How the Penguins Saved Veronica

 

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I showed up to book club as a full penguin. Everyone else wore black and white and called it a day.

That felt fitting for this one, because How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior is all about actually showing up for something.

Veronica McCreedy is 85, rich, and cranky enough to clear a room. She’s estranged from everyone, so when a penguin documentary catches her eye, she decides the Antarctic research team studying them should inherit her fortune. But first she has to see the penguins herself, which means flying to Antarctica against everyone’s advice and parking herself at a research station where three scientists absolutely do not want to babysit her. She also goes looking for living family and turns up Patrick, a directionless grandson she does not click with even a little.

Then she talks the team into rescuing an orphaned chick, and the whole thing cracks open. Veronica finally has something to love, and her friendship with Terry, one of the scientists, gives her somewhere to put all that armor down.

Here’s what got the whole book club: Veronica is not likable for a good chunk of this book. But once you learn where the hardness came from, losing her parents in the Blitz, losing a child, decades of nobody, you stop wanting to shake her and start rooting for her. That’s hard to pull off and Prior does it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me and a unanimous yes from the group. Bring tissues for the backstory.

How the Penguins Save Veronica is out now. Grab a copy on Bookshop.com and support an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you may be interested in another cantankerous old woman, Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth.

About the Author

Hazel Prior lives on Exmoor with her husband and a huge ginger cat. As well as writing, she works as a freelance harpist. Hazel is the author of Ellie and the Harp-Maker, the #1 ebook and audiobook bestseller Away with the Penguins and its follow-up, Call of the Penguins. Life and Otter Miracles is her fourth novel.

Follow Hazel on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

The Forest Becomes Her

 

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This book made me want to walk outside and put my hands in the dirt.

The Forest Becomes Her by Julie Carrick Dalton follows three women in Concord, Massachusetts after a centuries-old forest gets clear-cut to make room for a development of eco-friendly homes. The irony is lost on the developers. One massive oak is left standing alone, and that tree is what pulls these three women into each other's lives.

Polly is a grieving teenager who scattered her mother's ashes at the old oak, a place the two of them loved. Stella is the real estate agent selling the new homes, lonely after losing her best friend, Polly's mom. Hazel is Stella's neighbor, trying to make sense of a devastating loss, finding her only comfort in the soil of her backyard. Together they set out to save the tree, and they find friendship, community, and a way through their grief.

I loved all three women, but Polly especially. She's smart, shy, observant, and kind. She's carrying two kinds of grief at once, for her mother and for the forest, and she starts out alone but slowly finds her voice and her people. Dalton's writing is poignant without ever tipping into saccharine. You feel the weight these women are carrying, but the book never tries to manipulate you into feeling it. The magical realism is woven in so gradually it never feels forced, and the idea of finding solace in nature shows up in ways I won't spoil here.

Atmospheric, engrossing, and full of heart. The right reader for this is anyone who loves found family, magical realism, women's fiction, or stories about our connection to the natural world. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Megan Beatie Communications and St. Martin's Press for the gifted ARC. The Forest Becomes Her is out July 14. Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might like Little Wild by Laura Evans.

About the Author

As a journalist, Julie Carrick Dalton has published more than a thousand articles in The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Orion Magazine, Electric Literature, and other publications. A former beekeeper and organic farmer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of writing fiction in the age of climate crisis and is a member of the teaching faculty at Drexel University’s MFA Program. When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, you can probably find her skiing, swimming, kayaking, working in her garden, or trying to keep track of her four children and two dogs.

Follow Julie on Instagram and visit her website for news and information about her books.

Give Me Everything You've Got

 

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Every book has its reader. This one's reader just isn't me, and I want to tell you why.

Back in the 1930s, a librarian named S.R. Ranganathan wrote a set of guiding principles for library science. Two of them have stuck with me for 20 years: every reader their book, and every book its reader. The idea is simple. Every person can find books they love, and every book will find the people who love it.

That's my roundabout way of telling you I'm not the reader for Give Me Everything You've Got. And that's genuinely fine.

The premise: Ruby is a young filmmaker just starting to taste success when she's invited to spend the summer at the country house of Ellen, the feminist director she idolizes and who's promised to mentor her. The retreat sours fast. Ruby gets pulled into the mind games between Ellen and her magnetic daughter Lara, and the house itself starts to feel haunted by the sense that she isn't the first promising young woman brought there.

On paper that's gothic Rebecca territory, and I wanted to love it. I just didn't feel it. The characters stayed vague and hard to root for, the pace crawled, and the whole thing is written in long unbroken blocks with no quotation marks around the dialogue. If the goal was to read like one long stream of consciousness, the writing pulls it off. I found it tough to follow.

But not connecting with a book isn't the same as a book being bad. The prose is doing something deliberate, and there are readers who will fall hard for exactly that. If you love literary fiction that asks you to sink into a mood instead of a plot, this could be your summer obsession.

Thank you to Henry Holt for the gifted copy. Give Me Everything You've Got is out July 21. Grab a copy from Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

If you enjoy literary fiction, James Grady's coming of age novel American Sky might interest you.

About the Author

Imogen Crimp’s debut novel A Very Nice Girl was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, selected for Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club and chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times and Grazia. She lives in London.

Yesteryear

 

This was 100% a Bookstagram FOMO read for me. And I get the hype now.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I'd seen this one everywhere, so I finally caved and listened to the audiobook. Verdict: unhinged in the best way.

If you somehow missed it: Natalie is a tradwife influencer with millions of followers selling the homestead dream of raw milk, farm-fresh eggs, and homeschooled babies. Then she wakes up in 1855. No explanation. No electricity. No nannies hiding behind the curtain. Just the brutal version of the life she's been peddling online.

What worked for me was the writing. Sharp, sarcastic, satirical — Caro Claire Burke absolutely nails the tradwife performance. On camera Natalie is baking the bread, feeding the chickens, doing the homeschooling. Off camera? She married into serious money and there's a whole team running that "simple little homestead." The peek behind the curtain is brutal and very, very funny.

The 1855 sections are a different kind of brutal. Natalie is not handling it. Her 1855 family resents her for not being the wife and mother she's supposed to be, and they're pretty sure she's lost her mind.

What didn't fully land for me was the ending. I had questions. Specifically — why did people wait so long to get her help?? That's all I'll say because I know some of you haven't read it yet.

Rebecca Lowman narrates the audio and she's so good. Natalie is calculating and often deeply unlikable, and Lowman somehow keeps you invested in her the whole way through.

Anne Hathaway bought the rights and honestly? This could be a phenomenal movie. For a debut, Burke knocked it out of the park.

Liked it. Didn't love it. Would absolutely recommend it.

If you're drawn to stories about influencers whose perfect lives are built on lies, go read my review of Julie Chan Is Dead next,

About the Author

Caro Claire Burke received her Master’s in Fine Arts from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the co-host of Diabolical Lies, a politics and culture podcast. Yesteryear is her first novel.

For more news and information about Caro, visit her webiste.

Road Trip

This was my first Mary Kay Andrews book and she did NOT phone it in.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted early listen.

Road Trip by Mary Kay Andrews was a blast, and I think a lot of you will feel the same.

Sisters Maeve and Therese Dunigan are nothing alike. Maeve is practical and by the book. Therese is an actress and free spirit who hasn't been back to Savannah in years.

When their mother dies, they inherit the painting that's been hanging over the fireplace their whole lives. Their mother always swore it was valuable, with roots going back generations to Ireland. They never really believed her.

Until Therese sees a news article about an identical painting that just sold for over a million dollars. And both sisters happen to have wolves at their door.

So off to Ireland they go. Two sisters who can barely stand each other, chasing a family mystery that turns out to be way more complicated than either of them expected. There are family secrets, a murder to solve, a charming whiskey maker, an atmospheric Irish village, and a dog with an important role in the story.

I listened to this on audio and Kathleen McInerney's narration was spot-on. She kept every character distinct and handled the timeline shifts without ever losing me. This is the kind of book that makes a long drive or a beach afternoon feel too short. No notes. Pure fun.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 📅 Pub date: June 2

If you enjoyed this, you might also be interested in The Other Sis of Now.

About the Author

Mary Kay Andrews is The New York Times bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big Christmas, The Homewreckers, The Santa Suit, The Newcomer, Hello, Summer, Sunset Beach. The High Tide Club, The Beach House Cookbook, The Weekenders, Beach Town, Save the Date, Ladies’ Night, Christmas Bliss, Spring Fever, Summer Rental, The Fixer Upper, Deep Dish, Blue Christmas, Savannah Breeze, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues. A former journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Visit Mary Kay's website for more news and information about her book.

I See You've Called in Dead

 

Declared dead by HR. Forced to figure out how to actually live.

I See You've Called in Dead made me laugh out loud and then cry actual tears sometimes within the same paragraph.

An obituary writer gets drunk, accidentally publishes his own obituary, and suddenly the company’s HR system thinks he’s dead. Dead people can’t be fired. So now what?

Bud Stanley writes obituaries for a living. He’s depressed, lonely, and still not over his divorce. One night he has too much to drink and does something spectacularly ill-advised. He writes and posts his own obituary to his newspaper’s online portal. By morning, the whole world thinks he’s dead.

His company’s system now has him listed as deceased, and you can’t legally fire a dead man. So Bud is suspended, unmoored, and left to figure out what to do with himself.

What he does is start showing up to the wakes and funerals of total strangers.

He meets Clara, a woman who has been doing this for years. Watching how people grieve and remember the people they loved has taught her how to actually live. Bud starts going too, and at each service, he hears stories about the deceased from the people who loved them. Slowly, something starts to shift.

His best friend Tim is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in a long time. Paralyzed in an accident as a young man, Tim fought through the grief and rage of that and came out the other side full of life, art, music, and deep friendship. He becomes the person who gently drags Bud back into the world.

This is a book about grief and loss that is also genuinely funny. Walking that line without losing either side is incredibly hard to do, and John Kenney does it beautifully. Narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins is perfectly cast. His deadpan delivery makes the humor land even perfectly, and he handles the emotional moments with real care.

This was my book club’s April pick, and every single person in the group loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I strongly recommend it.

Fans of Backman’s A Man Called Ove will feel right at home with Bud Stanley. Here’s my review. 

About the Author

John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of the humorous poetry collections Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People, and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has worked for many years as a copywriter. He has also been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1999. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

To learn more about John Kenney and his other books, visit his website. 

5 Books to Break Your Reading Slump

Reading slumps are real, and sometimes the only cure is a book that grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go.

These five did exactly that for me. Different vibes, different genres, but every single one of them made me forget what time it was.

Whether you’re in the mood for a sweeping emotional thriller, a twisty legal mystery, or something atmospheric and dark, there’s a book on this list for you. 

All the Colors of the Dark — Chris Whitaker

1975, a small Missouri town, girls going missing, and a one-eyed boy named Patch who does something brave and pays a price for it for decades. This one is part serial killer thriller, part love story, part gut punch. It spans 25+ years and somehow gets more gripping as it goes. Warning: you will ugly cry.

The Violin Conspiracy — Brendan Slocumb

A Black violinist from rural North Carolina discovers the beat-up fiddle his grandmother gave him is actually a Stradivarius worth millions — and then someone steals it days before the most important competition of his life. It’s a mystery, it’s a coming-of-age story, and it’s a look at racism in classical music that will stick with you. The author is an actual violinist, and it shows.

Those Empty Eyes — Charlie Donlea

A teenager is found holding a shotgun at the scene of her family’s massacre. She didn’t do it — but the media dubs her “Empty Eyes” and decides she did. Ten years later, she’s changed her name and is working as a legal investigator when a new case starts connecting to her own unsolved past. Fast-paced and twisty, with an ending I genuinely did not see coming.

The Return of Ellie Black — Emiko Jean

A girl vanishes without a trace. Two years later, she’s found wandering out of the woods — alive, but refusing to talk. Detective Chelsey Calhoun is desperate to find out why, partly because she lost her own sister to violence years ago. Atmospheric, dark, and the twist will drop your jaw. Stephen King called it a “page-turning suspense novel.” He’s not wrong.

The Marsh King’s Daughter — Karen Dionne

Helena has a normal life — husband, kids, jam business. Then she hears on the news that the Marsh King has escaped from prison. Her father. The man who kidnapped her mother and raised Helena in a remote Michigan marsh, completely off the grid. Now she knows the police can’t catch him. But she can. This one is deeply unsettling in the best way.

Looking g for more recommendations? Check out 5 Fast Paced Thrillers You Can Read in a Weekend. 

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