Spring is just around the corner – the weather is slowly warming up, flowers will soon begin to blossom and there are many wonderful new books to read no matter what you’re in the mood for!
I enjoy reading a variety of genres so my recommendations for the best books to read spring 2024 include recently published (or soon to be published) works of contemporary fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction, romance, and mysteries that I have read already or that are on my TBR for this spring.
You Might Also Enjoy Reading:
21 of the Best New Books To Read Spring 2023
30 of the Best New Books To Read Spring 2022
15 Books for Your Spring 2021 Reading List
25 Books To Read This Spring: A Travel Inspired List (2020)
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1. The Secret Keeper by Genevieve Graham
Setting: Canada, Europe
Another fantastic Canadian historical fiction novel from Genevieve Graham who has become an auto-buy author for me! The Secret Keeper is the story of inseparable twin sisters, Dorothy and Margaret, from Oshawa, Ontario – better known as Dot and Dash – who join the war effort during World War II.
Told from the perspective of the two sisters, Dash is adventurous, outgoing and obsessed with flying planes while Dot is more reserved and prefers to read and solve puzzles with her dad. When war breaks out, Dash joins the WRENS as a mechanic but Dot is initially fearful about leaving home. She later follows in her sister’s footsteps joining the WRENS as a typist, however, her skills in Morse Code and problem solving soon lead her to Camp X (a top-secret Canadian location connected to Bletchley Park) where she is required to take an oath of secrecy.
The oath causes a rift between the two sisters when Dot is unable to return home during a family emergency or explain the reasons why. Unable to forgive her sister, Dash accepts a position flying transport planes as an ATA girl (Air Transport Auxiliary) in Europe while Dot becomes involved in the planning for Operation Overlord (D-Day). Both young women find love during the war but the romance story lines are secondary to the work that they do.
I have read and enjoyed several of Graham’s historical novels which are inspired by real-life stories and appreciate that they are well-researched and based in historical fact, well-written, tell a compelling story about unforgettable characters and highlight aspects of Canadian history that we didn’t learn in school. In this novel, we learn more about the war effort on the homefront during World War II and the important work done by the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service known as the WRENS. I was familiar with Bletchley Park in England and knew that women had worked there as codebreakers but had no idea that there were women doing similar work here in Canada at a top secret location.
The Secret Keeper is a heartwarming story about the bond between sisters and the courageous work undertaken by women during World War II that slowly builds to a heartpounding conclusion. Be sure to read the excellent Author’s Note at the end of the book to learn more about the courageous women who served in the Second World War. An engaging, informative read – this is my favourite of Graham’s so far!
2. The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams
Setting: London, England
In a small pocket of London, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. It was a beautiful thing once, a little oasis in a bustling city for neighbors by day and the local foxes at twilight. Now it’s overgrown and neglected, an empty patch of greenery lost to time.
Once a sanctuary, the garden’s gate is now firmly closed. And that’s exactly how Winston at No.79 likes it – anything to avoid Bernice, who has moved in next door with her young son. Their houses may share the garden, but they’re not exactly neighborly.
But then a mysterious parcel drops on Winston’s doormat. It contains no note, only a bundle of photographs of the garden in bloom many years ago—vibrant with flowers, filled with people from every corner of the community. Is someone trying to tell them something? The seed of an idea is planted…
Somewhere out there, a secret gardener made a decades-old promise to keep the community’s spirit alive. Now it’s time for The Twilight Garden to come out of hibernation.
3. Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray
Setting: New York, Washington, DC
Becoming Madam Secretary is a captivating and informative historical novel about Frances Perkins who was the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the U.S. The novel begins in 1909 when Frances was living in New York City conducting research on maternal nutrition and advocating for social reforms to protect workers – especially women and children – and follows her career and personal life through to 1935.
Her work took her to Albany to lobby the state legislature for labour reforms which led to her working for Governor Smith and then Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his term as Governor. She became a trusted political advisor to FDR and when he was elected President in 1932 he appointed her Secretary of Labor. She served in that position for the 12 years of FDR’s presidency focusing through the Depression years on passing social security legislation and then on additional labour and immigration reforms.
Frances Perkins was a fascinating and ambitious woman who played a key role in U.S. history but who isn’t very well known and this well-researched and well-written historical fiction novel highlights her many accomplishments. This is a fictionalized account of the life of Frances Perkins, however, the author hasn’t strayed far from the facts. There’s an excellent Author’s Note at the end of the book where she explains which aspects of the story are factual and where she had to make assumptions due to lack of documentation particularly relating to the personal life of Perkins.
In addition to highlighting all that she achieved, the author makes Perkins relatable by showing how she struggled to balance her demanding career and her drive to help others with marriage, motherhood and the mental health issues that plagued her husband and later her daughter. The novel can be a bit slow at times but I appreciated the attention to historical detail and everything that I learned about this incredibly accomplished woman whose work had such an important impact on American society and who isn’t as well known as she should be. Overall an enjoyable and informative read!
Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
4. Funny Story by Emily Henry
Setting: Small town in Michigan
Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads —Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
5. The House on Biscayne Bay by Chanel Cleeton
Setting: South Florida
With the Great War finally behind them, many Americans flock to South Florida with their sights set on making a fortune. When wealthy industrialist Robert Barnes and his wife, Anna, build Marbrisa, a glamorous estate on Biscayne Bay, they become the toast of the newly burgeoning society. Anna and Robert appear to have it all, but in a town like Miami, appearances can be deceiving, and one scandal can change everything.
Years later following the tragic death of her parents in Havana, Carmen Acosta journeys to Marbrisa, the grand home of her estranged older sister, Carolina, and her husband, Asher Wyatt. On the surface, the gilded estate looks like paradise, but Carmen quickly learns that nothing at Marbrisa is as it seems. The house has a treacherous legacy, and Carmen’s own life is soon in jeopardy . . . unless she can unravel the secrets buried beneath the mansion’s facade and stop history from repeating itself.
6. The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay
Setting: Berlin and Virginia/Washington, DC
An absorbing novel about the Cold War told from the perspective of one family torn apart by the construction of the Berlin Wall. The novel opens on Sunday August 13, 1961 when Monica Voekler is walking with her 3 year-old daughter, Luisa, to meet up with her parents and younger sister in their neighbourhood in the western sector only to discover that barriers have been constructed overnight to prevent movement back and forth between East and West Berlin.
In 1989, Luisa Voekler is a CIA codebreaker who believes that she moved to Washington, DC with her grandparents after her parents were killed in a car crash. When she discovers a cache of letters which she refers to as The Berlin Letters, she realizes that her father is actually alive in Berlin and has been writing to her grandfather for 25 years embedding secret messages within the text of the letters. The most recent letter from several months earlier reveals that her father is in trouble and, as protests spread across Eastern Europe, Luisa races to save her father.
After reading this thoroughly researched novel, I felt that I had a better understanding of how individual families were torn apart because of the Berlin Wall, how people existed with fear/paranoia about being watched by unknown informants for the government in Eastern bloc countries and how various geopolitical events in the late 1980s led to change. A captivating page-turner with the suspense of a political thriller that teaches history with an entertaining story!
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Muse for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
7. The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird
Setting: Reno, Nevada
Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce―except in Reno, Nevada.
At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno’s famous “divorce ranches,” Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcees, all in Reno for the six weeks’ residency that is the state’s only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it’s as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, is prim and stifling.
But it isn’t until Greer Lang arrives that Lois’s world truly cracks open. Gorgeous, beguiling, and completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met―and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. How far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?
8. A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Setting: Southern California
Shortly after their marriage, Ashok and Priya Shah immigrated from India to the U.S. and have now been living in Southern California for 20 years working and raising their three children – Deepa, Maya and Ajay. The family recently left behind their old neighbourhood and purchased a home in the gated community of Pacific Hills in an upscale neighbourhood that is a bit of a stretch for them financially. The family is still settling into their new home when Ashok and Priya receive a call while at a dinner party with friends informing them that their 12 year-old son, Ajay, has been arrested in a violent encounter with the police.
Told from multiple perspectives, A Great Country is a moving story about the challenges faced by an immigrant family after the arrest of their child. Over the period of just a couple of weeks, the lives of everyone in the Shah family are turned completely upside down as they try to deal with Ajay’s legal issues and the accompanying media storm.
The novel explores class and racial divides in Southern California, systemic racism and police attitudes toward minorities, and justice/injustice as well as considering what it means to be an immigrant in America and how little it takes to go from being a “model minority” to one who is looked at with suspicion. A well-written, hard to put down, thought-provoking read!!
9. All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore
Setting: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Set in pre-Civil War Philadelphia, All We Were Promised is the story of a housemaid with a dangerous family secret who conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape.
After escaping from a plantation in Maryland four years earlier, Charlotte and her white-passing father are living in Philadelphia where he has established a successful business and Charlotte lives as his housemaid so as not to raise the suspicion of slave catchers. Charlotte is befriended by Nell, a young abolitionist from one of the city’s wealthiest Black families, who encourages Charlotte to become involved with the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Just as Charlotte is starting to feel like she’s settling into a new life, she sees her old friend, Evie, at the market. Evie has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress and needs help from Charlotte and Nell as she is desperate to escape. In the midst of race riots and attacks on abolitionists, Charlotte and Nell make the difficult decision to help Evie even though they will be putting themselves at considerable risk.
Ashton Lattimore’s debut novel is a captivating historical novel told from the perspective of three young Black women in Philadelphia in 1837/38. The main characters in the novel are fictional but they interact with real-life historical figures and the plot also includes some factual events such as the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women that took place at Pennsylvania Hall in 1938.
This novel is interesting and I learned quite a bit from its portrayal of what life was like for Black people living in Philadelphia during this time period and the race-related problems that existed despite it being a “free” city in the North. Racial tensions were high with racially motivated violence common in Philadelphia which was geographically quite close to states where slavery was still legal. There were also class divides between the wealthy Black families who had been free for decades, the working class Blacks who were struggling to get by and runaways recently arrived in the city. I was surprised to learn that there were also laws in place that allowed Southerners to bring enslaved people to Philadelphia and keep them there provided they didn’t stay longer than six months.
This is a very strong historical fiction debut – the characters are well-written, it’s clear a great deal of effort went into research, it’s informative and the author has crafted a compelling story that keeps the pages turning. All We Were Promised is a thought-provoking story of friendship, courage and what it was like to be a Black person in a “free” state during this time period – it starts slowly but will have your heart pounding as it nears the conclusion!
10. Table for Two by Amor Towles
Setting: Moscow, New York City, Hollywood
Table for Two is a collection of six short stories and a novella that Amor Towles has written in the last ten years. The first short story begins in Moscow post-Revolution and moves to New York City and the remaining five take place in New York City around the year 2000. The novella (which is more than 200 pages) takes place in Los Angeles in 1938/9 and follows Evelyn Ross from Towles’ earlier novel, Rules of Civility.
I have never been a fan of short stories (they always leave me wanting more) but pre-ordered Table for Two for the simple reason that Amor Towles hasn’t disappointed me yet. I read Rules of Civility just a few weeks ago in anticipation of this publication and was most excited about the novella Eve in Hollywood.
When last we saw Eve, she was heading home to Indiana but extended her ticket to Los Angeles instead of getting off the train in Chicago where her parents were waiting for her. This novella picks up at that point where Eve makes the decision to stay on the train and continues with her arrival in Golden Age Hollywood where she soon befriends Olivia de Havilland. It’s not necessary to read Rules of Civility first to enjoy this novella but if you have then you will appreciate this opportunity to spend more time with the enigmatic Eve.
It’s no surprise that these short stories and novella were a pleasure to read. Towles is a masterful storyteller – his stories are well-crafted with keen observations on the human condition, his characters are well-drawn and his writing is superb – witty and charming with evocative turns of phrase and just the right amount of description. Table for Two is both entertaining and thought-provoking – a thoroughly satisfying reading experience!
11. A Game of Lies by Clare Macintosh
Setting: Wales
An enjoyable police procedural featuring Detective Ffion Morgan and a reality television show called Exposure filming on a mountain near the small town Cwm Coed in North Wales close to the English border.
Seven contestants believe that they have been selected for a survival show but are shocked to find out during the filming of the first episode that the show is actually about exposing each person’s deepest, darkest secrets live on air. One of the contestants goes missing after the first show and Ffion and her partner, Georgina, as well as DS Leo Brady (an English detective that Ffion has a romantic past with) are called in to conduct an investigation.
This is the second in the DC Morgan series but can be read as a standalone – I haven’t read the first book and enjoyed this one. A great premise, a great sense of place, solid plot and well-written with unexpected twists. The pace is steady and not particularly suspenseful until towards the end but still an enjoyable story. I liked Ffion with all her rough edges and difficulty showing emotion and her rescue dog, Dave, is the best.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
12. How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
Setting: Los Angeles, California
A steamy romance about two writers connected by a tragic accident in their senior year of high school who find themselves working together in Hollywood 13 years later.
Helen Zhang, a bestselling author of a YA series who has temporarily relocated from New York to Los Angeles to work on her book adaptation, is surprised to discover that her high school classmate, Grant Shepard, is one of the writers on the screenwriting team. Grant is a successful screenwriter who took this job despite misgivings and is hoping that he and Helen can work together notwithstanding their past. Tension between the two evolves quite quickly into attraction and they agree to a time-limited relationship that will end when the screenplay is finished.
I have enjoyed a number of romance novels that dealt with heavy issues that the main characters were experiencing but here the issues exist mostly in the background and aren’t fully explored. And the obstacle to their relationship is quite a doozy – I’m honestly not sure how anyone could move past it even with a lot of talking and therapy. The other issue that I had was that I wasn’t really invested in the relationship between Helen and Grant – it’s entirely insta-lust and I think it would have worked better for me as a slow burn romance and better development of the two characters.
This book was an okay read for me but I think my expectations were too high because of the Emily Henry connection (the author wrote the screenplay for the upcoming adaptation of Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation). While it wasn’t a great fit for me, a lot of people are loving this book so take my ambivalence with a grain of salt!
Content Warning: suicide, death of sibling
13. The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez
Setting: Panama
Set against the backdrop of the construction of the Panama Canal, The Great Divide tells the story of a group of people whose lives are impacted by this massive construction project. The story takes place over a period of a few weeks in 1907 when the canal project has been underway for more than two years.
The story is told from multiple points of view including: Panamanian fisherman Francisco Aquino who has a troubled relationship with his son; Francisco’s son, Omar, who is working on the canal against his father’s wishes; Francisco’s fishmonger friend, Joaquin, whose wife convinces him to travel to her hometown to protest orders that the entire town be moved elsewhere; John Oswald, a malaria researcher determined to eradicate the disease in Panama and secure his place in the history books; Oswald’s wife, Marian, a botanist who has set aside her own ambitions to support her husband; and Ada Bunting, a teenager from Barbados who stows away on a ship and arrives in Panama seeking employment.
Shortly after her arrival in Panama, Ada goes to the aid of a young man (Omar) who has collapsed in the street while a crowd watches in fear of catching malaria. John Oswald witnesses this act of compassion and hires Ada to care for his wife who has taken ill. This action leads to the interconnection of many of the characters’ story lines.
The Panama Canal, an artificial waterway which cuts across the Isthmus of Panama to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, is considered one of the world’s greatest feats of engineering but The Great Divide doesn’t focus on the construction project. Henriquez chooses instead to tell the story of the human cost of building the canal and the disruption it caused in the lives of Panamanians.
I enjoyed this character driven story with its beautiful narrative and descriptive writing that transported me to Panama and the canal zone early in the 20th century. The novel touches on the history of Panama leading up to the building of the canal by Americans after the separation of Panama from Columbia (and is clearly well-researched) but the focus remains firmly on the people impacted. It’s an ambitious novel telling an interesting and compelling story that will make you think about the people whose lives are impacted by historical events but whose stories are left out of history books.
14. Nosy Neighbors by Freya Sampson
Setting: England
In a small town in England, twenty-five year-old Kat Bennett arrives at a historic Victorian known as Shelley House to inquire about a room for rent in one of the building’s six flats and encounters long-time resident Dorothy Darling, a cantakerous busybody who keeps a close watch on the comings of goings of the other tenants and notes every infraction and lack of common sense that she observes. Dorothy takes an instant dislike to the young woman and her pink hair but Kat decides to rent Joseph’s extra room despite the frosty reception from Dorothy.
Kat is still settling into her new home when the tenants at Shelley House receive an eviction notice from their unscrupulous landlord who wants to demolish the historic building and build a block of modern flats. Shortly after the tenants meet to discuss a campaign to stop the eviction, one of their own is viciously attacked and Dorothy and Kat band together to save their home and find the criminal responsible for the violence.
Like Freya Sampson’s previous novel, The Lost Ticket, this is a heartwarming story of a disparate group of people coming together to form a community. Sampson has a knack for creating a charming cast of characters that readers grow to care about and, in this case, there’s also an adorable dog named Reggie who is an absolute scene stealer!
It’s impossible not to feel for these two women who have closed themselves off as they learn to let go of the past, forgive themselves and trust each other. A great choice for readers who enjoy an entertaining, feel-good story with a happy ending!
15. The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
Setting: Sicily, Italy
Sara Marsala’s life is a mess – her restaurant failed, she’s going through a divorce, her husband is trying to get full custody of their 4 year-old daughter and now her great-aunt Rosie has died. Rosie has, however, left Sara the deed to a possibly valuable property in Sicily that the family knew nothing about as well as a plane ticket.
Rosie made all of the arrangements for Sara to travel to her family’s village in Sicily to make inquiries about selling the property and also to try and find out what actually happened to Rosie’s mother, Serafina Forte Marsala. The family has always believed that Serafina died from an illness before she was to join the family in America in 1925 but there’s a possibility that she was murdered. Sara arrives in Sicily and soon realizes that there are people who want her to go home without selling the property and her life might be in danger if she stays.
The story is told in a dual timeline – Sara in the present day and Serafina in the past (1908-1925) beginning when she’s 15 until her death at 32. Serafina was an ambitious and headstrong young woman who hoped to leave the village for further education but she discovers she’s pregnant at 15 and has no choice but to marry Gio. Gio emigrates to America to work and Sara stays behind to care for their children and eventually begins working as a healer in the village.
The Sicilian Inheritance is a gripping historical mystery inspired by the author’s own family history. The two timelines in this novel are equally suspenseful and twisty as both women are in danger in this small Sicilian village.
The historical aspect of Serafina’s story is also quite interesting as it touches on life in Sicily early in the 20th century with a tumultuous political situation resulting from the unification that made Sicily part of Italy, the control that the Cosa Nostra (mafia) had in the villages at the time, and the economic reality that sent a large percentage of working age men abroad leaving behind women who took on work outside the home to keep the keep villages functioning.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
16. The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota
Setting: Chesterfield, England
Nayan Olak is mounting a run for general secretary of the union that has become the centre of his life since losing his family in a tragic accident twenty years earlier, when he finds himself inexorably drawn to an inscrutable woman he keeps seeing around town. Passing the run-down house where she—Helen, he’s learned her name is—lives with her teenage son, Brandon, he wonders why they’ve returned to this place, and why they appear so guarded.
As Nayan’s involvement with Helen and Brandon deepens, his differences with his rival in the race to lead the union, a privileged young woman named Megha, spin out of control. While he unknowingly barrels toward long-held secrets about how his and Helen’s pasts might be connected, much more is threatened than his chances of winning.
17. Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
Setting: New York City, Rhode Island
Anita de Monte was an up and coming Cuban American artist until her tragic fall from the window of her 34th floor apartment in Greenwich Village in 1985. Her husband, the iconic minimalist sculptor Jack Martin, was charged with her murder but not convicted and Anita’s name gradually faded in art circles and her work forgotten.
In 1998, Raquel Toro is a 3rd year Art History major at Brown University in Rhode Island working with her advisor on a thesis about Jack Martin’s art. Raquel has never felt like she fits in at the predominantly white Ivy League university until she starts dating an older art student from a wealthy family – in a relationship that parallels Anita’s with Jack.
As Raquel researches Martin, she stumbles upon Anita’s story. Anita’s artwork resonates with Raquel and she is driven to learn more about the artist and to question why her courses have always focused on white male artists. The story is told from three points of view – Anita, Raquel and Jack – and takes a turn into the supernatural after Anita’s death with her ghost continuing to narrate.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a fictional take on the life of artist Ana Mendieta (an artist I wasn’t familiar with but was inspired to learn more about after reading this novel). It’s an interesting story that examines how the art world works – how woman and people of colour are treated and whose work is studied and considered worthwhile. It also looks at higher education, particularly the Ivy League universities, and the microaggressions and outright racism that POC students are subjected to.
Magical realism often doesn’t work for me but I thought it was well done in this case – I liked Anita as a ghost trying to get justice for herself and her work. Anita de Monte Laughs Last is well-written and easy to read, as engaging as it is thought-provoking.
18. Real Americans by Rachel Khong
Setting: NYC, Washington state, San Francisco Bay area
Publication Date: April 30, 2024
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn’t be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can’t shake the sense she’s hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
19. James by Percival Everett
Setting: Missouri and along the Mississippi River
In this satirical reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view, Percival Everett takes a well-known character in American literature and gives him his own voice.
Set in 19th century America just before the Civil War, an enslaved man and a white boy run away from Hannibal, Missouri – Jim because he learned that Miss Watson planned to sell him to a man in New Orleans and Huck because he had faked his own death to escape his abusive father. The two build a raft and head out on the Mississippi River with a loose plan of travelling north to a free state where Jim can earn the money needed to buy freedom for his wife and daughter.
In Everett’s retelling, Jim (or James, the name he chooses) is intelligent and well-read (from his clandestine reading of the volumes in Judge Thatcher’s library) but he and the other enslaved people speak in a vernacular that they call a “slave filter” in front of white people so that they sound uneducated and won’t be perceived as any sort of threat. When Jim and Huck’s story was originally told from Huck’s perspective, their trip down the Mississippi was an adventure but when told from Jim’s perspective, the reader understands the ever present danger that he lived with. Instead of an adventurous tale about drifting down the river on a raft, it becomes a story about a man racing to find a way to save himself and his family.
I had a general idea of what happened in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but this novel can be enjoyed without having read or knowing anything about Twain’s novel. It follows the plot of its source material quite closely at first but the same events have a different feel with the change in perspective and later in the book the plot diverges.
James is the first novel that I have read by Percival Everett and I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style. This is an author who clearly loves to play with language and it makes for a pleasurable read. Fast-paced and hard to put down, thought-provoking, and beautifully crafted – a memorable read that I expect will be one of my favourites of the year!
20. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench
For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.
Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.
21. Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles
Setting: France and New York City
Publication Date: April 30, 2024
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade is a dual timeline World War I historical novel that highlights the accomplishments of the American Committee for Devastated France (known as CARD) founded by American philanthropist and heiress Anne Morgan. Jessie ‘Kit’ Carson is a librarian at the NYPL who travels to France early in 1918 to work with Morgan and CARD in establishing libraries in the northern regions of the country devastated by the ongoing war.
Jessie arrives at CARD headquarters which are set up only miles from the front and joins a group of women working to help devastated French civilians. Jessie is determined to contribute to their efforts and uses books to connect with the villagers and help them recover and rebuild. As the war rages on, the CARDS bravely risk their lives and at one point even lead evacuation efforts.
In the second 1987 timeline, Wendy Peterson is an aspiring young writer working in the Archives of the NYPL who comes across documents relating to the work of CARD and is determined to learn more about Carson and the other women who served with the organization.
Like the author’s previous novel, The Paris Library, this is a well-researched historical novel that highlights the little known role that librarians played in the war. I had no idea that this organization existed or about the work that they did in France during and after World War I so found it a fascinating read in that regard. There is an excellent detailed Author’s Note that provides additional information and is a must for readers who want to know more about the women the novel is based on.
I found the writing and the plot a bit simplistic and sentimental at times but the novel was so well-researched and I learned such a great deal that it was an enjoyable read regardless. This is a fascinating story about a little known aspect of World War I, the resilience of the human spirit and the power of literature (it’s packed with literary references that book lovers will enjoy) that will appeal to readers who love books and libraries as well as historical fiction fans. And the book cover is beautiful!
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
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