I can’t remember where I heard about The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer (Oprah, perhaps). The storyline was intriguing – a mother has premonitions that she is going to lose her daughter and then she does – and the beginning was good, but it lost steam for me. While I wanted to find out what happened, by the end, I really just wanted to know what happened after the resolution. Not only wasn’t that really addressed, but the mystery-solving portion was completed in the last 10 pages – way too quickly given the pace of the rest of the book. Overall, it felt too forced and wasn’t compelling. It was a disappointment.

Be Frank With Me was on my list for a while and I was eager to read it as it had lots of great reviews. Frank is a little boy who Alice has been dispatched to take care of by her publisher boss while Mimi, the author and Frank’s mother, finishes her next great work. Mimi, made famous by her first bestseller, has not written anything in decades. The tone was reminiscent of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. To me, the writing was choppy, which was purposeful, I suppose, so you could better feel the characters, but it made the book seem shallow to me. While I mostly enjoyed reading it, I wasn’t enamored of either the writing or the storyline.

The Ramblers, by Aidan Donnelly Rowley is a delightful, but shallow dip into a set of young college graduates’ lives in New York. Clio and Smith were roommates at Yale whose lives were completely different, yet they were drawn together and stayed close afterwards. Both are navigating family and life in NYC as well as relationship complications. I liked the varying points of view from chapter to chapter, including Tate’s (added later – Smith’s new love interest). Each section wove the story tighter and tighter. This was a fast-paced read, and an enjoyable one.

While I am a little tired of World War II, Secrets of a Charmed Life, by Susan Meissner, was a wonderful story about Emmy and her sister, Julia, who were sent away to the English Countryside during the war. The story is framed by on about Kendra, a history major, who has gone to hear Isabel MacFarland’s story of the Blitz. The secrets Isabel has to tell and the way both stories weave together make for compelling reading. I plan to look into more of Susan Meissner’s books, now that I have discovered her.

Saving Sophie by Ronald Balson was recommended by my work colleague who always has great recommendations. She also suggested Once We Were Brothers, which I plan to read as well. While I enjoyed Saving Sophie very much – fast paced, short chapters, compelling story – it could have been much shorter. It came out of the gate swinging, then stalled out a bit in the middle with lots of middle eastern history, and then picked up again at the end. At 400+ pages, it surely could have been a bit condensed. However, for the most part, it moved quickly, and, as I said, the story was interesting, so well worth a read.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is one of the most powerful books I have read. While it was a quick read, accomplished in a few hours, I won’t easily forget either the beautiful prose or the thoughtful approach. Paul Kalanithi was in his last year of residency for neurosurgery when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. This book is the chronicle of his years in school as well as the last months of his life. My only (very minor) complaint about this book, other than the immense sadness in reading it, was the distant tone of the author. However, upon reading the ending, written after his death by his wife, we can understand why this distance is powerful and perfect. She writes, “Paul’s voice in When Breath Becomes Air is strong and distinctive, but also somewhat solitary. Parallel to this story are the warmth and spaciousness and radial permission that surrounded him. We all inhabit different selves in space and time. Here he is as a doctor, as a patient, and within a doctor-patient relationship. He wrote with a clear voice, the voice of someone with limited time, a ceaseless striver, though there were other selves as well. Not fully captured in these pages are Paul’s sense of humor – he was wickedly funny – or his sweetness and tenderness, the value he placed on relationships with friends and family. But this is the book he wrote; this was his voice during this time; this was his message during this time; this was what he wrote when he needed to write it. Indeed, the version of Paul I miss most, more even than the robust, dazzling version with whom I first fell in love, is the beautiful, focused man he was in his last year, the Paul who wrote this book – frail but never weak.” While this is a devastatingly difficult book to read, it is absolutely worth it. What an amazing legacy.

I really wanted to like H is for Hawk, by Helen McDonald. I read many good reviews and it was one of the NYT’s Book Reviews 10 best books of the year as well as on more than 25 Best Books of the Year lists. But, I just found it dull and struggled to get through it. While I felt for Helen, who lost her father, grieved, and recovered by training a goshawk, ultimately, I couldn’t get into the long descriptions of T. H. White (The Once and Future King, Sword in the Stone) and his hawk training coupled with Helen’s. If you are really into falconry, you might enjoy this autobiography, but it left me cold.

The Forgotten Room, by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig, was a delight from start to finish. In this unique novel, three authors weave together three stories of three generations of women and the house they live and/or work in. Each chapter, in order, furthers the story of one of the women. It’s a wonderful set of stories and was a pleasure in which to get lost. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Looking for a quick-read thriller that will make your heart pound? Those Girls by Chevy Stevens is it. I read it in about two hours. The premise is three sisters who are abused by their father, leave town in a hurry, and end up in another terrible situation. We then skip 18 years ahead to the sisters and how they are coping with their past. And then, the past begins to repeat itself. I posted about Stevens’ previous book, That Night here. And, honestly, I could have repeated that earlier post. It’s not great literature, but it’s good, keep you on the edge of your seat reading. Well worth a few hours.

I enjoyed Melanie Benjamin’s last book, The Aviator’s Wife, a novelization of the lives of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In fact, it was 4.5 star-worthy. Here is my review. So, I was excited to pick up her newest book, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, a novel about Babe Paley and her friends’ relationship with Truman Capote. Unfortunately, this novel fell flat for me. While I enjoyed learning more about this time and these characters, it plodded along and never really held my interest. I was ready for it to be over 200 pages before it was. Pick up The Aviator’s Wife instead – you’ll be glad you did.