Cross My Heart

Collins, Megan. Cross My Heart. New York: Atria 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Hi,

I've decided there's no way to begin this message that isn't either [1] creepy or [2] awkward, so I'm just going to dive right into the Creepy/Awkward Pool and hope I don't drown.

One year ago today, your wife saved my life. And it breaks my heart that, in order for me to live, she first had to die. 

Description:

OK, I'm only going to tell you the premise of Megan Collins' Cross My Heart and what happens on the opening few pages. That's all you're going to get because this is a genuine thriller with more red herrings and twisty-turns than Perseus and the Minotaur together couldn't put together. Any more details from me would only spoil your own adventure into this riveting story, one that I highly recommend.

Here's some nutshell details to get your interest peaked. Rosie Lachlan, the writer of the opening text message above, had received a heart transplant over a year ago. Somehow, she learned the identity of the anonymous donor: the wife of a local celebrity author who happens to live in Rosie's own suburban town.

With her opening letter to Morgan Thorne, the author, and the clever, bantering return message from him, Rosie dreams this man definitely could be the answer to the depression she endures after her fiancé broke up with her before her heart transplant.

I didn't think of surviving as something I'd do -- actively, with intention. I thought of it as something that may or may not happen to me, a think like the weather, completely beyond my control.

This all is in just the first few pages.

What author Collins so skillfully presents then is how this relationship between the heart recipient and the donor's widowed husband plays out. Despite warnings from her best friend, Nina, the email exchanges continue. Rosie obsesses over Morgan in her mind, walks her parents' dog past his house to possibly catch a glimpse of him, and even sees him while in a local coffee shop, debating in her mind a scenario where she could "accidently" bump into him to actually meet and talk with him. She researches everything about him from his writings to interviews to podcasts in order to learn everything about him.

But Rosie dismisses the few rumors about Morgan's relationship with his wife and how her accidental death might not have been what it seemed. Other characters enter Rosie's life, each one contributing a bit more information (good and questionable) about the man, but she keeps her dreams about a potential relationship with him secret.

Or does she? Is she really just dreaming about him or is she actually meeting him on the sly, away from her co-workers', friend's and parent's knowledge? And is Morgan the perfect man she learns about or someone else?

The risk seemed worth the reward.

You may think you can guess where this story is going, a kind of Play Misty for Me stalker tale that ends badly for the relationship. But I am here to tell you that Collins has a lot of surprises to spring on you throughout Cross My Heart at the most unexpected moments. Enough quirky plotlines that made me want to read this book straight through, trying to figure out what the next page would reveal.

That's it. Enough said on my part. I really loved this book and highly recommend it for its seemingly straightforward, if obsessive plot that halfway through turns everything on its head and doesn't let up until the very last page. 

Go get it and be entertained/duped/delighted in the most unexpected ways. Highest recommendation.

You have his wife's heart.....You can't have her life, too.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman awakens from a coma with no memory of how she got there. She can hear everything that is going on around her, but cannot move or otherwise respond. Visitors talk to each other about her situation and slowly she begins to piece together her history and remember ... but what she remembers may not really be what happened, nor the people around her who they say they are. Riveting. (Previously reviewed here)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Shy Creatures

Chambers, Clare. Shy Creatures. New York: Mariner. 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

 

In all failed relationships, there is a point that passes unnoticed at the tiume, which can later be identified as the beginning of the declined. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park. 

Description:

The premise of Clare Chambers' Shy Creatures was enough to hook me for good. A mute, shy man with uncut hair and a beard to his waist is discovered in a run-down Victorian house living with a dotty, aged aunt. Nearby neighbors did not know a man was living in this house, never having seen him outside in 20 years. 

William Tapping is admitted to a nearby phychiatric hospital where Helen Hansfor, a thirty-something art therapist, takes a special interest in his case. William talks with no one, but displays a brilliant talent for drawing.

The book gradually unfolds his story, in reverse chronological order, starting with the disturbance that led police to his home and his subsiquent admittance to the hospital, all the way back to his origins that led him to that point. His is a truly fascinating tale, one that is unpredictable, emotional, and powerful from end to start as the pieces of his life story slowly fall into place.

Meanwhile, on a parallel track, the life of Helen also unfolds. She is having a three-year affair with one of the hospital doctors, Gil Rudden, a married man with a family, a giant in the field of psychiatry, and her immediate superior. While they meet secretly, waiting for the day when his children leave their home in a few years, there is conflict on the treatment of the mute recluse, William Tapping, under their care. 

I think that is all you will get out of me. A very gripping story with highly sympathetic and often stubborn characters interplaying throughout the novel right up to its final conclusion. A great, engrossing read.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Michaelides, Alex. The Silent Patient.    

A woman is found with a shotgun over her dead husband. There is no doubt she has killed him., But during the trial and for the six years she is in a psychiatric hospital, she has not said a word. Why? And can the new doctor get through to her somehow and learn her story? (previously reviewed here) 

 

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

 

The Ministry of Time

Bradley, Kaliane. The Ministry of Time. New York: Avid Reader 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Perhaps he'll die this time. He finds this doesn't worry him. Maybe because he's so cold he has a drunkard's grip on his mind. When thoughts come, they're translucent, free-swimming medusae. As the Arctic wind bites at his hands and feet, his thoughts slop against his skull. They'll be the last thing to freeze over.

Description:

Being a fan of time-travel books, Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time, was a definite must-read for me. Of course, it involves different eras, people trying to understand earlier and later worlds, and possibly altering history.

But Ministry of Time is quite different on many levels. First, it is primarily a character study between several protagonists, not just people wandering around a different world with their mouths open, making awkward mistakes. Second, it does not seem to dwell on the time-travel element. The time machine is rarely presented and remains cloaked in origin, powers, and dangers right up to the end. And the people simply go about their business in the new era, knowing they cannot return to their origins, so that issue rarely is discussed.

Here's the premise, without spoilers since this all happens in the first few pages. Somehow England in today's world and its government agency called "The Ministry" has a time machine that can bring a handful of people from their eras into the present. The selected people historically were destined to die soon, so removing them from the past probably wouldn't affect the future. One was from the plague era in the 1600s; one was a member of John Franklin's ill-fated Arctic exploration in the 1850s; one a soldier in the trenches of Somme in World War I, etc. 

Commander Graham Gore, the arctic explorer, is one of the five transported "expats" who is assigned to a previously lowly female Ministry civil servant in languages to be his Bridge. As his Bridge, she is to monitor and report on the expat's mental and physical developments, platonically living with Gore and being there to help him acclimate to the 21st century during his first year. After that, he would have to get a job. 

 

But to what purpose has the Ministry of Time brought these five individuals into the present day? How will the expats cope with their new world and their Bridges? What is the future of the time machine and the administers who make decisions regarding its use? And finally, what will become of Gore and his relationship with other expats and his nameless Bridge?

That's all I'm revealing. It is a slower plot without ray guns or rockets, realistically paced to gauge the activities and thoughts of the characters to reveal their deliberations and actions as they work on how best to address the people and the world of this century. 

But the writing, especially the imagery, are first rate:

• Being around her made me want to run across the crosswalks without looking;

• The days moldered and dampened, like something lost at the back of the fridge;

• She looked at me as you might a cat that, with unusual perspicacity, has brought home a ten-pound note instead of a dead mouse;

• He was looking worse than when I last saw him -- he had that ineffable air of someone who has to boil hot water on his stove for bathing, which was surely incompatible with his rank.

It's a compelling read with a layered plot that is not fully uncovered until the final pages. Until then, buckle up and follow these interesting characters try to uncover the mysteries and purposes of their very much-altered existence.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Crouch, Blake. Recursion.   

People begin to realize they have False Memory Syndrome where they have memories of bits and pieces of an alternate life they've lived (or are living now). If so, which life can they choose to continue living? Fascinating.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

A Life Impossible

Gleason, Steve. A Life Impossible: Living With ALS: Finding Peace and Wisdom Within a Fragile Existence. New York: Knoff 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

I sat naked in the shower while a twenty-four-year-old man washed my armpits.  Across the bathroom, my three-year-old daughter, Gray, sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged like the Buddha, with one difference. She was wailing hysterically and incessantly. Inconsolable. And I was incapable of helping her.


Description:

It is almost impossible to comprehend living day to day, hour to hour, a life where every voluntary muscle in your body is unable to function. You are robbed of the ability to walk, raise your arms, close your hands, speak, even breathe. Smiling and blinking are denied. 

Yet such is the ongoing existence of author Steve Gleason for the past thirteen years (and counting) since his diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, i.e., Lou Gehrig's Disease).

He thoughtfully, emotionally, and openly discusses his journey from his boyhood through years as a professional football player, to young married trying to understand his fatal ALS diagnosis, and on then his continuing struggles with his restricted life today in his memoir, A Life Impossible. 

To call him a survivor is too passive a label. He is a battler. Throughout his life he has deeply contemplated his life, his personal situation, his emotions, and his future. His brilliant writing in this book are transporting. Gleason allows readers into the deepest parts of his mind, from denial of the diagnosis as a 33-year-old man to a firm confidence he can beat the disease; from despair as his relationships crack under the strain of his needs for constant, intimate care, to occasional peace of mind as revelations occur to him that give him even temporary triumphs in communication or action.

I'd spent most of my life seeking the sacred and extraordinary, but [meditation] was showing me that the sacred is within us....I'm not sure how much it was improving my "real life," but for a guy who was living with ALS, to have an hour a day of peace and even bliss, it was a welcome change.

During Gleason's New Orleans Saints' football career, he played on special teams. In 2006, he blocked an opposing Atlanta Falcons' punt on their first series of downs which was quickly recovered for a Saints' touchdown. This was an incredibly gutsy play by Gleason which surprised everyone on the field, the stadium, and in the Monday Night Football audience, and led to a Saints victory. 

It was an historic play as this was the first game held in the New Orleans Superdome, a beloved landmark for the citizens, which had finally opened after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Gleason's block and eventual Saints' victory signaled the beginning of the city's recovery. There is now even a statue of Gleason blocking that punt residing in front of the stadium, so important was the symbolism of New Orleans' triumph.

But ALS soon robbed him of his dream to live off the grid with his new wife, Michel, in an isolated spot somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Slowly and unceasingly, he awoke each day to another loss of strength and function. "Most people awake each day from a nightmare. I awake to a nightmare," he stated. 

He also lost all his savings due to an investment with friends in an alternative real estate company which went bankrupt. He repeatedly tried for a different diagnosis, experimented with every type of possible cure from faith healers to diets to meditation. His eventual failures to walk even a few steps, swim, have sex, or swallow forced him to realize that ALS was progressing relentlessly.

But although he writes of his discouragement with his situation, he also created "Team Gleason" with friends and families to explore treatments, medical devices, and opportunities to expand horizons for other ALS patients. 

He wanted to prove to himself and others that life can still be lived, and began to travel, give speeches, fish for salmon in Alaska, and even reach the top of Machu Picchu in Peru sitting in an electronic wheelchair that had to be carried over foot-wide pathways.

Gleason proved to ALS sufferers and others that the world could still be expanded . While he still could speak, he recorded 1,500 English phrases for a company called CereProc which then created a customized voice similar to his own for oral expression of his typed words.

Team Gleason grew and donors contributed to ALS research. The highly popular ALS fund-raising Ice Bucket Challenge was started by a Team Gleason member. Other ALS patients formed discussion groups to share stories, coping techniques, and understanding hearts with each other and the world. Through Gleason, others learned they were not alone, had options, and could lead expanded lives.

Gleason received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest United State Civilian honor, in 2019. Then in 2024 he was presented with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage given for "strength, courage and willingness to stand up for their beliefs in the face of adversity.” Upon receiving this award, Gleason delivered a brilliant speech (created before the ceremony using only his eye/laser letter-by-letter composition program) verbalized through his synthetic voice to the ESPY audience. A documentary film, Gleason, was recently finished (available on Amazon Prime). His social media site has over half a million followers today.

 

A wonderfully powerful book that spares readers no emotion, thought, or dream that enters author Gleason's mind and world throughout his journey. Highly recommended.

Now I realize this: Life gets ugly at times, so when we have the chance to do something amazing in the midst of ugly, go for it.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterflyh: A Memoir of Life in Death.   

One man's memoirs, painfully written using only the blinking of his one working eyelid, revealing how he experiences the "Locked-In Syndrome" where nothing on hiss body can be moved, no words can be spoken, yet his mind and awareness are still present in his seemingly lifeless body. Absolutely astonishing and powerful. (previously reviewed here)

 

Clear

Davies, Carys. Clear. New York: Scribner 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

He wished he could swim -- the swimming belt felt like a flimsy thin and it had been no comfort to be told not to worry, the men couldn't swim either. Each time they rose he glimpsed the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any kind of landing; each time they descended, the rocks vanished and were replaced by a liquid wall of gray. He closed his eyes.


Description:

In the 1840s, the Scottish Clearances was a relentless movement by Scot landowners to remove poor tenants from their properties in order to turn the land into cheaper and more profitable sheep production. In Clear by Carys Davies, John Ferguson, an impoverished minister, agrees to take on the job of removing the last man from an isolated island off the northern coast of Scotland. John only takes on this work out of desperation to raise money for his struggling church. 

Of course, John is told by the landowner that the man to be removed will be set up in a better location, so should readily agree to leave his barren, wind-swept isolation for a better life. What could go wrong? In this intriguing historical novel, we soon find out.

On the first day on the island and before meeting anyone, John falls from a cliff, knocking himself out, and waking up in the hovel of Ivar, the very man he is supposed to evict. John does not speak the island's ancient language used by Ivar, but in the ensuing days, he slowly builds a dictionary of the forgotten words.

Ivar lives by scraping out a small garden and raising a few wild sheep, trading wool for his rent although due to the isolation of the island, the owner has not bothered to collect payment for decades. Tragedies in his family have left him to survive on the island alone.

Before the arrival of John Ferguson [Ivar thought] he'd never really thought of the things he saw or heard or touched or felt as words....It was strange to think of a fine sea mist, say, or the cold north-easterly wind that came in spring and damaged the corn ... It was as if he'd never fully understood his solitude until now -- as if, with the arrival of John Ferguson, he had been turned into something he'd never been or hadn't been for a long time... 

This quiet novel slowly unfolds the awkward relationship of the men as John recovers from his injury, living in close quarters in Ivar's sparse hut. And meanwhile, John's wife worries about her husband whom she hasn't been able to contact. She was against the work he was to undertake. Since the next boat to pick up John and Ivar is one month away, she is naturally restless for news of the men.

I loved this book. It is calming, exciting, intelligent, human, and challenging in its very quiet way. There is even an appendix with entries from an actual 1908 dictionary of the Norn language used in the Shetlands of Ivar. (Author Davies notes that the last native-speaker of Norn had died in 1850, just after the time period of this novel.)

Carys Davies is a new author to me, so I'm immediately ordering some of her other works. Fingers crossed they are anywhere near as good as Clear.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Davies, Carys. West.   

A widowed mule-breeder hears of the discovery of huge bones in Tennessee and, leaving behind his sister and daughter on his run-down farm, sets off into unknown lands to see whether these ancient giants still exist.

 

Remarkable Bright Creatures

Van Pelt, Shelby. Remarkably Bright Creatures. New York: HarperCollins 202. Print.

First Sentences:

Darkness suits me. Each evening, I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank. Not perfect, but close enough. Almost-darkness, like the middle-bottom of the sea. I lived there before I was captured and imprisoned....Darkness runs through my blood.

 

Description:

Not sure whether Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures, title refers to octopuses or humans. You see, a small part of this interesting novel is narrated by an curmudgeonly Giant Pacific octopus, a creature (named Marcellus, of course) held in a tank located in the Sowell Bay Aquarium for the past four years.

"Held" is a relative term. At night, Marcellus is able to squeeze through a tiny opening under his tank's lid, pull himself out, and slip-slide throughout the room, snacking on the other water creatures in adjacent tanks, opening locked doors, and generally exploring everything in the aquarium during the 18 minutes he can survive before he needs to return to water. 

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures focuses of Tova Sullivan, an elderly woman who cleans the aquarium, idly talking to the fish and other waterlife there, including Marcellus, as she mops floors and polishes the glass on the tanks. Tova recently lost her beloved husband to cancer, and also thirty years earlier suffered the loss of her teenage son who disappeared one night under unknown conditions. Cleaning the aquarium gives her something to do and help her cope.

Marcellus hears her kind words of greeting and observes her sadness. And when one evening Tova finds Marcellus accidentally trapped in computer cords outside his tank during one of his wanderings, she rescues him and the two form an secret friendship. Tova even finds she can place her arm inside his tank and Marcellus will wrap a tentacle around it, squeezing it gently, and leaving suction marks that puzzle Tova's friends.

 

It should be mentioned that during Marcellus late-night movements, he collects items and hides them safely under a rock in his tank. And one item, he realizes, might prove how Tova's son died. But communicating this information is far from easy.

It is lonely. Perhaps it would be less so if I had someone with whom to share my secrets. I am very good at keeping secrets. You might say I have no choice. Whom might I tell? My options are scant.

Then along comes a young man, Cameron, who visits Sowell Bay on a quest to look for his absentee father as well as any information about his mother who had abandoned him years ago without revealing Camderon's father's name. An old photograph, high school yearbook, and class ring have led him to Sowell Bay and eventually to work in the aquarium alongside Tova and Marcellus.

Now hang with me for a moment, all you doubters. It sounds like a ridiculous premise: a thinking, observant sea creature who understands English, and remembers every action, word, and creature (aquatic and human) who enter his viewing room? But Marcellus is no ordinary octopus, or maybe he is and we have never gave his species credit for their cleverness and brain.

Well, of course I am intelligent. All octopuses are. I remember each and every human face that pauses to gaze at my tank. Patterns come readily to me....When I choose to hear, I hear everything...my vision is precise. I can tell which particular human has touched the glass of my tank by the fingerprints left behind. Learning to read their letters and words was easy....My neurons number half a billion, and they are distributed among my eight arms....I have wondered whether I might have more intelligence in a single tentacle than a human does in its entire skull.

Author Van Pelt cleverly, convincingly, dreamily explores and eventually ties together the stories of loss and hope of these characters. It is an absorbing tale of realistic figures (including the octopus), who deal with personal and social challenges and heartbreak, but retain hope throughout all their trials. It is an optimistic book, full of positivity and endurance despite the obstacles placed before each of them. A quiet story to absorb you from page one to the very end.

Secrets are everywhere. Some humans are crammed full of them. How do they not explode. It seems to be a hallmark of the human species' abysmal communication skills....Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire. 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.

An absolutely fascinating account of the author's varied experiences with octopuses, relating numerous examples of their intelligence, interaction with humans, and lifestyles. Don't miss it.  (previously reviewed here)