** Splinters by Leslie Jamison

If there’s any love story in Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, it would be between the author and her baby daughter (or her own mother), and certainly not with her ex-partner and father of said daughter, who seems to contribute nothing but insults and grumpiness to the tale. There are some well-captured moments of motherly panic, and lovely paeans to the role of grandmothers, but I could not quite identify what the author wanted to accomplish with this memoir.

* Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar

Martyr! stars an Iranian-American man who is trying to put himself together after a tough childhood and various addictions and settles on writing a book about martyrs. He travels to visit a performance artist who will illuminate his life. There’s a lot of surprises in the book and yet I failed to connect with the hero or even the story, especially when it featured dreams, which I tend to find tedious.

*** Trondheim by Cormac James

Trondheim opens with a French exchange being admitted into an intensive-care unit in Sweden (specifically Trondheim, as the title suggests). He’s in very bad shape and his two moms rush to his bedside after a harrowing day of travel. It’s every parent’s nightmare, and the author does a great job of conveying the terror of it, so much so that I almost gave up on the book. But it’s worth going on, as the moms discover the closed world of ICU staff and families, reflect on their soured relationship, and hope for the best.

* Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford

Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame is tailor-made for fans of the Great British Bake-Off, as it stars a seventy-something contestant who is as eager and self-deprecating as most of the real contestants (and offers a few twists in the competition I thought the real show could embrace, to boot).

That would be a sappy-enough plot, but the author chooses to superimpose another personal tragedy, which turns the entire adventure into a compendium of treacly platitudes. Too bad, as there are some genuinely sweet moments, no puns intended.

** A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

It takes a while for A Fatal Grace to settle into any kind of a rhythm, which is a bit of a problem for a mystery. We also have to contend with a cliché Quebec village and its attending population of carefully contrasted characters as well as complicated internal police politics that don’t seem to add much to the story. That said, there’s a twisted plot of hatred that kills two women that seem completed unrelated, but will turn out to have close ties to the village.

** Holding Pattern by Jenny Xie

The heroine of Holding Pattern is a lost young adult, who’s been dumped, dropped out of school, and is now back in her mom’s home. But her mom has transformed herself into a powerhouse of fitness, clean living, and especially wedding planning–for herself. (The early chapter devoted to dress shopping is very funny.)  The daughter stumbles through a bizarre job as professional cuddler and generally tries to survive. The vibe is droll and the story moves along–even though it felt a little too forced to me.

*** Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen

Owner of a Lonely Heart is a nostalgic memoir of a woman who arrived in the US as a refugee and minus her mother. Although she was well taken care of by her father, stepmother, and grandmother, she never got a good explanation of what happened to her mother until she was an adult. Her bittersweet later visits with her mother are told gently and heartbreakingly.

** How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum

How to Love Your Daughter stars a mother obsessed by her child and who becomes so enmeshed with her that the daughter eventually leaves home and becomes completely estranged–at least until her mother meddles with her life again. The story is told though intricate and often confusing flashbacks and is rather chilling. I could never work up much of an affection for either mother or daughter but may be you will.

** Directions to Myself by Heidi Julavits

Another memoir, and again one full of references to New England sailing! But  Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years describes only a few sailing trips and focuses on the author’s borderline obsessive observations of her young son. Too much obsession for my taste.  and her other obsession, for buying used books and ephemera, is not my cup of tea either.

*** There Are Moms Way Worse than You by

Most moms feel guilty they are not doing more for their kids. There Are Moms Way Worse Than You: Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent is a humorous refutation by way of showing us scientifically-proven examples that definitely would not pass muster. It’s a little wordy, and I really hated the typeface–but I laughed!