The Vera Wong books are so enjoyable, especially as audiobooks. I wish I had a Vera in my life (and yet, I also really don't... you'll understand when you read them!) This sequel may have been even better than the first one, which is hard to do. I hope we're gifted a 3rd book in the series soon!

Great summer read. Perfect getaway.

A true crime writer is investigating two deaths that took place years apart at a Vermont Orphanage. She has been hired to be a ghostwriter for an author writing a story about the abuse at the orphanage, and is researching background. At the orphanage, in 1968 a young boy was found drowned, at the lake. Fifty years later his murder has never been solved, and a new victim has been discovered in the same spot at the same lake. Is there a connection? Kept me guessing. I love me a good mystery.

I really enjoyed this novel. I was inspired to read it after hearing the author speak and read excerpts from her book at EMPL. It is a fast read about why Grace left her family years ago.

this is a sad as well as a heart warming story. children losing a parent at such and young age and while they are grieving the other parent needs to go to rehab. the children manage to get through the summer with the help of there uncle. the children also help the uncle who is still grieving the loss of his partner 4 years later. by the end of the summer Patrick is ready and get back to living I cried at the end of the book

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.

I liked this book very much. It was a nicely written book with some difficult plot lines dealing with spousal abuse and homelessness. So there were times that I had to stop reading the book.

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.

Sophie is celebrating her 16th birthday party at her father and step-mothers lavish but perhaps haunted home in the Texas Hill country. There is a large cast of characters that may initially seem unrelated, and many red herrings. I felt it was a bit slow in the beginning, but the stage had to be set. Slowly surprising secrets are revealed. Read for detail, but even so this one is so twisted I didn’t have a clue. Good guys and bad guys are not always obvious in this one. A good read.

Molly Jong-Fast created a “can’t look away from this vessel careening rapidly toward a cliff kind of memoir.” I would never have guessed that life with Erica Jong, the author of The Fear of Flying, and lovely celebrity of the 70’s could have been such a mess . What’s even more unbelievable is that the author and celebrity is still alive in 2025. There is so much name dropping in this Memoir of a Daughter, one might suspect that the work is actually fiction. I remember reading novels by Molly’s grandfather, Howard Fast, in the 70’s. Molly wails that she could never get enough time with her mother who is still raging alcoholic. Molly also identifies as an alcoholic and talks about her drug use in the past but says she has been sober for some 20 years. She works as a journalist and political pundit, has a wonderful husband and three terrific kids and actually acknowledges that her life is a form of normal. There is love on every page of this book or I might have simply put it down with all the sadness that also occupies almost every page.