The Testaments ~ Margaret Atwood The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and takes place 15 years after the events of her first book. If you are unfamiliar with The Handmaid’s Tale, it is the story of a dystopian America, Gilead, taken over by a group of religious fundamentalists who subjugate women, largely because human fertility has greatly diminished. The nation is segmented into strict strata. At the top are the commanders and their wives. If the wife is unable to conceive (it is always assumed to be the wife’s fertility in question), they bring in a handmaid. Handmaids are women who have proven they are fertile…

An American Marriage ~ Tayari Jones Celestial and Roy are a young, black, successful couple in Atlanta. He is an up and coming executive, and she is an artist, creating dolls that can sell for thousands of dollars, or be played with by children. About a year after they marry, they go to visit his family, and are staying in a motel one night when a woman is assaulted, and is convinced that Roy is the rapist. He is convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in Louisiana. The rest of the book is the aftermath of their separation, how it affects them both psychologically, and how it affects…

Once and Again ~ Rebecca Serle The Novak women have been blessed with a silver ticket, a one time do-over that they can use to turn back time in order to avoid tragedy. Lauren (37), her mother Marcella, and her grandmother Sylvia have all had the opportunity to press reset. Marcella used her ticket to avoid a car accident that kills both her husband and the driver of the other car. Ever since she used her ticket, she is obsessed with avoiding tragedy in life, because she no longer has the ability to fix things. She mostly fixates on her husband’s health, after he has bypass surgery in his late…

The Lady with the Dark Hair ~ Erin Bartels Esther Markstrom manages her family’s art museum in Lansing, Michigan. She has spent the last 20 years caring for her artist mother, who suffers from mental illness, and running the museum, which focuses on the art of their ancestor, painter Francisco Vella. She is reunited with one of her art history professors from college, who suggests that the painting that Esther and her mom have in their home, the painting they consider his best, may not actually be authentic. Viviana Torrens is a Catalanian woman living in 19th century France, working as a scullery maid for an esteemed painter. Francisco Vella…

Consider Yourself Kissed ~ Jessica Stanley It is 2013 in London, and Coralie Bower is a 29 year old Australian transplant, working as a copywriter and dreaming of writing a novel. When she meets (divorced) Adam and his young daughter, Zora, she quickly falls for them. Adam works as an author and political podcaster, and the backdrop of the novel, which takes place over the next 10 years, is Brexit and the prime ministerships of Boris Johnson and Theresa May. As Coralie and Adam work to build their life together, his career takes off, while she is mired down in parenthood, losing her sense of self and autonomy along the…

Thirst Trap ~ Gráinne O’Hare Maggie, Harley, and Róise are flatmates in Belfast. They have been friends since school, and are just turning 30. By now, they thought they would have been settled down a bit, perhaps married, perhaps with homes of their own, perhaps in successful careers. Instead, they are still living in the same run down flat that they have shared since they left school, and mourning the loss of their fourth friend, Lydia, who died in a car accident when they were all inconveniently in the midst of a fight. They are all harboring wounds, guilt, and pain, which they medicate by going to clubs, doing MDMA…

Yesteryear ~ Caro Claire Burke Natalie Heller Mills is a tradwife influencer, Instagram famous for her aspirational life on a 500 acre farm in rural Idaho, where she lives with her husband and their 5 (soon to be 6) children. She works to portray herself as a kind and affectionate mother, someone who has infinite patience, knows the value of hard work, and cooks amazing meals every day for her beloved family. She does cook, and she is a hard worker, but her hard work is mostly in controlling her temper and creating content for her millions of fans. One day, she wakes up in her house, but everything is…

What Happens in Amsterdam ~ Rachel Lynn Solomon Dani Dorman and Wouter van Leeuwen secretly date when they are 17, and he is an exchange student from The Netherlands living with her family in Los Angeles. They break up after he returns home, breaking Dani’s heart. 13 years later, after a failed relationship with a coworker breaks up, Dani takes a job at a start up in Amsterdam, where she (literally) bumps into Wouter on the street. Listen, this is a romance novel, we all know what is going to happen. It’s how they get there that is interesting, right? In this case, her start up fails and she suddenly…

The Marriage Portrait ~ Maggie O’Farrell Lucrezia de’ Medici is betrothed at 13 to her recently deceased sister’s fiancé, though they wait to marry until she is 15. Now she is a duchess, living in Ferrara, far from her family and her home. As the book begins, Lucrezia, now 16, has the distinct feeling that her husband, Alfonso, intends to have her killed. From here we go back and forth through their relationship. From their first meeting, when he was courting her sister and appears to be charming and kind, to the news that she is to be married to him (in her sister’s wedding dress), though she begs her…

The Latecomer ~ Jean Hanff Korelitz The Oppenheimer triplets have disliked each other since birth. Perhaps before birth. They don’t want to spend time with each other, and for some reason find their home stifling and cannot wait to get away from that as well. Lewyn and Sally attend the same college, though they do not tell anyone that they have a sibling in the next dorm over, which becomes awkward when Lewyn begins dating Sally’s roommate. Harrison attends a small two year all men’s college that encourages his right wing narcissistic tendencies. Their father, Salo, has a passion for modern, outsider, art, a passion his wife Johanna neither shares…

Promise Me Sunshine ~ Cara Bastone Lenny is in deep mourning for her best friend, Lou, who recently died. She can’t bear to go to the empty Brooklyn apartment they shared, so she sleeps in public places like the Staton Island Ferry. She can’t eat, doesn’t bathe much, hasn’t cut her hair in two years, and surely smells kind of funky, but somehow manages to get occasional jobs babysitting. We meet her as she starts a job babysitting 7 year old Ainsley, whose single mom, Reese, travels a lot for work. Despite her overwhelming pain and grief, she is an amazing babysitter, knows what keeps kids happy, how to help…

Sky Daddy ~ Kate Folk Linda works as a content moderator at a tech company in San Francisco, where she reviews comments to make sure they follow the standards of her company’s clients. She lives in the Outer Sunset neighborhood, where she pays $900 a month to live in a windowless (illegal) cube in a family’s garage (I feel like they could get more than $900). She has only one friend, coworker Karina, and a sexual obsession with commercial airplanes. Linda saves her wages to spend on flights to anywhere, because her desire is the flight, not the location. She masterbates on the flight, lands, spends her time in the…

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…