This was another amazing book by Kristin Harmel. It’s a dual timeline set in the time leading up to WWII and WWII itself in Paris and 2018 in Boston. It explores an intriguing theme of moral ambiguities. What if someone is doing what’s considered immoral but for a good cause? In this book, the main character, Collette’s family is descended from the legendary Robin Hood. They have succeeded in following Robin Hood’s mission from stealing from the rich to give to the poor. At the age of 10, Collette learns the family trade of being a jewel thief. It all seems to go well for her and her mother Annabel until a tragic event that shakes the family to the core during WWII. It was a mission to steal some jewelry back for their Jewish friends who were sent away to the death camp. But, it ends up going horribly wrong and has Collette losing her mother and 4 year old sister, Liliane in one instant. Flash forward to 2018 in Boston and at 89, Collette is still a successful jewel thief, still stealing from evil people with wealth, to benefit the disadvantaged or for a mission to fund a Holocaust education center in Boston. What she didn’t expect was one of the bracelets of the dear friends her family lost in the war on that tragic night to turn up again. The same one her sister had on her person all those years ago when she disappeared. This leads to the mystery of where it came from and the story flashes between two timelines to fill in the gaps of what happened all those years ago. Like many of her other books, this was a quick read. In fact, I finished it in a day. It’s a testament to her engaging characters and compelling storytelling that tugs at your heartstrings. I highly recommend this book.

I chose this book because I saw it in the East Meadow Newsletter and It was last months Book Club pick.

Another book in the Shana Merchant series. Another good one!

This book was really well written and was very interesting. A lot of the book was fun since it mentioned a lot of literary classics. The first 3/4 of the book are great. Once you get to the end and they start revealing the twists is when things go off the rails. I am all for twists, red herrings and suspending belief for the sake of the story, but the biggest reveal felt so arbitrary, it really felt tacked on. I wish the author worked harder on the reasoning for that instead of adding so many reveals.

This book was very disappointing to me. It was entirely too long and drawn out. The characters (especially the main one Olivia) was annoying and held no accountability to her own faults. The plot got more and more ridiculous and should have been solved easily if people just communicated. Lastly the agenda pushing was over the top, it made the book even harder to get through.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this biography, but it slowed significantly later on. Dani was raised in an orthodox Jewish family. As an adult, she takes a DNA test and discovers that her biological father was not Jewish. This completely alters her image of herself, and she proceeds to investigate how it is possible that her dad is not her biological father, and her parents, no longer alive, never told her. It turns out that she was conceived in the early time of artificial insemination, when little was known about it. She attempts to find family who can help her understand her history, and to find her biological father. Add a star or 2 if you or someone close to you has an unknown parent.

This is a dual time line story -- the present and Poland during the Nazi takeover. I am a fan of Kelly Rimmer's books and liked this one, too.

Two strangers meet in a London airport, but are they really strangers? She has secrets. He is unhappy. It all leads to murder. The book was ok, but not great.

It feels so good to have a new Adriana Triggiani book to get lost in this summer. Jess Capodimonte Baratta is part of a big, messy, loving family that lives in Lake Como, NJ. Triggiani weaves her story full of wonderful characters between life in New Jersey and life in Lake Como in the Tuscany region of Italy. The work includes lots of Italian food and cultural descriptions that were so important in Triggiani’s prior stories. Jess works for her uncle Lou who owns a company that supplies white and blue marble sourced in Italiy for customers in NJ. We learn about the process of removing the marble from the hilltops. There is romance, culture, possible criminal involvement and amazing word pictures describing the beauty of the people, food, hills and lakes. I did not want this book to end.

Unlikable characters, a ridiculous amount of Taylor Swift mentions, absolutely no plausibility and the most outrageous sense of ‘justice’- this book was not for me