Fiction book reviews archive | Page 20 of 454

by Thane Tierney

The Old Testament book of Ezekiel states that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.” In theory, while wealth may be passed along from generation to generation, debts—even those of the karmic nature—aren’t.

Try telling that to any of the Sonoro clan, the family at the center of Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ dual-timeline magical realist tour de force, The Bullet Swallower.

Beginning with patriarch Alferez Antonio in the 1800s, the Sonoros have committed all manner of sins in the name of ambition, from running a gold mine with slave labor to robbing a train at the turn of the 20th century. When the latter goes sideways, Antonio Sonoro is shot by the Texas Rangers and left for dead in the desert. His henchman brother is killed, but Antonio survives and swears a blood oath for revenge—rechristening himself as El Tragabalas, the Bullet Swallower.

A century later, in 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s number one box-office draw, a much-beloved movie star and performer known as El Gallo (The Rooster). While relaxing at home after a grueling tour, he’s visited by someone whom he believes to be a fan, bearing a strange gift: an ancient volume entitled The Ignominious History of the Sonoro Family from Antiquity to the Present Day.

Ping-ponging back and forth across the decades, Gonzalez James constructs a dynastic legacy that is shrouded in mystery and carries more than a hint of danger. When Jaime tries to pry some of the family’s more recent history out of his tight-lipped father, the old man replies, “Did you ever think that the reason I never said anything about them is because it’s too painful?” And when a shadowy figure named Remedio inserts himself unexpectedly into Jaime’s household, the story takes on an element of the supernatural.

All this would be remarkable enough, but it’s made even more so by the fact that The Bullet Swallower is based, albeit loosely, on Gonzalez James’ own family history. As she puts it in the author’s note, “Everything in this book is true except for the stuff I made up.” So while the son—or in this case the great-granddaughter—may not bear the iniquity of the father, it seems she does wind up bearing witness to it.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ dual-timeline magical realist tour de force presents the dynastic legacy of the Sonoro family—one that is shrouded in mystery and carries more than a hint of danger.

Coming of Age, Fiction, Popular Fiction

Fiction Popular Fiction Coming of Age

Interesting Facts About Space

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

by Sarah McCraw Crow

As with her first novel, Everyone in this Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily Austin’s Interesting Facts About Space features a quirky main character in Enid, who loves listening to true-crime podcasts to calm down. “I hate being startled,” she notes. “I like my podcasts, horror movies, and ghost stories that I can pause and rewind. I handle fear sort of like a workhorse. I could charge bravely into a planned battle, take in the sights of bombs and corpses, but I would still be spooked by an unanticipated barn rat.” When we first meet her, Enid is listening to a particularly grisly podcast while baking a gender reveal cake for her pregnant half sister Edna. Into this moment comes a stranger who’s furious at Enid, and the exchange unfolds in such an unexpected way that I laughed out loud more than once.

Enid is half-deaf, neurodivergent and gay. She’s also pretty sure that she’s a terrible person. In short vignettes, Enid narrates her attempts to navigate an uncomfortable new relationship with her half sisters and keep tabs on her depressed mom. With the help of her best friend Vin, Enid’s also trying to figure out what’s causing her panic attacks, and why someone seems to be stalking her. Enid and Vin work at the Space Agency, managing information, from which Enid’s gathered a vast array of random facts about outer space, which she shares with her mother in attempts at connection.

The novel’s comic scenes of misunderstandings and non sequiturs are interspersed with Enid’s musings about herself, her high-school years and her parents. Enid may be in her 20s, but Interesting Facts About Space is a coming-of-age story. Balancing the comic and the dark, the novel slowly reveals the essential sadness in Enid’s past that she can’t let herself see, and though occasionally the novel’s first-person, present-tense voice can feel a little claustrophobic, that’s a small quibble. In a lesser writer’s hands, Enid’s quirky traits could feel constructed, but Austin makes Enid’s vulnerable voice and deep thoughts feel brave, heartbreaking and true.

Emily Austin’s quirky main character, Enid, is trying to figure out what’s causing her panic attacks, and why someone seems to be stalking her. She’s also pretty sure that she’s a terrible person.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Wolves of Winter

Review by Matthew Jackson

by Matthew Jackson

With his debut novel, Essex Dogs, popular historian Dan Jones proved that he could take his expertise in medieval history and translate it into compelling, immensely readable fiction. Now, with Wolves of Winter Jones manages to do it again—and then some.

A direct sequel to Essex Dogs, Wolves of Winter picks up on the adventures of a band of soldiers and friends serving in the army of King Edward III in the midst of the Hundred Years War. In the wake of the English victory at the battle of Crecy, the Essex Dogs are convinced they’re going home soon, with pockets full of whatever plunder they’ve managed to scrape together. But the King and his noble allies have other plans. For reasons no one in the army’s rank and file can quite grasp, the English are preparing to lay siege to Calais, a small French port town surrounded by treacherous marshes. So, instead of going home, the Dogs continue on to Calais, even as a man they thought they left in the past creeps up behind them.

Throughout the action, Jones maintains a clear, confident grasp on the historical details, from the weapons the Dogs use to the surprising way that pirates factor into the Calais story. And just as in Essex Dogs, none of that detail ever distracts from the narrative, character development or emotional stakes. Jones’ themes have also matured and deepened, as the mysteries of the siege of Calais offer plenty of new opportunities to explore the futility of war from the Dogs’ perspective. Crecy was such a triumph that to keep fighting feels like an exercise in foolish bravado. As the Essex Dogs descend into the literal quagmire around Calais, they begin pondering the steps that led them to this point, considering whether control over their destinies is possible in a world ruled by those richer and more influential. It’s a study in maturation for an author who was already working at a high level; the added depth never gets in the way of the swashbuckling, epic action of the battles.

Wolves of Winter is another rollicking success for Dan Jones, cementing him as a master of historical fiction and leaving us counting the days until we can read what the Essex Dogs do next.

Wolves of Winter is another rollicking success for Dan Jones, leaving us counting the days until we can read what the Essex Dogs do next.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Hard by a Great Forest

Review by Chika Gujarathi

by Chika Gujarathi

For author Leo Vardiashvili, home was Tbilisi, Georgia, until post-Soviet civil unrest forced him and his family to flee to England in the 1990s. Almost two decades would pass before Vardiashvili returned to Tbilisi, finding a pulsing city filled with mere remnants of his childhood memories, places and faces.

Born of this loss and transformation, Vardiashvili’s debut novel Hard by a Great Forest tells the story of Saba Sulidze-Donauri, who has returned to his native city from London under difficult circumstances. Months ago, first his father, Irakli, and then his older brother, Sandro, had been drawn to Tbilisi by the pull of the past, then suddenly dropped out of contact and disappeared. It is now up to Saba to decipher the cryptic clues they left behind and locate his father and brother without arousing suspicion from the Georgian authorities.

Along with the shock of this awful situation, Saba faces the anxiety of returning “home” to find everything unfamiliar and overwhelming. Helping him navigate the streets as well as his emotions is a gregarious taxi driver named Nodar who drives an ancient Volga. Nodar has his own stories of loss camouflaged within this city that has moved on without him. Like young children possessed by an adventurous spirit, Nodar and Saba soldier on, determined to unravel the mystery of the disappearances. Although some brutal moments are hard to bear, Vardiashvili keeps readers invested with the grit and generous spirit of his characters, including Nodar, his resourceful wife Keti, and many long-dead relatives that live on as voices in Saba’s head.

At its simplest, Hard by a Great Forest appeals as a thrilling story of good guys trying to beat the bad ones. It is a great read full of history, mystery and chance reunions that asks the reader to examine how we can move forward when we’re followed by the ghosts of the past.

Hard by a Great Forest is full of history, mystery and chance reunions, following a Georgian refugee who has returned to Tbilisi to find his missing father and brother.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Popular Fiction

The Women

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

“Some women had worn love beads in the sixties; others had worn dog tags,” Kristin Hannah writes in The Women, her salute to American women who were nurses in the Vietnam War. It’s a book she has long wanted to write—since 1997—but didn’t feel ready to tackle until now. As she’s done before in runaway bestsellers like The Nightingale, The Great Alone and The Four Winds, Hannah demonstrates her knack for blending broad sweeps of history with page-turning plots to immediately engross legions of readers in even the most difficult of subjects.

The story covers more than 20 years, beginning in 1966 when 21-year-old Frankie McGrath impetuously joins the Army Nurse Corps, hoping to follow her beloved brother, Finley, to Vietnam. Her well-to-do parents live on Coronado Island in California and are very much concerned with keeping up appearances. Frankie’s father keeps a “Wall of Heroes” in his office filled with portraits of their family’s military veterans, even though he, to his shame, was declared ineligible to serve. Frankie’s life changes when one of her brother’s friends tells her, “Women can be heroes.”

Frankie arrives in Vietnam as a clueless, newly minted nurse, but she rises to the horrific circumstances and ends up finding her calling in life, as well as a turbulent romance. She slowly grows into a highly skilled surgical combat nurse, and the scenes of her working are particularly immersive, showing readers the traumatic experiences that soldiers, nurses and doctors experienced on a daily basis.

Over 265,000 women served during the Vietnam era, including about 10,000 American military women stationed in Vietnam during the war, most of them nurses. And yet, after the war, these women were met with remarks like “There were no women in Vietnam.” That’s the reaction Frankie gets when she returns home, and the last half of the book deals with her struggle with Americans who have little idea of or respect for what she’s been through. Her parents compound her feelings of shame and confusion when they reveal that they explained her absence to their friends by pretending Frankie had been studying abroad. Amidst so much misunderstanding, she relies on the support of two lifelong nursing friends as she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and depression.

In true Hannah fashion, The Women delivers a compelling read as well as a new understanding of the Vietnam era.

Kristin Hannah demonstrates her knack for blending broad sweeps of history with page-turning plots in this salute to military and civilian women who served during the Vietnam era.

Coming of Age, Fiction, Popular Fiction

Fiction Popular Fiction Coming of Age

Greta & Valdin

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

One of the first things I assumed when I started reading Rebecca K Reilly’s sad, hilarious novel Greta & Valdin was that the titular Maori and Russian New Zealander siblings must be teenagers. They are certainly adolescently self-absorbed and lovelorn, Valdin overcome with heartache over his ex-boyfriend and Greta harboring a puppy-dog crush on her tutor. It’s a mild shock to learn that Valdin is about 30 years old and a former physicist turned comedian, while Greta is five years younger, working on a useless master’s thesis and perpetually broke.

Greta and Valdin live together, and though they won’t acknowledge it, depend on one another. She’s hurt when he flies off to Buenos Aires and neglects to stay in touch with her. When Valdin comes back, he wonders what sort of flowers to buy along with a bag of limes to soothe Greta’s feelings. Their family members—Russian father Linsh, Maori mother Beatrice and older brother Casper (not his real name, but a name bestowed at birth because he was so pale)—take the siblings’ loopiness in stride. After all, they’re a fairly loopy bunch themselves.

Reilly writes with a dry, sly humor and great love for her characters. She brilliantly builds the world of the siblings bit by bit, like a jigsaw puzzle. Here’s a mention of a popular drink, a song, a snippet of another language or dialect, the names of local shops and bars, the specific clothing people wear: All combine not just to make the world feel real and lived in, but also to explain why Greta and Valdin are the way they are. Everyone in their circle acts like they’re 16. Why shouldn’t Greta and Valdin follow suit?

Ultimately joyous and life-affirming, Greta & Valdin is Reilly’s first novel. This reviewer is eager to see what she does next.

Rebecca K Reilly writes with a dry, sly humor and great love for her characters, building the world of siblings Greta and Valdin bit by bit, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Dixon, Descending

Review by Alden Mudge

by Alden Mudge

In Karen Outen’s adroit first novel, Dixon, Descending, Dixon Bryant carries a lot of baggage up Mount Everest. And even more coming down.

Part of that baggage involves his relationship with his brother, Nate. Sixteen months older than Dixon and now approaching 50, Nate, the long-awaited first son, has always been the “gift” to their parents. Charismatic, irrepressible and sometimes irresponsible, Nate is a bright balloon floating high in the air. Dixon, the wise, soulful, solid brother, holds the string. It is Nate who proposes that the brothers become the first Black American men to summit Everest.

Everest and the people who climb it form a world all their own. Outen, whose endnotes describe her passion for the mountain, writes breathtaking passages about the brothers’ experiences there: the competitive companionability of other climbers; the smell and sounds of the ever-shifting mountain; and, of course, the gut-wrenching dangers of the ascent. Nate and Dixon and their climbing team have lighter moments in camp, but as the brothers climb higher, things get deadly serious. In the rarefied air near the summit, slowed by the long line of climbers and barely able to breathe, the brothers have to make impossible choices about their ambitions, responsibilities and love for one another.

Back near sea level in Maryland, Dixon has more to contend with. Family and friends, for one. But more pressing is a matter at the middle school where he works as a beloved school psychologist. He has taken a bullied boy, Marcus, under his wing. When Marcus is viciously beaten, in an uncharacteristic moment, Dixon violently confronts the tormentor, an irreparably damaged soul named Shiloh. As a result, Dixon goes on leave and follows an unexpected path to self-discovery and expatiation.

That Outen can rather seamlessly meld these two fraught strands of story is a marker of her flowering skill as a writer. An additional gift of the novel is how much it has to reveal about love and friendship among Black men. That alone makes Dixon, Descending a worthy read.

In the rarefied air near the summit, two brothers must make impossible choices about their ambitions, responsibilities and love for one another as they attempt to become the first Black American men to climb Everest.

Fiction, Literary Fiction, Satire

Fiction Satire Literary Fiction

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

Review by Eric A. Ponce

by Eric A. Ponce

“Cartoonish” is typically a pejorative label. Overexaggerated, outlandish, silly—when a piece of art provokes these descriptions, we expect to be met with sticks of dynamite and eye roll-worthy puns. But the recent elevation of cartoons, from the existentialism of “BoJack Horseman” to the tender lessons of “Adventure Time,” should make us reconsider how we view cartoonishness. Isabel Waidner’s new novella, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, is cartoonish on every conceivable level: The story of Corey Fah is a comedic romp through a queer, absurdist world. Fit with an adorably passive-aggressive deer-spider hybrid, a wormhole-hunting playwright turned talk show host, and biting social commentary about social commentary, Waidner’s novel is a thoroughly enjoyable, envelope-pushing head-scratcher.

Corey lives with their partner Drew Szumski in a capital city loosely resembling London. After winning the Award for the Fictionalization of Social Evils, Corey is tasked with retrieving their trophy, but it’s not so simple as picking it up from the prize committee. The trophy is a neon-beige flying saucer that has a mind of its own, teleporting away from Corey and Drew as they repeatedly try to claim it. On this wild goose chase, the pair meet Bambi Pavok, the aforementioned fawn-spider creature who teleported from an alternate dimension. Still sans trophy and under pressure from the prize committee to do publicity, Corey takes Bambi Pavok onto a cultish talk show where the dimensional layers of this strange world start to fold in on themselves and the story takes a turn from weird to utterly bizarre.

I can say with certainty that Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is the wildest book I have ever reviewed for BookPage. The plot toes the line of ridiculousness in a truly masterful way, never ceasing to surprise, and Waidner’s ultramodern language, a mix of the Queen’s English and Tumblr-speak, results in some strangely beautiful sentences. All the while, the characters are developed in subtle, touching ways. For example, in a socially awkward, quintessentially millennial moment of tenderness, Corey expresses that they would be utterly lost without Drew, who has stood by them throughout their flailing career as a writer.

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is a flashy, punchy whirlwind: Waidner has caught lightning in a bottle.

Isabel Waidner has caught lightning in a bottle with this comedic romp through a queer, absurdist world.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Acts of Forgiveness

Review by Michael Magras

by Michael Magras

The concept of reparations has been a component of conflict resolutions since the days of ancient Carthage. In America today, the issue most often comes up in reference to offering restitution to Black citizens for the ills of slavery. That topic, and the backlash from those against monetary redress, is the animating force in Acts of Forgiveness, Maura Cheeks’ debut novel.

When Senator Elizabeth Johnson ran for president, a pillar of her campaign was her championing of the Forgiveness Act, which would provide $175,000 to every Black citizen over 18 who could prove they had an enslaved ancestor. Now, as America’s first female president, she announces her intention to carry out that promise. This is hopeful news for Black Philadelphia native Willie Revel, the 33-year-old single mother of a gifted daughter. Willie once dreamed of becoming a journalist. But after her father, who owns a construction company, had a heart attack, Willie abandoned her dreams and returned to Philly to take over the business.

Cheeks does a nice job of dramatizing Willie’s conflict and is equally adept at demonstrating not only the need for financial restitution but also its specific importance to Willie’s family. Willie could use the money for the family business, which struggles to stay afloat. One lifeline her father insists upon is a contract with Soteria, a company that hired their firm to build a recycling complex. Willie is revolted by working with Soteria because the owner, like a lot of conservatives, vehemently opposes the Forgiveness Act.

That’s just one of many issues Willie contends with as she researches her family history to prove their eligibility for reparations. Others include her lack of career fulfillment and her daughter’s difficulties at school and attempts to write a play—an ambition that resembles the one Willie had to give up.

Cheeks doesn’t fully demonstrate the skill of distinguishing necessary information from superfluous detail, but Acts of Forgiveness movingly highlights a litany of injustices, from casual racism to the pressure on women to sacrifice their ambitions. Willie’s mother tells her that “sometimes you have to go where you’re not wanted in order to change people’s minds.” This novel highlights the soundness of that advice, as well as the perils of being brave enough to follow it.

Maura Cheeks’ debut novel follows the impact of a reparations bill on Black Philly native Willie Revel, as she struggles to keep her family’s construction business afloat.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Fox Wife

Review by Freya Sachs

by Freya Sachs

Foxes, trains, elaborate outfits, witty sayings, luck and chance, the last days of an empire. Told in two voices, Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife is a fitting follow up to Choo’s previous novels, The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger.

Set in Manchuria in 1908, The Fox Wife plays with Chinese myths about the fox gods: foxes with the ability to transform themselves into beguiling, beautiful and tormented men and women. Legend has it that these fox gods sometimes live among people, causing trouble through their trickery and slippery relationship to the truth.

Equipped with an extreme sensitivity to the presence of truth, Bao is a detective on a mission to figure out what happened to a woman found frozen to death on the doorstep of a restaurant. His chapters—told from a third-person perspective—enthrall with keen observations about the gods, his own past and the people around him.

Snow is on her own quest to understand the death of her only child. She begins working for a family who has been cursed: Their sons die young. Her first-person chapters are particularly intriguing, with a strong voice and sharp turns of phrase. Who is Snow? And what will her journey allow her to discover?

As the story alternates between Snow’s and Bao’s perspectives, the pull to solve these mysteries builds momentum. The voices are compelling; the secrets are rich. When the two tales begin to overlap and the gaps fill in, the surprise is worth the wait. Layers of meaning accrue, bringing together the past and the present, mythology and personal ambition, actions and reactions, control and fate, into a fascinating tale of foxes, foes and friends.

Set in Manchuria in 1908, The Fox Wife combines Chinese myths about fox gods who live among people and the story of a detective determined to uncover the truth behind a woman’s mysterious death.

Family Saga, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction Family Saga

Cover reveal: ‘Familiaris’ by David Wroblewski

Feature by Phoebe Farrell-Sherman

David Wroblewski spent 10 years writing his first book, the remarkable instant classic The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Now, 16 years later, he’s delivering a follow-up: Familiaris, which will go on sale June 4th, and is available for preorder now.

We’re thrilled to reveal the beautiful cover, as well as an exclusive excerpt, below, but first, here’s the official synopsis:

It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle’s imagination has gotten him into trouble . . . again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin’s northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start—and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose, and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends—human, animal, and otherworldly—to realize their dreams.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, mysterious and enchanting, Familiaris takes readers on an unforgettable journey from the halls of a small-town automobile factory, through an epic midwestern firestorm and an ambitious WWII dog-training program, and far back into mankind’s ancient past, examining the dynamics of love and friendship, the vexing nature of families, the universal desire to create something lasting and beautiful, and of course, the species-long partnership between Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris.

Cover design by Alenka Linaschke.

Read on for an exclusive first look at the cover of the epic follow-up to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, plus a sneak peek of the first chapter.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction Historical Fiction

Goldenseal

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

by Sarah McCraw Crow

Maria Hummel’s fifth novel offers the atmospheric story of an old friendship gone awry. As Goldenseal opens in 1990, Edith has arrived in Los Angeles, a city that’s unrecognizable to her after 40 years in Maine. Her destination is a grand hotel she once knew well. Waiting for Edith is Lacey, who has withdrawn not only from her old friend, but from the world, making herself a recluse high above the city in the hotel her father owned for decades.

Lacey is agitated and doesn’t know why Edith has returned, but she has planned a fancy room service dinner for the two of them. As the dinner begins, the two are wary, feeling the presence of the long-ago rupture in their friendship. At 70, Lacey is troubled and fragile, while Edith is restrained, a cipher, “the headmistress incarnate.” Both women have been pummeled by time and by the world.

As each woman guardedly tells the other her perspective, we learn how Lacey and Edith became like sisters. Occasionally, one will wish for more of this recounting to be shown in scene rather than dialogue, because the novel describes Edith and Lacey’s youth so gorgeously, beginning with Lacey’s late-1930s childhood in her beloved Prague before the sudden move with her Mutti and Papi to New York City as war and the Holocaust loom. When Lacey is sent to summer camp in Maine, she encounters Edith, and they begin an intense friendship. They’re outwardly opposites: Lacey is a pampered only child, while Edith was born into rural poverty and is attending camp on scholarship because her father is the camp’s handyman. Eventually, Edith and Lacey both follow Lacey’s parents to Los Angeles to try out the film business, setting in motion the events that cause their dramatic split. In the novel’s present, the reunion dinner’s end leads to a surprising moment of tenderness: a bittersweet, fitting conclusion.

In the afterword, Hummel notes that she wrote Goldenseal as an homage to Hungarian author S&aacutendor M&aacuterai’s novel Embers, drawing her structure—two old friends reuniting for one night after a 40-year rift—from the older novel. Goldenseal is an inventive, immersive book recounting the particular past, old hurts and late healing of two singular characters.

Maria Hummel’s Goldenseal is an inventive, immersive novel recounting the reunion of two old friends 40 years after a dramatic rupture.

Coming of Age, Fiction

Fiction Coming of Age

Holiday Country

Review by Chika Gujarathi

by Chika Gujarathi

Set in a dreamy coastal town, Inci Atrek’s debut novel, Holiday Country, is about three generations of women learning to make peace with the choices they have made. Narrated by the youngest of them all, Ada, the story is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is about lost opportunities and how far one may be tempted to go to recover them.

Things are just as you might imagine in the tiny seaside town of Ayvalik off the Aegean coast of Turkey—sleepy, quiet and slow-moving. Here, time is dictated not by the ticking of a clock but rather by the movement of the sun and tide. Oleander bushes line the pathways connecting the villas, the market and the two lone restaurants (aptly named the Big Club and the Small Club), and gossiping is as crucial a part of the lives of Ayvalik’s mostly retired residents as swimming, eating and sleeping.

19-year-old Ada has spent all her summer holidays here since she was 4. Ada and her mother Meltem’s annual pilgrimage to Ayvalik from San Francisco has been a consistent but mostly unsuccessful attempt to please Ada’s opinionated and controlling grandma, Mukadder, who never quite forgave Meltem for marrying an American and moving away.

This summer, however, there is uncertainty in the air for Ada, who has not only discovered that her father has been cheating on her mother, but is also unsure of how her impending adult life will change her summer getaways to Ayvalik and, by extension, her connection to her Turkish heritage and her sense of who she really is. Amidst this angst, Ada meets a handsome older man named Levent. Soon discovering he has a romantic past with her mother, she goes on a mission to get them back together again, while unintentionally falling for him herself.

With a setting that comes through beautifully in Atrek’s writing, Holiday Country is tender, well-written and filled with just the right amount of twists and turns.

Holiday Country is a tender coming-of-age story about lost opportunities set in the tiny seaside town of Ayvalik off the Aegean coast of Turkey.