Welcome to Litsy!

This is a quiet, internal story, with abuse, abandonment, and unanswered questions at its heart. Julia—pregnant at 41—returns to her hometown after 23 years away. She‘s searching for answers & some measure of resolution about her past. I appreciated the nuance with which Hegi paints her characters—acknowledging both the repercussions of abuse & abandonment, and the unreliability of memory—as Julia struggles to reconcile the past & move forward.⤵️

A solid mystery/thriller discussed at tonight‘s book club meeting. Ellie Black has been missing for 2 years. She returns but gives detective Chelsey Calhoun little to go on about where she‘s been and who‘s responsible for her disappearance, but something is clearly amiss. This is one with several twists that totally surprised me but also featured well developed characters and meaningful relationships. Not for the faint of heart.

“My mother always says that the sweetest sound in the world is a baby‘s borning cry.”

May Amelia‘s mom is a midwife. Her family lives in a small community in Washington state around the turn of the 19th century, where farming and logging are primary subsistence. Poignant

#Read2025 #LitsyAtoZ #Bookspinbingo #Series2025 #Pantone2025

“There is a bright full moon, and boats in the harbor are lit up and dancing in the inky water.”

With seven older brothers and a love of adventure, May Amelia Jackson just can't seem to abide her family's insistence that she behave like a Proper Young Lady. Set in Washington in 1899 - HF MG by one of my favorite Newbery authors.

#Read2025 #LitsyAtoZ #Bookspinbingo #Series2025 #Pantone2025

You can see Richard Lasher‘s car & the dirt bike he was able to flee the approaching ash cloud on.

I was alive when St Helen‘s happened but was too young & too far away from WA to remember. I wish the book would have gone right to covering the event & not the years before background & its players.

I do remember the elderly man that refused to heed warnings & condemned 16 cats to eruption death. You also get perished dogs & horses. Humans too. 💧

So good! Kept me guessing and there were some really good twists!

#bookspinbingo

There‘s been a pattern forming with #BookSpin for me this year: inevitably one spin lands on one of my #192025 spots and I get to choose something from a range of decades. This month, my #DoubleSpin landed on the 1980s–2000s, and I‘m deciding between the three above. #BookSpin is Salt Dancers by Ursula Hegi—she was an obsession of mine in the early 2000s and several of her books that I bought then still haven‘t been read. This one‘s time has come!

This was just ok for me. The ending was satisfying, but it took a long time to get there. The amount of fatphobia was very annoying. The characterizations in general felt a bit shallow. It passed the time, though (most of it I listened to as an audiobook at work but read the last third at the airport/during my flight - last third was the strongest part).

Early morning flight. A little over an hour before boarding for me to read and have my iced dirty chai.