Book Review: Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: September 10, 2024
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 
Publisher’s Description:

In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served his time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, this book is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.

In Sky Full of Elephants, society was changed when a year ago all of the white people walked into the nearest body of water and drowned. Now the world is adjusting to the after effects of that event. Sydney, a bi-racial teenager, is left behind when her white mother and stepfamily walk into the water. She’s been holed up in her house, afraid of the new world. She’s heard that there is a civilization in Alabama and asks her estranged father to help her get there. She’s never met him and holds a lot of anger towards him for leaving her mother. She plays on his guilt to convince him to take her there even though the journey will be dangerous. Raised by white people, Sydney has internalized racism that she doesn’t recognize but those around her do. She doesn’t say it outright, but it’s clear that she’s hoping the settlement she and her father are traveling to has white people living there.

Sky Full of Elephants was very thought provoking. A world without white people is different than I imagined when I first heard about this book. It’s almost like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. White people control so much in the United States that when they are gone, a lot of things cease to exist – like the government, utilities, and public transportation. Other consequences are good. For instance, all of the prisoners were set free, instantly solving the mass incarceration of Black people problem. The stress of living in a racist society has been lifted for people left, making the negative aspects worth it.

I loved this book. The concept was unlike anything I’ve read before and executed perfectly. Weeks after reading it, I’m still thinking about it. Highly, highly recommended.

Book Review: The Mad Wife by Meagan Church

The Mad Wife by Meagan Church
Narrator: Susan Bennentt
Publisher: Recorded Books
Release Date: November 4, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the perfect 1950s housewife. Despite the tragic memories that haunt her and the weight of exhausting expectations, she keeps her husband happy, her household running, and her gelatin salads the talk of the neighborhood. But after she gives birth to her second child, Lulu’s carefully crafted life begins to unravel.

When a new neighbor, Bitsy, moves in, Lulu suspects that something darker lurks behind the woman’s constant smile. As her fixation on Bitsy deepens, Lulu is drawn into a web of unsettling truths that threaten to expose the cracks in her own life. The more she uncovers about Bitsy, the more she questions everything she thought she knew—and soon, others begin questioning her sanity. But is Lulu truly losing her mind? Or is she on the verge of discovering a reality too terrifying to accept?

In the vein of The Bell Jar and The Hours, The Mad Wife weaves domestic drama with psychological suspense, so poignant and immersive, you won’t want to stop listening.

The Mad Wife follows Lulu, a 1950s housewife and mother who lives in the suburbs. She keeps a clean house and has a homecooked meal on the table every night for her husband when he gets home from work. She’s also known as the “queen of molded foods”. Her specialty is the perfection salad – gelatin filled with carrots, celery, cabbage, green olives and radishes. (Why was the food in the ’50s so gross??) Lately, Lulu’s grown listless.

When a new family moves across the street, Loulou is suspicious. Bitsy, the wife, seems strange and distant and her five-year-old daughter does as well. And Bitsy is just a little too perfect. The neighborhood women welcome her with open arms, which makes Loulou jealous. Soon Lulu is obsessed with finding out what is going on behind the scenes with Bitsy’s family.

The Mad Wife was riveting. I listened to the last half while I was driving on a road trip, and my heart was in my throat the whole time. The twists are amazing. It was read by Susan Bennett who has the perfect 1950s housewife voice. She sounded just like Donna Reed. Loulou basically was Donna Reed until Bitsy moved in and got her discombobulated.

I cannot stop thinking about this book and how good it was. Highly recommended.

(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)

Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake
Narrators: Rita Amparita and Stephanie Nemeth-Parker
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: October 21, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.

After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she’s taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.

Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner’s new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane’s clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she’s apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.

As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.

First of all, do not read the New York Times’ review of Girl Dinner before you read this book. It has major spoilers – I’m glad I read the book first.

Girl Dinner follows Nina, a college sophomore rushing a sorority referred to as The House and Sloan, an adjunct professor at Nina’s university. Both are struggling with what it means to be a “Good Woman”.

Nina finds herself wanting to be perfect to impress her future sorority sisters, especially Fawn, the president. Much to the chagrin of her feminist twin sister Jas, Nina is starting buy into the tenants of the The House. Meanwhile, Sloane, a new faculty advisor for The House is struggling to balance her career and motherhood. She feels like she’s failing at both. Her husband, a tenured professor at the university, is no help. To give an idea of the kind of man he is: one night Sloan forgets to put the silverware on the dinner table. Her husband gets up and gets one fork. For himself.

Both Nina and Sloan wonder about what it means to be a Good Woman. Is that even possible in world full of men content to hoard their power? The characters in Girl Dinner philosophize about this throughout. While all the deep thinking is going on, the sorority is up to some gruesome rituals that also ask the question of how far is one willing to go to become a Good Woman.

I’m still thinking about Girl Dinner weeks after reading it. I’m realizing that I prefer social horror that is on the realistic side – no monsters or demons. Girl Dinner is a great example of this type of horror.

The audiobook is narrated by two women which worked well since there are so many female characters. I think it would have been hard for one woman to have a distinct voice for all of the them.

Highly recommended.

(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)

Audiobook Review: Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley

Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley
Narrator: Priscilla Beaulieu Presley
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Release Date: September 23, 2015
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Priscilla Presley’s divorce from Elvis left his fans incredulous. How could she leave the man every woman wanted? From the outside, life in Elvis’s mansion looked glamorous and enviable, and in many respects, it was. But inside the mansion, her husband was constantly surrounded by a male entourage while at the gates, lines of beautiful women waited hopefully for an audience with the King. From the time she was seventeen years old, that life was all Priscilla had known. During her ten years with Elvis, it became painfully apparent that she had no idea who she was outside Elvis’s world. The only way to find herself was to leave that world and seek a new life of her own, because leaving was the only way to survive, for herself and for her daughter.

Softly, As I Leave You, is the deeply personal story of what Priscilla lost and what she found when she walked away from the man she loved. Despite the legal separation, their love for one another transformed into a touching and tender dynamic that endured until Elvis’s untimely death four years later. Shattered by Elvis’s passing, she had to reinvent herself a second time as the single mother of a talented, often headstrong daughter who never really recovered from her father’s death. Priscilla’s dedication to motherhood was enriched by the birth of her second child, and she gradually found her footing as a businesswoman, actress, designer, and legislative advocate. She transformed Graceland into an international destination and helped guide the development of Elvis Presley Enterprises. But the unexpected, shattering loss of three immediate family members years later brought Priscilla to her knees. She shares her journey with a quiet dignity that will comfort and reassure anyone who has suffered–and survived–seemingly unbearable loss.

A compassionate, and inspiring story of finding your place in the world, Softly, As I Leave You, is a sweet Southern melody that will take the listener with Priscilla on her long road home.

Softly, as I Leave You is Priscilla Presley’s second memoir. Her first, Elvis and Me, was published in 1985. She does write a little about her childhood and early life with Elvis in Softly, as I Leave You but it’s covered in a lot more detail in her first book. I’ve read Elvis and Me and it’s not necessary to have read it to enjoy Softly, as I Leave You.

One of the things Priscilla writes about is her relationship with her daughter, Lisa Marie. Lisa Marie’s memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, came out in 2024 after her death and was already out when Priscilla was writing her book. In some ways, it feels like this book is a response to Lisa Marie’s book. For instance, Lisa Marie says in her book that Pricilla’s live-in boyfriend Michael Edwards sexually abused her, and she told Priscilla, but Priscilla says that she had no idea that had happened until she read Lisa Marie’s book. There are other situations discussed where their viewpoints were different as well. It’s not often you get both sides of the story like that, and I thought it was cool, having also read Lisa Marie’s book.

She also talks about her son and grandchildren as well as her acting career. She narrates the book herself – a celebrity memoir is almost always better when the celebrity narrates the audiobook and that is the case here. She has a slow, dreamy voice – I was able to speed up to 2x speed and I’m normally at 1.5x!

Celebrity memoir fans and Elvis fans alike will enjoy this book.

(I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for review.)

Book Review: Til Summer Do Us Part by Meghan Quinn

Till Summer Do Us Part by Meghan Quinn
Publisher: Bloom Books
Publication date: June 3, 2025
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Scottie Price just started a new job, and it’s a real sausage fest. She’s the only woman on a team filled with Brads and Chads. Expecting a bachelor pad atmosphere, she is quickly corrected when she finds out everyone is happily married.

In an effort to impress her boss, Scottie mentions her nonexistent husband in a company meeting. But eagle-eyed Chad points out her lack of wedding ring. Panicked, Scottie creates a story about her unhappy marriage. Unfortunately for Scottie, her boss has a solution―a one-on-one session with the best marriage counselor in the Northeast, who happens to be her boss’s husband.

With no way out of her lie, Scottie agrees to see him. Frantic, she calls in help from her best friend who sets her up with his brother, an improv-obsessed millionaire.

Enter Wilder Wells. More than happy to take on the job, he teaches Scottie the main rule of improv: always say yes. But the rule backfires during the session when Wilder signs them up for an eight-day summer marriage camp with all of Scottie’s co-workers where she’ll have to share a cabin with her way-too-handsome fake husband.

Til Summer Do Us Part is Meghan Quinn’s latest book. Scottie feels left out as the only unmarried person in her office. To make it worse, she works with all men and they’re all kind of douchey. In a meeting where the talk turns to marriage, she lies and says that she’s married too. She didn’t mean to; it just slipped out. Her boss is married to a marriage counselor, and she insists that Scottie and her husband join everyone else at a weeklong couple’s retreat. Scottie needs to find a husband and fast.

Enter her best friend Mika’s little brother Wilder. Even though he’s only in his twenties, he’s retired after selling the app he developed for millions of dollars. He’s bored and looking for something to do. When Mika asks him to be Scottie’ s fake husband and go on the retreat, he jumps at the chance. He’s taking an improv class, and this will be the perfect chance to practice.

Predictably, Scottie and Wilder don’t get along at first. She’s a little up-tight and worried about embarrassing herself in from of her coworkers and Wilder takes his improvisation a little too far. This lead to hilarious banter between the two of them. I had tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard.

Fake dating/marriage and grumpy/sunshine are my favorite tropes, and Meghan Quinn has written them perfectly in Til Summer Do Us Part. She is the queen of banter, and I can’t wait to read more by her. This is my fifth of her over 75 books, so I have a lot of Meghan Quinn ahead of me to enjoy.

Audiobook Review: The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver

The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: August 5, 2025
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Eli Francis is stuck. Stuck in an assistant position at the online magazine Vent when he should be a writer. Stuck with a boss who dangles a promotion but would rather he just fetch the coffee. Stuck working alongside the ex who has had no trouble moving up at work…or moving on.

When Eli’s roommates push him to date so he can get over his ex once and for all, they set him up with Peter Park. Tall, handsome, and unbelievably awkward. The date is a complete disaster, and further proof to Eli that love isn’t for him. But when his boss overhears Eli recounting the catastrophic night, he suggests teaching Peter to be a better boyfriend through a series of simulated dates so he can write an article about it.

But Eli has other ideas…Eli plays along, pretending to write the article, while secretly interviewing Peter about growing up queer in the South and coming-of-age dating wise in adulthood. Eli hopes writing this sort of piece will finally get him the promotion he deserves. And in exchange, he will teach Peter how to be a better boyfriend.But the more time Eli spends with Peter, the closer they become, and the lines between what’s real and what’s fake begin to blur. Before long Eli is forced to face his greatest fears to become the writer he wants to be and secure the love he’s always needed.

The Build-A-Boyfriend Project follows Eli, a gay trans man who works for a San Francisco magazine writing puff pieces. He longs to write something more meaningful, but his boss rejects his ideas, wanting to keep the magazine light.

After a disastrous first date with Peter, a gay Korean man with no experience dating men, Eli decides to pitch an article about teaching Peter to be a good boyfriend while secretly writing a serious thought piece about Peter navigating life as a gay man within his Korean culture. He’s sure that his boss will want to publish it when he sees how good it is. He gets Peter to cooperate with the lessons for the article he’s supposed to be writing.

I love the fake dating trope and The-Build-A-Boyfriend Project is an original take on it. There are some funny moments because Peter is just so clueless. It also has more substance than a typical rom-com. I really enjoyed reading about Eli and Peter.

Recommended.

(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)

I’ve also reviewed I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver.

Book Review: The New Girl by Jesse Q. Sutanto

The New Girl by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 1, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Lia Setiawan has never really fit in. And when she wins a full ride to the prestigious Draycott Academy on a track scholarship, she’s determined to make it work even though she’s never felt more out of place.

But on her first day there she witnesses a girl being forcefully carried away by campus security. Her new schoolmates and teachers seem unfazed, but it leaves her unsure of what she’s gotten herself into.

And as she uncovers the secrets of Draycott, complete with a corrupt teacher, a golden boy who isn’t what he seems, and a blackmailer determined to get her thrown out, she’s not sure if she can trust anyone…especially when the threats against her take a deadly turn.

Lia Setiawan is the new girl at Draycott Academy, an elite boarding school. She’s there on a track scholarship and feels out of place amongst her uber rich classmates. On her first day she witnesses a student dragged away kicking and screaming by campus security. What is the truth behind this incident? What other secrets are students and teachers alike harboring at Draycott? Is Lia in over her head at her new school?

The New Girl is a YA thriller written by Jesse Q. Sutanto, the author of the Four Aunties series and the Vera Wong series. The New Girl is fairly serious, unlike Aunties and Vera, which have some comic relief. Like the Four Aunties series, Indonesian culture plays a part. Lia is Chinese Indonesian, which is a problem for her boyfriend’s parents, who are native Indonesian.

The New Girl was my book club’s August selection. I don’t want to delve into too much detail and risk spoilers, but I will say that none of us were completely satisfied with the book. The epilogue didn’t make sense. We also struggled with the fact that the person who did the big bad thing didn’t seem to feel any guilt around it and was just concerned with whether or not they were going to get caught.

I didn’t hate this book but I’m going to stick to Sutanto’s adult books – I think they are more to my taste.

Book Review: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
My rating: 4.75 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

The winner of the Booker Prize 2023 and a critically acclaimed national bestseller, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

Prophet Song is speculative fiction that takes place in Ireland. Eilish and Larry live normal middle-class lives until one day, the government, run by The National Alliance Party, declares an emergency. Her husband, a high-ranking unionist, is taken away by the government and Eilish has no idea where he is or what happened to him. Her oldest son is in danger of being drafted.

A rebel force rises to oppose the government and the unrest increases. A curfew is imposed. Life becomes bleak and dangerous. People are risking their lives to cross the border and get out of Ireland.

Not only is Eilish trying to protect her four children, but she is also caring for her elderly father who has dementia. If she wanted to leave it would be difficult. Should she even try?

Paul Lynch never states what the emergency is or what the ideology of either side actually is. This makes it easier to imagine that what the government is doing could happen anywhere. In fact, it’s currently beginning to happen in the United States, which makes this book even scarier. This also keeps the focus on the question of, “What would you do if you were put in this situation?” and not on how you feel about the specifics of what the government and rebels think.

A warning: Lynch does not use quotation marks or paragraph breaks. In general, I find a lack of punctuation pretentious and annoying. I’m sure he had his reasons, but I found it much easier to listen to the audiobook because of this.

Prophet Song was one of my book clubs’ pick for June. There was so much to discuss – we discussed it for the entire hour without even hardly referring to the host prepared questions. The conversation just flowed naturally. This is a book that stays with you.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Roots of the Guava Tree

The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia by Sonia Daccarett
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication Date: August 12, 2025
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Sonia Daccarett grew up with a Jewish mother and a Christian Palestinian father in Colombia during the drug-war 1980s. When she asks her parents questions about their family’s ethnicity and religion they answer evasively, defining their family religion and ethnicity as “nothing.” Grandparents and family members who speak Yiddish, Hebrew, and Arabic and fled from places called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Bethlehem, and the Ottoman Empire, does not sound like “nothing” to Sonia.

At the same time, Sonia grapples with her American education at school. She is both enchanted and challenged by the tropical landscape of her childhood in a remote suburb of Cali, which is rapidly changing as cocaine trafficking and drug cartels begin to dominate the city’s life.

As she tries to discover what her family is, Colombia begins unraveling around her through violence, kidnappings, and the death of acquaintances and friends. At the same time, her parents’ marriage and their personal identities are rocked by the faraway Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Soon, she will have to decide whether to stay in Colombia with her family or leave them behind to find the answers she seeks.

Sonia Darccarett’s memoir, The Roots of the Guava Tree, is about being the child of a Christan Palestinian father and a Jewish mother in Columbia. Both of her parents were humanists so this isn’t so much a book about having a dual identity and having to figure out how to meld them. It’s more a book about how she felt like she had no identity. Whenever she asked her parents about religion, they told her they had no religion and that she should never talk to anyone about religion because it would just cause problems. That was hard because almost all of her classmates in the English language school she attended were Catholic. They didn’t know she was half Jewish and said Anti-Semitic things around her. She struggled with feeling like she didn’t fit in.

Sonia’s parents were distant in other ways. Her dad preferred to spend his time in his study reading newspapers to spending time with the family. Her mother was a very serious, almost gloomy person. In their effort to shield Sonia from anything religious, they didn’t even let her attend her grandparents’ funerals because they would be religious ceremonies. It’s interesting that whenever Sonia asked about religion, they told her she could decide what she wanted to do when she was an adult but didn’t make any effort to teach about the religions they grew up with. She wondered often how she could make that choice with no information.

The Roots of the Guava Tree is an insightful memoir about growing up feeling like an outsider in your own country.

(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)

Book Review: Seven Empty Houses

Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: October 18, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin’s tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child’s first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents.

In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.

Seven Empty Houses is a short story collection. It was first published in Spanish in 2015. Short story collections are hard to review because most of the time, some stories are better than others. That’s the case here.

These stories are bizarre, in a disturbing way. In one of them, the grandparents are running around in the backyard naked, for reasons never made clear. In another, a mother makes her adult child drive her around to different houses that she breaks into just to have a look around and take a trinket or two.

Most of the stories were too unsettling for me but I did like the longest one in the collection, which follows the decline of a woman with dementia. I felt like the author did a great job getting inside the woman’s head and portraying her thoughts as she gets more and more confused.

This was my May book club pick. It made for a lively discussion because we all had different interpretations of what the stories meant. One thing we agreed on is that they were all weird!