What I read: September edition
Spooky season, beautiful work, and a killer mystery.
This month, I read:
A fun, YA spook,
A game changer book I’ve been working through for a while,
A novel straight out of recent history, and
A new release from The Modern Maven of Murder Mystery.
Bittersweet in the Hollow by Kate Pearsall
“The Appalachians are among the oldest mountains in the world, once connected to the same ancient range as the Scottish Highlands. These hills and hollows are where legends and lore thrive, alive and well. Mine is a story of being lost for a night in the vastness of the National Forest, of fearing the unknown and what may be hiding in shadows of the deepest dark. But make no mistake, it’s far from the only mystery held beneath these ancient peaks. And as much as I want to forget, I know that sometimes secrets are seeds, just waiting for the right conditions to sprout. The deeper you bury them, the stronger they grow.“
Really enjoyed the premise of this one: the James family has lived in the shadows of Appalachia for generations. The women of this family have shared their healing abilities with the folks of Caball Hallow since the first James woman mysteriously stepped out of the woods long ago.
But this small West Virginia town has secrets and legends, and the James name is tangled up in nearly all of them. The current family members include three generations, and four sisters growing up in modern Appalachia at the diner their family runs, where they whip up more than pancakes and folk medicine from scratch.
Last year, during a town festival on the summer solstice, Linden James disappeared into the woods. She is returned to her family the next day with no memories of what occurred that night, but is plagued by nightmares. When another young woman disappears on the same night a year later, Linden is determined to remember what happened to her so that nothing bad befalls her friend.
This book had it all: Southern Gothic, folk lore and medicine, and modern Appalachia. It got a bit crazy plot-wise as Pearsall tried to wrap it all up, and I felt like it had the typical YA lack of depth. But overall, this was a fun autumn read with the right amount of spook.
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.
This book is one I’ll heartily recommend to every woman (and those who love those women). It has been an education, a shift in perspective, and a tool to unpack the narrow view our culture holds about female sexuality.
This book is about sex, but it’s about so much more than sex. I think Dr. Nagoski says it best herself, so I’m going to leave it to her:
“I wrote this book to teach women to live with confidence and joy. I don’t have all the answers—I don’t even have half the answers. The science is constantly growing and expanding—so more insight, more clarity will come. In this book, I’ve presented some of the answers that I’ve seen help women, and I hope I’ve done it im a way that heals and renews and expands your sexuality.
This world is full of fun, exciting, entertaining things that draw and hold our attention. But the structure of the truth is quieter, slower, more personal, and so much more interesting than mere entertainment.
Trust your body.”
Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
“He was a moving statue, made to stand in a great square and eke out noise. He mattered and didn’t, just as my own history did and didn’t. Just like the fathers I knew, who were there—they cast huge shadows and never sank—but were also ciphers, names that survived in our minds because of how deftly they evaded stable meaning.
I wondered too—here my mind sharpened and wouldn’t let me skim—if I’d be this kind of silty half-entity for my own daughter.
I knew that I wanted to be more than a Rorschach, more legible than a symbol, more vivid and musical, at least to the kid, than even the most laureled statue could ever be. I wanted to be real in a way that history wasn’t, and realized, listening to the new president, that I didn’t yet know how, couldn’t fathom where to begin.
I pulled out my phone and opened the camera, stretched my arm unprayerfully toward the stage and took a picture…”
This one started with such strength, but as short as it was, meandered through the second half. That’s tough to pull off in a book as thin as this one.
Such a cool premise: a young campaign worker pulls long hours for the first Black candidate for president, who is never named and simply called “the Senator” throughout. The reality of life on the campaign trail keeps young David away from the utopian ideals of the rhetoric, he is never truly on board with the idea that this man is the great hope for America.
A fascinating puzzle of race, fatherhood, and politics in America, this novel looked at the rise of this storied politician from the inside. And though it is a novel, the author worked on Obama’s campaign, so it seems there are some grains of truth amidst the rubble foundations of this tale. As David begins to move his way up the ladder, he begins to see the wheel of politics churning at a national level: ostentatious fundraisers and strategies for winning the votes of a particular neighborhood.
And each time David actually meets the Senator, it’s at a moment of total humanness (aka: not a great moment for either of them). I appreciated the depth and complexity with which this novel approached the often mythic remembrances of the 2008 campaign, and also the portrayal of the Senator as a real person with skin on who sometimes just wanted a smoke.
All told, it was an interesting retelling of this period of American life, but it did somewhat strangely meander through the second half. Could’ve been tighter on the telling, but it did feel a bit like a modern classic that I would’ve had on a syllabus for a college English class. Lots to ponder on.
The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley
“Born of the unknown depths of the wood: an image from a medieval woodcut, a dark folktale to frighten badly behaved children. In the modern world, a world of busyness, of speed and connection, they make no sense. But here among the trees, hidden from moonlight and starlight, it is as if the modern world is the fairy tale: other and strange.”
Lucy Foley is consistently the most intriguing murder mystery writer. There is always a killer premise, mixed with a lot of intrigue and various lesser, but no less fascinating, mysteries.
Set at opening weekend of a brand new wellness retreat, Francesca has seen to it that no expense is spared for her guests. The resort above the sea glistens with outdoor chandeliers and crystal goblets, the CBD oil cocktail is poured with a heavy hand, and the guests are dressed to impress. But this resort is built on land that encroaches on the forests that hold dark secrets.
The legend of The Birds is a whisper on the lips of those who have grown up in the town. Local folklore has it that if you write down a wrong done to you and take it to the Tree of A Thousand Eyes in the midst of the ancient forest, The Birds will get your revenge for you. And the townsfolk are not pleased with this new resort that continues to edge farmers from their land and prefers to ship in goods than support the local economy.
But Francesca, the owner of The Manor, whose touch turns all of her investments to gold, is certain this weekend will go off without a hitch. But someone won’t make it through opening weekend alive. And Francesca has secrets of her own, darker than the woods she refuses to enter.
This read was like Nine Perfect Strangers mixed with Pretty Little Liars, but wholly different. Such a stellar plot and I was guessing until the final page!
Join me here next month for more reads!