Wednesday, July 30, 2014

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.

Small Blessings by Martha Woodroof. The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on August 12, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Tom Putnam, an English professor at a Virginia women’s college, has resigned himself to a quiet and half-fulfilled life. For more than ten years, his wife Marjory has been a shut-in, a fragile and frigid woman whose neuroses have left her fully dependent on Tom and his formidable mother-in-law, Agnes Tattle. Tom considers his unhappy condition self-inflicted, since Marjory’s condition was exacerbated by her discovery of Tom’s brief and misguided affair with a visiting poetess. But when Tom and Marjory meet Rose Callahan, the campus bookstore’s charming new hire, and Marjory invites Rose to dinner, her first social interaction in a decade, Tom wonders if it’s a sign that change is on the horizon. And when Tom returns home that evening to a letter from the poetess telling him that he’d fathered her son, Henry, and that Henry, now ten, will arrive by train in a few days, it’s clear change is coming whether Tom’s ready or not.

For readers of Helen Simonson and Anna Quindlen, Small Blessings is funny, heart-warming and poignant, with a charmingly imperfect cast of cinema-ready characters. Readers will fall in love with the novel’s wonderfully optimistic heart that reminds us that sometimes, when it feels like life is veering irrevocably off track, the track changes in ways we never could have imagined.

Monday, July 28, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Still on vacation. Still being lazy, starting books right, left, and center, without finishing them or reviewing them. But this happy scatterbrained bliss is about to end and I'll be back to my regular programming shortly. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The From-Aways by C.J. Hauser
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
Gemini by Carol Cassella
Ruby by Cynthia Bond
bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

Reviews posted this week:

The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

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

Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
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
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
The From-Aways by C.J. Hauser
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

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.

Palmetto Moon by Kim Boykin. The book is being released by Berkley Trade on August 5, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: June, 1947. Charleston is poised to celebrate the biggest wedding in high-society history, the joining of two of the oldest families in the city. Except the bride is nowhere to be found…

Unlike the rest of the debs she grew up with, Vada Hadley doesn’t see marrying Justin McLeod as a blessing—she sees it as a life sentence. So when she finds herself one day away from a wedding she doesn’t want, she’s left with no choice but to run away from the future her parents have so carefully planned for her.

In Round O, South Carolina, Vada finds independence in the unexpected friendships she forms at the boarding house where she stays, and a quiet yet fulfilling courtship with the local diner owner, Frank Darling. For the first time in her life, she finally feels like she’s where she’s meant to be. But when her dear friend Darby hunts her down, needing help, Vada will have to confront the life she gave up—and decide where her heart truly belongs.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Review: The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

Deborah Lawrenson's novel, The Sea Garden, is composed of three short stories which are seemingly unconnected but which ultimately come together in unexpected ways. The first story, called The Sea Garden, centers on Ellie Brooks, a young woman arriving on the French Mediterranean island of Porquerolles to work on a garden commission. As Ellie sketches out her ideas, she is bothered by misgivings about the elderly woman who found and convinced her son to hire Ellie and she feels as if her only ally in the increasingly menacing situation is an elusive war historian. The second story, called The Lavender Field, tells the story of a young blind French girl who works at a perfume factory and discovers that the family who has taken her in works in a Resistance cell. Marthe must decide whether she has the courage to join in with this dangerous work as well, especially after a tragedy threatens to derail long held planning. And the third story, A Shadow Life, is also set during WWII. In it, a junior British intelligence officer named Iris falls in love with a French agent. When the war ends, Iris is determined to discover what happened to her lover, despite accepted evidence that he was possibly a double agent.

Each of the stories is completely self-contained but toward the end of the third story, the other two stories are tied in to the mystery of whatever happened to Iris's lover. The first story, set in the present day, has a gothic feel to it with a rising tension and hints of the paranormal. There are some plot aspects that aren't resolved entirely satisfactorily until the third story and there are one or two things that are raised, like the suicide of the young man on the ferry in the opening of the story, that are used for atmosphere but need a bit more to be fully realized in the story. The second and third stories are significantly different in tone than the first story, completely lacking the threatening tone that pervades the first. These latter two stories tell of different aspects of the war and are representative of the many stories that make up the whole of the war. They are fascinating in a historical sense and interesting for the personal touch they bring to the Resistance and to British intelligence. Lawrenson has done a phenomenal job in connecting all three individual stories in the end and in revealing the mystery and secrets behind the whole.

The descriptive passages here are very visual and evocative and Lawrenson's managed to conjure up the scents to which Marthe, as a blind woman, would have been so very sensitive. Each of the stories are atmospheric and well researched, from gardening to the war and the main characters are all strong women, appealing and intelligent. The structure was an interesting one that required a little work on the reader's part to remember well each story and make the connections that tied the whole together. Historical fiction readers, specifically those with an interest in WWII, and those who enjoy mysterious fiction will enjoy this novel immensely.

For more information about Deborah Lawrenson and the book, check out her website, Facebook page, and her blog. 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I am on vacation, which means I have vry limited internet access. This means lots of reading and very little reviewing gets accomplished so I'll have to play catch-up when I get home. It also means that this is more than one week's worth of stuff. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The From-Aways by C.J. Hauser

Reviews posted this week:

Losing Touch by Sandra Hunter
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor

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

Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
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
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Review: The Union Street Bakery by Mary Ellen Taylor

Daisy McCrae never imagined her life as it is right now. She's lost her job as a financial manager, broken up with her fiancé, and moved home to live in the tiny attic room above her family's bakery. She's trying to help untangle the bakery's finances and take some of the stress off of her family while she figures out where her life should go next. In this interim, Daisy would also like to find out something more about her mother, the woman who abandoned her at the bakery as a three year old.

This early abandonment has marked Daisy hard. She feels like she isn't a real McCrae even though the family formally adopted her and folded her into their hearts. She has a fairly tense relationship with her sisters and that makes her current situation in the bakery that much tougher. When a long time elderly customer who seems to know quite a bit about Daisy dies, she bequeaths an 1850s diary to Daisy without any word of explanation. Daisy has no idea why she's been given this historical document written by a slave girl named Susie when it's one of her sisters who is interested in history. The diary is, in fact, a treasure trove of history, personal and public, and it holds the answers to a lot of Daisy's questions, as she discovers as she delves deeper into its contents. It also brings the presence of a slightly malevolent feeling ghost into the bakery and into Daisy's attic in particular.

The insecurity that Daisy feels as a result of her abandonment and subsequent adoption is very well handled. The fact that she is loved and accepted in her family helps some but doesn't completely mitigate the result of the deep trauma on her. That she stays somewhat aloof and doesn't share important things in her life like her engagement and the subsequent breaking off of that engagement with her family is understandable given her feeling of outsider status. But the love and acceptance that the McCrae family offers her is unrelenting despite her holding back. The mystery of Daisy's origins is revealed slowly and tied into general history quite well. As Daisy learns about Susie and her connection not only to herself but to the McCrae family, she also learns more completely what it takes to be a fully fledged member of a loving family such as the McCraes.

The story was an interesting one with multiple threads running through it, the current day story, the historical angle, and the paranormal as well. Daisy's character is a sympathetic one, desperately wanting to fit in, mourning the loss of the man she loves, and trying to save the bakery despite the dire financial situation. The rest of the McCrae family isn't quite as fleshed out as Daisy is, perhaps a reflection of her own feeling of distance from them.  The paranormal element here is more of a distraction than a necessary piece of the plot.  This is the first in a planned series and there may be more plot and character development in future books and the paranormal may tie in more necessarily as well. A fast read, this tackles some deeper issues in an easy and engaging way.

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

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

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.

Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya. The book is being released by Riverhead Hardcover on July 31, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: A dazzling debut novel about a Russian immigrant family living in Brooklyn and their struggle to learn the new rules of the American Dream.

In this account of two decades in the life of an immigrant household, the fall of communism and the rise of globalization are artfully reflected in the experience of a single family. Ironies, subtle and glaring, are revealed: the Nasmertovs left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a huge sense of finality, only to find that the divide between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut as they thought. The dissolution of the Soviet Union makes returning just a matter of a plane ticket, and the Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream still work if the past is always within reach?

If the Nasmertov parents can afford only to look forward, learning the rules of aspiration, the family’s youngest, Frida, can only look back.

In striking, arresting prose loaded with fresh and inventive turns of phrase, Yelena Akhtiorskaya has written the first great novel of Brighton Beach: a searing portrait of hope and ambition, and a profound exploration of the power and limits of language itself, its ability to make connections across cultures and generations.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Review: Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert

Mothers and daughters can have all sorts of relationships. Some are close and loving while others are distant or estranged. Some mothers raise their children while other children are basically abandoned to raise themselves. And yet no matter what our relationship with our mothers, not knowing any other way of life, we assume our experience is the common one. We crave love, acceptance, attention, and acknowledgement from our mothers. In Rebecca Rotert's novel, Last Night at the Blue Angel, set in 1965 Chicago, Naomi, a single mother, sings in a  rundown nightclub and strives for an ever elusive fame while her innocent but wise ten year old daughter, Sophia, aches for Naomi's attention as she tries to hold her talented but fragile mother together.

The novel opens on the night that Naomi finally becomes famous but the spotlight of the narrative is very quickly and firmly on the precocious Sophia perched on her stool in the wings watching the mother she adores. Sophia worries about life after a nuclear bomb and she keeps lists of the necessary things that she will have to reinvent in the event of such a major disaster. Her world is not perfect but it is her world and she wants nothing more than to preserve it as it is. Since Naomi is too consumed with her career and self-involved to be a particularly attentive mother, Sophia is lucky to be surrounded by an extended family of her and Naomi's own making. Jim, a photographer documenting the ruins of old Chicago architecture before it is forever lost and in love with Naomi, helps Sophia manage her mother and acts as a steadying influence and surrogate father. Sister Eye is a teacher at Sophia's school who has known Naomi since before she left her small Kansas town, driven out by small minded prejudice. And it is with Sister Eye and Rita that Naomi lived while she found her footing, when she discovered she was pregnant with Sophia, and who are as much Sophia's family as if they shared blood.

The novel eventually alternates between Sophia and Naomi's narration with Sophia telling the tale of the immediate past and Naomi filling in the even further past events that led her to flee Kansas. When Naomi tells her tale, it fills the gaps and explains things in Sophia's narrative in some unexpected ways. Even so, Sophia's narration is the stronger, more sympathetic one. Sophia is an appealing character, accepting and winsome, and her fierce love for her mother is poignant while her loyalty and love for the others in her life is overwhelming. Naomi has been battered by life far more than her daughter but some of that battering is a result of her own choices. Most of the relationships are well developed here but there are two incredibly important ones, with David and with Laura, that are underdeveloped and scant despite their significance to the story as a whole. The ending is bittersweet and gives a hint of how Sophia will face growing up to match the maturity she already possesses.

The novel, like I imagine Naomi's voice, is sultry and full of longing for real beauty and for love and family. It is well written, telling a story that is both beautiful and tragic. Tackling prejudice, racism, sexuality, the terrible price of fame, and durability versus vulnerability, this novel is a slow, jazzy paean, heart-wrenching and languid.

For more information about Rebecca Rotert and the book, 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 Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Review: Losing Touch by Sandra Hunter

Every generation grows up in a different world than the one before them. But when a family emigrates from one country to another, all the familiar touchstones of the parents' world are lost so they must parent in a world completely unlike their own, even as they try to adapt and adjust themselves. In Sandra Hunter's novel, Losing Touch, the Kulkani family has immigrated from India to England and some of them are trying hard to hang onto their cultural heritage while others are doing their best to lose it and to assimilate into English society.

Father Arjun is a strict and traditional Indian father, wanting to impress upon his children the importance of embracing their Indian identity. Mother Sunila just wants to be as British as possible, aiding her children in leaving behind all that their father values. Children Murad and Tarani feel misunderstood by their father and are, like so many immigrant children, caught uncomfortably between two worlds. The family is wracked with tension and unhappiness. And as the novel opens, they are also grieving for the loss of Arjun's happy younger brother, Jonti, who has died from a hereditary degenerative disease, leaving behind a young family. Arjun's grief is compounded by the fact that he suspects that he too is in the beginning stages of the family's degenerative wasting disease.

Each chapter of the novel takes place a year further on from the previous chapter and a year further into Arjun's slow slide into disease himself. This helps capture the small moments, the failings, and difficult love that make up a family life and highlights the inexorable march of time. The chapters focus on different characters although throughout the main focus remains on Arjun, the progression of his disease, and its impact on the family, as well as the progression of the family's assimilation. His loss of physical dexterity echoes the emotional loss and fraying connection to his own culture; Arjun is losing touch both literally and figuratively.

All of the characters are realistic, fully rounded, and generally sympathetic. The two parts of the novel, separated by thirty years, have two different feels to them, highlighting the changes to the once hale, hearty, and athletic Arjun into a gentler, less physical man than he used to be. Rather than a traditional novel, this has the feel of intimate snapshots in the life of this family. It is chronological, yet skipping large swathes of time. The pacing is relaxed and the novel is gracefully written, a quick and appealing read.

For more information about Sandra Hunter and the book, check out her website or her GoodReads page. 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.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

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.

All I Know and Love by Judith Frank. The book is being released by William Morrow on July 15, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Told with the storytelling power and emotional fidelity of Wally Lamb, this is a searing drama of a modern American family on the brink of dissolution, one that explores adoption, gay marriage, and love lost and found.

For years, Matthew Greene and Daniel Rosen have enjoyed a quiet domestic life together in Northampton, Massachusetts. Opposites in many ways, they have grown together and made their relationship work. But when they learn that Daniel’s twin brother and sister-in-law have been killed in a bombing in Jerusalem, their lives are suddenly, utterly transformed.

In dealing with their families and the need to make a decision about who will raise the deceased couple’s two children, both Matthew and Daniel are confronted with challenges that strike at the very heart of their relationship. What is Matthew’s place in an extended family that does not completely accept him or the commitment he and Daniel have made? How do Daniel’s questions about his identity as a Jewish man affect his life as a gay American? Tensions only intensify when they learn that the deceased parents wanted Matthew and Daniel to adopt the children—six-year-old Gal, and baby Noam.

The impact this instant new family has on Matthew, Daniel, and their relationship is subtle and heartbreaking, yet not without glimmers of hope. They must learn to reinvent and redefine their bond in profound, sometimes painful ways. What kind of parents can these two men really be? How does a family become strong enough to stay together and endure? And are there limits to honesty or commitment—or love?

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Review: Serenade by Emily Kiebel


I firmly believe that people can be aligned to elements in ways that feed their souls. Some people love to garden, clearly nourished by a relationship with the earth. Some people are hypnotized by a bonfire. And others fancy mercurial changes like the wind. While I love a good bonfire, I am most definitely a child of the water, at home in the water like nowhere else. I am drawn to water and find nothing so pleasing as being in it, on it, or beside it. My attraction to it would pale in comparison to some mythical creatures like mermaids, sirens, or gods and goddesses of the deep though. As Lorelei Clark, the main character in Emily Kiebel's YA novel, Serenade, discovers, when one is in fact a siren, the pull of the ocean is strong.

Lorelei is a freshman in college, having defied her mother and gone to a classical music school in Maine to major in voice performance. She has a beautiful voice and despite the estrangement with her mother that her decision caused, she feels like she is doing what she is meant to do. As the novel opens, her father is visiting her for her fall break when he is struck and killed crossing the street. Lorelei cradles his dying body, inexplicably drawn to sing for him. After his funeral, she sneaks away from her Colorado home and her mother's demands once again, returning to school. But her singing no longer has the instinctive feel to it that it once did and she reluctantly takes a leave of absence, traveling to the Cape to meet the maternal relatives she's only just heard of and to try and heal a little from the crippling grief after her father's death.

While she is getting to know her great aunt Helen and her two cousins, Calliope and Deidre, they strike her as a little bit eccentric. They run a dive salvage company and the china they eat off of is White Star Line china, ostensibly taken from the Titanic. But then she witnesses them transforming into something otherworldly in the cove outside their home one night and she is terrified. Once they calm her down, they tell her that they are real live sirens and that she is one too. This is not welcome news to her because she thinks of sirens as the mythical creatures who lure sailors to their deaths. But the Deleaux women explain to her how wrong her preconception is and they start training her to take her place in their family group. She is starting to reconcile herself to her destiny but she continues to have trouble with the idea that she will ease someone into death rather than trying to save them. And she must learn to govern her willfulness and her temper as well, no easy task.

Kiebel blends the idea of living, breathing sirens into our familiar world convincingly. And she makes them far from the horrible, murderous creatures they are in mythology so that the reader can feel sympathy for Lorelei's situation. The novel is slow to start, building an elaborate backstory for Lorelei before finally centering on her discovery and training as a siren. As this is clearly the first of a series, there are numerous dropped plot threads, such as the evil that lurks in the water, that will presumably reappear in later books and Kiebel even introduces entirely new and completely unexplained and undeveloped pieces, a Valkyrie and the Elysienne, to Lorelei's tale at the very end of the novel, which caused me some frustration.  In addition, Lorelei's deep grief at the loss of her beloved father is quickly ignored once she accepts her heritage. Despite these stumbles, Kiebel has penned an intriguing tale of family, one of right and wrong, and one that questions the idea of unbendable fate.

For more information about Emily Kiebel and the book, check out her website, her Facebook page, 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.

Monday, July 7, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
Serenade by Emily Kiebel

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki

Reviews posted this week:

Betty's (Little Basement) Garden by Laurel Dewey
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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

Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
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
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Losing Touch by Sandra Hunter
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
Serenade by Emily Kiebel

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Review: After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid


Love is not static. It changes. It is adaptable. It can grow and it can disappear. It is amazingly special but it isn't easy. It has to be worked at. And if you don't pay attention to it, it can be hidden behind the mundanities of everyday life. When this happens, many people give up, finding it too hard to work their way back to the love they once felt. But are there other options? For Lauren and Ryan, in Taylor Jenkins Reid's newest novel, After I Do, the solution is to take a year off of their marriage to determine if what they once had, the love they once cherished, is worth saving.

Lauren and Ryan met in college. Their relationship was charmed, the envy of friends and family. But eleven years in and six years into their marriage, all is not well in Camelot. In fact, things are downright unhappy. Lauren and Ryan don't even want to be in the same room together anymore. They snipe at each other, throwing small unkindnesses at each other, freezing each other out, cutting at each other a thousand ways. They are resentful, irritated, and annoyed with the other most of the time. Things finally come to a head when they acknowledge the state of suppressed warfare in their home and they don't know if their marriage can survive the people they've become. The spark is well and truly gone from their relationship and brutally, truthfully, they aren't in love with each other anymore. But they both remember how it used to be and don't want to let that go without at least trying to recover it. So they agree to be apart for a year, not to contact each other, to focus on what they need individually in order to remember why they fell in love in the first place. Their decision isn't an easy or conventional one but they feel as if it is their only chance to save their marriage.

Told mainly through Lauren's experiences, the novel is realistic and honest about the fading of love in the face of small daily resentment after small daily resentment. Reid captures beautifully (and painfully) the building minor aggravations that chip away at the very foundation of happiness, thoughtfulness, and love and how those aggravations ultimately grow so large that they overtake any finer feeling. As their year apart progresses, Lauren reads Ryan's written and saved but unsent emails to her and starts writing her own as well. The sporadic emails allow each of the characters to safely air their grievances, the ways they feel the other has marginalized them, and the things that are so important that they have to change if there will ever be a chance to come back together again. Lauren, with the insights of her mother, her siblings, best friend, and grandmother comes to realize the many shapes that enduring love takes and she must decide if she and Ryan are fighting for happiness and to find a way back to loving each other, as opposed to being "in love" with each other, or if this year apart means that they can and should live without each other.

The emotions are so raw and so completely unadorned and truthful here that some portions of the novel are hard to read. As Lauren works back and forth through her own desires and intentions with regard to Ryan's and her future, the reader swings through foreboding, worry, and happiness all in equal measure. Watching the characters lose themselves almost completely is painful and knowing they will be forever changed at the end of their year apart no matter what their ultimate decision is is nerve-wracking. The narrative tension is consistent and the novel is perfectly paced. This is not really a romance but it is definitely a novel about love, knowing what is worth saving, what real, messy love looks like, and the importance of nurturing it before it is gone. Relatable and instructive, it is a novel worth reading for anyone who has been through the ups and downs of marriage or long term relationship.

For more information about Taylor Jenkins Reid 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, July 2, 2014

Review: Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

When you are young and in love, you think that it will last forever. But there are so many ways that forever gets a lot shorter. And none is so sad as that of the early and unexpected death of a loved one. Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel, Forever, Interrupted, tackles that heartbreaking scenario and how one person moves on when there's still so much life to live without their love.

Elsie and Ben have been married nine days when he heads out on his bike to pick up some cereal for Elsie. When he doesn't come home and she hears ambulance sirens, Elsie runs outside to discover that her new husband and soul mate has been hit by a truck and died instantly. At the hospital, as she starts to navigate the surreal situation, she discovers that Ben's mother Susan is still listed as his next of kin and she will have all the say in what happens with Ben's body and the funeral. As if this wasn't enough, Ben never told his mother about Elsie and Susan doesn't believe that they were married. And Elsie can't prove it because their marriage license hasn't even arrived in the mail yet. So instead of the two people who most loved Ben being able to come together and comfort each other in their grief, they are rivals at odds over what Ben wanted.

The novel follows two plot lines alternating evenly between the two of them, one moving forward from Ben's death and one telling the story of Elsie and Ben's whirlwind romance. In the present, Elsie and Susan butt heads and have difficulty accepting each other or acknowledging the love that Ben had for each of them. Part of the trouble on Susan's part is not only that she is skeptical about the importance of Elsie in Ben's life but also the fact that she, like so many people in Elsie's life, minimizes Elsie's grief because she and Ben had only been married for such a brief time. In fact, they had only known each other for a handful of months before they got married. But what others don't appreciate is that Elsie and Ben's relationship and love affair was a completely real one, not just a fairy tale created after the fact. Ben was a sweet, romantic, thoughtful man and Elsie was totally head over heels, madly in love with him. The duration of their knowing each other had no bearing on the amount of pain Elsie feels at his loss. And after all, who can really quantify love on a timeline?

This is a novel about learning to live again and to trust and appreciate those around you who also loved your love. It is a realistic, emotional, heart-wrenching read but has a surprisingly poignant amount of levity to keep it from overwhelming the reader with only intense sadness. The double stranded timeline works well here as a way to make Ben a fully rounded character and to explain why he never shared the fact of his intense and wonderful love for Elsie with his mother. Both Elsie and Susan handle their grief honestly even if very differently. And each must come to find a way to move forward and go on in the present even though they are shattered. Their gradual understanding of the depth of the other's love for Ben helps each of them grow and change. Reid has captured beautifully the range of emotions, the anger, the fear, and the wracking grief that often come in the wake of an early and unexpected death. The reader sympathizes with Elsie and comes to respect Susan's fortitude as she piles the loss of her only son on top of the loss of her husband only a couple of years prior. It is hard to keep dry-eyed when reading this but in the end it is true and hopeful and healing, if not more than a little bittersweet.

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.

Emeralds Included by Betsy Woodman. The book is being released by Henry Holt on July 8, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Feathers fly and cultures clash as the Jolly Grant House prepares to welcome a special delivery from Scotland

In the third installment of the Jana Bibi series, Betsy Woodman takes us back to the Jolly Grant house for the arrival of Jana’s son, Jack, from Scotland, and his Hungarian bride-to-be, Katarina Esterhazy. The whole gang is excited to welcome their international visitors—and Jana is determined to repair the house to Jack’s high standards and those of her grandfather, from whom she inherited the eccentric building. But this puts a strain on Jana, both emotionally and financially, and she risks her most prized and valuable possession—the (surprisingly real!) emeralds she got from the Treasure Emporium—to help her through it.

Jana saved the town from a government dam in Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes and foiled an international bird-smuggling ring in Love Potion Number 10, but in Emeralds Included, Jana faces her biggest challenges yet: preparing for her son’s arrival and planning a wedding in the upside-down town of Harma Nagar!

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Book a day (collected)

Did you play along with the #bookaday postings in June, either on Facebook or on Twitter? I did and I thought I'd collect all of mine here for you.

June 1: Favorite book from childhood? The Fabulous Flight by Robert Lawson. This is the greatest book and it is long since out of print but it's so great my sister and I both bought copies off abebooks.com a while ago and we also have my mom's original copy at the cottage. We just wanted to make sure our kids will always have access to it.

June 2: Best bargain? This one is hard! Having worked both for a publisher and at a bookstore, I got a lot of books deeply discounted and I am always on the lookout for inexpensive books. But I think that the best deal was probably the quarter I paid for an old hardcover copy of Beverley Nichol's brilliant Laughter on the Stairs, which introduced me to a wonderful, witty author I'd never heard anyone else ever mention.

June 3: One with a blue cover? Since blue is my favorite color, I am always attracted to books with blue covers and have many, many, many to choose from. So I picked Mark Dunn's Welcome to Higby because the *whole* cover is blue.

June 4: Least favourite book by favourite author? Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I just can't help it but I don't love Fanny Price and her moral high ground.

June 5: Doesn't belong to me? Will I be stoned for admitting that I don't have any books that don't belong to me here? I rarely borrow books because I don't like feeling an obligation to get through them and get them back to their rightful owner. And as a corollary, I can be a bit squirrelly about lending my books too. It's like sending them off to summer camp but not knowing if/when they'll return. (And no, I don't send my kids to summer camp either, despite the fact that all camps would certainly return them to me on or before a specified date.)

June 6: The one I always give as a gift? Well, I try to tailor my book gifts specifically to the person I'm gifting but if I didn't have a clue, I'd probably get them my most recent raved about books: Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler or The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. Then again, I could always fall back on two I have for a while now loved: Silk by Alessandro Barrico or Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye. And for baby gifts, I always pick up both the Newbery and Caldecott winner for the year of the baby's birth (so obviously they vary year to year).

June 7: Forgot I owned it? I have an appalling amount of books and every time I poke around my shelves, I find something I forgot I owned. Sometimes I'm bad enough to have bought them more than once as well.

June 8: Have more than one copy? Normally I return duplicates to the store (the benefits of having everything cataloged and easily accessible but I do have multiple copies of the Harry Potter series because I bought the hardcovers when they were released and I fell in love with the cover art of the more recently released slipcovered paperbacks so I bought them too.

June 9: Film or tv tie-in? I really don't like movie or tv covers on books. I prefer to keep my media separate.

June 10: Reminds me of someone I love? Our torn and battered copy of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom reminds me of my wonderful reading children who used to request that book over and over again.

June 11: A secondhand bookshop gem? The B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain was the first book I ever read. My mother got rid of it at some point (and I haven't quite forgiven her for it) but a secondhand bookstore found it for me again when I was in high school. It had long been out of print when I was searching for it but it was reissued at some point so it's fairly easy to find now but it sure wasn't then!

June 12: I pretend to have read it? It's not a contest so I don't pretend to have read anything. I have never managed to finish Paradise Lost (twice) but I always admit that failure.

June 13: Makes me laugh? Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog is hilarious, truly laugh out loud funny.

June 14: An old favorite? I read James Michener's Hawaii one summer when I was 12 and I've had a soft spot for it ever since.

June 15: Favorite fictional father? There really aren't all that many great dads in fiction, are there? Or at least not in the fiction I read, I guess. I think I'll go with the slightly absent minded dad in The Penderwicks because while he isn't a focus of the narrative, he clearly loves his girls and allows them to have the sort of unstructured and wholesome childhood that makes the book and their adventures sing. He's kind, funny, understanding, and supportive. A peach of a dad.

June 16: Can't believe more people haven't read? Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye. I try and push this book on everyone in a tri-state area so surely by now everyone would have read it, right? Wrong! So what are you waiting for? Go read it.

June 17: Future classic? I wish I really could predict this sort of thing but since I can't, I'll say that I think that Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief will stand the test of time.

June 18: Bought on a recommendation? I bought Outlander by Diana Gabaldon after a friend raved about it. I was very reluctant to read a book so clearly marketed as a romance (I was still in my reading snob phase after school) but she really bullied me into it and since I still had a discount at the bookstore, I finally gave in. Those first four books (all that had been released at that point) sucked an entire weekend out of my life because I couldn't put them down.

June 19: Still can't stop talking about it? Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler is my rave book so far this year. I mentioned it at the WNBA National Board Meeting this past weekend and I mentioned it at book club again tonight. I suspect I'll be talking about it for a long time to come too.

June 20: Favorite cover? People who know my peccadillos well know that if a cover has water of any sort on it, I am completely sucked in. I particularly liked the hardcover version of Michael Parker's The Watery Part of the World.

June 21: Summer read? Well, this one depends on whether you tackle a big book in the summer or prefer lighter reads. When I was younger, I read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo one summer and its epic scale was wonderful for the long reading days. For a delightful, lighter, more modern read, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion was charming.

June 22: Out of Print? Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie is kind of out of print. You can get the e-book version but not the physical version (and we all already know how I feel about e-books). It is a magnificent book though and if I didn't have it already and could only get it via e-book, I'd cave.

June 23: Made to read at school? When you go to school forever and focus on literature, there's an awful lot of books you can list for this one so I think I'll pick a much less conventional choice: Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea, which I read for my Asian American Literature class in college.

June 24: Hooked me in to reading? This would have to be The B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain, the first book I ever read myself. I still remember the amazing feeling of reading for the first time. Nothing has ever beat it and it's why I still sink into books every chance I get.

June 25: Never finished it? Milton's Paradise Lost. Worse yet, I didn't finish it twice, once in 10th grade and once in grad school. Both times I slammed it shut muttering about how I wished Milton's daughter's hadn't written down their blind father's words and that since I knew the story of the Fall, I didn't have any need to plod onward with this brain numbingly, tiresome piece of horridness. Not that I have firm opinions on it or anything.

June 26: Should have sold more copies? Silk by Alessandro Baricco is amazing and is one that I always try to mention to people in hopes that this slim volume will sell enough to stay in print forever.

June 27: Want to be one of the characters? I don't know that there's any book where I'd happily be any and all of the characters but yes, I am cliché enough to admit I'd love to be Lizzie Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) or Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables) if I had my choice of characters within a said book. I'd also like to be Thursday Next from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series which starts with The Eyre Affair, because who wouldn't want to live in a fictional world all the time?!

June 28: Bought at my fave independent bookshop? I bought Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma at Safe Harbor Books in Cedarville, MI, a teeny, tiny bookshop up by our cottage. I try to buy as much as I can there every summer to say thanks for being there.

June 29: The one I have reread most often? If I don't count the books I read and read and read to my kids when they were small, it would have to be Pride and Prejudice, of course.

June 30: Would save if my house burned down? The family bible that dates back to my great great grandparents.

Review: Betty's (Little Basement) Garden by Laurel Dewey

When I was in college, my boyfriend and I were visiting some of his fraternity brothers in their off campus apartment. I didn't know the two guys we were visiting all that well so I was a bit uncomfortable. And as I do when I'm uncomfortable, I babbled away on topics of little to no consequence without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise. What did I latch onto while sitting with these two guys? Of course, I complimented them on the fantastically lush and gorgeous plant sitting in their window. I admitted how many houseplants I had murdered over my college dorm career and asked if they had any tips for me since they clearly had green thumbs. Obviously I didn't notice that my boyfriend and these two guys were all sitting there looking at me with their mouths open in incredulity. After we left, the boyfriend laughed uproariously over the fact that I had gushed over their marijuana plant, agreeing that I did indeed grow up in an ivory tower if I had no idea that that was what the plant was. What can I say? I was sheltered. So the whole pot culture is curious to me and I was intrigued to read Laurel Dewey's novel, Betty's (Little Basement) Garden, about a woman who starts growing marijuana in her basement.

Betty Craven is a widow in her early sixties. She is as conservative, judgmental, and Republican as it gets. She's known for her wonderful parties, her delicious homemade chocolates, her prize-winning garden, and always being put together and perfect. But all of that is a façade. Betty's marriage to her late husband was miserable; he was hateful and she lacked the courage to stand up to him. Her beloved only son, Frankie, died of an overdose, a terrible loss over which she feels crippling guilt. The gourmet chocolate shop she opened after her husband's death collapsed with the economy. And she's having to sell off antiques from her crumbling home just to make ends meet. Life is not going well for Betty. But after she signs a letter to the editor written by a friend arguing a need to limit the number of medical marijuana dispensaries allowed in her little town, her life changes 180 degrees.

One of Betty's coterie of upright, like-minded friends is dying of cancer. When she reluctantly goes to visit Peggy, she meets Peyton, Peggy's nephew, who is clearly a marijuana user. Betty is equal parts repulsed and drawn to him for his similarity to her late son and she is horrified when she discovers that he has taken the beautiful chocolates she made for Peggy, melted them down, and added cannabis to them so that Peggy will have some pain relief in her final days. But the very fact of his doing this plants a seed in Betty's mind. And before she knows it, she has applied to be a medical caregiver herself, is taking on patients, growing marijuana in her basement, starting a relationship with the owner of the Hippy Dippy Heath Food Store, and meeting the people who populate a very different social circle than the one in which she's lived her life so far.

Betty's character is clearly at a crossroads with her life falling down around her feet when she goes from horrified about the idea of legal marijuana to growing and sampling it herself. She is changing her life and outlook practically on a dime, having signed the strident letter to the editor against marijuana and the "criminal element" it brings with it to being completely immersed in the pot culture in a mere seven days. But if her turn around on the issue is quick, the story certainly isn't, taking more than 200 pages to get her there. In the chunk of the book prior to her putting her new decision into practice, there is a large amount of preachy research that does nothing to move the story along thrown at the reader. Apparently everyone Betty meets who is involved in growing or using marijuana (excuse me, cannabis) is a natural philosopher and more enlightened than Betty's narrow-minded, uptight, ignorant, Republican friends. And all of her new friends feel the need to share their life philosophy with Betty, making the book painfully repetitive. Betty remains conflicted about sharing her new life choices with her friends even as she jumps in with both feet and has the privilege of sharing the beauty of the life cycle with her patients. The cannabis activist in the novel suggests that Betty, with her classy (her caregiving business is even called The Classy Joint) and mainstream appearance, should become a vocal and visible symbol of all that is right about legalizing marijuana across the board. Apparently that's what Dewey has chosen to do here, use her character of Betty, a formerly misguided, now enlightened Republican, to further the call for legalization. And that would be fine in a political tract. In a novel, though, it was downright boring, overwhelming any plot and creating incredibly one-dimensional unrealistic characters.  I was terribly disappointed in this novel.

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

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