The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom Review

I listened to this story as an audiobook. It was engrossing. I found myself listening at every opportunity. The writing beautiful despite some of the dark subjects the book explored. The book is not a super happy story, if you are looking for rainbows and sunshine this is not the book for you. If you can find the happiness in little things and the joy of family that will help. The one thing that I detested about the book was that a lot of the problems in the book were caused by misunderstanding and not speaking to each other. Despite that, the story kept me invested. I loved some characters and loved to hate others. For me, the characters and their relationships made the story.  The narration on the audiobook was excellent and added something to the story.

Amazon Description:
Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of the highly anticipated Glory Over Everything, established herself as a remarkable new talent with The Kitchen House, now a contemporary classic. In this gripping novel, a dark secret threatens to expose the best and worst in everyone tied to the estate at a thriving plantation in Virginia in the decades before the Civil War.

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food, while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family.
In time, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master’s opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves.
Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom’s debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.

This book is available for checkout through the Lake County Library System.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisen Review

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Book One of the Broken Earth

The Fifth Season is the first in The Broken Earth series. The setting is on Earth but it is long past our time, many civilizations have flourished and been destroyed. The Earth is unstable. Large earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano eruptions that can darken the sky for years happen. Sometimes sending the world into a Season, a period of ruin, some survive some do not. The world is littered with deadciv artifacts. In the first few pages, an unnamed character does breaks the Earth to bring about the beginning of a new Season.

The basically enslaved orogenes are people born with the ability to affect the geological. There are Guardians, they have the ability to control orogenes. The main characters are all orogenes. We meet one as she loses a child, one as a child who has just learned what she can do, and another as she embarks on a mission for the Guardian controlled Fulcrum.

I enjoyed the layout of the book and the weaving of the characters. I had an inkling of a twist, but wasn’t sure how the author could pull it off. She did it and after I thought of course, very satisfying. The characters are the heart of the story. I worried for them all. And hoped. I was angry at some of the choices they made but understood them.

While I did enjoy this book, I mainly read it on my lunch break. It wasn’t till over half way through that I couldn’t wait to take it home and read. By the time I finished the book I was hooked, if the second one was near I would have started it immediately.

One thing I would have liked a little more time on were the node maintainers. I don’t know if that will be possible in the next book. I get enough of it to understand the horror but still have some questions. I also want to know more about the mysterious Stone-eaters and the obelisks. Hopefully, book two The Obelisk Gate will be come in on hold for me today.

Amazon Description:

 THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS... FOR THE LAST TIME.

A season of endings has begun.

It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun.

It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter.

It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy. 

This book is available for checkout through the Lake County Library System.

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson Review

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

The premise is exciting, suppose you start having dreams that are of a completely conceivable alternate life. They progress in time just like waking life. This is what happens to Kitty Miller in 1962. A single thirty-eight year old woman who owns a bookstore with her best friend Frieda. In the dreams she starts having she goes by her given name of Katharyn and is married to a man she loves and has triplets with.

The book was a fun read and made me think a bit about what life then would have been like living as a single woman. And about how one little change or missed connection can so intensely affect a life.

I enjoyed both Kitty/Katharyn and Frieda’s characters, and their relationship differences in the waking and dreaming lines. The only character I found to be a bit of a cardboard character was Lars Katharyn’s husband. There was something that was a stressor for them but it didn’t flesh Lars out for me.

I really enjoyed the time I spent with this book. I wondered all through the book how the ending was going to go. How Swanson was going to end this story. It was one of those great endings that you realize at the end, it was the only way it could end.  It's worth a read.

Amazon Description:

A provocative and hauntingly powerful debut novel reminiscent of Sliding Doors, The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams.

Nothing is as permanent as it appears . . .

Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn’t quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.

Then the dreams begin.

Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It’s everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted—but it only exists when she sleeps.

Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?

As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?