This book! I don’t usually read crime/thriller books, but I’d heard great things about this one, so I took the plunge. It’s terrific, easily one of the best books I read this year.

Two ex-cons, Ike and Buddy Lee, team up for vengeance after their sons are brutally murdered. Ike, a Black man who’s gone legit with a landscaping business after spending seven years in jail, and Buddy Lee, a white man who’s been in and out of jail, both had fraught relationships with their sons as they didn’t accept their lives as a gay married couple.

While trying to find out who killed their boys, these two characters deal with everything from racism to bigotry to white supremacist violence. In SA Cosby’s deft hands, every issue is explored honestly and openly. Although it’s violent, the gravitas that Cosby brings to this buddy comedy/crime tale is revelatory and poignant. Hope, change, and redemption are possible, even in the most horrific of circumstances.

I loved this book! It’s fast-paced from start to finish and is an emotional powerhouse. I highly recommend it. Easily one of my favorites of the year!

A satirical look at an IKEA-type company and a product designer, Ava, who works there, this odd book did not work for me. Ava suffers a horrific loss and a romance with her new boss opens her up to coming out of the funk she's been in since that loss. Yet a certain plot point tweaks this seemingly fun and redemptive book of healing and growth into a thriller-type book that ends with little closure. Maybe I missed what I was supposed to get out of the send-ups of the IKEA-like company or the corp culture or the bro-culture that were intended, but I just ended up being underwhelmed at the end. Ava, after all the loss she suffered, wasn't redeemed or didn't really "grow." The rushed ending seems to indicate that she is finally open to loving and growing again, but it didn't feel earned. Overall, I was disappointed with this one.

This book is astounding. Easily one of my favorites of the year.

An epic tale of history, art, love, loss, and life, this novel felt like a lush, expansive movie. Author Winman crafts a vivid, mesmerizing narrative that covers 40 years of history, both big moments and everyday occurances.

In 1944, Ulysses Temper, an Allied forces soldier, has a chance meeting with an older art historian named Evelyn Skinner. As bombs fall, they hide out in a wine cellar in Florence with Temper's Captain. The brief moment in time stays with both Ulysses and Evelyn even after they say farewell. After the war ends, Ulysses heads back to his hometown of London to a rag-tag group of pub-goers who are family more than friends and his estranged wife Peg, who, in his absence, had a baby named Alys with an American man. Evelyn continues to teach art history and enjoy spending time with several female lovers.

Ulysses and Evelyn eventually find one another again, yet during the 40 years they are apart, the narrative focuses on Ulysses's life with his friends in London and his eventual move to Florence. Each character is richly drawn, making you laugh, cry, and cheer, as they navigate the highs and lows of the day-to-day and the occasional "big" event that affects them. While the bulk of the narrative focuses on everyday events, it still enchants and engrosses. Even when the setting switches to Florence, the lives of the new characters we meet and Ulysses's experiences (and those of Cress and Alys, who go with him) are engaging and enlightening.

When Ulysses and Evelyn meet up again, the story moves to its inevitable and thoroughly satisfying conclusion. I loved every part of this (big!) novel. The commentary on how art heals and reveals our humanity. How the true-to-life 1966 Flood of the Arno is described and how Ulysses and his friends navigate the damage and devastation. Evelyn's rich sapphic love life and her encounters with famous artists and writers, especially E.M. Forester. The charming A Room with a View homage that enhances the historical chronology.

All in all, this sweeping saga is a gloriously rendered historical fiction novel that enchants with vivid writing and a historical timeline that highlights some truly momentous occasions. Yet, it still makes quite a case for the beauty, humor, and heart of the quiet, day-to-day moments. Under the frozen, "perfect" image of a still-life painting, lies the "messy" components that went into making it...but even in them, there is beauty. Similarly, the major challenges and conflicts of life are underscored by the tedium and pattern of the everyday. And even in those, there is beauty.

This intense character study focuses on two middle-aged women, Liselle and Selena. Liselle is hosting a dinner party for her husband, Winn, who has just lost an election to be a state legislator in Pennsylvania. Liselle, a Black woman, is recollecting comments made by her outspoken mother, Verity, about how Liselle lives the life of a rich, privileged woman, with a big house, white husband, and housemaid. Liselle is shocked to learn that her husband is under investigation by the FBI. While dealing with these realities, she remembers her life as a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she was in a relationship with Selena, another Black woman. While there, the two were open about their love and their fierce determination to live their lives on their own terms.

Selena, plagued by hyper-anxiety about all of the world's ills, has been in-and-out of mental hospitals in the years since she's seen Liselle. After a chance meeting in a grocery store, the two end up thinking about each other and the book chronicles their lives leading up to a defining moment and the issues that affect them, including racism, sexuality, and love/marriage.

I always enjoy a book that is laser-focused on a strong character, and while this one is that in regards to Liselle, I was interested but not gripped by her story. As her dinner party progresses, she starts questioning her life choices, especially her marriage to a man that she's not sure she truly knows and the lost love she regrets. Her backstory reveals a woman who lived an unabashed lesbian lifestyle, so to see her so settled in a life she's not fully comfortable with, is a shock. Selena's storyline is not as detailed, yet the despair that plagues her is relatable. When in college and in a relationship with Liselle, Selena wasn't as outspoken as Liselle, but seemed to be able to keep some of her anxiety at bay by feeling happy in love. I still felt like her story wasn't as detailed as it needed to be for the reader to become completely immersed in her rebirth.

A short 208 pages, this novel felt unfinished to me. There are allusions to the work of poet Audre Lord (the Afrekete in the title) and similar story beats to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I did enjoy this look at two complex, middle-aged women who reassessed their lives and their relationship with each other, but I was left wanting more background on Selena and more closure at the end.

King’s superpower as a writer seems to be to take very specific fictional situations and mine them for relatable human experiences, including humor, pathos, good, evil, and heart. This collection features a bunch of great stories, with some standing out above others. I really enjoyed “Creature,” “Five Tuesdays in Winter,” and “The Man at the Door.” Some themes that carry through all of them are parent-child relationships, life and death, sexuality, love, and coming-of-age. King has a lovely way with words and there are several lines in this collection that resonate. I read parts of this and listened to the audiobook, which has a different narrator for each story (including Perfect Strangers’ Bronson Pinchot!). If you love short stories, this is a great collection to experience.