A Word About Awards

CIRCE by Madeline Miller   Awards: Goodreads Winner 2018   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2019, Dublin Longlist 2020, Women’s Prize Finalist 2019   Date Read: January 14, 2025   From Kirkus Reviews: “A  retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch. “Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for  The Song of Achilles  (2012). This time, she dips into  The Odyssey  for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their c...

THE SPANISH LOVE DECEPTION by Elena Armas   Award: Goodreads Winner 2021   Date Read: July 31, 2024   Seeing as I’ve been into the romance genre a lot lately, this one was the perfect balance between smut and sweet. Aaron is pure heart and already knows what he wants: Lina. And Lina only knows what she doesn’t want: Aaron and to open herself up to ridicule again.   When a family wedding in Spain threatens to expose Lina’s lies of having a boyfriend, Aaron eagerly jumps at the chance, convincing her he’s her only choice. And you almost wonder why he’s so eager to take on such a tedious task. But subtle hints here and there show he has feelings for Lina.   Of course, during the magic of their Spain adventure, Lina and Aaron are able to overcome their differences and discover they have amazing chemistry, heat and feelings for each other. The only thing standing in their way is Lina’s fear of being ridiculed for sleeping with the boss, which Aaron is poised to becom...

DAISY JONES & THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid   Award: Goodreads Winner 2019   Date Read: January 28, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ What ever happened to Daisy Jones and The Six, the iconic 1970s rock band that topped the charts and sold out stadiums? It’s always been a mystery why the musicians suddenly disbanded.   Reid ( The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , 2017, etc.) takes an unusual approach to dissecting the breakup of the fictional rock band by offering a narrative composed solely of transcribed interviews. At the center of the documentary-style novel is the relationship between lead singer Billy Dunne, recovering addict and aspiring family man, and sexy bad girl Daisy Jones, whose soulful voice and complex lyrics turn out to have been the missing ingredient The Six needed. When Daisy joins the band, the group catapults to fame, but not without cost. She refuses to simply fall in line and let Billy make the artistic decisions. In doing this, not only does s...

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Stedman   Award: Goodreads Winner 2012 Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2014, Women's Prize Longlist 2013   Date Read: August 17, 2012   After four harrowing years on the Western front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel.   Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are rem...

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman   Award: Goodreads Winner 2013   Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2015   Date Read: January 10, 2016   From Kirkus Reviews: “ From one of the great masters of modern speculative fiction: Gaiman’s first novel for adults since  Anansi Boys (2005). An unnamed protagonist and narrator returns to his Sussex roots to attend a funeral. Although his boyhood dwelling no longer stands, at the end of the road lies the Hempstock farm, to which he’s drawn without knowing why. Memories begin to flow. The Hempstocks were an odd family, with 11-year-old Lettie’s claim that their duck pond was an ocean, her mother’s miraculous cooking and her grandmother’s reminiscences of the Big Bang; all three seemed much older than their apparent ages. Forty years ago, the family lodger, a South African opal miner, gambled his fortune away, then committed suicide in the Hempstock farmyard. Something dark, deadly and far distant heard his dying lamen...

THE NIGHTINGALE by Kristin Hannah   Award: Goodreads Winner 2015 Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2017   Date Read: January 21, 2016   From Kirkus Review: “Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.   In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged yo...