…And the BOTM nominees are a novel bunch indeed!

With everything going on in the world these days, it’s hard to find something fun to look forward to but fortunately, the winner of Book of the Month Club’s BOTY(Book of the Year) will be announced next week!

That means that qualifying subscribers will be able to add one of the five nominees as a free selection to their March box, a pretty sweet deal especially for me as my birthday is in April. That gives me two months with back-to-back free book picks!

For now, I have to consider which of the five contenders for the BOTY to choose from, or in my case, four as I already have Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods on my TBR in a BOTM edition. So, let’s take a look at the other books and see what will suit my bookish fancy;

The Wedding People:

Alison Epach’s story of two women unexpectedly connecting over a wedding(to which one of them was not invited) has garnered plenty of good reviews and word of mouth, not to mention being a Read With Jenna book club pick.

It’s made several best of the year lists and was a GoodReads Choice winner as well, strong points in its favor. While it does sound like a charming mix of humor and pathos, I do have quite a few books on my TBR with similar themes that I need to get to first. This does make me want to rewatch the 1989 movie Cousins (a good little film) that’s for certain:

Phantasma:

This first entry in the “Wicked Games” series is a dark romantasy about a young woman named Ophelia who must undertake a set of gruesome challenges within a haunted manor house in order to rescue her missing sister.

Along the way, she finds love and danger , both in the of Blackwell, a dubious guide who promises to help Ophelia in exchange for ten years of her life. Quite the price to pay yet will it be worth if she even survives at all?

This does sound wild and I have to admit that romantasy is a new interest for me. However, the second book, Enchantra, is not a BOTM selection so that does give me some pause there(yes, I do like matching editions of series titles, it’s a weakness of mine!).

It is a lively choice and certainly feels as properly chaotic as reality is at the moment:

The Lion Women of Tehran:

This touching novel by Marian Kamala chronicles the friendship between two young women in Iran, starting in the 1950s and taking them in the revolutionary era of the seventies.

Ellie and Homa first met as school girls, forming a lasting bond despite a family tragedy that forces one of their families to move far away.

Reunited in high school, they pick up where they left off for the most part; Homa is now interested in politics and social change while Ellie is going down the traditional path set up by her mother. As the world around them changes, Homa and Ellie find that they must reassess who and what they want their lives to be about.

I have heard nothing but wonderful things about this book and have been interested in reading Kamali’s work for some time now. This story , which features food, family and love, sounds like a true winner in the best sense of the term:

The Women:

Kristin Hannah’s epic novel follows Frances aka Frankie McGrath as she becomes a combat nurse during the Vietnam War and not only shows what she and other women went through during that time but her life after the war as well.

This book has become quite the blockbuster, with mixed opinions hovering around it. As the daughter of a retired nurse, I am intrigued by this story, not to mention that last year, I finally read one of Hannah’s novels to completion (The Great Alone) and it was definitely a page turner.

I do enjoy a good saga and Hannah does have what Stephen King calls the “gotta” as in “Yeah, I have stuff to do but I gotta see what happens next in this book!”. Plus , historical fiction featuring women in perilous times is hard to resist:

So, as you can see, I’m torn between The Lion Women and The Women here. Maybe I can get both but only one will be a free book yet a good story is always worth it. My congratulations to all of the nominees and I am

sure that many of us will be happy for whoever wins.

One thing is for certain; I really ought to read The God of the Woods sooner rather than later. Not the biggest dilemma out there but it’s one that I have some control over at least. Then again , a good book tends to age well like a fine wine, so my patience will probably be well rewarded: