gilda_elise | Entries tagged with book bingo 2023

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment…

After Nessa James’s husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she’s left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead—a gift she’s inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.

On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn’t left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriett’s life is far from over—in fact, she’s undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis.

Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent thirty long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw—until she realizes she has the ability to channel them, and finally comes into her power.

Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio of women discover a teenage girl whose body was abandoned beside a remote beach. The police have written the victim off as a drug-addicted sex worker, but the women refuse to buy into the official narrative. Their investigation into the girl’s murder leads to more bodies, and to the town’s most exclusive and isolated enclave, a world of stupendous wealth where the rules don’t apply. With their newfound powers, Jo, Nessa, and Harriett will take matters into their own hands…

I’ve run across few books recently where women have managed to gain the upper hand, usually by acquiring special powers. This book is certainly in that genre, and one of the best. And while I’ve enjoyed all of them, I don’t I’ve enjoyed one quite as much as I did this one.

Central to the story are three lovely and totally enjoyable women. As the story unfolds, the narrative switching between the characters, we learn about each of the women, their past, their dreams for the future, and how their special gifts are impacting their lives. And while I loved all three, it was Harriett who I found to be the most intriguing.

Her gift is an amazing one, for who could not want such a gift, the ability to be part of nature? But I came to love all three women, cheering them on as they came into their own.

There is suspense, humor, and downright bad things that happen. But Miller delivers them in such a way that makes the book hard to put down. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

And I can't thank

just_ann_now enough for recommending it to me.

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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51. Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner
52. Jackdaw (Jackdaw #1) by K.J. Charles
53. Blightborn (Heartland #2) by Chuck Wendig
54. The Harvest (Heartland #3) by Chuck Wendig
55. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
56. Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
57. The Change by Kirsten Miller

Dec - justannnow

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

I’m not sure what I expected from this book; something more mystical, perhaps? But the story is actually more straightforward, more down to earth. An odd thing, considering its theme.

Nora Seed is so dissatisfied with her life it isn’t even funny. Not that she doesn’t have every reason to be. Thing is, so much of it is her own fault. That leaves sympathy in very short supply. Even when handed a solution on a sliver platter, she grouses about it.

Turns out, maybe she has every reason to be suspect. Being thrown into another life, with no memory of its past, pretty much guarantees that she’s not going to be happy with it. Could be that that’s the point. That makes for some (unintentional?) amusing situations. But many not so amusing.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the ending. Oddly, that didn’t stop me from enjoying the book. After all, I could have been wrong (I wasn’t.) And there were more than a few times when I felt Nora could use a good shake!

But is what’s going on real? A dream? Or a delirium brought on my Nora’s actions? You decide!

Many thanks to

keli for the recommendation!

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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46. The Passage (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin
47. Kallocain by Karin Boye, Gustaf Lannestock (Translator), Richard B. Vowles (Introduction)
48. The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) by M.R. Carey
49. Different Seasons by Stephen King
50. In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune
51. Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner
52. Jackdaw (Jackdaw #1) by K.J. Charles
53. Blightborn (Heartland #2) by Chuck Wendig
54. The Harvest (Heartland #3) by Chuck Wendig
55. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Nov - keli

This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian World-state through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, kallocain, which denies the privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not to the state?"
As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, Kallocain achieves a chilling power and veracity that place it among the finest novels to emerge from the strife-torn Europe of the twentieth century.

The translation from Swedish only adds to our disassociation from the narrator, just as he seems to be disassociated from his own actions. Petty, paranoid, and overly ambitious, Leo Kall seems to have bought into the belief system espoused by the Worldstate (always written as one word,) under which he lives. So much so that he invents a drug that makes it impossible for a person to lie, thus adding to the state’s power.

One can well imagine how this would play out, which shows just how much Kall has blinded himself to its ramifications. Just as he has blinded himself to the feeling of Linda, his wife, and Rissen, a colleague who he mistrusts and ultimately betrays.

Yet I didn’t find the book as powerful as 1984 , or Brave New World. Perhaps because too much of the novel is taken up with the finding of test subjects and how they are affected by the drug. The action at the end I found to be a bit too coincidental, though probably the most engaging.

Recommended by Amy Sturgis (

eldritchhobbit)

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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41. The Power by Naomi Alderman
42. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
43. Day Zero (Sea of Rust #0) by C. Robert Cargill
44. Dog Days by Ericka Waller
45. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
46. The Passage (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin
47. Kallocain by Karin Boye, Gustaf Lannestock (Translator), Richard B. Vowles (Introduction)

Sept-Amy Sturgis

She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.'

Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death. With this single twist, the four lives at the heart of Naomi Alderman's extraordinary, visceral novel are utterly transformed, and we look at the world in an entirely new light.

What if the power to hurt were in women's hands?

I had initially passed this book by, a couple of times. The premise sounded rather hackneyed, electricity coming out of females’ fingertips, but it came highly recommended, so I decided to give it a shot. I have to admit, the author makes it work.

It was interesting how the story was set up as someone writing a historical novel about what had occurred thousands of years before, how it came to be that women were in power. They have no idea that the reverse was ever true, though the male author decides to write the book as if it was.

The book starts slowly. A lot of time is spent on the set-up, as the power emerges in first one girl and then another. It’s ten years before the culmination of the revolution. Each section brings the reader closer to the emergence of what will be the new world order.

The characters are interesting, especially Roxy, whose father is an underworld figure. But each girl brings her own story forward, until it all comes together, and the world changes. But we already begin to see that women in power isn’t much different than men in power, because as the first sentence of the book notes. The shape of power is always the same.

Thanks so much to

vysila for recommending this book.

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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36. The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
37. A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob Dunn
38. Sparta: Rise of a Warrior Nation by Philip Matyszak
39. Wayward (Wanderers #2) by Chuck Wendig
40. The Summoning God (Anasazi Mysteries #2) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear
41. The Power by Naomi Alderman

Aug-Vysila

Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, HAMNET is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve read a book that was so beautiful, and yet so tragic. The writing is lyrical, and creates a world of magic and love and loss.

But while the title of the book leads the reader in one direction, or, perhaps, two, the boy, Hamnet, and the sickness that swept across Europe, the true center of the story is Hamnet’s parents. How they met, what it took for them to come together, and how the death of their son affects their lives. Together, and separately.

In this way, Hamnet is an integral part of the story. He is a sweet and loving child, whose death drives his parents in two different direction. Both are devastated, but while his mother struggles to survive one day at a time, his father pours his grief into reimagining his son, and how his character would have manifested itself.

I was amazed that, in further reading, some critical “experts” saw no evidence of his son’s death having any affect on Shakespeare’s writing. I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t have. Anyone who has lost a child, or knows someone who has, I would imagine would agree.

I can't thank Melissa W. enough for recommending this book.

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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26. Bethany's Sin by Robert McCammon
27. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
28. The Tea Party by Charles L. Grant
29. Seeker (Alex Benedict #3) by Jack McDevitt
30. Jizzle by John Wyndham
31. The Taking by Dean Koontz
32. Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff
33. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
34. Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O'Farrell

July - Melissa W

Take a dip into a world where reality trembles and sanity is all in the mind — a world created by the brilliant author of The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes.

There’s a monkey with a unique artistic talent. A man living his life over again. A tube in the rush hour that was so crowded it seemed like hell; in fact it was hell...

Jizzle will grip you from cover to cover with its unique blend of horror and fantasy — a combination which can never fail.

There were some stories I really liked, some I sort of liked, and some I didn’t care for in this collection of short stories. But, I have to admit that, even the stories that I wasn’t so crazy about, I have to admire Wyndham’s imagination. Several of the stories had endings that I didn’t see coming, and were a refreshing change. Especially since they were written so long ago, and the basis of some of the stories have been used innumerable times.

I thought Technical Slip to be the most inventive, though my favorites were How Do I Do?, More Spinned Against, and Perforce to Dream.

I’ve seen the movies based on some of Wyndham’s novels, but have never read them. That’s something I plan on rectifying.

And much thanks to

0ftgx for recommending the book.

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

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21. The Magpie Lord (Charm of Magpies 1) by K.J. Charles
22. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated by Eric H. Cline
23. Wanderers (Wanderers #1) by Chuck Wendig
24. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
25. A Dog's History of the World: Canines and the Domestication of Humans by Laura Hobgood-Oster
26. Bethany's Sin by Robert McCammon
27. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
28. The Tea Party by Charles L. Grant
29. Seeker (Alex Benedict #3) by Jack McDevitt
30. Jizzle by John Wyndham

May - istia

A lord in danger. A magician in turmoil. A snowball in hell.

Exiled to China for twenty years, Lucien Vaudrey never planned to return to England. But with the mysterious deaths of his father and brother, it seems the new Lord Crane has inherited an earldom. He’s also inherited his family’s enemies. He needs magical assistance, fast. He doesn't expect it to turn up angry.

Magician Stephen Day has good reason to hate Crane’s family. Unfortunately, it’s his job to deal with supernatural threats. Besides, the earl is unlike any aristocrat he’s ever met, with the tattoos, the attitude... and the way Crane seems determined to get him into bed. That’s definitely unusual.

Soon Stephen is falling hard for the worst possible man, at the worst possible time. But Crane’s dangerous appeal isn't the only thing rendering Stephen powerless. Evil pervades the house, a web of plots is closing round Crane, and if Stephen can’t find a way through it—they’re both going to die.

I have to admit to liking the book more as horror, rather than M/M. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book. And I really did like Crane and Day. But I found myself more taken with the storyline. There’s something weird and creepy going on, much too creepy to be just “fantasy-sf.” A good thing? It was for me.

But, though I did like Crane and Day, I have to admit that, other than pure physical attraction, I didn’t understand their connection; certainly nothing that may me think “romance.” Maybe there’ll be more in the sequels.

My only complaint was the imbalance in the relationship. First, could we stop with the “little” and “small”, when it comes to describing Day? I got it; he’s short. Really short. Maybe a bit too short. Since it was brought up so much, I couldn’t help but think of him as a stand-in for a woman. He doesn’t even get to keep his magic for himself. Normally I would have liked that they had this extra connection, but it only added to the imbalance.

Still, a good start to a series I intend to finish. So thank so much for the rec,

severina2001.

Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. Alexander's Tomb: The Two-Thousand Year Obsession to Find the Lost Conquerer by Nicholas J. Saunders
2. Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
3. Under the Empyrean Sky (Heartland Trilogy #1) by Chuck Wendig
4. Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
5. After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War by Gregory P. Downs
6. The Wolf's Hour (Michael Gallatin #1) by Robert R. McCammon
7. Bag of Bones by Stephen King
8. Substitute by Susi Holliday
9. Fairy Tale by Stephen King
10. Huxley: From Devil's Disciple To Evolution's High Priest
11. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
12. The History of Bees (Climate Quartet #1) by Maja Lunde, Diane Oatley (Translator)
13. The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley
14. The Hunter from the Woods (Michael Gallatin #2) by Robert McCammon
15. The Far Arena by Richard Ben Sapir
16. The Humans by Matt Haig
17. Craven Manor by Darcy Coates
18. The Alpha Female Wolf: The Fierce Legacy of Yellowstone's 06 by Rick McIntyre
19. The Last Town (Wayward Pines #3) by Blake Crouch
20. Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist
21. The Magpie Lord (Charm of Magpies 1) by K.J. Charles

Apr - severina

Black, red, or white cover
1. The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles (some black, some white.)

When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal.

He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there.

Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.

The book reminded me so much of Resident Alien, or should I say that the program reminded me so much of the book, since the book was published first. The wit, the humor, the charm, are things they share, even if the book lacks the laugh out loud comedy.

Perhaps that’s actually a plus. Because though I enjoy the program, I love the book. There is a tenderness that too broad of comedy disrupts. The joy is watching the “new” Andrew Martin learn what it means to be human, and what he’ll do in order to retain what he’s learned.

Thanks so much to my dear friend, Anne Jackson, for recommending it.

Three people live. Three people die. You make the choice.

Like any mother, Chrissie wants to protect her family. She would do anything to keep them safe. So when a mysterious stranger turns up at her door, offering to prevent the deaths of the people she loves, it sounds too good to be true. The only problem: she must choose someone to die in their place. A substitute.

When her daughter Holly has a terrible accident, Chrissie has no option but to enter the program. In that horrifying moment, she would do anything to save her. But even after Holly makes a miraculous recovery, Chrissie is convinced it’s just a coincidence. After all, who can really control the laws of life and death?

But as the dangers to her family escalate and her chosen substitutes begin to disappear, Chrissie finds herself in an underworld of hidden laboratories and secretive doctors. And the consequences of playing by their rules are far deadlier than she ever imagined…

I’m very much of two minds when it comes to this book. On the one hand, I thought the premise behind it was a good one, and, mostly, it kept my interest, though there were too many times when coincidence played too large a part.

My bigger problem was with the characters. Chrissie isn’t very likable, mostly because she’s so indecisive. And when she does make decisions they’re usually bad ones. As the book unfolds, it becomes very obvious from who she inherited these traits.

The ending fell rather flat, especially after the characters, knowing that someone could be in danger, continue to talk rather than act.

That all said, I did find it easy to read, and again, mostly enjoyed it. So I must thank

nakeisha for recommending it.

For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days–until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community... but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.

With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over–for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again–in ways she could never have imagined…

And intriguing and highly imaginative novel, Ofelia’s story does not disappoint. How many of us have wondered what it would be like to have the planet, or at least your neighborhood, all to yourself? Here, you’ve given a view of how one woman handles it. She revels in her new life, showing a strength that she didn’t know she had.

Of course, it can’t last. But how Ofelia handles the change in her situation, how she deals with the planet’s original inhabitants, shows, not just strength, but an intelligence and compassion that had lain dormant.

I couldn’t help but love Ofelia, and those who she comes to love. It’s a truly wonderful story.

And thanks so much to

honor_reid for recommending this book.