Review: The Nature of the Beast

The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Gamache #11), by Louise Penny (Minotaur 2015)

First line: “Running, running, stumbling, running.”

You guys, I’ve read my favorite Three Pines book yet.

Set almost exclusively in the village of Three Pines, this 11th book in the series has an excellent central mystery as well as continued superb character development. (The relationship between Gamache and Beauvior is just too much for this tender heart. I love them so.) There’s not much I can go into, being so far along in the series, but the story starts with a boy who cried wolf, or in this case, a boy who cried giant gun in the woods, and because of his fanciful storytelling, no one believes him. But a giant gun he did indeed find, and the whole village might pay for not believing him.

I love where our main characters are in their lives at this point, and I’m so curious how Penny will keep their development going as she continues to write more books in this series.

I’ve had a lot of 4 and 4.5 stars in this series, but this is the first time I’ve given a Penny book 5 stars. The moments that had me melting and the moments that had my heart racing were too numerous to count, and I’m so delighted by them all.

Review: Calling for a Blanket Dance

Calling for a Blanket Dance, by Oscar Hokeah (Algonquin 2022)

First line: “I always told Turtle when I was raising her, “If a man acts like a child, then send him back to his ae-jee and let her straighten him out.””

I am a sucker for a novel with an interesting format. Give me timelines that move backward or perspectives that shift around or emails interspersed, and I am here. for. it. In Calling for a Blanket Dance, Oscar Hokeah crafts a beautiful novel telling the story of Ever Geimausaddle by laying out chapters from the point of view of 11 of his family members, starting in 1976, each jumping ahead 3-5 years at a time to see Ever at many different stages of his life. The 12th chapter is finally from Ever’s perspective, but the reader feels like they know him pretty intimately already, just from seeing him through the eyes of those who love him.

This is the story of a diverse family living in Oklahoma, blending Cherokee, Kiowa, and Mexican heritage (the same familial background of our author), and Ever has not has it easy growing up. There are moments of intense devastation, including a particularly horrific scene in the first chapter, which Lena, our first narrator and Ever’s grandmother, says shapes the rest of his life, as his soul is witched by the violence he witnesses as a young baby. But among these incidents of violence, abuse, drug use, addiction, disease, infant loss, and racism, the reader finds countless examples of selfless love, compassion, and care, not just towards and among Ever and the members of his family, but toward strangers they encounter as well. My heart was hooked on Ever’s story in a way I can’t remember feeling recently. I cannot wait to see what else this author will write.

Review: Forty Words for Love

Forty Words for Love, by Aisha Saeed (Kokila, expected pub. Aug 22, 2023)

First line: “The first clear moment Raf recalled from that night was the sound of laughter. Hers.”

I first stumbled upon this book and was intrigued just from the gorgeous cover, and then even more intrigued by the premise: Yas and Raf live in Moonlight Bay, where the ocean waters are pink and purple, and the town is imbued with wonder and magic. They’ve been best friends since Raf and his family came through the portal enormous tree in the forest a decade ago, away from their volatile home to the safety of the Bay. But a year ago, just as Raf was beginning to realize his feelings for Yas were maybe more than friendship, a tragic accident turned the waters a murky gray, seemingly taking the cozy comfort of Moonlight Bay with it, and Yas and Raf and the rest of the town are struggling to keep afloat.

There’s a lot happening here, and I felt like the book never really figured out exactly what it wanted to be because of it. There’s light fantasy, a sense of dystopia, a refugee crisis, a friends-to-lovers romance… and yet, nothing much happens. Despite the fact that the characters (and the entire town) are devastated by the inciting tragedy, the reader doesn’t really get to feel it, and is left kind of wading around in the trauma without really understanding it. On a character level, I really loved Yas and Raf’s friendship, and the authenticity of all those feelings you feel when you start to realize there’s more to it than friendship. I think the author was spot on with that. But I left the story with more questions than answers. There was so much potential here that just wasn’t quite realized.

Many thanks to Kokila and Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Stationary Shop

The Stationary Shop, by Marjan Kamali (Gallery Books 2019)

First line: “‘I made an appointment to see him.'”

I was nervous to pick up this beloved book. Several very trusted readers have told me how much they loved it, and honestly I’ve never seen a negative review. And I have to say, the entire first half kept me very nervous.

In the first chapter of The Stationary Shop, we see our protagonist Roya as a woman in her 70s, heading to an elder care facility to meet with a man she knew more than 50 years prior. A man she was in love with and engaged to and then who disappeared from her life in an instant. Upon seeing him, we are taken back to politically volatile 1950s Iran, where we watch Roya fall in love with Bahman among the pages of Rumi love poems at the small stationary shop run by Mr. Fakhri. This is where I started having a hard time. I’ve never bought in to the idea of love at first sight or insta-love, and it all felt a little unbelievable and naive. They meet eyes over Rumi and are suddenly engaged? What now? I do realize things happened differently back in the day and also differently in different cultures, but it still felt all too sudden.

But then, after the disastrous breakup, Roya and her sister are sent to California to earn degrees, and here we start to see some complexity in Roya’s story. Her life in America, forever shaped by her experiences with Bahman in Iran, is careful and measured. And while her romance with Walter, the man who becomes her husband, is radically different than that with Bahman, it’s no less real. Looking back, I realize that part of why the initial romance was so rushed is because they are such babies. Teenagers. Roya felt naive to me because she was naive. I can’t fault her for that.

The WSJ blurb on the front calls this novel a “powerful love story,” and while I was initially turned off by what I thought that was referring to (the love story between 17 year olds), I now think it’s an accurate assessment. Kamali painted a love story not between one man and one woman, but a woman’s whole love story, which encompasses her young romance, her devoted husband, her fierce sister bond, her love for and from her parents, and her love as a mother. Life is not simple, and neither is this love story.

Review: A Little Hope

A Little Hope, by Ethan Joella (Scribner 2021)

First line: “Freddie Tyler wakes at six and watches her sleeping husband breathe for a moment.”

This little debut novel feels like a warm hug… after a swift punch in the gut.

In A Little Hope, Joella offers slice-of-life vignettes of a whole host of characters living in small town Connecticut over the course of a year. Some characters get two or three chapters devoted to their perspectives, many see only one. But the reader gets the pleasure of seeing how these characters all connect as their stories and lives overlap in tender and heartwarming ways. This novel is not for the faint of heart though, as before their hopeful endings, they see a lot of emotional turmoil and pain, through cancer diagnoses, deaths of children, pregnancy loss, infidelity, addiction, and regret.

At times, the grief and pain all felt like a lot — like, really, Joella? More devastation? And the moments of hope and joy had a tendency toward sappiness. And yet, I couldn’t get enough of this novel. I read it very quickly (an unheard of reality for print books in my last few months), and would have read more. I loved getting inside these characters’ minds, seeing how different they were, while all still just trying their best to figure out life. There wasn’t an unlikable character in the bunch, no villains found here, which felt like a balm in our increasingly polarized reality where it seems like a villain lurks around every corner.

Joella has another novel, A Quiet Life, coming out at the end of the month, which seems very similar in content, tone, and style, and I’ve been seeing great reviews for that one too.