Book Report, First Quarter of 2025: January, February, March

Hello and Happy Tax Day! I'm not usually too bugged by having to pay taxes, because I believe in public education, good roads, etc. But I'm not too pleased with having to pay for someone's regular golf outings or bodyguards for people who don't need bodyguards. Oh well - I'm guessing that not many of you are pleased about it either, so misery loves company.

On to happier things, though. I realized I'd forgotten to update you on what I've read in the first three months of this year. So here you go, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

A Happier Life, by Kristy Woodson Harvey. Keaton Smith finds herself quitting a job she loved in a company she helped to build, for both personal and professional reasons. And as part of that, she loses her place to live. While she is staying with her parents, her mother and uncle decide it's time they sold *their* parents' house in Beaufort,  North Carolina. But neither of them have been back there since the parents disappeared in 1976. 

Keaton grew up knowing only that this set of grandparents died in a car crash. Her mother would never ever talk about them at all. Keaton's uncle, who is in real estate,  offers her part of his commission if she will leave New York City and go to Beaufort and get the house cleaned up and ready to sell. Since she has nothing else happening,  she decides to do it, figuring it will take maybe a month or so.

When she arrives, she is shocked because the house is like a time capsule  - it looks like the occupants stepped out and then never returned. She meets her next door neighbor and his young son, and a group of women who were friends of her grandparents.  And she finds a notebook meant for her mother, where she has done both some journaling, as well as provided tips for successful entertaining. 

All of this leads you to thinking that this book is just like a Hallmark movie. And yes, that part of the book is entirely predictable. 

BUT - what makes the book worth reading is finding out what actually happened to Keaton's grandparents.  Her grandmother's friends indicate early on that they never quite believed the story about a car crash, and so the reader and Keaton want more info. 

And that was the part of the book that I found fascinating.  Like I said, I found the framing story fine but predictable. But the grandparents' stories were what kept me reading.

The Last Girl, by Jane Casey. This is an excellent mystery. Maeve Kerrigan and her partner are sent to a house in the Wimbledon area, to a horrific crime scene. A fifteen year old girl with her throat slashed, and her mother stabbed to death,both found in the living room. The father, an extremely successful lawyer, in his bedroom, knocked unconscious.  The only survivor is the twin sister of the teenage victim, who was swimming in the family pool and could not see or hear anything from there.

The father has plenty of enemies, and a string of former lovers, so it seems like maybe that plays info things.  But as Maeve and Josh dig deeper,  they become more and more frustrated because the case seems stuck. 

At the same time, gang wars are escalating in London, and Maeve's personal life has her on edge.

There were so many twists and turns in all aspects of the story, that you just have to keep reading. The characters are flawed but interesting. I'll definitely read the next in this series.

When Woman Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion, by Julie Satow. This is the story of three women who - during times when women weren't really forces the workplace - attained the highest levels in fashion retailing in the famous department stores New York City.  

Hortense Odlum (Bonwit Teller), Dorothy Shaver (Lord & Taylor), and Geraldine Stutz (Henri Bendel) were all women with uneventful upbringing and no real "official" backgrounds in fashion or management.  But each of them had an eye for style, and - except for Hortense - worked their way through the ranks to not only make their businesses successful and well-known, but arbiters of American style.

The book provides extensive background not only on these three women but also the history of these names we know so well. I feel it's ironic that I started reading this book the same day that Macy's announced that they were closing their store in Center City Philadelphia, where I live. The Macy's had been in the original building of the John Wanamaker department store, in a building that is an historic site. It was never as exclusive as the stores in the book, but it was a grand style department store.

Anyway, the stories of these stores and these three particular women were not just interesting but also fascinating.  I hadn't idea about any of them, but reading this book reinforces the fact that though fashion and style are generally thought of as female endeavors and interests, the names we all know are usually those of the men involved. Even Donald Trump shows up in the book briefly, reminding the reader that he has always been a terrible, classless human being.

This book made me sad for the loss of department stores. I always enjoyed shopping and/or just looking around or window shopping there. And having lunch in their tearoom was always such a treat. Online shopping will never come close to the experience. And as an architectural critic said in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the buildings themselves "elevated and dignified us."

A Punishing Breed, by DC Frost. At a small liberal arts college in Los Angeles, the best fundraising officer has been found dead in his office. Detective  DJ Arias is assigned the case. Arias is a veteran, not only somewhat hardened throughly experience,  but frankly, kind of an asshole. The person who called in the murder is an ex-con who works in maintenance at the college, who Arias sent to prison ten years ago.  Arias immediately suspects him.

But there's more than meets the eye happening on campus. The deceased was a well-known womanizer, so a lot of people have secrets to hide. Along with all of the other campus politics that are contained in the small school, Arias has a number of suspects to consider.

The author does a good job of keeping you both interested and in suspense, and includes some side stories that all tie in at the end. She does a good job of making Arias unpleasant, but maybe promising towards the end. 

Having attended a small liberal arts college where my mother was a secretary in the Development Office, I can say that a number of the characters and setting were familiar in many ways.

The Lost Story, by Meg Shaffer. I have to admit that I closely skimmed through the last third of this book. 

Jeremy and Rafe are two close friends who disappeared as young teenagers in a West Virginia forest. When they were found they were I nmuch better condition than when they had left, and neither of them had any explanation for where they had been or what happened.

Fifteen years later, Jeremy agrees to help a young vet tech named Emilie find her missing sister. He has become world-renowned for being able to find missing girls. He tells Emilie that they need to get Rafe to help them too. Rafe has become a reclusive artist,  and has not seen Jeremy for years. Eventually he agrees to accompany them, so they return to the spot where they disappeared all those years ago.

They enter the magical land of Shanandoah (spelled this way for a reason), where they had been while lost.  Rafe was a prince, and a knight. 

And here's where they lost me.  I'm not a big fan of magical, fantasy worlds in general, and this one just didn't keep my interest. I read to the end of the book, because I wanted to see if I'd be drawn in at any point, and how the story resolved. 

So,not my favorite book. But it gets points for recognizing and celebrating West Virginia, which truly has magical places like nowhere else.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot. My husband and I have been taking turns reading this book to one another over the course of several years. We would often have very long stretches of time when we left it to read other things.

But though he has read this book several times on his own, this was my first time, and I can see why it is a classic. The story of the people and times in a small town called Middlemarch is an amazing study of the lives they led and the societal mores of the time. George Eliot has crafted a very long but magnificent work about a group of people who are not necessarily significant to anyone but themselves, making a book about fairly ordinary townspeople of the time one that tells a lot more than a history book can.

Site Unseen, by Dana Cameron. Emma Fielding is a new, junior professor at Caldwell College in Maine, and is leading a dig with some of her archeology students at what she thinks/hopes will turn out to be the first settlement in the New World, previous to both Jamestown and Plymouth. The site is on the property of a family friend that she met as a child through her grandfather, a world-renowned archeologist.

At the same time, she and her husband who is a chemist living in Massachusetts are trying to figure out how to find a place to live that is equally distant from each of their workplaces.

A local Mainer who shows up at Emma's dig site with a metal detector starts a series of events that cause danger and loss in Emma's life. It's up to her to figure out what's going on before it's her turn to be the victim. 

This was a decent read, and kept me interested in the story. I can see myself reading another entry in this series.

The Bookshop of Second Chances, by Jackie Fraser. Not a great book, but a fun enough read when I needed some serious distraction.

Thea Mottram is forced to start her life again when she receives text from her husband meant for his mistress. She is going a long feeling pretty lost when she learns that a great-uncle who she only met a few times as a child, but who was impressed with her love of reading, has left his estate to her. It includes not just a lodge home but also his complete library of rare books.

She heads north to a small town in Scotland, thinking she'll get things ready to sell, return home to England and have some money to work with while deciding her next steps.

She meets the man who owns the manor house where her uncle's lodge house is located. He's slowly but surely repurchasing all of the land and property that his family has to sell off, and is more than happy to have Thea sell the lodge to him. 

His older brother, who denounced his title and inheritance, and who doesn't get along with his brother at all, owns a bookstore in the town. He is grumpy and unfriendly, but agrees to hire Thea to work there, hoping he can be the buyer of her great-uncle 's book collection.

So you quickly imagine where the story will go, and how things may turn out, and yes it's kind of Hallmark movie-ish. But it's way less sappy than you expect it to be, and Thea is more interesting than you expect, so it's a decent thing to read.

A Quiet Life, by Ethan Joella. This is a wonderful story about the connections we have to one another, and how they can change each person's life.

Chuck is a widower, trying to move on after the death of his wife Cat the spring before the book begins. Ella's currently delivering newspapers and working at a bridal shop while dealing with her ex-husband's abduction of their young daughter, Riley. Kristen is working at a animal rescue, trying to figure out what to do since she didn't get into veterinary school, and dealing with her father's shooting death at a gasoline convenience store shortly before the book begins.

How these three lives are changed, and how they each change each other, is at the heart of the book. Their inner lives, and the small actions of their daily lives, are at the heart of the story. It's a reminder of the quote about living lives of quiet desperation.

It all ends on a hopeful note. And it's a wonderful book. My only caveat is to make sure you read this book when you are feeling steady in your emotions.  I reading this when I was feeling very emotional and vulnerable, and it nearly crushed me with it's language and characters.

The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny. It's Christmastime, the first one since the Covid vaccines have become available.  Armand Gamache is looking forward to the holidays with his family. So when an acquaintance who is the Chancellor of a local university asks him to provide security for something that seems benign, he accepts.

Except the person coming to speak, Professor Abigail Robinson, has become extremely controversial and polarizing. Having been asked by the government to study statistics from the pandemic, and offer solutions for the future, they refuse to publish her results. Why? Because she has recommended that the disabled, long-term infirm, and children born with certain conditions be dealt with through mandatory euthanasia. 

Now, her support is growing, pulling in thousands at her talks. What was supposed to be a non- event turnsinto a huge crowd attending her talk in Three Pines. Shots are fired during the talk, causing fear and chaos. 

When her close assistant is murdered on New Year's Eve, the hunt for answers intensifies.  Family secrets, national policies gone wrong, and a host of suspects keeps Gamache and his team on their toes.

Loiuse Penny has written not only a good story, but a book that challenges the reader in several ways. It made me feel almost like she was predicting the future of things here in the U.S.

All We Were Promised, by Ashton Lattimore. In 1837 Philadelphia,  a couple of young women become friends. Nell is the daughter of a prominent free black family, and is becoming active as an abolitionist. Charlotte escaped with her father from a plantation in the South. The thing is, Charlotte's father is passing for white, and has a successful business building furniture for the wealthy people in the city. So Charlotte's role is as his housekeeper. 

Things are volatile in the city - the Pennsylvania legislature has declared the state to be a free state,  but with some ridiculous loopholes in the law. Pennsylvania Hall is being built, and when complete will host a national anti-slavery convention.

Charlotte's has managed to make a somewhat comfortable existence for herself. But when she runs into a young girl she knew and loved on the plantation, her entire new life is threatened. But she also wants desperately to help Evie escape from life as a slave. 

And so Charlotte and Nell start devising a plan, and put themselves, Evie, and both of their families in danger. 

This book is an excellent read, and shows what life was like in Philadelphia during this time, as well as discussing the lives of prominent black families. It's a fascinating story of free people, enslaved people, and institutional racism that provided the best of both worlds for privileged whites. 

The story of Charlotte and her father was especially interesting to me. Highly recommended.

Highly recommended.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie. This book is a classic, and was controversial at the time it was published because Agatha Christie did not "follow the rules" of writing a mystery story. 

In this book, Hercule Poirot has decided to move to a small English town to retire. But after a prominent member of the community is murdered, he is talked into working on the case. He asks his next-door neighbor, Dr Sheppard - who is also the narrator - to assist him, as his "dear Hastings" who usually works with him, has moved to the Argentine for love.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The characters, the setting, the occasional humor of one character or another, all make you want to keep going. This is a classic for a good reason!

Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose, by Martha Beck. I saw someone talking about this book on one of the morning news shows, saying it was incredibly helpful to them to deal with their anxiety. So I thought give it a try.

But I just couldn't keep going. I'm sure that another of things she talks about could be useful, but I just couldn't engage with her writing style. When I got halfway through the book and it still didn't really make me want to keep reading, I decided to just move on.

Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood. This is a novel that reads like a woman's journal.

The woman who is the narrator has left her job, her husband, and her life in the city to visit a monastic community in the area in Australia where she grew up. She is an atheist, but finds the quiet helpful. 

Years later, she has moved there permanently,  though she us not technically part of the order. There are three main events shaping her time: a plague of mice, the return of the remains of one of the sisters who had been in Thailand, and a visitor who is someone she knew when she was in school, though they were never friends. 

Her thoughts are taken up often with remembrances of her parents, particularly her mother. She comes to understand how much of her mother she seldom considered or understood as a child or even as an adult, and what she carries with her.

This is a beautiful book.

Unleashed, by Emily Kimelman. I had read a review of this book, and it sounded intriguing.  But although it was a good story with a lot of interesting parts about New York City history,  it was too violent and disturbing for me. And I know I've read "worse" things and didn't blink an eye, but this was a bit much for me to take.

The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty. Having read a few of the later books by this author, I can tell that this one doesn't have quite the same feel as those. It's readable,  and interesting enough, but doesn't have the same "grab you right off the bat" of later books.

Sophie Honeywell is the kast of her friends to be single. She was involved with Thomas, but broke up with him on the evening he was going to propose. He's now married with a little girl,  so when he calls Sophie to discuss something out of the blue, she's intrigued. 

It turns out that Thomas' aunt Connie has died, and left her house to Sophie, who only met her once or twice.  It's on an island off the coast of Australia,  where most of his family lives, and which is renowned due to the Munro Baby Mystery.

Sophie moves there, and becomes involved in everyone's lives, and is promised the truth about the Munro Baby Mystery. At the annual festival commemorating the event, lives collide and secrets are revealed.

I didn't dislike this book, but didn't love it either.  Two books by this author came available from my library holds at the same time,  so I'll read another, published later, next. I'm curious to see if my theory of later books having more of an immediate grab holds.

Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarty. At the start of this book, people on a plane are terrorized by an older woman walking down the aisle, predicting each person's death, its cause, and their ages when it will happen.

The rest of the book is the story of the woman's life, and certain individuals that were on that plane. 

I found the woman's story interesting, but didn't really like her - maybe because I wouldn't appreciate her predicting my demise?

But the book did get me thinking about how people might behave if they knew how and when their own deaths would occur. I for one prefer to live in ignorance, and hope that when it does happen, it will be completely without drama. The story does make you think about mortality,  yours and others'. 

The book ends on a hopeful note, which is a blessing, if you ask me.

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, by Anna Johnston. Elderly Frederick Fife finds himself in a predicament - his beloved wife Dawn is dead, as are the few other people he was close to. He can't afford food, and hasn't paid his rent, so his landlord gives him the news he's going to be evicted.

As he takes a walk along the river he comes across another elderly man in a wheelchair who is dead. Assuming that he is with a group of others who look as if they are on a field trip of sorts, he goes to wheel him back to them. Except he trips, and the man in the wheelchair tumbles into the river and is washed away by the current! 

When he finds someone to explain what happened, they think he is the man in the wheelchair (they do look alike!), and he ends up back at the nursing home with everyone believing he is Bernard Greer.

Fred keeps trying to prove he is not Bernard, but since Bernard had dementia, no one pays attention to his claims and finally he just accepts things. But when it turns out that Bernard has a daughter who comes to visit, Fred is really in a pickle. 

This is a very funny, very sweet book about a man doing his best. It also illustrates ways in which elderly men and women are invisible and/or ignored by most of society. (As an elderly woman,  I already knew this.)

But it's also full of characters who are real people with faults, feelings, and disappointments. Fred exemplifies the idea that we all try our best most of the time, but we need others to listen and pay attention. 

Highly recommended.

Bean There, Done That, by Sandra Balzo. I enjoy this series, especially for a palate cleanser after more intense or serious books.

When Maggy Thorsen gets a visit from her ex-husband's wife Rachel (who broke up her marriage), she's a bit surprised.  But when she asks Maggy to help her prove that Ted, Maggy's ex, was cheating on her *while* he was also cheating on Maggy, it's just a weird situation. 

But when Rachel disappears after her meeting with Maggy and Ted is the main suspect, Maggy feels she owes it to their son to find out what happened. 

A good entry in this group of books.

Remain Silent, by Susie Steiner. This is an interesting book, but kind of grim, especially in the current political environment.  

Manon Bradshaw is out with her toddler when she comes across a body hanging from a tree. The victim is from Eastern Europe, and is in England illegally, doing work on farm, etc. when work is available. 

Though Manon has only been working 3 days a week since returning from maternity leave, she is made lead on the investigation.  

She and her partner Davy are suddenly looking into human trafficking, shady finances, anti-immigration zealots. To add even more stress, Manon's partner at home is finished with pancreatic cancer.

A lot of different things are addressed in this story. Like I said, it's not a cheerful book, but it is a compelling read.

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach. Phoebe's husband Matt decided shortly after their last unsuccessful attempt at IVF, that he was leaving her for Mia, afriend and colleague of both of them at the Missouri college where Matt is a professor and Phoebe is an adjunct. As if that's not bad enough, their cat Harry dies unexpectedly.  

So Phoebe decides she is leaving, and books an overnight stay in a very expensive seaside resort hotel in Rhode Island, where she and Matt once thought they'd vacation.  She only needs an overnight reservation because she is headed there to kill herself. 

When she arrives, everyone else at the place is there for the wedding of Lila and Gary - a week of activities leading to the big day! Everyone - including Lila - assumes she is some friend or relative, but when Lila learns about Phoebe's plan, she is worried it will ruin her wedding.

And so the story begins. A story about life's disappointments, but also the joys. About what you really want, and who you want to be. About how everyone is capable of changing.

This was a lovely book, and not as predictable as I expected once the story was underway.

The Deep End, by Julie Mulhern. In 1974 Kansas City, Ellison Russell is living her everyday life, getting up early and swimming at the country club, making sure her daughter Grace is doing OK, and working on her painting, where she can be herself and ignore the fact that her husband is cheating on her quite publicly. 

But during her morning swim one day, she runs into a dead body - and not just a random one, but the body of her husband's mistress! Things get really crazy after that, and Ellison has to hold things together, especially for her daughter.

With some amusing and also annoying characters as well as some surprising developments, this is not just an enjoyable read, but a reminder that women's lives used to be much different.  And at a time when cell phones did not exist, other ways of finding and collecting evidence were all there was. It's a good read, with a twist I did not expect.

*****

And that's that. I often forget, until I do these book posts, which books I've read during the three months, and how I felt about them. So I enjoy revisiting all of them, because some feel like running into old friends again. 😊

I hope you've been finding some goodies that you enjoyed as well!