The Mars Room Book Review

The Mars Room: Book Review By Dinh.
4.5 stars out of 5 stars

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Find Rachel Kushner: Website| Facebook |

Review:

I am so glad that we chose to read The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner for our book club monthly read. It is not my usual type of read and it’s nice to go outside the comfort zone once in a while.

I have not read any of Rachel Kushner’s work. She is known for her best selling book The Flamethrowers (2013), which was a finalist in the 2013 National Book Award and a NY Times top 10 books of 2013. Her works also include the short stories in The Strange Case of Rachel K (2015), and Telex From Cuba (2008). Continue reading “The Mars Room Book Review” →

The Recipe Box Book Review

The Recipe Box: Book Review by Arlene.
4 stars

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Find Viola Shipman: Website | Facebook |Twitter |

Review:

I felt this was the perfect time of year, with autumn fast approaching, to do a review of The Recipe Box. My daughter Kim gave me this book as one of my Mother’s Day gifts this year.

This wonderful “sweet book” delves into the deep emotional ties of family and especially the relationships of mothers and daughters and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Continue reading “The Recipe Box Book Review” →

The Woman In The Window Book Review

The Woman in the Window: Book Review by Dinh.
4.5 stars

Synopsis:

Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare. Continue reading “The Woman In The Window Book Review” →

Little Fires Everywhere Book Review

Little Fires Everywhere: Book Review by Dinh.
5 out of 5 stars

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

The Great Alone: Book Review by Dinh.
5 out of 5 stars

Read Synopsis here.

Find Kristin Hannah: Website| Facebook|

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

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

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

Before We Were Yours: Book review by Dinh.
4.5 stars

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

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Book Review by Dinh.
5 out of 5 stars

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” →

The City of Brass Book Review

The City of Brass: Book Review by Dinh.
5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power: on the streets of eighteenth century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by – palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing – are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive.

But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass- a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound. Continue reading “The City of Brass Book Review” →

Sharp Objects Book Review

Sharp Objects: book review by Dinh.
3.5stars

Synopsis:

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town.

Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Continue reading “Sharp Objects Book Review” →