September Reading Recs Recap!
- Patricia Leslie
- Oct 3
- 4 min read
Another month of great reading! I post my weekly reading recs on Facebook and Instagram.
September Reading Recs Recap!
Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods
Well, I loved “After the Forest”, Kell Woods' debut novel, and I possibly enjoyed this one even more.
Woods is a wonderful storyteller and her second novel, certainly did not let me down. She has a knack for merging fairytales and retelling them in an original way weaving them into well-researched historical fiction as she goes. Such brilliant writing!
If you love stories of love, betrayal, folklore and adventure, wrapped up in history and reimagined fairytales, you need to read, “Upon a Starlit Tide”.
Learn more about Kell Woods and her writing kellwoods.com.au
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The Wedding People by Alison Espach
The Wedding People is a witty novel about best-laid plans. Lila’s plans to marry and spend a week celebrating the upcoming nuptials with her family and friends at the fancy Cornwall Inn on Rhode Island. Phoebe Stone, divorced and not coping well, has less salubrious plans. The only guest at the Inn not part of the wedding, she is the ultimate outsider. A position she’s used to but soon changes as she is drawn into Lila’s world.
Alison Espach weaves satire, drama and humour into a story that deals with wedding plan issues, dysfunctional families, and mental health.
Lila appreciates the objective friendship and wisdom that the older Phoebe provides. Phoebe finds purpose outside of her old stale life as she grows closer to Lila. She connects with Lila’s family in a way she didn’t with her own. And has some fun along the way.
I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Phoebe’s concerns and misgiving about change, disappointment, and taking risks connect on various levels. It’s a light read with a powerful message.
Hilarious and moving, The Wedding People is an irresistible novel about love, friendship, dysfunctional families, and the unexpected paths that lead to happiness.
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The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer.
This novel is about love and loneliness, friendship, death and grieving, and the courage to take a risk or two and surpass them all. Clover is a death doula. Someone who helps others through the last stage of life so that they can die, if not always peacefully, at least not alone. Clover’s relationship with death started early, but rather be hurt by it, she comes to learn and reach an understanding of its inevitability. She studies its meaning, processes, and the rituals different cultures attach to it.
As a doula, Clover continues to study death through the keeping of notebooks containing her clients last words. They encompass advice given, regrets acknowledged, and confessions shared. Clover uses this collective wisdom to help her manage her own life. A quiet, withdrawn persons, used to containing her emotions to benefit her clients’ journeys, she has only one or two friends. People she’s known since childhood. Clover has a good relationship with death, its life she finds difficult.
A spanner is thrown into her orderly, if somewhat cluttered life with a new neighbour and a new client. From each she learns acceptance and the need to take risks if she wants to lead a more fulfilled life. Death may be her calling but its not done a lot for her social life.
I enjoyed this novel (finished it in one evening). It gently opens conversations about death and life. Through the stories of Clover and her grandfather, her latest client, Claudia, and the determination of new friends, we learn the importance and worth of being brave and putting yourself out there.
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The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura
(translated from Japanese by Yuka Maeno)
Similar style of story to Before the Coffee gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. In The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop at a certain time of year, people are chosen/invited to the mystical, “Sakura” bookshop. Each person must be reading the exact same passage of the exact same book, chosen by the bookshop attendant and her long-haired calico cat. At that time, the bookshop appears beneath the fantastical vanishing cherry blossom tree, and the person finds themselves entering the magical space.
In Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s stories, the characters go back in time, and Asakura has a similar concept though time and place in the Sakura Bookshop are more fluid.
These stories aren’t for everyone. I find them hard to get into at first but am usually drawn in enough to read past the hurdles with writing style and get right into the story. The characters are what saves the story. They are interesting and developed enough to relate to. Once you move through each of their bookshop experiences, you realise there is some connection (though it is somewhat loose).
The whole concept is based around the theme of books being doorways into the unknown. Using this concept, the author explores family dysfunction, ageing, and grief through the experience of each of the characters.
During their visit to the bookshop, each character is given the opportunity to address something from their early relationships; to see the other person and/or situation from a more objective viewpoint afforded by the passage of time.
If you want to try something a little different then I recommend looking at this one. If you’re a fan of Before the Coffee gets Cold, you’ll probably quite enjoy the read.
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