Mad Mabel was a delight! I was hopeful because I loved the cover and I’ve enjoyed other books by Sally Hepworth. I was not disappointed. The side characters from her aunt and her neighbors were a lot of fun. They all felt fully fleshed out and just odd enough to be interesting but not too … Continue reading
This may be my favorite book of 2025 so far! I loved the New Zealand setting. I felt like I was eating sausages right along with them. It did a great job of having a child narrator without it feeling childish or too all knowing. It really hit all the parts of childhood—family dynamics and … Continue reading
I always love her memoirs and writing in general and this one filled in some gaps in her life’s story. I love how she writes about her biological mother and how fraught that relationship is. She writes very honestly about her father and how he has changed into a very different man with her children … Continue reading
Dirt Creek did one of the best jobs of keeping all the characters in this tiny interrelated town straight and reminding us who they were all the time in a helpful yet unobtrusive manner I’ve seen! I really can’t say enough about how rare that is! There were a lot of characters, a lot of … Continue reading
I always like Heiny’s books because they are filled with people I feel like I’d actually know in my own life, teachers, woodworkers, mandolin players, and not the soccer moms and endless lawyers that populate so many other books. Early Morning Riser did not disappoint! I really felt like I lived in this town and … Continue reading
Rachel Reads Books 