Ann Patchett's latest book, Whistler, reminds me of building with Magna Tiles. There are squares and triangles of different sizes with magnets embedded on the sides. They click together, and you build with them. Here is a quick YouTube video to demonstrate: s2jFeogTEgQ. The tiles have jewel tones that remind me of stained glass. When I am building with my fellow engineers, my grandsons, we start with a stack of unimpressive shapes and create cathedrals that glow. It's amazing. Every writer uses words and sentences--Magna Tiles, but Ann Patchett creates glowing cathedrals with hers, and she gets better with each book. I think Whistler is her best book. It is a good book to read after her essay collection, These Precious Days, because it contains her essay exploring her relationships with her three fathers (her birth father and two stepfathers). Whistler's plot centers on a woman in her 50s, Daphne, who accidentally bumps into her former stepfather, Eddie. He and her mother had been married for slightly over a year when Daphne was eight, and when they divorced, she never saw him again. They had been very close. The woman starts to untangle the knot of what happened to the marriage and why. It pulls deeply on the father/daughter relationship. Ann Patchett shines at showing how complex that relationship can be, intertwined with love, disappointment, expectation, longing, safety, so many things. Whistler is excellent.
Previous reviews of Ann Patchett's books: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Ann+Patchett
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The Thirteenth Child by Erin A. Craig was recommended to me by a daughter. It had several things I liked in a fantasy novel. The premise was that Hazel is a rare thirteenth child, which made her coveted by the Gods. Her father promises her to Merrick, the Dreaded End, the god of death. His will is for her to be a healer, a very famous healer, and he gives her the ability to see what is wrong with her patients and to know how to heal them. However, not everyone can be healed. Some patients are marked for death, and in fact, their deaths are required. I found this to be an interesting plot, with creative world-building and surprising story paths. It felt like it took a long time to tell the story; the pacing could have been faster. The story proposed that some people needed to die to keep more people from dying. They had to die for the greater good, but when using the God-Eye, Hazel could see all of a person's possible futures. I found the book's internal logic inconsistent, which bugged me, but not enough to stop reading. Craig is a captivating storyteller.
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Last week, I read Sulari Gentill's Woman in the Library and liked her creative approach to plotting a mystery, so I read Five Found Dead. This murder mystery takes place on the Orient Express! Bold move. The story is told in the first person. Meredith Penvale has suspended her job as a corporate lawyer to help her twin brother Joe, a successful mystery writer, as he fights cancer. To celebrate his survival, the two book a trip on the famous Orient Express. In the cabin next to theirs, a murder occurs. The door is locked, the room is splashed with blood, but there is no body and nowhere to hide. Or is there? This book was also clever. It could have moved faster, but it was a fun read.
(https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2026/06/mysterymagical-ya.html)
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