‘Owen’ is the story of a man who went from a Welsh solider in the English army, to a servant, and then ended up marrying the dowager queen of England. His descendants would go on to rule multiple countries around Europe. The founder of a great dynasty that would change England and therefore the world.

Owen Tudor is one of the people in the Wars of the Roses, that I have never seen portrayed in film or writing. That was until I read this book. I think it is quite strange that many have not ventured into writing about this man as in a sense he founded the Tudor Dynasty. The character work here is very one dimensional but I can see why since there is not a lot to base Owen on. I did like the portrayal of Queen Catherine and the dialogue that came along with that.

I have talked far and wide for my love of the Middle Ages and more specifically the Wars of the Roses time period. The author did a great deal of research on the time period and the people in it.

The writing is where I think this fell flat for me but it also could have been the plot but we will get to that. It was very mechanical and simple. Which does make for an easy read but I got bored with it. One dimensional is a word that I would use to overall describe my time reading ‘Owen’.

As stated before, it is obvious that the writer did his research for the first installment of the Tudor trilogy. That is great but it also held him back a lot. If you know the life of Owen Tudor that is exactly what you are going to get with very few moments going in depth or veering off course. It got dull and repetitive as the story went on.

The character work here is very one dimensional but I can see why since there is not a lot to base Owen on.The author did a great deal of research on the time period and the people in it. The writing was very mechanical and simple. The plot got dull and repetitive as the story went on. I did not hate this book or love it, I left it with no strong feelings therefore it will a receive a 2.5 star.

Here are the books that I plan to read this year, 2023, that I believe will be five stars. The best of the best. I will be leaving the description of each book below but I would like to say that these are copied from Goodreads and not personally written by me.

Betty –

So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence–both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family’s darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.

Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story–a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.

Love, Pamela – 

PAMELA ANDERSON’s blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands during a Canadian football game, she was quickly launched into superstardom, becoming Playboy‘s favorite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sex appeal. Yet the Pamela Anderson we think we know was created through happenstance rather than careful cultivation. Love, Pamela brings forth her true story: that of a small-town girl getting tangled up in her own dream.

Pamela forged ahead with grace, finding sanctuary in her love of art and literature, and emerged a devoted mother and activist. Now, having returned to the island of her childhood, after a memorable run starring as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, Pamela is telling her story, a story of an irrepressible free spirit coming home and discovering herself anew at every turn. With vivid prose interspersed with bursts of original poetry, Love, Pamela is a pensive, layered, and unforgettable memoir. 

The Medici – 

Wealthy bankers, wise politicians, patrons of the arts, glittering dukes… so runs the traditional telling of the story of the Medici, the family that ruled Florence for two hundred years and inspired the birth of the Italian Renaissance.

In this definitive account of their rise and fall, Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were wise rulers and enlightened fathers of the Renaissance is a fiction. In truth, she says, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias – tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own and which they beggared in their lust for power.

Ghostwritten – 

A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?

A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut novel of a writer with astonishing gifts.

Washington – 

On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation’s capital: ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions and compromises, Washington has been, from its beginnings, the stage on which our national dramas have played out.

“It is our national center,” Frederick Douglass once said of Washington, DC; “it belongs to us, and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny.” Interweaving the story of the city’s physical transformation with a nuanced account of its political, economic, and social evolution, Lewis tells the powerful history of Washington, DC ” the site of our nation’s highest ideals and some of our deepest failures.

The Actual Star – 

The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents —collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle.

In each era, age-old questions about existence and belonging and identity converge deep underground. Because only in complete darkness can one truly see the stars. 

Love, Comment, Subscribe – 

Back in high school, Lily Wang wanted to be popular, but she considered herself lucky to be part of a tight group of oddballs and honors students called the Nerd Herd. Now, at twenty-eight, she feels like she’s finally on the cusp of succeeding as a beauty influencer—if she can hit five million subscribers, brands will take notice and she could get her own makeup line.

Fellow Nerd Herd alum Tobin Bui has had a lot of success as a YouTube gamer. But the road to online stardom has been rocky. First, he disappointed his parents by dropping out of college, and now, after years of pranks, skits, and playthroughs, he’s struggling to come up with new content to satisfy his ever-growing fan base. His agents say he needs cross-audience appeal, a new twist.

Play it as it Lays – 

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil – literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul – it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

Babel – 

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

The Love Songs of W.E.B Dubois –

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois once wrote about the Problem of Race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

Crossroads –

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless–unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident. 

Still Life – 

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’s life for the next four decades.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 4.5 stars –

If there is one thing that Backman knows how to do it’s write characters. We have a large cast here, yet, they are properly developed and all individuals of their own. They all have their own story and insecurity. They might not be likable but they are real.

We are  locked in one small apartment and then a police station for the majority of this story but you never feel like you’re in a stagnant situation like our characters.

The writing was a bit confusing at times, just following the timelines and what not and then making sure you have the connections right. I think this could be a full five star on reread! I highly recommend keeping notes as you read this!

There are many themes here to uncover. None of us are perfect and we’re all trying to do good and do our best even if it doesn’t turn out as planned. Another could be the stages of life and what they bring. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers 4 stars –

The characters were all unique and interesting. There is a lot of representation in this book from disability to race and that is always great to see in such popular books! At the beginning, I was really worried that none of these stories would combine but all of that was for nothing and the branches connected beautifully. Nick and Olivia were my favorites.

You are one with nature when reading this book. Obviously a book where nature is the main focus you will have descriptive writing, therefore, hopefully, a great atmosphere. Here you have all of that.

As stated before the writing was very descriptive and impactful. So many of the quotes left me pondering and I am still thinking about them. The pacing was off here, though. The first section was almost like a short story collection and then the latter sections are told like a regular novel. I would have given this book a 4.5 (therefore a 5 on Goodreads) if it had been shortened. This could have been 200 pages shorter than it actually was. Just towards the end I really didn’t care what was happening in the story or with the characters because it went on for far too long.

The plot brings up a lot of important topics that most people probably don’t think about. My main takeaway was that we should appreciate the smallest things even if they’re large in a physical sense. So many of us take for granted the beauty of the nature around us and it’s quite sad. This book will give you a new appreciation for trees and I now find myself looking at them more. 

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin 3 stars –

I connected with the female characters ever so slightly but there was not a tremendous love for them. The males, I thought, were more on the one dimensional side. Maybe if we got more time with each person it would have worked out better.

The setting is really cool how we have almost a different time period with each character and usually in different locations but the same location can be different with time.

The writing was slightly above average. 

The themes here are the most important part, life and death. Is there free will or a set destiny? It left me thinking a lot. However, the ending was a little too open for my taste.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino 5 stars – This is a character driven novel at its finest. Cliff was still the coolest and Rick’s POV still the most boring. If I could be dropped into one story this would be it. I think that that says a lot about the atmosphere. My only complaint for the writing was there was some head jumping but it improved as the story went on. If you are thinking that you don’t need to read this because you have seen the movie, you are wrong. The book adds so much more.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 5 stars –

Great, great, great character work here. Zeno is the character arc that I want to say stands out the most but it’s so hard to choose. With Zeno we see his life all the way through where the others we don’t get as much time with. You get so hooked on a section and don’t want it to end and then you just get enthralled by the next one. All these stories are all connected, I was scared they wouldn’t be but the author knew what he was doing here.

I wasn’t certain how this would go atmosphere wise. We are given a lot and it might be overwhelming to some. In chronological order we have two characters in Bulgaria and Turkey in the 1400s, then two in modern day(1930s?-2070s) Idaho, lastly a character in the near future on a spaceship. That is a lot to take in and I didn’t know how it would all come together but they did. Each setting was like something I had never read before and has given me so much more knowledge on the world and different human experiences.

The writing was like that of a Greek epic. It was just  told like a classic story, fairy tale like. This felt like a story as old as time and that is very poetic as stories and time are two of the main themes here. The chapters were short so I never felt bogged down like I had to keep in this one place forever. It was quick for a six hundred page book. I read along with the audiobook and that really enhanced the experience for me.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid 5 stars – If there’s one thing that Taylor Jenkins Reid knows how to do, it’s making compelling characters. In her two previous books, I did not like the characters as people but I loved reading from them. The Riva siblings, they are characters I can pull for and like. The side characters are developed enough, even with so little page time, that the reader knows who each one is. Really, they could all get a book like Carrie Soto did. Malibu became a character of itself, especially in the earlier parts of the book. I just had such a vivid image in my head of what it might have been like in the past as I’ve only visited in the 2010s. This is the best writing I’ve seen from this author, it’s just different from her other works. The themes of nepotism were covered and if someone is really famous because of their family or if they have an actual talent. Another main theme was generational trauma and how the way someone’s raised overall impacts their mentality as a person. This book might only take place in one day but the characters develop and come to terms with who they are as people. I love everything about how Taylor Jenkins Reid writes her books!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 5 stars-

Best nonfiction this year.

I felt for these people. You could really see them as humans and could feel their emotions. We see sides of good and evil. It gives you hope in this world and then some just make you feel pure rage at how some treated others. Rebecca Skloot brought these people to life and really humanized Henrietta Lacks, showing that she and her family are more than just cells under a microscope.

When I first opened this book, the writing blew me away. It felt like I was reading an actual novel rather than a work of nonfiction. The storytelling was just amazing. I highly recommend the audiobook as it feels like you’re hearing an actual story from someone and not just having facts thrown at you. Nonfiction is always a hit or miss with the writing, it can be boring and dry or a whole worthwhile learning experience. This is accessible and easy to read. It is so worth it to learn about this woman and her contribution to the world

This plot is so important and I don’t know why it’s not taught in schools. There is actually a young adult version of this book and I think it should be read in schools. Believe it or not Henrietta Lacks has impacted all of our lives. The story shows the morals or lack of morals in science. It brings up so many things that seem to be hidden away in American history. Most of us assume it was only the Nazis doing experiments on people when it was happening here in the United States in the last century. It’s disgusting and needs to be brought to light. I am glad that the Lacks family finally got respect from someone like Rebecca Skloot and were able to have their mother’s story brought to light.

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh by Carl Zimmer 4 stars –

‘She Has Her Mother’s Laugh’, starts with the word heredity; where it came from and what it means. After the etymology, it is then explained how heredity was first used. Oftentimes it was used to describe the descendants of a king and who the heir to the throne would be. It went from Roman times all the way to the modern day with eyes pointed at the future of how genes can be engineered and if it’s ethical.

I think it best if the reader goes in with some prior knowledge on the subject matter. It got dense at times and just too much information. I did learn a lot and I still recommend it but some stuff did go over my head.

Heard it in a Love Song by Tracey Garvis Graves 2 stars – Could this be the biggest flop of my five star prediction project? So far, it has been and the project only has one book left. Let’s talk about my feelings on this book, though. At the start, I could definitely tell that Josh was going to be the more developed of our two characters because we were getting more page time with him, funny that it is the female character, Layla, on the cover of the novel. Josh’s story had a lot more background going back to his teenage years, whereas Layla we still see her early twenties but we are only seeing her stage life as a musician and then her romance, nothing else. That being said the characters were a Gary and Mary Sue, making them one dimensional. The writing is what got me through, ‘Heard It in a Love Song’, easy and quick to digest, the formatting of the flashbacks was a bit awkward as in the character would be in the middle of an action and then go into flashback and then would ‘wake up’ from said flashback from the other character being like “hello, earth to Josh.” Just awkward and strange. The plot sounded like something that would have interesting dynamics as it is two characters coming out of long term relationships to a dating scene that is completely different than it was twenty years ago without the internet. However, this is the most boring romance that I have ever read. This is why character work is so important!!

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag 3 stars – Surprisingly, the characters ruined this whole book for me. Myra was a holier than thou kind of person, like she was the last good person left on the planet. Her daughter, Pearl, was annoying but she is only a child so I won’t fault her too much. The world building is where the author had success. The setting is always so important in the fantasy and science fiction genres as these are worlds we as humans are not familiar with and need the knowledge of to navigate the story. The writing was average. The plot sounds like it would have been intriguing, the world has been flooded and a mother is on a mission to find her daughter, that sounds great and the story started off great. However, it got less gripping as more time passed and the characters got more and more annoying. I liked the book though but I would not recommend it if you’re not a big fan of dystopian science fiction.

This is the story of two sisters, Bethie and Jo, going from the 1950s all the way to our year of 2022. It shows how they come to find themselves and grow as people in the everchanging society around them and what it means to a be a woman of the modern age.

Character work in its finest form, Bethie was the most relatable character for me, but I liked her less and less as the novel progressed. Jo, on the other hand, her story was like nothing that I had ever read before. Bethie had the ‘flower child’ story we see a lot of when the twentieth century is portrayed in literature, whereas Jo was something different. Jo was a struggling housewife, living the perfect American dream but not being able to be her true self. The characters were so human, with their flaws, and that was one of the main factors of this story.

I have never read a historical fiction book, other than ones in the Tudor era, that follows the whole life of its protagonist, not until now. As the characters change, the reader sees how the world changes around them and it was just perfect for slice of life from the 1950s to the modern day in 2022.

The writing is why this is not receiving a five-star review. Do not get me wrong, there were beautiful paragraphs that I wanted to annotate. (I will on reread.) However, it was lengthy and longwinded. Some of the formatting was awkward. The passage of time was hard to tell as chapters went on. This could have been edited better, but as it is, this a book that would make for a good audiobook experience.

The plot is where, ‘Mrs. Everything’ flies. There are so many ideas brought forth by Weiner. Ones including family, race, and religion. My favorite was the themes of feminism throughout the novel. That a woman does not have to fit into one mold and how the idea of feminism is different for each woman, rather it be a housewife in a northeastern suburb or a drifter in Santa Fe, but that in the end each woman is wanting the same thing, wanting to live their life how they see fit. There are also interesting discussions of how mental and physical health intersect one another. The main theme is the life of women, and how it has its bumps and is never perfect, mistakes are made and sometimes learned from. In the end the life is lived with all its highs and lows and makes for a beautiful story.

4.5 out of 5 stars.