This is a sequel to My Name is Lucy Burton, which I read as part of my 2017 reading challenge. That was a year when I had categories of books that I was reading from and I can't remember which category this fulfilled.  I had trouble finding books to fill those lists the few years that I did that and started asking for recommendations, which is how I ended up ditching that list and just taking recommendations for my yearly booklist. 
In any event, I did not write reviews back then, so I decided to reread My Name Is Lucy Barton after reading the first chapter of this book in order to remember the backstory.  In retrospect, this wasn't necessary to appreciate this story, but it did help connect many of the relationships in the book.
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And there are a lot of relationships in this book.  There are a ton of characters and the history between them is complicated. I often felt like I do when I visit friends in a close-knit community or try to join a new group of people who have been tight for a long time.  There are all these backstories that touch on each other and it is hard to keep up with how they all touch on each other.  This makes the details of the book hard to keep track of and sometimes I would be well into a new storyline before I realized these were the same people from another storyline. In many ways, this is the magic of this series. It really makes you feel what Lucy Barton's small town life with judgy, hurtful people was like--and not just for her.  Those who bullied her, those who were indifferent to her, and those who saw and helped her in big and small ways are all portrayed sometimes in sympathetic ways, sometimes not, and most often in both ways at the same time. 

There is so much depth here, so much hurt. Child sex abuse and sexual assault play prominent roles as they play out in families and relationships in ways that fill in the backstory for many characters. It is the story of kids who were bullied and kids who did the bullying and kids who were both bullied and did the bullying and how this plays out in their adult lives.  The emotion of childhood trauma, indeed sometimes of torture, is on painful display here--told with a perspective that conveys deep empathy for the damage done and the damage done to the people caused the damage.  It is heart-wrenching the whole way.

Recommend.

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​By the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this is a captivating read about Venice, particularly in the context of the fire that destroyed La Fenice Opera House in the late 1990s.  While to a large extent focused on who started the fire and why, this book branches out from the main storyline in interesting ways, painting a detailed portrait of a unique city. Filled with politics, culture, history, and, of course, an unsolved mystery, I loved not only the exquisite writing, but the interviews and depicts of people.  Instead of being a distraction, the side stories were just as interesting as the main fire plot.

Highly recommend.

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I have to say that I just love a good time travel book and this is a spectacularly good time travel book.  With a complicated plot, rich characters with depth, and a fairly believable world, the story is captivating and I did not want to take a break from it.  I particularly loved how much time I invested in trying to keep track of the loose ends and the satisfaction I had as they all came together as the story enfolded in an interconnected and unexpected way.

​The foreshadowing was there, so that the ending came together smoothly, but not so much so that it was predictable or trite.  I also love a book in which friendship is the at the center of the story and this book developed many storylines around friendships, some of them particularly sweet, though perhaps unconventional.  The relationship between the protagonist Cass and her grandfather is melancholic and haunting, but so endearing.  You'll need space in your life to really pay attention to the details, because there is a lot going on that you will want to keep track of as the story unfolds. 

And I have a soft spot for books that take place in bookstores and libraries and this has the added benefit of having both of those.

And extra bonus points for the unexpected Oregon connection.
 
Highly recommend.
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I did not even know there was a genre of literature called "feminist horror."  I am not a horror fan, despite there being quire a number of horror books recommended to me this year, so I came into this read more than a bit skeptical and a little worried about how it would impact me.  This book was nothing like what I was expecting.  It was actually just kind of awesome.  A murder mystery within a murder mystery, I found the supernatural twists to be fun in a dark kind of way and its fast pace, quirky characters, and unusual fantasy world where the "normal" rules for ghosts/monsters don't apply to be captivating.  Add in the pay-back for intimate violence themes that resonates with many survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, and I was hooked. 

This recommendation might be the epitome of why I really enjoy this project because I absolutely never would have read this book but for the fact that I read every book on this list every year.  I was sure this would fall into the category of "I love to hate a book almost as much as I love to love to book," ultimately the best part of this project is when I love a book I was sure I was going to hate. And that is what happened here.

Recommend.

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I will preface this by saying that I am not a fan of horror, either in books or movies, but part of this project is that I read and finish every book and in this case, even though the bottom line is going to be a Not Recommended label, I have to say that I thought and talked about this book a remarkable amount for not recommending it to anyone. 

This book is about truly awful, abusive mothers with borderline personality disorders who torture and haunt their children, even after their death.  The lack of clarity about whether the haunting is real or a shared delusion as a result of the trauma these mothers inflicted on their children, step-children, and children-in-law, is truly horrifying and the book in general was, indeed, horrific. 

That said, the ending was so clever and the cleverness of the ending only adding to the horror of the story.  Although it is a full book, it had the pacing and feel more in line with that of a short story, including the way the ending of the story lands with the slow realization of what is happening having the feel of The Gift of the Magi or The Lottery. 

If you are a fan of horror, then this may very well be for you, but I can't really recommend it otherwise. I did give serious thought to a Not Not Recommendation, but ultimately decided that it really was just too disturbing for that.

Not recommended.

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In many ways this is a traditional masculine war novel. It is set in Leningrad during World War II, but I am not sure that I got the sense that the narrative was true to that era.  To be fair, I know very little about the Russian front in WWII, but there was something about significant pieces of the plot that seemed unlikely to be true and to a large extent it felt like another example of "historical fiction" that imports model progressive values into historical scenarios that I am not at all sure that people experienced at the time and that just feels like a erasure of actual historical experiences. 

​Here, it is a young woman posing as a boy and a Jewish boy pretending to be a soldier, both "hiding in plain sight," who just happen to come into contact again and again by people who step up to protect him that felt too much like a story about how many saviors there were in a time and place where we know that these types of heroes were few and far between.  The chances that they would come into contact with this many just ignores how unusual that probably would have been. And there were just so many little examples of this, like the way sex workers are treated with so much respect and compassion by the protagonist solider and his friend also felt so unlikely that I couldn't get into the story. There was something not just about the substance of these interactions, but the voice that just did not feel congruent with other writing from and about that era that I spent the entire book thinking about whether the book was researched and historical accurate and not about the actual story itself.  I found it distracting for this reason and just couldn't get into it. 

Not recommended.
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A Holocaust novel, this book reminded me so much of the more well-known novel The Book Thief that I actually had to make sure that I wasn't misremembering that it was the same book--or at least the same author.  While The Book Thief was narrated by Death, The Little Liar was narrated by Truth.  The story is, of course, both incredibly depressing while also being a story of resilience for those who survived and it does a good job of highlighting the different ways the characters survived and what it cost them. I found the respect for the disparate impacts of trauma on different people to be relatively sophisticate and interesting. Some of the plot twists felt farfetched and the over-done theme of the non-Jews who, out of no where, stepped in to help was trite. The use of Truth as the narrator felt a bit gimmicky.  I had some sympathy for this, since it must be difficult to find a fresh way to engage with material this dark that will find an audience and yet I just found the narration scheme to be distracting.  I am likely in the minority in this respect, though, since I had a similar reaction to The Book Thief.  
 
Not recommended. 
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Another murder mystery, of which I seem to have had a lot more this year than usual, there is a lot to like in this story.  Set in a remote location at the destination of a successful tv star and a magazine editor, the story is told from multiple pointsof view, which narrators being more and less reliable, revealing all the hidden motives and guarded secrets they have in small bits as the story unfolds.  These back stories set the stage for the conflicts that arise, but the biggest secrets are held back and keep you guessing as more and more people have reason to murder others at the party and you don't know until the end who is murdered, let alone who did it. I really liked the story and thought it was cleverly written and the unusual format which could have felt gimmicky actually flowed really well. I will say that there was one too many backstories and as the last one played out, my willingness suspension of disbelief was pushed a little too far. It just felt too unlikely that the person with the least connect to the main circle of people just happened to have had motive to kill one of the other guests because of a connection that neither was aware of and that unfolds with way too much coincidence.  It did add a layer of extra cleverness and it was woven into the story early on in a way that made it all make sense when it came together, but really it just seemed so unlikely to have been possible that it distracted from an otherwise really tightly plotted story. Even with that, I am giving it a soft recommendation.
Recommend
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I understand that this nearly 1,000 page book is revered as brilliant and that the author has received the Nobel Prize for Literature for another novel.  I know that many intelligent people think the book is amazing. I, however, feel like it was pretty much lost on me.  I found it a slog, pedantic, male-centric, and frankly boring.  Yes, some of the historical pieces were mildly interesting, but I have decided that I do not find 18th century Poland particularly enthralling.  Sometimes, it felt like the descriptions would never end and that the plot was a very long ways away from the words I was reading.  Other times, some of the narrative would pull me in, particularly the portions that compared the Jewish protagonist's exploration of other communities. But, those parts were short lived and almost as soon as I realized I was engaged, the moment would be gone and I would return to feeling that this book was just too heady for me.


Do not recommend.

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This is a fabulous murder mystery that I can't stop thinking about.  It is so well written, the characters are so richly developed, and the plot is delightfully complicated that I am seriously contemplating reading it a second time.  Set across time from 1961 to 1975 as they investigate an old murder and a new disappearance, the complexity of interpersonal dynamics and histories just pulled me in, all the time being filled with red herrings and twists, as the investigation proceeds. The standout character is the young woman detective no one takes seriously and the ending just reinforced how much I loved her.  I found the portrayal of sexism and elitism to be well portrayed, ever present, without having it be the sole focus of the story--reminding me of how even during my younger years it was so pervasive we often accepted it without noticing at all. Did I mention the ending of this book was so good? So often these complex stories have predictable, unrealistic, or just stupid endings that don't hold together, but this one was right on point.
Highly recommend.

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