reading lately: June roundup

The unintentional theme of this month's reading: revisiting authors I have enjoyed before. These authors made for a good reading month, with the new-to-me ones unfortunately being my two meh reads of the month. For July I'm actually planning to continue this "theme" partly as I got the new Taylor Jenkins Reid book for my birthday (+ the new Fredrik Backman as my BOTM birthday month freebie) and partly as I am not going to be able to wait much longer to continue in the Thursday Murder Club series - the 2nd one was my favorite book of June!

Literary/contemporary fiction

The Strange Case of Jane O.: When her son is only a few months old, Jane suffers from a couple of strange, amnesia type episodes that present a total mystery to the detectives who found her after she was missing for a few days, and also to the psychiatrist she comes to for help. Between this psychiatrist's case notes about his sessions with Jane, and Jane's journal in the form of letters to her son, Karen Thompson Walker again presents a character-driven yet unputdownable speculative mystery. What I really love about her books is that at the same time as being fascinating in their speculative fiction genre (real world with just one or two sci-fi type of tweaks) they are also insightful and real in their human emotions. She does that again here - with profound and also relatable reflections on motherhood through Jane's journal - and on top of it she gives the reader a super interesting twist on the "unreliable narrator" reading experience. What are we to make of Jane's account - is it an overwhelmed new mother with legitimate anxieties about the world "falling apart"? Is it mental illness or delusion speaking? Is she faking things? And then the psychiatrist's case notes too - can we trust everything here, or are there biases at play based on the warm feelings he has for Jane? And as he acknowledges, we all have our own version of events, with memory being an ephemeral and influenceable thing. All of this makes for an interesting puzzle-like reading experience and one that very much invites discussion on the themes of love, memory, identity, and fate. I'd say go in with only those details and see how it unfolds! ★★★★.25

Once There Were Wolves: After finding her new release (Wild Dark Shore) to be a 5-star read for me, I was eager to look into Charlotte McConaghy's backlist. This book, her sophomore novel, while quite different in setting and plot, definitely was immediately recognizable as being by the same authors, as it focused on themes of climate change and its affect on human life; scientific research/conservation; remote and rugged geographical setting; the wildness of the world, which humans erroneously think they can/have tamed; and the place human love and relationship have in this. In Once There Were Wolves, Inti Flynn leads a team of biologists who are re-introducing wolves to places they have gone extinct, in an effort to reinstate the natural ecosystem/regenerate the land, and the team arrives to a rugged and remote area of Scotland facing the resistance of the local sheep farmers, in addition to the tenuousness of this project of getting 14 wolves to survive and thrive in their new home. As the wolves settle in and the project seems to be going successfully, Inti also starts to settle a little, coming out of her protective shell and developing relationships with local community members. But then when tragedy strikes and a farmer is found dead, Inti knows the wolves will be blamed - and she is ready to do whatever it takes to prevent this. There's a little bit of a mystery/crime investigation element that drives the plot, in addition to great nature writing + eerie cli-fi vibes, as well as exploration of themes around love, grief, and connection in family (especially sisters, but also motherhood). Definitely a well-done story and intriguing plot even if I didn't find it quite as strongly developed/well written as Wild Dark Shore (it maybe felt a bit more "commercial" and Wild Dark Shore leaning more literary?). It was perhaps a bit related to the alternating "before" timeline in Once There Were Wolves that delves into the trauma that Inti and her twin Aggie went through that drove them to move from Alaska to Scotland for this project. That part sometimes felt a bit too drawn out or like it was leading the reader on; I thought the present-day storyline was the better part and couldn't put it down in the last 50 pages. ★★★★

Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?: Regina is a former celebrity chef known as Queenie B who burned all her bridges and flamed out in a big way a decade ago, with ego and substance abuse issues galore. She's now in recovery and lives incognito, running a soup kitchen as a self-imposed way to atone for her past. Gale is an up-and-coming chef who is trying to maintain his own sobriety while he fights guilt over the death of a friend and while he tries to make ends meet in the low-paying start of working his way up to sous chef. He meets prickly Regina when he goes to her soup kitchen for a meal, and when he starts volunteering to help he starts to thaw her icy demeanor, while she starts to become an important mentor for him. But will her identity stay secret, and will they both stay on the straight-and-narrow when life is throwing a lot their way... I like a look behind-the-scenes of chef life (my favorite episode on Top Chef is often "restaurant week", when you see the ins-and-outs of launching a restaurant from concept to menu to opening night), so I liked that aspect of this book, but in general for me there was way too much "tell" (vs. "show") to the writing in terms of the characters' emotions and lessons learned; it made the whole thing feel too drawn out and unsubtle. It's light, heartwarming reading that's not a romance - rare to find - the slow plot and choppy/repetitive sentence structure just didn't quite work for me, though I managed to get invested just enough to stick it out to the end. However, if you liked Colton Gentry's Third Act, this one might be a hit for you - similar in the general second-chances themes, as well as this intermingling of grief, substance abuse, and recovery with working in a restaurant being part of that journey. ★★★

Mystery/thriller

Trust Her: In the follow up to Northern Spy, sisters Tessa and Marian have built a new life under new identities after escaping their role as MI5 informers in Northern Ireland, but they can't evade the IRA forever. They are drawn back into The Troubles as IRA operatives threaten their lives and their children's' lives, unless they find their old MI5 handler and try to turn him informant. This literary suspense/spy novel is full of character depth and emotion, at the same time the tension is super high with all of these potentially shifting loyalties; it's nearly impossible for Tessa to figure out who they can trust and how they can navigate the situation and protect their children at the same time - making this book hard to put down and a very quick read. I think Flynn Berry does such a good job of keeping this taut feeling the whole time as the reader is with Tessa in waiting for the other shoe to drop, and not having any idea of who is trustworthy as there are so many potential double agents in the picture - and yet in the midst of all of this Tessa still has such mundane things to deal with, the school dropoffs and time at the playground and meltdowns over mealtime pickiness. It's an extreme contrast of the juggle that motherhood is - the woman who has a past and responsibilities and conflicts outside of her child, and at the same time has to balance this with being that child and his focus on the present moment. Makes for some profound thoughts and also a more interesting/better read than your average spy thriller, as with Northern Spy. (Also it does not have the type of ick/torture that make me avoid most spy books, which I appreciate.) ★★★★.25

The Man Who Died Twice: Despite their great friendship, the Thursday Murder Club crew Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are starting to find life at their retirement community a tad boring again after all of the excitement of the mysteries they solved in book one, when 2 new projects fall in their laps: the unfortunate attack on Ibrahim by some local hoodlums (and the version of revenge that his friends want to exact), and the return of some people from Elizabeth's MI-5 spy days, bringing with them a mystery caper with stolen diamonds and safe houses and international thugs. Somehow this was all even more delightful to read than book 1?! There's a lot going on, but the plot comes together, and it perfectly walks the line between being fun and zippy without being too zany. I adore each of the friends' individual personalities, and how they come together with such great banter, and as with the first book it's just delightfully amusing how get the best of unsuspecting law officials, etc. with their witty repartee, wearing down anyone who tries to converse with them, or they play on the invisibility of the elderly and/or the assumptions that people have about them to get stuff done in their own way. Some of the side characters from book 1 get bigger parts and a bit more character development, and I love them too, especially police officer Donna and contractor/tough guy Bogdan; adding them in makes it feel like the series can continue to be fresh and fun in book 3, and I can't wait to pick it up soon. If you liked this one, try Killers of a Certain Age - it has the "certain age" and more of the spy/assassin angle of that one, beyond just the amateur detective part. ★★★★.5

Historical fiction

Go As a River: I'm not a huge reader of straight-up historical fiction, but the time and location of this debut novel - beginning in 1950s rugged Colorado - felt like it would be different from settings I've read about before, and definitely a shake-up from what I've been reading lately. Unfortunately the "sweeping" and "epic" that the cover copy promises fell a little flat for me. The story follows Tori, a motherless teenager who is in charge of all of the "women's" work at her family's peach farm, who runs into an outsider arriving into town one day- after which their brief love affair changes the course of their lives forever. What felt "sweeping" to me was not something in a grand sense, but instead a sense that felt like we skipped over a bunch of character and relationship development, with very little dialogue and fairly big jumps in time. Most of all, this love between Wilson and Tori was supposed to be so grand, but the "instalove" part of it was so unconvincing to me, and their subsequent time together was barely fleshed out (and was such a minor part of the book) that it didn't seem like it was something that should set the course of the rest of the book. And all this buildup to what end? The nature writing was evocative, but the characters lacked depth in terms of feeling like I connected with them or at least that they could be real people, and the slow moving plot was a bit ho-hum for me. I know of some people who loved this one, and I can see how readers of historical fiction who don't mind slower plots would like it, but for me as a non-regular historical fiction reader, it didn't have enough pull to reel me in to the genre. ★★★

Now that we're halfway through the year I thought I'd put together a halfway top 10 - stay tuned next week to see if any of my June reads made it under the wire for that list...