The Heart’s Invisible Furies ~ John Boyne Cyril Avery is born in Dublin in 1945, to a young unwed woman, Catherine, who relinquishes him to a convent to be adopted. He is raised by Maude and Charles Avery, a couple who want a son because it seems the thing to do. Maude is a writer and is mostly interested in writing her books and chain smoking cigarettes. Charles is a businessman (I don’t remember what he does actually) and is kind of shady. One day when Cyril is 7, Charles’ lawyer comes to the house with his two young children, Julian (7) and Alice (5 or 6). Julian and Cyril…

Five Star Stranger ~ Kat Tang The unnamed protagonist of Five Star Stranger works as a rent-a-person, via an app where he can be rented by the hour to pose as a date to a wedding, a mourner at a funeral, a wingman, a brother, etc. The Stranger, as I will refer to him here, (makes me think of Camus, and from there to The Cure) lives in a cramped apartment in New York, and goes from gig to gig, some with regulars whom he sees often, some with clients who only need him for an hour or two. His goals? To make people happy, to help them when they…

Slow Dance ~ Rainbow Rowell Shiloh, Cary, and Mikey were best friends in High School. Shiloh and Cary had romantic feelings for each other, but they were always too afraid to act on them. Fear of rejection and of ruining their friendship keeps them platonic. Shiloh is growing up in poverty with her mom (I listened to this a month or so ago, and I don’t remember where her dad is. Another story with an unknown dad? Dead? No idea.) Cary is being raised by his grandmother, and he is told that he is hers, so he thinks that his birth mom is his older sister. He never lets on…

Same as it Ever Was ~ Claire Lombardo Julia Ames is the 57 year old mother of two. Ben, her 24 year old son, is planning his wedding. Alma, her daughter, is getting ready to graduate from High School and is worried about college admissions. Her husband, Mark, is loving and attentive. Julia isn’t quite sure why she isn’t happier, why she can’t ever quite accept that life is good. At the grocery store one day, Julia runs into Helen, an elderly woman she was close to 20 years earlier, bringing back memories of their time as friends, and how her friendship with Helen brought about events that shook her…

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers ~ Jesse Sutanto Thank you to those of you who suggested this book. I’m not really into the murder mystery genre, though when I read them I seem to enjoy them, so maybe I am into the murder mystery genre? Maybe I need to read some Agatha Christie books, my mom sure loved the hell out of them. Anyway, I loved Vera, though there are so many descriptions of her as being elderly and old, and she’s (ahem) 60. I mean, I guess when I was younger, 60 seemed pretty old to me, and my mom died at 66, and it’s close to retirement…

The Bee Sting ~ Paul Murray Cassie is finishing up secondary school, ready for college. She’s a straight A student, bright and interested in poetry, but she’s angry with her father, and she blames him for their reduced position in town. She worries that she will not get to go to Dublin to attend college with her best friend, Elaine, and seems determined to sabotage her chances. She has a lot of disdain for her mother, who she thinks of as shallow and uneducated. PJ is Cassie’s little brother, lover of science and strange facts, who inconveniently outgrows his shoes right when money is tightest. He’s worried that his parents…

10 Things that Never Happened ~ Alexis Hall Sam manages a big box bed and bath store in Northern England, though he doesn’t run it very well. His employees are either taking too many breaks, or they are damaging the expensive mattresses, that sort of thing. He should probably fire the one that does the damage, but that employee is caring for his Gran, right? He should come down on the one who takes too many breaks, but really, he doesn’t care enough. That’s the real issue. He’d like things to go more smoothly, but this isn’t his dream job, and he’s just going through the motions. It’s a small…

The Night We Lost Him ~ Laura Dave Nora Noone is a successful architect living in New York, who has recently gone through the horrible loss of both of her parents, her mother from cancer, her father when he fell from a cliff side above the ocean in California. They divorced when she was young, and her father remarried, twice. Nora was extremely close with her mother, and is having a lot of trouble processing that loss. She loved her father, but they weren’t terribly close, and she was not close with her twin brothers, who he had with his second wife. She is struggling with her grief, which is…