Blog Archives
By Any Other Name
By Any Other Name, by Kate Laack, is a contemporary literary mystery about Jordan Marlowe, a stalled young writer who finds a published novel in an airport bookstore and realizes, with growing horror, that it is almost certainly based on her own unpublished manuscript. What begins as a personal search for the person who stole her story becomes a wider look at authorship, ambition, artistic insecurity, and the uneasy place where creativity meets technology.
I liked how grounded the book feels, even when the premise takes a strange turn. Jordan’s panic is not treated like melodrama. It feels physical and believable, the kind of disbelief that would make you reread the same page again and again just to prove you are not imagining it. Laack gives the story the shape of a mystery, with suspects, clues, awkward conversations, and red herrings, but the emotional pull comes from Jordan’s bruised confidence. She’s not only trying to prove that the book is hers. She’s trying to prove that her voice matters.
The author also makes some smart choices in how she handles the larger ideas. The book could have become a lecture about AI, publishing, and plagiarism, but it stays close to Jordan’s hurt, confusion, and anger. That makes the bigger questions easier to sit with. I found myself thinking less about abstract debates and more about the quiet terror of seeing something deeply personal removed from your name and handed to the world without you. The pace is strong, the conversations are sharp, and the book has a satisfying sense of momentum.
What I appreciated most is that By Any Other Name understands writing as more than output. It’s memory, doubt, effort, ego, longing, and revision. It’s also the strange courage of putting your name on something before anyone else agrees that it deserves to exist. I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy contemporary fiction with a mystery engine, especially book lovers interested in creative ownership and the personal cost of chasing validation. It would also make a strong book club pick because the central question is simple but sticky: who gets to claim a story, and what happens when the answer is not as clean as we want it to be?
Pages: 280 | ASIN : B0G44DPVN4
The Sweet Season
The Sweet Season, by James B. Farmer, follows a group of overlooked girls in a struggling Midwestern town who become the Sweets, a softball team built from “leftovers” and shaped by an aging coach with grief, regrets, and a stubborn belief in effort. At the center are Jessee, a gifted but emotionally bruised athlete, and Cat, a Somali refugee whose quiet courage changes not only the team but the town around them. What begins as a sports story gradually becomes a novel about friendship, discipline, community repair, and the long echo of one incandescent life.
I was most drawn to the way Farmer treats softball not as decoration but as a moral language. Practice matters here. Repetition matters. Failure isn’t glamorous, but it’s useful. The games have tension, yet the deeper victories happen in the smaller moments: a girl learning to trust a teammate, an old coach learning he still has something to give, a neglected town beginning to remember its young people. The novel has an old-fashioned largeness of heart, but it’s not soft. It keeps returning to hard subjects, poverty, prejudice, violence, grief, civic neglect, and asks what people owe one another when the scoreboard is not enough.
Cat is the book’s emotional lodestar, and Jessee’s arc gives the story much of its ache. Their friendship feels unlikely at first, then necessary, then almost mythic in its power to reorder lives. I appreciated that the novel lets love show itself through action rather than sentiment alone: tutoring, training, showing up, refusing to quit. At times, the book’s earnestness is big enough to fill a stadium, but I found that part of its charm. It wants readers to believe that character can be coached, that broken towns can be mended, and that a team can become a kind of chosen family.
This book will appeal to readers who enjoy coming-of-age fiction, sports fiction, inspirational fiction, and character-driven literary fiction with strong themes of resilience and community. Fans of A League of Their Own may recognize the fierce joy of women proving themselves on the field, while readers who admire Fredrik Backman’s blend of humor, heartbreak, and communal healing may feel at home in Farmer’s Centerville. The Sweet Season is a warm, bruising, deeply earnest novel about the people who teach us how to win without letting winning become the point.
Pages: 401 | ASIN : B0GWRXSHF4
Quirky Curmudgeonly Women
Harriet Hates Lemonade follows a rule-loving widow who stumbles into her neighbor’s dangerous marriage, where she’s forced to confront the emotional abuse she once called love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the setup came from the idea of a forced collision between two very different kinds of isolation. Harriet’s isolation appears to be self-inflicted, with her rules and rigid ideas of how life should be lived, and Robyn’s isolation is imposed upon her by her controlling, abusive husband. I wanted to take a woman like Harriet, who uses rules and rigidity as a fortress to keep the world at a safe distance, and literally trip her up. The broken ankle caused by a neighbor’s dog is the physical catalyst, but the true setup is Harriet stumbling into a reality she can’t ignore, where she is forced to get out of her comfort zone and become involved in her neighbor’s messy life.
As Harriet begins to peer into the cracks of Robyn’s life, she stops seeing a neighbor in trouble and starts seeing a mirror. I wanted to explore that terrifying moment of cognitive dissonance, where you try to help someone else escape a dangerous situation, only to realize your own relationship was built on the same foundation of control and manipulation. Having experienced the way an abuser’s voice can rewrite your own thoughts, I wanted the setup to be a slow-motion realization. Harriet doesn’t just stumble into Robyn’s marriage; she stumbles into the truth about her own marriage, and she finally has to admit that the rules she thought were protecting her were actually confining and isolating her. I wanted to show that Harriet’s prickly exterior isn’t her personality. It’s a learned survival mechanism from decades of being told she was inadequate. Her journey is about unlearning those lies and reclaiming her own voice.
Harriet is sharp, judgmental, and often difficult—yet deeply compelling. What drew you to writing a protagonist like her?
I’ve always loved quirky, curmudgeonly, initially unlikeable women in literature, characters like Eleanor Oliphant or Olive Kitteridge, who refuse to cushion their opinions to spare anyone’s feelings. With Harriet, I wanted to find that sweet spot where a character is grumpy and rigid, yet still hilarious and human.
Initially, she came to me in snippets, inspired by real-life encounters with high-drama neighbors and overzealous HOA members I met while living in a perfectly manicured neighborhood in Bozeman. But as I dug deeper into her history, I realized that her judgment was actually a shield. She uses rules and high standards to create a sense of safety in a world that has been unkind to her. I loved the challenge of making a woman who can be quite awful into someone the reader would ultimately want to hug. Once I understood her trauma and what made her tick, Harriet took the wheel and started telling the story to me.
Scenes like the grocery bag mix-up or the off-leash dog crusade are comedic, but also revealing. How do you see humor functioning in Harriet’s emotional armor?
Humor is the release valve for both Harriet and the reader. For Harriet, her crusades against neighborhood minor offenses, like off-leash dogs or decorations left up too long, are her way of exerting control when she feels powerless. The humor lies in the absurdity of her rigidity. There’s something inherently funny about the contrast between a perfectly manicured lawn and the high-stakes battle Harriet is willing to wage over it.
But as a writer, the humor is also a tool. It allows me to lead the reader into very dark, heavy territory, like the domestic violence Robyn is facing, without the story feeling like a lecture or a pamphlet. By letting the reader laugh at the grocery bag mix-up or the DNA testing for dog poop suggestion, I’m building a bridge of empathy. The humor allows the reader to take a breath between the heavy moments in the novel. But then, it makes the heavy moments hit harder for two reasons: it fosters a deep empathy for Harriet that makes you truly invested in her, while simultaneously lowering your defenses so the heavy moments hit even harder.
If Harriet could speak to readers directly at the end of the novel, what do you think she would say?
I think she’d start with a huff and a comment about the font utilized in the book, but then she’d get to the heart of it. She’d tell readers that being self-sufficient is a lonely way to live and that the rules won’t actually save you. She’d say that she spent so many years thinking that if she just kept her house tidy and her mouth shut, she was safe, but she wasn’t. She was just alone. She would urge people to invest in their friends, their neighbors, their families. She’d tell readers that getting involved is messy, butting in is risky, and you’ll probably get some dirt on your shoes, but it’s the only thing that really matters. Finally, she’d tell readers to pick up after their dogs, but she’d say it with a wink and a smile.
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Harriet has life all figured out, and she doesn’t hesitate to inform others of their shortcomings. Though her attempts to become president of the homeowner’s association failed, that doesn’t stop her from berating “off-leash-dog-man” or reporting the neighbor who had the audacity to leave their Easter decorations up an entire week past the holiday. The problem is, unbeknownst to her, Harriet’s rigid rules and judgmental opinions are not her own.
Her ordered life plunges into chaos when a twelve-year-old neighbor knocks on Harriet’s door seeking help because the girl’s father is physically abusing her mother. Reluctantly, Harriet comes to her neighbor’s aid and, in the process, recognizes her own insidious abuse which has unwittingly shaped her isolated, rigid existence. To escape her crushing loneliness, she must learn to break free from the patterns of control and isolation that have defined her life and learn to connect with people she previously viewed as heathens.
Harriet Hates Lemonade
Harriet Hates Lemonade follows Harriet Henderson, a rigid and lonely widow in Bozeman, Montana, who breaks her ankle after a showdown with a neighbor’s off-leash dog and suddenly cannot outrun her own life anymore. Stuck at home with her beloved dog Bibbo, she clashes with new neighbor Robyn and Robyn’s young daughter, then slowly notices that something is very wrong inside their house. As Harriet gets pulled into their struggle with an abusive husband and into group meetings at Harmony House, she starts to recognize patterns from her own marriage to Les and the ways she has buried those memories. The story tracks Harriet’s halting attempts to help Robyn find safety, her growing bond with Audrey, and her reluctant softening toward community, small kindnesses, and even a few messy surprises. Underneath the neighborhood gossip and petty HOA battles sits a clear through-line about the cycle of emotional abuse and the work it takes to break it.
I really loved how the writing lets me sit deep inside Harriet’s prickly head. The narration stays close to her thoughts and habits, so her sharp comments about neighbors, librarians, and lemonade stands made me laugh even when she was objectively being awful. Scenes like the humiliating hospital pickup, the underwear-in-the-grocery-bag mix-up, and the crusade against the off-leash dog feel both funny and sad at the same time. The prose itself is clean and unfussy, and the humor feels natural, not forced. I also appreciated the sensory details around aging and the house, from the cave-like wood paneling to Harriet’s irritation with her own body, because they grounded the story in a very tangible midlife reality.
The ideas in the book hit me harder than I expected. The sessions at Harmony House walk through the cycle of narcissistic abuse, love bombing, devaluing, and hoovering, and the explanations are clear without turning the novel into a pamphlet. I found myself wincing as Harriet initially resists the word “abuse” and defends Les with religious language and talk about old-fashioned vows, because that denial felt painfully believable. The story shows how emotional abuse hides inside “rules,” jokes, and backhanded remarks, and why leaving is not a simple act of will. I liked that Robyn’s journey does not follow a neat straight line and that Harriet’s support is clumsy and sometimes controlling, since that messiness mirrors real life. The book also nudged me to think about community and neighborliness, how easy it is to hide behind privacy and routine, and how risky it feels to butt into someone else’s marriage even when every instinct screams that something is wrong.
Harriet Hates Lemonade will suit readers who enjoy character-driven contemporary fiction, small-town settings, and complicated, not-always-likable women who have to unlearn a lifetime of bad lessons. If you have liked books in the vein of A Man Called Ove or Olive Kitteridge, or if you are interested in stories that unpack domestic abuse with compassion and plain language, this novel is a strong pick for you and for book clubs that like big feelings and big discussions.
Pages: 330 | ASIN : B0G2YPGWHV
A Bold Bargain
A Bold Bargain follows Jack Blaine, an eighteen-year-old conservation agent in 1950s Missouri who keeps stumbling into danger, mystery, and unexpected connections. The story moves between tense encounters with poachers, the quiet bond between a boy and a half-wolf pup, and Jack’s growing involvement with vulnerable people near the Sac River. The book blends rugged outdoor life with soft moments of compassion, and it ties everything together with a thread of personal history that Jack can’t quite outrun.
Jack’s mix of grit and gentleness lands with a real thump in the chest, and the writing makes his inner world feel close enough to touch. The scenes along the river pulled me in fast. The pacing shifts from calm to sharp in a blink, and that rhythm kept me turning pages even when I told myself I should stop. The dialogue feels natural, plain spoken, and warm. I liked how it brought out the heart of the community around him. No big speeches. Just people trying to make sense of life as it comes.
I also felt a tug of emotion watching how Jack steps into other people’s pain without hesitation. His encounters with Mrs. Fletcher and the French family hit me harder than I expected. The writing paints poverty, loneliness, and aging with a simple brush, and it still lands heavy. Nothing feels overplayed. I appreciated how the book lets kindness show up quietly, almost shyly. At the same time, I wanted just a touch more complexity in a few side characters. Still, the sincerity in the storytelling made me forgive that pretty quickly. I could tell the author cares deeply about these people and this place, and that care shines through.
A Bold Bargain is a book for readers who enjoy heartfelt stories set against open sky and rough country roads. If you like character-driven tales with danger, tenderness, and a little old-fashioned grit, this one will be perfect for you. In many ways, A Bold Bargain reminded me of Where the Crawdads Sing, because both stories mix raw nature, quiet resilience, and the fierce pull of human connection into something that stays with you.
Pages: 346 | ASIN : B0FD7VSY68
Trade-Offs
Crossfire follows a high-powered executive who is struggling to juggle corporate pressure, family expectations, and the uneasy beginnings of an environmental partnership that pushes her boundaries. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I am fascinated by the impact of each choice we make in life, and each benefit requires a sacrifice, no matter how small. I wanted to use the green energy debate to show how small decisions really add up over time. For the series inspiration, I think we have so many books focused on coming-of-age stories, decisions that define the original trajectory of a life in early adulthood, but few dealing with middle age, which is where I wanted to focus. This first book series looks at a woman in the middle of her life, reflecting back on all those trade-offs she’s made—like choosing career over family, or balancing what she believes about the environment with what’s actually practical. I was most inspired by the idea that all these choices we think are separate actually connect and end up shaping where we land in life, but one or two different decisions can change everything at any point.
There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?
It was important that Moirin, the main character, remained deeply committed to her convictions while being unyieldingly tough and independent in the workplace, yet vulnerable and yearning in her personal life.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
This series explores the experiences of women in midlife, and a common theme is the impact of life choices, such as prioritizing work over having a family or vice versa. I wanted to explore this with the extra layer of the moral, ethical, and financial choices made on behalf of a corporation. Every choice each of us makes impacts not only what we expect, but often has implications we could have never imagined. The results end up being our legacy in life, and the ultimate choices Moirin made.
What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?
The next book in the series follows Jo Sanderson, Moirin’s best friend, who is dealing with the midlife financial challenges of a widow who loses her job, but a deeper struggle is at play with overcoming decades of loss and grief. As a result of her history, she developed a people-pleasing personality, constantly seeking to support the dreams of others, even those deceased, at the sacrifice of her own. It’s another story of growth that has a lot of cowboy and Wyoming outdoor influences. It will be available by mid-year 2026.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Everyone around her marked the passage of time through celebrations of weddings, anniversaries and graduations, measuring life success through joy in family portraits. Everyone else had a life with husbands and wives, children, grandchildren. Moirin has a cat named Orson.
After decades spent building her grandfather’s Denver-based energy company into an international corporation, she’s poised to be the next CEO, when the Board of Directors announced a rigorous vetting process, ostensibly to avoid nepotism. It should have been a formality, but the challenges of an environmental impact study, resolving a string of increasingly suspicious management issues, and a vindictive business associate aren’t helping her pass their scrutiny.
When she meets a state brand inspector and team roping cowboy, his pragmatic outlook and life philosophy challenge her ideas about environment, life, and legacy. On the verge of achieving everything she’d worked for, Moirin Garrett wonders – had she made the right choices in life? At this stage, was it too late to change her legacy?
A Second Chance
Lunch Tales: Teagan follows a woman grieving the loss of her husband and adapting to being a single parent who, through this crisis, is reunited with her first love, and dares to think she could find love again. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the setup of Lunch Tales: Teagan started with her best friend Suellen’s book, where we first meet Teagan. The inability to have children and the financial burden of fertility treatments were causing problems in Teagan’s marriage. She didn’t think she could ever get over not being able to have a child, while her husband Mike, said that she was enough for him, and thus began a clash in their marital partnership. Eventually, Mike gets on board with Teagan’s wish to adopt, and just as their threesome has blossomed in the best way, Mike is killed in a car accident, and Teagan finds herself a single parent at the start of her story. Since I write realistic fiction, many of my themes come from real-life stories. Teagan’s story is a blend of several occurrences I pondered, and I wanted to give it the respect I would give anyone in a similar scenario. The purpose of my stories is to inspire and instill hope.
There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?
I had a head start because Suellen’s book included Teagan’s work friends, which gave me a basis to build upon. As for Teagan’s family, I have Irish friends who helped me with the particular traits of an Irish family. Our closeness, coupled with several interviews, gave me confidence that I would get it right.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Teagan’s experience highlights the strength found in the backing of friends and family, while I also explored adoption as a positive option. The most uplifting and charming theme is a romance that offers a second chance.
Will there be a third book in the Lunch Tales series? If so, who will the story focus on?
The third installment of the Lunch Tales series will feature Carol and is currently in early development.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Pushing her son’s stroller on a summer day, thirty-six-year-old Teagan Quinn has no reason to think a big change is looming-the kind that happens in a mind-blowing instant. Nothing could prepare her for a shocking heartbreak.
Gripped by the trauma and grief of suddenly becoming a single parent, Teagan leans heavily on her lunch friends and lively Irish family for support. But when something ends, something usually begins-and Officer Luke Pisani walks back into Teagan’s life. Not just any old friend, he was her idealistic first. The man who got away.
As the grieving months go by, Luke is there at every turn, and gradually, old attraction reignites. But as ambivalent feelings challenge Teagan’s new beginning, a series of hurtful anonymous notes arrive, each angrier than the one before it.
With grit and urgency, Teagan must summon her inner sleuth before the letters poison one of the best things that could happen to her-learning to love again.
Wake the Lake
Wake the Lake follows fifteen-year-old Hudson Holloway, a driven wakeboarder chasing perfection on the glassy waters of Lake Watanabe while navigating the ripples of family struggle, fear, and self-doubt. Her father, Jim, a blue-collar worker with his own demons, supports her dream despite financial strain, while her mother, Evie, once a wakeboarding champion herself, watches from a wheelchair after a tragic accident. The story swells toward Hudson’s journey to the Junior Nationals, where ambition, anxiety, and family wounds collide in a powerful coming-of-age ride.
This book grabbed me from the first page. The opening scene, Hudson soaring across the lake, the water alive beneath her, felt cinematic. Kevler’s writing is sharp but tender, full of motion and heart. He nails the rhythm of sport and the quiet spaces in between, those moments when confidence fades and doubt creeps in. Hudson’s inner world is drawn with such authenticity that I found myself rooting for her even when she stumbled. The tension between her parents hit me hard, too. Jim’s flaws felt painfully real, and Evie’s strength broke through every page. There’s a rawness to their love that made me ache a little.
What really worked for me, though, was how the book balanced adrenaline and vulnerability. One chapter has you holding your breath through a stunt; the next leaves you still with heartbreak or hope. The prose flows like water, fast when it needs to be, gentle when it should. Sure, a few lines dip into melodrama, but I didn’t mind. The emotions felt earned. I could feel the sun, the spray, the exhaustion, and that electric need to prove something to yourself when no one’s watching.
Wake the Lake is a story for anyone who’s ever chased a dream while fighting the weight of life pulling them down. It’s especially for young readers who crave stories about resilience, family, and finding peace with imperfection. I’d recommend it to teens, athletes, and parents alike, or anyone who knows what it means to fall, get back up, and keep riding.
Pages: 253 | ASIN : B0FF4B3CF5
