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The Sign for Home by Blair Fell
Arlo Dilly is young, handsome, and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah’s Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none.
And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life—a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever.
Or so Arlo thought.
After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again.
No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life’s joyful possibilities.
Why you should read it: This was an intense ride from start to finish, and it's brilliantly crafted. A lot of the subject matter is so far outside my lived experience that I'm ill-equipped to tell how accurate it is, but it felt incredibly informative (especially about the logistics of tactile and haptic signing) and without ever dropping me out of the narrative. Strong character voices really stand out for me in the two POV's, occasionally getting so realistic as to be downright uncomfortable. It's a powerful story, with difficult subject matter, and it gave me a lot to unpack. My one warning is that the cover design (and to some extent the marketing copy) is incredibly misleading. This is not a fluffy romance novel. There's a love story in there, but it's a relatively small piece of a much larger, heavier narrative, and I would not describe anything about this book as fluffy. Hopefully, if you know this going in, the cognitive dissonance won't ruin the read for you—because it truly is a wonderful book.
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Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake. Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home—she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business—someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Why you should read it: I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It defies genre a bit—it was described to me as a heist story, and I don't think that's right, but I also can't think of what to call it that might be closer—and the way the story is framed is a fascinating exercise in unreliable narrators. The writing was excellent, the pacing tight, the characters fascinating. All-in-all a riveting read.
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One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that.
But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane.
All hard edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on her train every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one—namely, displaced in time from the 1970s—she thinks maybe it’s time to start believing.
Why you should read it: This was very fun and very sweet, with a wide cast of quirky characters that felt delightful to spend time with. I knew almost nothing going in, beyond a baseline confidence that I would enjoy the author's writing style, so watching this mystery unfold, realizing the whole premise was steeped in magic... I enjoyed it enormously. A lovely read.
(One caveat if you're the type to check content tags before reading a book: the author describes this book as containing a scene with "semi-public" sex, but you should know going in, there's nothing semi-public about it. The sex takes place in a fully public setting. And if that's going to squick you, now you know to brace yourself, you're welcome.)
The Sign for Home by Blair Fell
Arlo Dilly is young, handsome, and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah’s Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none.
And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life—a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever.
Or so Arlo thought.
After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again.
No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life’s joyful possibilities.
Why you should read it: This was an intense ride from start to finish, and it's brilliantly crafted. A lot of the subject matter is so far outside my lived experience that I'm ill-equipped to tell how accurate it is, but it felt incredibly informative (especially about the logistics of tactile and haptic signing) and without ever dropping me out of the narrative. Strong character voices really stand out for me in the two POV's, occasionally getting so realistic as to be downright uncomfortable. It's a powerful story, with difficult subject matter, and it gave me a lot to unpack. My one warning is that the cover design (and to some extent the marketing copy) is incredibly misleading. This is not a fluffy romance novel. There's a love story in there, but it's a relatively small piece of a much larger, heavier narrative, and I would not describe anything about this book as fluffy. Hopefully, if you know this going in, the cognitive dissonance won't ruin the read for you—because it truly is a wonderful book.
- — - — - — - — -
Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake. Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home—she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business—someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Why you should read it: I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It defies genre a bit—it was described to me as a heist story, and I don't think that's right, but I also can't think of what to call it that might be closer—and the way the story is framed is a fascinating exercise in unreliable narrators. The writing was excellent, the pacing tight, the characters fascinating. All-in-all a riveting read.
- — - — - — - — -
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that.
But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane.
All hard edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on her train every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one—namely, displaced in time from the 1970s—she thinks maybe it’s time to start believing.
Why you should read it: This was very fun and very sweet, with a wide cast of quirky characters that felt delightful to spend time with. I knew almost nothing going in, beyond a baseline confidence that I would enjoy the author's writing style, so watching this mystery unfold, realizing the whole premise was steeped in magic... I enjoyed it enormously. A lovely read.
(One caveat if you're the type to check content tags before reading a book: the author describes this book as containing a scene with "semi-public" sex, but you should know going in, there's nothing semi-public about it. The sex takes place in a fully public setting. And if that's going to squick you, now you know to brace yourself, you're welcome.)
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