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Susan Choi's Globe-Spanning Saga of Family Secrets
A quirky crime duo, Susan Choi's latest, and more ...
BookBrowse Highlights
Hello Readers!
This week in First Impressions, reviewers jump on board with a new crime-solving duo in Liza Tully’s The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant.
Our Editor’s Choice review covers National Book Award Winner Susan Choi’s Flashlight, a globe-spanning saga of history, family secrets, and memory that book clubs will love.
What’s really going on with Van Eyck’s mysterious Arnolfini portrait? Take a closer look in our “beyond the book” article for Nell Stevens’ The Original.
Plus, get great nonfiction recommendations from BookBrowsers in the community forum, check out current and upcoming online discussions, and puzzle out our latest Wordplay.
Thanks for reading,
The BookBrowse Team
First Impressions
Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on one recently released title.
The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant by Liza Tully
“Olivia Blunt is bored in her research job and applies for the job of assistant to Aubrey Merritt, the great detective. Olivia is young, carefree, overly confident in her abilities and very inexperienced. Aubrey is wealthy, demanding, impatient, critical and hard to please. What could go wrong? Olivia finally gets the chance to work on a case when Aubrey, who insists on being called Merritt, is asked to investigate a death that has been ruled a suicide. The pair heads to a luxury resort on Lake Champlain to investigate…The chemistry between the characters is fun and intriguing. I am eager to see how the relationship grows and changes.” —Ruthie A. (Jersey City, NJ) |  |
“I will definitely recommend this book for the Mystery Discussion group I facilitate at the local library when it comes out, and I look forward to sequels!” —Ellen G. (Treynor, IA)
“The book reminded me of a good Agatha Christie mystery with all the clues falling into place in a very orderly fashion at the end. Anyone who likes murder mysteries should love this book and its exciting new crime-solving team.” —Linda M. (Ocala, FL)
Editor’s Choice
Flashlight by Susan Choi
In Susan Choi's Flashlight, ten-year-old Louisa, the daughter of a Japanese-born Korean man and a white woman from the American Midwest, is found unconscious on a beach in Japan—her father, who was walking with her through the dark, flashlight in hand, is soon presumed drowned. This event, with its unknowns, reverberates forward, through the lives of Louisa and her mother Anne, both perceptibly and imperceptibly, linked to the past in ways they can't imagine. Despite its premise, Flashlight is less suspense-driven than a reader might expect, and more closely resembles straightforward literary fiction than Choi's National Book Award-winning Trust Exercise (2019). But it's a big swing with bold implications. … continued Review by Elisabeth Cook |  |
Beyond the Book
Jan van Eyck's Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (1434)
In The Original by Nell Stevens, Grace Inderwick, who lives a privileged but dreary existence with her aunt in England at the turn of the 20th century, dreams of making an independent life for herself as an art forger. In her endeavors to do so, one of the paintings she copies is Jan van Eyck's Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (1434). The painting is known for its photographic precision, as well as the mystery of the story behind it. Is the man, purported to be Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini, really Arnolfini? Is the woman in the painting Arnolfini's wife? His fiancée? Is she pregnant, or is that just the way she's holding her gown? … continued Article by Elisabeth Cook |  |
BookBrowse Community Forum
Join us for lively conversation any day of the week in the BookBrowse community forum. In addition to hosting book club discussions and Ask the Author interviews, this is a space for our members to share their favorite reads and discuss all things books. Anyone can browse the forum, so please check it out! |  |
What are three nonfiction books you absolutely loved and would recommend? See others’ replies to this question, and chime in on this topic and many more.
Discussions
Discussions are open to all, so please join us! If you would like to receive a message when a particular discussion opens, you can sign up for a one-time notification. You can also find inspiration for your book club among our more than 200 past discussions. Currently, we’re discussing Before Dorothy by Hazel Gaynor and Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall, among many other books. |  |
Later this month, we feature Kate Heartfield’s The Tapestry of Time and Kate Atkinson’s Death at the Sign of the Rook.
Wordplay
Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a one-year membership to BookBrowse!
"E H L the B"
Click for the answer to the last Wordplay (C K the C), and a detailed breakdown of its meaning and history.
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