Carole (Carole's Random Life)'s Reviews > The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

This review can also be found at https://carolesrandomlife.com/

I really wanted to love this book, but it was just kind of okay for me. I decided to give it a try after seeing quite a few positive reviews and the fact that it has been named Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year and Amazon’s Best Book of 2023. I saw the book described as a murder mystery and I expected a murder mystery. It would be a stretch to call this book any kind of mystery so my expectations were a bit off.

The story is very well-written. The bulk of the book is set in a small area of Pennsylvania called Chicken Hill during the 1930’s. This area is home to a quirky cast of Black and Jewish residents. Throughout this novel, we meet many characters and learn their backstory. It was interesting to see how interconnected this community was. I liked some characters more than others but I found something interesting in each of their stories.

I listened to the audiobook and thought that Dominic Hoffman did a fabulous job with this story. I believe that this is the first time that I have had a chance to listen to this narrator’s work and I was very impressed. He handled the vast cast of characters quite well which helped maintain my interest. I am certain that his performance is a big reason why I liked this book as much as I did, and I hate to admit that I am not sure that I would have finished without his narration.

This book is going to work a lot better for many readers than it did for me. I spent most of the book waiting for someone to die so we could explain the bones found at the very beginning. Unfortunatly, the author doesn’t circle back to those bones until the very end of the story and by then I didn’t care anymore.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Riverhead Books and Penguin Random House Audio.