Review of Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett
performed by Meryl Streep

HarperAudio, 2023. 11 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written September 5, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Ann Patchett writes immersive, meditative literary novels, and this newest one has a lovely dose of joy. With Meryl Streep narrating the audiobook, listening was a complete delight.

The first thing I wondered about the book: Is Tom Lake a person or a place? The answer is that it’s a place – a lake in northern Michigan where summer stock theater would happen.

The setting of the book is Spring of 2020. The world is shutdown. Lara and her husband have no workers to bring in the harvest on their cherry farm, but their three daughters, all in their 20s, have come home, and they’re doing the picking. While they work, they demand their mother tell them, at last, about her relationship with the famous movie star Peter Duke. She dated him before she met their father, when she was playing Emily in Our Town during that long-ago summer at Tom Lake.

That maybe doesn’t sound too exciting? In practice, it ended up being mesmerizing and engaging and I ended up dreaming about it when I stopped in the middle to sleep.

Lara reflects on her life choices, on Duke’s magnetic personality, on the pivotal events that turned her life to the path she ended up taking.

Something I love about the book is that it’s told by a happy middle-aged woman. She’s feeling a little guilty how happy she is in the middle of a pandemic because she got to be surrounded by her daughters and the husband she’s loved so long. (I remember feeling a little guilty how much I loved that my kids started playing online games with me once a week during the pandemic.) Yes, she went through some things when she was young. She didn’t end up making it as an actress and Duke didn’t stay with her and went on to be wildly successful. But she’s fundamentally happy about where life has taken her, and that gives the whole book a feeling of peaceful joy.

There are some surprises in the story — things her girls didn’t know at all and the reader doesn’t expect. The sense of place is strong and makes me want to go visit a cherry orchard in Michigan, or maybe find a summer stock theater show by a lake. Completely delightful.

annpatchett.com

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Review of Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Fourth Wing

by Rebecca Yarros
read by Rebecca Soler
with Teddy Hamilton

Recorded Books, 2023. 20 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written August 13, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Wow. Fourth Wing is a grittier, tougher, sexier adult version of a young person attending a school for wizards — or in this case, dragonriders. With all the danger (students constantly dying) and action, the book pulls you in and doesn’t stop. I found myself thinking about the book when I wasn’t listening to it.

It begins with Violet’s older sister Mira protesting to their mother that Violet’s going to die. Violet always planned to go into the scribe quadrant like their father when she got to be twenty and it was her turn to make a choice.

But her father has recently died and her mother, the general in charge of the war college, says that their family were always dragon riders, and she’ll drag Violet out of the scribe quadrant if she tries to go there. But everybody, including Violet, seems convinced that she’ll die. After all, she’s got Ehler-Danlos syndrome, which naturally doesn’t have that name, but she’s got weak joints and brittle bones that often go out of joint. And never mind that the very first day, she has to cross a parapet in the rain — recruits typically fall to their deaths before they even get a chance at the dragons.

Mira warns Violet to look to her lifelong friend Dane Atos for help, a second-year squad leader. And to watch out for Xaden Rierson, the son of the man who led a rebellion six years ago. Their mother oversaw the execution of his father, but that father was responsible for the death of their beloved brother Brennan. So of course they can be expected to hate each other. At a place where students are known to kill one another. With that warning, there’s no surprise the conflict that’s going to be in Violet’s heart, but I like how the author gets us there, showing rather than telling us why attraction happens or doesn’t happen.

Once Violet crosses the parapet, there are still many ways to die. Challenges with other cadets. Difficult training maneuvers. And it all builds toward the Threshing, when candidates may or may not bond with a dragon and then learn to wield their dragon’s magic in their own particular signet.

The world-building all develops naturally along with the action, and the author gets us completely wrapped up in it. There’s a warning at the front about violence and about sexual activity portrayed on the page. And, yes, it’s awfully messed up to have an academy to train dragon riders where a large percentage of the candidates die. Also, the sexy scenes don’t happen until two-thirds of the way through the book, but when they do, well, furniture breaks. Yes, that part is long, vivid, and over-the-top. You won’t necessarily want to listen to this with anyone else in the room.

And — I won’t say what happens, but I love it when books have an ending that makes me shout out loud with a surprising and perfect twist. The only bad part about it is that I have to wait until the next book is published to find out what happens next. (But good news! I see that Book Two is coming out in November.)

This is an amazing book. I love it that a short girl with physical limitations uses her cleverness to become a dragonrider. (Hey, I’m not giving anything away. It would be a short book if she didn’t make it.) The characters are complex (even if you can see where the romance is going), the world-building is intricate, and the dragons are just plain cool.

rebeccayarros.com

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Review of Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto, read by Eunice Wong

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Jesse Q. Sutanto
read by Eunice Wong

Books on Tape, 2023. 10 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written July 26, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Here’s a delightful cozy murder mystery with a modern Miss Marple as the sleuth. But instead of knitting, Vera Wong is an expert in teas. She lives alone in San Francisco’s Chinatown above the tea shop she established with her late husband, “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Tea House.” She gets up at 4:30 every morning, texts her lawyer son, and goes for a brisk walk before spending her day in the shop. Unfortunately, Vera only ever has one customer, a lonely old man whose wife is bedridden. But Vera always concocts the perfect tea for him.

Then, one morning, there’s a dead body in her shop, with the shop window broken. Vera calls the police and leaves things as she finds them — well, aside from cleaning up the broken glass. And drawing an outline around the body. And, well, taking a flash drive out of the dead man’s hand.

The police don’t do anything like Vera has seen happen on CSI. They don’t seem to take the murder seriously at all. They don’t even take fingerprints or look for DNA evidence! So Vera figures she’s going to have to investigate herself. She cleverly puts an obituary in the paper right away, being sure to mention that the body was found at Vera Wang’s World-Famous Tea Shop. Sure enough — the next day four people show up at the tea shop, and Vera has her suspects.

This is where the unsolicited advice comes in. Vera meets the dead man’s wife and daughter, as well as his twin brother. And two young people who claim to be journalists. And, naturally, she gets to know them, serves them tea, and gives them unsolicited advice.

What follows is a delightful story as a lonely and interfering old lady investigates a murder – and finds a family. Except there’s that little problem that one member of her new family is likely the murderer. Which one? Vera is certainly clever enough to find out!

I had given up expecting murder mysteries to be amazingly heartwarming! This one’s delightful.

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Review of Zero Days, by Ruth Ware

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

Zero Days

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 14 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written July 17, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay, if you like thrillers at all, this is one of the best I’ve read. I started finding excuses to keep listening to the audiobook (which I usually do while doing chores) because I was completely invested in the story.

It begins with a young woman named Jack breaking into a large office building. And it takes subtlety, strength, planning, and attention to detail. I found myself hoping it was like the beginning of the Scarlett & Browne books, showing a successful heist to start off, so that we’d understand how capable our main characters are. Because it was super tense, and I was already afraid she was going to get caught.

Speaking to her through her earpiece, helping direct her movements and evade security, was her husband Gabe. They clearly have a great working relationship and deep fondness for one another, with a little flirting along with the danger. I found myself thinking that it’s very unusual for a main character to be in a great marriage right at the start of the book. I had a bad feeling that situation wouldn’t last.

I won’t even tell you how those gut feelings were fulfilled or not fulfilled. If you read a description you’ll find out, because it’s the very beginning — but I did enjoy the suspense right from the start.

What I will tell you is that Jack ends up being on the run from the police while trying to solve a mystery — and pretty much everything is against her and she doesn’t know whom she can trust.

And she’s a character I couldn’t help but admire, incredibly good at tight situations, so I was invested in her making it, but not at all sure how or if she would. The tension doesn’t ever let up.

I have to say that Imogen Church is the perfect narrator for a young British woman in a tense situation. I’ve listened to quite a few of her audiobooks by now and she adds to my enjoyment. I’d had the audio sped up with the previous audiobook I’d listened to, and had to slow it back down to normal, because she speaks quickly and keeps the tension going.

I’m currently on the Morris Award Committee for YA debut novels, so only have time to “read” novels for adults in audio form, and the only problem with this thriller is it made me want to spend all my time with it, not reading the award-eligible books I needed to read. So good! Give it a try!

ruthware.com

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Review of Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 2

Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver
read by Charlie Thurston

HarperAudio, 2022. 21 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written June 30, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2023 Pulitzer Prize Winner
2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner

I’ll be honest: When I was in the middle of this long audiobook, I wasn’t enjoying it much. It tells the story of Demon Copperhead — a kid named Damon, who, like the father who died before he was born, had red hair. He was born in the very rural Lee County, Virginia, to an addict Mom, and bad things just kept happening to him, so the book was somewhat depressing. I kept listening, because it was written by Barbara Kingsolver, who is a truly amazing author.

There was abuse from a stepdad, overdose death of his mother, terrible foster home situations, and eventually getting addicted himself. The narrator had such an authentic rural Virginia accent, I was surprised when he spoke at the end of the book in the “thank you for reading this book” section without the accent.

Something the author does to make all this terrible stuff tolerable is telling the story from the perspective of an older Demon telling about his life. So we know he’s going to survive and get through these awful things. And when things take a particularly bad turn, there’s plenty of foreshadowing, with him wondering if he had done things differently in the events leading up to the disaster, if that would have helped. Or talking about how he didn’t fully appreciate it when things were good — so you know his troubles aren’t over.

When I was in the middle thinking I was tired of listening to it and that I don’t enjoy listening to a rural southern accent as much as a British one — that was when the kids in the story noticed that the media portrays to the world that rural southerners and hillbillies are stupid. Touché! As I began thinking I didn’t really like spending all that time in Demon’s life — then he naturally in the story pointed out that’s how the media wants me to think.

The book also showed the opioid crisis and how it gained full steam. (I’m going to call it Historical because it begins in the 1990s.) The drug companies actually looked for populations likely to get hooked and sent their representatives there, giving doctors kickbacks if they prescribed the addictive painkillers. Damon got hooked after a football injury — beginning by only taking exactly what was prescribed. The whole awful situation is told in a way that reminds the reader that these are people’s lives that were destroyed, not some kind of lazy subhumans who deserved their fate.

And yes, by the time I’d listened to all 21 hours of this book, I was glad I did. I ended up having a much higher view of the folks in the communities portrayed, and I was pleased and proud to have spent so much of my time with a kid who got way more than his share of tough breaks in life, but whose heart shines like gold.

barbarakingsolver.net

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Review of Horse, by Geraldine Brooks

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Horse

by Geraldine Brooks
read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell, and Michael Oblora

Penguin Audio, 2022. 14 hours, 6 minutes.
Review written March 18, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

A big thank you to my friend Keith, who persistently recommended this book to me. When he first recommended it, I was reading for the Cybils and didn’t get to it. Then at the start of the year when he said it was the best book he’d read in 2022, I put the audiobook on hold again, and this time when it came in a couple months later, I made a point of listening, and was glad I did.

This book is a rich tapestry. It’s set in 2019 and also in the 1850s. The two viewpoint characters in 2019 are working behind the scenes at the Smithsonian. One of those is an African American grad student writing an article for Smithsonian magazine on restoring a painting he found when his neighbor put it out in the trash. And his dissertation is about the depiction of African Americans in 19th century American equestrian art. Those two things come together.

And along the way he meets Jess, who works behind the scenes at the Smithsonian with animal skeletons. A British researcher has come to examine a particular skeleton, and Jess has to do some research to find it. The label just says “Horse,” but records show it’s the skeleton of Lexington, one of the greatest thoroughbreds of all time.

This book is the story of Lexington. The main viewpoint character from the past is Jarret, an enslaved boy who was present when Lexington was foaled. He manages to stay with Lexington for the horse’s whole life, and this book tells that story, mixed in with the story of restoring the painting and the skeleton in 2019.

The story is wonderfully told. And this audio production, using different readers for all the different viewpoint characters, makes it all the more immersive.

I was very surprised at the end to learn that Lexington was a real horse with an actual stellar career as a racer and as a sire. I had assumed she’d have to make up a fictional horse. His skeleton actually did spend time in the Smithsonian labeled as “Horse.” Most of the historical characters were real people, but the author brought them to life through the eyes of Jarret, the African American groom who loved him and knew him best. Jarret’s life is the fictional part, though with enough plausibility, you can tell yourself this is what really happened.

As she says in the afterword, because African Americans were so crucial to American racing in the nineteenth century, her story of a racehorse had to become a story of race. I have to say that I completely hated some things that happened toward the end of the book, though I see why she put them in. But I sure would have liked the story to go a different way. However, even with that reservation, this was an amazing book that I won’t forget any time soon.

geraldinebrooks.com

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Review of Chef’s Kiss, written by Jarrett Melendez, illustrated by Danica Brine

Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

Chef’s Kiss

written by Jarrett Melendez
illustrated by Danica Brine
colored by Hank Jones
lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Oni Press, 2022. 160 pages.
Review written February 26, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Award is given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. The committee picked a fun one with this rom-com graphic novel.

The characters in this book are new adults. We meet four of them on the first panel, moving into a new apartment together after college. Two have jobs already, which they’re ready to begin. One is staying in school with a new major (theater), and the other, Ben, has job interviews lined up.

We follow Ben to the interviews, and in each one, the interviewer loses interest when Ben admits he doesn’t have professional experience. He decides to lower his sights, but even the trash collectors want professional experience!

It’s at that point that Ben sees a Help Wanted sign at a restaurant, with “No Experience Necessary” at the bottom. And the cook who talks with him is heart-throbbingly handsome. Ben does have some ideas about cooking and something of a knack for it. But it’s a three-week training process before he can be permanently hired, and he has to please the owner’s pig!

The training is full of ups and downs, as he gets to know his handsome coworker. But then on the last day, his parents learn that he didn’t get the writing job he’d told them about. They pressure him instead to take an internship with a literary magazine, with their support, rather than continuing with “this nonsense” of working in a restaurant.

The whole thing is super fun, with adorable characters trying to set out into adult life. Since it’s a graphic novel, it didn’t take me long to read, and left me smiling.

onipress.com

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Review of The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Golden Enclaves

Lesson Three of the Scholomance

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey (Penguin Random House), 2022. 407 pages.
Review written October 2, 2022, from my own copy, preordered from Amazon.com
Starred review

Okay, this book is SO GOOD!!!!

All right, enough gushing, now for a serious review. First, I’m so happy that my preordered copy arrived just before Cybils season started, so I could read it before I need to start madly reading Young Adult Speculative Fiction books, which is the category I’m judging this year. Although this book is speculative fiction and features a young woman freshly out of school, it’s published for adults and isn’t eligible for the Cybils Awards.

First, let me say that this is a trilogy where you absolutely must read the books in order to understand what’s going on. So I’m going to speak about the trilogy in general terms in this review so as to not give anything away. If you haven’t read the earlier books yet, you are in luck! You won’t have to wait a year in between books to find out what happens after huge dramatic reversals at the ends of books one and two. But be prepared — once you start, you’re going to want to finish. I stayed up awfully late last night because of this book. (And I suspect I’ll want to reread the entire trilogy after my Cybils reading is done.)

The story is amazing how it pulls you in. I couldn’t stop thinking about it this morning. My shorthand way of talking about it is that it’s a story about a Wizard School that wants to kill you.

But I love the way Naomi Novik does the world-building, gradually telling us more and more about the world and the magic they use. This is why you really need to start at the beginning.

The trilogy follows El (short for Galadriel) whom the universe – and the Scholomance – seems to want to make a frightfully powerful death sorceress. This is in balance with her mother, who only works healing magic with sweetness and light. The first book starts with her junior year in the Scholomance.

We learn about the magic in that universe – parallel to ours – which always has a price. Wizards can get mana by doing work and helping others, which gives them power to do magic. But they can also use malia, which gets power from taking from the life force of others. The things that want to kill you in the Scholomance are malificaria, and they are drawn to magic, and especially to young and powerful wizards, so they flock to the Scholomance like a magnet. In the earlier books, we learn that El has a grudge against the kids from enclaves, where wizards band together to share magic. But it’s hard to get into enclaves, and there’s a prophecy about El destroying enclaves. And then there’s Orion, that annoying hero from the New York enclave who won El’s heart. He wound up in a bad place in the last book. Has she seen the end of him?

So in this book, El is out of the Scholomance and figuring out what she’s going to do with her life and what she’s going to do about Orion. She came out of the school with the Golden Sutras — powerful spell books about building Golden Enclaves without using malia.

And then a mawmouth is attacking the London enclave. A mawmouth is the most horrible kind of malificaria of all. It devours all in its path — and they don’t die, but remain suffering inside it forever after. Before El, there was only one living wizard who’d ever defeated a mawmouth. El, however, fought and destroyed more than one in the Scholomance. Her classmates know this, and call her to London. And that has consequences….

Another thing I love about this book is the way El, who started out friendless, now has a whole community who care about her and help her.

Okay, I’d love to say more, but I should stop. If you enjoy reading fantasy at all, tackle this brilliant trilogy. It’s outstanding.

TheScholomance.com
naominovik.com
randomhousebooks.com

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Review of How to Raise an Elephant, by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery 0

How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith
narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Recorded Books, 2020. 8.5 hours on 8 compact discs.
Review written October 7, 2021, from a library audiobook

Here’s the latest installment of the adventures of Mma Ramotswe and her associates with the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana. This audiobook has a new narrator, and I wasn’t crazy about some of her character voices, but I did love the way she rolls all her Rs and of course her delightful accent.

If you haven’t read any other books in this series, I do recommend beginning with the first book, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. That one is better written as a detective story, but the main point of these stories are not the cases the agency must deal with, but the relationships between the delightful characters and their observations on life and human nature.

In this one, there are three main cases to be considered: a distant cousin of Mma Ramotswe’s asking for money, new neighbors moving in next door who seem to be having marital troubles, and Charlie borrowing Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van for a mysterious purpose.

The cases aren’t solved by figuring out puzzles, but as we see the ins and outs revealed, we gain insights on relationships and approaching life with compassion. Though Charlie’s story – which is not too surprising because of the title – ends up involving an orphaned baby elephant.

I’ve taken to listening to these books on my commute because I don’t quite have patience for the rambling and meditative observations on human nature when reading an actual book. But stuck in traffic, they never fail to make me smile. The books are anchored in Botswana, and I’m starting to feel like the country itself is a beloved friend.

recordedbooks.com

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Review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid
read by Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan, and Robin Miles

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2017. 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written August 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

I heard about this book on Book Tok and thought I’d give it a try. I’m not completely sure why, because I’ve never been a fan of celebrity tell-alls, and this is essentially a fictional celebrity tell-all, telling the life of a glamorous Hollywood icon, the most beautiful woman in the world.

But once I started, the book pulled me in quickly. Instead of starting with the glamorous Evelyn Hugo, the book begins with Monique, a struggling biracial writer who works for an upscale magazine. Her new husband recently decided to move to the west coast, and she didn’t go with him, because this magazine is her chance and she needs to be in New York. So she’s thinking about her empty apartment and short failed marriage.

But then her magazine tells her to go interview the now-reclusive Evelyn Hugo for a feature article. When she tries to figure out why, it turns out that Evelyn Hugo requested her specifically. And when she begins the interviews, she learns that Evelyn doesn’t actually want to do a feature article. She wants to give her story to Monique to publish in a book after Evelyn’s death — but she won’t give Monique any idea if she has a reason to anticipate that will happen soon. The book will be worth millions, but meanwhile, what does Monique tell her employers?

And as we hear Evelyn’s life story, we get more and more pulled in. Despite the seven husbands, she’s no King Henry VIII. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Evelyn is bisexual and the love of her life was a woman. But in Hollywood beginning in the 40s and 50s, that wasn’t something she could let people know and still have a career.

The book does have some raunchy moments. But mostly, you’re pulled into the life of the “most beautiful woman in the world” and come to understand her choices, even the questionable ones. In the middle of the book, I wondered why I’d been pulled into a fake celebrity tell-all, but by the end, I felt like something deeper and more important was going on. Monique gains perspective from hearing Evelyn’s story, and the reader will, too.

Oh, and if you start out by liking celebrity tell-alls, you should enjoy this book all the more!

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