Looking to read a book that’s like a reality TV show? That’s The Compound by Aisling Rawle. Amazon: “Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?” This is a total beach read and definitely a guilty pleasure. While I enjoyed it, it was candy – little substance, but delicious nonetheless.

Stop everything and grab this book!! The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a wonderful, wonderful epistolary novel that I could not put down. Aside from the absolutely gorgeous cover, everything about this book was delicious and incredible. I absolutely adored it. “Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime. Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.” (Amazon) I cannot recommend this book more highly and, if I could give it more than five stars, I would.

Happy Labor Day – the weekend I publish my summer reading reviews. This summer, I held myself somewhat accountable to my summer reading list (published here). As usual, I kept a printout of the covers above my desk for reference and checked off each as I completed it. But, for the first time since I can remember, I didn’t read all the books I selected. I’ll chalk it up to the new job and my bargello obsession, and hope to read the missing two selections this fall.

Please let me know if you read anything amazing this summer. I love having good recs from those of you who share my reading vibe.

So, now for the overall reviews and recommendations from those I had chosen for the summer and those that weren’t on the list:

Best Books of the Summer (5-Stars)
Culpability
A Little Less Broken
What Kind of Paradise
Everything is Tuberculosis
Pending: Lovely One…only halfway through, but LOVE

Summer Reading List Reviews
Rabbit Moon (4.5-stars)
Wild Dark Shore (4.5-stars)
Great Big Beautiful Life (4.5-stars)
Heartwood (4-stars)
Isola (4-stars)
Show Don’t Tell (4-stars)
Chances Are (3.5-stars)
Hope (4-stars)
A World of My Own (didn’t read, but bought)
My Name is Emilia Del Valle (didn’t read, but bought)

What a way to end the summer! Culpability by Bruce Holsinger was an excellent read. First recommended to me by Gayle Weiswasser of the Everyday I Write the Book blog and Wonderland Books and then chosen as Oprah’s June read, it’s been top of mind all summer. There were so many things to ponder from this novel and I am going to be thinking about it for a long time. Amazon: “When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.” This book was terrific and I highly recommend.

I originally had The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue on my summer reading list and changed it out at the last minute. But, it came from the library, so I read it anyway. “Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.” (Amazon) This was a good read for a trip and kept my interest, but it wasn’t a favorite.

You have to have an Emily Henry on a summer reading list (too bad about the title being reminiscent of the Big Beautiful Bill…)! Amazon writes of Great Big Beautiful Life: “Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century. When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game. One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over. Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication. Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition. But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it.” This was a great beach read and an enjoyable end of summer diversion.

Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst was a fascinating true story that was well told. Amazon: “Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.” I listened to this selection, which was a good choice. My only complaint was that it went on far too long after the rescue. Otherwise, it would have been a five-star choice for sure.

I am a sucker for Patti Callahan (and apparently also Patti Callahan Henry) stories and The Story She Left Behind was no exception. Predictable? A little. Sappy? Definitely, yes. But so enjoyable that they can be quickly binged, as I did today. Amazon: “In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, vanishes off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her disappearance leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beloved mother. By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother’s disappearance, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.” Callahan/Callahan Henry also wrote The Secret Book of Flora Lea and Becoming Mrs. Lewis, both of which I also very much enjoyed. I’ll have to add some of her others to my TBR list!

I really loved A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole by Marian Schembari. I know that part of this was that the author went to Davidson and spent some time describing that experience. But it was just such a raw and honest memoir that sucked me in and was such a good listen. Amazon: “Marian Schembari was thirty-four years old when she learned she was autistic. By then, she’d spent decades hiding her tics and shutting down in public, wondering why she couldn’t just act like everyone else. Therapists told her she had Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sensory processing disorder, social anxiety, and recurrent depression. They prescribed breathing techniques and gratitude journaling. Nothing helped. It wasn’t until years later that she finally learned the truth: she wasn’t weird or deficient or moody or sensitive or broken. She was autistic. Today, more people than ever are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Testing improvements have made it easier to identify neurodivergence, especially among women and girls who spent decades dismissed by everyone from parents to doctors, and misled by gender-biased research. A diagnosis can end the cycle of shame and invisibility, but only if it can be found. In this deeply personal and researched memoir, Schembari’s journey takes her from the mountains of New Zealand to the tech offices of San Francisco, from her first love to her first child, all with unflinching honesty and good humor. A Little Less Broken breaks down the barriers that leave women in the dark about their own bodies, and reveals what it truly means to embrace our differences.” I highly recommend this memoir. It was great!

I chose The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler as my school summer reading selection (I also am in the middle of reading The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker- there were so many good choices that I couldn’t select just one). “Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.” (Amazon) This was a good audiobook and I enjoyed listening, but I didn’t love it.