Jolissa

My full review is published here: https://literaryquicksand.com/2023/03/review-the-covenant-of-water-by-abraham-verghese/

As I sit here watching my blinking curser, I'm wondering where to start with this book. Man, it was a lot. Good a lot, mostly!

The first thing I noticed was the time investment I'd need to put into it. I didn't look at how long it was before requesting it on NetGalley, but when I finished the first chapter and my Kindle was telling me it would take 18 more hours to read the whole thing, I just about had a fit

My full review is published here: https://literaryquicksand.com/2023/01/review-only-the-beautiful-by-susan-meissner/

Do you have any authors who've been on your to-read list for YEARS? You know their books are a great fit for you, but somehow you've just never gotten to them? One of those authors for me is Susan Meissner. I've even owned one of her books about since it came out FIVE YEARS ago. The life of a book blogger/busy mom/owner of too many books, I guess

This review is published in full here: https://literaryquicksand.com/2022/12/review-hello-beautiful-by-ann-napolitano/

Favorite author alert! Ann Napolitano's Dear Edward is a gorgeous book that I love, so I was really excited to read Hello Beautiful. With these two books, Napolitano has cemented herself among my favorite authors!

I couldn't believe my luck when I was approved on NetGalley to read Hello Beautiful before it comes out in March. I loved Dear Edward so much (read my review), so I was very much looking forward to reading it!

First of all, the relationships in this book are so complicated and messy, but so real and beautiful. The four sisters at the heart of the story all have different relationships with each other, and Napolitano somehow captures each of those unique relationships and how they all fit together.

There's one moment in this book that was just magical to me, when William and Sylvie are sitting together on a bench. In this ordinary moment, they see each other...like really see each other. It's honestly one of the most subtly beautiful moments I've ever read in a book, and I think it'll stand out to me forever. It was just so perfect!

Hello Beautiful is named for the girls' father and how he'd greet them when they entered a room, who ends up not being in the story much, yet is this huge part of his daughters' lives. I really felt that – how a parent can be not present, yet SO present.

The book takes place over decades. Sometimes, books that make such big time jumps are hard for me, because I feel like I need to know what happened in all those years in between that were skipped, but I didn't really feel that way with this one. It was just sort of “normal life” continues, and you pick up where you need to.

Overall, I found this book to be pretty amazing. It was like a cozy family novel that I could pick up and fall into for a while (much like Little Women, which is referenced many times in Hello Beautiful), It's largely character driven, but definitely has some events that happen to move things along. It's about legacy, family, true love, grief, mental health, and more. I highly recommend Hello Beautiful and I think it would make a fantastic book club read. 5 full stars!

My full review is published at https://literaryquicksand.com/2022/11/review-lost-souls-of-leningrad-by-suzanne-parry/

Alright, so first of all, this book is beautiful, and very, very bleak much of the time. However, try not to let that scare you off, because the beautifulness and moments of emotional clarity were so good!

There's no sugarcoating the fact that this book is hard to read at times. It's set in Russia in a time when Russia was at war and Leningrad became completely cut off by the Germans, and was unable to receive supplies. There was no electricity, so no heat and no food for an entire winter in frigid Russia, and thousands upon thousands starved in Leningrad. If you can go into reading this one knowing that that's what you're going to encounter, I think you might be better prepared than I was.

I do also have to give a content warning for this one about children and death/trauma. There was a part that snuck up on me that made me have to take a pause.

HOWEVER, through all of that bleakness and the worst possible circumstances, there are these lasting relationships and bits of love and redeeming moments that just turn this book into something you want to read, and they're why this book is getting great ratings.

With some authors, you just know what to expect. Right? A Fredrick Backman novel is going to be, well, like a Backman novel. Having read two of Steven Rowley's previous books (Lily and the Octopus and The Guncle), I thought I knew what to expect. But really, I found The Celebrants to be a departure from those two!

For the first quarter of this book, I was getting into it, thinking okay, this is going to be really good. However, at that point it seemed to just keep going without much really happening. This is really a character-driven story...there's not a ton of storyline. At first, that really threw me off and I was pretty unsure about the whole thing. Where was this thing going??

In reality, it's just a succession of the friends' “funerals” that are had during personal crises. If you're looking for a really riveting story, you're not going to find it here.

HOWEVER. starting at about 55%, the whole thing started to affect me more deeply, and I started really loving a couple of the characters. It just took a while for me to get there! I almost felt like giving up on it, but man, the payoff in the second half is so worth getting a little bored in the first half.

My full review is here: https://literaryquicksand.com/2023/06/review-the-celebrants-by-steven-rowley/