Well, here’s to a pretty good reading start in 2024. I guess there’s a perk to the fact that I’ve pretty much been sick since NOVEMBER! I had non-Covid and then I had Covid and then when the Covid was gone I was back to just the standard non-Covid still coughing my head off but still having to go about my daily business. At least I was able to read some books, right? For the first time in years my goodreads challenge tells me I’m actually ahead of schedule! Let’s dive in!
Synopsis
When Shelby Tebow goes missing, everyone looks toward the husband. It’s always the husband, you know? But then seeds of doubt are planted when local doula, Meredith Dickey, and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish without a trace. Eleven years after their disappearance, Delilah reappears, and her return calls into question everything previously thought about what happened to the missing women. The book bounces back and forth in time and between the perspectives of Meredith, the Dickeys’ neighbor Kate, Delilah, and Leo, Meredith’s other child. As these threads are all woven together, we get a clearer picture of everyone’s relationships to one another.
Review
Reviewing a book like this one is extremely difficult, because I can’t be completely candid about my thoughts. My main issues with this book surrounds motivation, action vs. inaction, and decision-making on the part of the characters. I found myself immensely frustrated at many junctures, not to mention utterly perplexed at how some things could even be possible. Too much wound up conveniently working out against all odds just to fool us into believing one thing over another.
I can definitely attest to this one being twisty, and admittedly I didn’t see a couple of the twists coming. But, honestly, that’s mostly due to the fact that much of this book doesn’t make a lot of sense. The villain? Without trying to give anything away, I will say that this person was completely different in the first half of the book than in the second. Such a rapid 180 is jarring, and I don’t think misrepresentation is the same thing as strategic misdirection. After things come to light, they seem to vacillate between utterly devoid of compassion to scared and desperate, which really muddles the whole concept of motive. Are you a sociopath or a freaking mouse just trying not to get caught in the trap? Also, there were just so many red herrings. I think literally everyone must have been a suspect at one point, some for pretty dumb reasons.
Delilah’s story in the beginning was great. It was riveting, moving, terrifying. Then the story lost something when we abruptly dropped her narrative and picked up with everyone else, and her story we only see through the eyes of Leo from that point forward. Leo’s perspective just seems utterly unnecessary and useless in hindsight. His is a very interesting perspective, but its potential also gets lost amongst all the other stuff going on. I don’t even want to get into how I felt about where Delilah’s character wound up. Suffice to say, she did not get the due diligence she deserved and that’s very disappointing. Honestly, I feel like she could have had a whole separate book dedicated to her story. That was much more compelling than Meredith’s.
Simply put, I think Kubica simply tried to include too much in this book, and that basically cheated each separate part out of its power to move the reader. A standard criticism I see from readers across the board about Kubica is the writing is pretty lackluster and simple. The appeal of her books is much more about the surprises she has lurking around the corners than in her skill as a wordsmith. I do feel that was made less obvious by the fact that I listened to this one. A good audiobook narrator can make the flow of the narration more pleasing to the ear and less disjointed than it is on the page. Despite what I saw as some pretty major flaws, I still found myself enjoying most of this book, It brought forth a gasp or two and I at least felt something for most of the characters involved. Overall, I give this one 3 stars.
Published May 18, 2021 by Harlequin Audio. ISBN 9781488211690. Runtime 11 hrs. 40 mins. Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Jennifer Jill Araya, Gary Tiedemann and Jesse Vilinsky.
So, naturally, if I add the category of “Productivity Book,” to my reading challenge for this year, the Universe sends me a sign. It took one look inside my closets and kitchen pantry and sighed heavily. Unsurprisingly, the very same week, this delightful little tome shows up on Hoopla under my “Recommended for You” titles. Thanks, Universe. I feel very seen and judged right now. 
Louisa Morgan is a fairly prolific writer of modern fantasy, especially the ever-popular witchy titles. This is the first of hers I’ve read (I feel like I say that a lot about a lot of authors, so shame on me). I actually chose this one because my 9-year-old picked it up in the library and liked the cover art. I assured her it probably wasn’t suitable for a reader of her age but I would take it. HA! As I suspected, it was definitely an adult read. 
Unfortunately this will be the last of my 2023 backlog that I’m going to fully review. All of the others I’m just posting quick little goodreads review and starting fresh in 2024 with the blog. I got way too far behind. But this book deserves the full treatment, because Kristin Hannah has an absolute gift. She’s an incredibly versatile author, and though her books often vary in subject matter and time period, they always contain the same elements that elevate them above many other books written by her contemporaries. They manage to contain all the sheer beauty and brutality of life in such an authentic way. In The Great Alone, she allows the setting of a remote and unforgiving corner of the Alaskan wilderness to perfectly encapsulate the tone of this story. Life is brutal. Life is beautiful. Life will gut you and leave you breathless with ecstatic wonder. 
I am far from the Taylor Jenkins Reid fangirl. This is only the second of hers that I’ve read, though I do plan on picking up more in the future. I feel like readers are in one of two camps with her (usually.) Either you love her stuff or you’re dropping one star reviews simply because she’s permanently ensconced in the popular fiction camp. Frankly, I’ve never thought the latter of the two philosophies to be entirely fair to anyone, not the author nor the readers devoted to their works. Then again, for me a one star review means something is either highly offensive or is just so bad in every single facet to the point I can’t find any redeeming qualities. Those are few and far between. Though, reviews are purely subjective. One person’s masterpiece is another person’s trash. Frankly, that’s what makes literature and life so compelling. 
Coming in at only 166 pages, this little volume barely constitutes a book, but it manages to just tip the scale between novella and novel. This is deliberate on the part of Coetzee who has opted for what is described as “late style.” This phrase was coined in 1937 by philosopher Theodor Adorno who described it this way: “The maturity of the late works does not resemble the kind one finds in fruit. They are for the most part not round, but furrowed, even ravaged. Devoid of sweetness, bitter and spiny, they do not surrender themselves to mere delectation.” In hindsight, that does perfectly summarize this book. We see an aging artist laid bare, stripped down to the raw and ravaged sinew of a once formidable body. Even the cover of the book is simple and abrupt. The keys of the piano as shown are reduced to one octave ranging from A to G. Even this seems to suggest the shortening of time as one inches closer to mortality. 
Adrienne Young is quite the prolific author, predominantly writing young adult fantasy but branching out lately to release more adult material. I’ve been under a rock, apparently, because this beautiful novel is the first of hers I’ve had the pleasure of reading. The Unmaking of June Farrow follows, you guessed it, June Farrow. She’s the last in a long line of Farrow women, women who are cursed to suffer the slow descent into mental decline. June is determined to be the last of this cursed line. She will remain alone, never to bring a daughter into the world to suffer the same fate. Now in her thirties, the hallucinations begin and June prepares herself for the end. However, as the hallucinations become ever more powerful, June begins to suspect there’s more to the story of the Farrow women than she’s previously been told. They aren’t just different. They are special in a way the rest of the world could never understand. The more she uncovers, the more June realizes she may not just have to let the curse die with her. She could stop it from plaguing future generations of her family once and for all. 
Philip Marsh was a local author, poet, and licensed clinical social worker based in the Ozarks where I live. I never got the chance to meet him, but I do know his brother, a lawyer in Springfield, who passed along Philip’s novel to me. The author passed away in March of 2021 from complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis, a disease he’d battled for almost 40 years. Despite these trials in his life, Marsh managed to truly leave his mark on the community in which he lived. Apples of Stone was his only novel. It is very loosely based on the Times Beach, Missouri, environmental disaster. If you mention Times Beach to any Missouri native who was alive and coherent in the 80’s, you’ll probably receive a somber nod of recognition. It was a big deal, and a ghost town was left in its wake to prove just what a big deal it was. 
A Librarian and Her Books 