Anne Hart

If you were to write a novel set in a location you loved as a kid, where would it be?  The scenery from our childhoods can strengthen us or haunt us.  In Kelly Mustain’s The Girls in the Stilt House, most of the story takes place in the Natchez Trace area of Mississippi.  Mustain grew up in Natchez, Mississippi, and the swampland around it is full of creatures and stories.  There is beauty and danger in both.  The story takes place during the tumultuous 1920s.  The Natchez Trace is a character in the book all itself with it being the mother of the stilt house in the swamp.  Ada, a young white girl lives in the stilt house owned by her drunk and abusive bootlegging father.  He’s a horrible person!  He’s the reason Matilda, a teenage African American girl who is the daughter of a black sharecropper finds Ada.  Matilda’s father is a bootlegger too.  Lucky for Ada and Matilda, they can help each other in different ways.  The...

What would you do for your sibling?  In Keeper of the Night by Kylie Lee Baker, the love a brother has for his half-sister is out of this world, literally.  The dark fantasy/horror/thriller is set in 1890s Britain and Japan.  But the story gives insight into worldwide folklore surrounding death and the idea of Death personified.  Death is one thing every single person in this world has in common.  Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough is a tormented girl.  She’s unloved by her father and stepmother.  She’s bullied for being biracial.  And she’s harboring her secret magical powers.  She does know the amazing true love of her stepbrother Neven.  For all the torment and darkness in the story, Neven is hopeful, loving, and empathetic.  Ren flees Britain to go to Japan to find her mother.  Neven goes with her just because he loves her.  The venture to Yokohama.  They meet the Goddess of Death...

Is it better to grow up poor and then become rich or grow up rich and become poor?  In The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel, it is better to be poor and then become rich.  If you are born poor you’ll know how to survive, whereas if you’re born rich and then become poor you won’t know how to feed yourself.  The Last Rose is about the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in WWII.  The story starts with an American filmmaker in a hotel in Shanghai in 1980 Shanghai, China meeting the millionaire businesswoman Aiyi Shao.  Aiyi then tells the filmmaker the story of Shanghai housing many Jewish refugees who fled from German-occupied Europe during WWII.  Before the occupation, Aiyi is a wealthy heiress running a jazz club.  Then she meets Ernest Reismann who is one of the penniless Jewish refugees.  He’s a piano player and connects with Aiyi through music.  Aiyi makes multiple complex decisions that have consequences for a lot of differen...

What is the creepiest neighbor you’ve had?  In Karen McQuestion’s The Moonlight Child the Fleming family definitely deserves the creepy neighbor award.  The story starts out by introducing us to a different family.  Wendy is a Mom dealing with Morgan who is a troubled teen dealing with drugs.  Morgan has disappeared.  Then we meet Amy, an attorney who helps children in foster care.  Amy calls her Mom, Sharon, and asks her to take in Niki, a former foster child.  Sharon agrees and that is how we meet the creepy Fleming family.  Mia is a little girl at their house which no one knows about.  The Fleming Mom, Suzette is a psychopath.  Jacob, her son, is likable but also lacks a spine.  He has the ability to help Mia escape which makes his character so frustrating.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to handle the book but the “abuse” is primarily mental.  The neighbors, Sharon and Niki, know something is wrong.  ...

Have you ever called in an anonymous tip to the police?  If you read The Monsters We Make by Kali White, you would be calling in every slow vehicle that drives by your house, anyone who ever offered your kid candy, and any house with an attic or basement.  I’m not sure my kids will ever be let out of the house again after reading it.  Sammy and Crystal Cox are siblings growing up in the 1980s.  They live with their Mom who works two jobs and is a bit clueless.  Crystal has a vision disability where she is legally blind but she writes for the school yearbook and newspaper.  Following the disappearances of two paperboys from their small Midwestern town, Crystal decides it’s the perfect story to win a writing contest for a scholarship. Officer Dale Goodkind is the detective on the case who is haunted by his past.  This book is gut-wrenching!  We are given two possible men who are the potential monsters kidnapping the boys.  Sammy and Crys...

Have you ever tried to read a book just because you wanted to feel young, cool, and hip?  When I first tried reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, it was for purely selfish reasons.  It was like I wanted to be able to say I understand post-postmodern literature.  Bragging rights that I’d read the book were what I needed.  When I tried reading it though, I was pissed.  I read to escape work, not read more PowerPoint presentations.  And I thought if this is a bestseller, I can write something so much better.  Obviously, I was wrong.  When I read a review that said to read it like a collection of related stories, then I got it!  Now, 10 years later I really get it.  Basically, it’s the story of Bennie and his younger troubled assistant, Sasha. It explores all the people which connect Bennie and Sasha.  It explores how time (the goon) gets us all.  I re-read this book in anticipation of her newest book The Candy House which h...

Have you read a WWII historical fiction from a German’s point of view?  The German Wife by Debbie Rix is a disturbing German perspective on World War II.  I loved the straight chronological narrative by Annaliese’s perspective of being a German around 1939.  Annaliese is a young woman who is swept off her feet by Hans. He’s a doctor wanting to do research.  He sees Hitler’s regime as a way to be able to further his medical research.  He wants to find a homeopathic cure for malaria.  He gets caught up in the violence and depravity that was the Nazis' goal.  Hans pressures Annaliese to be a good German hausfrau and have children.  Then a Russian prisoner named Alexander is sent from Dachau to work in their garden.  Anna’s story then takes a big twist and then after the war ends, yet an even bigger twist occurs.  Then in 1989 the past once again haunts Annaliese and her unknowing son.  We can’t ever escape the past.  Annali...