Review: The Lost Story (by Meg Shaffer)

My Rating: 5 stars

 

I had read Meg Shaffer’s debut The Wishing Game last year and absolutely adored it.  That story was an imaginative, bookish take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was both charming and endearing.  This time around, with The Lost Story, Shaffer takes her inspiration from another children’s classic, The Chronicles of Narnia, while also paying tribute to fairy tales and the world of make-believe in the process. 

 

In all honesty, I don’t have words to describe how I felt reading this beautifully written story – one that drew me in from the very first page and I never wanted to end.  This was such a fun, delightful, charming story – truly a fairytale in every way, from its structure (with its storyteller who begins the story with “once upon a time” and ends it with “happily ever after”) to its magical, make-believe world consisting of castles and unicorns, heroes and heroines, knights in shining armor, villains that disappear and reappear in puffs of smoke, animals with the intelligence of humans, huge thousand feet trees with leaves in every color of the rainbow, etc. – yet on the other hand, this was also a very “adult” story that dealt with some very real and difficult issues (such as abuse, discrimination, bullying, for example).  Just like in a fairy tale, there was a deeply profound and meaningful moral lesson buried underneath the fantastical elements, but everything blended together so seamlessly that, at times, it was easy to get lost in the tale itself. There was so much to love with this one:  the characters were wonderfully-rendered and I actually loved all of them (Rafe, Jeremy, Emilie, Skya, as well as all the supporting characters) from the moment I met them within the first few pages, but I especially loved the way the characters interacted with each other; the descriptions of both the real and fantasy worlds were breathtaking and so well done that I definitely felt like I was completely immersed in a different time and place; the humor was also wonderfully done and there were so many scenes that had me laughing so hard, I started getting stomach cramps; most important of all however, was the underlying “lost and found” storyline (especially the one involving Rafe and Jeremy) that was both powerful and moving. 

 

This was no doubt an emotional read for me – a roller coaster ride that had me laughing one minute and crying the next.  At the same time, I also couldn’t help feeling a bit nostalgic and wistful due to all the memories that this brought back from my childhood – as an avid reader, I of course read everything I could get my hands on, but I especially loved fairy tales.  One of my favorite books growing up was a special hardbound edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I had read so much that it eventually fell apart to the point that I was forced to get rid of it (which still pains me when I think about it even now).  The fact that I essentially stopped reading fairy tales after that incident (plus my reading tastes after I became an adult were markedly different from what I used to read as a child), made the nostalgia feel even more poignant.  Getting the chance to revisit this aspect of my childhood through Shaffer’s story was definitely a welcome escape from all the craziness that has been a part of my life in recent months.

I don’t want to say much more about this book because revealing too many details would spoil the magic.  If you loved Shaffer’s debut The Wishing Game as much as I did, definitely pick up this sophomore novel of hers – it’s written in the same vein, yet also vastly different in many aspects.  Even though I ended up loving this one just a tad bit more, both are amazing reads that I highly, highly recommend!

Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley.

Review: The Briar Club (by Kate Quinn)

 My Rating: 4.5 stars

 

As I continue to work my way through my toppling summer reading TBR, I’ve been trying to prioritize works by my favorite authors first and foremost.  Last week, I finished the latest new release by Liz Moore (which I loved) and this week, it’s Kate Quinn’s turn.  I’ve read and loved most of Quinn’s 20^th century historical novels and her newest work, The Briar Club, is of course no exception.  This time around, Quinn takes on 1950s America at the height of McCarthy’s Red Scare, with both the Korean War as well as the aftermath of WWII playing minor roles in the backgrounds of a few of the characters.  At the center of the story is the Briarwood House, an all-female boardinghouse in Washington D.C., where, on Thanksgiving Day 1954, a murder has just taken place and the police are on-site investigating.  As the police get ready to interview witnesses (of whom there are many – the tenants of the boardinghouse as well as various friends and relatives), we are taken back through the past 4 years leading up to this point, starting from the day that mysterious widow Grace March moves into the closet-like room on the top floor and starts a Thursday night supper club that ends up drawing her eclectic mix of neighbors together.

 

The structure of the story is a unique one – in between a narrative that alternates between the perspectives of each of the characters where we learn their varying backstories, there are short interstitial sections that return us again and again to the present storyline in 1954, each time revealing more clues about the murder currently being investigated.  All these threads converge into an unexpected plot twist in the end that actually had me going back through some of the chapters trying to understand how I missed some of the clues that were staring me in the face. Also, one of the things I found different about this novel compared to Quinn’s previous ones is that the historical elements were more subtle, blended seamlessly into the various characters’ backstories to the point that you kind of have to pay close attention in order to notice them.  In this regard, Quinn’s Author Note – which she deliberately puts at the end of the book because it reveals spoilers from the story – is a must-read, as it provides much of the historical context for both the story as well as the characters.

 

Those who’ve read Quinn’s previous historical novels will notice that she went in a slightly different direction with this one (both story and structure-wise), but one aspect that’s a constant with her works is the focus on strong yet flawed female protagonists and the friendships (as well as rivalries) that are formed as the story progresses.  It is also worth mentioning that the tone of this novel overall is much lighter than that of Quinn’s past works, with some subtle humor interspersed throughout the story that is not usually present in her other novels.  The biggest indication of this, in my opinion, exists in the interstitial sections from the “present” 1954 timeline, which are all told from the perspective of the Briarwood boarding house (yes, you read that right – the house actually narrates those portions of the story) in contrast to the rest of the chapters which are told from the actual characters’ perspectives.  I found this narrative structure quite interesting and in this case, it worked well for the story that Quinn was trying to tell.

 

I definitely enjoyed this one, though admittedly, it’s not my favorite of Quinn’s novels (which has more to do with me than her, as this particular historical setting – 1950s America, specifically Washington D.C. amidst McCarthyism – is one that I’ve never been too keen on).  With that said, the writing is brilliant (as expected), but what blew me away the most is how Quinn wrote her characters – every single character has a distinctive personality as well as a unique backstory to match, yet the way the characters interact with each other when they come together as a group felt so natural.  These are characters that, when I got to the end of the story, I honestly did not want to part with and would’ve absolutely been happy reading more about them -- if Quinn ever decides to continue any of these characters’ stories in future works, I am totally there for it!

 

Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.

Review: The God of the Woods (by Liz Moore)

 My Rating: 5 stars

With summer in full swing, I’ve been trying to catch up on all the reading I had planned to do, which, admittedly, has not been easy given the many other obligations that I’ve been trying to juggle as well.  Having said that, I’m working through my stack slowly but surely, prioritizing the “must-reads” by favorite authors that I’ve been looking forward to for months.  One of those favorite authors is Liz Moore, whose 2 previous works Long Bright River (2020) and The Unseen World (2016) I had read and loved.  Moore’s newest novel, The God of the Woods, is her most ambitious novel to date and absolutely a brilliantly written masterpiece!

 

This intricately crafted, multi-layered story weaves together several complex threads, told from the perspectives of multiple complicated (and often morally ambiguous) characters, to create a wonderfully nuanced narrative that I honestly could not put down (despite clocking in at nearly 500 pages, I flew through this one in two sittings).  The story begins with a mystery – the disappearance of teenager Barbara Van Laar from a family run summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains (in New York) – but when it is revealed that another Van Laar child had also disappeared from the same family compound 14 years ago (Barbara’s older brother Bear), the possible connection between the two cases leads to a riveting exploration of family dynamics and much, much more.  This is truly a wide-reaching novel that covers many themes and social issues, including family and marriage struggles, parent/child relationships, class disparities and the implications of these differences on the rich vs the poor, gender discrimination, land conservation vs exploitation of nature, coming of age, identity and belonging, abuse and neglect vs caretaking and found family, inequalities within the criminal justice system, etc.  At the same time, there are also historical elements that Moore incorporated into the narrative that aren’t readily apparent without reading the Author’s Note (which I highly recommend). 

 

There is so much to unpack with this story, yet at the same time, it’s not the overly complex type of story where you have to read it several times to understand what it’s trying to say. In addition to the mystery / suspense element being superbly done (at multiple points when I thought I had figured out the ending, turns out I was completely wrong), the atmospheric nature of the writing (to the point that I felt transported back to a different time and place) gave this a historical fiction feel, while the extensive coverage of various contemporary social issues also made the story and characters highly relatable. 

 

One of the things I love about Moore (in addition to her knack for creating memorable characters that I can’t help stop thinking about) is her ability to take a subject that I’m usually not too keen on reading about (i.e. drug addiction/opioid crisis, computer science and technology, environmentalism) and craft such an emotionally compelling story around it that it piques my interest and I find myself wanting to read/learn more about the subject.

 

This brilliant, genre-defying novel is the perfect summer read and one that I highly, highly recommend.  If this is your first-time reading Moore’s novels, this is a great place to start, but definitely go back and read her previous novels as well, if you can (I myself still have to read her first 2 novels, which are on my list to get to at some point).  I can’t wait for what Moore decides to write next – hopefully we’ll hear something soon!

 

Received ARC from Riverhead Books via NetGalley.