Book Reviews: Julie Chan Is Dead; All the Words We Know

 Two reviews

I'm finally reviewing ARCs promptly and not holding off, possibly forgetting about them. I wonder how many books I've read but never reviewed? Hmmm.... 

Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang
April 29, 2025; thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley

Social Media Influencers:

I am still trying to figure out the reason for this book. It's an odd story about influencers, identical twins, the power of wealth and influence, and becoming famous on social media. I'm not sure there is a straight forward message. If so, it's enmeshed in a tale that begins with a twin that takes over her dead sister's successful social media identity. 

This story morphs into the secrets of an influencer group that bands together in a bizarre cult having a strange god and unholy sacrifices required of the members.The pull of money to be made by social influencers online, the lengths people will go for this fame - this seems to be the basic theme. The story goes over and beyond the normal in order for this message to be heard. 

It kept my interest but almost lost it on that private island with crazily drugged women, high on the need for fame and influence.

All the Words We Know by Bruce Nash

July 1, 2025; thanks to Atria Books, NetGalley

Senior Sleuth with Dementia:

I enjoyed the word play by 80-year-old Rose, a nursing home resident with dementia, whose love of nature, plants, and trees comes through when she remembers the botanical names of each flower and plant she cherishes in her memory. Though in her 80s and a widow, she still has enough determination to ferret out the center's secrets and the crimes she thinks she sees being done to employees, her friends in the home, and other residents.

Rose lives half of her time in a remembered garden with her second husband, now deceased. It spurs her on to also take note of the present and her circumstances. And in a very roundabout way, she achieves her goals, with the help of a silent mop boy who cleans the floors and sees and knows all the secrets.

The story was clever, cute, and suspenseful, with an ending that brings relief and a sense of completion. Her frequent use of malapropisms, a misuse of words that sound alike, was also entertaining.

Next reads

She Doesn't Have a Clue by Jenny Elder Moke

Jan. 21, 2025; thanks to Minotaur and NetGalley

Destination wedding: 

Mystery writer Kate attends the wedding of her ex-fiancee on a private island off the coast of Seattle, but when the bride is poisoned at the wedding and Kate also finds a dead body, things definitely take an unexpected turn. This rom com mystery sounds exciting and I am eager to start reading it. 

Mona Acts Out by Mischa Berlinski, Jan. 21, 20025; thanks to Liveright and NetGalley

Stage actress has had enough:

Mona runs off with her dog, dreading the guests packed into her apartment; her husband; and the upcoming rehearsals for a new play as Cleopatra. An overnight escape adventure into the city gives her a better perspective of her life.

In my mailbox

 

Big Bad Wool by Leonie Swann, translated from the German. May 6, 2025; thanks to Soho Press

Flock of sheep as amateur sleuths:

Who would ever think of sheep as sleuths in mystery books? Author Leonie Swann has. This is her second book with a group of sheep from Glennkill and their shepherdess, Rebecca. This time the sheep head for France. When other sheep and deer are being killed by an unknown predator. it seems Rebecca's flock are to solve the mystery. 

I wonder how? 

Note: My Follow button on the right  works now to follow this blog. But leave comments, too; please do.  

What are you reading or watching this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday 

Sunday Salon: Reading at 2:30 a.m.

Waking too early.

Listening to light rain bouncing off the roof drains, I reach for my phone. Too early to play my word game- the new one isn’t up as yet. The other games don’t interest me right now. 

My phone shows me the ebooks I have partially read. Which one to start again, to put me back to sleep, maybe? 

Do I want to follow that penurious artist in the French countryside village who has returned to his room at the inn, having been discharged from the hospital after cutting off his own ear in a mental frenzy? Sounds like Van Gogh’s story. 

Or do I want to get on the motorcycle of a rider in Italy who doesn’t know how to control his vehicle in busy streets?  Or perhaps visit the writers trapped with a murderer on a small, privately owned Greek island? 

Decide on a motorcycle ride in Italy? Not very sleep inducing, but it suits my present mood. 

I opt instead to get up and write this Sunday post.

Books that didn't help me get back to sleep

Madame Sorel's Lodger by Tracy Wise, Publication Feb. 4, 2025, Type Eighteen Books, NetGalley

I am enjoying reading about the Artist who stays in a little French village called A-, at Madame Sorel's lodgings, gets up to paint all day in the fields overlooking a farm, and drinks at the nearby inn. The Artist is short of money, relies on his brother in Paris to send him funds. I'm at the point where the Artist, who is subject to strange buzzing in his head that sends him almost mad, has cut off his ear in one of his frenzies, and just returned from the hospital.  

Sounds like the Artist might be modeled after the life of Van Gogh. I'll keep on reading. I am disappointed, though, that there was no mention of the famous artist anywhere in the book, in the prologue, afterword, or acknowledgements. 

Writers and Liars by Carol Goodman, Publication: July 15, 2025; William Morrow, NetGalley

I do like mysteries set on Greek islands!

Several writers have been invited by Argos to his secluded island, to take part in a writing retreat, the second one he has organized over the years.

However, Argos is found dead when the writers arrive and they find themselves stranded on the island with no radio contact with the mainland or outside world. This is a classic locker-room type mystery and I don't know where it's going, but the writers are on the island with a murderer! 

Code Word Romance by Carlie Walker, March 18, 2025; Berkley, NetGalley

I love setting and the plot. When the CIA offers would-be chef Max a deal, five milliion dollars to pretend to be Sofia, a female prime minister on her annual Italian vacation, cash strapped Max doesn't hesitate and heads for the Amalfi coast in Italy. The book opens with a chase, when Max on a bike is being chased by the mafia who want her dead. 

The three books above that I tried to read in the early morning, did not put me back to sleep. Instead they got me going to my office to write this Can't Sleep post.

Note: The ebooks above are all ARCs from NetGalley, and not yet published or available in libraries or bookstores.  

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves 

Korean-American Day

 A presidential statement today was made in honor of Korean-American Day, January 13. Exactly 121 years ago, the first Korean immigrants landed in the U.S., which now has the largest number of Korean immigrants anywhere in the world. 

I have noticed that there are more and more Korean-American and Korean authors whose books reflect their history and their arrival in the U.S. I have read several contemporary books, nonfiction and fiction, by these authors who bring their reality to readers everywhere. 

The memoir offers very personal stories about growing up in America in a Korean immigrant family.

Thanks to Grace Fell, senior publicist at Spark Point Studio, for the NetGalley ARC and the follow up hard copy of Kinda Korean: Stories from an American Life by Joan Sung (February 25, 2025 by She Writes Press). Grace recommends the memoir as perfect for Korean American Day (January 13). Click on the title link for my Goodreads review of the memoir. 

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Publisher description of Kinda Korean :

Korean diaspora | Coming-of-age angst & pain

Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first-generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. From her experiences with microaggressions to the over-fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities through her research on race and representation. 

Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family in this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society.

 

About the author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Published: Feb. 25, 2020 by One World. 

"Cathy Park Hong was born to Korean immigrants in 1976 and raised in a bilingual home. She recalls her childhood in Los Angeles as a “profoundly lonely experience,” during which she first began to comprehend the cultural invisibility of Asian Americans in the United States."

Book Description: Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.

Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. 

With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. 

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, FINALIST FOR PULITZER PRIZE, WINNER OF NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, AMERICAN BOOK AWARD, ONE OF BEST TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2021

These are just two of the books written by Korean-American women about their experiences as immigrants to the U.S. I think they bring valuable insights that many immigrants, no matter from which part of the world, might feel or experience as newcomers to a new society. 

Cathy Park Hong's memoir was written four to five years ago. Hopefully, things have improved somewhat for her situation since then. 

Have you read any other memoirs or novels by Korean-Americans? 

Sunday Salon: First Post of 2025 - Books, of course

 My first post in a new blog for 2025! BookBirdDog (Book Dilettante) has been retired, and I'm starting anew. 

Welcome to  my new blog:  Harvee Reads

How did I start the new year, apart from starting a new blog? 

I am still a huge NetGalley fan, and don't mind reading advance copies of books. They are, after all, the writers' galleys before final editing and final print, and their own words matter a lot to me before they are polished and possibly changed by editors and publishers.

 My planned January reads? Books soon to be published this month.

To Have and To Hold by Lilly French

a psychological thriller with a dramatic ending

To be published Jan. 17, 2025; NetGalley

Description: Emma and Luke seem to have a perfect marriage until Emma discovers a hotel receipt in Luke's pocket. This leads to at a secluded, supposedly romantic weekend for the two. 

Unfortunately the goodreads readers rated the thriller only 2.43 stars.

The Lost House by Melissa Larsen 

Publication Jan. 14, 2025; Minotaur; NetGalley

Setting: Icelandic winter landscape

Description: A young girl, Agnes, returns to her ancestral home in Iceland to investigate a murder in her family forty years previously. Is it a coincidence a local girl goes missing the very same weekend Agnes is in Iceland? A thriller packed with plot twists.

Strange Pictures by Uketsu is described as horror, mystery and thriller, adult fiction. I don't normally read horror novels but I'm intrigued by this Japanese  mystery. The strange pictures have a backstory that connects them. 

Publication: Jan. 14, 2025, HarperVia, NetGalley

I have to find some lighter reading inbetween those three thrillers. 

Accidentally Amy by Lynn Painter

Publication: Jan. 14, 2025; Berkley, NetGalley

My review:

In a rush to get to work, Izzy takes the pumpkin spice latte she ordered and paid for at the coffee shop. Problem is that the latte belongs to an earlier customer, Amy, who doesn't answer the call of the barista to come get her drink. Izzy grabs the latte and spins around to leave, but instead bumps into Blake, a handsome executive also waiting in line.

This is the meet-cute situation of this rom com. The romance tropes then move on from enemy-lover mode as Blake turns out to be Izzy's new boss. But he thinks that Izzy is really named Amy, and she doesn't correct him at the beginning. Most of the book have the two trying to figure out ways to hide their growing attraction for each other, as work rules forbid fraternization between employees and especially between boss and subordinate. The rationalizations they give themselves for meeting after work and falling in love are quite clever and amusing.

The tropes work for this rom com, and with the sometimes over-the-top love scenes, it's an entertaining read.

In My Mailbox

Sunlight Playing over a Mountain by Selina Li Bi

Publication: April 1, 2025; Soho Teen ARC

Description: A lyrical, mythology-tinged debut novel about a Chinese-Filipino teenager whose world of daydreams is destroyed by a family secret. Selina Li Bi’s magical debut perfectly portrays the pain of growing up in a less-than-magical world and introduces a remarkable new voice in young adult fiction.

I'm interested in the mythology in this YA novel.

Please visit Mailbox Monday at I'd Rather Be Reading at the Beach, each week to see books bloggers received. 

 

What are you reading or watching this wintry day? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday