Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
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Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann (tr. Imogen Taylor)
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: A remarkable story exploring the disintegration of the Soviet Union, told through mothers & daughters and stretching from the 1970s to the near present
Loaded with “vibrancy and humour”, Glorious People is a vivid depiction of how the collapse of the Soviet Union reverberated through the lives of ordinary people taking place across several generations of two families (TLS).
As a child, Lena longs to pick hazelnuts in the woods with her grandmother. Instead, she is raised to be a good socialist: sent to Pioneer summer camps where she's taught to worship Lenin and sing songs in praise of the glorious Soviet Union. But perestroika is coming. Lena's corner of the USSR is now Ukraine, and corruption and patronage are the only ways to get by—to secure a place at university, an apartment, treatment for a sick baby.
For Tatjana, the shock of the new means the first McDonald's in the Soviet Union and certified foreign whisky, but no food in the shops; it means terrible choices about how to love. Eventually both women must decide whether to stay or to emigrate, but the trauma they carry is handed down to their daughters, who struggle to make sense of their own identities.
Engrossing, rich in detail and unforgettable characters, this is a captivating love letter to mothers and daughters from one of Europe’s most powerful voices in political fiction.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I liked it fine. It seems to have ruffled some feathers that present themselves as Ukrainian, though for the life of me I can not see why. It makes more sense to me that the upset Cyrillic-users were Russians out to discredit this personal-level tale of political upheaval's emotional costs to emigrants.
Lena and Tatjana the emigrants, and their German-immigrant daughters Edita and Nina, are wrapped in the titanic, existential upheavals of Soviet imperial dissolution. The text is not focused enough for me to more than broadly sympathize with any one of them, though the topic, and its effects, is well-delineated. A book I admired more than enjoyed.
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for $13.99 for an ebook. Maybe borrow one.
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The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A distinctive murder mystery with an unforgettably spiky protagonist, for fans of The Twyford Code, Magpie Murders and Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Meet Agatha Dorn, cantankerous archivist, grammar pedant, gin aficionado and murder mystery addict. When she discovers a lost manuscript by Gladden Green, the Empress of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha's life takes an unexpected twist. She becomes an overnight sensation, basking in the limelight of literary stardom.
But Agatha's newfound fame takes a nosedive when the 'rediscovered' novel is exposed as a hoax. And when her ex-lover turns up dead, with a scrap of the manuscript by her side, Agatha suspects foul play.
Cancelled, ostracised and severely ticked off, Agatha turns detective to uncover the sinister truth that connects the murder and the fraudulent manuscript. But can she stay sober long enough to catch the murderer, or will Agatha become a whodunit herself?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Agatha...get it?...is a solidly drawn amateur sleuth, investigating an entertaining bibliomystery motivated by sheer cussèdness and rancor against dishonesty. My kinda gal! I relate to her bluntness and grouchy affect against people she's got reason to believe aren't doing the right thing.
There are easter-eggs for Dame Agatha mystery lovers to spot, if they're in the mood. No knowledge of the œuvre in question? Nothing will make no sense without that specialist knowledge. A very pleasant afternoon spent chuckling and smiling through the twisty bits.
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $11.99 for an ebook, and cheap at the price.
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Glitter in the Dark by Olesya Lyuzna
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: The search for a kidnapped singer in Prohibition-era New York leads an intrepid reporter from Harlem speakeasies to the dazzling world of the theater, all while grappling with her warring passions.
Ambitious advice columnist Ginny Dugan knows she’s capable of more than solving other people’s beauty problems, but her boss at Photoplay magazine thinks she's only fit for fluff pieces. When she witnesses the kidnapping of a famous singer at Harlem’s hottest speakeasy, nobody takes her seriously, but Ginny knows what she saw—and what she saw haunts her.
Guilt-ridden over her failure to stop the kidnappers and hard-pressed for cash to finally move out of her uptight showgirl sister’s apartment, Ginny resolves to chase down the truth that will clear her conscience and maybe win her a promotion in the process. When private detective Jack Crawford starts interfering with her case, Ginny ropes him into a reluctant partnership but soon finds herself drawn to the kind heart she glimpses beneath his brooding exterior. Equally as alluring is Gloria Gardner, the star dancer of the Ziegfeld Follies who treats life like one unending party. Yet as Ginny delves deeper into the criminal underworld, the sinister plot she uncovers seems to lead right back to the theater.
Then a brutal murder strikes someone close to her, and Ginny realizes the stakes are higher than she ever imagined. This glamorous world has a deadly edge, and Ginny must shatter her every illusion to catch the shadowy killer before they strike again.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: The speakeasies, the sex, the showgirls, the secrets! Harlem during Prohibition never looked more glam. If you can see it through the proliferation of subplots, minor characters foregrounded, and lush overdone descriptions.
Enjoyable for all that, and sure to please my fellow series mystery lovers. (If this ain't a book one, never saw one more wasted.)
Mysterious Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires you to surrender $17.95 (any edition) before legal possession is transferred to you.
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Roundabout of Death by Faysal Khartash (tr. Max Weiss)
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: "Potent ... intimate, humorous and compelling ... One of the best Syrian novelists of his generation and one of the most exciting writers to emerge from the region since the Arab Spring."— The Times Literary Supplement
Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing, Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods, and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks.
He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo’s streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire's flâneur.
The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Like life—as we are told in multiple stories both fiction and nonfiction—lived in war zones, this is a collection of vignettes and impressions that impress themselves on the narrator. He is a Syrian teacher of Arabic, the man on the Clapham omnibus, and at the mercy of the violence then ravaging now-destroyed Aleppo in 2012. Simple daily acts carry huge time penalties and require significant personal risk of harm, let alone crossing the many internal control points to find his kidnapped brother.
A moving story, sure to appeal to vibes-reading souls who urgently desire peace; for all that I think this 2017 book might be "of its time" not necessarily ours.
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) exacts $16.95 from you for reading privileges.
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A Killer Wedding by Joan O'Leary
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Wildly witty and wickedly fun, A Killer Wedding is a juicy debut whodunit about toxic family dynamics hidden beneath the surface of billionaire-level wealth that reads like The Devil Wears Prada protagonist played a game of Clue at a White Lotus Hotel.
Christine can’t believe her luck. The iconic Gloria Beaufort, founder of the billion-dollar beauty empire Glo, has personally chosen her to cover her grandson’s wedding for Bespoke, the cult fashion magazine that every A-list bride dreams of being featured in. A career-making scoop and a free trip to a castle turned five-star hotel on the Emerald Isle? It feels too good to be true…
Because it is.
Gloria is found dead on the very first morning of the celebratory weekend, and her entire family wants to keep her death a secret and for the wedding to march on. When Gloria’s heirs issue a chilling warning to Christine to keep things quiet, she can’t help but wonder if one of them is guilty. There’s the son who’s hiding a damaging lawsuit; the resentful daughter-in-law; the grandson who’s had a few too many run-ins with the law; the ambitious granddaughter who’s hiding more than one secret; and Gloria’s favorite grandchild, the too-good-to-be-true groom. As Christine navigates a world where glamour masks grimy secrets and everyone she meets is a suspect, she realizes that among this glitzy elite, nothing is as it seems.
Set against the dazzling backdrop of ultimate luxury and an endless reveal of surprises, A Killer Wedding is a fast-paced, humorous mystery that proves you’ll never forget your wedding day…especially if it starts with a murder.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I know we're supposed to love stories about how ghastly the superrich are, while still covetously drooling over their overpriced tat. I'm over it. A debut novel that spends about 40% of the page count modishly snarking while obsequiously documenting a culture I only want to know about if there's naked guys parading for my pervy pleasure.
Plenty of humor I wasn't that impressed by, lots of stylish...stuff...lovingly described, and who the hell care if that harridan was murdered because the wonder is it took so long.
William Morrow (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $14.99, please, but you must supply the Hermès Kindle cover.
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The Sisterhood (A Lady Emily Mystery #19) by Tasha Alexander
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Lady Emily investigates the murder of a glamorous debutante in the latest irresistible mystery of Tasha Alexander’s New York Times bestselling series.
London, 1907: When the Season's most accomplished and elegant debutante, Victoria Goldsborough, collapses and dies at her engagement ball, the great and good of London Society prepare to mourn the tragic loss of an upstanding young woman. But all is not what it seems, and after a toxic beverage is revealed to be the cause of death, the king himself instructs Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves to unearth the truth.
Who would want to harm one of the most popular women of the year? Is it her fiancé with whom she had an unusually brief courtship; a rival for his affections bitter at being cast aside; her best friend who is almost certainly hiding a secret from Colin and Emily; a disappointed suitor with a hidden gambling habit; or a notorious jewel thief who has taken a priceless tiara from the Goldsborough home? When a second debutante succumbs to poison, the race is on to find a ruthless killer.
Emily and Colin’s investigation leads to a centuries old tomb in the center of London with a mysterious link to another death dating back to Roman times and the violent reign of Boudica, ancient Britain's fearsome warrior queen. As the stakes rise and the clock ticks down, Emily must find the killer before they strike again.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Boudicca's reign and Edward VII's intersect in this truly unexpected story of a society murder set alongside the murder of a society. Not in the least what I was expecting. Enjoyable but pretty slight in its conceit. These timelines do not seamlessly converge nor can I picture a way to make that happen.
Jaded, seen-it-all historical mystery readers should pick up Author Alexander's gauntlet. I might e missing a big...something.
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) craves the boon of $14.99 from you for a night in its company.
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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
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What We Can Know (28%) by Ian McEwan
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Cli-fi and poetry and postapocalyptic archipelagos where England was and Ian McEwan, taken all together, were simply too many things I don't much like for me to get over my indifference. I got to, "Even if Vivien never read her birthday present, never even untied the scroll, everything I've learned about her suggests that she did not destroy the poem."
That's me done here. More of this guy's maunderings and I might scream louder than I already have. YMMV.
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $14.99 for an ebook. You do you.
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To the Moon and Back (58%) by Eliana Ramage
Rating: 2.75* of five
The Publisher Says: One young woman’s relentless quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut will irrevocably alter the fates of the people she loves most in this tour de force of a debut about ambition, belonging, and family.
My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister’s hair. I watched the moon.
Steph Harper is on the run. When she was six, her mother, Hannah, fled an abusive husband—with Steph and her younger sister, Kayla, in tow—to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.
In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: To say I abandoned this read is to do the read a disservice. It was a decent lesbian coming-of-age novel by the time I quit at the beginning of chapter sixteen. I got no frisson from it.
I really wanted to love it, but did not. You might resonate to it where I did not.
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires a payment of $14.99 for the ebook. Others will like it more than I did.
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The Story That Wouldn't Die (Jolene Garcia Mysteries #2) {15%} by Christina Estes
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Emmy Award-winning reporter Christina Estes uses her twenty-year career for inspiration for her mysteries. In The Story That Wouldn’t Die, Jolene Garcia refuses to stop investigating, but someone is determined to kill the story—and maybe her—for good.
Phoenix, Arizona, TV reporter Jolene Garcia is fresh off winning her first Emmy and committed to covering stories that matter to her community. But Jolene’s managers want stories that grab immediate attention and generate clicks, not ones that take time to develop.
When a beloved small business owner dies in a car crash, Jolene isn’t convinced it was an accident. He’d been raising questions about who keeps getting lucrative deals at city hall—questions that powerful people don’t want answered. The deeper Jolene digs, the more suspicious things she uncovers.
Exposing greed, ambition, and deception could become the biggest story of Jolene’s career. Her bosses tell her to drop it. But there’s a story here, and Jolene’s going to find it.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I started reading this DRC in April. I gave up last night when I realized I read this sentence: "It will be interesting to hear what Kris Kruger has to say about the guy who quit working for him, started his own business, and then complained about Kris getting lucrative city contracts," a second time...I restarted the read...and was utterly convinced that no, it very much would not.
I rated her first novel, Off the Air, 3.5* and noted I was not invested in the victim's death because he needed killin'...and lo, here we are again.
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $14.99 to relinquish their monopoly on the file. Libraries are free to use.
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The Art of a Lie (52%) by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Rating: 3* of five, because it's me not the book
The Publisher Says: In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits in this masterful historical novel from the author of the USA TODAY bestseller The Square of Sevens.
Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.
Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I feel caddish abandoning this read. The Punchbowl and Pineapple deserves better from me than abandonment at 52%; yet I had to face facts: I like the idea of the read but am unenthusiastic about the execution. At the beginning of Part III, I faced up to the fact I was slogging along hoping I could finish.
My Goodreads friend who convinced me by example to keep going will most likely unfriend me now. She *loooved* the story. I, sadly, did not.
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires $14.99 for your access to the file.
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UNVEILED: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt (41%) by JONATHAN HAROUNOFF
Rating: 3* of five, because it's my mood as much as the book
The Publisher Says: In September 2022, twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini is killed by Iran's morality police in Tehran for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely. Outrage triggers nationwide protests. Women rip off their headscarves, setting them afire. Others cut their hair in open defiance. Key industries are brought to a standstill, and once-revered banners of the country's Supreme Leader are incinerated. It's the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran in its forty-six-year history-not coming from a foreign adversary but from their own freedom-seeking women. Women and girls, perhaps for the first time in the history of the modern Middle East, take center stage in a nationwide uprising, clamoring for a freer Iran and chanting the now-viral battle cry of: "Woman, Life, Freedom."
Award-winning British-Iranian journalist Jonathan Harounoff, now serving as Israel's international spokesperson to the United Nations, demystifies the context leading up to these historic protests inside Iran and abroad and examines the potential future ramifications. With much of the global spotlight focused on the Islamic Republic's dangerous foreign policy agenda, Unveiled: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt pays tribute to the people of Iran who have paid the ultimate price for freedom.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Important reminder that progress does not contain guarantees of permanence. It is journalistic prose, neither bad nor good, but serviceable. I gave up when we went back to cell phone footage being dismissed by the regime as fake. I'm not saying anything is untrue, I'm just not enjoying the read stylistically so it feels like I'm taking a beating for no reward.
Leftists scared by modern trends, who believe women are adults with actual rights to bodily autonomy, should look into it.
Black Rose Writing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $18.95 for a paperback.
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