The Amateur

 

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A golf novel, but make it a 1970s family drama. ⛳📚

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian starts with a practice shot gone horribly wrong and follows a teenage golf star as her life comes apart. Mira is a mess, and I rooted for her anyway (while also wanting to send her to her room).

🎧 Melora Hardin's narration is the way to go.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grab a copy of The Amateur from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of The Sins of Summer Daughters by Lo Patrick. 

About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-six books, including his most recent The Amateur, as well as The Jackal’s Mistress, The Lioness, Hour of the Witch, Midwives, and The Flight Attendant, which was made into an Emmy-winning HBO Max limited series starring Kaley Cuoco. His other books include The Red Lotus, The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; and The Double Bind. His novels Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty- five languages. Follow Chris on Instagram and visit his website for more news and information about his books.

North Woods

 

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My book club picked this one for the month, and then I missed the discussion because I’m at the beach. 🏖️

North Woods by Daniel Mason follows a single house in the western Massachusetts woods across a few centuries, along with everyone who lives there.

It doesn't read like a typical novel. It's more like a set of linked short stories, and sometimes the thread connecting them doesn't show up for decades. Some chapters are heartbreaking. The one about a young man and his schizophrenia really stuck with me. Others are funny in a bittersweet way, like the amateur historian who gets kicked out of his historical society for being a cad.

The writing is detailed but never drags. Each time period feels well researched, and the setting is so atmospheric you can almost smell the pine. I did have to ask my husband, a retired history teacher, to help me sort out the Colonial-era setting in the early chapters.

Fair warning: more than once I thought, "What the heck am I reading?" My book club agreed. The consensus was the book was interesting, bizarre, and a bit hard to get through in spots. I liked some chapters much more than others, but I've never read anything quite like it.

📚 Readers' advisory note: this one's for patient readers who like books that take big swings with structure. If you want a fast plot and one main character to follow, skip it.

I liked it more than I loved it, but the storytelling is so original that it earned four stars from me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You can grab a copy of North Woods from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you like this review, you might be interested in my recommendations for Revolutionary War reads.

About the Author

Daniel Mason was born and raised in Northern California. He studied biology at Harvard, and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His first novel, The Piano Tuner, published in 2002, was a national bestseller and has since been published in 27 countries. His other works include A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon Earth, and his writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine and Lapham’s Quarterly. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit Daniel's website for more news and information about his books.

The Barman of the Ritz

 

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Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook. 

The Barman of the Ritz by Philippe Collin is based on the fascinating life of Frank Meier, a celebrated barman known for inventing popular cocktails and being the consummate professional. In 1936 he wrote The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, and original copies are so rare they now sell for thousands of dollars.

Meier grew up in poverty but ended up rubbing elbows with the rich and famous: authors, playwrights, actors, politicians, and titans of business.

When the Nazis occupy Paris, the grand Ritz Hotel stays open, and its little bar becomes their favorite spot. Night after night, Meier keeps shaking cocktails for German officers while hiding the fact that he's Jewish.

Collin does a remarkable job contrasting the cruelty of the Occupation with the nightly festivities at the bar. You really get a sense of time and place, with socialites, artists, philosophers, moguls, and Nazi officers all passing through. Simon Paisley Day brings real gravitas to the narration, capturing both Meier's pride in his work and his terror that his secret will come out.

What I liked most is that Meier wasn't part of the Resistance. This is the story of an ordinary man trying to survive an extraordinarily dark and dangerous time. A great pick for historical fiction readers looking for something a little different. Out now! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Grab a copy from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon. 

About the Author

Philippe Collin has been a producer at France Inter for the past twenty years and holds a master’s degree in contemporary history. Since 2021, he has produced a series of historical podcasts that have been downloaded by more than forty million listeners. The Barman of the Ritz is his first novel. Follow Philippe on Instagram.

The Camino

 

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Thank you Simon and Schuster Audio for the gifted audiobook!

This is not the fast paced thriller the cover promises, and that's exactly why I liked it.

A widow retraces her husband’s final walk on the Camino and discovers the man she married never existed.

The Camino by Anya Niewierra is billed as a literary thriller, and it is and it isn’t. It reads more like a domestic drama braided with historical fiction, with a character study at its heart. So a fair warning from your librarian: if you go in expecting a page turner with a twist every chapter, you might be disappointed. But if you love to settle into a layered story and let it unfold at its own pace, your patience will be rewarded.

Lotte Bonnet is a Dutch chocolatier whose husband Emil, a refugee from Bosnia, died by suicide while walking the Camino de Santiago through central France. One year later, Lotte follows his exact route, stop for stop, hoping to understand what happened. Along the way she learns that Emil had been living a lie for their entire marriage. And she starts to realize someone does not want her to finish the walk.

The second timeline comes through a letter written to Lotte, describing life in Bosnia before the war and the hardships and horrors once it began. I’m old enough to remember watching the Bosnian War unfold on the news, and it’s clear Niewierra did serious research here. This is a time and place that doesn’t get much shelf space in historical fiction, and it deserves it.

I liked Lotte. I found the story unique and intriguing. There's a subplot I thought pulled focus from the main story, but overall it's an engrossing read. A quick note that this book was a phenomenon in the Netherlands, selling over 800,000 copies and winning multiple awards, and it's finally available in English for the first time.

On audio, Carlotta Brentan and Vas Eli are excellent. Their performances perfectly match Niewierra’s lyrical prose, and having two narrators for the two timelines really elevated the listening experience.

This is a good choice for historical fiction lovers who want a setting and events off the beaten path, and literary thriller readers who like to get lost in a story that takes its time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Heather. It's a literary thriller by Caitlin Muller.

About the Author

Anya Niewierra is the number one bestselling author of the Netherlands, dubbed by the press as the new queen of Dutch literature. She has written six books, all of them immense bestsellers. Her breakthrough book The Camino has sold well over 800,000 copies in the Netherlands, won both the NS Reader’s Award and the Hebban Crime Award, and was the bestselling and most borrowed book of the year in the Netherlands in 2024, spending over 170 weeks on the bestseller list. It’s currently being made into an international television series and has been published in multiple languages. Follow Anya on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.

Currently Reading

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

Thank you Simon Audio, Grand Central Publishing, and Megan Beatie Communications for the gifted copies! 

I just started listening to The Camino by Anya Niewierra. This is a literary thriller about a woman who walks the Camino de Santiago in search of answers to her husband's death. This one's out Aug. 25. 

I'm reading Tear the City Down by Andre Hardy. Coltrane is a hustler and fixer, but he's ready to quit the game for his daughter and the woman he loves. But one final job involving an NFL player gets complicated and pulls Coltrane into danger he never expected. This is gritty crime fiction debut from Hardy, a former NFL player. It's out Sept. 1. 

You can preorder a copy of The Camino and Tear the City Down from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

Revolutionary War Reads for the Fourth of July

 

Four books that drop you right into the Revolution, no fireworks required. I was a school librarian for twenty years, and the Revolutionary War shelf was sometimes a hard sell until I figured out which books actually pull kids in. These four hold up whether you are twelve or seventy.

Johnny Tremain is the one I read as a kid and never shook. A young silversmith's apprentice in Boston badly burns his hand, falls in with the Sons of Liberty, and ends up tangled in the Tea Party and the first shots at Lexington. It won the Newbery in 1943, and it still moves.

My Brother Sam Is Dead is the one that gutted me. A Connecticut family torn down the middle, a father who wants no part of the fight, an older son who runs off to join the Patriots, and the younger brother left watching it all come apart. It is not the tidy version of the Revolution. It is the real cost of it. Fair warning, the title is not a bluff.

A Girl Called Samson is the grown up pick, and it is based on a true story. Deborah Samson bound her chest, called herself Robert Shurtliff, and enlisted in the Continental Army. Amy Harmon goes deep on the history with a slow burn romance running underneath.

Chains is the one I wish I could have handed every single student. Isabel is thirteen, enslaved in New York City in 1776, promised her freedom and then sold to a Loyalist family instead. She spies for the Patriots hoping it buys her liberty and learns neither side is really fighting for hers. It is upper middle grade, and it does not soften the violence of slavery, so go in knowing that. It will stay with you.

A little nostalgia, a little history they skipped in school, and a reminder that independence looked very different depending on who you were.

Deborah Sampson isn't the only woman who hid who she was to fight. Here's my review of Code Name Hélène.

Little Wild

 

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Literary fiction, but make it gothic, witchy, and gay.

I don't read literary fiction often, but Laura Evans’ debut Little Wild pulled me in anyway. The setting is 1937 Suffolk, England during a historic heat wave that won't break. There's a crumbling estate called Snare House, owned by the Winther family. Margaret lives with the family, but she's not part of the family. She narrates the whole story. She's sharp, watchful, and funny.  And she's hopelessly in love and obsessed with her best friend Joanie, even though she knows every one of Joanie's careless rich-girl flaws (big Daisy Buchanan energy).

Margaret has survived a lot. Her mother died young. Her father came back from the war hollowed out and neglectful. She was raised at the edge of the Winther family's world just enough to taste a life that was never really hers. She and Joanie make a plan to run off to London together as lovers. Then they're discovered, and everything breaks. Margaret is banished to a falling-down cabin in the woods with her father, grieving and alone. There in the woods, something old and strange starts waking up in her - a power that might have come from her mother.

What kept me turning pages was that I was never sure how much to trust Margaret. Was this grief and isolation bending her mind, or was she actually tapping into something real? She has this ethereal quality, and apparently her mother did too, and Evans never tidily answers it. 

The story touches on  love, friendship, grief, poverty, mental illness, and society's expectations and rolls of women. The writing is gorgeous without ever trying too hard. It’s immersive and  atmospheric, just flat-out good. 

I went back and forth between the ARC and the audiobook. Tamaryn Payne's narration is wonderful. She nails every character's tone and pours all of Margaret's longing straight into your ears.

If you love historical fiction, queer love stories, magical realism, gothic vibes, or a family drama, this blends all of it and somehow makes it sing. I could not stop rooting for Margaret.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen and Henry Holt for the gifted ARC. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out June 23. Grab a copy on Bookshop.org and help an indie store while you're at it.

Different genre, same wound: both Little Wild and The Three Lives of Cate Kay are about how the great love of your youth reshapes who you turn into when it falls apart.

About the Author

Laura Evans was born in the north of England and grew up in the Midlands. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge before coming in a roundabout way to journalism, where she became a magazine editor specializing in travel and nature. A lifelong city dweller who romanticizes the countryside, she spent several years in both London and Bristol before making her way to the medieval city of Norwich, where she lives with her family.

Visit Laura's website to keep up with news about Laura and her work. Follow Laura on Instagram.

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.

The Kindness of Strangers

 

A dead body on page one and I still couldn’t guess how we got there.

Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted listen!

Five housemates, one mysterious stranger, and a 1950s London boarding house where everyone has a secret. 

The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman is going on my list of books to recommend when someone says they want something like an Agatha Christie. This is slow burning, character driven, atmospheric, and absolutely packed with secrets. It pulled me right in. 

The setting is London, 1953 and the city is still pulling itself out of the war. Honor Wilson runs a boarding house, and she’s picky about who gets a room. We’ve got George, the society girl trying to escape her debutante life. Mina, the small-village girl who came to London to be more than she was. Robbie, the would-be writer haunted by the war. And Saul, the refugee who lost his entire family in the Holocaust. 

Then Jimmy Sullivan turns up at the door one foggy night and Honor lets him stay even though she clearly doesn’t want to. Everyone can feel something is off about him, but no one can put their finger on what. Mina and Saul end up teaming up like an unlikely detective duo to figure out who he actually is, and that’s where the book really gets its hooks in you.

Olivia Dowd’s narration is wonderful. She gave every character their own distinct voice and I never once got lost in the house full of people.

If you like Christie’s group-of-strangers-with-secrets setup or the cozy-with-edge feel of The Thursday Murder Club, grab this one. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

If you enjoyed this, you might be interested in The Thursday Murder Club.

About the Author

Emma Garman, a Brighton-based writer and critic, has been a columnist for The Paris Review and a contributor to Literary Review, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, and History News Network. She has an MA in creative writing from the City College of New York and an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London. The Kindness of Strangers is her debut novel.

The Tobacco Wives

 

This book made me want to stand up and cheer for a 15-year-old girl who had more courage than all the adults around her. This was my book club’s March pick and it did not disappoint.

The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers is set in 1946 in Bright Leaf, North Carolina. It’s a fictional tobacco town where everything looks picture perfect on the surface. Young Maddie Sykes arrives to spend the summer with her aunt, a seamstress who sews gowns for the wives of powerful tobacco executives. But the more time Maddie spends in this world of glamour and garden parties, the more she starts to notice what no one wants her to see.

What really got me about this book was how well Myers captured a pivotal moment in women’s history. During WWII, women had stepped into jobs that had always belonged to men. For many women it was the first time earning their own money and building their own identities. And then the men came home. Would women be pushed back into the roles they’d been handed before the war, or would things ever be the same again? Myers doesn’t let you forget that question for a single page.

The atmosphere is the real star here. The southern setting feels authentic, the fashion details are chef’s kiss, and the characters are drawn with enough depth that you actually care what happens to them. Fair warning: the opening chapters take a little while to get going, but once the story finds its footing, it pulls you right in.

My book club had a fantastic discussion with this one. It’s exactly the kind of book that gives you plenty to dig into.

Perfect for fans of historical fiction, women’s fiction, and family drama.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

What’s a book you’ve read that made you think differently about a piece of history you thought you already knew?

If you liked this, you might also enjoy my review of Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven. 

About the Author

Adele Myers grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and has a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son and their rescue dog.