Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (As Told to Me) Story by Bess Kalb is a quirky memoir of Bess Kalb's grandmother, Bobby Bell. They had an amazing grandmother/granddaughter relationship as depicted by this book. Kalb speaks with her grandmother's voice. It is like she's playing dress-up using her grandmother's thoughts. Kalb has her grandmother's literal voicemails on her phone. I had the feeling Kalb was processing her loss through her writing, much like Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking. I enjoyed seeing the impact that a grandmother can have.
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I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai is filed in the mystery category because it is a gripping mystery. However, this book is more than a whodunit. Bodie Kane is a successful podcaster and film professor living in Los Angeles. She is invited to do a winter mini-mester at her old New Hampshire boarding school. The story zigzags back and forth in time as Bodie reconsiders the death of her roommate that occurred senior year. This book covers a lot of meaty topics like racial injustice, casual misogynistic abuse, and the curious fascination with the deaths of young, pretty white girls, but at its heart, it is a suspenseful mystery.
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Emily Henry is great at writing witty, pithy romance books. People We Meet On Vacation was the perfect read while traveling by airplane. It made the miles fly by. This book follows a friends-to-lovers path. Poppy and Alex meet in college when he gives her a ride home for summer break. They both live in the same small town. They are opposites. Poppy's sole desire is travel; Alex's is to build a stable life. So, they agreed to be best friends who would take a week-long vacation together once a year. But one year, something happens, and they stop. Poppy makes one last desperate attempt to get her best friend back.
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The main focus of The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman is the romance of gardening. As someone who gets poison ivy whenever I try to pull weeds and considers houseplants a bouquet that lasts slightly longer than average, I was charmed by this lovely book and the problem-free garden. Lillian Girvan has been a widow for three years. She is drawn in and compacted--much like a seed in hard ground--when she signs up for gardening class, where she transforms, with the help of others, into something unexpected. Interspersed between the chapters are short, witty essays on how to prepare and grow a garden.
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I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle doesn't strictly follow the traditional fantasy tropes. The story's hero is a lowly dragon exterminator who hates his job. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, his friends call him Robert, has inherited the job of ridding hovels to castles of dragons. When the princess of Robert's kingdom falls hard for the neighboring kingdom's handsome prince, Robert is called for a long overdue castle dragon cleansing; however, everything doesn't go as planned. Beagle's writing style is humourous while also telling a rollicking tale.
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The Ministry of Time by Kaleane Bradley is a debut novel. Her concept is clever. Time travel is possible, but instead of sending someone from this timeline, the government chooses to secretly pull people from the past who would have died if they hadn't been rescued. Then, study the physical and mental effects on these unwilling participants. A small group of Expats from several centuries are gathered in a future where the climate crisis is becoming overwhelming. The book's narrator is the bridge helper/keeper of a British officer who would have died in an Arctic expedition in 1847. She must help him acclimate to the current timeline and regularly report to the ministry about him. She is both his friend and his foe. Time travel makes things weird. I like weird. The genre is humorous sci-fi romance with a conscience.
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