Raising Hare (2024)

Hot Wax

M. L. Rio

2025 · 400 pages · 6 reviews

Others: Mostly negative

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father's forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills' wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning - one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come. The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father's sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil's beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she'd lost forever: desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country - and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Liquid

Mariam Rahmani

2025 · 320 pages · 1 review

Others: Mixed

The Marriage Plot meets The Idiot in this brilliant debut, which tells the story of a young Muslim scholar stuck in the mire of adjunct professorship in Los Angeles who decides to give up her career in academia and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer. By midsummer reality hits, taking her—and her project—to Tehran. The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid, A Love Story has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just marry rich. But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County. Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time. For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Elif Batuman, Liquid, A Love Story delivers a modern tale of romance, loss, and belonging like no other. Mariam Rahmani’s gorgeous high-wire satire explodes off the page with verve and originality in this riveting spin on the classic romantic comedy.

Bombshell

Daryl Far

1 review

Others: Positive

The Bombshell

Daryl Farre

1 review

Others: Positive

She Didn't See It Coming

Shari Lapeña

2025 · 400 pages · 3 reviews

Others: Mixed

Bryden and Sam have it all: thriving careers, a smart apartment in a luxury condominium, supportive friends and a cherished daughter. The perfect life for the perfect couple. Then Sam receives a call at his office. Bryden – working from home that day – has failed to collect their daughter from daycare. Arriving home with their little girl, he finds his wife’s car in the underground garage. Upstairs in their apartment her laptop is open on the table, her cell phone nearby, her keys in their usual place in the hall. Except Bryden is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if she just walked out. How can she have disappeared from her own home? And did she even leave the building at all? With every minute that passes – and as questions swirl around their community – Bryden and Sam’s past seems a little less perfect, their condominium less safe, their friends, neighbors and relatives no longer quite so reliable...

Counting the Cost

Jill Duggar

2023 · 288 pages · 1 review

Others: Negative

Jill and Derick knew a normal life wasn’t possible for them. As a star on the popular TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, Jill grew up in front of viewers who were fascinated by her family’s way of life. She was the responsible, second daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle’s nineteen kids; always with a baby on her hip and happy to wear the modest ankle-length dresses with throat-high necklines. She didn’t protest the strict model of patriarchy that her family followed, which declares that men are superior, that women are expected to be wives and mothers and are discouraged from attaining a higher education, and that parental authority over their children continues well into adulthood, even once they are married. But as Jill got older, married Derick, and they embarked on their own lives, the red flags became too obvious to ignore. For as long as they could, Jill and Derick tried to be obedient family members—but now they’re raising a family of their own, and they’re done with the secrets. Thanks to time, tears, therapy, and blessings from God, they have the strength to share their journey.