That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam

I had heard this reviewed on the All the Books podcast and immediately requested from the Library.  I was not disappointed. The book tells the story of a young mother, Rebecca Stone, a poet, who struggles with her newborn at the beginning (who doesn't?) and hires the La Leche League coach from the hospital to be her nanny. They develop a great relationship, at least to Rebecca, and she comes to depend on Priscilla for much more than just help with the baby, Jacob.  Priscilla is the mother of a young woman (Priscilla gave birth to her at 17) and has experience that Rebecca lacks.  Oh, and Priscilla is black.
Priscilla comes one day and announces that she is pregnant. This is when Rebecca realizes that there are aspects of Priscilla's life she has no clue about, although she tries. Priscilla dies in childbirth and Rebecca and her husband adopt the baby, even though Andrew does have a "sister" much older than him, Cheryl. SHE has just given birth to a little girl, Ivy.

There is a lot going on here, and it's interesting to see how Rebecca develops as a character in the book.  Exploring themes of race, privilege, and family, Alam's second novel will leave you thinking about it long after finishing.

Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen

This was a very quiet but poignant book. I am not sure why I feel it was "quiet" because some very disruptive and even violent events took place but the books moves at a quiet, slow pace and pretty much tells a story of what it's like to live in the UWS of Manhattan with a group of friends who are similar and yet very different. It is a story of have and have-nots and of race issues in the city. And the story of a marriage slowly falling apart - more like two people just drifting apart.
I can't recall a book that Anna Quindlen wrote that I didn't like, and this is no exception.
Kirkus doesn't agree with me. They say it's not on par with her other books, but I say, it's just a little different for her,

The vagaries of parking in New York City figure prominently in Quindlen’s ninth novel, which begins with a moment of parking karma: Charlie Nolan has just scored a permanent spot in the small outdoor lot on his Upper West Side block. Charlie, an investment banker, and his wife, Nora, who runs a jewelry museum, live in a town house surrounded by other town houses owned by affluent types much like themselves; the only blight on the block is a single-room-occupancy building. The Nolans have been married for almost 25 years—not unhappily, not quite serenely—and are parents of college-age twins. Nothing much happens in the first 100 pages or so, but the author’s amusing digressions—on dogs, rats, parking tickets, housing prices, and other city obsessions—keep things moving. Then a violent act shatters the calm on the Nolans’ block: Hot-tempered Jack Fisk, partner in a white-shoe law firm, takes a golf club to mild-mannered Ricky Ramos, the neighborhood handyman, who’s had the temerity to block the entrance to the parking lot with his van. And simmering issues of race and class boil over. (Earlier, when Nora visits Ricky at his home in the Bronx—getting lost, of course, on the way—there’s a whiff of Bonfire of the Vanities.) The golf-club incident also has consequences for the Nolan family. The title of the book, it turns out, doesn’t just refer to parking. Quindlen’s sendup of entitled Manhattanites is fun but familiar. And though the author has been justly praised for her richly imagined female characters, Nora can seem more a type than a full-bodied woman.
There’s insight here—about the precariousness of even the most stable-seeming marriages—and some charm, but the novel is not on a par with Quindlen’s best.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

This is a "hot" book right now and it started out strong, but as time went on, I found myself losing interest.  I did finish it but it was not a satisfying ending. Maybe I didn't "get it."
 From Kirkus

The book revolves around the question, "Would you want to know when your life was going to end?"
A psychic on the Lower East Side tells four children the dates they will die. Only time will tell if her predictions are accurate.
“Perhaps nothing would have happened were it not the pit of summer, with a month and a half of humid boredom behind them and a month and a half ahead….[T]his year—the summer of 1969—it seems something is happening to everyone but them.” Varya is 13, Daniel, 11, Klara, 9, and Simon, 7, the day they visit the woman on Hester Street who is said to know the future. She sees each of the siblings alone, telling each the exact date of his or her death; at first, the reader hears only Varya’s, which is far in the future. The next four sections focus on each of the siblings in turn, continuing through 2010. Simon runs off to San Francisco and becomes a dancer at a gay club called Purp; when one of his many sex partners is described as an Australian flight attendant, we, too, can predict his future. Klara, who tags along with Simon to the West Coast, studies magic and eventually takes her act to Las Vegas; she marries her stage partner and has a child. Daniel becomes a doctor in the military; Varya, a scientist doing longevity experiments with primates. Speaking of longevity experiments with primates, the book’s hypothesis about the fortuneteller’s death dates is inexplicably credulous, though suggestions of a self-fulfilling prophecy muddy the waters a bit. In any case, the siblings are an unhappy bunch, saddled not only with this unwelcome knowledge of the future but with alcoholism, depression, OCD, possible bipolar disease, and many regrets; misunderstandings and grudges divide them from each other. Various minor characters—a cop; spouses, lovers, and offspring; the fortuneteller herself—weave through the plot in a contrived way.

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

This was such a delightful read - I thoroughly enjoyed it. The beginning really reels you in with humor and pathos and a crazy cast of characters.  Here is what Kirkus says:

In her debut novel, the author of the charming short story collection Single, Carefree, Mellow (2015) matures into new (equally beguiling) terrain, exploring marriage, fidelity, friendship, and parenting.
It’s easy to see why Graham, one-half of the New York City couple at the center of Heiny’s first novel, is enthralled by his wife of 12 years, Audra. While Graham, a medical-venture specialist at a venture capitalist firm, is steady, stable, and fond of “routine and order,” Audra, a freelance graphic designer 15 years his junior, is an unrestrained force of good nature. Audra’s vivacity offers a stark contrast to Graham’s emotionally cool first wife, Elspeth, with whom the couple reconnects. Audra draws all manner of friends and random strangers into her orbit with her chatty sociability and almost unwavering cheer. She cannot make it through a trip to the grocery store without running into a million people she knows (Graham says it’s like shopping with “a visiting dignity”) and bonding big-time with the checkout guy, is constantly inviting people (a woman she barely knows from her book group whose husband has been unfaithful; their building’s afternoon doorman, for a reason Graham cannot recall) to move into their den or eat at their table. Audra is forever on the phone, helping out with PTA activities at the school attended by their 10-year-old son, Matthew, who has Asperger’s and is some kind of origami prodigy, or chatting with her best friend, Lorelei. Like Graham, the reader may be deeply enchanted with, if also somewhat mystified by, Audra. She’s a wonderful character, as are many of those assembled around her, and the series of minor challenges she and Graham face (potential infidelities, possible pregnancy, challenging play dates, and other parental concerns)—she pluckily; he sheepishly—make for reading as delicious as the meals Graham is forever called into service to cook for whomever Audra happens to have invited by that night. To quibble, the episodic, somewhat attenuated plot lacks a degree of urgency and loses a bit of steam midway through, but it regains its footing by the end. And to spend 300-plus pages with Heiny’s wry voice and colorful cast of characters is to love them, truly.
An amusingly engaging take on long-term marriage with a lovably loopy character at its center.

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

This author gets a lot of press and accolades so I tried this one. Started off good but I really thought it was predictable and not that suspenseful. I am not even sure I finished it! That's how much I cared about "Who Did It?"

🌟 The Sisters Chase by Sarah Healy

Loved this book! Read what Kirkus says

An absorbing story of two sisters on the road.
When their mother dies in a car accident, the Chase sisters, 18-year-old Mary and 4-year-old Hannah (affectionately called Bunny), are on their own. Their connection is intense, “the line where one ended and the other began a malleable, gossamer thing,” but what Mary knows about the identities of the girls’ fathers she does not share. They leave their home and the motel their mother ran on the southeast coast to find lives elsewhere, slowly but surely trailing a kind of fate to the opposite coast. On the road, they have to cobble together funds, shelter, and food. Mary is smart, strong-willed, beautiful, and fiercely protective of Hannah. She knows how to use these powers to manipulate the men she encounters. The first of these is her second cousin’s husband, whom she blackmails for $10,000—a desperate but lifesaving move with major consequences. They rarely stay anywhere for longer than a few days until a significant stop in Rhode Island. Eventually, the choice of this location becomes clear: it’s the hometown of a boy who passed through their motel when Mary was 14, a boy with whom she is still in love. When the past catches up to them and they are forced to leave Rhode Island, it is with extreme devastation that they have to get back on the road toward their final destination: California, where Mary will work the night shift at a famous old hotel and Hannah will begin school. The fate that brought them there ultimately brings them face to face with their fathers. The story unfolds over the course of 13 years and feels throughout like one of providence. Healy (House of Wonder, 2014, etc.) takes every opportunity to surprise her reader as Mary and Hannah grow up and into themselves.
The sisters' relationship—and their resilience—makes this novel powerful when it might otherwise have been prosaic.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Fantastic Book! That's all I can say. READ IT!