Sunday Salon: Swallows: A Novel by Natsuo Kirino, and Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman

 Two reviews

Swallows by Natsuo Kirino

Genre: Japanese literature, adult fiction, contemporary fiction


Riki comes to Tokyo not knowing anyone and needing to find a job, but the only thing she can find is a job as a surrogate for famous ballet dancer Motoi and his wife, Yuko, who cannot have children. Riki provides the egg, and she is artificially inseminated with Motoi's sperm. The dancer and his wife agree to take care of all Riki's surrogacy expenses and to raise the child as their own.

However, when Riki discovers she is carrying twins who may not have been fathered by Motoi but possibly by one of two other men with whom she had brief affairs just before insemination, things become complicated for all concerned. And especially for Riki whose maternal instincts kick in later in her pregnance, leading her to maybe consider the idea of raising the twins by herself.

The complications of surrogacy is explored in this novel, not only the physical demands and procedures, but the emotions of the people involved. Changes of mind by all three, from one state to another, make this novel a study in personalities and characters in a difficult situation. I read on, mesmerized by the story and the final resolution. It was not a disappointment.

Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman

Genre: thriller, mystery set in Bora Bora

Erin and Mark on their honeymoon and sailing in Bora, Bora, find a heavy, bulky bag floating in the water far away from land. They decide to turn it in to their hotel front desk, but Erin, ever the curious one, tears open the bag and makes an irresistable find. They try to keep the bag for themselves, but Erin digs into the background of the possible owners by powering up a cell phone left in the bag and talking to someone on the other end.

Scuba diving in the same area, they had also found the sunken wreckage of a small plane, with people inside.

This starts a cat and mouse game, with Erin digging herself deeper into the mystery and getting both herself and Mark in danger from the unknown persons connected to plane and the bag. They both decide to keep the information to themselves and return home to England with the bag's contents.

Needless to say, danger follows them, and the reader is left with a plot twist that is as mind boggling as it is unexpected. Excellent thriller.

 

Authors coming to our local library

June 17, 2025; William Morrow, NetGalley

Laura Lippman, mystery author visits our main library for her talk on June 26 featuring her books and most recent mystery novel.

Description: Muriel Blossom, a former PI and a middle-aged widow, takes a vacation on a Parisian river cruise, and finds a deadly international mystery only she can solve.

 

May 20, 2025; Sourcebooks, NetGalley

Kristina McMorris will discuss her historical fiction novels on July 22 at the library

Description: Portland, 1888. In the notorious Shanghai Tunnels in underground Portland, a drugged woman finds herself "shanghaied" and being shipped off as forced labor. She serves as a maid for the family of a dubious mayor and becomes entwined in a goldminers' massacre. Being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era of anti-Chinese sentiment, Celia must find a way to escape a place of unearthed secrets more dangerous than the dark recesses of Chinatown.  

In my mailbox

Thanks to Soho Press for a hard copy of the new mystery by Zoe B. Wallbrook, History Lessons, publication July 1, 2025.

What are you reading, watching, or listening to this week? 

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

Invited to Read: Two New Books

 Invited to read by the publishers on NetGalley, ARCs

An over age 65 sleuth! 

July 8, 2025; Berkley, NetGalley

The World's Greatest Detective

Description: A brilliant Boomer detective and her ambitious Gen Z assistant try to get along in this delightful feel-good mystery.

Olivia Blunt is thrilled to be hired as assistant to the nationally renowned investigator Aubrey Merritt. She longs to become a valued contributor to the great detective’s work, but Merritt is a difficult, exacting boss, and the learning curve is steeper than she expected.

After weeks of boring computer work, Olivia is finally invited to join Merritt on an important case. On the night of her sixty-fifth birthday party, Victoria Summersworth somehow fell over her balcony railing to her death on the rocky shore of Vermont’s Lake Champlain. She was a happy woman—rich, beloved, in love, and matriarch of the preeminent Summersworth family. The police ruled her death a suicide, but Victoria’s daughter Haley thinks it was murder.

Merritt and Olivia soon discover that the Summersworth family is complicated web of lies, ambitions, and resentments. As the list of suspects grows, Olivia makes one apparent mistake after another. When she blunders into a truly dangerous situation, she realizes Merritt might be right: she might be in over her head with this whole detective thing…or she might be unravelling a mystery even bigger than the one they started with.

A more serious read by the famed Japanese writer, Natsuo Kirino, author of Out

Sept. 9, 2025; Knopf

Swallows

Description:

The highly anticipated new novel. When a young single woman in Tokyo decides she’s ready to sell anything—even her womb—to escape the precarity of her life, an agency pairs her with a wealthy couple desperate to have a child. The match seems made in heaven. She even looks a little like the wife. But is anything ever that simple?

Nothing has ever gone right for Riki. She left her boring hometown in Hokkaido, where she worked at a nursing home, for a better life in Tokyo. But as a temp in the big city she has no job security, and barely scrapes by. She eats the same old discount boiled egg for lunch every day, sometimes for dinner, too. Many of her peers have to take on a side hustle just to make ends meet. So when her friend discovers an agency offering a hefty sum for egg donation, both leap at the chance for an interview.

Meanwhile, former ballet star Motoi Kusaoke and his wife, Yuko, have been trying to conceive for years. After trying what feels like every available option, it seems futile—until Motoi dives deep into his research and learns that, while surrogacy is technically illegal in Japan, there is a company that’s found a loophole.

Before long, everyone has an opinion on the matter: from Yuko’s sex-obsessed, asexual best friend, to Motoi’s controlling prima ballerina mother, and even the affable sex-worker-slash-therapist that Riki has been to a couple of times, after she accepted a down payment to be a surrogate.

Acutely funny and addictively page-turning, Swallows pulls at the seams of society, reassessing our understanding of motherhood, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and class. What does it mean to be “in control”? And can money really buy happiness?

June 24, 2025; Muswell Press, NetGalley

I couldn't resist getting this thriller set in Copenhagen, even though it's the fourth in the series, but still a stand alone mystery. 

Out of the Dark 

Description: Matilde Clausen, 9, vanishes from a crowded playground in the middle of Copenhagen, triggering a frantic search across the city. When a link emerges to the disappearance of Lea Høgh, aged 10, six years ago, DI Henrik Jungersen is thrown back into the nightmare that almost finished his career. 

Desperate for redemption, but barred from reopening the old case, Henrik turns to his estranged lover, Dagbladet chief crime reporter Jensen, for help. As the investigation reaches deep into Denmark’s underworld, how will Henrik, Jensen and her teenage apprentice Gustav manage to escape the darkness that threatens to engulf them, in time to solve the mystery? What really happened to Lea? And where on earth is Matilde? 

What are you reading these days? 

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