#47/130 -
Daughter of Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
I have been waiting for this one to come out ever since I picked up Brennert's
Honolulu and
Moloka'i, I think because of recommendations in past years' incarnations of this thread. It did not disappoint. Brennert has a real gift for telling huge, sweeping stories through the eyes of a single character/family, bringing major episodes from history to life on a very personal level. This story follows the daughter of the main character of
Moloka'i, a girl of mixed Hawaiian and Japanese ancestry who was born in a Hawaiian leper colony and adopted by a Japanese family that eventually moves to California just before Pearl Harbor, only to end up as part of the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war. The historical elements of the book are beautifully researched and heartbreakingly presented without being maudlin or melancholy, and the story continues past the end of the war to follow how the family moves on from the experience and the eventual reunion between the main character and her birth mother.
#48/130 -
Craving by Helen Hardt
#49 -
Obsession
#50 -
Possession
This series started out strong, roping me in by not being quite what I expected, but kind of fizzled as the story dragged on. The first book was a surprise. I picked it up expecting a pretty typical romance novel, which in some ways it was, but there's a strong psychological storyline to it too, in the hero's backstory, that eventually develops into more of a thriller/mystery. I really enjoyed the characters in the first book, who were formulaic in some ways but unexpected in others, but as I got into the second and particularly the third book, it kind of got a bit tiresome, with the overarching mystery feeling like something thrown in to keep the reader hooked, and I was disappointed that there was absolutely no resolution at the end of the third book even though that's the end of the story arc between the two main characters. To find out how the mystery unravels, you have to move on to a second series featuring the hero's brother, and another after that featuring their other brother. I am just not invested enough for all of that, especially since I've reached my Hoopla borrowing limit for the month and finishing out the series (10 books in all) would eat up my entire May and half of June's limit too.
Happy Doomsday by David Sosnowski. This was a dystopian novel - a type of literature that I am very unfamiliar with and I am not really clear how I came to down load this book to my Kindle. However, it was a unique type story to me - everyone in the world suddenly drops dead except for young people who were attempting suicide. The book follows three characters as they struggle to survive and eventually find each other.
It was an
Amazon Prime First Reads pick not that long ago.
28/75...Becoming by Michelle Obama
I was a teacher and like Michelle Obama, I believe that education is a way out of poverty. I enjoyed the book, and waited about 4 months to get it from the library. I read it in two days, so bringing it back to share her story with whomever is next in line!
I have been on the waitlist for this one for what feels like forever, and I'm still 24th in line!
