Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit

Hello my lovely readers! Another day, another re-read. Let's get into it. 

SYNOPSIS
What if you could live forever? In this timeless story young Winnie Foster learns of a hidden spring in a nearby wood and meets the Tuck family, whose members reveal their astonishing discovery of the spring’s life-changing power. Now Winnie must decide what to do with her newfound knowledge—and the Tucks must decide what to do with her. But it’s not just the curious girl who is interested in their remarkable tale. A suspicious stranger is also searching for the Tucks, and he will stop at nothing until he finds them and uncovers their secret.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Elif Shafak

 

Hello my lovely readers! More and more books are coming off my personal shelves and I'm so happy. This is one of them. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active--for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life--and the lives of others, outcasts like her.

Tequila Leila's memories bring us back to her childhood in the provinces, a highly oppressive milieu with religion and traditions, shaped by a polygamous family with two mothers and an increasingly authoritarian father. Escaping to Istanbul, Leila makes her way into the sordid industry of sex trafficking, finding a home in the city's historic Street of Brothels. This is a dark, violent world, but Leila is tough and open to beauty, light, and the essential bonds of friendship.

In Tequila Leila's death, the secrets and wonders of modern Istanbul come to life, painted vividly by the captivating tales of how Leila came to know and be loved by her friends. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Hello my lovely readers! Re-reading this as an adult made me fall in love with this book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into ten languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

Hello my lovely readers! This was a re-read for me and part of my 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge. I started this book December 28, 2025 and I'm just now finishing it. Woof. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson

 

Hello my lovely readers! This book...whew! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

On December 22, 1984, white New Yorker Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers at point-blank in a New York City subway car. Goetz slipped into the subway tunnels undetected, fleeing the city to evade capture. From the moment Goetz turned himself in, the narrative surrounding the shooting became a matter of extraordinary debate, igniting public outcry and capturing the attention of the nation.

While Goetz's guilt was never in question, media outlets sensationalized the event, redirecting public ire toward the victims themselves. In the end, it would take two grand juries and a civil suit to achieve justice on behalf of the four Black teenagers. For some, Goetz would go on to become a national hero, inciting a disturbing new chapter in American history. This brutal act revealed a white rage and resentment much deeper, larger, and more insidious than the actions of Bernie Goetz himself. Intensified by politicians and tabloid media, it would lead a stunning number of white Americans to celebrate vigilantism as a fully legitimate means for addressing racial fear, fracturing American race relations.

Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood by Jill Watts

Hello my lovely readers!

Another day, another book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS 
Hattie McDaniel is best known for her performance as Mammy, the sassy foil to Scarlett O’Hara in the movie classic Gone with the Wind. Her powerful performance won her an Oscar® and bolstered the hopes of black Hollywood that the entertainment industry was finally ready to write more multidimensional, fully-realized roles for blacks.

But despite this victory, and pleas by organizations such as the NAACP and SAG, roles for blacks continued to denigrate the African American experience. So Hattie McDaniel continued to play servants. “I’d rather play a maid then be a maid,” Hattie McDaniel answered her critics, but her flip response belied a woman who was emotionally conflicted. Here, in an exhaustively detailed and incisive text by a talented historian, is the story of a valiant woman who defied the racism of her time.

A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa

Hello my lovely readers!

I needed a break from all the nonfiction I've been reading recently and this was a delightful read! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa has inherited a neighborhood bakery from her grandmother. Curiously, her grandmother’s will spells out two conditions: Yeon-hwa must keep the shop going for at least another month and only open it to customers from 10 PM until midnight. Yeon-hwa is hesitant at first; her grandmother was always distant, raising Yeon-hwa after her parents died in a car accident. But she agrees to the terms, hoping that running the bakery will help her to finally understand her grandmother after all these years.

Yeon-hwa soon learns that the Hwawoldang—the name means “flower moon temple” —is not an ordinary dessert shop. The customers who arrive late at night are spirits, there to attend to unfinished business before being reincarnated. The sweets they crave hold some deep significance in their earthly lives, and they expect Yeon-hwa to meet their requests, as her grandmother did.

With each customer who arrives, Yeon-hwa learns which special desserts live in their memories and will help them on their way. Aided by the shop’s resident black cat, Yeon-hwa learns how to find closure for her customers—and begins to unravel her own family’s secrets as well.

In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press by Katherine Corcoran

Hello my lovely readers! This was one of the book selections for the Morbidly Curious Book Club. I don't follow the book selections each month. I usually just find what interests me from their list for the year and put it on my TBR list. This book really piqued by interest, since I am a journalist and we all know I love a good journalism book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

Regina Martínez was no stranger to retaliation. A journalist out of Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, Regina's stories for the magazine Proceso laid out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics. She was barred from press conferences, and copies of Proceso often disappeared before they made the newsstands. In 2012, shortly after Proceso published an article on corruption and two Veracruz politicians, and the magazine went missing once again, she was bludgeoned to death in her bathroom. The message was clear: No journalist in Mexico was safe.

Katherine Corcoran, then leading the Associated Press coverage of Mexico, admired Regina Martínez's work. Troubled by the news of her death, Corcoran journeyed to Veracruz to find out what had happened. Regina hadn't even written the controversial article. But did she have something else that someone didn't want published? Once there, Katherine bonded with four of Regina's grief-stricken mentees, each desperate to prove who was to blame for the death of their friend. Together they battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape, and threats to sift through the mess of lies-and discover what got Regina killed.

Hometown Betrayal by Emily Benedek

Hello my lovely readers! It's been a while. Unfortunately, I had some health issues shortly after my last review and I just couldn't handle writing reviews.

I have read a lot of books though, but they were all...meh. Stay tuned for another "Quick Reviews!"

Now let's get into this book!

SYNOPSIS
No one believed it could happen in their town.

Valarie Clark Miller seemed to have it all. Smart, beautiful, and athletic, with a wealthy, successful husband and growing family, Valarie appeared to be the picture-perfect Mormon wife. But it was all a façade. Inside, she was crumbling from the pressures of long-repressed memories of a childhood plagued with sexual and physical abuse.

In Hometown Betrayal, author Emily Benedek brings you behind the closed doors of the remote Mormon community of Clarkston, Utah. With the help of hundreds of individual stories, she pieces together not only what happened to Valarie, but also the conditions and culture that allowed it. Hometown Betrayal culminates in an account of the Miller family’s fight to hold accountable the men—including the local cop-- who abused Valarie and controlled the systems designed to look the other way.

Mornings in Jenin by Susan Albuhawa

Hello my lovely readers! I'm definitely finding my niche with fiction that I like to read and I think it comes down to international or Black American historical fiction or off-beat literary fiction. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
In the refugee camp of Jenin, Amal is born into a world of loss—of home, country, and heritage. Her Palestinian family was driven from their ancestral village by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948. As the villagers fled that day, Amal's older brother, just a baby, was stolen away by an Israeli soldier. In Jenin, the adults subsist on memories, waiting to return to the homes they love. Amal's mother has walled away her heart with grief, and her father labors all day. But in the fleeting peacefulness of dawn, he reads to his young daughter daily, and she can feel his love for her, "as big as the ocean and all its fishes." On those quiet mornings, they dream together of a brighter future.

This is Amal's story, the story of one family's struggle and survival through over sixty years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, carrying us from Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon and the anonymity of America. It is a story shaped by scars and fear, but also by the transformative intimacy of marriage and the fierce protectiveness of motherhood. It is a story of faith, forgiveness, and life-sustaining love.

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris

 

Hello my lovely readers! This biography came out on Tuesday, I got a Libby copy of it on Wednesday and I'm already finished! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion.

In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories.

Morris explains what drove She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

Independence by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Hello my lovely readers! Indian fiction....let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
India, 1947. In a rural village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor.

Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father's footsteps and become a doctor, though society frowns on it.

Deepa: the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status.

Jamini: devout, sharp-eyed, and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals.

Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge from the violent events taking shape in the nation. Then their father is killed during a riot, and even their neighbors turn against them, bringing the events of their country closer to home.

As Priya determinedly pursues her career goal, Deepa falls deeply in love with a Muslim, causing her to break with her family. And Jamini attempts to hold her family together, even as she secretly longs for her sister's fiancé.

When the partition of India is officially decided, a drastic--and dangerous--change is in the air. India is now for Hindus, Pakistan for Muslims. The sisters find themselves separated from one another, each on different paths. They fear for what will happen to not just themselves, but each other.

Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica

Hello my lovely readers! This was another strange read. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib

Hello my lovely readers! This was a timely book that I happened to randomly pick up at the library a few weeks ago. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Hadi and Sama are a young Syrian couple flying high on a whirlwind love, dreaming up a life in the country that brought them together. She had come to Boston years before chasing dreams of a bigger life; he’d landed there as a sponsored refugee from a bloody civil war. Now, they are giddily awaiting the birth of their son, a boy whose native language would be freedom and belonging.

When Sama is five months pregnant, Hadi’s father dies suddenly in Jordan, the night before his visa appointment at the embassy. Hadi flies back for the funeral, promising his wife that he’ll only be gone for a few days. On the day his flight is due to arrive in Boston, Sama is waiting for him at the airport, eager to bring him back home. But as the minutes and then hours pass, she continues to wait, unaware that Hadi has been stopped at the border and detained for questioning, trapped in a timeless, nightmarish limbo.

Worlds apart, suspended between hope and disillusion as hours become days become weeks, Sama and Hadi yearn for a way back to each other, and to the life they’d dreamed up together. But does that life exist anymore, or was it only an illusion?

The Most by Jessica Anthony

 

Hello my lovely readers! This was a quick read. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Kathleen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.

A consuming, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, THE MOST breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, Kathleen and Virgil hurtle towards each other until they arrive at a reckoning that will either shatter their marriage, or transform it, at last, into something real.

The Names by Florence Knapp

Hello my lovely readers! Oh my, how I loved this book! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

Stiff by Mary Roach

Hello my lovely readers! 

Two years ago, coincidentally around this time, I DNF'd this book because I wasn't in the headspace for it. You can read that "review" here.

I decided to give it another shot and I'm glad I did! Let's get into it.

SYNPOSIS
Cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings from France's first guillotines to helping solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800.

For every new surgical procedure, cadavers have helped make history. Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

 Hello my lovely readers! I finished this book in two days and...whew! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby

Hello my lovely readers!  What a beautiful book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now.

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Lydia Abarca was a Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company—the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a troupe of women and men who became each other’s chosen family. She was the first Black ballerina on the cover of Dance magazine, an Essence cover star; she was cast in The Wiz and in a Bob Fosse production on Broadway. She performed in some of ballet’s most iconic works with other trailblazing ballerinas, including the young women who became her closest friends—founding Dance Theatre of Harlem members Gayle McKinney-Griffith and Sheila Rohan, as well as first-generation dancers Karlya Shelton and Marcia Sells.

These Swans of Harlem performed for the Queen of England, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder, on the same bill as Josephine Baker, at the White House, and beyond. But decades later there was almost no record of their groundbreaking history to be found. Out of a sisterhood that had grown even deeper with the years, these Swans joined forces again—to share their story with the world.

Captivating, rich in vivid detail and character, and steeped in the glamour and grit of professional ballet, The Swans of Harlem is a riveting account of five extraordinarily accomplished women, a celebration of both their historic careers and the sustaining, grounding power of female friendship, and a window into the robust history of Black ballet, hidden for too long.

Unravelling by Preethi Nair

 

Hello my lovely readers! It's been a while since I've read a novel that was so thought-provoking. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The stories we tell ourselves and others are very often not true…

To the outside world, Bhanu seems to have a perfect a beautiful home and a wonderful husband and family… No one knows that each superficial layer has been carefully constructed to hide the dark secrets of her past and to bury the utter disappointment that what was written in the stars did not come to pass.

Then, on the eve of her fortieth wedding anniversary and vow renewal ceremony, a chance encounter shatters Bhanu’s pretence, when a face from her past reappears.

Deep, her first love who was etched into her heart, the man who lingered in her dreams throughout her married life, reappears, asking her to abandon everything for a second chance at love.

Forced to confront the consequences of choices made long ago, Bhanu begins to unravel as her life is thrust into chaos. But by reaching for a different future, can she heal the wounds of her past?

An extraordinary story about the complex tapestry that makes up a woman’s life and how facing the truth can change everything.