Heartwood

 

Heartwood by Amity Gaige

Fiction

2025

Narrated by Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, Cary Hite, Helen Laser, Ali Andre Ali

Finished on 3/15/2026

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

Meh. The writing is quite good with some lovely passages, but I wish I had read Heartwood rather than going with the audio. There are several narrators, some better than others. One had the habit of dropping the volume of her voice toward the end of a sentence, which should have been caught and corrected in production. The plot isn't very suspenseful, the pacing uneven, and I didn't care much for any of the characters. The ending felt rushed with a few loose ends. All in all, a mediocre read. 

Edited: I've decided to bump up my rating up to a 3/5.

The Wedding People

 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Fiction

2024

Narrated by Helen Laser

Finished on August 2, 2024

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew.

It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

I listened to The Wedding People over the course of two weeks and thoroughly enjoyed this new novel by Alison Espach. I've been gravitating toward lighter books this summer and Espach's ticks all the boxes for an entertaining, and at times humorous, tale of a wedding week in Newport, Rhode Island. Helen Laser, whom I initially mistook for Julia Whelan, expertly captures the personality and unique traits of each character, and I'm eager to find more audiobooks with her narration.

Well past the age of bachelorette parties, I wasn't sure if I was the right audience for this book, but I was surprisingly entertained, laughing out loud on more than one occasion. If you're in the mood for a feel-good summer read, look no further. 

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