Saturday, May 31, 2014

Review: Boleto by Alyson Hagy

I was never one of those little girls who wanted a pony for Christmas. Horses were just not that high on my list. I did, of course, read all the horse books though, Misty of Chincoteague, Black Beauty, Sea Star, and so on. But even those equine paeans didn't inspire a request for a horse from Santa. And perhaps because of my general disinterest, even as an adult Western set novels don't automatically jump out at me, teasing me to take them home. But somehow Alyson Hagy's novel about a Wyoming cowboy and the gorgeous filly he intends to train as a polo pony snagged my awareness and stayed there, calling to me to read it. This is no simple story about a cowboy and his horse though. It is a gorgeously written, long, slow unveiling coming of age novel.

Will Testerman is a quiet third son whose family ranch is rich in land but nothing else. Will is back on the ranch but he has plans to leave, to make his mark in his own considered way. After buying the young filly he names Ticket because she is going to be his ticket to his future, he devotes himself to training her, gentling her. His own quiet manner with horses secures him jobs as he works towards getting himself and his girl to the California ranch of Don Enrique, a wealthy polo horse breeder and owner. Will's own quiet, generally gentle acceptance of life serves him well with horses but leaves him as a bit of an emotionally closed observer with people, even those with whom he seems to have been closest, his family, an ex-girlfriend, and a friend who mysteriously disappeared. As Will moves through his time training the filly, he is more naturally attuned to animals than people, content to follow his own conscience and long-standing dreams even as this way of life inevitably leads him to the emotionally charged, gut-wrenchingly necessary ending to the novel.

This is not a splashy novel. It is an elegant, constrained character study, calm and considered with a certain serenity to the narrative. The prose is simple yet evocative and the various settings provide stunning backdrops to the story. Hagy is clearly a poet, choosing each word with care and she is masterful at subtly increasing the tension as the story moves along. The way in which failure and loss are used as defining and clarifying moments is impressive, with each loss carrying an important lesson about people and life. Told in three sections, corresponding to three stages in Will's coming of age, there are some frustratingly dropped plot threads as one section shifts to another and the pacing is sometimes overly slow and measured. But the writing is beautifully crafted. Yes, this is a novel about a cowboy and his horse but it is also about the scope of life, the complications, disappointments, and perfidy of human relationship as contrasted to human animal interactions, and the privilege and rights of wealth. In the end, the reader will ache with Will for all he has learned and for the high cost of his learning.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Review: Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick


How do you heal from a breakup? Do you dive into a carton of ice cream? Do you burn all of his photos? Do you dump all of his things on the lawn or sidewalk. Do you plot some grisly punishment you hope the universe will mete out on your behalf? Do you call his cell and hang up just to hear his voice on his message? What if there was a place dedicated to healing your broken heart that didn't cause you to gain weight or grovel for his attention or become bitter? In Beth Kendrick's newest novel, Cure for the Common Breakup, there is such a place.

Summer Benson is a flight attendant who is flying to Paris to spend a naughty weekend with her pilot boyfriend. When a fellow flight attendant tells her that Aaron is going to propose in Paris, Summer isn't at all sure that's what she wants. She's always been the good time girl, no strings attached, and she's perfectly happy that way. Or is she? Horrifically, the plane crashes just after take-off and Summer comes to in the hospital, burned and broken from helping passengers escape the plane. But the physical brokenness is nothing compared to the emotional damage when Aaron, sitting at her bedside, tells her that the accident has clarified for him the fact that he loves her but not enough to marry her.

Crushed despite her own ambivalence about the relationship, Summer flees to Black Dog Bay, a small Delaware town she'd read about in a magazine, a town that specializes in helping people recover from breakups. As she drives into town looking for a hotel, she swerves to avoid a turtle and ends up plowing through a trellis and rose bushes in the yard of the good looking but unattainably aloof mayor, Dutch Jansen. It is not an auspicious way to arrive in town. When she finally gets to the Better Off Bed-and-Breakfast, her reputation has preceded her. Summer starts to settle into the quaint beach town, befriending the generous locals and putting the more unpleasant residents in their places. She is also determined to have a fling with the delectable Dutch. What she doesn't count on is becoming a role model of sorts for Dutch's teenaged sister, Ingrid, nor on becoming the companion for the town's most irascible citizen, Hattie Huntington, who is still nurturing a hurt decades in the past.

Summer is a fun and flirty character. She is a dominating, take-charge personality and her skills at placating passengers on an airplane certainly come in handy in dealing with the less pleasant people in town. Her relationship with Dutch is fairly predictable but the novel is really more about being brave enough to find a new direction for your life and to have the courage to look into your heart and understand your own fears and how they've shaped you rather than about the romance. The romance is actually like the whipped cream on this sweet and charming sundae. The secondary characters are delightful, sassy, and completely appealing. The concept of the town's purpose is highly entertaining and well integrated into the storyline.  And the novel has a refreshingly positive spin on recovering from a breakup, without bitterness or heated anger. It's a fun and light-hearted look at one woman who is afraid to commit her heart until this town and the people in it show her her true capacity for caring.

For more information about Beth Kendrick and the book, check out her website, her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter, or connect with her on GoodReads. Take a look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Review: A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

Nantucket, the very essence of summer. An artist who has given up her craft to mother her children. A marriage that is emotionally unfulfilling. An elaborate fundraising event. And the temptation of a wealthy man. Life just got complicated but is it ever okay to have an affair? Elin Hilderbrand's tense beach read, A Summer Affair, pulls together these disparate situations and poses this very question.

Claire is a nationally renowned glass artist who has given up her art after an accident in the studio left her unconscious, dangerously dehydrated, and caused her to deliver her fourth child prematurely. Her worries and guilt about baby Zack and the permanent damage she might have done him led her to agree with her husband to shutter the hot shop permanently and just focus on her family. Without her art, Claire needs a creative outlet and she finds herself agreeing to co-chair the annual Nantucket Children's Summer Gala a year from the start of the novel. Claire doesn't really know Lock Dixon, the man asking, but she knows Lock's wife Daphne, who had gone out with her on a girls' night one winter and drank too much before getting in a terrible, life-altering accident on her way home. Claire still harbors guilt over letting Daphne drive off rather than making sure she got home safely and she lets her need to atone not only drive her agreement over co-chairing the gala but also in getting her to agree to consider secretly producing a museum quality piece for the gala's auction, despite the lock on her hot shop door. And if that wasn't enough, she also agrees to secure famous rock star Max West, formerly her high school boyfriend Matthew, to play at the gala.

All of a sudden, Claire is not only up to her eyeballs in commitment and controversy over gala decisions, but she is fighting with her husband Jason over all of it, metaphorically moving further and further away from him. As she abandons her husband emotionally, she is drawn to Lock and to his support of her needs and wants. And so the two of them embark on a risky and potentially scandalous affair, hidden under the guise of working together on this enormous charitable undertaking.

But the novel is not just about the affair. It is also about creativity and the need to express and challenge yourself as Claire does when she starts creating the delicate and impressive chandelier she has envisioned. It is about love and the needs of a partner, family and balance, guilt and atonement, desire and duty. There are a whole host of characters in the novel who swirl around Claire with their own needs, secrets, and agendas, and each of them complicates her decisions. There is so much going on beneath the surface of the community that it's a veritable Peyton Place. Where the troubles faced by all the characters could have been compelling, gambling, embezzling, cognitive impairment, chronic nastiness, etc., they didn't really hum and were negligible compared to Claire's choices. As for Claire and Lock, neither one of them was a particularly appealing character. Claire is wildly emotional, expiring with guilt one moment and sneaking off for furtive sex with Lock the next. Lock is, quite frankly, dull. So their affair, the underlying plot thread throughout the whole story, is not terribly engaging, and not just because of the moral transgression. The ending of the novel is unfinished feeling and surprisingly unemotional but even so, it is a relief to come to it, despite already knowing how it will end, how it must end. Just because Hilderbrand can juggle all the balls she's tossed into the air, doesn't mean they are all necessary to the flourish of this novel. As a beach read, you could do worse but don't be surprised if you don't start rooting for Claire to destroy her own life long before you turn that last page.

Thanks to 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.

Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits by Mary Jane Hathaway. The book is being released by Howard Books on June 10, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: This hilarious Southern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice tells the story of two hard-headed Civil war historians who find that first impressions can be deceiving.

Shelby Roswell, a Civil War historian and professor, is on the fast track to tenure—that is, until her new book is roasted by the famous historian Ransom Fielding in a national review. With her career stalled by a man she’s never met, Shelby struggles to maintain her composure when she discovers that Fielding has taken a visiting professorship at her small Southern college.

Ransom Fielding is still struggling with his role in his wife’s accidental death six years ago and is hoping that a year at Shelby’s small college near his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, will be a respite from the pressures of Ivy League academia. He never bargained for falling in love with the one woman whose career—and pride—he injured, and who would do anything to make him leave.

When these two hot-headed southerners find themselves fighting over the centuries-old history of local battles and antebellum mansions, their small college is about to become a battlefield of Civil War proportions.

With familiar and relatable characters and wit to spare, Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits shows you that love can conquer all…especially when pride, prejudice, love, and cheese grits are involved!

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Review: The Accidental Book Club by Jennifer Scott

I have belonged to more than my fair share of book clubs through the years. Each time we move, it is the first thing I try to find because it helps me to escape the drudgery of unpacking and mitigates my loneliness at least once a month until I settle into a new life. So I can certainly appreciate a book club's power to help heal and the ways that members love and support one another. Certainly that has been the case many times over in my own life. The same is true in Jennifer Scott's The Accidental Book Club, about a group of women who come together to help each other in ways great and small.

Jean Vison lives alone, still mourning the death of her husband, Wayne, several years before. She isn't particularly close to her perfect daughter, Laura, not having seen her daughter and her family since her Wayne's funeral. She has built a life for herself though, startled out of her loneliness by her best friend and neighbor Loretta, who convinced Jean to start a book club to pull her out of her well of grief. And the women in the book club have become supportive friends, each handling and sometimes sharing her own challenges as well. Loretta's turned to steamy romance novels to make up for the fact that her retired husband has retreated to his recliner and no longer offers her physical or emotional intimacy in her marriage. Dorothy is constantly having to bail one son or another out of trouble or jail, railing about her no good ex every step of the way. May is unattached and seems to have the worst dating luck on the planet. Mitzi is obdurate and opinionated, often coming across as abrasive. And shy, retiring Janet, maligned for her size, is so reserved with her constant blushing that she is dismissed and trod upon.

While each of the women have something they are struggling with in their own lives, the focus is on Jean, especially when she receives a phone call from her son-in-law informing her that her daughter Laura is in the hospital. It is a terrible shock to Jean to discover that Curt and Laura are separated but an even bigger shock to be told that Laura is an alcoholic and needs to go to rehab. But that's not the last of the surprises for Jean. When Curt calls several days later and asks her to take Bailey, the teenaged granddaughter she barely knows, to live with her because he can't handle the child, Jean doesn't know what to do besides say yes. And so she's landed with a sullen, attention-starved, bitter teenager exploding into Jean's solitude and comfort, embarrassing her in front of her friends. It gets even more confused and stressful when Laura arrives on Jean's doorstep as well, having checked herself out of rehab. As Jean navigates her suddenly changed family circumstances, trying to break through to Bailey and understand how best to help Laura, the book club that she started as a way to rejoin the world after Wayne's death supports and helps her again.  When she decides to take life by the horns, they are behind her all the way.

Both Jean and Bailey have to learn to let go of and forgive the past if they each want to come through their deep unhappiness, Jean for the loss of her husband and Bailey for the raw deal she figures life has handed her. But the novel is not all grief and strife; the scene where the book club has a chance to skewer the author they have read is quite funny and the still evolving relationships between the various women are touching.  The different women of the book club have very different personalities and each of them offers the wisdom of her own experience to Jean as she struggles to show her love to her broken granddaughter. Jean and Bailey are both drawn fully and completely and with the third person omniscient narration, it is very easy to follow and sympathize with each of their motivations and feelings towards each other and towards the world around them. They are both realistic characters in need of healing. The way that Scott shows the needs of Jean and Bailey, sometimes in conflict with the needs of the other, is emotionally true and honest. The book has some difficult themes, alcoholism, emotional absence, and raging anger but it manages to retain a lightness to it.  While the ending is a bit too facile given the depth of the novel's conflict, Scott has drawn an affecting tale of family, love, and forgiveness.  Over all, this is a good and quick summer read, especially for people who love and appreciate book clubs.

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

Monday, May 26, 2014

Summer Reading

The kids might not be out of school and we may still have activities to get to and from but the grill has already heated up, the neighborhood pool is open, and the temps are rising rapidly. We pause on this Memorial Day and remember those who have given of themselves to keep us safe. And somehow this day of remembrance also typically heralds the beginning of summer, which means that it's time for me to post the list of books I hope to wade through between now and Labor Day. I counted how many I read last year and if I read as many, I have a few wildcard spots open. We'll see!!! Comments on the list are welcome.

2014 Summer Reading List

The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin
The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma
The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri
The Revealed by Jessica Hickam
The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee
The Walk In Closet by Abdi Nazemian
Elly in Love by Colleen Oakes
Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden by Laurel Dewey
After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Serenade by Emily Kiebel
Losing Touch by Sandra Hunter
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson
Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
Jane Austen’s First Love by Syrie James
Gravel on the Side of the Road by Kris Raddish
The Curse of Van Gogh by Paul Hoppe
The Wild Within by Melissa Hart
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Ishmael’s Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
No Book But the World by Leah Hager Cohen
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
In Between Dreams by Iman Verjee
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Blessings by Elise Juska
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
Juliet’s Nurse by Lois Leveen
The Traitor’s Wife by Allison Pataki
The Sign Painter by Davis Bunn
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Mating for Life by Marissa Stapley
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ruby by Cynthia Bond
The People in the Photo by Helene Gestern
The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley
‘Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The From Aways by C.J. Hauser
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Lotsa reading again this week. When the kids are through with activities for a week or so like they have been, I can power read and that makes me a happy, happy girl. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
The New Me by Mary Marcus
The Accidental Book Club by Jennifer Scott
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma

Reviews posted this week:

Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan
The New Me by Mary Marcus
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

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

Where Somebody Waits by Margaret Kaufman
Dinner With the Smileys by Sarah Smiley
Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
The Accidental Book Club by Jennifer Scott
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke

Monday Mailbox

This week's mailbox arrivals:

The New Me by Mary Marcus came from The Story Plant for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this one here.

Betty's (little basement) Garden by Laurel Dewey came from The Story Plant for a blog tour.

An elegant widow whose business has gone bust, who still grieves for her late son, whose house is falling apart, and who is known for her lush and beautiful garden turns to something a lot more unconventional (growing marijuana) and changes her life beyond all recognition. This one reminds me, at first glance, of the movie Saving Grace, which was hilarious.

My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle by Marcel Pagnol came from me to myself (because sometimes you just have to give yourself a gift).

All about Pagnol's Provencal childhood, this memoir looks charming and lovely.

Losing Touch by Sandra Hunter came from Oneworld and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I am always attracted to books about the challenges facing immigrant families so this book about an Indian family living in London and torn between their old world and their new one really appeals to me.

Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok came from Riverhead Books.

This novel about a young woman who grew up in Manhattan's Chinatown and discovers ballroom dancing causing her to open her mind to the things about the Western world of which her widowed father is so suspicious sounds fascinating as two cultures and their very different philosophies come together.

Ruby by Cynthia Bond came from Hogarth.

The South and the way it shapes people is of endless fascination to me so I am looking forward to this novel about a woman deeply damaged by her past but who must go home and live among it again and the man who has loved her since she was a girl, wanting nothing more than to save her now in the present.

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

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Sunday Salon: Romantic Times Convention


I've been home from the Romantic Times Convention in New Orleans for a week now and life has gone back to being as busy as ever. I brought scads of books home with me and have yet to sit down and read a single one.  Story of my life!  But I have been reflecting on the event, what I learned there, and the insights it gave me into myself.

I went to the convention with two friends and we sometimes stayed together for discussions and sometimes split up depending on our interests. In looking back, I find I went to a surprising amount of panels on erotica. And honestly, I'm not a huge erotica fan; I don't see the appeal of BDSM and unless I'm missing something, that seems to be the major focus of the sub-genre right now. My friends and I mostly went to sessions where authors spoke rather than crafting or interactive sessions. We did go to Cover Model Karaoke and spent a lot of time laughing. The session I enjoyed the most though, was the session on creating a cover where we got the perspective of an author, a photographer, and a cover model. Color me nerdy but the mechanics of all of it really appealed. There was a huge book fair (sale and signing) event and while I spent my fair share of money there and did have the books signed, I discovered that I truly don't care about meeting the authors or having them sign my books. I am content to know and appreciate them through the pages of their works so that I don't have to make small talk with them, something I am dreadfully bad at doing. One of my favorite parts of the whole weekend was probably meeting up with a local friend and hopping around to three different independent bookstores with her, where I also spend more than my share of money. One credit card company, forgetting my bookstore weakness, even shut my card off after only a few transactions, worried about fraud. Good thing I had a second one. ;-)

Between the three of us, my friends and I had to buy a whole new piece of luggage to bring all our books home. We loaded it up at the hotel and then had to unpack and repack carry-ons and the checked bag as well at the airport when the latter tipped the scale at 64 lbs. Whoops! It took us three re-adjustments to get us under the 50 lb. mark and left our carry-on luggage extremely heavy. Both my friends ended up checking their carry-ons but me, being my usual cheapskate self, did not. I was the big winner for the day though as the flight was full and they offered to gate check bags for free so I didn't have to heft my now almost 50 lb. carry-on into an overhead bin either.   Now I'm home and still trying to figure out where all to stash the new books. And in two weeks I head to Detroit for another bookish event: the Women's National Book Association National Board Meeting. I'll have to pack a little lighter as I'm hoping to visit an independent bookstore or two up there as well. Maybe this time my credit card will cooperate. And if not, I still have a second one!

P.S. For all those of you who are wondering, the two biggest takeaways from the weekend are that "Lizards don't build space ships" and there are books for everyone out there (Tyrannosaurus Sex anyone?).

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Review: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan


I don't often read a lot of YA novels but every once in a while I find one so enticing that I have to read it. Either the premise is fantastic, my teenaged daughter has raved about it, or others who read similarly to me have said it's well worth the time. Erin McCahan's new novel, Love and Other Foreign Words, is one of those appealing, can't miss YA books and I am feeling a little smug that I found it before my daughter so I have one to recommend to her instead of the other way around.

Josie is fifteen going on sixteen and she is completely brilliant. A certifiable genius, she's in high school and college simultaneously.  She likes precision and verifiable facts.  As easy and interesting as she finds school work, she is still baffled by the intangibles of life.  She navigates her own life as different countries each with different languages, which she speaks with varying degrees of success. The one language she doesn't understand at all is Love. And when her adored older sister Kate gets engaged to the odious Geoff, she realizes just how little of love she understands. So Josie sets out on a quest to show Kate why Geoff is all wrong for her and to get the wedding called off. As she delves deeper into Kate's love life, Josie might learn a little bit about love herself too.

Josie is sweet and hilarious, smart but sometimes clueless, and her family is fantastic. Their banter and love for each other shines through the pages. As Josie explores relationships and crushes and all their attendant humiliations and giant-sized emotions, she is completely endearing. As Josie is the narrator, the reader identifies with her and her perspective, even while knowing that no matter how smart she is, she's still a teenager with not very much life experience behind her. Each of the other characters is seen through her eyes and colored by her feelings about them.  They aren't all enormously developed but each serves their purpose in the novel well and their interactions with Josie help her to grow and mature as the novel moves onward.  She is very analytical, examining things, studying them as she would study a course. The way that she perceives the language around her is fascinating as she picks up on hidden contexts and unspoken meanings, coming at "different" language as an outsider rather than a native.  A unique perspective on coming of age, this is a quick, charming, and cute read and Josie is that rare teenager with whom you wish you could actually spend more time rather than less, a genuine delight.

For more information about Erin McCahan and the book, check out her website, her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter, or connect with her on GoodReads. Take a look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Review: The New Me by Mary Marcus

A long term marriage is a funny thing. People make concessions. They negotiate the ways that they will live. They play the roles they long ago established. And no one outside a marriage knows exactly what goes on behind closed doors. But what happens when one of the partners, perhaps helped along by outside influences, slowly starts to realize that the concessions she's made for so long might not work for her anymore? Mary Marcus' new novel, The New Me, looks at one such situation.

Harriet is a forty-something year old television chef on a show called Healthy Harriet. She has been married to Jules, a photographer always gone on movie shoots, for a long time and their twin sons have just left for college, leaving Harriet and Jules with an empty nest and a suddenly unobstructed view of their marriage. And the diagnosis isn't all that promising, what with a very unequal power structure and Harriet's disconcerting habit of screaming with pent up frustration in the shower. When Harriet meets a beautiful, British, twenty-something woman at yoga who reminds her very much of her younger self, she introduces Lydia to Jules, invites her to move in with them into one twin's empty room, and watches the show unfold.

Harriet narrates the novel from the present but looking back at the past several months. Because of this position of hindsight, she (and the reader) already know the outcome of Lydia's arrival into Harriet and Jules' life. The perspective allows Harriet to make connections and offer illuminating commentary that, as she acknowledges, she might not have made at the time, at least not consciously. As Harriet discusses her emotionally absent, self-absorbed, and selfish husband, the reader wonders why she lived so long with her head in the sand and how she could be so tolerant of such an ass. She admits that he can be charming and appealing but aside from her telling this to the reader, there's no such evidence in the actual drawing of his character; all of his traits are quite negative and Peter Pan-like. Likewise, the immediate draw to Lydia for both Harriet and Jules (and their pets but not their housekeeper) is a mystery.

While most of the sympathy from the reader will definitely be directed towards Harriet, there's also a frustration with her continued naivete and laissez-faire attitude as she aids and abets the situation. The only thing that eases the frustration any is Harriet's consideration that her decisions might have been unconsciously deliberate as she looks back on it from the present. Harriet is introspective as she contemplates her role in all of this and the view of marriage here is honest and real but it was missing that tiny leavening bit of humor that, for me, would have made it a more fulfilling read. An interesting look at reinvention, desires for the future, and marriage as it enters a new stage, this didn't quite hit the mark although I did appreciate the perfectly pitched ending.

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

The Late Starters Orchestra by Ari Goldman. The book is being released by Algonquin Books on June 10, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: If you thought a fiddler on a roof was in a precarious position, imagine what happens when a middle-aged professor with a bad back takes up the cello. Ari Goldman hasn’t played in twenty-five years, but he’s decided to give the cello one last chance. First he secures a seat in his eleven-year-old son’s youth orchestra, and then he’s ready for the big time: the Late Starters Orchestra of New York City—a bona fide amateur string orchestra for beginning or recently returning adult players.

We accompany Goldman to LSO rehearsals (their motto is “If you think you can play, you can”) and sit in on his son’s Suzuki lessons (where we find out that children do indeed learn differently from adults). And we wonder whether Goldman will be good enough to perform at his next birthday party. Coming to the rescue is the ghost of Goldman’s very first cello teacher, Mr. J, who continues to inspire and guide him—about music and more—through this enchanting midlife journey.

The Late Starters Orchestra reminds us that with a band of friends beside us, anything is possible.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Review: Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan

What would drive a mother to leave her family without another word? And how does such an action permanently change her child? Does it really even matter why a beloved mother is gone, if she has gone of her own free will? Melanie Dugan's lyrical new novel, Bee Summers, explores this question, ways to recover from unexpected loss, and the unseen but always acknowledged scars left on a heart.

The summer that Lissy Singer is eleven, her mother walks out on Lissy and her father. At first, Lissy believes that her mother has just gone to a rally but as days pass without word, she then becomes convinced that her mother has cancer and wants to spare Lissy the pain of watching her suffer. Lissy cannot begin to conceive of what else would make her mother disappear so completely and so determinedly. As her mother's disappearance stretches on, Lissy spends her summer traveling around on her father's beekeeping route, unloading hives in orchards and then looping back again to retrieve them once the bees' job pollinating is finished. She meets and stays with the people on her father's route: Earl, an aging African American orchardist whose kindness and easy acceptance is immediately appealing; Chance, a famous author who is semi-reclusive but who helps nurture the spark of creativity in Lissy; and Opal and Les, a kindly woman and her ailing but abusive husband living on a rural farm. As Lissy meets each of these people on her father's route, she learns about life and the ways others live, layering experience after experience in her own life.

Lissy's mother doesn't return and she overhears whispers and gossip she doesn't quite understand in their small town. But as she grows up, alienated from the town, she holds her hurt at her abandonment close to her chest, never discussing it with anyone. Apart from her summer migrations with her comfortably silent father, she seems to live on the periphery, waiting for her own chance to escape the town. When she wins a scholarship to college, supplemented by a gift from her Aunt Hetty, she leaves for university and never looks back. Her volume of published poetry concentrated on the long ago wounds from her mother's leaving, telling her experience and the silence and pain surrounding it. But her version is only one version of her mother's disappearance, as she will eventually come to see.

Lissy as a character is lovely and heartbreaking. She is very smart and precocious but also softly naïve. Her worry that liking the manicure Opal takes her for means she is taking sides against her mother, who would not have approved, is wrenching. She very much wants her mother to return to her and doesn't want to do anything that could possibly prevent that. But she is curious and just a little bit open to the world her mother never knew and people her mother never met so she finds herself growing and changing anyway. The writing here is lush and the descriptions of the natural world are gorgeous. The pacing of the novel is languid, dizzy with the buzzing of bees and heavy with the sweet, hot scent of summers. The majority of the book takes place in the seven years before Lissy leaves for university but the quarter set during her settled adult life allows the reader to look back with her at those long past summers with more adult eyes and to see the ways in which they formed her, good and bad alike. This is a magnificent coming of age novel, a testimony to resilience and the uncovering of truth, even if it jars with memory, a perfect read for the long, lazy days of summer.

For more information about Melanie Dugan 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 author for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Monday, May 19, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Part way through the week, I headed to New Orleans for a girls' weekend with friends and to attend the Romantic Times Convention so while I was surrounded by books and authors and cover models (oh my!), I didn't have a ton of time to read and any reviews were done prior to my leaving home so not much of that either. But I had a blast and now have about a zillion more books to read someday, when I find the time. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard

Reviews posted this week:

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The One and Only by Emily Giffin
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro

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

Where Somebody Waits by Margaret Kaufman
Dinner With the Smileys by Sarah Smiley
Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan
Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

Monday Mailbox

I was off gallivanting around New Orleans this weekend and having myself a big old time. In the meantime, I had a lot of great looking books landing on my doorstep. This week's mailbox arrivals:

The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I love stories about people who immigrate to the US and how they and their families adjust so this tale of three generations of Chinese American women, from the grandmother who first came to this country to escape Mao's Revolution to the teenaged granddaughter who was adopted from China, should be fascinating.

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas came from Simon and Schuster.

What happens when the American Dream is not everyone's dream? I can't wait to read this novel about a family where one person drives the upward mobility she so wants while the other is reluctant to chase that golden ring.

We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride came from Simon and Schuster.

A novel set in Las Vegas, but the Las Vegas that tourists don't visit, this looks like a fantastic novel.

Helena Rubenstein by Michele Fitoussi came from Gallic and Meryl Zegarek PR.

Make-up and fashion are not my things at all but I am curious about a woman to whom these were driving forces.

The One and Only by Emily Giffin came from Ballantine Books and Book Sparks PR for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this one here.

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

Friday, May 16, 2014

Review: Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro

Very frequently in the press you hear about the "Mommy Wars" where working moms and stay-at-home moms take pot shots at each others' choices. But rarely do you hear about the tension and unpleasantness within each subset. And it's certainly there. I've been a mom now for over 17 years and some of the most fraught and contentious conversations about parenting I ever had happened in the baby and young child years when it seems like every choice will forever after determine your inclusion or exclusion on the good parenting rolls. It's not a time I'd like to revisit ever again and yet that's exactly what I did when I opened the pages of Julia Fierro's new novel, Cutting Teeth.

Nicole, who is OCD, invites her entire playgroup out to her parent's beach home to escape for the weekend after she reads about a web bot predicting something terrible in NYC. The playgroup is made up of an eclectic group of moms (and one stay at home dad) who all have children between 3 and 4 years old. There is Rip, the stay at home dad who desperately wants another child in order to stay pertinent and his workaholic wife Grace. There's Susanna, the pregnant lesbian partner to Allie, an artist who has misgivings about being a mom. There's Tiffany, the social climbing sancti-mommy and her fiancé Michael. And there's Leigh, who wanted a second child so badly she was willing to steal PTA funds to finance another round of IVF and whose husband couldn't make it, opening the door for her to bring her Tibetan nanny Tenzin, a calming influence on everyone but especially on Leigh's oldest, Chase. The characters all have little in common besides the age of their children, without whom they undoubtedly would not be friends. It is this very marked difference amongst them that promises thrumming tension and ultimately an explosive weekend, even if it's not the sort of disaster that Nicole is nervously anticipating.

Fierro has written as cast of fairly unlikable characters. All of them have their quirks but over all, they are unpleasant, competitive, judgmental, righteous, and self-involved. While each of them suffers from their own insecurities, they also harbor a fairly nasty superior streak. Their interactions with each other are manipulative and insincere and they made me incredibly uncomfortable. The namby-pamby lack of discipline made my skin crawl and I had a seriously visceral reaction when, egged on by bossy Harper, the only girl in the playgroup, the boys crushed to death all of the sea creatures they'd collected. Just a little too Lord of the Flies. The characters themselves seem chosen in order to be representative, hip, and inclusive what with a couple who has fertility problems, a stay at home dad, a lesbian couple, a developmentally delayed child, and a sanctimonious organics only mom. Most of the parents have a chance to narrate the story, giving the reader more insight into what drives them but this insight doesn't serve to make them any more appealing. In fact, as hard as parenting is for everyone (not just these characters), it is depressing that none of them seem to find much joy in their children unless they are getting a self-esteem boost because that child is proving they are good parents. There's no simple pleasure in being a parent, no plain happy moments. More realistic by far than the unicorns and rainbows version of parenting, nevertheless the emotional train wreck of this novel made it hard to read.

For more information about Julia Fierro and the book, check out her website, her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter. You can also take a look at the Good Reads page or follow her on Pinterest. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Have you ever wanted to escape your life? Have you made choices that sort of snowballed and eventually you wonder how you've gotten where you are in life? Bernadette, in Maria Semple's fantastic new novel, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, is definitely not living the life her younger self expected and somehow she's lost the essence of herself through the years.

Bernadette is a reclusive, famous architect who received a MacArthur genius grant and has only designed and built one building in her career. After a conflict with her neighbor over said building, she retreats in self-imposed exile with her husband Elgin when he relocates to Seattle to work for Microsoft as a popular and influential engineer. They have one daughter, Balakrishna, nicknamed Bee, who has survived a heart defect and is finishing up middle school at a local private school. Bee is gifted and funny and she adores her quirky mother. As a reward for graduating from middle school with perfect grades, Bee asks her parents for a family cruise to Antarctica. Bernadette, who is just one short step away from agoraphobic and who, in general, is not a fan of people, wants to come up with a way to avoid the trip. As she thinks of ways to escape, she contracts for a virtual personal assistant in India to handle all the mundane daily details of her family's life. But when Manjula turns out to be rather different than expected, it turns everything upside down.

The novel is told using a narrative collage. It is comprised of emails, letters, memos, first person narration by Bee, official documents, and bills and it works surprisingly well for the hodge podge. Each piece of the narration expands on the characters, not only the Branch family itself, but also Audrey, their crazy neighbor and fellow school parent, and Elgin's new assistant, another fellow school parent, Soo-Lin. The tale is off the wall outrageous but it romps along at a great pace. There are laugh out loud moments and it is definitely a witty and thorough indictment of Seattle's culture (or as Bernadette sees it, complete lack of culture). Bernadette is an eccentric and unpredictable character whose subjugation of her creative spark has led her to a place she doesn't recognize and the book posits the question whether the lack of a creative outlet can lead to mental illness. When a mental health intervention results in Bernadette actually going missing without a trace, Bee puts this novel together to find not only her mother but the Bernadette who has been absent for so long. A fun and entertaining read, the novel is like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, not huge ups and downs, just careening crazily on the edge of losing control and giggling all the way.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Review: The One and Only by Emily Giffin


Football has never been my thing. When I was in college and my boyfriend had a Super Bowl party, I took a book with me and read through most of the game. I don't have a team I root for, not college nor NFL. I understand the game, I just don't care about it despite living with a husband (the same one to whose party I took a book) and two sons who love watching it every night that it's on tv. I suspect that I'm not terribly unusual in not caring about it, especially for a woman. The main character in Emily Giffin's newest novel though, is not like me.  She lives and breathes football.

Shea Rigsby is in her thirties. She's a talented writer but she's settled for a job in the athletic department of her university rather than pursuing a job she'd love because it keeps her close to her beloved Walker Broncos. Shea grew up revering Walker football and everything associated with it, like most everyone else in her small Texas town.  She never had any urge to leave Walker, growing up there and then going to college there as well. But when her best friend's mother dies young, Shea finds herself taking stock of her life and safe choices she's made. She sees that she has been taking the easy and comfortable route in both her love life and her work life and that this is no longer good enough because it can't make her as happy as she deserves to be. So Shea chooses to move forward instead of continuing to coast, breaking up with her boyfriend and reaching out for a sports reporting job, leaving the cocoon of the university. As she makes these big decisions, she is supported by her best friend Lucy's father, Coach Carr, the popular and winning head coach of the Walker team, a man with whom she has had a special bond her entire life.

Shea has always had a bit of a crush on Coach Carr and she is happy to check up on him after his wife dies. When she starts feeling more for Coach than she should, she tries to pull back and distract herself by dating a big NFL star and former Walker player. But her obsession with football and her loyalty to and interest in her team keep throwing her into Coach's orbit, making it hard for her to deny her growing feelings.

The novel is filled with football jargon and information; after all, football is akin to religion in Texas. While football permeates every aspect of the novel, the main plot line is what will happen with Shea's growing awareness of and interest in Coach. The fact that she calls her best friend's father hot and that she is attracted to him makes for a definite ick factor and I was skeeved out by her falling for a man who was not only old enough to be her father but in many ways actually was her surrogate father, giving any potential relationship a slightly incestuous feel. But my discomfort with the developing situation did keep me turning the pages in hopes that I would be wrong in the end. There are other less well developed threads here, an abusive boyfriend, NCAA violations, and Shea's own family dysfunction, but they are handled lightly and pale beside the main plot. If you need something quick to read beside the pool this summer and you have at least a passing interest in football or college sports, this could be the book for you.

For more information about Emily Giffin and the book, check out her website or follow her on Twitter. Take a look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

The Tastemakers by David Sax. The book is being released by PublicAffairs on May 27, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Greek yogurt. Spicy chipotle mayo. Honeycrisp apples. The Cronut. These days, it seems we are constantly discovering a new food that will make us healthier, happier, or even somehow smarter. After a brief life as a novelty houseplant and "I Love the '80s" punchline, chia seeds are suddenly a superfood. Speaking of which, what ever happened to pomegranate juice? Or acai berries? Did they suddenly cease to be healthy in 2010? And by the way, what exactly is a superfood again?

In this eye-opening, witty work of reportage, David Sax uncovers the world of food trends: where they come from, how they grow, and where they end up. From the test labs at Dole foods to the food truck lobby to the 20 seconds of Sex and the City that forever changed the fate of the cupcake, Sax reveals the money and influence behind what you eat for breakfast.

In sections on how food trends are created, what makes them explode, and why they matter, Sax travels America in search of the farmers, planners, and chefs who help decide what you will spend three hours waiting for on a SoHo sidewalk. The Tastemakers is full of entertaining stories and useful bits of wisdom for maintaining your sanity in the complex world of food choices.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

An enticing cover, devoid of people. An odd and intriguing title. Desperate sounding jacket copy. What can all this possibly have in common with the Chechen wars? The title, taken from a Soviet era medical textbook, is the definition of life and the small, blue suitcase on the cover, holding talismans from her own life and from the refugees who passed through her family's home, belongs to a young girl whose life, like all of the characters contained in the novel, has changed irrevocably because of the latest war and the rent it has left in society in Anthony Marra's haunting tale.

When Havaa's arborist father Dokka is taken away by the Russian military and her home burned to the ground, she hides in the forest with her suitcase until neighbor and friend Akhmed finds her there. Knowing that she's in danger from the same people who took her father, he takes her to the nearest bigger city to the hospital. There he finds overworked but brilliant surgeon Sonja doing her best to keep the hospital running with a skeleton staff. She has no interest in this orphan of war but when Akhmed, having attended medical school as a dismal student more interested in art than medicine, offers up his own limited medical knowledge in return for her promise to shelter Havaa, she agrees that the girl can stay.

Marra plays with the timeline in the novel, jumping from 1994 to 2004 and to points in between seemingly at random, weaving together a complex narrative line. The various different time periods allow the reader to learn about the characters' pasts and their motivations without interrupting the precarious and dangerous present. The history of this ethnically charged area and its recurring partisan wars is woven through the tales of each of the characters. In addition to Havaa, Dokka, Akhmed, and Sonja, there is also Khassan, an elderly man who is ashamed of his son, Ramzan, the village informer who has caused so many of his fellow ethnic Muslims to disappear, and there is Natasha, Sonja's younger sister, who has demons of her own and is stripped of her dignity and hope by unending war and who has gone missing without a trace.

Although the book and the war it depicts is brutal, it explores much of what makes people human beings. Each of the characters faces the challenge of maintaining their humanity in the face of great inhumanity and some of them succeed better than others. Each, in his or her own way, looks for forgiveness and absolution over decisions the violent, partisan war has made them make. In some ways the characters can be very unemotional, unwilling to risk more of themselves to the instability and random cost of war. They have to find ways of keeping living even amidst lives filled with uncertainty and unresolved, agonizing mysteries. And yet no matter how agonized they are, they are careful to mute their reactions, to focus on the here and now, to live in the present, reaching out a hand if they can while acknowledging the horrendous cost they have already paid and might have to keep paying.

Marra does a masterful job weaving together the cast of seemingly only tangentially connected characters and their stories in unexpected and awe-inspiring ways. The writing is gorgeous and his ability to keep things both unresolved and tie things up enough to satisfy the reader is impressive indeed. You don't need to have even a passing knowledge of Chechnya or its enduring instability because of so many unfinished wars and on-going tensions to see this novel for the impressive debut that it is.  Like the definition of life that gives the novel its name, this book is indeed its own constellation of vital phenomena.

Trips and e-reading

I'm getting ready to go on a girl's trip. I am missing my daughter's ten zillionth dance recital. I am missing my son's junior prom. But aside from telling my husband that he needs to take pictures of these events for me, the biggest concern I have is what to take with me to read. Now, this is probably an unnecessary concern given that we are going to New Orleans for the Romantic Times Convention so there will be hundreds or thousands of choices there but as a former Girl Scout, I always want to be prepared. Now, when I admit to people that I need to take multiple books with me even if it is only for a long weekend, most people gush, "I love my [insert e-reader of choice here]" and I always have to admit that I don't like reading electronically.

I should come clean here and admit that I've been saying this for years without actually trying it. Yes, don't tell my children but I've been as bad as they are when I put an unusual vegetable on their plates. I have completely dismissed this ever growing way to read ever since it became possible. My excuses? "I'm a Luddite and not really a gadget person." "There's nothing like the feel of a physical book." "I don't like reading on a screen." "I'm just contrary." (This last one is my favorite.) But I finally, this past weekend, read a book electronically. Yes, I've had an e-reader for years compliments of my husband who is always trying to find me the perfect present I haven't already bought myself. Bless the man, he tries. He's generally just a bit off (like never noticing my comments about e-readers) but I love him anyway. In any case, I have had the thing plugged in and waiting for literally years now. So this weekend, I tried it. And you know what? I'm a Luddite and not really a gadget person. There's nothing like the feel of a physical book. I don't like reading on a screen, And yes, I'm just contrary. Man, I love having my preconceived notions confirmed!

Now, before I have anyone jump on me and suggest that I went into the whole thing with a bad attitude, let me say nay.  Nay, I say.  I really tried to go into it with an open mind. But the feel was all wrong. Neither "swiping" a page nor tapping one side of the page, ahem--excuse me--the device, replicates the slow, seductive feel of a page sliding through your thumb and finger. I could not flip backwards and forwards while holding my place. I could not check to see when a chapter ended or accurately calculate how much more I had to read. I could not (did not want to) carry it around with me clutched to my chest as I absorbed what I had just read. I couldn't take it in the car with me and leave it on the seat while I ran errands. The screen didn't look like paper no matter what the manufacturers might claim. The heft of the thing was all wrong. I actually like holding my pages open. I like seeing if the bookmark (another thing I have a weakness for incidentally, bookmarks) looks halfway through the book or not. I like the smell of books; electronics just smell weird. Sure, it was the same story as in the physical book but the experience didn't even come close to living up to reading the old-fashioned way. I guess I'm just forever a physical book girl.

In the spirit of the romance novels I'm sure to pick up this weekend, reading electronically for me was like sex without love. The mechanics were all there but it was devoid of that best, intangible bit. So if the dire predictions of the death of the physical book ever come to pass, I'll just hole myself up with my own collection and reread. OK, given my book hoarding collecting, I probably have enough to keep me going until I'm 350 years old without rereading but I will always be able to touch and connect with those books on a physical level that just isn't there for me on the screen. But when people ask me why I don't read electronically, I'll probably still tell them "I'm just contrary" because the whole sex without love analogy might make people think I'm weird or something.

Oh, and does anyone want to volunteer to pay for my overweight baggage after this weekend comes to a close? ::grin::

Monday, May 12, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I had a heck of a reading week, working to get ahead of myself on the review books. I didn't review so many but that will come in time (and as the deadlines hit!). This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Casebook by Mona Simpson
Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro
Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The One and Only by Emily Giffin
Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry

Reviews posted this week:

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose
Delicious! by Ruth Reichl
Casebook by Mona Simpson
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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

Where Somebody Waits by Margaret Kaufman
Dinner With the Smileys by Sarah Smiley
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro
Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The One and Only by Emily Giffin
Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Monday Mailbox

Another envy inducing mailbox here all of the books seem to have the theme of love in common. Can't wait to dig into them! This week's mailbox arrivals:

Bee Summers by Melanie Dugan came from Upstart Press and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

About a young girl whose mother abandons her and her migratory beekeeper father, this look at childhood, innocence, and the people that shape you looks fantastic.

Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan came from Dial and BookSparks PR for a blog tour.

A novel about a girl who has to navigate all the different languages that teens speak, I am looking forward to seeing how she handles the foreign word called love.

Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick came from New American Library and BookSparks PR for a blog tour.

Can you imagine a place that is perfect for recovering from a breakup? I am so curious to read about this place, the people in it, and the woman who has gone there to heal.

The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine came from SehWrites Press.

This enticing looking novel asks what it means when love and muse are not found in the same person. I can only imagine the answers it will offer.

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

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