The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ There Is No Death in Finding Nemo  by  Jeffrey M. Feingold  is an entertaining collection of seven short stories varying in theme and tone, featuring characters who are real and relatable, as are the dilemmas they face. The first story, The Narcissist’s Library (3/5), revolves around a young woman who, ignoring her sister’s advice, embarks on an ill-fated relationship. Not a favorite, but I did like how it ended. In The Mirror (4/5), we meet a man in his mid-sixties whose preoccupation with youthfulness and body, image blurs his reality. An apprentice baker and innovator’s ideology and well-intentioned efforts to address food supply shortage and hunger issues result in a clash with those looking to profit from their own business ventures in Avram’s Miracle (3.5/5). In The Box (5/5), a mysterious gift from a stranger enables a young art professor to approach the challenges of online dating and modern relationships in a r...

Rating:  3.5⭐️   A group of eccentric seniors embark on a “mission” to solve the murder of an invalid senior in their neighborhood while trying to hide the death (by gunshot) of one of their own friends. Agnes Sharp and her fellow residents of Sunset Hall have hidden their deceased friend’s body from the police but when another murder is committed in their neighborhood, Agnes and her gang are happy to mislead the police is believing that the murders were committed by the same person. How did Lilith die and why do the residents of Sunset Hall want to hide the cause of death? Who killed Agnes’ neighbor and former friend Mildred? How and why does the murder weapon suddenly appear in their home? Agnes’ house share arrangement had raised more than a few eyebrows in her village and investigating the murder isn’t going to be easy. But neither the disdain of the village nor their own age-related ailments and challenges will prevent Agnes and her gang from pursuing the truth. In fact, ...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ “When someone takes their life, they don’t only steal the future out from under our feet, they also desecrate their past. It makes it hard to hold on to the good things about them. And no one deserves to be judged on the worst five minutes of their life, even if those five minutes turn out to be their last.” When Marianne Brown was eight years old, her mother disappeared, leaving her and her brother, who was just a baby at the time, to be raised by their father Edward, a college professor. The search for her mother revealed one footprint on the banks of a river near their home and nothing else. Growing up. Her mother’s disappearance was not discussed much and eventually, the family moved from what was once their home to live closer to where her father worked. The loss of her mother at such a young age left an indelible imprint on Marianne’s life. We follow her through her childhood, troubled teenage years and her own journey as a mother. As she grows older, Marianne strugg...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ On the surface, Happiness Falls by Angie Kim revolves around the disappearance of a fifty-five-year-old man and the events that follow as both his family and local law enforcement try to locate him and piece together the events that led to his disappearance and the impact these efforts have on his immediate family. Adam disappeared while on a walk to a local park with his fourteen-year-old son, Eugene, the only witness to what transpired. Eugene is autistic and nonverbal, having been diagnosed with mosaic Angelman syndrome (AS). His family is protective of him and initially hides the fact that he was found running on the road in a disheveled, agitated state with bloodstains on his clothes from the police. The events are narrated from the perspective of Adam’s twenty-year-old daughter, Mia. The narrative follows Mia, her twin John, and their mother Hannah over the weeks following Adam’s disappearance as they search for him and take care of Eugene. Mia is intense and d...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ “There were seven of us in all, trapped on the island. One of us was a murderer.” When former Hollywood movie star Lana Farrar invites her friends to join her on Aura, the idyllic small Greek island gifted to her by her late first husband, for an Easter weekend getaway with her family, little does she know that one of the seven would not leave the island alive. Who was murdered and why? One of Lana’s guests, Elliot, a dramatist by profession, takes us through the events that transpired over that fateful weekend and that led to the murder in question. Through Elliot we get to know more about Lana and the others on the island - Kate, theater actor and Lana’s and Elliot’s friend; Leo, Lana’s seventeen-year-old son who wishes to pursue an acting career despite his mother’s disapproval; Lana’s second husband Jason who doesn’t seem too fond of the other guests; Lana’s housekeeper and confidante Agathi and the caretaker of island, Nikos both of whom have been in Lana’s empl...

Rating:  4.5⭐ “To be haunted by a memory and to be haunted by the feeling that you have lost all memory are nearly the same thing; it is all lost. You are never getting the real thing back.” Six months after losing his younger brother Kai to drowning, Damien, consumed with grief at losing the only family he had left, leaves his job as a cook in a restaurant on a journey with no destination in sight. His journey takes him across a grueling trek through the desert where he meets a Goatherd who directs him to a village, “a land for the grieving”, where he believes Damien will find what he is looking for. Damien lands up in the village, which is home to a struggling fishing community on the day of the funeral of one of its residents. Damien finds himself amid the deceased Carla’s family, her mother Ana-Maria, and Carla’s younger sisters Paola and Marta. Rumored to be “Bruja” whose fate is intertwined with that of the village and therefore influential, Ana Maria is an imposing presence....

Rating: 3.75⭐ Set in Columbia in 1925, during the Cali earthquake, the narrative of The Queen of Valley follows Maria Purificacion “Puri” de Lafont y Toledo as she travels to Colombia in search of Martin Sabater, with whom she shared history and who was her cacao supplier for her chocolate business. Martin owned his own cacao plantation and was in contact with Puri until recently. Martin’s most recent correspondence has Puri concerned for his wellbeing and when she arrives at his hacienda in the aftermath of an earthquake, barely escaping being attacked by miscreants on the way, she comes to know that Martin disappeared on the night of a fundraising gala held at his residence three months ago and is presumed dead. Puri, posing as a nun, finds a position helping take care of patients amid a cholera outbreak while she searches for clues that could lead her to the truth behind Martin’s disappearance. His hacienda has been converted into a hospital run by his childhood friend Dr. Farid Man...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Alice Feeney is one of my favorite authors in this genre. I loved  Rock Paper Scissors ,  Sometimes I Lie  and  His and Hers . I’m always eager to be immersed in her stories and left shocked at the surprises she throws your way, though I found  Daisy Darker  a tad disappointing on account of its predictability and lack of originality. I really wanted to love her latest offering but sadly,  Good Bad Girl  failed to deliver on the thrills. The narrative begins with a baby being stolen from a stroller in the supermarket on Mother's Day. Twenty years later, on Mother’s Day, we meet eighty-year-old Edith, a resident of an assisted living facility who resents having been placed there by her daughter Clio. Edith’s relationship with her daughter is strained on account of reasons that are gradually revealed. Edith is befriended by young Patience who works at the care home and is fond of Edith, often going out of her way to help her. We also mee...

Rating: 3.5⭐ “She had never been able to shake the sense that life was war, a series of battles with the occasional spell of good things.” Set in modern-day Nigeria, the narrative of  A Spell of Good Things  by  Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀  revolves around two characters from vastly different walks of life - Ẹniọlá, a teenager who belongs to a family struggling to make ends meet and Wúràọlá, a young doctor from an affluent family - and how their lives become intertwined through an episode of violence and tragedy. Ẹniọlá dreams of pursuing his education in a good school as his father had once promised. But his father, a teacher by profession, loses his job, and the family is unable to fund his or his sister Bùsọ́lá’s education. Ẹniọlá works odd jobs in a tailoring shop, unable to pay for an apprenticeship but hoping to acquire some skills while also earning some money. He, along with others in similar situations, is regularly punished by school authorities for their inability t...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023* “No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying.” Sixty-six-year-old retired police officer Tom Kettle is nine months into his retirement when he is visited by two young officers in his new home in the annex of a Victorian castle in coastal Ireland. The reason for their visit is to request his help for a cold case from his younger days – a case revolving around the unsolved death of a Catholic priest. The priest in question was one of two who were known to have sexually abused children. The case in question is a sensitive one that hit too close to home for Tom. He is a kind man, who was deeply devoted to his family and is aware of the corruption within the justice system and in the Catholic Church, who took no action when presented with proof of the priests’ crimes. The visit triggers a floodgate of memories for Tom who reflects on his life as a police officer, his family, ...

Rating: 3.75⭐ “In that moment I was aware of life pulsing all around me, indifferent to me. I was just a tiny part of a vast living, breathing ecosystem. I wasn’t at the center of anything. Maybe, I thought, life can really be this simple. Maybe I can just . . . exist.” Jess once had a happy marriage, a son she doted on and another child on the way and a fulfilling career. But life took an unfortunate turn and for over the last four years she has been living the van life. Hers is a lonely journey with much hardship and no destination in sight, living in the present with only others whom she meets along the way as her community, each person with their own reasons to choose their way of life. Her life takes a dramatic turn when her son finds her in Arizona. The Scenic Route   by  Christina Baker Kline   is a well-written, emotional read that revolves around themes of motherhood, loss, family, community and second chances. I enjoyed this short story and the descriptions of v...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ After a personal tragedy resulted in a downward spiral for Leela Crowe, her deceased fiancé’s brother Teddy Lindmark offered her a job working in PR in the VR sector at tech giant Jolvix. Leela’s two-year stint at Jolvix ended after she burnt out after a hush job for what could have been a PR disaster for the company revolving around a controversial Virtual Reality game that was ultimately never released. Leela has changed the direction of her career, presently working as Volunteer Coordinator at Feline Better, a cat café/shelter. Her equilibrium is shattered when she starts receiving apology messages from people from her past= people who had wronged her in some way- each of whom has taken their own life within minutes after sending her the text message. When details of the deaths begin to emerge, Leela suspects that these were not suicides and that the deadly game that was never made public might have been instrumental in the killings. Leela enlists the help of Tedd...

Rating:  3.75⭐ Sally Diamond, an Irish woman in her forties makes the news when puts her deceased father, a retired psychiatrist out in the bins – based on statements he made in jest when he was alive. Sally is “socially deficient”, unable to understand social cues and would rather pretend to deaf to avoid interacting with others. She's had a sheltered upbringing and her mother has passed on. After the death of her father she is completely alone and doing the best she can to take care of herself. The unwanted attention she garners from the episode with her father results in the unraveling of deep and dark secrets from Sally’s early childhood - a past of which Sally has no memories and has been kept from her by the parents who raised her and is only now being revealed to her through a series of letters left to her by her deceased father - triggering a series of events that has Sally grappling with her truth, questioning everything she has been brought up to believe about herself and...

 Rating:  4.5⭐️ “In the end we must all choose what we are unwilling to lose— be it a dream, a passion, a person, or ourselves. And what informs that choice most of all is discovering a raison d’être.” After almost giving up on hopes of finding that special someone thirty-two-year-old paralegal Constance Sparks finds a wonderful partner in high school teacher Hayden and is happy to be planning her upcoming nuptials. Constance had a difficult childhood and her father is serving his sentence for murder – facts that she does not disclose to Hayden, whose behavior often strikes as inconsistent with the image he projects. Constance spends her free time volunteering at the local animal shelter and her love for animals is a driving force in her life. Constance wants more from life but she is too busy keeping everyone around her happy, suppressing her own ambitions and desires. She has a lot on her plate – she feels her career has stagnated, she fears how the truth about her family hi...

Rating:  3.5⭐️ As the novel begins, we meet fifteen-year-old Mia Jacob as she plans her escape from the oppressive cult in western Massachusetts, where she has spent all her young life. Mia was born to Ivy Jacob, a teenager from an affluent family in Boston who left when pregnant with Mia and joined the community headed by Joel Davis whom Ivy later marries- a decision she soon comes to regret. Joel is controlling and life in the commune is governed by strict rules and regulations and minimal contact with the outside world and those found guilty of any indiscretion are severely punished. Mia has broken the rules by visiting the library on the sly and reading books. On one of her visits, Mia finds an old copy of The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the library and falls in love with the story, which she finds bears similarity to her mother’s life and is intrigued by the inscription inside the book. When tragedy strikes, Mia finds no reason to remain with the cult. The narrat...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Acting Sherriff Ben Packard of Sandy Lake, Minnesota, has his hands full solving the murder of a man who was shot to death in his own bed as well as running for the position of Sheriff after a tragedy leaves the position vacant. Bill Sanderson’s death is surrounded by a cloud of lies, deception, and family secrets. Bill had gambling debts, was investing in a business venture with a friend, and his personal life was complicated, to say the least, and Ben discovers in the course of the investigation. Who wanted him dead and why? Was it a burglary gone wrong or was the motivation more personal? The narrative follows Ben as he tries to unravel small-town secrets and find the killer all the while trying to navigate the internal politics within his department and people who would rather see him fail at his job. Joshua Moehling’s Where the Dead Sleep  is a well-paced and tightly plotted police procedural. The author does a wonderful job of setting the scene with the small-tow...

  Rating:  4.25⭐️ *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023* The mixed-race community of Apple Island dated back to 1793 when Benjamin Honey, a Civil War veteran and formerly enslaved man settled on the island with his Irish wife Patience. Six generations later in 1911, their descendants have continued to live on the island and their community includes Esther Honey, great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, her son and grandchildren and their neighbors - Theophilus and Candace Larks and their family born of incest, two sisters who are raising three Penobscot orphans, Civil War veteran Zachary Hand To God Proverbs who lived in a hollow oak tree and elderly Annie Parker who lived alone. Life on the island was not particularly easy but the residents survived in their cocoon of tolerance and community. The arrival of racist missionary/retired schoolteacher Matthew Diamond on the island and his efforts to impart education to the children directs public attention to the island. His ...

Rating:  3.5⭐ It’s been five years since Tony Reed fled Los Angeles leaving behind a life of crime and his association with the Los Angeles McIntyre crime family headed by Boyd McIntyre. Tony was godfather to Boyd’s children – Kristen and her younger brother Ryan who is hearing impaired. When Tony fled five years ago he took the children with him to save them from the life that awaited them under the watchful eye of their paternal grandmother who holds the reins to their criminal enterprise. But Boyd has traced them to the small Montana town they have made a life for themselves as a family and will leave no stone unturned to bring his children back home and exact revenge on Tony. Escaping Boyd and his goons won’t be easy this time. Boyd has connections and has used his money and connections for information on Tony. When the plane in which Tony, Kristen and Ryan are attempting to leave is shot down and Tony is injured it is up to Kristen and Ryan to tap into the skills Tony has taug...

Rating: 3.75⭐ Public hero and “pride of the nation” DI Grant Cliveden collapses in Old Bailey just minutes before giving testimony in a drug case. All evidence points to him being poisoned and the prime suspect is career felon Jimmy Knight, who has only recently been released after serving a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. Jimmy had a history with the deceased and had met with him in a local pub before his death. The theory is that Jimmy slipped the poison in Cliveden's drink. Though there is no forensic evidence linking Jimmy to the poisoning, he is arrested and set to be tried for murder, based on the discovery of a burner phone, from which he sent a text message setting up the meeting, in his possession and CCTV footage of the same meeting which shows Jimmy buying Cliveden a drink. Pupil barrister Adam Green is on Jimmy’s defense team headed by his pupil master Jonathan Taylor-Cameron, who would rather Jimmy plead guilty so that he could devote his attention to more high-pa...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ Revolving around themes of Native American history, heritage, identity, trauma and healing  A Council of Dolls  by  Mona Susan Power  tells the story of three generations of Native American women spanning the nineteenth century to the present day. The narrative is presented to us from the first-person perspectives of Sissy (Jesse), Lillian and Cora. Also sharing their perspectives are the three dolls that bear witness to the sorrows, loss and trauma these three women during their childhood years – their friends, companions, confidantes and source of strength in difficult times- Sissy’s doll Ethel, Lillian’s doll is a Shirley Temple doll she calls Mae and Cora’s is a buckskin doll named Winona. “We've had forces working to get rid of our culture and beliefs, our way of living, for many generations now.” Sissy’s mother Lillian is a strong woman, an activist with a volatile temperament whose childhood experiences, both in her family and in school, ha...