Category: Release Of the Week

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Featured New Release of the Week: The Road She Left Behind by Christine Nolfi

This week we look at a tale of a prodigal child running from the guilt of what she did years ago = and having to come home and confront it once and for all. This week we are looking at The Road She Left Behind by Christine Nolfi.

I do confessionals here, right? Kinda in the very tagline I use on this place? Here’s one: This book hit home because yet again I find an author writing a book that has main elements that speak directly to my life. In this particular case, Darcy has never been home since one fateful day 8 yrs ago and the guilt she has over it. In my own case, I’ve never lived within 100 miles of my home town as an adult, and while my own tale isn’t as tragic as Darcy’s, there was enough similarity there to be very thought provoking. (To be clear, the dynamics of Darcy’s family are nothing at all like my own.)

Overall an objectively excellent book, full of drama and just enough humor to lighten the mood a bit at key times. Very much a recommended read.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Summer Hours by Amy Mason Doan

This week we look at an excellent tale of a pair of disillusioned 30 somethings who had gone to school together and are reuniting for the remaining member of their trio’s wedding. This week we are looking at Summer Hours by Amy Mason Doan.

This was a solid story told in both the past and the present, with the past storyline taking us through the best friend trio’s high school and college years and the present taking place around 2008 when the trio was now in their early 30s. The pacing is well done, with the story lines hinting at just enough of what is to come in each other to keep the reader diving back into the next chapter to see what comes next.

As a bit of a disillusioned 30 something myself right now, the book hit home quite a bit, particularly in its back half when the present storyline begins picking up and dominating. Indeed, there were five quotes in particular that stood out:

  • “We say ‘we’ll never be like them’, but it happens. It happens gradually. We give in a little here, put off the hard decision there, say we’re paying our dues. We forget to swim against the current.”
  • “[The quest] has given me a taste of something I haven’t had in a long time. The thrill of the chase. Entering other people’s worlds, so different from your own. One fact leading to another, feeling your way in the dark, sometimes crawling and sometimes backing up and sometimes running. The certainty that [the goal] is important, that you have to keep going because no one else will. Until you’re out of the maze, holding a fragment of the truth up to the light.”
  • “We pick this industry we’re passionate about, and then if we’re *really* *really* good at it and *really* *really* lucky, we get to watch the job become a total perversion of what we once loved. Maybe we’re better off keeping the passions to the side. Separate from the paycheck.”
  • “I’m thirty-two, and yet I feel so locked into my life. And I’m scared I’m running out of time to change it.”
  • “They thought they knew exactly who I was, because I’d done such a good job of pretending *I* knew. When I didnt have a clue.”

Indeed, this book resonated so much that it seems to have contributed to the slump I noted in last week’s Featured New Release of the Week entry, as this was the book I read immediately prior to starting that one. Very good book, highly recommended.

As always, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
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Featured New Release Of The Weekend: I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie

This week we’re looking at a book about summer camps, just as summer camp season starts up! This week, we’re looking at I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie.

This is the story of a family that each experienced the same tragic event years ago – and has been keeping secrets from each other about their own involvement in that event ever since. The story is intriguing and well paced, with a convenient in-story and in-book chart that helps drive the plot along nicely. With the explosive mandate set by their father, will the children be able to come together and finally spill the secrets each keeps? Or will these secrets tear this family asunder?

Structurally, the story is told from the perspective of very nearly everyone involved as each struggles to piece together what really happened that night all those years ago. Because someone truly has secrets that they never intend to tell. This is an excellent technique for telling this story, as it reveals many things to the reader before the characters reveal it to each other, and yet at the same time this very mechanism increases the mystery for the reader.

Overall an excellent book that had this reader hooked from the get-go. Very highly recommended.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of The Week: Her Secret Son by Hannah Mary McKinnon

Today, we look at a book that begins with a tragedy and ends in secrets layered in secrets layered in secrets. Today, we look at Her Secret Son by Hannah Mary McKinnon.

As I note in the Goodreads review below, I had a bit of difficulty with this book – at first. It seems that my brain needed a break from reading for a bit (it happens) *and* the opening 10% or so of this book is just *so* depressing – McKinnon does an amazing job of showing a man and a boy’s emotional turmoil when their lover and mother (respectively, obviously) suddenly dies. But that is somewhat similar to my experience reading The Great Gatsby so many years ago. And like that book, once you get beyond the opening, it becomes a truly stupendous tale. In this case, Once the secrets start coming unravelled, they unravell into… other secrets. That unravel into other secrets. All the way to literally the last page of the book. Along the way, we do in fact get the answers we seek as readers, and McKinnon does a stellar job of showing a practical investigation by a person untrained in any investigative techniques. Very highly recommended book.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Vessel by Lisa A Nichols

This week, we’re looking at a lone-survivor-in-space book from a debut author that could give still-new author Andy Weir’s The Martian a run for its money. This week, we’re looking at Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols.

This story is basically a combination of a psychological thriller ala say Dete Meserve’s The Space Between with a lone-survivor-of-space-disaster science fiction ala the aforementioned The Martian by Andy Weir, with a sense of a dash of Interstellar thrown in – all without going into really any techno-speak beyond the bare minimum necessary for such a story. Thus, it is very approachable for anyone from any background, and indeed it works very well as a very real introduction to how NASA tends to operate in real life, for better and for worse.

That’s right. This particular reader has somewhat followed NASA for most of his life, including reading several memoirs and biographies of different personnel over the last year in particular, and this story really gets what working at Johnson Space Center as an Astronaut is really like, almost as though Nichols has read the same memoirs and biographies I have. Thus, there is just enough realism to this admittedly science fiction tale to add that extra degree of gravitas to the entire story, and in the end that makes a big difference.

If you enjoyed The Martian or Interstellar, you really should give this book a try. It really is a solid effort in those lines. Even if you didn’t particularly enjoy those efforts, give this one a shot – particularly if it was their more technical elements you didn’t enjoy as much. Simply a truly stunning book that you really need to drop everything else and read.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: The Taco Truck by Robert Lemon

This week we look at a fascinating if dry examination of how Mexican taco trucks have evolved in the United States and how they have pushed urban spaces in new heretofore unforseen directions. This week we look at The Taco Truck by Robert Lemon.

This book was absolutely fascinating, but I gotta admit: It was one of the more dry academic oriented books I’ve read in the last few years, and thus is was very difficult for me to read with my eyes. Fortunately my Kindle Fires have a solid text-to-speech ability, and I was able to consume the book that way very well.

And what a book it really was. Very nearly as comprehensive in its subject as Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop was in its own subject several years ago, the author spends a few pages grounding us in the history of street food in Central American culture before following these people north in the era before the United States’ westward expansion. He then spends quite a bit of the book showing the deeper history as well as the more current history of the last 40 years or so of how taco trucks in northern California – the Bay Area and Sacramento in particular – have evolved as more efforts at centralized urban planning have forced them out of their original purposes and locations and into new roles, just to stay in business. We then jump nearly to the opposite coast and spend a fair amount of time examining a similar evolution in Columbus, OH, and how there in particular taco trucks have become a cultural melting pot. Along the way, we also see the foodie/ food truck movement of the last decade develop and how it is different from – and, the author argues, appropriating of – the original taco truck culture.

Overall this was truly a fascinating book, though the dry prose makes it a very tough read. But those that can fight through the read will have found a very special look at an often overlooked facet of the American Dream, and for that they will be at least a bit better than they were before reading this text. Very much recommended reading.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Only Ever Her by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

This week we look at an amazing tale of loss and recovery by yet another new to me Lake Union author. This week, we look at Only Ever Her by Marybeth Whalen.

The book does an excellent job of showcasing rural small town life in the South. A bit interestingly, it is actually based in the same general region as last week’s Featured New Release of the Week, The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe by Granville Wyche Burgess, and the dichotomies here are interesting. While last week’s book showcases the South in the final years of Jim Crow, this tale features a more current take on the same area – the South Carolina Upstate near Greenville. The town and tale are fictional, but in this reader’s experience growing up in and around such areas, accurate to the types of things you’ll see there.

And the singular biggest thing featured here is the multilayered and multi-generational secrets, responsibilities, and aspirations. Annie is just looking to leave town and set her own course, after spending a lifetime being known for a tragedy that happened when she was just three years old and having grown up bearing the responsibility of helping her hometown cope with its darkest night. Faye is Annie’s aunt who came in to save Annie – yet harbors secrets of her own. Clary is Faye’s daughter and Annie’s aunt, but just one year older than Annie and thus the two have grown up like sisters – to their enjoyment and chagrin. Clary has secrets that Annie stumbled into and wants Clary to reveal. Kenny is the outsider weirdo that Annie defended in high school, and the two share secrets from both his girlfriend – and the fiancee she is about to marry. Laurel is the high school queen bee who has come back to her hometown in disgrace after giving a lofty graduation speech about her goals of exploring the world.

Narratively, the story is told from each of the perspectives of the characters described above, sometimes shifting to another character in the same scene with a chapter break, but with such grace that one could easily imagine a solid cinematographer having a field day with the visual transition. But the secrets don’t end with just these characters. The Sheriff harbors secrets. The fiancee and best friend harbor secrets. The former elite socialite grandmother harbors secrets. The pastor harbors secrets. Indeed, it seems that the only character in the book that doesn’t harbor secrets is the girlfriend, and she doesn’t even get named until near the end of the tale!

Overall an excellent work and I’m looking forward to more from this author. Very much recommended.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release Of the Week: The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe by Granville Wyche Burgess

This week we are looking at a fictional novel about the last year of the life of one of the greatest baseball players to ever play in the sport. This week we are looking at The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe by Granville Wyche Burgess.

This book was a phenomenal tale that captures the old – and currently resurging – Southern mill life pretty well perfectly. And it also captures the desires of some of its children – sons in particular – to do anything possible to leave it behind them once and for all. Having grown up after the mill era busted yet in an era when it was still lingering, this reader can personally attest to the accuracy of the setting, both from personal memory and from growing up around those who lived, laughed, worked, and loved during the heyday of the southern american textile mill. Even the secondary story of the young lady coming down from the mountains to find better money in the mills is spot on to the era and even life in the region to this day.

But for all its spot-on perfection in showing the southern mill life, this book is a baseball book through and through, and it is within baseball that the book truly shines brightest. The story pits a young talented up and comer who works hard at perfecting his baseball skills against the owner of the local mill who is pursuing a championship at any cost, and both characters work very well. However, it is the inclusion of the titular Shoeless Joe Jackson of the infamous Black Sox scandal that rocked the sport a century ago this very year that gives the story is emotional and narrative heft. At this point in his life, the greatest natural hitter ever to grace a baseball diamond has consigned himself to a life apart from the sport he still loves, living in obscurity in his hometown as a liquor store owner. At least until our young up and comer comes to him and begs him to help train him to be a better baseball player. After some shenanigans from the villain, Joe is convinced to not only train our youngster but to become the manager of the team. This leads to the inevitable comeback ala the Atlanta Braves’ own Worst to First season, and like that very season the championship game comes down to the villain’s team vs the team now managed by Shoeless Joe.

It is during this stretch of the book that we get a phenomenal look at the Black Sox scandal itself, apparently based on original research done by the author and told via Joe reminiscing and revealing secrets at critical times – and withholding others almost until it is too late.

Ultimately, the championship game in particular shines and we get our titular moment – the last at-bat of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the greatest natural hitter in the history of baseball. And it is truly spectacular and worthy of being the title of the book.

Even if you have no interest in baseball or southern mill life in the last years of Jim Crow, you owe it to yourself to read this book, easily among the best I’ve read this year and quite possibly likely to remain a Top 5 book on the year no matter how many more I read.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release Of the Week: Only One Life by Ashley Farley

This week we are looking at a generational tale of love, loss, secrets, and a mother’s enduring love for her children. This week, we are looking at Only One Life by Ashley Farley.

Structurally, this book was intriguing. The “normal” structure for these types of books that delve into stories in both past and present is to alternate chapters or sometimes even scenes within a chapter. This book takes a seemingly novel approach to the novel and instead opens in the present, goes back to the past to tell that entire story up to the present day, and then comes back to the present to finish out the overall story. For the story of this particular tale, this structure worked very well indeed – and even within this structure, managed to save some surprises for late in the book.

The tale itself was heartbreaking and yet also full of hope. The struggles that the primary mother and daughter go through are immense, but the ending gets to a happily ever after that manages to leave at least one key plot point resolved yet ready for a sequel, should Ms. Farley choose to pursue it. Overall an excellent tale, my first from this Lake Union author, and yet again not my last. Very much recommended.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon:
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Book CounterPoint: Perfectly Good Crime by Dete Meserve

Moments ago, I wrote the Featured New Release of the Week post for this week, which features Perfectly Good Crime by Dete Meserve. I spent a large part of this review speaking about something that was the thing about this book that primarily resonated with me and intrigued me about this book, yet I felt it was a spoiler to reveal it. Other reviews have since already spoiled this particular topic, but even now I feel the need to hide the rest of this commentary behind a Continue Reading tag, so if you are reading beyond this point,

READER BEWARE: I CONSIDER THE BELOW DISCUSSION TO CONTAIN SPOILERS TO THIS BOOK!
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