Zoë Rankin's The Vanishing Place is a location where fear, isolation, and complex family secrets reign. Who is the young girl caught frantically devouring strawberries at a grocery store in Koraha, New Zealand in 2025? What is her relationship to Effie, who currently lives in Island of Skye, Scotland? We piece this together from flashes of Effie's experiences in New Zealand in the early 2000s and her 2025 return to help police locate her childhood home in the bush in hopes of determining the girl's identity. Switching back and forth between snatches of the past and present is an effective way to build suspense, but the author's introduction of a third timespan about three-quarters of the way through the book adds confusion with many new twists and turns. In the end, it is the depth of the young girl's and Effie's characters and their relationship that make this novel worth reading.

Susanna Kwan's first novel, Awake in the Floating City, drew me into a post-apocalyptic San Francisco where survivors live in the top floors of flooded buildings where near-constant rains continue to wash away the remnants of civilization. At first, I was a reluctant witness to the main character Bo's hesitancy to leave this place. The pace seemed slow, and Bo's conflicted feelings made me impatient. Soon I appreciated the complexities of Bo's situation and her relationships with Eddie, her sometime lover; Mia, the elderly women she agrees to care for; and the relatives of each of these characters. Her efforts to resume her practice as an artist help her tie together past, present, and future, bringing the reader along to explore ways in which history, memory, and death and dying help us define and preserve the essence of humanity.

Emily is the central character of Marie Rutkoski's novel "Ordinary Love." We met her at her country home in upstate New York with her husband Jack, 10-year-old son Connor, and his younger sister Stella. Emily's confronting Jack concerning an incident with the children provides our entry into an examination of her marriage, relationships with childhood friends, her parents, acquaintances, and sexual partners. As is true of most relationships, Emily struggles with communicating, building trust, and resolving conflicts.

Rutkoski writes memorably about these interactions, but the relationships are fraught with missed opportunities for resolution. At a few points I dreaded reading what happened next—would she fail? We get glimpses throughout the book into lives of the elites—wealthy families and top-level athletes—that sometimes made me feel more excluded than informed. Overall, the author compellingly portrays the perils and rewards of the quest for ordinary love.

I love Anne Tyler's books--that hasn't changed over the 50 years I've been reading them. I especially love the way she portrays her characters' feelings and frailties as she does in "Three Days in June," which focuses on the day before, of, and after Gail's daughter Debbie's wedding. Although more novella than novel in length, Tyler conveys many details of not only Gail and Debbie's lives, but Gail's ex-husband, mother, and employer; the groom, his parents and sister; other assorted significant others; as well as neighbors and seemingly incidental characters, including a cat. Tyler's greatest gift may be how she describes her subjects' feelings, which feelings they want to share with others, and the dialog they use to do so, ultimately revealing how people become who they are and behave the way they do. The expertly handled themes here include betrayals and the complexities of reconciliation across the lifespan.

My first reaction to Hayley Scrivenor's novel, "Girl Falling," was the use of "girl" in the title. The success of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" has made "girl" titles so common that I find it off-putting! The novel is well-crafted, but I found it difficult to like the characters. The author focuses on important relationships that Finn and Daphne, the central characters, have with each other, their sisters, their mothers, their therapist, and other friends and lovers. The twists and turns in the plot were clever and surprising, but I found myself dreading finding out what would happen to them rather than caring. The characters' detailed discussion of psychological issues is plausible because of their academic experience, but I found some of their behaviors implausible. Would a particular person really make this sequence of decisions and actions? Would the other characters react to them in this way? I wish I had cared more!

Joanna Pearson's first novel, Bright and Tender Dark, focuses on the January 2000 murder of college student Karlie. Part mystery and part commentary on generational change, we hear the story first from the perspective of Joy, Karlie's freshman year roommate, and others—often strangers—who, in 2019, are obsessed with solving her murder—believing the man convicted is innocent. Then Pearson returns to 1999, revealing more about Karlie, her relationships with her family, religion, and several friends and acquaintances. Karlie's inner life is expertly portrayed, partly through her writings, including poetry. Pearson ends the novel with a return to 2019 and additional details that might resolve the murder mystery.

The writing is wonderful, but some of the characters seem cast primarily as red herrings or to represent diverse groups. This is an engaging read for anyone interested in academia, evangelism, and how we deal with love and rejection.