Napolitano puts words together so beautifully that sometimes I had to pause the audiobook so I could take a minute to reflect on and admire her turns of phrase. Sometimes writing like that can get bogged down, but that isn’t the case with this book.
The variety of characters and voices and the toying with the timeline kept me intrigued and wanting more. Though the story is tragic, the themes of love, friendship, and hope resonate.
A transcendent coming-of-age story about the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles: there are 192 people aboard. When the plane suddenly crashes, twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor.
In the aftermath, Edward struggles to make sense of his grief, sudden fame and find his place in a world without his family. But then Edward and his neighbour Shay make a startling discovery; hidden in his uncle's garage are letters from the relatives of other passengers - all addressed him.…
This book is a prequel. You don’t have to read one to read the other, but it was enjoyable to spend more time with beloved characters and understand the world of Conrey’s imagination better.
This book made the list because it was the book that resonated with me the most; after I finished it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It explores the complexity of love and sexuality in a time in the not-too-distant past when small-town America struggled to accept and understand same-sex love stories.
When Maggie Bryan works up the nerve to tell her parents she's pregnant, they immediately disown her. Later that night, her boyfriend is killed. In desperation, she turns to her brother, Sam. Against his wife's wishes, Sam brings Maggie to his home in rural Pennsylvania.
While Maggie awaits the birth of her child and navigates the tension in her new home, she decides to finish high school. There, she meets Anne Phillips, a volunteer educator and full
This book was particularly intriguing to me because of the time, the 1840s, and the place, Australia. This is not a setting that I’ve ever read a book set in before, and I found it historically and culturally really interesting.
Kline is a talented writer and is particularly good at characterization. The book did not disappoint in that regard.
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant historical novel that captures the hardship, oppression, opportunity and hope of a trio of women's lives-two English convicts and an orphaned Aboriginal girl - in nineteenth-century Australia.
Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naive young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain…
Eve Prince is done with college, with her mom, with guys, and with her dream of fashion design. But when her best friend goes MIA, Eve must gather together the broken threads of her life in order to search for her.
When Eve's grandmother, Boop, finds out about the trip, she hijacks her granddaughter's road trip. She knows that sharing the secret that's haunted her for sixty years might be the one thing that will lessen Eve's growing depression, but she also fears that if she reveals it, she'll lose her family and her own hard-won happiness.
Boop and Eve's journey through the heart of Dixie is an unforgettable love story between a grandmother and her granddaughter.
