Days of Wonder by Caroline Leavitt

Secrets never stay secret, and when they are revealed the damage they cause can be worse than had they never been secret.

Secrets abound in this novel, hiding the truth and separating people from those they love. The story is an emotional roller coaster of loss and guilt, finding love and losing it. But in the end, when the truth is revealed, healing begins and love finds its home.

Ella and Jude were teenage soul mates. Jude had secrets, the secrets of his mother’s death and his father’s alcoholic abuse. As Jude becomes close to Ella and her mother, his father pushes to separate them, finally taking a job in another city. The young lovers stay awake for days, inseparable, dreaming of ways to stay together.

When Jude’s father nearly dies, Ella is arrested for attempted murder. Neither Ella nor Jude have clear recollections of what had happened that fateful night when Jude’s father was poisoned. Only Jude’s father knows the truth, and he uses his power as a judge to place the blame on Ella. Jude does not know that she was pregnant, and was coerced to give the baby up; she was sentenced to twenty-five years and could not take care of a child.

With an early release, Ella is intent on one thing: finding her daughter. She gets employment by lying about her felony conviction and moves to Ann Arbor, stalking her daughter until by chance she meets the adoptive mother, and befriends her. Her daughter’s adoptive family looks perfect from the outside, but it is far from a happy family. Can she protect her daughter?

When Ella’s secret past is revealed, she is poised to lose everything.

This emotionally charged novel is a page turner, and although coincidences and melodrama abounds, it will appeal to a large readership.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Days of Wonder
by Caroline Leavitt
Pub Date April 23, 2024
Algonquin Books
ISBN: 9781643751283

from the publisher

As a teenager, for a moment, Ella Fitchburg found love—yearning, breathless love—that consumed both her and her boyfriend, Jude, as they wandered the streets of New York City together. But her glorious life was pulled out from beneath her after she was accused of trying to murder Jude’s father, an imperious superior court judge. When she learns she’s pregnant shortly after receiving a long prison sentence, she reluctantly decides to give up the child.

Ella is released from prison after serving only six years and is desperate to turn the page on a new life, but she can’t seem to let go of her past. With only an address as a possible lead, she moves to Ann Arbor, Michigan, determined to get her daughter back. Hiding her identity and living in a constant state of deception, she finds that what she’s been searching for all along is a way to uncover—and live with—the truth. Yet a central mystery endures: neither Jude nor Ella can remember the events leading up to the attempted murder—that fateful night which led to Ella’s conviction.

Days of Wonder is a gripping high-drama page-turner about the elusive nature of redemption and the profound reach of love.

Within Arm’s Reach by Ann Napolitano

There is no such thing as love without loss.

from Within Arm’s Reach by Ann Napolitano

After the success of her third novel Dear Edward, which my book club loved, and last year’s Hello Beautiful, which I recommended to the book club, we now can read Napolitano’s first novel. It is inspired by her own grandmother and family stories.

Catharine was determined that she would not leave behind a broken family. Each generation carried its scars into the next, each generation putting up barriers and hiding the truth.

Catherine had suffered so many losses– a husband, a daughter, the twins. She never got it right, failing each child. Her daughter Kelly is dealing with a husband broken by grief and guilt after his employee died on the job. He goes through the motions, but is totally closed off. Underneath her hard exterior, she is vulnerable and needy. Her daughters are struggling. Lila was a stellar student in med school, but does not have the patience to deal with real people. And Gracie’s wild life has resulted in pregnancy, and she is determined she will be a single mother. The only family who supports her is her Gram, Catherine, who sees the baby as a second chance for the family, a new generation; maybe this time they can get family right.

Each character tells her story in alternating chapters. This big, dysfunctional, Irish American family is filled with colorful characters struggling with relatable problems. It is a lovely read, compassionate and moving.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Within Arm’s Reach
by Ann Napolitano
Pub Date April 30, 2024
Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780593732496

from the publisher

No one in my mother’s family ever talks about anything that can be categorized as unpleasant or as having to do with emotions. . . .

This spellbinding novel by bestselling author Ann Napolitano is a poignant reminder of how connected we are to those we love, even when we cannot find the words to say it. The unforgettable story of three generations of an Irish American family, Within Arm’s Reach is another rich and deeply satisfying novel from the author who captured the many dimensions of grief in Dear Edward and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood in Hello Beautiful.

Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

The secret is that we’re a family, we’re just an ordinary family, with ordinary unhappiness like yours.

from Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

Tom Hargreaves was a reporter who preyed human failings, spinning compulsive news stories for a tabloid magazine. He was onto the perfect story: a ten-year-old girl implicated in the death of a child. Her family had come from Ireland to London, the father and brother deadbeat alcoholics and the mother beautiful and depressed. Tom uses his honed skills to worm his way into their lives, his sympathetic appearance masking a heartless and analytical intention to spin their story into an explosive headline that would make his career.

The Green family is knit together by blood but not intimacy. Each is trapped in their own misery, like distant planets encased in icy tombs. Left out is the child who since the death of her grandmother has not been cherished or loved or touched. When she is taken by the police, her first thought was that finally, her inner evil has been discovered.

The novel takes us inside these ordinary people with their ordinary tragedies. A teenage girl deceived into intimacy, denying her pregnancy, shutting out the child, her dreams of being special gone. The father whose beloved wife cheats on him and leaves him, his second wife struggling to care for his broken family. The son who was never cherished, his desire to be liked leading to his hanging with drinking buddies at the bar and subsequent alcoholism. And the granddaughter, confused and angry and alone.

Yes, it is dark. The author takes us into these character’s thoughts, a sad place to be. But then she offers hope and healing and growth. We don’t have to be speechless and alone, they learn. “The trying would be their life’s work,” they come to understand, the trying to connect, to be open, to care, to love.

The novel left me thinking–What if. What if society could identify needs and provide therapy to heal ordinary human failings, the hurt and pain that builds defences and the anger that lashes out, too often leading to wasted lives or violence inflicted on oneself or others?

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Ordinary Human Failings
by Megan Nolan
Pub Date February 6, 2024
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316567787

from the publisher

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets from “huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard) and internationally bestselling author Megan Nolan.

It’s 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the “peasants” — ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and “bad apples”: the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there’s nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

Redwood Court by DeLana R. A. Dameron

“You have all these stories inside you–that’s what we have to pass on–all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You have the stories you’ve heard and the ones you”ve yet to hear. The ones you’ll live to tell someone else. That’s a gift that gives and gives and gives. You get to make it into something for tomorrow. You write ‘en in your books and show everyone who we are.”

from Redwood Court by DeLana R. A. Dameron

Redwood Court reminded me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: the story of a girl growing up, set in a particular time and place and culture, but universal in its appeal and wisdom.

The time is the 1990s. The place is Columbia, Georgia. Redwood Court is home to Mika’s grandparents, who proudly purchased the suburban home in the 1960s. It was an achievement of having ‘made it.’ Mika adores her grandfather Teeta, the heart of the family. Her grandmother Weesie shaped the street into a community of mutual support. As Mika’s parents both work, she spends summers with her grandparents.

The novel begins with a homework project Mika is struggling over. She is tasked to trace her family history, but as African Americans, discovering their roots is unlikely. Teeta tells Mika that it’s her job to preserve their stories for the future. And the entire book tells their story, past and present, from the grandparent’s remarkable love story to her uncle’s incarceration. Mika spends time with the women, listening, learning.

This unforgettable family has its joys and losses, holds on to hope and faces the cruel reality of racism. It’s a wonderful debut novel and I look forward to hearing more from this writer.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Redwood Court
by DéLana R. A. Dameron
Pub Date February 6, 2024
Random House, The Dial Press
ISBN: 9780593447024

from the publisher

“Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write ’em in your books and show everyone who we are.”

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they’ve built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.