ginasbookreport

Oye by Melissa Mogollon Publisher: Hogarth an imprint of Random House Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature / Fiction / Humor Read This If You Love: The Guncle by Steven Rowley / The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren “Pain! Beauty! Resilience! And silicone! All tightly packed in one.” Oye by Melissa Mogollon is a masterpiece of a humorous coming-of-age story with a twist. Luciana (Nana) is entering her last year of high school and is balancing figuring out who she is, being accepted, adjusting to her sister living away at college, and navigating her quirky family and their love. The book is a lovely, funny, touching tale of a young woman coming into her own voice and learning lessons from her fearless grandmother—a character readers are sure to love and NEVER forget. Oye opens with the quote  “Entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma.” roughly…  “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”—Everyone’s Mother That quote sums up this novel so well. Nana pulls no pu...

Wellness by Nathan Hill Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love: Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow / John Irving novels “But it also explains why love sometimes feels fleeting, why it seems to occasionally go away. Because it’s a thing . And things can run out.” Wellness  by Nathan Hill is a story of marriage, evolving individuals, and the pursuit of what constitutes health and happiness. Spanning decades from childhood through middle age, the novel touches on 1990s nostalgia while examining the time via the evolved lens of today and also delves into our obsession with wellness culture. Jack and Elizabeth fell in love as neighbors before they even met. It’s a lovely story to the beginning of their life together, but was any of it real? Now decades into their marriage, they are facing the daily challenges of life while confronting the childhoods that shaped them. Elizabeth has always been an overachiever and ...

Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin Publisher: Atria Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre: Literature / LGBTQIA+ / Romance Read This If You Love: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine / Lessons in Chemistry / The Guncle “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want to be. I wish I were someone different.” Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin is a masterful piece of dark humor, wit, and emotion. Enid is finding her way in the world and it isn’t always easy when you see the world in a different way than those around you. Managing difficult family relationships, mental health journeys, and navigating accidental complicated romantic situations is full of pitfalls and Enid’s processing of it all will have you chuckling to yourself. Well, until something nefarious seems to be going on? Is someone after Enid or is she paranoid? Is it just her mind playing tricks on her because she is so obsessed with listening to true crime podcasts? Oh…and if you want ...

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang Publisher: William Morrow Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature / Thriller / Psychological Mystery Read This If You Love: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow “What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered?” Athena Liu is a literary success. June Hayward can only wish to achieve the same accomplishments. Well…maybe she could literally have Athena’s writing to help her earn the praise she so seeks? When Athena tragically dies, June takes Athena’s newest manuscript and claims it as her own. Publishing it as Juniper Song, which is all sorts of inappropriate and misleading. What unfolds from there is an exploration of the publishing industry, respecting cultural stories, and what we will do to be successful. I loved this book! Writing an entirely first-person narrative and making it so immersive and engaging for the reader is a high bar, but Kuang does it so effortlessly. The messages in Yell...

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson Publisher: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature Read This If You Love: Tom Lake  by Ann Patchett “She turned off the light and backed out of the room, full of the understanding that her children were going to be totally f*#@ed up.” Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson tells the story of the Stockton clan. Told via sisters Darley and Georgiana and their sister-in-law Sasha, readers are taken on a journey through the layers of what it means to be a member of an old-money family. Darley is a mother of two rambunctious and entertaining children that made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. She is navigating having put her own career ambitions on hold. Georgiana is making her way from youth to maturity via a bumpy road filled with bad choices and heartache. Sasha is treated as an outsider by the Stocktons who, not so secretly, refer to her as The Gold Digger. Can these three women find...

Diva by Daisy Goodwin Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️.5 Genre:  Literature / Historical Fiction Read This If You Love:  Maria Callas “…but in the end, we all fall silent.” Diva is an historical fiction novel about the story of real-life opera singer Maria Callas. Callas is said to have one of the most beautiful voices ever, but her life off the stage was an opera fit for a diva as well. From her dramatic childhood during the war and her complex relationships with her mother and sister, to her long-running relationship with Aristotle Onassis, Callas led a fascinating life. Unfortunately, Diva  somehow falls short in entertaining the reader, IMHO. The book reads more like a biography than a fiction novel that uses a real-life person and events to center around a larger plot. For instance, The Rose Code  was set against Bletchley Circle and had many characters who existed in our world. However, there was a central event that T...

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett Publisher:  Harper Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature Read This If You Love:  The Dutch House  / The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls   “Cricket, it’s your past.”   “I understand that joy is inappropriate these days and, still, we feel what we feel.”   Tom Lake is an exploration of life, love, and the fact that each and every person can never be truly and completely known…even by those that love us most. Every step we take in life leads us to the next, and when that role becomes parent, children think of us as starting the day they were born. In this masterpiece, Lara is on her family farm during COVID lockdown and her three daughters have returned to help harvest the cherries. As they spend this scary and uncertain time together, the women pepper their mother with questions about her past as an actress and her time with the famous Peter Duke. What they think they knew of their parents is pee...

The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes by Elissa R. Sloan Publisher: William Morrow Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature Read This If You Love: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising   “ It struck me as odd that someone who could claim knowledge of a god could hate someone so forcefully.” Cassidy Holmes struck it big as a member of the 90s girl group Gloss. Fifteen years later, she has committed suicide and her former band mates are left analyzing their past and all the steps that lead Cassidy down a dark road. Cassidy, through her own voice and version of the past, also steps through what it was like for her to want, need, achieve, be adored, but always feel alone.  While many will want to compare The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes  to Daisy Jones and the Six , I actually felt like it was more reminiscent of Reid’s Malibu Rising . There have been a run of oral histories of fictional bands. Unraveling is a narrative with time jumps and different points of view....

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Publisher:  Doubleday Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature Read This If You Love:  Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Elizabeth is a scientist, and society and men aren’t happy about it. They can try to “put her in her place,” but she is still going to set up her lab and do the work. She is a force that will not be stopped no matter what life throws her way. When she finds herself raising a daughter alone, she puts her own brand of Elizabeth into parenting. You will laugh and cry along with Elizabeth and her loved ones. (I was especially partial to Six Thirty.) Lessons in Chemistry is an exploration of the repression of women and the spine of steel that it takes to persevere anyway. It’s easy to see why so many have fallen in love with this book and Elizabeth. I, for one, can’t wait to see how this translates to the screen in the Apple TV+ series. I enjoyed reading this book beachside and will always reme...

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton Publisher:  Grand Central Publishing Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Fiction / Literature / Post Apocalyptic / Climate Change Read This If You Love:  We Are the Light  / Sea of Tranquility / Life of Pi “Ever since they met, the structures of civilization have been deteriorating more quickly than ever before, falling to unprecedented pieces month by month.”   Wanda is born into a world that is changing. Changing weather pattens, changing ways of living, changing landscape, and a changing family. Wanda harnesses her connection to this world, to her family, and to nature. Transported throughout her life, we watch her story and the story of this new world unfold. “It’s as though the water has swallowed a swirling living galaxy; a trillion stars, burning cool blue or pale yellow, or a hot flickering violet.” Brooks-Dalton’s writing style possesses an eloquent and majestic quality that is painted with vibrant pic...

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf a division of Penguin Random House Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow “When you love someone, you sign up for the whole thing.” Rachel is 21 and trying to figure out life when one pivotal year changes everything. The year is 2010 and the setting is Ireland where we follow the complex relationships between Rachel, her best friend James, and her professor. What events will butterfly effect out and how will it all end? This is a poignant new novel that I was drawn to by a praise quote from the author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow . Both books fit in the same literary fiction vein and both tackle coming of age stories mixed with societal issues and complex adolescent to adulthood relationships. While I didn’t feel The Rachel Incident  to hold the same level of nostalgia (largely due to the fact that I was the s...

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett Publisher: Picador Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love: The Windsor Knot “Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato—one finished what’s on one’s plate.” Queen Elizabeth II stumbles upon the traveling library that stops at the castle each week. This sets her off on a journey of reading. Much to the disappointment of her handlers, she changes her daily habits to fit her reading and wants to chat about books and recommend them. This isn’t the Queen they are used to and can manage.  The Uncommon Reader  is a short novella about the love of books and reading. I wanted to love this little book, but I just didn’t find it to be for me. Although I enjoyed the message of the book, the plot lacks in movement. Like the fictional Queen’s quote above, I finished the novella that was on my plate. Now, I will say that the end has a punch...

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dannie Walton Publisher: 37 Ink an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature / Fiction / Historical Fiction Read This If You Love: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow / Razorblade Tears “The backbone dropped out.” The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a tour de force of a novel. This historical fiction book is told in the oral history style and details the series of events that brought together and ripped apart the rock duo of Opal Jewel and Neville Charles. As journalist S. Sunny Shelton conducts her research to write the novel, she discovers the ugly truth of racism, discrimination, lies, and gut-wrenching heinous behavior. At its core, this book peels back the layers of what it means to be a black woman in the United States—even if you are a celebrity. Opal takes the brunt of the harsh criticisms regarding events, even though her actions were on the side of right and others were despicable...

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati Publisher:  Sourcebooks Landmark Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love:  Madeline Miller’s Circe , Susanna Clarke’s  Piranesi So Leda’s daughters,  two lethal brides,  will twice and thrice wed.  One will launch Greece in a thousand ships,  her beauty the ruin of her land,  and the men sent to rescue her  will come back ashes and bones.  The other, the queen hell-bent on revenge,  will rise in the house of Mycenae,  loyal to those who revere her,  savage to those who oppose her. If you are a fan of mythological retellings, Clytemnestra is a book you shouldn’t miss. In other stories, she is Helen’s sister and Agamemnon’s wife, but in this book, Clytemnestra takes center stage. Told through her eyes, we follow her life of being a huntress, warrior, mother, murderer, and queen. While woman are often depicted in classic mythology as havi...

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai Publisher: Viking Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Fiction / Literary Fiction Read This If You Love: Serial   “You’re obsessed. You’re getting obsessed.”    “Is there forgiveness in your dreams?”  This booooooooook!!! You might have heard about this one…I jest because it is EVERYWHERE. My prediction is that it will end up being a love it or hate it book (more on that later) and I loved it. While reading it, there was a compulsion to read one more chapter, find out one more thing. This, to me, is a what strong storytelling looks like. Every page included something that was eventful, impactful, or interesting. I Have Some Questions for You  is literary fiction mixed with mystery and mystique against a backdrop of a coming of age story. “—the way every girl was just a body to be used, to be discarded—the way that if you had a body, they could grab you—if you had a body, they co...

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas Publisher: Avid Reader Press, a division of Simon & Schuster Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre: Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love: Fiction with depth  “It felt like both life and beyond life.”   Where to start?!? Vladimir  has been referred to as controversial, subversive, and provocative. I found it to be a novel of great depth with thoughtful (yes, controversial) fictional discussion of agency versus power and manipulation. If you come to this book looking for a contemporary romance, it is not the right book for you. If you are looking for a sophisticated and well written debut novel that is thought provoking, grab a copy of Vladimir  now. Our narrator is a 50-something English professor at an upstate New York college. Her husband has been accused of having sexually inappropriate involvement with many of his former students. No surprise to his wife, as they’ve long had an open marriage. But, just because she is ...

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti Publisher:  William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Literature / Chick Lit Read This If You Love:  Inventing Anna  / Catch Me If You Can / Queen of the Con (podcast) Lora Rick wants to make her dream of becoming a fashion magazine editor a reality. When her actual life is falling apart, she lands an internship at Elle . There she crosses paths with Cat Wolff—a charismatic and enthralling figure living off her billionaire father’s dime. Except…who IS Cat…really? A magical persona or a masterful con artist?  Socialite con artist meets Catch Me If You Can  is told via emails, texts, reports, and diary entries. A great and easy-to-read thrill of a ride, it is the perfect pool or beach read when you need some low mental investment entertainment.  When I’m not reading a book, I’m often listening to podcasts and one of my favorites is Queen of the Con  by Johnatha...

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Publisher:  Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature Read This If You Love: Gen-X nostalgia, Sea of Tranquility (from a character-development perspective), & if you felt let down by The Interestings “How strange and beautiful human beings are. And how fragile.”—Sadie Wow. My first thought after I closed this book was that there are thousands of books that have tried to BE this book. No, really! When I saw this book on all the best lists of 2022 and all over social media, it actually made me not want to read it. So often, books can get overhyped with people singing the praises and just aren’t as enjoyable as expected. After I got over my hesitancy and cracked Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow open, I couldn’t put it down and LOVED it. Publisher Synopsis On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees...

We Are the Light by Matthew Quick Publisher:  Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 Genre: Literature / Fiction Read This If You Love: Now Is Not the Time to Panic “Sometimes you have to bend to not break.” When the town of Majestic is the latest scene of massive tragedy, the survivors must find a way to process their pain and loss. Told through letters written by Lucas to his analyst Karl, we follow how Lucas helps take care of his community and how they help take care of him. Leaving no stone unturned, Quick doesn’t back away from showing pain in its awful realness.   We Are the Light  is a breathtaking look at how we process grief, healing, and understanding. The character development is so deep and strong…a full depiction of a person as a whole—the concept and recognition that we are not all good and not all bad. While the backdrop of the Majestic Theater tragedy is horrific and gut-wrenching, We Are the Li...

Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson Publisher:  Ecco an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Literature Read This If You Love: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Normal People We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. Frankie is living her teenage life in the small town of Coalfield, Tennessee when Zeke moves to town. The two become entwined in each other’s worlds. As they are striving to discover who they are, they set off a chain of events that leads to the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Decades later, the truth arrives on Frankie’s doorstep. Is she ready to tell what really happened in the summer of 1996? Now Is Not the Time to Panic  is a master class in writing and storytelling. Sometimes you start a book and just immediately know it will always stick out in your memory. (Out of all the new releases in 2022, I would list Sea of Tranquility and Now Is Not the Time to Panic  as top-tier must r...