The Girl Who Was Taken ~ Charlie Donlea Megan and Nicole are two High School students, graduating students from different friend groups who disappear one night from the same party. Megan escapes their abductor 2 weeks later, but Nicole is gone. Gone gone. Nicole’s sister, Livia is a forensic pathology fellow working to become a coroner. A year after the abduction, a body is found in a lake that Livia feels must somehow be connected to her sister, and she works with Megan to try to solve the mystery. This book was recommended to me, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was pretty riveting,…

The Girls from Corona Del Mar ~ Rufi Thorpe At the beginning of The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Mia and Lorrie Ann are high school best friends, and Mia is in trouble. She is pregnant (with a boy she doesn’t even like, she just wanted to get the deed over with so she would no longer be a virgin). Mia has an abortion, and decides that the only way to get out of sports practice the following day (don’t ask me what sport, all sports are the same to me. Likely there was a ball involved) is to have Lorrie Ann take a hammer to her toe and break…

The Anthropocene Reviewed ~ John Green A memoir in the form of a collection of essays where the author reviews various aspects of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale, exploring topics both mundane and grand. He reviews hot dogs in Iceland, the QWERT keyboard, Diet Dr. Pepper, orbital sunsets, the plague, Monopoly, the movie Harvey, on and on. In each essay we learn more about the author, about his struggles with anxiety, his family, his hopes and fears. Among other things, he discusses climate change, the pandemic, history, and science. I really enjoyed a lot of these essays, and found them engrossing and moving, but mostly memoir and essay…

Be Ready When the Luck Happens ~ Ina Garten From the author’s website: ”From a difficult childhood to meeting and marrying the love of her life, Jeffrey, while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, DC to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned…

Home Stretch ~ Graham Norton Another book about growing up gay in Ireland. This one begins with a group of 6 young adults involved in a horrible car accident on the eve of a wedding in 1987. The bride, groom, and bridesmaid are all killed. The survivors are the sister of the bride, the driver, and one other young man. One of the survivors is Conner, who leaves the village rather than live with the constant shame of being the driver who caused the death of three young people. He ends up living in London for a while, then in New York, where he forges a new life for himself.…

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…

The Flatshare ~ Beth O’Leary The Flatshare is a ridiculous (and fun) rom-com in which 2 strangers share a one bedroom flat, though they have never met. Leon needs some extra money, he works overnights, and spends his weekends with his girlfriend. Tiffy has recently broken up with her boyfriend and needs a place to live, so she answers Leon’s ad. The rent is ridiculously cheap, because Leon’s flat only has one bed, which they will share, though not at the same time. This is the silly premise, but the author makes it feel realistic enough, and as they start communicating with each other via post-it notes left around the…

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…