The Last September was a recommendation from my favorite blog, Everyday I Write the Book. Like Gayle, I had some issues with the main character and her actions at the end of the book. The story, in a nutshell, is about a murder and the falling apart of a marriage. It was a heartbreaking book in many ways, but overall, I found myself too irritated with some of the characters and some of the plot lines to fully give myself over to it. And, to me, the last 50 pages were a disappointment. It was a letdown especially after an interesting and intriguing start.

The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs is a short, spare novel that is a quick and enjoyable read, but nothing astonishing. The premise, though, of a woman who heads out of town unexpectedly with her teenage daughter to right a wrong done to her in high school by her former best friend, is one that will resonate with anyone who had a slight in high school that they have never forgotten. You cheer for Caroline, while at the same time, realize truths about that time in everyone’s lives. It won’t take too long to read this one, should you choose to pick it up.

The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford was a quick and engaging read, but I didn’t love it. It made me too anxious. The protagonist has bipolar disorder and thinks she may have murdered her neighbor. She can’t clearly remember the events of the day in question and begins to doubt everything that happens to her. The tension between the characters and the plot was interesting, but something was missing and things were prolonged and then ended too quickly.

I must have been living under a rock to not know that Kate Mulgrew not only played Red on “Orange is the New Black,” but was also famously on “Cheers,” “Ryan’s Hope” and “Star Trek”. I had seen her memoir, Born With Teeth, on lots of Best of 2015 book lists and added it to mine, thinking I might enjoy it, since I like memoirs so much. I did enjoy it very much and the added bonus was that I learned a great deal about an actress I knew nothing at all about. Her writing style was too spare at first and jumped about without enough explanation, but it came together and grew on me toward the middle and end. I also liked the photos to head each chapter (one chapter was missing a photo, which was weird and offended my OCD sensibilities). I frequently looked back to the listing which described each photo and wish they had been captioned instead. It would have been even more annoying to have to flip back and forth on a Kindle. This issue aside, I highly recommend you pick it up.