Fiction | Book Chatter

Big Swiss
By Jen Beagin
Scribner, August 2023, 352 pp.

The Short of It:

What a fun, darkly humorous book.

The Rest of It:

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss.

Transcribing sex therapy sessions is already unusual work, but everything shifts the moment Greta recognizes a familiar voice in the park. Standing right in front of her is the woman she has only known through transcripts, the one she has privately dubbed Big Swiss. Seeing her in real life is startling. She is tall, poised, and quietly commanding. Greta realizes she knows intimate details about this woman’s life, yet the urge to know more only deepens.

What begins as curiosity turns into something far more consuming. Greta’s fascination with Big Swiss, whose real name is Flavia, grows intense and increasingly risky. Flavia is married, and Greta is painfully aware of that marriage through the therapy sessions she transcribes. Still, there is an undeniable pull between them. That tension is heightened by the shadow hanging over Flavia’s life, as she is being stalked by the person who once nearly killed her.

As their connection develops into something complicated and unconventional, Greta is forced to confront her own past. She carries deep guilt over her mother’s death, a burden she cannot seem to shake. Meanwhile, life in a small town offers little room for secrets. Everyone is entangled in everyone else’s business, especially when a sex therapist sits at the center, quietly collecting stories and asking probing questions that linger long after the sessions end.

Greta’s job pays the bills, but it also puts her in a morally precarious position. When the boundaries of confidentiality begin to blur, she faces a choice that could unravel everything. Even her eccentric, free-spirited roommate struggles to understand what is at stake.

This novel blends dark humor with an exploration of unconventional relationships. It moves through friendship, obsession, desire, and fear while asking difficult questions. What does it mean to give yourself fully to another person? Is it a loss of self, or a way of becoming whole?

Highly recommended.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Heartwood
By Amity Gaige
Simon & Schuster, April 2025, 320pp.

The Short of It:

Riveting story with characters you wanna root for.

The Rest of It:

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. ~ from the publisher

I picked this book up on a whim. It was a late Thursday evening, and I had just turned the last page of my current read, so I went looking for something to quickly dive into. Heartwood was it.

Books set outdoors always appeal to me. I’m a desk jockey at work, so the idea of traipsing through a forest or along a trail makes my heart sing, especially when it’s happening in my imagination and there are no mosquitoes to deal with. Heartwood delivered that feeling beautifully.

From the start, there’s a very real sense of time slipping away. Valerie only has so much of it out on that trail. Lost, alone, and with limited supplies, the people searching for her are highly experienced, but they also know that with every passing day, every ticking minute, the chances of rescuing her alive grow slimmer. Very slim.

Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden, leads the search team on the ground. Then there’s Lena. At 76, she lives in an independent senior community, keeping mostly to herself and avoiding the other residents. But Valerie’s case catches her attention because the missing woman reminds her so much of her own daughter—whom she hasn’t seen in decades. Soon, Lena becomes an armchair detective, piecing together clues with the help of an anonymous online friend.

Friend? Or someone hiding behind a carefully constructed online persona?

I found this story to be just the right mix of personal backstories and the heart-pounding urgency of a clock running out. I flipped through the pages as fast as I could. What a satisfying read.

These days, with everything going on in the world, satisfying reads can be hard to come by. They have to compete with our busy minds and the constant stream of bad news around us. But Heartwood? It checked all the boxes.

Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…