The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone

The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone

By Audrey Burges
Narrated by Christine Lakin
Release date: 24 January 2023
listening length: 9 hours, 57 minutes

A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges.

From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide. Myra’s stories have created legions of fans who breathlessly await every blog post, trade photographs of Mansion-modeled rooms, and swap theories about the enigmatic and reclusive author. Myra herself is tethered to the Mansion by mysteries she can’t understand—rooms that appear and disappear overnight, music that plays in its corridors.

Across the country, Alex Rakes, the scion of a custom furniture business, encounters two Mansion fans trying to recreate a room. The pair show him the Minuscule Mansion, and Alex is shocked to recognize a reflection of his own life mirrored back to him in minute scale. The room is his own bedroom, and the Mansion is his family’s home, handed down from the grandmother who disappeared mysteriously when Alex was a child. Searching for answers, Alex begins corresponding with Myra. Together, the two unwind the lonely paths of their twin worlds—big and small—and trace the stories that entwine them, setting the stage for a meeting rooted in loss, but defined by love.

I loved this book. I loved the characters. I love the way that the past weaves and shows you how it connects into the present. I loved how it ended, the hope of a future, even if it wasn't the one I wanted.

The Measure

The Measure 

Nikki Erlick 
Published June 28, 2022

My rating: 5 stars out of 5 stars

I read this book to complete the prompt in my Boise Public library Ultimate Book Nerd challenge: Read a book on a book list (NYT Best sellers ect). 

"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager

A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster for readers of The Midnight Library.

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious, and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.

I thought this book was simply amazing. Listened to this as an audiobook and the way the characters are laid out is just perfect, seeing them come together, each separate person in this huge city, somehow weaving together into one beautiful story. Plus the concept is just something that makes you think about all the social issues that go on any day. What would you do if the length of your life could be known to you. Do you open your box? Just a crazy concept and I loved it!

Lawn Boy

For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work—and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew—he knows that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how?

In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity. That’s the birthright for all Americans, isn’t it? If so, then what is Mike Muñoz’s problem? Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can’t seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it. And it’s looking really good.

Lawn Boy is an important, entertaining, and completely winning novel about social class distinctions, about overcoming cultural discrimination, and about standing up for oneself.

Trigger warnings: homophobic language, sexual content, language, drug abuse, alcohol use

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This was the strangest book I have read in a long while, but I think I liked it. Mike is just trying to figure himself out. Through the changing jobs and the people who are drifting in and out of his life, I was beginning to wonder about the choices he was making. Then I started to see him become more sure in his own decisions and understood. This isn't about the decisions I would make, but about him becoming the man he was supposed to be. I love how supportive his family is, how much his friend comes beside and supports him (even if he is a real homo-phobe a**hole). I just love teh realness of this story.

Some of my favorite quotes, these are scattered through the book - percent of the way through shown in parenthesis after the quotes, if you are interested:

  

At this point, I feel like I’m nothing more than what everybody needs me to be or whatever the situation demands of me. (3%)

That’s what kids should do, they should laugh. If there’s a better, righter sound in the whole world than the laughter of children, I don’t know what it is. (5%)

I’ve come to believe that to a large degree we are products of our environment. (10%)

No matter how deep the infection runs, family is family. The only other choice is to cut them off like rotten limbs. (31%)

the moments are fleeting, like my mom’s smile, and it’s not often we have control over them, and that just makes them all the sweeter. (39%) 

when the questions become too numerous and the considerations begin to feel a little overwhelming, you just have to look away for a minute and regather your vision for the thing, try to see it the way it originally came to you. Ask yourself, how did I arrive here? What was I trying to accomplish? (90%)

So, whoever you are, whatever your last name is, wherever you came from, whichever way you swing, whatever is standing in your way, just remember: you’re bigger than that. Like the man said: you contain multitudes. (90%)

The Last Dreamwalker

After her mother’s unexpected death, Layla Hurley must accept that their relationship was always distant and fraught. In the wake of her passing, Layla reconnects with the maternal side of her family—aunts she hasn’t been allowed to visit or speak to for years, and stories she’s never heard. She travels to South Carolina in search of closure, but discovers much more than she bargained for. While her mother harbored dark and disturbing secrets, there is also talk of her inheritance: a piece of land on the Gullah-Geechee island off the shore is now her own.

But Layla inherits more than land. A long-buried mysterious power, dropped through generations of her Gullah ancestors, awakens. Like many women before her, Layla is a dream-walker. She can inhabit and manipulate the dreams of others. As she dives into dark memories of her mother and the history of the island, she’s desperate to hold onto what’s real and untangle it from the looming dread that someone else, someone cloaked in malice, inhabits these dreams too.

No gift is without its consequences, and Layla finds herself thrust in the middle of a nightmare against an enemy that could snatch away her family and her life as she knows it.

While I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my review (via netgalley), all opinions remain my own.

Trigger warnings: slavery, racism, violence, mental health

I found this story to be quite compelling. It kept me listening long beyond when I should have turned it off. 

I wanted to know what was going to happen to Layla and her island. This story also goes back to the viewpoints of Layla's ancestors and you see how the island came to be theirs. The idea of dream-walking is something that I have always been fascinated with and this book just brought the idea to life. It is a new twist on a very old concept. One thing I also loved was the way the family related to each other. Felt like a real family dynamic. We aren't all like the classic TV family, this shows that we can still function, even if we aren't perfect.

The Spanish Love Deception

Catalina Martín desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiraled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him.
She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. New York to Spain is no short flight and her raucous family won’t be easy to fool.

Enter Aaron Blackford—her tall, handsome, condescending colleague—who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating, blood-boiling, and insufferable man.

But Catalina is desperate, and as the wedding draws nearer, Aaron looks like her best option. And she begins to realize he might not be as terrible in the real world as he is at the office.

My rating: four of five stars

I thought this was a cute book. Parts of it were a little expected, but it wasn't in a bad way. I loved the end of the story though and really love that this is book one. That means there will be more Catalina and Aaron. They are so cute together. TSLD includes several racy love scenes, so if those aren't your thing, either be prepared to skip a few pages or maybe skip this book. The main characters in this story were loveable and fun. Sometimes you wanted to slap them for the stupid decisions they were making. 

All Good People Here

This is a book I have been looking forward to and it did not disappoint. This is the synopsis from goodreads: 

In the propulsive debut novel from the host of the #1 true crime podcast "Crime Junkie," a journalist uncovers her hometown’s dark secrets when she becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her childhood neighbor—and the disappearance of another girl twenty years later.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

When Margot returns home to help care for her sick uncle, it feels like walking into a time capsule. Wakarusa is exactly how she remembered: genial, stifled, secretive. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who’s gone missing under eerily similar circumstances. With all the old feelings rushing back, Margot vows to find Natalie and solve January’s murder once and for all.

But the police, the family, the townspeople—they all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into Natalie’s disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder January’s case feels. Could the killer still be out there? Could it be the same person who kidnapped Natalie? And what will it cost to finally discover what truly happened that night?

I will start with a few trigger warnings. This book includes lots of talk of child death and or murder, missing children, abuse of an already deceased animal, violence. This may not cover all triggering topics, read with caution if you are sensitive to this kind of content. 

I really did enjoy reading this story. The pace was fast and kept me really guessing who the "bad guy" was. It was suspenseful without being too much. I think the only thing I didn't love is that the end was so open. While you know what happened, you don't know everything. If you have read it, you know. 

I hate it when that happens. 

I've upgraded this one from my original review to four stars. The open-ish ending didn't change how I felt reading this book. 

Would recommend this to any true crime fans (likely you have heard about it already if you listen to any true crime podcasts).