This is a heartwarming tale about Kate, a young fashion designer, who after suffering loss and heartache decides to leave Seattle and embark on a journey to her ancestral homeland of Ireland. A trip encouraged by her late mother. After a few weeks of drifting around Ireland she lands in a small sleepy village called Glenmara. There she meets a group of women and quickly bonds with them while listening to their heartfelt stories and learning to make the lace items that the town is known for. Instead of leaving, Kate decides to stick around and help the women turn their lace into beautifully designed lingerie which some town’s people frown upon including the village priest. Kate also begins a romantic relationship with Sullivan, the town’s most eligible bachelor much to the annoyance of the other single ladies. The women soon begin wearing the lacy items they make and are transformed. They are happier and more affectionate and their husbands return the sentiment in kind. However, the village priest is on a crusade to rid the village of Kate and the beautiful undergarments she helps create.
I
enjoyed reading this sweet and romantic book very much. I especially liked
learning about the lace making process and the description of the picturesque
village. Having traveled to my husband’s ancestral home of Ireland several
summers ago, I can appreciate the warmth and generosity of the Irish people.
The assortment of quirky characters are fun and interesting and I was thrilled
when Kate and Sullivan begin a courtship. All in all, this a lovely book that
everyone can enjoy.
Read-alikes:
The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham
The It Girls by Karen Harper
The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester
Karen McHugh, Harborfields Public Library
Noreen “Nora” is an executive at a shoe corporation; her department specializes in branding and marketing. When the corporation is bought out by another, the incoming team vies with current employees for the positions available. Nora’s sleazy coworker boyfriend really wants her position and convinces her to take a buyout.
Nora suddenly has 18 months of pay with no job prospects, no boyfriend, and a ton of time on her hands. So she puts on a pair of new sneakers that she tirelessly promoted and the pedometer the company gifted her and begins walking. Quickly she is joined by two neighbors, Tess, who is struggling with a rebellious teenage daughter, and Rosie, who took over her parents’ lavender fields after her mom died. The three women meet each morning to walk. They spend their mornings talking and trying to solve each other's problems. Along with walking, Noreen attends small-group career coaching sessions (a perk from the buyout) where she discovers that she is more than just what she can rattle off her resume.
Overall, this book was subpar. The overall theme of walking and friendship had potential. I found the characters to be unlikeable and underdeveloped and the story felt rushed. There were too many weak storylines instead of developing a few. The novel takes place over just a couple weeks, so I feel that the way things play out is a bit unrealistic as well. For a big portion of the novel the women don’t seem like they want to be friends, but they decide to take a trip to Washington State to attend a Lavender festival together. On this trip is the first time I felt that there was any form of connection between the characters. If you are looking for a quick, mindless read that relates to walking, especially during tough times I would recommend this book. If you’re looking for character depth, this is not the book for you.
Read-alikes:
Suprise Me by Sophie Kinsella
Starting Now by Debbie Macomber
The Girls of August by Anne Rivers Siddon
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
Nanci Helmle, The Smithtown Library - Commack Building
This book is a fictionalized biography of Georges Auguste Escoffier, a French chef, restauranteur, and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking. Escoffier began his career by organizing the kitchens of his captors during the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871) and went on to cook for the rich and famous of his day. His wife Delphine, a poet whom he won in a poker game, refused to accompany him on his travels, but he returned home to care for her when she was became deathly ill.
Good for readers of biographical fiction, foodies, and lovers of historical fiction.
Read-alikes:
The First Actress: A Novel of Sarah Bernhardt by C.W. Gortner
Delicious by Ruth Reichl
The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro
Jackie Malone, Retired
Although Andrea Levy’s fourth novel was originally published in 2004, and the bulk of the story takes place in 1948, Small Island has an uncanny relevancy in the year 2021. Winning both the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize, this novel broaches the subjects of immigration, race, and prejudice in post-World War II England. The main characters in the story are two married couples—one Jamaican and one British—and the story is told in their individual voices.
Hortense and Gilbert live on the “small island” of Jamaica. But each dreams of a more meaningful existence beyond their native land. They feel that the way to accomplish their goals would be to emigrate to England, the Mother Country—the “big island.” Shortly after they meet, they realize that they both have the same vision and each can use the other to reach their goal, so they marry. Once they got to England, the plan was that Gilbert would attend law school and Hortense would teach. What the couple did not anticipate was the level of discrimination and hostility that they would face when they arrived, simply because of their race.
The story opens with Hortense arriving at the English residence that Gilbert secured for the couple after his tour of duty in the RAF. The grand house is owned by Queenie, one of many Britons awaiting the return of a spouse from the war. When her husband Bernard fails to return, Queenie is forced to take in lodgers—Gilbert being one of them. When Bernard finally does return, he is outraged that Queenie would let rooms to colored people. The disharmony that ensues reaches almost catastrophic proportions.
Filled with intriguing characters, the novel unfolds as seen through the eyes of each of the characters.
Written in a non-linear chronology, the novel portends the diverse culture that exists today. Small Island is written in a literary style that may not appeal to some readers. But if you are looking for a saga—a story that you can really immerse yourself in; an epic tale that leaves you thirsting for the next plot development; a narrative that you almost wish would never end, then this book is for you. It unfolds like a Netflix limited series—it’s that captivating. Levy masterfully fleshes out the characters with a contagious compassion, successfully captures the flavor of the Jamaican dialect, and effectively exposes the nature of social inequality. And, oh yes, she throws in a surprise ending in the very last pages of the book!
Read-alikes:
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Affairs of the Falcons by Melissa Rivero
Deborah Formosa, Northport-East Northport Public Library
When Beatrice gets a phone call telling her that her sister Tess is missing, she immediately hops a flight to England. A few days later, Tess’s body is found. The police and coroner pronounce the death a suicide, but Bea knows her sister would never do such a thing. This literary thriller follows Bea’s attempts to find her sister’s murderer.
The structure jumps from Bea telling (dead) Tess what she’s doing, to telling the police what she’s done, then going over it again in her head. A lot of back and forth and repetition. We read what she tells her sister, then read it again when she tells the police.
There
are a lot of characters but unfortunately, they are all one dimensional. I did feel Bea’s grief over losing her
sister, but otherwise, no character or sentiment was very strong.
It
is a page-turner inasmuch as you do want to know what happened to Tess, but the
ending is convoluted and disappointing as we find that the narrator is a bit
unreliable.
Read-alikes:
The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornice
Friends We Keep by Jane Green
Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth
Lori Ludlow, Babylon Public Library
Private investigation is the Spellman family business and they are very good at what they do. Unfortunately, their professional skills tend to spill over into their personal lives and are even used against each other. Invading each other’s privacy is a normal occurrence. Our narrator, Izzy, is the eldest daughter and resident misfit. Her 13-year-old sister is on the way to becoming Izzy 2.0 and her brother is irritatingly perfect. Her parents have the most P.I. experience, which is abundantly clear with each interaction/interrogation they have with their children.
Izzy spends her time working cases, avoiding her parents, looking for her next ex-boyfriend, trying to keep her little sister from acting out on her new favorite pastime of “recreational surveillance” on random people, and tracking down her uncle who tends to go on benders the family refers to as “Lost Weekends”. This fast-paced novel successfully deals with real life issues in a truly offbeat way.
Author Lisa Lutz started out writing Hollywood screenplays and one of the rejected scripts became the premise for her first book, The Spellman Files, which then became a series. If you liked the Veronica Mars television show/movies or like a bit of humor with your mystery, this might be the book for you!
Read-alikes:
Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
The Stephanie Plum Series by Janet Evanovich
Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple
Jessicca Newmark, The Smithtown Library - Smithtown Building
Two brothers, both lawyers. Reggie is the responsible one, well respected in the field. Nigel is the screw up, working for his brother, hoping to stay out of jail and not lose his license. Reggie has his brother answering mail, hoping to keep him out of trouble, but it turns out trouble finds him anyway when Nigel finds an old letter from a little girl whose father is missing. She wrote to their firm, not because of the brothers, but because the firm's address is none other than the address for the famous Sherlock Holmes and she needs his help. It turns out the office receives a lot of letters for the famous detective and part leasing the offices means dealing with Mr. Holmes' mail.
Nigel tries to tell Reggie what's going on, but Reggie doesn't want to hear his tales. This leads Nigel to take matters into his own hands, fly to California, and try to find the girl, now woman, from the decades old letter in order to help. Upon discovering Nigel's latest escapade, Reggie also finds a dead body in Nigel's office and isn't sure what's going on. To keep his brother out of jail and protect his own reputation, Reggie follows Nigel to L.A. hoping to bring his brother home, but instead finds himself embroiled in a decades-old cover up as well as another murder. Will Reggie be able to clear Nigel's name while protecting his own reputation and maybe even solve the old and current murders or will he lose everything including his brother?
Although a good read overall, it was slow is parts and could be repetitive with Nigel's antics and Reggie always coming to his rescue. Plus there was a side story about Reggie's girlfriend that became a bit tedious. The mystery kept the reader guessing and the historical details about L.A. as well as the law firm's connection to Sherlock Holmes made for interesting backstory. Book one in a series of six, The Baker Street Letters is one of those books that you'll love if you're a cozy mystery fan but would otherwise put on your to-read list and maybe get to sometime in the future.
Read-alikes:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Still Life by Louise Penny
A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas
Azurée Agnello, West Babylon Public Library
The story begins on March 22, 1897 with the sudden death of H. H. the Maharaja of Prindur. Following the funeral which included an elephant-drawn hearse and the discovery of numerous debts left unpaid, H.H. Princess Alexandrina, nicknamed Mink, and her faithful servant Pookie, find themselves forced to move to a “grace-and-favour” home in Hampton Court Palace. Mink, Pookie, and all their eccentric neighbors attend a picnic at the palace’s Pond Gardens during which Major-General Bagshot falls ill and dies after eating a pigeon pie which Pookie baked. Was it arsenic poison or was it murder? Mink decides do her own investigating in order to clear Pookie before she is arrested and hung for murder.
This is a wonderful cozy mystery filled with quirky characters and just enough detail to keep the reader engaged. If you like Victorian historical mysteries, you’ll enjoy this one. The book includes a detailed map of Hampton Court Palace which will come in handy for those readers who want to follow along as Mink and Pookie move about the palace grounds. (Grace-and-favour residential homes owned by the Crown do still exist, though they have been discontinued at Hampton Court.)
Read-alikes:
Crowned and Dangerous by Rhys Bowen
A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman
The Secret of Wishtide by Kate Saunders
A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman
The Secret of Wishtide by Kate Saunders
Sue Ketcham, LIU Post
Grendy is a mermaid. Not for real, she just plays one in an underwater show in a has-seen-better-days Florida theme park. She started being a mermaid many years ago, but then left the biz to marry a preacher and start a family in Indiana.
Thirty-something years later, Grendy and her husband have returned to Florida, so that she can participate in reunion shows with her old mermaid pals. Until one day, she disappears, leaving a note, and her six-year-old grandson Theo behind. France, her daughter and Theo’s aunt, rushes to Florida to try to find her, and to care for Theo. While there she allows herself to be sucked into the mermaid lore, even agreeing to take her mom’s place in the upcoming Labor Day show, Mermaids on the Moon. She’s convinced her mother’s mer-pals know where she is, but they’re not telling. In the meantime, she has her life back in Indiana to worry about.
I think this story was supposed to be a whimsical tale that ends with a satisfying mother-and-daughter-come-together-understanding-each-other-better sort of thing, but it just didn’t work for me. The dialogue was stilted, allegedly because several characters were keeping secrets from each other, but I had to be told, rather than shown, that. The characters were flat, with several having the same interactions, but expecting different outcomes, several times.
I doubt that anyone would want a read-alike based on this book, but if they did want one, perhaps for a more satisfying, mother-daughter story, here are my suggestions:
Read-alikes:
If Only I Could Tell You by Hannah Beckerman
A Week at the Shore by Barbara Delinsky
The Book of Summer by Michelle Gable
Mara Zonderman, Westhampton Free Library
