The River Knows Your Name by Kelly Mustian

 Author Kelly Mustian has followed up her debut The Girls in the Stilt House with a strong  sophomore novel The River Knows Your Name, coming out April 1. Set in 1971, the story introduces sisters Nell and Evie Brown who are concerned about their mother Hazel. She has started acting  opposite of her secretive and emotionally remote ways, doing things she had never done: inviting Evie out to lunch, taking her shopping, going to movies, and singing in a church choir.

Nell was six years old when Hazel did a favor for a friend by taking in a little girl around two for one night. The friend was never heard from again causing Hazel to uproot them all from their home in Mississippi to Clay Mountain near West Jefferson, North Carolina, to raise Evie as her own. When Evie was ten, she and Nell found inside a book a birth certificate for Evie naming  a stranger as her mother. The girls never let on to Hazel that they knew this secret. Because of Hazel’s change of personality, Nell decides to go back to Mississippi to learn more about Hazel and to track down the person listed on Evie’s birth certificate.

Becca, who had married Ben Chambers in 1932, was still a newlywed, when her “second mother” Lottie drowned in the Mississippi River. Upon hearing the terms of Lottie’s will, Becca learned that she had inherited a house in the near ghost town of Rodney, Mississippi. Orphaned at age six, Becca was aware that Lottie had once lived in Rodney with the only man she had ever loved. Becca did not realize that Lottie still owned a house there, a house that would provide refuge for Becca when her world turned upside down.

The lives of all four women will come together as they deal with love, loss, secrets, and “chosen family.” This book will be hard to put down until the last mystery is revealed. The River Knows Your Name is set in the Mississippi Delta as well as in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Kelly Mustian received the Mississippi Library Association's 2023 Author Award for Fiction, while The Girls in the Stilt House was shortlisted for the 2022 Crook's Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American South. She has also written for numerous literary journals and commercial magazines. Born in Mississippi, Mustian lives in North Carolina.

                                                                                              

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting February 28, 2025.

I would like to thank Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

The Love We Found by Jill Santopolo

 

In The Love We Found by Jill Santopolo coming out March 18, Lucy recounts the life of her first love, Gabriel, who she met in college in New York City. Gabriel became a war photographer and Lucy produces children’s programming.

She lost Gabe almost ten years ago, and his editor at the Associated Press wants to do an update of Gabe’s book. Lucy has been asked to share Gabe’s photographs for the project. As she digs into the box of his old photos, an address in Italy written on a scrap of paper is intriguing. Impulsively Lucy buys a ticket to Italy to find who lived at the address.

As she uncovers Gabe’s secret, she encounters Dr. Dax Armstrong, a New Yorker in Italy working with a non-governmental organization. Lucy and the doctor become involved over two days in Italy though they promise to renew their acquaintance when he cycles back to New York.

For seven years, Lucy has been divorced from Darren with whom she shares three children. She had been unfaithful to Darren, having shattered their marriage with the information that their youngest child Samuel was not biologically Darren’s.

With her memories of Gabe renewed through the photo project, she believes it is the right time to tell Samuel about his biological father. Darren, adamant that the time is not right to tell Sammy, feels threatened and refuses. But Lucy wants to set herself free of this secret, hoping to chart a new journey for her broken heart with the doctor she met in Italy.

How will Sammy respond to the news that he has a father other than Darren? What will her two older children think about this change in their family dynamic? What are the next steps she can take to put her regret behind her and forge a life with a new love?

Designed as a follow-up to the Reese’s Book Club pick of 2018 The Light We Lost, The Love We Found can be read as a standalone.

Jill Santopolo is the Editorial Director of Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. She lives in New York City.