Lakshmi left her husband at the age of 17. She is now 30 and makes her living in Jaipur in the 1950s as a henna artist and herbal medicine practitioner. She hopes to transition to being a matchmaker to the ladies she serves, so she can finish the house she's been saving and building for since she arrived in the city ten years ago and pay off her debts. Just as she's closing in on achieving her dreams, two people from her past appear--one she knew and one she didn't.

The story follows Lakshmi, her young assistant Malik, and the stranger from Lakshmi's past as they navigate the gossipy pettiness of the upper class society members they serve. I'm excited there's a follow up, [b:The Secret Keeper of Jaipur|55004546|The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (The Henna Artist, #2)|Alka Joshi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618850443l/55004546._SY75_.jpg|85724759].

A trio of Paris Opera Ballet dancers: narrator Delphine, Lindsay the American, and Margaux who happens to be gay make their way through the school, the company, and poor choices. When Delphine, now a choreographer, returns to Paris from St. Petersburg after a breakup, she wants her friendships to resume, and maybe to finally sleep with that hot guy she said no to when she was a virgin.

Good and bad things happen, Delphine is a jerk, and maybe there's a little manslaughter, but everyone learns something in the end. I guess that's my snarky way of saying this book is okay. I didn't love it, but I wouldn't kick it out of bed.

The YA tropes of a selfish narrator and a perfect boyfriend made it hard for me to love this book. I almost put it down a few times, but stuck with it because at least the narrator wasn't a self-involved white girl. Harley is mixed race.

She's grown up in the circus her parents run. When she turns 18, she wants to finally live her dream of becoming a trapeze artist. When her parents insist she go to college, she runs...to another circus, committing an unforgivable act of betrayal.

You might glean I really wasn't a fan of this book. There is one aspect of it that interests me, though, and that's the mental health of the lovers. Harley seems to be manic-depressive, and her love interest Vas is on the autism spectrum. No diagnoses are made, and no medical treatments are considered. I think Harley seeks talk therapy, but that's it. I am down with the Icarus Project and mad acceptance, but I'm still puzzling out what was left unsaid about mental health.

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea is a fun, wholesome read about better presidential times. Mastromonaco worked for BO before he was on the national scene and continued until she'd served as Deputy Chief of Staff for I think three years. It seems she left because the job was a little stressful, especially her position, which was essentially Logistics Engineer Where the Whole World Is Watching. Seriously horrible, but glamorous job. Still, Mastromonaco has time for a giant cat, who is a highlight of the story.

The story itself--all entertaining and relatable, but some people, of whom I am one, like linearity, even if some authors don't.



Re: tampons, menstruators in the White House learn to carry extra tampons, because they have each others' backs. Like, you don't want to have a leak showing through your pants when the Secret Service or the president is walking behind you. Mastromonaco's biggest achievement, celebrated only in this book, was getting a tampon dispenser installed in a West Wing bathroom. The Lordessa's work.

Another favorite moment is when she narcs on Andrew Cuomo for being an information hoarder after Hurricane Sandy.

I read this 1966 novel by "Morna Stuart, the last generation of a family born in India" when I was a kid in the 1970s. It seemed progressive at the time, a narrative from the point of view of 18th century enslaved twin boys--one in Haiti, and one who was sold into a French household, as they long to be reunited. Meanwhile, there are revolutions happening.

The slave holders are thoughtless, greedy, and violent, but hating them is wrong, advises "Papa Doctor," an enslaved healer who chooses for himself and his family to remain in bondage to his white owner for reasons only he understands. That's wild, right?!? So much going on I didn't know about when I was a tween!

This is a weird story. I'm not sure what to say about it! The protagonist, whose name we don't learn until the end, is a pregnant 18-year-old who works as a pizza delivery person in LA. She lives with her boyfriend and her mom, who adore each other. Her alcoholic dad is dead.

One day, a woman calls in an order for a pepperoni and pickle pizza, and though pickles are not an item on the menu, Pizza Girl decides to accommodate the caller, a woman about Pizza Girl's mother's age and herself a mother of an elementary school-aged boy.

Based on the life of Nancy Wake, this is a French resistance novel with a satisfying amount of things going boom and arrogant sexists getting put in their place. Our heroine left her home in Australia at 16 and is a freelance journalist in Paris when we meet her. At that time, her publisher, Hearst, didn't give women writers bylines, unless they chose a male pen name. The author observes

It is quite possible that Nancy Wake was being erased from history even as she was writing it.

For that reason, it wasn't terribly hard on Wake to give up her underpaid, unrecognized job when she fell in love and moved to Marseille to marry Henri. Still, before she stopped covering the war, she saw enough of it to fucking hate the fucking Nazis.

When Henri is called to war, Nancy can't sit idly by. She finds her way into the resistance and eventually becomes a leader of it, working for the Brits (the French were xenophobes in the 1940s just like they are now). It's a powerful story with laughter and tears. Good and bad things happen. Nancy is painted like someone who is colorful, fun, and good at her job, but maybe a little headstrong and annoying if you're not counting on her to kill an Obersturmführer with her bare hands.

Cha tells the stories of four residents of a Seoul officetel: Ara, Kyuri, Miho, and Woona. They read as idol-obsessed, vain, selfish, and mean, though it's clear they have wounds from their past or societal pressures that make them so. I think that Cha is indicting Korean society, but I didn't love reading narratives from her unlikable heroines.

The novel is interesting for its look at Korean culture, even if it's not always enjoyable. It's a quickish read--and ends abruptly. Your mileage may vary. Let me know what you think.

Published in 1992 or so, Doomsday Book takes place in 2054 and 14th century Oxford with a pandemic in both storylines.I first read this novel at least twenty years ago, and it was the first time I'd seen the word "pandemic." A pandemic had taken place around our current time, and ever since, people had been given turbo-anti virals, so much so that young people didn't even know what colds felt like. Therefore when a university student contracted an illness, all he could tell was that something was wrong.

In the mid-21st century, time travel is a thing that historians get to do, even an undergrad like Kivrin can go back to the middle ages to have the ultimate primary source experience. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, self-important history professors are fighting stubbornly, and tedious American bell ringers have been quarantined along with a busybody mother, and a boy who sneaked through the quarantine perimeter to be with his great aunt/not be with his mother and mother's live-in for the Christmas holidays.

Things go terribly wrong in both worlds, but there is also some beauty in the way people care for one another, sometimes even after they're gone.

The titular mismatched are Soraya, a good Muslim girl, and her former classmate, Magnus, a rugby god. They both just finished university (it's the UK) and are figuring out adulting--without good adult role models in their lives. Both their dads are substance abusers. Soraya's mum, despite being the breadwinner (she has a PhD in something science), supports Soraya's abusive dad...to a devastating degree, as Soraya discovers late in the novel.

Although Magnus has problems, too, he's basically a perfect YA boyfriend with an undeserved reputation as a Lothario. He does enjoy taking naked photos and posting them on Instagram, and his rugby friends are assholes, so perfect is overstating it, but he's still way better than is likely for a handsome rugby god in his early 20s.

The story is fine, predictable, frustrating. My favorite part is when the family secret comes out, and Soraya's family finally starts to heal.