the mother's secret book review

The Mother's Secret: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller

About this ebook.

Now, Eve has left all that behind. She pretends that she never had a child, and keeps her secrets close. But someone knows the truth. They know that Eve told a lie, and the clock is ticking before her shocking decision is revealed. Once the story comes out, there’ll be no way out for Eve. If people learn about the crime she covered up, they’ll never look at her the same way again. She must get her little girl back, before it’s too late. If she can’t, running away won’t be an option. This time, Eve will face the consequences, and pay the price she should have paid years ago...

A heart-stopping psychological thriller with an ending you won’t see coming from #1 bestseller Kathryn Croft. Perfect for fans of Shari Lapena, C. L. Taylor and K. L. Slater.

‘The first word that came to my mind after I read this book was OMG!!!!! ... Each secret did eventually come out and revealed that shocker of an ending. I was like WOW is this really happening. I had no clue that this book would take a twisted turn like that but I loved it. ’ Goodreads review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘A beautiful marriage of 'whodunnit' with a cracking work of psychological fiction . Don't even get me started on those awesome plot twists!! ’ Goodreads review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Another very engaging suspenseful read from Kathryn Croft, this author just never disappoints me with her plots and twists.’ NetGalley review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Wow! Wow! Wow! Kathryn Croft at her best. She never disappoints. An excellent, captivating psychological thriller.’ Goodreads review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘ Wow, wow is all I can say. This book has a twist in every chapter. I couldn’t put this book down! ’ Goodreads review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘ I read it in one day ... The ending is also fantastic and is a real gut punch for the reader. Highly recommended, a must-read novel!’ NetGalley review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘A great psychological thriller that had me guessing until the very end... Family secrets, lies and twists made this a page turner that I didn't want to put down. 5 twisty stars from me! ’ Goodreads review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Well written with a compelling storyline and well developed characters ... I was gripped right from the start and couldn't put it down... twisty and unpredictable and kept me guessing until the end.’ NetGalley Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Croft clearly has that knack of hitting you with a cracking twist at the end .’ NetGalley Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Wow, this book is simply unputdownable ! I inhaled the novel... the character of Eve is so brilliantly written that I wanted to know more. I was completely immersed in both the characters and the story .’ NetGalley Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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About the author

Kathryn Croft is the bestselling author of nine psychological thrillers and to date she has sold over one million copies of her books. Her third book, The Girl With No Past spent over four weeks at number one in the Amazon UK chart, and she has also appeared on the Wall Street Journal 's bestsellers list. With publishing deals in fifteen different countries, Kathryn is now working on book ten. She lives in Guildford, Surrey with her husband and two children.

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MY MOTHER'S SECRET

by J.L. Witterick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2013

Frustratingly sparse.

A debut novel of Jews and Germans, families and soldiers hidden from the Nazis.

Based upon the true story of Franciszka Halamajowa, Witterick’s novel is told by four narrators, beginning with Franciszka’s daughter, Helena. Raised in Germany with her older brother, Damian, Helena recalls her mother’s hard work and generosity. A strict, selfish man, their father sympathizes with the Nazi movement. In contrast, Franciszka judges people by their behavior, and her return to Poland effectively ends their marriage. In Sokol, Damian begins working at an oil refinery, enabling him to support the family and to become a skilled machinist. Helena lands a secretarial job at a garment factory, where she falls in love with the general manager, Casmir Kowalski, a good man. Like Franciszka—who entertains German commanders while harboring Jews—Casmir understands the importance of appearing to befriend officials on different sides of the conflict. Yet Helena is afraid to embroil Casmir in her mother’s secrets, so she cannot follow him to Germany when the Nazis invade. The perspective then shifts to those Franciszka sheltered. She rescues Bronek, his wife and child, as well as his brother and sister-in-law, from certain death in a Jewish ghetto, offering them asylum in her pigsty. She rescues Dr. Mikolaj Wolenski and his family, providing them safe haven under the floorboards of her kitchen. She also rescues Vilhelm, a German soldier, giving him refuge in the cramped attic. Franciszka’s thoughts remain a secret, revealed only through her own behavior. The Halamajowa family’s courage is inspiring. Yet, instead of illuminating the transcendence of their work, the simplicity of Witterick’s prose dulls the story. Instead of universalizing the tale, the underdeveloped characters and thin descriptions flatten the effect.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-399-16854-3

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORY

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “ You’ll get only one shot at this ,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “ Don’t botch it .” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “ That form is a deal breaker ,” he tells himself. “ It’s life and death .” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas . She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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by Heather Morris

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• My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a...

My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story

Franciszka Halamajowa and her daughter, Helena, are remarkable women who have the courage to become saviors to two Jewish families and a defecting German soldier during the Holocaust. These Polish women were recognized as “the Righteous Among the Nation” after World War II, and author J.L. Witterick paid them tribute by visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. She knew that the framework of their story was true, but was still overjoyed at seeing proof that the women had been honored.

It is an impossible scenario: for over 20 months in a two-room home, Franciszka hides and saves from death half of the surviving Jewish Poles.

William Styron’s SOPHIE’S CHOICE has become an idiom for unbearable choices, and one of the mothers hiding above Franciszka’s pigsty faces an impossible situation. Her baby cries and has alerted the enemy below. “A German soldier climbs up the steps to the loft and whispers to her, ‘Do you want to go with your baby?’” She has only a minute to make a decision that no one could make in a lifetime. It is giving nothing away to say that other horrors of the Holocaust are revealed in this same simple, matter-of-fact language.

"The beauty of HER MOTHER’S SECRET lies in the simplicity of the language and the complexity of the storylines. Each piece is told in a straightforward, almost-childlike manner, belying the layers of information and years and emotions."

Although the style of writing remains the same, there are four separate voices telling their versions of the same story. Helena begins with her family living in Germany, and she captures our attention and understanding as she describes her overbearing father who believes in Hitler. Her mother’s decision to leave him and return to Poland “may have been as subtle as the sight of a small robin sitting on our windowsill in the early days of spring.” That bird’s freedom may have inspired her mother to move to her own freedom. Helen’s teenage years and the beginning of work and an office romance intertwine with the threatening cloud of Nazism. She introduces us to her mother’s incredible ability to take risks and find solutions; Helena’s admiration and love for Franciszka are reasons we have hope for humanity in inhumane times.

Bronek, the next storyteller, is identifiably Jewish and reminds us again of the atrocities in Poland in the early 1940s. Jews who did not wear the Star of David in the open were “shot on the spot and left on the side of the street.” Bronek must care for his wife, his son and his brother’s widow; knowing this, he has saved and buried valuables along the riverbank. His foresight helped immensely as he discovers that gold, even Jewish gold, “since the beginning of time, has worked best.” His family finds refuge with Franciszka, a woman who barely knows them, and he compares her to “water in a pond where you cannot see the bottom.” It is only when you dive in that you find where the water is truly deep. The depths of Franciszka’s bravery and compassion are immeasurable.

Mikolaj, the young son of a Jewish doctor and his pampered, beautiful wife, tells from his eight-year-old perspective how his life changes as the three of them scurry into a hand-dug basement under Franciszka’s kitchen. His father’s ingenuity and wisdom save them, but it is his mother’s surprising strength that sustains them during their months in hiding.

Vilheim is a German soldier. He remembers the mantra his Oma (grandmother) gave when he was drafted:  Don’t stand out. Keep a low profile. Play along . Even though he does not hurt anyone, neither is he helping. His conscience forces him to defect, and he is astonished at Franciszka’s courage in allowing him to hide in her tiny attic.

Helena tells the final chapters. Keeping the three locations secret from the ever-present German soldiers, and keeping the people separate and ignorant of one another’s existence, takes a huge toll on her and her mother. “You never get used to the fear. It appears out of nowhere, while you are walking, eating, sleeping, and yet you go on because there is nothing else to do.” She gives some details of the final days of the war and of their hiding so many people for so long.

The beauty of HER MOTHER’S SECRET lies in the simplicity of the language and the complexity of the storylines. Each piece is told in a straightforward, almost-childlike manner, belying the layers of information and years and emotions. This Holocaust story is fresh yet too familiar; we wish we did not know that this could have happened, but we know it did.

Reviewed by Jane Krebs on September 13, 2013

My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story by J.L. Witterick

• Publication Date: September 2, 2014
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade
• ISBN-10: 0425274810
• ISBN-13: 9780425274811

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A Town’s Secret Propels ‘The Mothers,’ a Lauded Debut Novel

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By Mira Jacob

• Nov. 2, 2016

THE MOTHERS By Brit Bennett 278 pp. Riverhead Books. $26.

Call a book “The Mothers” and you’ve burdened it from the jump. You’ve gotten every back in the room up, tapped into lizard-brain levels of vulnerability and need, and added a generous dose of comfort or contempt to whatever comes next. Whom do we feel more conflicted about than mothers? To Brit Bennett’s credit, her ferociously moving debut lives up to its title, never once allowing readers a simplistic view of the maternal pain at its center.

“All good secrets have a taste before you tell them,” the mothers of Upper Room Chapel tell us before the story even begins. Claiming centuries of collective experience — “If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself” — they appear like gossipy Furies at the head of every chapter, an invisible and united front of warnings, back story, predictions, contradictions, laments and very occasionally sympathy for the Oceanside, Calif., lives they lay bare. Authorities on all things Upper Room, the mothers butt into and bend the narrative as they see fit, all too eager to tell us the “unripe secret, plucked too soon,” of what really happened between Nadia Turner; her closest friend, Aubrey Evans; and the man they both fell in love with, Luke Sheppard.

How easy it would be to stay with them for the length of the book, to relish the pearls they toss our way, like: “It’s exciting, loving someone who can never love you back. Freeing, in its own way,” or “After a secret’s been told, everyone becomes a prophet.” But Bennett sets up a delicious trick by allowing the mothers their say and then immediately shifting to the perspective of a single character. Here we find the real secrets of the book, the ones that will never be uttered aloud, let alone savored in the mouths of others.

Seventeen-year-old Nadia Turner sits in a blaze of grief as the book opens, recently unmothered and soon to be “unpregnant.” Just months earlier, she was a pretty, popular Oceanside High senior with a scholarship to the University of Michigan, the kind of girl who heard regularly she might be the first black lady president. Now she is the troubled daughter of Elise Turner, a woman last seen in Upper Room Chapel just hours before she drove down the street, parked the car and shot herself in the head. With no note of explanation, a father too shattered to speak of it and friends who “stopped joking when she sat down at lunch, as if their happiness were offensive to her,” Nadia becomes the kind of girl who will find her own answers, first in a downtown strip club, then in bed with Luke, the pastor’s shiftless son.

It’s a terrifying if clichéd setup — an innocent girl pushing herself into dangerous spaces, unaware of what she could still lose — but from the start, Bennett imbues Nadia with such peculiar savvy that we cannot easily dismiss her yearnings. Yes, she is dazzled by the way Luke, a former college football star, “knew things and he knew girls, college girls who wore high heels to class, not sneakers,” but her real attraction is to his shattered leg, the limp that turns him into the kind of person “who wore their pain outwardly, the way she couldn’t.” Likewise, she loses her virginity to him not because she’s chasing a rose-tinted version of romance, but because “sex would hurt and she wanted it to. She wanted Luke to be her outside hurt.”

In Nadia, we find a marvelous conundrum — a girl who remains cleareyed in the fog of mourning, whose unfamiliarity with grief’s numbing properties leads her to use her body in ways both stupid and brave. We cannot help admiring her struggle for agency, even if it lands her in an abortion clinic, her own fragility delivered via the tiny white light of a life that could “bring hers to an end.”

It’s no surprise we humans have a terrible time accepting loss, going to great lengths to make sense of what befalls us (see: religion, opiates, psychic mediums). Is it any wonder in the wake of her abortion Nadia gets her grief and guilt wires crossed, landing hard on the false conviction that she’s to blame for her mother’s suicide? Sure, the evidence is scant, but wasn’t Elise just 17 when she kept Nadia instead of aborting her? And wasn’t Nadia the reason her mother had never made it to college, despite hoarding copies of the Palomar College course catalog? It might be the coldest sort of comfort, but Nadia’s relief imagining “versions of her mother’s life that did not end with a bullet shattering her brain” — every one of which erases Nadia’s own birth — is starkly moving. What better way to ensure disaster won’t sneak up on you again than by believing you are the disaster?

“The Mothers” is a lush book, a book of so many secrets, betrayals and reckonings that to spill them in the lines of a review instead of letting them play out as the author intended would be silly. Instead I will tell you this: Despite Bennett’s thrumming plot, despite the snap of her pacing, it’s the always deepening complexity of her characters that provides the book’s urgency. Bennett’s ability to unwind them gently, offering insights both shocking and revelatory, has a striking effect. I found myself reading not to find out what happens to the characters, but to find out who they are. Long after closing the book, I am still, like the most dogged of children, trying to follow them.

Mira Jacob is the author of “The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing.”

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My Mother’s Secret: Book Review

My Mother's Secret

Author :  Sanjida Kay . Published : 2018,  Corvus . Length : 368 Pages. Genre(s) : Thriller, Drama, Romance. Rating : 3/5.

Links :  Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Book Depository  |  Audible

[I]t’s not until we get out of the car that I have a cold feeling in my stomach. If she lied about such a little thing so convincingly, what else is she lying about?

My Mother’s Secret  is told through the experiences of three narrators: Lizzie Bradshaw, Emma Taylor, and her daughter, Stella Taylor. It’s a contemporary thriller that hones in on themes such as identity and parenthood. The protagonist, Emma, hides a dark secret that goes all the way back to Lizzie’s narration, which takes place sixteen years before the experiences of Emma and Stella.

Secrets always have a way of revealing themselves, though, and this is exactly what Emma comes to realise when Stella witnesses her mother doing something…  unexpected . The rest of the story deals with a lot of emotion as the various characters attempt to work through the events that are now unfurling around them.

This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and most importantly of all, secrets.

The first thing to say about  My Mother’s Secret  is that it is extremely compelling: the story is gripping and the characters are well developed. They also instil a lot of curiosity into the mind of the reader; their stories are interlocked in a way that will encourage you to keep reading, even in the slower parts of the novel.

Yet this book also has its issues. For one thing, its “twists” leave a lot to be desired. They are easy to predict, lacking the originality you would expect from a narrative that hinges on a big, conclusive “twist”. For another, the different narrators have very distinct voices. Generally, this is a very positive thing: they are distinct characters with distinguishable voices. Yet this book also switches between first-person and third-person narrations, which can actually seem rather confusing. It’s an unusual writing decision, and, unfortunately, it has quite a negative effect on the rest of the novel.

It is also possible to struggle with the plausibility of My Mother’s Secret . The main narrative centres around a secret, yet everything about this secret – along with the reason for concealing it – is just so unlikely.  This may be fiction, but it is also a realist work, which means that it is set in the real world, and, as a result of this, it should be believable. For the most part, the events that happen in this novel are unlikely , but, to a degree, they are believable. Yet the suggestion that all of these events happened at once – to one person – does seem a little absurd.

Having said this,  My Mother’s Secret  is a very enjoyable novel. It provides some fascinating insights into identity crises, anxiety issues, and the struggles of parenthood. It is well written, has short chapters that make it easy to read, and is certainly exciting. If you don’t mind the occasional impossibility, then we can thoroughly recommend this book.

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Judaica in the Spotlight

Art Magazine

Book Review: My Mother’s Secret – A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region by Alina Adams

Image: Courtesy of Judaica in the Spotlight

Reviewed by Miriam P.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Alina Adams and her publisher, History Through Fiction , for sending us a complimentary copy of My Mother’s Secret – A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region in exchange for an honest book review.  

As always, you can rest assured that I will not give away any spoilers.

Book Description:

With his dying breath, Lena’s father asks his family a cryptic question: “You couldn’t tell, could you?” After his passing, Lena stumbles upon the answer that changes her life forever.

As her revolutionary neighbor mysteriously disappears during Josef Stalin’s Great Terror purges, 18-year-old Regina suspects that she’s the Kremlin’s next target. Under cover of the night, she flees from her parents’ communal apartment in 1930s Moscow to the 20th century’s first Jewish state, Birobidzhan, on the border between Russia and China. Once there, Regina has to grapple with her preconceived notions of socialism and Judaism while asking herself the eternal question: What do we owe each other? How can we best help one another? While she contends with these queries and struggles to help Birobidzhan establish itself, love and war are on the horizon.

Do we ever really know our parents and what motivates their behaviour? Are we even capable of taking a step back to just listen to their life story with the compassion it deserves? This would be the first step to understand where they came from, what they went through, and how they got to the place they are in today.

Seeing Lena meeting her mother Regina’s true self for the first time, and being finally able to understand her mother’s behaviour towards her, was truly interesting to follow. I would go as far as to suggest that it may help some readers to consider that there is much more behind their parents’ silence than they can possibly imagine. Especially, if they have lived through similar experiences as Regina Solomonovna has, whom you will get to know and grow fond of throughout this novel.

My Mother’s Secret – A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region by Alina Adams is a wonderful book that doesn’t only teach the reader about Soviet Jewish history, but also takes us on a fascinating journey through Regina’s life and how her experiences have shaped her.

Alina is a talented author whose captivating writing style will catapult you back in time and invite you into a world so foreign to many. I’m not a native English speaker and managed to read My Mother’s Secret without any problem within a day. It’s a quick and easy read you simply have to add to your to-be-read list this autumn.

My Mother’s Secret has it all: plenty of history, quite the mystery, some hidden identities, and a dash of love. Don’t worry, this historical novel is much more than a love story between a man and a woman. So much more.

The plot of this novel will stay with you long after you finished reading the book. My Mother’s Secret is a truly heartfelt story about one woman’s fierce determination to fight for what she believes is right and the life she wants to live. Regina’s character development is second-to-none, truly impressive.

My Mother’s Secret is a book about strong women confronted with hard choices who eventually find their way. Something I personally enjoyed a lot about this book was that the storyline was not as straight-forward as expected, but rather shows how complicated life can get when confronted with tough choices. Reading this novel, you will stop multiple times and ask yourself what you would have done if you were in Regina’s shoes. Seeing how far she is willed to go will make you wonder what your own priorities would have been.

Regina is a character you will quickly be able to connect with. You will discover and learn the unwritten rules of society with her, you will love with her, you will long with her, you will grieve with her, you will be brave with her, and you will hope with her. I have enjoyed the book as much as I expected when first hearing about it and can recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading historical fiction.

This well-researched book is a true page turner with an enthralling story and makes a wonderful introduction to Birobidzhan. In my opinion, anyone should know about this place and its history. Sadly, I was under the wrong impression that everyone would have learned about this place in school when learning about Soviet history.  After speaking with a few friends and acquaintances of mine, who were educated outside of Europe, I was rather surprised none of them had ever heard of Birobidzhan. This is also one of the many reasons why I believe My Mother’s Secret is such an important novel and fantastic introduction to this place. It certainly is an inspiration to pick up more books about the region and to learn more about Birobidzhan and its history.

If this part of the world is unfamiliar to you, you can rest assured that My Mother’s Secret will be easy to follow as well as spark your curiosity. In any case, you should never feel discouraged to read a book simply because you are unfamiliar with the history or the place the story is set in. This should be even more of a reason for you to pick up a title!

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Alina Adams for our website. You can read it here .

My Mother’s Secret – A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region will be available as of November 15 th , 2022. You can always pre-order it on Amazon !

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Book Reviews

'the familiar' is a romance, coming-of-age tale, and a story about fighting for more.

Gabino Iglesias

Leigh Bardugo's The Familiar is an entertaining slice of speculative fiction wrapped in historical fiction and delivered with heavy doses of magic and wit.

At once a love story, a coming-of-age tale full of secrets and tension, and a narrative about wanting more and doing anything to get it, The Familiar is a solid entry into Bardugo's already impressive oeuvre.

Luzia Cotado is a scullion with callused hands who sleeps on a grimy floor and constantly dreams of a better life where she has more money, complete freedom, and love. Luiza works for a couple who are struggling to maintain their social status, so she doesn't make much and owns almost nothing. To help her get through her days and take care of menial tasks, Luzia uses a bit of magic, which she keeps secret from everyone.

On Netflix, Leigh Bardugo's 'Shadow And Bone' Celebrates A Diverse Grishaverse

Luzia learned how to perform little miracles from her aunt, a strange woman and the lover of a very powerful man. When Luzia's mistress discovers her servant can perform "milagritos," she sees it as the perfect opportunity to improve her social status and forces Luzia to work her magic for their dinner guests. But what begins as entertainment soon turns into something much more serious when Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king, enters the scene and sees Luzia's magic as an opportunity for himself.

The king is desperate to improve his military prowess, and Pérez thinks Luzia's powers might be the thing that puts him, once again, in the king's good graces. There will be a competition, and if Luzia wins, everyone around her might gain something. But winning won't be easy, and Luzia fears her newfound fame will get her and her Jewish blood in the Inquisition's crosshairs. Surrounded by people with secret agendas, learning to use her magic, caught in a new romance with a mysterious undead man, and an unknown pawn in a plethora of self-serving machinations, Luzia will soon need more than a bit of magic to survive.

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The Familiar drags readers into a world of servitude, magic, power struggles, and intrigue. There isn't a single character in this story that doesn't have a secret agenda or something to win—or lose!—that's directly tied to Luzia. The desires of some clash with those of others, and those battles slowly make the narrative more complex while simultaneously increasing the tension and the sense of doom. Despite the many elements at play and the bafflingly large cast of characters she juggles here, Bardugo delivers every twist and turn with clarity, plenty of humor, and charming wittiness, the latter of which fills the novel with superb, snappy dialogue that shows Luzia lacks everything except a quick intelligence and a sharp tongue. Also, while many of the plot elements here like the magic battle, someone being trapped by a curse, and an impossible love are far from new, Bardugo mixes them well together and manages to make them feel fresh.

Known mostly for her Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Scars duology—all of which are part of her Grishaverse universe—Bardugo delivers an entertaining standalone here with a strong female protagonist that's very easy to root for. Through Luzia, we get a critique of religion, a look into the lives of those who have no option but to serve to survive, and a romance that's as full of passion and sensuality as well as lies and treachery. Lastly, the magic system Bardugo created, which is Jewish magic based on phrases sung or spoken in mixed languages, is interesting and allows the author to talk about otherness without straying from the core of her narrative.

While Bardugo accomplishes a lot in this novel, the crowning jewel of The Familiar is Luzia, a memorable character whose most personal aspirations possess an outstanding universality. We watch her suffer, emerge from her cocoon, fall in love, and then receive her ultimatum: "Your life, your aunt's life, your lover's future all hang in the balance. So do your best or I will be forced to do my worst." Through every single one of those steps, we want her to triumph and to learn to hone her powers, and that connection keeps the pages turning.

At times the endless descriptions of clothing and the increasing number of characters and subplots—some with a satisfying arc and some that just fizzle out—seem a bit excessive and threaten the pacing of the story. But Bardugo is always in control and her masterful use of tension — and that, along with her talent for great dialogue, more than overpower the novel's small shortcomings.

The Familiar is full of "milagritos" and pain, of betrayal and resentment, of fear and desire. However, the novel's most powerful element is hope; Luzia is all about it, and her feelings are so powerful they're contagious. That connections makes this a book that's hard to put down.

Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias .

Libraries are full of books about great cats. This one is special.

Caleb carr’s memoir, ‘my beloved monster,’ is a heart-rending tale of human-feline connection.

Over the years, my wife and I have been blessed with 15 cats, three rescued from the streets of Brooklyn, three from barns near our home in Vermont, one from a Canadian resort and the others from the nearby shelter, where my wife has volunteered as a “cat whisperer” for the most emotionally scarred of its feline inhabitants for years. Twelve of our beloved pets have died (usually in our arms), and we could lose any of our current three cats — whose combined age is roughly 52 — any day now. So, I am either the best person to offer an opinion on Caleb Carr’s memoir, “ My Beloved Monster ,” or the worst.

For the many who have read Carr’s 1994 novel, “The Alienist,” an atmospheric crime story set in 19th-century New York, or watched the Netflix series it inspired, Carr’s new book might come as something of a surprise. “My Beloved Monster” is a warm, wrenching love story about Carr and his cat, a half-wild rescue named Masha who, according to the subtitle of his book, in fact rescued Carr. The author is, by his own admission, a curmudgeon, scarred by childhood abuse, living alone and watching his health and his career go the way of all flesh.

What makes the book so moving is that it is not merely the saga of a great cat. Libraries are filled with books like that, some better than others. It’s the 17-year chronicle of Carr and Masha aging together, and the bond they forged in decline. (As Philip Roth observed, “Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.”) He chronicles their lives, beginning with the moment the animal shelter begs Carr to bring the young lioness home because the creature is so ferocious she unnerves the staff — “You have to take that cat!” one implores.

Interspersed throughout Carr’s account of his years with Masha are his recollections of all the other cats he has had in his life, going back to his youth in Manhattan. And there are a lot. Cats often provided him comfort after yet another torment his father, the writer Lucien Carr , and stepfather visited upon him. Moreover, Carr identifies so deeply with the species that as a small child he drew a self-portrait of a boy with a cat’s head. He knows a great deal about cats and is eager to share his knowledge, for instance about the Jacobson’s organ in the roof of their mouths that helps them decide if another creature is predator or prey. His observations are always astute: “Dogs tend to trust blindly, unless and until abuse teaches them discretion. … Cats, conversely, trust conditionally from the start.”

Carr, now 68, was a much younger man when he adopted Masha. Soon, however, they were joined at the hip. As the two of them bonded, the writer found himself marveling at what he believed were their shared childhood traumas, which move between horrifying and, in Carr’s hands, morbidly hilarious: “I began to accept my father’s behavior in the spirit with which he intended it … he was trying to kill me.” Man and cat shared the same physical ailments, including arthritis and neuropathy, possibly caused by physical violence in both cases. Carr allowed Masha, a Siberian forest cat, to go outside, a decision many cat owners may decry, but he defends it: “Masha was an entirely different kind of feline,” and keeping her inside “would have killed her just as certainly as any bear or dog.” Indeed, Masha took on fishers and bears (yes, bears!) on Carr’s wooded property in Upstate New York.

But bears and dogs are humdrum fare compared with cancer and old age, which come for both the novelist and his cat. Carr’s diagnosis came first, and his first concern was whether he would outlive Masha. (The existence of the book gives us the answer he didn’t have at the time.) Illness adds new intensity to the human-feline connection: “Coming back from a hospital or a medical facility to Masha was always particularly heartening,” Carr writes, “not just because she’d been worried and was glad to see me, but because she seemed to know exactly what had been going on … and also because she was so anxious to show that she hadn’t been scared, that she’d held the fort bravely.”

Sometimes, perhaps, Carr anthropomorphizes too much and exaggerates Masha’s language comprehension, or gives her more human emotion than she had. But maybe not. Heaven knows, I see a lot behind my own cats’ eyes. Moreover, it’s hard to argue with a passage as beautiful as this: “In each other’s company, nothing seemed insurmountable. We were left with outward scars. … But the only wounds that really mattered to either of us were the psychic wounds caused by the occasional possibility of losing each other; and those did heal, always, blending and dissolving back into joy.”

Like all good memoirs — and this is an excellent one — “My Beloved Monster” is not always for the faint of heart. Because life is not for the faint of heart. But it is worth the emotional investment, and the tissues you will need by the end, to spend time with a writer and cat duo as extraordinary as Masha and Carr.

Chris Bohjalian is the best-selling author of 24 books. His most recent novel, “The Princess of Las Vegas,” was published last month.

My Beloved Monster

Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

By Caleb Carr

Little, Brown. 435 pp. $29

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Florida woman is sentenced to a month in jail for selling Biden’s daughter’s diary

Aimee Harris, right, walks out of Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in New York. The Florida mother has been sentenced to a month in prison and three months of home confinement for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary four years ago. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

Aimee Harris, left, walks out of Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in New York. The Florida mother has been sentenced to a month in prison and three months of home confinement for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary four years ago. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida mother was sentenced Tuesday to a month in prison and three months of home confinement for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary four years ago to the conservative group Project Veritas.

Aimee Harris was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who called the Palm Beach, Florida, woman’s actions “despicable.”

Harris pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in August 2022, admitting that she received $20,000 of the $40,000 that was paid by Project Veritas for personal items belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden.

Project Veritas, founded in 2010 , identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.

Aimee Harris, left, walks out of Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

A tearful Harris apologized for enabling Ashley Biden’s private writings to be sold after she found the diary and other items at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida, home in 2020, where prosecutors said Ashley Biden believed her items were safely stored after she temporarily stayed there in spring 2020.

“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said after a prosecutor urged a prison sentence following her failure to appear at numerous sentencing dates on the grounds that she was consumed with caring for her two children, ages 8 and 6.

“I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.

With a lawyer for Ashley Biden observing from the courtroom’s spectator section, Harris apologized to the president’s daughter, saying she regrets making her childhood and life public.

In announcing the sentence, Swain noted that Harris and a co-defendant, Robert Kurlander, of nearby Jupiter, Florida, had first tried unsuccessfully to sell Ashley Biden’s belongings to then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The judge said that Harris, besides being motivated by greed, had hoped to impact the nation’s political landscape.

Kurlander, who has not yet been sentenced, and Harris, had each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines.

Defense attorney Anthony Cecutti urged no prison time, citing his client’s traumatic life and her efforts to care for her children while recovering from abuse and violence.

“She carries the shame and stigma of her actions,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman urged a prison sentence, saying Harris had exhibited a “pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system.”

“Ms. Harris is not the victim in this case,” Sobelman said. “Ms. Biden is the victim in this case.”

He said Harris in the summer of 2020 had stolen Ashley Biden’s diary, a digital storage card, books, clothing, luggage and “everything she could get her hands on” in the hopes she “could make as much money as she could.”

“She wanted to damage Ms. Biden’s father,” he said.

Harris was told to report to prison in July. As she left the courthouse, she declined to speak.

The lawyer for Ashley Biden also declined to comment, though he submitted a letter to the judge on his client’s behalf a day earlier that was not immediately put in the court record.