Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Paradise Close  Author: Lisa Russ Spaar  ISBN: 9780892555512 Publisher: Persea Books Type of book: money, wealth, actions, 1914?-2017, time breaks, mental hospital, eating disorders, art, great love, poetry, family mysteries and secrets, Pennsylvania, New York, home   Year it was published: 2022 Summary: In 1971, orphan Marlise Schade—fourteen, anorectic, and evicted from the psychiatric hospital her trust fund can no longer support—finds herself alone in an ancestral home during a blizzard. Marlise’s struggles to survive there become the focal point for a host of imperiled figures, living and dead, whose stories intersect with hers and with forces roiling the U.S. in the ’70s. Decades later, on the brink of Trump’s America, sixty-something Tee Handel is shaken by an inexplicable visitation. For years he’s nursed a deep hurt over his breakup with a captivating artist, spending his days and nights in solitude tinkering with antique clocks. What’s be...

Name of Book: The Five Wounds Author: Kirstin Valdez Quade  ISBN: 9781324020219 Publisher: W Norton  Type of book: New Mexico, small village, community, hermadad, attempted entrepreneurship, generational trauma and poverty, different worlds, teenage motherhood, redemption, cancer diagnosis, relationships, goals,  Year it was published: 2021 Summary: It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path. Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother...

Name of Book: The Shore Author: Katie Runde ISBN: 9781982180171 Publisher: Scribner  Type of book: USA, contemporary, New Jersey, living by beach, brain cancer, mother/daughter relationship, dying father, summer love, necessity, out of towners, jobs, summer season, real estate care company,   Year it was published: 2022 Summary: Set over the course of one summer, this perfect beach read follows a mother and her two daughters as they grapple with heartbreak, young love, and the weight of family secrets. Brian and Margot Dunne live year-round in Seaside, just steps away from the bustling boardwalk, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, making their living by quickly turning over rental houses for tourists. But the family’s future becomes even more precarious when Brian develops a brain tumor, transforming into a bizarre, erratic version of himself. Amidst the chaos and new caretaking responsibilities, Liz still seeks out summer adventu...

 Since end of May, I have been very sick. My six year old got something and passed it to me and my mom, so we are all sick. Perhaps in a day or two I will finish up three reviews that I should have done last month: namely that of Kirstin Valdez Quade, Lisa Russ Spaar and Katie Runde. Still loving fantasy, still having no luck in getting some certain books. Let's see how it will go. I am not surprised by failure. Without further adieu, here are my reading attractions.  Flight of the sparrow by Amy Belding Brown  The lost girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff The tumbling Turner sisters by Juliette Fay  Big girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan  The Martyr by Anthony Ryan  For the throne by Hannah Whitten  The book of Gothel by Mary McMyne  A KILLING IN COSTUMES by Zac Bissonnette  Jewish Noir II by various  The bone flower by Charles Lambert  The monsters we defy by Leslye Penelope  The Jasmine throne by Tasha Suri The oleander sword by Tasha S...

The Poison prince- S.C. Emmett  SR: June 8th, 2022  FR:  June 30th, 2022 The ballad of perilous graves- Alex Jennings  SR: May 25th, 2022 FR: June 8th, 2022 The book of gothel- Mary McMyne  SR: June 30th, 2022 FR:  The German wife- Kelly Rimmer SR: May 25th, 2022 FR:  June 30th, 2022 The martyr- Anthony Ryan SR: June 30th, 2022 FR:  Fish swimming in dappled sunlight- Riku Onda SR: June 8th, 2022 FR: June 30th, 2022 Kalmann- Joachim B. Schmidt  SR: May 25th, 2022 FR: June 8th, 2022 Big girl- Mecca Jamillah Sullivan SR: June 30th, 2022 FR: June 30th, 2022  The Jasmine throne- Tasha Suri  SR: June 30th, 2022 FR:  For the wolf- Hannah Whitten  SR: May 28th, 2022 FR: June 30th, 2022 For the throne- Hannah Whitten SR: June 30th, 2022 FR:  Nonfiction: