The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

I'm pretty sure I haven't ever read a Susan Wiggs novel before this one. I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, this novel had me at bookshop (as they all do!) and even though I've had an ARC of this book for months, I finally decided to finish it today, after stopping and starting a few times a few months ago. 

I'll confess I was cruising along with my books, and suddenly this past week I hit a wall again. Just couldn't get through anything. So I am glad I picked this back up again, because I hit that magical place in the book that had me focusing in and forgetting about anything for awhile. Even though I didn't do anything for July 4th but stay home and cook out, I was still feeling a bit of a holiday hangover today. After watering my flowers outside and getting laundry started, I was happy to just stay inside and read. 

This novel really is a nod to booklovers everywhere. Natalie Harper grew up in a bookstore; her mother Blythe operates a family bookshop in a building that has been in the Harper family for 100 years-a coveted building in fashionable San Francisco. After a horrible tragedy, Natalie returns to San Francisco and the bookshop, to take stock of its future, and to take care of Grandy, her grandfather. He'd recently fallen and broken his hip and was now showing signs of early dementia. Natalie had been successful at a wine brokerage firm and while she didn't love her job, she was good at it. But it wasn't hard to leave and return, if only to help her Grandy take care of next steps. 

Those next steps aren't as easy as Natalie expects, when she finds out her Grandy owns the building and the bookstore, and will not sell, even after Natalie realizes they are deep in debt and behind on taxes. What's a bookstore manager to do, but try and build up the business with a huge author event that could help pay bills and give the store much needed advertising?

Natalie also meets Peach Gallagher, a local "hammer guy" who specializes in fixing old buildings. Her mother had arranged for Peach to fix a few things in the building, and Peach is one good looking man. He's also a really decent man, with an adorable daughter who frequents the bookstore. His friendly and calm attitude helps Natalie as she struggles between grief, understanding her grandfather's failing health, and the tough decisions she has to make. 

So we've got a few things running through this story: the struggle to save the bookstore, an ailing grandfather, a potential romance, and a story that's been handed down over the generations about a treasure that's hidden somewhere in the building, left by Grandy's grandmother, who died in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Is it just a fanciful story, or is there treasure lurking somewhere-treasure that could save the business?

I read this novel pretty quickly, and enjoyed it very much. No surprises, just a gentle unfolding of the story. I loved all the book references, and the peeks into what it takes to run a bookstore. Definitely a good vacation book!

This book is out in the U.S. on July 7th in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

Rating: 4/6 for an enjoyable novel about life when it makes a few sharp turns, the importance of family, and of course, the life changing magic of books. Some parts made me a little teary-eyed, so you may need a tissue! 

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The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis

I can't even begin to describe this novel. It was definitely not what I expected when I picked it up at the library last week. I thought it was about a woman's survival in the wild after a plane crash. Well, that's a big part of it, but there's a lot more, and most of that had me scratching my head. 

It's September, 1986 and  seventy-two year old Cloris Waldrip and her husband are flying to a small cabin in the Montana mountains for a weekend getaway. They've traveled from Texas and this is the first vacation they've really had in years. 

They never make it to the cabin. The small plane they are in crashes in the Bitterroot Range, a particularly brutal wilderness in Montana. Cloris is the only survivor. What follows is Cloris' struggle to find her way out of the wilderness and to safety. With minimal tools to help her survive, she is sure to die before help arrives. Yet somehow, Cloris finds help in the wilderness, and with her own will to survive, you know that Cloris is going to make it. Her tale, told twenty years later from ninety-two year old Cloris' apartment in a retirement home in Vermont, is astounding and shows the power of fighting to survive in the worst of circumstances. 

The other side of this story involves Ranger Debra Lewis, who lives and works in the Bitterroot Range. She's a mess--so much of a mess that I had a permanent wince on my face whenever the story turned to her. She's a divorced raging alcoholic. Lewis has bottles of merlot everywhere, and she spends her days drinking wine out of a thermos while working out of the ranger office and driving the mountain roads. It's a lonesome job, and she's got no one. She hears about the plane crash, and even though the pilot and Mr. Waldrip are found dead, Lewis is convinced Mrs. Waldrip has survived and is out in the wilderness somewhere. She decides to pull together a ragtag team of people to start a search for Mrs. Waldrip. It quickly becomes an obsession. 

I've got to say this wasn't at all the novel I expected it to be. I thought it would be a tale of one woman's survival--a woman vs. nature kind of tale. It was that, for sure, but the rest of it was just downright weird. Ranger Lewis and her motley rescue crew are all damaged people with no hope of rescue. And honestly, Lewis' consumption of merlot kind of made me queasy after awhile-and I love wine! So many lost souls. Mrs. Waldrip is one amazing lady, who looks back at her life and ponders decisions she made. She's got plenty of time to reflect, and her aloneness is so very different from Lewis and crew. 

I would love to discuss this novel and talk it out with someone else who has read it. It left me unsettled and uneasy; maybe because the theme of loneliness is overwhelming, and there isn't really a happy ending, or even a peaceful ending for any of the characters. 

Rating: 4/6 for a novel that is about human survival at the most basic level, and also survival when you are lost in the wilderness in your head. Very odd characters, but Mrs. Waldrip's epic adventure is amazing and keeps you reading. 

Available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

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Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis

Freefall by Jessica Barry

A big thanks to Harper Collins for sending me a copy of this novel. I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise. Sometimes being presented with a book is a good thing; it's nice to have someone else say "Here! Read this!" instead of me always deciding what to read next. 

Freefall is a fast paced novel about a plane crash, a woman's struggle to survive the wilderness, and a mother's struggle to understand the reasons her daughter was on a small plane with her fiancé that crashed in the mountains of Colorado. Told in the voices of Allison and her mother Maggie, the novel has short chapters that lend to the increasing urgency of uncovering the mysteries of Allison's life in San Diego. Back in her hometown of Owl's Creek, Maine, Maggie is grieving over the loss of her daughter and having a hard time believing she's dead, since her body has not been found in the plane wreckage. 

You, as the reader, know Allison survived the crash, and although injured, is moving through the Colorado wilderness in search of safety. She knows someone is after her and wants to kill her. 

The plot unfolds over a few weeks, and I have to give a shout out to the author for making Maggie's former career as a librarian an important part of the plot. Feeling restless and needing answers, Maggie returns to her former library to do some investigating online. As she slowly uncovers bits of Allison's life in San Diego, she has more questions than answers, and her feeling that Allison was involved in something dangerous keeps growing stronger. But was Allison involved in something that puts her mother in danger, too?

There's more to the story, of course. Maggie and Allison haven't spoken to each other for over two years, after Maggie's husband and Allison's father died of colon cancer. Maggie has no idea what Allison's been doing with her life, and while we are on Allison's journey with her, we learn what's happened to her, and the downward spiral her life took after her father died. How did Allison go from a bright, ambitious magazine writer to the brittle, controlled finance of a pharmaceutical genius? Her journey is pretty fascinating, and it's also fascinating to see what Maggie uncovers in her quest to understand her daughter's life. 

This is a pretty good thriller, with plenty of moments of high tension. You'll find yourself cheering Allison on as she doesn't give up, but keeps moving forward. Her reflections on her life, her growing terror that her mother is also in danger, and her transformation from a fragile controlled woman to one of independence and strength are all strong elements of the plot. The bad guys in this novel are definitely bad and ruthless. 

Rating: 5/6 for a thriller that grabs you from the first page and keeps you engaged and rooting for both women. As the plot unfolds, danger creeps closer, and you won't be able to put it down. 

Available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

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Freefall by Jessica Barry

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

This book was on my radar, but not on the "I've just got to read it now!" radar.  I put myself on the hold list at the library, but soon realized it would probably be next year before I would reach the top of the list.  That just wouldn't do.  I was contemplating buying the hardcover, when my friend Kirk talked about the book at our monthly book club and offered up his copy to anyone who wanted to read it.  

When the book gods offer up a book you want to read, you take it.  It was immediately bumped up to this month's TBR pile so I wouldn't lose it at home, forget to read it, or have to keep telling Kirk "I'm going to read it soon".  

Before the Fall is a pretty quick read.  Noah Hawley is a very talented writer of tv shows (Fargo, Bones), and that talent shows in the back and forth that happens in the novel.  I'm not giving anything away when I give you the plot of the story:  a very rich couple vacations on Martha's Vineyard in August.  They are heading back to New Jersey on a private plane.  They've invited along another couple, and an artist who's hitching a ride back to New Jersey.  The couple Maggie and David Bateman also have their two kids on board:  nine year old Rachel and four year old JJ.  Also along for the ride is the Bateman's security guard, Gil Baruch.  A simple flight, taking less than an hour.  

Except 16 minutes into the flight, the plane crashes into the ocean.  Only two people survive:  Scott Burroughs, the artist, and little JJ.  

How does the plane crash?  Why?  Was it a mechanical failure, or something more ominous?  There are plenty of possibilities.  The novel moves from Scott's experience after the crash to each person on the plane, and the days leading up to the crash.  One strange bit is that the date of each person's death: August 23, 2015 is the same except for Gil Baruch's:  his is August 26th, 2015.  What the heck does that mean?  

Another kicker:  Scott doesn't remember what happened.  He hit his head, and next thing he knows, he's in the ocean, surrounded by flames.  And then he hears a cry.  It's JJ, floating on a piece of debris.  

It's a pretty good book.  I wouldn't say it's a thriller; more of a mystery.  The novel also looks at the way the 24 hour news treats tragedies; how they treat survivors, and through it all is the sense of how abruptly life can end for some of us without any warning.  What makes this such a big news story is the fact that Bateman was the head of a Fox-like news company (worth millions), and the other couple, Ben and Sarah Kipling, are also millionaires.  And Ben just found out he's going to be indicted for money laundering the next day.  Will they find the plane?  Will the FBI figure out what happened?  And how will Scott move forward, knowing he's got a second chance?

I enjoyed this novel.  It was a complete switch from reading about baking and Vermont.  The ending, oh, it just felt like a punch in the stomach to me.  

Rating:  8/10 for a novel that sucks you into the lives of characters that perish in the first chapter, but haunt you throughout the story.  A good read!

Available in hardcover, e-book, and audio.

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Before the Fall by Noah Hawley