September Reads: The Silent Wife, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls

Book Reviews

I can’t believe I read three books this month. I really have gotten back into the reading habit since I set a modest goal of reading one book a month last year. I mostly read on my iPhone using the Kindle App, and as soon as I finish a book I am back on Amazon.com looking for the next one to download. The three books I read this month all involve a mystery of some kind, but they have very different moods.

My favorite book this month was The Silent Wife by A. S. A. Harrison. I actually read the paperback edition, borrowed from a friend to take on my trip to Boston.

(click to buy on Amazon)

From the Amazon synopsis:

Jodi and Todd are at a bad place in their marriage. Much is at stake, including the affluent life they lead in their beautiful waterfront condo in Chicago, as she, the killer, and he, the victim, rush haplessly toward the main event. He is a committed cheater. She lives and breathes denial. He exists in dual worlds. She likes to settle scores. He decides to play for keeps. She has nothing left to lose. Told in alternating voices, The Silent Wife is about a marriage in the throes of dissolution, a couple headed for catastrophe, concessions that can’t be made, and promises that won’t be kept. Expertly plotted and reminiscent of Gone Girl and These Things Hidden, The Silent Wife ensnares the reader from page one and does not let go.

Note to publishers: I am not usually enticed by reviews that proclaim that a new book is “this year’s” version of a previous bestseller. Even if I liked the bestseller, I read that book. I want a new story. But, when my friend said she really enjoyed The Silent Wife, I decided to give it a chance.

I was not disappointed. The Silent Wife is similar to Gone Girl in that the narration switches between the two main characters, and they both were page-turners, but The Silent Wife tells a completely different story, and has its own twists and turns that keep you reading late into the night.

*     *     *     *     *

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple was a bit lighter, although it does raise some interesting issues.

(Click to buy on Amazon)

From the Amazon synopsis:

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. …. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.

I really enjoyed the snarkiness of Bernadette’s interactions with the “fellow private-school mothers,” and while I’m not agoraphobic, I was a bit jealous of Bernadette’s resourcefulness in outsourcing most of the mundane demands of daily life. Overall, this was a fun book to read.

*     *     *     *     *

The other book I read this month was The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls by Anton DiSclafani.

(click to buy on Amazon)

From the Amazon synopsis:

It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrienne boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships …. As Thea grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, she finds herself enmeshed in a new order, one that will change her sense of what is possible for herself, her family, her country. ….

This was a good book, but not my favorite–maybe because it was more serious. It is a coming-of-age story propelled by the “family tragedy” that is revealed bit-by-bit. As with most coming-of-age stories, there are some inappropriate sexual relationships. While they are probably handled as they would have been in the 1930s, it is frustrating to see who gets off Scott-free and who bears the consequences.

Do you pass on books to your friends?

What should I read next?