Something For Everyone In This Month's Book Report

This month’s Book Report has something for for everyone.

On the nonfiction side, Jeff Hobbs, author of the brilliant The Short And Tragic Life of Robert Peace takes on the timely subject of homelessness in Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children and a Story of Homelessness in America. 

In 2018, Evelyn decides that the best chance for her five children to have a good future is to leave her home in the desert town of Lancaster, California and move to Los Angeles where the schools are better.

She and her husband have $5000 in savings which she thinks will keep them until they find jobs and a home. The money dwindles quickly as finding a place to live within their means is difficult. Evelyn works as a waitress at Applebees, but her husband doesn’t find work in construction.

After a domestic violence incident, Evelyn flees with her children. They stay with her aunt as long as they can, but then they move on to a government system that finds emergency housing in hotels for families. Every night, she calls a phone number and hopes that there is a room for them, meaning that they move every night to a different hotel, often in dangerous areas of Los Angeles.

When they can’t find a hotel room, the family of now six children and Evelyn sleep in their old SUV parked on side streets. Eventually, Evelyn is connected with Doors of Hope, a nonprofit organization that helps families find homes and learn job and life skills that will lead to a better life.

Wendi works at Doors of Hope becoming a lifeline for Evelyn. Wendi is also a graduate of Doors of Hope and knows first-hand the challenges Evelyn faces. Evelyn can be stubborn and Wendi finds it difficult at times to deal with her, but Wendi admires Evelyn’s determination to give her children the best education they can get.

Hobbs shows us the increasing problem of homelessness in this country through the prism of Evelyn and her family. We see how precarious life can be and the daily stress that lack of housing creates in a family. It’s an eye-opening book that will enlighten us all to this important issue. I highly recommend it.

On the lighter side, Vera Wong is back in Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man. In the second book in this charming series, 61 year-old Vera, owner of a tea shop in Chinatown in San Francisco, is hoping to find another murder to solve after  she caught the person who killed a man she found dead in her tea shop in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Guide to Murders. 

This time, Vera becomes involved in the apparent suicide of a popular influencer on TikTok. Once again, Vera collects a group of people who knew the young man, a man with many secrets.

Vera uses a combination of doggedness and feeding anyone she wants information from her delicious Chinese delicacies to discover what happened to the young man she believes was murdered.

When Vera is threatened by a scary man, she knows she is on the right track. Her merry band of people join her in her quest to discover the truth, all while becoming a TikTok star in her own right.

Vera is a hoot of a character, and the things she says made me laugh out loud several times, although I still quibble that 61 year-old Vera is ‘elderly’. (At least in this book Vera begins to question that she is elderly as well so that is progress.) This book is a delight.

Anne Tyler’s novel Three Days in June covers, yes, three days in the life of Gail, a woman whose daughter is getting married tomorrow. Today Gail loses her job at a private school and finds her ex-husband at her door with his cat. 

He is asking to stay with her for the wedding because he can’t leave the cat at home and their daughter’s fiancé is allergic to cats. To top it off, Gail isn’t invited to the spa day with her daughter and the rest of the bridal party and her daughter’s future mother-in-law who has taken over all the wedding preparations. Oh, and she got a very bad haircut at the salon.

Gail is reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge in that she is also socially awkward and tends to not be diplomatic in her dealings with others. Anne Tyler always writes intriguing characters, and Gail continues in that tradition in this slim novel, easily read in a weekend.

Seeking Shelter by Jeff Hobbs- A+

Published by Scribner

Hardcover, $29.99, 336 pages

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man by Jesse Q. Sutanto- A

Published by Berkley

Trade paperback, $19, 336 pages

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler- A-

Published by Knopf

Hardcover, $27, 176 pages

Romantic Friction by Lori Gold

Romantic Friction by Lori Gold

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778387657

Trade paperback, $18.99, 304 pages

From the publisher:

Sofie Wilde’s bestselling fantasy romance series has been breaking bestseller records and readers’ hearts for years. She’s primed to become a worldwide phenomenon as the tenth and final book is set to debut after the annual romance readers convention takes place in Chicago next week. As buzz continues to build toward the book’s release, Sofie is asked to headline the event for the first time, a career milestone. One she won’t let anyone take from her, especially “the next Sofie Wilde.”

That’s what they’re calling her—Hartley West, the self-published debut author who writes in the style of Sofie Wilde. Except she doesn’t actually “write” anything. After Hartley admits to using AI to create her novel, Sofie’s ready to watch Hartley be skewered on social media. Except in this unpredictable world, Hartley is instead lauded for being innovative, for being such a skilled editor to take what the AI churned out and massage it into a story that’s just as compelling as Sofie’s—maybe even more so.

After her unhinged rant unintentionally goes viral, Sofie loses her keynote, and she’s starting to lose all her support. That loss is Hartley’s gain—as her book sales start soaring, she’s given the headliner spot. Sofie is livid. And she’s not the only one. As the convention begins, Sofie is surrounded by fellow authors who also fear for their futures, their livelihoods, their art being stripped away, one AI prompt at a time. Something must be done. This has to be stopped. Now. With the clock ticking down to the keynote, Sofie enlists her fellow authors in a plan to stop Hartley, vowing, “‘The next Sofie Wilde’—over my dead body. Or hers.”

My thoughts:

As someone who doesn't know (or care?) too much about AI, I found Romantic Friction's look at how it steals from authors' works enlightening- and frightening. Hartley West at first appears to be just a Sophie Wilde superfan who writes fan-fiction in the same style of Sophie Wilde, but clearly there is more to her than meets the eye.

Hartley wants to be a successful author too and sees using AI as a way to do that. Sophie rightly feels that Hartley is stealing from her, and as things begin to spiral out of control at the romance convention, she must figure out a way to stop Hartley.

Other romance authors at the convention confront Sophie and insist that she stop Hartley or they fear that there will be more Hartleys coming their way stealing their books. I did feel that the other romance authors were less well-drawn that than other characters in the book.

And who is this handsome mysterious man oddly named Cooper-Brad who appeared at the infamous book signing and now shows up at the romance convention? Is he Hartley's partner in crime or someone who Sophie can count on to help her?

Sophie is a great flawed character. She drinks too much, is pretty anti-social with other authors, and has trouble with the concept of friendship. 

There are hijinks a-plenty as Sophie attempts to stop Hartley, and if you've ever been to a book convention, you'll enjoy that aspect of the story. (If you haven't been to a convention, you'll like it as well.) 

There's also a few twists in this fun inside baseball look at the publishing industry, and it's not all flattering, but it is thought-provoking.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Summer 2025 Blog Tour.