#49 [2025/CBR17] Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah

I thought I'd been listening to Kristin Hannah's latest novel, Magic Hour, but now that I'm writing the review, I just realized it was written back in 2006--so, almost twenty years ago and definitely not her latest novel. I'm a little late to this party. I've read a number of Hannah's novels. Some of them I've really liked, and others I've found too contrived and I got annoyed. I was immediately drawn into this one, though, and I'm glad I read it.

A young, malnourished girl wanders into a small town in the Pacific Northwest, near Olympic National Forest. She is terrified, cannot talk, has unexplained injuries, and seems to be friends with a young wolf. The sheriff of the town is a 39-year-old woman, Ellie. They are able to capture the young girl, but they have no idea what to do with her. Ellie calls her younger sister, Julia, in Los Angeles for help.

Julia Cates is a renowned child psychiatrist who is dealing with her own demons. One of her teenage clients shot and killed some other children before killing herself. The families and the media are blaming her, and Julia has lost all of her clients. She is beginning to even doubt herself. But when she sees that little girl who needs so much help in order to not get lost forever in the system, she is determined to do everything she can.

Julia spends all of her time with the little girl they begin to call Alice. Slowly, Alice starts trusting Julia, and she makes great progress. Along with this main story, there is the somewhat strained relationship between Ellie and Julia, and the possible love connections for both Julia and Ellie. For me, the main driver of the story was Alice and her recovery. Although I also appreciated seeing the sisters understand each other better, the love stories didn't feel necessary for the book. 

***SPOILERS***

After a heyday of publicity when Alice was first found, no one has come forward to claim her. The more Julia works with Alice, the more she knows she could never leave her. She asks her attorney to start working on adopting her. Suddenly, George enters the picture. He is Alice's father, just recently released from prison on appeal for the murder of his wife and daughter. He is rich and a little selfish, but he is no murderer. He's been unjustly imprisoned for years and thought his wife and daughter were gone forever.

The courts decided that Alice needed to go with her father, and in a scene that had me bawling, her father takes her away from Julia. Fortunately for Julia and Alice, George quickly decides he can't parent Alice and he brings her back. 

***END SPOILERS***

The story of the lost little girl coming out of the woods and her slow recovery immediately grabbed my attention. This was not a hard book to read. At times this book may have felt more like a fairy tale than something that could happen in real life, but I enjoyed it. 

#48 [2025/CBR17] Replaceable You by Mary Roach

Although it's been a number of years since I've read a book by Mary Roach, I have read quite a few. Mary Roach writes non-fiction--digging into whatever topic seems to catch her fancy. Quite often this topic is at least a little bit taboo. She's written a book about sex (Bonk), death (Stiff), and ghosts (Spook). When I was told her latest book was coming out, I immediately put a hold on it at the library. 

Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025) is Roach's latest book. I thought it was interesting, and I definitely learned some things, but I didn't find it quite as readable as I have some of her other books. I have discovered about myself that whatever subject I'm learning about, I prefer to really dig into it, understand it fully, and explore every corner. Replaceable You (and many of Roach's books) keeps it fast paced, jumping from topic to topic with witticisms and little jokes. It can be fun, but I found myself getting frustrated. 

Roach tackles a number of different subjects in Replaceable You, including: the history of building fake noses, skin grafting, using pig organs for humans, growing organs, repurposing sexual organs, prosthetic legs, the iron lung, ostomy bags, hair transplants, and more. The overarching theme is an acknowledgement of how complex the human body is, and how difficult a time we have when we try to create part of it ourselves. It is amazing what some doctors have accomplished, but I'm a little afraid that we're walking ourselves right into a harrowing science-fiction movie.

My favorite parts of the book were when Roach showed how the research affected people personally. I enjoyed learning about the woman who wanted a prosthetic over her real foot because her original was so damaged. I also found the chapter on ostomy bags pretty interesting. I had never really thought about the stigma and challenge of trying to live your life with an ostomy bag. Finally, the chapter on the woman who had used an iron lung at night for most of her life was both fascinating and unexpectedly heart wrenching. 

There was a fair bit of information about the use of animals in all this research, including growing pig organs for humans and more. I am not against all animal testing. I realize that it has helped countless people's lives, but it still makes me uncomfortable, and I didn't enjoy reading about some of it. I also occasionally had a hard time following some of the more advanced research. Again, I felt like I needed more explanation to really understand what was going on and how much more needed to be done before it became something that was medically useable. 

Fans of Mary Roach will almost certainly enjoy this book as well, although I didn't find it as readable as some of her others.

#47 [2025/CBR17] The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden

I needed a book to listen to for my commute, and I needed it immediately. Somehow, The Wife Upstairs (2020) by Freida McFadden grabbed my eye when I searched available audio books at my library. I was not familiar with McFadden, but she has written a large number of successful thrillers, and she seems to have quite a following.

Sylvia Robinson is not in a good place in her life when the book begins. She has just lost her job after being unfairly accused of stealing, she is behind in her rent, and her ex has been harassing her with nonstop phone calls and unwanted visits. So, when Adam Barnett, a good-looking young writer, who lives in a beautiful suburban house outside of New York City offers her a job, she doesn't really have a choice but to accept.

Sylvia moves in and becomes the daytime caretaker of Victoria Barnett. Victoria is Adam's wife, and she has recently fallen down the stairs, leaving her with no control over one side of her body, bad facial scarring, and difficulty speaking. Before the accident, Victoria had been a nurse practitioner. She had been pregnant, and she lost the baby when she fell down the stairs.

Adam gives Sylvia Victoria's old laptop to use, which, conveniently, is where Victoria kept a diary of her life. Victoria tells Sylvia "avocado," which is what the diary is saved under because she wants Sylvia to read the diary. As Sylvia cares for Victoria, she continues to read her diary. It tells the story of a meet cute between Victoria and Adam in the emergency room in New York City. The two begin dating, and the relationship grows quickly. However, the closer they get, the more Adam shows his true colors, which includes jealous and controlling behavior. Victoria always forgives Adam, though, because he is also very good in a number of ways.

After Victoria and Adam are married, Adam buys the giant house way out in suburbia, far away from everything. He does not talk about it with Victoria beforehand. Things get worse and worse, with Adam taking away all of Victoria's credit cards and giving her a small, weekly allowance. She's not allowed to go to the gym or even any classes because he believes that she'll be meeting other men there.

By the time we get to the end of the novel, there are a couple of twists and turns in the plot. In the end everything is all explained.

I did not like this novel. It sounded like an exciting idea, but there were a lot of plot holes. I spent a lot of time frustrated while listening to this book. Sure, there were some interesting reveals, but when the plot feels so contrived, the reveals don't feel earned. Most obvious of all, I can't imagine anyone handing over their wife's laptop--with nothing deleted--to an employee that they'd just hired. Sylvia's job did not require a laptop; it's probably something she should have supplied for herself. Why couldn't Sylvia have found a hardcover diary or something? That would have been more believable.

This book also touched on my pet peeve because Sylvia's diary did not resemble how normal people write diaries. At least it only included information that Sylvia would know, but it was still written in great detail and with dialogue like a novel. And although it made the novel more suspenseful, it doesn't make sense that it would take Sylvia months to read that diary--especially when the information was obviously so important to her. Finally, I found it annoying that in a book that delves into controlling and abusive behavior, the author has the ex-boyfriend who has been harassing the protagonist turn into the savior. That's not usually how those things go.

In the end, I think these types of genre thrillers are not good book choices for me. If you look at the Amazon reviews, many people loved this book. Occasionally, I will enjoy them if they're very well written--like Gone Girl. But more often, I find them too unrealistic. This also happened when I read The Silent Patient, which I found on some kind of best of list and could not figure out why people liked it.

So, not for me, although plenty of people have enjoyed it if it's your thing.

#46 [2025/CBR17] Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

CBR17Bingo: "TBR" because after this book was recommended to me, it took me months to finally get around to reading it.

I am lucky enough to have access to some therapy through work because my job is inherently stressful. Recently I've been struggling more with stress and anxiety, and my therapist recommended that I read Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (2011) by Kristin Neff.

I wasn't too sure about this book at first. Neff started out by saying, when you feel badly about yourself, you pick apart other people in order to make yourself feel better. I had trouble relating to this. I really do look for the best in people; I even look for the good qualities in people I don't like. I was starting to think that this book wasn't for me, but then Neff brought up perfectionism. She wrote that no one is perfect, and no one needs to be perfect. Messing up is just a part of being human. Now, this is not the first I've heard this kind of thing, but this time it kind of hit me and I almost felt a release: like I could let go and stop trying. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. I can't release a lifetime of tension simply by reading a couple of words, but it does give me something to think about and it helps me relax when I get too stressed about how things will turn out.

Another almost moment of release occurred when Neff wrote that everyone suffers, it is what makes us human, and brings us together. I spend a lot of effort railing against unfair suffering on behalf of me, my friends, my family and the world, as well as trying to guard myself against it. But this is an impossible task and only causes me additional suffering. It was a good reminder.

Neff's book argues that for many years, psychologists have focused on improving self esteem to better people's lives. But self-esteem isn't what makes people happy or compassionate. A better option is to focus on self-compassion. Her arguments make sense. First you want to be aware of your feelings and allow yourself to feel them. And then you can actively give yourself compassion for whatever suffering you're feeling in the moment. It might help to pretend that a friend of yours is in the same situation, and think of what you would say to them. 

Neff references some studies showing why self-compassion is the best mindset for any number of variables. If people wonder whether focusing on self-compassion would make someone not want to work hard or become lazy, the opposite has been shown in studies. You don't have to beat yourself up in order to succeed. People who are happy and not afraid of making mistakes tend to have a lot of motivation.

Although this book sometimes felt a little too general or too repetitive, I'm glad I read it. It has changed my perspective in some ways, and I will try to keep it in mind moving forward.

#45 [2025/CBR17] Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

CBR17Bingo: "Borders" - because even though bacteria do not respect borders, whether you contract or can fight off tuberculosis depends primarily on where you live.

I know tuberculosis still exists in the United States because many years ago I had a patient cough in my face and later found out she suffered from tuberculosis. I knew just enough to be kind of concerned until I got tested and was negative. My only other knowledge of tuberculosis is that Doc Holliday suffered from it in Tombstone. It goes without saying that I learned a lot while reading this book.

I know John Green from "the kids cancer book" The Fault in Our Stars, which I was very impressed by. I have also experienced Green's non-fiction writing in The Anthropocene Reviewed. So, when I saw he had another non-fiction book, I thought it was worth a try. I listened to this on Audiobook.

"Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past."

For a long time John Green was like me. If he thought about tuberculosis at all, it was something from decades and centuries ago. But then he found himself in a tuberculosis hospital in Sierra Leone, and that's where he met Henry. Henry was a teenager, but he looked much younger. He had been sick most of  his life, and was dying of tuberculosis. But he was a smart, optimistic, and likeable kid. And he just happened to have the same name as Green's son.

According to the internet, 1.25 million people died of tuberculosis in 2023 (down from 2022); 565 of them were from the United States. I had no idea of the human toll that tuberculosis continues to take on people around the world, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa. It's hard to even wrap my brain around that large of a number succumbing to a disease that is treatable. And tuberculosis is an excruciating way to die: coughing and choking until your body can't hold out any longer. It is just so much suffering.

Green mentions a number of times that the cure for tuberculosis is where the disease is not. And the disease is where the cure is not. And that's the simple reason for why we have not eradicated tuberculosis. With growing antibiotic resistance, eradication has become harder, but it would still be possible if the developed world had different priorities.

Green writes about the history of tuberculosis, how its perception changed throughout the years, how ubiquitous it was in Europe and America in the 1800's, and how a cure was eventually developed in the 1950's. These chapters are interspersed with chapters of Henry, his early life, the death of his sister for want of a simple operation, how the civil war in Sierra Leone tore his stable life apart, and his subsequent sickness with tuberculosis. Green goes into the different treatments Henry has tried, how difficult they were on his body, and how they didn't work because he did not have access to the test that could have told him he had drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis became something of an obsession for Green, and he is committed to breaking down the barriers for those in need accessing the care and medications required. This book is part of that mission, educating anyone willing to read it that tuberculosis is still a very real problem no matter how little it affects our lives here in the United States.

"We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth's atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering."

"It reminded me, that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We an do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistic or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world." 

I found this book interesting, moving, and enlightening. Highly recommended. 

#44 [2025/CBR17] First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison

I found First-Time Caller (2025) by B.K. Borison on my library's list of popular and available audio books. This one sounded cute and I started it with high hopes. And it started out really well. Unfortunately, I kind of lost interest in the middle and the end of the book. It wasn't bad, but the characters didn't seem real, and I didn't find it very romantic.

Aiden Valentine is the host of Heartstrings, a call-in radio show where he dispenses relationship advice. Although he's not really qualified for this kind of thing on any level, he likes to talk to people, and his name fits the bill. However, lately, Aiden has become more cynical. He's tired of hearing petty complaints from people in unhappy relationships.

Then one night a young girl named Maya calls. She says her mother doesn't date, and she's worried about her. Lucie Stone, finding her daughter up and on the phone in the middle of the night gets on the line. And she and Aiden start talking. These first couple chapters were my favorite in the book. Aiden and Lucie have great chemistry, and it was fun to listen to.

When Aiden and Lucie's conversation goes viral, the show decides to have Lucie on as a recurring guest as they find dates for her. Lucie begins this journey with high expectations, but the first couple of dates are remarkably bad. At the same time, she's spending more and more time with Aiden. It is inevitable that at some point, they have to address the growing attraction. But Aiden grew up with a mother who was constantly fighting cancer, and it messed with his ability to have relationships. He keeps pushing Lucie away with flimsy excuses that only hurt her.

Like I said before, I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. Unfortunately, it let me down a bit as I read. My biggest complaint is the relationship between Aiden and Lucie. I felt like Lucie was constantly putting herself out there, and Aiden would alternate between pushing her away and being weirdly touchy feely for simple coworkers. Honestly, it kind of creeped me out. 

In addition, the characters didn't feel real to me. Lucie is a mechanic, which is a very interesting job for a woman. But there was nothing on how she became a mechanic or even got interested in cars. She seems to have zero interest in cars outside of her job. Also, her garage sends her out with a tow truck one time in this book, and she just happens to pick up Aiden's car, which just happened to break down. I'm pretty sure mechanics do not routinely also become tow truck drivers. Maybe in tiny towns, but this takes place in Baltimore. Lucie's daughter, Maya, also felt more like a mascot than a real daughter. 

Finally, and I am nitpicking here. Lucie is a single mother who works full time and is too busy for anything for herself. Yet she suddenly spends hours night after night talking at a radio station. I hope she was getting paid for this because her time commitment was enormous. When was she getting any sleep?

The beginning of this book set my expectations very high, but I was let down in the end. This was not a bad romance, but I got frustrated in the middle and it left me wanting more. 

#43 [2025/CBR17] Dream State by Eric Puchner

Dream State (2025) by Eric Puchner is another book that I can't remember how I discovered. I don't know the author, and I've never read another book by him. But at some point I saw it, and it seemed interesting enough to put on hold at the library. I enjoyed reading this book. Both the people and their problems felt real, and it kept my attention throughout. Spoilers ahead.

The book begins when a young woman, Cece, comes to Salish, Montana, a small touristy town, in order to finish the preparations for her wedding. Cece is marrying Charlie, and the wedding is taking place at his family's summer cottage in Salish. While there, Cece meets Charlie's best friend and old roommate, Garrett, whom Charlie has asked to be the officiant at their wedding. Garrett has been through some struggles. He had something of a breakdown after the death of one of his best friend's in college. He quit school and is working as a baggage handler at the local airport. In addition, Garrett's father is dying of cancer.

Cece is initially put off by Garrett, but they spend some time together before Charlie comes up to meet her and something happens. Despite most of the wedding party getting Norovirus and whatever deep connection Cece and Garrett have, the wedding goes on as planned. Afterwards, Cece is too ill to fly home. And then she never leaves. She leaves Charlie for his best friend, Garrett, staying and building a life with him.

The book continues to follow Cece, Garrett, and Charlie as they have kids and grow older. After many years, Charlie forgives Cece and Garrett for the betrayal and loss. The two families spend a lot of time during the summers together in Salish. But Charlie still has a strong underlying layer of grief and want when it comes to Cece. He may see her as the one that ruined his life because his relationships are not successful after her.

And unlike the movies, Cece's life did not turn into happily ever after when she married Garrett. She loves him, but they struggled for money. Also, Garrett spends a huge chunk of his time up in the mountains studying wolverines. She had bigger dreams than waitressing in a small town with life a constant struggle.

    She'd always imagined she was special, destined to do something original with her life, maybe even becoming someone great, and this, ironically, was what had drawn her to Garrett in the first place. Running away with him, as far as she'd thought about it consciously, was meant to be part of  this becoming. And yet what had she become?

As they grow older, the children have their own lives and problems as the adults start facing some of the problems of old age. In addition, the summers in Salish become more and more unbearable as climate change causes heat and smoke from fires to increase exponentially.

What I liked most about this book was how Puchner wrote realistic relationships. Everyone in this book makes a mistake at some point, but they do their best and continue living. The relationship between Garrett and Charlie and Cece and Charlie was especially interesting after their betrayal. It was even something to see how it affected their children. In addition, Garrett and Cece really felt like a good, loving couple, but they had their struggles. I loved reading about the little moments that made their lives better. Recommended.