Best Books of 2025 – Chapter 2

I don’t know if this has ever happened before but the first three books that I read in 2025 all made my “Best of” list.  Last week, you learned about the first two, and now here is the third.   What a way to start off my reading new year!

I was first exposed to this author when I enjoyed reading her book, The Aviator’s Wife, about the wife of Charles Lindbergh.  So, when I saw she had recently published another book about the Wright brother’s sister, I was intrigued.  For it was when I read David McCullough’s book about the Wright brothers several years ago, that I first learned of the significant role Katharine played in her famous brother’s efforts to master flight.  So, I knew I would enjoy reading a historical fiction that prominently featured their less well-known sister.

The story opens about fifteen years before their famous 1903 flight when Orville and Wilbur are studying how birds fly and how they could create manmade machines to mimic their flight.  With chapters alternating between the voice of Katharine, Orville and Wilbur, we get a chance to hear each person’s perspective as their research unfolds.  Included are both their successes but their failures as well and even controversies about who had first mastered powered flight.

The things I read confirmed many of the facts I previously knew of the significant part Katharine played in her brother’s success.  Interspersed with the factual events, travels, and disasters that occurred, was intriguing dialog that brought to life the human aspects of each occurrence.  The biggest learning for me in the book was the price that Katharine paid to be her brother’s assistant over the years.  While wanting a family of her own, she repeatedly denied herself this longing to support her brother’s efforts.

It was not until late in life, when many of her family members had already passed on, did she finally allow herself to follow her passion and marry.  But it was short lived.  As the book ended with her too-early death, I shed several tears for what she had missed out on in her life.

This book haunted me for a number of days after I finished it for the multigenerational tragedies that befell a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter and how the story ultimately ended.  When I read the short Bookbub synopsis about What the Light Touches by Xavier Bosch (translated from Catalan by Samantha Mateo), I purchased it immediately.  And I am so glad I did.

The book is set in Paris in dual timelines, one in the 1940s during the German occupation of France and the other in the 2000s.  In the latter timeline, the granddaughter is living in the Montmartre apartment belonging to her grandmother that they shared before the elder moved into a retirement home.  And as the granddaughter walks the streets there, I could picture it in my own eyes as my wife, and I had been to that hilltop location in Paris.

The story opens with the granddaughter finding a stranger, a photographer sitting on the couch in her apartment.  Once it is explained how he has made his unforced entry, the two of them embark on a path exploring the genesis of a Nazi propaganda photo that captures her grandmother with a glowing smile riding a bicycle, a photo the granddaughter had never seen.  Along the way, the two develop a very close relationship.

Worked into the plot, are some of the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated on the French during that time and how those evil deeds impacted the grandmother’s young Oboe teacher.  He was a member of one of the few orchestras allowed to perform during the occupation.  And in this earlier timeline, we learn about how the photo came about and how it changed their lives forever.

During a lockdown in Paris due to a severe snowstorm, we learn about the additional tragedies that have occurred to both the granddaughter and her photographer companion.  As the story reaches its climax, their additional research answers many of the remaining questions that have lingered unanswered throughout the book with a few surprises.  Revealing more would be a spoiler so suffice it to say this was a very enjoyable read.

As soon as I came across the title of this book, The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood, I was immediately intrigued.  Once I read the brief synopsis, I was sold and quickly pushed the purchase button.  And the book wastes no time in getting there with the opening words: “This cannot be how I die.”

Our protagonist is Delphie, a young woman living in London who at that moment is choking on her dinner.  After she dies and discovers she is in some sort of afterlife waystation, she is greeted by a handsome man who she quickly discovers is her soul mate.  But just as she is warming up to the prospect of enjoying an afterlife with this man, a mistake is revealed that sends him back to his not quite dead body.

Discouraged over losing the love she never got to enjoy in her too short life, Delphie is offered a unique opportunity to return to her life and seek out this person.  But she only knows his name is Jonah T., his full last name having been cut off by the interruption announcing the mistake of him being there.  But there are two catches to this “once in an afterlife time” opportunity.

Saying more would be a spoiler.

Returning to her Earthly body, Delphie begins to seek out her living soul mate.  And as she does so, she discovers many things about her rather secluded life that amaze her.  As her search for Jonah comes to a climax, the absolutely most surprising ending is revealed.

This was a very fun read indeed, and I will have to seek out other books by this author of whom, I was totally unfamiliar.

     To be continued…