Free audiobook? Yes, please. A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey is free to everyone on Libby. It’s a decent story, though the audioversion was annoyingly voiced by one person who made their voice lower for the male parts in a way that really didn’t do it for me. Amazon: “Natalie Walker is the reason her older brother and sister went to prison over fifteen years ago. She fled California shortly after that fateful night and hasn’t spoken to anyone in her family since. Now, on the same day her boyfriend steals her dream job out from under her, Natalie receives a letter from a lawyer saying her estranged mother has died and left the family’s historic Santa Cruz house to her. Sort of. The only way for Natalie and her siblings to inherit is for all three adult children to come back and claim it―together. Natalie drives cross-country to Santa Cruz with her willful cat in tow expecting to sign some papers, see siblings Lynn and Jake briefly, and get back to sorting out her life in Boston. But Jake, now an award-winning ornithologist, is missing. And Lynn, working as an undertaker in New York City, shows up with a teenage son. While Natalie and her nephew look for Jake―meeting a very handsome marine biologist who immediately captures her heart―she unpacks the guilt she has held onto for so many years, wondering how (or if) she can salvage a relationship with her siblings after all this time.” I liked the premise and the story development. It was a bit predictable, but I enjoyed the resolution nonetheless. Not a bad summer choice.

The Last Party was on the shelf at the library and looked like an appealing summer read, so I grabbed it. While the smattering of Welsh was off-putting since it mostly wasn’t translated, overall, it was an OK read. “On New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors. But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake. On New Year’s Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family—and Ffion has her own secrets to protect. With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him. In a village with this many secrets, murder is just the beginning.” (Amazon) This was a decent psychological mystery (Is that a genre? I wouldn’t describe it as a thriller…) but I didn’t love it. Fortunately, it was a quick and engaging read and, I didn’t predict the ending.

As with much of my TBR list, I am not sure how The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland ended up on my Summer Must Read list, but I am glad it did. Amazon: “Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn’t give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he’ll have to buy her freedom first. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.” I really enjoyed this historical fiction and was interested in the story I knew nothing about in advance. Another highly recommend for the week.

I read about The Wager by David Grann all over the place this spring and summer. And, the author attended my alma mater. AND, Obama put it on his summer reading list (along with several others on my list – I feel very presidential tangential…) “On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang. The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.” (Amazon) This was a gripping read, and one I very much enjoyed. Highly recommend.

I have never read a Dennis Lehane book and am not sure what made me interested in choosing Small Mercies other than the premise. “In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart. One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business. Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.” I liked this read (and it would make a good movie), but, as with most that I have read this summer, I didn’t love it.

I have absolutely no idea how All My Knotted Up Life by Beth Moore ended up on my TBR and “Want to Read This Summer” lists. NO. IDEA. While I almost threw in the towel as her life is SO not my cup of tea, I persevered and am glad I did. The story, while often quite vague and always very evangelical, was an interesting one and memoirs are almost always my cup of tea. Amazon: “New York Times best-selling author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir. All My Knotted-Up Life is told with surprising candor about some of the personal heartbreaks and behind-the-scenes challenges that have marked Beth’s life. But beyond that, it’s a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.” Again, it was hard to wrap my head around a lot of this story and I certainly didn’t love it, but I am glad I finished it.

I wish I had read the reviews on Amazon before I grabbed this Reese pick from the library. The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes only garnered 3.6 stars and I know why. While it was a page-turner, you wanted to know the ending, and it was creative, it was too far-fetched to suspend disbelief. I’d give this one a pass. “Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer—the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey. At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin. . . .” (Amazon) The risks the main character takes are just implausible and you just can’t believe the people around her deal with her at all. Boo.

I like Alka Joshi (The Henna Artist and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur) and was excited to see the last of the trilogy at the library. The Perfumist of Paris felt a lot like her others, but in a new location. Amazon: “Paris, 1974. Radha is now living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion—the treasure trove of scents. She has an exciting and challenging position working for a master perfumer, helping to design completely new fragrances for clients and building her career one scent at a time. She only wishes Pierre could understand her need to work. She feels his frustration, but she can’t give up this thing that drives her. Tasked with her first major project, Radha travels to India, where she enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra—women who use the power of fragrance to seduce, tease and entice. She’s on the cusp of a breakthrough when she finds out the son she never told her husband about is heading to Paris to find her—upending her carefully managed world and threatening to destroy a vulnerable marriage.” This was a solid choice, but not a summer favorite.

I read Newman’s Falling in 2021 and it was OK. I thought Drowning was SO good. Nothing amazing writing-wise, but a good thriller. “Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside. More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives. Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff. There’s not much time. There’s even less air.” (Amazon) He’s got a thing going with cover art. Can’t imagine what he will think of next. Again, as with Falling, don’t read this one on a plane!

I love everything about Dolly Parton. I have never read James Patterson. When the audiobook of their collaboration, Run, Rose, Run was available at the library, I grabbed it. It was a great listen and Dolly herself reads the country music star. “Every song tells a story. She’s a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her. She’s also on the run. Find a future, lose a past. Nashville is where she’s come to claim her destiny.  It’s also where the darkness she’s fled might find her.  And destroy her. Run, Rose, Run is a novel glittering with danger and desire—a story that only America’s #1 beloved entertainer and its #1 bestselling author could have created.” (Amazon) It’s a good listen, good mystery/thriller, good love story.