Editor’s note: This review and roundup appears in several Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia newspapers and magazines, including at https://cullmantimes.com/2025/03/11/review-a-sip-of-spring-fiction-with-a-bit-of-history-for-flavor/

A sip of spring fiction, with a bit of history for flavor

By Tom Mayer

On the cusp of the 80th anniversary of the atrocities ending with World War II’s VJ Day, comes an important reminder in the form of cinematic storytelling from the pen of best-selling author Robert Dugoni, assisted by fellow academic researchers Chris Crabtree and Jeff Langholz.

Five hundred-page novels that contain more than a hundred pages of afterword and notes aren’t typical fare for the type of thrillers Dugoni writes; and if cinema is used as an adjective for such tomes it generally implies “best documentary” rather than “best picture.” But this fictionalized re-telling of the end of the war is anything but documental, especially with its final 150 pages moving full steam ahead, filled with submarines, warships and Clancyesque code breaking.

“Hold Strong” (Lake Union) tells the story of Sam Carlson and Sarah Haber, young sweethearts from Eagle Grove, Minnesota. It’s the end of the Great Depression and looking for a way out of his and his parents’ misfortunes — the family farm has been repossessed — Sam joins the war effort. Finding that the Army life suits him, he rises through the ranks. In 1942, he’s taken prisoner by the Japanese and survives the worst that that experience can offer, including the Bataan Death March in the Philippines and captivity in the hold of a Japanese “hell ship,” the Arisan Maru.

Through this, Sarah, and Sam’s family, receive no word about him, and the Army records him as missing in action. Though the couple made a promise to each other but never cemented an engagement before he left, Sarah especially is left in limbo, loving a man who she knows could be dead.

But Sarah’s strong, independent character is coupled with a brilliant mathematical mind, and she’s recruited out of college by the Navy to become a code breaker in the service of the WAVES — Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service — helping to turn the tide of the war, and possibly even unknowingly, Sam’s fate. The upshot is that no one, not even their families, can know what the women are doing, even to the point of telling others if asked that they are nothing more than secretaries in the service of Uncle Sam.

The story of Sam and Sarah is just that, a story, but Dugoni and company get it right, opening new and little-known chapters on the hells of that war — and the critical roles of female recruits — with startling and stark reality.

“Hold Strong” works well as a novel, and its secondary characters, such as Father Tom with his unflappable faith and Grace Moretti with her unbounded optimism, are extraordinarily well-developed. But this is one book bound for the big screen, and with its historic foundation underpinning a captivating wartime love story, one that is sure to become the sleeper read of the year.

Another novel of potential sleeper status comes to us as a dream in the charming coming-of-age “The Rainfall Market” (Ace). Written by a young South Korean novelist, You Yeong-Gwang (whose own dream as a young author is this story), and translated by Slin Jung, this magical novel tells the story of the impoverished teenager Serin and an abandoned house on the outskirts of Rainbow Town.

The legend says that if you send an essay explaining your misfortunes to that address, you could receive a ticket in return, and one that not only allows entrance to the Market beyond the house’s front door, but the offer to swap your life for another.

The odds are long but Serin sends off her letter and gets in return a ticket and an invitation to visit the Market for the duration of the rainy season — those who overstay the welcome are destined to never leave — with the total of its enchantments, including a magical cat companion named Issha.

Travels and travails follow Serin and Issha as they are plagued by Dokkaebi — goblin-like creatures taken from the pages of Korean folklore — who run the individual shops in the market, each offering a “happier story in our stock.”

With help from Issha and others that she befriends, Serin traverses the market’s allegorical landmines, comparing one life’s outcome with another until she comes to the end of her visit in this predictable but rewarding fairytale.

Other notable titles out this spring and worth the price of admission — no essay required — range from the fantastical to the feral with a number of big-hitting authors submitting some of their best work, including sequels:

“Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” (Berkley) by Grady Hendrix: 15-year-old Fern arrives alone and scared and pregnant at the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida — as are all the young woman and girls living at the home. Life is strictly regulated under the tyrannical control of the adults until Fern is gifted a book about witchcraft — and the power it contains to both create and destroy.

“The Ends of Things” (Blackstone) by Sandra Chwialkowska: A romantic lovers’ paradise is anything but idyllic for Laura Phillips and her boyfriend as shea becomes involved in the disappearance of the lone traveler befriended on the beach. An exotic getaway soon itself gets away from Laura as garnished cocktails and sumptuous suites turn into a murder investigation — and a fight for her innocence.

“Somewhere Toward Freedom” (Simon & Schuster) by Bennett Parten: Parten, a Georgia-native university professor with an expertise in the Civil War period, shines with storytelling as his reporting illuminates new, and unconventional, light on one of the most well-documented and well-known war episodes in our nation’s history — Sherman’s march to the sea. Subtitled “Sherman’s March and Story of America’s Largest Emancipation,” Parten re-tills well-trodden ground, telling the story of the thousands of enslaved people who followed Sherman and his army, turning a march of destruction into the launch of liberation in this meticulously researched book.

“Cupid on the Loose” (Blackstone) by John J. Jacobson: This timely novel that slipped into best-selling list early in February is nonetheless a timely tale for the ages, and especially for those who love a love story in the vein of Nicholas Sparks, and the romantic mayhem of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — an author who incidentally plays a prominent role of his own in this fun read. Centered on a “kindred kind of romance” that needs a bit of tender to set it ablaze, enter a meddling grandmother whose intentions are as well-conceived as they are misguided.

“Destiny’s Way” (Berkley) by Jack Campbell: In this sequel to Campbell’s “In Our Stars,” the time traveling part-human, part-alien-DNA Selene Genji is thrust 30 years into the past, before the Universal Way destroyed the world, in an attempt to save Earth — excedpt those alive who want her dead after being declared a traitor by the Earth Guard. Assisted by at least one friend from the first part of the “Doomed Earth Duology,” Selene must find a way to save a prejudicial mankind that wants this independent and strong woman dead.

“The Secrets of Flowers” (Blackstone) by Sally Page: A story floating from the depths of the Titanic — and we never get tired of those — Page crafts a unique, heart-healing tale of Emma, who is bereft following her husband’s death. Told through the language of flowers, Emma discovers the lost story of a girl from the ship, one told in the arrangements of the flowers on board during the maiden, and final, voyage, that might just blossom into the healing of her own grief.

“The Memory Ward” (Blackstone) by Jon Bassoff: A seemingly Elysian small town is the scene of bizarre oddities, and postal worker Hank Davies isn’t the first to notice — he comes to realize he’s delivering mail filled with blank pages — but he’s the one whose willing to cry foul. A secreted story discovered beneath the walls of Hank’s bedroom touches off pages of alternate reality as Bassoff delivers a tale of trauma and altered identity, and one questioning the concept of humanity itself.

“American Fever” (Arcade) by Dur e Aziz Amna: This engaging and humorous novel centers on a Pakistani exchange student in rural Oregon who finds herself between worlds — and entrenched in the navigation of first love, racism, Islamophobia and homesickness. When she finds herself quarantined after a diagnosis of tuberculosis, her world shrinks further as themes of religion, family and national identity take on increasingly larger proportions.

“Protecting Jess” (Arcade Crimewise) by Karna Small Bodman: A White House economist and rising star, Jessica Tanner, has both brains and beauty. Sent to Brazil to speak at an international conference on behalf of her boss, a planned exotic dream assignment descends into a dangerous and foreboding nightmare.

“Don’t Tell Me How to Die” (Blackstone) by Marshall Karp: Marshall Karp, of NYPD Red series (aka, co-conspirator of James Patterson) fame, offers a taut, sharp and on-target psychological thriller in “Don’t Tell Me How To Die” (Blackstone). Told in parts, past and present, Karp crafts a evolving storyline centered on 43-year-old Maggie, a woman who is not only diagnosed with the same deadly disease that claimed her mother but vows to not recreate the adolescent hell she endured because of the passing. Seeing firsthand her dying mother’s warning that, once she died, women would flock to 17-year-old Maggie and her sister’s father “like stray cats to an overturned milk truck” and that it would be up to girls to protect him. Which they do, admirably — until one slips through their gatekeeping. … Determined that the same thing won’t happen to her own family, Maggie devises a plan to find a perfect match as wife and mother … before she dies. If this were all to the plot, the storyline would be worth an afternoon, but in succeeding parts of the novel, Karp continuously turns everything upside down, projecting surprise after surprise in a trope-laden, over-blown style that works perfectly for a main course instead of the appetizer it would have been coming from a lesser pen. Karp is a veteran in keeping the cinematic action going and the shocks coming — both of which are abundantly on display in his latest.

“Cold Iron Task” (Berkley) by James J. Butcher: In this Book 3 of 3 in Butcher’s “The Unorthodox Chronicles,” Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby — one of the most notable names in literary history — has solved at least one case, but he’s still a beginner in Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. As he joins an unlikely partner in the heist of of an otherworldly vault, Grimsby touches off past and closely guarded secrets, freeing demons and monsters, Usual and Unorthodox, that could be his demise in this series finisher.

“The Gate of the Feral Gods” (Ace Hardcovers) by Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl series): Welcome, Crawler, to the fifth floor of the dungeon in Book 4 of Dinniman’s quest series, and one filled with warrior gnomes, malfunctioning machines and a deadly, haunted crypt. On the eve of utter failure, Carl and his team find they must rely on the untrustworthy crawlers trapped in the bubble with them.

“The Summer Guests” (Thomas & Mercer) by Tess Gerritsen: In Book 2 of The Martini Club, retired covert agent Maggie Bird has “retired” to the seaside. In Purity, life is quiet, but it’s not without murder as a friendly neighbor of Maggies becomes embroiled in double homicide charges. It’s up to the Martini Club, a circle of ex-CIA friends book club, to find the truth behind the secrets that portend more murder on the horizon.

“Gothictown” (Kensington) by Emily Carpenter: What if you could purchase a Victorian home for $100 in a small Georgia town eager to spur its pandemic-riddled economy? So begins this story of Billie Hope’s dream of fleeing cramped and crimped New York City with her husband and daughter. Dreams, as they often do in the offerings from Carpenter — a Birmingham, Alabama, native now living in Georgia — descend from opportunities to devilish bargains, and “Gothictown” is part and parcel of the oeuvre. More than genteel charms lurks beneath the facade of Southern hospitality in this town. View a free 66-page teaser of the novel (“Gothictown: A Sneak Peek”) at online booksellers.

“Home Is Where the Bodies Are” (Blackstone) by Jeneva Rose: Questions and secrets arise when three estranged siblings begin to sort their mother’s estate — and discover a VHS recording of their blood-soaked father involved in a death of which none of them have any recollection. Revive the past or leave it buried with their mother? That becomes the question … with no easy, or safe, answers.

Reach Tom Mayer at tmayer@cullmantimes.com.

This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart


Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I've really loved the Lost Fleet and spin off series by this author. They have action with military battle, along with military politics and the morality decisions of battles. The Doomed Earth series has the military and politics with its fast paced action but also a romance. It's not a romance novel more a sideline plot with aliens, and inexplicable time travel. I could say many of the same things I did from the In Our Stars review to lessen spoilers.

Selene is an alloy from about 40 years in the future. An alloy has some alien DNA but is mostly human appearing. Kayl Owen is part of the team who goes to find any survivors when her ship appears. She came from 2180 when Earth disintegrates in bombing attacks. Selene is trying to save Earth by changing the catalysts for the attack between now - 2140- and 2180. The reason is prejudice and misunderstanding about aliens or various classes of human, along with the typical greed of politics.

Kayl joins Selene in her mission to influenceattitudes and events. Kayl joins her in the mission. They knew it would be dangerous but the Earth Guard fleet tries to kill them from the start. As they begin trying to have effects on big events, they become attached and attracted, even though Selene is unwilling to hope. She knows that changing things may mean she might not exist in the future.

I enjoyed the fast paced action and strategy. The relationship seemed a little hokey, a bit immature somehow. That could be that Selene and Kayl both have limited experience with serious relationships. Destiny's Way makes serious progress in the issues. I enjoy alien interactions and I don't mean Selene; I mean the Tramontines. Since Selene speaks and understands them, the First Contact goes better than it did in Selene's history.

The key aspect here is the moral choice of what is personhood and how to treat people fairly and honestly. A LOT of people try to kill them but they are prepared and gradually things improve.

Thanks for the free book @AceBooksPub. #BerkleyPartner #Berkley #BerkleyBookstagram

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
Destiny’s Way (The Doomed Earth, Book 2) by Jack Campbell
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 384 / Genre: Sci-Fi
Release Date: February 25, 2025
🥳#HappyPubDay!🎉

The Doomed Earth duolgy is a thoughtful, almost philosophical sci-fi thriller that at its core is about acceptance, tolerance, and basic respect among humans. In 2180, Lieutenant Selene Gengi watched the Earth explode, which somehow blasted her back in time to 2140. She realized she had a chance to change the timeline and save Earth. The problem is she’s a genetically engineered human with alien DNA, which makes her eyes and skin different from full humans. This makes her a “freak” and something to be feared. How can she change minds to change the timeline when all they want to do is kill the alien?

In the first book of the duology, In Our Stars, we learn of the explosion and Selene’s first experiences in 2140. In this second book, Destiny’s Way, she sets off to finish what she started. It’s exciting to see the impact she makes just by doing what’s right and protecting the very humans who want to kill her. One by one, people see her for who she really is and what she’s trying to accomplish.

Overall I thought this series was both exciting and enlightening. I highly recommend it. Destiny’s Way was the better of the two books since you get the satisfaction of an ending to this epic adventure, but it’s definitely worth reading both books to get the full story.

Destiny’s Way by Jack Campbell
.
The second book in the Doomed Earth duology, Destiny’s Way picks up right where In Our Stars left us. (Which I was glad of because boy, was that a cliffhanger ending!!)

I loved the premise of this whole duology! After watching the earth being destroyed, the force of the destruction sends Selene back in time. Now she has the chance to change events to ensure the planet’s survival.

Kayl is the very first person in the past that Selene meets, and the first person to believe that she is from the future. Kayl decides to join Selene in her quest, and I just adored the two of them together.

Time travel books are my jam, so I enjoyed these books a lot. I loved the alien part to the plot as well. But I think my two favorite aspects to this half of the story were Kayl’s family meeting Selene, and when Selene saved the people in the car crash.
.
4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If you love sci-fi books with both space AND time travel elements to them then I would recommend this duology! Start with In Our Stars and then read Destiny’s Way.

I'm really loving duolgies lately, it gives you a little bit more of the story without making a huge commitment.


This was a well-done and satisfying conclusion to The Doomed Earth series. I almost always like book 1 better when I read a duology, but this time I actually liked book 2 better! The social commentary was well-done, and that's something I always appreciate. The character growth that Selene exhibits was great.

I enjoyed the second book of the duology just a bit more than the first. Lieutenant Genji and Lieutenant Owen have less action moments but spend more time figuring out what the future may hold. There is a lot of talking about what decisions they need to make. I loved the growth of Lieutenant Genji as she slowly comes to accept the world around her and her new place in it. I don't know if this is the last book in the series, but I would love to see this couple navigate the new world that they have brought about.

This is the concluding story of Kayl and Selene’s story to save the earth from total destruction. It is again a lesson on diversity, equity and inclusion with a positive slant on what we can learn from each other if we only give people who are different a chance. It also cautions about those having too much power and how far they will go to keep that power. It is a series very appropriate for our time.

A nice wrap up with everything you want or need in a story. Can stand alone. Plenty of action, tension. Great characters

I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. I normally don’t read this genre but the cover was too cute to pass up. I surprisingly loved this and can’t wait to read more.