I read 106 books in 2022, so narrowing it down to my very favorites was a challenge. The list below comprises my crème de la crème in a great year of reading. You’ll find a variety of genres set in the United States, Mexico, Ghana, Ukraine, China, England, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, and Vietnam. Most of these were 5-star reads for me, but one was a 4.5 rounded up to 5. I hope you find something you love! Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid “We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto is Back. […]
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Amy’s December 2022 Picks and Pans
One December not that long ago, I read some terrific books. They were different genres set in different places—Florida, England, Colorado, Maine, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Mexico, Connecticut, and Texas—but most had one thing in common: great writing. Enjoy my reviews; I hope you find something to add to your TBR list! Once Upon a Wardrobe Patti Callahan “No matter your age, may you never, ever grow too old for fairy tales.”—Pattie Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe. I couldn’t have loved this book more. It started and ended with a flourish in moving, heartwarming, and magical prose. I loved learning about Jack Lewis’s life (you probably know him as […]
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A Ballad of Love and Glory Book Review
Reyna Grande’s historical novel about a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier during the Mexican-American War is inspired by true events and historical figures. The year is 1846. After the controversial annexation of Texas, the US Army marches south to provoke war with México over the disputed Rio Grande boundary. Ximena Salomé is a gifted Mexican healer who dreams of building a family with the man she loves on the land she calls home. But when Texas Rangers kill her husband, becomes a battlefield nurse, a character immortalized in a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. Meanwhile, John Riley, an Irish immigrant in the Yankee army, is sickened by the […]
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Gilded Mountain Book Review
“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there, and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad, he would be a United States Senator.” — Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. The early 1900s is an epic time in American history and Moonstone, Colorado, is a harsh place to live. In Gilded Mountain, author Kate Manning introduces readers to Sylvie Pelletier, an unforgettable teenager who bravely exposes the corruption that enriches her father’s employers. Sylvie is a first-generation American and the daughter of French-Canadian parents. To help put food on the table, the sixteen-year-old serves as […]
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The Ways We Hide
This wonderful novel maintained my interest from the first sentence. Unlike so many WWII novels I’ve read, The Ways We Hide one isn’t about the British who served as intelligence agents. it’s about an American woman’s involvement with MI9 (which I knew nothing about). MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. Their function was two-fold: to help Allied POWs escape Nazi Germany, and help downed airmen evade capture after being shot down. Fenna Vos grew up on Michigan’s harsh Upper Peninsula. On Christmas Eve, 1913, the union holds a party at the Italian Hall in […]
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The Unlocked Path
The Unlocked Path is a historical novel about a “New Woman” of the early twentieth century: educated, career-minded, independent. In 1897 Philadelphia, after experiencing her aunt’s suicide, Eliza Edwards vows to help and heal. In her social circle, a young woman’s chief goal was to debut in society, but Eliza isn’t interested in such a traditional role. Instead, she enters medical college when only five percent of doctors are female. With the support of a team of women and driven by a determination to conquer curriculum demands, battle sexism, and overcome doubts, Eliza charts her life’s trajectory. Author Janis Robinson Daly was inspired to write her debut novel after conducting […]
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The Last Dress from Paris Review
London, 2017. When Lucille’s beloved Granny Sylvie asks her to go to Paris to retrieve a priceless Dior dress, Lucille is happy to oblige. What she finds in a small apartment sends her on a wild goose hunt through the City of Light that changes her life forever. Paris, 1952. Postwar Paris is full of glamour and privilege, and Alice Ainsley is in the middle of it all as the wife of the British ambassador to France. He showers her with expensive gifts, but not his affection. Alice yearns to follow her heart and becomes caught up in a love affair for the ages. The Last Dress from Paris is […]
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Small World Book Review
Jonathan Evison’s Small World tells the stories of a train’s passengers in 2019 and their mid-nineteenth-century ancestors after a disastrous crash. There’s Walter Bergen, a veteran train conductor on his last run before retiring, and a descendent of Irish twin orphans. Malik, a young basketball star, is the descendent of a slave. Then there’s Jenny, a corporate consultant whose ancestors were Chinese immigrants, and Laila, a Native American, fleeing her abusive husband. Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from many points of view across place and time. This inventive work explores the immigrant experience, and that of the modern era in the United States. I read and reviewed Jonathan Evison’s last […]
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The Foundling Book Review
“I trust you’re familiar with the type of girl I’m referring to,” she tells the audience. “You’ve seen her slinking in and out of bawdy houses and illegal drinking establishments… she may seem normal enough—in fact, she’s often quite pretty. Until you see her again, a few years later, ruined and destitute, begging for handouts, surrounded by her own diseased and illegitimate children.”—Ann Leary, The Foundling. So says Dr. Agnes Vogel, the administrator of the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. It’s 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as Dr. Vogel’s secretary at an institution for mentally disabled women. She’s immediately in awe of […]
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The Diamond Eye Book Review
“Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm,” Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye. With each of her historical novels, Kate Quinn gets better. After her 2021 book, The Rose Code, I didn’t think that was possible, but The Diamond Eye is a stellar achievement. In the snowbound city of Kiev, history student Lyudmila “Mila” Pavlichenko’s life revolves around her job as a library researcher and caring for her five-year-old son, Slavka. But when Hitler invades Russia, she forges a different […]
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