The best books with impossible odds and satisfying endings

This author was new to me, and I fell in love! The characters are rich, quirky, and distinctive. I was intrigued by the supernatural element. The story drew me in immediately, and I couldn’t put the book down. I loved how it ended.

I felt like I’d spent time with complicated friends who conquered their demons. It satisfied what I crave most from any book: intrigue, interesting, unpredictable characters that must peel away the layers the deeper I go, seemingly insurmountable obstacles that are eventually overcome, and a satisfying ending. I would equate the feel of this read to spending quality time with best friends, enjoying a steak cooked to perfection with roast potatoes crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. And, of course, chocolate mousse sprinkled with hazelnuts for dessert.

This book was recommended to me by a friend. OMG, I loved, loved, loved the audio. Though in a hurry to get home, at crucial moments, I found myself driving around the block a number of times, my need for the end of the chapter far exceeding the worry of wasting gas. 

But oh, fascinating Elizabeth Zot is so worth it! 

An outwardly tough cookie who earned her way through the school of hard knocks to start a women’s movement, simply be taken seriously as a scientist in a man’s world. I was rooting for her every step of the way. I wanted to be her best friend and work at dismantling her heavy armor while helping her through every devastating obstacle and hurtful unkindness. Six-thirty was the best dog EVER, and I know the best dogs! I loved this so much that I sent a sick friend one of my Audible credits so she could listen to Elizabeth’s wonderful story and forget her woes. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it’s set in South Africa and has all the elements that move me as a human being: pain, pleasure, violence, mysticism, and adventure. There was also enough drama to keep my nose immersed in this book for hours on end. To say I loved Peekay is an understatement. It takes a hellofa writer to make me feel.

I ached for Peekay, was excited for him, humiliated for him, thrilled for him, and proud of him. I felt Peekay. I agree wholeheartedly with a literary critic who said of this book: “Unabashedly uplifting…asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’ can prevail.” 

This book, with its prose as poetry, made me want to read it again the minute I finished. To absorb Mr. Doerr’s majestic words was to be transformed into a little blind girl with the heart of a lion, the wit of a comic, the determination of a world leader. I became Marie-Laure LeBlanc and felt all the while sublimely grateful that I could see. And then I met Werner Flemming and wept for him. I understood him. I was deeply moved by him. 

I felt it was profoundly destined that these two should meet and fall in love, but my imagination carried me far into the future. I was surprised to find though I should have been disappointed, I was not. You see, this book made me realize that while many people touch our lives, some can change the course of our trajectory even by a single degree. And that very fraction might be the difference between mediocrity and greatness. 

This book made me feel brittle and ridiculously humble, and I wept again as I remembered all those who’ve affected me, be it with a giant paintbrush or a line of petite bristles sized for an eyeliner. Every single one left its mark. And I give silent thanks for being colored by large and small strokes because they all shaped the course of my existence.

OMG. I have recommended this book to more people than any other. It’s truly a historical fiction masterpiece. I read slowly but my eyes flew over these titillating pages as if I was a famished glutton and had to devour them quickly lest they disappear. The intrigue! The avarice! The anarchy!

It is an ambitious literary project that splashes over the colorful canvas set in 12th-century England. If, like me, you love the complexities of the human condition, read this book and prepare for the rapture that is virtuoso storytelling.