★★★★☆ The book follows three sets of characters – Deanna Wolfe, Lusa Landowski, and Garnett and Nannie, an elderly man and woman who all live on Zebulon Mountain in rural Southern Appalachia. Deanna is a biologist who lives alone deep in the woods. Lusa is a young farmer’s wife who has just suffered a tragedy. Garnett and Nannie are feuding neighbors.
Category: Women’s Fiction
Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan
★★★☆☆ A well-written, heartbreaking story, this novel explores the challenges of motherhood, mental illness, and how things are often not what they seem. Little Disasters serves as a good reminder that you never know what someone else is going through, no matter how together they seem.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
★★★★☆ This beautifully written book opens with estranged siblings Byron and Benedetta Bennett reluctantly meeting after the death of their mother, Eleanor, to hear her final wishes. She leaves them an hour-long recording and a frozen Black Cake to eat together “when the time is right.”
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
★★★★★ History was always my favorite subject in high school and college. This love for history is probably why I am a fan of historical fiction novels, especially ones that teach me about an unfamiliar part of history. This was the case with Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network, a Reese's Book Club selection based on … Continue reading The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Before Dawn by Laura Murphy
★★★☆☆ Max Abbracciaventio, a biracial young woman living in New York with her adopted family, has made some questionable choices in her life. One of them was having an affair with an abusive married man 14 years her senior.
Recovering Alice by Catherine Morrison
★★★★☆ Equal parts romance and self-discovery, Recovering Alice tells the story of Alice Patterson’s struggle with alcohol addiction amidst a new relationship. Our main character meets Bob in a bar during a relapse and has to decide whether she can get her life back under control while dating someone new.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
★★★★★
This literary fiction novel tells the story of Stella and Desiree Vignes, twins who grew up in Mallard, a small community in Louisiana. At 16, the twins run away to New Orleans together from home - a decision that ultimately leads them to live separate lives.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
★★★★★ Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the early 1960s, a time when it was unheard of for a woman to be in a lab. She receives so little support from the all-male research team at Hastings Institute that she has to resort to stealing beakers to keep her research going. Calvin Evans, the Nobel prize-nominated scientist whose lab Elizabeth pilfers, ends up becoming her romantic partner.
I Let You Fall by Sara Downing
★★★★☆ In I Let You Fall, Eve Chapman observes an emergency operation on a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury. When the bandages are removed, Eve realizes she was the person being operated on.
The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark
★★★★★ Julie Clark has done it again. She has written a completely captivating story about two traumatized women whose lives are intertwined. After reading and loving The Last Flight, I was prepared not to like this book (my June 2022 Book of the Month pick) as much, but I absolutely did!