Life and Other Love Songs

November 1, 2022

In perennial New York Times best-selling Deveraux's My Heart Will Find You, a young woman stranded in Kansas City by the pandemic agrees to serve as caretaker for an isolated older man and finds a book in his library that leads to vibrant dreams of a life and love in the 1870s that could be real (125,000-copy first printing). Gray's Life and Other Love Songs, which tracks a Black family from the Great Migration to 1990s New York, opens with Ozro Armstead taking a walk on his 37th birthday when he inexplicably vanishes; following the LibraryReads pick The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (60,000-copy first printing). Henry features the couple Harriet and Wyn, who aren't in a Happy Place; they have reluctantly broken up but agree to the pretense that they are still together for their annual getaway with best friends (750,000-copy first printing). Caterer Emma Jansen returns to the bulldozer-ready Long Island estate where she grew up as the estate manager's daughter and encounters both the family's grandson, whom she loved, and chauffeur's son Leo, her best buddy; just like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, hence Janowitz's title, The Audrey Hepburn Estate (75,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Beloved author McCall Smith set out to solve The Enigma of Garlic as he revisits the residents of 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh, with shenanigans set off by excitement over Big Lou and Fat Bob's wedding. Novak convenes three friends at The Seaside Library 20 years after a tragedy altered their lives--but not, it seems, their rediscovered commitment to one another (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Susan Patterson (Big Words for Little Geniuses) and lyricist/librettist DiLallo are joined by mega-best-selling James Patterson with Things I Wish I Told My Mother, the story of a mother and daughter opening up to each other on a Paris vacation (150,000-copy first printing). Celebrated Southern author Smith returns with Silver Alert, featuring a curmudgeonly older man who refuses to let his life dim, instead setting off on a last glorious journey up the Florida Keys with a younger friend bearing secrets of her own (40,000-copy first printing). After the beloved best sellers Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota, Stradal stays Midwestern culinary with Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, featuring husband-and-wife Ned and Mariel Praeger and the crises they face regarding the Minnesota family restaurant businesses each has inherited (100,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 27, 2023
Gray (The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls) follows three generations of a Black Detroit family in her poignant latest. Deborah and Oz Armstead marry young, not long after meeting as teens at a 1962 rent party. Gray traces their effort to rise above menial jobs in a hospital kitchen and on a graveyard shift at GM, respectively. As Deborah chases her dream of a Motown singing career and they have a daughter, Trinity, Deborah comes to suspect Oz hasn’t shared the whole story of his past. Then, on Oz’s 37th birthday, he disappears, leaving behind Deborah; teenage Trinity; Oz’s younger brother, Tommy; and the brothers’ mother, Pearl. Unsure if he’s dead or alive (“absence was not the same as death,” Trinity narrates), the family tries to move on. As Deborah struggles with alcohol and career disappointments, the years tick past, and each character is shaped by others’ actions, as well as the country’s changing political and social turmoil. Gray gradually reveals the painful events that forced Oz, Pearl, and Tommy to leave Alabama in 1962 and head north. Along the way, there are plenty of razor-sharp observations (“They calling this a riot? This ain’t no riot. It’s a uprising. A rebellion,” remarks a preacher in 1967). Gray does not disappoint. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary.

March 15, 2023
Gray proves herself, as she did in The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (2019), as a master storyteller of family dramas filled with secrets and lies. In 1960s Detroit, Deborah dreams of being the next Diana Ross when she meets shy, ambitious Oz. While he fully supports her singing career, her success means she isn't around enough for their daughter, Trinity, or for Oz--she's the only thing that quiets his inner demons and keeps him from obsessing over the past. He has forever been his brother Tommy's protector, especially from their father, who tried to beat the ""sissy"" out of him. But in Oz's determination to build a happy life, he effectively pushes away both Deborah, who turns to drink, and Tommy, who uses the Vietnam War as an escape. When Oz disappears on his thirty-seventh birthday, everything falls apart. Gray moves in time to unwind the mystery of Oz's disappearance and to tell the stories of Deborah, Oz, Trinity, and Tommy. Humming with heart and just enough suspense to keep the pages turning, this is arresting.

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May 1, 2023
A Black family in suburban Detroit is torn apart by long-held secrets. In her sophomore novel, following The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (2019), Gray again braids the narrative perspectives of three family members--here Daniel Ozro Armstead Jr.; his wife, Deborah; and his daughter, Trinity. Trinity narrates the opening section of the book, which is set at her father's funeral--though they are burying an empty casket because her father vanished years earlier and his death is only presumed. From there, the sections move back and forth in time to illuminate the situation and its aftermath, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Oz, as he was called, grew up in rural Alabama, but after a fire took his father's life and burned their house to the ground in 1962, his mother, Pearl, took her two sons and fled to Detroit. Both boys have mysterious scars and keep the full story of what happened from everyone, including the beautiful up-and-coming singer Deborah, whom Oz meets at a rent party. So much hope and promise are vested in Deborah's career, and in the life she and Oz create for Trinity--but her recording contract never materializes, she turns to alcohol, and their home in an all-White-except-for-them suburb becomes a tense and unhappy place. Gray keeps the narrative interest high by teasing out the mystery of Oz's disappearance as the family splinters and the story follows them to Chicago, New York, and back to the rural South. Oz, the most complicated character, retains a core of decency even as his mistakes pile up, and Trinity is a snappy smart-mouth--"I, on the other hand, looked like an aging hooker who'd had a particularly bad night"--who injects the story with energy and moments of comic relief. The trajectory of Gray's flawed but relatable characters offers hope that even deep, long-festering wounds can heal.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2023

Family secrets and generational trauma take center stage in Gray's (The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls) powerfully written historical novel. When Oz Armstead disappeared on his 37th birthday, his wife Deborah and 16-year-old daughter Trinity were devastated. Eight years later, in the 1980s, Deborah has him declared dead. Then the novel flashes back to the early 1960s, before the disappearance, to the period of Deborah's and Oz's courtship and the early years of their marriage. Detroit-born and -bred Deborah hopes to be discovered by Motown, but when circumstances force her to give up on stardom, her occasional drinking becomes worse. Deborah's drinking plus the effects of Oz's troubled childhood causes fractures in their marriage. In the after-disappearance period, Trinity and Deborah try to move on with their lives, but Trinity's abandonment issues cause her to mess up her romantic relationship, while Deborah hits rock bottom. As Deborah begins to recover parts of her lost dreams, Trinity realizes she has to change her ways before they affect her son. VERDICT Gray shows the complex natures of these broken characters and how abuse, deceit, and life's struggles are all made worse by racism, poverty, and homophobia. A great pick for book clubs and an essential purchase.--Lynnanne Pearson

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.