All the Water in the Workd

 

Author: Eiren Caffell

Narrator: Eunice Wong

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Year: 2025

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall is a post apocalyptic climate change survival story. Nonie, her sister Bix, and their parents survived the initial societal collapse. They stayed in NYC with a small group of scientists and reachers and made a settlement atop  the American Museum of Natural History. Life wasn’t easy, but they were relatively safe and surviving. Nonie has a special gift of feeling when storms are coming and what kinds of storms- from a gently rainfall to a massively destructive hypercane. 

When a hypercane hits, Nonie, Bix, their father, and their Keller are forced to flee. Their plan is to make their way to a farm upstate and hopefully find safety there. 

This is a thoughtful story of society’s collapse and survival in a new world. It stresses the importance of keeping a record of the things that used to be. The group worked very hard to preserve and create a record of the museum’s collections while they lived on the building’s roof. The story includes many of the things one expects to find in a dystopian world- like food shortages, scarce medicine, and small communities run by evil people. 

I thought this was an interesting and, at times, scary story. It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to think this could happen sometime in the not too distant future. Eunice Wong’s narration is spot on and really enhanced the story for me. I definitely recommend this literary and thought provoking novel. 

What do you think of dystopian novels? Are you a fan? Throw out some recommendations if you have any. 

#bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm #booklover #bookstagram #librarybook #lovemylibrary#audiobook #audiobookstagram#audiobookreview #audiobookrec #allthewaterintheworld 

About the Author

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV Fire, forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Row House Publishing released her first book and memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary, in 2024, and her novel, All the Water in the World, released by St. Martin’s Press earlier this year. 

City in Ruins

 

Author: Don Winslow

Narrator: Ari Fliakos

Publisher: HarperAudio

Year: 2024

Did you ever dive into a book without realizing it’s part of a series? 

I did just that with Don Winslow’s City in Ruins. It’s the third book of a trilogy. 🤦‍♀️ But it was actually ok. There was enough backstory about the main character and the situation, so I didn’t feel lost. 

Dan Ryan, a former mob guy, is now a legit businessman in Las Vegas. Books 1 and 2 in the series must deal with the earlier phases of his life. This book is about his Vegas ambitions to open the best casino and hotel resort in town and how he makes enemies in doing so. This was a good story and I liked it. I’ve read some of Winslow’s other books, so I knew what to expect. He’s a good storyteller and narrator Ari Fliakos does an admirable job bringing the characters and story to life. Will I go back and read the other two books? No. I got enough of the story to be satisfied and entertained. 

#crimefiction #mysterybooks #thrillerbooks #bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm 

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#librarybook #lovemylibrary

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About the Author

Don Winslow is the author of twenty-one acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including the New York Times bestsellers The Force and The Border, the #1 international bestseller The Cartel, The Power of the Dog, Savages, and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone. The Power of the Dog, The Cartel and The Border sold to FX in a major multimillion-dollar deal to air as a weekly television series beginning in 2020. A former investigator, antiterrorist trainer and trial consultant, Winslow lives in California and Rhode Island.

Dark Neon & Dirt

 

Shaun Nguyen has been many things in his life- a Vietnamese war orphan, part of a Chinese gang, and a soldier in Iraq. Now he’s a master thief and he knows it’s almost time to get out of the game. An old army buddy gets Shaun involved in an armored car robbery that goes terribly wrong. Shaun’s the only one left standing at the robbery and he’s got a bag of diamonds as his prize. Los Angeles police lieutenant Thomas Monroe has been tracking Shaun’s high end heists for years, but without any luck. The stolen diamonds puts Monroe, a sketchy cop, one step closer to Shaun. Shaun wants one more big heist before retiring. His plans get more complicated when he meets a beautiful former FBI agent who has plans of her own. 

I love a good heist novel and this is a great one. It pulled me right in. I’m also a sucker for crime fiction set in LA so I couldn’t resist this one. Shaun and Monroe are complex characters who play a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Shaun is a smart thief and loyal friend, while Monroe is a brilliant and dogged detective with a chip on his shoulder. There’s tons of twists and turns and lots of action. The book has less than 300 pages, so the plot zips along. I tore through this because it was just so good. This was one of my favorite March reads. Author Thomas Trang really knocked it out of the park with this debut crime novel. Loved it. 😍 

Happy Friday! Any fun plans for the weekend? We’re heading to our daughter’s house for the weekend and then to the beach. I have several audiobooks downloaded to listen to while I’m driving. 

#crimefiction #mysterybooks #thrillerbooks #bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm 

#booklover #bookstagram #darkneondirt #thomastrang #shotgunhoneybooks 

About the Author

Thomas Trang is a French/Vietnamese writer currently living in the UK after stints in Australia, New York, and Singapore. His stories have previously appeared in FutureQuake, Full House Literary and the Revolutions 2 anthology. He is currently working on a SF trilogy which mixes cyberpunk with the gritty realpolitik of The Wire and Cold War spy fiction. 

Friends Helping Friends

 

Author: Patrick Hoffman

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Year: 2025

“Sure, we’ll beat him up for ya. Nothing too nasty. Friends helping friends, right…”

Bunny Simpson’s best friend Jerry has a proposition for him- $500 for help beating up a guy. Bunny is reluctant to do it, but agrees. Jerry and Bunny don’t know that the guy they’ve been hire to beat up is a judge. And that lands them in a lot of trouble. The police have no trouble arresting the pair. Federal agents offer Bunny a deal -infiltrate and gather information on a white nationalist group run by Bunny’s uncle. Bunny is thrown into a world of extreme violence. Can Bunny survive being a snitch and escape with his life? Swipe  to read the full summary. 

Friendship is at the heart of this story- mostly Bunny’s and Jerry’s friendship. They might be misguided and directionless, but they’re really not bad guys. They’re best friends and their actions through out the book prove how loyal they are and how much they deeply care for each other. It was really refreshing to see genuine friendship like this in a crime fiction novel. And since it is crime fiction, there was lots of conflict, twists and turns. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook. Jacques Roy provides a top notch narration, giving Bunny and Jerry depth and emotion. Kudos to author Patrick Hoffman for a unique and riveting thriller with male characters that show a real depth of emotion and who I really cared about. Definitely recommend picking this one up if you’re looking for a unique thriller with  engaging characters and a satisfying ending. 

Let’s play predictive text: Friends helping friends to find the most compelling stories. 

#crimefiction #mysterybooks #thrillerbooks #bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm 

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About the Author

Patrick Hoffman is a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn, NY. His first book, The White Van, was a finalist for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was named a Wall Street Journal and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. His highly anticipated follow-up, Every Man a Menace, came out in 2016, and was again named one of the ten best of the year by the Wall Street Journal. 

Sunrise on the Reaping

 

Author: Suzanne Collins 

Narrator: Jefferson White

Publisher: Scholastic Audio Books

Year: 2025

We’re back in District 12 and this time we get Haymitch’s back story. Haymitch was in the Quarter Quell and that meant double the amount of participants making it even deadlier. Here’s what I really liked about this story:

🏹 the glimpse of life in District 12 and some of the origins of of things that appear in the original trilogy like Katniss’s mockingjay pin

🏹 Lenore Dove, Haymitch’s girlfriend- feisty and defiant 

🏹 Maysilee Donner- so sassy and smart. I loved her!

🏹 the alliance of the new comers 

🏹 the roots of rebellion 

🏹 the early look at Effie Trinket

🏹 the pacing of the story and all the tension

🏹 learning more about some of the District 12 residents in the generation before Katniss

🏹 Haymitch is thoughtful, loving, and smart 

I liked this prequel much more than The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I thought that story was disjointed and lagged at times. This new story just flowed better and kept me riveted. I also loved Jefferson White’s narration. He really brought young Haymitch and all his energy and emotions to life. 

It’ll be interesting to see if Suzanne Collins continues with the prequels and which character she focuses on next. 

What do you think of prequels for books (or movies)? I like that they can provide new insights into favorite characters or universes. 

#bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm #booklover #bookstagram #librarybook #lovemylibrary #audiobook #audiobookstagram#audiobookreview #audiobookrec #sunriseonthereaping #suzannecollins #hungergames #quarterquell 

March Reading Wrap Up

 

Happy April! I think March was a record month for me. I read 19 total books (7 ebooks

12 audiobooks). 🤯 Here they are: 

Loved 😍

📖Tell Me What You Did

🎧I Might Be in Trouble

📖What Kind of Paradise

🎧Broken Country

🎧Count My Lies

🎧The Story She Left Behind

📖Dark Neon & Dirt

Really Liked 👍🏻

🎧The Year of Living Constitutionally 

🎧Food for Thought

🎧Witness 8

📖Disappeared 

🎧Sunrise on the Reaping

🎧Friends Helping Friends

🎧City in Ruins

🎧 All the Water in the World

Liked but just ok 😐

📖Florida Palms

🎧The Talent

📖Erasure

📖A Killing Cold

Balancing the books:

1 purchased ebook ($7.41)

2 NetGalley - thank you Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House! 

6 gifted from publisher - thank you Simon & Schuster Audio! 

10 library books

I think 7 five star books in a month is also a record for me. Did you have any 5⭐️ books in March? Or tell me your favorite March read. 

#crimefiction #mysterybooks #thrillerbooks #bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish#bookworm #booklover#bookstagram #audiobook

#librarybook #lovemylibrary

#audiobookstagram #audiobookrec #audiobookreview #historicalfiction #monthlywrapup #readingwrapup 

Erasure

 

Author: Percival Everett

Publisher: Graywolf  Press

Year: 2011

Monk Ellison is writer and professor. His books are scholarly literary works, but not best sellers. As both a Black man and a writer, he’s offended by a the instant commercial success of a debut novel filled with caricature experiences of living in the ghetto, but it was written by a middle class Black woman who visited her relatives in Harlem for a few days. Monk has some family tragedies and needs money to take care of his aging mother who is showing signs of dementia. His anger and desperation prompts him to write a satirical novel about a Black teen in the hood as a response to the exploitative best seller. Monk insists his that agent send it out to publishers under a pen name. Monk’s scathing parody is championed as a new authentic voice. Monk has everything he ever dreamed of- success, money, fame. But with the publishing world and the media are clamoring to learn about this hot new author, Monk must bring his pen name’s persona to life. 

I have mixed feelings on this one. For the most part I liked it. It’s thoughtful and insightful. It’s full of satire and I always enjoy the book within a book concept. Mixed in with all Monk’s family drama are his notes or story ideas. Either these passages were too high brow or I’m just not smart enough to understand them. Every time I encountered one, it took me right out of the story. I guess I’m a just pretty basic girl. I just want to enjoy a great and engaging story. I don’t want to feel like I’m back in high school struggling to analyze the text. I guess I’m not built for deep literature. This was a buddy read with @ and @ . Can’t wait for our discussion to hear what they think of it. If you’re looking for a book about race, identity, and scathing satire definitely give this one a try. 

How do you feel about rating books you didn’t particularly enjoy? 

I try to be honest and I usually don’t tag the author. 

#bibliofile #reader #readinglife #alwaysreading #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookrecomendation #bookworm #booklover #bookstagram #librarybook #lovemylibrary

About the Author

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023. His 2024 novel James is a NYT best seller and National Book Award winner. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their children.