Welcome to this months #BuddyRead episode. What's a Buddy Read? Co-host Classy and I select a title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both. Afterwards we come together to chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo.  We also get to talk about this book during a live chat at in the Shelf Addiction Official Facebook group, so you'll want to join us there for the next book club!
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In this episode, we're discussing Long Bright River, by Liz Moore. Be sure to check out the video version of this pod and watch the exclusive After Show on Patreon.

​Check out previous Buddy Read titles here!

This spoiler-free review was possible courtesy of William Morrow. In just a minute or two, you'll know what I thought of this book! 

Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: March 10, 2020 
Format: Paperback ARC
Pages: 384
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 bookmarks

Synopsis: 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Don't miss the latest Shelf Byte episode! You'll hear a spoiler-free book or audiobook review in just a few minutes!
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Today, I'm sharing my thoughts on the controversial title American Dirt. If you've read it, comment below and let me know what you thought of the book itself. If you want to know my unfiltered POV on the ins and outs of drama surrounding the book and author, become a Shelf Addiction Patreon member and you'll gain access to this exclusive content and more. 

Here are a few additional articles for reference regarding American Dirt.

• Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature
• ‘American Dirt’ is a novel about Mexicans by a writer who isn’t. For some, that’s a problem.
• Will the American Dirt Fiasco Change American Publishing?

Publisher: Berkley Publishing
Release Date: February 13, 2018
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Source: Publicist/Publisher
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
​Rating: 4 bookmarks

​Synopsis:  Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early twenties, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers--Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years. 

As chief resident, Nick Xenokostas was the center of Zadie's life--both professionally and personally--throughout a tragic chain of events in her third year of medical school that she has long since put behind her. Nick's unexpected reappearance during a time of new professional crisis shocks both women into a deeper look at the difficult choices they made at the beginning of their careers. As it becomes evident that Emma must have known more than she revealed about circumstances that nearly derailed both their lives, Zadie starts to question everything she thought she knew about her closest friend.

I love Grey’s Anatomy and I adore Big Little Lies, I enjoyed them both immensely. When I heard that this book has the vibe of both of those put together, I was all about it!  Pair that with the stunning cover (I’m a sucker for pretty cover art) and I was super excited to read The Queen of Hearts.
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Kimmery Martin delivers a beautifully written book about friendship, motherhood, secrets, and medicine.  I found this book hard to put down.  Her writing style is concise, yet it’s easy to read and had a warmth to it.  At first I was concerned that things could get too technical with all the medicine because Martin is a doctor, but I had nothing to worry about. The parts that described medical procedures and surgiers were well done and digestible. 

Publisher: Doubleday Books 
Release Date: July 18, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Source: Publicist/Publisher
Genre: General Fiction
​Rating: 4 bookmarks

Synopsis: Growing up in Little Harbor, Maine, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, Eliza Barnes could haul a trap and row a skiff with the best of them. But she always knew she'd leave that life behind. Now that she's married, with two kids and a cushy front-row seat to suburban country club gossip in an affluent Massachusetts town, she feels adrift.

When her father injures himself in a boating accident, Eliza pushes the pause button on her own life to come to his aid. But when she arrives in Maine, she discovers her father's situation is more dire than he let on. Eliza's homecoming is further complicated by the reemergence of her first love--and memories of their shared secret. Then Eliza meets Mary Brown, a seventeen-year-old local who is at her own crossroad, and Eliza can't help but wonder what her life would have been like if she'd stayed.

​* This book was provided by BookSparks in exchange for an honest review.

​Sometimes in life you get dealt bad cards, the ones that seem like your world is ending or that you might not be strong enough to get through. In Meg Mitchell Moore’s book, the Captain’s Daughter, she portrays the realistic hardships of life for all her characters in vivid detail that draws you into their lives. Told in the style of alternating viewpoints from the different characters, Mitchell Moore does a great job developing the story of every one of her characters. Reading the chapters you can really tell that each one has their own voice, personality, and you can literally feel their emotions as they try to deal with life’s surprises. From the start, her descriptions make you feel like you are actually there with the characters, and even though the pace of the book is a little slow, the chapters aren’t that long, and you don’t mind because she makes the character’s story interesting enough. 

Publisher: Sparkpress
Release Date: June 6, 2017
Format: Paperback
Pages: 376
Source: Publicist/Publisher
Genre: General Fiction
Rating: 4 bookmarks

Synopsis: If Will Fletcher's severe bipolar disorder isn't proof he shouldn't be a parent, his infant daughter's grave is. Once a happily married, successful veterinarian, he now lives with his sister and thrives as the small-town crazy of Half Moon Hollow. But when a fifteen-year-old orphan claims she's his daughter, Will is forced back into the role he fears most: fatherhood. Her biological dad isn't the hero Regan Whitmer hoped for, but he's better than her abusive stepfather back in Chicago. Still haunted by her mother's suicide and the rebellious past she fears led to it, Regan is desperate for a stable home and a normal family--things Will can't offer. Can she ride the highs and lows of his illness to find a new definition of family? The Rules of Half explores what it is to be an atypical family in a small town and to be mentally ill in the wake of a tragedy--and who has the right to determine both. 

* This book was provided by BookSparks in exchange for an honest review.

Not all happy endings are completely happy, and “The Rules of Half” is a perfect example of this. Jenna Patrick’s debut novel is set in modern day small-town America, and follows Will Fletcher, the town ‘crazy’, and his sister Janey. Will and Janey’s childhood involved a father that was suffering from a disorder of the mind, and it appears that Will is following in his footsteps. Janey has been there for the last five years to pick up the pieces, all while keeping her own life on the back burner. 
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Enter Regan-a feisty 16 year old who is fleeing from her own grief who claims that Will is her biological father. Can the trio learn to live together and not drive each other insane, literally?

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date: June 6, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Source: Publisher
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 4 bookmarks

Synopsis:  After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.

The islanders call it -Grief Cottage, - because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, never certain whether the ghost is friendly or follows some sinister agenda.

*This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for a honest review.

​Gail Godwin has written a lovely and engaging tale exploring themes of loss, abuse, growth, friendship and love with an ambivalent ghost, haunted cottage, and revealing surprise conclusion in her newest novel, Grief Cottage.

Marcus Harshaw, the eleven year old protagonist, loses his mother in a tragic car accident and must travel to live with his only known relative, Aunt Charlotte. Charlotte, an edgy alcoholic artist who seems to disdain too much contact or unnecessary talk, quickly establishes a summer routine for Marcus that sets him free to explore his new small South Carolina island home. While Marcus is discovering and making contact with the ghost of a boy lost in a hurricane decades ago, Charlotte is working through her own crisis brought on by injuries from a drunken fall making her normal painting impossible. Charlotte and Marcus must each confront their own personal ghosts and secrets to find their way forward into optimistic new futures.