"Family Family" by Laurie Frankel

Where do I even start? I feel like I know these characters, I believe the story is true to the letter, and I refuse to accept it's fiction and that I won't be able to meet India Allwood in real life.

What a book! 5 stars out of 5 for plotting, pacing, author's voice and beautiful writing. And thank you, Laurie, for tackling the important issue of adoption.

This book is not about adoption, though. It's about what makes a family. And what makes a family - family.

Blurb:

“Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?”

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.

Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.

Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help–and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother…

The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.

"The Wrong Girl" featured in the Writers' News

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The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

"The New Couple in 5B" by Lisa Unger is - yes, naturally a thriller - but also something else. Something more. Or different. There's a mood to the book that's absent from the author's other works. The setting is a periodic piece of a historic apartment building in New York, potentially plagued by ghosts and definitely plagued by weird neighbours and weirder paranormal social gatherings.

Definitely a must-read. Oh, and incidentally, the author has recently won the International Thriller Writers Thriller Award for Best Short Story with her work "Unknown Caller". Well deserved, it's brilliant!

Blurb:

Rosie and Chad Lowan are barely making ends meet in New York City when they receive life-changing news: Chad’s late uncle has left them his luxury apartment at the historic Windermere in glamorous Murray Hill. With its prewar elegance and impeccably uniformed doorman, the building is the epitome of old New York charm. One would almost never suspect the dark history lurking behind its perfectly maintained facade.

At first, the building and its eclectic tenants couldn’t feel more welcoming. But as the Lowans settle into their new home, Rosie starts to suspect that there’s more to the Windermere than meets the eye. Why is the doorman ever-present? Why are there cameras everywhere? And why have so many gruesome crimes occurred there throughout the years? When one of the neighbors turns up dead, Rosie must get to the truth about the Windermere before she, too, falls under its dangerous spell.

Still See You Everywhere by Lisa Gardner

"Still See You Everywhere" by Lisa Gardner is the third book in the Frankie Elkin series. This one is set on a tropical island. I love Lisa, I love Frankie, and I love islands. That would have been enough to persuade me to read it, except that everything by Lisa Gardner is on my preorder list by default anyway. 

If you still need convincing, here's a list:

• a cool setting
• super quirky characters
• relentless pace.

Blurb:

A lifetime missing. Just three weeks to find her. The brand new thriller from the New York Times no. 1 bestselling author. A remote tropical island. Countless dangerous secrets. No way to call help. 

Missing persons specialist Frankie Elkin is on an isolated island off the coast of Hawaii. Her mission- to find Lani, the missing sister of a Death Row serial killer known as the Beautiful Butcher who is awaiting execution in just three weeks' time. According to the Beautiful Butcher's sources, Lani is being held captive by her millionaire ex-boyfriend on the island. The only way to gain access is for Frankie to go undercover. 

But can Frankie really trust the word of a serial killer? Plus, this island is no paradise with deadly creatures and suspicious co-workers at every turn, and an incoming tropical storm about to cut her off from the outside world. Could this be Frankie Elkin's most dangerous case yet?

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably would have noticed that I hardly ever review books set in World War Two (notable recent exception here). Having grown up in Poland, I've had my fill of war stories - every anniversary of Berlin falling, Warsaw uprising, or just because, the television screen would be full of images too traumatic to contemplate.

However, "The Kitchen Front" by Jennifer Ryan is a gentle book. Yes, the war is raging. Yes, her husband's plane was shot down. Yes, there are raids and rations. And yet, against the backdrop of all that is sad, there is family and love and cooking inventive dishes despite the food shortages.

Simply beautiful. Read it.

Blurb:

In a new World War II-set story, four women compete for a spot hosting a wartime cookery program called The Kitchen Front - based on the actual BBC program of the same name - as well as a chance to better their lives.

Two years into WW2, Britain is feeling her losses; the Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is putting on a cooking contest--and the grand prize is a job as the program's first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the contest presents a crucial chance to change their lives.

For a young widow, it's a chance to pay off her husband's debts and keep a roof over her children's heads. For a kitchen maid, it's a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For the lady of the manor, it's a chance to escape her wealthy husband's increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it's a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession.

These four women are giving the competition their all--even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together serve only to break it apart?

The Big Thrill Discusses The Wrong Girl With Yvonne Eve Walus

Yvonne Eve Walus recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss her latest domestic thriller, THE WRONG GIRL.

Q: When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

A: The recurring character in my crime fiction is Constable Zero Zimmerman who’s a mixture of very analytic and orderly (almost on the autistic spectrum) but also very good at reading body language and sensing whether someone is telling the truth or not (something an autistic person struggles with). She’s... (read the rest here)

Right Place Wrong Time - short story by Yvonne Walus

Delighted that one of my short stories was highly commended in the prestigious Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2024 organised annually by the Crime Writers’ Association. Read it here.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a book you will either love or put down after the first few pages. The prose is beautiful and the plot slow-burning, so if you're in the mood for a boom-boom-boom James Patterson thriller, you might not have the patience for "Americanah". And yet, it's well worth digging into it for the author's keen observations and spot-on comments on the life of an immigrant, race, and culture. In a way, a more descriptive title might have been "Africanah", because the novel provides a glimpse of the life in Nigeria, not to mention hair rotines for "curly" hair.

Blurb:

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

I don't understand why "Yellowface" by R.F. Kuang has such mixed reviews. It's brilliantly simple and simply brilliant in the way it makes us reconsider cancel culture, online warriors, as well as what is and what isn't culture appropriation. A page-turner, easy to read and difficult to put down.

Blurb:

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

 The reasons you will love "happiness Falls" by Angie Kim:

1. The author's voice is engaging, fresh, quirky, totally believable
2. The pace is tight
3. The theme of happiness woven through the story makes for some good thinking
4. You will care about the characters
5. You will immediately look for more books by this author

Blurb:

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.