Book Reviews

Book reviews are listed alphabetically by author’s last name.

Ayobami Adebayo – Stay With Me

Tomi Adeyemi – Children of Blood and Bone

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Sherman Alexie – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie – You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me

Svetlana Alexievich – The Unwomanly Face of War

Andre Alexis – Fifteen Dogs

Jokha Alharthi – Bitter Orange Tree

Isabel Allende – The Japanese Lover

Hala Alyan – The Arsonists’ City

Hala Alyan – Salt Houses

Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Michiko Aoyama – What You Are Looking for is in the Library

Gina Apostol – Bibliolepsy

Katherine Arden – The Bear and the Nightingale

Kate Atkinson – Life After Life

Kate Atkinson – A God in Ruins

Kate Atkinson – Transcription

Kate Atkinson – Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Margaret Atwood – The Heart Goes Last

Paul Auster – Travels in the Scriptorium

Mona Awad – Bunny

Kate Baer – What Kind of Woman

Kate Baer – I hope this finds you well

Kate Baer – And Yet

Sharon Bala – The Boat People

Heidi Barnes – The Bellman

Heidi Barnes – The Bellman’s Secret

Julian Barnes – The Sense of an Ending

Damian Barr – You Will Be Safe Here

Gurjinder Basran – Everything was Good-Bye

Paul Beatty – The Sellout

Nancy Beach & Samantha Beach Kiley – Next Sunday

Peter Behrens – Carry Me

Billy-Ray Belcourt – A History of My Brief Body

Catherine Belknap & Natalie Telfer – Cat and Nat’s Mom Truths

David Benioff – City of Thieves

Chloe Benjamin – The Immortalists

Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett – The Mothers

Lucia Berlin – A Manual for Cleaning Women

Sindya Bhanoo – Seeking Fortune Elsewhere

Chelsea Bieker – Heartbroke

A.K. Blakemore – The Manningtree Witches

Amy Bloom – Away

Roberto Bolano – 2666

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Life Together

Karina Sainz Borgo – It Would be Night in Caracas

Tim Bowling – The Bone Sharps

Randy Boyagoda – Original Prin

Joseph Boyden – Three Day Road

Joseph Boyden – Wenjack

John Boyne – The Heart’s Invisible Furies

Renee Branum – Defenestrate

Taffy Brodesser-Akner – Fleishman is in Trouble

Geraldine Brooks – The Secret Chord

Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte – Villette

Carol Rifka Brunt – Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Ali Bryan – The Figgs

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan – Harmless Like You

Pearl Buck – The Good Earth

Amy Jo Burns – Shiner

Sarah Louise Butler – The Wild Heavens

Susan Cain – Quiet

Morley Callaghan – Such is My Beloved

Patti Callahan – Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Maria Campbell – Halfbreed

Edgar Cantero – Meddling Kids

Lan Cao & Harlan Margaret Van Cao – Family in Six Tones

Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card – Speaker for the Dead

Peter Carey – Jack Maggs

J.L. Carr – A Month in the Country

Roch Carrier – La Guerre, Yes Sir!

Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries

Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote

Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon – The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Michael Chabon – Telegraph Avenue

Michael Chabon – The Final Solution

Francis Chan – Crazy Love

Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep

Clay McLeod Chapman – Ghost Eaters

Gary Chapman – The Five Love Languages

David Chariandy – Brother

Bethany Chase – One Night at the Lake

Eve Chase – The Daughters of Foxcote Manor

G.K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday

G.K. Chesterton – Autobiography

Denise Chong – Egg on Mao

Kevin Chong – Beauty Plus Pity

Kevin Chong – The Double Life of Benson Yu

Yangsze Choo – The Night Tiger

Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None

Michael Christie – If I Fall, If I Die

Ye Chun – Hao

Kerry Clare – Waiting for a Star to Fall

Susanna Clarke – Piranesi

Paul Cleave – Trust No One

Lee Conell – The Party Upstairs

Bryce Courtenay – The Power of One

Ivan Coyote – Rebent Sinner

Charmaine Cragg – Miss Burma 

Kirsten Cram – Starling

Eva Crocker – Barrelling Forward

Katie Crouch – Abroad

Michael Crummey – Galore

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney – The Nest

Leesa Dean – Waiting for the Cyclone

Claire Dederer – Monsters

Rene Denfeld – The Enchanted

Kate DiCamillo – The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens – Nicholas Nickleby

Francesco Dimitri – Never the Wind

Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See

Emma Donoghue – The Wonder

Emma Donoghue – Astray

Emma Donoghue – The Pull of the Stars

Emma Donoghue – Haven

Sara Downing – I Let You Fall

Mark & Grace Driscoll – Real Marriage

Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca

Esi Edugyan – Washington Black

Esi Edugyan – Out of the Sun

Gene Edwards – A Tale of Three Kings

Helen Edwards & Jenny Lee Smith – My Secret Sister

Jennifer Egan – The Keep

Jennifer Egan – A Visit From the Goon Squad

Dave Eggers – The Lifters

Dave Eggers – The Parade

Francesca Ekwuyasi – Butter Honey Pig Bread

Omar El Akkad – American War

Omar El Akkad – What Strange Paradise

Alicia Elliott – A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Salma El-Wardany – These Impossible Things

Marina Endicott – Good to a Fault

Shusaku Endo – Silence

Shusaku Endo – Samurai

Louise Erdrich – The Sentence

Juliet Escoria – Juliet the Maniac

Jeffrey Eugenides – The Marriage Plot

Diana Evans – Ordinary People

Rachel Held Evans – A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Joanna Faber & Julie King – How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen

J. Meade Falkner – Moonfleet

Hans Fallada – Every Man Dies Alone

Fang Fang – Wuhan Diary

Genki Ferguson – Satellite Love

Joshua Ferris – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Joshua Ferris – The Dinner Party

Henry Fielding – Tom Jones

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Jonathan Safran Foer – Here I Am

E.M. Forster – A Room with a View

Yara Rodrigues Fowler – Stubborn Archivist 

Carlos Fuentes – The Orange Tree

Claire Fuller – Swimming Lessons

Claire Fuller – Our Endless Numbered Days 

Neil Gaiman – Chivalry

Rivka Galchen – Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

Damon Galgut – The Promise

Joanne Gallant – A Womb in the Shape of a Heart

Steven Galloway – The Confabulist

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude

Bonnie Garmus – Lessons in Chemistry

Natalie Eve Garrett – The Lonely Stories

Bill Gaston – The World

Bill Gaston – Juliet Was A Surprise

Bill Gaston – A Mariner’s Guide to Self-Sabotage

Yan Ge – Strange Beasts of China

Rachel Giese – Boys: What It Means To Become a Man

Alan Gibney – I Carried You Home

Michelle Good – Five Little Indians

John Gould – Seven Good Reasons Not to be Good

Shilpi Somaya Gowda – The Secret Daughter

Chris Grabenstein – Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

Marlowe Granados – Happy Hour

John Green – The Fault in our Stars

John Green – Looking for Alaska

John Green – Paper Towns

Graham Greene – The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene – The Quiet American

Graham Greene – The Human Factor

Graham Greene – The End of the Affair

Daryl Gregory – Spoonbenders

Kate Grenville – Restless Dolly Maunder

Lauren Groff – Fates and Furies

Guy Gunaratne – In Our Mad and Furious City

Yaa Gyasi – Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi – Transcendent Kingdom

Mark Haddon – The Porpoise

Matt Haig – The Humans

Mohsin Hamid – Exit West

Helene Hanff – 84, Charing Cross Road

Kristin Hannah – The Nightingale

Emma Hansen – Still

Nino Haratischvili – The Eighth Life (for Brilka)

Zakiya Dalila Harris – The Other Black Girl

Tiffany Clarke Harrison – Blue Hour

Sara N. Harvey – Death Benefits

Noah Hawley – Before the Fall

Elizabeth Hay – Alone in the Classroom

Elizabeth Hay – His Whole Life

Mark Helprin – Winter’s Tale

Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway – The Garden of Eden

Ernest Hemingway – The Only Thing That Counts: The Ernest Hemingway-Maxwell Perkins Correspondence

Rebecca Hendry – Grace River

Emily Henry – Beach Read

Sheila Heti – Motherhood

Naoki Higashida – Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8

Gail Honeyman – Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Emma Hooper – Our Homesick Songs

Emma Hooper – We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky

Nick Hornby – A Long Way Down

Gabe Hudson – Gork, the Teenage Dragon

Ann Hui – Chop Suey Nation

Megan Hunter – The End We Start From

John Inazu & Timothy Keller – Uncommon Ground

Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and the Sun

Eowyn Ivey – The Snow Child

Heidi L.M. Jacobs – Molly of the Mall

Chantal James – None but the Righteous 

Henry James – Portrait of a Lady

Karen Jennings – An Island

Paulette Jiles – News of the World

Adam Johnson – Fortune Smiles

Crockett Johnson – Harold and the Purple Crayon

Daisy Johnson – Sisters

Julia Claiborne Johnson – Be Frank With Me

Wayne Johnston – The Navigator of New York

Rachel Joyce – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Paul Kalanithi – When Breath Becomes Air

Han Kang – The Vegetarian

Katłıà – Land-Water-Sky

Katłįà – This House is not a Home

Rebecca Kauffman – Chorus

Patrick Radden Keefe – Say Nothing

Claire Keegan – Antarctica

Timothy Keller – The Prodigal God

Timothy & Kathy Keller – The Meaning of Marriage

Timothy Keller – Every Good Endeavor

Timothy Keller & John Inazu – Uncommon Ground

Timothy Keller – Hope in Times of Fear

Timothy Keller – Forgive 

Randall Kenan – If I Had Two Wings

Louise Kennedy – The End of the World is a Cul de Sac

Hannah Kent – Burial Rites

Hannah Kent – The Good People

Khaled Khalifa – Death is Hard Work

Jonas Hassen Khemiri – The Family Clause

Jess Kidd – Himself

Bernardine Kielty – A Treasury of Short Stories

Samantha Beach Kiley & Nancy Beach – Next Sunday

Kristin Kimball – The Dirty Life

A.S. King – Reality Boy

Thomas King – Indians on Vacation

Thomas King – Sufferance

Michael C. Klein – Dissident Doctor

T.J. Klune – The House in the Cerulean Sea

Chelene Knight – Dear Current Occupant

Eric Knight – Lassie Come Home

John Knowles – A Separate Peace

Kristin Kobes du Mez – Jesus and John Wayne

Herman Koch – The Dinner

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer – All the Broken Things

Kevin Kwan – Crazy Rich Asians

R. O. Kwon – The Incendiaries

Sarah Lahey – Nostalgia is Heartless

Jhumpa Lahiri – Roman Stories

Caitriona Lally – Eggshells

Lori Lansens – This Little Light

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe – Red Paint

Kara LaReau – The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters #1: The Jolly Regina

Evelyn Kohl LaTorre – Between Inca Walls

Jenny Lawson – Furiously Happy

Mary Lawson – Crow Lake

Jen Sookfong Lee – The Conjoined

Jing-Jing Lee – How We Disappeared

Madeleine L’Engle – The Moment of Tenderness

Catherine Leroux – The Future

Natasha Lester – The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre

C.S. Lewis – Letters to Malcolm

C.S. Lewis – A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis – Reflections on the Psalms

C.S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia

Ashley Little – Confessions of a Teenage Leper

Marceline Loridan-Ivens – But You Did Not Come Back

Richard Louv – Last Child in the Woods

Brenda Lozano – Witches

Annabel Lyon – The Golden Mean

Ling Ma – Severance

Linden MacIntyre – The Bishop’s Man

Alexander MacLeod – Animal Person

Alistair MacLeod – No Great Mischief

Alistair MacLeod – Remembrance

Andrea MacPherson – When She Was Electric

Rebecca Makkai – Music for Wartime

Anthony Marra – A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Yann Martel – Beatrice & Virgil

Yann Martel – The High Mountains of Portugal

Eternity Martis – They Said This Would Be Fun

Daniel Mason – A Registry Of My Passage Upon the Earth

Gabor Mate & Gordon Neufeld – Hold On To Your Kids

Dan Mayland – The Doctor of Aleppo

Eimear McBride – The Lesser Bohemians

Will McCallum – How to Give up Plastic

Colum McCann – Transatlantic

Colum McCann – Thirteen Ways of Looking

Colum McCann – This Side of Brightness

Mary McCarthy – The Company She Keeps

Jay McInerney – Bright Lights, Big City

Ami McKay – The Birth House

James Meek – The People’s Act of Love

Semezdin Mehmedinovic – My Heart

Joseph Auguste Merasty – The Education of Augie Merasty

Thomas Merton – Seven Storey Mountain

Anne Michaels – The Winter Vault

Anne Michaels – The Adventures of Miss Petitfour

Anne Michaels – The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour

Liz Michalski – Darling Girl

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Madeline Miller – The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller – Circe

Lydia Millet – A Children’s Bible

Czeslaw Milosz – A Book of Luminous Things

Fatima Farheen Mirza – A Place for Us

David Mitchell – Black Swan Green

David Mitchell – Utopia Avenue

Shandi Mitchell – The Waiting Hours

Premee Mohamed – The Annual Migration of Clouds

Lucy Maud Montgomery – The Blue Castle

Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia – The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison – Beloved

Ottessa Moshfegh – Eileen

Farley Mowat – The Curse of the Viking Grave

Téa Mutonji – Shut Up You’re Pretty

Jane Nelsen – Positive Discipline

Gordon Neufeld & Gabor Mate – Hold On To Your Kids

Celeste Ng – Our Missing Hearts

Bao Ninh – The Sorrow of War

Susin Nielsen – We Are All Made of Molecules

Chigozie Obioma – An Orchestra of Minorities

Edna O’Brien – The Little Red Chairs

Tim O’Brien – Going After Cacciato

Jessica O’Dwyer – Mother Mother

Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet & Judith

Maggie O’Farrell – The Marriage Portrait

Carol Off – All We Leave Behind

Alix Ohlin – We Want What We Want

Audur Ava Olafsdottir – Butterflies in November

Michael Ondaatje – In the Skin of a Lion

Heather O’Neill – Lullabies for Little Criminals

Heather O’Neill – Daydreams of Angels

Heather O’Neill – The Lonely Hearts Hotel

Heather O’Neill – When We Lost Our Heads

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia – The Son of the House

Julie Orringer – How to Breathe Underwater

Lauren Owen – The Quick

Helen Oyeyemi – What is not Yours is not Yours

Helen Oyeyemi – The Icarus Girl

R.J. Palacio – Wonder

Grace Paley – The Collected Stories

Elizabeth Pantley – The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers

Ann Patchett – This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Ann Patchett – Bel Canto

Ann Patchett – Commonwealth

Julie Paul – The Pull of the Moon

Pamela Paul & Maria Russo – How to Raise a Reader 

Brian Payton – The Wind is not a River

Stef Penney – The Tenderness of Wolves

Sara Pennypacker – Pax

Maxwell Perkins – The Only Thing That Counts: The Ernest Hemingway-Maxwell Perkins Correspondence

Tom Perrotta – Little Children

Andrew Peterson – At the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness

Kate Reed Petty – True Story

Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Max Porter – Lanny

Adam Pottle – Voice

Steven Price – By Gaslight

Karen Swallow Prior – On Reading Well

Anna Qu – Made in China

Kate Quinn – The Alice Network

Pilar Quintana – Abyss

Michael Redhill – Bellevue Square

Raziel Reid – Kens

Dana Reinhardt – Tomorrow There Will Be Sun

Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea

Ransom Riggs – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Eden Robinson – Monkey Beach

Marilynne Robinson – Gilead

Marilynne Robinson  – Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson – Jack

Sally Rooney – Normal People

Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Polly Rosenwaike – Look How Happy I’m Making You

J.K. Rowling – The Casual Vacancy

Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things

Etaf Rum – A Woman is No Man

Salman Rushdie – The Golden House

Maria Russo & Pamela Paul – How to Raise a Reader

Layla F. Saad – Me and White Supremacy

Mark Sakamoto – Forgiveness

George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo

Laura Schroff – An Invisible Thread

Martina Scholtens – Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist

Emily Schultz – The Blondes

Samantha Schweblin – Little Eyes

Amber Scorah – Leaving the Witness

Paul Seesequasis – Blanket Toss Under the Midnight Sun

Sarah Selecky – Radiant Shimmering Light

Maria Semple – Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Maria Semple Today Will Be Different

Vikram Seth – A Suitable Boy

Diane Setterfield – Once Upon a River

Ali Shaw – The Trees

Eleanor Shearer – River Sing Me Home

Nilofar Shidmehr – Divided Loyalties

Ken Shigematsu – God in My Everything

Lionel Shriver – We Need to Talk About Kevin

Parini Shroff – The Bandit Queens

Nevil Shute – A Town Like Alice 

Nevil Shute – On the Beach

Nevil Shute – Pastoral

Claude Simon – The Flanders Road

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies

Graeme Simsion – The Rosie Project

Merilyn Simonds – Refuge

Robin Sloan – Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Graeme Smith – The Dogs Are Eating Them Now

Tatjana Soli – The Lotus Eaters

Tatjana Soli – The Forgetting Tree

Gaetan Soucy – The Little Girl Who was Too Fond of Matches

Betty Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle

Patti Smith – Just Kids

Zadie Smith – White Teeth

Zadie Smith – The Embassy of Cambodia

Amy Spurway – Crow

Kara Stanley – Ghost Warning 

M.L. Stedman – The Light Between Oceans

Garth Stein – The Art of Racing in the Rain

John Steinbeck – The Pearl

John Steinbeck – The Winter of our Discontent

Susie Steiner – Missing, Presumed

Robert Louis Stevenson – Kidnapped

Emily St. John Mandel – Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel – The Glass Hotel

Emily St. John Mandel – Sea of Tranquility

Emma Straub – Modern Lovers

Cordelia Strube On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

Douglas Stuart – Shuggie Bain

Donna Tartt – The Secret History

Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch

Dizz Tate – Brutes

Brandon Taylor – Real Life

Emily J. Taylor – Hotel Magnifique 

Helen Taylor – Little Pilgrim’s Progress

Souvankham Thammavongsa – How to Pronounce Knife

Madeleine Thien – Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give

Joan Thomas – Five Wives

Kim Thuy – Man

Miriam Toews – All My Puny Sorrows

Miriam Toews – Fight Night

Miriam Toews – Women Talking

Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob

J.R.R. Tolkien – Roverandom

Dania Tomlinson – Our Animal Hearts

Sarah Tomlinson – Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers

Amor Towles – A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles – Rules of Civility

P.L. Travers – The Fox at the Manger

Alex Tresniowski – An Invisible Thread

Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons

Stuart Turton – The Devil and the Dark Water

Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Catherynne M. Valente – The Past is Red

Richard van Camp – Moccasin Square Gardens

Harlan Margaret Van Cao & Lan Cao – Family in Six Tones

Abraham Verghese – Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese – The Tennis Partner

Katherena Vermette – The Break

Vendela Vida – We Run the Tides

Tanguy Viel – Article 353

Nghi Vo – The Chosen and the Beautiful

David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest

Jeannette Walls – Half Broke Horses

Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited

Jonathan Weisman – No. 4 Imperial Lane

Tara Westover – Educated

Zoe Whittall – The Best Kind of People

Zoe Whittall – Holding Still for as Long as Possible

Khristin Wierman – Buck’s Pantry

Alex Williams – The Talent Thief

Lara Williams – The Odyssey 

Deborah Willis – The Dark and Other Loves Stories

G. Willow Wilson – The Bird King

Kevin Wilson – Perfect Little World

Sarah Winman – Tin Man

Kathleen Winter – Lost in September

Michael Winter – Minister Without Portfolio

Meg Wolitzer – The Interestings

Meg Wolitzer – The Female Persuasion

Jan Wong – Beijing Confidential

Lindsay Wong – The Woo Woo

N.T. Wright God and the Pandemic

Diana Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle

xwu’p’a’lich, Barbara Higgins – Etched in my Memory

Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life

Philip Yancey – What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Philip Yancey – Reaching for the Invisible God

Philip Yancey – The Jesus I Never Knew

Philip Yancey – Prayer

Philip Yancey – Where the Light Fell

Dori Jones Yang – When the Red Gates Opened

Susie Yang – White Ivy

Sunil Yapa – Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Kelly Yang – Front Desk

Kelly Yang – New From Here

Dori Jones Yang – When the Red Gates Opened

Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

Kwon Yeo-sun – Lemon

Clea Young – Teardown

Danielle Younge-Ullman – He Must Like You

Charles Yu – Interior Chinatown

Carlos Ruiz Zafon – The Shadow of the Wind

Kate Zambreno – Drifts

Gabrielle Zevin – The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Leni Zumas – Red Clocks

Markus Zusak – I Am the Messenger

And an overview of everything I’ve read in the last six years:

2020

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013