UNTAMED COAST, historical mystery set in Alaska

UNTAMED COAST
KEVIN C. MORRIS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A late-night mayday call drives a grieving man to embark on an unexpected journey along the wild Alaskan coast, unraveling a decades-old mystery of stolen gold, missing women, and murder in this atmospheric and propulsive debut novel.

After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can't explain or ignore.

His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.

Told across three evocative timelines—a radio operator in 1938 collecting more than just telegrams, a young woman in the 1980s fighting to survive her abusive husband, and Marco in the present day searching for a voice in the static—Untamed Coast is a story of fierce determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection, and the unseen ripples that reverberate across generations, standing the test of time and the tides.

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My Review: "Marconi Franco" is one of the most nominative-determinist monikers I've run across in fiction. I think Author Morris took a big swing with it, making Marconi the center of the 2017 timeline, and could've whiffed on it very badly...and didn't. That's skill, sure, but even more luck as he's a debut author. I can readily see ten ways he could've fumbled such a "joke" but Marco never becomes a one-liner in a narrative that splits among grieving Marco who misses his late wife Michelle; Anya from 1982, struggling to survive marital abuse in a remote, isolated life fishing with her husbeast; and in 1938, there's gold-struck Joe Baxter in Radioville, a communication outpost who helps isolated prospectors stay alive while scheming how to get rich.

Yes, it's the radio that connects them all. As that oddness in the spacetime continuum plays out, though, Author Morris evokes immersively the bleak, spare beauty of maritime Southern Alaska, allowing readers to really *get* what it is that binds these characters to the life they've each chosen in harsh, unstable conditions.

The mystery of what connects the lives of each character is well-handled. It's always a danger to think in "supernatural" terms, and never moreso than when characters exist in separate timelines. In maritime Southern Alaska, there are a lot of details to survival in a really complicated dance of detailed actions, dangerous situations that have changed very very little in a long time, and thus things in concrete reality that have commonality among Marco, Anya, and Joe. I wouldn't call this a thriller, though there are moments throughout the stories that do indeed cause intense responses; I'd say it's a suspense novel because even in the not-thrilling moments, there are deeply drawn scenes of uneasy peace that feels unlike rest, there are oddball, off-kilter moments that point your attention irresistible *there* and away from *here*...lots of thought went into how to keep your reading finger turning pages.

If no one gives this book to Alan Ritchson's first-look company (he must have one, Reacher's such a success) to develop into a limited series for Prime, it will be a shame. He'd *slay* as Marco. Or Joe, if he prefers. (Not Anya, though.)

USING GIFT CARDS: NetGalley Mystery/Thriller Page

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEAD MONEY
JAKOB KERR
Bantam Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.

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My Review: It's a great way to start 2026, this book. Don't buy into the ever-so-cheery façade that the AI-promoting shills very badly want you not to question! There is always a darker side to every shiny surface.

This twisty, really twisted thriller is not realistic, though, because it's a thriller. They're OTT by design. In this case I really liked Mackenzie's utter ruthlessness because it's all too seldom one sees that role fulfilled by a female character. Author Kerr made her legal-eagle skills more believably deployed than I expected in the novel's framework...private-practice lawyers don't get "attached" to FBI investigations, or there'd be no honest investigation ever performed...but again, it's a thriller. Told in several timeframes, with action-slowing jumps, the story still unfolds in a logical way. I'm not eager to hop around quite as much as Author Kerr takes me, but it did all hang together, and none of the hops were unnecessary.

The concept of "dead money"—funds not accessible until some legal process is complete—is very useful indeed. It added a great deal of urgency to this story, and provided a seriously powerful goad for Mackenzie to use every lever she can reach to get the murder of a man who, frankly, just needed killin', resolved. Only in a certain way...which is why she's morally ambiguous and happy to use methods, umm, unorthodox shall we say to accomplish her goal.

That this is Author Kerr's debut novel was really impressive to me. He's clearly an habitual observer. All his characters felt distinct, if not distinctive; but it is a novel set in the tech world, so there the buffet is already laid. It's not a knock, the characters are well used; but it does make me eager to see what more he decides to do beyond this framework. The plot twists are never exactly perfectly convenient for Mackenzie so he's not intellectually lazy. It wasn't entirely his fault that I figured out who committed the murder, nor that I wanted to smack the shit out of some of the entitled goofs he peoples the world with. He's an insider, I think he'd know if these were unfair stereotypes; I'll go with "not" as the answer to that.

The ending was very satisfying, and I particularly liked some of the moralizing speeches in advance of it. Others will feel differently. A very solid debut thriller introducing a new voice in thrillerdom. May he decide to keep developing his good-quality storytelling chops.

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SALTWATER
KATY HAYS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, Italy, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

Haunted by the specter of that night, the paranoid, insular Lingate family begins to crack, and Helen seizes the opportunity with the help of Lorna Moreno, the family assistant. But then Lorna disappears, and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened. Everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect—Helen’s controlling father, Richard; her rarely lucid aunt, Naomi; her distant uncle, Marcus; and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems. As long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes clear: Not everyone will leave the island alive.

Combining a glittering, dark atmosphere, morally-gray characters, and mind-bending twists, Saltwater is an exploration of the corrupting effects of generational privilege and the lengths people go to protect a legacy—and how no one can hold a grudge like family.

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My Review: Poor Helen Lingate...poor little rich girl...it must really feel awful to suffer inside a gilded cage.

Actually, it does. Money does not make people happier, does not insulate them against the awfulness that life chucks into the pits we dig for ourselves. That lots of it is self-inflicted is true of everyone on Earth. It also does not obviate the role of luck in the lottery we call family. Helen got some lousy luck, some decent luck, and genetic gifts out of her family heritage.

What she didn't get was a decent family. Uncle Marcus and dad Richard (!) have her locked into an ugly conservatorship à la Britney Spears. Is his control justified? Is he her concerned papa or a bog-standard greedy parent? Why is the sudden reappearance of the necklace worn by the late Sarah Lingate the night of her death such a jolt?

A gothic story of grudges nursed, retribution plotted, and cruelty from unexpected quarters, all set on the storied isle of Capri...there's a reason Tiberius used this locale as his hideaway, it's so lush...and soapishly ornate. I had a good time indeed. The big twist that family stories must always have amused me greatly. Using multiple narrative voices was a clever way to avoid giving the game away. Jumping around in time is just the way things seem to be in thrillers in 2025. I'm not the biggest fan, but it does allow us to keep a real sense of suspense here. A good way to hide clues is to put them in a different frame from the main story's narrative.

A second novel from an author whose first, The Cloisters, I have not read. I won't accuse her of sophomore slump!

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CAT'S PEOPLE
TANYA GUERRERO
Delacorte Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where her feeds her favorite stray—a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns Núria’s favorite bodega?

When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves bonding together in their desire to care for him, and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they’ve all been searching for.

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My Review: I said yes to this story from the publisher because I need to keep challenging my prejudices. One of those is a strong dislike of Felis catus in all its colorways and personality types. Cat people don't tend to be sane in reference to their cult objects, which worries me for the future of humanity.

Romantic plots and sentimental results are just not my favorites. Remarkably Bright Creatures got my highest-ever rating for this kind of fiction, at four full stars; that was down to Marcellus the cephalopod not being, oh let's just say for example, a cat.

I liked Marcellus' narrative voice more than the human narrators' voices. I liked Cat's voice among these narrators more than the human ones. I was particularly amused by Cat's names for the humans. The struck me as very likely the real way that cats see their cultists. Would I have bought this book for myself? Surely you jest! (Leslie Nielsen...what do you call an earworm when it's a meme, not a song lyric?...reference only more pointed, intentional.) It's a damn sight better than those unbearable cutesy-poopsie Japanese bookshop-cat things y'all're lappin' up like they're cream.

I don't have to like something to know when it's well-made. This is a well-made polyphonic sentimental novel that's good at smoothing your emotional fur while scratching that itchy place, that "I need a happy" place, you can't reach on your own.

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PARTY OF LIARS
KELSEY COX
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

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My Review: I like the classic drama technique of setting a story during the course of one day. Of course, in line with modern trends, the story's told in multiple timelines and PoVs. It's the action taking place that's all the story's Today. It works reasonably well in Author Kelsey's hands.

I think the enduring appeal of rich-people shenanigans is the scope for soap (opera) they provide. Setting a novel at a Sweet-Sixteen party is fiendishly clever because adolescence, that time of adult-strength emotions without adult perspective to help manage them, is quite the drama-driving force. The adults in this story appear not to have resolved their own angry adolescent issues, then add the new generation's...!

Exploring these varying levels of rage, envy, and desire is the meat of this story. It makes the read absorbing...if you're reading for character. As a thriller, Author Kelsey's debut novel shows her learning curve. I would've asked her to give us real action more frequently than all at the end of the read. It's not dull before then, it is very interior. A thriller with that kind of reflectiveness is not bad, only a tad slower than many genre readers would prefer.

Getting to know these folks was enough satisfaction for me, so I recommend it to y'all who like character novels even if the "thriller" label turns you off; and y'all thriller lovers ought to give these flawed, damaged women some room to expand your repertoire.

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THAT DEVIL, AMBITION
LINSEY MILLER
Storytide (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: here is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

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My Review: Dark academia YA with murderous schools prioritizing the killer instincts of the students...shades of that ghastly Yarros series y'all're gobbling up. I really detested that farrago on multiple axes. One big one is how idiotic a parent would have to be to consent to their child being admitted under these circs.

...and then...how different is it, really, from the titanic greed mill that is the student loan racket? How different is it from this administration resuming the revolting practice of garnishing paychecks of student-loan debtors as long as those debtors are left with $217.50 from the paycheck? Debt peonage is a real threat to people's ability to live.

So, while I was sniffy at first, I had to admit the horror, the evil personified, was more than dramatically fun...it was really quite on point. The concept of "severance" in this magic system made me think very strongly of the TV show. It's a bigger take on the idea but similarly evil in its intent. I was deeply impressed throughout by the clear, unambiguous tenor of matter-of-factness...it enabled the moral stakes to stand stark in contrast to the worldbuilding. I approve of such a contrast as a didactic storytelling choice because once one sees the contrast as the commentary it is, it can't be unseen.

The same matter-of-factness points up the controversial inclusiveness of the queer people in this story...literally all of them in relationships, and all the same at risk of betrayal-for-advancement as cishet couples. In other words, no single hair's breadth of difference between them. That this is a comment on the narrative being pushed by external forces is entirely invisible, until you see it.

I'm sure you're getting my drift by now. This is a story of a scoobygroup with a life-or-death motivation to resist the narrative they're being sold. Their actions will make the world...so they need to choose how they're going to do that in the face of a death-dealing Devil who has absolute power over them.

I think over-forty readers might sigh and roll their eyes at the beginning 25%, thinking they were in for a very specific kind of read. To them I say, put it down for a week, read some porn...oops, romantasy...or something, then come back to get your surprise. Author Linsey's talking to people who don't have our frame of reference. Clear your cookies then come refreshed as she shifts registers to one more suited to the "A" bit of YA.

It isn't perfect but damn! It heartened and elevated me in my mood and affect. That is saying a lot in 2025.

THE PARADOX HOTEL, rollicking good time-travel story

THE PARADOX HOTEL
ROB HART
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$4.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake.

January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.

Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.

Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.

None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.

On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.

January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.

There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.

But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.

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My Review: Witty, fun dialogue describing a very standard plot. I'm not complainig, I'm explaining. If you like our Unstuck heroine,January Cole, you'll like the whole effort. I liked her; I think most of y'all might as well. If you're not all lemon-puckered about SF, you might already know Author Rob's work from The Warehouse. (Plenty of subtext in that sentence if you know what you're looking for.)

"Unstuck"? Um, well, yeah...it's a time-travel book, featuring some yucky trillionaire types without morals or scruples, who can afford their very own access to time travel:

“There’s this saying, about people who are born on third base and think they hit a triple,” I tell him. “About the way people inherit wealth and power and think that not only did they earn it, but they deserve it. We deal with a different sort in this place. People who were born on third base and think they built the stadium.”

A consequence of developing time travel is that some people come "Unstuck" from their roots in...whatever Time is...hence are "Unstuck." Think The Time Traveler's Wife, or Everything Everywhere All at Once. Like all the best time-travel stories, those and this one are about bigger things, grief, the idea of inequality, the process of identity versus the certainties most of us crave for identity to provide...y'know, Life.

Author Rob digs in, plays it out, makes us care while taking our little teeny Stuck selves through a mad, whirling, loud maelstrom of voices and ideas. January lost Mena, grieves for her, but...what does loss really mean to someone Unstuck? Why is everything everywhere here and why is now all at once? With time crimes to solve, security professional January needs to track everyone and through the everywhere that is the Paradox Hotel...which is being sold in the process of the US Government privatizing the ability to time travel, just to add some more complexity.

And who's the dead guy in room 526 that no one else can see?

All of these are questions January needs to solve/resolve. It's the only focus she has that can override her desperate, raging grief for Mena. And it might keep her employed at the Paradox Hotel.

And alive. All because she's Unstuck, so the only one who *can* do it all.

I don't offer a fifth star because the humor is often bitter, sometimes forced, and always facetious. I resonate with most of it. I love Jodi Taylor's emotionally intense, very funny books; they're happy humor, laughing...sometimes mordantly...together with the story. In Author Rob's work, we stand outside and laugh at things with January. It can feel off-putting. So no fifth star for you.

It's still a really good time for the right mood, the right reader, the right moment. Look into it!

I LEAVE IT UP TO YOU, do not read while hungry!

I LEAVE IT UP TO YOU
JINWOO CHONG
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?

A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.

Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, that of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.

There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.

Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.

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My Review: The Bear starring Daniel Dae Kim, only queer. Like that show, it's about the people doing the work of feeding others not the act of making and serving the food.

The lead is Jack, Junior. He has never been one to deal with anything he can run away from; waking up from a coma to find that his fiancé has moved on with his own life without a proper ending...well...it's a condign punishment. Far more unnerving is having to return home to the family he treated the way his belovèd treated him.

Being Korean, they take him in; being Korean, there's a steep emotional cost to their reintegration of the queer prodigal. Now it's all on Jack's shoulders to do the thing he ran away to escape...run the restaurant that supports them...plus make his amends for the truly terrible, and in their ancestral culture deeply dishonorable, way he abandoned them.

Their homophobia does not excuse him of feeling guilt even in his own mind. He's forced to grapple, belatedly but inescapably, with coming of age and coming out instead of running away from this existential conflict. Delaying this always complex and usually painful process does not make it one bit easier. A raft of new complications are added on top of the old, homophobic ones: what the hell is COVID? Why won't his fiancè talk to him? How can he presume to advise his nephew, son of his recovering-alcoholic brother, on life when he has royally screwed his own? Can he learn to want the legacy of restaurant-running his deeply unhappy father and super-pragmatic mother are so desperate to wish on him? How can he ask Emil, the nurse who cared for him during his coma, to be...to be...well, what exactly does he want Emil to be?

You can see how the layers and the complications bring to mind Carmie and The Bear. It's not like a mystery novel, it's more like an episodic show, in that you're expected from the get-go to invest in the people doing the stuff rather than the stuff being done. I'll always batten on any story that takes a man on the emotional journey of self-discovery, self-actualization. It's much more interesting to me than another facile-but-fun falling in lust/love/like in any order story could be.

I can't quite offer all five stars because the story can't quite offer enough of an ending. Yes, Jack is on a new road through life. He has a sense of himself as in control of more of his life than ever before, and gets that from a very realistic decision to let go of many of his self-limiting beliefs. This is done, however, by implication. No scene illuminates this decision, and that absence...likely done to avoid being smacked in the face with it...means Jack continues to *feel* to readers like his old self but inexplicably making better decisions. Umma, the mother, is short-shrifted as a person...like she would be in the culture she comes from. It felt a bit raggedy of Author Chong to give her a mysterious boyfriend and not do more with it. Chekhov's gun, anyone? And the bigly under-thought-through inclusion of COVID and its impact on the small family businesses of the US. The loving, delightful use of use of evocative description for sushi ingredients, preparation, and its cultural resonances for this Korean family made me wish to see more of this cursory subplot. Describing the food and leaving the business underlying its service out wasn't fully satisfying.

What was satisfying was the manner of Author Chong's incorporation of Jack, JUNIOR'S, queerness. Yes, a point of conflict; no, not a source of rage and rejection. Jack's running away was more of a problem than his sexuality.

I love this story's good parts a lot, I think the author deserves our eyeblinks and treasure. A very good story well-told is a thing we all need.

THE LATINA ANTI-DIET: A Dietitian's Guide to Authentic Health that Celebrates Culture and Full-Flavor Living, good, supportive guide to eating

THE LATINA ANTI-DIET: A Dietitian's Guide to Authentic Health that Celebrates Culture and Full-Flavor Living
DALINA SOTO
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Break away from diet culture while still honoring your body and incorporating cultural foods in this fresh, expansive guide from the registered dietitian and creator of Your Latina Nutritionist.

Diet culture is facing a reckoning, and intuitive eating has been leading the charge. The movement has taken the internet by storm, encouraging us to stop dieting and make food choices that feel good for our bodies rather than follow influencers and their shakes.

But intuitive eating is missing a key ingredient: culture. Like many movements, intuitive eating has become co-opted by a select few—placing the focus on “mainstream” food while discounting cultural cuisines. But how can we gain a healthy attitude towards food when our foods—our arroz, habichuelas, and plátanos—are left out of the conversation?

Dalina Soto is here to add them back to our plates.

As a registered dietitian, Soto understands the pros and cons of intuitive eating. As a first-generation Dominican American, she’s also seen firsthand how this movement has only catered to a certain demographic. With her easy-to-follow CHULA method, Soto teaches us how to:

Challenge negative thoughts

Honor our bodies and health

Understand our needs

Listen to our hunger

Acknowledge our emotions

She gives us tools to confront diet culture and the whitewashing of food so we can go back to eating what we love while managing our health.

Engaging and incisive, The Latina Anti-Diet is for everyone who’s been told to lay off the tortillas and swap their white rice for brown. Soto shows us that food is so much more than calories; it’s about celebrating our culture and living a life full of flavor.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Food, fat, and flavor start with the same letter for a reason. I'm deeply anti-diet. This book crystalizes my objections to the diet industry's be-afraid-of-your-food message, its relentless focus on women and the concomitant relentless bombardment of negativity about appearance, or more stealthily but with the same objective, relentless "health" messaging that is anything but healthy.

The author is a social-media Force. She's got followers in droves...legions...and she's been giving this very practical method to get yourself into a healthy, sustainable pattern of eating the food you enjoy for a while now. I hadn't heard of her because I'm not all that interested in diets except to belittle and insult the anti-food goblins that perpetrate and perpetuate the anti-food messaging that damages so many people.

What else can I say? If you think you need a diet book, you really need this book. Skip the "one weird trick" fads, spend your time and your treasure here. Author Soto is Cicero to the Br'er Rabbits that abound in this space. She spends a deal of her page-count telling stories about those who've used her method...CHULA, explained above...to mend their fractured relationship to food. There's a lot of informative and explanatory text, so it's not just a paper version of an infomercial; the aim was to recreate her social-media presence's warm, approachable presentation of self. I found it effective, and agreeable, where I expected to feel it was kinda cringe.

*I*, a certifiable curmudgeon with a long-standing hatred of the dietmongers, am rating this book 5 stars and recommending it to people who think they need to diet. Push a pin in that idea until you've read this book.

THE DEVIL AT HIS ELBOW: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty, in a nutshell: Sick-making

THE DEVIL AT HIS ELBOW: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
VALERIE BAUERLEIN
Ballantine Books
$32.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.

Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect—and fear—for a hundred miles in any direction.

When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. His forefathers had covered up a midnight suicide at a remote railroad crossing, a bootlegging ring run from a courthouse, and the attempted murder of a pregnant lover. Alex, too, almost walked away from his unspeakable crimes with his reputation intact, but his downfall was secured by a twist of fate, some stray mistakes, and a fateful decision by an old friend who’d finally seen enough.

Why would a man who had everything kill his wife and grown son? To unwind the roots of Alex’s ruin, award-winning journalist Valerie Bauerlein reported not just from the courthouse every day but also along the backroads and through the tidal marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. When the jurors made their pilgrimage to the crime scene, trying to envision Maggie and Paul’s last moments, she walked right behind them, sensing the ghosts that haunt the Murdaughs’ now-shattered legacy.

Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sick-making.

True-crime books are not strangers to my TBR himalaya, or my blog. They regularly infuriate me, offend my sense of ma'at, and reorient my moral compass in the direction of "humans are irredeemable scum".

This story marks the second time I have felt physically sick while reading about a true crime. (American Honor Killings was the first.) Author Bauerlein covered the story for the Wall Street Journal because, one assumes, there were so very many financial crimes uncovered in this murder trial. The malpractice, malfeasance, and felony money-laundering are what made the case interesting enough for that bastion of The Establishment to consent to spend resources on the take-down of what is presented as a rogue actor, a bad apple, an outlier. What better way to protect The Establishment than to show it policing itself?

The book details a century's worth of similar, often worse, crimes committed by the same family. Unprosecuted, usually uninvestigated crimes committed as good as out in the open.

But this one's a rogue.

No, he is not, and if #MeToo taught the world anything it's that The Establishment circles the wagons fast to contain the damage. Zoë Kravitz has made this superficial damage control the center of her directorial debut film Blink Twice. Author Bauerlein does not seem to make this connection, though, as she says, Alex Murdaugh had inherited his forebears' power and prowess and then squandered it, the work of a hundred years washed away in blood. Even after digging into the history of these crackers in expensive shoes, her allegiance is firmly to The Establishment, and thus confines condemnation to this scumbag while quietly and indirectly exonerating the evil demon of generational wealth that enabled at the least, caused is more like it, the inevitable rise of the very scumbag she ringingly condemns.

I understood the need to organize the book out of chronological order; there's evidence that otherwise wouldn't fit into the story. It did mean that all the almost-five hundred pages feel weighty, freighted with meanings you can not slip past or you will indeed miss something. It also made the read a week longer for me than it would have been otherwise. Processing the implications of the murderer's inherited sense of entitlement and immunity from consequences was, and is, effortful for me.

Terrible story of a vile scion of ill-gotten wealth squandered, and for a wonder, the criminal punished at long last. A cautionary tale for others in similar circumstances.

The chickens will come home to roost.

FLYING SOLO, charming story of adults in the midst of Life and love

FLYING SOLO
LINDA HOLMES
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

One of NPR's Best Books of 2022!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A woman returns to her small Maine hometown, uncovering family secrets that take her on a journey of self-discovery and new love, in this warm and charming novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over.

Smarting from her recently cancelled wedding and about to turn 40, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be 90. Along with boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line, “And anyway, if you’re ever desperate, there are always ducks, darling.”

Laurie is told that the duck has no financial value. But after it disappears under suspicious circumstances, she feels compelled to figure out why anyone would steal a wooden duck — and why Dot kept it hidden away in the first place. Suddenly Laurie finds herself swept up in a righteous caper that has her negotiating with antiques dealers and con artists, going on after-hours dates at the local library, and reconnecting with her oldest friend and first love. Desperate to uncover her great-aunt’s secrets, Laurie must reckon with her past, her future, and ultimately embrace her own vision of flying solo.

I CHECKED THIS OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. THANK GOODNESS THEY EXIST. BUYING EVERY BOOK I WANT TO READ WOULD BE RUINOUS!

My Review: There's something really wonderful about reading stories that center your own concerns. I'm older than most of these characters, younger than a few, but they're not just starting out, figuring out Life, for the first time. They're part of it, settled into it, and now...there needs to be More.

Laurie and Nick dated eons ago, fell out of touch, and now that Laurie's back in their hometown to settle up her Aunt Dot's estate, she's back in touch with Nick because...well, because she wants to be. Because he wants to be, too. They're grownups with crack-ups in their pasts. They're adult children of people they love and care for. They're professionals and they're nice people.

And they're still...again...relearning how to be...in love. With each other, with their wildly separate lives and their mutually exclusive homes. They are, in short, deeply relatable to me. This book came to me as a not-quite recommendation from a LibraryThing friend who read it and resonated to its companionate themes. I'm resonating to the, well, the desire to make a relationship work that has a lot of strange contours to it and that precludes cohabitation for the foreseeable future. But is still a full, fun, vibrant, living relationship. It's not that common to see this kind of thing in fiction, though I'm aware that it exists in reality.

What happens in the course of Nick and Laurie's rediscovery of each other is a story that weaves together the best of humanity...generous, kind, unselfish souls sharing gladly all that they're asked for, looking for ways to give even more...and the worst, the dishonest and selfish impulse to lie and cheat and steal. In the course of that element of the story being resolved, in a believable way, these two main charatcers go on the real voyage of discovery inside themselves and in relation to the many, many people in their orbit.

I found a lot to enjoy in this read. I laughed out loud at Author Holmes' trademark funny lines:

“...we were pretty much out of cabinet space between the actual dishes and the food dehydrator he had bought himself and then used to make jerky a total of two—as in ‘one, two’—times.”

“How was the jerky?”

“Wretched. It tasted like wet cigarettes. We could have used it to repel raccoons.”

–and–

“...But yes, she started doing senior synchronized swimming at the Sarasota Y recently. She’s going to be in a recital. The theme is Hooray for Hollywood.”

The sound Dot made was closer to a hoot than a laugh. “Good for her. Whatever it takes to get your legs over your head.”

Fun, funny stuff that totally makes sense to someone who lives in an assisted living facility, and regulary talks about it to someone who doesn't. Author Holmes never stints on the real-life elements of her stories, so far at least, and we should all pray to the Muses she never tries to.

The real-life stuff's not *all* fun, of course, and there's a lot of relatable material in that as well:

“This is just a gruesome job. I feel so bad, like a grave robber.”

{The reseller} nodded. “You are far from a grave robber. Remember, she had these things for as long as she needed them, and they probably brought her a lot of happiness. But they most likely won’t bring you any, so there’s not a lot to gain from your coming down hard on yourself because you want to let stuff go.”

–and–

“Nah. Believe me, you don’t want to get married if the marriage you’re going to have is not the same marriage as the one you’d like to have.”

It's not deathless prose that stuns with its lapidary gleam and brilliance; it's the way your smarter-than-you friend with the sense of humor talks sense into you when you're falling off of/under/for something. It's comfortable, comforting, and relatable in the best ways.

It's a book I'm glad I read by an author I'm glad is getting contracts. That's more than enough for me right this minute. It felt like a slightly selfish, wicked little gift I was giving myself, reading this pleasant tale about people like me with concerns I could relate to. Giving it a few hours made a whole bunch more of them more pleasant, and that's worth four starts and a thank you every day.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING, which is why you should read it

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING
HENRY FRY
Ballantine Books
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. He always dreamed of escaping the small-town life of his parents’ fish-and-chip shop, moving to London, and becoming a journalist. And, after five years in the city, his career isn’t exactly awful, and his relationship with pretentious Tobbs isn’t exactly unfulfilling. Certainly his limited-edition Dolly Parton vinyls and many (maybe too many) house plants are hitting the spot. But his world is flipped upside down when a visit to the local clinic reveals that Tobbs might not have been exactly faithful. In fact, Tobbs claims they were never operating under the “heteronormative paradigm” of monogamy to begin with. Oh, and Danny’s flatmates are unceremoniously evicting him because they want to start a family. It’s all going quite well.

Newly single and with nowhere to live, Danny is forced to move in with his best friend, Jacob, a flamboyant nonbinary artist whom he’s known since childhood, and their eccentric group of friends living in an East London “commune.” What follows is a colorful voyage of discovery through modern queer life, dating, work, and lots of therapy—all places Danny has always been too afraid to fully explore. Upon realizing just how little he knows about himself and his sexuality, he careens from one questionable decision (and man) to another, relying on his inscrutable new therapist and housemates to help him face the demons he’s spent his entire life trying to repress. Is he really fine, after all?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's far from my first time for...well, almost anything. Yet this British tale of being a twentysomething soul whose entire world turns upside down, whose every point of trust in his relationships is called into question because he wasn't having the same relationship with others they were having with him, just called to me.

Danny is our PoV character, a young man who's daring to think his life is going well and he's among the people who understand and love him. It's a heady place to be. So, this being a story, we know it's not the way things will stay. First, Tobbs (his long-term love) brings home an STD. So there goes that whole monogamy fantasy...and his love says some self-serving things about it being heteronormative and I cringed so hard I looked like I was trying out for the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've used that line, though I hasten to say not to excuse my transmission of an STD! Just...well, Author Fry, you scored a point with me by holding the Ouch Oculus up to my face.

Thank goodness, given this, that Danny doesn't live with that knob Tobbs. Laura and her husband seem...nice. Do please note I said "husband" and extrapolate from there that there is procreative activity taking place. We who have paid attention in sex-ed classes (or just had families) will be unsurprised to learn that Danny's rent payments are less desirable than the space he's taking up when the inevitable pregnancy occurs...just as his relationship with that knob Tobbs is over.

Danny's in therapy...terrible anxiety issues...and that completely won me over. Nina, Danny's therapist, is brilliant (in the UK sense) and comedy gold. She's not a comedy therapist, the kind you read in older books who either bumbles or is sibylline. She's commonsensical, not here for self-pity, and deeply committed to Danny learning to manage his issues. Her solidity and warmth were equaled by the obligatory wild BFF: Jacob. They are enby (non-binary), ace (asexual), and so utterly FABULOUS that I think they should have a book of their own.

Hint, hint.

The things that happen in Danny's world, in hindrance that proves to be help, are all relatable. The voice the story's told in makes the project of reading it a pleasure, and the laughter it evokes is frequently tinged with sad recognition as well as joyful anticipation. Given that Author Fry, in an interview with Debutiful.com, says he was inspired to write this story in part by television sitcoms, it's no surprise that he's already got an adaptation in the works from Aussie production company Moonriver as it expands its UK footprint.

This debut novel is a delight from giddy-up to whoa. I'd've kept this review back until my June Pride Month cavalcade of Queerness but I just couldn't...I want you to go get one and read it now.

THE OTHER DR. GILMER, unnerving murder with serious mental health implications

THE OTHER DR. GILMER: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice
BENJAMIN GILMER
Ballantine Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

A 2022 New York Public Library Best Adult book!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A rural physician learns that a former doctor at his clinic committed a shocking crime, leading him to uncover an undiagnosed mental health crisis in our broken prison system—a powerful true story expanding on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time.

When family physician Dr. Benjamin Gilmer began working at the Cane Creek clinic in rural North Carolina, he was following in the footsteps of a man with the same last name. His predecessor, Dr. Vince Gilmer, was beloved by his patients and community—right up until the shocking moment when he strangled his ailing father and then returned to the clinic for a regular day of work after the murder. He'd been in prison for nearly a decade by the time Benjamin arrived, but Vince's patients would still tell Benjamin they couldn't believe the other Dr. Gilmer was capable of such violence. The more Benjamin looked into Vince's case, the more he knew that something was wrong.

Vince knew, too. He complained from the time he was arrested of his SSRI brain, referring to withdrawal from his anti-depressant medication. When Benjamin visited Vince in prison, he met a man who was obviously fighting his own mind, constantly twitching and veering off into nonsensical tangents. Enlisting This American Life journalist Sarah Koenig, Benjamin resolved to get Vince the help he needed. But time and again, the pair would come up against a prison system that cared little about the mental health of its inmates—despite an estimated one third of them suffering from an untreated mental illness.

In The Other Dr. Gilmer, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer tells of how a caring man was overcome by a perfect storm of rare health conditions, leading to an unimaginable crime. Rather than get treatment, Vince Gilmer was sentenced to life in prison—a life made all the worse by his untrustworthy brain and prison and government officials who dismissed his situation. A large percentage of imprisoned Americans are suffering from mental illness when they commit their crimes and continue to suffer, untreated, in prison. In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer argues that some crimes need to be healed rather than punished.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The carceral economy that makes corporations wealthy is evil.

That's my bias, right there; I make no apologies for it, and if your opinion is otherwise, this review will make you angry and upset, and feel (correctly) that you are being shamed and blamed for your absence of empathy and decency. Doubled if you claim to follow a religion.

A man with Huntington's disease, who was sexually abused by his parent, is serving a life sentence in prison for murdering that parent. Here is what the incarcerated man said to the author, when asked what he wanted this book to show the world when it was written:

Before I left the prison that day in 2018, I asked Vince to tell me the most important things he wanted this book to say. This is what he said:
Prison is torture.
Sexual abuse changes you forever.
We are all at the mercy of our brains.
Listening is healing.

Dr. Vince Gilmer will, it is almost certain, die in prison. There is no cure, or really any treatment, for Huntington's disease. His entire lifetime of service as a family physician in a poor area counted for nothing when weighed against the awful crime of strangling his abuser.

That's the nature of the system. For-profit prisons need prisoners; mental-health services cost a lot of money but make no one any profits. Guess which one we-the-people fund, generously? Mental health services can't guarantee good outcomes, some people can't be helped (Vince Gilmer, for example), so spending taxpayer money on the off-chance that this specific person who has committed a violent crime might be able to benefit? What a waste...there are corporations whose bottom lines could get fatter if he's jammed into jail.

As a result of untreated intergenerational trauma, exacerbated by a fatal degenerative neurological disease likely inherited from the parent who abused Vince Gilmer in childhood, he will die alone, in misery, in a corporate profit center. At the very least his life should end in a cold, uncaring corporate medical-profit center. (There is, at long last, some glimmer of hope for those crushed by medical debts; tiny, inadequate steps towards economic justice are better than the great race backwards occurring on so many fronts.)

If you've read The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row and enjoyed it, you're in the target demographic for the book. If you're thinking "oh pew! this is too hard, too much, too unhappy" then you *should* read it...because your empathy circuits need a bit of exercise. If you're sure peope who commit murder belong in jail, what on Earth are you doing here in the first place?!

THE MAID, a lightly-sweetened lemonade of a book...refreshing!

THE MAID
NITA PROSE
Ballantine Books
$27.00 hardcover, available now

NOW $2.99 ON KINDLE (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is a locked-room mystery, narrated by a naïve narrator who genuinely, unfeignedly does not understand what is happening or why it unfolds the way it does. Its bones, then, are excellent. A well-trodden path is a gift and a curse for writer and reader. What makes or breaks the reading experience is the voice the author tells the story in.

Having edited books for a living, Author Prose is very much aware of this reality. It makes her achievement in creating Molly the Maid, ironically surnamed "Gray", contextually appropriate but nonetheless impressive. Molly loves her world, the job of being a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel.

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley early in the morning. It is, in my humble opinion, a cornucopia of bounty and beauty. The crisp little packages of delicately wrapped soaps that smell of orange blossom, the tiny Crabtree & Evelyn shampoo bottles, the squat tissue boxes, the toilet-paper rolls wrapped in hygienic film, the bleached white towels in three sizes—bath, hand, and washcloth—and the stacks of doilies for the tea-and-coffee service tray. And last but not least, the cleaning kit, which includes a feather duster, lemon furniture polish, lightly scented antiseptic garbage bags, as well as an impressive array of solvents and disinfectants, all lined up and ready to combat any stain, be it coffee rings, vomit—or even blood. A well-stocked housekeeping trolly is a portable sanitation miracle; it is a clean machine on wheels. And as I said, it is beautiful.

There is nothing about a housekeeping trolley that has ever creased my cranium before now. I'll never be so blind again. It's a rolling chemistry experiment, though I don't see that with Molly's appreciative eyes.

What strikes the neurotypical reader is how very clearly Molly isn't One of Us. She has her meltdowns, logically enough, when overwhelmed by the chaos of Life (which of necessity includes death); we'd do the same if Chaos obtruded on our day the way it did Molly's as she discovers the lifeless body of repeat hotel guest Mr. Black. The fact is, Black is well named. His death wasn't an accident or an illness...he was Murdered and the police, unfamiliar with Molly's, um, state of being, rapidly assign her the role of Suspect.

And then the Universe springs into action.

Molly, you see, is a gem. She's being used by some bad people whose moral compasses aren't calibrated right, she's being set up to take a fall she can't even see, and she is...crucially...possessed of seriously good luck in her friends. There is no question that she is the proof one always wishes for that there are some Forrest-Gumpian stories that aren't cloying. However, I will not lie to you: anyone...and I mean ANYone...who says "we are all the same in different ways" to me is going to get a truly Tongan response.... Still there is a beauty in the repetition and reassembly of cliché in service of a Message. Well, when that Message is a positive and a constructive one, which is what this fun read exemplifies to the point of being the illustration in the dictionary under "message fiction." It is, though, this Message-y nature that leaves a fifth star off my rating. I could hang with the repetitive reminders of Molly's neurodivergence. I was not quite so willing to overlook the "different ≠ bad" catechism, or the "pretty ≠ good" catechism. Learning to see beyond surfaces? Yes, yes, a maid whose oft-repeated mantra is to "return your suite to a state of perfection" is the perfect messenger for it, got it, stop now. But there was no Stop button....

What happens as a result, though, is the unraveling of a long and ugly strand of American society, a series of horrible crimes that are so...repellent...to persons and so easy to distract institutions from pursuing, that it really isn't on for me to go into it. I will say that there's not one miscreant who gets through this wringer unsqueezed. That's enough about the crime parts. The resolution parts are shaped to suit Molly the Maid's comprehension level, which expands exponentially as she navigates the shoals of her grieving for her Gran's death, for her sad coming-to-awareness of the venality of people, and her sudden awakening to the fragility of Truth and Innocence in a world that needs answers instead of solutions.

Molly and Gran used to watch Columbo reruns together, so Molly's primed for a policing style that doesn't exist in reality when she's enmeshed in a dreadful web of lies and betrayals in her safe place, The Regency Grand Hotel. She's arrested for a crime she knows she didn't commit, and her tormentors aren't even slightly interested in her life-long passion for truthfulness. The issue is, of course, that even her truthfulness is weaponized against her by the miscreants using her innocence to cover their crimes. But, crucially, Gran's long shadow nurtured relationships that Molly, all unknowing, can depend on for her very life. Right there in the hotel! And she surprises herself by being able to reach back to the hands held out to her. Though there is a serious difficulty in that she doesn't immediately see them as helping hands.

Seeing is a recurring theme for Molly. Her being seen, being acknowledged, is a huge issue in her life...people don't see maids, and even her co-workers don't as a rule see Molly. The names of the characters are almost all colors or qualities of sight...Stark, Rosso, Green among others...and Molly's perceptions of the Regency Grand are of its colors and presentations of shiny, glossy surfaces. It's not subtle, goodness knows, but it's very effective because of the narrator's neurodivergence. It's very easy to see that this brightness of vision is intentional and it's all down to interpretation for Molly to be able to present what she's so clearly seen in self-exculpatory ways.

The final scene, a lovely piece of courtroom theater, will make Florence Pugh a bigger star than she is when the film is eventually released. It is so very,very satisfying that I can only blush while reporting the honest truth that I cheered a little and even had a humidity condensation event around my ocular area.

Don't tell anyone.

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS, Victorian setting--usual suspects--good story

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS
PIP WILLIAMS
Ballantine Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.

Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM MY COUNTY'S LIBRARY SYSTEM. USE YOUR LIBRARY, FOLKS! THEY NEED US!

My Review: First, read his:

Some words are more than letters on a page, don't you think? They have shape and texture. They are like bullets, full of energy, and when you give one breath you can feel its sharp edge against your lip.
–and–
I often wondered what kind of slip I would be written on if I was a word. Something too long, certainly. Probably the wrong colour. A scrap of paper that didn't quite fit. I worried that perhaps I would never find my place in the pigeon-holes at all.
–and–
A vulgar word, well placed and said with just enough vigour, can express far more than its polite equivalent.

There is an immense gulf between thoughts and words...Esme, as a girl in the almost-all-male world of dictionary-obsessed dad Harry, discovers again and again that the ideas we robe in words aren't seen by those who hear them as we've made them in our minds. The factual world of making the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) presided over by Dr. James Murray is expanded to include a fictional word-mad girl-child whose run-ins with lying adults, oblivious adults, and peers without her ruling passion for The Words We Use are the meat of this delicious, if difficult to deal with at times, novel. Esme Nicholl does not spend her life the way Dr. Murray's typically Victorian daughters do. Her days are spent being educated at school; her afternoons with the men at the Scriptorium as they collate and pigeonhole and excise the tens of thousands of definitions and attestations through usage that arrive in Dr. Murray's home/workhouse from around the world. Careless dropping or deliberate deletion, it makes no never-mind to young Esme. She re-homes them in her treasure-chest, under a housemaid's bed, their shared secret.

The dropped words, Esme notices as her life gives her more analytical tools, are often words commonly used by, among, and about women and their activities. Her world is coming for her, bent on controlling her and bending her to its will. Her Godmother Edith, a factual person really nicknamed Ditte, is a very unconventional woman and a prolific contributor the OED. She's acted as a co-parent, in a limited way, to Esme; yet she fails her when Esme desperately needs her simply because Ditte doesn't live in Oxford, let alone in daily contact with Esme.

“Dr. Murray said you and Beth were proflitic contributors,” I said, with some authority.

“Prolific,” Ditte corrected.

“Is that a nice thing to be?”

“It means we have collected a lot of words and quotations for Dr. Murray’s dictionary, and I’m sure he meant it as a compliment.”

The relationship is pretty tidily encapsulated there. Older mentor, not quite understanding the mentee but giving great guidance anyway; just not quite what was really needed. The words for things are centered; the denotations are generously given, while the connotations are left more or less to Esme's maturing brain to construct as best she can. She is, after all, equipped with well-designed tools...but no manuals to train their user in their best use.

In her word-collecting fever, Esme amasses much raw data, many denotations. Her goal for it remains unfocused until she realizes that the words' connotations give her the needed feminist perspective: she and her half of humanity are doomed to be controlled until they can participate in life as political actors instead of passive observers. Yes, she discovers Feminism and becomes a suffragette. And uses her life-long capacity to work with words to give sharp focus to her purpose.

If war could change the nature of men, it would surely change the nature of words.
–and–
“Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.”

Something I wish people who fuss over neologisms and redefinitions would process. Things are growing or dying. There is no stasis in natural systems, and no homeostasis doesn't count...it is a finely balanced state but predicated on constant shifts and changes that must support a larger whole's proper, healthy functioning. Just like language...the words are always tip-tilting, reconfiguring themselves, shedding pieces and adding others; but the language as a whole lives and thrives and, broadly, remains the same. Only different.

It struck me that we are never fully at ease when we are aware of another's gaze. Perhaps we are never fully ourselves. In the desire to please or impress, to persuade or dominate, our movements become conscious, our features set.

That snapshot effect, the mask of Persona slid over a person's face, is what Esme is resisting as she rescues rejected and deleted words from the magisterial OED. Her women's words are the ones men most need, and are supremely reluctant, to hear. Esme's project, fictional of course, is the titular dictionary, with words like "menstruation" (simply too earthy and shuddersome for the frail little men making the OED) to "knackered" because it's vulgar and ugly when a more refined person could say "exhausted" or "listless." Esme thinks "bollocks to that" and spends her adulthood on the many pieces that must be moved around and reconfigured to make a society that can even properly think about a way to include women as adult beings.

And herein the reason I don't give this book a five-star warble of ecstasy...the passage of time. It doesn't. I'm herky-jerkyed into different stages of Esme and the world's life but the setting remains...internal. It's The Esme Show, instead of Truman; she's the star and no doubt. But there's a degree of alienation in that. Thank goodness there are so many dates to open chapters! Too bad they don't mean more. It's certainly true that we, in our daily rounds, don't think carefully about where the screens in the piston of our french-press coffeepot come from, or how and when to clean or replace them. But some sense of Esme's adjustments to the world around her, since her project is to effect true change upon it, would've helped me grasp the maturation parts of time's passage. I felt the lack of that connection keenly.

Esme's relationships were also a bit troubling to read for this reason. Lizzie, her female exemplar in residence, was a lower-class girl whose best hopes weren't as high as she's actually risen by working for the Murrays and becoming Esme's comadre. By rights she should be a dead young worn-out whore. So the way the privileged miss and the rough serving girl should practically leap off the page at me, right?

“Me needlework will always be here,” she said. “I see this and I feel…well, I don’t know the word. Like I’ll always be here.”

“Permanent,” I said. “And the rest of the time?”

“I feel like a dandelion just before the wind blows.”
–and–
My mother was like a word with a thousand slips. Lizzie’s mother was like a word with only two, barely enough to be counted. And I had treated one as if it were superfluous to need.

It's really the fate of most of us...we vanish into nothingness as soon as we assume room temperature. Ephemeral as life is, what I found wantimg in those perfectly lovely passages was the solidity of Life beating Esme with her own responsibility to and for the older but more vulnerable on a practical life-level woman.

Still and all, I'm so pleased that I read this wonderful story. I think it could have made more of an impact on me had some stylistic choices been made differently; that is always the way with making art, no one can create something as powerful and fully realized as this book is without making choices that won't work for everyone. I felt very strongly the aura of choices and decisions affirmatively, consideredly made at every turn. This is in no way a slapdash or ill-made work of fiction. Its real and its fictional characters are treated with equal gravitas. That the factual characters take up less screen time is a decision that the author and editor clearly planned carefully and executed deftly. I can offer no more heartfelt recommendation than "read this book soon." I *could* have, if certain other, less distancing, choices had been made, turned obnoxious pest and shouted at you to get the book NOW read it on the Jitney or in the Admiral's Club but just GET IT!!

But really, does it get that much better than this?

I thought about all the words I’d collected from Mabel and from Lizzie and from other women: women who gutted fish or cut cloth or cleaned the ladies’ public convenience on Magdalen Street. They spoke their minds in words that suited them, and were reverent as I wrote their words on slips. These slips were precious to me, and I hid them in the trunk to keep them safe. But from what? Did I fear they would be scrutinised and found deficient? Or were those fears I had for myself? I never dreamed the givers had any hopes for their words beyond my slips, but it was suddenly clear that no one but me would ever read them. The women’s names, so carefully written, would never be set in type. Their words and their names would be lost as soon as I began to forget them. My Dictionary of Lost Words was no better than the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Commons: it hid what should be seen and silenced what should be heard.

Pip Williams: I salute you for writing a grown-up book for real, passionate readers.

DARK MATTER, or "Home is Where Your Multiverse Door Opens and This Time You're Glad to Be There"

DARK MATTER
BLAKE CROUCH
Ballantine Books
$17.00 paperback, $12.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

Republishing my 2016 review here because we're getting a TV series of the book! It's a long one...settle in.

When I first reviewed the book in 2016, I posted a mild bleat of confusion regarding it on Goodreads:
I have no idea how I am going to review this book without spoilering every-damn-thing.

Several hours of hard thinking later:

Okay…what I can think of is this:
In anyone's life, there are decisions that have no correct answer. We make them and move on. Reading this book I revisited a few of mine, and luckily for me, I didn't feel I'd gotten them wrong.

And that's where I am, but now I'm going to spoiler every-damn-thing because if you're joining me here, you've made an effort to in full knowledge that everything's on the table.

I got a review copy of Dark Matter shortly after it was published. I'd requested an advance review copy, but wasn't approved. I was mildly piqued, but I've got many dozens of books sent by many other publishers to assuage the sting. Having mostly forgotten the whole incident, imagine my pleased surprise to receive the finished book! In a sign of just how much Crown, his hardcover publisher, thinks of Crouch and his chances to make a bestseller of this title, it was packaged in a black shiny bubble-mailer, with a specially printed and super-spiffed-out label with the book's title interrupted by a cartouche where my name was printed in fancy colored ink. Yowza! Anything for the guy with the TV deal, said my cynical inner blogger. That mouthy bitch got mouthier when the book appeared…handsome object…with the usual publicity sheet (whatever happened to the ONE-sheet? Now it's double-sided AND there are two of them) plus what used to be called a "compliments card" from Author Crouch hisownself. It read, in part, "I'm sure you get a lot of ARCs vying for your attention, but please know that I put everything I have into this novel." Oh good, gloated Inner Bitch Blogger, now I can wail on you without guilt!

You would think that, after the best part of two decades reading in order to write reviews and over 50 years reading an average of a book a day, I'd know better than to pre-judge my own reading experience. But noooooo, as Steve Martin said how-many years ago on Saturday Night Live. Still makes me giggle.

I read the book in a sitting, as so many readers seem to do. Five hours of rushing to find what happens next with pauses to piddle and stretch out the experience. Part of that celerity is down to Crouch's staccato writing style:

He says, "Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice."

Daniela says, "Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system."

That's either a reason to move quickly or it's a reason to put the book down. I was torn. In the end, I moved at a good clip there wasn't anything too awful terrible much to slow me down, line by line; this story's effect is cumulative.

That effect is, or was for me, to start another reverie on alternate dimensions novels I've read over the years, and how they've formed my sense of myself as an actor in my own life.

Time travel novels came first for me, starting with Michael Moorcock's wondrous The Warlord of the Air which I found one deeply boring to teenage me Watergate summer at The Book Stall, a used book emporium that my mother took me to one Saturday a month so I could feed my biblioholism. Since she shared that trait, it wasn't pure pain for her. But Oswald Bastable, hero of The Warlord of the Air and its two sequels (The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar), sleeps his way from a 1902 British Army defeat in Afghanistan (do people never learn? There is absolutely no point in trying to conquer the damned place if Alexander and Ashoka and Queen Victoria and the Soviet Union and now the USA have tried and failed) to 1973.

It's not our 1973, but it's still 1973, which makes the rest of the story into a time travel novel. The other two books are alternate dimensions of the 1973 Bastable bobs through, growing older but much faster than the lucky sods who live single-line lives in the novels, and the whole series is called "The Nomad of the Timestreams," a reference to Bastable's unmooring from his typical-human single track life. It was hugely influential to my teen self. My adolescent exceptionalism was strong, fueled by my position as my mother's sex-toy. There were obviously versions of me in a multiverse, too many to count, living lives that reflected better and more satisfying outcomes than my unhappy present. Unfortunately they all began with the present me, and stemmed from choices I *would* make in coming days, weeks, years. It wasn't rescue, it was hope that somewhere someone split off MePrime wasn't experiencing the special hell of maternal incest plus increasing same sex desire. The future on my own timeline wasn't a given to me, so this kind of action wasn't my favorite.

Later, though only a very short time later thanks to a with-it young man who had a strong pash for me who worked at The Book Stall, came the deeply romantic Time and Again by Jack Finney. It seemed like forever that Robert Redford was reported to have the rights to make this meet-your-soulmate-in-the-past tale into a feature film. Nothing from him or from any other quarter on that front in more than 40 years, and what a pity that is. The premise is a simple love triangle set in 1882 Manhattan spiced up with Si, the main character, being from 1970 New York.

Si's travails in living this bifurcated by time's arrow love affair said a lot to me, young as I was at the time (all of 13). I'd already had two requited love affairs. Neither was in any way unpleasant, except in the usual angst-ridden adolescent ways. My weirdo of a girlfriend took an inordinate pleasure in taking my virginity, so I had no heart to tell her I'd already done the nasty with a guy in my junior high classes, and wouldn't admit for almost 25 years what Mama was doing to me. Si and 1882's Julia had nothing on the intensity of passionate connection and mattress-igniting sex that we had. Along came the older store clerk and it was the 1882 love triangle! That made me feel both sophisticated and glamourous. And a life-long pattern of loving men, loving women, and telling all of them all about it was born.

But then came a game-changer, a book whose effect on my evolving awareness that this here-and-now is obviously not the only here-and-now possible or probable or present in the moments we live. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen follows the career of Cpl. Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police after he is moved from his marginally satisfying life to a reality existing at the same moment as his that bears no real resemblance to his familiar world's history or present. Pennsylvania's long history of resource-extraction based economy has left truly permanent marks of its passing, signs Calvin does not see in his otherwise familiar surroundings. Calvin spends several hours coming to terms with this self-evident fact and its inevitable conclusion: that he has been moved not up into a post-apocalyptic future, nor down into a pre-European past as the people he sees are clearly like him, but to the side across time's infinite tributaries.

Erwin Schrödinger first introduced the physics-based concept in 1952, and it has been a staple in science fiction ever since. In fact, it goes back much farther than that as a fantasy, and its survival as well as its scientific explanation (insofar as anything this vast can be explained) sit very well with most average people. It makes intuitive sense. The physics of it is dauntingly complex and also suffers from a testable-hypothesis deficit, but that doesn't detract one iota from many people's sense that it's just *right*. And for Calvin Morrison, it is a life-saving reality. His quick wits, political savvy, military prowess, and social conscience are perfectly suited to his new circumstances. His rise to the pinnacle of power is inevitable, and his character and knowledge base make him a dream ruler by local standards.

This book, another of my hippie bookseller supercrush's finds for me, perfectly reflected my sense of being wasted in my own life. I talked with him for hours about how there had to be, somewhere out there, a timeline/timestream/alternate reality perfectly suited to me, to him, to every other misfit we knew. How to find it? How to access it? Naturally we reached no conclusions, but we had a great time talking about it.

Since those early discoveries I've encountered grand-scale alternate histories by , as well as more intimate and personal ones like Kate Atkinson's widely read 2013 novel Life After Life. As much as I ended up admiring Atkinson's wonderful tale of the extraordinary fate of Ursula Todd, it wasn't on the same moral-compass heading as Dark Matter. The latter is a deeply personal Grail quest, an Odyssey whose modern Ulysses is physicist Jason Dessen. There are, as we all know by know, an inifinty of Jasons who have done almost the same things with varying degrees of success. Our point-of-view JasonPrime is the happiest man around because he's chosen to focus his energies on being a family man, fully present in his life with Daniela.

For her part Daniela gave up a burgeoning artistic life to bear and care for Charlie, further derailed by severe post-partum depression. For his part, JasonPrime lost focus on a potentially world-shattering quantum superposition technology that would have made him both rich and famous. One version of JasonPrime made the opposite choice and unlocked the secret to making macro quantum superposition, the key to travel across the multiverse. What he didn't have, and what Daniela didn't have, is Charlie, or a relationship; both feel the pull to make that decision again in this or another life. So Jason2, with his full-sized quantum superposition apparatus, decides he will be the next person to use it after a string of failed test subjects who didn't return. His colleagues don't know it, but he has no plans to return either. He is in search of his polar opposite, the Jason that kept Daniela and raised Charlie and was brilliantly successful at it. Instead of killing JasonPrime, he assuages whatever serves him for a conscience by making sure the prime gets to Jason2's luxurious and glamourous life.

Except that's not what the prime wants. And he fights and fights and struggles and fights some more to get home, Home, that one place where you *know* you belong, is just…there, and he'll stop at nothing to get there.

It's startling to me how much that resonates with me. I've always been in search of Home. Lots of near misses, but honestly I no longer expect I'll get there this time around. Where I am, who I am, what defines me as me…good enough. Plenty good enough. I experience long stretches of contentment, bursts of happiness, and significant amounts of pleasure.

But like JasonPrime's many visits to many Chicagos, it's not *quite* home. It's my talent to make do without fuss. But sometimes, it's past the periphery of my awareness and I wonder, what if….
Read this book for a propulsive, pounding joyride through spaces and places you didn't know that you didn't know you wanted to visit. I give it five stars of five and a strong push to buy it now.