Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: January 6, 2026
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb―literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n roll idol Shep may have finally run out.
When Del―the creative motor behind the show―is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?
Funny, big-hearted, and deeply moving, Meet the Newmans is a rich family story about the dual lives we lead. Because even when our lives aren’t televised weekly, we all have a behind-the-scenes.
The Newman family started out as a radio show before it transitioned to a television show. It has been on TV for years. It’s modeled after the real life of Dinah and Del Newman and their two sons, Guy and Shep, in the vein of Ozzie and Harriet.
The year is now 1964 and times they are a-changing. The traditional nuclear family is not as relevant anymore and ratings are plummeting. When Del is in an accident, Dinah must take over running the show. None of the higher ups have confidence in her because she’s a woman.
Juliet, a young reporter for the LA Times, is struggling to prove herself in a man’s world. Having recently read The Feminine Mystique, she’s on a mission to spread the ideas contained within it. She’s tasked with interviewing Dinah for what is supposed to be a typical puff piece. She wants to write something harder hitting about how Dinah’s portrayal of herself on TV is helping to keep woman subjugated to traditional gender roles. Dinah sees right through her and is not pleased.
Meet the Newmans deals with many of the social issues of the 1960s – feminism, free love, homosexuality and more. There were several references to real life celebrities that were based on facts incorporated throughout, which I thought was fun. I love books about the entertainment industry like Meet the Newmans.
Overall, I thought this book was a good representation of the time period and I found it to be an enjoyable read.
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
Publisher: Dutton
Publication date: February 23, 2021
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams. Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same. Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old girl living in a village in Nigeria. Her family is very poor. After her mother dies, her father sells her into marriage with a much older man, even though he promised her mother he’d never do that. She wanted her daughter to go to school and find her “louding voice”. Adunni begs him not to – she wants to stay in school and become educated. He will not relent.
Adunni is the third wife of the man she marries. His first wife is mean, jealous and physically abusive. The second wife takes Adunni under wing. At twenty she already has three children and is pregnant with the fourth. Adunne is determined to escape her situation and get an education to find her “louding voice”. But she faces obstacles at every turn.
I loved Adunni. Her resilience was amazing. The book illustrated the strong contrast the between the rural Nigerian villages, in which the people live in third world conditions and the cities. At one point, Adunni goes to Lagos. The culture shock she experiences is in some ways humorous and serves to break up what is otherwise a somewhat bleak story. It’s full of tension and drama with richly drawn characters. There is a sequel called And So I Roar that I can’t wait to read.
Highly recommended.
February 20th, 2026 in
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The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: April 29, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
Sybil Van Antwerp is an elderly lady who prefers to communicate through the written word, whether it be by letter or email, with her preference being an old-fashioned letter written with pen on paper. The Correspondent is an epistolary novel composed of her letters to the people in her life. In addition to her family, Sybil writes to famous authors, and they actually write her back. She even has prospective suitors write to her. She’s a spunky gal and some of her letters are quite humorous. Some are serious, as her life and the life of some of her friends and family have been touched by tragedy at various times in their lives. This book is at once heartbreaking and heartwarming.
I listed to the audiobook, and I think that added to the experience of reading this book. Each character is voiced by a different narrator, which I enjoyed. It made it easy to keep track of who was who.
Highly recommended.
February 15th, 2026 in
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All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication date : January 7, 2025
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they’ve saved.
Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.
All the Water in the World takes place in a dystopian world after the glaciers have melted and water covers most of it. Nonie and her family live on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. They are trying to live off as little in the museum as possible so they can preserve the collections for future generations. When a superstorm hits, they must leave the museum and start a dangerous voyage to find dry land.
I found this book to be boring. The voyage they were on became repetitive – it was mostly rowing their boat and getting rained on. The world building, including the settlements they encountered along the way could have been more fleshed out. The simplicity read YA to me even though it is for adults. I could see what the author was trying to do but she didn’t quite get there. This book was not for me.
February 1st, 2026 in
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Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.
A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
Hamnet is the story of William Shakepeare’s family, centered on his wife Agnes and their children. Shakespeare is never named, referred to as “the tutor” or “the husband”, which serves to emphasize that he is not the focus of this book. When Hamnet, Agnes and William’s only son, suddenly dies of the Plague, they find themselves at loose ends, each dealing with their grief in their own way.
In much of the book, William lives away from his family in London, writing and performing his plays. His family stayed behind in the village he grew up in because his youngest daughter is too frail to survive the germs of the big city. After Hamnet’s death, we follow Agnes’s grief journey while she is largely alone. It’s a heart-wrenching exploration of what it’s like to lose a child. Agnes struggles to go on, while her husband is seemingly living it up in London. She wonders if he’s been affected at all by the tragedy.
Little is actually known about William Shakespeare’s personal life. He did have a son who died named Hamnet, which is thought to be a name interchangeable with Hamlet. He is thought to have named the character Hamlet after his son. While it’s not strictly necessary to have read Hamlet before reading this book, I did find it helpful to familiarize myself with the basics of it. I was able to better understand the ending of the book, which involves a performance of the play.
I thought about this book for a long while after I finished it, which to me is a sign of a great novel. The prose was beautiful and raw. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie, which is also supposed to be wonderful.
Highly recommended.
January 26th, 2026 in
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The Lafferty Girl: Surviving Trauma, Abuse, and My Father’s Crimes by Rebecca Lafferty
Narrator: Ivory Tiffin
Publisher: Union Square & Company
Release Date: September 30, 2025
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Rebecca Lafferty grew up with a volatile, erratic, and ultimately notorious father, Dan Lafferty. She carried the scars of her traumatic upbringing through childhood and into adulthood. But most of all, Rebecca carried the horror of learning about the cold-blooded murder of her aunt and infant cousin in 1984, perpetrated by Dan and Ron according to a revelation Ron had received—as profiled in the Jon Krakauer book and FX/Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven.
Now, in this riveting memoir, Rebecca tells her own story of survival and healing. Her correspondence with Dan—serving life in prison—insights from relatives, and most importantly, her own lived experience, give her an astoundingly deep point of view on the lead-up to the tragedy and its aftermath.
In this book, Rebecca hopes to encourage other survivors of abuse and trauma to chart their own path to healing and peace.
Rebecca Lafferty is the daughter of Dan Lafferty who murdered her aunt and baby cousin because God told him to. Dan’s story is the focus of John Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven. You don’t have to have read that book to understand this book. It is a really good book though so you should read it just for the sake of it.
Rebecca grew up in a strict Fundamentalist Mormon household. Her father, Dan, is clearly mentally ill and twisted Mormon doctrine to suit his needs. He was abusive and irrational. Her mother immigrated from Scotland and felt trapped in her situation. She stayed with him right up until he committed the murders.
The first part of Rebecca’s book is about her childhood. She is still in contact with her father and visits him in prison. Because of this, she was able to offer his perspective on her childhood. He is still not well and doesn’t seem to have remorse for what he did. He still feels like God was calling him to commit his crimes.
The second part of the book is about Rebecca’s life after her father went to prison. It’s been a journey to overcome the guilt and shame she feels because of what her father did. Because of that, she has made some poor choices throughout her life. She’s had a few bad relationships and has three children with different fathers. She sought healing from both traditional non-traditional methods, including hypnotherapy. She’s now a certified hypnotherapist.
I liked this book, but I was hoping for more on Rebecca’s childhood. That’s the main reason I picked this book because I love reading about cults and Dan Lafferty was a cult of two – him and his brother. A lot of Rebecca’s healing journey focused on “woo-woo” methods of healing and as a pragmatic person, that didn’t interest me.
If you’re interested in a more in depth look at Dan Lafferty’s crimes as well as the history of Mormon fundamentalism, I recommend reading Under the Banner of Heaven instead of this book. But if you’re looking to read a book about a woman’s journey to heal her childhood trauma that focuses more on her present than her past, then this is the book for you.
(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)
January 12th, 2026 in
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The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up before graduation, they vowed to never speak to each other again. Ten years later, on the eve of the new millennium, they find themselves back on their snowy, picturesque New England campus together for the first time for the wedding of mutual friends. Frankie’s on the rise as a music manager for the hottest bands of the late ’90s, and Ezra’s ready to propose to his girlfriend after the wedding. Everything is going to plan—they just have to avoid the chasm of emotions brought up when they inevitably come face to face.
But when they wake up in bed next to each other the following morning with Ezra’s grandmother’s diamond on Frankie’s finger, they have zero memory of how they got there—or about any of the events that transpired the night before. Now Frankie and Ezra have to put aside old grievances in order to figure out what happened, what didn’t happen…and to ask themselves the most troubling question of all: what if they both got it wrong the first time around?
College sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up on the day of their college graduation. They’ve hated each other ever since and have not spoken in the ten years since then. They both come back to their college town on for the wedding of mutual friends, which is on New Year’s Eve of 1999.
The morning after the rehearsal dinner, they wake up in bed together in one of the college’s dorm rooms. The engagement ring that Ezra intended to propose to his current girlfriend with is on Frankie’s finger. Neither of them can remember what happened.
I cannot get over the unrealistic premise of this book. After Frankie and Ezra wake up in bed together, they think they must have gotten married because Ezra’s grandmother’s wedding ring is on Frankie’s finger and Ezra has a gold band on his. Neither can remember anything from the night before so they set off on a journey retracing their steps around town to see if they can jog their memories and find out if they are really married.
Hello?! They are in New England, not Las Vegas. You need a marriage license to get legally married and I’m pretty sure you can’t get one at midnight. Are they dumb? Ezra went to law school for Christ’s sake! All I could think about while reading this book was how stupid they both are.
Additionally, Frankie is not a nice person, and I never felt that she redeemed herself. I was rooting for them NOT to get back together. They hated each other up until the last couple of chapters. This was a romance with no romance.
From the publisher’s description, I thought that this was going to be a time-loop novel and that they woke up in bed together because they were transported back to their college days. That’s on me I suppose for not reading the description close enough. But it was still disappointing.
You can skip The Rewind. If you’re looking for a cute romance set around New Year’s Eve, check out The Second Chance Year by Melissa Wiesner.
January 4th, 2026 in
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James by Percival Everett
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication date: March 19, 2024
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn from Jim’s point of view. It’s not necessary to read Huckelberry Finn first but I did and I think I got more out of it that way. It’s still a five-star read no matter what. In Huck Finn, Jim is portrayed as naive and not very smart. In James, we discover that it’s all an act. Enslaved people act dumb and speak in the slave dialect as a form of self-protection. They know that white people would feel threatened if they knew that their slaves were just as smart, if not smarter, than them. I loved seeing James’s point of view of his interactions with Huck. For instance, in Huckelberry Finn, Huck convinces Jim that an incident that actually happened was just a dream. Jim freaks out and thinks he’s going crazy. Then Huck tells him the truth and feels bad for tricking Jim. In James, James knows that Huck is tricking him and goes along with it because he has affection for Huck and knows that it’s fun for Huck to pull a prank like that on him. He also knows that it’s expected that he’s dumb enough to fall for something like that.
I think James is a more realistic portrayal of Black people in those times than Huckelberry Finn. Of course they were intelligent. But if people acknowledged that, it might be harder to treat them as subhuman. I wondered reading Huck Finn if enslaved people actually talked with that dialect. I had to switch to audio because I couldn’t even understand Jim’s dialogue as it was written. In James, when James speaks in the slave dialect, it’s written in a way that you can understand what he’s saying.
James was my book club’s February selection. It’s a great book for discussion – we had a lot to talk about. I don’t want to tell you too much about the plot, but a lot happened to him that was eye-opening for us. Some of us had read Huck Finn so we could compare and contrast it with James as part of our discussion.
James deservedly won almost every book award there is in 2024. I highly, highly recommend it.
December 7th, 2025 in
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Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: September 10, 2024
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served his time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.
Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, this book is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
In Sky Full of Elephants, society was changed when a year ago all of the white people walked into the nearest body of water and drowned. Now the world is adjusting to the after effects of that event. Sydney, a bi-racial teenager, is left behind when her white mother and stepfamily walk into the water. She’s been holed up in her house, afraid of the new world. She’s heard that there is a civilization in Alabama and asks her estranged father to help her get there. She’s never met him and holds a lot of anger towards him for leaving her mother. She plays on his guilt to convince him to take her there even though the journey will be dangerous. Raised by white people, Sydney has internalized racism that she doesn’t recognize but those around her do. She doesn’t say it outright, but it’s clear that she’s hoping the settlement she and her father are traveling to has white people living there.
Sky Full of Elephants was very thought provoking. A world without white people is different than I imagined when I first heard about this book. It’s almost like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. White people control so much in the United States that when they are gone, a lot of things cease to exist – like the government, utilities, and public transportation. Other consequences are good. For instance, all of the prisoners were set free, instantly solving the mass incarceration of Black people problem. The stress of living in a racist society has been lifted for people left, making the negative aspects worth it.
I loved this book. The concept was unlike anything I’ve read before and executed perfectly. Weeks after reading it, I’m still thinking about it. Highly, highly recommended.
December 4th, 2025 in
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The Mad Wife by Meagan Church
Narrator: Susan Bennentt
Publisher: Recorded Books
Release Date: November 4, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the perfect 1950s housewife. Despite the tragic memories that haunt her and the weight of exhausting expectations, she keeps her husband happy, her household running, and her gelatin salads the talk of the neighborhood. But after she gives birth to her second child, Lulu’s carefully crafted life begins to unravel.
When a new neighbor, Bitsy, moves in, Lulu suspects that something darker lurks behind the woman’s constant smile. As her fixation on Bitsy deepens, Lulu is drawn into a web of unsettling truths that threaten to expose the cracks in her own life. The more she uncovers about Bitsy, the more she questions everything she thought she knew—and soon, others begin questioning her sanity. But is Lulu truly losing her mind? Or is she on the verge of discovering a reality too terrifying to accept?
In the vein of The Bell Jar and The Hours, The Mad Wife weaves domestic drama with psychological suspense, so poignant and immersive, you won’t want to stop listening.
The Mad Wife follows Lulu, a 1950s housewife and mother who lives in the suburbs. She keeps a clean house and has a homecooked meal on the table every night for her husband when he gets home from work. She’s also known as the “queen of molded foods”. Her specialty is the perfection salad – gelatin filled with carrots, celery, cabbage, green olives and radishes. (Why was the food in the ’50s so gross??) Lately, Lulu’s grown listless.
When a new family moves across the street, Loulou is suspicious. Bitsy, the wife, seems strange and distant and her five-year-old daughter does as well. And Bitsy is just a little too perfect. The neighborhood women welcome her with open arms, which makes Loulou jealous. Soon Lulu is obsessed with finding out what is going on behind the scenes with Bitsy’s family.
The Mad Wife was riveting. I listened to the last half while I was driving on a road trip, and my heart was in my throat the whole time. The twists are amazing. It was read by Susan Bennett who has the perfect 1950s housewife voice. She sounded just like Donna Reed. Loulou basically was Donna Reed until Bitsy moved in and got her discombobulated.
I cannot stop thinking about this book and how good it was. Highly recommended.
(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)
December 1st, 2025 in
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