Finished: The Last Party (Mackintosh) A very good whoddunit! Luxury condos for the wealthy have been built on the shores of remote Lake Mirror....on the exact border of Wales and England. The wealthy man responsible for the building is Rhys Lloyd, a local Welsh "boy" who left his hometown village and made it as a famous opera singer. Using the land inherited from his family, Lloyd comes back to Lake Mirror with his wife and teenage twin daughters after his career begins to wane. His land, in the years before, had been settled to be officially in England...so he's one of the wealthy people who comes to build and live at the upper, upper crust neighborhood, The Shore. The town members of Cwm Coed, who live and work and raise children across the lake in Wales, are not happy. Not only is the view of the landscape drastically changed, but the difference between the wealthy "summer home" owners and townspeople, who barely make ends meet, is tremendous. When the first handful of lake front homes is complete, the wealthy owners start moving in. We meet all kinds of interesting characters, both home owners and townsfolk. Rhys Lloyd and his wife, Yasmine, throw a New Year's Eve party and, along side their wealthy neighbors, the entire town is invited to come. By the end of the night, Lloyd is dead! His body washes up on shore at the annual New Year's Day dip in the lake. The Detective Constable in charge on the Welsh side is Ffion Morgan, a thirty year old divorcee who lives with her mother Cwm Coed. She's outdoorsy, very truthful and holds a painful past close. The Detective Constable on the English side is Leo Brady, also a divorcee and father of a young son, who has just relocated from London to the area. DC Brady has problems of his own, as his ex-wife is holding a secret over his head to keep him from seeing his son as the custody arrangement states. He's more the meek type and is surprised by the outspokenness of DC Morgan when he meets  her. Neither one is happy being saddled with the other as a partner, but they must work together to figure out what happened. It gets particularly dicey when Leo begins to discover that Ffion has secrets that may be directly involved with the evening in question...and she has lied to him about it. You can't help but like both characters and root for them to at least become friends and lean on each other. Eventually Ffion's secret, and how it relates to Rhys Lloyd, does come to light just in time to throw them together into another tricky situation. All The Shore neighbors are suspects, as well as many of the townspeople, even  Ffion with her motive. The story does a good job of weaving together all the characters and their stories and why, as it turns out, nearly each and every person who knew him despised Lloyd, and with good reason. I was hoping by the end of the book that Ffion and Leo might work together again on another case, and was just happy to read that this is apparently book #1 of the DC Morgan series! Can't wait for more. :-) 

 Finished: I Have Some Questions For You (Makkai) I was so anxious to read the new book by Rebecca Makkai since I LOVED her The Great Believers! This one did not disappoint. :-) It wasn't as meaningful to me as TGB, but was a nice mystery with very developed characters. Bodie Kane is a successful crime blogger and film professor who is 20 years past her boarding school days in New Hampshire. She's put her painful childhood and teenage years from boarding school behind her, but it all comes rushing back when she's invited back to Granby as a visiting film professor for two weeks. Her students have been given the assignment to create their own documentary podcasts, and one student has chosen a tragedy from Bodie's senior year at Granby that opens up all the old wounds, and most importantly, some nagging doubts. In her senior year, Bodie's roommate, Thalia, had been murdered and the athletic trainer was still spending his life in prison for it. But, did they get the right man? The student's documentary is about Omar, the athletic trainer, and how he was imprisoned unfairly and is an innocent man who should get a retrial. The entire book is narrated to one specific teacher from Bodie's years who had a physical relationship with Thalia. Bodie has convinced herself that it was this teacher and not Omar who killed Thalia. As we get deeper into the story, we see that not only did that teacher have motive and opportunity, but so did a few of the students....Thalia's hotheaded boyfriend, her jealous girlfriends, her rejected suitors, etc. The mystery is cracked at the end with a surprise, but not off the rails, twist. A good read and very well written! 

 

Finished: Exiles (Harper) I’ve read all of Harper’s books and really enjoy her writing! Aaron Falk is a character that has been developed from the first book. He always solves the mystery, but along the way we also see his own personal relationships, past mistakes, loves, etc. Can’t wait for (hopefully) more! Again, being lazy and using Amazon blurb. J

“Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is on his way to a small town deep in Southern Australian wine country for the christening of an old friend's baby. But mystery follows him, even on vacation.

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Kim Gillespie's disappearance. One year ago, at a busy town festival on a warm spring night, Kim safely tucked her sleeping baby into her stroller, then vanished into the crowd. No one has seen her since. When Kim's older daughter makes a plea for anyone with information about her missing mom to come forward, Falk and his old buddy Raco can't leave the case alone.

As Falk soaks up life in the lush valley, he is welcomed into the tight-knit circle of Kim’s friends and loved ones. But the group may be more fractured than it seems. Between Falk’s closest friend, the missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge. What would make a mother abandon her child? What happened to Kim Gillespie?”

 Finished: A Town Called Solace (Lawson) I'm going to be super lazy and just use the Amazon blurb. A pretty good book, but I wanted to love it more than I did. I liked all the relationships that developed between various characters, like Clara and Liam, and Elizabeth and Liam much earlier. Both sets of parents in the story left alot to be desired. 

"A Town Called Solace, the brilliant and emotionally radiant new novel from Mary Lawson, her first in nearly a decade, opens on a family in crisis. Sixteen-year-old Rose is missing. Angry and rebellious, she had a row with her mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Left behind is seven-year-old Clara, Rose’s adoring little sister. Isolated by her parents’ efforts to protect her from the truth, Clara is bewildered and distraught. Her sole comfort is Moses, the cat next door, whom she is looking after for his elderly owner, Mrs. Orchard, who went into hospital weeks ago and has still not returned. 

Enter Liam Kane, mid-thirties, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, who moves into Mrs. Orchard’s house - where, in Clara’s view, he emphatically does not belong. Within a matter of hours he receives a visit from the police. It seems he is suspected of a crime.

At the end of her life, Elizabeth Orchard is also thinking about a crime, one committed thirty years previously that had tragic consequences for two families, and in particular for one small child. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. 

Told through three distinct, compelling points of view, the novel cuts back and forth among these unforgettable characters to uncover the layers of grief, remorse, and love that connect them. A Town Called Solace is a masterful, suspenseful, darkly funny and deeply humane novel by one of our great storytellers."

 Finished: Just the Nicest Couple (Kubica) A pretty good book...one that picks up a bit more during the last half. It is told in alternating viewpoints by Christian and Nina. Christian is happily married to Lily, and they are expecting their first child after several first trimester miscarriages. He comes home one night to find Lily in a state of panic and finally gets her to tell him what is wrong. Lily teaches high school math and has a good friend there, Nina. Nina is five or six years older than Lily and took her under her wing when Lily began teaching, and they became fast friends. Nina is married to neurosurgeon, Jake. Jake is a bit full of himself and loves living the high life that his salary provides. He and Nina are pretty happy in their marriage until Nina has to start spending weekends with her mom, who has been diagnosed with macular degeneration. Jake is very childish about not getting all of Nina's time, so their marriage has been a bit rocky lately. Lily finally tells Christian that when she went for a walk on the trail in the park that day, she ran into Jake, who convinced her to go down a more remote trail with him to see some deer. Once there, Jake put the moves on Lily and got out of control angry when she told him no. He grabbed her and pushed her down and Lily picked up a rock and bashed him in the head...more than once. She's afraid she might have killed him. Meanwhile, Nina can't believe that Jake has not come home after their fight the night before. More importantly, he hasn't shown up at his work for his patients and surgeries. Christian has Lily take him to the exact spot where everything happened, and there is so much blood, but no body. As Christian panics and moves to erase any evidence of Lily being in the park, weird things start happening at Nina's house. Weird because Christian has snuck in looking for Jake's car key to move his car, which is parked at the park. Nina's mother thinks, with her poor vision, that Jake has returned home briefly when he runs out the door. Nina, who has filed a missing person's report with the police, tells them it's not necessary any more. She still just can't figure out how Jake could have disappeared and not want to see her. Certainly things hadn't been THAT bad. The story unfolds and we find out what really happened in the woods between Lily and Jake, what happened to Jake, and who did it! My guess was right. It's always the one you least suspect. :-) Pretty good book, but not one that kept me up late reading. 

 Finished: One True Loves (Jenkins Reid) Not my favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book, especially after starting with Malibu Rising and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and then the amazing, Daisy Jones and the Six. Anyway, this one was written earlier and is a solid book, just not one of my favs. :-) It's the story of a woman, Emma, who has moved back home to the small hometown in the northeast, after the death of her husband of one year, Jesse. Jesse was the absolute love of her life...her one true love. They met in high school, realized they were kindred spirits, and then traveled the world together for ten years before finally tying the knot. When Jesse accepts a work assignment right before their first anniversary, Emma asks him not to go, but he says no worries, he'll be back in a flash. Of course, his helicopter goes down over the ocean and his body is never found. The pilot's and co-pilot's bodies are both found. Emma is devastated and refuses to believe Jesse is gone. Her sister finally convinces her that Jesse isn't coming back. Emma breaks down then, and returns home to work at the family bookstore...the one she didn't want to take over as an adult...the one she ran away from. Emma deals with her grief day by day and finally starts going about the town...and working at the book store! She reconnects with another boy from high school, Sam. Sam had always been in love with Emma and was heartbroken himself when she suddenly fell for Jesse. Of course, Emma had no idea how he felt, as they were just the best of friends. Sam is now back in town and teaching music, what he always wanted to do. After gradually dating, and then moving in together, they finally get engaged. Emma loves Sam and loves that he knows her so well. He has become her true love as well. The wedding is only a couple of months away when Emma gets a phone call from a number she doesn't recognize....it's Jesse. He's alive! He's been stranded on an obscure island and trying everything he can to get back to his wife, to his Emma. And, from there the book goes as you'd expect. Emma becomes torn between Sam, who knows the person she is now and loves her for it...and Jesse, who is in love with the girl he left behind who would never have moved back home. Who does Emma end up picking? Of course, you've got to read to find out. :-) 

 Finished: Five Survive (Jackson) A good thriller about six students headed south for spring break in an RV. Four are high school seniors and friends. Two are college students, the big brother of one of the girls and his girlfriend, going along as chaperons. They get lost on a small road with no cell service, looking for the place they are supposed to meet their other friends. It's not long before they are being terrorized by a sniper with a high-powered rifle. The sniper shoots out all the tires and the gas tank of the RV, stranding the kids with no way to leave. He leaves them a walkie talkie and tells them if any of them try to leave, he will kill them on the spot. Then he taunts them, telling them, one of you has a secret and I want to know what it is. When I do, the rest of you are free to go unharmed. He says he'll give them some time to talk it out and figure out who has the secret. A night of accusations, suspicions, guilt and confessions ensues as each of them wonders if their own secret is what the sniper is talking about. When they finally figure out that one of them must be working with the sniper for him to know the things he does, things escalate quickly, and then tragedy strikes. I'm not going to give anything away. The book was slightly slow at first, but then really picks up the pace and was hard to put down trying to put all the pieces together. A good read! :-)

 Finished: Babel (Kuang). The entire title is Babel: On the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. To understand what that means, you really have to read the whole 560 page book! :-) The book is good! I started it during the holidays and it officially becomes my first read book of 2023. It's good, and complicated, and tragic, but also very timely, to me at least. In 1828 a ten year old boy is dying of cholera in Canton. Most of his entire family, and his English born tutor who has been with him for years, are already dead and his mother lays dying beside him. After his mother dies, an English man appears and holds a bar of silver over him that instantly makes him feel funny inside, but ends up healing him. The man is Professor Lovell and he is the man who sent the English tutor to the family so the boy would grow up speaking fluent English, as well as his native Cantonese. (He is also the man who hung around in China for two weeks waiting for the mother to die before he went in and saved the boy.) Professor Lovell insists that the boy come up with an English name and say goodbye to his Chinese name. Having been provided with all kinds of books during his childhood, the boy decides on the name Robin Swift. Professor Lovell takes Robin back to London where he spends the next several years having him trained in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese. The goal? For Robin to be accepted into Oxford University's Royal Institute of Translation...called by all who know it, Babel. Babel is the most important translation center in the world, and England wants to keep it that way. Babel is also the center of the mysterious magic of silver! With the silver bars, translators enchant the silver bars with translations of words from different languages that have enough of a connection to evoke the results they want. The silver can enhance most things...make carts go faster, make music pitch perfect, make buildings sturdier, heal a sick person,etc. They can also be used as weapons of war. In England, they are used by the ultra rich for frivolous things like automatically opening and closing curtains, or making a room appear brighter. While the poor die of diseases that could possibly be cured, or starve from  hunger, the rich enjoy these unnecessary pleasures. What Professor Lovell and his cohorts do is shameless. They "sponsor" children from other countries whose languages they need to master in order to turn around and have dominance over those very countries. The children are so struck by either the loss of their families or by their "luck" at being singled out by a sponsor, that they go along semi-willingly, not knowing that the end result will actually be damaging to their native countries when they are eventually asked to attend important meetings with those countries and translate for the English men who are there to take every advantage they can. It's really just despicable. As Robin grows up in Professor Lovell's household, he is rarely offered true encouragement or caring from the professor, and often physically abused if he strays from his studies. By the time he is seventeen and ready for the Institute of Translation, he is accepted at Oxford and all his expenses and clothing are paid for. However, Oxford is still Oxford and is attended mostly by the elite white children of the rich in England. Being half Chinese and half English (having never met his father, this is his assumption), Robin can blend in somewhat, but most of the students don't accept him. Thankfully in his first week there, before classes even start, Robin meets his roommate, Ramy, a boy from India who has been sponsored by an English man that his family works for. They instantly bond and become best friends. Together they run into Letty and Victoire....two girls! Girls at Oxford is unheard of at the time, so they must dress like and pretend to be boys. Victoire is from France, but Jamaican born. She is the least accepted of the four students because of her black skin. Letty is from a rich white family in England whose son, who all their hopes and dreams were pinned on to attend Oxford, were dashed when he was killed by his own careless actions. Wanting to prove to her father that a girl can be just as smart, she learns all kinds of languages and passes the entry exam to both Oxford and Babel. Though she's not of a foreign nationality, she is a female, so the four of them are completely alone, but with each other, at Oxford. Just the four of them have been brought in this year for the Institute of Translation, so as long as they try and avoid the regular Oxford students, they should be ok. They form an incredible bond, which is why it makes what happens as the years progress and the book hits it's climax, heartbreaking. In addition to meeting Ramy the first week he is at school, Robin also meets a boy that looks strikingly like himself named Griffin. Griffin is a former student of the Institute of Translation who was also sponsored by Professor Lovell, but is now working for a secret society called the Hermes Society. The Hermes Society is all about stealing as much silver as they can from the institute and using it for good and for the poor, and keeping it out of the hands of the rich. Most of them are former students of Babel who realized exactly what was going on and how they were being used. By the time they are fourth year students and actually learning to work with the silver, we realize exactly how involved or not involved in Hermes each of the four friends are, and the tragic results of the revolution they are about to participate in. A long book, but it kept me reading each time I picked it up! 

 Finished: AfterLives (Gurnah) A very well written book about a subject I know very little about....the colonization of parts of eastern Africa by the Germans in the late 1800's. The Germans brutally swept through the land, destroying villages and intimidating many of the men who lived in the villages to join their security forces. In AfterLives, two of the main characters join the German Schutztruppe, Ilyas and Hamza. Ilyas joins willingly after running away from home. He supports the Germans and comes to respect them. But, he is fighting against his own people. He is fighting against the tribes who try to rise up and revolt about the colonization. Hamza also joins voluntarily, but warily. He's got no other way to exist but to rely on the Germans to feed him and clothe him. The two don't know each other, but we read about their experiences in depth, while also reading about the history of the domination of the Germans in East Africa. The book is written by a Nobel Prize winner and was fascinating to me! Here is the description of the author:

"Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." 

That pretty much sums up the historical, eye-opening aspect to the book. Gurnah weaves his story around Ilyas, Hamza, Ilyas' best friend, Khalifa, and Ilyas' younger sister, Afiya. Before Ilyas leaves to join the Schutztruppe, he's been away with them for years, having run away from home at the age of eleven. He returns home, only to find that he has a sister who is ten years his junior, Afiya. She's only ten when he meets her, but he immediately takes her away from her abusive temporary family. He teaches her to read and write, and both she and Ilyas live with Khalifa, who is older than Ilyas, but has become one of his best friends. When Ilyas departs to rejoin the Germans in their battles, he enlists Khalifa to watch after Afiya. She grows up with Khalifa and his wife, Asha, and never stops wondering when Ilyas will return from the wars. We then turn to Hamza and the story of his experiences in the Schutztruppe. When the Germans are finally defeated by the British, who also want to colonize East Africa, but in a different way, Hamza returns home battered physically and emotionally, seeking out anyone who he may have known from his younger years. Finding no one, he ends up working under Khalifa at his warehouse job. Of course...when Hamza and Afiya meet, they fall in love. It's a slow process, but eventually they are married. Ilyas has still never returned home after several years, and Hamza does his best to find out any information he can for Afiya. Afiya eventually gives birth to a baby boy who they name, Ilyas. When young Ilyas grows up, he goes in search of the uncle he was named after and is finally successful in learning Ilyas' fate. The book ends rather abruptly there, which was a little unsettling, but on the whole, it was a very good book, letting us get to know and care for real people who were deeply affected by the colonization of their home country, first by Germany and then the British. 

 Finished: If We Were Villains (Rio) I really loved this one! Seven students at the small, but exclusive, Dellecher Classical Conservatory are deeply immersed in their Shakespearean curriculum...so much so that they even speak to each other using quotes from Shakespeare quite often in their every day conversations...and they make sense! Oliver, James, Meredith, Richard Wren, Alexander and Filippa are fourth year students, set to graduate at the end of the year. They all live together in one old, classical building, and are the only fourth year drama students. Last year they studied all the comedies, and this year they've finally made it to the tragedies. And, there IS real life drama and tragedy! As they wonder who will be cast in each role for their upcoming main stage production of Julius Caesar, Alexander bets the others that he can name the entire cast already based on how they have all been typecast in previous productions as the hero, the villain, the temptress, the tyrant, the ingenue and the "bit parts". Sure enough, Julius Caesar is cast exactly that way. Richard is pleased to be playing Caesar and never doubted for a moment that he would get the shining lead role. He's played most of the lead roles in the previous year's productions. He's a bit arrogant, and he and Meredith, the beauty, have been dating for over a year. Interestingly, each of the students pretty much has the attributes of the characters they are usually assigned. For instance, James is always cast as the hero, Oliver as the sidekick, Alexander as the villain, Meredith as the temptress, Wren as the ingenue, Filippa as the "go to" character, and Richard as the lead, which is quite often a tyrant. James and Oliver are roommates and the best of friends. Alexander is the one to go to for drugs. Meredith is the seductive, flirty beauty. Wren is the innocent, quiet girl, etc. All of the friends have their own faults...none are perfect, but they are extremely close and the best of friends. I really loved this aspect of the book. I loved that they could all predict how one of the others would feel in a given situation, and how they all rushed to stand beside any one of them who might be hurt or in trouble. When the fourth years are assigned their roles in the annual one night performance, where they perform selected scenes from a play, they are instructed to tell no one their roles! They are to just learn their lines and scenes and be prepared to perform the night of the event. This year's selected scenes will be from Hamlet. Upon receiving their assignments, Richard is clearly livid and has some sort of internal meltdown. When the night arrives, everyone is shocked that James is playing Hamlet and Oliver is playing Banquo. Everyone had assumed Richard would be Hamlet, but he has only a minor role. His behavior becomes more and more volatile, as he becomes verbally and physically abusive to all of them...going so far as to almost drown James after the Hamlet event. We continue to get to know each of the students, and their relationships to each other to the point of really caring for each of these kids. After Richard's behavior escalates even more at dress rehearsal and the first performance of Julius Caesar, a tragedy occurs and one of the students is dead. I won't spoil who it is. This event throws the remaining students into a tailspin as they wonder who could have done what was done. Their lives implode and we only hear the details of all these experiences ten years later as Oliver is released from prison and finally agrees to tell the now retiring detective, who has been on the case since the beginning, the entire truth of what really happened. I can't tell you how much I really loved this book, despite the tragedy. I'd love for there to be a sequel, but then it might just be best left alone with it's jaw-dropping epilogue. :-)