Well, there goes my last Tana French book. When is the next one??? (Seriously. When. I need it.) Like the previous four Tana French books (all part of the Dublin Murder Squad series), this book follows a detective from the Murder Squad as they investigate a murder, all the while it gets sneakily personal and deep. Also like previous Tana French books, it is secretly obsessed with friendship, how connections between people are formed and broken. This one she breaks the mold a little, though. […]
Book Exchange Book 2 – Delicious Mystery
This was my second book given to me this year for the Pajiba Cannonball Read Book Exchange. My benefactor picked two in my “to read” list off of Goodreads, and gave this one a glowing recommendation, and they were not wrong!! This was a real page turner, I was obsessed with seeing how it all played out! Missing children, murder, detective partners with secret histories, the wood with its own secrets of present and past. At its roots the story isn’t that complex, and […]
Tana French is an evil sorceress. Her words are her magical weapons.
It’s not entirely hyperbole when I say that Tana French is magic. When I’m reading her books, more than with any other author I’ve ever read, I feel ensorcelled. Like, I’m being pulled in to the book with ropes that have been tied around my emotions, and it’s entirely not in my control how much I’m allowed to be inside the story. Her books are wrenching. So much humanity in there. Joy and suffering and pain and longing and regret. All at the same time. Plus […]
Three romance novellas, and I’m deciding how I feel about novellas
I haven’t read an overwhelming number of novellas, and at least one which you lovely folks seem to love has been on hold at my library FOREVER. So, in my limited experience, I’ve found them to be, mostly, pleasantly diverting but lacking true staying power. There are two — Courtney Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter and Unlocked that I have liked a lot, but otherwise I’ve felt that the stores suffer from their shortened length. We lose characterization, or the conclusion feels rushed, or the driving conflict is either […]
An inspirational story of grief and survival, loss and self-discovery
A lovely and simply told tale of grief and loss, survival and renewal. This is the story of Nora Webster, a newly-widowed 40-year-old woman in a claustrophobic Irish town who must suddenly face not just the challenge of financial security and raising her children without a husband, but how to step back into the mainstream of life after 21 years of housekeeping and childrearing. She is depressed, angry, secretive, and resentful in turns, and often too self-absorbed to help her children with their grief. She […]
Unluck of the Irish
Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls Trilogy was originally released as three separate novels: The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). This collected edition from 1986 includes an Epilogue as well, rounding out the story of two Irish girls who grow up, fall in and out of love, and get involved in bad relationships in the 1950s/early 1960s. O’Brien’s writing is a delight to read. She mixes humor with sadness and tragedy. Caithleen Brady (Kate) and Bridget Brennan (Baba) […]