Sunday Salon: Welcome Home

I just spent the past week in London. I'll let that sink in for a minute (especially since it's still sinking in for me).

So yeah. London. The trip was a tenth anniversary present from my husband. It was also a fifteenth anniversary present. And yes, it was a twentieth anniversary trip too. But we finally managed to take it (and even over our 20th anniversary to boot). And it was really, really good. We walked all over the place, saw tons (and missed tons more), and had a generally good time. On the bad side, I got terrible blisters (par for the course), we ate at too many pubs (burgers should *never* be cooked all the way to the grey and depressing stage), and apparently no wait staff in London is too concerned with ever refilling a glass of water. But in the grand scheme of things, those are completely minor and I'd love to go back and see all the things we missed. Since the trip was so long in coming, my husband was generally amenable to whatever I wanted to do and only winced a few times as I hit three bookstores in the course of the week. He cheerfully went along with the open top bus tour where I was the only person on the whole bus to know that Ian Fleming also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in addition to his James Bond books. Hubbers anteed up for a behind the scenes tour of the British Library, which probably interested him not at all. He came along uncomplainingly on the couple of London Walks tours I picked (and really enjoyed the Hidden Pubs of London tour I chose for his benefit but which had enough history and literary references to keep me entertained between stops for beer and ale). He even chose to ensconce himself in the fifth floor bar at the five story Waterstones on Picadilly rather than huffing and chivvying me along in my shopping there. It was only marginally alarming to him that I made friends with two of the lovely booksellers who made it their mission to find me good reads to take home with me. In fact, I walked the store with those two charming men for almost two hours and I only got a text from D. once. All it asked was whether I was almost done or if he should order another one. And trust me, the man knows how expensive it is to let me wander unattended (or worse yet, with my own personal shoppers) in a cloud of bliss at a bookstore for any length of time whatsoever. Suffice it to say my entire carry-on (which I promptly checked because it was heavy) was filled with books coming home. As for the carry-on I did carry, well, it was pretty heavily loaded with books too. ::grin::

With all of the sightseeing and shopping, you'd be correct if you think I didn't get much reading done while I was gone. I tried to sleep on the plane over to forestall jetlag but I did do a fair bit of reading on the way home. After almost 9 hours in the air, 15 minutes waiting to be let off the plane because customs was too full to let us off immediately, an appallingly long time standing in customs itself (they've automated parts that make the whole process even less efficient than it used to be--oh joy, oh rapture), and then a good 30 minutes waiting for our personal taxi driver (aka one of our teenagers) to actually find the airport and collect us, I arrived home to a towering stack of mail spread across the counter, dirty dishes stacked in the sink--because the dishwasher right next to the sink requires a person to actually open it--, and a mound of dirty laundry piled on top of the washer--because apparently putting things in it was too much effort. The kids were marginally glad to see us although I think they're sorry their current diet of cereal and pizza is going to have to change.  But the dog, well, she made it all worthwhile coming home, at least until she peed all over the floor in her excitement. ::sigh::  Gee whiz, welcome home!

Although I didn't read as much as I intended (four of the ten books I took came back unopened), I did get some quality reading time in on a few days and that last 9 hour flight would have provided even more reading time had I thought to pull a third book out of my carry-on when we boarded (middle seat, don't 'cha know). Instead, once I finished book number two, I was reduced to watching the movie Mr. Turner, which was egregiously terrible. Although Timothy Spall does have quite a range of truffling pig grunts and snorts in his acting repertoire. I'm going to be bitter about having wasted all that good reading time on that movie for quite some time.  But enough about the movie, my reading travels this week took me to wine making country in California with a woman who finds out first that her fiancé and then all of her family members all seem to be harboring secrets that she isn't sure she can endure, to the apocalyptic future after a waterless flood has wiped out most of humanity, to France where an elderly man and his friend set out on a journey to trace the Tour de France, to Milwaukee where a formerly Orthodox Jewish woman is coming to terms with her past and her mother, and to an island off the coast of Maine where two best friends must work through something that could destroy them. Where did your reading take you this past week?

Review: The Balance Project by Susie Orman Schnall

An entire forest has probably died to print all the books and articles out there on how to have it all: career, marriage, and family. But do all those things that say women can do everything really have it right? What happens when women can't pull it all off? Are they failures? Or are they just normal? Susie Orman Schnall's newest novel, The Balance Project, takes a close look at this idea, the message it gives to women, and the ultimate cost of this advice.

Katherine Whitney is the COO of the health food giant Green Goddess and Co, happily married to her professor husband, and mother to two young daughters. She's also the author of a best-selling book about work-life balance, appearing on television and in magazines constantly and acting as a role model to a nation of working mothers. But Katherine's life isn't as easy and as balanced as the shiny façade and the together demeanor might suggest. In fact, without her dedicated assistant, Lucy Cooper, keeping her together, all the balls Katherine has in the air would likely collide. And although Lucy's job is infinitely less high powered than Katherine's, her own life is so out of balance, it's about to crash and burn too.

Lucy originally wanted a position in digital media but to get her foot in the door at Green Goddess, she accepted a position as an assistant. Three years on, she's working for Katherine Whitney and has become indispensable to her, especially now when so many things are all of a sudden converging on Katherine and she's stretched thinner than she's ever been. This means that Lucy is busier than she's ever been too and she finds herself cancelling on her lovely and understanding long-term boyfriend Nick more than she should. When Nick finally proposes marriage to Lucy and she finds herself unable to say yes because of her deep-seated fear of marriage, the chaos at work keeps her from having to dwell on the mess she's making of her own life and what she needs to do to fix it. But eventually, choices will have to be made whether to help Katherine maintain the very public perfect façade she's created or whether to salvage Lucy's own life.

Schnall has captured the harried pressure that many women find themselves facing as they try to achieve perfection in all areas of their lives without having enough hours in the day. Her portrayal of the panic and the stress so many feel when one or more things has to slide in order to focus on the most important thing is spot on and very real. Although the book itself takes a firm stance on the viability of this "having it all" culture we live in, it never feels preachy. It is very much a book of this time with numerous cultural references to firmly place it in the here and now. Lucy's character starts off appealing and likable but the reader wants to smack her when she allows herself to be a doormat and a martyr to work and to the smooth functioning of Katherine's world without taking into account the importance of everything in her own life. Katherine is, on balance, generally kind but she has some spectacular moments of nastiness and selfishness, often not seeing Lucy as anything other than a cog in the machine that she directs. Both women are less sympathetic as the book goes on and they continue to bow to outside expectations to the detriment of their future happiness but their on-going capitulation to these unrealistic expectations points to the question of just why this is such a challenge for women. Is it institutionalized? Is it self-inflicted? And how do we change things without handicapping women? These are questions that aren't really answered, as they really can't be. The problem is continuing and all we can do is try to get to the bottom of it. Readers interested in this dynamic will be find this an interesting and thought-provoking read for sure.

For more information on Susie Orman Schnall and the book, visit her webpage, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest. Check out her GoodReads author page. For others' opinions on the book, check it out on Amazon.

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

Review: In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi

Books teach us many things. The best books and stories reflect the human condition, helping us understand how to face any number of situations we encounter in our lives. They show us what is possible, both good and bad. And although we may hope to never feel the need to look to certain works for guidance, they are still available to us if we need them. To read books is to live many lives, some truly and some vicariously. But what happens when you are forced to lead a life you didn't want and didn't choose, one that threatened to pull you under? When Dante scholar and professor Joseph Luzzi loses his wife in a car accident the same day his daughter is born, he is thrust into a life he doesn't want to lead, lost and wandering without any map. His memoir, In a Dark Wood, recounts the years he spent learning to find his way out of grief and mourning, finally learning to be a father and to love again, thanks to close a close reading of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Luzzi's wife Katherine was eight and a half months pregnant when she was hit and killed in an automobile accident. Although doctors could not save her life, they could save the baby, delivering tiny Isabel by emergency caesarean. Luzzi had been looking forward to becoming a father, despite the fact that his own father did not give him a model he wanted to follow in his own parenting. But when he loses Katherine, he is too overcome with grief to take care of Isabel, giving her over to the care of his old-world Calabrian mother and sisters, plunging himself into work to distract himself from the pain of loss. Luckily his work is on Dante, author of one of history's most famous lost love's laments and ultimately a guide to helping Luzzi come to terms with his unwanted and unlooked for vita nuova (new life).

The deeply personal memoir of loss, grief, and longing is intricately intertwined with Luzzi's literary exploration of Dante, especially as Dante's loss of his beloved Beatrice mirrored Luzzi's own journey through his loss of Katherine and the exile he feels from his own life. Dante's journey through the underworld, purgatory, and ultimately into paradise, is mirrored by Luzzi's years of struggle to come out the other side of his own dark wood of deep and paralyzing grief. He looked to Dante to help him understand how it is possible to still love someone who has become incorporeal, gone from this world forever. Luzzi finds some solace in the parallels he finds in Dante but the book cannot show him how to be a father. From the very beginning, he has an inability to connect with Isabel because of being emotionally frozen to protect against the overwhelming agony that his wife's death carries for him. And in Katherine's absence as Isabel's flesh and blood mother, Luzzi does not know how he should father this baby, this toddler, this child either.

As he addresses his own despair, he pulls directly from Dante's writing and life experiences, weaving the literary and the personal tightly together. His own life is an illustration of Dante's journey. Or perhaps Dante's journey is an illustration of Luzzi's life. His writing about his own life is raw but the literary analysis, while reinforcing the shared experience, helps make the emotion a little less overwhelming to the reader. Luzzi spares nothing in opening up about his loneliness and his floundering as a father. He is honest about the failures at moving on in his life, wanting to replicate the family that was forever lost with Katherine's death, one that truly perhaps never quite existed in the first place. But Dante doesn't just teach him about death, pushing him to the purgatory of healing and the paradise of love as well. As Luzzi says, "every grief story is a love story" and this is certainly that.  It's a wrenching tale skillfully told, literate and accessible both.

For more information about Joseph Luzzi and the book, check out his website, like his Facebook page, follow him on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours 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.

Two Fridays in April by Roisin Meaney. The book is being released by Hachette Books Ireland on June 1, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: It's Friday, April 2. Daphne Darling knows that she should be celebrating her stepdaughter Una's 17th birthday, but it's hard, because the date also marks the one-year anniversary of her husband's death, and she and Una just can't seem to connect anymore. Daphne can't turn to her own mother Isobel for advice, as their relationship is distant, to say the least, and Mo, Finn's elderly mother, is still grief-stricken at the death of her only son, so she is of little help. But by the end of that day in April, marking the occasion with a slice of cake and a glass of wine will be the last thing on anyone's mind. . . Before that Friday, Daphne, Mo, and Isobel were all stuck in the past, with their grief and their loss. And then Una takes matters into her own hands, and even though she makes a terrible mistake, she teaches Daphne, Mo, and Isobel something about life: that it is to be lived and that, in spite of everything they've been through, happiness can still be a part of it.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison
The Balance Project by Susie Orman Schnall
The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry
In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

Reviews posted this week:

Five Night Stand by Richard Alley
Find the Good by Heather Lende
It's Not Me It's You by Mhairi McFarlane
The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society by Amy Hill Hearth
The Unlikely Lady by Valerie Bowman

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

The Surfacing by Cormac James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
The Promise by Ann Weisgarber
A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison
The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry
In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi

Monday Mailbox

Even a few days short of a full week (long explanation that no one cares to hear), I was a very spoiled girl as you can see below. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman came from Washington Square Press.

I've already reviewed this absolutely delightful novel here.

The Balance Project by Susie Orman Schnall came from Spark Press and BookSparks for a blog tour.

The assistant to a work-life balance author is the only thing keeping the balls in the air for her employer, at the expense of her own life. Since I think it's pretty nigh impossible to "have it all," I am very curious to see what happens when said assistant must make the decision between continuing on like this or letting a ball or two drop.

Fishbowl by Bradley Somer came from St. Martin's Press.

A goldfish decides to jump out of his bowl and as he plummets 27 stories toward the street, he gets a view into all the apartments he passes. Sounds quirky and fun, no?!

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave came from BookSparks PR for a blog tour.

About a woman who returns home to the family vineyard after discovering her fiancé has been keeping secrets only to find that everyone else has too, this sounds delicious.

In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi came from Harper Wave and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

This memoir about grief and Dante speaks to the literature student of my soul.

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.

Review: The Unlikely Lady by Valerie Bowman

I do enjoy my Regency-set historical romances, especially when the heroine is a bluestocking and the hero has a grand library. That makes me want to dive into the book and win the hero myself despite the fact that most likely I would have been the illiterate maid dusting the books if I had actually lived in this time. Valerie Bowman's third novel in her Playful Brides series, The Unlikely Lady, has the bluestocking, the hero's amazing library, and as an added bonus, it's an homage to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Jane Lowndes and Garrett Upton don't much like each other. Given that Jane is one of Garrett's cousin Lucy's best friends, they cannot avoid each other though. They meet again at the pre-wedding house party before Lucy and Jane's mutual friend Cassandra's long awaited wedding. They immediately start their customary sniping tossing pointed barbs at each other until they resolve to try and be civil to make Cassandra more comfortable. They still don't think much of each other though. An uneasy détente is maintained until the beautiful but nasty and conniving widow of Garrett's friend arrives uninvited and imposes herself on the party in an effort to ensnare Garrett, who has been financially maintaining her and her children for years now thanks to his guilt over his friend's death.

One of the pre-wedding festivities is a masquerade ball. Jane agrees to forgo her usual frumpy clothing, leave her book behind in her room, and navigate without her glasses, despite her appallingly poor eyesight. Garrett spends much of the ball trying to politely avoid the widow and as a result ends up completely drunk. When a blind as a bat heroine looking for a little scandal to convince her parents she never wants to wed and a blind drunk hero end up together, they end up in each others' arms, not knowing who the other is, at least not at first. The scandal is that they find they like it and perhaps each other too. When Lucy and Cassandra come to almost the exactly right conclusion about Jane and Garrett's disappearance from the ball, they conspire to match these two up by telling each that the other is in love with them. Of course, with a determined widow lurking about, the path of love cannot run smoothly.

Both Jane and Garrett were engaging characters and if one overlooks the fact that their chemistry goes from dead annoyance to desire and love in zero flat after just one kiss, the story was a fun one. That Jane didn't change her interests one jot and that Garrett not only didn't want her to but also shared a mutual enjoyment of reading was definitely appealing. The resolution of the widow's plot line was a bit over the top but overall, this was an amusing and quick read for readers of historical romance.

Review: Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society by Amy Hill Hearth

Some things just can't be believed and Southern literature in particular is chock full of such things. Characters are zany; events are outlandish. Or is it that characters are outlandish and events are zany? Either way, the hallmark of fun southern fiction is pure wacky. Amy Hill Hearth's novel Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society has over the top and wacky in spades.

When Dora Witherspoon, who rescues turtles and works at the Post Office is caught leafing through the only copy of Vogue magazine to ever come through the Naples, Florida post office by it's rightful owner, Jackie Hart, they strike up a conversation. Jackie is new to town, a Yankee in a very southern enclave. She's bored and doesn't fit into this town her husband has moved her to so she decides to start up a book club at the library. The oddly eclectic bunch who show up for the first meeting are all town outsiders of one sort or another. There's Dora, who is divorced; the librarian; a plain woman who secretly writes steamy romances and sexy articles for magazines; an elderly woman convicted of killing her husband and newly released from prison; a literate young, black maid with dreams of higher education, and the only homosexual man in town who also happens to live with his alligator hunting mother. The only thing any of these people have in common is their outsider status and their interest in the book club and yet they come together as friends and partners in crime on some truly crazy, sometimes scary adventures.

The novel is set in 1962 but it is told from the perspective of Dora fifty years on, now in her 80s. She recounts the group's formation and slow bonding plus the roiling tensions in town that particular summer through the lens of Jackie's non-native lack of understanding. There's the ongoing mystery of what really did happen to Bailey's husband and the not really a mystery of who Miss Dreamsville, the sultry sounding radio personality who keeps the town captivated, is. The group also has a scary run-in with the local KKK and Jackie's young son is arrested as a suspected Communist. The tone of the book is light as fits a goofy caper style novel but it actually has some weightier issues than it appears at first blush from prejudice and racial hatred to the expected role of women and the embracing of "othernesss." The characters aren't always fully fleshed out and the situations are definitely over the top but the breezy telling of the tale keeps the reader turning the pages even as she shakes her head at the crazy.

Review: The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin

My parents have long had an alluring looking coffee table book on Sisi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, that they brought back from a trip. Since I usually take my own collection of books with me to read on the holidays we spend at their house, I haven't done much more than flip through it to look at the pictures but I've done that one more than one occasion. So I was definitely intrigued to read a book where the famous royal beauty was a major character. That the author was Daisy Goodwin, whose The American Heiress I enjoyed, made it that much more appealing. But The Fortune Hunter is not focused on Sisi so much as it is on two characters whose lives are changed by her very presence.

Charlotte Baird is a quiet and unassuming young woman possessed of an enormous fortune. She has a quick wit and a settled sensibility to her. Her older half brother has the administration of her fortune until she attains her majority or marries and he has short-listed several suitable men for her consideration. She's more interested in pursuing the art of photography than she is marrying until she meets one of her brother's fellow officers, the dashing but rather unsuitable Captain Bay Middleton. When they meet, Bay has just been thrown over by his married lover after she discovers that she is pregnant with his child and must go to her husband to prevent the child from appearing illegitimate. He is still smarting from his dismissal but finds himself captivated by this intelligent and no nonsense young woman. And although they come to a sort of secret understanding, the arrival of Elisabeth, the Empress of Austria, threatens to change everything.

As the preeminent rider in England, Middleton, who is in fact a cavalry officer, is assigned to pilot Sisi for the current hunting season. She herself is a marvelous equestrienne and the two of them spend hours out in the field riding together and testing each other's prowess in the saddle. And soon they are lovers as well. Despite this liaison, Bay doesn't want to give up Charlotte, and torn between them, he must juggle the two women carefully, one too astute to miss the situation and one too entitled to give her rival much of a thought. When Charlotte takes a furtive picture of the Empress, who is accounted the most beautiful woman in the world, and of Bay gazing on her with patent adoration, and the picture comes to public view, not only the personal is revealed but political underpinnings come suddenly into play.

This is not a typical romance, even if it has many of the hallmarks of one. Goodwin draws a fascinating picture of Victorian England, the horsey set, and the nascent art of photography. She's captured several different, sometimes unconventional, love stories and the longing and desire in each beautifully. But she's also captured the uncertainty of women through Charlotte's fear that she is only being pursued for her money rather than herself and through Sisi's poignant fear of aging and losing her much vaunted looks. A thick feeling of unhappiness pervaded much of the novel with each of the characters trying so hard to find something to hold onto in life that would bring them joy. For Charlotte, that thing is clearly photography. For Bay, it's riding and horses. For Sisi, it's hard to say as she continually pushes for more of everything in search of the elusive happiness. In both Bay and Sisi, there is a certain recklessness while Charlotte is a much steadier character. The secondary characters surrounding this trio were well drawn and helped to show the stifling social rules under which each of them was forced to live. Based on real people, the story was very readable although Sisi as a character was rather less likable than Charlotte for me, coming across as petulant and spoiled on occasion. Charlotte's continued devotion to Bay, despite the rumors of his infidelities and her own photographic proof, would be inexplicable if not for her tender age and the mysterious workings of the human heart. This is pleasant and readable historical fiction although I must admit to liking Goodwin's prior book more.

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

Review: It's Not Me It's You by Mhairi McFarlane

Sometimes we get a little complacent. Sometimes life needs a little shaking up. Changing a settled existence is definitely scary but it's far better to make changes yourself than to have changes happen to you before you're ready for them. In theory, the heroine of Mhairi McFarlane's light new novel, It's Not Me It's You, understands this but when the changes she instigates throw her for a loop, she's completely taken by surprise and forced into even bigger changes than she ever imagined or planned for.

Delia Moss is a quirkily dressed ginger. She works at the local council in comms, a rather uninspiring position, and she's been with her bar owner boyfriend Paul for ten years. As the novel starts, she has decided to propose to Paul, to move their relationship forward from the stasis it's in. Paul's rather lackluster acceptance of her proposal doesn't really bother her until later that night when she gets a panicked text from him meant for the much younger woman with whom he's been cheating. All of a sudden her entire life is thrown upside down. She immediately moves out of his house, the one she lovingly decorated and made into a home for the two of them, staying with her parents and her video game obsessed younger brother. She gets called on the carpet at work for trying to uncover the identity of the internet troll, nicknamed Peshwari Naan, who has been wreaking small amounts of havoc on the council's webpage, despite the fact that her boss has asked her to look into the matter. And when she is further chastised for sharing information about her personal life in a team building exercise that asks for just such personal revelations, she has finally had it, quitting the incredibly unfulfilling job and impulsively moving from Newcastle to London and in with her best friend Emma.

Once in London, she finds a job in a PR firm that seems exciting and fast-paced, unconventional and interesting. In her new position, she meets an attractive journalist named Alex but she is offended when he asks her to spy on her boss for him. She refuses. But when she leaves a binder of privileged information behind her after their meeting, Alex has the nerve to blackmail her into providing him information.  Terrified of losing her job, she agrees despite not being able to abide Alex. As she watches her boss, Kurt, function over time though, she starts to realize that Alex may not be the bad guy in the scenario. The truth is not only being massaged and stretched beyond recognition, but Kurt is flat out lying and manufacturing things, things that are completely amoral. That he is a lech doesn't add to his cache for Delia. Meanwhile Paul has started a campaign to win Delia back.   Delia has never been so conflicted.

Although Delia is in her thirties, she has never learned her own worth, never fought for what she deserved out of life, always settling for comfortable and safe, not wanting to rock the boat. But all this fear of reaching for something greater has resulted in so far is a broken heart, her abandoning drawing the Fantastic Miss Fox comic that once meant so much to her creatively, and a tangle of confusion over what she really wants from life. Despite the fact that she is naïve and not as full of self-confidence as she initially seems, Delia's a really fun character. Her experiences moving from the smaller, familiar Newcastle to the big and overwhelming city of London are well written and she keeps finding herself in situations that are actually rather funny. Plus you just have to love a character who loves an incontinent dog named Parsnip. The secondary characters here are quirky and appealing and each of them is integral to the story. There is one plot thread that doesn't make as much sense as the others and seems to only exist to introduce one of the secondary characters, something that could have easily been done without the added intrigue of the extra storyline that just fizzles out. There are occasional over the top moments and the novel ran on a tad long but in general it was a frothy bit of chick lit, easy and quick to read despite its length.

For more information about Mhairi McFarlane and the book, check out her website, like her Facebook page,, follow her on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours 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.

Land Where I Flee by Prajwal Parajuly. The book is being released by Quercus on June 2, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, Prajwal Parajuly has established himself as a distinctive voice in literature about the South Asian diaspora. Now in his debut novel, Land Where I Flee about returning home, Parajuly demonstrates that he is, as Manil Suri noted, "a master capturing, with wit and humor, the day-to-day interactions between his characters."

To commemorate Chitralekha Nepauney's Chaurasi--her landmark eighty-fourth birthday--three of Chitralekha's grandchildren are travelling to Gangtok, Sikkim, to pay their respects. Agastaya is flying in from New York. Although a successful oncologist, he is dreading his family's inquisition into why he is not married, and terrified that the reason for his bachelordom will be discovered.

Joining him are his sisters Manasa and Bhagwati, travelling from London and Colorado respectively. One the Oxford-educated achiever; the other the disgraced eloper--one moneyed but miserable; the other ostracized but optimistic.

All three harbor the same dual objective: to emerge from the celebrations with their formidable grandmother's blessing and their nerves intact: a goal that will become increasingly impossible thanks to a mischievous maid and a fourth, uninvited guest.

Review: Find the Good by Heather Lende

It's so easy to focus on the negative. I can stew for a long time about someone cutting me off in traffic. I walk off the tennis court replaying my errors. I let unkind comments fester. And I know I'm not alone in this. But what if we chose to focus on happiness and the gifts that everyone in our lives brings to the table instead of dwelling on the negative?  What if, as the title of Heather Lende's lovely new book suggests, we Find the Good?  It won't change my traffic situation or improve my tennis game, but it sure might make me a more positive, contented person.

Life is lived in the dash between the dates on our headstone and until that last date is engraved, we can always change the story in between. Lende is the obituary writer in her small Alaskan fishing village. Often she knows the people she's writing about very well so it's heartbreakingly easy for her to find the good in someone's life as she goes about the business of distilling a life to the space allotted in the paper. Each short chapter is packed with wisdom gleaned from the life of someone who has died. And the brief slice of their life that Lende captures is wonderful, giving a real sense of the person. There is humor here and there are unexpected revelations. Lende shares a bit of her own family's challenges and the life-affirming way that she decided to face them. And as she does, she reminds us all that how we face each thing in our life is in fact a decision. We can dwell or we can celebrate and celebrating is infinitely more fun. It is a quick and welcoming read, one that is easy to dip in and out of when you need to be reminded about all the positives in life thanks to its vignette style essays. Heartwarming, simple, and direct, this is a gorgeous little book with a beautiful message that will leave you smiling as you close the cover. If you're looking for the good, you'll certainly find a lot of it here.

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

Review: Five Night Stand by Richard J. Alley

Some people live through music. It courses through them, leaking out their fingertips. They wrap their lives around it and it, in turn, drives their lives. So when it comes time to stand up from the keyboard or set down the trumpet, there is a poignancy and a sadness as if of grief. These freighted emotions pervade the whole of Richard J. Alley's novel, Five Night Stand.

Oliver Pleasant is in his eighties and his long and illustrious career is at an end. Drawn to the piano and the smoky, lush sounds of jazz from a young age, over his lifetime, Oliver has played with all the well known greats and is himself a jazz legend. His beloved wife is long since passed, he is estranged from his children, and it is time for him to retire down to Memphis to live with his niece for his remaining time. But before he goes, he is going to play one last five night stand at a local club in New York City and go out with a proper bow to the music that sustained and enriched him his entire life.

Frank Severs is a middle-aged freelance newspaper reporter from Memphis who idolizes Pleasant. Frank was laid off from his newspaper job, his novel in progress is collecting dust, and his marriage is so strained under the weight of fertility issues that it might not survive. When Frank hears about Oliver's final five night stand, he arranges to fly to New York to bear witness and hopefully write a saleable piece out of the experience.

Agnes Cassady is a Memphian like Frank and an amazingly talented pianist like Oliver. Only in her twenties, she suffers from a degenerative disease that is slowly robbing her of her ability to play the piano and ultimately of her life. She's traveled to New York in a last ditch effort to find a treatment that can arrest or possibly cure her disease and while she's there, she discovers that Oliver Pleasant is playing his farewell five night stand, a concert she must see.

The three characters are tied together by their mutual love of music, jazz in particular, and they connect over Oliver's final set of performances. Each of the characters comes into the story much like the band playing with Oliver comes on stage, one at a time, each of them riffing on their own before weaving into the larger tapestry of the story. Oliver, Frank, and Agnes all have extended and important back stories that are carried in their present and they are told seamlessly, another melody line in the overall composition. Each character carries sorrow deep within and the tone of the novel is melancholic.  It is a little slow to start as the connections between the characters build towards their coming together.  Regret and long held secrets infuse all three stories, creating an incredible depth of feeling here. The novel is very much like a jazz piece with the writing weaving in and out of separate stories that all come together to make one harmonious whole.

For more information about Richard J. Alley and the book, check out his website; like him on Facebook; follow him on Twitter, Instagram, or Google Plus; take a look at the book's 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Five Night Stand by Richard Alley
The Unlikely Lady by Valerie Bowman
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
The Promise by Ann Weisgarber

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison

Reviews posted this week:

The House of Hawthorne by Erika Robuck
Trail of Broken Wings by Sejal Badani
Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland
The Grown-Ups by Robin Antalek
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrick Backman
The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

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


Find the Good by Heather Lende
The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society by Amy Hill Hearth
The Surfacing by Cormac James
it's Not Me It's You by Mhairi McFarlane
Five Night Stand by Richard Alley
The Unlikely Lady by Valerie Bowman
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
The Promise by Ann Weisgarber

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I've really enjoyed Perry's down to earth memoirs and I'm excited to read this small town Wisconsin novel that deals with developers, love, and religion.

The Grown-Ups by Robin Antalek came from BookSparks for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this complicated friendship novel here.

The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen came from BookSparks for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this lovely memoir here.

The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright came from Gallery Books

I've already reviewed this sweet story of middle-aged reinvention 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.

Sunday Salon: A Quick Jotting

This past week has been crazy hectic for me. In fact, I don't think there's a square on my calendar until the end of June that doesn't have at least one thing, if not two, four, or six things, written on it. No wonder I am so frazzled I can't remember my children's names half the time! This weekend is my daughter's annual dance recital. After this one, she'll only have next year left before she goes off to college so I feel a strange sense of things coming to an end too. Not that the end is in sight when I am backstage with all the competition girls, up to my ears in quick changes, scattering hair pins to the winds, and trying to keep costumes corralled in one place while changing a kid's hair style with my free (ha!) hand. It's not much of a reading and relaxing weekend, that's for sure! But even with all the things coming at me at the speed of light, my day is not right if I can't end it quietly sitting in bed with a book, winding down by escaping into other worlds and lives I could never imagine on my own.

This past week my reading travels have taken me to London with a woman who must learn her own worth; to New York for a jazz legend's final five night performance; to Regency England with a bluestocking resolved not to wed; and into Appalachia as mountains are destroyed, hollows are filled in, and one boy comes of age. Right now I am in Galveston just before Isaac hits with a woman who traveled there to marry an old acquaintance and escape a scandal in her Ohio hometown. Where has your reading taken you this past week?

Review: The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

I have always been fascinated by the idea of ballroom dancing, despite not exactly being the embodiment of grace and poise myself. There's something elegant and classic about spinning seemingly effortlessly about the floor, shoes sliding and dress flaring. When my husband and I took a few lessons leading up to our wedding, we showed less than zero aptitude though and so I will be content to watch from the side as others swoop and twirl gracefully. The heroine in Kim Wright's novel, The Unexpected Waltz, doesn't just watch though, she immerses herself in the welcoming community and culture of ballroom dancing.

Kelly was widowed about a year ago and since the death of her husband, she's really been floundering. Over the past year she's come to realize that the person she was in her marriage is perhaps not an entirely honest reflection of who she really is. As the younger, second wife of a wealthy older husband, she has played her part as a society wife quite well, serving on committees, lunching with other wives, decorating her home and garden, participating in fund raisers, and so on. But in doing so, she's lost touch with the woman she once was, trading her once passionate life for stability and contentment. She is the woman who creates elaborate, if clichéd, tablescapes to grace every party and event she hosts, a clear metaphor for her own life--unoriginal but expected just the same. When she inadvertently walks out of a local grocery store with an apple she hasn't paid for in her hand, she turns around to make it right but accidentally walks into the ballroom dance studio next door instead of the grocery store. And just like that, her life changes.

Agreeing to lessons, Kelly is drawn to the discipline of ballroom dance, to the kindness and acceptance of the community she finds in the studio, to the trials and tribulations of her fellow dancers, and to the person that dance allows her to bloom into being. Her newfound love for dancing coupled with her volunteer work for Hospice and her interactions with Carolina, the young mother dying of breast cancer she visits there, helps Kelly slowly learn to make the life she wants, embrace moving on, and gives her a chance to find out who she really is both by visiting the unresolved past and looking to the future.

Kelly is a quiet character, not one given to flash, but her journey to discover the woman she's suppressed for so long is an appealing one. She takes honest stock of herself, facing her mistakes and failures as she does her soul searching. Only by accepting everything about herself, including the truth about her marriage, her age, and her previous stagnation will she be able to find the confidence in herself to go against her lawyer's words to her after her husband's death: "Nothing has to change." For Kelly, thanks to her reevaluation of life in middle age, things do in fact have to change. There are a lot of secondary characters in the book, many of them fellow ballroom dancers, but they mostly remain quick sketches with only brief touches on their lives. The description of the dance steps that Kelly tries to master can bog down some, especially for readers with no dance experience behind them. It's hard to capture something so physical and visual for the uninitiated. The pacing is generally slow, deliberate, and measured like the classic dances until the end when it becomes almost frenzied in its rush to wrap up. This is a sweet tale of unexpected interests, embracing change, and learning that it's never to late to move forward in life.

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

I have a dread of precocious child narrators. It's so hard to make them realistic and likable. The juxtaposition of knowing wisdom but no real life experience to support it is very hard to pull off in young characters. I had high hopes for Fredrik Backman's My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry since I absolutely, unreservedly loved his A Man Called Ove, despite the narration by a precocious seven, almost eight, year old girl. But as can happen when hopes and expectations are so high, there was no way for the book to live up to them.

Elsa is seven, almost eight years old, and her best friend is her nutty, opinionated, and cantankerous grandmother. Elsa is smart and imaginative and she love Harry Potter. She is also different from other children; she's being bullied at school and she is anxious about how Halfie, her half-sibling, will change her life. Her best escape from all of her worries is when she and Granny visit their invented Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where Granny tells Elsa wondrous fairy tales in their own invented language. When her Granny dies of cancer, Elsa can no longer find her way to the very precious land of make believe she and Granny created and she can't protect herself against the bullies who make her life so incredibly miserable. But the monster living on the first floor of her apartment building comes to her rescue and the wurse that lives in another apartment becomes her constant companion, helping her to cope with her loss and the big, scary things going on in her life. Her grandmother's strange final wish for Elsa was to deliver letters of apology that tell Elsa the story of who Granny was before she was a grandmother and how she was tied to many of the people Elsa knows. As she delivers her grandmother's letters of apology, she discovers a tangled and surprising web of interconnected relationships amongst the inhabitants of her apartment building, in the process building an extended family for herself.

The premise of the novel is charming and I hoped that it would contain some of the magic that characterized A Man Called Ove but it didn't. Elsa was too precocious and unbelievable as a seven year old. All of the secondary characters were intentionally quirky and the plot itself was overwhelmed and dominated by the long running fairy tale. Figuring out who each character was in the so-called invented story Granny told Elsa through the years and how they would all become heroes for Elsa became wearisome and another distraction from the story itself. The love between Elsa and Granny was clearly deep and abiding and retreating into the fairy tale was, for Elsa, a valuable coping mechanism but it became too repetitious. The reader didn't need the escape from Elsa's life so the continual retreat from it ended up being an irritant. There is a sense of poignancy and vulnerability in the story and for this child of divorce who is burdened with an ineffective father and a busy mother who finds the most love and acceptance from the grandmother who dies and leaves her but even that feeling isn't enough to save this otherwise rather saccharine tale. Read A Man Called Ove but be forewarned that this one isn't a patch on that one.

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

Review: The Grown-Ups by Robin Antalek

When you think back to your teenaged self and your group of friends, can you remember the times you felt as if you were already grown up, as if you already knew what the world meant and how life worked? I sure can. But if you are a bit distant from those years, or watching them from the vantage point of a parent, you can see how jaded but naïve you, or your children, are about real life. And you know there's not really one defining moment where you become forever an adult, that growing up is a long process done in fits and starts and that what once looked like a definitive thing might, in fact, be an eternal process. Robin Antalek's new novel, The Grown Ups, shows this coming of age and dawning understanding about the nature of change and growth very well.

Opening the summer they are fifteen, the novel follows Sam, Suzie, and Bella over a fifteen year span. Suzie's life is falling apart, with her mother no longer able to turn a blind eye to her father's philandering. Sam is less concerned with what all of the neighborhood infidelities mean and more with just what he and Suzie are up to in her basement rec room and whether or not they qualify as boyfriend and girlfriend. In fact, his own mother will leave their family this same summer, just as Suzie's family leaves town for a fresh start. Bella's mother is an invalid and Bella is Suzie's best friend.  In the wake of Suzie's move and subsequent complete disappearance from the larger group of neighborhood friends, Bella will find that Sam is her own first love, even if she is not his. As each of the three move through the years, learning how to navigate the shoals of impending adulthood, college, relationships, family crises, and eventually the decline and aging of parents, they come to a burgeoning understanding of the larger things at play in their lives and families. They come together and grow apart, waxing and waning in each others' lives and thoughts through the years.

The novel is a snapshot of life for three people, each of whom is shaped by their life, experiences, and hard won wisdom as they take different paths and different timelines toward the elusive concept of adulthood. The three of them, Sam, Suzie, and Bella, are inextricably intertwined, even when they are not speaking to each other because of distance or circumstance. Their bond is indelible. Told in chapters from alternating perspectives, there are jumps in the timeline that allow for moments, large and small, to build the picture of their growth and change. The characters are likable and Antalek has done a good job capturing not only their confused teenaged voices but also the maturation of their voices as their lives and experiences mold them into the people they've become by the end of the story. There are no big cataclysms or pyrotechnics here, it's just a steady, well done, and engaging slice of life bildungsroman.

For more information on Robin Antalek and the book, visit her webpage, find her on Facebook, or follow her on Instagram or Tumblr. For others' opinions on the book, check it out on Amazon.

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

Review: Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland

Screens are ubiquitous. Technology has taken over every corner of most of our lives. Every one of our fingers and thumbs are flying as we text and email our days away. We are so plugged in that you can't go anywhere without seeing people on smart phones or computers, glued to the screen as actual life flies on past without our noticing. And because smart phones and computers with their apps and their enticing websites have become such an important part of our lives, giving them up is almost completely inconceivable. My family spends the best part of the summer in a place where we cannot play on screens: there is no internet connection available in the cottage, cell phones get one bar (if that), and the three television stations come in poorly through static and snow like we're living in the 1960s. Even there though we are not entirely unplugged because we can go into town and plug in (we know all the public hotspots) if we need or want to. But there's definitely something to be said for living without and experiencing real life going on all around you. In Elyssa Friedland's fun novel, Love and Miss Communication, main character Evie Rosen gives up all screens for a year and her life changes immeasurably.

Evie's life isn't entirely the way she'd like it but it's better than it is about to become. She's convinced that she's about to become partner in her law firm but she and her long time boyfriend broke up when she gave him the ultimatum that she wanted to get married like all of her close friends. A nice and promising blind date goes quickly south when Evie admits to having Googled her date. When she finally gets called in front of the partners at the office, it isn't to offer her the partnership she's worked so long and hard for, it's to fire her for her excessive emailing and web surfing on company time, a problem the extent to which she had no idea she had. Then she finds out through her excessive Facebook stalking that her commitment-phobic ex has gone and gotten married. It all of a sudden seems to her that he wasn't against marriage, just against marriage with her. Insta-connection and technology are ruining her life so she comes up with the idea of going off of them, completely. How does life unfold when you aren't glued to a screen? Evie needs to find out and to reconnect with her own core self.

When Evie disconnects, her character comes into sharper focus and in some ways that's good and in others, it's bad. Her envy of her friends' marriages and children becomes pretty crystal clear although it doesn't show her in the best light. And being unplugged makes her look at the way in which she might have been her own worst enemy in her relationship, choosing to stay with a man who had made his wishes known up front and sabotaging her own dreams for certainty and the easy contentment of being able to click the box on Facebook that says "In a relationship." Being unplugged in today's world means often being out of the loop and Evie discovers this as well, showing her that, once her self-imposed year is up, moderation is a reasonable plan and that forsaking technology entirely is doing her no favors either. As Friedland shows, technology can over take everything else in our world, making it impossible for us to experience the joy of just living in the moment, but if used carefully, it can also enhance life and keep us connected in ways that aren't so harmful as well. Evie may not be entirely changed by the end, still anxiously waiting for that expected proposal, but this is a light, fun, and timely look at our lives today, on screen and off.

For more information about Elyssa Friedland and the book, check out her website, like her Facebook page,, follow her on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: Trail of Broken Wings by Sejal Badani

No one on the outside ever knows what goes on under the surface of a family. A perfect façade leaves those looking in thinking that the family is in fact, if not perfect, then darn close and lucky to be there. But facades can be faked, manufactured, and can have little connection to reality. This is how abusers get away with their trade for so long. Someone has to crack the superficial lie before the horrific truth emerges into the light. This is very much the case in Sejal Badani's novel, Trail of Broken Wings, about one Indian American family and its legacy of abuse.

As Brent lies in an inexplicable coma, his three daughters and his wife gather round him in what might be a show of love and devotion. In fact, they are each grappling with their long and terrifying past with the man in the hospital bed, even as they continue to maintain the careful façade they have created over the years. Trisha, the favorite daughter and the only one to escape the brutal and constant beatings, mourns the loss of her beloved father, even as she recognizes the ways he terrorized her sisters, compartmentalizing them from the loving man she knew. Oldest daughter Marin, now a mother herself, has always been driven to perfection in order to prove her worth and to hopefully forestall the beatings. Youngest daughter Sonya is the prodigal, the one who was uncertain whether she'd come home for this vigil, the one who fled her father's fists and left her family behind so long ago to photograph the world. But really there is no escape, not for Brent's daughters, not for his wife Ranee. The mental and emotional scars are forever, the long term psychological fallout for them as survivors of abuse is greater than they ever imagined, and they are all damaged.

As each of the women gather at Brent's bedside, she keeps the secrets she's hidden for so long. The relationships amongst all of these women are strained by their past, their resentments, and their inability to allow anyone, even fellow sufferers, to see the full extent of their shame. Reading about these women is emotionally taxing, especially in the chapters told by Sonya in first person. The other chapters focused on her sisters and her mother are told in third person, giving them a modicum of distance that her own painful musings do not have. The story moves backwards and forwards in time, from the happier, pre-abusive times when they lived in India to the dawning frustration of life in America where Brent faced racism, marginalization, and a demeaning that he could not absorb, reflecting it instead, and then finally to the horrors he inflicted on the family who depended on him. With the coma giving his family time to decide what Brent's reckoning must ultimately be, the story is very heavy feeling and makes the reader wonder if they can possibly heal. There are some unexpected twists and turns in the story which helps when it seems as if it is going on just a bit too long but the ending itself, for several of the characters, is not entirely in keeping with the tone of the novel. After years of dragging this terrible baggage and being unable to face or acknowledge it, an ending promising so much hope seems too easy and unearned. Despite that, this is a realistic and difficult portrayal of lives in the aftermath of abuse and the ways in which silence is so much the enemy of truth and healing.

For more information about Sejal Badani and the book, check out the book's 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.

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.

Muse by Jonathan Galassi. The book is being released by Knopf on June 2, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last independent publishing houses in New York, whose shabby offices on Union Square belie the treasures on its list. Working with his boss, the flamboyant Homer Stern, Paul learns the ins and outs of the book trade—how to work an agent over lunch; how to swim with the literary sharks at the Frankfurt Book Fair; and, most important, how to nurse the fragile egos of the dazzling, volatile authors he adores.

But Paul’s deepest admiration has always been reserved for one writer: poet Ida Perkins, whose audacious verse and notorious private life have shaped America’s contemporary literary landscape, and whose longtime publisher—also her cousin and erstwhile lover—happens to be Homer’s biggest rival. And when Paul at last has the chance to meet Ida at her Venetian palazzo, she entrusts him with her greatest secret—one that will change all of their lives forever.

Studded with juicy details only a quintessential insider could know, written with both satiric verve and openhearted nostalgia, Muse is a brilliant, haunting book about the beguiling interplay between life and art, and the eternal romance of literature.