Read With Jenna Book Club

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.

The Waters
By Bonnie Jo Campbell
W.W. Norton & Company, October 2024, 416pp.

The Short of It:

A bit too much romance for me but brimming with strong, independent women.

The Rest of It:

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp–an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan–herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest–the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn–has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. – the publisher

The Waters is an interesting read. Never in my life would I have picked it up on my own. Why? Seemed a little flowery to me at first glance. A little too “woo-woo” with the lotions and potions. You know what I mean? My book club chose it for November so I found a copy and hunkered down.

Not long after starting it, I was sucked into the lives of these women. Herself, she literally calls herself this, has been providing medicinal potions to the town of Whiteheart for as long as people can remember. She lives on the island, with her girls, mainly Rose Thorn, another odd name. The island is controlled by a drawbridge of sorts to keep the men out. This becomes important later.

So here she is, Herself and Rose Thorn, living by themselves. The other siblings, Primrose and Molly have gotten themselves off the island and live fairly normal lives but their lives continue to be intertwined with their family on the island because for one reason or another, they are always called back.

Rose Thorn. The name is odd but appropriate. Beautiful like a rose but thorny, stubborn. She does what she wants. She seems to be the only thing, besides the lotions and potions tying the island back to Whiteheart. But Rose has her own demons. Raped and impregnated, she leaves the island only to return when her daughter makes her appearance. Her daughter, Donkey, AKA Dorothy. This family and their crazy names!

Donkey is a force to be reckoned with. She’s inherited some of her grandma’s talent with lotions and potions. She understands the value of those medicinal tonics, the waters, so to speak. She’s also desperate for a relationship with the father figures around her. The identity of her own father is buried in secrets.

As these women find their place on this island and outside of it, the rest of the town falls under the spell of these women and cannot stay away. They gather just outside of the island, eager to be around Rose Thorn and her desire for love becomes complicated when her soulmate finds that the obligation to his farm, outweighs actual desire.

There were times while reading this that I groaned over the romantic aspects of this novel. Was Rose Thorn really such a hot commodity that the Whiteheart men just fell to her feet even when attached to their own families? Yes, and no. They are most definitely drawn to her but loyalties come into play and it all culminates in an odd and frustrating conclusion.

I really liked walking along with Donkey, but there were times where I just wanted to shake some sense into her. All the talk about the poisonous plants, the snakes, and the like. A child growing up on an island like that is going to encounter some interesting things, and she does.

Overall, this was a very different read for me. I am not much into lotions and potions and the woo woo benefits that such things can bring, but this is a strong circle of women. I wish there was less of the romantic stuff and more of the family stuff. That would have made this a perfect read.

Recommend. Should be good for discussion.

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

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