Julie's Journal : What I've Been Reading

I've been reading quite a bit lately, which is nothing new, and I have a few recommendations for you.

First up is Famous Last Words, by Gillian McAllister.  Ms. McAllister is very good at writing a first chapter that really pulls me into a story and gets me invested in how everything turns out.  This one starts with Camilla, a new mother in London who is returning to work after maternity leave.  As she gets ready to drop her daughter off at daycare for the first time, she is experiencing all the anxieties that new mothers go through, along with some frustration that her husband has left early and isn't there to go through it with her.  As she starts her day at work, she is beginning to worry about her husband, who isn't returning her texts, when she gets pulled into a meeting with authorities.  They inform her about a hostage situation happening across town.  Her husband is involved, but he isn't a victim.  He's the perpetrator!  The book then goes back and forth between timelines.  We see the hostage situation unfolding, but also Camilla, seven years in the future, where she is still trying to deal with the aftermath.  This is the third book I've read by this author, and I will be seeking out more by her in the future.  So far, I've enjoyed all the books I've read by her.

Next is We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough.  I discovered Pinborough when I read Behind Her Eyes, which had a crazy premise and one of the wildest twists I remember.  We Live Here Now has a classic creepy house and an unreliable narrator.  Emily is recovering from a horrific accident and with her husband has bought a historic house in the country.  The house feels malevolent, especially the third floor.  Books fall off shelves, windows open by themselves, and cold seeps through the floor.  Emily seems to be the only one who notices these things, and she's still medically unsound, so she's unsure if she can trust her own perceptions.  Frankie, her husband, doesn't seem to notice anything amiss.  They slowly meet neighbors and start to build a life in the new community, but Emily is determined to figure out the truth about their house.  Once again with a Pinborough book, I didn't figure out the house's mystery or see the end coming.  I'm not sure how I would categorize this - maybe horror, although it wasn't particularly gory.  I will read this author again, just to see what wild and crazy ideas she comes up with.

Several years ago, my husband and I were watching North Woods Law, a game warden show set in Maine, and they featured the story of Geraldine Largay.  Geraldine went missing on the Appalachian trail in 2013.  Her body wasn't found until 2015 and it was discovered that she had survived for 26 days before succumbing to the elements.  This year I read Heartwood, by Amity Gaige.  Heartwood is not really based on Geraldine's story, but is more inspired by it.  It follows Valerie - the missing hiker, Bev - the game warden in charge of finding her, and Lena - an elderly woman in a senior living center who is following the case closely for her own reasons.  Maybe it was because I was already a little familiar with the real-life case, but this book sucked me in and I flew through it.

Kate & Frida, by Kim Fay is a follow-up to Love & Saffron from a few years ago.  Both books are epistolary, told through letters written between two young women.  It is 1991.  Frida is in Paris, trying to make a success of being a war correspondent.  She hopes to tell the story of war torn Bosnia.  She writes to a bookstore in Seattle looking for a certain book.  She is answered by Kate.  Kate sends the requested for book as well as a recommendation for more.  They begin a friendship through letters becoming essentially pen pals.  Through their letters, they discuss books, food, current events, their love lives and everything in between.  It is not a flashy, exciting read, but it is a book that gave me a sense of contentment and peace as I was reading it.  I had the same feeling reading Love & Saffron.  I hope that Kim Fay writes more of this type of book.

If you like fantasy, I discovered a new trilogy.  I've read the Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett.  The first is Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies.  Emily is a professor at Cambridge.  She studies fairies.  She travels to the far north in order to study winter fairies first hand.  She's not very good with people and manages to insult the locals on her first day, which makes her existence in the village very difficult.  Soon though she is joined by her colleague, Wendell Bambleby, who has the gift of charm.  Emily is frustrated by Wendell, and tries to keep him at arms length, but he has more to offer her, both personally and professionally, than she realizes.  She is hot on the trail of the "Hidden Ones", elusive royal fairies that most mortals are afraid to deal with for good reason.  She will end up needing more help than she wants to accept, if she's going to survive this research trip.  I read all three books in this series pretty quickly.  I enjoyed Emily's curmudgeonly character very much.