When journalist Drew returns to her small town with a shrinking bank account and no job prospects, she’s surprised to run into her former best friend Steph. Steph is thriving financially and her skin is absolutely glowing. She’s eager to share her secret- it’s LuminUS, a skincare line that has paid for her seemingly luxurious lifestyle all while allowing her to be her own boss. Drew is hesitant, but the more Steph shares, the more Drew thinks this might be her ticket to turning her life around.
As Drew sends out sales pitches to everyone she’s ever known, she begins taking the LuminUS supplements. Soon it’s time for the annual conference where Drew gets to spend time with the rest of the bleach blonde team. Only things might not be as radiant as the skin of the women around her. Fights break out amongst the team members, and after a late night party, one LuminUS distributor is found dead.
Multilevel marketing is a tale as old as time, but this is a fun twist on your traditional whodunnit. The world of LuminUS shines bright in this lighthearted romp through the scammy world of direct sales. A fast paced and fun read! If you love a cheeky mystery or binged the LuLaRich docuseries, give this one a try.
Greetings Readers! Another year, another Best Of list. I usually start these posts by lamenting how difficult it is to pick just ten titles and then going on to list 20 books I loved that year. Not this year, dear reader. This year I came nowhere near reaching my lofty reading goal and of the books I did manage to read, I only awarded five stars to 10 books. This could be the easiest Top Ten List of my life! Let’s go. Update: I picked 12 titles because the formatting was ugly with only 4 nonfiction titles.Update 2: There are 24 titles on my list…
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FICTION
Lucky Red by Claudia Craven is a book I would never have selected on my own. I read it for RRPL’s LGBTQIA+ Book Discussion and now I can’t stop thinking about it! A rollicking western told from a female point of view. What an entertaining escape.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune is the much anticipated follow-up to The House in the Cerulean Sea, and it was just as heartfelt and charming as the first. I am a softie for found families!
Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher is a queer YA adventures set in the world of Camelot. Witty banter, double entendres, and swoony romances abound in the royal court of the kingdom of Camelot. But there’s more to this than just a romping good time. Throw in political intrigue, espionage, and betrayal for extra excitement.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a slim, but powerful speculative fiction story originally published in French in 1995. Now translated into English for the first time, the story left me with more questions than answers and I will likely revisit it for further mulling over.
NONFICTION *1-4 were five-stars for me.
A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan is a book I chose for my True Crime Discussion Group. It’s an eye-opening and frighteningly timely read about the rise and fall of the KKK in Indiana.
Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson is an analysis of our current political climate through a lens of history. This is an accessible introduction to the history of American democracy.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner was my very first book of 2024. I broke my no-cancer-books rule for it and am glad I did. This one packs a punch.
Leslie F*cking Jones by Leslie Jones is a real treat. Looking back at my short review-it was what I NEEDED at the time that I listened to it. It’s brilliant.
Gator Country by Rebecca Renner is another book we discussed in my True Crime Discussion Group. Sometimes we need a break from murders and explore different types of crime. This was a fascinating read about alligator poaching and the undercover operation that targeted poaching.
All in the Family by Fred Trump is a memoir of the famous family from the point of view of Donald Trump’s nephew. It was an interesting glimpse into the relationships between the different branches of the family.
Well, that felt too easy, so here are few more titles I really enjoyed this year:
Now I am just showing off. Here are a few books I am looking forward to in 2025:
Finally, we reach Part Four. It’s all been building towards this: the 1936 Olympic Games.
There are a lot of tough decisions to make for Coach Al Ulbrickson in assembling the varsity team. He even drops Joe from boat one, though a month later he is moved back to the first boat, making the Olympics-hopeful boat. The final lineup is: Herbert Morris, Charles Day, Gordon Adam, John White, James McMillin, George Hunt, Donald Hume, Robert Moch, and Joe Rantz. But their work is far from over. They’ve got to make it to Berlin, and to do that, they must succeed at the Olympic Time Trials in New Jersey.
The men packed up as though they were headed to Germany and took a train to the east coast. With a now-signature come from behind victory, the Washington team was Olympics-bound! However, they needed to fund their own way, and fast. I thought it was admirable that Coach Ulbrickson kept the money issue a secret from the team, to keep them focused on their goal. Fortunately, the whole of Washington is supporting them, and they manage to raise $5,000 and set off for Europe, to put their skills to the most challenging test of all.
The voyage over was difficult: Hume became ill, people got seasick, some gained weight from lack of exercise, an Olympian even got expelled from the Games due to excessive drinking. Meanwhile, Germany, of course, was ramping up their wide-scale oppression but their propaganda team did their best to present a welcoming, peaceful facade. When the Americans arrived, they were impressed with the warm energy and had no idea of what was looming in the shadows.
Practice began and the Americans had the opportunity to view the other countries’ rowing teams: disciplined Germany, similar Britain, calm Netherlands. The Americans were still struggling to work together but slowly, they began to open up to each other and grow stronger. At the preliminary race, the Americans won and set a new world record, even with an ill Hume. The next day was the final and the Americans were at a disadvantage with the worst lane position. The weather was raging and when the race began, the American and British teams didn’t even notice! Even knowing the outcome, I was glued to the page, unsure of how a team so behind could make up the difference and emerge victorious.
The second to last chapter was told masterfully, every detail of the race on the page. But nothing beats archival footage to see pieces of the race. The video below in particular shows just how close the race was, with the American boat just barely winning gold. It was an extraordinary moment and after reading about the trials those men went through, what a glorious, well-deserved end!
Discussion questions for Part Four:
Of course, we know the results of the 1936 Olympic Games. However, while reading about the race, what emotions did you experience? Were you so immersed in the story that you felt, for a moment, that the boys could lose?
We were able to get a lot of Joe Rantz’s personal life told in this story. Throughout the book and in the epilogue, we learn more about the other members of the boat. Did you wish the author was able to provide a deeper dive on any other person in the book? Who would you want to know more about and why?
Thank you for joining our online discussion! Keep the conversation going with two All-Ages book discussions coming up:
Tuesday, July 23, 7:00-8:00pm in the Green Room at the Library OR Tuesday, July 30, 10:30-11:30am at the Rocky River Senior Center at 21014 Hilliard Blvd.
And join us on Friday, July 26 at 12pm: we will be showing The Boys in the Boat at our Movie Matinee!
Part Three- 1935 The Parts That Really Matter. Chapters Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve.
In this part, we really start to see some storylines coming together. The goal stated on January 14th of 1935 declared they would forgo normal training with hopes to go to the Olympics the following year. This sets a different tone as these rowers have in the span of a year gone from fighting for a spot on the freshman team to working towards becoming Olympic champions. We really don’t hear much about what the boys and Joe were thinking about this other than their stress. We see their struggle from the perspective of Ulbrickson and his personal struggle. As much as he wanted to recapture the magic from the Poughkeepsie freshman race of the previous year, the sophomore team just wasn’t predictable. I’ve had problems, particularly with machines where sometimes they’ll work and other times they won’t. I understand to some extent the frustration of seeing the sophomores row well sometimes and other times struggle to keep up with the older students.
The buildup and the excitement for the races in this part are exhilarating. With the sophomores assigned to the varsity boat, they consistently win the races. They don’t consistently beat the older boys though. So when it comes to this year’s competition at Poughkeepsie, the older boys get to race as the varsity only to lose. The older boys lose the varsity race at Poughkeepsie and lose the 2000 meter exhibition run. With 2000 meters being the Olympic length, it must have really hurt their morale. The University of Washington seemed to have the raw talent, but they struggled to create a proper team to prove they deserved a shot at the Olympics.
Joe’s personal life is still very tumultuous at this point. Joe finds where his family has been living, is rejected by Thula again, secretly visits his siblings, Thula dies, and his father suggests they live together again. Joe’s personal life feels like a whirlwind. It’s hard to imagine being a young man with all this family drama, struggling to pay for your tuition, and still managing to find time to be on the crew team as well as date Joyce. We get a better understanding of the other boys on the crew team as Joe sees them in a more humanizing light outside of crew. Joe starts to develop a connection with George Pocock as the new year of training begins in the fall.
Both in the United States and in Germany, the Nazi problem is becoming more and more apparent. Jewish people are losing their rights as their society turns against them. Americans vote on whether to boycott the Olympics, but the vote fails. The people sent to Germany to see the Olympic facilities are fooled. Brundage manages to fool the public by saying he is an advocate for the Jewish people, yet using arguments to minimize their suffering and doubt themselves. This book paints a vivid picture of the manipulations that were happening at the time.
Discussion questions for Part Three:
What did you think of the excitement of the California races with the sophomores appointed as varsity as well as the upset JV team? Do you think the results would have been different if the older boys had raced the California varsity?
Have you ever had a moment like Joe had after the California race where you felt truly celebrated for your accomplishments?
Let us know how your thoughts! Come to one, or both, of our All Ages Book Discussion:
Tuesday, July 23, 7:00-8:00pm in the Green Room at the Library OR Tuesday, July 30, 10:30-11:30am at the Rocky River Senior Center at 21014 Hilliard Blvd.
60-year-old Maggie Bird is quietly raising chickens in the seaside village of Purity, Maine. So too are several of her fellow retired CIA officers, who also like the area’s charm–but especially like to keep watch on one another. When a dead body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes, and she turns to her friends, and not Purity’s baffled, acting Police Chief Jo Thibodeau, for help.
As she tries to figure out what led to this, in alternating chapters, Maggie’s reminisces about working her most past dangerous mission, Operation Cyrano, which took her around the world and eventually, she believes forced her to become a traitor. But as ghosts from Maggie’s past continue to seek revenge, she’ll need to call on the favors of some old friends – and perhaps even the local police after all – in order to outmaneuver them.
With plenty of action and espionage, and engaging characters readers will want to get to know more, The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen is the perfect book for readers who enjoy spy novels, murder mysteries, and thrillers. This first novel in a planned series will also please fans of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series and the “Red” film series. Place your hold today.
A forensic photographer who works for the Albuquerque police, Rita Todacheene is good at capturing what others don’t see, through the lens of her cameras. Not only does she have a keen photographer’s eye that helps cops solve the toughest crimes, but she also has a special talent –Rita can see dead people. As a young girl, her only friends were often such ghosts, but the first time Rita confessed this, she was mostly ostracized by her fellow Navajos on the Reservation. Now she knows to keep her “gift” quiet.
While she can usually block out her visions, after Rita photographs the particularly brutal scene of a supposed suicide, the victim’s enraged ghost, Erma, begins to full-on haunt Rita. Erma insists that her death was murder, forcing Rita on a quest to find her killers and avenge her death. Unbeknownst to Rita, investigating this case gets her the wrong kind of attention from Albuquerque’s most dangerous drug cartel and the crooked cops who work for them.
Shutter by Ramona Emerson was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. Not only is this a suspenseful debut crime novel, it is also a compelling coming of age tale, as Rita’s Indigenous upbringing and the history of her visions are revealed in flashbacks along the way. Filled with non-stop action, grisly descriptions of violent crime scenes and corpses, and plenty of not-so-friendly ghosts, this truly original blend of mystery and the supernatural might be just the change of pace you are looking for. And good news –its sequel, Exposure, will be published in October 2024.
When the body of Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, it sets off an irreversible chain of events that forever changes lives in Black Earth County in southwestern Minnesota in 1958. Quinn, one of the rural county’s wealthiest landowners, was a cruel man whose death comes as a relief to most of his neighbors. But before Sherriff Brody Dern even examines the crime scene, prejudices influence townspeople to pin the murder on Noah Bluestone, a war vet, and a Dakota Sioux whose ancestor first owned Quinn’s land. As Brody continues to investigate, tensions rise and a myriad of secrets come to light about his neighbors – even as Brody desperately tries to conceal his own dark past. Can Brody get to the truth of Quinn’s death before innocent people begin to turn against one another?
With a cast of exquisitely drawn characters, most of whom are still haunted by World War II, The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger is part police procedural, part exploration of small town life in 1950’s Minnesota. With vivid descriptive and a gripping narrative that you’ll want to savor, this novel is Krueger at his most skilled. Pick up a copy today!
Margaret and Hal think they’ve struck the gold mine when they purchase a stately old Victorian home. But come September, things start going awry. Blood drips down the walls, items get misplaced, and ghostly former inhabitants known as “the pranksters” roam the halls. And they all ominously point to the basement door with a warning- “He’s down there.”
Margaret spends all her time managing the house and its quirks, but Hal has had enough. So when another September rolls around, Hal decides to take matters into his own hands…and disappears without a trace. When their daughter Katherine calls, Margaret begrudgingly shares the news that Hal is missing. Panicked, Katherine immediately plans a visit. In September. Just as the house is waking up for its annual haunting. What could go wrong?
I listened to this horror novel and was mesmerized by the characters, plot, and setting. The pranksters are explained in vivid detail, which gives them an especially spooky feel, and Margaret and Katherine’s antics are those of a classic mother-daughter pair. The house itself is a central character to the story as it creaks and groans with its dark secrets. If you want to be swept away by a scary story, this book is for you.
2023 was a good year for reading! For some reason it was an entry into the Horror genre for me. I didn’t realize that horror books are very different than horror movies- they are usually less gory, but can be a lot scarier! If you want to give one a try, look at My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (which comes before Don’t Fear the Reaper which was excellent), or if you really want to be creeped out, read A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay.
As we approach the conclusion of 2023, it’s not just the turning of a calendar page—it’s a moment of reflection. Today, I invite you to step into my literary sanctuary as I unveil a curated selection of my favorite books from this year.
Shielding herself from the world behind the safety of her camera lens, photographer Ayah Fleming is pulled into the past when she returns home and uncovers the truth about her descendants with the help of a man who makes her long for a brighter future.
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in 15th-century China.
From the best-selling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes a look at the school-to-prison pipeline and life in the juvenile “justice” system.
Drawing on 30 years of experience, a renowned cat behavior scientist references historical records and examines modern scientific studies of cat-human communication to reveal previously unexplored secrets of how cats all over the world have learned to talk to us.
In 1974, Paris perfumer Radha, on the cusp of a breakthrough, travels to India where she enlists the help of her sister and the courtesans of Agra, who use the power of fragrance to seduce, while finally confronting a past secret, which threatens her already vulnerable marriage.
Based on a true story and a five-million-word secret journal, this extraordinary work of fiction follows an orphaned heiress, banished from India to England, and a brilliant, troublesome tomboy who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in 1805 York where they fall secretly, deeply and dangerous in love.
Accused of murder, an enslaved woman goes on the run with an abolitionist schoolteacher in the fall of 1863, dodging constables and slave catchers, in the new novel by the New York Times best-selling author of If I Disappear.
In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.
In 1921 Penang, when Willie, a famed writer and old friend of her husband’s, arrives for an extended stay, Lesley, as her friendship with Willie grows, makes a dangerous decision to confide in him about life in the Straits, including her relationship with a charismatic Chinese revolutionary a confession that has devastating consequences.
As WWII ends, Elise returns to Paris to reunite with her daughter only to find her friend Juliette, the woman she entrusted her daughter with, has seemingly vanished without a trace, which leads Elise on a desperate search to New York and to Juliette one final, fateful time.
Read it or Weep 