Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kenedy

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025--San Antonio

Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kenedy is a novel from 10 years ago that fits within what I have read is a current trend of gay romance hockey stories.  It is well enough written that it was been translated into 10 languages.  There was one "hitch" at the beginning that made me question whether it was well written or not; I don't recall what it was.  But it turned into a well-written, funny, and entertaining story about two boys who attended an elite summer hockey training camp throughout high school, didn't talk to each other throughout their college years because of a situation that occurred the last night of their last season at the camp, but met again when they were both drafted for NHL teams at the end of their college careers, and spent a final summer together back at the camp as coaches.  One has been openly gay throughout college.  The other has believed he was straight but is now, in the summer before they report to their teams, discovering he is bisexual.  The one who is bisexual is questioning whether he really wants to go professional as a goalie since there is a good chance he might not get to play much and that he might be sent to a lower level team.  He enjoys coaching and starts wondering if he might be better off not reporting to his team and trying to find a job as a defensive coach for a minor league hockey team.  The one who is gay wants to make it as a professional, but he feels he must return "to the closet" at least during his first year as a profession due to homophobia being a known problem within professional sports.  As with most romance novels of any kind, I found it had more and longer descriptive sexual encounters than I really wanted to read; they just slowed down the progression of the story.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025--San Antonio

Penguin named The Stolden Queen by Fiona Davis one of the best books for the first half of 2025, but I disagree.   A major error occurred about halfway through as the 19-year-old character Annie, who has been taking care of her mother for 10 years in a hand-to-month living situation, rushes to their small basement apartment to quickly pack a bag and PICK UP HER PASSPORT!  Apparently neither the Columbia University graduate author nor her editor (presumably also a college graduate and living in New York) had the mental awareness to realize that a young woman in that situation would NOT have a passport and be unable to plan to leave the country for the first time in her life with a two-day notice.  As the fast-paced action took off from that point to its conclusion, there were just too many coincidences taking place at too fast a pace.  I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of the book and I finished it, but my rating kept falling after the mid-point until at the end of the book it landed at a generous 3 1/2 stars out of 4--not a qualifier for being named a best book of the first half of 2025!

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngodi Ardichi

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025--San Antonio

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngodi Arichi was named as a top book of the first half of 2025 by BBC and an anticipated book by many known reviewers.  It is built around the lives of 4 African women--3 living in the US and 1 in Nigeria--who have all become close friends.  There are ups and downs in their lives which they share with each other.  All face problems because of cultural and family expectations.  Each looks back and questions decisions they have made in their lives.  Three are wealthy.  Two of those are passing the age of having their own babies while still unmarried.  The poor one is a hotel maid and is raped by a very high-ranking international politician in his hotel room.  When she "became of age" she was also "cut" (female circumcision) by her female family members.  The one living in Nigeria works for a bank which colludes with politicians for them to steal money through corrupt practices and becomes so sick of it that she starts stealing herself--not to have the money for herself but to provide "loans" to individual village women to expand their local businesses with the requirement only that they pay her back by helping at least one other woman in return.  Desires, relationship experiences, and the background histories for all 4 women are revealed over time.  It's a complex book, at times an uncomfortable story, and about 1/3 longer than most novels, so it took me two weeks to read the book.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Dream State by Eric Puchner

 Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025--San Antonio

Dream State by Eric Puchner has been named a top book of the first half of 2025 by BBC and others.  It is a story of chosen families and birth families, of lifetime friendships, of incidents that affect one's life and lives of others, of changes in society over time, of global warming and its harmful effects over the long term in various ways--on wild animals, forests, neighborhoods, people, etc.  At the center of the story are 3 people--Charlie and Garret (two best friends) and CeCe (the woman they have both loved).  But the story goes far beyond these three to encompass the lives of their grandparents, their parents, their children, their other lifetime friends, tragedies that occur in their lives, the choices they have made in their lives, and the changes (both societal and personal) over time in their lives.  I found the book to be fascinating.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5. 

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025--San Antonio

One Golden Summer by Carley Foretune is a "summer romance novel" which was listed as one of the best books so far in 2025 and which the library offered with "no holds" via the Libby app last weekend, so I downloaded it.  It's a good book.  There is wonderful bickering dialog between the two main characters that kept me laughing over and over again.  Alice, a professional photographer returns to a summer cabin on a lake for two months with her grandmother who is recovering from hip-replacement surgery.  It's the place where, at 17, she was given her first camera by her grandmother and where she took her favorite personal photo of all time of 3 local teenagers in a boat--persons she never met because she was too shy to interact with others at the time.  Now, 16 years later, she discovers that the nearby neighbor Charlie who was asked to make the cabin ready for them at the request of the owner is the older "boy" in the photo where he is lovingly looking at his younger brother with his girlfriend.  Charlie is 35 now with a massive ego and the reputation of being the town charmer and a love-um-and-leave-um ladies man.  They seem to be attracted to each other and are soon spending all day with each other while both are being very cautious and insisting that it is just a friendship.  Each has a reason for resisting it going beyond that.  Like all romance novels, in my opinion there are way too many lengthy descriptions of sexual attraction and semi-sexual interactions--things that other readers want but which I find are greatly distracting from the continuing development of the love story.  But the love story itself is well written and a pleasure to read.  I gave the book 4 1/4 stars out of 5.

The Foreign Student by Susan Choi

Monday, Aug. 4, 2025--San Antonio

The Foreign Student by Susan Choi won a prize as the best first novel from an Asian-American organization.  I enjoyed the book very much.  It really is two stories of two different people with limited interaction between the two.  One of the characters is a young girl named Catherine just coming into womanhood at the age of 14 with a major crush on a professor twice her age or more who is a friend of the family.  The professor takes advantage of the situation--establishing a sexual relationship that continues summer after summer as she and her family keep returning to their summer home in Tennessee.  Eventually the mother learns of the relationship and tries to sever ties, but the girl grows into a woman still maintaining the relationship with the professor who is the only person she has ever had as a sexual partner.  But as a maturing woman in her mid-20s, a strain is developing between the two of them.  The other main character is a young man from Korea named Chung.  After WWII, because he can speak English, he is working with the US Information service in Korea helping translate local news stories to English for the foreign reporters about the unrest and back-and-forth movements in the line between the communist forces and the American-backed Korean forces.  His story involves a close friendship with a communist sympathizer his age, a perceived close friendship with his young American boss,  What is happening in this long war is tragically covered in detail in the novel as Chang gets caught up in it.  After the war ends, Chang applies for scholarships at many American universities and eventually is accepted on a full scholarship to The University of the South (Sewanee) which is where Catherine is continuing to live and have her troubled affair of a decade or more with the professor and where Chang continues to be called "Chuck" as he was in the USIA office in Seoul.    Sewanee is a small university that is its own town and only has one small general store, so everyone there knows Catherine and the gossip about her relationship with the professor and everyone is curious about the "Chuck" (who they think is Chinese or Japanese but reference him as an "Oriental") who is new to this southern Tennessee town.  During his first year at the university there is very limited interaction between Catherine and Chang.  They seem to be drawn together as outliers in the community who have sympathy for each other and may even find the other fascinating, but no real relationship develops between them.  The very end of the novel is when everything starts goes to pot.  Catherine goes to New Orleans because her mother is dying and because it is a good excuse to think about whether she really wants to marry the controlling professor who she has somewhat forced to propose to her.  Chung has taken a summer job in Chicago--a miserable, dirty job thumbing through old books to remove anything inside, ripping the binding off, and sending the book upstairs for the edges of the pages to be trimmed and a new binding attached.  How will they tolerate this summer of unhappiness?    Will Catherine return to her professor?  Will Chung, who keeps being accused by his supervisor of stealing the money that is often in old books rather than giving it to her, keep putting his own limited money into books?  What can happen to change their circumstances with the book almost ending?  I gave the book 4 1/4 stars out of 5.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Wednesday, July 30, 2925--San Antonio

Audition by Katie Kitamura is what I consider to be an intellectual novel--one that is constructed in a way that the reader has to think, question, reason, etc.  I almost didn't read it because some of the comments I read made it sound as if it might be confusing.  But I picked it up and never wanted to stop reading it although I never got really excited about reading it.  It has characters that are interesting, but ones that grab you and make you love them.  And it is beautifully written. At 50% when I had ideas of where the story might be going, there was instead a major turn.  At 75% when I was guessing what was really happening (which turned out to be true), it was announced in the news that the book had been longlisted for the Booker Prize this year--the only nominee I have yet read and one that maybe deserves to be shortlisted in a few weeks or months when as they pare down the list to the most deserving.  In the final 5% of the novel there was an added surprise.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.