A Constellation of Vital Phenomena ~ Anthony Marra Late one night in 2004, in Eldar, Chechnya, Federalist soldiers capture a villager, Dokka, whom they accuse of being involved in the shooting of a Russian colonel two years earlier. They search the house for his young daughter, Havaa, and when they can’t find her, they burn it down. Dokka’s friend and neighbor, Akhmed, finds Havaa hiding in the woods with a little blue suitcase, and knowing the Feds will be looking for her, tries to find a safe place for her to live. He takes her to the hospital in a neighboring town. The town is in ruins, the hospital is…

Inhale Exhale ~ Nicole MacPherson Michelle is a 55 year old mother of three, the owner of a busy yoga studio, and a committed divorcee. Committed because she has been divorced since before the birth of her youngest child, who now a teenager, and she hasn’t dated. She doesn’t want to date, she is busy and fulfilled and living the life she wants. Isn’t she? I suspect that many of us have either read Inhale Exhale by now, as it is the debut novel of Cool Blogger extraordinaire Nicole, or we are waiting for it to arrive. So why not give you my standard review format, and then I can…

Heart the Lover ~ Lily KingJordan is a college student who dreams of being a writer. She was admitted to college on a sports scholarship, but quit the sport after a week or two, so is funding her education by working and taking out student loans. She becomes friends with Sam and Yash, two fellow students who live a privileged life housesitting for a professor who is away for the year. She first falls for Sam, and then Yash. This is Part 1 of the book. Part 2 takes place years in the future, when Yash comes to visit Jordan, and Part 3 takes place after that. Writers and Lovers…

The Names ~ Florence Knapp 1987 England – Cora Atkin is an Irish woman living with her British husband, Gordon, their 9 year old daughter, Maia, and their newborn son. When she goes to the Registry office to register her baby’s birth, she is confronted with the task of naming him. Gordon has always assumed that their first son would be named for him, and his father. Cora hates the name, and does not want her son to be like her husband and father in law. She likes the name Julian, which means ‘sky father’, which to her means that her baby would rise above the horrible examples of her…

What the fuck did I just read? If you’re asking, ‘should I read this?’ I would say, if you like clever writing that seems like it could be a YA novel, but is most definitely NOT, AND you are into unreliable narrators AND the thought of the mean girls of Heathers as a coven or a cult, then yes, yes you should read this book! Otherwise, probably not. What’s it about? Well, our main character, Samantha, is a loner working on her MFA in a creative writing program at Warren University. Her mother is dead, her father absent (avoiding the law, I think). She has one friend, Ava, who is…

Wild Dark Shore ~ Charlotte McConaghy Dominic (Dom) Salt and his three children live on remote Shearwater Island near Antarctica, caretakers of a seed vault meant to maintain the planet’s plant diversity in case of extinctions. They share the island with a small group of scientists who are performing experiments and caring for the seed vault. Climate change means that the island will soon be uninhabitable and that the seeds must be moved and the people evacuated. Several weeks before the ship is scheduled to come evacuate the island, there is a huge storm, and a woman (Rowan) washes up on shore, gravely injured but alive. The communications equipment is…

Trust ~ Hernan Diaz Andrew and Mildred Bevel are the couple at the heart of Trust. Andrew is a stock market billionaire in the 1920s, Mildred is his philanthropist wife. Their story is told through four separate books. First is a biographic novel, which paints Andrew as an opportunist and Mildred as suffering from mental illness. Next is an unfinished autobiography, where Andrew works to defend his legacy from the unflattering descriptions of the novel. Then comes the memoir of the woman who was his ghost writer for the autobiography, who finds Mildred to be the more interesting of the two, even as Andrew works to keep her legacy limited…

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois ~ Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Ailey Garfield is a young American woman of African, Scottish, and Native American descent, growing up in a highly educated family with high expectations. Her parents are Belle and Geoff Garfield, a teacher (professor? I don’t remember) and a medical doctor. Ailey and her sisters, Lydia and Coco, all suffer sexual abuse at the hands of their grandfather, ‘Gandy’. None of them know that the other two have suffered, they all thought that their silence, demanded under threat of the murder of their family, has protected the others. This abuse haunts them all, but leads them in different directions with…

I’ll Come to You ~ Rebecca Kaufmann It is January, 1995. Ellen is recently divorced, but she doesn’t really understand what went wrong in her marriage. She goes on a blind date with Gary that doesn’t really go well, and she decides that what they need next Christmas is to have a family holiday, with her ex husband included. Perhaps they can cool down between now and then and reconcile. Ellen’s son, Paul, is married to Corinne, and they are expecting a baby. They struggled to get to this point. Corinne’s brother (Rob) is a used car salesman with a history of lying that has followed him through his life,…