Fiction
BOOKLIFE.COM111aPW REVIEWS ®
The following are reviews of self-published titles that have previously appeared in PW
Advanced Physical Chemistry
Susannah Nix. Haver Street, $14.99 trade
paper (274p) ISBN 978-0-9990948-6-0
Nix (Rising Star) offers a sweet and often
hilarious tale of a heartbroken heroine who
makes an impressive rebound. Plus-sized
scientist and fan fiction enthusiast Penny
Popplestone is at a knitting group meeting
in a café when her boyfriend, Kenneth,
saunters in with another woman. It’s bad
enough that she’s being cheated on, but
she’s also mortified that the hottest barista
in the shop is witnessing it. Turns out
Hottie Barista, aka Caleb Mayhew, a soon-
to-be medical student, has had his eye on
Penny for a while. Knowing Caleb will soon
leave town for school, Penny, who has dealt
with a long string of terrible boyfriends,
sets out to have her first no-strings-attached
affair. Nix’s pacing is pitch-perfect, and a
cast of endearing secondary characters, par-
ticularly Penny’s supportive friend Olivia,
add depth and appeal. Penny is a refreshing
heroine with a messy personal life, but an
inspiring career. Readers will eagerly
devour Nix’s smart and sexy story.
A Dream of Steam
James W. Barry. Aloft, $14.95 trade paper
(338p) ISBN 978-0-692-14637-8
Barry debuts with a clever tale inspired
by the true story of a sawmill heist in
northern Michigan. In August 1891,
William McGrath, operator of McGrath
Brothers Lumber Company on Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, convinces his brother,
Thomas, a ship captain, to invest in
upgrades to a steamship and steam-powered
mill equipment. William’s hopes to revi-
talize the sawmill are compromised by John
Fitzpatrick, an unscrupulous employee of
the Industrial Bank of Detroit, from whom
they borrowed the investment capital.
Fitzpatrick, the bank president’s son-in-
law, has been embezzling to fuel his poker
habit. Meanwhile, Thomas tries to steady
his brother from heartbreak over his ex-wife
Carmina, who left him three years earlier,
and who William imagines seeing on the
street. After Fitzpatrick revokes the loan,
having dug himself deeper into his own
problems, the McGraths’ business is in
sudden jeopardy, and the brothers resort to
desperate measures to save the mill. The
impassioned narrative is colored by evoca-
tive prose (“Night began to paint itself onto
the cityscape, softly daubing darkness into
twilit corners and alleys, and around build-
ings made vacant until morning”), and
Barry’s integration of different plot threads
is impressive. This is a solid debut.Flygirl
R.D. Kardon. Acorn, $16.99 trade paper
(310p) ISBN 978-1-947392-21-2
Kardon’s exciting, spirited debut follows
a new female pilot as she vies to move up to
the captain’s seat. Thirty-something
Patricia “Tris” Miles abandons her career as
a middle school English teacher to pursue
a lifelong dream of learning to fly planes.
After training with a commuter airline, she
accepts an offer to become a copilot for a
corporation’s private jet, which she thinks
will allow her to advance in her career more
quickly. Instead, she faces stiff, rude com-
petition with male counterparts such as Ed
Deter, a misogynist ex-military pilot who
“hadn’t met a woman yet whose hands he’d
put his life into,” and who resents the
assignment to train Tris. Another pilot,
Larry Ross, considers standing up for Tris,
but worries that his coworkers will tease
him for having a crush on her. Tris brushes
off Ross’s flirtation, driven by her laser focus
on achieving her goals, and eventually an
opportunity presents itself to shine next to
Deter and save the day. Kardon, a pilot,
convincingly describes the intricacies of
flying, and a passage in which a plane must
be flown through thick fog, with nothing
but the instruments for guidance (“Woman
and machine entwined in the exceptional
conversation of flight”) is particularly well
done. This soaring testament to the value
of following one’s dreams delivers the
goods.The Girl on the Moon
Julie Mannix von Zerneck. Blue Blazer
Productions, $16.95 trade paper (204p)
ISBN 978-0-9857358-5-2
Drawing on themes of adoption andreunion from her memoir, Secret Storms, von
Zerneck spins an implausible but affecting
fairy tale. In a church in 15th-century Paris,
the young painter Lucienne Badeaux lights
a candle for her late father and is killed by a
pack of wolves, a scene referencing a bizarre
incident in Parisian history. She is reincar-
nated as Josie, born in 1946 to Philadelphia
socialite Jewell Russell, and begins a career
in journalism. She gets pregnant by her
married editor, Aaron Goldman, and agrees
to give up the baby for adoption with
Jewell’s help. Two years later, Josie marries
Aaron and has two more children, but the
identity of her first daughter, Kate, is kept
secret from her by Jewell. Von Zerneck
weaves the separate stories of Josie and
Kate, showing how Josie channels her
anguish and guilt over her lost daughter
into a series of successful children’s books
about Luna, a girl from the moon, while
Kate becomes powerfully drawn to
Badeaux’s painting of a Parisian church.
Though the plot races by with minimal
emotional interludes and the coincidences
are too convenient, von Zerneck succeeds at
making Josie a woman to root for. Readers
who enjoy stories that celebrate familial
bonds will appreciate this.Girls Who Pray
Evelyn Dar. Evelyn Dar, $8.99 trade paper
(270p) ISBN 978-1-68915-568-7
Dar (It’s Complicated) puts a queer spin on
Amish romance in this enjoyable if uneven
tale of forbidden love. The successful, ex-
Amish young adult novelist writing as
Claire Roberts makes a splash with her
latest book, a steamy tell-all about an affair
between two Amish women. Claire’s des-
potic former bishop, Vernon Zimmerman,
sues Claire for libel and she returns home to
Ashville, Ohio, to defend herself. As the
trial haltingly unfolds, Claire flashes back
to 2006, when 18-year-old Rachel Fisher
moves to town. Rachel, chafing at the strict
rules of the Amish settlement, takes the fall
for the bishop’s daughter, Sarah
Zimmerman, over an unapproved radio,
bonding them instantly. As they grow
closer, Sarah and Rachel try and fail to fight
against their mutual attraction, leading to
sensual love scenes between the heroines.