Kin by Tayari Jones is a novel about two women, Vernice and Annie, who grew up as “cradle friends” in a small town in Louisiana in the 1950s. Both are motherless (Vernice’s mother was killed by her father, Annie’s mother abandoned her as an infant), and as they grow up, they become each other’s sister. After high school, Vernice goes to college while Annie moves to Memphis in search of her mother. Kin follows their parallel lives as they move into adulthood, always a presence for each other despite the physical distance between them. Through the women’s sporadic letters and alternating chapters, Jones tracks Annie and Vernice’s two very different trajectories, ultimately showing that the strength of their friendship, borne from almost identical circumstances, is not enough to even out their adulthoods. While I enjoyed this book, for me it didn’t pack the emotional wallop of An American Marriage, a book I still think about often, 8 years after I read it. I’d still recommend Kin, though – it’s a compelling and at times heartbreaking look at the Jim Crow South through two very different lenses.

The post KIN by Tayari Jones appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers by Carlos Barragán is a disturbing book that stemmed from the author’s attempts to find the Nigerian man who had conned his well-educated, confident Spanish mother online for months. Barragán sets out to understand how these “Yahoo Boys”, so named because they develop so many online identities, prey on lonely white Americans, and why those Americans fall for the ruse. He interviews several Yahoo Boys, exploring their backgrounds and how they fell into scamming, and even tracks down a few of their victims. What emerges is the depiction of surprisingly complex economic and social forces that combine to bind scammer and victim together in a depressing cycle. Barragán has compassion for everyone involved, persuasively identifying chronic loneliness, poverty, social media and government corruption as the larger forces behind this phenomenon. A very interesting, if sad, read.

The post THE YAHOO BOYS by Carlos Barragán appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!] I picked up Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild based on glowing online reviews that described it as a cross between a literary romance and a psychological thriller. Tom and Honor, a wealthy couple living in London, go to Paris to celebrate Christmas with their young daughter. While there, they experience a tragedy that affects their relationship and lives forever. However, aside from this shocking early twist, the rest of the book played out rather dully. I kept thinking something really unexpected would happen and, well, it didn’t. Rothschild makes an unusual narrative choice that could have lent itself to a more complicated and interesting plot, but that sadly wasn’t the case. Finding Grace was just a mildly interesting story that ended as it seemed it would. Did I read the same book as everyone else?

The post FINDING GRACE by Loretta Rothschild appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline is a fictionalized recounting of the life of Sarah Yates, one of the two sisters who married famous conjoined twins Cheng and Eng in mid-1880s North Carolina. What could convince a woman to marry a man with whom she could never be alone, signing up for a lifetime of sharing her husband not only with his brother, but with her own sister? Kline does a great job of getting into Sarah’s head and understanding how someone could not only accept these circumstances, but even grow comfortable with them and have 11 children with a man who is permanently attached to another. The story is told against the backdrop of the Civil War, nicely incorporating issues of freedom, autonomy, power and duty on both a personal and an ideological level. Some parts made me physically uncomfortable to read, a sign of Kline’s vivid and compassionate storytelling. This is the third historical fiction written by Kline that I have read, and I really appreciate her painstaking research and focus on people and situations that have not gotten a lot of attention.

The post THE FOURSOME by Christina Baker Kline appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

I chose You With The Sad Eyes by Christina Applegate as the June memoir book club pick for Wonderland Books because I had heard great things about it, and it delivered. Applegate, an actor known best for her roles on Married… With Children and Dead To Me, has faced a lot of challenges in her life despite her onscreen success. She and her mother were abandoned by her father when she was a baby. She worked hard through her childhood and teens to support the two of them. She witnessed and endured abuse from her mother’s violent partner, and then found herself in an equally abusive relationship as a young adult. She also survived breast cancer, only to then face the most devastating challenge yet: a diagnosis of MS. Applegate opens and closes You With The Sad Eyes talking about the disease and how much it has robbed from her. I really liked Applegate’s honesty and unapologetic tone throughout the memoir, as well as her lack of self-pity. She’s angry, yes, but she’s aware of the gifts she’s been given, and is trying to make the best of a very tough situation. Our book club discussion was robust (which you might not always get with a celebrity memoir), with everyone in attendance glad that they had read it. There is some Hollywood gossip in here, but really it’s a book about a talented, kind woman who has been dealt a very mixed hand.

The post YOU WITH THE SAD EYES by Christina Applegate appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

Earlier this year, I read a debut novel called The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff. I loved this book about grief, forgiveness and parenthood, told through the prism of a marriage plagued by addiction. I was very excited to read Damoff’s new book, The Burning Side, which is also a family drama about a marriage in crisis. In The Burning Side, April, Leo and their two small children are forced to move out of their house after it is ravaged by a fire. They move in with April’s parents while they figure out whether their marriage – already under serious strain – will survive the trauma. Meanwhile, April’s parents are dealing with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the seismic shifts that accompany that news. While I liked The Burning Side, it didn’t deliver the same emotional punch as Damoff’s first book. This one felt more scripted, a little too conveniently plotted. I wasn’t particularly rooting for April and Leo, who simply needed to have an honest conversation to work things out. Overall, this one was just OK for me. (But The Bright Years is one of my top reads of the year.)

The post THE BURNING SIDE by Sarah Damoff appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

Good People by Patmina Sabit is a powerful story about an Afghan family living in Northern Virginia. The Sharafs are successful and wealthy (after a rough start as immigrants), but their daughter Zorah pushes back against her confining, traditional upbringing. When she goes against her parents’ wishes, there are tragic consequences for her and the family. This book is narrated entirely by people outside the Sharafs – friends, neighbors, police, school officials – like a Greek chorus. Everyone has their own theory about what happened, with readers left to draw their own conclusions about guilt and innocence, honor killings and teenage rebellion. It’s an engrossing book that had me changing my mind every few pages, depending on whose perspective I was hearing. It also lent itself to a robust discussion at the Wonderland Books literary fiction book club. I recommend this fast-paced, well-crafted story about family, loyalty and the American dream. (I did this one partly on audio and highly recommend – there are different narrators for each person.)

The post GOOD PEOPLE by Patmina Sabit appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

In Whistler, Ann Patchett’s latest novel, she returns to her roots with a novel about complicated family dynamics and the relationships in childhood that shape identity and one’s sense of self. One afternoon at the Met in New York City, Daphne, a middle aged woman visiting the museum with her husband, encounters an older man who has been following her through the rooms. He turns out to be Eddie, a man who was married to her mother for several years when she was young. Although she hasn’t seen him in over forty years, their connection and affection are immediately apparent, and their reunion is a happy one that spurs days of conversation about what happened when she was young and why he disappeared so suddenly from her life. Soon, Daphne’s mother and her sister Leda become involved in this rekindled relationship, providing depth and new perspectives to what happened decades before. Patchett’s famous eye for detail, her realistic conversation and her satisfying analysis of relationships are all on display here, and Whistler is satisfying reading without need for showy plot twists or other pyrotechnics. If you liked Commonwealth or The Dutch House, this one is for you.

The post WHISTLER by Ann Patchett appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

Solito by Javier Zamora is a harrowing memoir about the author’s attempts to immigrate to the US from El Salvador when he was only nine years old, a trip he took unaccompanied because he was to meet his parents once he arrived safely across the border. The crossing, a stretch of 9 weeks when he was not in touch with anyone from his family, was arduous, risky and scary, including overnight boat rides to reach Mexico, long treks through scorching hot deserts and US immigration police patrolling and waiting to return migrants to their home countries. Throughout, Javier relies on – and develops close relationships with – the other people his coyote was paid to bring, forming a temporary family that provided him support and comfort. Solito is a difficult and emotional read, perhaps a bit too long, but one that has stayed with me long after I turned the last page. I have learned that there is a sequel being written, and I will absolutely be picking that up.

The post SOLITO by Javier Zamora appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is the book of the spring, if sales at Wonderland Books are any indication. I was told to go in blind on this one, so I am going to keep this review pretty vague. Yesteryear is about a tradwife influencer named Natalie who lives on a ranch called Yesteryear in Idaho with her husband and five children. She wakes up one day in the 1850s, forced to adapt to the life she has only pretended to live for her smartphone and Instagram followers. The book jumps around in time, covering how Natalie met her husband, had her kids and built her social media empire, and then returning to the nineteenth century where she lives with some version of that husband and those kids, but without any of the luxuries or freedom of her modern life. Yesteryear is told in a snarky, bitter voice which I appreciated, and Burke is full of commentary about influencer culture, Christian tradwives and modern misogyny. While it’s a wholly original and thought-provoking story, I am still not sure how much I actually enjoyed it, as it’s pretty bleak. (But I am glad I read it if only to know what the fuss is about!)

The post YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke appeared first on Everyday I Write the Book.