Winter Time and Intriguing Books Are Calling
Intriguing Books
I have always loved to read and I’m always on the lookout for a great book. I go through reading phases. Sometimes I’m reading one right after another and other times, I just can’t find the time. You know how that goes. But when I find one I love, one that keeps me up at night, well that’s a “winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
Sometimes I let friends and family recommend a book. Before I wrote this post I asked several of my close friends to choose their favorite book from 2021. Many of them said, “I can’t remember.” Which, considering our age, didn’t surprise me. Several of them chose books that were published over a decade ago. But a good book is a good book no matter how long ago it was written!
We all loved “Where the Crawdad’s Sing” but I’ve already reviewed it, so I passed on my friend’s recommendation to give it a shout out.
But here are some more they loved and so did I!
The characters in this book become friends and by the end of the book I was sad to say goodbye to them.
Part of the Amazon review says, “A powerful story about circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond of family.” It is a compelling story and written with the touch of someone who can create magic with language.
Yes, this one has been out awhile too, but it’s oh so good!
From Amazon, ” This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild. But after everything she knows and trusts dissolves, headstrong young Beryl is flung into a string of disastrous relationships, then becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl will risk everything to have Denys’s love, but it’s ultimately her own heart she must conquer to embrace her true calling and her destiny: to fly.”
Like I said earlier, I like historical fiction. This is a good one. I read The Warsaw Orphan, too but didn’t like it as much as this book.
From Amazon, “In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate.”
Definitely worth your time!
I’ve told you before but this is a great book! I recommended it to a friend who was a flight attendant for 42 years and she loved it! If you haven’t read this one, read it! This one will keep you up at night!
So snow is on the way. Download a book on your Kindle or Audible, or run to the bookstore. Grab a good book and read!
This is next on my reading list. I LOVE a good mystery and this sounds like one. “When he was just 8 years old, Wayland Maynard saw his father, the “gentle, prim, fastidious” barber in a small Vermont town, shoot himself in the head. The note that was left behind also serves as the title of Eric Rickstand’s strange and engrossing novel, I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM. Wayland attempts, years later, to find out the truth about his family. The reader will entertain many incorrect theories before arriving at the shocker of a finale. The most wrenching moment of all: when we find out what the note really signifies.”
This one is from 2013 but it’s another good one recommended by my friend Annette. “It was an easy read but kept me captivated to the very end. It was definitely a surprise ending and one I couldn’t guess. Too often I have read a great book but then the author will just throw everything at the wall in a few pages hoping to make a good ending, which seldom happens. This book was good from beginning to end,” Annette said.
The Amazon review says in part….
“One mistake, one fateful night, and Tess DeMello’s life is changed forever.
It is 1944. Pregnant, alone, and riddled with guilt, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly gives up her budding career as a nurse and ends her engagement to the love of her life, unable to live a lie. Instead, she turns to the baby’s father for help and agrees to marry him, moving to the small, rural town of Hickory, North Carolina. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows her no affection. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.”
Finally my friend’s daughter recommended Before We Were Yours, which I’ve already reviewed and absolutely loved. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s great.
So what are you reading and what books have you loved?
