Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars, rounded up

I really liked this fast-paced story about Catherine who is a nurse at an elderly home and her mother, Ruth. They have been together all their lives and have a very close dependable relationship. Until things start to unravel. Catherine catches her mother in one lie, and then another, until she is not sure she can believe anything her mom says and their paths start forking.

This story goes back and forth between the present time and Ruth’s diary entires about her past. While I liked the diary entries, it felt a bit like telling more than showing so made those parts of the story feel like I was reading someone’s synopsis of a book.

Unlike so many mystery books, this one didn’t have any dislikable characters and I found myself rooting both for the mom and the daughter. I read this one in a single sitting and I am sure you will, too.

With gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Third Person by Emma Grove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of Emma who is transgender and trying to get approval for hormone replacement therapy. So she starts seeing a therapist and slowly they uncover that she has a history of trauma and Dissociative Identity Disorder. The rest of the book is Emma struggling with her therapist and his lack of professionalism and ability to deal with her disorder (in fact, I’d say the therapist is abusive too often.) and her journey working her way through some of her trauma, etc.

It’s really heart wrenching in parts and really disorienting in others. It made me feel really angry at incompetent therapists who do more harm than good and it also broke my heart completely to read all the trauma she had to endure as a little girl. People can be so very cruel.

Many people commented on how big this book is, since I read it as an ebook I didn’t realize that until I started it but to me, it was a fast and engrossing (and heartbreaking) read.

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It Won’t Always Be Like This by Malaka Gharib
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this story about an American girl whose dad moved back to his hometown of Egypt after her parents’ divorce. She goes back to Egypt to spend the summers with him all her life. He marries someone else and has children with that person and their lives change and evolve from there. It’s an interesting story even though it stays a little too on the surface in my opinion.

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Forever Hold Your Peace by Liz Fenton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very sweet story of two people who fall in love on vacation in italy and decide to get married as a result of their whirlwind romance. When they come back home, both of their parents are worried it’s all happening too soon until they meet and realize they know each other from a past life.

Chaos ensues.

Until the chaos touches the two kids whom they love with all their hearts and brings the parents back to their senses.

It’s sweet, predictable but kind with lots of laughs. It was a lovely book to read during the rainy and dark winter days.

with gratitude to netgalley and Alcove Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

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The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“But the secret to a beautiful death is a beautiful life.”

Clover is a death doula. She sits with people as they die and she makes sure they are not alone. And yet, she’s mostly alone. She has one friend who is 76 and that’s it.

This is the story of how through the help of a new client, some unexpected friends and some tough but real words she slowly starts to change her life.

This character driven story is beautiful and is full of reminders that life is for the living. It’s for taking chances, it’s for being cautiously reckless and it’s for living the moments we’re given to their full capacity.

with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“It was something she would tell her son later, when he was learning to read himself—how your first read of an extraordinary book is something you can only experience once.”

This book is a premise that I hadn’t read before. It’s a story of ten different people. The first one writes a book to help cope with deep sorrow in her life and the nine others experience the book in their own unique way, through the lens of their own lives and get affected differently.

Some of them are connected to each other in small ways, some in bigger ways, and some not really. And yet this book flows through their life and doesn’t leave them the same as a result.

“It was probably six hours later when Theo met the love of his life. There were no fireworks, no steamy glances across a room. Just two human beings, falling together like puzzle pieces, which made sense because both of them were broken, their edges not the smooth arcs or straight lines of others, which fit easily into so many situations. No, there was only one place each of them belonged, and that was with the other. It sounded dramatic, but wasn’t. More like an animal finding its natural habitat.”

Some people will say it’s cheesy and it’s more like interconnected short stories than it is a novel. And some of the characters have a lot of telling vs showing. And yet I loved it. I loved the broken characters. I loved waiting to see how they’d be connected. I loved waiting to see when and how the book would show up and I loved seeing how it would change them. I felt connected and invested in each of these characters.

“Different from sleeping, where you had no choice where you went. Picking up a book was a decision: I’m going to go away. The exciting possibility: I may not come back the same.”

I am not the same because I read this beautiful book. Because, books, they change you. And I am so grateful for that.

with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

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