From the opening lines of Melinda Salisbury’s debut novel, The Sin Eater’s Daughter, I felt swept forward into a world of uncertainty and tension. After the first paragraph alone, I wanted to ask a half-dozen questions.
Rather than frustrate me – which it could have easily done – I found myself engaged and excited at being a few steps behind the narrator, anxious and ready to understand unfamiliar words and their meanings, and get a handle on the complex world of the author’s creation.
In Alice Hoffman’s gentle and enchanting Nightbird, Twig and her mother have a secret, one that keeps them separate from the town, and separate from friends. That is until the Halls and their two young daughters move into the house down the road. They are Twig’s first neighbors ever, and – as it turns out – descendants of the woman who brought her family lasting turmoil generations before.
It does not surprise me that it took Anthony Doerr 10 years to write his adult fiction novel All the Light We Cannot See. It is a beautifully written, carefully plotted book that – despite being somewhat lengthy at 544 pages – relies on each and every word to convey story, meaning, and emotion.
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The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is a dense read, with new characters and plot lines introduced even 3/4 of the way through the book. Keeping up with every detail, every motivation, every twist was a bit laborious, but the book is saved by Wecker’s clear, insightful writing, and the powerful charisma of the Golem and the Jinni themselves.
I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to get when I read Katherine Center’s new novel, The Lost Husband. Lucky for me, it turned out to be a sweet, clean romance, and a satisfying way to spend a handful of hours.
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BOOK:30 