The Identicals by Elin HIlderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Nantucket is only eleven miles away from Martha's Vineyard. But they may as well be worlds apart for estranged twin sisters Harper and Tabitha Frost.

After not speaking for more than a decade, Harper and Tabitha switch islands-and lives-to save what's left of their splintered family. But the twins quickly discover that the secrets, lies, and gossip they thought they'd outrun can travel between islands just as easily as they can. Will Harper and Tabitha be able to bury the hatchet and end their sibling rivalry once and for all?

Before the last beach picnic of the season, there will be enough old resentments, new loves, and cases of mistaken identity to make this the most talked-about summer that Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket have experienced in ages.

HerKentucky Review: I love this book, y’all. It’s probably my favorite Elin Hilderbrand book. Identical twins Harper and Tabitha Frost have been estranged for over a decade, even though they live only eleven miles apart. Set on Massachusetts’ twin islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, the Identicals is a story of the ways we hurt the people we love the most. The characters are vivid and complex in this one; I especially adore the twins’ mother, an homage to Lilly Pulitzer.

Purchase The Identicals on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: It's Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom's wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate.

But it's going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect. Featuring beloved characters from The Castaways, Beautiful Day, and A Summer Affair, The Perfect Couple proves once again that Elin Hilderbrand is the queen of the summer beach read.

HerKentucky Review: A quirky tale in which a bridesmaid’s corpse washes up on the Nantucket shore on the morning of a storybook wedding. Soon we learn that no couple — even Celeste and Benji — is perfect. A fast-paced tale of marriage, illusions, and love. An absolutely perfect beach read!

Purchase The Perfect Couple on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Four siblings experience the drama, intrigue, and upheaval of the '60s summer when everything changed in Elin Hilderbrand's #1 New York Times bestselling historical novel.
Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. And thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, while each of them hides a troubling secret.
As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country. In her first historical novel, rich with the details of an era that shaped both a nation and an island thirty miles out to sea, Elin Hilderbrand once again earns her title as queen of the summer novel.

HerKentucky Review: The Levin family faces their own crises against the tumultuous backdrop of 1969. This is Ms. Hilderbrand’s most ambitious novel, and the only one set in a historical context. Boomers will love the convergence of events — Chappaquiddick, the moon landing — that accompanies the story. The rest of us will love the layers of family drama. I especially loved a passage that described a character’s summer packing list — Tretorns, striped shirts, Lilly Pulitzer dresses — that mimics my own over fifty years later.

Purchase Summer of ‘69 on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. What begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny's boyfriend, Jake, and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt--but the emotional damage is overwhelming. Questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel.

As summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed about the survivors and their parents, the secrets kept, promises broken, and hearts betrayed.

HerKentucky Review: A tragic car accident changes the lives of four Nantucket teenagers — and their parents — forever. This novel does a lovely job of analyzing several characters’ flaws and motivations in a manner that is both complex and succinct. Teenage alcoholism and depression are handled with precision and compassion. A must for anyone who loves dramatic shows set in high schools!

Purchase Summerland on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Here's to Us by Elin Hildebrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s Synopsis: Laurel Thorpe, Belinda Rowe, and Scarlett Oliver share only two things; a love for the man they all married, Deacon Thorpe—a celebrity chef with an insatiable appetite for life—and a passionate dislike of one another. All three are remarkable, spirited women, but they couldn't be more different. Laurel: Deacon's high school sweetheart and an effortlessly beautiful social worker; Belinda: a high-maintenance Hollywood diva; and Scarlett: a sexy southern belle floating by on her family money and her fabulous looks. They've established a delicate understanding over the years—they avoid each other at all costs.

But their fragile detente threatens to come crashing down after Deacon's tragic death on his favorite place on earth: a ramshackle Nantucket summer cottage. Deacon's final wish was for his makeshift family to assemble on his beloved Nantucket to say good-bye. Begrudgingly, Laurel, Belinda, and Scarlett gather on the island as once again, as in each of their marriages, they're left to pick up Deacon's mess. Now they're trapped in the crowded cottage where they all made their own memories—a house that they now share in more ways than one—along with the children they raised with Deacon, and his best friend. Laurel, Belinda, and Scarlett each had an unbreakable bond with Deacon—and they all have secrets to hide.

Before the weekend is over, there are enough accusations, lies, tears, and drama to turn even the best of friends—let alone three women who married the same man—into adversaries. As his unlikely family says good-bye to the man who brought them together—for better or worse—will they be able to put aside their differences long enough to raise a glass in Deacon's honor?

HerKentucky Review: The three former wives of bad boy celebrity chef Deacon Thorpe gather, along with their children, at the chef’s Nantucket cottage for the reading of his will. This is a sexy, dysfunctional story of lost dreams, addiction, and family ties. If, like me, you’ll forever be in love with Anthony Bourdain, this one is for you.

Purchase Here’s to Us  on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Malibu Rising is THE must-read novel of Summer 2021. I think that’s clear by now. We’ve seen Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest Los Angeles story of celebrity and heartbreak on the New York Times bestseller list, Jenna Bush Hager’s Today Show Book Club, and every summer-themed #bookstagram post the Internet has to offer. This one certainly lives up to all the buzz.

Malibu Rising is the story of the Riva siblings, four beautiful California kids who’ve grown up in the shadow of their absent father, superstar singer Mick Riva. The novel centers around family heartbreak and secrets, all of which come to light on the night of the Rivas’ annual Malibu party. Over the course of the evening, Riva family secrets come to life amidst the backdrop of celebrities, wannabes, and the spark that lights a Malibu wildfire.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a fantastic storyteller, and she weaves an absolutely fascinating world of interconnected characters (Mick Riva is one of the titular Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and one of the rock stars who partied with Daisy Jones and the Six). If you love Eighties memorabilia, Hollywood gossip, or a great beach read about family dynamics. This one gets five whiskey glasses from me; it’s a fast, fun read!

If you’re interested in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s celebrity novels, read in this order:

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

• Daisy Jones & The Six

• Malibu Rising

Shop for Malibu Rising on Bookshop.org

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

HerKentucky review: (Content warning: This book includes themes of rape, assault, and trauma and could trigger some readers.)

I honestly can’t remember a time in my adult reading life that I didn't love Jennifer Weiner’s novels. I read her debut novel, Good in Bed, nearly twenty years ago and was immediately hooked on her compelling writing style. Ms. Weiner writes smart, witty female protagonists better than anyone. (Fun Fact: Ms. Weiner briefly wrote a pop culture column for the Lexington Herald-Leader!) Of course, I picked up her latest novel, That Summer, on its publication date, knowing little more than that it took place in part on Cape Cod, with a callback to last year’s fun, fast-paced Big Summer. It’s a Jennifer Weiner beach novel, I thought, it’ll be fun and lightweight. Instead, I found myself devouring a story that’s part Lifetime movie, part Promising Young Woman, and part Christine Blasey Ford’s Congressional testimony.

That Summer is a smart, well-written story — one I couldn’t put down — but it’s far from a lightweight beach book. Ms. Weiner intertwines the stories of two women named Diana — one a corporate consultant, the other an anxiety-ridden housewife on Philadelphia’s Main Line — who forge a friendship seemingly based on their very similar email addresses and the misdirected messages that each woman receives. The ensuing story is a complex #METOO era tale of sexual assault, culpability, privilege, and the aftermath of trauma. Ms. Weiner explores ethical implications and psychological impact with skill and clarity, while making (most of) her characters imminently likable and relatable. The work manages to be funny and sweet at times, while presenting a complex story of revenge. It isn’t quite the breezy beach thriller I’d expected; in fact, it’s far better.

As a longtime fan of Ms. Weiner’s work, I find that one of her greatest storytelling strengths lies in the quirky details with which she imbues her characters. That Summer delivers odd, likable characters in droves — a prairie-core teenager who skips class at her swanky private school to make and sell crafts on Etsy, a banker-turned-Cape-Cod-restaurant-owner, and a teacher with an almost compulsive need to save all the children. These so-odd-they-have-to-be-real characters add a goodnatured twist to a story that ventures at times into dark territory.

That Summer is a must-read for my fellow Jennifer Weiner fans and for anyone who enjoys plot twists, quirky characters, or smartly-written depictions of tricky relationships.

Purchase That Summer on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Just a Few Miles South by Ouita Michel

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: For twenty years, diners in the Bluegrass have been able to satisfy their cravings for Ouita Michel's sustainable, farm-to-table cuisine at her many acclaimed restaurants. Each restaurant—from Wallace Station to Holly Hill Inn—features dishes that combine Kentucky's bounty with Michel's celebrated vision. Diners can enjoy traditional southern staples like buttermilk biscuits, country ham, and Po-Boy sandwiches, or opt for unique variations on international favorites and American classics. Now, readers around the country can experience what makes Ouita Michel a culinary and cultural treasure.

Just a Few Miles South serves up the recipes that patrons of Michel's restaurants have come to know and love, including the Bluegrass Benedict breakfast sandwich, Ouita's Sardou Panini, Wallace Station's Creamy Chicken and Mushroom Soup, and Honeywood's Hoecake Burger. Some dishes offer creative twists on classics, like the Inside Out Hot Brown, the Wallace Cubano, or the Bourbon Banh Mi. Throughout, the chefs responsible for these delicious creations share the rich traditions and stories behind the recipes. When you can't get down to your favorite place, this book will help you bring home the aroma, the flavors, and the love of fresh foods made with locally sourced ingredients—and share it all with friends and family.

HerKentucky review: A few years ago, I attended a media event preceding the opening of Chef Ouita Michel’s Honeywood restaurant in Lexington. I’d met Chef Ouita a few times prior to that event, and had interviewed her fairly recently. We stood around talking for a few minutes as the camera crews and various blogger and media folks set up. Then, Ouita noticed my hands. “Those are kitchen burns,” she said worriedly. “I would recognize them anywhere.” Here was a multiple James Beard Award nominee and owner of 7 Central Kentucky restaurants, less concerned about the news cameras in her new restaurant than in asking about my kitchen mishap. I laughingly told the story of an ill-fated lasagna I’d battled with years earlier in Nashville. I also went from considering myself quite fond of Ouita’s restaurants to being a Ouita Michel fan for life. Ouita, as any Kentucky grandmother would say, is good people.

If you ever have the pleasure of meeting Chef Ouita Michel, whom most of us consider The Queen of Kentucky Food, you’ll find her to be one of the kindest, funniest and loveliest people ever. Her food is insanely good and she doesn’t shy away from a stiff bourbon pour. But, most importantly, she loves Kentucky — our food, our land, and our people. In the twenty years since Ouita and her husband, Chris, opened their first restaurant, Midway’s Holly Hill Inn, their restaurants have become synonymous with local, seasonal Kentucky food. She was one of the key people who helped attract Bravo’s “Top Chef” competition to film a season in Kentucky. She works tirelessly to promote fellow chefs and to improve the community around her. She uses her knowledge and talents to promote the study of Appalachian culture and foodways — she even made dumplin’s at a fancy NYC James Beard House dinner!

Chef Ouita’s first cookbook, Just a Few Miles South: Timeless Recipes from Our Favorite Places, recently released by University of Kentucky Press, reflects the Southern-style comfort food served in her restaurants. The po’ boy sandwiches from Windy Corner Market are included, as are the hoecake burgers from Honeywood and the bourbon cheese dip and Weisenberger Mills cheese grits from Holly Hill Inn. If you’ve enjoyed a dish at one of Ouita’s restaurants, odds are that they’re included in her cookbook!

Just a Few Miles South demonstrates Chef Ouita and her staff’s commitment to fresh Kentucky food and authentic local recipes. It’s a great gift for anyone who enjoys Southern and Appalachian cuisine, an expatriated Kentuckian, or anyone who, like me, always looks forward to dining at one of Ouita’s restaurants. It would make a fabulous Mother’s Day, graduation, or wedding gift when bundled with a bottle of Woodford Reserve (Ouita is also chef-in-residence at Woodford Reserve Distillery!) Trust me, it’s a gift any Kentuckian would love!

Purchase Just a Few Miles South on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

I was given an advance review copy of this book by the publisher. All opinions are my own. This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere--through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise--until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

HerKentucky Review: 28 Summers is a novel based loosely around the 1978 Ellen Burstyn - Alan Alda film Same Time, Next Year. Like the characters in that film, Ms. Hilderbrand’s protagonists, Mallory and Jake, meet every year for a weekend affair, watching that film on Sunday nights while eating Chinese takeout. Ms. Hilderbrand, long regarded as the queen of the beach read, sets most of her fiction on Nantucket. In her latest work, free-spirited high school English teacher Mallory lives in the Nantucket beach cottage she inherited from her late aunt. Every Labor Day weekend from 1993 to 2019, she welcomes Jake, whom she first meets as her brother’s fraternity buddy and whom the world later knows as the husband of hotshot presidential candidate Ursula de Gournsey. Their affair spans the eponymous 28 summers, with each character leading a completely separate life — marriage, moves, children, cancer treatment, losing parents — for the rest of the year.

Each chapter of Ms. Hilderbrand’s work describes a summer of Jake and Mallory’s romance. She begins each chapter by asking “What are we talking about in [the year at hand]?”, a device that lists political and pop culture moments in a quick-fire manner, transporting the reader to that exact moment in time. This device also served to remind me that I probably would have found the idea of impossible romance much more dreamy and palatable when I was in my twenties than I do now. The Nineties, after all, were a very different time.

28 Summers is a beautiful beach read with quirky, likable characters. I found myself cheering for not only the star-crossed couple, but even for the male protagonist’s driven, icy politician wife. At the same time, I found myself impossibly heartbroken for the female lead, both due to the terms of their relationship and to her health situation. Pour yourself a glass of cold white wine, stream a 1990s radio station, and be prepared to shed a few tears at the end. This book is a must-read if you love Elin HIlderbrand’s Nantucket novels or if you can remember seeing episodes of Friends on their original network airing.

Purchase 28 Summers on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

The Lies that Bind by Emily Giffin

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: It’s 2 A.M. on a Saturday night in the spring of 2001, and twenty-eight-year-old Cecily Gardner sits alone in a dive bar in New York’s East Village, questioning her life. Feeling lonesome and homesick for the Midwest, she wonders if she’ll ever make it as a reporter in the big city—and whether she made a terrible mistake in breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, Matthew. 

As Cecily reaches for the phone to call him, she hears a guy on the barstool next to her say, “Don’t do it—you’ll regret it.” Something tells her to listen, and over the next several hours—and shots of tequila—the two forge an unlikely connection. That should be it, they both decide the next morning, as Cecily reminds herself of the perils of a rebound relationship. Moreover, their timing couldn’t be worse—Grant is preparing to quit his job and move overseas. Yet despite all their obstacles, they can’t seem to say goodbye, and for the first time in her carefully constructed life, Cecily follows her heart instead of her head.

 Then Grant disappears in the chaos of 9/11. Fearing the worst, Cecily spots his face on a missing-person poster, and realizes she is not the only one searching for him. Her investigative reporting instincts kick into action as she vows to discover the truth. But the questions pile up fast: How well did she really know Grant? Did he ever really love her? And is it possible to love a man who wasn’t who heseemed to be? 

The Lies That Bind is a mesmerizing and emotionally resonant exploration of the never-ending search for love and truth—in our relationships, our careers, and deep within our own hearts.

HerKentucky Review: Nearly every Emily Giffin novel can be summed up in two sentences: Midwestern girl winds up in big city circumstances that are more lavish than her wildest dreams. She acts from insecurity and hubris, making an impetuous decision that nearly costs her everything. Ms. Giffin’s The Lies that Bind, applies that basic plot to the story of 28 year-old Cecily, a Wisconsin native and would-be journalist, who feels an instant connection to Grant, whom she meets in the spring of 2001. They begin an intense affair, and then he totally vanishes after the 9/11 attacks.

Emily Giffin is known for writing novels about complex moral issues. Her characters make questionable decisions, and you either really root for them, or you don’t. In some (Something Borrowed and Something Blue), that technique really works for me. In others (Love the One You’re With and Baby Proof), the characters are so flawed that I kind of hated them and the decisions they made.

In The Lies that Bind, I found the female protagonist to be somewhat willfully obtuse. Her decisions were knowingly shortsighted and selfish. And, yet, I couldn’t put the book down. I felt the nostalgia pull so strongly in this one. I was 25 on September 11th, working at a job that made me miserable and dealing with dating drama and never having enough money. I hated the stupid decisions Cecily made, but I so strongly recalled my own life at that point. Ms. Giffin really transported me to my own life decisions at the time. Enjoy this one with a Sex-and-the-City era Cosmo and a Christina Aguilera playlist, and remember how you didn’t always make the best dating decisions 20 years ago.

Purchase The Lies that Bind on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Nashville: Scenes from the New American South by Heidi Ross and Ann Patchett

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: A dynamic, experiential, and intimate portrait that explores the many sides of the legendary Southern city and country music capital, from award-winning writers Ann Patchett, Jon Meacham, and acclaimed photographer Heidi Ross.

Nashville is a creative collaboration that awakens the senses, providing a virtual immersion in this unique American city hailed as the Athens of the South. Patchett, Ross, and Meacham in his introduction, at once capture both the city’s iconic historical side—its deep, rich Southern roots, from its food and festivals to its famous venues, recording studios, and style—and its edgier, highly vibrant creative side, which has made it a modern cultural mecca increasingly populated by established and upcoming artists in art, film, and music.

Nashville celebrates Nashvillians’ beloved locales and events, both established and new, that are the heart of the city’s character including:

• Bobbie’s Dairy Dip

• Broadway

• Cumberland River

• Buchanan Arts District

• Bolton’s Chicken and Fish

• Dino’s

• East Nashville Tomato Arts Festival

• Germantown

• The Gulch

• Grand Ole Opry

• Pie Town (SoBro)

• Pride Festival

• Prince’s Hot Chicken

• Schermerhorn Symphony Center

• Stanley Cup Playoffs

• Tennessee Performing Arts Center

• Tennessee State Fair

• Third Man Records

• WXNA Independent Radio

Here, too, are engaging vignettes spotlighting the diverse talent that makes the Tennessee city a significant cultural incubator and influencer, including singer-songwriters Marty Stuart, Gillian Welsh, and Dave Rawlings; film director Harmony Korine, textile designer Andra Eggleston, country music fashion designer to the stars Manuel, chef Margot McCormack, acclaimed pastry chef Lisa Donovan, and model and musician Karen Elson.

Blending exceptional narrative, evocative photography—including 175 black-and-white and color photographs—and a bold graphic design, Nashville is an intimate, textured panorama that brilliantly illuminates one of America’s most remarkable treasures.

HerKentucky review: Nashville is my very favorite city. I loved living there. I visit as often as I can. It just sparks the creative process for me in a way that no other place can. It’s the perfect mix of small-town and big-city. Trends arrive there about a year after they hit Brooklyn, and a good 18 months before they make it to Louisville — just in time for me to have a firm opinion on them!

Because I love Nashville so very much, i spent a good chunk of last autumn waiting for the release of Nashville: Scenes from the New American South by Heidi Ross and Ann Patchett. Of course, I waited to purchase it from Parnassus Books, author Ann Patchett’s bookstore, on my annual Christmas shopping trip to the Music City. I wanted a signed copy, of course, and I never pass up an opportunity to visit Parnassus.

If you love any aspect of Nashville — the music scene, the meat and threes, the history, or anything else — then you’ll love this coffee table book. The foreword by journalist/Presidential biographer Jon Meacham touches on the city’s role in the civil rights movement, popular culture, and Southern life. Ann Patchett’s accompanying essay intersperses these themes with her own experiences of growing up in 1960s Nashville. While I never miss a chance to read what either of these folks have to say, the true star of this work is the stunning visual spread of Heidi Ross’s photographs. You’ll see everything you love about Nashville in this work. The Nashville I love — the Pancake Pantry line, musicians like Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson, the iconic hot chicken restaurants — is well-represented. So are everyday sights like high school cheerleaders and street musicians, art galleries and parks, diners and farmers’ markets. It’s a gorgeous reminder that Nashville is far more than the Disney-like strip of celebrity-inspired bars and bachelorette parties offered on SoBro. If you love Nashville, you’ll love this book.

Purchase Nashville: Scenes from the New American South on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? by Robert Lawson

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into her car around midnight―presumably headed for home. But she would never arrive. Three hours later, Brown was found dead in a driveway near the center of campus, strangled to death with her own brassiere. Kentuckians from across the state became engrossed in the proceedings as lead after lead went nowhere. Four years later, the police investigation completely stalled.

In 1965, a drifter named Alex Arnold Jr. confessed to the killing while in jail on other charges in Oregon. Arnold was brought to Lexington, indicted for the murder of Betty Gail Brown, and put on trial, where he entered a plea of not guilty. Robert G. Lawson was a young attorney at a local firm when a senior member asked him to help defend Arnold, and he offers a meticulous record of the case in Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? During the trial, the courtroom was packed daily, but witnesses failed to produce any concrete evidence. Arnold was an alcoholic whose memory was unreliable, and his confused, inconsistent answers to questions about the night of the homicide did not add up.

Since the trial, new leads have come and gone, but Betty Gail Brown's murder remains unsolved. A written transcript of the court proceedings does not exist; and thus Lawson, drawing upon police and court records, newspaper articles, personal files, and his own notes, provides an invaluable record of one of Kentucky's most famous cold cases.

HerKentucky review: Betty Gail Brown was a Lexington native, a Transylvania University student, and a member of the Delta Theta Chapter of Phi Mu. She was on campus late one Thursday night in October studying for a biology exam; the following morning, she was found dead in her car. Intense media coverage, a thorough police investigation, and a prolonged trial ensued. In Who Killed Betty Gail Brown?, Mr. Lawson, longtime criminal law professor at UK College of Law, recreates the crime, the investigation, and the legal proceedings from his perspective as the defense attorney for the accused killer, an alcoholic drifter named Alex Arnold.

I was immediately drawn to this story because I love any story about Lexington's past, and I loved my years as a Phi Mu in the Transy chapter. Of course, I needed to read about what happened to my sorority sister! 

The book is extremely respectful of Miss Brown, and takes pains to explain why the author and his law partner were committed to the belief that Mr. Arnold was, in all likelihood, not the killer. Professor Lawson's most-read work is Kentucky's Penal Code, and I will say that the story is, at times, very lawyerly and dry. There is no sensationalism in the work -- in fact, there are times when more details would have aided the story -- and the book often reads like the recitation of facts in a legal brief. It's an interesting exercise for a reader: I find myself coming to the story with an interest in Lexington history, and the victim's school and sorority, while the author is interested in finding answers to an unsolved crime and legal proceedings that ended in mistrial. It's an interesting exercise in perspective. For example, I found in follow-up research that the victim was a niece to the late Kentucky-born actor Harry Dean Stanton. I found this detail fascinating; of course it was omitted from the narrative of the book because it had nothing to do with the story.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes stories true crime, legal nonfiction, or Lexington history. If you're familiar with Transylvania's campus, it's eerie to think that this terrible crime took place in an area where you've walked so many times. Professor Lawson tells a great story from the perspective of his own involvement in the story, and his own uncertainty about who actually killed Miss Brown.

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Madam Belle: Sex, Money and Influence in a Southern Brothel by Maryjean Wall

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Belle Brezing made a major career move when she stepped off the streets of Lexington, Kentucky, and into Jennie Hill's bawdy house―an upscale brothel run out of a former residence of Mary Todd Lincoln. At nineteen, Brezing was already infamous as a youth steeped in death, sex, drugs, and scandal. But it was in Miss Hill's "respectable" establishment that she began to acquire the skills, manners, and business contacts that allowed her to ascend to power and influence as an internationally known madam.

In this revealing book, Maryjean Wall offers a tantalizing true story of vice and power in the Gilded Age South, as told through the life and times of the notorious Miss Belle. After years on the streets and working for Hill, Belle Brezing borrowed enough money to set up her own establishment―her wealth and fame growing alongside the booming popularity of horse racing. Soon, her houses were known internationally, and powerful patrons from the industrial cities of the Northeast courted her in the lavish parlors of her gilt-and-mirror mansion.

Secrecy was a moral code in the sequestered demimonde of prostitution in Victorian America, so little has been written about the Southern madam credited with inspiring the character Belle Watling in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Following Brezing from her birth amid the ruins of the Civil War to the height of her scarlet fame and beyond, Wall uses her story to explore a wider world of sex, business, politics, and power. The result is a scintillating tale that is as enthralling as any fiction.

HerKentucky review:

If you've spent any time at all in Lexington, then you've certainly met at least one person who considers herself a "Belle Enthusiast" -- someone who simply can't get enough of the legend of Miss Belle Brezing.

Belle was, of course, a Lexington madam of the late 19th and early 20th century whose shrewd business sense and commitment to opulence and decorum led to the establishment of what was widely known as "The Most Orderly of Disorderly Houses." Widely believed to be the inspiration for the Belle Watling character in Gone with the Wind, Belle rose from humble beginnings to own a successful brothel that was frequented by judges, horse breeders, and society gentlemen of the day. I count myself among the Belle Enthusiasts who are fascinated by her life story, so I was excited to get my hands on the latest Belle biography, Maryjean Wall's Madam Belle: Sex, Money, and Influence in a Southern Brothel. 

Ms. Wall, who covered the turf beat for the Lexington Herald-Leader for nearly four decades, brings a well-researched account of Lexington in the 1880s and 1890s. Her work brings an interesting perspective of the era's horse business to Belle's story. However, with little new information about Belle and a wealth of stories about seemingly peripheral racing stories, the book functions better as a history of Lexington than as a Belle Brezing biography. The knowledgeable Belle enthusiast will find little new information in this work, with much of the story devoted to pedantic details found in receipt books and a heavy reliance on Buddy Thompson's seminal Brezing biography, Madam Belle Brezing. [Ed. note: my college bookstore stocked a few copies of Thompson's book when I was matriculating there. I always meant to buy it but at the time, list price seemed exorbitant; now it's impossible to find a copy of the long-out-of-print work for under $70...]

I found myself simply wanting to like this book far more than I actually did. There was little new information and Ms. Wall's text is cumbersome. The language which the author employs is particularly problematic. The overuse of "demimonde" adds an aura of pretension, while the repeated referral to Ms. Brezing's employees as "whores" undermines the commonly-held (and seemingly accepted by the author) conceit that Belle was a sharp businesswoman who added a touch of elegance to her enterprise. The historical context of Kentucky horsemen often seems forced, bringing awkward phrases like "But [Belle's] opening night gala still lay in the future on that Derby night of 1890" or the reference to 1890s thoroughbred horses as "four-legged Ferarris." [Driver Enzo Ferrari was not born until 1898, and his eponymous sports car company was founded in 1929.] At times, I simply found myself wondering where the point lay in Ms. Wall's exercise.

For this reader, Ms. Wall's most interesting addition to the Belle Canon is an anecdote regarding Belle's final days. Aging, alone, and fighting a morphine addiction, Belle found herself in the frequent care of James Herndon, an orderly at Lexington's St. Joseph Hospital. Mr. Herndon is perhaps better known as Lexington's original drag queen, Miss Sweet Evening Breeze; it's fascinating to imagine how this connection kept the Belle legend alive in Lexington. Ms. Wall's quote of Lexington artist Bob Morgan, who says "All the old queens loved Belle. She was powerful and a sexual outlaw..." tells a fascinating story of gender politics and historical interpretation. I found myself wishing that this storyline had been better developed, with less emphasis on the same perusal of auction records that appears in every Belle timeline.

Madam Belle adds little to the body of Belle writing. I would recommend it only for those who are new to the Belle legend or who are interested in an overview of the vices of historical Lexington.