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Homeland Elegies

Title: Homeland Elegies

Author: Ayad Akhtar

Genre: Asian American Literature

PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt: book by a Muslim American author

I had no idea what this book was about, and I had another book selected for this PopSugar prompt, but I’ve heard people say how great it is, so I put it on my list. Even though it’s fiction, it reads very much like non-fiction. It’s several chapters, but each one is its own story. The stories revolve around Akhtar, but also his family, friends, career, and being Muslim in a post 9/11 and pro-Trump world.

From Goodreads: A deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the nation’s unhealed wounds of 9/11 wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one — least of all himself — in the process.

I read one chapter a day, which broke the book up into small vignettes. I’m not sure what parts of the story are fiction vs non-fiction. I didn’t do any research, so I don’t know if Akhtar has ever said. I took it all as truth, though. That said, I’m not going to debate anyone who believes it’s entirely fiction. Given that the book deals with actual events like 9/11, Charlottesville, mass shootings, Trump’s election, etc, the book is definitely grounded in truth. Own voices books are critical these days. And I’ve been reading a lot of Black and Latinx authors. But I’m glad the PopSugar challenge put a Muslim American author on the challenge. This one was a really great insight into the life of Muslims these days.

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Let Me Hear a Rhyme

Title: Let Me Hear a Rhyme

Author: Tiffany D. Jackson

Genre: YA fiction

I’ve already read Grown and Monday’s Not Coming from Tiffany D. Jackson, and both books were just outstanding. So I made a point to read her other books. I have Allegedly on my Kindle and will get to it shortly, but this one was a book I’ve heard very little about. And I get why. It’s very different from her other books. It’s fantastic, and I really enjoyed it. I wish it got more hype, though. Whereas her other books are more intense, more edge of your seat, this one is more laid-back. And it’s definitely an homage to her youth. She says in the back of the book that this one is her most personal, and I can see why. She writes about the late 90s in Brooklyn, which is when/where she grew up. When Biggie was murdered, she remembers his funeral, which makes an appearance in the book. Her love and knowledge of hip hop is evident. And where there is a darker plot line, overall the book was less nail-biting than her others.

From Goodreads: Biggie Smalls was right. Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean that Quadir and Jarrell are okay letting their best friend Steph’s tracks lie forgotten in his bedroom after he’s killed—not when his beats could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a celebration, not after years of having each other’s backs.

Enlisting the help of Steph’s younger sister, Jasmine, Quadir and Jarrell come up with a plan to promote Steph’s music under a new rap name: The Architect. Soon, everyone in Brooklyn is dancing to Steph’s voice. But then his mixtape catches the attention of a hotheaded music rep and—with just hours on the clock—the trio must race to prove Steph’s talent from beyond the grave.

Now, as the pressure—and danger—of keeping their secret grows, Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are forced to confront the truth about what happened to Steph. Only each has something to hide. And with everything riding on Steph’s fame, together they need to decide what they stand for before they lose everything they’ve worked so hard to hold on to—including each other.

Steph’s death happens before the book begins, which makes the loss easier on the reader. Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are really great, fun, dynamic characters who you cheer for from the outset. While they are trying to get Steph’s voice into the community, they are also trying to find out what happens to him, which is the aforementioned darker storyline. That said, this book was a lot lighter than her others. Sadly, it has nowhere near the ratings on Goodreads. But if you enjoy her books, you should absolutely add this one to your list.

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A Dark Lure

Title: A Dark Lure

Author: Loreth Anne White

Genre: Thriller

I read In the Dark last year, which ended up being one of my top 10 of 2020. I just thought it was so clever and well-written. That book immediately put White on my radar as an author who I want to keep reading. And this one definitely kept her on my list. What a great, thrilling, suspenseful book.

From Goodreads: Twelve years ago, Sarah Baker was abducted by the Watt Lake Killer and sexually assaulted for months before managing to escape. The killer was caught, but Sarah lost everything: her marriage, her child, and the life she loved.

Struggling with PTSD, Sarah changes her name to Olivia West and finds sanctuary working on Broken Bar Ranch. But as her scars finally begin to heal, a cop involved with her horrific case remains convinced the Watt Lake Killer is still out there. He sets a lure for the murderer, and a fresh body is discovered. Now Olivia must face the impossible—could the butcher be back, this time to finish the job?

As a frigid winter isolates the ranch, only one person can help Olivia: Cole McDonough, a writer, adventurer, and ranch heir who stirs long-dormant feelings in her. But this time, Olivia’s determination to shut out her past may destroy more than her chance at love. It could cost her her life.

What I love about this is that all the character motivations make sense. A lot of thrillers just have characters doing things that really don’t make sense, just to make the plot work. And it’s so frustrating. But White has her characters’ actions make sense within the development of said character. When Sarah/Olivia keeps her past a secret, sure it helps the plot, but it’s really because White has created a character the craves privacy because of her past. I just detest thrillers that underestimate the reader. We are smart. We require well-written books. And so many writers just cheapen the genre. Not Loreth Anne White. She’s the real deal and I can’t wait to read the next book in this series.

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The Haunting of Maddy Clare

Title: The Haunting of Maddy Clare

Author: Simone St. James

Genre: ghost story, historical fiction

I love finding new to me authors and going through their back catalogs. Simone St. James is one of them. I first read The Sun Down Motel and really loved it. It was a great mix of thriller and supernatural. Then I read The Broken Girls, another mix of thriller and ghost story. So, I decided to keep going. This one is more of a historical fiction and ghost story, heavy on the ghost, namely Maddy Clare who is haunting a barn where she died.

From Goodreads: Sarah Piper’s lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist a ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, scarred by World War I, and obsessed with ghosts—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is haunting the barn where she committed suicide.
Since Maddy hated men in life, it is Sarah’s task to confront her in death. Soon Sarah is caught up in a desperate struggle. For Maddy’s ghost is real, she’s angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Can Sarah and Alistair’s assistant, the rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance—before she destroys them all?

I’m not a big historical fiction fan, but this one was much more of a ghost story than anything. I’m not a believer in ghosts, so the story wasn’t truly scary to me, but it was definitely well-written and creepy. You really do start to feel bad for ghost Maddy when you learn more of her background. Sarah, Matthew, and Alistair make a good team and try to figure out why Maddy is still around. What needs to be resolved before she moves on, out of our world? I’m at the point where Simone St. James has yet to let me down, so, even though I don’t normally read ghost stories, I thought this one was great. I’ll definitely keep reading her books.

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Hairpin Bridge

Title: Hairpin Bridge

Author: Taylor Adams

Genre: psychological thriller

Thank you NetGalley for this book!

I LOVED No Exit. One of the best, most suspenseful thrillers I’ve read in a long time. So when I saw that another Taylor Adams book was coming and was available on NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to get it. Thankfully, my request was approved because this one was fantastic. I’m happy to share a fantastic review of this one. And I cannot wait to go through Adams’ back catalog to uncover some other gems of his.

From Goodreads: Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge sixty miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version. But Lena isn’t buying it.

Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body.

Corporal Raymond Raycevic has agreed to meet Lena at the scene. He is sympathetic, forthright, and professional. But his story doesn’t seem to add up. For one thing, he stopped Cambry for speeding a full hour before she supposedly leapt to her death. Then there are the sixteen attempted 911 calls from her cell phone, made in what was unfortunately a dead zone.

But perhaps most troubling of all, the state trooper is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. I couldn’t live with it. Hopefully you can, Officer Raycevic.

Lena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing, tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival—one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself.

I loved this book. It was just a notch below No Exit, because that one just floored me, but this one is great and absolutely worth reading. The bulk of the story takes place in just a few hours, which was really interesting. Lena is full of fun surprises, as is Cambry’s story, which is also told, but only from Lena’s guess as to what happened. This duality creates a great unreliable narrator perspective. Is Lena’s idea of what happened to Cambry the truth? Or wishful thinking taking suicide off the table? If you liked No Exit, this one definitely needs to be on your to read list when it comes out. Another great one from Taylor Adams.

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Little Secrets

Title: Little Secrets

Author: Jennifer Hillier

Genre: psychological thriller

I’m a sucker for a good plot twist. As long as it’s reasonable and not just some random thing thrown in to convince the reader that the author is clever. Because it’s not clever. At. All. But if you can lead the reader down a path, throw in a twist, then the reader can follow the plot back and see how it all makes sense… I’m in. Sure thing. And this one definitely made sense. Whew.

From Goodreads: Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They’re admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman. This discovery sparks Marin back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix. Permanently.

From the blurb, it sounds like Marin is a pain in the ass, but she’s not. She’s raw and dealing with a terrible situation. She is struggling, her marriage is struggling, and she’s just at a loss on how to deal with anything. She makes rash decisions, but they all make sense. I flew through the second half of the book and couldn’t wait to see what happened. This book was a good, fun, entertaining twisty thriller.

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Punch Me Up to the Gods

Title: Punch Me Up to the Gods

Author: Brian Broome

Genre: memoir

Thank you NetGalley for this book. And really, I am so thankful. What a fantastic book.

I’m a white, cis, straight, woman. Because of these privileges, my life is not hard. Sure, being a woman can be difficult at times, but it doesn’t compare in any way to being a Black person in society these days. Or being a gay person. But being both Black and gay is an unbelievable challenge, to put it mildly. Brian is around my age, grew up in a small town, just like I did, but his life was vastly different all because of his Blackness and his queerness. This theme is the topic of the book, and although the book was difficult to read because of all the struggles he dealt with, I couldn’t put this one down. Reading books written by people who are different from you is critical to being a member of the world. I’m so glad NetGalley sent this one to me.

From Goodreads: Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.
 
Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

Back when I was teaching AP English, I was constantly on the hunt for passages to use in class. One section near the end of this book about Brian wanting a pink shirt is simply one of the best written passages I’ve read in ages. So many people write memoirs their story is interesting, but the writing leaves you cringing because of how cheesy or bad it is. This book is beautifully written from beginning to end. I hope this one gets the reviews it deserves. Own voices books are critical these days, and this is one I will be recommending to everyone.

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Hidden Valley Road

Title: Hidden Valley Road

Author: Robert Kolker

Genre: Biology, Schizophrenia

My poor husband has had to deal with hearing this phrase a lot over the past few days…”Do you want to know something I learned about schizophrenia?” And whether he wanted to learn it or not, I just proceeded to tell him. Because this book is fascinating. It’s not just about this one family, but it’s also about the history of research into the mental illness. All the things doctors have learned about schizophrenia since the early 1900s, which isn’t as much as you’d expect, honestly. Schizophrenia is really complex, and the treatments don’t work well for everyone.

From Goodreads: Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope. 

The Galvin story is just so awful. The family really had no idea what to do with the sick boys. But their willingness to help researchers was so important into the discoveries made in the 80s and 90s. Because as the boys were growing up in the 60s and 70s, schizophrenia was so misunderstood. We now know that it’s a genetic illness, assumed to be formed in utero. There’s no longer a nature vs nurture debate. It’s nature. 100%. But isolating the gene has been tough. This book was absolutely fascinating, and I learned so much. If the book had simply been about the family, or simply about the research, it wouldn’t have been as interesting. But having both aspects in the book was perfect. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in the subject.

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The Chalk Man

Title: The Chalk Man

Author: CJ Tudor

Genre: thriller, murder mystery

When I read and loved The Burning Girls, I made a point to get Tudor’s other book from my library. You guys, I burned through this book in two days. I absolutely couldn’t put it down. Not only was it a great story, tightly written, interesting characters, etc, it has a ton of Stephen King Easter eggs. He actually tweeted his recommendation of this book, and I imagine him giggling at the eggs as he’s reading. Even without the eggs, the book was excellent.

From Goodreads: In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he’s put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That’s when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

The story is told from Eddie’s perspective in both past and present, but the chapters are labeled as such, so it’s really easy to follow. Eddie is a great character, flawed but likable, so you still cheer for him. He has a dark side, though, too, probably due to various incidents as a child. Finding out the truth behind the dismembered body was a fun journey. So far, Tudor is two for two in my book. I can’t wait for her next book!

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Too Good to Be True

Title: Too Good to Be True

Author: Carola Lovering

Genre: psychological thriller

This book was offered as a Book of the Month offer, and although I selected another book, this one sounded good, so I looked for it at my library. Holy. Smokes. This book is one of the best I’ve read this year. I absolutely loved it. It’s definitely crazy, but in such a fun way. It took turns I wasn’t expecting.

From Goodreads: Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips―she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family―she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.

But now Burke―handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before―says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends.

In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past―or will he find his way into her future?

On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.

Nuts. This book is nuts. But in the best way possible. I actually shouted “HOLY CRAP” a couple of times when certain plot points were revealed. The story is expertly crafted and the characters jumped right off the page. Whether they were good people or not, they were definitely dynamic. I couldn’t put this book down. I’ve only read a handful of truly great thrillers this year (out of the dozens I’ve read), but I’m happy to say this one will be high on my recommendations.