A Year of New Books

I found this little gem in the same used bookstore I found (ugh) Foul Play (ugh), but Britt-Marie Was Here by Frederik Backman is a delight. 

From the description: “When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg—of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it—she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center. The fastidious Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts...Funny and moving, sweet and inspiring, Britt-Marie Was Here celebrates the importance of community and connection in a world that can feel isolating.”

That last line quite perfectly sums up this beautiful little book. We don’t choose our communities, but without them we’re lost. How do we forge those connections? What if we’re not very good at it? 

Britt-Marie was a character in a Backman book I read last year (My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry), and she was one of the most difficult. In that story, Elsa is apologizing to all of these people for her grandmother, growing to understand and appreciate each one of them and their struggles as the story goes on; it’s no coincidence that (spoiler alert) Britt-Marie is the last one to get an apology. She’s so...

Awful. Britt-Marie is kind of awful. She’s passive-aggressive and controlling, steam-rolling over everyone around her while obsessively cleaning and telling everyone it must be nice to not care about smudged windows. She’s married to a shit stain of a human being, and you just want to shake her for enabling what a narcissistic tool he is, but you also want to hug her tight because you want her to get away from him and be better. Because in spite of so much of what she does, Britt-Marie, at her deepest core, is someone who can be better. 

This story explores what happens after she leaves Kent. There is a sense in this book that what we are seeing is not the end of Britt-Marie’s story; this is just the transition. And transition is so painful and heartbreaking. 

In the end, Britt-Marie’s biggest fear is such a universal fear - we’re scared no one sees us. That we’re not making an impact, that no one will remember us when we’re gone. (At least, it’s a big fear of mine.)

This book had an ending that would have driven me nuts if any other author had written it, but Backman makes it work. I closed it smiling. 

There are some authors that are so reliable you could set a watch by them. Deanna Raybourn’s A Treacherous Curse was just as reliably wonderful as the rest of her writing. 

From the description: “London, 1888. As colorful and unfettered as the butterflies she collects, Victorian adventuress Veronica Speedwell can’t resist the allure of an exotic mystery—particularly one involving her enigmatic colleague, Stoker. His former expedition partner has vanished from an archaeological dig with a priceless diadem unearthed from the newly discovered tomb of an Egyptian princess. This disappearance is just the latest in a string of unfortunate events that have plagued the controversial expedition, and rumors abound that the curse of the vengeful princess has been unleashed as the shadowy figure of Anubis himself stalks the streets of London.”

Why yes, this plot does bear a rather striking resemblance to one of my most hated books of 2017, Crocodiles on the Sandbank. Buuuut - this book is 1,000 times better!

The cover blurb nails it on the head - this book is thoroughly delightful. It’s engaging, witty, and has some genuine surprises. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, but if you liked the first two books of the series, you’ll like this one too. 

I still adore these characters. Veronica and Stoker are captivating, flawed people, and I like how unflinching they are in their view of each other. No one is convinced of anyone else’s perfection, and instead appreciates the human in front of them.

I mean, what can I say? Thank heavens for the steadiness of Deanna Raybourn. 

Last year I loved everything I read until sometime in the spring. I felt like a Pollyanna writing glowing reviews about everything I was reading and I was pretty relieved when I didn’t like something. In 2018, I apparently decided to find something I hated nice and early - Foul Play by Janet Evanovich. 

(Just that covers tells you a lot - the title is an awful pun that they didn’t even bother to really commit to! It’s a romance novel about (I am not kidding) a kidnapped chicken, the title should be Fowl Play.) 

From the description: “When Amy Klasse loses her TV job to a dancing chicken, handsome veterinarian Jake Elliott rescues her with an offer to be his receptionist. Jake just can't resist a damsel in distress, and Amy certainly doesn't mind Jake's charming sincerity.Then suddenly the job-stealing chicken disappears and Amy is suspected of foul play. Amy and Jake search for clues to prove her innocence. But will Jake be able to prove to Amy that love, too, is a mystery worth solving?”

I honestly, truly, love Janet Evanovich as a writer - she’s funny and I like her characters. She writes romances and mysteries that are incredibly predictable and they’re like cotton candy - sweet and fun, but you couldn’t live off of them. 

This book is a part of a collection of short romance novels she wrote very early in her career under a pen name. They were revamped and re-released by the publisher back in the early 2000s. I own several of them, with Love Overboard being my favorite.

So please don’t assume that I’m being a book snob when I tell you that, good sweet Lord, did I hate this book. 

It wasn’t funny, the romance was lukewarm, and the plot was incredibly stupid, like stupider than romance plots usually are. 

It also contained a romance novel trope that I truly despise - the importance of virginity. I kept yelling at this book “virginity is a construct!” but it didn’t seem to improve my feelings.

The chicken on the cover should have tipped me off. 

So even after my deep loathing for Sunshine, I still love Robin McKinley. I had bought The Hero and the Crown somewhere back in 2017, and it just got kind of lost on my Kindle. But I found it, and LOVED IT. 

From the description: “Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her. She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .” (ellipsis not mine, shockingly)

So let’s take a break and talk about The Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie. I mean, I was excited to see it, and I knew I would enjoy it, but I didn’t really expect how much of an emotional punch it would pack to see a female superhero portrayed with the same power, strength, and bad-assery of the (veritable mountain of) male superheros we have to choose from. When she strode into No Man’s Land and took off the cloak and truly became Wonder Woman, I’m not gonna lie - I cried. Representation matters. 

This book affected me in the same way. I’ve read plenty of medieval fantasy books about knights and dragons, and the better ones have very strong female characters. I love The Song of the Lioness quintet, and that series is all about a female knight. 

But this was different. TSotL is about a very different kind of heroine, and that story stays away from the very classic archetypes. The Hero and the Crown deliberately leans into them. This is classic medieval fantasy, with everything upended. It was beautiful. I loved every bit of it. 

And if you’re the kind of reader who likes that sort of thing, the bond between Aerin and Talat is a special one. I was never a horse girl, but I know lots of girls were; if that’s you, this is absolutely your book. 

Total new books read: 28

Top 5, in no particular order: 1. 11/22/63 2. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry 3. The Bear and the Nightingale 4. Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman 5. A Darker Shade of Magic

The Bottom 5, in the order I remembered hating them: 1. Sunshine 2. Olive Kitteridge 3. Crocodile on the Sandbank 4. 3 Dark Crowns 5. The Bookshop on the Corner

Longest book: Imajica, by a freaking mile

Shortest Book: Romancing the Werewolf

Already Reread Because I Loved It So: A Perilous Undertaking 

All told, a pretty good (reading) year! I did some major rereading in March after being hospitalized, like the entire Witch Central series and Lady Julia Grey series, but I got back on track fairly quickly. 

On a personal level, this year was the absolute fucking worst. I’ve never been so happy to see a year end. I was even grateful for a negative pregnancy test right before New Years Eve, because I didn’t want to bring anything from the garbage year with me. I’m thrilled to be writing this from the clearer days of 2018. 

I’m going to continue to use this blog to keep up with any new books I read this year. I think in 2019 I’ll be having a year of old books, but I’d like another year of predominantly new books before I do that. 

I requested this book from the library in October, thinking it would be a fun Halloween read, since I didn’t want to throw off my game and reread The Picture of Dorian Gray like I usually do. It missed the mark completely for a Halloween read, but at least Practical Magic, by Alice Hoffman, made it in just in time to be my last book of 2017. 

I thought I knew what I was getting into with this book - I mean, I love the movie! (Cue the eye rolls) But the book is definitely its own creation. 

The story is simpler, and the characters quite different from what I expected. Everyone is 10 years older than they were in the movie. The magic is very, well, practical. There are no magic lessons, no one lights a candle by blowing on it, and no one’s magical gifts are discussed. The overt witchiness of the movie is nowhere to be found in these pages. That could have been disappointing, but the writing more than made up for it. 

Alice Hoffman’s narrative voice reminded me so strongly of Anne Rice, of all people. Anne Rice has this beautiful, lyrical, lush voice, and even when her books are a mess - and they tend to be a little chaotic and messy and slow - they are such a pleasure to read. Alice Hoffman’s was just like that. 

Her style is lyrical and dark, and there’s a quotable passage every other page. The story, at its base, is a simple one. But the way it’s told is so glorious and lush, I forgave it. It might be a flawed, but I loved it. It was narrative magic. 

December continued with Aly’s continuing story and its conclusion in Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Queen. 

From the description:  “Aly has risen through the ranks of the rebellion to become a master of spies. And just in time, she is brought out of exile and into the heart of the snakes’ den that is the Copper Isles royal court. Still, Aly must keep her wager with the trickster god and protect her charges...Can they step out of the shadows and prove they’re a force to be reckoned with?”

Archetypes are there for a reason, and this book is just full of them. So was this book very surprising? No. One of the biggest “twists” is practically spelled out in the description! (I edited it out.)

But it was still a great read! I don’t want to write too much about it because it’s so heavily tied to the events of the first book.

Endings are hard, and Tamora Pierce has written a lot of them. This is probably the neatest of them, because although she’s still writing in this world, this isn’t a character I think we’re going to see a lot more of. 

After all, she is a spy. That’s kind of the point. 

December is such a busy month that I gave myself a reader’s gift for this month: a series by one of my favorite authors that I just hadn’t got around to reading! In the middle of all the holiday panic and work, I read Trickster’s Choice, by Tamora Pierce. 

There are authors in every genre that you just have to read because they are just that good. Tamora Pierce is one of those authors. 

She writes YA fantasy, and it’s a marvel - feminist, sex-positive, character driven, and well written. She’s a solid pillar of all the things fantasy writing can and should be. It may be YA, but everyone should read her. 

I orginally read the Tamora Pierce Tortall books out of order - I read the Immortals quartet, then the Song of the Lioness quartet, and entirely skipped the Protector of the Small series. (It should be read Song of the Lioness (4 books), The Immortals (4 books), Protector of the Small (4 books), and then this series, Daughter of the Lioness (2 books). ) 

I first read Wild Magic at 14, but the storytelling here is just as powerful and captivating at this point in my life as it was then. 

From the blurb: “Aly is from a family known for great deeds. She is the daughter of Alanna, the famed knight and King’s Champion of Tortall. But even though she is bold and brave, like her mother, her true talents lie on her father’s side, in the art of spying. When Aly is captured by pirates and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Isles, she strikes a bargain with the trickster god.”

Is this as good as Song of the Lioness? No, but nothing really could be. But it is far and away the best YA lit I read this year. Aly is compelling - she’s difficult as any teenager, and smart as a whip. She’s far more her father’s child than her mother’s. 

More than anything, this is a fun, action packed book. In spite of how busy I was, I blew through this. 

I found the next book in Amazon’s suggestions - The Silence of Trees, by Valya Dudycz Lupescu. 

That recommendation was based on The Bear and the Nightingale, and I do not, at all, understand why. Their similarities are mild, at best - both involve Slavic countries and the narrators are women. That’s pretty much it.

Here’s the publisher’s description:  “In Chicago's Ukrainian Village, Nadya Lysenko has built her life on a foundation of secrets. When she was sixteen, Nadya snuck out of her house in Western Ukraine to meet a fortuneteller in the woods. She never expected it to be the last time she would see her family. Decades later, Nadya continues to be haunted by the death of her parents and sisters. The myths and magic of her childhood are still a part of her reality: dreams unite friends across time and space, house spirits misplace keys and glasses, and a fortuneteller's cards predict the future. Nadya's beloved dead insist on being heard through dreams and whispers in the night. They want the truth to come out. Nadya needs to face her past and confront the secrets she buried--in The Silence of Trees.”

They really want you to believe that there is a supernatural element to this story, but...there just isn’t. The house spirits, the “myth and magic,” the fortune teller, they’re all presented in a stark, every day occurrence kind of way. There’s no wonder there, just pragmatic belief.

What this book actually is, is a story of war and family and tradition, a woman reluctant to open up to her family with the basic truth of her past. Thematically, it has a lot more in common with Olive Kitteridge than I would have thought. I liked Nadya a lot more than I liked Olive, and she gets a better ending than Olive. 

It wasn’t a bad book, but it definitely wasn’t what I thought I was getting - I never would have chosen this book if I had realized what it actually is. I still feel pretty lukewarm about it. 

But in the end, it’s a good book! Just not really my cup of tea. 

November’s next book, read over the Thanksgiving break, was Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. 

From the synopsis:  “ Amelia Peabody, that indomitable product of the Victorian age, embarks on her debut Egyptian adventure armed with unshakable self-confidence, a journal to record her thoughts, and, of course, a sturdy umbrella. On her way to Cairo, Amelia rescues young Evelyn Barton-Forbes, who has been abandoned by her scoundrel lover. Together the two women sail up the Nile to an archeological site run by the Emerson brothers-the irascible but dashing Radcliffe and the amiable Walter. Soon their little party is increased by one-one mummy that is, and a singularly lively example of the species.”

Gail Carriger (who I just love) sights this book as one of her inspirations for the main character of the Parasol Protectorate series, and I can absolutely see it. But every single thing that this book does is done better by Gail. It wasn’t bad! It just wasn’t all that good either. It didn’t have the humor or wit that you find in the Parasol Protectorate, and I kept wishing it would just show up.

It was incredibly predictable, but as the anchor of a series, it has to be. But still. I read this at a leisurely pace because I wasn’t concerned about what would happen - it was pretty obvious. 

After the long long long slog of my last pick, the novella Romancing the Werewolf, by Gail Carriger, was a nice hour and a half break. 

Gail Carriger admitted in a recent post that she has a thing for secondary characters. For me, it’s one of the things I adore about her as an author - she writes a cast of fully realized characters, with quirks and personalities all their own. And because she tends to get hung up on them, she has written several of these little novellas (this one falls under the Supernatural Society parasol) to close off the stories of these beloved sidekicks. 

This was a sweet, lighthearted little romance. It tied off an existing plot line of 2 fan favorites quiet nicely. 

My only issue with all of these novellas is that the fact of their existence signals, to me at least, that Gail is wrapping up this world. Tying off the open plot lines is like hiding the yarn ends on a crochet project - a finishing move. She can’t write in this universe forever, I know, but it still makes me sad. 

I remain hopeful. Deanna Raybourn did the same thing with the Lady Julia Grey series - the long goodbye tour of novellas - but her new series (Veronica Speedwell, book 2 reviewed somewhere below) is even better than what came before. 

So maybe this is just a sign that Gail is getting ready to depart from this cozy, silly, steampunk world she’s created for new, fresher waters. With the last of the Custard Protocol books currently in copy edits, this makes a certain amount of sense. 

Either way, I’m along for the ride!

Imajica by Clive Barker is a giant, exhausting read. It took most of October and a week of November to conquer. 

Quite honestly, I have no idea how to describe this book or talk about it. At 896 pages long, it’s a lot. I started reading it in hardback form and then crapped out and bought it on my Kindle because I was tired of lugging the book around, and the tiny print on the big page was slowing me down. The average read time is listed as 19 hours and some odd minutes, and they are not kidding. I read it in maybe 15-16 hours, but it was a difficult read.

From the publisher’s synopsis: “Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.”

That works...sort of...for a synopsis, but it doesn’t really tell you what this book is about. At it’s heart, it’s about religion, love, magic, death, sex, and the nature of the world. It’s nonsensical until you find the rhythm of the story, and it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s incredibly violent and erotic, and equally graphic in its depiction of violence and sex. (The fact that it was MY MOTHER who recommended this book is wigging me out, because there are parts of this that definitely read like erotica.)

It is vast and obsessively detailed. This is world building on a different scale entirely. It’s overwhelming and difficult, and I can’t say I regret reading it, because for all of that, it’s an incredible work of fiction. 

I can compare reading this book to 2 other similar experiences. The first was when I read The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist; it was so strange I forced 2 other people to read it because I needed someone to talk to. The second time was when I read Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey; the world was so vivid and expansive that I was grateful for the map and the cast of characters at the front of the book. 

I just...someone please read this book so we can talk.

While visiting a good friend in Austin, I picked up her roommate’s copy of Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, and read about a third of it in an hour. When I came home, I requested it from the library, and finished it 2 days later because I made myself slow down. 

One of the things I remember most vividly about being a teenager is how everything that happened to me was life or death. A day was incredible or it was the worst day ever, I loved a boyfriend or I despised him. Every emotion was so strong, so immediate. This book captures that sense of those years perfectly. 

This is a girl-meets-boy classic, with a twist - the girl is allergic to the whole world. Nothing that happens is all that surprising, so I recommend you read this book in a single sitting; if you have too much time to think about it, you’ll figure it out. For all that, it’s still a well-done YA love story. 

What sets this apart from a fairly saturated market is the medium it’s told with. Some of the book (2/3, maybe?) is typical prose. The rest of it is drawings, online chats, emails, book reviews, and found documents. (I may have to steal Madeline’s book review format for next year.) The mixed mediums shake up the story, keep it moving, and speed the story along; another point in favor of a one sitting read. 

There’s not a whole lot to tell about this book. It’s not groundbreaking, and I’m not all that surprised they’re adapting this for a movie, and it’s not bad. I enjoyed it, and it was a nice palate cleanser for what comes next in my book pile. 

Why did I choose this book? That cover design is ON POINT and is the whole reason I picked it up.  Would I read this again? Probably not - once you know the twist, you’re not going to need to go back to find the clues. I know the story, I’m good.  Who would I recommend this to? Fans of YA in general and sappy romance. Ooooh, my dad would just love this book.  Favorite quote: Instead of a favorite quote, here’s my favorite page:

The Amazon recommendation algorithm/robot who is constantly spying on me is usually pretty hit-or-miss. Some of their selections are crummy and make me question the choices I’ve made that put this crap in my recommendations (The Immortal Circus *shudder*cringe*). Some of their suggestions aren’t half bad (The Wrath and the Dawn). And sometimes, they hit the nail right on the head and find something purely and absolutely perfect. September’s last book was a marvel - The Bear and the Nightingale by Katharine Arden, a book so good I’m actually thrilled that it’s the start of a series!

I have a continual issue with the little bit of fluff that the publisher puts on the back of the book, or the inside of the jacket, or on the e-book listing. These little blurbs almost always contain way too much information, giving away major plot details, and robbing you of the joy of discovery. 

It’s why I’m such an impulsive book shopper. I’m more likely to use whatshouldireadnext.com to find a new book, or use the “people who bought this also purchased” section on Amazon, because at least then you can choose without finding out too much; you know it was approved by people who also loved what you loved. 

So as is my usual practice, I only read a small bit of Amazon’s plug for The Bear and the Nightingale: “A magical debut novel for readers of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and Neil Gaiman’s myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice.”

I hope you can hear, from the past, the sound of me clicking “Buy Now w/1 Click” without a second thought. 

I’m not familiar enough with Russian folklore for this novel to feel hackneyed or cliched. It felt fresh and bracing, wild and imaginative. The narrative voice is lyrical, and while the story can be harsh, it’s beautiful. 

Don’t find out anything about this gorgeous book. Just buy it, curl up with a blanket on a rainy day, and dive in. 

My mom tends to make recommendations in pairs - she once recommended both The Time Traveler’s Wife and Water for Elephants - and when she does that, I usually hate one and love the other. (That order applies to the pair listed above, but only because The Time Traveler’s Wife should never not ever be read by someone in a long distance relationship.) I didn’t care for Olive Kitteridge, but My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman was perfection. 

This is a book about so many things. It’s about stories and why we tell them, it’s about family and who we choose as our family, about growing up, about grief, about being different, about the life we choose to live and how it impacts everyone around us.

The general rule for fiction is that the age of the main character tells us who this book is written for - it’s why YA fiction is almost always about a teenage girl who has no idea how special she is, why Libriomancer is about a geek in his mid-20s - but this book does not follow that pattern. 

The main character, Elsa, is a 7 year old girl, and is obsessed with Harry Potter. Her wild and crazy grandmother is her only friend. When her grandmother dies, she leaves an unlikely quest behind for Elsa to finish. 

This book is full of charm. It’s comforting and warm, with a cast characters full of surprises. To be fair, the surprises aren’t all that surprising - Elsa does love fairy tales, and this is certainly a modern day fairy tale. But they fit, they feel right within the story.

This book is, for me, an example of an author getting it absolutely right. I laughed and I cried, and I just adored this beautiful little book. I was sad to see it end. 

If I learn nothing else from this experience, I will at least learn this - if Amazon reduces the price on a book, odds are that it’s sequel is coming out within 3 months and they’re trying to drum up readership. That’s how I found myself reading One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake only 2 months after I read its predecessor. 

This installment has more action, but I don’t think it’s any better than the first. The world building is fascinating, but I definitely felt like it wasn’t planned out ahead of time; it all felt very cobbled together, and certain elements felt contradictory to what is in the first book. There were surprises about a particular character that felt like they came clear out of left field!

My main concern with all of these YA books is the way that they are marketed. The publisher most likely already knows the length of the series, since they signed a contract with the author to finish it in a certain number of books. So then why didn’t they advertise this as a quartet?!

I felt like a moron for assuming this would be the end. These YA authors maintain a strong social media presence and buzz to get the word out about their work, so I was a double moron for not bothering to check. About 30 pages from the end, I realized that the author was clearly wheel spinning (again) to build to another cliffhanger and bring everyone back for the third (and apparently fourth UGH) book. That feeling more than anything soured me on this book. I had enjoyed it, but I felt cheated that the story wasn’t over.

I’ll read the last book when it does come out, but only because I want to see how this ends. The story is fascinating, but the writing is just ok, nothing to gush over. 

While Hurricane Harvey was blowing through Houston (my hometown), we went and stayed with my parents. Our house was fine, but our neighborhood took on a lot of water; if we had stayed, we would have been a dry island in our flooded neighborhood. When we left the house, I only brought a single book - Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout.

Olive Kitteridge is not a traditional piece of fiction - it’s a collection of short stories, some of them focused on Olive, some of them focused on the people in her small Maine town with Olive only showing up in a supporting role. The stories are chronological, without dates, so the timeline is very general. 

This book is a marvel. It’s beautifully written and ambiguous, and hard to describe. But this is also a book with a specific audience. 

My mother is the one who recommended this book to me, and I can see why she loved it. I can see why all of her friends in her book club are going to love it too. But those same aspects are what I disliked so much about this book. 

Olive is a difficult character. She is stern, cold, patient, and deeply feeling, sometimes all in the same story. She is, frankly, a shitty mother and an awful wife. But she is also vulnerable and sad. 

I think it’s easier to be forgiving of these flaws when, honestly, the reader is older and closer to Olive’s age. You can sympathize with the specific awful situations she goes through, like overhearing her new daughter-in-law gossip about her. Olive feels the anger and resentment that so many of us feel and are ashamed of, but she feels it right out loud. I would hate to imagine that I would turn into Olive, but my mother says that she can see bits of herself in Olive. 

To really talk about what got under my skin about this book I need to talk about the end. So if you want to read this book, skip the next part. 

What I wanted for Olive in this story I never got. I wanted a resolution, for things to tidy up and work out, for people to forgive and live better, for her to truly communicate with her son to move forward, for a hopeful, fictional ending. But instead, we have an ambiguous and realistic ending. It’s a fitting ending, but it still upset me. I just wanted things to be better for her. If I want ambiguity, I can just live my own life - I want my books to give me the closure we never find in this world.