Reported by Kristin
By Book or by Crook by Eva
Gates was declared to be a “cute little cat mystery” with a heroine named Lucy
working in a lighthouse turned library. These stories never stay idyllic, so when
a valuable book is stolen and a board member murdered, Lucy finds that her job
turns from librarian to sleuth (other duties as assigned?) all too quickly. Our
Nevermore member found this first in series book to be a light, fun read.
The same reader picked up The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn
Hardcastle by Stuart Turton and had a bit of a harder time with it, as the
story is told from so many different viewpoints. Nevermore reviews have been
mixed on this bestseller which is a dinner party murder mystery, but with a
twist—Aiden, one of the guests, lives the day of the murder over and over but
in the body of a different person each time. It’s up to Aiden to solve the
murder, or die trying.
Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon is
another return to an earlier time, 1937 when the dirigible Hindenburg begins
its final flight. Told from the viewpoints of a cabin boy, a newspaper
reporter, and a stewardess, the days leading up to the disaster are revealed.
Our reader thought that the author definitely had her own theories on what
caused the airship to burst into flames. This book comes highly recommended and
our reader is eagerly seeking out other books by Lawhon.
All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy’s
1968 Tour of Appalachia by Matthew Algeo touched our next reader in
a personal way. Kennedy had come to the heart of eastern Kentucky, an area
close to our reader’s home. She exclaimed that she learned so many things by
reading this book, and empathized with the people in those poorest communities
visited by the Senator. She also noted that even though people in that area
were in deep poverty, most of them still had a roof over their heads even if it
was just a tar paper shack.
Finally, another reader was intrigued by The Parable of the
Sower by Octavia Butler. Written in 1993 but set in the futuristic 2025,
this dystopian novel tells the tale of empathetic Lauren Olamina, a young woman
who feels others’ pain in a dangerous world of walled communities surrounded by
near anarchy. Lauren must depend on her family and her neighbors in a world
where water is scarce, police and fire services must be paid by the
individuals, and where bodies are all too often found in the surrounding
foothills. Another reader chimed in saying she enjoyed Butler’s writing, and
planned to seek out more.
