nomadreader

Dear Jasmine, After reading and enjoying your first two novels, The Wedding Date  and The Proposal , and hearing you speak at ALA last summer, I was excited to revisit those characters in your third novel, The Wedding Party, but also get to know new characters in this fictional universe. I wouldn't consider your books a series (would you?), but I do love seeing the characters pop up in the other novels. It's so much fun. This book features Maddie and Theo, the two best friends of Alexa, the heroine of The Wedding Date , but I admit, I didn't remember much about either one . Thankfully, your reminders helped me remember without feeling like you were re-telling key scenes from The Wedding Date .   And I fell so in love with both of them, but especially Maddie, that I might even go back and re-read The Wedding Date  knowing what I know now. I'm a reader who doesn't read many romance novels (perhaps I just haven't found the right ones?), but I love your romance ...

Last spring I read Jasmine Guillory's debut novel, The Wedding Date , mostly because the bookternet was so excited about it. I don't typically read romance, but body-positive interracial romance with smart people intrigued me. And I liked the book. When I reviewed it on Litsy, I said, "A fun, sexy, mostly smart romp. Both main characters are annoyingly insecure at times, but part of that may have been the audio performance, which was okay but distractingly breathy at times. I finished it in print and actually preferred that." Clearly my opinion about the audio performance is unpopular, as it was nominated for an Audie . Last summer, at ALA, I saw Guillory speak as part of a romance panel (that added more than one title to my TBR) and was excited to learn The Proposal  features one of the supporting character from The Wedding Date, Carlos, as a main character. (The third book, The Wedding Party , will feature Maddie and Theo, Alexa's best friends.) Despite getting...

The basics:  Blessed are the Dead  is the debut mystery for Kristi Belcamino. It introduces San Francisco crime reporter Gabriella Giovanni. It was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel in 2015. My thoughts:  I majored in journalism in college, and I'm drawn to books written about journalists (despite, or perhaps because I have zero professional interest in every working as a reporter.) Still, lines like these remind me of why I pursued the field in college: "I try not to eavesdrop, but hey, it's what reporters do. We are natural observers of everyone and everything around us." I think the same is true for novelists, and Belcamino's observations were wonderful in this novel. I also like mysteries, so a contemporary mystery with a fantastically flawed heroine who happens to be a crime reporter, and is also written by a crime reporter? It sounds perfect. I bought this book for my Kindle as soon as I saw the 2015 Anthony Award nominees. I have no i...

The backstory: Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my favorite authors. I've thoroughly enjoyed all her novels, Prep,  The Man of My Dreams , Sisterland  and my all-time favorite novel, American Wife .  The basics: Eligible  is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. It's set in contemporary Cincinnati. My thoughts: I begin this review with a confession: I have never read Pride and Prejudice . Unless you count the BabyLit version , which I have read to Hawthorne more times than I can count. Despite never having read it (or seen any of the film adaptations), I am quite familiar with the plot. I debated whether or not to read Pride and Prejudice  before or after Eligible. I spent months, in fact, with a copy of Eligible  on my Kindle debating. So I finally read it, and I'm glad I didn't read Pride and Prejudice  first. Sittenfeld writes in a way that is thoroughly modern and authentic, but I was able to guess the actual events of Pride and Prejudice ...

narrated by Emma Bering and Robbie Daymond The backstory: Vanessa Diffenbaugh's first novel, The Language of Flowers , has been on my TBR list since it came out, yet I never got around to it. When I saw her speak at the American Library Association conference this summer, I was wowed, and vowed to read both her books. The basics: We Never Asked for Wings  is the story of Letty, an American born to Mexican parents in the U.S. She works as a bartender, and her parents have largely raised her two children, Alex, fifteen, and Luna, six. Life is hard for Letty and her children, and she vows to find a way to move to a good neighborhood in the San Francisco area before Alex starts high school. My thoughts: It took me about twenty minutes to get my bearings in We Never Asked for Wings . It's hard for me to tell sometimes if that's the novel or the act of listening on audio, and Diffenbaugh is intentionally vague in the opening scene. In this case, it may also due to the fac...

The backstory: I've read and loved all of Alafair Burke's mysteries , so I was eager to read The Cinderella Murder, her first collaboration (and first in a new series) with Mary Higgins Clark, a prolific mystery author whose work I have never read. The basics: The Cinderella Murder  is the first in a new series entitled Under Suspicion. Under Suspicion is a news special focused on unsolved cold cases. Although this is the first in the series, the production crew characters were featured in Higgins Clark's previous novel, I've Got You Under My Skin . This review, and the book itself, contains spoilers from I've Got You Under My Skin. My thoughts: There are two main storylines in this mystery: the murder of Susan Dempsey twenty years ago and Laurie Moran's continued recovery after her husband's death and the death of his killer. Perhaps because I had not read I've Got You Under My Skin , I enjoyed Laurie's personal storyline much less. I didn...

The backstory: When the Emperor Was Divine , Julie Otsuka's first novel, was longlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize (now known as the Bailey's Prize.) I previously enjoyed Otsuka's second novel, The Buddha in the Attic . The basics: Set during World War II, When The Emperor Was Divine  is the story of a Japanese-American family living in Berkeley, California. The novel begins with the mother reading a notice about Japanese internment camp, and she begins packing her possessions, and those of her children. My thoughts: Julie Otsuka's prose is sparse and haunting. She manages the ultimate storytelling: she shows more than she tells. You won't find lengthy descriptions of people's feelings here. You won't even find the word interment camp. Otsuka dumps the reader immediately into the story without providing many orienting details. In this sense, the reader shares the confusion of the children, Those who are familiar with this time period will clearly know ...

The backstory: Emma Donoghue is among my favorite authors. Room  remains one of my all-time favorite books , and I've also enjoyed The Sealed Letter  and Astray . The basics: Set in the summer of 1876 in San Francisco in the midst of the smallpox epidemic, Frog Music is the story of the murder of Jenny Bonnet, a cross-dressing young woman who dies in the novel's first pages. Her new friend Blanche Beunon, a French burlesque dancer and prostitute, tells the story. The action shifts between the days after Jenny's murder and a month earlier, when Jenny and Blanche meet. My thoughts: Although Frog Music  is the story of an unsolved murder, I'd classify it more as historical fiction than historical mystery. The mystery itself is compelling, particularly as the novel climaxes, but it's not what I loved most about this novel. As I read, I was immediately immersed in San Francisco in the summer of 1876. Donoghue strikes the perfect balance between vivid historical det...

The basics:   The Buddha in the Attic is the story of Japanese picture brides from their journey on a boat shortly after World War I until World War II. My thoughts: Julie Otsuka enchanted me from the very first paragraph: "On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonas we'd been wearing for years--faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and redyed many times. Some of us came from the mountains, and had never before seen teh sea, except for in pictures, and some of us were the daughters of fishermen who had been around the sea all our lives. Perhaps we had lost a brother or father to t...

The backstory: The Sisters Brothers  was longlisted for the 2011 Booker Prize. The basics: Eli and Charlie are brothers working as hit men in 1851 Oregon City. Eli, a nice, honest, killer if you will, hopes for life after killing, but his brother Charlie wants to keep living the life of a gunslinger. The two set out on a mission to kill a man in San Francisco. My thoughts: When I saw True Grit  last year ( my review ), I was surprised how much I loved it.  When the Booker longlist was announced, I was intrigued by The Sisters Brothers  and was thrilled when it came into the library so quickly. I was surprised how much I enjoyed The Sisters Brothers  too. I guess it really is true: I like westerns. Eli Sisters is a wonderful narrator and character. His cadence and perspective struck me as endearing and unexpected. I also could not help picturing it as a film as I read it. I think there's a great future for comedic westerns on the screen. Booker t...

The backstory: Swapna convinced me to read this one with her glowing review . The basics: Secret Daughter  is the story of Somer, a white California doctor; Somer's husband Krishnan, who grew up in India and is also a doctor; Kavita, a married woman in India whose husband believes they can only afford one child and it must be a boy; and Asha, the young Indian girl Kavita gives up for adoption and always wonders about and Somer and Krishnan adopt. My thoughts: I began reading Secret Daughter  with high expectations, and from the opening pages, I was mesmerized by the characters and stories. The novel moved through time and effortlessly shifted between narrators. I was simultaneously eager to catch up with each character and reluctant for the chapter to end. I loved following the stories of these characters who did not know their own connections to each other. I'm a huge fan of novels dealing that are stories of lives and how events shape us. Secret Daughter  is abou...