The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano ~ Donna Freitas Rose does not have children. She has never wanted children. She has always been very clear about this, to herself, to her family, her friends, and her partners. She marries Luke, who also does not want to have children, never has. Until a few years into their marriage, his parents convince him that life is meaningless without kids, and now suddenly it is the most important thing ever for him. He’s a complete dick to her, and piles on the pressure, despite knowing that she doesn’t want kids, despite knowing (I assume) how much money and work goes into being a…

Kin ~ Tayari Jones Annie and Niecy are ‘cradle friends’, and have known each other for as long as they can remember. Both are orphans in the Jim Crow South, Annie raised by her grandmother, Niecy by her Aunt Irene. Niecy’s mother was murdered by her father (who then committed suicide) when she was an infant, while Annie’s mother deserted her and went to Memphis. Early on, Niecy’s Aunt Irene tells her that she is the luckier of the two girls, because her mother is gone and there is no hope of finding her, while Annie lives with the idea of perhaps finding her and reclaiming the maternal love she…

The Things We Never Say ~ Elizabeth Strout Loneliness does not come from having no people around you. Instead, it stems from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you, or from holding certain views that others find inadmissible. ~ Carl Jung This is the epigraph of Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, and it perfectly encapsulates the novel. Artie Dam is depressed. He is a middle-aged high school History teacher in Massachusetts with a love for sailing. His best friend, Flossie, has moved away to be closer to her daughter after the death of her husband, Reginald, whom she describes as an asshole whom she…

The Calamity Club ~ Katheryn Stockett Birdie Calhoun is visiting her sister, Frances, in Oxford, Mississippi, hoping to borrow money from her sister’s new husband to save the family farm. It’s 1933 and things have not gone well, and she needs money to pay the property taxes. Frances has married into a wealthy family and is a social climber. She volunteers at the local orphanage, where she tries to ingratiate herself with the chairwoman, Garnett Pittman, who runs the place with a cruel, uncaring hand. Meg Lefleur is one of the girls at the orphanage. Her mom left one day to go to the store and never came home. Garnett…

Good People ~ Patmeena Sabit The Sharaf family are an immigrant success story. The parents came to the US from Afghanistan and settled in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC, and through intelligence and hard work, became extremely wealthy. Rahmat is a successful businessman, and Maryam is his wife and stay at home mother to their four children. The parents have dreams that their eldest son, Omer, will be a world class surgeon, but he has other plans and doesn’t even want to go to community college. Now the dreams are pinned to their teenaged daughter, Zorah, becoming a lawyer. Zorah is an excellent student, and straddles the fine line…

Lost Lambs ~ Madeline Cash Bud and Catherine Flynn’s marriage is in trouble. She has decided the solution is an open marriage and to have a neighbor take nude photos of her, which she places around the house. Bud sleeps in his car most nights. Neither of them really know how to parent. Neither parent cooks, so the family lives off of take out and there is rarely much to eat in the fridge, the downstairs bathroom is moldy and the faucet doesn’t work, and their 3 teenaged daughters are troubled. Abigail, 17, has ended her affair with the high school art teacher, and is now dating a twenty-something military…

They All Fall in Love at the End ~ Haili Blassingame Catherine “Cat” St. Clair is a 20 something graduate student, living with her parents in Washington DC, and hoping to finish her MFA within 10 years. She takes one class a semester because that’s all she can afford with her scholarship and money from her part time job at a sausage restaurant. Cat is working on a semi-autobiographical novel about her parents’ shitty marriage and her life thus far. She has a boyfriend, Jay, who is a school teacher in California. Cat wants an open relationship, she feels trapped by monogamy. She feels like Jay (Not Jay per se,…

Gray After Dark ~ Noelle West Ihli Miley is an Olympic biathlete whose aspirations were crushed by a horrible accident. She dreams of getting back to her sport, and is planning to spend the summer working at a remote mountain resort lodge, where she will use her spare time to recover and train both physically and mentally. Her coworker, Wes, warns her about going off on her own, and encourages her to carry bear spray. A few years prior, another worker went missing, and all that was recovered were her bloody clothes. Miley isn’t worried, she knows that most of the bears in the area are black bears, so though…

The Favorites ~ Layne Fargo Katarina (Kat) Shaw and Heath Rocha are childhood sweethearts from the Midwest. Heath is ann orphan, and Kat’s father takes him in. After the father dies, Kat and Heath are left at the hands of her abusive alcoholic brother. Kat dreams of becoming an Olympic ice dancer, and Heath is down for that, because he’s obsessed with Kat and will do whatever she wants. They run off to California to train with a world famous former Olympian, Sheila Lin, and her twin children, Garret and Bella. Things happen, Heath broods, Kat obsesses about skating and winning. The Favorites goes back and forth between a documentary…

Life After Life ~ Kate Atkinson Ursula Todd is born in February of 2010, but does not survive because her umbilical cord is wrapped around her neck. Then she is born in February of 2010 and she survives. She dies over and over again throughout the book, only to be born again and start over. In some realities, she has memories of past lives, and is thus able to change both her reality and those of others. She drowns, is murdered, dies from bombing in London, dies from bombing in Berlin, so many ways to die. She dies as a child and as a middle aged woman. As the story…

Lake Effect ~ Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Nina Larkin, a food columnist, is unhappily married to Sam, a closeted gay marketing executive, and they live in Rochester, New York, with their teenage daughters, Clara and Bridie. Across the street from the Larkins, Finn Finnegan, head of a regional grocery chain, is unhappily married to Honey, a sexually repressed and unaffectionate Weight Watchers coach. They also have two teenagers, Duke and Fern. Duke and Clara are high school seniors who are secretly dating. After surviving a heart attack while shoveling snow, Finn decides that he wants more from life than a loveless marriage. When Nina and Finn run away to the Dominican…

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert ~ Bob the Drag Queen Famous figures from the past are appearing in present day, including Harriet Tubman. Harriet has things to say to the modern world, and she wants to say it via hip-hop music, so she seeks out the help of Darnell, a music producer who was at the top of his game 20 years ago, but has fallen out of favor. With Harriet are her musical group, the Freemen, people that she guided to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Through their musical sessions and conversations while putting together their album, Queen of the Underground, Harriet and the Freemen teach Darnell about their…

The Phoenix Pencil Company ~ Allison King Monica Tsai is home for the summer following her first year of college. She was raised by her grandparents, Yun and Torou, and her grandma is having health issues (she celebrates her 90th birthday near the beginning of the book – with a feast from Arby’s, her favorite). Monica loves her grandparents dearly, and worries about losing them, and about whether her grandpa can take care of her grandma as she loses her memory. Grandma Yun tells her a bit about her life in Shanghai under Japanese occupation, and of her relationship with her cousin, Meng. Yun and Meng worked together at the…

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…