The Block Party

The Block Party
Jamie Day
384 pages
St. Martin's Press

From Goodreads: On the night of the annual Summer block party, the Meadowbrook community Facebook page lights up with posts reporting sirens descending on the desirable and exclusive cul-de-sac neighborhood on Alton Road. Bit by bit, the comments trickle in, some taking pleasure in their neighbors’ misfortune and others showing concern. The truth eventually comes out. It's not an accident, or a drowning, or a fire, as some had predicted. For the first time in forty years, there's been a murder in Meadowbrook.

The residents of Alton Road—The Fox family, the core of the neighborhood but each with secrets of their own; the Adair Family, the seemingly perfect all-American family; the Thompson Family, on the brink of an explosive divorce; The Kumars, the mysterious "new neighbors"; Brooke Bailey, the "Black Widow"; and Gus Fisher, the quirky salesman— are entangled in a web of secrets and scandal unbeknownst to the outside world and even each other.

Who was murdered at the block party? Who committed the murder? And why? As the night unfolds, the residents will discover that the real danger lies within their own block and nothing—and no one—is ever as it seems. Propulsive and layered, THE BLOCK PARTY will keep you guessing until the very last page.

What a delightful novel about a group of neighbors who get along splendidly and... just kidding. The Block Party takes readers on a journey through what seems to the outside like an idyllic, wealthy suburban cul-de-sac, but in actuality is a group of families that have so many secrets and desires for revenge, it's only a matter of time before the tension explodes into violence.

The book opens with the crime and then rewinds as we follow the neighbors through the whole year leading up. Collectively the families aren't very interesting, they seem white-washed and stereotypical, and I'm so bored reading about rich white people in general. Several times throughout the book a character says something like, "It doesn't matter, we have the money." In one instance $25,000 goes missing but the family doesn't suffer any financial repercussions. That makes it a little difficult to care about whether or not the husband is cheating, in my opinion.

BUT. I kept reading because the storyline involving the high schoolers was interesting and while they were pretty stereotypical themselves, they held my attention the best. As time goes on the storylines of every family, teens and adults, mingle together into a maze of mystery and the author craftily reveals main characters to be more complex than initial impressions. The sheer number of characters threatens to make the book confusing, but in the end all was well.

The Block Party is more mystery than thriller and though I wasn't at the edge of my sear until the very end, I was invested. If you like a good domestic mystery this would be a great summer read for you! The book releases July 18. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book; as always, opinions are my own.

Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad by Miriam Thaggert

Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad
Miriam Thaggert
208 pages
University of Illinois Press

From Goodreads: Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; Black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class "ladies’ cars"; Black women railroad food vendors; and Black maids on Pullman trains. Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences.

My local library came through for me again, specifically ordering a university press book that piqued my interest. How much did I know about Black women and the railroad? Admittedly, not much beyond the Great Migration, and for some reason the cover really captured my attention as well as the feminized version of Jim Crow in the title. 

There was much to uncover that I had never considered before. For example, the porters on the Pullman trains are ubiquitous but how have I gone this long not knowing about the Black maids! Their stories and accompanying photographs were fascinating, as was the introduction to activist Pauli Murray later on in the book, who introduced the phrase "Jane Crow" used in the title.

As with any good history book, something specific caught my attention and left me wanting more. Thaggert mentions work by Psyche A. Williams-Forson when writing about the food vendors who sold quick meals to travelers through train windows. These women were a major part of the local economy, purchasing vast amounts of chicken, flour, and other ingredients to cook and sell. Thaggert cites Williams-Forson when discussing how women were able to purchase homes with their profits, and so now I have the books Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs and Eating While Black on my shelves waiting for their turn to be read.

I think any reader with an interest in Black history will find this book useful, especially those who like to study the intersectionality between race and gender. The book is meticulously researched and noted and I highly recommend it.

Bellegarde by Jamie Lilac

Bellegarde
Jamie Lilac
320 pages
HarperTeen

From Goodreads: Bellegarde reimagines the 90s romcom classic She's All That in 18th-century Paris, France. The lush pastel world building of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette meets the modern twist of Bridgerton in this YA historical romcom debut.

Beau Bellegarde, a second-born son, makes a deal: if he can turn Evie Clément, the unapproachable baker's daughter, into the winner of the Court Ball, making her the most desired bachelorette in Paris, he inherits the family fortune, but his target has plans of her own.

Let me start by saying that if you're looking for a book filled with historical realism, this isn't the book for you. Lilac's characters have a familiar countenance and modern turns of phrase, but are still set in a lavish historical setting a la Paris making me yearn for a croissant and les Tulleries. I actually think this is a great way to write a historical YA novel, as it makes it more accessible for reluctant readers.  

Though the book is historical fiction, the problems Evie faces would be just as recognizable in today's world: the occasional callousness of teenage boys, means girls and cliques, and even gentrification take the stage. Class is a constant underlying theme in the novel since Evie's family is working class and barely able to keep their bake shop, whereas most of her classmates are aristocratic. Her determination to make life better for her sister Violette is admirable and heartwarming, though I feel Violette is underestimated.

Of course the love story is why most readers will be picking up this book. The comparison to the movie She's All That is entirely apt. Though the reader will go into the book knowing who Evie will end up with, there is a third party in the middle of the book who makes things very interesting. As for Beau, his backstory piqued my interest and the one interaction he has with his father in the novel left me wishing this plot line had been expanded on.

All in all this was a fun and fast read, perfect for the upcoming summer. Bellegarde releases July 11th so be sure to add it to your calendar! Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy. As always, opinions are my own.

Read to Death at the Lakeside Library

Read to Death at the Lakeside Library
Holly Danvers
320 pages
Crooked Lane Books

From Goodreads: Summer is in full swing as tourists flock back to the Northwoods and travel to Lofty Pines, Wisconsin. For Rain Wilmot, owner of the Lakeside Library, this is the perfect opportunity to bring back her mother’s summer book club. But the summer sun starts to really heat up when one of the club’s members, Lily Redlin, is found dead in her own home not long after the first meeting.

Alongside her sidekick and neighbor Julia Reynolds and the charming Jace Lowe, Rain discovers that the murder is seemingly inspired by the book club’s recent selection of Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel, Sparkling Cyanide. But who would kill Lily, and more importantly, why?

The deeper Rain goes into the story, the more confusing and complicated the plot becomes. Was Lily murdered to cover up a tragic accident involving an old classmate years earlier? Or were the rumors true—did Lily really possess priceless original Laura Ingles Wilder manuscripts and someone killed her for them? And who stands to gain the recently inherited piece of waterfront property that Lily received from a long-lost relative?

With a long list of suspects and motives, Rain realizes that all leads come back to people involved in the book club. Rain and her friends take a page from Agatha Christie’s book by hosting a reenactment of the club’s first meeting to flush out the killer. Will Rain’s plan succeed—or will this librarian’s book be checked out for good?

I fell right into this new cozy by Holly Danvers; it has such an energetic pace I couldn't help to keep reading. Rain is definitely a character you can't help but root for. Despite a tough past, she has such an infectious energy and is extremely kind to her friends and neighbors in Lofty Pines. So it's no surprise that when of her new book club members if found murdered, she starts investigating with her best friend Julia. The book club contains a wide cast of characters (and suspects!) but as each woman was investigated by the duo we got to know them better.

This cozy has some of the best aspects of other cozies: idyllic setting, spunky heroine, slightly disgruntled law enforcement contact, BFF and partner in crime, fluffy pups, and a friendly local library. Still, as I was reading this book felt surprisingly refreshing. Rain is definitely a part of that because her character is so awesome, but she and Julie egg each other on and push themselves further than other cozy heroines. Rain and Julie have a precious friendship, which really shone through at the ending of the book. 

This is the third book in the series but I had no problem jumping right in. Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book, which comes out in August so mark your calendars! As always, opinions are my own.

Homegrown by Jeffrey Toobin

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism 

Jeffrey Toobin

432 pages

Simon Schuster 

From Goodreads: Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from memory: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.” But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.

I was a kid when the Oklahoma City Bombing took place, but combined with other simultaneous big news stories, it's probably one of the first ones I can recall hearing about - we watched Dan Rather every night during dinner when I was growing up. Scrolling through NetGalley I came across this book and my interest was piqued.

In some ways, I think, McVeigh was ahead of his time. The author continually states that McVeigh couldn't find his people, his army with the same beliefs as him, but as we've seen with the explosion of the internet that army is well formulated today. When McVeigh was arrested during a traffic stop after the bombing it was for his gun. That law is no longer in existence and the trooper would have let McVeigh go if it was today. Even scarier, McVeigh's extreme beliefs in 1995 are far from extreme in 2023. Absolutely if he would have been caught today he would still be found guilty, but I think he would have a lot more public sympathy and it's possible he would avoid the death penalty as a result.

The comparison between Merrick Garland's response and Bill Clinton's was fascinating and I can't help to think what might have been different if Garland had played up the right-wing discontent during the trial. Would domestic terrorism be more on the forefront of people's minds heading into 9/11? The blip about the FBI's domestic terrorism report during the Obama administration was also worth pondering.

The author spends a lot of time comparing the OKC bombing and January 6th. It's an apt comparison and I don't dispute it, but it comes up so much that it gets a little tired. Overall, though, the book is well-written and presented in an easy to understand chronology. The beginning of the book about McVeigh's youth dragged a bit, but things (obviously) picked up when he started collecting parts for his bomb. I had to put the book down for a bit as the bombing was described; it was gripping and tough. The second half of the book following McVeigh's trial was extremely interesting. I do wish a little more had been explained about Nichol's trial.

This is a great read for true crime fans and those who know of the OKC bombing but not much behind it. I learned a lot and thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. As always, opinions are my own.

Africatown by Nick Tabor

Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created
Nick Tabor
384 pages
St. Martin's Press

From Goodreads: An evocative and epic story, Nick Tabor's Africatown charts the fraught history of America from those who were brought here as slaves but nevertheless established a home for themselves and their descendants, a community which often thrived despite persistent racism and environmental pollution.

In 1860, a ship called the Clotilda was smuggled through the Alabama Gulf Coast, carrying the last group of enslaved people ever brought to the U.S. from West Africa. Five years later, the shipmates were emancipated, but they had no way of getting back home. Instead they created their own community outside the city of Mobile, where they spoke Yoruba and appointed their own leaders, a story chronicled in Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon.

That community, Africatown, has endured to the present day, and many of the community residents are the shipmates’ direct descendants. After many decades of neglect and a Jim Crow legal system that targeted the area for industrialization, the community is struggling to survive. Many community members believe the pollution from the heavy industry surrounding their homes has caused a cancer epidemic among residents, and companies are eyeing even more land for development.

At the same time, after the discovery of the remains of the Clotilda in the riverbed nearby, a renewed effort is underway to create a living memorial to the community and the lives of the slaves who founded it.

The Clotilda is having a bit of a moment, I think (and rightly so). Last year Ben Raines released his book The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How the Clotilda Was Found, her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning, which became an NPR Best Book of 2022. In 2018 Zora Neale Hurston's work Baracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" was rereleased and this is where I picked up my research of the Clotilda in 2019. Previously, I had only read a few of the news articles that surfaced around the time the ship was found and reading the short Baracoon left me needing more... a lot more.

And here we have Africatown, the latest tome about the Clotilda to be published. For roughly the first half of the book, the author focuses on the history surround the Clotilda's journey to and from Africa and the slaves she picked up. If you have never read anything about the Clotilda before, this will provide a succinct depiction of its history, but I found the history presented in The Last Slave Ship much more engaging. 

Africatown has the unique perspective of showing the more recent history of the town through the lens of environmental racism. Along with Flint, this is perhaps one of the most glaring examples of racism in industrialization; factories contaminated the town for generations with pollution that affected the food its citizens ate and coated the town in ash that had to be regularly scrubbed from houses. The book also spends a great amount of time describing the citizens most recent history of fighting potential oil pipelines from running under their water source. Tank farms are also a large environmental concern in the area. This perspective has left me searching for more books on environmental racism, so Tabor did a great job piquing my interest to an aspect of Jim Crow I have yet to explore.

Finally, the end of Africatown discusses some miscellaneous topics that were very interesting to me, including the Meaher's descendants and their secrecy regarding anything to do with the Clotilda. Also discussed is the effort it would take to make Africatown a historical museum and removing blight. All in all, Africatown is an interesting book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about this one of a kind community.  

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of this book. As always, opinions are my own. 

Primer and Punishment, Diane Kelly

Primer and Punishment: A House-Flipper Mystery
Diane Kelly
304 pages
St. Martin's Paperbacks

From Goodreads: Carpenter Whitney Whitaker and her cousin Buck are looking once again to rehab and resell a house, only this particular house is made of fiberglass, floats, and has been dubbed the Skinny Dipper. The old houseboat sure could use some work, but the unusual project has Whitney bubbling with excitement.

The charming and handsome Grant Hardisty lives on the cabin cruiser in the adjacent slip, but the cousins soon learn he’s left a half dozen angry ex-wives in his wake and made enemies of all sorts of unsavory folks. The man is clearly caught in an increasingly dangerous current with no life preserver in sight.

Whitney and Buck are spraying primer on their houseboat when—KABOOM!—Grant’s boat blows sky high with the man himself inside. Detective Collin Flynn has no shortage of suspects, but the waters become muddied when several of them confess to the crime. Is one of those who confessed truly guilty, or are they taking a dive for someone else? When anonymous threats are made against the cousins, Whitney must quickly determine who killed their neighbor at the lake, or she and Buck might also be sunk.

So the book's description says Grant is charming, but there's nothing charming about him at all; it isn't hard to see why he had five ex-wives and why he's failing at finding a new one. I felt a little bad for him for having injured his leg and being so tight on finances, but he really played up the injury to absolve himself of any responsibility. Not charming. When his boat blew up and he was blown to pieces - literally - I wasn't exactly sad. But of course, Whitney and Buck find themselves in their fifth murder investigation. I guess Buck won't be seeing that 60 bucks he lended Grant ever again.

Primer and Punishment also takes place in the weeks before Buck's wedding to Whitney's roommate. They're planning bachelor/ette parties to take place on their houseboat before they sell it and the end of the book is the wedding itself. If you've read all the books to this point, this is the true charming part of the book. However, I want to point out that even though this is fifth in a series and the character's relationships are developing, you would have no problem dropping in to read this as a standalone. In fact, I think the houseboat setting easily makes this the best book of the series thus far. 

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's for the advanced copy of this book. As always, opinions are my own.