As I look back over my read list from January, I noticed that I was all over the place. It was a varied reading month, which makes for a great month. Sometimes, I can get stuck in series or mystery runs, and those are great too, but I do love a variety.
Mother Daughter Murder Night
Mystery – Multi Generational – Book Club
Mother Daughter Murder Night is one of those books that I had seen everywhere. It was popular enough to be a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and show up on all the podcasts and Bookstagram. Lana, Beth and Jack are a mother, daughter, granddaughter team that wind up having to solve a murder when Jack, the youngest, seems to be a suspect. With Lana’s cancer causing her to need more care, they also have to learn to live under the same roof. This was a good mystery combined with a great family story. Learning how to understand your family and loving them anyway. They mystery involving ecological issues and inheritance was good, but wouldn’t carry a straight mystery novel. Set in California, it would make a great read, probably better in the summer.
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy
Girl Power – Fantasy – Young Adult
I have already recommended this to my reading niece. It seems like we are going straight to Hogwarts for bad kids, but it was so much deeper than that. Marya lives in a world where the only thing that can protect the people from an evil known as The Dread is a group of sorcerers. All young boys hold the potential for magic and when they come of age, they are tested and if they pass, taken to be trained. This means wealth and status for the families. When Marya apparently keeps her brother from being chosen, she is sent immediately to Dragomir Academy for Troubled Girls. She soon learns that all of the students are sent there because they don’t behave as girls should. What Marya learns at the academy (and not from the teachers) is that girls can have power and change the world too. I love this for any young girls out there trying to find where they belong.
The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin
Magical Realism – Sisters – Flower Farm
I can’t decide what my favorite part of this one is. Was it the magical realism or the flower farm setting? I am not sure, but combined they made for a great reading experience. Antoinette has a from of autism that means she doesn’t speak and often has seizures. But there is more to her that makes her special. She can heal with her touch. She brings flowers back to life and heals cuts and even cancer. But when her mother faces a devastating cancer diagnosis of her own, she won’t let Antoinette any where near her. She calls he prodigal sister home to help with the flower farm inherited from their parents and to take over care of Antoinette once she has succumbed to the cancer. Antoinette wants to heal her mom so she doesn’t lose her, but the healing seems to drain something essential from her. With a bitter sweet ending, just being in the small town flower farm makes this one a feel good read.
