Thankful for Five-Star Bossy Favorites
I'm always thankful for books and reading, so I wanted to reshare some of my five-star reads from the past in case you need a great long-weekend read or a book gift idea.
A five-star Bossy read is rare; it often makes me feel all the feelings, it's typically intriguing and makes me think, and it's usually tough for me to put down.
You might also like the books on my past Greedy Reading Lists Thankful for Five-Star Bossy Reads and Six Five-Star Bossy Reads to Check Out. Or you can search the site for my Five-Star Book Reviews.
Which books have been standouts for you? Do you have all-time favorite reads that you often recommend to others?
01 The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
Cronin's debut novel explores mortality, vulnerability, surprising moments of joy and reflection, an irresistible young protagonist, and a wonderful array of friends who are like family.
Lenni and Margot was one of my top twelve reads the year I read it.
Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives in the terminal ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Her life expectancy isn't long, but Lenni still has a lot she wants to do and be.
In the hospital's arts and crafts class, she meets 83-year-old Margot, a spirited, rebellious new friend. Collectively they've been around 100 years, but this just doesn't feel like enough, and they each want to leave their mark on the world.
With the help of Father Arthur, the hospital chaplain, and a kind palliative care nurse, the friends make a plan to create one hundred paintings, one to represent each of their years of life. This goal adds structure to the novel, but the story is far richer than the characters' mission to create art.
I don’t usually read books again, but I could use a copy of my own to highlight upon rereading. The Sparrow took a little time to get going for me, but then I was blown away.
If you're interested in books that explore mortality, you might want to check out Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Another novel I loved that involves a precocious, wise, reflective, tough young protagonist is This Is All He Asks of You.
For my full review of this book, please see The One Hundred Years of Lennie and Margot.
Marianne Cronin has a new book coming out in December 2024, Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love.
02 White Houses by Amy Bloom
White Houses is gorgeously written, exhaustingly researched historical fiction about Eleanor Roosevelt and her love, Lorena Hickock, and it was a five-star read for me.
Oh, this book!
Bloom’s writing is exquisite. The characters in White Houses are funny, heartbreaking, and feel alive.
I loved the behind-the-scenes peeks at the residential rooms of the Roosevelt White House (which, Bloom recounts in interviews, functioned more like a not-very-fancy boarding house at the time).
The dialogue is incredible, and the faulted main players are irresistible. The final paragraphs of the book in "first friend" Lorena Hickock’s voice were so gorgeous, they made me want to weep.
What a satisfyingly rich world and story.
Bloom is also the author of the heartbreakingly beautiful In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Away, Lucky Us, Come to Me: Stories, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories.
Click here for my full review of White Houses.
03 The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
The Winter Soldier is a World War I tale full of medical details and lovely, unlikely bonds. This is a five-star read from the author of North Woods.
Lucius is a young medical student when World War I sweeps across Europe. With romantic notions in his head about noble work in a field hospital filled with brilliant surgeons, he enlists and heads to his post in the remote Carpathian Mountains.
But there he finds one solitary nurse, Sister Margarite, bravely keeping together the makeshift clinic, which has been decimated by typhus. The other doctors have all left.
Lucius is surrounded by grave injuries but has never even wielded a scalpel He'll learn more from Sister Margarite--who he's falling for--than he ever could have in his classes. She's been building an immense wealth of practical knowledge while trying to save the broken soldiers.
This was wonderful. The details of World War I injuries and methods of treatment were fittingly grim and sometimes gruesome, but Mason's writing is beautiful and evocative, conveying the cold and brutal nature of war and loss, the chilling nature of acts done in coldhearted necessity, and the warm, promising hope of love.
For my full review, please see The Winter Soldier.
04 Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams offers a gritty, honest, captivating, spare yet fully developed memoir in which she explores her musical influences and influential high and low moments in her personal life.
In Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, songwriter, singer, and musician Lucinda Williams shares stories of her childhood, her musical influences, and pivotal moments in her career and personal life.
Williams takes us along as she digs into her life's trajectory and the various conflicts, explorations, realizations, and challenges that have shaped her.
Her insights into her mindset and her creativity are often offbeat, and they always feel thoughtful. She writes songs about "sex, love, and the state of the world," and in one instance describes musical freedom as feeling like everything is “uncorked."
As she digs into the inspirations for her music she quotes her own lyrics--along with, occasionally, others' poems--and it all feels like truth-telling poetry--in her case, often set to music.
Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You was wonderful--spare yet fully developed, often surprising, and always intriguing.
For my full review, please click here.
05 Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
McAllister offers a smart, intriguing, twisty story that plays with time and offers second chances, revelations, betrayals, deep connections, and an unusual route to uncovering the truth. I loved it.
Gillian McAllister's twisty mystery Wrong Place Wrong Time plays with time, and I love books that play with time.
The story begins with a mother awaiting her teenage son's return home late one night. She peers out the window to see him walking down the street--then she sees that he is armed, and to her horror, she sees him kill another man on the street.
But when she awakens the next morning bracing to face the living nightmare her family has begun living in, she's relieved to find that her son hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't been arrested, and in fact, none of last night's events have happened after all. She must be losing her mind. But she knows that last night was real.
Somehow she's reliving yesterday again. She really and truly is. She can't explain what's happened, but she quickly realizes that now she may be able to stop the murder before it occurs. Can she shift the future by changing the past?
The story was fascinating and touching and chilling and sweet. I absolutely loved it.
Please click here for my full review of Wrong Place, Wrong Time.
06 You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
Sittenfeld shapes fully realized, fascinating characters that stuck with me in the ten stories of You Think It, I'll Say It. I loved it and rated the collection five stars.
At the start of this collection I was concerned that this was going to be a short story collection about people making poor choices, and I have loooots of trouble and get verrrry nervous reading those situations.
But Sittenfeld has a fascinating way of turning situations on their heads and making the reader sympathetic to absurd, heartbreaking, sometimes dramatic everyday situations, as she does here.
The ten stories in You Think It, I'll Say It explore expectations related to gender and relationships while Sittenfeld builds characters whose lives are shaped by missed connections, coincidences--and the aforementioned faulty decision-making.
After I finished reading, I kept thinking about the characters and their realizations, compromises, and sometimes their resignation in the face of imperfect circumstances.
For my full review, please see You Think It, I'll Say It.
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