Tag: #summerbooks

Death at the Party

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Amy Stuart

The story starts with our protagonist watching a man die. She pulls her phone out a couple of times, tempted to call 911 but pauses.

No, it would be better if he were dead.

We then flashback to that morning. Nadine Walsh, daughter, wife, mother, is making the final preparations for her mother’s birthday party that evening. Throughout the day we meet various people who will be attending the party. We are introduced to these potential partygoers (one of which is our victim)  through the critical lens of Nadine herself, so some of them we like, and the others,

well, we don’t like quite as much.

Is this because we are influenced by Nadine herself?

And just to make our reading a bit more uncomfortable, Nadine isn’t exactly the most sympathetic of characters until… well, I won’t spoil it for you.

I loved this book. It was perfect for a weekend read on my balcony sipping a cosmopolitan. A perfect addition to your summer reading list.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the copy.

The Radcliffe Ladies Reading Club

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Julia Bryan Thomas

This is an easy quick read perfect for summer.
It’s 1954 and Alice Campbell has decided to make a big change in her life, giving up everything for independence. So she buys a small bookshop in Boston and makes it her own. One day, Alice decides to create a book club where individuals will meet once a month to discuss books of her choosing…and they just so happen to be books about and/or written by women who are, themselves searching for a life to call their own. Alice’s little book club is made of four young women (Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt) who just happen to be attending nearby Radcliffe College, all are young and edited with their own newfound independence.
I liked this book well enough. It was a very quick read that was suitable after a workday where I had to tax my brain. I found the description of Alice’s bookshop and the details of the simple life she has created for herself is simply charming. I also enjoyed the simplicity of characterization, it was easy to understand the choices and motivations of each. My favourite part of the novel was how the author attempted to weave the various themes of the books studied in the book club with the lives of the characters who read them. (Jane Eyre, Age of Innocence, Essays of Virginia Wolfe).

Trigger warning for sexual assault and miscarriage.

You will be able to purchase this book June 18th!

Thank you to Source Books and Netgalley for the free copy.

The Secret Book of Flora Lea

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Patti Callahan Henry

Well, this was an absolutely wonderful book.

At the beginning of the book our main character, Hazel is working at an antiquarian bookstore unpacking and itemizing rare books (my DREAM JOB)! However, she is soon off to bigger and brighter experiences moving on to a much more elitist job at an auction house in London. But before she leaves this charming little shop, she comes across a storybook that possesses a tale that shakes her to her very core. You see, when she was a young girl she used to tell her little sister Flora the story of  “Whisperwood” , an imaginative world where they would be safe and happy and distracted from the war. Hazel and Flora have had to flee their home and parents in London to escape the bombing and it is up to Hazel to protect her little sister while they are away. Tragically, one day Flora disappears, everyone believing she accidentally tumbled into the river and drowned. And now, like a ghost from the past, the story she has told to only her little sister has appeared. Hazel then sets out in search of the author of this book in the hopes to find out information on her sister’s disappearance or maybe, hopefully, finding her sister alive after all these years.

A lovely, lovely, story. Well written, suspenseful, wonderful plot complications and characterization. Definitely one to put on your summer reading list.

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for the free copy. The Secret Book of Flora Lea is in bookstores now!