought with her from her childhood, of what a woman could say to a man, how open one could be in a relationship, lead to a misunderstanding, and they break up. They both marry and have children and careers. Sarah’s marriage does not last, and when she and Warren bump into each other at a performance of the opera Tosca, she is long divorced, while he is still married. Now in their early 60s, they rekindle their love in an extramarital affair. She believes that she…

True Biz ~ Sara Novic Charlie is a new student at River Valley School for the Deaf, where she is playing catch-up to the other students, who all know American Sign Language. Charlie has a cochlear implant, which has never really worked, and she is far behind her peers in language skills because of this. February is the dean of the school, a hearing woman with deaf parents, who understands the issues involved, and fights hard for civil rights for her students, and for her school. Austin is the son of a deaf mother and a hearing father, whose parents are well known in the local deaf community, and is…

Sandwich ~ Catherine Newman Rachel “Rocky” and her husband go on an annual vacation to Cape Cod with their 20-something children Jamie and Willa, along with Jamie’s girlfriend. Rocky’s parents visit. A vacation is had. A lot of sandwiches are eaten. Secrets are revealed. Rocky is in what is called the Sandwich generation, between her elderly parents and her adult children. Knowing this, I expected the story to be a bit less about the children and a bit more about the parents, and was slightly disappointed about that. That is likely my only complaint about the book. I really enjoyed the meandering way the story unfolded, I liked Rocky and…

After Annie ~ Anna Quindlan Annie Brown, wife, friend, and mother of three, has died in her late 30s, collapsing on the floor of her kitchen after suffering a brain aneurysm. She leaves behind husband Bill, children Ali, Ant, Benjy, and Jamie, and best friend Annemarie. All are lost without the spoke that held their wheel together. After Annie tells the story of the year following her death, and how her loved ones are able to come to terms with the vacuum left in her wake. This was a character driven novel, and not a LOT happened, though there were some disturbing revelations about side characters. What really struck me…

None of This is True ~ Lisa Jewel Josie and her (much older) husband are celebrating her 40th birthday at a local restaurant, when Josie spies a group of celebrants coming in to celebrate another woman’s 40th birthday, and discovers that a local podcaster, Alix, was born on the same day in the same hospital. They are birthday twins! Based on this, Josie approaches Alix to feature Josie in her podcast, as she is making large changes in her life. Alix is looking for a new subject, having wrapped up a recent series, so she agrees. This was a gripping read, a psychological thriller. It is told from several points…