The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Fiction
2013 Scribner
Finished on 4/24/13
Rating: 5/5 (Excellent!)




An extraordinary and heart-rending book about good people, tragic decisions and the beauty found in each of them.
 ~ Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief

Publisher’s Blurb:

The debut of a stunning new voice in fiction—a novel both heartbreaking and transcendent.

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 Western coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, 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 winds. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. 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 reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M.L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinary compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer.

Do you see that? A 5/5 rating! It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had one of those and Stedman’s debut novel deserves nothing less! I’m not even going to knock off any points for the slow start, because that could easily be attributed to my fatigue from an exhausting week at work. Once I got a few pages in, I was hooked and could barely set the book aside. I even read a few pages while fixing dinner!

On a violent ocean:

There are times when the ocean is not the ocean—not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: ferocity on a scale only gods can summon. It hurls itself at the island, sending spray right over the top of the lighthouse, biting pieces off the cliff. And the sound is a roaring of a beast whose anger knows no limits. Those are the nights the light is needed most.

On the persistence of the passage of time:

The wind had kept up its sullen howl. The late-afternoon sun continued to shine in through the window, laying a blanket of bright gold over the woman and her almost-baby. The old clock on the kitchen wall still clicked its minutes with fussy punctuality. A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill.

On isolation:

Anyone who’s worked on the Offshore Lights can tell you about it—the isolation, and the spell it casts. Like sparks flung off the furnace that is Australia, these beacons dot around it, flickering on and off, some of them only ever seen by a handful of living souls. But their isolation saves the whole continent from isolation—keeps the shipping lanes safe, as vessels steam the thousands of miles to bring machines and books and cloth, in return for wool and wheat, coal and gold: the fruits of ingenuity traded for the fruits of earth.

The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, on time, one rhythm—the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.

The Light Between Oceans is the type of book that could easily be read in a few days, but I took my time, slowly savoring the lyrical prose, dreading the turn of that final page. However, as the conclusion drew near with an ominous sense of foreboding, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the words, holding my breath as the tension mounted. Each of the characters faced a moral dilemma with no perfect solution; the heartbreak of both was inevitable. And yet, in spite of this tragic story, I came away from it with a feeling of satisfaction.

Final Thoughts: 

An outstanding debut that is sure to be a winner among fans of literary fiction and book clubs alike. Stedman’s vigorously evocative narrative, along with a strong sense of place, depicts the powerful isolation and ultimate desperation of an Australian lighthouse keeper and his family. The author’s skill in crafting a thought-provoking and gripping tale, peopled with fully-realized characters (who in spite of their flaws, will win over even the harshest of critics), is more characteristic of a seasoned writer than one fresh to the world of bestsellers. I anxiously await her second endeavor and meanwhile, I plan to listen to the audio version of this remarkable novel. Kudos, Ms. Stedman!

A Far-flung Life

 

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman

Fiction

2026

Finished on December 27, 2025

Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)

Release Date: March 3, 2026

Publisher's Blurb:

From the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Light Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love.

When we do something that can't be undone or mended, how do we go on living? How do we find our North Star when there is no right answer? These are the questions at the center of M. L. Stedman's unforgettable and magisterial new novel A Far-flung Life, a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades.

Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride serves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is blunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

A Far-flung Life is a tale about family and belonging, fate and time. It is about people trying to do their best and each, for private reasons, seeking shelter from the storm of life. Can a fleeting moment unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably? Can compassion, resilience, and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections? These are the questions Stedman asks in her profoundly moving, uplifting, and luminous new novel about what the heart can endure for the sake of love.

It's been thirteen years since The Light Between Oceans was published. I received an ARC of that debut novel and gave it a perfect 5-star rating. To say that I loved it is an understatement. 

And thus, I was thrilled to receive an ARC of M. L. Stedman's new novel, and as soon as I wrapped up my Elizabeth Strout marathon, I dove right into A Far-flung Life. I couldn't have loved it more. What a remarkable story. It's one of loss, grief, love, and dark secrets. The characters are strongly defined and I ached for the MacBride family who had more than their share of heartaches. Stedman's setting is vivid, the heat and dust practically jumping off the pages.

It's hard country, out this way. Back in England, a farm might support two or three sheep per acre. Here, with the lack of rainfall, you need more like forty acres per sheep. There is heat. There is sun. But on winter nights the water in the tanks will freeze over. The searing light that coaxes life into being here will bleach it out of existence with the same indifferent shrug, leaving blanched trees, and rusted corrugated iron on the roofs of abandoned homesteads. The wind that brings the rain can bring floods and flatten shearing sheds. Everything that can do you good can also do you harm here--that's just the way of it.

This land has seen improbable things: the evolution of marsupials and monotremes; of flightless birds and animals that fly. It's seen continents split and islands arise. It's seen oceans turn to desert and desert turn to glaciers. And it's watched people drag their little lives across its surface, flat and unforgiving. 

and

In the homestead at Meredith Downs, silence is a canvas on which each sound trails like a color. The wind; a single fly; the clatter of a pan; the distant barking of a kelpie; the banging of a flywire door. There is no continuous murmur of traffic. No vague stream of voices. Each sound emerges for its solo, then fades into stillness, into a silence so complete it makes music of your heartbeat in your ears.

A Far-flung Life is a compulsively readable literary work, and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. It will likely become a book club favorite, and it will linger in my mind for years to come. I am so pleased to have finished out the year with a 5-star read, and look forward to re-reading this beautiful gem. It's a keeper.

Highly recommend!

I received a complimentary copy from Goodreads. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
Fiction – YA Post-Apocalyptic
2013 G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Finished on 5/5/13
Rating: 4.75/5 (Outstanding!)





If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans. ~ Stephen Hawking

Publisher’s Blurb:

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, just one rule applies: TRUST NO ONE.

Now it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

From award-winning author Rick Yancey comes a gripping epic of catastrophic loss, unthinkable odds, and unflinching courage.

I don’t read a lot of teen fiction. Other than The Book Thief (which became a widely popular cross-over novel with adult readers and is one of my all-time favorite reads ever), there have been less than a handful of teen novels that have piqued my interest. While I enjoyed The Hunger Games and Twilight, the sequels were disappointing and I quickly grew tired of all the teenage angst. However, I love a good post-apocalyptic story (The Stand, Swan Song, The Road, and The Passage, are just a few of my favorites), so when the ARC of The 5th Wave arrived I knew I wanted to read it, but decided to let my husband have first dibs. I figured he could save me some valuable time, if he felt it was poorly written or not compelling enough. Well, surprisingly (as he rarely ever reads teen fiction), not only did he finish the book, he thought it was very good. And, much to my relief, not filled with a lot of angst.

I dove into the book as soon as I finished The Light Between Oceans (something I rarely do, as I like to have a little break between books, if only a few hours) and was immediately drawn into Cassie and Evan’s stories. Other than a few instances in which I thought that Cassie’s internal monologues depicting her romantic attraction toward another character were beginning to feel overly saccharine, I loved the book. While not as intricate or sophisticated as The Stand or Swan Song, it was highly entertaining and much better than I had anticipated. With that said, I will continue to hold out hope that the second installment (yes, this is the first in a trilogy) doesn’t follow the trend of disappointing sequels.

Final Thoughts:

The 5th Wave is a tautly written page-turner, sure to satisfy readers of all ages and appeal to fans of Ender’s Game and The Hunger Games. I look forward to the next novel in this trilogy, but meanwhile, I plan to check out Rick Yancey’s backlist. Any recommendations?

Go here to read Justin Cronin’s (best-selling author of The Passage and The Twelve) review of The 5th Wave.

All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Fiction
2014 Scribner
Finished on July 27, 2014
Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)




A tender exploration of this world’s paradoxes: the beauty of the laws of nature and the terrible ends to which war subverts them; the frailty and the resilience of the human heart; the immutability of a moment and the healing power of time. The language is as expertly crafted as the master locksmith’s models in the story and the setting as intricately evoked. ~ M. L. Stedman, author of The Light Between Oceans

Publisher’s Blurb:

A blind child, Marie-Laure, lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Germans occupy Paris and father and daughter flee—carrying what might be the museum’s most valuable diamond—to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea.

In another world, in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes a master at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Nazi Germany, beyond the Russian front and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Anthony Doerr is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, The National Magazine Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize.

This may be the best book I’ve read this year.

When I first began reading All the Light We Cannot See, I immediately noticed the short chapters (most averaging only two to four pages in length) and found that I could read longer and later into the night, telling myself, “Just one more chapter.” But then summer arrived with a flurry of activities, travel and a house guest and time slipped away from me, often without a single page read for several days. And then when I did have the time or energy to read, I could only seem to manage a chapter or two, in spite of the author’s gorgeous prose and endearing characters. I began this book on June 15th and did not reach the final page for another six weeks. Had I started this in the dead of winter, I would have easily raced through it in less than a week; it was that good. And yet, in spite of a rather fragmented reading experience, I still choose to give this magnificent novel a perfect 5/5 rating.

Saint-Malo:

Up and down the lanes, the last unevacuated townspeople wake, groan, sigh. Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty. Procrastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of every order. The poor. The stubborn. The blind.

Some hurry to bomb shelters. Some tell themselves it is merely a drill. Some linger to grab a blanket or a prayer book or a deck of playing cards.

D-day was two months ago. Cherbourg has been liberated, Caen liberated, Rennes too. Half of western France is free. In the east, the Soviets have retaken Minsk; the Polish Home Army is revolting in Warsaw; a few newspapers have become bold enough to suggest that the tide has turned.

But not here. Not this last citadel at the edge of the continent, this final German strongpoint on the Breton coast.

Here, people whisper, the Germans have renovated two kilometers of subterranean corridors under the medieval walls; they have built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering intricacy. Beneath the peninsular fort of La Cite, across the river from the old city, there are rooms of bandages, rooms of ammunition, even and underground hospital, or so it is believed. There is air-conditioning, a two-hundred-thousand-liter water tank, a direct line to Berlin. There are flame-throwing booby traps, a net of pillboxes with periscopic sights; they have stockpiled enough ordnance to spray shells into the sea all day, every day, for a year.

Here, they whisper, are a thousand Germans ready to die. Or five thousand. Maybe more.

Simple Joys in Fearful Times:

Eggs crack. Butter pops in the hot pan. Her father is telling an abridged story of their flight, train stations, bleating crowds, omitting the stop in Evreux, but soon all of Marie-Laure’s attention is absorbed by the smells blooming around her: egg, spinach, melting cheese.

An omelet arrives. She positions her face over its steam. “May I please have a fork?”

The old woman laughs: a laugh Marie-Laure warms to immediately. In an instant a fork is fitted into her hand.

The eggs taste like clouds. Like spun gold. Madame Manec says, “I think she likes it,” and laughs again.

A second omelet soon appears. Now it is her father who eats quickly. “How about peaches, dear?” murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.

An Occupied Village:

If there are fireflies this summer, they do not come down the rue Vauborel. Now it seems there are only shadows and silence. Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters. Madame Guiboux, mother of the shoemaker, has left town. As has old Madame Blanchard. So many windows are dark. It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumes, the lamps all extinguished.

A Gray World:

For portions of every day, she manages to lose herself in realms of memory; the faint impressions of the visual world before she was six, when Paris was like a vast kitchen, pyramids of cabbages and carrots everywhere; bakers’ stalls overflowing with pastries; fish stacked like cordwood in the fishmongers’ booths, the runnels awash in silver scales, alabaster gulls swooping down to carry off entrails. Every corner she turned billowed with color: the greens of leeks, the deep purple glaze of eggplants.

Now her world has turned gray. Gray faces and gray quiet and a gray nervous terror hanging over the queue at the bakery and the only color in the world briefly kindled when Etienne climbs the stairs to the attic, knees cracking, to read one more string of numbers into the ether, to send another of Madame Ruelle’s messages, to play a song. That little attic bursting with magenta and aquamarine and gold for five minutes, and then the radio switches off, and the gray rushes back in, and her uncle stumps down the stairs.

On Bravery:

“When I lost my sight, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life…”

Final Thoughts:

This gorgeous novel is destined to become a classic! Doerr’s luminescent prose brings to mind Pat Conroy’s lyrical descriptions in Beach Music, another all-time favorite of mine. I loved Doerr’s finely crafted and unpredictable story and look forward to reading some of his other works, as well as listening to the audio edition of All the Light We Cannot See. Yes, another World War II novel, but I strongly encourage everyone to read this dazzling novel. Quite simply, it’s a masterpiece.

Go here to listen to Doer’s interview on NPR.

:: Right Now ::

Right now, I am...

:: feeling grateful for the cooler temps that greeted us this weekend. Yesterday, it was 66 degrees with cloudy skies when we headed out for our morning walk with Annie. We didn't even mind the heavy downpour that caught us unprepared. Felt like Oregon! Today is looking just a nice. Current temp: 60!

:: contemplating either a bike ride or a long walk.

:: continuing to feel excited about hand-selling The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield. Can't quote numbers, but let's just say it's A LOT!

:: enjoying the lazy summertime feeling our weekends have taken on. Coffee on the deck before breakfast at 10 am. We don't like to rush things!

:: looking forward to an evening with good friends, delicious food, wine and laughter.

:: anticipating the arrival of one very special granddaughter. Two full weeks with no traveling on my part! Nice change from last year's visit.

:: wondering how many ice cream shops my husband will want to visit with a certain 10-year-old granddaughter.

:: hoping to get in some long walks and bike rides to work off said ice cream.

:: eager to get back to Lisa Genova's latest novel, Love Anthony. I started it last night and read 50 pages before turning out the light. So far, it's wonderful!

:: wishing I could read faster. I'm anxious to dive into Broken Harbor (Tana French), Off the Grid (P.J. Tracy), The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Stedman) and Sharp Objects (Gillian Flynn).

:: happy to wash dishes, vacuum and iron shirts so I can listen to Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) on my Nano. What a great audiobook! Thanks for the recommendation, Trish!

:: sorry I didn't think to get tickets to see Crosby, Stills and Nash at the Pinewood Bowl this month.

:: pleased with a delicious new salad recipe from the Home Cooking with Trish Yearwood cookbook.

:: proud of my daughter's culinary endeavors. "Amy Bars" are now available for purchase at Bolsa Mercado in Dallas, TX!

:: having fun with the Photoaday August challenge. I've missed messing around with my camera on a daily basis.

:: listening to my dog chase rabbits in her sleep.

:: thinking about the wonderful movies we watched this weekend. I highly recommend Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Unmistaken Child, the latter of which is quite thought-provoking.

:: happy for my 3-day weekends.

:: looking forward to more "mild" summer days. We had the windows open for the first time in weeks!



::Right Now:: was inspired by Amanada Soule of SouleMama

A Window Opens

A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan
Fiction
2015 Simon & Schuster
Finished on September 23, 2015
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)





Publisher’s Blurb:

For fans of I Don’t Know How She Does It and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?.

In A Window Opens, beloved books editor at Glamour magazine, Elisabeth Egan, brings us Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all, sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age.

Like her fictional forebears Kate Reddy and Bridget Jones, Alice plays many roles (which she never refers to as “wearing many hats” and wishes you wouldn’t, either). She is a mostly-happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker or the breadwinner. But when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in—and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up which promises to be the future of reading, with its chain of chic literary lounges and dedication to beloved classics. The Holy Grail of working mothers―an intellectually satisfying job and a happy personal life―seems suddenly within reach.

Despite the disapproval of her best friend, who owns the local bookstore, Alice is proud of her new “balancing act” (which is more like a three-ring circus) until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up and her work takes an unexpected turn. Readers will cheer as Alice realizes the question is not whether it’s possible to have it all, but what does she―Alice Pearse―really want?


A Window Opens is another one of those books with eye-catching cover art that I simply could not resist. Egan’s debut novel is a fairly quick read and one which book lovers (and those working in the book biz) will enjoy. I laughed out loud and I may have shed a tear or two. As Marysue Rucci (Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Simon & Schuster, Inc.) says, “…reading A Window Opens is akin to reading the work of Anna Quindlen—like spending precious time with your brilliant, brutally honest, funniest, and most observant best friend. You never want the evening to end.”

As with all bookish-type of books, I loved the bookseller chatter about current recommendations:

Susanna: How are you guys holding up? Thinking of you constantly.
Me: The cousins are skim-board phenoms, taking the island by storm. Adults are more subdued; nice to all be together. You?
Susanna: The usual. College kids quitting for a better offer, so basically on my feet all day, ringing up Fifty Shades of Grey. What is it with that book?
Me: Ya got me. I’m halfway through The Light Between Oceans and LOVING IT.
Susanna: That one’s selling like hotcakes, too, thankfully.

And the joy of working in a bookstore:

When I arrived for my first day of work, visible rays of light crisscrossed through the store, turning the shelves into a rainbow of spines: thick, thin, shiny, matte, striped, printed with small pictures and designs, lettered in gold. The effect was dazzling. I already knew the bustle of the Blue Owl on a weekend afternoon, or after closing with customers in work clothes lingering over platters of Triscuits and cubed cheese. But, I realized, this was my first time in the store before it opened and, instantly, I knew it was the best time to be there—the bookseller’s equivalent of watching your kids sleep. I could feel the peace in my bones.

In addition to the book chatter, the novel also deals with the loss of a family member, which I found to be spot-on. I found myself nodding my head in agreement on more than one occasion.

On platitudes:

One by one, the guests left my mom’s house. They promised to check in soon and made us promise to let them know if there was anything they could do.

News flash: nobody is going to give you an assignment. Just do something.

Amy, the daughter of one of my mom’s tennis friends, worked quietly in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, brewing pot after pot of strong coffee and stowing Mass cards and sympathy cards in a straw basket so my mom could read them later. Even though our mothers had been friends for decades, we weren’t friends; she’d been a few years ahead of me in school. Up until this point, most of our contact had been through families she’d babysat for, whom she passed along to me when she lost interest watching 227 alone on Saturday nights. I knew Amy was a teacher now, and the mother of toddlers, which meant that she’d lined up both a sub and a babysitter of her own so she could take coats and arrange crudité platters for our family. Her kindness was mind-boggling.

Final Thoughts:

I wasn’t planning to keep my ARC of A Window Opens, but after thumbing through it while composing this review, I realized that it was really an enjoyable read and that I’d like to at least attempt to find time to read it again someday. I enjoyed the smooth conversational style of Egan’s writing and anxiously await her next novel. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Liane Moriarty, and of course, Anna Quindlen, are sure to enjoy this smart and humorous novel.

From the New York Times Book Review:

Egan has an eye for the absurdities of the corporate workplace and an ear for its preposterous jargon: “drilling down,” “onboarding,” “action item,” “noodle that over.” And she’s very funny on the cultural chasm separating Alice, who is in her late 30s from her savvy younger colleagues in their “statement glasses.” As Alice puts it, “Sometimes I felt like one of the Danish au pairs I made plans with on the front lawn of the school – understanding but not understanding.” These workaday passages are further enhanced by the presence of two delightfully loathsome villains.

About the Author:

Elisabeth Egan is the books editor at Glamour. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Self, Glamour, O, People, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Huffington Post, The New York Times Book Review, LA Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times; and Newark Star-Ledger. She lives in New Jersey with her family.

A Decade of Favorites (2010 - 2019)

2010

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan (5/5)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (5/5)

Lift by Kelly Corrigan (5/5)

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen (5/5)

Faithful Place by Tana French (5/5)

World Without End by Ken Follett (5/5)

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (5/5)

Room by Emma Donoghue (5/5)

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (5/5)

Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel (4.75/5)


2011

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult (4.5/5)

Shoot to Thrill by P.J. Tracy (4.5/5)

Joy For Beginners by Erica Bauermeister (4.5/5)

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (4.5/5)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (4.5/5)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (4.5/5)

The Pioneer Woman: From High Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond (4.5/5)

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (4.5/5)

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (4.5/5)

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante (4.75/5)

Beachcombing For A Shipwrecked God by Joe Coomer (4.5/5)

The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore (4.75/5)

Faith by Jennifer Haigh (4.5/5)


2012

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield (5/5)

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (4/5)

Gone by Mo Hayder (5/5)

Little Princes by Conor Grennan (5/5)

Paris in Love by Eloisa James (4.5/5)

The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus by Sonya Sones (4.5/5)

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (4.75/5)

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan (4.75/5)

The Passage by Justin Cronin (4.75/5)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (4.5/5)


2013

The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister (4.5/5)

Broken Harbor by Tana French (4.75/5)

The Shadow In the Streets by Susan Hill (4.5/5)

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman (5/5)

The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancy (4.75/5)

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (4.75/5)

The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin (4.75/5)

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (4.75/5)

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler (4.5/5)

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (4.75/5)


2014

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (4.5/5)

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (4.75/5)

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell (4.5/5)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (4.5/5)

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (4.5/5)

A Dog's Purpose by Bruce Cameron (4.5/5)

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe (4.5/5)

This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash (4.75/5)

The Circle by Dave Eggers (4.5/5)

That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay (4.5/5)

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (4.75/5)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (5/5)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (4.5/5)

Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline (4.5/5)


2015

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (4.5/5)

The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill (4.5/5)

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (4.5/5)

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (4.5/5)

The Bear by Claire Cameron (4.5/5)

Wonder by R.J. Palacio (5/5)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (4.75/5)

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Brackman (4.5/5)

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova (4.75/5)

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult (4.5/5)

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (5/5)

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (4.5/5)


2016

You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris (4.5/5)

Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris (5/5)

Leveling the Playing Field by Rod Scher (4.5/5)

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (4.5/5)

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (4.75/5)

Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern (4.5/5)

Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson (4.5/5)

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash (4.5/5)

City of Thieves by David Benioff (5/5)

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (4.5/5)

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (4.5/5)

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (4.5/5)

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (4.5/5)

What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas (4.5/5)


2017

The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons (5/5)

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs (5/5)

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (5/5)

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (5/5)

Night by Elie Wiesel (5/5)

News of the World by Paulette Jiles (4.5/5)

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (4.5/5)

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer (4.5/5)

A Celibate Season by Carol Shields (4.5/5)

The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood (4.5/5)


2018

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel (5/5)

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan (5/5)

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova (4.75/5)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (4.75/5)

Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence (4.5/5)

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne (4.5/5)

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (4.5/5)

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (4.5/5)

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate (4.5/5)

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult (4.5/5)


2019

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb (5/5)

Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan (5/5)

Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg (5/5)

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny (5/5)

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (5/5)

Becoming by Michelle Obama (5/5)

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (4.5/5)

Devotion by Dani Shapiro (4.5/5)

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane (4.5/5)

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne (4.5/5)

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman (4.5/5)

Kitchen Yarns by Ann Hood (4.5/5)

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (4.5/5)

After You by Jojo Moyes (4.5/5)

Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison (4.5/5)

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny (4.5/5)

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (4.5/5)


Click on the link to read my review.