Early in Terry McMillan’s hilarious, sad, wry, raunchy novel—-aren’t all of her books thus?—the protagonist, 50-something Georgia Young, opens the door to a handsome 18-year-old pizza delivery boy. With memories of How Stella Got Her Groove Back swimming in her head, the reviewer immediately thought, ‘Oh Terry, don’t go there. Please don’t.’ I won’t reveal where McMillan goes with the hot pizza delivery boy, but the places she takes readers in I Almost Forgot About You are utterly fascinating.

Georgia is an optometrist living in the San Francisco Bay area. She’s comfortable financially: She has a big honking house and shops at Whole Foods without trauma. Her two daughters are grown; she’s a veteran of two divorces; and she’s bored rigid with her life. When a patient reveals that she’s the daughter of one of Georgia’s old flames, who is alas, no longer alive, Georgia gets the idea to contact all—well, a lot—of the men she had relationships with in her torrid past and let them know what they meant to her. A rollicking story ensues.

The reader finds herself torn between gritting her teeth at how right McMillan gets the relationships between best friends, ex-spouses, ex-lovers, parents and children and putting the book down to laugh out loud. What else can you do when Georgia describes an ex-husband’s perfidy making her want to turn her head around “like Linda Blair in The Exorcist”?

Head-spinning aside, what an amazing character Georgia Young is! She’s loving, though everyone she loves gets on her nerves. She’s wise and foolish, whip-smart and sort of dumb. Isn’t she a bit like you and me? She’s also supported by one of the best cast of characters McMillan has conjured up in a long time. Run, don’t walk, and pick up this exuberant summer read.

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Emma Straub has been making her mark in the genre of domestic drama—see her 2014 hit, The Vacationers—and her latest has all the necessary elements for a repeat: an appealing cast, interwoven plot lines and an insightful take on the ups and downs of both marital and parent-child relationships.

Over two decades ago, four Oberlin College students formed a band and achieved a modest amount of local fame. After the band dispersed, Lydia, the lead singer, became famous on her own before dying from an overdose at age 27. Now in their 40s, the other band members—Zoe, Andrew and Elizabeth—all live in Brooklyn: Andrew and Elizabeth are married and have a 17-year-old son; Zoe and her wife, Jane, own a local restaurant and have an 18-year-old daughter.

As Modern Lovers opens, things are not running smoothly among these longtime friends. Elizabeth, a successful real estate broker, is mystified, even after all these years, by Andrew’s lack of commitment to a “normal” vocation. From a wealthy family, he’s never really had to work, and he’s thinking of investing in a shady yoga/health center. Zoe and Jane are seeing a marriage counselor, and they may be close to splitting up. Then a Hollywood producer contacts Elizabeth about buying the rights to a song for an upcoming biopic about Lydia. All three must sign off on the rights, but of course, they can’t agree: one more complication threatening their friendship.

Straub perceptively explores this new phase of her characters’ lives in chapters told from each one’s point of view as they realize they must leave their combined past behind to deal with what lies ahead. Straub weaves their stories together with wit and empathy, creating an engaging read about love in its many guises.

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In English author Yvvette Edwards’ second novel, following her acclaimed debut, A Cupboard Full of Coats (2012), she delves into the timely issue of violence against and between young black men—both its possible causes, and its heartrending effects on the families involved.

The Mother opens in London, as Marcia Williams prepares to attend the first day of the trial of the young man accused of stabbing to death her bright and loving 16-year-old son, Ryan. We learn that Ryan was returning to the Sports Ground to retrieve his football shoes after practice; that a jogger saw a young man run toward Ryan and stab him four times; and that the accused, Tyson Manley, claims to have been with his girlfriend at the time of the murder.

Edwards leads the reader through the jury selection, the opening statements and the evidence presented by both the prosecution and defense in complete detail. But in the process of laying out these basic facts, Edwards perceptively explores a wide realm of issues, uncovering layer by layer the complicated answers to the questions that have hounded Marcia since her son’s death. How could someone so young kill another person so brutally? Why does Tyson show no remorse? Why would his girlfriend lie for someone who has shown no respect for her?

Edwards writes with compassion for her characters and with intuitive understanding of the effects of loss on a family, as well as the underlying causes that can lead to senseless crimes such as this one. The Mother is highly recommended for readers who enjoy current issue-related fiction by authors such as Jodi Picoult and Jacquelyn Mitchard.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the small township of Bledsoe, Mississippi, sits Singer’s Trailer Park, a collection of trailers, campers and sometimes tents. Inside Singer’s lives a clever young girl named Solemn Redvine, whose family prefers to keep their distance from their neighbors—with the exception of Solemn’s father, whose occasional wanderings lead Solemn to believe the infant child of a couple down the way may be her half-sibling.

When Solemn witnesses a shocking event late one night in Singer’s, she struggles to reclaim the sense of innocence she felt before and find her balance. As more changes happen to Solemn’s family dynamic and within the community, she wonders who she will become as her life develops among such turmoil. She longs to leave Singer’s, where she feels trapped by her connection to a crime she saw and can’t forget. When Solemn’s father’s latest mistake leads to her removal from her parents’ custody, Solemn gets the escape she has been looking for, albeit under less-than-perfect circumstances. But she finds herself facing the same questions about her identity. There might not be an easy way to grow up.

Kalisha Buckhanon has presented realistic portraits of modern African-American life in her previous novels, Upstate and Conception. With Solemn, she has created an emotional and expressive novel about family, obligation and community. This twisting, expressive coming-of-age story not only offers readers a young girl’s experience of seeking her place in the world, but also illustrates the struggle of life in the rural South.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Each day is filled with hundreds of tiny choices: Will you take this route to work, or that one? Stop for coffee, or continue directly to the office? Speak to the stranger in front of you in line, or keep to yourself? Most of these decisions seem insignificant. But you never know when a moment will change the course of your life. 

In The Versions of Us, a #1 bestseller in the U.K., debut novelist Laura Barnett explores the paths that branch from a central moment in Eva Edelstein’s and Jim Taylor’s lives. The pair meet in 1950s Cambridge, when a dog runs in front of Eva’s bicycle. Jim steps in to help, and their next moves will determine the rest of their lives. 

At the time of their meeting, Eva is an aspiring writer involved with an actor, David, who is considered the prize among the university’s theater crowd. Jim is the son of a renowned, deceased painter, and a talented artist himself, but he’s set on pursuing a career as an attorney. 

Barnett follows Eva and Jim over decades and through three versions of what could be. In the first, they fall in love; in the second, they say hello and continue on; in the third, Eva feels a connection to Jim but opts to stay with David. On each of these paths, their lives will again intersect. 

Barnett masterfully pulls the reader through these alternating tales. Each option is compelling and believable. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here: Regardless of the paths we choose, the people who are meant to be in our lives will find their way there.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Elizabeth Crane’s latest novel, The History of Great Things, is a poignant dual narrative featuring a mother and daughter whose disparate paths ultimately prevent them from ever truly understanding each other.

For Crane’s two heroines—ambitious Lois, who speaks from beyond the grave, and her only child, Elizabeth, who shares a name with the author—untangling the knots of their messy lives means sifting through decades of memories, both shared and separate. These include the Great Depression and Lois’ Midwestern youth, the early days of Lois’ first marriage, and the turmoil of Elizabeth’s childhood and adolescence as she copes with her mother’s absence.

A gifted musician and aspiring opera singer, Lois feels trapped by the soul-numbing domesticity prescribed to women of her generation, and she doesn’t hesitate to ease her unhappiness by sacrificing her daughter, whose birth has cast her ambitious mother’s dreams asunder. While many women of her era would have accommodated a passion for music by joining the church choir, compromise is not in Lois’ vernacular. Her pursuit of her career comes at the detriment of her soon to be ex-husband and daughter.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s problems are rooted in the perils of self-medicating with alcohol, which she first turns to as a way to escape her pain and anxiety as a teenager as she shuttles between Iowa and New York City. As an adult, she has difficulty establishing a healthy relationship.

Alternating between laugh-out-loud humor and heart-rending melancholy, Crane gives us a mother and daughter who never quite grasp each other’s life stories, but who find truth through unconditional love.

A reader of fashion writer and editor William Norwich’s latest novel, My Mrs. Brown, could be forgiven for thinking its titular heroine is living in the 1950s, like Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge. The lady described is in late middle age. Mrs. Brown is modest, fair-minded and dutiful, and lives in a quiet Rhode Island town. The highlight of her year is being asked to help with an inventory of the estate of a philanthropic widow. Only then does it becomes clear that the story takes place in the present day. Are there still people like this?

Norwich’s answer is an enthusiastic “Yes!” There are ladies who wear twinsets and sensible shoes, bake morning glory muffins and still write letters in the age of Facebook and endless texting. You’ll be surprised how shocked you are when you encounter the first F-bomb in this book. No, it does not come from Mrs. Brown.

During the inventory, Mrs. Brown sorts through Mrs. Groton’s sumptuous dresses, and she finds one whose twin she simply must have. She’s a good seamstress but she could never sew such a glorious garment. No, Mrs. Brown has to go to New York to find such a dress, and the prospect fills her with the terror and excitement of a recruit waiting to storm a beachhead.

Even if you find Mrs. Brown anachronistic, with the gentle conservatism of an age long-gone, you come to like and respect her. Then, you come to love her. For along with her belief in decency and humility comes tenacity. She is determined to overcome her fear of New York—its crazy transit system and good/bad smells and confusing street signs and all the rich and sophisticated people who still manage to be kind when they meet her—because she must have that Oscar de la Renta dress, which she has painstakingly saved for. She does not want the dress to entice a man, or to flatter her figure or even because she thinks she’s as good as Mrs. Groton, although she is. The reviewer will leave it to the reader to find out the reason why.

Goodness really is its own reward, says Norwich’s gentle-hearted book. Better yet, sometimes goodness is rewarded.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For both parents and child, the subject of adoption is fraught with emotional complications. That’s the point of departure for New York writer Boris Fishman’s perceptive second novel, Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo. And like his debut novel, A Replacement Life, it also deals with the challenges facing immigrants from the former Soviet Union as they adapt to life in the United States.

There’s definitely something different about Max Rubin, the adopted 8-year-old son of Alex Rubin, of Belarus, and his wife, Maya, of Ukraine. The blonde-haired, green-eyed boy is fond of sleeping in a tent and has even taken to tasting some of the varieties of grass growing around his New Jersey townhouse. His decision to abandon the school bus and disappear one late spring afternoon throws his family into crisis.

Maya’s need to unravel the mystery that is Max eventually leads her to propose a family odyssey to Montana, where Max was born. For the suburbanites, Montana might as well be Mars, a reality Fishman adroitly reveals in describing both its geography and its culture.

At the heart of this family drama is mercurial, deeply sympathetic Maya, who senses disaster lurking around every corner. Fishman patiently uncovers the tensions embedded in the Rubins’ relationship that intensify Maya’s restlessness. They’ve reached the midpoint of their lives in an alien land without a clear vision of where life is taking them, and with a vague sense of unease that’s exacerbated by their sharp disagreements over how much of Max’s history they need to know.

Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo—the plea of Max’s young mother as she hands over her child to his adoptive parents—is a ruminative story about the often fragile bonds of family. Even the most comfortable parents and children may someday confront a crisis as unsettling as the one that afflicts the Rubins, a truth that allows this novel to resonate with unexpected force.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re looking for a typical story in which two people meet, fall in love and live happily ever after—this is not it. Theresa Rebeck’s comedic and heartbreaking love story, I’m Glad About You, is anything but predictable. From Hollywood red carpets to Midwestern mansions, Rebeck takes us on a wild ride through the lives of two high-school sweethearts who just can’t seem to get it right.

Alison Moore and Kyle Wallace’s romance was complicated from the start. They fell in love in high school, but went their separate ways after realizing their future ambitions didn’t quite align. Alison wanted to escape Cincinnati and become a movie star, while Kyle hoped to practice medicine. Years pass as they build their lives independently, but when fate brings them back to Cincinnati, they’re forced to face past regrets and the magnetic connection that remains despite the time and distance. Will they put their careers and families on the line to finally be together?

A seasoned playwright and producer—she was the creator of the TV drama “Smash”—Rebeck gives readers a behind-the-scenes peek into show business and the price of fame. Whether at a Hollywood movie set or a Midwestern cookout, her characters are faced with the (sometimes ugly) truth of what happens when life isn’t unfolding exactly how you thought it would. I’m Glad About You is a refreshingly honest character study that explores how flawed people attempt to build a love that thrives in a messy, complicated world.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When we meet Charlie Goldwyn, he is hurtling through life at breakneck speed. Recently widowed, Charlie is pouring all his energy into his high-pressure, high-stakes job at a prestigious corporate law firm and clearly not dealing with his grief over his wife’s death. Nearly ’round-the-clock workdays have put a serious dent in his relationship with his quirky 5-year-old son, Caleb, and are not winning Charlie any father of the year awards. Pile on a complicated relationship with his own father and you have a portrait of the workaholic, emotionally out-of-touch, modern male. 

Of course, readers know that this “life” Charlie has created is unsustainable. Cue office party and a booze-soaked moment of truth that leaves Charlie humiliated, unemployed and an instant YouTube sensation. Now jobless, Charlie is stuck at home with Caleb for the summer. What ensues is a hilarious, touching romp of a journey that finds Charlie learning what fatherhood truly means. 

Cristina Alger, author of The Darlings, has written a big, heartfelt book that reads like your favorite sitcom. Charlie’s evolution to a secure, confident stay-at-home dad is wonderfully satisfying, and he is as relatable as Will Freeman in Nick Hornby’s About a Boy. This Was Not the Plan is a familiar story of love, loss, parenthood, friendship—and of finally understanding what it means to create a life that is truly in balance.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Yes, the heroine of The Things We Keep, Anna, is a 38-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease who is confined to an assisted-living facility. But no, Australian writer Sally Hepworth’s second novel is not depressing, and while her narrative can be sad and even painful at times, it is never bleak. On the contrary, the story of Anna and her “boyfriend” at Rosalind House, fellow patient Luke, is tragic but also hopeful, positive and even romantic.

Anna and Luke’s relationship may be the heart of the novel, but its peripheral characters are equally compelling. First among these is Eve, a young mother who lost her identity after her husband’s precipitous fall from grace and reinvents herself as the cook at the assisted-living facility. Hepworth’s depiction of Eve’s spirited daughter, Clem, is also heartrending, as are her portrayals of the eclectic contingent of residents at Rosalind House.

Hepworth’s debut, The Secrets of Midwives, was critically acclaimed, and it’s always a formidable task to impress readers with a second novel. But with The Things We Keep, Hepworth proves that literary lightning can indeed strike twice.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Three American women become ensconced in the cultural mélange of Hong Kong’s expat community in Janice Y.K. Lee’s absorbing, character-driven novel, following 2009’s The Piano Teacher. The author, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, opens her novel with a spot-on description of that sprawling city’s expat contingent—the Chinese, Irish, French, Koreans and Americans—“a veritable UN of fortune-seekers.” They have come for their jobs, or their husbands’ jobs; for six months, a year, maybe three years or more. And they have no idea what to expect from their temporary new home.

Mercy, 27, is a Korean-American woman who has been trying to make a “new start” in Hong Kong for three years. She was raised in a cramped apartment in Queens and graduated from Columbia, a “fancy college with fancy kids who showed her a different world.” She is having trouble finding a steady job and is not yet feeling comfortable in her role as one of the few single expats.

Margaret Reade also arrived three years ago, following her husband, a higher-up with a U.S. multinational. On the surface they are living the enviable, seemingly perfect expat life, but they have suffered a recent loss, and Margaret is finding it nearly impossible to move on. 

Hilary and her husband, David, have been in Hong Kong for eight years, and she has been trying to become pregnant ever since their arrival. Her marriage has “cooled into politeness,” but she’s hoping a child might help.

In Hong Kong’s insulated atmosphere, the paths of these three women manage to cross in intricate and unexpected ways. As they tell their stories in alternating chapters, Mercy, Margaret and Hilary become so familiar, the reader seems to have met them before. We know them not just superficially but are privy to their inner thoughts, frustrations and dreams. Like Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah, Lee is a perceptive observer of her compelling characters and brings them vividly to life in this moving novel.
 

RELATED CONTENT: Read our interview with Janice Y.K. Lee about The Expatriates.
 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.