In 1960s Harlem, Ray Carney has a reputation as an upstanding used furniture salesman. Although Carney strives to live up to what he knows he can be, times aren't like they used to be, and he occasionally supplements his income with a side gig fencing items for the underworld of Harlem. When Carney's cousin ropes him into being the fence for a heist gone wrong, Carney finds himself caught up with shady cops and local gangsters.

Whitehead is a gorgeous writer with a powerful command of visuals, but I have to admit, I struggled to get into his newest novel. The beginning moved so slowly I was tempted to quit, and just as it picked up (a heist, a murder!), the section ended and the story jumped 2 years ahead. However, I'm so glad I stuck with it, because halfway through, I finally connected with Ray's struggle to straddle moral and ethical lines as he deals with the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of 1960s Harlem.

To be near his mother in a dementia care facility, newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter move to his sleepy New York hometown. Working in a downstairs office, Sam doesn't realize his therapy sessions with his mostly female clientele can be heard from a vent in the office upstairs, a temptation too big to resist. After Sam disappears one night in a storm, Annie wonders how well she really knew her husband.

A very quick read, Goodnight Beautiful completely surprised me with its first twist, one so well executed you will never see it coming. However, the story goes downhill from there, falling into the trap of being more of a retread of another story (no spoilers on which one) rather than a clever retelling.

After graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was excited to enter "the real world" with a job in Paris and an amazing new boyfriend. But an itch turned to a diagnosis of leukemia with only a low chance of survival. Jaouad spent the next four years in the hospital battling cancer and writing about it for The New York Times. Yet, once she was cured, she felt even more lost than ever. So she embarked on a road trip across the country to find herself in this bestselling nonfiction book.

Jaouad's memoir is a startling first-hand account showcasing how cancer can eat into more than just our bodies. Jaouad honestly describes how her illness affected her relationships with friends, family, and even her faithful boyfriend. Reading it, you learn how modern medicine does a great job keeping you alive but fails to look at the entire aspect of a person, both the mental and the physical. Jaouad's journey back to "normal" is a stark reminder that the post-cancer transition can be just as hard as the throes of chemotherapy.

Amid the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra, Australia, is rocked by a murder-suicide in a local family. For the first time since he was run out of town as a teen, Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns home for the funeral. The parents of his best friend are convinced their son could not have murdered his family and Falk agrees to help the local sheriff investigate in this compulsive mystery that will draw you in from the very first page.

Xiomara Batista feels trapped and confused as she grows into adulthood. Instead of letting her fists fly, Xiomara begins to record her thoughts into a little leather notebook. When she is invited to join her school's poetry club, she realizes the power in expressing her own emotions even if against her family's approval. Acevedo brilliantly narrates the turmoil of a young woman straining to push past her parent's expectations and the world's assumptions to find who she really is. Not being a fan of poetry, Acevedo's audiobook narration made this novel told in verse even more powerful.

Good people can be bad at relationships. Matthew Fray knows this first hand, after his article "She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink" went viral following his divorce. Now a relationship coach and blogger, Fray explains how good intentions can cause us to hurt our partners and shows how to break the cycle of dysfunction in your marriage. 

This is How Your Marriage Ends spends most of the book repeating the same lesson over and over in as many ways as possible - by not having empathy, you unintentionally hurt your spouse and then invalidate their experience, breaking their trust and straining the relationship. Fray's book serves his target audience (good men who are bad husbands) well, beating them over the head with his central message. However, the constant repetition drove me crazy and Fray's sense of humor wasn't my style.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harper Collins through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Jack and Grace seem to be the perfect couple. He's a high-powered attorney who defends abused women and she's the perfect housewife. Yet looks can be deceiving, Grace is a prisoner in her own house, forced to act as Jack sees fit. As the day arrives for Grace's sister with Down Syndrome to move in with them, Grace must find a way to negate Jack's leverage and escape.

Although I spent the whole novel wanting to yell at Grace to just act, Paris does an excellent job making this implausible scenario feel plausible. Compulsively readable, Behind Closed Doors is the perfect psychological thriller if you want fast-paced action you can't put it down. 

After spending a year at a prison work farm for involuntary manslaughter, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson returns to his Nebraska hometown. With his mother gone and his father recently deceased, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head West. But his plans are derailed when two friends from the work farm suddenly appear with a scheme of their own, forcing an unexpected journey to New York City.

Amor Towles immerses you into the 1950s with his richly descriptive literary novel about the madcap ten-day adventure of Emmett and Billy Watson. I quickly fell in love with the gorgeous multi-layered characters in The Lincoln Highway. On the cusp of adulthood and coping with feelings of abandonment, they each are struggling to understand their place in the world. 

In Red Hook, Brooklyn during the early 1900s, Sofia and Antonia are best friends and neighbors, members of "The Family," the local Italian mafia. When Antonia's father is disappeared, a wedge develops between the girls that will affect them as they grow older and begin to question the demands of their "family."

The Family is at heart a story about female friendship and motherhood. Close-knit as children, Sofia and Antonia drift as teenagers only to find connection again as new mothers. The 1930s Mafia serves as a backdrop to the story, serving to anchor the characters together, but The Family is much more Firefly Lane than The Godfather, which I enjoyed but others might not.

Not as effortlessly inspiring as Essentialism

What if you could achieve more without overexerting and overthinking? McKeown stresses the importance of simplifying processes to get effortless results. McKeown focuses on how to get yourself in the right mindset, how to simplify your actions, and then how to automate them to reach even greater results. 

When I read McKeown's Essentialism last year, its simplicity spoke to me in a way few books have. Needless to say, my expectations for Effortless were rather high. Unfortunately, McKeown's newest book just didn't have the same power that Essentialism had, and I struggled to stay engaged with the uninspired advice.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Crown Publishing through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.