Review: The Big Steal by Emyl Jenkins

Mysteries, even cozy mysteries, generally have a murder in them and so I tend to avoid them, citing severe cowardice. But I do think it's good to read out of your comfort zone sometimes too so when a mystery comes along that doesn't in fact have blood spattered across its pages, I find myself getting excited about being able to branch out from the usual and dip a toe into a whole different part of the pool than I usually find myself in. Emyl Jenkins' second novel in the Sterling Glass pair of mysteries is one such mystery. No murder at all. Just my kind of mystery!

Sterling Glass is an antiques appraiser who has been called in to help ascertain whether an insurance claim for stolen and broken antiques from an unusual Virginia estate museum in rural Orange County, Virginia is legitimate. When Sterling arrives at the curious treasure-trove that is Wynderley, she finds that things are not going to be anywhere near as straightforward with the appraisal as she'd thought. The house, now a museum, was the home of Hoyt and Mazie Wyndfield. He was from old Virginia money and enjoyed traveling and the house is stuffed to the gills with acquisitions from their extensive globe-trotting. But even at first glance, Sterling can see that there are a goodly number of fakes freely intermingled with truly stunning antiques and the discrepancy intrigues her. She is also frustrated by her inability to do the job she was hired for because of a hovering curator who is strangely prickly and inexperienced and a museum board composed of locals who seem to want to draw her into their own squabbles and further their own unspoken agendas. The theft itself is also suspicious and seems to have been an inside job which remains unsolved.

As Sterling tries to do her job, she learns conflicting things about the Wyndfields, uncovers decades old secrets, discovers hidden rooms in the mansion, reads old and long forgotten diaries, exposes dodgy antiques provenances, and stumbles across possible fraud. Although the theft of the potentially priceless antiques seems to be the mystery around which the plot revolves, there is actually the bigger mystery of the Wyndfields themselves, their worldwide acquisitions, and the explanation for the anomalies found all throughout Wynderley. It is this latter mystery that interests and draws in Sterling. And it is this mystery that she finds herself investigating through interviews with the foundation board members, the curator, and a wealthy local woman who has the wherewithal to save Wynderley from the abyssmal mismanagement under which it has suffered for so many years now.

Definitely not a traditional entry into the mystery genre, the whodunit here is far less important than the history and the tale that the antiques tell. Each chapter opens with a newspaper advice column style entry in question and answer format about specific antiques which then play a part in the following chapter. The information contained in that brief blurb is fascinating and helps the lay person understand what sorts of things Sterling is looking for and at as she goes about her job of verifying the pieces at Wynderley. Sterling herself is an appealing character. She knows her profession (and Jenkins, an appraiser herself, clearly does as well) inside and out and she is curious, inquisitive, and intuitive in her investigations, a smart and professional woman of a certain age. The secondary characters are multi-faceted and interesting and they work well as an ensemble. The plot sometimes stalls a bit and there are tangents that don't add much to the story but overall this is a fun read that will appeal to fans of Antiques Roadshow and to those who want a gentle and unusual mystery.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride

We teach our children that they should never lie, that the truth is always the best option. And usually this is the case. But we can't always explain the gradations of truth and lies or that there are, in fact, some situations where it is kinder to fib than to tell the truth. Sometimes the truth hurts people for no reason and a lie gives them comfort. And who's to say that telling a lie in that case is the wrong thing to do? But lies can have a way of coming back to bite us, even when they are told out of compassion or kindness as Gretchen Brink, in Susan McBride's newest novel The Truth About Love and Lightning, discovers.

A freak tornado rips through a small community in Missouri, completely cutting off the farm where Gretchen Brink and her younger, blind sisters Trudy and Bennie live. The sisters' other senses are acute and they not only sense the coming of the physical storm but also the emotional storm roiling in its wake. When inspecting the property for damage, Gretchen finds an injured man under a tree in the long barren, but now inexplicably budding walnut grove. He doesn't know who he is or where he is but she and her sisters quickly come to understand that there's every chance he could be Sam Winston, the man from whose parents Gretchen inherited the farm, who has long been thought dead in Africa, and who Gretchen named as the father of her baby so many years ago. She and Sam had been the closest of friends and although Sam wanted more from her, at seventeen she wasn't interested.  After his disappearance while on a mission trip, it gave his parents comfort to believe that Gretchen's baby was Sam's and it gave her a place to shelter after her judgmental and hard mother cast her out for the sin of her pregnancy and so she let everyone believe that Sam was the father.  She raised her daughter Abby with that understanding as well, keeping the truth to herself.

But now The Man Who Might Be Sam is recovering in her home and Abby is about to show up on her doorstep as well, unexpectedly pregnant and reeling, having run away from the long-time boyfriend who sees no reason to get married but whom she does love deeply. And when Abby arrives, she immediately latches onto the idea that the man in the parlor is in fact Sam, her father, finally come home to her just like she wished for so many years growing up. Over the course of the next few days, the past is evident everywhere on the Winston/Brink farm. From Gretchen's childhood growing up with a harsh and blunt mother who felt that the truth was more important that sparing anyone's feelings to the mystery and mysticism of Sam Winston's grandfather Hank Littlefoot, a shaman who could summon the rain to Abby's childhood and her wish that her mother wouldn't ease the sting of the truth with small, apparently harmless fibs.

But if the past and its long concealed secrets swirl around these characters, they must also look forward to their futures. How can they discover who The Man Who Might Be Sam is? What is Abby's plan going forward? Will she tell Nate about the baby and what decisions will they make, together or seperately? Will Gretchen be able to keep the secret of Abby's paternity to herself and spare Abby anger and sadness at the loss of her growing relationship with the man she readily accepts is both Sam and her father? Can Gretchen open her heart to the precious connection she dismissed forty years ago? Although the past cannot be re-written, it can offer guidance and maybe, with the help of an anachronistic storm, it can shine a light on the way forward.

McBride has written a story filled with genuine warmth, love, and hope. The idea of truth as something not quite an absolute and the importance of the intention behind a lie is an intriguing one. The characters are charming and the quirky novel moves along well. The use of the past, especially Hank Littlefoot's story, helps to flesh out the present as does the use of multiple narrators. And the thread of magic and belief that runs through the tale adds an unexpected spice to the plot although the ending remains very predictable and the mystery of who the man is is never really in doubt. An easy read, this will appeal greatly to those who like a light bit of magic, family, and love in their women's fiction.

For more information about Susan McBride and the book check out her website. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. The book is being released by Viking Adult on March 12, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

Review: The Good Daughter by Jane Porter

When you read a book with several characters you'd like to see more of, it's always satisfying to find out that the book is in fact part of a series. In the case of Jane Porter's Brennan Sisters series, there are four sisters and a sister-in-law who are potential main characters for their own books. Readers were introduced to the Brennan family and invited into oldest sister Meg's life in The Good Woman. This time it's the selfless sister, the daughter who puts everyone else before herself, Kit, whose story is front and center.

Kit spent ten years living with a man who turned out to be Mr. Wrong and who was unwilling to recognize that what Kit, a homebody devoted to her parents and siblings, wanted more than anything was a family of her own. As the novel opens, she is heading towards forty, settling into her new home, and coming to understand what she most wants her future to look like. She's a wonderful, caring, and involved teacher at a Catholic school. She's a dutiful and compliant daughter who cares deeply about her parents and who is devastated that her mother has terminal cancer. She's the level-headed, peacemaking sister who wants the best for her siblings and their families. She's a good and loyal friend. As amazing as she sounds, she isn't completely satisfied with her own personal life. She has decided to write off men, especially after her foray into internet dating is disastrous but she can't shake her deep-seated desire to be a mother even if that means she'll have to go it alone, something which her devoutly Catholic family would find it hard to approve.

While on a girl's weekend at her family's cottage, she meets the very definition of a bad boy, a sexy, motorcycle-riding, tattooed man named Jude who remembers once meeting her wild twin Brianna. She is drawn to him but she knows that this tough, long-haired guy who reeks of danger and trouble is everything that her family disapproves of so she tries to put him out of her mind. Meanwhile, back at home, she's met an attractive but pushy man named Michael who insists on a date and leaves Kit feeling oddly disturbed. As she sorts out her feelings and uncovers the stories behind who each of these men are, she is also grappling with her grief over her mother's end stage cancer, worrying about the home life of a seriously troubled student, filling out the paperwork to adopt as a single woman approaching forty, and uncovering the suppressed memories which form the roots of her inability to stand up for herself.

There is a lot going on in this appearances can be deceiving tale. Kit is on a journey of self-discovery, learning to nurture herself as much as she nurtures everyone else around her. Because of her heartfelt and frequent involvement as her dying mother's caretaker and her concern for her student Delilah, sometimes Kit's story takes a backseat to the other big issues in the novel. The revelation of her own repressed memories comes across as minor given the bigger and more menacing instances of abuse here but both are awful and horrific and should be equally weighted.

 Kit as a character is big-hearted and likable and her inner life is well drawn. The secondary characters are not as front and center here as they might have been because so much of what is going on is Kit's own emotional reactions and her examination of her own heart as much as it is her search for outside love and connection. This makes the ending of the book rather abrupt though, as if some of the important plot happened off the page. There are quite a few very deep issues included here, some touched on briefly and others used as major plot points, so this would be a book that could generate a lot of discussion in a book group. Like its prequel, the book might try to tackle too many issues though, causing it to start to have a bit of an "everything but the kitchen sink" feel to it but overall it was a quick and satisfying read and regular readers of women's literature will certainly be happy to have spent more time with another of the Brennan sisters.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Elusive Dawn by Gabriele Wills
The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Reviews posted this week:

All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani
The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie Saul
The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley
Elusive Dawn by Gabriele Wills

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

2012

A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

The Good Daughter by Jane Porter
The Big Steal by Emlyn Jenkins
How to Deceive a Duke by Lecia Cornwall
How It All Began by Penelope Lively
The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride

Review: Elusive Dawn by Gabriele Wills

The second in Wills' Muskoka trilogy, Elusive Dawn is the continuation of the gripping tale that started in The Summer Before the Storm.  World War I has been raging for a couple of years now and much of the action of the novel has moved from the beautiful wealthy summer playground of the Canadian lake over to a Britain and Europe sunk deep into the horrors of hell.  Centering around Ria Wyndham Thornton and husband RFC pilot and decorated Ace Chas, the novel also continues the stories, in large or small ways, of many of the large ensemble cast of characters from the first novel.

Ria was devastated by the news that Chas had fathered a child with a French woman, especially after the crushing loss of their own baby and her subsequent inability to have more children.  Uncertain if her love for him could withstand this betrayal and unwilling to sit in Britain away from the horrors that drove Chas into this other woman's arms, at the start of Elusive Dawn, Ria has enlisted in the WATS (Women's Ambulance and Transport Services) and is about to leave for France and the indescribable hell of wounded and dying men.  She learns to drive an ambulance and gives comfort to the soldiers who find themselves in her presence, racing through bombing raids, dire weather, and the blackest nights to transport the wounded to hospitals.  It is dangerous, grinding, and exhausting work but Ria rises to it, growing close to her fellow WATS and to some of the men posted nearby, especially to cavalry Major Lance Chadwick.  Chas meanwhile is desperate to repair the damage to their marriage that his infidelity has caused and he writes honestly and openly to Ria of their shared past, his love for her, and his hopes and dreams for the future.

This novel is no superficial look at war.  It doesn't spare the appalling and gruesome details and it presents the incongruities of a continued veneer of civilization (soldiers invited to tea, a convalescent hospital with staff in evening gowns) juxtaposed with horrific brutalities and senseless loss.  There are marriages, deaths, and maimings and Wills captures very well the desperate gaiety of a period when the very existence of a tomorrow was in question.  The devastation and toll of war was not just in the physical but in the emotional as well and the Canadian characters experience the full range of this terrible legacy as they each privately wonder if the war will ever end and if it does, if any of their generation will make it out alive.

There are portions of this epic set back at Muskoka but by and large the majority of it is not, allowing Muskoka to invoke the ideal setting in contrast to the reality of the war.  The memories of the last summer before the war acts as a talisman for many of the characters, even ones who have never been there.  It is the symbol of a happier, more peaceful time.  And although there was roiling and rumbling under the surface of that ideal, it still emits a siren call of innocence and unsullied love.  The characters, although much easier to follow in this sequel given the reader's familiarity with them by now, are also getting older and maturing much faster than their years because of what they have all seen and experienced in the war.  Life gets much more complicated for many of them and they have to move out of the mindset of being solely concerned with their own lives and join the worry and strife of the adult world.  The action is continuous and yet, like the war years for those that lived them, it also feels never ending, as if placid normalcy will never again return.  Because the characters feel like old friends, the reader feels their losses and crushing devastations deeply.  The whole is well researched and the historical information is not only fascinating in and of itself but it is seamlessly integrated into the plot as well.  Book Two of this trilogy is gripping and I can't wait to read the conclusion to this big and ambitious saga.

For more about Gabriele Wills or the book, check out her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter, or view the book trailer. You can follow the rest of the book tour or see what others have had to say about the book here and you can purchase the entire trilogy at Mindshadows.

Thanks to Teddy Rose at Premier Virtual Tours and the author for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

Do you have a living will or an advanced directive? Do you know the difference? Do your loved ones know what your wishes are? Have you covered any and all possible scenarios with them? If you've chosen to not be kept alive by artificial means, is there anything that could possibly negate that wish? That question is at the heart of Priscille Sibley's beautiful and heart-wrenching debut novel The Promise of Stardust.

Matt and Elle have known each other their whole lives. They grew up next door to each other and were family long before they married. They know each other inside and out having weathered the tragedy of losing Elle's mother to cancer when they were just teenagers in love, again when Elle's previously undiagnosed medical condition causes her to miscarry several desparately wanted pregnancies, and most recently when their son was stillborn. Their relationship and devotion to each other has been tested by fire and it hasn't always stayed constant, with the two of them going their own ways for almost a decade before finding their ay back to each other. But by the time the novel opens, they have been married for five years and are clearly soul mates. Matt is a respected neurologist and Elle (nicknamed Peep) is a college professor and celebrated former astronaut and they have a pretty good life in the Maine town in which they grew up. Their one overwhelming heartbreak is their inability to have a child.

When the novel opens, Matt gets called to the ER because Elle has been injured in a freak accident. As a neurologist, it is immediately clear to him that she has suffered a terrible trauma falling from a ladder and hitting her head on a rock and she's brain damaged. After an operation to try and save her, she is undoubtedly brain dead and Matt makes the difficult and heart-rending decision to remove her from life support. But before that happens, Elle's doctor tells him that she is pregnant, only 8 weeks, but pregnant nonetheless. When an ultrasound shows that Elle's brain death doesn't seem to have affected the fetus, everything changes for Matt. He knows that her greatest fear in life is to be kept alive in a vegetative state, especially after she witnessed the slow, terrible, and painful death her mother suffered, comatose in the end but still obviously in pain. But he also believes that she would have given her very life to have a baby and so as long as there is even the most remote of chances to bring the baby to viability, he is certain she'd want to be kept alive by any means possible. And so he changes his mind about life support, desperate to give the baby a chance, to give Elle's baby a chance, and to give himself a reason to go on living.

Matt's mother Linney, a labor and delivery nurse, and her younger brother Christopher, whom she mothered even as their own mother was dying, both disagree with Matt's decision, arguing that Elle would never, under any circumstances want to be kept alive like this. And Linney feels so strongly about it that she is willing to take her own son to court over it, showing that 18 year old Elle drafted an advanced directive giving Linney the power to make her health care decisions so that she would never end her days the way her own mother did. Matt is unable to convince his mother that since Elle is brain dead and feels no pain that she would want to do everything in her power to give their baby a fighting chance. With the court case and Elle's added notoriety as an heroic astronaut, the case becomes a media circus and a locus for the right-to-life movement. Matt does not want to use his private struggle to to further a public political agenda he doesn't even agree with and which is only tangentially related to what is actually going on in the fight over whether to keep Elle alive or not, but the situation is a lightning rod anyway. The tragedy of losing Elle is not the only tragedy in the book, there is also the tearing apart of a close-knit and loving family because each of the characters is convinced that he or she knows what Elle would want, even in such a totally unfathomable situation.

The story is told in the present as the accident occurs and the court case moves forward but Sibley also adeptly uses flashbacks to give the reader the long and deep history of Matt and Elle, who they are now and the forces that shaped them into those people. Matt tells the story of his greatest heartbreak, losing the wife he loves more than life, but he gives Elle a voice as well, reading snippets from the journals she kept religiously. In recalling conversations with her and reading her journals, he is certain that he knows Elle's mind, can accurately predict what she would have chosen to do, and that in fighting to keep her alive for the baby's sake he is doing the right thing. Since the narrative is not told from Linney's perspective, there's no way to gauge why she believes equally adamantly that this is the wrong thing, the reader can only know Matt's assertion that his mother is unequivocably wrong.

The book and the many issues it raises are incredibly emotional ones and Sibley definitely tugs at the heart strings. The end was never really in doubt although there are some unexpected twists to get there and that generally made for a stronger plot overall. There were some incongruous bits (Elle's brother raging at Matt for getting Elle pregnant again as if it was all Matt's fault alone, as if Christopher actually got to have input, or that it was any of his business in the first place as well as the reappearance of Elle's ex-boyfriend and his fight to discontinue Elle's life support) that detracted a bit from the story. And the secondary characters, perhaps because of the narration perspective, came off as flat and one dimensional. But Matt and Elle's love story was well done and lovely and the grief and shock Matt was in, fluctuating from anger to despair and back again, felt authentic. This is exactly the sort of book that would be perfect for book clubs, packed with controversial issues and the idea of the intersection of private and public.

For more information about Priscille Sibley and the book check out her website, her Facebook page, her Pinterest boards, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie Saul

When his old college friend Laura, with whom he'd long since lost touch, dies of cancer, she names New York City voice actor Geoffrey as executor of her will. He is a little surprised but accepts the job, just as Laura had suspected he would, having remembered him as loyal and dependable. So he travels up to Laura's small childhood home town, the place she settled in as the high school music teacher after her husband and partner in their renowned jazz group died and left her a young widow. And in small Shady Grove, Geoffrey comes face to face with Laura's dear friend Marian, another young widow still mourning the accidental death of her husband a decade before and the one woman who has the potential to change Geoffrey's easy, emotionally remote existence.

Goeffrey's life is very orderly and settled. He takes enough voice over work to be financially secure. He's in a long term but emotionally distant relationship with Rita, a woman who makes no demands of him and who enjoys their convenient and detached situation as much as he does. He goes out with friends but seems to have no emotionally fulfilling relationships with the possible exception of his psychoanalyst brother Alex. He's contented in this life until he meets Marian and looks deep within himself to see that in fact he does want a life of connection and love. He promptly breaks off with Rita and sets out to convince Marian that their immediate attraction and ease means that they should both risk change.

Just as Geoffrey is initially set in his life, Marian is equally set in hers. She is also in a relationship that doesn't ask her to engage her emotions and allows her to continue to live as Buddy's widow, stagnant in her loss rather than willing to try opening up and moving forward. She owns a nursery and maintains many of the gardens that she and Buddy built together in their landscape design firm. She lives in the home they built and drives Buddy's truck. His larger than life presence, even after death, is the comfortable wrap and barrier around her heart. The loss of Buddy and her happy marriage was devastating and resulted in not only her continued guilt over the circumstances of his death but to an emotional paralysis she has never tried to shake off. It is this closed off inertia that Geoffrey will have to overcome to reach the Marian he wants.

Both Geoffrey and Marian have to do a lot of soul searching as they look to see exactly what shape they want their lives to take. Geoffrey in particular needs to understand who he is and just who Marian is too, trying to understand her marriage and relationship with Buddy and how they made her the woman she is now. He also has to face the decisions he made in the past, in particular the decisions he has made in regards to Simon, Laura's lost and floundering younger brother, and what those decisions say about him as well as how they might have formed others as well.

The novel is a very slow introspective tale with echoes of therapy and the search for self-realization. It is very psychological and philosophical and because of this can seem as emotionally remote as the characters it portrays. With all the obsessive talking about feeling and relationship and love, it is still hard to pinpoint why Geoffrey and Marian fall for each other. He enjoys her uninhibited laugh and feels comfortable in her presence but there's no indication of what Marian finds so magnetic about him that despite wanting desperately to close herself off from him she cannot. There is a similar undefinable, langorous magnetism about the novel as a whole. A deeply examined novel filled with soul-searching scrutiny, the characters' initial lack of connection with life carried through the novel far longer than it should have, making it more difficult for the reader to develop a connection with them either. Those looking for a novel about relationship that delves deeper and questions far more intensely than a typical love story will find their something different here.

For more information about Jamie Saul and the book check out his Facebook page. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

I'll Take What She Has by Samantha Wilde. The book is being released by Bantam on February 26, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: Nora and Annie have been best friends since kindergarten. Nora, a shy English teacher at a quaint New England boarding school, longs to have a baby. Annie, an outspoken stay-at-home mother of two, longs for one day of peace and quiet (not to mention more money and some free time). Despite their very different lives, nothing can come between them—until Cynthia Cypress arrives on campus.

Cynthia has it all: brains, beauty, impeccable style, and a gorgeous husband (who happens to be Nora’s ex). When Cynthia eagerly befriends Nora, Annie’s oldest friendship is tested. Now, each woman must wrestle the green-eyed demon of envy and, in the process, confront imperfect, mixed-up family histories they don’t want to repeat. Amid the hilarious and harried straits of friendship, marriage, and parenthood, the women may discover that the greenest grass is right beneath their feet.

Review: All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani

I tend to be an over-sharing sort of person.  And I don't just share the good and the great but also those things that don't make me too proud.  My annual Christmas letter is more than enough evidence of that.  But life is very much packed with good and bad.  So why shouldn't we admit to the unflattering and the unpalatable and talk about the things that would otherwise fester or haunt us, giving comfort to others who face similar challenges and disappointments?  Not everyone wants to live this way though, only confidently sharing the highlights and suppressing the less than picture perfect.  I know this because some of my family was this way.  Just like with my own Italian-Irish family, Maddalena Grasso, one of the main characters in Castellani's latest novel, All This Talk of Love, works very much this way, prefering to move on without looking back, without confronting loss, always carrying her sadness with her but not allowing it into her forward-looking present.  So what happens when her daughter decides that she wants to take her parents, who haven't seen family in the fifty years since they emigrated, back to Italy?  Secrets and sadness and long untold tales tumble out into present view but it is only through the deep and sustaining love of the Grasso family, no matter what they have faced in the past or will in the future, that holds everything together.

 

Antonio and Maddalena came to America from Italy fifty years ago and in all that time, they haven't been back.  Maddalena has never wanted to return, to see and talk to her family again, choosing instead to make her family and her life in the US.  She is afraid that maintaining her connection to Italy will allow the past to resurface and so she has spent fifty years distancing herself from that past.  She and Antonio have raised their own family, daughter Prima is the mother of adult sons of her own now and son Frankie is an academic earning his PhD.  Antonio's restaurant continues to thrive even without his constant daily attendance.  And although they will always mourn the death of their fifteen year old son Tony, they do not discuss it.  They certainly appear contented as they move into their twilight years.  But then at her son's confirmation party, Prima announces that she and husband Tom are taking the entire Grasso family back to Italy, to the village of Santa Cecilia, where it all began.  And so begins the tug of war over whether or not they will be going to Italy between the determined Maddalena, who is adamantly against the trip, and her equally determined daughter Prima.

 

Narrated through the eyes of many of the characters, the novel examines the idea of memory, the past, and buried secrets.  Every character has their own unexamined, unshared secrets which inform their reactions to not only the announcement of the Italy trip but also many other instances in their lives.  And their perspectives of each other are also firmly rooted only in what they know, not those hidden and unsuspected things that lie just beneath the surface, the sadnesses, disappointments, and griefs.  As Maddalena and Prima debate over whether or not the trip to Italy is going to happen, the reader watches the slow unfolding of the secrets and stories, ancient and new, that make each character who he or she is.  Despite their inability to understand each other and their motivations, and in the face of the old tragedy of losing Tony and the newer health crises that hit the Grassos in the course of the novel, it is clear that although they sweep so many things under the rug and refuse to acknowledge them, above all else each of them truly loves and cares for the others.

 

Castellani has written a poignant, slowly revealed novel that captures the close knit Italian family experience and the many and varied ways in which the family members show their love for each other.  The characters are all very real feeling although sometimes the explanations or motivations for their actions seemed a bit missing.  Even as their deepest held secrets are revealed to the reader, it feels as if there's something still kept back, one final secret not shared.  The story itself is slow moving, centered more on the concept of growing older, the power of memory, familial love, and the fallacy of going home again, in mind or in body, than on an action oriented plot.  It is an introspective read, with all of the characters having the chance to muse on their own memories and understandings of their shared past especially as life keeps coming at them and subtly altering what they thought they remembered.  A satisfying read to be savoured, this is actually the third novel in a loose trilogy but it easily stands on its own.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

My parents were in town all this past week for a variety of kid stuff which cut into a little of my reading and a lot of my reviewing. But that's OK. Family beats books (but just barely). ;-) This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Big Steal by Emlyn Jenkins
How to Deceive a Duke by Lecia Cornwall
The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie Saul
How It All Began by Penelope Lively
The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
Elusive Dawn by Gabriele Wills

Reviews posted this week:

Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke
Indiscretion by Charles Dubow

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

2012

A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani
The Good Daughter by Jane Porter
The Big Steal by Emlyn Jenkins
How to Deceive a Duke by Lecia Cornwall
The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie Saul
How It All Began by Penelope Lively
The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

Monday Mailbox

Another pair of wonderful looking books! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison came from Random House and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A novel about Rasputin's daughter? Oh yes, please!

Secret Storms by Julie Mannix von Zerneck and Kathy Hatfield came from Meryl Zegarek Public Relations.

The memoir of a pregnant teengaer committed against her will to a psychiatric hospital and the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption, this looks like it will be a fascinating read.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Unabridged Chick as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Busy week and bookish family

This past week has been rather a busy one. My mom came to visit on Monday and my dad flew in on Wednesday. They came in because my daughter had her competition dance debut show and they were hoping to also see the youngest's soccer game and the oldest's tennis match, both of which ended up being cancelled thanks to one of our incredibly unusual snows down here. For many people, having houseguests means sacrificing time spent with books. And that was the case for me. But since we as a family are all readers, I didn't have to sacrifice as much time as I might have for someone other than family. When mom and I went shopping one day, we managed to hit three different book stores looking for some very specific titles. We made it to no other stores that day. And I pulled out the stash of books I have sitting in a closet waiting for me to host my next book exchange just before summer arrives and mom went through them to choose some for herself. Then dad claimed a book I had bought my oldest son but which my husband already owned and said he'd share. It's good to have a bookish family. Mom and dad leave today and then the plan is laser tag with the soccer team. Snow might cancel the game but we can still have the fun after the game. And then I can cozy up with another book and make my day complete.

This week my reading travels took me into a large Virginia manor home filled with antiques and a puzzling amount of fakes just after a theft, to Regency England where a woman steps in to marry the rakish Duke her sister is supposed to marry so she can save her family, through a novel based on chaos theory where one old woman's being mugged ripples through an ever expanding plot, and into a family grieving the brain death of one of their members even while they fight over whether or not to discontinue life support to this newly pregnant woman. What sorts of lives did you explore this week in your reading?

Review: Indiscretion by Charles Dubow

The Great Gatsby is a classic with its unreliable narrator and its old money and its devastation and unavoidable tragedy.  In Charles Dubow's debut novel, there are shades of Fitzgerald's masterpiece but the characters are more obvious and the tale and its presentation nothing special.  It is no Great Gatsby.  I really wanted to be wowed by this clear homage to one of my favorite books of all time, wanted to impressed like almost every other reviewer I've read so far.  Instead I was bored and found myself getting angry and annoyed as I read along.

Harry and Maddy Winslow are a golden couple with the sort of charisma and glow in which everyone in their orbit wants to bask.  Their marriage is perfect and their love for each other comfort in each others' presence, and contentment with their lives is palpable.  Until it isn't.  Because this is the tale of Harry, former college hockey standout, ace former military pilot, novelist and recent National Book Award Winner; and Maddy, gracious, effortless, extremely beautiful, and monied; and what happens when Harry, wanting more than the perfection he already seems to have, embarks on a completely pedestrian affair and devastates his own, his wife, and his fragile son's lives.  Narrated by Maddy's childhood friend, the noble Walter, who has loved Maddy forever but has long settled back and contented himself with the reflected glow of the Winslow's enviable love and family, this is a story told long after the fact, pieced together by information left behind, things written by Harry, secondhand observation, speculations, and confidences made to Walter both at the time and after the events.  Even though Walter was in fact one of the spectators of the situation, his relationship and loyalty to Maddy, plus the torch he has carried for her close on to forty some odd years, makes him suspect, obviously biased, in the telling.

One summer, twenty-six year old Claire is invited out to the Hamptons to stay with her wealthy, occasional boyfriend, Clive.  While there she comes into the Winslows' orbit and falls for both of them, but especially for Harry.  Given that she was dissatisfied with Clive, who admittedly is a jerk, when she arrived, it is no surprise that this callous and selfish young woman is eager and willing to be pulled into the Winslow's golden sphere.  She ingratiates herself and starts being invited to come out to spend weekends with them, to frolic and play and generally have an enchanted time.  Like Maddy, Claire is exceptionally beautiful in the way of youth but unlike Maddy, Claire does not come from money and she is enticed by all its trappings, setting her sights on Harry and even making an overt pass at him that he easily deflects.  But because this is a tale of infidelity or "indiscretion," it is clear that Claire will in fact get her way even if it has to be delayed.  And from the moment that Harry ends up in bed with this nubile, young thing, it is broadcast loud and clear where this novel is heading.  There is no nuance, no surprise, and little anticipation.

Claire is a predator from the outset, using Clive and then easily dropping him for the more enticing prey of Harry.  It almost makes the reader sorry for the ghastly, boorish Clive and certainly reeks of "come into my parlour said the spider to the fly" once Claire has set her sights on Harry.  That is to say the outcome is entirely inevitable.  Everything in the novel is completely, expectedly inevitable.  It's a cliched situation without enough depth to the characters or the plot to rescue the whole.  In fact, there really is no plot at all and as a character study, an anatomy of an affair, or a psychological look at the cost of infidelity, it is nothing special or new.  The characters are unsympathetic.  The writing is florid and overwrought.  The dialogue is clunky and stilted.  Harry and Claire's affair is boring to read about and the minute details of their sexual exploits were unappealing.  Their overly introspective pillow talk had all the emotional range of giddy, immature teenagers and Claire's constant assertions that she never wanted to hurt Maddy but that she just couldn't give up Harry and Harry's reciprocal agreement would be better suited to high schoolers than to adults, one in her later twenties and one in his early forties.

And because I was already not enjoying the novel, every little thing jumped out at me and made me angrier.  Dubow uses the metaphor of a dress rehearsal at one point but suggests that the similarity is like seeing the seats empty and the actors in their street clothes on stage.  Um...  That's not a dress rehearsal.  And yes, that's a nit-pick on my part but this sort of thing is endemic.  In giving birth to their son Johnny, Maddy is whisked away for an emergency episiotomy and a frantic Harry is kept from her because of this procedure.  Another um...  Having had one of these myself many a year ago, this is emphatically not how they are handled, not even close.  Yes, more nit-picking but the devil is in the details.  And frankly, I am bothered by the portrayal of Harry as unable and unwilling to stop Claire when she finally does seduce him.  The rest of the novel is predicated on the fact that he was as attracted to her from the outset as she was to him but in reality, he was drunk and severely jetlagged when she took him back to her apartment and he does actually protest and try to stop before he is carried away by the wave of passion (which makes him come across as stupid and ruled solely by his penis, a whole new portrayal of him born in that exact moment).  This does not absolve him of any guilt, mind you, since he inexplicably wakes up the next day not wracked with guilt but insatiable for Claire and ridiculously, completely smitten especially given his feelings just a day prior but it absolves him of any of the calculatedness in cheating that is assumed as the novel continues; it was never a decision for Harry, only one for Claire.  Of course, because this is a novel about a continuing affair and not just a one night stand, we get more sweaty foreplay and slick sex between these two.  We get the sloppily covered tracks, the weak and easily uncovered lies, and we get the damaging discovery of truth and the shamed acknowledgement of betrayal.  In short, we get the story of every infidelity ever.  We recognize the fall-out.  And we know that there can be no happy endings.

I seem to be alone in my dislike of the book and everyone else is so captivated they never noticed the writing problems or the inconsistencies in the characters or any of the numerous things that got my back up.  I'd love for someone I know to read this and tell me what you think.  I may just be alone on this one.  So far I sure seem to be.

For more information about Charles Dubow and the book follow him on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Benediction by Kent Haruf. The book is being released by Knopf on Feb. 26, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: From the beloved and best-selling author of Plainsong and Eventide comes a story of life and death, and the ties that bind, once again set out on the High Plains in Holt, Colorado.

When Dad Lewis is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife, Mary, must work together to make his final days as comfortable as possible. Their daughter, Lorraine, hastens back from Denver to help look after him; her devotion softens the bitter absence of their estranged son, Frank, but this cannot be willed away and remains a palpable presence for all three of them. Next door, a young girl named Alice moves in with her grandmother and contends with the painful memories that Dad's condition stirs up of her own mother's death. Meanwhile, the town’s newly arrived preacher attempts to mend his strained relationships with his wife and teenaged son, a task that proves all the more challenging when he faces the disdain of his congregation after offering more than they are accustomed to getting on a Sunday morning. And throughout, an elderly widow and her middle-aged daughter do everything they can to ease the pain of their friends and neighbors.

Despite the travails that each of these families faces, together they form bonds strong enough to carry them through the most difficult of times. Bracing, sad and deeply illuminating, Benediction captures the fullness of life by representing every stage of it, including its extinction, as well as the hopes and dreams that sustain us along the way. Here Kent Haruf gives us his most indelible portrait yet of this small town and reveals, with grace and insight, the compassion, the suffering and, above all, the humanity of its inhabitants.

Review: Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke

Who amongst readers hasn't wished to be able to meet her favorite author?  Some people can fulfill this desire by going to a signing and exchanging small talk with the author.  For others though, their favorite author is long dead and nothing short of time travel would make meeting them possible.  I fall into this latter camp as Jane Austen is my favorite author.  So a novel with the premise of characters truly stepping through a rip in the fabric of time and meeting Austen as happens in Sally Smith O'Rourke's novel, Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen, was eminently intriguing to me.

The novel opens as the elegant and historic Rose Ball at Pemberley Farms is winding down and New York artist Eliza Knight is reflecting on the fantastic, enchanted events that brought her to this Virginia horse farm and into the life of the gorgeous and enigmatic Fitz Darcy, Pemberley Farms' owner.  Finding sealed letters behind the mirror of her new, antique vanity table, she discovered that they were from Jane Austen to Fitzwilliam Darcy.  She then subsequently discovered that the Fitzwilliam Darcy the letters were written to was in fact did not live in 1813 but was a time traveler from the present day and the current owner of Pemberley Farms in Virginia.  Eliza traveled from New York to Virginia to deliver the letters to him (still thinking they were in fact written to his ancestor as he had not told her his story--told in O'Rourke's first book The Man Who Loved Jane Austen--yet) and found not only the real life inspiration for one of Austen's most famous characters but also a good and upstanding man who might just turn out to be the love of her life.

But Eliza and Fitz's budding relationship is not the only plot thread here.  There's the matter of Eliza processing Fitz's deep and abiding affection for Austen; an overbearing woman determined to authenticate the letters and solidify her reputation as the preminent Austen expert; the culture shock that Simmons, the stableboy from Austen's time who steps through the time portal into the twenty-first century in search of Fitz Darcy and a job in his stables, faces in this most curious of times; and of course the daily life and thoughts of Austen herself still in 1810.

There is much that must be explained from the previous book, at least in the beginning, and because of that the narrative pace is much slower at the start than at the end.  Eliza's insecurity and growing jealousy of Fitz's love for Austen hampers the progress of the relationship as do Fitz's occasional evasions and abruptnesses.  Fitz is not entirely the character that Austen created and Eliza, while pragmatic and accomplished, is not quite what we could of expect of a modern day Lizzie Bennet but Austen's characters are very much bound by the conventions of their time and Fitz and Eliza are clearly twenty-first century characters.  The scenes with Simmons experiencing technology and all the differences between the 1810s and now are delightful, especially when he is once again helping a sick horse, comfortable in his element, and curious about advances in equine treatments.  The scenes with Austen herself are interesting and shed light on the life she could have lived amongst her family and small circle of acquaintance.  The eventual twining together of the three plot lines works and the twist in the end is clever and satisfying.  Those readers who enjoy all things Austen will find this a fresh and original take on their favorite author and her most beloved characters.

Thanks to the author for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani
Indiscretion by Charles Dubow
The Good Daughter by Jane Porter

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

How It All Began by Penelope Lively
The Big Steal by Emlyn Jenkins

Reviews posted this week:

The News From Heaven by Jennifer Haigh
The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin
The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs by Dana Bate
Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

2012

Yours Affectionately, Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke
A Different Kind of Normal by Cathy Lamb
The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James

2013

All This Talk of Love by Christopher Castellani
Indiscretion by Charles Dubow
The Good Daughter by Jane Porter

Monday Mailbox

Another pair of wonderful looking books! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

A Place for Us by Liza Gyllenhaal came from NAL.

Don't you just want to climb into one of the chairs on the cover of this one? As enticing as it looks though, this novel about what happens in a small town when one family is accused of responsibility in a terrible scandal means those chairs may not be as welcoming as they look. But the novel itself promises to deliver a gripping read and that's better than imagining myself in those chairs.

Temple of a Thousand Faces by John Shors came from NAL.

Angkor Wat fascinates me and I've read and enjoyed other books by Shors so this historical saga set around this famed temple looks amazing.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Unabridged Chick as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Shopping

I'm not much of a shopper.  Never have been.  But put me in a bookstore and I can outshop anyone, a fact that my husband recognized long ago before we even married when he perfected the art of walking me past mall bookstores as if he didn't even see them.  My kids, heaven help 'em, are the same way, despite protesting that they don't really read that much.  (It's all relative around here and their sense of "a lot" is a bit skewed.)  Yesterday I proved both my non-shopping gene and my helpless in a bookstore gene.

I had to pick T. up from a test yesterday.  The test site was a good 45 minutes from home and that meant that I wasn't going to have time to take him all the way back to the house and then retrace my steps 25 minutes to go to the mandatory dance parent meeting for R.  So not only did I wake T. up for a standardized test at 7am on a Saturday morning, but I was going to force him to sit through a boring meeting.  Luckily I had a little time to kill after picking him up and as we looked for drive-thrus to get him lunch, I also spotted a Books-A-Million.  Ten minutes in there resulted in 5 books for me, 4 books for T., and the one book in a series that R. was missing.  I managed to spend more than 10 dollars a minute.  Willpower?  I don't think we're acquainted.  On the plus side, T. has finished two of the books already and he loved them.

Later yesterday, D. and I went to the annual Mardi Gras party with some of my running friends.  One of my friends works in fashion.  Her husband and I were talking and he asked me if I'd been getting lots of things from Nordstrom's lately.  I must have looked puzzled because he said that a lot of boxes had been arriving  at their place and M. told him not to open any of them (it was his birthday) but that he noticed that Nordstrom's was the return address on most of them.  Apparently they were having an ENORMOUS sale.  I had zero idea.  What I did know as far as sales is that I saved an email telling me that one of the local Books-A-Millions is closing and starting this weekend, everything is 30-50 percent off.  I've been plotting how to get there ever since.  Nordstrom's huge sale?  Didn't even cross my radar nor did I feel a sense of disappointment over having missed it.  Unless it's still going on?  I really have no idea.  But large discounts at a bookstore, even one I have never been to because it's too far out of my usual bubble?  I am all over that and getting anxious that I haven't yet made it there.

For some people, it's shoes or clothes or jewelry.  For me it's books.  Always books.

This week my reading adventures took me into an Italian American family and their tug of war about whether they are going back to visit their ancestral village, into a picture perfect marriage derailed by an affair, and into the life of a daughter who has always sacrificed for others but who desperately wants her own happiness and her own family.  Where did your reading take you?

Review: Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister

I have a copy of The Complete Works of Dorothy Parker on my bookshelves.  I have not yet read it despite it inhabiting shelf space for years now.  Instead, I mostly know Dorothy Parker for her reputation, her membership at the famed Algonquin Round Table, her witty and cutting one liners, and her eminently quotable and sarcastic truths.  She is truly a legend, even for someone who hasn't read her more extensively.  And although I can hardly claim her as one of my literary heroes without reading more of her work, I have always been drawn to her sass, attitude, and outsized chutzpah.  The heroine of Ellen Meister's newest novel, Violet Epps, is also drawn to Parker and her confidence but Violet actually meets the ghost of her literary hero and all sorts of life changing shenanigans ensue in this wonderful and engaging tale.

Violet is a movie critic who is well known for her acerbic wit and high standards and if often likened to a modern day Dorothy Parker.  But in her personal life, she is the most self-effacing, timid woman ever.  She cannot even stand up for herself enough to tell the restaurant maitre-d' at the Algonquin Hotel that she is the next person waiting to be seated.  Her steamroller of a boyfriend has no such qualms and throws Violet's recognizable name around too, resulting in the general manager of the hotel bringing the hotel's guest book, signed through the years by its most esteemed guests, including the wits from the Round Table, over to Violet for her to sign as well.  But at this point all hell breaks loose and the small, ugly dog in Violet's purse breaks free, bites the deadbeat boyfriend, and scampers off.  In chasing him out of the hotel, Violet mistakenly takes the guest book with her, a move that will change her forever because, you see, the ghost of Dorothy Parker lives on in the pages of that guest book, never having moved on to the next thing.

Until Violet brings home the guest book, she is fighting a custody battle for her orphaned niece with Delaney's grandparents and her inability to stand up for what she wants has her seriously in danger of losing this important battle.  She is handicapped by paralyzing insecurity and shyness except in her writing and reviewing when she's channeling Dorothy Parker.  But when the guest book is opened, the actual ghost of Parker materializes and Violet will have her heroine's help in finding her own voice and channeling the strength she needs to go after the things in life that she wants.  The first thing that Mrs. Parker helps Violet do is finally, permanently to dump her narcissistic, user boyfriend Carl.  And once over that hurdle, Violet gains the courage, helped along by the wise-cracking Parker, to face down her insubordinate, scheming work assistant, and to start to take control of the custody situation.  She learns to stand up for herself and to go after what she wants, in the way she wants.  Violet's transformation is by no means overnight and she and the ghost of Dorothy Parker have some go-rounds about the extent of ghostly interference and what is right for Violet.  But this haunting causes her to examine her life, the way that she is living it, the root cause for her extreme and paralysing self-effacement, and the happiness to be found in standing up for what she wants, including with Michael, her yummy kung fu  teacher.  But power isn't the only gift that she is given by Mrs. Parker, she also learns to look past the superficial and to trust her insights into other people and situations, making her a more balanced person and writer.

This novel is both charming and humorous and the ways in which Dorothy Parker's ghost bulldozes mousy Violet can be highly entertaining but they can also cross the line, as fits Parker's reputation.  Violet is coping with a lot of sadness and loss in her life and sometimes she just can't push as fast as the ghost wants her to.  Although she can be a frustrating character, unable to speak out for herself or for her niece Delaney's good, she is still a character for whom the reader roots.  And as she grows in confidence, finding her own core of strength, and becoming empowered, the reader roots for her even harder.  Overcoming her own emotional baggage, which coupled with society's expectations of women as soft and yielding, Violet's story has a lesson for all women.  We can be soft and yielding but when the situation calls for it, the steel core to that velvet facade must come to the fore because only we can advocate successfully for ourselves, our sisters, our daughters, our nieces.  A fun, sassy, and deliciously quick read with some important deeper truths, readers will thoroughly enjoy this homage to Parker and perhaps be inspired to channel a little of her verve into their own lives.

Thanks to the publisher and author for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs by Dana Bate

Sometimes in life you try so very hard to please others, to live the life that they want you to live, to act the way they want you to act, and to be the person they want you to be that you forget that the person you are, before all the outside influence and pressure, is wonderful. And trying to be someone you're not is a fast way to heartache, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness. But it's awfully hard to be true to yourself when the people you are trying to please are your parents or your boyfriend. In Dana Bates' sweet debut novel, The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs, main character Hannah Sugarman finds out just how hard it is to bend your life to others' expectations when your own happiness lies in a different direction entirely.

Hannah works for a Washington, DC think tank and lives in a spectacular apartment with boyfriend Adam who first fell for her because of her larger than life, forthright, "firecracker" personality. She's happy neither in her job nor in her relationship but she's holding on with both hands anyway. Her professor parents got her the deadly boring job when she seemed undirected after college, completely dismissing her interest in cooking for a living, and Hannah, wanting to please them, went along with them. As for her relationship with Adam, it's definitely on shaky ground but she's so afraid of losing this first enduring partnership that she is willing to try as hard as she can to subvert her natural buoyancy to be the more sedate girlfriend that Adam now seems to want no matter that her initial attraction was the fact that she was the complete opposite of this. But suppressing herself is not Hannah's strong suit and it is inevitable that her relationship with Adam crashes and burns in a humiliatingly public manner. And because Hannah cannot afford their swanky apartment on her own, she has to find a new place to live.

The apartment she finds is a tiny basement apartment underneath cute but nerdy landlord Blake's gorgeous townhouse. Blake, who sometimes talks like a pirate, using nautical terms and fishing similies an awful lot, is the communications director for a Florida politician and so he's often away working in the constituency. In a bid to take Hannah's mind off of the Adam debacle, her best friend Rachel convinces her to try hosting an underground supper club now that she's in her own place and Adam can no longer disapprove. The supper club will be a good toe in the water of professional cooking for Hannah and will put her firmly in a happy place in life. Of course, secret supper clubs are not entirely legal, circumventing the health department and regulations. But any concerns disappear in the face of the excitement of creating a menu, procuring the ingredients and cooking the meal, which is surprisingly and gratifyingly booked out. So when Hannah's apartment floods the morning of the supper club, it's a disaster. Without thinking and knowing that Blake is in Florida, Hannah and Rachel simply move the location upstairs into his phenomenal Dupont Circle townhouse. The night is a fabulous success and the secret, exclusive Dupont Circle Supper Club is born.

Hannah's cooking is sublime and people loved the experience she provided so the internet is abuzz with this new clandestine happening. There's just one problem. She used Blake's house, not hers, and he'd be horrified by that fact, especially since he's running for neighborhood office on a platform that intends to shut things like Hannah's supper club down. But flush with her success and feeling more fulfilled than she has in a long time, Hannah continues to use his house to host these dinners, even as she and Blake develop a friendship. Trying to achieve her dream of cooking professionally in her spare time while still trying to live the majority of her life the way that her academic parents have always dreamed of for her can come to no good. And close call after close call reminds her that she can easily sabotage everything that's good, happy, and fulfilling in her life in the blink of an eye. But maybe getting caught is the only way she will ever be able to come into her own and learn to make the decisions that make her happy instead of trying always to please others.

Hannah is a loveable muddle of a character. She comes across as very young and immature but eager to please. That she maintains a facade of adulthood at all in her dreary job is frankly amazing. She's easy to sympathize with though because she is obviously loving and wants so much to make everyone else happy, even at the cost of her own happiness. She is so torn between what she should do and all the ways in which she worries that she's letting others down that it's hard not to want to take her in hand yourself and direct her down the path she clearly needs to tread. The secondary characters exist only in relation to Hannah and so they are more one dimensional. The constant threat of Hannah's supper club being discovered keeps the narrative tension high and although the eventual love interest is never in doubt, how they finally come together is sweet and well done. This is a delightful tale of gentle love and delicious sounding food. Readers who enjoy lighthearted stories with a main character who definitely grows and matures into a more confident but still natural and appealing person will enjoy this funny and charming read.   And for the kitchen inclined, there are several enticing recipes in the back, all from one or another of Hannah's supper clubs.

For more information about Dana Bate and the book visit her website, her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Erin from Book Sparks PR and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

What school child hasn't heard of Charles Lindbergh and his historic, solo trans-Atlantic flight? Or about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby? Who hasn't walked through the Smithsonian Museum in Washington and marveled at the seemingly insubstantial and yet amazing The Spirit of St. Louis hanging from the ceiling? But how many people know much of anything about Lindbergh's wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh? Those of us who are bookish (especially we bookish women) have heard of and read her bestselling work Gift From the Sea but generally, in the history books and in life, Anne Morrow Lindbergh stood in the long shadow cast by her husband and his amazing youthful accomplishment. In this novelization of Lindbergh's marriage and adult life, Melanie Benjamin has once again made Anne a marvel herself, given her a voice, and imagined a strong woman maturing into her own.

When shy Anne Morrow travels down to Mexico during her Christmas break from Smith College to be with her family for the holiday, she doesn't expect to meet famous aviator Charles Lindbergh in her father's, the American ambassador to Mexico, house. She is captivated by the man she catches glimpses of behind the facade he presents to the world but she's resigned to him not noticing her in the glow of her older sister's beauty and outgoing personality. But it is quiet, bookish Anne in whom the celebrated Lindbergh sees the right woman to stand by his side. And he chooses well because in addition to being dependable and supportive, her soul also thrills to adventure so that she happily accompanies her husband on his record setting journeys and trips mapping future aviation routes, making history of her own. Anne earned her own pilot's license, acted as navigator and radio operator on many of Charles' flights, and was the first American woman to earn her glider pilot's license. She was both a supportive wife happy to work as Charles' crew and she embraced the exciting potential that the early years of their marriage promised.

But it wasn't easy being the wife of the biggest hero of the age. Fame and celebrity sat uneasily on the Lindberghs' shoulders. And both Charles and Anne faced the pressures differently, creating public personas and hiding their private truths. Their marriage was not the easy fairy tale it seemed either.  Charles was domineering, cold, and reserved, incapable of opening up emotionally. He demanded strict adherence to his requirements and imposed impossible standards on Anne and their children. While Anne was a dutiful and acquiescent wife, as much as both Charles and the times called for, she was also torn, once she became a mother, between her deep maternal feelings and a desire to soar with her husband as they once did. She was necessarily more earthbound once children arrived, forcing her to forge a new persona, to become more than just the ornamental aviator's wife that the public saw her as. The Lindbergh marriage was a marriage of two unlikely and very different people and it was challenged and burdened by the realities of life.

As the novel focuses on Anne, the woman behind the legend, and her perspective, the reader sees her struggle to become a fully realized and satisfied woman in her own right even as she always admired and even loved her powerful, overwhelming, and difficult husband. Throughout the course of the novel there is a great change in Anne, a burgeoning independence and a determination borne out in her own confident writing of Gift From the Sea and in her ultimate desire to take charge of her own happiness. Although their life together was not without its flaws and missteps, enormous tragedies and hurtful betrayals, in the end, Anne concedes that she never regretted her choice, making this an honest portrait of a marriage that endured despite the heavy toll of a public life and private anguish.

Benjamin has created an Anne who is intriguing and yet frustratingly trapped in her time. The author's note following the text acknowledges the fictions woven in amongst the known facts, helping to remind the reader that this, while based on the real person, is still fiction. The Charles Lindbergh in these pages is rather unpleasantly repressed, dictatorial, and aloof from his wife and children and Anne is often incapable of defiance, meek and star-struck even as she wants more from Charles than she can ask for or he can give her. The very public aspects of the Lindbergh marriage are covered here, from the tense lead-up and horrifying conclusion to the kidnapping of baby Charlie to Charles' endorsement of Nazi Germany and Anne's written support of his stance. Benjamin doesn't shy away from the unpalatable, facing it head on and showing the impact on this very private public family. The narrative draws the reader in as it paints a picture of a marriage far different than the one that was popularly supposed. Anne's growth and maturation is organic and realistic as her life changes and passes through the stages we all live. Ultimately a captivating portrayal of a woman just outside the limelight, admired for her husband's prowess rather than her own rather formidable accomplishments, The Aviator's Wife will appeal to those who like tales of extraordinary, enduring women as well as those who have an interest in the historical time or want an imagined glimpse into the personal life of the famed aviator and the wife who allowed him to cultivate his larger than life public persona.

For more information about Melanie Benjamin and the book visit her website, her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter, or on Good Reads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Dorothy from Pump Up Your Book and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.