BookBrowse | Book Reviews and Recommendations

Reviews by Mary Beth S. (Mequon, WI)

Mating for Life
by Marissa Stapley

Mating for life (3/27/2014)

The book jacket summary of Marissa Stapley's debut novel, Mating for Life, held a lot of promise. Family dysfunction, free spirit mother, grown daughters struggling to find their own identity and coming of age for a spattering of characters all combine in this light read. …more

Precious Thing
by Colette McBeth

Precious Things (1/5/2014)

Precious Things by Colette McBeth grabs you at the onset and doesn't let you go at the end. McBeth draws you into the story and makes you care about the characters, only to have this empathy flipped over and over as you delve further into the book. Plot lines that you are …more

Safe with Me
by Amy Hatvany

Safe with me (12/8/2013)

Amy Hatvany brings a lot of major issues to her book "Safe With Me" - single parenthood, the death of a child, organ donation viewed from both recipient and donor family, spousal abuse. She manages to weave all these topics together seamlessly into a plausible, well told …more

Henry and Rachel
by Laurel Saville

Two lost souls (9/23/2013)

A husband who wants nothing more than for his wife to love him and a wife who has too much baggage to fully give herself to her husband outlines the plot for this book. While the characters are left in the dark,the narrator leaves clues for the reader to find. Book clubs …more

Lost Luggage
by Jordi Punti

Lost Luggage lost me (8/16/2013)

Four young men, fathered by the same man with different mothers, discover the existence of the others in Lost Luggage by Jordi Punti . Combined, they serve as the narrator of this book which is confusing enough on its own. To complicate matters for the reader even further, …more

The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane
by Kelly Harms

The Good Luck Girls are our good luck! (5/21/2013)

Warmth, frustration, love, trust, spirit - gently mix together and let flavors meld over the course of a year. Two women who share the same name each think they have won the HomeSweetHome Network's Free Home Sweepstakes. One is a scrappy fighter, the other an amateur chef. …more

BookBrowse Book Club

The Lilac People
by Milo Todd

For fans of All the Light We Cannot See, a poignant tale of a trans man’s survival in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.

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Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus

Praised by Parade and The New York Times Book Review, this debut features a 1960s scientist turned TV cooking star.

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Daughters of Shandong
by Eve J. Chung

Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.

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A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

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A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

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