A Book A Week

From the outside looking in, Natalie has the perfect life. She lives on the picturesque Yesteryear Ranch, tucked into the quiet hills of Idaho. Her husband, Caleb—a ruggedly handsome cowboy—runs the agricultural side of the farm, while Natalie raises their six seemingly perfect children. She shares their simple, rustic, all-natural lifestyle with over eight million followers, who watch with envy.

But if social media has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is ever quite as it seems.

In reality, Natalie relies on a team of nannies to wrangle the kids while she maintains her carefully curated image. Her live-in producer, Shannon, ensures everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. And Caleb? He’s never successfully grown a plant or kept an animal alive. Natalie secretly employs real farmers to keep the ranch functioning under the cover of night. Oh, and Caleb is also having an affair with Shannon.

This picture-perfect life is nothing but a façade, and it’s about to collapse.

After discovering the affair and Shannon’s sudden resignation, Natalie retreats to her bedroom, overwhelmed. When she awakes the next day, something is…off. She’s still in the same house, but Caleb is older—years older—and strangely competent. The children are there, but they aren’t her children. And all the modern conveniences that sustained her life are gone. No nannies. No producer. No electricity. No running water.

Has Natalie somehow slipped into the very past she’s been pretending to live in? Or is something far more unsettling at play? Whatever this is, if she wants to salvage her life—and the empire built on it—she’ll have to find a way out.

With Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke bursts onto the literary fiction scene with a debut that may be one of the most original novels I read all year. There’s a sharp, biting irony in forcing a character to confront the harsh realities of the lifestyle she’s built a brand on promoting, but the exploration of hypocrisy is only the beginning of what Burke has in mind.

Burke alternates between Natalie’s present-day predicament and glimpses into her past, gradually constructing the version of her we meet at the novel’s start. It’s a smart, effective structure that deepens our understanding of an admittedly complex and often frustrating protagonist. As Natalie struggles to make sense of her situation, the novel expands into a thoughtful meditation on motherhood, womanhood, religion, politics, and the performative nature of life in the age of social media.

I found myself completely absorbed, eager to uncover the truth behind what was happening. The answer is as bold as you might expect from a novel this daring, though I suspect the ending will prove divisive for some readers. Even so, I was captivated from beginning to end. Yesteryear is a striking debut novel that will almost certainly make my list of favorite reads of the year.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2026, 28)

Lately, my husband has rekindled his interest in reading. While I indulge in a couple of books every week, he has refrained from reading for pleasure for more than a decade. As a history major, his academic journey involved consuming numerous nonfiction volumes, providing valuable knowledge but transforming the act of reading into a more laborious task than a leisurely pursuit. Following his recent successful foray into a historical fiction/mystery novel, he suggested we embark on a joint reading venture. Our chosen book was Michael Crichton's Timeline, a bestselling 1998 novel that seamlessly blends elements of thriller and historical fiction, catering to both of our literary preferences.

In the vast expanse of the relentless Arizona desert, a lost couple stumbles upon a bewildering sight—an individual on the roadside caught in a trance, uttering incomprehensible rhymes, unable to discern his identity or the reason for his presence. Stranded with no means to seek immediate assistance, the compassionate couple places the enigmatic man in the back of their car and rushes him to the nearest hospital. The medical staff, like the good Samaritans, is confounded by his condition; his mental disarray is accompanied by a rapid physical decline. Before the night concludes, he succumbs to his mysterious affliction, leaving unanswered questions surrounding his inexplicable state.

Meanwhile, in France, Professor Johnston and his team of student archaeologists meticulously unearth a medieval city's ruins, progressing carefully to ensure the site's preservation. The pace proves too sluggish for their corporate financiers, whose impatience clashes with the meticulous work of the historians. Balancing historical research with corporate interests becomes nearly impossible, pushing the archaeologists and corporate representatives to their limits. While Professor Johnston embarks on a journey to the financiers' corporate headquarters in an attempt to mend their fraying relationship, his team makes a startling discovery at the excavation site. Soon, the students are also whisked away to the corporate headquarters, where they are introduced to a mysterious technology that promises to revolutionize the study of history through firsthand experience. Although it initially appears as if torn from the pages of science fiction, they will soon discover the very real dangers associated with it.

In its attempt to echo the success of Michael Crichton's classic adventures like Jurassic Park, Timeline incorporates familiar elements, including mysterious technology with promises of scientific advancement and corporate gain. Following a recurring theme in Crichton's work, academics take on the role of heroes tasked with uncovering the truth behind the new technology and highlighting its ethical dilemmas. While this formula made Crichton's previous novels smart, page-turning reads, it falls flat in Timeline.

Despite the surface-level engagement provided by the familiar elements, a closer look reveals that the story lacks the depth and cleverness it aspires to achieve. The characters adhere closely to their prescribed stereotypes, with the villains being overtly evil and the heroes unflinchingly good. While this advances the plot, it fails to create a connection that would make readers invest in the characters. The heroes, in particular, lack depth, making distinguishing between them at various points in the narrative challenging. Even my husband and I found ourselves struggling to keep track of who was who.

While two-dimensional characters can be overlooked if the plot is compelling, Timeline also struggles to effectively utilize its intriguing concept. Numerous narrative threads remain unresolved, and the primary motivation for the heroes' time travel feels contrived, serving more as a means to move characters where the author wants them than as an organic story progression. Despite offering a level of enjoyable escapism, the book ultimately feels unrewarding. While I remain a fan of Crichton's classic works, Timeline, unfortunately, misses the mark. 

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2024, 22)

 "A life lived in simulation is still a life."

Emily St. John Mandel is an author who has been on my radar for several years. I've seen glowing reviews of her previous novels The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven, but I've never gotten around to reading them. Like other much-hyped books, I added them to my TBR list and then ignored them. Her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, was published earlier this year, and the reviews have been glowing once again. Comparisons to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, a novel that both mesmerized and confounded me, piqued my interest even more. I decided it was finally time to read a Mandel novel, and Sea of Tranquility would be a perfect place to begin. 

What is reality? How do we decipher what is valid from what is imagined? These questions mark the impetus of this novel. It opens in 1912 with Edwin, a young man who has been castigated from his family and his home country in embarrassment. He couldn't keep his mouth shut, and now he finds himself halfway across the world, landing in Western Canada's wilderness. As he wanders the forest, Edwin steps into a place that leaves him questioning his very sanity. "He steps forward into a flash of darkness, like sudden blindness or an eclipse. He has an impression of being in some vast interior, something like a train station or a cathedral, and there are notes of violin music, there are other people around him, and then an incomprehensible sound—."

Just as we begin to grapple with the implications of what Edwin experiences, Mandel thrusts us forward a hundred years. We see a composer giving a lecture about his composition that centers around a video recorded by his sister. In the recording, she is seen walking through the forest when time and space seem to blip. Again, before we have time to wrestle with what we read, Mandel moves us forward to the year 2203. We meet a novelist who is on a book tour promoting her latest work. The tour has taken her from her home on a moon colony back to earth. As she laments missing her family, news breaks of a plague beginning to spread on the planet. In a fiction that mirrors Madel's own reality, the author must face promoting her book amongst the spread of a life-threatening illness. 

It isn't until the mid-point of the novel that things begin to come into focus. We land in the year 2401, to a world (galaxy may be more apt) that is completely transformed. Humanity exists in domed colonies, a reality that is both alien and familiar. Gaspery, a man we've seen glimpses of in the preceding stories, is fully introduced as a nightwatchman of a hotel, a job he hates. His sister works at a more exciting, but secretive, gig as a scientist who has been investigating anomalies in time and space. She reveals to Gaspery that different centuries and realities are bleeding into each other, an oddity that is without explanation. Gaspery, desperate to shake his dead-end job, agrees to assist her in traveling across time to get to the bottom of this strange aberration. 

With Sea of Tranquility Emily St. John Mandel takes her readers on a journey across time and space, daring us to ask big questions and to find answers nestled in unlikely places. From a sheer construction standpoint, the novel is a mastery of craft and plotting. Each story corresponds to the next and vice versa creating a nesting doll effect. Yes, other authors have used this device before, but perhaps none to such a rewarding effect. I'll admit to being a bit discombobulated at first. It was hard to see the forest from the trees, especially as Mandel thrust us forward in time with each new section. This confusion is resolved by introducing a character who is able to traverse time, giving us readers someone to help make sense of how everything is connected. Despite the narrative wizardry at play here, Mandel manages to ground her work in characters who glimmer with reality, even when that reality is so different from our own. Ultimately it is the way these characters, love, and lament that makes Sea of Tranquility truly shine. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2022, 45)

"Either something was wrong with her watch, or something was wrong with time."

If you had the chance to do it all again, what would you change? Every moment in life is connected to the others that have preceded them. Each decision we make can alter the trajectory of our lives in small and large ways. That's probably why so many of us have spent time wondering to ourselves "what if". What if I never took that job? What if I never moved to that city? What if I wasn't so afraid to express my true feelings to someone else? If we spend too much time dwelling on lost possibilities, we devolve into an endless stream of hypotheticals. Still, the ability to go back and alter even just a single decision can be appealing. It is this connection of decisions and the potential to choose a different path that lies at the center of Matt Haig's hit novel The Midnight Library. 

Nora is ready to end it all. Nothing in her life matters anymore. She's stuck in a routine of working a job that means nothing to her. On the personal front, things are equally grim. Nora has squandered every relationship that ever meant anything to her. Her parents have been divorced for years. Her mother has passed away, and her father seems more intent on cherishing his new family than the one he left behind. There have been romantic prospects, but Nora always seems to screw things up before they get too serious. Her brother, the last person to actually care about her, has stopped speaking to her. Even her cat has been hit by a car. There's really nothing left. The world will be a better place without the existence of Nora, so she resolves to do the deed and end her life once and for all. 

As she emerges on the other side, Nora is surprised at what she sees. Where the pearly gates and fluffy clouds should be stands the imposing facade of a large building flanked by classical stone pillars. She opens the grand doors and is greeted by the smell of thousands of well-worn books. Nora stares at the clock on the wall, eternally frozen at midnight, still uncertain of where exactly she is. Among the book-lined shelves, Nora sees the long-forgotten face of her elementary school librarian, Mrs. Elm. Mrs. Elm explains that Nora finds herself at the Midnight Library, a place somewhere right between life and death. Each book on the shelf represents a single regret in Nora's life. If she opens it, she will be able to live out the life that she would have had if she had never made that one decision. If Nora finds a version of her life that she truly likes, she will be allowed to stay there. The moment she regrets that path, she'll be sent back to the library to choose another book. Her time there is limited. She may only have enough time to try one life, or she may get to experience many of them. One thing is certain. When the clock moves to 12:01, her time is up. 

The idea of turning back time isn't a new one. Countless works of fiction have explored the topic before, though Matt Haig gets major bonus points for centering his time-bending fiction around a library. I think a lot of us would agree that there could be worse ways to spend purgatory than being in a giant library! Haig broaches the topic of depression in a way that is both honest and endearing. The main character Nora serves as the vessel through which the author moves readers through dealing with the affliction. There's no "Groundhog Day" effect here. We aren't simply observing the same day or events over and over. Instead, each book that Nora opens transports her to a different timeline, one in which a single decision drastically altered this version compared to the one that she lived before. It takes some time for the supporting cast to round out, especially as we only meet different versions of them in the various timelines that Nora chooses. By the end, however, we see the importance of each personal relationship within her life. Yes, the ending of this book is predictably inevitable, but to decry the conclusion would be to miss the point of the work entirely. Haig posits that life is but an interconnected web of one decision after another, culminating in a world that is beautiful, tragic, brilliant, messy, and every other conceivable adjective. An existence that is uniquely our own with each experience made more meaningful because of what came before. The Midnight Library perfectly captures the intricacies of life through one of the most simple and creative presentations imaginable. It is absolutely worthy of all the hype that it has received. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2022, 16)

The older I've gotten, the more I've come to appreciate the value of time. It may be cliche to say, but time really is the one commodity that we can't get more of. As someone who sets a time-based reading goal each year, I always feel the pressure of the weekly clock resetting, urging me to finish my current read, publish my latest review, and move on to the next book for the next week. It can be quite overwhelming. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for just one extra hour to finish a book or polish a review before publishing it. With age comes the realization that there will never be enough time. There will always be a book to read or a review to write and I'm okay with that. But what if we could travel back in time? Would you take the chance to revisit your past, have one extra moment with someone you loved, or even place yourself directly in a historical event? In Rob Hart's latest novel, The Paradox Hotel, he imagines a future where all of that and more is possible. 

Years ago, the science behind time travel was perfected. It was hailed as the kind of innovation that would define generations for years to come, a once-in-a-lifetime breakthrough of social, cultural, and technological clout. The possibilities of time travel seemed endless, but in the hands of the US Government, they quickly did what governments do best. They monetized it. The Paradox Hotel was born, a place where only the wealthiest of tourists could pay to visit different time periods. They each come dressed in the various garb of their destinations, eager to pay whatever price necessary to tour the past. 

January Cole, head of security for the hotel, is no stranger to unusual happenings. They come with the territory. The occasional stowaway from a bygone era or the random blip in the timeline is inevitable. That's just the price you pay when you are in such close proximity to the ever-continuing timeline. Recently though, things have been getting more and more stressful. You see, like all good government services, the Paradox Hotel is running at a deficit. The promise of time travel, even at astronomical prices, isn't what it used to be. Just like space travel years ago, the government is looking to privatize time travel and sell off the hotel. The world's wealthiest citizens each salivate at the idea of taking control of such a powerful resource. 

That's not the only headache ringing through Cole's brain. Before she was head of security, January guided the tours through time, ensuring each of the guests behaved and did nothing to alter the timeline ahead. She was pulled off of this job when she became "unstuck" from the timeline. Now she falls into a kind of limbo, never fully stuck in the past, present, or future. These episodes of involuntary time travel are getting worse, causing her to see things that others can't. Today, January has stumbled upon a corpse in one of the hotel rooms, though she's uncertain of who or when the crime took place. For all she knows, this may be a glimmer of things to come. One thing is certain. January is the only person equipped to solve the case. 

I first became aware of Rob Hart's writing when I read his 2019 novel The Warehouse. That work of speculative fiction was a modern Orwellian tale that perfectly captured the predicaments of our modern times. I enjoyed it so much that I eagerly accepted a copy of The Paradox Hotel when his publisher offered it to me earlier this year. This new book falls more into the science fiction category than what I'd normally read, but I couldn't help but be drawn into the premise. Hart grounds the more fanciful concepts of time travel with character motivations of greed, regret, and grief that are universal to past, present, and future. I found myself having to really focus on the plot to fully understand the complexities of the world more than I was prepared to. Still, I found myself invested enough in the main character to keep the pages turning. The end left me feeling more perplexed by my response to it all than anything else. On one hand, I was glad to be finished with a book that challenged me to grasp the intricacies of the mechanics of the world, especially as the genre was outside of my normal reading habits. On the other hand, I can't help but feel as if spending more time becoming acquainted with the world and the characters would have increased my enjoyment of the story on the whole. I loved the concept and idea behind the novel, but I can't say that I ultimately loved reading it. Your results may vary, but I do believe that Hart's skills as an author make this one worth the effort. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2021, 12)