Title: Braised Pork Author: An Yu Genre: Fiction Rating: 3.0 out of 5
One morning in autumn, just after breakfast, Jia Jia finds her husband dead in the bathtub of their Beijing apartment. Next to him is a piece of folded paper, a sketch of a strange creature from his dream. He has left her no other sign.
Young, alone, and with many unanswered questions, Jia Jia sets out on a journey. Starting at her neighborhood bar, fueled by anger, bewilderment, curiosity and love, she travels from nocturnal Beijing to the high plains of Tibet, deep into her past in order to arrive at her future.
So…I am not entirely sure why I even finished reading this. Because it was a quick read? That’s probably it. I enjoyed reading about the village culture in Tibet, but Jia Jia’s life was depressing, her lack of options was sad, and her obsession with finding this creature was absurd. There was a hint of magical realism in this, but it also seemed like the hallucinations of a troubled mind, so who’s to say what the truth was?
Excellent writing, but I found the story dark, sad, and virtually pointless, so this is clearly a case of the book not being a good fit for me.
An Yu is from Beijing. Braised Pork is her debut novel.
(Galley courtesy of Grove Atlantic in exchange for an honest review.)
Emily Warren Roebling refuses to live conventionally―she knows who she is and what she wants, and she’s determined to make change. But then her husband Wash asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible.
Emily’s fight for women’s suffrage is put on hold, and her life transformed when Wash, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. Lines blur as Wash’s vision becomes her own, and when he is unable to return to the job, Emily is consumed by it. But as the project takes shape under Emily’s direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building―hers, or her husband’s. As the monument rises, Emily’s marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it?
Interestingly enough, the big subplot of this novel: the love triangle between Emily, Wash, and PT Barnum isn’t even mentioned in the synopsis. Nor is the women’s suffrage movement, also a significant part of the story. Both of these things gave more depth to the storyline, and PT Barnum was arguably the most interesting character in the novel.
I found Emily herself likable enough, if a bit self-absorbed. She fought a hard battle and that came through clearly, although I felt her strength was overshadowed by her lack of awareness of how her actions affected others. Wash was also self-absorbed, but his willingness to put his own feeling aside in favor of Emily’s wishes was a nice touch of character.
Tracey Enerson Wood has always loved writing. The Engineer’s Wife is her new novel.
(Galley courtesy of Sourcebooks Landmark in exchange for an honest review.)
After finding disturbing journal pages that suggest her late mother didn’t die in a car accident as her father had always maintained, Beth Walsh begins a search for answers to the question — what really happened to their mother? With the power and relevance of Jodi Picoult and Lisa Jewell, Rimmer pens a provocative novel told by two women a generation apart, the struggles they unwittingly shared, and a family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
With her father recently moved to a care facility because of worsening signs of dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home to prepare it for sale. Why shouldn’t she be the one, after all? Her three siblings are all busy with their families and successful careers, and Beth is on maternity leave after giving birth to Noah, their miracle baby. It took her and her husband Hunter years to get pregnant, but now that they have Noah, Beth can only feel panic. And leaving Noah with her in-laws while she pokes about in their father’s house gives her a perfect excuse not to have to deal with motherhood.
Beth is surprised to discover the door to their old attic playroom padlocked, and even more shocked to see what’s behind it – a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers, and miscellaneous junk. Her father was the most fastidious, everything-in-its-place man, and this chaos makes no sense. As she picks through the clutter, she finds a handwritten note attached to one of the paintings, in what appears to be in her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing Grace Walsh died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker may be true. A frantic search uncovers more notes, seemingly a series of loose journal entries that paint a very disturbing portrait of a woman in profound distress, and of a husband that bears very little resemblance to the father Beth and her siblings know.
Sometimes it’s hard to pull off narratives with dual timelines, but Rimmer manages to do so and keeps the reader guessing as to what’s actually going on. The characters deal with a lot of underlying issues: postpartum depression, terminal illness of a parent, women’s rights, suicide… there’s a lot going on here, and some of it is deeply emotional and traumatic, but the reader is drawn into the stories and concerns of the characters and experiences their emotions right along with them. This isn’t a light or funny read, but it is engrossing and sure to captivate readers.
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide and USA TODAY bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, Me Without You, and The Secret Daughter. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages.
(Galley courtesy of Graydon House in exchange for an honest review.)
Delaney Nichols is confident she’s doing what she loves—case in point, just one day after returning from her fabulous European honeymoon, she’s eager to get back to the Cracked Spine, the bookstore where she works. But as she disembarks her bus and hurries toward the shop she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying to the ground.
Delaney’s hapless victim’s name is Mary, and the two women can’t help but notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. According to Mary, they both also look like the long-beheaded Mary Queen of Scots. Even stranger, Mary believes she is the reincarnation of the Scottish queen. But peculiar as Delaney’s doppelganger is, she doesn’t have time to dwell on it: on her arrival to the bookshop, she learns the Edinburgh city council wants to close the Cracked Spine, citing code violations, and she’s determined to stop them.
But when Mary’s husband dies in a car explosion—and Delaney learns he was the very member of city council who proposed that the city take a closer look at the bookshop’s construction—she starts to wonder if her meeting with Mary wasn’t an accident. Edinburgh has become as filled with intrigue and deception as any European court, and Delaney is determined to get to the bottom of this royal mystery.
I haven’t read any of the first four books in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series, but that wasn’t a problem at all. I was all ready to pack up and head off to Scotland after finishing this. I love the tribe at the bookstore, and the eccentric Mary gives a quirky edge to things. This was a fun, feel-good read.
Paige Shelton lives in Arizona. The Stolen Letter is her newest novel, the fifth installment in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Murder strikes close to home for a new K-9 unit in Brooklyn. When a double homicide is strikingly familiar to a twenty-year-old cold case, Detective Nate Slater is rattled by the parallels. With a child as the only witness, he and his K-9 partner must protect little Lucy and her aunt, Willow Emery. Nate’s rough past means he always keeps an emotional distance…but in this case getting closer is the only way they’ll all survive.
I enjoy romantic suspense novels, and I love faith-based stories, so combining the two should have been a home run. However, I felt like everything in this novel was too rushed, almost like we were just skimming the tip of the actual story, but not truly experiencing the details.
The double homicide in question—while probably the story arc of the entire series—isn’t the focus of this book. The romance was practically insta-love. The faith aspect of the story was a secondary detail at best, almost an afterthought even for the characters. And, while I’m not an expert in police procedures, several things felt completely unbelievable to be realistic. This felt more like a bare bones outline to me than a fully fleshed out story.
Laura Scott is honored to write for the Love Inspired Suspense line, where a reader can find a heartwarming journey of faith amid the thrilling danger. She lives with her husband of twenty-five years and has two children, a daughter and a son, who are both in college. She works as a critical-care nurse during the day at a large level-one trauma center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and spends her spare time writing romance.
(Galley courtesy of Harlequin in exchange for an honest review.)
Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?
England, 1840. Two decades after the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her family friends, the Fowles. In a dusty corner of the vicarage, there is a cache of Jane’s letters that Cassandra is desperate to find. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?
I love Jane Austen’s works, so this was a natural choice for me to read. It started off a bit slow—and, honestly, was never what I’d call fast-paced—but that’s fitting for this particular story. The reader is immersed in the lives of Cassandra and Jane as young ladies, but also experiences life with Jane via flashbacks and letters, and also Cassandra’s life as an older, single woman on her own.
This novel is rich in historical detail and will appeal to readers who are Austen fans and want to learn more about their literary heroine’s life. I found Cassandra’s life to be deeply sad—but she’s happy, and that’s what really matters.
Gill Hornby lives in England. Miss Austen is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Flatiron Books in exchange for an honest review.)
I enjoyed this thriller/murder mystery. I like reading police procedurals, and with Shea going undercover as a teenager, that just made this even more interesting. I might have figured out who did it, but that’s mainly because I usually pick the least likely suspect and go with that while reading mysteries or watching stuff like NCIS. But there were a lot of red herrings in this one.
Shea herself was an interesting character. I can’t imagine doing undercover work and how hard that would be, and Shae experiences the struggles as she comes to care about people who think she’s someone she’s not. And excellent pick to distract yourself from everything going on around you!
Lissa Marie Redmond is a retired detective. The Secrets They Left Behind is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Crooked Lane Books in exchange for an honest review.)
Every year, lock-in night changes lives. This year, it might just change the world.
Central International School’s annual lock-in is legendary — and for six students, this year’s lock-in is the answer to their dreams. The chance to finally win the contest. Kiss the guy. Make a friend. Become the star of a story that will be passed down from student to student for years to come. But then a group of students, led by Marisa Cuevas, stage an eco-protest and chain themselves to the doors, vowing to keep everyone trapped inside until their list of demands is met. While some students rally to the cause, others are devastated as they watch their plans fall apart. And Marisa, once so certain of her goals, must now decide just how far she’ll go to attain them.
Alsaid writes quirky characters that I like but can’t always relate to. Which is fine. Everyone is different, and I like reading about people different from myself. The writing is solid, as is Alsaid’s writing in other books of his I’ve read, but one thing made this fall squarely on the unbelievable side of things: a teenager is holding a bunch of kids hostage in a high school for a week, and the cops aren’t involved.
Even taking into account cultural differences—this story is set in an unnamed international location—this is so far-fetched as to make for a stumbling block I hit against roughly every three pages as I was reading it. The cops aren’t involved—and the parents who are all wealthy and important people—are okay with that? I find that highly unlikely, and if the basic premise of a story breaks the “rules” of the world the story in set in, well, that destroys the author’s credibility in my mind.
Adi Alsaid lives in Mexico City. We Didn’t Ask for This is his newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Inkyard Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Almost a year ago, May lost her twin brother in a school shooting. People call her a survivor, but no one understand what May heard and saw that day. No one knows why she was the only one to walk out of the room that day. Even May doesn’t know. Her best friend is the only one who doesn’t try to push her, who tries to understand, and who drags her out of the house every now and then.
Zach lost everything when his mom decided to represent the shooter. His girlfriend dumped him, his friends dropped him, and his parents had already basically left him and his little sister to their own devices. But Zach’s best friend insists he go with him to band practice one night.
That’s where Zach meets May. And where May finally gets a hint that maybe, just maybe, she can start to live again.
The Lucky Ones deals with the emotional aftermath of a school shooting, with what those who survived must face. It doesn’t focus much on the violence and horror of the shooting, but on the gaping wounds the survivors bear.
May’s not sure she’ll ever get past the emotional scars and the guilt she has for being the one who lived. For the most part, both May’s parents and Zach’s parents are so wrapped up in their own issues they don’t even notice their children are suffering, except towards the end of the novel. This is a different view of a school shooting, of the damage done in the aftermath of violence, and I found it a compelling read.
Liz Lawson lives in California. The Lucky Ones is her debut novel.
(Galley courtesy of Random House/Delacorte Press in exchange for an honest review.)
A lot of second novels are less impressive than the books they follow, but Emily A. Duncan’s Ruthless Gods is not one of them! This novel continues the story of Nadya, Malachiasz, Serefin, and the rest of their friends. It’s dark, cold, and compelling.
There’s a lot of blood, violence, and despair here, but there is also hope, albeit a tiny, trembling flame. The characters finally start to realize—truly realize—that what they’ve always thought to be truth may not necessarily be so, Compelling, mesmerizing, riveting…whatever your synonym of choice for “I couldn’t put this down!” is, Ruthless Gods is it.
Emily A. Duncan is a New York Times bestselling author. Ruthless Gods, her newest novel, is the second book in the Something Dark and Holy series.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 