THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT (Karen White)

What a great book!  OK, in retrospect I DID suspect the outcome, but it isn't supposed to be a mystery. What made this a great book is that I kept thinking about it and wanting to get back to reading it AND I actually remember the names of all of the main characters even though I've already started reading another novel. To me, this means that it was good!

I haven't read all of Karen White's novels, but this one seems like a bit of a departure from the ones I have read.  There is no history (although there are flashbacks to the earlier years of one of the characters) and no paranormal element, just good old-fashioned Lifetime Movie thrills.  Who doesn't enjoy a good story about a sad divorcee who moves to a new home with her children, meets an intriguing man, a wise old woman with secrets, and a too-good-to-be-true new friend?

Recent divorcee Merilee Dunlap and her two children, Lily and Colin, rent a cottage on the property of 93-year-old Sugar Bates, a widowed Sweet Apple native with some deep, dark secrets.  Since Merilee herself has a past that she has been trying to run from for years, she and Sugar discover a surprising sense of kinship.  Heather Blackford, a wealthy and attractive local woman who chairs numerous events at the children's school, recruits Merilee to help, taking her under her wing and making her a part of the school's social in-crowd.  Heather and Merilee become fast friends, but Sugar distrusts Heather's motives, especially since seemingly happily married Heather was once engaged to Wade, the grandson of Sugar's best friend, who has exhibited an interest in getting to know Heather better.  A series of mix-ups with meetings, weekend getaways, and supposedly misunderstood directions eventually lead to tragedy.  I can't say anymore with giving away the whole plot, but I will say that I loved every twist and turn.  In terms of thrillers, this isn't on par with some of the big names.  There are a few things that could have been resolved but weren't, and a few spots in the story where you might find yourself saying, "Is she really that stupid?".  However, White does such a great job of making us care about and empathize with Merilee and Sugar that you just won't care about the little flaws.  I still want to find out what happens next, but the book ended.  Darn!

THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES (Sally Hepworth)

This is an earlier novel by the author of The Things We Keep and The Mother's Promise.  I will admit that a couple of my friends and I seem to have formed a Sally Hepworth cult.  We can't get enough of her excellent novels!

This one was published in 2015 and alternates between 3 generations of midwives - a grandmother, mother, and granddaughter, all of whom are harboring personal secrets.  Floss, 83, is retired and in a relationship with another woman.  She fled from England years ago with her newborn daughter, Grace, then finished her midwifery training and settled into life as a single mother in Rhode Island, presenting only vague details of her late husband to her family.  Grace, Floss's daughter, is going through a difficult time, personally and professionally.  He husband, Robert, an accountant, is on the verge of being downsized and spends most of his time worrying about finances, while Grace's dedication to home births and hatred of doctors may create problems with her career.  Neva, Grace's single daughter, works in a hospital birthing center as a certified nurse-midwife and has been hiding important news from everyone: she is 30 weeks pregnant.  When her condition is discovered she refuses to name the father.

While there is a bit of melodrama here, it is a wonderful book.  The details about midwifery are fascinating, the characters are actually believable and appealing, and the ending will leave you with warm feeling about human nature and acceptance.  I would not rate it quite as highly as The Things We Keep, but I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys women's fiction.  I loved it!

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (Muriel Spark)

First of all, I don't like Jean Brodie.  She is manipulative, immoral, narcissistic, and callous.  She uses people, especially her students, to satisfy some unidentifiable lack in her own life.  Perhaps she is unable to love, or perhaps she feels that she needs to justify her own sense of superiority by minimizing the abilities of others. She is a rebel dedicated to her own cause, a standard of behavior and accomplishment that fails to take into account the talents and aspirations of others.  Instead of nurturing her students, she manipulates them.

Miss Brodie teaches at a Scottish girl's school.  Her students are 10-year-old girls, the perfect age at which to prey on their insecurities and influence their values.  The "Brodie Set" is a disparate group, including the beautiful, the brilliant, the awkward, and the clueless.  They worship Miss Brodie, each in their own way, and aspire to meet her unbendable standards of behavior and intellectual accomplishment.  She is, by her own admission, in her prime, and in her narcissistic mind this meas that she is superior (apparently no one else in her life has ever or will ever enjoy a "prime").  She also admires Mussolini and Hitler. I have to admit that I am not sure what author Spark meant to convey in this novel other than to present a character study of the ultimate narcissist.  I do know that Miss Brodie is based in part on a teacher that encouraged Spark to write, but I can't imagine that she would have been a favorite teacher!  The novel includes a great deal of flash forwards, so the reader knows what will eventually happen to each of the girls and to Miss Brodie.

Would I recommend it?  On the basis of the long-time literary merit it has enjoyed, I would.  It will keep you thinking long after you finish reading.  If you are looking for a novel to relax with and enjoy, however, I would not.  It's hard to love a novel where you thoroughly dislike the main character!

QUIET NEIGHBORS (Catriona McPherson)

This is very different from the novels that I usually read. Jude flees London for obscure reasons (a broken marriage? a crime?  grief?) and ends up returning to a messy bookstore in Scotland that she and her then-husband had visited on an earlier holiday.  She ends up taking a job at the bookstore and forming a sort of family with the shop's owner, Lowland (Lowell) Glen, and his newly discovered daughter.

This is a novel about identity.  Who is Jude and why is she so fearful about her past being discovered?  Is Lowell's daughter really his daughter with one-night-stand Miranda, now deceased, and is she really pregnant with Lowell's grandchild?  Who are the quiet neighbors and what is the long-deceased neighbor whose books are buried in Lowell's shop trying to communicate with the obscure notes/reviews he left in so many of the volumes he owned?  What the heck is going on with Mrs. Hewitt, old Dr. Glen's nurse, who lives in a cottage on Lowell's property?

I found the story to be somewhat confusing, to tell you the truth.  I would have liked a bit more revelation about Jude's past earlier on because it was difficult to even like her when you had no idea if she was a criminal, a grief-stricken daughter, or just irresponsible.  I DID, however, enjoy the atmosphere tremendously.  You could almost smell the dusty books and feel the grottiness of the bookshop.  I loved the cottage in the cemetery, though, and wish I could visit it or live there myself!  I noticed that some people on Amazon described this as a cozy, which it certainly is not.  It is atmospheric, mysterious, annoying, and sometimes downright scary, but it is definitely not cozy.

DON'T BELIEVE A WORD (Patricia MacDonald)

Wow!  I don't know why Patricia MacDonald isn't up there on the best-seller lists with James Patterson and Janet Evanovich.  I don't think I've ever read one of her thrillers and not liked it, and this one is certainly intriguing.  Eden Radley, a New York book editor, is shocked to hear on the news that her mother, who left Eden and her father years ago to marry a much younger man, has committed murder-suicide.  Tara Darby, the mother, apparently taped up windows and doors in her Cincinnati home while her husband, Flynn, was at a writers' conference, then left the car running in order to kill herself and her severely disabled son.  Eden is guilt-ridden about ignoring a message from her mother on the night she died, wondering if she could have prevented the tragedy.  Eden travels to Cincinnati and is appalled at the attitude and appearance of her step-father, Flynn Darby, and eventually becomes convinced that he was instrumental in the deaths of his wife and child.

MacDonald creates layers and layers of doubts, intrigue, and motives, never allowing the reader to feel that a comfortable and logical solution has been found.  She constantly surprises us, along with Eden, as new information comes to light in each chapter.  When Eden is put in the impossible position of editing Flynn's new book about his life, she has to return to Cleveland, a trip that opens up more doubts about what happened to her mother.

There are a few typical minor plotlines in this novel, including a budding love interest, and there is a woman-in-jeopardy scene that you can see coming from a mile away.  They belong in the book, though, and just add to the excitement of the story.  This novel actually touches on a wide range of issues, including mental illness, genetic disorders, infidelity, family relationships, Muslim culture, and the devastation of dealing with hopeless diagnoses.  You'll be as shocked as Eden was at the outcome, and you'll be sorry that it had to end.