May Book Choices

Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos

5 minutes for books review: Pen, Will, and Cat are college buddies. We get to know them through flashes back to their college and post-college days while simultaneously knowing Pen and Will in the present, as they return to the alma mater for a reunion after getting a mysterious note from Cat. They’ve all been estranged for years. We aren’t sure why, but they have the kind of friendship that when Cat sends an email out of the blue, Pen and Will both show up.

The way the story is told is interesting, in a 3rd person limited omniscient way. It’s perfect, because we know what Pen is thinking, and we can also sense the way things are with Will, even though we are never told. We see what is obvious to us, but obscured to them.

I loved de los Santos’ beautiful imagery (“The moon was high and its light didn’t clarify, but stretched tightly over everything like the skin on hot milk” p70 ARC); her characters who I wanted to befriend and love and hate and know completely; and the story which was full of wonderful character-driven suspense as we wonder what happened to Cat and what will happen with Will and Pen.

A perfect ending — not predictable but lovely, with just the right amount of dramatic tension.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jann-Philipp Sendker

A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

The Time In Between by Maria Duenas

The inspiring international bestseller of a seemingly ordinary woman who uses her talent and courage to transform herself first into a prestigious couturier and then into an undercover agent for the Allies during World War II.

At age twelve, Sira Quiroga sweeps the atelier floors where her single mother works as a seamstress. At fourteen, she quietly begins her own apprenticeship. By her early twenties she has learned the ropes of the business and is engaged to a modest government clerk. But everything changes when two charismatic men burst unexpectedly into her neatly mapped-out life: an attractive salesman and the father she never knew.

An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski

“Excuse me lady, do you have any spare change? I am hungry.”

When I heard him, I didn’t really hear him. His words were part of the clatter, like a car horn or someone yelling for a cab. They were, you could say, just noise—the kind of nuisance New Yorkers learn to tune out. So I walked right by him, as if he wasn’t there.

But then, just a few yards past him, I stopped.

And then—and I’m still not sure why I did this—I came back.

When Laura Schroff first met Maurice on a New York City street corner, she had no idea that she was standing on the brink of an incredible and unlikely friendship that would inevitably change both their lives. As one lunch at McDonald’s with Maurice turns into two, then into a weekly occurrence that is fast growing into an inexplicable connection, Laura learns heart-wrenching details about Maurice’s horrific childhood.