by Audra H. Anders for The Aha! Connection
I think by now everyone knows I love to read. Seems like my reading is more sporadic the last few years but I’ve been reading a lot more consistently in 2024 and wanted to share thoughts on the last three books I’ve read…including one that made me mad and I can’t stop thinking about it.
#1. The Covenant of Water
I’ve already mentioned that this is probably going to end up on my top 3 favorite books ever….even if I live to be 100! It is a MASTERPIECE. I can’t recommend it enough….it is so so so so so good. I chose this book because I LOVED the author’s prior book and he waited TEN years to write this one!
Here’s the Amazon description:
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret read more.
#2. All That is Mine I Carry With Me
I chose this book because Landay also wrote Defending Jacob. What a THRILLER/PAGE TURNER and the Apple TV Limited Series was excellent! All That is Mine I Carry With Me wasn’t in my opinion as amazing as Defending Jacob but it was still really good. You don’t find out “whodunnit” until the last chapter!
Here’s the Amazon description:
A mother vanished. A father presumed guilty. There is no proof. There are no witnesses. For the children, there is only doubt. From the bestselling author of Defending Jacob. . . .read more
#3. The Tearsmith
This is the one that made me so mad. It’s an International Young Adult Best Seller, originally written in Italian and about to be a Netflix show. All good reasons to choose this book, right? Maybe because I’m not YOUNG I shouldn’t have such high expectations of an YA book….but I don’t think that is necessarily fair because I’ve simply devoured and loved many YA articles well into my Middle Ages. I mean, The Fault in Our Stars is one of my favorite books ever.
Why did The Tearsmith make me mad? Mainly because whoever translated it into English was lazy. They moved the setting to Alabama (from ITALY!) and made so many errors by doing this. I was born and raised in Alabama so maybe I’m biased but the lazy errors simply irritate me. More laziness was found throughout the book in the types of drinks, food, the universities in Alabama, the way we spell color not colour etc. I don’t know if the original version was as long as the English version or not but OMG…..the narrator takes FOREVER in her long long long descriptions. I found myself skipping pages and I am quite certain I didn’t miss a thing. The plot is really good actually but could have been told in half the time and the translators really let down the original author. If others have read this book I’d love to know your thoughts so please email me! Meanwhile I still plan to watch the first episode on Netflix when it comes out in April….hopefully it will be better than the English translation of the book!
Here’s the Amazon description:
The bestselling international sensation, coming soon to Netflix, now in English for the first time—a dark, sexy, haunting novel of two very damaged teens who are taken in by the same family and forced to reckon with a destructive love that could be the undoing of them both. Read more
