Lost in the Moment and Found

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire, 146 pages

In the eighth Wayward Children book, we get the story of Antsy, a young girl whose home environment has been increasingly uncomfortable since her father died and a new stepfather came into the equation. When Antsy hits her tipping point and the alarm bells start ringing, she runs away from home and ends up in an eclectic store that she soon learns is a nexus of worlds, the place where lost thing go, with Doors leading in and out of strange and sometimes wonderful lands.

We met Antsy in the previous book in the series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, as Cora's roommate, but what's wonderful is that you don't have to have read that one to enjoy this one, or vice versa. (The back-and-forth between the continuing story and books that focus on specific characters is fantastic, and makes it approachable from many angles.) Antsy's story is uncomfortable and scary and unsettling, a story of childhood and innocence lost, and it's delicately and perfectly told.

Good riddance

Good riddance / Elinor Lipman, read by Mia Barron, 290 pgs.

Newly divorced Daphne never really understood her mom's obsession with an old yearbook from her first year of teaching.  Sure, she was the year book adviser and the book was dedicated to her.  She used it to keep notes on the class whose reunions she attended.  When the yearbook is left to Daphne when her mom dies, she keeps it for a year then throws it in the recycle bin in her apartment.  The neighbor down the hall is a documentary film maker, she finds the yearbook, decodes some of the notes and decides it would make a great story for her to research.  Now, with her mom's reputation on the line (turns out some of those notes were a bit catty), Daphne needs to figure out how to put the brakes on this project. A bit of hilarity ensues as Daphne makes things up on the fly, deals with her widowed dad moving from New Hampshire to an apartment 5 blocks away, and discovering something very interesting about one of her mother's ex-students.  Luckily, the neighbor across the way is available for a romantic interlude.  Fun to read and not take too seriously.  The audio is excellently narrated by Mia Barron.

The Clockmaker's Daughter

The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton, 485 pages

Archivist Elodie is sifting through a box at work when she stumbles upon a sketchbook that once belonged to Victorian artist Edward Radcliffe. Among the images he sketched are a hauntingly beautiful woman and a gabled, multi-chimney country home that Elodie immediately recognizes from a fairy tale her long-dead mother once told her. From there, the book hops around from Elodie's modern story to that of Radcliffe's beautiful model in the 1850s to a young student at the turn of the 20th Century to a researcher in the late 1920s to a mother and her children taking refuge at the house during the London Blitz. Throughout all of it is a narrative from a ghost who haunts the house, seeing all of these stories as they happen.

I love the idea for this book, but the execution is a bit rough, in part because Morton fleshes out each story SO MUCH — I kept finding myself hooked into a story only to find it dropping off in favor of a different character's story at a different time. I feel like Morton would have done well to cut out a storyline or two, and checked in with Elodie a bit more often (as she is the one who gets us into this whole tale to begin with). Great idea though.

The Red Notebook

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain  159 pp.

This sweet story is the tale of Parisian bookseller, Laurent, who finds a lady's purse abandoned on top of a trash can. Fearing some poor woman has been mugged, he attempts to turn it in to the police who are too busy to deal with it. Laurent takes the handbag home and then commits the ultimate sin...he goes through the purse in a search for the owners identity. In addition to ordinary items--lipstick, etc.-- he finds a small red notebook filled with random, observations made by the owner. Laurent is intrigued and begins the search for the mysterious woman in earnest. The question is will he find her and form a lasting relationship with the missing owner of the purse? I really enjoyed this small book.