⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ll be honest—His Delightful Lady Delia (American Royalty #3) by Grace Hitchcock isn’t typically the kind of book I grab off the stack. Gilded Age romance with plenty of emotion? Not my usual lane. And yet… I ended up enjoying it more than I expected. After years as her temperamental mother’s understudy, Delia Vittoria finally steps into the spotlight when her diva mother loses her voice for good. Delia now stands center stage at the Academy of Music, which is locked in a fierce opera war with the flashy new Metropolitan Opera House. To save the Academy—and prove herself—she agrees to a risky scheme. Enter Kit Quincy, who is trying […]
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Family Secrets and Fresh Danger in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is classic Colleen Coble—fast-paced, layered with secrets, and set against a moody coastal backdrop that almost feels like another character. In Dark of Night, the second installment in the Annie Pederson series, Coble blends suspense, family drama, and a thread of faith into a story that kept me eagerly flipping pages. Annie’s life is already unraveling when a woman appears claiming to be Sarah—the sister abducted at age five twenty-four years ago. The emotional fallout is immediate. Can Annie risk believing her? And what will it mean for her eight-year-old daughter, Kylie, who senses more than Annie wants to admit? Add to that the unexpected return of Jon, Annie’s […]
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Ink, Regret, and Redemption: A Life Told in Letters
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Absolutely one of the best books I read in 2025. In The Correspondent, Virginia Evans introduces Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old retired law clerk whose life is stitched together through letters. Each morning at half past ten, she writes—to family, to old colleagues, to authors she admires like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry—and to one person from her past whose letter she has never quite managed to send. Through these exchanges, we see a woman who prefers the safety of the written word to the unpredictability of conversation. Sybil assumes her orderly world will continue as it always has. She has been many things—mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, respected legal mind—and she wears those roles with […]
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A Quiet, Haunting Story of Loss and Longing
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 In July 1962, a Mi’kmaq family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine for the blueberry harvest. Before the summer ends, their four-year-old daughter vanishes. That single, devastating moment shapes the next fifty years. One family mourns in silence, clinging to faith and memory. In another household, a girl named Norma grows up troubled by vivid dreams that feel less like imagination and more like buried truth. Amanda Peters—of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry and winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose—writes with restraint and empathy. She explores loss, grief, and hope, but also the invisible tether that binds families together even when […]
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Books, Codes, and Quiet Courage in WWII Europe
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Librarian Spy is a thoughtful WWII spy novel inspired by the true history of America’s little-known “library spies.” I enjoyed learning the fascinating ways books, newspapers, and printed materials were gathered, analyzed, and transformed into intelligence during the war. The story follows two women on parallel paths. Ava, a librarian at the Library of Congress, is recruited by the U.S. military and sent to neutral-but-dangerous Lisbon, where she works undercover collecting and microfilming enemy publications. Across the ocean, Elaine joins the French Resistance through a clandestine printing press, fully aware the Nazis are hunting both the press and those who run it. Their stories connect through coded messages and […]
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A Sequel That Leaves New Readers Behind
This novel makes one thing clear pretty quickly: it was written with prior knowledge in mind. Having never read The Woman in Cabin 10, I often felt unmoored, as if I’d walked into the second half of a conversation and was expected to keep up. Key relationships and emotional stakes are taken for granted instead of built on the page, which makes it hard to fully invest. The setup should work. Travel journalist Lo Blacklock, sidelined by motherhood and a changing media landscape, jumps at the chance to attend the opening of a luxurious Swiss hotel on Lake Geneva. The owner is a reclusive billionaire, the setting is glamorous, and a […]
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Love and Survival Under Africa’s Darkest Sky
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ All the Glimmering Stars by Mark T. Sullivan had a special pull for me. My daughter studied abroad in Kampala, Uganda, and while I knew the country’s beauty, I also knew its violent past. This novel brought that history into sharp, painful focus. Inspired by a true story, the book follows Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori, bright, principled teens coming of age in 1990s Uganda. Both believe in being good humans—right up until they’re kidnapped and forced into the Lord’s Resistance Army. Anthony is drawn terrifyingly close to warlord Joseph Kony and his secrets, while Florence fights to hold on to her sense of self as the world around her unravels. When […]
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A Brilliant Sea Story of Honor, Love, and Moral Courage
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Oceans and the Stars is a rousing blend of war novel, love story, and moral compass—and it may be one of Mark Helprin’s most cinematic books yet. Honestly? This should be a movie. Stephen Rensselaer is a Navy captain near the end of a stellar career: disciplined, principled, and stubbornly unwilling to play political games. When he bruises the president’s ego, he’s reassigned to command the Athena, a small, supposedly doomed patrol ship meant to embarrass him. Instead of resigning, Rensselaer does what he always does—he serves. While overseeing the ship’s fitting out in New Orleans, he falls into a last-chance romance with Katy Farrar, a brilliant and formidable lawyer […]
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A Quietly Powerful Portrait of Grit and Grace
⭐⭐⭐⭐ O Pioneers! is one of those novels that sneaks up on you. On the surface, not much “happens,” yet by the end, it feels like you’ve lived an entire life on the Nebraska prairie. First published in 1913, it marked Willa Cather’s first great novel and set the tone for much of the work that followed. Set in the late 19th century, O Pioneers! follows Alexandra Bergson, a determined young woman who inherits her family’s struggling farm. While her brothers doubt the land—and her—Alexandra trusts her instincts, digs in her heels, and slowly turns hardship into opportunity. She’s practical, steady, and quietly radical for her time. As the progeny of Swedish and Norwegian […]
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Sisterhood, Sacrifice, and the High Cost of Chasing a Dream
⭐⭐⭐ Spectacular Things follows sisters Mia and Cricket Lowe, well known in their small Maine town as the daughters of a gifted single mother and as rising soccer royalty. From an early age, their paths feel set: Mia becomes the responsible, academically driven caretaker, while Cricket pours her talent and energy into the single-minded pursuit of soccer stardom. The novel traces the many sacrifices required to keep that dream alive—unfulfilled ambitions, family tragedy, and the quiet pressure placed on the sibling who is expected to hold everything together. Dorey-Stein is at her best when exploring grief, loyalty, and how love can slide into obligation without anyone quite noticing. I’m a soccer […]
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