Tuesday Book Review

Five-star review of A House Between Sea and Sky by Beth Cato

 

What do you get when you mix Hollywood folks in need of direction, a sourdough starter that’s older than time, a mysterious house on a cliff in Carmel in the 1920s, and Russian folklore and witches and throw in a dash of Agatha Christie and a pinch of PTSD? This wonderful read, of course. The magic makes sense and the characters are multidimensional, as in other books I’ve read by Beth Cato. Houses narration of parts of the story made me chuckle and smile. I second other reviewers’ wish for another book about Mother and House. Very satisfying ending. I wish I could end my stories so well. 

Tuesday Book Review

Four-star review of The Wedding People by Alison Espach

I enjoyed the humor sprinkled throughout this story  of a depressed woman, Phoebe, whose meeting with the people attending a wedding in Newport makes a difference in her life. The casual references to sex seemed gratuitous to someone of my generation. Otherwise, I liked many of the characters and they all were well-described, with quirks and foibles. I listened to the audiobook and the descriptions put me in every scene. The ending didn’t resolve everyone’s story, although Phoebe was more hopeful about her future. I wish I cared more about what that would be. 

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

Four-star review of Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum

This Korean novel was as much a treatise on the philosophy of choosing a job that can make you happy as it was a fictional story. The writing style was sometimes awkward, but that could have been the translation. Yeong-Ju isn’t happy in her IT job or her marriage. After her divorce, she opens her childhood dream of a bookshop in a quiet neighborhood. The shop evolves over time into more than a bookstore but also a meeting place with a coffee counter and book clubs. The friendships that develop among the characters was one of the more interesting parts of the book.