Author: Yangtze Choo

This is the second book I’ve read from Reese Witherspoon’s picks. I was amazed that our library had it and that it only took a couple of weeks for it to be available to me. I didn’t like the first one I read from her list so I was a bit hesitant on this one.

Jilin and her step-brother Shin are named for two of the five virtues of Confucius. When Ren reveals that he and his dead twin are also name after the virtues you know you will eventually find the fifth virtue. All through the book their lives are connected either physically or in dreams.

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Author: Matthew Thomas

I think I picked this book up at the thrift store on Texada. On a recent trip to the studio I finished the book I was reading and needed a new one; I pulled this one from the cupboard.

The novel tells the story of a family, Ed, Eileen and their son Connell, but the story is told mostly from Eileen’s point of view. At the beginning of the novel we hear about her life with her Irish family and the plans she has for her life; when she meets and marries Ed it doesn’t all turn out the way she had planned.

Ed becomes a victim of early onset Alzheimers. I’ve read a lot of novels with Alzheimers as a theme but I don’t think I’ve ever read one any better than this; the descriptions of what each of the characters are going through seems very realistic.

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Author: Ann Cleeves

I was surprised that when I looked over my Ann Cleeves books that I had only read one of the Shetland series. I guess having watched three seasons on Netflix I assumed I had read more. I have the first in the series wait-listed at the library and I’ll go through them all eventually.

White Nights refers to the “midnight sun” in Scotland. Apparently it makes everyone in the Shetlands just a little bit crazier. This is the book where Jimmy Perez’s future wife appears. It’s a good mystery and there would be no way the reader could figure it out. Loved it to the very end.

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Author: Delia Owens

On a recent trip to the library to check out a book the clerk told me that one of the books I had ordered wasn’t available; our library didn’t have it and it was too recent to be available through an inter-library loan. However, they had acquired another book I had requested (long enough ago that I had forgotten about it).

Kya, the Marsh Girl, lives in a shack in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She has been abandoned by everyone in her family – her older siblings, her mother, her brother and, finally, her father when she is just ten. She attended school for only one day; the teasing of the other kids was too much and she never went back.

Alone in the marsh and swamps she survives on seafood, selling it in exchange for gas for her father’s old boat. As she matures she has two relationships – both of which end with her being abandoned – and a flourishing career as an artist, writer and an expert on the marsh. When one of her admirers is found dead Kya is charged with murder and faces the death penalty.

I kept hoping throughout the trial that none of the people who had been kind to Kya was the murderer. The ending was quite a surprise.

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