The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery

This Is How It Always Is (Laurie Frankel) - Based partly on the author’s experience raising a transgender child, this novel will certainly inspire a lively discussion in any book group.

This nonfiction narrative about a family raising twins, one of whom is transgender, was absolutely fascinating. So many novels fall apart at the end, either tying everything up too neatly or leaving us hanging, but the ending of this book is absolutely perfect.īecoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (Amy Ellis Nutt) - After reading This Is How it Always Is, my curiosity about transgender issues was piqued. Bibliophiles will love all the literary references and quotations sprinkled throughout.

Turtles All the Way Down (John Green) - More sophisticated than his earlier novels, Green’s latest focuses on a teenage girl, Aza, struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder, along with all the usual adolescent angst. Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir (Amy Tan) - I love memoirs by writers, and I love Amy Tan, so I thought this book was absolutely wonderful - but I think it has some broader appeal, in that it focuses on Tan’s complicated relationship with her mother. The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs (Janet Peery) - Peery is a beautiful and poetic writer, and her subject is a timely one: the cost of opioid addiction to an individual and a family. The gist of the group’s criticism was that they felt emotionally distant from the character and they found the narrative less than compelling. We still had a great discussion, but the experience made me a little hesitant about recommending the book again. Manhattan Beach (Jennifer Egan) - I really enjoyed Jennifer Egan’s foray into the traditional historical novel, so I was surprised when I moderated a book discussion about it and found that not one of the dozen or so smart, well-read women in the group liked the book at all.

The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery