Review of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
read by Arina Li

Harlequin Audio, 2020. 6 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written November 11, 2025, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

I placed a hold on Before the Coffee Gets Cold after I read and loved What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama, and many blurbs about the book compared it to Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

And yes, it’s a good comparison. Both books are set in Tokyo and are international bestsellers translated from Japanese. Both tell stories of separate people whose lives are changed after they visit a particular place. Both have a touch of magic – this one a much stronger thread, enough that I’m going to call it science fiction. Of course I enjoyed What You Are Looking For Is in the Library more because the magical place is a library – but I enjoyed this book, too.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a time travel story. Normally, I’m not the audience for time travel stories. (Though because I only review books I like, my readers might not realize there are plenty of time travel stories I’ve decided not to review.) But I like the way the time travel in this book came with rules that did away with any nasty paradoxes or feelings of “that wouldn’t happen that way.” (Okay, there’s one exception to that, which I’ll list at the end. But it didn’t nag at me like in some books.)

The setting is a café where visitors can time travel. But the rules are many. Nothing they do in the past will change the present. They can only time travel in one particular seat. And they can’t leave that seat while they are time traveling. So of course they can only talk with people who are also in the café at the time they travel to. And perhaps most crucial – the time travel begins when a particular cup of coffee is poured – and they have to drink the entire cup – and finish before the coffee gets cold.

The rules make the story more fun. And no real explanation is given, despite what the first featured visitor wants. That’s simply the way the time travel works. By not trying to explain it and by making the rules somewhat inconvenient – it’s easier for the reader not to question how it works.

The book features four time travelers. First is a young woman who wants to revisit the conversation in the café when her boyfriend told her he was moving to America. Then comes a wife whose husband is inflicted with Alzheimer’s and has forgotten who she is. We’ve got a sister who wants to see her sister one last time, and a woman who wants to reassure herself that her daughter will be okay.

Along the way, we get to know the owner and workers in the café and its regular visitors, including the ghost of a woman who time traveled too long, and her coffee got cold.

Oh, and what’s the one little nagging question? When somebody goes back in time to a time when they know the person they want to talk to was in the café – where did their own past self go? (Maybe I missed the part where they made sure it was before or after they themselves were there, but I wasn’t super clear on how that part worked.) The story was done well enough, I didn’t really think about that until after the encounter, though.

It’s one of those charming feel-good books, and I just learned that so far there are four sequels, though unfortunately the library doesn’t own the audiobook versions. But I do like all that can be done within those simple time-traveling rules, and how much it can reflect on life, relationships, and interactions.

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Review of The Cassatt Sisters, by Lisa Groen

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Cassatt Sisters

A Novel of Love and Art

by Lisa Groen

Black Rose Writing, 2025. 260 pages.
Review written November 5, 2025, from my own copy, ordered via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Full disclosure: The author of this book is a friendly acquaintance of mine. She was a regular customer back when I worked at Sembach Air Base Library in Germany, and we became Facebook friends, and I read and enjoyed her first book, The Mother’s Book of Well-Being.

So when I heard that she’d written a novel about the Impressionists, of course I preordered a copy!

Now, I didn’t know a lot about the Impressionists except having been thrilled to enjoy their work in Paris at the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay – which together are my favorite museums in Paris, or, yes, in the world. So I enjoyed finding out more – and especially about Mary Cassatt, the only American woman among the Impressionists.

This book covers her life beginning in 1877. Mary Cassatt had already been living in Paris, working to establish herself as an artist, living with her sister Lydia and her parents. They had settled in Paris as well, to support her. Mary’s close relationship with Lydia is a primary thread all through this book. Lydia was her muse, and often the subject of her work.

But the book begins with her admiring the work of Edgar Degas, meeting him, beginning to work with him – and starting a romantic relationship.

Now, honestly, if that were all there was to it, the book might have been a little trite. Let’s just say the relationship doesn’t last, and Mary coping with that – while grappling with who she is as an artist – deepens and enriches the book.

And life as an artist wasn’t the same for Mary as it was for the male Impressionists. Nor was it the same as for Berthe Morisot, who was a mother. This story of Mary Cassatt’s life, work, loves, and ambitions, makes the reader think about women and our place in the world – and how things have changed and not changed in 150 years.

I did laugh when Mary called Monet’s Water Lilies glorified wallpaper – apparently an actual comment of hers. The book included black-and-white reproductions of the specific paintings that got mentioned, which added richness to the narrative, since art was such an important part of Mary’s life. Another thing I thought was funny was when Mary used her nieces and nephews as models – and then her mother wouldn’t let her “sell the grandchildren.” She was more limited than the men in whom she could use as models – and then her mother didn’t want her to sell the paintings of family. What’s a woman to do?

By the end of the book, I felt like I’d spent time in Paris – only in such a way that I really need to go back as soon as possible. I will look at the Impressionists’ art with new eyes, now feeling like they are interesting individuals with personalities, instead of one big group. This book, as happens with the very best historical fiction, made these great artists of history come alive in my mind.

lisagroen.com
blackrosewriting.com

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Review of The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Book Club for Troublesome Women

by Marie Bostwick
read by Lisa Flanagan

Harper Muse, 2025. 11 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written October 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I loved this one. In many ways it’s a standard story of four women bonding through the ups and downs of life because they’ve come together in a book club. But this book adds something special because they begin meeting in the early 1960s, and the first book they read together is The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan.

So the book isn’t simply about enduring friendships through life’s difficulties. It’s also about a woman’s role and society’s expectations for women.

The setting is a fictional suburb in northern Virginia called Concordia – that fits right in with the suburbs found here today. The four women of the book club are chafing under the expectations of running a home and caring for their husband and kids. One wants to be a writer, another wants to get her art into galleries, another wanted to be a veterinarian – but got married and dropped out of school shortly before getting her Bachelor’s in order to help establish her husband’s practice. And the fourth is a former combat nurse who now has six kids – and gets pregnant because she wasn’t able to get birth control pills without her husband’s permission, and he hadn’t gotten around to coming to the appointment yet.

A couple of the women have good relationships with their husbands, despite some ups and downs and working things out. A couple of them have very bad relationships with their husbands. The writer gets a job writing a column for a women’s magazine – but they only want her to write fluff pieces. The high point of the book is when she decides to write an honest essay about what The Feminine Mystique and the book club have meant to her.

I loved listening to this book right from the start. It got me thinking about my life and my mother’s life. My mother got married at the end of 1960, and I, her third child, was born in 1964 – so she was navigating marriage right in this time period. My mom did not achieve the perfect house and family – she had way too many kids to keep up (ending up with thirteen) – but she desperately wanted to. My mom would decidedly not have joined this book club, being staunchly against feminism, and despite the fact she didn’t meet society’s expectations for a housewife, she did pass those expectations on to me. So something else I had to deal with after I got married was realizing I couldn’t afford to be a stay-at-home mom even if I wanted to be. And keeping a clean house and good meals? An always failing proposition. In so many ways it was crazily liberating when my husband left me – because it pretty much threw out all those expectations, and I got to find out how truly wonderful a meaningful career can be.

But of course it’s all more complicated than can be put into a paragraph. Or an essay. But a novel – that’s a wonderful format to explore how attitudes were changing for women in the early 1960s and all that could mean for individuals.

And besides all that thought-provoking stuff, these characters were so much fun to get to know and spend time with. Troublesome women can be very entertaining! Highly recommended!

mariebostwick.com

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Review of A Tangled Web, by L. M. Montgomery

Fiction Review, Historical, Old Favorites, Starred Review 0

A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

Bantam Books, 1989. Originally published in 1931. 257 pages.
Review written June 20, 2025, from my own copy.
Starred Review

Back in 2019, I got to visit Prince Edward Island, and attempted to reread all of L. M. Montgomery’s books in the order she published them before I did. I did not finish that project, but I did reread fourteen of her twenty novels. However, it’s only now in 2025 that I got back to that project with the joy of rereading A Tangled Web as the perfect diversion on a flight that ended up much longer than planned because of storms.

A Tangled Web begins some of L. M. Montgomery’s more mature novels. Technically, it was published for adults, and the characters featured are almost entirely adults and young adults. But as with all of her books, there’s a wide appeal from preteens through adults, and you’d better believe that in 1931, she would not have written any sexual content.

A Tangled Web is about two large entwined (by intermarrying) families, the Darks and the Penhallows, living on Prince Edward Island. Aunt Becky is the owner of the famous clan heirloom, the Dark jug. She has gathered all the clan as she knows her time is coming – to tell them who will inherit the old brown jug.

All the family comes. Either because they’re desperate to own the jug, or because they want the entertainment of watching Aunt Becky make everyone squirm with all the secrets she knows about everyone. Well, she makes hints and threats – but announces that they will have to meet again on a certain day more than a year away, when the one family member who can keep a secret will announce who gets the jug.

And almost no one in the family is unaffected by the meetings and the jug. The book covers several of those life-changing events. This book reminds me greatly of L. M. Montgomery’s short story collections – but the stories are tangled together by somehow relating to the family jug.

And I’m afraid Maud Montgomery seems more cynical than in her youth. Yes, there is some love at first sight – some that even works out in the end – but there’s a theme running through of the wisdom of taking a second look at your passions to see if they stand the test of time. (And some do, some don’t.) Yes, there are a bunch of happy marriages that happen in this book – but there are also some painful course corrections for the people involved. And I love that at least one happily ever after happens when the course correction goes away from marriage. And that at least one legacy from Aunt Becky brings great good to a couple people who richly deserve it.

But you absolutely cannot go wrong with L. M. Montgomery. She is a master of making quirky characters come alive and revealing the vagaries of human nature. If you haven’t read her books yet, this isn’t necessarily the one I’d start with – but anyone who’s read and loved any of her books will be happy to find out there’s more.

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Review of All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker
read by Edoardo Ballerini

Books on Tape, 2024. 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Review written September 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I don’t remember where I found the recommendation that prompted me to put this eaudiobook on hold, but I laughed when I recognized the cover. It turns out, I heard the author speak at ALA Annual Conference 2024, and received a free copy of the print book, signed by the author. But it’s still easier for me to get around to reading it if it’s in my eaudiobooks holds queue. (What can I say? Books I own don’t have a due date, and I can listen while I’m doing other things.)

In the middle of this book, I was going to report that it’s a super sad book, with lots of people making bad choices. But almost unbelievably, it turns out to all come to a satisfying conclusion at the end. I’m saying that up front to encourage other readers to persevere.

It’s a sweeping saga beginning with an unusual boy and girl from small-town America who are each other’s only friend. Patch has only one eye, and his mother helped him deal with that by encouraging him to embrace the identity of a pirate. Patch sometimes steals things, and he’s not popular with the other kids. But when he’s the only person who answers a girl named Saint’s open invitation to visit her beehives – using someone else’s invitation – the two become friends.

But when they’re thirteen, Patch sees a man attacking the girl who’s the queen bee of their class. Patch intervenes, and the girl gets away – but Patch disappears. The only one who continues to look for him – without regard for her own safety – is Saint. Over months, she follows every lead, insistent that Patch is still alive and out there somewhere.

Patch, on his part, is being kept in a completely dark room. He can’t see anything. But there is also a girl there – a girl who tells him how to stay alive, unlike the other girls who were there before him. And in the many hours they’re alone together, she paints pictures in his mind of places she’s been. Her name is Grace, and she is his tether to reality.

But when Saint finally finds Patch, the person who captured him isn’t found – presumed dead, because there’s a fire. But Grace is also missing.

The doctor tells Patch’s mother – who lost the ability to cope with life while Patch was missing – that his mind invented Grace while he was imprisoned in the dark. But that wouldn’t explain all the places Grace described that Patch had never seen before. And it turns out, there are missing girls from those places. So Patch sets out on a quest to find Grace – and the other missing girls as well.

The story’s a saga, and there’s lots more to the book than that. Most of our characters make some bad choices along the way, and fall in love with the wrong people. We follow Patch and Saint across years of searching and years of dealing with the things life throws at them.

And I was surprised how satisfied I was with the ways it all comes together in the end! Believe it or not, even telling you that much, I don’t think I’m giving anything away – that’s just the beginning of how their lives’ courses are set.

So read this book when you’re ready for a saga about friendship and love and persistence and guilt and punishment and protection and painting and the mind’s eye.

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Review of James, by Percival Everett, read by Dominic Hoffman

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

James

by Percival Everett
read by Dominic Hoffman

Books on Tape, 2024. 7 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written September 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put James on hold shortly after reading the graphic novel Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson. And then, when my hold was only a couple weeks away from coming in, I accidentally canceled the hold when I meant to cancel a different hold – and then had several more months to wait. Anyway, that gave me more time between the two books, which are essentially doing the same thing – retelling the story of Huckleberry Finn, this time from the perspective of Jim.

I honestly enjoyed Big Jim and the White Boy a little more. It was more light-hearted and cast Jim as essentially a superhero, telling something of a tall tale about his exploits. A lot of fun to read.

“Fun” isn’t the word I’d use to describe James. Though it was certainly more realistic, and gave you some insights about what would happen if a slave ran away with a white boy and floated south down the Mississippi River.

In both books, James doesn’t talk in the ridiculous way Mark Twain portrayed him talking. In this book, it’s quite a theme that among themselves, slaves speak “proper” English, but deliberately sound ignorant and childlike if any white people are around. James knows how to read and has spent hours in Judge Thatcher’s library reading philosophy. He dreams about people like Voltaire and has discussions with them about their defense of slavery. Throughout the book, it’s just plain comical how disconcerted white folks are if they hear Jim speaking without using slave speech. There’s a funny scene where the elders are teaching kids how to speak to white folks. The trick is to always play dumb and let the white folks figure things out for themselves.

Mostly the book is a series of adventures and tight spots, some with Huck and some without. James wants to be free and wants to purchase the freedom of his wife and daughter. And along the way, he acquires a pencil and also wants to write his story. There’s plenty of insight and commentary on slavery in the days just before the Civil War began. A very powerful and moving story that does shine light on an evil time in our nation’s history.

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Review of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

by Michiko Aoyama
read by Hanako Footman, Susan Momoko Hingley, Kenichiro Thomson, Winson Ting, and Shiro Kawai

HarlequinAudio, 2023. 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written September 9, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First, a great big thank-you to my friend Suzanne LaPierre for recommending this book! I loved it in every way! She recommended it in an answer to my new email newsletter, Book Talking with Sondy, so let me encourage more of my readers to sign up for Book Talking with Sondy and recommend books back to me!

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a translation of a Japanese book, set in a neighborhood of Tokyo. We get five interlocking stories – a 21-year-old working in a department store and not happy about it, a 35-year-old salary man who wishes he could open an antique store, a 40-year-old who got demoted while she was on maternity leave, a 30-year-old NEET (not in employment, education or training), and a newly retired 65-year-old.

All of these people are thinking about their lives and their work and what it all means and what they want and what they’re stuck with – or are they actually stuck? All of them find their way to a small community library with a very large librarian, Sayuri Komachi.

I did love that these folks found a path to meaning in a library – my one quibble being that this librarian had time to take up a hobby and make felted objects while she waits behind a screen for customers to show up.

But this particular librarian has mystical powers – and she gives each of our featured characters the books they ask for, plus one seemingly unrelated book that makes all the difference. She also gives each one a bonus gift – a small felted object that ends up having special significance to that person and helps to change their life.

And all of our heroes find paths to new meaning after their encounter with the almost magical librarian. So that might be hard to read for someone struggling with similar issues themselves – except that the author treats all of the characters and their situations with deep respect, showing plainly that their life and their value goes much deeper than their current work situation.

Just a wonderful and uplifting book. And look! Our library has ordered another book by this author – The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park. I have already placed a hold.

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Review of Austen at Sea, by Natalie Jenner

Austenalia, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Austen at Sea

by Natalie Jenner

St. Martin’s Press, 2025. 304 pages.
Review written August 25, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Like the author’s wonderful earlier book, The Jane Austen Society, this book wasn’t so much a retelling of one of Jane Austen’s classics as it was a story about her legacy. In both books, something I loved was the characters discussing the fine points of Jane Austen’s novels as true aficionados. Other Janeites will enjoy that part as much as I did.

And we’ve also got Louisa May Alcott as a character in this book! That was a nice surprise. Here’s the set-up: In 1865, two sisters from Boston and two brothers from Philadelphia are on a ship crossing the ocean to visit the elderly Admiral Frank Austen, Jane Austen’s surviving brother. The two parties hadn’t known about each other, but both had written to the admiral about their love of Jane’s writings. And the admiral got some match-making ideas.

And another person traveling on the ship from Boston is Louisa May Alcott, accompanying an elderly friend to Europe to regain her health after the Civil War (as she in fact did). On the ship, the ladies decide to put on a theatrical production as a benefit to charity, with Lu in charge – as she had often done with her sisters, and as the characters do in Mansfield Park.

I was honestly a little disappointed that, although there is plenty of romance in this book, the admiral’s schemes don’t bear fruit. The book ends up being very much about women’s rights – and how women lost them when they married. Though it turns out that the laws were different on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But I’d never thought about what it meant that a woman marrying no longer had property rights.

So – I enjoyed the story, loved the characters (especially Louisa May Alcott!), delighted in the discussions of Jane Austen’s books and the visits to the places she lived, and learned things as well. This is definitely another good one for Jane Austen fans like me. (And do check out my Austenalia page while you’re at it!)

nataliejenner.com

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Review of Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson, read by January LaVoy

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson
read by January LaVoy

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 27 minutes.
Review written August 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Good Dirt, from the author of Black Cake, is another sweeping saga that shows us a person in extraordinary circumstances in the present and weaves a tapestry of history around that person.

In Good Dirt, Ebony Freeman has fled to France in order to get some time to herself, nine months after the man she was supposed to marry didn’t show up for the wedding.

This wasn’t Ebbie’s first brush with notoriety, and the first time was even worse: When she was ten years old, her fifteen-year-old brother was shot in their Connecticut home when some thieves were trying to steal their family’s historic old jar. Ebbie was with her brother when he died and saw the jar in pieces on the floor.

The family was proud of that jar, and loved to tell stories about its history. It came to New England when Ebbie’s great-great-grandfather brought it along when he stowed away on a ship and made his way to freedom. Moses, the enslaved man who made the jar, carved an inscription on the bottom of the jar, at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write. That inscription has inspired the family for generations.

But now Ebbie’s managing her friend’s guesthouse in France – and the first people to show up are her ex-fiance and his new girlfriend, Ashley. It’s not as big a coincidence as it seems – Ashley had picked up an ad Ebbie’s friend had placed in a neighborhood cafe when she was in the area for Ebbie’s planned wedding. But the awkward situation forces Ebbie to think through a lot of things she’d been avoiding.

And that’s the situation that fuels the book. Ebbie decides to write the stories of the jar, and we learn its rich history while watching Ebbie deal with her own history and what this all means for the present with the man she’d planned to marry in front of her on the other side of the ocean.

As in Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson gives us multiple perspectives on events. I, for one, didn’t care what the ex-fiance thought about things – but she uses even that to help us get to know the whole family – all still dealing with the loss of Ebbie’s brother, and trying to go on with dignity in the present.

This is another powerful story that completely enthralls.

charmspen.com

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Review of The Women, by Kristin Hannah, read by Julia Whelan

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Women

by Kristin Hannah
read by Julia Whelan

Macmillan Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 57 minutes.
Review written August 5, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I know, I know – I’m way behind most people on reading this book, but Wow! Now I see why it’s been so popular.

“The Women” the title refers to are the women who served in Vietnam. Even though they were often told after the war that “There were no women in Vietnam.” (And Kristin Hannah’s author’s note at the end tells us that was a detail she got from more than one woman she interviewed.)

She tells the story of many women by focusing in on one woman, Frankie McGrath. At her brother’s going-away party, setting off to serve in Vietnam, when they all thought the war would be over soon, she was told, “Women can be heroes, too.”

So Frankie trained as a nurse and decided to serve in Vietnam with her brother. But the very day she signed up and told her parents the news was the day that they got word that her brother was killed in action, no remains found.

When Frankie got to Vietnam, it was trial by fire. Kristin Hannah takes us through her bewildering first day when there was a mass casualty event, through her training in the neuro ward, watching over patients who were unresponsive, through her coming into true expertise as an Operating Room Nurse.

And the author shows us how this was the worst and best time of Frankie’s life. Besides the horrors that haunt her, she built friendships like cement. She fell in love more than once – trying to avoid the ones who are already married. And she watched people die. But she also saved many lives, and held the hands of the dying so that they were not alone.

Half of the book is about what happened after Frankie got back. She was not hailed as a hero, not even by her parents, who’d told people she’d gone to school in Florence. The reader can see her PTSD symptoms – before that was even named as an issue.

There were times as I was reading this book when I cringed because I was pretty sure another impossibly hard thing was going to hit Frankie. And I wasn’t wrong.

But this is ultimately a story of a woman who went through impossibly hard things and came out the other side. The book ends on a well-earned hopeful note. And I love that Frankie represents the actual lives of the thousands of women who served in Vietnam. Her story helps us understand their stories.

kristinhannah.com

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