August was not a huge reading month for me because I was busy soaking up the last bits of summer traveling and spending time with family and friends. However, I was able to read three books—two new ones and a reread.
My husband and I went on a road trip in early August down to the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island and then up to Portland, Maine. We stopped in Salem, Massachusetts for a couple of days and I found it the perfect backdrop to read The Devil Knows Her Name by C.N. Vair.
This one has been on my radar for a while thanks to the author’s aunt who is a regular at our store. We were fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy in July from the author and after Jade’s rave review, I couldn’t wait to get into it. The story follows Tess, a witch who runs a wildlife sanctuary. Her mother and grandmother spent her childhood warning her to stay away from the devil. But after a violent encounter with a man, Tess makes a deal with the devil to save her life. She spends over 100 years protecting the land her sanctuary sits on with her powers. One day, she takes a unique fawn into her sanctuary and immediately bonds with it knowing there is something there she sees within herself.
I couldn’t wait to hear the discussion of The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard for our August book club. I read this book last year and when it was selected for a book club pick I knew that the conversation would be fascinating. A unique time travel book, The Other Valley is a speculative fiction novel set in a valley where to the west exists the same valley 20 years in the past and to the east the same valley 20 years in the future. Traveling between the valleys is strictly prohibited unless approved by the Counseil, a coveted small group of residents who weigh the factors involved in traveling between valleys and the repercussions that traveling would cause in everyone’s lives. The book follows Odile, a young woman destined for the Counseil, who one day sees visitors from another valley which launches her life in a different direction, therefore changing the course of numerous people’s lives. The book club discussion may have broken my brain a little bit (in a good way) as we jumped from possibility to possibility exploring different “what-ifs” for nearly two hours that night. The best kind of discussion.
The third and final book I read in August I listened to as an audiobook through LibroFM. Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LaCour is a historical fiction novel that traces the history of the Great Migration through the life of Odette, a Creole woman from New Orleans, who lives her life in the shadows of her sisters, hiding who she is. Her father, a painter, is sent to an institution by her mother and Odette uses art to remain connected to him after he passes away. When she and her family move to Los Angeles, she begins to allow herself to dream bigger dreams as an artist which helps to give her the permission to be who she has always been and to love openly. It is a story of sacrifice, transformation, love, and acceptance.
