Although I have been busy with many projects, my early morning reading time is still my favorite time of day especially when I am enjoying a good book. Cool mornings with a hot cup of coffee and the quiet of the early light is relaxing. Only three of my last eight have been winners, though. But these three are well worth your reading time. Two are published and available in audio form, the third will publish in October. Links to Amazon on the ones I recommend are provided if you’d like to read more of the synopsis and other reviews.
Up first is a fabulous book that I was able to read in advance of publication, One Thing Better by Jessica Sherry. Right now it is only showing in an ebook edition, so if you have a Kindle or other eReader, you can order it. I hope it will publish in a hardback edition as I want it for my permanent library. Get on your library hold list now if you have access to ebooks there as this is easily one of the best books I have read this year! It is a story of resilience as a woman who has been dealt multiple blows including a business failure, a divorce, and caring for her dying mother during the last three years of her mom’s life. She inherits a dilapidated and hoarded property needing more repairs and cleaning than she can afford, and is just starting to sell some things to survive when she is offered a job in another city. But then, the job offer is taken away due to the covid shutdown. As she struggles to get through each day between the work needing to be done and her anxiety, she tries to live from her mother’s mantra of just making one thing better each day. Meeting neighbors and making connections help her find her way, along with a special horse and a war veteran police officer with physical and emotional damage of his own. The novel is very well written, paced nicely, laugh out loud funny in parts, heartwarming and touching in others. I loved this one, five stars! It publishes in late October, and I’ll remind you about it again when it is available.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs – Magical realism novel with a compelling story of two half-sisters trying to protect a magical library where books have power and need a drop of blood mixed with herbs to work. In the right hands, the books can allow someone to walk through a wall, make it rain, or cause flowers to ring like bells. Joanna, who can sense magic, is tied in the house with the books, needing to set protection wards nightly. Esther, who cannot sense magic and also is immune to it, has been told that coming home will put the library and her family in danger. When a vampire book kills their father, and someone tries to kill her, Esther has to break a years-long promise and trust a stranger in an enchanted mirror. Joanna has to confront her mother, who was banned from the home years before, and learn the secret she has kept so long to unravel the long buried secret. The book is 416 pages but will seem like half that as it is a definite page turner. Available in Audiobook.Recommend.
Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes – Highly imaginative story of two women who get their gym bags mixed up, then the gym closes and they cannot connect. Sam is struggling with a number of issues in her personal life, her career and her financial situation, and Nisha is an ultra-rich socialite wife whose husband locks her out of everything while she is at the gym. What follows is a transformation of both as they are forced to wear each other’s shoes. Hilarious and heartwarming, with an imaginative way for both to come through the hard times and stick it to the jerks in both their lives. Enjoyable read that became harder to put down as it went. The 435 pages flew by, highly recommend. Available in Audiobook.
Reading over the past few weeks has been a challenge. I had five in a row of books I could not recommend, some boring to the point of wall-banging, some just bad, and one really terrible. Rather than give any of those a forum on my blog, you can read my reviews linked on the titles to my Goodreads reviews if you are curious as to why I did not like them, cannot recommend them and in the case of the last one, warn you away. Here’s my Avoid list –
Gone Like Yesterday by Janelle M Williams,
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk,
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell ,
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai,
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi.
This is all the more irritating as all of these were recommended, on best seller lists, or touted as the next great novel.
For more book review posts, click on Book Reviews to see my previous posts with more recommendations from many genres.
What are you reading this month?
From My Carolina Home 
Thanks for the links to the other reviews. What a good way to get the information out without filling up your own space. I’ve come to realize I’m easily satisfied, but with only so much time, need to be more selective in what I’ll read. Your reviews are always spot on.
Just happened on your reading post this early Tuesday morning. I was up at 5am. I need to set a reading time each day. My book reading has been minimal recently. Quilting, and cross stitching and blog reading have taken over my time! Need to change some of that. I asked to be your friend on Goodreads. See you there and here at your wonderful blog!
yes sometimes books that are highly recommended on well known book review lists stink in my opinion. That first book you mention sounds good to me and I jotted it down on my list
Fortunately, I haven’t picked up any of your bad books! The JoJo Moyes looks fun to me. I love reading too, but some months are harder than others — I can see why you were challenged in the reading time these days!
Hi Carole…I’m from NJ. I also enjoy quilting, flowers and birds (your friends appear so much earlier in the season and let us northerners know that good weather is on the way in the Spring). Eileen
Thanks for the book reviews, Carole! I always enjoy hearing about worthy titles. I also thought “The Centre” was terrible and did not even make it past the first two chapters. My philosophy is if I do not enjoy a book after the first few chapters, to put it down and move on to something else. Life is too short and there are tons of other more appealing titles out there. I am a retired school librarian and I approve this message!
I just finished “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. Funny, down-to-earth, poignant, inspiring.
Thanks for the review if Someone Else’s shoes. I have been wanting to read it but wasn’t sure since no one else I know had read it yet.
This month I read American Dirt and loved it. Many aspects of migration that I had not considered.
The Paris Daughter by Kristen Harmel. I think it is a must read for those who like WW2 fiction. Although some parts were a bit predictable, I really enjoyed the story of 2 women who become friends in Paris during WWII. When one has to escape, she leaves behind her daughter in order to save the child’s life.
Carole, I am surprised to see a Maggie O’Farrell book on your bad list. She is one of my favorite writers. I will look for that book and give it a go to see what put you off about it. I have to admit that neither Hamnet nor The Marriage Portrait were ‘fun’ reads, but I am glad I read them.
Thanks for your reviews of books. Looks like I will me reading several of todays,
Got my name on the list to get “Someone’s Shoes” from the library. Reading a Chiaverini book that I’ve read before. One at a time…Fall rainy season here, finishing 2 quilts for friend whose daughter got married this summer and son who got married last weekend – I really need to pay more attention to the neighbors. Our dogs play at the fence and we wave from the doors! Thanks for the suggestions!
I discovered the Murderbot Diaries series. While I’m not normally a big fan of SciFi unless they’re really good, this series is a winner. And free on Kindle Unlimited. The first book, All Systems Red, starts very slow and completely confusing, but quickly picks up into the best series I’ve read in a long time. Books 1-4 are novella length so I easily read 1 per day. Book 5 was longer and also more detailed, not always a good thing. After a week, I’m starting book 6.
Murderbot is a construct, cloned organic material over a robot frame with both machine and organic brain. So it feels, thinks, and has lots of emotions. It overwrote the code that kept it controlled by a corporate entity and now, while still performing its duties as a security unit, just wants to watch soap operas and be left alone. And so its adventures begin.
Thank you, Carole, for your reviews, which I so enjoy reading. Like everyone else I’m having a hard time finding “time” for non-essentials of life. There was a time before grandchildren that reading was essential to me but I’ve been babysitting 5 of them so much lately reading (and sewing) has taken a back-seat. Your short lists of preferred reading helps me sort out what I CAN find time to read. You’re the BEST!!!
Your book reviews are a gift! Thank you!
I’ve put a couple of your recommended titles on hold at the library and the one that is not available yet, I’ve put on my “to read” list.
I read The In-Between written by a hospice nurse about her experiences. It was a quick read and her observations valuable.
I always enjoy your honest book reviews. I haven’t read much this year, need to start back!
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Beth Maran’s novels which take place in the Sherwood Forest area of England. They are feel good novels but also address serious issues along the way. I joined Kindle Unlimited for a trial run and most of her novels can be read for free and returned when finished. The latest of her novels that I’ve read is Always on My Mind:
“As Jessie embraces the comfort of being home, reveling in her new job at her parents’ day centre full of people determined to grow old disgracefully, she realises her housemates aren’t the only ones needing to make some changes. And maybe, if she can finally forgive herself for Elliot’s accident, she can start to look forward to a future, with or without him by her side.
Reading Beth Moran’s fabulous novels makes every day better. Heart-warming, soul-nourishing, with smart characters and irresistible romances, it’s impossible not to fall in love with a Beth Moran story.”
There isn’t a novel of hers that I haven’t enjoyed. She sucks you into the characters and makes it easy to want to return to the story.
I also loved The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev recently: three generations of Indian women living in the US with the grandmother being the most delightful of all. And on a more serious note, enjoyed the long sagas of Th Fire Blossom and The Fires of Change, mostly about German families who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1800s. I didn’t read the third novel in the series because I read that it was mostly a regurgitation of the first two novels.
And one can’t go wrong with a Heather Webber or Marie Bostwick novel. I’m pretty sure that you’ve reviewed books by those authors. It’s probably where I was introduced to them.
I find that I’m wanting to read those feel good novels these days, so much worrisome news in real life demands a buffer!
I appreciate your reading recommendations AND your avoid list! Hamnet turned me off Maggie O’Farrell. A lot of people loved Hamnet but it just didn’t speak to me.
Chalk me up as another Murderbot fan you created, and thank you!!
My gift back is N.K.Jemison’s The City We Became, which is about the most fun you can have in current day New York with a strong magical twist, and the most upbeat book I’ve read in a long time. The next one, The World We Make, is not quite as wild a ride but a wonderful love letter to cities around the world.
Thanks again, and I look forward to the books that you’ve just recommended!!
Thanks for the reviews Carole! Life is too short to spend time reading a book you’re not enjoying. I read everyday from 5pm to 6:30 while I’m sipping a pre- dinner glass of wine, my happy hour!
Jenna
Carole, Thanks for the great review of One Thing Better! I’m thrilled that you enjoyed it! It was an anxious and emotional challenge to write it, but worth it for the joy I feel whenever someone connects with Lena’s story.
As for other great books, I, too, want to recommend Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus–this one made me think (sadly) about the world my mom and grandmother grew up in. The Night of Many Endings by Melissa Payne is another feel-good favorite. It’s like The Breakfast Club for adults.
Thanks again for the review and your recommendations! I hope you find more reading gems for October 🙂
Jessica Sherry
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Carole–have you read any of the Louise Penny mystery novels that take place in Canada? They are my current favorites!!