The Art of Flavor by Daniel Patterson and Mandy Aftel

meh

The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester

Decent.

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

I have no idea why people are raving over this book. It is mediocre at best.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

So they blurb this book as if it were a chick-lit rom-com a la Sophie Kinsella, but it . . . is not. It's good, but the fact that it used the same device as another book I read recently kind of took the punch out of it for me.

Privilege by Shamus Khan

Decent.

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

I thought this was great fun.

Review copy provided by publisher.

Moral Combat by R. Marie Griffith

Very interesting.

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Solid, but not quite up to all of the hype about it.

Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna

This was surprisingly good for genre fiction.

Review copy provided by publisher.

The Good Widow by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke

Kind of ridiculous, but also kind of entertaining.

Review copy provided by publisher.

Happiness for Humans by P. Z. Reizin

If I said "rom-com with AI as Greek gods," you'd probably think that was stupid. But this: this is one of my favorite books every.

Review copy provided by publisher.

What She Ate by Laura Shapiro

I really enjoyed this.

Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky

Solid, but (1) this really could have used a good editor, and (2) it doesn't quite live up to the hype, and (3) if you read a lot of social science, a lot of this won't be new to you.

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Decent.

Lady Bird and Lyndon by Betty Boyd Caroli

I really, really enjoyed this.

Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict

I normally love books that can be described as "like reading Downton Abbey," but I think the genre of "we're going to focus on a woman peripheral to a famous person and show how she changed history" has been overdone.

Review copy provided by publisher.