Category: Family

Children's, Family, Magical Realism, Middle Grade

Sylvia Doe and the 100-Year Flood by Robert Beatty

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Embark on an unforgettable mystery-adventure starring a girl determined to save her friends and find a home, written by the best-selling author of the Serafina and Willa of the Wood series!

Robert Beatty, a master at telling atmospheric tales of mystery and suspense set in the natural world, has crafted another ingenious, unputdownable story.

Thirteen-year-old Sylvia Doe has lived at the Highground Home for Children nearly all her life. Whenever the administrators try to place her with a foster family, she runs away–back to Mason, Highground’s caretaker and her best friend. The only place she feels like she belongs is with him and the horses he has taught her to love.

When a powerful storm causes the remote mountain valley where she lives to flood, Sylvia begins to encounter strange and wondrous things floating down the river. Glittering gemstones and wild animals that don’t belong–everything’s out of place. Then she spots an unconscious boy floating in the water.

As she drags him onto the shore and their adventure together begins, Sylvia wonders who he is and where he came from. And why does she feel such a strong connection to this mysterious boy?

My Thoughts

Robert Beatty never fails to deliver a suspenseful, well-written story where the pages fly by because it’s so good you can’t stop reading. Here we have a new hero, Sylvia, a foster child with apparently no family and no recollection of what happened to her before age 4. All she knows is that she belongs at Highgrounds, the children’s home that is the only true home she’s ever known. She’s most comfortable with the horses and the nature surrounding the site.

This eerily prophetic story of a flood of epic proportions in the mountains of North Carolina is truly one of the best I’ve read in ages. From the very beginning when Sylvia is making her way back to Highgrounds, to the heartstopping ending, the story of Sylvia Doe and the mysterious boy she rescues from a raging river will keep readers entertained and get them hooked on Beatty’s writing. He joins Kate DiCamillo in my list of the best authors of children’s fiction writing today.

Publication Date: October 8, 2024
Published By: Disney Publishing Worldwide: Hyperion
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Food & Drink, Magical, New Releases, World Literature

Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them . . .

Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouth-watering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they revive lost recipes and rekindle forgotten memories.

From the Olympic swimmer who misses his estranged father’s bento lunchbox to the one-hit-wonder pop star who remembers the tempura she ate to celebrate her only successful record, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect . . .

The Kamogawa Diner doesn’t just serve meals—it’s a door to the past through the miracle of delicious food. A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

My Thoughts

What an absolute gem of a book! The concept is fascinating – a restaurant and chef that recreate recipes from your past. We all have some dish that evokes special and strong memories – maybe a memorable meal you had with a loved one, or, like the first dish in this story, a simple (or not-so-simple) lunch made for you by your parent every day for years.

The power of food and taste is explored in delicate and colorful prose, offering up poignant and heart-warming vignettes for the people who are lucky enough to find the Kamagawa Diner. This would make a wonderful TV series. I hope Netflix picks it up.

What is YOUR “lost recipe?”

Publication Date: October 8, 2024
Published By: Penguin Group Putnam
Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy

Family, Historical, Mystery

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Grames

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets.

The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest’s housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

My Thoughts

I always enjoy and appreciate a well-written story, and The Lost Boy of Chionia is certainly that.

This is a complex and layered story featuring a fairly remarkable character in Franca, or the maestra of this remote Italian village. I found the story slow to start, but the author clearly relished the opportunity to describe the isolated environment and its inhabitants which shape the story as it really gets going. The meandering pace is the only thing keeping me from really loving this book. I picked it up, put it down, picked it up, put it down so many times. But, I kept at it and was rewarded with a story that unfolded into one of the most interesting tales I’ve read this summer.

Grames is very, very good at writing characters where their true natures are sort of peeled back gradually. She clearly relished the opportunity to build a microcosm of a world in Santa Chionia – a village so remote that its residents might as well be on another planet. Agatha Christie based so much of her work on the premise that evil can exist anywhere, even in the tiniest village, and Grames writes that concept very well indeed.

If you like mysteries without the gore and that make you think, you’ll enjoy this.

Publication Date: July 23, 2024
Published By: Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage & Anchor
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Mystery, Suspense, Teens, Women

God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

“Extraordinary…Reminds me of Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut, The Secret History…I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world, that for hours I barely came up for air.” – Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide.

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

My Thoughts

I requested to review this book because of the location – a camp and community in the Adirondack Mountains in my home state of New York – and also because of my childhood fascination with sleep-away camp. The financial and social circumstances of my family were not those that made the possibility of sleep-away camp attainable, but that didn’t stop me from reading everything I could find about camp experiences, both good and bad. The mystery here is as bad as you can get – a camper disappears. And not just any camper, but the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the campground. The ensuing story covers the full-on search for the camper but also expands to recount the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the camper’s brother 10 years prior.

Told in short-form, alternating viewpoints, I admit I sometimes found it hard to keep everyone straight. However, the stories of two people provided the thread holding it all together – those of Judyta and Tracy, a rookie cop and the closest friend the lost camper had on-site. Their insights to both the camper and to the search process hold the story together.

Tbh, I have little sympathy for “poor-little-rich-girl” stories, but Moore does a decent job of humanizing the women in this story, especially Alice, TJ, and Barbara. I found the end very satisfying, for both plot lines – the death of Bear Van Laar and the disappearance of his sister Barbara. I found myself whipping through the final 20% of the story just to find out what happened.

Definitely recommended.

Publication Date: July 2, 2024
Published By: Penguin Group Riverhead
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Books About Books, Family, Mystery, New Releases, Reading, Suspense, Women

Return to Wyldecliffe Heights by Carol Goodman

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Jane Eyre meets The Thirteenth Tale in this new modern gothic mystery from two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winner Carol Goodman, about a reclusive writer who is desperate to rewrite the past.

Losing yourself inside of a book can be dangerous. Not everyone finds their way out.

Agnes Corey, a junior editor at a small independent publisher, has been hired by enigmatic author Veronica St. Clair to transcribe the sequel to her 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. St. Clair has been a recluse since the publication of the Jane Eyre-esque book, which coincided with a terrible fire that blinded and scarred her. Arriving in the Hudson Valley at St. Clair’s crumbling estate, which was once a psychiatric hospital for “wayward women,” Agnes is eager to ensure St. Clair’s devoted fans will get the sequel they’ve been anticipating for the past thirty years.

As St. Clair dictates, Agnes realizes there are clues in the story that reveal the true—and terrifying—events three decades ago that inspired the original novel. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, and Agnes discovers terrible secrets about an unresolved murder from long ago, which have startling connections to her own life. As St. Clair’s twisting tale infiltrates Agnes’s psyche, Agnes begins to question her own sanity—and safety. In order to save herself, Agnes must uncover what really happened to St. Clair, and in doing so, set free the stories of all the women victimized by Wyldcliffe Heights. 

My Thoughts

Carol Goodman never fails to deliver a riveting, complicated, and suspenseful story and she has succeeded admirably here. Goodman excels in writing complex relationships, often mother-daughter, that span generations, and the saga of Wyldecliffe Heights certainly provides plenty of family drama. There is the horrifying secret from the past, combined with the damaged younger protagonist, combined with the creepy history of the house as an asylum that all come together to create a story that doesn’t stop.

While there are nods to Jane Eyre and The Thirteenth Tale, this is an original and cleverly plotted story with a great twist at the end. This will appeal to fans of Simone St. James and Eve Chase, but also to Goodman’s legion of readers. Her books just keep getting better! I’ll be adding this to my recommended Spooky Season reads this year for sure.

Publication Date: July 30, 2024
Published By: William Morrow
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Historical, Mystery, Suspense, World Literature

The Heron Legacy by Leona Francombe

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Charles Fontaine returns to Europe to sell his family’s ancestral domain and finds that a twelfth-century legend still haunts the property. Clues lead him to a parchment relating the curious tale of a village seeress, whose music enchanted a nobleman with shadowy ties to the present-day Fontaine family. With the help of a famous medievalist and enigmatic woman from his youth, Charles draws ever closer to the truth of this tale and its stunning historical revelation…and to his own buried past. “”The Heron Legacy”” is a novel of modern suspense in which history roams freely, its breath still warm.

My Thoughts

This lovely, gentle book contains a deceptively gripping plot and a wonderful set of characters who will stay with me for a long time. The concept of chivalry runs strong and true through the narrative as the reader follows Charles de la Fontaine (or Charles d’Outre-mer) as he grows from a thoughtful boy obsessed with history to a man grown in the image of his father (or is he?)

The chapters describing Charles’ relationship with his beloved Uncle Theo are some of the most interesting and touching in the story and truly drive the narrative forward. Charles’ fascination with the chivalrous knights of the Crusades and the cognitive dissonance of their actions (killing for God) help create an exciting and deeply moving story.

The author is exceptionally skilled at storytelling – keeping a consistent pace, introducing new characters and bombshell information at just the right time, and crafting an ending that wraps up all the loose ends. I’ll be recommending this for sure.

Publication Date: June 25, 2024
Published By: BooksGoSocial
Thanks to Book Sirens for the review copy

Family, Folktales, Suspense, Teens

Rick Riordan Presents: It Waits in the Forest by Sarah Dass

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

The very first thriller from Rick Riordan Presents! Drawing from the darkest corners of Caribbean mythology, acclaimed author Sarah Dass crafts a chilling tale of magic, murder, and how far we’ll go to protect what’s ours—perfect for fans of Angeline Boulley and Tiffany D. Jackson.

Unlike the other residents of the small Caribbean Island of St. Virgil, Selina DaSilva does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving the island to study Pharmacology—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma.

Now her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to conning gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be avoided: there is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel, newly employed at the local newspaper and eager to put his investigative skills to use.

Desperate to put an end to the killings and claim justice for Selina’s family, these two former lovers race to find answers. But evil bides its time. And as long-buried feelings and long-hidden secrets about Selina’s family’s past begin to reveal themselves, only one answer remains—and it waits in the forest.

My Thoughts

A Rick Riordan and Sarah Dass collaboration produces a dynamite book? Shocker, I know.

This is everything I expected and more. It’s an ancient trope at the heart of the story, but Dass drapes the old “selling your soul” skeleton with plenty of modern dress. There are some great plot twists and one really terrifying underwater scene near the end that only further reinforced my irrational fear of swimming in anything but a pool with a defined bottom.

The Rick Riordan Presents series has introduced me to so many new stories from world folklore. This one is another winner.

Publication Date: May 14, 2024
Published By: Disney Publishing Worldwide
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Makes You Think, Women

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.

Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma’s characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo’s abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.

My Thoughts

This was a lovely palate cleanser for me between some historical romance and YA fantasy, but Julia Alvarez is so much more than a little lemon ice. The concept here may not be for everyone, but I loved the beginning of this set of stories that focus on Alma and her struggle with her father’s death and her place in the world.

A successful author, she finds her office full of unfinished stories which she feels the compulsion to bury. She regrets all the lost stories from her family, and wants to control her own unfinished and potentially lost stories by burying them where she began – in the Dominican Republic.

Alvarez explores the intricate family relationships that occur between Alma and her sisters, her parents, and even with the land in the Dominican Republic. The stories are complex and sometimes meandering, which requires attentive reading. This would make a thoughtful book club selection with discussion focusing on our own untold stories. What draws everything together is Alvarez’ beautiful prose. One of the best of the year.

Recommended.

“Only an alchemist as wise and sure as Alvarez could swirl the elements of folklore and the flavor of magical realism around her modern prose and make it all sing . . . Lively, joyous . . . often witty, occasionally somber and elegiac.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, The New York Times Book Review

“Engaging and written in a playful, crystal-clear prose, this novel explores friendship, love, sisterhood, living between cultures, and how people can be haunted by the things they don’t finish . . . Entertaining . . . Heartwarming.” —Gabino Iglesias, The Boston Globe

**Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, B&N Reads, Literary Hub, HipLatina, BookPage, BBC.com, Zibby Mag, and more**

Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Published By: Algonquin Books
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Historical, Magical, Mystery, Romance, Suspense, Time Slip, Women

Forgetting to Remember by M.J. Rose

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Discover a spellbinding love story in this dazzling time-travel adventure from the NYT bestselling author of The Last Tiara, M.J. Rose.

Setting aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of jewel-framed miniature eye portraits—a brilliant romantic device and clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

One piece among the assembly intrigues her more than all the others: a twilight-blue man’s eye framed by opals shimmering with enchanting flashes of fiery color. But the beauty is just the beginning. Not only is the painting a self-portrait of one of her favorite Pre-Raphaelite artists, Ashe Lloyd Lewis, but the brooch itself is a portal eight decades into the past.

Despite being cast into an era she was never meant to be in, Jeannine and Ashe develop an immediate and passionate bond, complicated by the undeniable fact that she does not belong in 1867, and the disaster about to destroy her family and reputation in her time.

Striving to live a dual life and dangerously straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her career and her father from scandal in the present while desperately trying to save her lover’s life in the past.

Forgetting to Remember—richly embroidered with historical detail and heartbreaking conflict—is another luscious and thrilling masterpiece by M.J. Rose. A beautiful and compelling story of art, war, magic, and survival, wrapped in a love that defies time.

My Thoughts

MJ Rose is one of my go-to authors when I’m looking for incredible storytelling with a pleasing blend of history and romance. As an added benefit, she throws in some time-travel here, adding yet another dimension to her already gorgeous descriptive narrative and imaginative plot.

I can’t say much more about this captivating author except go get her books and immerse yourself in her worlds. This one can be read as a stand-alone, so start here by all means, then get the rest of her work from the library.

Recommended.

Publication Date: March 26, 2024
Published By: Blue Box Press
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Family, Fantasy, Folktales, Magical Realism, Mystery, Teens, Young Adult

Under the Heron’s Light by Randi Pink

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Inspired by stories about the real-world Great Dismal Swamp, this dual POV Young Adult fantasy by Randi Pink explores alternate history, a family’s supernatural connections to the swamp, and the strength that comes in knowing your roots.

“Four thousand six hundred forty-two steps in,” Grannylou interrupted. “You remember that now, Baby. Four-thousand six hundred forty-two steps to paradise.”

On a damp night in 1722, Babylou Mac and her three siblings witness the murder of their mother at the hands of the local preacher’s son—so Babylou kills him in retaliation. With plantation dogs now on their heels, the four siblings breach the treacherous confines of the Great Dismal Swamp. Deeper and deeper into Dismal they delve, amid the biting moccasins and pitch-black waters, toward a refuge where they can live freely within the swamp’s natural—and supernatural—protection.

Three-hundred years later, college student Atlas comes home to North Carolina for the annual Bornday cookout and hog roast: a celebration of the fact that she and her three cousins were all born on the same day nineteen years ago, sharing a birthday with their Grannylou. But this Bornday, Grannylou’s usual riddles and folktales about a marvelous paradise deep in the Great Dismal Swamp start to take on a tangible quality. Change coming.

When Dismal calls, sucking Grannylou in, it’s up to Atlas and her cousins to uncover the history that the black waters hold. Centuries of family tension, with roots all over Virginia and North Carolina, are about to be dug up. Because Babylou and Grannylou are one and the same, and the power she helped cultivate hundreds of years ago—steeped in Black resistance, familial love, and the otherworldly mysteries of the Great Dismal Swamp—is bubbling back up. But so is a bitterness that runs deep as the swamp’s waters. And some are ready to take what they feel they’re owed.

My Thoughts

This is a complex, absolutely gripping novel that crosses genres to create one of the best stories of the year. Pink introduces plenty of southern Black folklore regarding the Great Dismal Swamp, and does a fabulous job of incorporating original takes on traditional folklore to create an unusual and authentic world of magic.

However, this is also a story about family – connections, betrayals, unshakable love, protection, and redemption. It is a book that requires the reader to pay attention and be fully immersed in the story – coming eye to eye with moccasins, feeling the black water of the swamp pool over your feet and the mud squish beneath you.

Pink does some extraordinary storytelling here that will both challenge and engross the reader. If this doesn’t become a movie or series, I will be very disappointed.

Highly recommended.

Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Published By: MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group | Feiwel & Friends
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy