Literary Mystique

"Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped.." Synopsis :  What are you looking for? This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it. Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The co...

"But I also can't tell him I've spent my entire life looking at myself through fog, pretending to be alive and hoping that one day I'd actually start to feel like I was, and now I'm terrified there's no hope left." Synopsis : Infatuation. Reincarnation. Damnation. Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers’ queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who’s a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn. But even Enzo doesn’t know about Gem’s dreams, haunting visions of magic and violence that have always felt too real. So how does Willa Mae Hardy? The strange new girl in town acts like she and Gem are old companions, and seems to know things about them they’ve never told anyone else. When Gem is attacked by a stranger claiming to be the Goddess of Death, Willa Mae saves t...

"Everywhere I looked I saw people hurting, disappointed, weighed down with longings they couldn’t name.." Synopsis :  A freak car crash in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. For forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of secrets that have turned her mean. A fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past. Darlene, a seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself still alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla’s family, and sets loose Aurilla’s own memories of longing and infidelity. As Aurilla’s forbidden and heartbreaking story of love, death, and repeated loss alternates with Darlene’s, the divide of generations and time narrows and collapses, building to the unlikely col...

"There were some things that were a part of you, no matter how badly they hurt.." Synopsis :  A rural island community steeped in the mystical superstitions of its founders and haunted by an unsolved murder is upended by the return of the suspected killer in this deeply atmospheric novel. Emery Blackwood’s life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily.  Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among the community that fractured her world in two. She’d once longed to run away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saiorse Island and chase new dreams; now, she maintains her late mother’s tea shop and cares for her ailing father.  But just as the island, rooted in folklore and tradition, begins to show signs of strange happenings, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past t...

"The heavenly-painted leaves won’t remain long. Might we enjoy them so much if they did?" Synopsis :  A young girl disappears. Can secrets inside a three centuries-old journal save her life in time? Advertising agency owner, Bethany Miller, inherits an ancestral home from the biological mother she never knew. Inside a grandfather clock named The Timekeeper, she discovers a treasured family journal. Generations of first daughters each wrote one entry, sharing family secrets, chronicling courageous acts, the freeing power of forgiveness and more.  Reading the women’s stories and timeless wisdom, Bethany begins to reassess her busy life and contemplates taking a chance on romance, but she can’t forget an alarming encounter with a girl’s soul-piercing eyes.  They shot her a dire warning … right before she disappeared. Those eyes cause Bethany’s past, present and future to collide. Is history right on time to save a girl’s life? Review :  As Time Unfolds had a promising p...

"We are all works in progress, and it takes real guts to admit when you’re wrong and try to move from there.." Synopsis : When popular high schooler,  Julianna Stefanie Robinson takes her life days before her final year of high school commence, her best friend, Dalia Parker, and her twin brother James Robinson are left to pick up the pieces as Julia left letters to those she feels she has wronged. But as they deliver them to their recipients and start getting closer to each other, Dalia and James realize that there were quite some skeletons that Julia hid in the closet, ones that could change their lives..forever.. Review :  First of all I'd like to thank the lovely @salemwrites_ for providing me with the ARC of this wonderful book.  The synopsis gave me major 13 Reasons Why vibes (one of my favourite books) and I knew then that I'd love this book too.  And in this respect, "The Secrets That She Kept" didn't disappoint. This book explores the typical Ame...

"You are a human being, not a machine. Nobody can be happy one hundred percent of the time. It isn’t realistic. It’s not what we’re made for.." Synopsis :  Trixie isn’t exactly sure what she was thinking when she stopped her car in the middle of downtown Chicago, scooped up a chicken struggling to cross the road, and drove off… but she does know that she has to find a new home for herself and her new feathered friend. The landlord at her apartment doesn’t allow pets and has caught Trixie in one too many pet-smuggling attempts in the past. Bear likes his quiet life with his close-knit family, who own a flower business, but he’s in for a rude awakening when his meddlesome sisters post an ad to rent the spare room in his simple home, without asking his permission. Still, when Trixie responds to the ad, he agrees to let her move in, despite immediate worries about keeping things platonic. Determined to keep her new room, befriend Bear, and give her rescue chicken the care she des...

"We should expect the mind to reel with echoes from our deepest past . It takes the most extreme trauma to trigger the unforgotten forgotten. Our conscious brain says “yes”, but the brain who’s only responsibility is our very survival says, “fuck no”.. Synopsis :  In a lonely valley, deep in the mountains, a ranger watches over the last surviving grizzly bear. With the natural world exhausted and in tatters, Ben has dedicated himself to protecting this single fragment of the wild. One night, he hears voices in the valley – poachers, come to hunt his bear. A heart-pounding chase begins, crossing forests and mountainsides, passing centuries of human ruins. Sometimes hunter, sometimes prey – Ben must choose the bear’s fate and his own. Is he willing to lay down his life for a dying breed? Is he willing to kill for it? Review :  Reading this novel was the ultimate literary shot in the dark for me, as I knew nothing about the author. But seeing one of his previous novels, “Fishbowl...

"It was easy to dwell on the little things when you didn’t think about there being a time when you no longer could.." From The Blurb :  In Mansi Shah’s stunning debut novel, a family tragedy beckons a first-generation immigrant to the city of her birth, where she grapples with her family’s past in search of where she truly belongs. After her parents moved her and her brother to America, Preeti Desai never meant to tear her family apart. All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm. But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents…and the complicated past they left behind. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling g...

"There’s always a bit of enchantment in the world as long as you know how to look for it. Synopsis :  Saint Louis, 1923.. The golden age of flight has just begun, and pilot Mattie McAdams refuses to cede the skies to cocky flyboys. She longs to perform daring stunts in her family’s flying circus, but the men in her life stand in her way—including the show’s star performer, Leo Ward. They can wring their hands all they want; Mattie won’t stay grounded for long. In the Great War, Leo Ward watched his best friend and Mattie’s twin brother, Alfred, perish in the skies over German territory. Since then, he’s vowed to protect the McAdams family, taking on the most perilous stunts himself. But the skies are too big for any one man. Mattie joins a female-dominated flying circus, kicking off a tantalizing aerial dance as the two pilots make efforts to one-up each other in the skies across America. As planes and passions soar, can Mattie and Leo look beyond their egos to see the great heigh...

"Beautiful things are either dangerous or supernatural, at times both, or a deception. Like feelings.." Review :  Before going to the book, I would like to admire the cover, which, despite being very pretty has a slight hint of gloom to it. Since it's a short book of sixty two pages, I would not ruin the interest of readers providing a synopsis. In short, this beautiful story is about how Death felt the essence of love when he came across a girl on Earth. What I loved : • The concept. Generally writers conceive death to be cold and incapable of love. This story is an exception to that.  • Personification of Death. Sakshi Deora has beautifully brought out how it feels to be like Death. • The letter written by Death at the end is very heart touching.  • The unexpected ending. What I slightly disliked : • I felt as if the book ended to quickly for me to connect with the characters. This could have been turned into a novella by providing more insight into the life of the girl...

"But it takes courage to complete the explanation, to say that something  instinctive, doubtless inscribed in the genetic heritage of the species, compels the  great masses of humanity to condone that which promises desolation and  carnage.." Review :   A powerful novella set in a fictional world where a variety of characters collide  : a mixture of characters from just released prisoners, to circus performers,  writers and a string quartet all living under the rule of an authoritarian  government and their military heavies, seeking the strange counterbalance of  hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only  for a moment.    The leader of the Frondists in the novella is typically buffoonish and  interchangeable with his henchmen, willing to use racism to mobilise the masses.  It’s quite an indictment on the behaviour of people in crowds and the need to  chant insulting slogans.  ...

"Perhaps we only ever have one true chance at anything and the rest, if offered, is always second best.." Review : Loss is integral to life – from birth, we lose the safety of the womb. Often we lose our position in a family to another sibling. Change is all encompassing. We lose the three-legged races of childhood and later career-driven and consumerist ‘races’ imposed by a success-driven world. When we age, we lose our looks and our health. Ultimately, we die. Always, we are at the mercy of progress, risk and accidents; often we are victims of war. Set in 1920, against the background of Poland’s tragic and tumultuous relationship with Russia, through war, revolution and invasion, until 1954 in the Snowy Mountains of Australia, The Tulip Tree revolves around two brothers - Henryk and Adam and their families faced with the struggle for existence. Brothers Henryk and Adam Radecki’s relationship is fraught with love and jealously. Henryk, unhappily married to Lucia, is a clever...

“None of us live without consequence. Our personal preferences are not truly  personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm  ourselves and others.”  Review :   An apocalyptic future tests the bonds of love between sisters.    In this future world, climate change and other disasters have brought people  together from different countries into eco-cities that levitate above their regions.    Sixteen-year-old Kasey Mizuhara disassociates herself from people,  moving through the world like an alien or ghost, observing her human  companions. She prefers the cool comfort of logic, and the only one she loves  and looks to for direction is Celia, her older sister.    Celia Mizuhara, on the other hand, loves too much, continually pushing  boundaries and breaking rules. Yet the sisters admire each other for their  complementary strengths. As the world crumbles around them due to human- made ...

"Most people don't trust people in power, whether it's the government or a big  corporation.."  Review :  Utopia PR, written by Adam Bender, is a political satire set in a  dystopian Washington, DC, that offers a brisk and entertaining sendup of  politics and the media, two machines driven by capitalism and ambition.    Public-relations extraordinaire Blake Hamner (the n is silent) put off his  honeymoon for his big break: joining a major political campaign for president.  Now, the “Hammer” struggles to make time for his marriage as Crisis  Communications Manager for Our Leader, who since taking power has  become increasingly mad and totalitarian.  The Hammer starts to reconsider his career choices when one of Our  Leader’s savage steel hounds attacks the Comms team at a press conference.  When a revolutionary levels grave allegations against Our Leader—and  implicates Blake for the cover-up—the PR rep who though...