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. :-)

 Finished: The It Girl (Ware) A page-turning who-done-it centered on a group of Oxford students who meet each other the first day of their first year and become best friends who do everything together. Rich and charismatic, April is the titular "it girl". She's got looks, personality, money, charm and a very mischievous, bordering on mean girl, persona. When small town, unsophisticated, not rich Hannah shows up to school, she finds that she's roommates with April. Despite their differences, they hit if of and become the core best friends of the rest of the gang: Ryan, Emily, Will and Hugh. On that first day, when Hannah meets Will, who is handsome, athletic and nice, she falls instantly in love or infatuation, but whatever it is, her feelings never abate. When she unexpectedly realizes that April and Will have become a couple, she's heartbroken, but keeps it to herself. Ryan is sarcastic and opinionated, but best friends with Will. Hugh is shy, nervous and nerdy, but also best friends with Will, having known him since they were young. No-nonsense Emily is super smart and honest. Each of them seems to bend to April's will, almost as if she has something on each one of them. However, before their first year is even over, April is dead...murdered in their dorm room, and Hannah is the person with the evidence to put the accused murderer away. One of the school porters, John Neville, has been very creepy around Hannah and made her extremely uncomfortable. When she sees John Neville exiting the only entrance leading to their dorm room right before she finds April dead, it's enough for the police to arrest him, accuse him of murder, and for a jury to send him to prison. Hannah is so devastated by April's death and the media frenzy that surrounds her as the best friend and main witness, that she leaves school and never goes back. The others manage to finish their degrees. Ten years after the murder, Hannah is now happily married and pregnant and works in a book store in Edinburgh...as far away from Oxford as she could get. Her adoring husband? Will! Will sought Hannah out after graduating and they fell in love and got married. They will never forget April, but their lives have moved on, until the day that John Neville dies in prison. The news sends both of them reeling and sends a reporter who believes in John Neville's professed innocence and wants Hannah's help proving it. This sets in motion a growing tension in their marriage, as Will wants Hannah to let it go. When it comes to light that Will, Ryan, Hugh and Emily all had motives to murder April, it puts Hannah in great danger as she digs deeper. Does she trust the right person? Did her own husband kill April? There are a few red herrings thrown in, but the truth finally comes out in the end, but I'm not giving the ending away. :-)

 Finished: Our Missing Hearts (Ng) A powerful, heartbreaking, but necessary, book! It is beautifully written and is about the very real danger of how a community can begin to ignore the oppression of and discrimination against members of their own community who happen to be "different" from them. The story is centered around Ethan Gardner and Margaret Miu, a Caucasian man and Chinese American woman who fall in love, move in together and have a child they nickname Bird. They happen to be living in an America that has recently passed the PACT act...Preserving American Culture and Traditions. The passing of this law is brought about by the growing instability of America's economy which has incited discord and violence. The leaders of America decide that China is to blame because they have a better economy, are raising prices, beating America, etc. etc. For this reason, Asian people become targets of violence and prejudice. Margaret is aware of what is going on because both of her parents have been murdered by strangers, just because of what they look like. However, when she meets Ethan, who is a linguistics professor at Harvard, and they begin to have a more fortunate income, unlike the majority of Americans, who are still struggling in long lines for food and other products, Margaret is able to put that knowledge aside and concentrate on their baby to be. During her pregnancy, Margaret writes poetry. She's a talented writer and finds a way to put her feelings about being pregnant and what other mothers must feel like into words. She writes a poem called All Our Missing Hearts, which becomes the cornerstone of the book she publishes. When Bird is born, both parents are thrilled. They are loving, caring parents who do their very best for him. In the meantime, the government has implemented a plan that gives authorities the ability to take a person's child from them, for the very slimmest of reasons, and "relocate" them to another family. Ethan and Margaret are aware of what is going on, but like everyone else, they must struggle between keeping their own family safe, or speaking up when an injustice is committed. When Bird is nine, the anti-PACT movement has become much larger and more vocal as people insist that the missing children be reunited with their parents. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Margaret, her poem, All Our Missing Hearts, is used by the dissidents as their slogan. They begin painting red hears on public property and put up flyers demanding that their missing hearts, aka, their children, be brought home. The government now has Margaret on a list, and she and Ethan feel it's only a matter of time before they come and remove Bird from their home. They make the difficult decision for Margaret to exit their lives and go to another city...and...to burn everything that had belonged to Margaret, especially her poems, so Ethan can claim that he completely supports the PACT and has cut his wife and Bird's mother out of their lives. It is utterly heartbreaking. :-(  Bird and his mother were so very close and one day she's just gone from his life. His father refuses to speak of her and tells Bird that they must forget about her. Of course, he still loves her, but Bird looks more like his mother than his father, and he's terrified that Bird will be persecuted in some way. Because a "known dissident and author of their slogan" was his wife, things take a downturn for Ethan and Bird. Ethan loses his job as a professor and can only work as a librarian shelving books day and night. Bird is relentlessly bullied at school, and has only one friend...a girl named Sadie, who happens to be a child who has been relocated because her parents were in extreme and vocal opposition of the PACT. She wants nothing more than to find her parents and be reunited, but she is powerless to do so. When Bird is twelve and Margaret has been gone for three years without a single communication, Bird receives a cryptic letter in the mail from his mother. Bird figures out the hidden meaning behind his mother's letter and decides to go searching for her in New York City. I'm not going to go into any more detail about whether they reunite, and what Margaret has actually been doing all that time, but the entire situation is emotional in so many ways. I encourage everyone to read this excellent book and absorb these characters and situations for yourselves. Not a book to pass up! 

 Finished: Long Shadows (Baldacci) Book #7 in the Memory Man series. The memory man is Amos Decker, a former NFL player (albeit briefly) turned detective, turned invaluable asset to the FBI. Amos suffered a serious head injury which ended his NFL career just a few games in. The injury left him with synesthesia and hyperthymesia. The hyperthymesia means that Amos now has a picture perfect memory, never forgetting a thing that he sees, no matter how small the detail. Unfortunately, this includes the horrific murder scene of his wife and young daughter ten years before. Now, having helped the FBI solve several cases, with his young journalist turned FBI agent partner, Alex, Amos finds himself on his own as Alex has moved to New York to finish her career there. When Amos is assigned a new partner, Freddie White, a feisty single mom who fights hard to work her way up the FBI ladder, he reluctantly goes with her to Florida to solve the murder of a popular judge. As usual, with lots of twists and turns, Amos figures out whodunnit, with some very capable help from Freddie. Suspects include her ex-husband, her security guard lover, a possessive man she dated, and even her neighbors. There's also a Slovakian element to the story! And, by the end of the book, after everything is wrapped up, Amos has gained a very high respect for  Freddie, and vice versa. They've even become friends as well as partners. I can see Freddie definitely being around for more crimes to solve. And, don't worry....Alex is around just a bit. Amos calls her a few times for info in this story and they are as close as ever. :-) I enjoy the series because I do like Amos Decker, and the stories are usually pretty good. 

 Finished: Mad Honey (Picoult and Boylan) A very good book about two teenagers, Lily and Asher, who fall in love when she moves to his small town. Both have been raised by single moms who escaped extremely abusive husbands. Both moms have tried to protect their children all their lives by keeping them away from their fathers. Asher's mom, Olivia, has moved back to the quaint New Hampshire town, back to her old family farm, where her father was a beekeeper. She now takes just as much care of the bees and sells the carefully curated honey and various honey products. Lily's mom, Ava, is a national park ranger who has taken a job in this remote town so she and her daughter can start over. Lily and Asher are just 18, but very much in love. They "get" each other...especially their like circumstances of having no father in their lives. They do go through a couple of fights, and sometimes Asher shows a temper that Olivia worries about. She worries that he may have inherited his father's abusive nature. When Lily and Asher have a big fight, and Lily won't speak to him to the point of missing several days of school, Asher is beside himself and constantly texts and calls her. When he gets no response, he finally goes over to her house, only to find her dead at the foot of the stairs. Or, at least, that's his story. Soon, Asher is arrested and put on trial for Lily's murder. That's when the story really shows it's twists and turns. We hear the story from Olivia's viewpoint, and from Lily's viewpoint. We meet both of the horrible fathers, as well as a couple of best friends, an old flame of Olivia's from her high school days, who happens to be the police chief in town now, and we meet a trans teen trying desperately to hang on to the secret they are afraid that no one would understand. I don't want to give away any spoilers. This book is good though! Jodi Picoult always tells a good story, and she does so just as well with her co-author. The characters are very well developed and you can't help but grow attached to them! :-)

 Finished: Rock Paper Scissors (Feeney) Another good book and jaw-dropping twist that I, again, didn't see coming! Amelia and Adam are married, but their marriage is very, very rocky. They've decided to go from their home in London up to a remote vacation rental in the highlands of Scotland for a weekend. For both of them, it is a last ditch attempt to either save or give up on their marriage. Adam is a screenwriter and spends more time at his writing than he does with Amelia. He's found a certain niche of turning popular books into movies, but always been disappointed that his own manuscript title Rock Paper Scissors has never been picked up by a studio. Amelia works at a local shelter for dogs, and loves her job and their dog, Bob. Naturally, as they arrive at the remote, nearly snowed in Scottish location, things are already a bit eerie and strange things start happening...beginning with the power going out. The story is told between alternating chapters by Amelia and Adam, each sharing their version of the crumbling marriage. In between chapters, there are also heartbreaking letters written to Adam each year on their anniversary that she has never sent. They follow the traditional gifts each year, but grow to not putting much thought into their gifts. Once they arrive at their rental, we also start getting chapters from Robin, the older woman who lives in the tiny shack on the grounds, and seemingly the caretaker. Things escalate when Amelia and Adam survive the frigid and creepy first night, but at first light, Bob is nowhere to be found. They look and call for him everywhere. They finally decide they'll have to trudge through the snow to visit the shack they had noticed, because, of course, there is no phone signal in the area. No one answers at the shack, but they know someone is in there. They decide to leave and get authorities to come back and help them look for Bob...but after digging their car out of the snow, they see that all four of their tires have been slashed. From here, things pick up and I'm going to leave this recap here. :-) It's another good book that left me gobsmacked by the twist! 

 Finished: Daisy Darker (Feeney) A very good book, and the first one in a long, long time that had a twist I didn't see coming at all! Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. That's her first line in the book as she narrates her story. She's the daughter of Frank, an orchestra conductor, and Nancy, an actress who gave up acting to have children. They are already the parents of two daughters, Rose and Lilly, when Daisy is born. She's born with a serious heart defect, and despite surgery, they are told that she probably won't live past the age of twelve. Both Frank and Nancy are awful parents, but particularly awful to Daisy. They end up divorced and Frank travels the world with his orchestra, rarely seeing anyone in the family. Nancy shows favoritism to Lilly, but it very critical of all the girls. She is truly more concerned with herself than her children. When Rose and Lilly are sent off to boarding school, Daisy isn't even allowed to go when she's old enough. She's never allowed to attend school at all and simply teaches herself how to read using Nana's immense library. The only solace that Daisy finds as she grows older is spending time with her Nana (Frank's mother). Nana lives on a tiny island in the only house on the island...an old gothic house named Seaglass. Every day, twice a day, when the tide comes in, the island is unapproachable except by boat. When the tide is out, you can walk across to the beach along the coast. Daisy is Nana's favorite of the girls because she is kind and loving and curious. Rose and Lilly are both very self-centered and mean-girlish. They each do things to little Daisy when she's a baby, like wishing her dead or putting a live rat in her bassinet. Rose does grow up to be a veterinarian, but remains unmarried. She seems to prefer animals over people. Lilly was so spoiled by her mother (and her father) she was never told no and never made to get a job. She gets pregnant as a teenager and has a daughter, Trixie, but still does not work. She just mooches off of Nancy and Frank, and at times, Nana. As our story opens, Daisy is now 29. Rose and Lilly are both in their 30's and Trixie is 15. The entire family is about to gather at Seaglass for Nana's 80th birthday. Daisy is nervous because the family really hasn't been all together in years. What's more, Nana had a fortune teller read her fortune and she told her that she would die when she turned 80. By the way, you can see that Daisy lived past the age of twelve! As it turns out, we find out later, at her last hospital appointment, the last time her heart just stopped, the doctor told her mother that there was a surgery they could do that would fix her heart. However, for whatever reason, her mother refused to have it done and never told Daisy there was new hope. It's as if she really just wanted Daisy to die. :-( Everyone converges at Seaglass for Nana's birthday, and thankfully, they all make it across before the tide comes in...even Frank, who you never know if and when he will show up. There are many awkward moments as the family falls into old patterns. Nothing is more awkward, though, than when Nana decides to go ahead and tell the entire family what is in her will. As it turns out, she leaves nothing to Frank or Nancy or Rose or Lilly. She's generous with Daisy, but what Daisy had really hoped for was to be left Seaglass. It had been her sanctuary so often for her entire life. Nana leaves Seaglass to Trixie, knowing that she'll have plenty of years to love it as much as she has. Needless to say this doesn't sit well with anyone in the family. When a young man named Conor, who is Rose's age, shows up by boat, Nana welcomes him with open arms. The rest of the family has various reactions, as nearly all of the girls had had crushes on him when they were younger. Conor had been ignored and abused by his father at a young age, after his mother died. Nana had taken him in whenever he needed and even paid for his father to go to rehab. He's got a history with each family member, so it's fitting that he is there for Nana's 80th. Then...the evening changes dramatically and people start dying!!! Nana is the first one to be found dead in the kitchen! With each death, there is an old VCR videotape full of old family movies left for the rest of the family to watch. Everyone is shocked and upset at Nana's death, and Nina decides to take Conor's boat across the water to alert the police. When she comes back in and says the boat is gone and the rope was cut, the family realizes they are in for a long, scary night. One by one, the family starts to die as we go back and forth between the murders, and the past, as we see the family movies unfold. I'm not saying anymore. :-) It's a book that should not be spoiled, but it was a really good one! So much so that I'm going to read another Alice Feeney book next! 

 Finished: Waypoints: My Scottish Journey (Heughan) A touching memoir written by actor, Sam Heughan, who opens up about his childhood, and then, the long road to becoming a successful actor. The book alternates between personal chapters about his early life and the current journey he is physically tackling as he dictates notes to himself that will become this book. The journey...the 96 mile West Highland Way a challenging walking trail that leads from Milngavie, Scotland to Fort William, which sits hear the highest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis. At the end of the five day, 96 mile trek, exhausted, but determined, Sam climbs Ben Nevis. The entire feat is quite impressive, but more impressive is the heartfelt rendering of Sam's personal journey from his father leaving the family when he was 18 months old, to his mother successfully raising two sons on her own, to the struggles of becoming a working actor, to finally realizing the success of recent years. The writing is lovely and humorous and serious and entertaining. Loved it! 

 Finished: Fire and Blood (Martin) A very good, and typical George R.R. Martin book chronicling the beginnings of the Targaryen family in his fictional Westeros set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, a major character in The Game of Thrones books. The book starts with Aegon the Conquerer, the Targaryen king who united the Seven Kingdoms after his fiery conquest with his dragons. King Aegon is the 1st of the Aegons, but certainly not the last. In this wordy book, with many, many, many names, we follow the lineage of Aegon down through the years as it gets to the crucial war that led to the beginning of the end of the Targaryen dynasty...the war known as the Dance of Dragons. At this point, the king is Viserys Targaryen. He and his wife, Aemma, have only one child, a daughter named Rhaenyra. When Aemma dies in childbirth and people start to question the succession of the throne with no son as an heir, Viserys declares that Rhaenyra will be his heir. He has all the families of the kingdom "bend the knee", swearing oaths to support Rhaenyra as the first queen upon his eventual passing. A bit of a conundrum occurs when Viserys remarries, the young Alicent Hightower, who proceeds to give him three sons and a daughter. Of course, the firstborn is Aegon II and talk by many soon turns to Rhaenyra being passed over as the heir by her half-brother, Aegon II. Talk by many people, but not Viserys. He always insists that Rhaenyra is his heir and that oaths were sworn. Rhaenyra has three sons with her first husband before marrying Daemon, her father's brother, and giving birth to two more sons, the first one naturally named Aegon, or Aegon III. When Viserys eventually dies, when Aegon II is 23 years old, Aegon II claims the throne, and of course, is challenged by Rhaenyra in the bloody Dance of Dragons war, where nearly all of the children and grandchildren of Viserys parish. We DO know that a Targaryen king named Aegon succeeds Viserys, but which Aegon will it be?? I really enjoyed reading this book, especially since I'm in the middle of watching the series and wanted to learn more about all the characters. :-)