54. The View from Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani

listened on Libby

416 pgs. (12:17)

2025
Adult CRF
Finished 112/30/2025
Goodreads rating: 3.86
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Lake Como, NJ AND Italy - Tuscany

My comments: I loved listening to this, Mira Sorvino does a wonderful job and kept me listening even when I thought it was getting a little too long.  Jess tells her entire story, and in doing so keeps going back in her memories to conversations and moments in time with her family.  This technique worked really well for me, and I feel I got to know Jess - and her tight, eccentric Italian-American New Jersey shore family very well.  The second half of the story is set in Tuscany, Italy, which I didn't really like as well as the first part, though both told the story of an Italian family with strong, firm roots in Italy.

Goodreads synopsis:  From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, a “dazzling” storyteller (Washington Post), and a “comedy writer with a heart of gold” (NYT), comes a novel about one woman’s quest to build her own life before it’s too late. 

Jess Capodimonte Baratta is not living the life of her dreams. Not even close.
 
In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, “the perfect husband," Jess moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. Jess is the overlooked daughter, who dutifully takes care of her parents, cooks Sunday dinner, and puts herself last. Despite her role as the family handmaiden, Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business run by her confidant, her dapper uncle Louie, who believes she can do anything (once she invests in a better wardrobe).  
 
When the Capodimonte and Baratta families endure an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that will force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy.
 
From the shadows of the majestic marble-capped mountains of Tuscany, to the glittering streets of Milan, and on the shores of enchanting Lake Como (the other one), Jess begins to carve a place in this new/old world. When she meets Angelo Strazza, a passionate artist who works in gold, she discovers her own skills are priceless. But as Jess uncovers the truth about her family history, it will change the course of her life and those she loves the most forever.  In love and work, in art and soul, Jess will need every tool she has mastered to reinvent her life.

Fed by the author’s cherished Italian roots comes a bighearted, hilarious novel of the the story of one woman’s determination to live a creative life that matters, with enough room left over for love. With a one-way ticket to Italy, Jess is determined to write a new story on her own terms--this time, in stone.

48. Lightning in a Mason Jar by Catherine Mann

read on Kindle

270 pgs.

2025
Adult CRF/HF
Finished 10/28/2025
Goodreads rating: 4.16
My rating: 4
Setting: 1970s and contemporary Bent Oak, SC

My comments: Took forever to read, but was ultimately an excellent story.  Told in two voices: Bailey Rae's in 2025 and Winnie's years previously in the late 70s, we learn the backstory and the current story of a 25-year-old who has lost her "adoptive" mother...Winnie.  Abusive marriages, abused children, and found families versus blood families are the huge themes in the story.

Goodreads synopsis:   In South Carolina, a woman discovers her aunt’s profound secrets in an emotional novel spanning decades about trauma, survival, and the bonds of female friendship.

Since Bailey Rae Rigby’s adoptive aunt Winnie passed, Bent Oak, South Carolina, doesn’t have much of a hold on her anymore. So it seems.

Bailey Rae aims to settle the small estate and, armed with her aunt’s inspiring personal cookbook, buy a food truck with an ocean view in Myrtle Beach. Everything goes awry when a distraught young mother arrives in town clutching a copy of that same cookbook. Embedded inside is a code that promises a safe place in Bent Oak for desperate women on the run. For Bailey Rae it opens up a world of questions. Who really was the beloved aunt she’s known most of her life?

Winnie Ballard’s story reaches back fifty years—one of a Southern debutante’s harrowing marriage, of her escape and reinvention, and the galvanizing friendship of three resilient women who overcame their traumas, created a shelter, and found purpose. But there’s more to Winnie’s deliverance and long-held secrets than Bailey Rae imagines.

With each revelation, Bailey Rae draws on her aunt’s courage to find purpose herself. For now, whatever threats may come, Bailey Rae isn’t going anywhere.

67. These Silent Woods - Kimi Cunningham Grant

listened on Audible

2021
275 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 9/21/2023 
Goodreads rating: 4.10
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary - in the middle of the woods off a long, private dirt road, on the edge of a National Forest....I'm thinking somewhere in remote PA

My comments: This is one of the best books I've read in a long while.  I loved every beautiful word, the plt, the complex characters, and the very special setting...all the details.  It was almost like I'be been waiting for the story with these kinds of details - living alone in the wodds on your own (Cooper is with his 8-year old daughter) surviving, enjoying nature and the birds, and loving your kid.  It was the details that really made it for me, as well as the brief flashbacks that explained what had happened to Cooper to bring him to this place.  So well done.  And the HEA that I would have never imagined.   Loved it.

Goodreads synopsis:   No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness. But she’s starting to push back against the sheltered life Cooper has created for her—and he’s still haunted by the painful truth of what it took to get them there.

The only people who know they exist are a mysterious local hermit named Scotland, and Cooper's old friend, Jake, who visits each winter to bring them food and supplies. But this year, Jake doesn't show up, setting off an irreversible chain of events that reveals just how precarious their situation really is. Suddenly, the boundaries of their safe haven have blurred—and when a stranger wanders into their woods, Finch’s growing obsession with her could put them all in danger. After a shocking disappearance threatens to upend the only life Finch has ever known, Cooper is forced to decide whether to keep hiding—or finally face the sins of his past.

Vividly atmospheric and masterfully tense, These Silent Woods is a poignant story of survival, sacrifice, and how far a father will go when faced with losing it all.

60. Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

listened on Libby

copyright 2021
304pgs.
Adult mystery/thriller
Finished 9/19/2022
Goodreads rating: 3.97
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary Scotland

My comments: This was on of those unusual mysteries thrillers where you really have no clue about what is going on.  That doesn't happen to me very often and I truly enjoyed this.  Set in the middle of newhere in Scotland during a blizzard, a husband and wife stay in an abandoned church that has been converted into a home - like a airb&b experience.  Lots of dark happenings, lots of mystery really well told!

Goodreads synopsis:  Think you know the person you married? Think again…

Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.

21. The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

#2 Truly Devious Trilogy
Listened on Audio
Read by Kate Rudd
Unabridged audio (9:13)
2019 Katherine Tegen Books
384 pgs.
YA Mystery
Finished 2/24/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.36- 3966 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary Vermont With Flashbacks to 1930s

First line/s: " 'Has anyone seen Dottie?' Miss Nelson asked"

My comments: I remember being extremely frustrated after finishing the first book because it left everything so incredibly up in the air. I think I feel even more frustrated after just now finishing this second installment. So unsatisfying! Decent mystery, especially since it’s YA and a good YA mystery is a bit unusual. I listened to this one and enjoyed all the “voices“ that Kate Rudd used except for that of Stevie, the protagonist. For some reason she used a very flat and expressionless tone for her, which didn’t suit the character at all....so that too was disappointing. A year to wait before the sequel comes out. I think I will include, below, a brief outline of the story and characters so that I can refresh my memory before reading book number three!

Goodreads synopsis:  All Stevie Bell wanted was to find the key to the Ellingham mystery, but instead she found her classmate dead. And while she solved that murder, the crimes of the past are still waiting in the dark. Just as Stevie feels she’s on the cusp of putting it together, her parents pull her out of Ellingham academy.
          For her own safety they say. She must move past this obsession with crime. Now that Stevie’s away from the school of topiaries and secret tunnels, and her strange and endearing friends, she begins to feel disconnected from the rest of the world. At least she won’t have to see David anymore. David, who she kissed. David, who lied to her about his identity—son of despised politician Edward King. Then King himself arrives at her house to offer a deal: He will bring Stevie back to Ellingham immediately. In return, she must play nice with David. King is in the midst of a campaign and can’t afford his son stirring up trouble. If Stevie’s at school, David will stay put.
          The tantalizing riddles behind the Ellingham murders are still waiting to be unraveled, and Stevie knows she’s so close. But the path to the truth has more twists and turns than she can imagine—and moving forward involves hurting someone she cares for. In New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s second novel of the Truly Devious series, nothing is free, and someone will pay for the truth with their life.

20. The Au Pair by Emma Rous

listened on Audible
read by Elizabeth Sastre
Unabridged (11:31)
2019, Penguin Group
379 pgs.
CRF with Flashbacks, lots of them...
Finished 2/21/2019
Goodreads rating: 3.72 - 3363 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting:  Contemporary Norfolk, England seaside, with half the book flashing back to a period 25 years prior.

First line/s:   "We have no photographs of our early days, Danny and I."

My comments: Another wonderful book that I read in one long gulp.  It was told in two voices 25 years apart, by two innocent young women, one whose decisions and silence profoundly affected the life of the other. A mystery that one could almost… but not quite… figure out.  Well defined characters. Lovely British setting.  And read beautifully by Elizabeth Sastre.

Goodreads synopsis:  Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother Danny were born in the middle of summer at their family’s estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.
          Now an adult, Seraphine mourns the recent death of her father. While going through his belongings, she uncovers a family photograph that raises dangerous questions. It was taken on the day the twins were born, and in the photo, their mother, surrounded by her husband and her young son, is beautifully dressed, smiling serenely, and holding just one baby.
          Who is the child and what really happened that day?
          One person knows the truth, if only Seraphine can find her.

8. The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor

read on my iPhone/Kindle/Book/Audible
2018 Crown Publishing Group
280 pgs.
Adult Mystery, back & forth in time, 1986 and present
Finished 1/16/18
Goodreads rating:  3.91 - 5066 ratings
My rating:  4.5
Setting:  small touristy town in the Cotswalds, England, 1986 and present

First line/s:  "Start at the beginning.  Problem was, none of us ever agreed on the exact beginning."

My comments:  There were some bits that did drag along a little, but otherwise this book was really difficult to put down.  I listened to it on Audible, and it was narrated with n incredibly wonderful British accent and voice.  Easy to understand.
     Ed Adams was 12 years old in 1986, and spent as much time as he could riding his bike around and playing in the woods and playground with his "gang," his four good friends.  Thirty years later he sets out to come to terms with the mysterious happenings of that time.  Switching between 1986 and 2016, we watch the whole story unfold in a totally fascinating way.  Many of the "surprises" are not so surprising, and Tudor includes one whopper of an ending.

Goodreads synopsis: In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
          In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he's put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank--until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

MOVIE - The Sense of an Ending

PG-13

Limited release 3/10/17

Viewed Sunday 3/26/17 at The Majestic Theater in Gettysburg
IMBd: 6.8/10

RT Critic:  71  Audience:  55
Critic's Consensus:   Anchored by a strong starring performance by Jim Broadbent, The Sense of an Ending proves consistently gripping even as it skims the narrative surface of its literary source material.

Cag:  4.5  Liked it a whole lot - had to figure out

Directed by Ritesh Batra

CBS Films

James Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Matthew Goode, Emily Mortimer

My comments:  This was a good one, a movie that kept you thinking and guessing and wondering what direction you'd be traveling in next.  Tony's story is told through flashbacks and coming-to-terms with current happenings and mysteries. I could relate to the settings...contemporary times when one is in their 60's and late high school year almost 50 years ago.  I felt it.  I liked it....

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Tony Webster leads a reclusive and quiet existence until long buried secrets from his past force him to face the flawed recollections of his younger self, the truth about his first love and the devastating consequences of decisions made a lifetime ago.