Tag: novel
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Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
The Husbands (Knopf Doubleday, 2024), debut novel by Holly Gramazio, a writer and video game designer, is an interesting read. I waited for quite some time to get a copy from my local library. I read it quickly, but it’s taken me several days to decide what I want to say about it in this…
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Book Review: Rachel to the Rescue by Elinor Lipman
I’ve been a devoted fan of Elinor Lipman since 1988. I had just moved from Louisiana to Maryland for a new job in exciting downtown Bethesda. I lived near the Bethesda Metro and walked to my office building just a block from the Metro’s food court. Between work and home I had to pass a…
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Book Review: How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley
How do you feel about books that start with an epigraph? Yea or nay? I generally like it, but sometimes I have no idea of its relevance until deep into the book. Not with this one, however. Last night I finished How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley. This book is VERY popular right now.…
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Book Review: Looking for You by Alexander McCall Smith
Before there was Match.com, eHarmony.com, or Tinder.com, there were individuals or agencies that “made introductions,” much like the matchmakers of the old days, like Yenta in the famous Fiddler on the Roof. The underlying theme of Fiddler is one of the key words of the musical: tradition. In Alexander McCall Smith’s series A Perfect Passion…
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Book Review: Murder by the Book by Lauren Elliott
Murder by the Book (the novel, Kensington Cozies, 2018) by Lauren Elliott is the first in the Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery series. I checked this book out to read on my Kindle via Libby through my local MCPL mostly because of the title and the cover. Many years ago, I directed a play by…
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Book Review: The Page Turner by Viola Shipman
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the ebook ARC of this new novel, by an author new to me. Viola Shipman is the pen name for memoirist Wade Rouse. Rouse uses the pen name Viola Shipman for his fiction to honor his grandmother, and traces of that sentiment are found in this…
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Book Review: The Love Haters by Katherine Center
First, thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC ebook of this new novel, soon to be published on May 20, 2025. For Katherine Center fans everywhere, I am sure this will be another smash hit! This is my third book by Katherine Center, who by her own admission is a writer…
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Book Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods (a/k/a Evie Gaughan)
The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris is my second book by Evie Woods, although I am a bit confused whether #2 is the chicken or the egg. I loved her first (?) book, The Lost Bookshop. It was the perfect blend of a dual timeline, half contemporary and half historical, with a dash of…
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Book Review: A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson
Happy. Hopeful. Depressing. Sad. Melancholy. Engaging. Frenetic. Anxious. Tedious. Mad. Bored. Chaotic. These are all things I felt while reading Maddie Dawson’s 2020 novel A Happy Catastrophe, published by Lake Union Publishing. (Disclosure: I purchased this book on Amazon for my Kindle.) As is sometimes the case, I found out after I had finished it…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 