TODAY is Sunday, August 20th, and although the temperature outside is still in the triple digits some afternoons, I am declaring that fall is here. Kids in Alvin, Texas have returned to school, and it won’t be long until the 1820 Coffee Shop will be serving pumpkin lattes. With a new season, I begin a new post–The Sunday Review.

To begin, I am offering one of my favorite novels of 2023, by one of my favorite authors: The Spectacular by Fiona Davis. For a year or so, Fiona’s mom was a member of our Tuesday Readers Book Club at the library, and we even had a conference call session with Ms Davis after selecting one of her books as our “read.” I had hoped to meet her in NYC and have her take me to an authentic NY cafe one afternoon, but Covid nixed the girlfriends’ trip to NY. Her latest novel, Spectacular is one of her best.

As all of her novels, Spectacular features a famous NY building, Radio City Music Hall. It has been described as dealing with, “love, sacrifice, and the pursuit of dreams.”

It begins in 1992 on Radio City Music Hall’s 60th anniversary. The protagonist, Marion Brooks, a former Rockette is preparing to enter assisted living, and is reluctant to attend the anniversary celebration. Handling a box of objects brought down from her attic, she flashes back to events in her life which have been recently published in a book and have brought her unwanted attention, causing her to re-experience tragic times in her past.

At the age of 19, back in 1956, Marion auditions (against her father’s will) for the Radio City Rockettes, and to her surprise, makes the cut. The discipline and sacrifices a woman must make to be a Rockette are fascinating to read. Cleverly, Davis entangles Marion in a series of bombings, executed by the “Big Apple Bomber,” who had, at that time, terrorized NYC for 16 years. With assistance from Peter Griggs, a young doctor at a mental hospital, who is developing “psychological profiling,” something unheard of then, she aims to solve the case for personal reasons. They offer their unwanted help to the NYC police, but end up taking things into their own hands.

Adventure and action enter the novel at this point in a way that is so suspenseful, it keeps the reader turning the pages well past bedtime. The ending is worth staying up for, and it is one of my best “reads” for this year. I highly recommend Spectacular.