Young Girl Wishes for a Mother

The fourth installment of the Stonehill series starts the title of the book, a wish made by Phil’s daughter, Jessica, for a mother. Jessica has grown up since the first book in the series; she is now eleven. She has never known her biological mother, who left them when she was a baby because the woman couldn’t handle having a Down syndrome child.

If you read the first book in the Stonehill series, you are familiar with Phil and Jessica as well as with Phil’s mother, Kara. Part of the enjoyment of this book came from seeing Kara and Harry’s new life together as a married couple up close. They are deeply in love and are trying to care for an infant of a mother who has nearly abandoned her to them.

Mallory has come back to the area. While in San Diego, she couldn’t stop thinking of her mother, Annie, and all that Marcus was doing to support her. So she quit her job and moved back so she could help her mother and the man whom she sees as a father figure. Mallory becomes reacquainted with Jessica and Phil, and soon Kara thinks that Mallory could be the perfect woman for Phil and a mothering influence for Jessica as she approaches her teen years.

What will Annie and Marcus think about Mallory’s return to town? What about Mallory’s career? Will romantic sparks fly between Mallory and Phil? Will Jessica get her wish?

I enjoyed having a more in-depth story that focused on Phil. He was an interesting character in his mother’s story (book one of the series), but you knew he had to have one, too, since he has such a complex backstory as well as a challenging present as a single father raising a special needs child. He and Mallory share similarities in their pasts; neither had a father in their life growing up. The characters are very supportive of each other, and Phil helps Mallory understand the difficulties she is having adjusting to the changes in her mother’s life.

Phil’s struggle about whether to trust another woman in his and Jessica’s lives seems realistic, even if it is hard to read when you so want him just to wake up and realize what he’d be missing!

I liked that seeing Phil through Mallory’s eyes gives us a completely different perspective of him than the first book where we only see Phil through his own thoughts and actions. Phil is a man who has struggled and continues to struggle with his relationship with his mother as he sees himself as being so different from her. At times when reading about him—both in this book and in the first one—I have felt frustrated with his lack of understanding and compassion for his mother, who did her best to raise him under challenging circumstances. But through Mallory’s eyes, we can see that he has inherited compassion and kindness from his mother, whether he would own it or not!

As this book deals very closely with characters and events from books one and three of the series, I would not consider it to be a standalone book. But all the books in the series are incredible, so I would recommend them all anyway, whether needed for this story or not. Once again, Marcy Bolden has delivered a story that packs an emotional punch. These characters suffer and struggle in ways that are easy to understand and empathize with. I love the way this tight-knit group supports each other. I hope there is much more in store for the people in Stonehill.

One Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery and Solving Family Mysteries

The book opens with a woman is going on a run just after her husband tells her their marriage is over, and she flashes back on seemingly random things that have happened to her lately. This radical change in Inbal’s life starts off a chain of events. Her father disappeared when she was ten years old under suspicious circumstances, and she has never known the whole story. She decides she needs to get to the bottom of this and talk with her secretive mother as well as try to reconnect with her sister.

Will Inbal find the answers she seeks? What other things will she discover about herself and her family?

This is a beautifully written book in which the author cleverly interweaves past and present and takes the reader on a journey that is both physical and psychological. I love the way he wrote the first scenes. You don’t understand at first why she is running or the relevance of the flashbacks, but it all comes together neatly. I enjoyed the metaphors of the buckling sidewalk and the trimming of the tree. I was surprised when I got to the end of the book and saw that a man wrote this as his understanding of complex female relationships, as between mother and daughter or sisters, seems right on. The author plays with language in a way that is both literary and accessible, which doesn’t always happen.

Thriller Harkens Back to the Bad of Days of Nazism

The book opens with a scene where Stag Maguire, a burnt-out journalist with PTSD, is going to his friend’s bar to meet him. His friends family had owned this bar for a couple of generations, and now it is going out of business. The friend, Harry, has not only lost his business but also his wife, so he is not doing well. Before they leave the bar one last time, Harry decides that he wants to take a portrait off the wall as a memento, as it has been there his whole life. When they go to remove it, a piece of parachute silk like a World War II pilot would carry falls out. There’s writing on it in German. Stag knows some German, and it appears to be an address and the words HELP ME, among others.

Both Stag and Harry now have questions about what the silk means and the portrait. The family has always just called the portrait Our Reini. After doing a little restoration of the portrait—during which time a key is found in the portrait—Stag realizes that it’s a representation of Reinhold Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo and the SD, which was the Nazi security/intelligence agency. As they start to investigate, they soon find themselves wrapped up an intrigue that finds Harry murdered by an assassin. Stag knows he’s in danger, but he’s a man with nothing to lose, so he decides to get to the bottom of this mystery that killed his friend. This takes him to the address in Germany that was on the silk, and the game is afoot.

This book is rich in detail about both the present and the past. Clearly, the author has a deep knowledge of Nazism and the Holocaust. The book sucks you in, first reading about two apparent losers who make this strange find. And then it heats up as soon as Harry gets killed. Who would kill over a World War II painting and a bit of parachute silk? Who wanted help? What are the mysteries to be found at apartment 12A? I love how Stag just took off and embraced the dangers of slipping into 12A so he could try to figure out why knowledge of it would make someone kill his friend. He ends up going to various parts of the globe, as he finds out more and more about the vestiges of Nazi Germany that still exist today.

If you enjoy page-turning thrillers that harken back to Nazi times, you might enjoy this book.