Once I passed page 300, I enjoyed THE WIDOW NASH. Up to that point, it interested me, only. I kept thinking that something was going to happen to grab my attention. And something did. It just took too long.

Dulcy was engaged to her father’s handsome business partner. But she found in time that he was a creep so broke off the engagement. He didn’t like that one single bit. He needed her to help figure out where her father hid their business earnings.

Rather than get stuck with this horrid man, Dulcy decides to disappear. She travels west and becomes the widow Nash.

This was an enticing enough storyline to keep me reading. But I had to put up with paragraph upon paragraph of unnecessary detail until I passed page 300.

Although it took about 100 pages before Jojo Moyes’ THE GIVER OF STARS was a story, in the end, I liked it. This is historical fiction about packhorse librarians in Depression-era Kentucky. Mainly, two stories are going on, both about particular librarians. Although the packhorse-librarian program was fact, I assume each of these stories is fiction. At least I can't find anything on the Internet about an English packhorse librarian in Kentucky or a packhorse librarian accused of murder.

As I read THE GIVER OF STARS, I was irritated that this is the third book my bookclub has read this year about librarians. And two of those books, one THE GIVER OF STARS and the other THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK by Kim Michele Richardson, are both about packhorse librarians in Kentucky. As a matter of fact, while I was researching how much of THE GIVER OF STARS is true, I learned that Richardson accused Moyes of plagiarism.

At any rate, although I did enjoy THE GIVER OF STARS, I wasn’t wowed by it. The historical parts are fine, but some of the details in the librarians’ stories seemed implausible to me.

BROKEN is a book in a series I've been reading out of order, and I enjoyed it so much. I've read all of Karin Slaughter's series books out of order, and I've always enjoyed them. No one book depends on another; each can be read as a standalone. That’s the best kind of series, each book well written and complete.

This book combines Slaughter’s Will Trent series with her Grant County series when Sara, a doctor at an Atlanta hospital in the Will Trent series, is visiting family in Grant County, where she formerly practiced medicine. She becomes concerned about the apparent suicide of a former patient in the Grant County jail.

Trent, as special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, is assigned to investigate the suicide. He normally lives and works in Atlanta and is already acquainted with Sara. Together and separately they encounter resistance from the Grant County police, not only in their investigation of the suicide but, also, in the department's own dealings with other cases. The corruption in that department is quite different from how it was run when Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, Sara's husband in the Grant County series, was alive.

In the meantime, although Trent and Sara are not romantically involved, the beginnings of something are hinted at. This is probably mostly because Trent is married. Because I've already read books later in the Will Trent series, I know how awful she, Angie, is and how lucky I was that she did not appear in this book.

If you think you are familiar with Angie because you watch the Will Trent television series, you're not. The Angie on TV and the Angie in the books do not look alike, sound alike, or act alike.

EXILES is further proof of Jane Harper’s writing skills. Here is another of her literate mysteries/thrillers. This book will grab you from page 1.

Aaron Falk is again the main character when he visits his friends the Racos to be their son’s godfather. While he spends a week in this small Australian town, he solves two mysteries.

Kim, the ex-wife of one of the Raco brothers, since remarried, has been missing for a year. Most presume that she is dead. Falk looks into this case at the insistence of his friend’s niece.

Another case, now six years old, involves the dead husband of a woman he meets there. Her stepson still wants to find the hit-and-run driver who killed him.

I’ve read all of Harper’s books and anxiously await her next one. But I heard her say that she is dropping Aaron Falk as a recurring character. I hope she changes her mind, and I think she might. She seems to have made an opening so she can bring him back if she wants to.

It’s not for nothing that Jane Harper is one of my favorite authors. I can pick up anything she’s written and know I’m going to love it. This has been proven true once again by her book THE SURVIVORS.

As with all of Harper’s books, this one is both character- and plot-driven. And there’s so much going on in the small-town community of Evelyn Bay in Tasmania.

The main character is Kieran, who has come back to Evelyn Bay with his girlfriend and their baby to help his parents pack to move. The very evening they arrive a murder occurs, and he and his old friends, who all still live there, become involved as either suspects or friends of suspects. Either way, all seem to be hiding secrets.

Could this have something to do with the possible murder in a missing-persons case that happened 12 years before? Gabby, the missing person, was Kieran‘s girlfriend's best friend and the younger sister of one of his old friends. (Can we call her an old girlfriend?)

(How convenient for the story that so many of Kieran‘s old friends still live in Evelyn Bay.)

Another theme running throughout THE SURVIVORS is the guilt Kieran has been carrying around since that day 12 years ago, when a big storm hit Evelyn Bay. It seems that Kieran‘s older brother went searching for him on his boat and drowned.

You should also note the repeated mentions of all the caves and the dangerous high tides. These play big roles.

The end was a surprise to me, but it makes perfect sense. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

TRUST is a really difficult book for me to review because I’m not sure that I understand it correctly. Here is what I know.

TRUST can be considered to be a novel written by Hernan Diaz. It consists of four stories: a novel written by the fictitious Harold Vanner, an autobiography (actually more fiction) written by the fictitious Andrew Bevel, a memoir (actually more fiction) written by the fictitious Ida Partenza, and a diary (again, more fiction) written by the fictitious Mildred Bevel. These stories make up the entirety of TRUST. They are not just stories within a story but, rather, stories that are the story. They are accompanied by no explanation but leave the reader to guess and not fully understand until almost the end. At least, I think I now understand, although maybe not fully.

I would say that Ida is the main character. You won’t know that until you are more than halfway through the book, though.

The novel BONDS is presented first because, you will later realize, this is the story that Ida reads first. It is the story of a filthy rich man who made out like a bandit during the Depression and is thought by some to have caused the Depression. You will later understand that BONDS is considered to be the real-life story of Andrew Bevel. The problem is, you are left to understand later too much. That makes for a frustrating read.

Next comes MY LIFE, the autobiography written by Andrew Bevel to correct the implications in BONDS. This is an unfinished manuscript. You will understand in the next story that MY LIFE is actually ghost written by Ida. And you won’t understand why it is unfinished until you read the next story. There are similarities between MY LIFE and BONDS, but you won’t be sure that the husband and wife in MY LIFE are the husband and wife in BONDS until you read the next story. I was still frustrated with a lot of unanswered questions.

Lots of questions are answered in the next story, A MEMOIR, REMEMBERED by Ida Partenza. Now Ida explains much of what I didn’t get.

FUTURES, Mildred Bevel’s diary, explains what Ida didn’t get but not until years and years later. Although Ida already understood that Mildred, not Andrew, was the main character in MY LIFE (and BONDS), she didn’t understand to what extent until she read FUTURES.

TRUST talks a lot about finances leading to the Great Depression. I found it frustrating more often than not. I’m still not sure what point Diaz was trying to make; he surely was trying to make a point.

The beginning of THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS seems like a fairytale. Yona has lived deep in a forest, away from society, since she was 2 years old, when she was stolen from her German parents in the 1920s. The almost magical woman who took Yona brought her up to be well-read and well-prepared with survival skills. She seemed to know ahead of time that Yona would one day need those skills to lead a group of desperate Jews in hiding from the Germans in the 1940s. Even the book's tone sounded to me like Kristin Harmel was telling the story to a youngster. So I thought when I read this fairy-tale-like beginning that I would not like the rest of it.

After the woman who raised Yona dies, she lives by herself in the forest until she encounters a small group of Jews who have escaped the ghetto and come to the forest to hide. But they don't know how to survive in the woods. Yona teaches them. She knows instinctively when they are in danger and need to move. As time goes on, more Jews in hiding join their group. They endure and survive because they have Yona, and, for the first time in her life, she feels like she has family.

The majority of THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS is based on truth. In the 1940s groups of Jews really did hide from German soldiers deep in the forest, they really did use those survival techniques, and they really did endure the hardships and persevere as described in the book. So I thought wrong when I decided too soon that I wasn't going to like it.

Also, be sure to read the "Author's Note" at the end of the story.

This is the first person account of “the four vagabonds,” told by 12-year-old harmonica-playing, storytelling Odie. It is 1932, in the midst of the Depression, and Odie, his older brother, Albert, their Indian friend, Mose, and six-year-old Emmy are traveling by canoe to what Odie hopes is home in St. Louis. All four are orphans who had been living in unacceptable circumstances at an Indian boarding school in Minnesota with its vicious superintendent. The life they are leaving is based on what really did go on at many Indian boarding schools.

Yes, the four are trying to escape their present environment, but the three boys are also running from the law. It is mistakenly believed that they have kidnapped Emmy.

They are paddling their canoe down rivers to their destination, often with no food. Along the way they meet people both good and bad.

Although Odie is angry with God, one person he meets who becomes his friend is a woman of God who heads religious crusades. She has the gift of being able to see someone's past. As time goes on, she recognizes that Emmy also has a gift, being able to see someone's future and sometimes being able to alter it slightly.

Of course, they meet others, too, such as a horrible man who forces them at gunpoint to work on his failing farm. They also meet many families living in "Hoovervilles," groups of people living in makeshift tents or shacks, and befriend some of them. The four vagabonds find friends to help them get where they're headed and foes trying to find them.

Although the depicted treatment of Indians and Indian boarding schools is accurate, I found other parts of this story too hard to believe. And those parts, for me, made this book seem young adultish, not meant to be questioned by an adult. As a YA book, though, this is excellent.

THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY is the story of a detour from a plan to travel the Lincoln Highway west from Nebraska to California. Of the three books by Amor Towles that I’ve read, RULES OF CIVILITY, A GENTLEMEN IN MOSCOW, and now THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, this one is by far his best.

After Emmett’s stint in jail and his father‘s death, he and his little brother Billy decide to move to California. But after two of Emmett's old bunkmates, Duchess and Wooley, show up, Emmett and Billy have to first take them to New York, in the opposite direction. And this is their story, an adventure told by each one of them, plus some chapters told by Emmett's and Billy’s friend, Sally.

I loved their different perspectives of the same situations, I loved their dialogue, and I loved Towles' humor. Every bit of this is unpredictable, especially the end.

What a pleasure this book is! Its only negative is Towles’ lack of quotation marks, which I think is rude to the reader.

For about the first half of EDUCATED, Tara Westover's autobiography, she describes the circumstances she grew up in. Her father was a survivalist who did not trust the government. So he didn't do things like register his cars or send his kids to public schools. Westover's mother made a stab at home schooling her seven children, but, to say the least, it was inadequate. Luckily, Westover's older brother taught her to read. Her father was also careless with his family's safety and didn't trust doctors or hospitals. So, when they were hurt, often as a result of his carelessness, the family depended on their mother's homeopathic remedies, even for severe burns and head injuries. Westover also had a dangerous brother who was defended and supported by both her parents.

With this background, Westover sought education, beginning with Brigham Young University. She had never even gone to high school much less graduated. But she got in when she was 16 after (pretty much) teaching herself enough to pass the ACT. (Her explanation of this doesn't sit well with me. My college in Michigan would never have let me in without examining my high school transcripts and diploma.) She soon discovered how ignorant she was of even the most well-known history such as the Holocaust and Martin Luther King's civil rights movements. But she learned as much as she could on her own and ended up impressing her professors enough to continue her education in spite of not being able to afford it. Westover kept going to various schools in the U.S. and abroad and now has her PhD in (of course) history.

Throughout the years she devoted to her education, Westover made annual trips to her home in Idaho. She wanted her parents' approval, but her father and, therefore, her mother insisted she was siding with the devil and needed to stop sinning and accept their reality, not hers. They have tried (and have been successful in most cases) to convince the rest of her family to stop associating with her until she admits she is wrong and her father is right.

Although I generally suspect that memoirs are written by people who incorrectly assume that their life story is important, in the case of EDUCATED, you can believe that it is. Also, I call this an autobiography in my first paragraph rather than a memoir because she has convinced me through her footnotes, Acknowledgements, and endnotes that it's all true.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW is about a misunderstood mother-in-law. It’s also about whether she really killed herself and who might be responsible. The story is told in both past and present from the points of view of, of course, the mother-in-law and of, of course, the daughter-in-law.

Diane and her husband Tom were rich and in love. Tom died first, and now Diane is dead too. Their daughter Nettie will do anything to have a baby, and their son-in-law Patrick is cheating on her. Their son Ollie owns a failing business, and their daughter-in-law Lucy has been dealing with her hateful mother-in-law for 10 years. They all have reason to kill Diane. Heck, even Ollie’s business partner, who was counting on Ollie's inheritance, might have done it. But it appears that she killed herself.

This is quite a convoluted mystery, and more and more mysteries continue to show up throughout the book. The main mystery I told you. But to tell you more might spoil any of the other mysteries. I can tell you this, though: I didn’t see any of them coming.

Sometimes a book that is a mystery is a thriller as well but not so in this case. That may be the reason that it wasn’t a page turner for me. But I would say the same of an Agatha Christie novel. So, although I would give it three stars for its pace, I give it four stars for its convoluted mysteries.

I won this book through bookclubcookbook.com.

FAITHLESS is a book in Karin Slaughter's Grant County series. I’ve read most of her books, which is a testament to what a great writer she is, particularly of mysteries/thrillers. But I read them as I find them in used bookstores, so out of order, and I still enjoy the heck out of them. But good for you if you can read them in order.

The three main characters in this series are Jeffrey Tolliver, Grant County’s police chief; Sara Linton, Tolliver's ex-wife, a pediatrician, and Grant County's coroner; and Lena Adams, a Grant County detective who works for Tolliver. All three become involved in the workings of a church (or is it a cult?) after Tolliver and Linton stumble across the body of one of its members in a coffin buried in the woods. She had been buried alive. Did she suffocate? Or was she poisoned? Have other church members suffered the same fate?

Both Tolliver and Adams investigate, while Linton mostly acts as Tolliver's sounding board, although she too becomes involved to a lesser extent. They find a church run by a particular large family. Now can they find out why the dead woman, a member of this family, was buried alive and who did it? As a result of their investigation, they find so much more about the church and about the family that runs it.

Because I’ve been reading Slaughter's two series out of order, I’ve already read the next book, BEYOND REACH. Luckily, I have it in my bookcase so I can skim through it to remind myself of what happens next.

3 1/2 stars. The first half of THE WHISPER MAN rated 3 stars, the second half 4.

The mystery in this book is good. Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake are learning how best to live since Rebecca, Tom’s wife and Jake’s mother, died. So they decide to move to a house that will not remind them of Rebecca, especially Jake’s memory of his mother body at the bottom of the stairs. It is their move to that particular house that involves them in the mystery of the whisper man.

In the city where Tom and Jake have moved, the whisper man has taken the lives of several young boys. The body of one of the boys killed 20 years ago has never been found.

The whisper man of the 20-year-old crimes has been found and is now in prison. But he seems to have had an accomplice, although he will not say so or indicate who it is. Is this other whisper man now coming for Jake?

Even though this mystery is good, I did not find it spooky, and the first half of THE WHISPER MAN is not thrilling and too easy to put down. Mysteries and thrillers should be unputdownable books.

Anthony Marra‘s A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA was so wonderful that I read his second book, THE TSAR OF LOVE AND TECHNO, without bothering to first read its reviews. So I was disappointed; it did not measure up to CONSTELLATION. Still, when his most recent book, MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS, came out, I bought it. And, again, it doesn’t measure up to CONSTELLATION “Fool me twice, shame on me."

If you want to read MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS because you loved CONSTELLATION, be warned that you will be disappointed.

Ostensibly about a post-pandemic plague of teenage suicides, ANTHEM is really about politics. The book flap calls it thrilling; it’s not. Does Noah Hawley not realize how boring this is?

Hawley seems to try to not take sides at first. But if you can read 100 pages, his political persuasion is clear. Does Hawley really think this book is a winner if he alienates at least half his readers?

MISSING, PRESUMED's story is a mystery. An upper class 24-year-old woman is missing, and police detectives search for her. But MISSING, PRESUMED is more than its plot.

The story is told through the eyes of various characters involved. Not only that, but the lives of these characters apart from the story are also examined. You might even say the book is more concerned with character development than it is with telling the story.

Although the best books develop both character and plot, the first half of MISSING, PRESUMED can be tiresome because of its concentration on the characters’ lives almost to the exclusion of plot. For this reason, I almost rated it three stars. But I think this is better than most three-star books.

Give this book a try. You may be glad to know that it is the first in a series.

BLOOD WILL OUT, though a true murder mystery, is not the murder mystery you would expect. Although there is a murder and many mysteries, particularly about the man who committed it, the author, Walter Kirn, plays a big part in this story, too. Not only that, but Kirn theorizes about the mysteries, and his theories are good, almost certainly correct.

Kirn does not begin with the murder or even what led to it. Instead, he begins with how he met the murderer, Christian Gerhartsreiter. Except Kirn thought he was meeting Clark Rockefeller, yes, of THE Rockefeller family. Turns out, "Clark Rockefeller" was only one of Gerhartsreiter's many aliases. (Kirn makes, in my opinion, the mistake of calling him Clark throughout the book because, Kirn says, that's how he knew him for a long time.)

Other books have been written about the man known as "Clark Rockefeller," but it looks like Kirn was careful to be different. He begins with his drive from his home in Montana to "Clark's" home in New York to bring him a crippled dog he wanted to adopt. Upon their meeting, "Clark" started dropping several clues that his stories were not true. And Kirn berates himself for not catching the lies at the time, with just being impressed with his new friend. For friends they did become. And Kirn continues to berate himself for that.

But good people tend to trust that most people are good. Most people ARE good. Gerhartsreiter is the exception. I hope Kirn has stopped being angry with himself for being one of the good ones.

THE GOOD SISTER was a pleasant surprise and my first Sally Hepworth novel, the reason for my surprise. The book met my number-one requirement of a good book: it must be one I don't want to put down, even to eat or sleep.

Rose and Fern are twin sisters. Fern has issues with sensory perception. She also takes everything said to her literally. Perhaps she has a high-functioning form of autism, although the book never says so. But, apparently, Rose has always taken it upon herself, even when they were children, to watch out for and protect Fern. We know this from a journal Rose is keeping now that they are adults.

In alternating chapters we see Fern's and Rose's lives from Fern's perspective. She feels indebted to Rose. So, because Rose wants a baby but can't have one, Fern decides to have one for her. Once she gets pregnant, though, we learn more and more about Fern's and Rose's lives, and it becomes more and more difficult to determine who is the good sister.

I've heard THE GOOD SISTER called "women's fiction." That term is such a turnoff for me! Please don't call it that. I just call it a really good book. And now I get to read Hepworth's backlist.

Lisa Unger has it in her to write a really great book, and I have read several. But UNDER MY SKIN isn’t one of them. It’s not bad, though. So, although I didn’t enjoy it, you may.

UNDER MY SKIN irritated me right away because its main character’s name is Poppy, which I think is a silly name but which is not a good reason to dislike a book. And it didn’t make me dislike it. It’s just a warning that my irritation may have contributed to my estimation of it.

Poppy’s husband, Jack, was murdered. Other reviews will tell you that UNDER MY SKIN is about her search for the murderer. Wrong. Part 1 of the book, that is, approximately the first half of it, is constant repetition of her love for and memories about Jack and her drug–induced dreams/memories. Unger also manages to tell you several times that Poppy dislikes her mother and loves her lifelong friend Layla.

Because of all the repetition in Part 1, I could easily skip paragraphs here and there. I got it already. Part 1 could have and should have been half as long.

Part 2 is where Poppy searches for her husband‘s murderer, but this part was mostly silly. I often felt like I was reading a romance novel. And it was so, so predictable.

UNDER MY SKIN could be called romantic suspense. That’s a genre many readers like. But not me.

I thought I had already read everything written by Chris Bohjalian, but I missed THE NIGHT STRANGERS until a few days ago. I love Bohjalian's books but might not have read them if I had started with this one. That is not to say this book is poorly written. It was the subject matter that didn't appeal to me. I would still call it a four-star book; it just isn't worth the five stars I usually give him.

After Chip Linton, an airline pilot whose plane crash landed in a lake, and his wife, Emily, and twin daughters move to an old home in New Hampshire, he begins experiencing what appeared to me to be hallucinations. One of their new neighbors, Anise, regularly brings them her homemade food, and I believed she was spiking it with a hallucinogen.

It's easy to understand why I believed that. Anise is among a group of especially friendly and helpful neighbors who are all herbalists with greenhouses in their backyards where they grow both normal and exotic herbs. Each member of this group is even named after an herb.

THE NIGHT STRANGERS is about Chip seeing and speaking with the ghosts of dead passengers on his ill-fated plane but, also, about this group of herbalists. Are they a cult?

The book is told from the points of view of various characters, mostly of the family members, including the 9-year-old twins, Hallie and Garnet. It is these girls who are in danger throughout THE NIGHT STRANGERS from both their father and his ghosts and from the herbalists.

If I had ever known for sure that Chip's ghosts were all in his head and certainly not real, I might have taken this story more seriously. More than that, I didn't see how the end could be as it was written. To me, it is unacceptable, especially Emily, who finally understood the danger of the herbalists if not of her husband.