White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson is fun book that ties in a lot of topical issues like prisons, blended interracial families, poorly treated mental illness, veganism, peanut allergies, predatory televangelists, drug use and gentrification into a spooky ghost/horror story. The ending was incredibly abrupt. Bizarrely so. I got it from the library and truly … Continue reading
I had some high hopes and mixed feelings about The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue. On the surface it ticked all of my “summer reading” boxes: A book set the late 1990s where a sixteen-year-old girl and her teacher disappeared from a remote Catholic girls’ boarding-school housed in a cliffside old mansion in Ireland? … Continue reading
I really don’t know how I came across this book. It was on my reserves from library so at some point I must have suggested they purchase it. I vaguely remember reading an earlier book of hers and enjoying it well enough. Sometimes the lag between reading about a book and it actually coming out … Continue reading
I came across this one in a NYT column and put it right on my holds list. It sounded intriguing–a man with three wives found dead near his rural compound. What a disappointment! I’m not entirely sure if Marilyn Stasio actually read the book. I didn’t get the impression from Black Widows or interviews with … Continue reading
I found A Spy in the Struggle a little puzzling. The concept was unique and I like how it touched on real issues and was topical (there is even a Covid-19 reference) but the main character was so flat. Her thinking was very black and white and childlike. It was very difficult to believe she … Continue reading
I read Heidi Pitlor’s first book back in March. I had found it a little odd stylistically but the subject matter–a wife disappears–was interesting and dealt with in a serious fashion that this current trend to the sensational in publishing rarely seems to do well. This book is about another woman on the margins of … Continue reading
I have read all Caroline Leavitt’s books since I was in high school in the late ’90s so I was excited to read this one. I follow her on Twitter so I knew it was a loose fictionalization of the author’s own coma experience so that intrigued me. She said that she had been in … Continue reading
What a clever idea for a novel! Who doesn’t wonder what their other life could be if things went differently? I felt like Lydia was a fully developed character as was Jonah but I didn’t see what the appeal of Freddie was. When they stayed together in her “sleep”, they didn’t seem to have anything … Continue reading
There needs to be a new subgenre of books that describe a book where something mysterious happens but that at the heart of the book is family-centered general fiction. I’ve read many books where a teenage girl disappears but the book is mostly about what is going on in the town vs. a true mystery or investigation. … Continue reading
I have not had great luck with books this month. Even ones I really looked forward to like the new Meg Wolitzer didn’t really grab me. I must have started and stopped a dozen books this month. I had high hopes for Then She Was Gone. I’ve read Lisa Jewell’s books since college. Back then … Continue reading
Rachel Reads Books 