Author: Kristen Mei Chase
Genre: Fiction
Rating: ★★★★★
This novel is about Grace and her mama Loralynn, whose great dream is to travel to Graceland.
When Grace needs a welcome escape from her life, she reluctantly agrees to take her mother on the trip. I’m up to chapter 8, and I have cried and laughed right along with these two.
@thatkristenagain, what an amazing journey. Thank you for writing this book.
Author: Julia Whelan Genre: WOMEN’S FICTION Rating: ★★★★☆ Julia Whelan’s Thank You for Listening follows Sewanee Chester, a once-promising actress whose career and confidence were shattered by a tragic accident, leaving her physically scarred and emotionally guarded. Now working as an audiobook narrator, Sewanee survives by “faking it till she makes it,” convinced she’ll never fully heal…
Author: Dara Horn Genre: Nonfiction; Jewish; Essays Rating: ★★★★★ Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews is a powerful and unsettling collection of essays that confronts the world’s fascination with Jewish tragedy while often ignoring Jewish life. Through sharp historical insight and cultural critique, Horn examines how societies memorialize Jewish suffering—especially the Holocaust—while remaining uncomfortable with living Jewish communities…
Author: Abbi Waxman Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Abbi Waxman’s Christa Comes Out of Her Shell follows Christa, a quiet marine researcher who has built a comfortable, solitary life studying ocean life—far removed from the family chaos she left behind. That carefully constructed world is disrupted when her father suddenly reappears after twenty-five years, forcing Christa to return home…
Author: Louise Miller Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Louise Miller’s The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living begins when Livvie Rawlings’s carefully built life in Boston goes down in flames, sending her retreating to Guthrie, Vermont, the small town where her best friend lives. What begins as a temporary escape slowly turns into something deeper as Livvie finds herself…
Author: Terri-Lynne DeFino Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Terri-Lynne DeFino’s Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story is a warm, character-driven family drama set in a lively New Jersey Italian-American community. Varina Palladino finds herself in a rut—her children are grown, her husband has been gone for years, and her fiercely present mother still looms large in her daily life….
Author: Various; Anthology Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen’s Unsung Characters is a delightful collection built on a clever, readerly question: what if Austen’s overlooked secondary women were given the fuller lives they deserved? The pieces feel like affectionate “afterstories,” imagining futures, choices, and small rebellions for characters who were often constrained…