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Hana Khan Carries On by
Uzma JalaluddinSales are slow at Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, the only halal restaurant in the close-knit Golden Crescent neighbourhood. Hana waitresses there part time, but what she really wants is to tell stories on the radio. If she can just outshine her fellow intern at the city radio station, she may have a chance at landing a job. In the meantime, Hana pours her thoughts and dreams into a podcast, where she forms a lively relationship with one of her listeners. But soon she’ll need all the support she can get: a new competing restaurant, a more upscale halal place, is about to open in the Golden Crescent, threatening Three Sisters.
When her mysterious aunt and her teenage cousin arrive from India for a surprise visit, they draw Hana into a long-buried family secret. A hate-motivated attack on their neighbourhood complicates the situation further, as does Hana’s growing attraction for Aydin, the young owner of the rival restaurant—who might not be a complete stranger after all.
As life on the Golden Crescent unravels, Hana must learn to use her voice, draw on the strength of her community and decide what her future should be.Why you should read it: Oh, this book is WONDERFUL. I kept tripping over my feelings while I listened to it—just fine one second, blinking through tears the next, as the emotional power of the story snuck up on me. They weren't sad tears either. Just a lot of excellent and overwhelming emotional moments. I love a story about powerful and complicated family connections, and a heartfelt celebration of culture and heritage, and this book has both. The romance arc was a lot of fun, but not at all the point of the story—I loved how it fit into place without ever distracting from all of the other deep emotional truths Hana is figuring out.
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold by
Toshikazu KawaguchiIn a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer's, see their sister one last time, and meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .Why you should read it: Apparently this novel was a play first, and it's interesting how much you can tell in the way the dialog and blocking are constructed. Not in a bad way: it makes for a vivid ambiance, that feels very different from most of the fiction I read, and I enjoyed it immensely. The characters feel very real and well-developed despite the incredibly short length of this book, and while some of them broke my heart, I loved getting to know them all.
The central magical pretense of the story—that customers of this coffee shop can travel back through time in this one very specific, very limited way, dictated by several unbendable rules—is never explained or justified, and I loved that too. We're invited into this world and told, "here's the one thing you need to believe," and it's impossible not to believe it when immersed in the lives of these characters.
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The Last Thing He Told Me by
Laura DaveBefore Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.
Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.Why you should read it: I'm not a big reader of mysteries, but I enjoyed the hell out of this book. Well-paced, beautiful prose, and compelling characters that I spent the whole book rooting for. I'm a sucker for complicated family dynamics, and this book in particular I picked up because I was fascinated to see how the protective-mama-bear dynamic would play out between Hannah and her husband's teenage daughter Bailey. Definitely recommend, it was a good read.
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