After the whirlwind that was the month of March, I am finally getting caught up. I wanted to document the books that I read in February, along with some reviews!
I dove into a couple of historical fiction novels which is a genre I really haven’t read in years, but it makes me excited to have found one that I loved!! Then the rest of them were mysteries and thrillers.
These book reviews are hard to do!! Ha! I feel like I am terrible at writing them, but I am trying to make myself. My idea of a book review is really just telling you yes, I loved it or no, I didn’t really care for it and leaving it at that!! I have my March book review almost finished, so that one will be coming out shortly. Let me know if you are enjoying these in the comments. I like them as a way of keeping track of what I have read.
My Review: ✮✮✮✮1/2
Okay this was a book we chose in our book club and this is exactly why I wanted to start a little book club to push me out of my comfort zone! This is a historical fiction novel which I RARELY ever read and I loved it so darn much! There is history, there is love, there is bravery and even a little mystery! It is a fairly long book but I found myself begging to read more. Now I think I’ve convinced myself to go dive into The Nightingale!
Amazon Summary
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than sixty years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but does she have the strength to revisit old memories?
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, where she began forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
My Review: ✮✮✮
I listened to this one on audible and I felt like it fell a little short for me. I wanted to love it because I felt like it received a lot of hype, but I thought it was just okay. Elizabeth Zott is a quirky, brilliant chemist and lives her life in facts. She is a student in the 1960s and working with an all-male team at the research institute and falls in love with a Nobel-prize scientist on her team. Her love story is sweet. But life takes her in a different direction than she had planned when she finds herself as a single mother and the face of a brand new and very popular cooking show (but not your average chef!), Supper at Six. This book touches on some “touchy” subjects but there is also some good humor thrown in.
Amazon Summary
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.
My Review: ✮✮✮✮
I read through this one quickly and I liked it so much. Molly Gray struggles with social skills and loves to live an orderly life. So when Molly gets the job as a maid at a high end hotel, you can be sure she is going to give it her all. The author uses Molly to share simple, yet, poignant life lessons from her grandmother throughout the book that I love and the story line pulled me in quickly. It offers just enough mystery to keep you reading and guessing until the end.
Amazon Summary
Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.
But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?
A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.
My Review: ✮✮✮✮
I have read one other of Jennifer Hillier’s books, Things we do in the Dark, and really, really liked it and this was ranked right up there with it. Like her other book, she hooks you in immediately by sharing the tragedy and then develops the story from there. Marin is a successful hair stylist to the celebrities married to her college sweetheart when her son is kidnapped right under her own nose. Her whole life begins to unravel and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned 😉
Amazon Summary
All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret…
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.
My Review: ✮✮1/2
I listened to this one on audible as well and I felt like it was a highly popular novel, although, I can’t remember where I saw it recommended. Need less to say, I would call this a hard pass. I did not enjoy this one…it had vulgarity, I just didn’t love the story line and I felt like I had to force myself to finish it.
Amazon Summary
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.
She also knows she’s next.
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Have you read any of these? What have you been reading lately? Drop me a line and let me know – I’m always looking for new books to add to my list!
