The Overbooked Bibliophile

My Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Close your eyes” In the year 1435, Samuel, the court jester of the prosperous European kingdom of Gora attempts to reconstruct the events that led to the fateful day in 1431 that the court storyteller Tycho and the cook Agnieszka fled the kingdom. Samuel takes us through the history of Gora and how it prospered and flourished under Pawel’s’ rule as well as the individual circumstances that led the characters – himself, Tycho, Agnieszka, Ahab the astronomer and Bishop Tonnelli to Gora and King Pawel who “was one of those strange few for whom the truth was more fantastic than the fiction”. King Pawel of Gora married his 19-year-old bride Kristina only to lose her in childbirth after five years of marriage leaving him with his children Princess Alexandra and Prince Krysztoff. Kristina’s death causes him to spiral into the depths of grief and madness, awaiting his beloved’s spirit, who is believed to haunt the premises of the castle, every night. Tycho the storyteller, Samu...

My Rating: 3.5 ⭐️ Eighteen year old Maeve Murray has her future planned out. Waiting for her A-level results to be published, she decides to take a summer job in a shirt factory with her closest friends Aoife and Caroline to earn some money before she moves to London to pursue higher education with the intention of embarking on a career in journalism. She can’t wait to get out of her Northern Ireland town and start a new life. Her first step towards independence is getting a summer job (despite the fact that she has to deal with an unpleasant boss whose treatment of his female employees is disrespectful to say the least) and renting a flat with her friend Caroline near her (temporary) workplace. Over the next few months, we follow Maeve as she adjusts to life as a factory worker, meets new people and makes new friends all the while hoping for a better future. Michelle Gallen’s Factory Girls  is an entertaining novel. Maeve is spirited (a bit brash at times) and resourceful. She obs...

My Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “We write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice. But a tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses. You don’t have to keep being the thing you have become. It is never too late.” I started this book immediately after finishing The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. This novel focuses on Miss Queenie Hennessy’s final days at St. Bernadine’s Hospice as she waits for Harold Fry to complete his walk from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed to visit her. Queenie, though terminally ill, begins to write a final letter to Harold. With Sister Mary Inconnu typing out whatever she can write down, she manages to chronicle the story of her life highlighting and sharing memories from her early childhood, her days in Kingsbridge working in the brewery where she strikes a friendship with Harold and unbeknownst to Harold, interacts with his son David, and her days after leaving. As we get to know more about Queenie, we also learn about h...

My Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fifty-seven-year-old Iona Iverson, spends her thirty-six-minute morning commute (ten stops to Waterloo), preparing for her day and observing the commuters around her with her dog Lulu by her side. Working as an advice columnist (“magazine therapist”) for a women’s magazine for the last 30 years and married to her long-time partner Bea, she has a specific set of “rules” to adhere to as far as her commute goes among which are to always pack for any eventuality (which explains her well-stocked bag) and to not talk to anyone (though that does not stop her from giving her fellow commuters interesting names such as Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader based on her observations of their behavior) However when one of her fellow commuters almost chokes on a grape and is saved by another commuter, this is just the beginning of a sequence of events through which a diverse group of people become friends, with Iona in the middle of it all. Initially, Iona, who is on the verge of being pushed...

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sixty-five-year-old Harold Fry, recently retired, receives a letter from an old friend Queenie Hennessy who is terminally ill and is in the care of St. Bernadine’s Hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Queenie was a friend from work, with whom Harold has not been in touch for almost twenty years but to whom he owed a great debt. Initially, he writes a response but on his way to posting it Harold is motivated to change direction and walk to Queenie, with faith that walking would keep her alive. It won’t be easy but in his yacht shoes and coat and otherwise unprepared, Harold embarks on his “pilgrimage”. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry  by  Rachel Joyce  follows Harold over the course of his eighty-seven-day, six hundred-and-twenty-seven-mile journey from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed. His pilgrimage attracts fans, followers and quite a bit of public attention (that quickly turns into a media circus). As Harold meets people from different walks of life, h...

My Rating : ⭐⭐⭐ When twenty-year-old Eden Perry is found murdered in a house on Locust Lane in an affluent Boston suburb, three teenagers Hannah, Jack, and Christopher who were the last to see her alive are suspected to be involved. While Eden’s mother wants justice for her daughter, the families of the teens scramble to protect their children, often turning against one another while juggling their own complicated family issues. Added to the fray is an unreliable witness who might have seen the killer. Who killed Eden and why? Drugs, money, love or is there more to the story? Stephen Amidon’s Locust Lane has its share of murder, lies, indiscretions, cover-ups, and a whole lot of family drama. The narrative is shared from the perspectives of Patrick, an alcoholic who is grieving the loss of his own daughter due to a drug overdose and who might have seen the killer while driving on Locust Lane, Danielle (Eden's mother), Alice (Hannah's stepmother), Michel (Christopher's fath...

My Rating: 4.5⭐ “But a lot of the girls here have already given up. You can see it in their eyes and their shoulders. But not me. I’m not going to be that fence standing alone out in the field, so I don’t give up hope. That would be against my nature. I am descended from people who survived the Trail of Tears.” It has been over two years since Karen "Kit" Crockett was forcibly sent to The Ashley Lordard Children’s Home. After her mother’s demise Kit was being by her father who though a bit distant was never unkind to her. Close to her late mother’s Cherokee family, Kit had a caring and loving group of relatives who also looked out for her. Her days were spent attending school in town, roaming the countryside, fishing in the bayou, and reading Nancy Drew books borrowed from the bookmobile. When an enigmatic young woman named Bella moves into her late great uncle’s home nearby, Kit makes a new friend. But Kit’s closeness to Bella triggers an unfortunate sequence of events that ...

My Rating: 3.5⭐ Our narrator Ernest “Ern” Cunningham is a self-published author who writes books on “how to write books”. A fan of Golden Age detective novels, he tries to adhere to Ronald Knox’s 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction (1929). He isn’t too fond of new age tropes such as the “unreliable narrator” and therefore makes his intentions of being a “reliable narrator” clear as writes his book based on the events that occurred during a family reunion held in a ski resort in winter. The discovery of a body of a local man on the grounds of the resort and Ern's brother Michael’s release from prison after serving a three year sentence (Ern’s testimony was instrumental in sending Michael to jail) sets the tone for an eventful (to put it mildly) and tension fraught family reunion. What follows is a complex web of multiple suspects including a serial killer who could be someone among them, a hefty sum of cash that Ern’s brother left his him before being jailed the origins of which re...

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Our protagonist Joseph Bogart is a man in his thirties, living alone in a rented flat in London. His daily routine revolves around work and home. With a history of unsuccessful romantic relationships in the past, he limits his social interactions to the bare minimum even with his office colleagues and though he yearns for company, Joseph hesitates to fully engage with others spending most of his free time watching reality television. When he meets ten-year-old Aaron, the son of his new neighbor, their unlikely friendship and Aaron’s innocent inquisitiveness motivate Joe to not only open up but also look inward and confront issues that have burdened him for years. As the narrative progresses we get to know more about Joseph, his family and relationships and the events from his past that have cast a long shadow on his present, holding him back from experiencing all that life has to offer. As Joseph navigates through his past trauma and personal losses, his friendship with...

My Rating: 4.5⭐️ (Book: 4⭐️ ; Audio Narration: 5⭐️) "Take the needle to the thread. Not the other way around. That’s the secret. Always yield to the needle because it’s inflexible. It’s the secret with people too. If a person seems inflexible, yield, then slip in sideways and get what you want." Newly married to a much older man, fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion moves to New York from her home in the Dominican Republic in January 1965. We follow Ana as she tries to make sense of her new situation- a new country, new language and culture very different from the one she has been accustomed to. Her husband Juan who is both emotionally and physically abusive does not make it easy for her. Ana is young, innocent and naïve in the ways of the world but she is aware of the enormous responsibility she carries on her shoulders- the responsibility of her family back home who expect her to help them move to America once she has settled in. Only when her husband Juan travels back to the Domin...

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ As the story begins, we meet seventy-two-year-old Jeannie Sharrock. A lifelong resident of Combe Pomeroy, she runs her family’s orchard and cider business. Divorced from her philandering husband years ago, who has since relocated to Spain, she now lives with her ninety-five-year-old mother Violet, and her teenage grandchildren who stay with her while finishing up with school after their father, Jeannie’s son moved to Spain with his wife. Jeannie has a lot on her plate and does feel overwhelmed but tries to shoulder all her responsibilities with a smile on her face. She enjoys meeting up with her book club at the local library, hosted by Ruth, the librarian and retired university admissions officer who moved to Combe Pomeroy eight years ago. Ruth is lonely and yearns for new experiences, Verity is experiencing trouble in her marriage to Mark, Danielle is dealing with the breakdown of her marriage after her husband’s infidelity and Aurora still nurses a broken heart from ...

   My Rating : 3.5⭐ On Christmas Eve, 1944 Franny Steinberg, still a teenager, manages to gain entry to the Empire Room of the Palmer Hotel in Chicago to catch a performance by notable comedian Boopsie Baxter and experience the much talked about “Showstopper” that she had been curious about. Earlier, the same day, her family received a telegram informing them that her older brother, who was fighting in the War, was missing. Fast forward seven years, Franny and her friends sneak off to the Blue Moon Cocktail Lounge to see a Boopsie Baxter show the day before her best friend’s wedding only to be thrown out because of Franny’s ill-timed comments. But Franny is back the next day after a traumatic memory leads to her leaving the wedding party. Franny knows what she wants – which is to follow in her idol’s footsteps and perform on stage! As the narrative progresses, we meet Franny’s family, her fun-loving father who believes in the importance of laughter in the most difficult of tim...

My Rating: 3.5 ⭐ As the story begins, we meet our protagonist, twenty-eight-year-old Maggie Banks as she reaches the small town of Bell River at the invitation of her best friend Rochelle, who is about to go on maternity leave and needs someone to take over her duties at Cobblestone Books, the bookshop partially owned by Rochelle’s family. Maggie, who has been unable to settle down in a career of her liking after graduating college and has been out of work and living with her parents in California, welcomes the change and the opportunity albeit a temporary one. Though not much of a reader herself, she is sure that with Rochelle’s guidance she should have no problems in managing a small town bookshop. Unbeknownst to Maggie, River Bell is a town with a literary legacy and is thus also a tourist destination for those who are drawn to the literary legend of the late Edward Bell (after whom the town has been named), whose family partly owns most of the commercial establishments in the area ...

My Rating:  4.5⭐ Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine and NetGalley for granting my wish! All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This novel is due to be released on March 7. 2023. On November 12, 1975, ten-year-old Miranda Larkin returned home from school to find her mother gone. Thirty-nine-year-old Jane Larkin was declared missing and her husband criminal defense attorney Dan Larkin, would remain the prime suspect in the eyes of lead investigator Detective Tom Glover but with no evidence or witnesses, Dan was never charged. His children remain divided on their opinions about their father’s role in their mother’s disappearance and needless to say this would complicate their relationships with their father and between themselves in the years to come. In 2015 author Philip “Phil” Solomon is contacted by his school friend Jeff Larkin after a long gap of forty years and is encouraged by Jeff and his sister Miranda to base his next book on the Jane Larkin...

My Rating:3.5 ⭐ This novel is set against the backdrop of the case of the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley by Asian American cop Peter Liang, which sparked protests in 2015-16 –with Asian American groups protesting on behalf of Liang stating that that the shooting was unintentional (the bullet ricocheted off a wall to fatally injure Gurley) and that Liang was being made a “scapegoat” for several white police officers guilty of violence against Black men. Many Asian Americans however joined BLM counter-protests supporting action against police brutality against Black people. Our protagonist, twenty–one–year–old Reed, a student at Columbia University and the child of a Korean American mother and Chinese American father returns home to Los Angeles to visit his ailing grandmother. Reed is currently actively engaged in the BLM movement protesting the shooting of Akai Gurley. He is fired up, motivated and seriously considering dropping out of college to take on a full- time role with the moveme...

My Rating: 2.5 ⭐ It has been fifteen years since the bodies of Charles and Saran Drummond were discovered in their home with their two young daughters, Abby and Mia, asleep upstairs. It was presumed that Charles had strangled Sarah before stabbing himself to death. The children were taken in by their grandparents who promptly relocated, changed the girls’ surnames to avoid public attention and told them that their parents died in a car crash. But now, after a freak accident at work Mia starts getting flashbacks from her childhood – memories similar to the one her sister Abby has been experiencing. When their grandmother finally shares the truth about what happened to their parents, it is evident that their memories are from that fateful night. When a journalist spots the girls’ grandmother at a seniors’ hotel, the renewed interest in the case fuels the search for new facts and witness statements. The narrative takes us back and forth between past and present and as the story progresses...

  My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’ve often wished that human bodies were as clever as those of octopuses. If we could divvy up the work of one heart among three, if we could have a semiautonomous brain in each of our appendages, perhaps we’d be more efficient with our time, less likely to waste it on grudges and hurts and all the things we feel we can’t say to one another.” It has been fifteen years since Ro’s (Aurora) father, a marine biologist employed with a local aquarium disappeared, on a research trip. Her father’s love for marine life is something he shared with Ro ever since she was a child. Ro’s fascination with sea animals prompted her to take up a job in the same aquarium in the field of animal husbandry. Ro, now in her thirties and employed with the aquarium for over eight years, feels a special connection to Dolores a giant Pacific octopus that was one of her father’s finds and feels that Dolores can understand her and vice versa. Ro misses her Apa and harbors hope that one day he ...

My Rating :⭐⭐⭐⭐ Former police detective turned FBI consultant, Amos Decker is back! Grappling with a personal loss, adjusting to working with a new partner and experiencing changes in his own medical condition(a sports injury from years ago that altered his brain function resulting in his perfect recall and synesthesia), he has a lot on his plate. When a federal judge Julia Cummins and her bodyguard Alan Draymont are murdered in the judge’s home, he travels to Florida with his newly assigned partner FBI Special Agent Frederica “Freddie” White to take lead on the case assisted by the local FBI office. It appears that the MO for both murders was different. While the judge was brutally stabbed to death, her bodyguard was shot with a wad of foreign currency shoved down his throat. Decker suspects more than one perpetrator. Working together or separate agendas? What follows is a deep – dive into the personal and professional lives of both victims. What follows is a complex web of murder, li...

My Rating: 4.5⭐️ In 1939, as WWII rages on, sisters fourteen-year-old Hazel Mersey Linden and five-year-old Flora Lea Linden are evacuated from London as a part of Operation Pied Piper along with other children to protect them from German aerial bombings. They end up in Binsey, Oxfordshire in the home of the Aberdeens - Bridie and her son Harry who welcome them and treat them with kindness and compassion. But their time in the safe idyllic countryside comes to a tragic end in 1940 when six-year-old Flora disappears from the banks of the River Thames, where she had been napping on a blanket. The pain and guilt for having not been able to protect Flora from harm haunt Hazel for years to come and resulting in her cutting all ties with the Aberdeens. Fast forward to 1960 and we find Hazel in the middle of her last day at Hogan’s Rare Book Shoppe in Bloomsbury where she has been employed for the last fifteen years and is now moving on to her dream job in Sotheby’s. When she opens a parcel f...

My Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ “She was good at forgetting; she had practiced for years, and it was now a skill at which she excelled.” A call for help in the form of an unsigned letter has Isabel Gibson hurry home to Brinkley’s Island, Maine to her childhood home and the family bookstore, years after she left her sister Sophie, with whom she has been estranged for years. Once an avid reader, her love for reading waned after losing her mother and after her father’s death she had been keen to sell the failing bookshop , a move opposed by her sister. In an unexpected turn of events, she is left in charge of the bookshop while her sister recuperates from surgery. “Isabel remembered what books had meant to her so long ago, and she suddenly had a longing for all those fictional worlds that had helped her through the worst years of her life.” As the story progresses , we see how Isabel reconnects with family, old friends ,the island, rekindles her love for books and the bookstore and comes finally comes to ...

My Rating:  4.5⭐ It’s Christmas and we’re back in the world of luxury solar-powered cars, flying feather dusters (I could really use one!) and lifelike companion bots designed and manufactured by Jolvix. It’s been two years since all of the Jagger siblings came home to Santa Barbara for Christmas. The last time they were together with their widowed father Jeremy and his new companion bot January ended in an act of violence toward January committed by Jesse, the third sibling. The siblings’ mother committed suicide years ago and Jeremy’s acquisition of January came as a surprise for all the siblings. But while Josiah, Julianna and Jada keep their opinions to themselves, Jesse in a fit of rage, attacks January causing severe damage. Fast forward two years and the family is together again with January (who has been repaired completely with a wiped memory, or so we are made to believe). It’s going to be an interesting  (to put it mildly!)  Christmas at the Jagger family home,...