Category: Historical Literature & Fiction

Little Fires Everywhere: Book Review by Dinh.

Synopsis:

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. Continue reading “Little Fires Everywhere Book Review” →

The Great Alone: Book Review by Dinh.

Read Synopsis here.

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Review:

I was so excited to read Kristin Hannah’s latest book The Great Alone for our book club. Hannah is the author of the best selling novel The Nightingale, now a major motion picture.

Hannah is a prolific writer and her other works include Firefly Lane, Fly Away,True Colors Home Front, Night Road, Winter Garden, Magic Hour, Comfort and Joy, The Things We Do For Love, Between Sisters, Summer Island, Distance Shores, Angel Falls, and On Mystic Lake.

I went into the book with high expectations knowing full well the best selling author’s reputation and I was not disappointed with it. Continue reading “The Great Alone Book Review” →

I’ll See You in Paris: Book Review By Arlene.

Review:

I’ll See You In Paris is a perfect, interesting, and fun summertime read for on the beach, laying by the pool or sitting on your deck chair under the umbrella…wherever you choose to pick up that one good book that will entertain and possibly educate you along the way.

It is an historical fiction novel, about a real person, the mysterious Duchess of Marlborough who turns out to be quite the unusual, quacky woman to say the least but who also lived a very interesting life and did it her way!! She will keep you laughing or wondering if this could be real all throughout the book. I think, in the end, you will get her and possibly like and understand her… Continue reading “I’ll See You in Paris Book Review” →

Before We Were Yours: Book review by Dinh.

Synopsis:

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize that the truth is much darker. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together—in a world of danger and uncertainty. Continue reading “Before We Were Yours Book Review” →

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Book Review by Dinh.

Synopsis:

January 1946: London is emerging form the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’d never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. He’d come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb. Perhaps she could tell him where he might find more books by this author.

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the Germans. Continue reading “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Book Review” →

Enchantress Of Numbers: Book review by Dinh.

Synopsis:

The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. But her mathematician mother, estranged from Ada’s infamous and destructively passionate father, is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada’s mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of imagination—or worse yet, passion or poetry—is promptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes. Continue reading “Enchantress Of Numbers Book Review” →

Brooklyn: Book Review By Dinh.

Synopsis:

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America–to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood “just like Ireland”–she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Continue reading “Brooklyn Book Review” →

The Stars Are Fire: Book Review By Dinh.

Synopsis:

In October 1947, after a summer-long drought, fires break out all along the Maine Coast, racing out of control from village to village. Twenty-four-year-old Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers. After an unimaginable night in which the fire forces them to huddle together at sea, they emerge at dawn to find their lives forever changed.

Homeless, penniless, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists, Grace must learn to drive and find a job, a place to live, and a way to care for her family. Continue reading “The Stars Are Fire Book Review” →

True Colors: Book Review by Arlene.

Synopsis:

The Grey sisters have always been close. After their mother’s death, the girls banded together, becoming best friends. Their stern, disapproving father cares less about his children than about his reputation. To Henry Grey, appearances are everything, and years later, he still demands that his daughters reflect his standing in the community.

Winona, the oldest, needs her father’s approval most of all. An overweight bookworm who never felt at home on the sprawling horse ranch that has been in her family for three generations, she knows that she doesn’t have the qualities her father values. But as the best lawyer in town, she’s determined to someday find a way to prove her worth to him. Continue reading “True Colors Book Review” →