Why am I passionate about this?

One of the things I love most about fiction is the way it allows you to ā€œbeā€ different peopleā€”to experience, think, feel, and behave from inside a particular temperament, worldview, or experience. My very favorite is adding the complexity of multiple perspectives to that magic trick so that you get to live inside two or more people who may be at complete odds with each other. Reading good fiction is an exercise in empathy, and reading good fiction from multiple viewpoints is empathy supercharged. Iā€™ve loved that immersion since I was a little kid who believed there was nothing better than a novel.


I wrote...

Book cover of The Mother Act

What is my book about?

Sadie Jones, a larger-than-life actress and controversial feminist, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this more deeplyā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Vanishing Half

Heidi Reimer Why did I love this book?

This novel is an immersive read with heaps of empathy for all its characters but especially for the two sisters whose perspectives are at the center of the story: the twin who disappears to live a secret life, passing as white, and the twin left behind.

We donā€™t get the perspective of Stella, the vanished twin, until 14 years after her disappearance, 150 pages into the book. By then, I was fully absorbed in the grief and unanswered questions of the people sheā€™d abandoned, eager to finally know where sheā€™d been all this time and to understand her complex motivations and the emotional and mental toll of relinquishingā€”and hidingā€”her racial identity, her community, her sister, and her past. I picked this book up and didnā€™t put it down until it was done.

By Brit Bennett,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked The Vanishing Half as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE

'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019

'Epic' Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine

'Favourite book [of the] year' Issa Rae

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten yearsā€¦


Book cover of Crossroads

Heidi Reimer Why did I love this book?

Most of the family members in this novelā€”father, mother, and four teenage kidsā€”are painfully at odds. Most of them donā€™t much like most of the others, but they also donā€™t have much understanding of one anotherā€™s inner worlds. As readers, we doā€”one character at a time, in multiplying layers of wounds, desires, and needs that grow into a complex picture of humanness.

I love it when a character who is underestimated or despised from the outsideā€”which Marion, the frumpy, near-invisible wife and mother, certainly isā€”later becomes the point of view character, and we finally get to see who they really are, hear the secrets of their past, and grasp what has shaped them and why. By the end, Marion takes hold of her own agency and becomes the powerful heart of this novel, a redemption I loved for her. 

By Jonathan Franzen,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Crossroads as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jonathan Franzenā€™s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

Itā€™s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joylessā€”unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clemā€™s sister, Becky, long the socialā€¦


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Book cover of The Romanov Heiress

The Romanov Heiress by Jennifer Laam,

Four sisters in hiding. A grand duchess in disguise. Dark family secrets revealed. An alternate future for the Romanovs from Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter Of The Tsar.

With her parents and brother missing and presumed dead, former Grand Duchess Olga Romanova must keep her younger sistersā€¦

Book cover of Five Wives

Heidi Reimer Why did I love this book?

I grew up with the true story of the missionaries to an isolated Indigenous tribe in Ecuador who, in 1956, were killed by the people theyā€™d come to help. I loved Five Wives because itā€™s an incisive but compassionate interrogation of a story from my own religious background, but you donā€™t need to be familiar with the source material to find it riveting. 

As a religiously fervent teen, I was inspired by the courage of the wives of these martyred men, who later returned to bring the gospel to their husbandsā€™ murderers. As an ex-Christian adult, I was awed by the ways Joan Thomas manages to neither patronize her religious characters nor leave the faith-and-martyrdom myths unchallenged. She deftly imagines the inner lives of these women, the very different doubts, struggles, and desires of each in the lead-up to and aftermath of the tragedy, and she doesnā€™t let anyone off the hook.

By Joan Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Five Wives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

A GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC BOOKS, APPLE BOOKS, AND NOW TORONTO BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the tradition of The Poisonwood Bible and State of Wonder, a novel set in the rainforest of Ecuador about five women left behind when their missionary husbands are killed. Based on the shocking real-life events

In 1956, a small group of evangelical Christian missionaries and their families journeyed to the rainforest in Ecuador intending to convert the Waorani, a people who had never had contact with the outside world. The plan was known asā€¦


Book cover of Maine

Heidi Reimer Why did I love this book?

Intergenerational conflict! Irreconcilable clashes of values! Decades of history, miscommunication, misunderstanding, secrets, resentments, shifting allegiances, expectations and their failure to be met!

These are my literary catnip, and theyā€™re all here in this book, brought to life through four complex women: a grandmother, a daughter, a granddaughter, and a daughter-in-law, converging in a beach house one fraught summer. I especially love the way these women's lives illustrate the changes to what is possible and permissible for women between generations. 

By J. Courtney Sullivan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Maine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ā€¢ The celebrated author of Commencement and The Engagements introduces four unforgettable women and the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.

"Rich and exhilarating ... You don't want the novel to end."ā€”The New York Times Book Review
 
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. As three generations of Kelleher women arrive at the family's beach house, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two andā€¦


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Book cover of Love and Chocolate

Love and Chocolate by Linda Shenton Matchett,

Ilsa Krause and her siblings are stunned to discover their father left massive debt behind upon his death. To help pay off their creditors, she takes a job at Beckā€™s Chocolates, the company her father despised. To make matters worse, her boss is Ernst Webber, her high school love whoā€¦

Book cover of Americanah

Heidi Reimer Why did I love this book?

I love a decades-spanning love story, and this book delivers, complete with separation and longing, the inner psychology and personal journeys of the two main characters, and a satisfying, hopeful coming togetherā€”FINALLY!ā€”at the end.

I also learned a ton about race and the differences between the American Black experience and the African Black experience, but in the best way it is possible to learn: fully immersed in a story thatā€™s entertaining and propulsive. I was emotionally invested in Ifemelu and Obinze from the start, and thatā€™s all I really ask of the fiction I love best. 

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Americanah as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to him, and plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.

Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria,ā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Book cover of The Mother Act

What is my book about?

Sadie Jones, a larger-than-life actress and controversial feminist, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this more deeply than Jude, the daughter Sadie left behind. While Jude spent her childhood touring with her fatherā€™s Shakespearian theater company, Sadie catapulted to fame with The Mother Actā€”a scathing one-woman show about motherhood. 

Two decades later, Jude is a talented actress in her own right, and her fraught relationship with Sadie has come to a head. At the packed premiere of Sadieā€™s latest play, the two come face-to-face, and the intertwined stories of their lives unfold. What emerges is a picture of two very different women navigating the complexities of career, love, and family while grappling with the essential question: can they ever understand each other?

Book cover of The Vanishing Half
Book cover of Crossroads
Book cover of Five Wives

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Book cover of Beneath the Stairs

Beneath the Stairs by Jennifer Fawcett,

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric ā€œnail-biter of a novelā€ (Shelf Awareness), a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at an alleged haunted houseā€”the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.

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Can a free-spirited country girl navigate the world of intrigue, illicit affairs, and power-mongering that is the court of Louis XIVā€”the Sun King--and still keep her head?

France, 1670. Sixteen-year-old Sylvienne dā€™Aubert receives an invitation to attend the court of King Louis XIV. She eagerly accepts, unaware of her motherā€™sā€¦

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Nigeria, family secrets, and Chicago?

Nigeria 68 books
Family Secrets 212 books
Chicago 403 books