Snow Kissed

A tender-hearted novel of women’s fiction about broken hearts mended by love during the Christmas season.

Strong women who face and overcome obstacles--familial and romantic--have come to define the heartwarming novels of Rae Anne Thayne (The Lost Book of First Loves, 15 Summers Later).

 

In Snow Kissed, she returns readers to Shelter Springs, a picturesque mountain town near Boise, Idaho. At the heart of this story--the third in the series after Christmas at the Shelter Inn and The December Market--is divorced, single mother, Holly Goodwin Moore, who is raising her neurodivergent daughter, Lydia, on her own while running the local flower shop. Holly was once enamored of all-things-Christmas, but since her divorce and the looming wedding of a family member of her ex’s--Lydia is excited to serve as flower girl--Holly is dreading seeing her ex, his new wife, and their new baby at the holiday wedding.

 

A meet-cute case of mistaken identity at the flower shop changes those feelings. Holly crosses paths with Ryan Caldwell, the uncle of 13-year-old, Audrey, who helps out at the flower shop. Ryan, on leave from his career as a Navy pilot, returns to Shelter Springs to help his infirm, troubled sister with Audrey for the holidays. Ryan carries as many scars from the past as does Holly. And as the two get to know each other, Holly asks Ryan a favor: will he agree to be her pretend ‘plus-one’ at the wedding? As their relationship grows, so do a host of complications that ultimately test their willingness to risk love again.

 

Readers familiar with the Shelter Springs books--and those new to the town and its inhabitants--will savor this moving and tender-hearted story about wounded hearts mended by love.

 

Snow Kissed by RaeAnne Thayne

Canary Street Press (Harlequin/HarperCollinsPublishers), $18.99 paperback, 978335013170, 320 pages

Publishing Date: October 7, 2025

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

Learn more about author RaeAnne Thayne HERE

Jill Fordye: The Undoing of Aloneness

 The Writer's Life

Jill Fordyce: The Undoing of Aloneness

(photo: Nathan Westerfield)

Jill Fordyce was born and raised in Bakersfield, Calif. She received a degree in English from the University of Southern California, and a law degree from Santa Clara University. While practicing law, she continued to study writing through the Stanford Continuing Education creative writing program. Her first novel, Belonging (Post Hill Press, January 30, 2024), traces the relationships and generational influences that impact the life of one woman over the course of 40 years. (See the review below)

Why write a coming-of-age story?

I have always been moved by stories that chronicle of young love, lifelong friendships, hometowns, music, and the hold the past often has over the present. And when I think of important times of youth, for me they are set against the backdrop of the Central Valley of California.

That accounts for the Bakersfield setting.

Initially, I thought of setting the novel in a fictional town, but every time I traveled back to Bakersfield, I felt such a unique type of inspiration, and I knew I had to write about it. I think we write what we know, what we can see--particularly with a first novel. The setting is so important, and Bakersfield is a place I know personally, so it made sense to put Jenny (the main character) there.

Themes of "hometown" are central to the story.

While some inspiration may come from what the notion of "hometown" evokes for everyone, some of it feels very specific to Bakersfield and Central California--the music, the food, the tree-lined streets and flat horizon, the warmth and the fog, the families who have known each other for generations.

Yes, the importance and influence of family--both birth and created families--is threaded throughout, as are themes of life and death, and a reliance on spiritual faith.

Family to me is a place of home and belonging. And belonging is fundamentally about the undoing of aloneness, which is a primary need for everyone. As I came to understand Jenny more deeply, I could see that her faith--Catholic faith instilled by her extended family--was central to her life. The comfort she derived from those spiritual influences was critical to her survival as a child, as she undergoes illness, isolation, and experiences death for the first time. Jenny comes to believe that to "love forever is to live forever." If she didn't have a spiritual grounding and hold such belief, I don't know if she would have had the fortitude and resilience that she does. She knows she's not doing it all alone. 

The book offers an ensemble cast. Yet, you tell the story solely through the perspective of a sensitive woman whose life is traced over decades.

All of the characters exist relative to Jenny, and I wanted to convey her experience of growing up in an intimate and realistic way--especially in a home with an alcoholic mother. I wanted to show those things that a young girl would rely on when her home life is so tumultuous: friends, extended family, faith, music. Finally, I wanted to understand how she would emerge from it and create the life that she longed for--and those things are possible primarily due to the large circle of loved ones around her.

The enduring battle of alcoholism figures prominently.

I don't know the percentage of families affected by alcoholism, but I suspect it is very high. Jenny learns that you can love and forgive an alcoholic on your own yet, also, step away and live your own life. Even if the alcoholic is never better, is never able to see her way out of the disease, the people around her can find grace and peace, both for themselves and the alcoholic. I think adult children of alcoholics have a unique burden when trying to find trusting love relationships and, in exploring Jenny's relationships, I try to show how some of those difficulties can be overcome.

How difficult was it to tell this story?

The most fulfilling part was experiencing the story as it unfolded, when it wasn't struggle or effort, when storylines emerged without conscious thought. That felt like magic. However, Belonging took me over 10 years to conceive of, write, and market. I embarked on many rewrites. When I first sat down to write, the only concrete idea I really had was the notion of the bonds of childhood friendship that light the way throughout life, across time and distance--and even death. 

The book spans from 1977 to 2017. Why that timeline?

I love a complete and full story--of seeing characters as children and then as young adults on their own in the world... and then in middle age, in a place where they can look back. The seeds of early relationships are so important. I always want to know, if characters are in love, why are they in love? If characters are best friends, why are they best friends? I tried to show readers the strength--and lasting impact--of childhood bonds, what they bring out in people.

Detailed flourishes and nostalgia are embedded throughout the novel. How much research was necessary? 

I researched the climate and geography of Bakersfield and the surrounding area: why there is fog, why the river was dry, the origin of the Grapevine, the ramifications of valley fever, a fungal disease. I delved into the history of Bakersfield and the Bakersfield Sound. I spent time in antique stores and looked at religious prayer cards. I rewatched films that inspired me. I listened to many old songs and made sure they were chronologically correct. I re-read both Our Town (Thornton Wilder) and The Greatest Thing in the World (Henry Drummond) several times. I spoke with a hospice nurse about end-of-life care. I spent hours researching the Vietnam War. But there were moments, too, when no research was necessary--gifts were just presented to me.

Belonging is certainly a gift to readers! Any plans for a second novel?

Yes, I am so excited to be working on another coming-of-age love story and family story, this time set in rural Tennessee.

Women in Sunlight

Four very different American women experience reinvention and self-discovery when they settle in Tuscany and explore all that Italy has to offer.

Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun, Under Magnolia) returns to the sensuous glories of Italy in her beautifully rendered and richly woven novel Women inSunlight. 

Catherine "Kit" Raine is an American expat in her late 30s. She has lived and worked as a successful writer and poet nestled in the Tuscan hills of San Rocco for 12 years. Her current project is a biography of fellow American Margaret Merrill--an older woman, good friend and a writer whom Kit admired--who set down roots in Tuscany much earlier.

When Margaret died, she surprisingly bequeathed her estate to Kit. Their friendship was at times rocky and difficult. However, Margaret's posthumous generosity made a lasting impression on Kit. In trying to broaden the readership of Margaret's work--and better understand her enigmatic friend--Kit grapples with memories on the page that lead Kit to examine her own life and future.

Kit's quest deepens when three American women--and their unruly dog--move into the villa next door. The three women are new friends, all retired, who met at an orientation for a 55-and-over retirement community near their homes in Chapel Hill, N.C. The threesome are still vital and active enough to assert their independence. 

Mayes's writing glimmers with masterful sensory descriptions. Readers can practically taste the white foam that tops cappuccinos, step into elongated shadows cast by cypress trees and feel the echoing cold retained amid old stone villas. Mayes delivers another intimate story, told in lively episodes, that details how unexpected friendships can lead to reinvention and bright new beginnings at any age.

Women in Sunlight: A Novel by Frances Mayes

Crown, $27.00 Hardcover,  9780451497666, 448  pages

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 24, 2018), link HERE

The Coincidence Makers

A suspenseful novel about secret operatives who cleverly orchestrate and execute forces of destiny.

Yoav Blum raises fascinating questions about destiny and free will in this fast-paced novel exploring otherworldly dimensions. In The Coincidence Makers, Blum has created a rich fantasy that focuses on trained and skilled secret agents who work--along with bureaucratic forces much greater than themselves--to orchestrate events that nudge ordinary people toward changing the course of their lives.

This smartly crafted novel focuses on three trainees--Guy, Eric and Emily--who have been rigorously educated on the intricacies of coincidences and the roles they, as Coincidence Makers (CMs), are expected to play in shaping human destiny. Eric is a showman who has been known to grandstand in creating very complex coincidences that have led to accidents, death and even murder. Emily is bright and highly sensitive, but tight-lipped in talking about past assignments. And Guy, while adept, is riddled with self-doubt and haunted by a past that broke his heart.

When the CMs are asked to put what they've learned into practice for a complicated assignment involving a former imaginary friend case, the CMs must reassess their roles in relation to humankind and how their efforts very often lead others--sometimes, even themselves--to find deeper meaning and purpose in life and in love.

Blum cleverly probes the cause and effect of life, while exploring the hearts, motivations and questioning nature of people. This makes his carefully constructed fictional universe all the more plausible and captivating--especially as the plot intensifies and unravels in surprising ways.

The Coincidence Makers: A Novel by Yoav Blum

St. Martin's Press, $26.99 Hardcover,  9781250146113, 320 pages

Publication Date: March 4, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different, shortened form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness: For the Book Trade (February 12, 2018), link HERE

To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 6, 2018), link HERE

Nina George: The Power of Books to Heal

The Writer's Life

Nina George writes contemporary novels centered on people "who undertake a physical journey that leads to self-discovery" because, she admits, she does the very same thing in her own life. "The quests, the odysseys, the 'joyful wanderings' (exploration, seeking the way, straying from the beaten path) are what constitutes a life." While she is of German descent, France is "in her blood" due to influences from her mother's side of the family. She believes "the French soul lay closer to (her) heart than German sensibilities." George lives in the Finistére region of Brittany, "at the end of the world.... Although," she claims, "some say it is where the world begins." The Little Paris Bookshop (read the review below or link HERE) was first published in German as "Das Lavendelzimmer" in 2013; it has sold over 500,000 copies and been translated into more than 27 languages. Crown will publish the novel in the U.S. in June. (Interview translated by Heidi Holzer.)

The Little Paris Bookshop largely takes place on French waterways. Have you ever taken a river cruise through France?

My father died the same year I'd planned to take the tour, and I also had a titanium implant in my neck. So I talked to "river people" and borrowed their river diaries. I spoke with tourists and locals. In 2014 (after the book had been on the bestseller list for a year), my husband, Jo, and I finally drove along the route. We ate and drank in Montargis and Cepoy, checked out houseboats for sale and drove across the canal bridge in Briare.

Sanary-sur-mer becomes the cornerstone of the novel. Is there any special reason why you chose to make this locale central to the plot of the story?

Oh, yes! In 2012, I explored Provence and drove around the region, 1,500 kilometers [930 miles], until the land answered my questions. I went to Sanary-sur-mer because it was the home of German women writers in exile. In a way, I felt as though I were in exile as well. My father had died, my body--my neck--was injured. It felt as though I'd lost my way: my life, my sense of inner childhood, my security. Sanary was a place of healing for me. I believe that everyone has a secret place where they are made "whole" again, no matter what it was that broke them in the first place.

Would you say a sense of brokenness inspired the novel?

Life. Death. Books. Dreams.... It began with the success of Die Mondspielerin/The Moon Musician, after which people expected me to write another novel. I wanted to explore the great themes of guilt, heartbreak and beginning one's "'actual" life all over again. My father died in 2011, and that was the caesura in my life, in everything that I am. I've been writing for 23 years. I'm a professional writer. Yet after my father's much too sudden death, I felt something break inside--my deep grief brought me back to myself. And it also redefined what I want to and am able to write about.

So I wrote about life, about survival after the death of a loved one, about the power of books that can heal everything--absolutely everything. And about living in one's own dreams. I felt free to do whatever I wanted, because I'd already gone through the worst possible thing in life. Since then, rules have no longer applied to me. For survivors, nothing is forbidden.

You pay your father a beautiful tribute in the dedication to this novel.

My father was a loving man. I never met any human being like him. He was kind and strong. He didn't have a great deal of education--no one did in postwar Germany--and yet he was wise and read up on everything. We'd been discussing my work since the early days of my career--I landed my first job, with a newspaper, at the age of 19. By 22, I'd written the first of what are now 26 books--and he read everything I wrote. We debated, he offered praise. He always wanted to know how I came up with things. No one else has ever been so intensely interested in what I think. He never wanted me to be simply "pretty" or "a good girl." His desire was for me to think, to develop internal endurance. He encouraged me in sports, challenged me to think. He helped develop my political sensibility and demanded that I respect people, cultures and religions. I was never to assume that my truth is the only one that matters. In a sense, the way he brought me up laid the groundwork for how I'm able to see the world.

Why has this novel resonated so deeply with readers?

Because it's a story about death and about how much we can be shaped by loss, by missing a person. Grieving, or admitting that the loss of a loved one has derailed us, was unfashionable, forbidden for much of the past. Also, there is a dedicated community of people in the world who will always be able to connect with each other across all languages, boundaries and religions. It is the "Readers' Club." People who read a lot, starting at a very young age, are people who were raised by books. They have learned about forms of love and hate, kindness, respect and ideas that are different from their own. They experience the world as something infinitely larger than before. They enjoy the indescribable feeling of having found their true selves.

We readers are book people, and Jean Perdu [the protagonist] is one of us. We are all traveling on an invisible literary riverboat, one that carries us down the stream of life. It shapes, holds and comforts us.

At the end of the novel, you include a compendium of books/titles to cure whatever ails a reader. If you were to include The Little Paris Bookshop on that list, what ailment would this novel serve to cure/alleviate?

Catharsis and healing. Das Lavendelzimmer/The Little Paris Bookshop is both a kind of cleansing and a literary form of solace. It penetrates areas of the soul where old and grand emotions are hidden. Grief, melancholy, regret that we are not 16 anymore, compassion, the desire to be loved by our parents, finding the place where we feel whole, understanding the fears in our dreams. The book cleanses these wounds--and above all, it provides solace. In Germany, people often give books to friends who are starting over: a new life, a new job, a new era.

Jean Perdu has a favorite book that changed his life. Do you have a book that changed yours?

My library holds 3,500 books, and I've read around 4,200 in my life. Every book has had an effect on me, but I'll mention only three:

Ein Fisch ohne Fahrrad (A Fish Without a Bicycle) by Elizabeth Dunkel: At a time when I didn't know whether I wanted to love or be loved, or which one would be harder to bear.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: At a time when I felt I didn't trust myself to be the person I am.

The diaries of Anais Nin: To help me understand that I have a sexual identity.

Will there be a 27th book?

I'm working on a novel that is about being afraid that one is not good enough and what awaits us in the space between life and death. It also deals with the question of whether there is even such a thing as the "right" life. 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this 

Q&A as originally published on Shelf Awareness  (4/8/15), click HERE

The Jesus Cow

Humorist Michael Perry (Coop) makes a foray into fiction with The Jesus Cow, a novel about a small Midwest community that is transformed in profound and hilarious ways by a bull calf born in a barn on Christmas Eve.

Perry sets the story in Swivel, Wis.--population exaggerated at 562--only visible from the interstate by a long-stemmed, halogen-lit Kwik Pump gasoline sign whose "logo glows against the sky." He focuses on resident Harley Jackson, who lives in the house where he grew up, on 15 acres of deteriorating farmland. When his prized cow, Tina Turner, delivers a bull calf bearing the image of Jesus Christ on its black-and-white patchwork hide, Harley, a born-again believer, doesn't drop to his knees. Instead, he says, "Well, that's trouble."

Whether the calf was marked by God or not, Harley doesn't want anything to disturb his manageable, unassuming life. But when the Jesus calf escapes from the barn, the animal's image goes viral. Harley's upper Midwest farm soon becomes an international spiritual destination--a circus that sends the town residents into a tizzy. 

As in Truck: A Love Story and Visiting Tom, Perry once again delivers his own brand of outlandishness through rich, endearing characterizations of quirky small-town folks, and how their zany foibles and flaws mask underlying disappointments, secrets and longings. By deploying humor in depicting the often painful truths and absurdities of life, Perry successfully makes much larger statements about society and the human condition.

The Jesus Cow: A Novel by Michael Perry

Harper, $25.99 Hardcover, 9780062289919, 304 pp

Publication Date: May 19, 2015

To order via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (5/26/15), click HERE

This review was also featured (in a longer form) on Shelf Awareness: Book Trade (5/11/15). To read the longer review click HERE

Lynne Truss: Dealing in the Slightly Surreal

The Writer's Life

Lynne Truss started her career as a literary editor. She's been a journalist, a television and book critic and has written extensively for the page, stage, radio and screen. Her book Get Her Off the Pitch details the four years she spent as a sportswriter for theTimes (London), and The Lynne Truss Treasury is a compilation of her humorous columns and three of her comic novels. Truss is probably best known for Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a mega-bestseller that made people care about punctuation and also spawned several illustrated children's books on the topic. Truss has a fondness for gothic fiction and the work of British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Her latest, Cat Out of Hell (see review below), is a mystery novel infused with humor and supernatural elements that focuses on talking cats, their many lives and the possibilities of their retributive behaviors.

Why return to fiction? And why a mystery novel?

In the 1990s, I wrote three novels in about six years, and my intention was to keep making a living from journalism while writing novels. Then a number of things happened around the year 2000, mainly that my sister died, and I gave up my job. For a while I concentrated on making radio programmes (mainly comedy) for the BBC. One of these programmes was about punctuation, and this led directly to writing Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The reception was truly phenomenal--but suddenly I was known as a nonfiction writer! All along I've been continuing to write stories and plays and dramatic comedies, so when I was commissioned to write a gothic novella for the Hammer imprint in the U.K., it made me very happy. I had written short stories in the comic-gothic mode. I like dealing in the slightly surreal. It seemed like a very natural next step to write a comic-gothic novel.

How did the story and themes arise in Cat Out of Hell? 

I knew from the start that it would be about talking cats. But when I started the book, all I was clear about was the structure. I wanted to start with a man on his own, poring over a folder of documents, pictures, sound recordings and so on, and being drawn into a mystery that he thinks does not concern him. So the first section would be the documents; the second would be narration; the third would take place in the present tense (e-mail exchanges, heightening the tension); the last would be narration of the dramatic climax. Once I had the structure, the story evolved to fit it. I'm working on a follow-up book at the moment, and the structure is different, but is still crucial to what kind of story will be told. As for the story and themes in Cat Out of Hell, the "many lives" element was one of several aspects of cat lore that seemed to offer gruesome possibilities! I'm quite pleased with my explanation for the belief that cats have nine lives. I also hope that cat owners will feel differently about a few other behaviours (such as purring), but I mustn't give too much away.

What role have cats played (or do play) in your domestic life?  

I had two, much-beloved cats for over 20 years, and I used to write about them quite a lot! I loved their indifference. One of my favourite columns began, "No Valentines from the cats again." After they died, I waited about 18 months and then took in two rescue cats, which was a bit of a disaster. They were semi-feral, I think. They didn't miaow. They didn't like to be stroked. They looked down at me from the top of the stairs like creatures from another planet. I'm sure the experience of having these cats for a couple of years fed into Cat Out of Hell! (Luckily, someone actually asked to have them, and I couldn't have been happier to see them go.)

But anyone who lives with cats knows the mystique they have. However close you get to them, they keep a lot in reserve. And the intelligence of animals is always fascinating. They are clever enough to recognise the sound of your car, but not clever enough to understand that when you put them in a basket, you're not actually trying to kill them. I find cats funny, I suppose. I think you can tell that I love them from the way (in Cat Out of Hell) Alec admires the cat called Roger. The two cats, The Captain and Roger, represent the sort-of Id and Superego of cat nature. One is all instinct and violence; the other all intellect and wit. 

Was Cat Out of Hell as much fun to write as it is to read?

All writing is scary to me. I wrote 24 episodes (in all) of a comic detective series for the radio here, and before each one I would have the internal debate: "I can't write this!" "Of course you can write this." "No, I can't write this." "But you're the only person who CAN write this." But you're right that in many ways writing Cat Out of Hell was just fun. There are passages that still make me laugh out loud--and they did delight me when I wrote them. It's a cliché that comic writing is a quite serious business--but it's true that it's a craft: it's about the timing, precise wording, and so on. You can buff it up. But writing in the comic mode isn't all craft; it's also about being alive to comic possibilities, and a funny idea popping into your head is sheer joy.

Your work certainly reflects how much you enjoy the craft of writing.

You would imagine that the enthusiasm would wear off, but in my case it really hasn't. Perhaps it's because I got going quite late (I was in my mid-30s when I wrote my first novel), I've always felt that it's a big privilege to be a writer. No one in my background had the luck that I've had. I was the first person in my family to go to university; the first not to have a boring job. Somehow I never forget that.

Gardening figures prominently in your comic novels, In One Lousy Free Packet of Seed and in Tennyson's Gift.

It's an odd thing. I have no special knowledge of botany, but I am terribly interested (thematically) in the idea of growth, so I think that's why I return to the subject of plants sometimes. When I started One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, I really wrestled with the idea of whether a comic character has to stay the same forever, or whether it can develop. So the idea of dormancy became a bit of a theme. I liked the idea of seeds--all that potential being contained in something so inert! As for the flower symbolism in Tennyson's Gift, it's in all Victorian art and poetry, so I took it on board. The fact that one of the little girls in Freshwater at the time was called Daisy (symbol of innocence) helped it all come together.

Will there be additional books featuring cats in your writing future?

I am currently writing about a demon kitten (for the next novel), and I get up each morning thinking, "I can't wait." I'm about 10,000 words in, and it's beginning to take shape, but I've got a lot of options still left open, such as: Will Roger return? 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this 

Q&A as originally published on Shelf Awareness  (3/24/14), click HERE

Beguiling Haunted Houses

From My Shelf: Happy Halloween!

A house is normally considered a safe place. In fiction, however, when a house has creaky stairs, rattling shutters, dark attics and basements and trapped secrets that embody the shadowy essence of unnerving spirits, scary becomes even scarier--especially on Halloween.

Shirley Jackson paved the way with her terrifying 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, where four people investigate an 80-year-old house filled with spirits and other unexplained events. Richard Matheson expanded that premise in Hell House (1971), where a physicist and two mediums examine a spooky shuttered house in Maine presumably haunted after serving as a domicile for decadence, drugs and alcohol.

The unifying elements of haunted house novels--past and present--seem to be long-buried secrets, demons from the past that need to be confronted and escalating suspense.

This House Is Haunted by John Boyne is set in a country estate in 1860s Norfolk. This Dickens-inspired story centers on a governess who cares for two seemingly parentless children and a malign, supernatural presence that taunts them.

An old carriage house on a sprawling estate invigorates Rebecca Makkai's The Hundred-Year House, where a young couple faces unexpected rumors of buried bodies, family mysteries and the presence of a ghost immortalized in a prominently displayed portrait.

Long-dead, lingering spirits--former residents of an old country house--jostle with an estranged, contemporary family, heirs who have come to sort through the detritus of their departed patriarch in Rooms, an imaginative, explosive story by Lauren Oliver.

In A Sudden Light, Garth Stein has crafted an atmospheric ghost story set in a rambling Pacific Northwest ancestral estate. This epic tale is part family saga and part mystery, infused with secrets, curses, dark familial legacies and a tragic love affair.

While jack-o'-lanterns, bats and witches are all symbols of Halloween, it's the haunted house, where ghosts and a fear of the unknown collide, that keeps readers bound captive to the page! 

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (10/31/14), link HERE

The Miniaturist

Dark shadows, whispered secrets and glimpses of life through ancient keyholes infuse an engrossing story of independence set in the Dutch Golden Age. With her father dead and the family in debt, 18-year-old Nella Oortman is married off to Johannes Brandt, a high-ranking merchant powerbroker for the Dutch East India Company in September 1686. She moves from her countryside home to Amsterdam, but Johannes isn't waiting to meet her. Instead, she is greeted by her husband's severe sister, Marin, who grudgingly welcomes Nella into the household.

Kind but distant and frequently absent, Johannes does little to appease his new wife or tame his overbearing sister, whom Nella overhears telling Johannes how to make trades and other business decisions. She has many questions she'd like to ask her frugal sister-in-law, but Marin answers in riddles. Aggression increases between the two women, and when Johannes presents his bride with an extravagant gift--an exact model replica of their home--the balance of power begins to shift.

Nella finally leaves the house in search of a miniaturist who can help her decorate Johannes's gift, but the shop is always empty. In response to her notes, the miniaturist sends her cryptic messages and unsolicited parcels: uncannily precise furniture reproductions and eerily accurate replicas of the inhabitants of Nella's world. How does this mysterious craftsperson know so much about the complex relationships in the household? Can this artisan/prophet see into the future, or have some sort of ominous control over Nella's fate?

In Jessie Burton's atmospheric debut, The Miniaturist, the powers of love and obsession, sins and secrets, loyalty and forgiveness bind together a cast of sympathetic characters who all have a part to play in a collectively chilling conclusion.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Ecco Press, $26.99 Hardcover, 9780062306814, 416 pp

Publication Date: August 26, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (8/22/14), click HERE

To read the full review of this novel as originally published as a special feature of Shelf Awareness: Maximum Shelf (5/21/14)--a much longer and much more comprehensive review--link HERE