Review: The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie

Sisters can be competitive. They can want what the other has. When it is something as harmless as a dress or a bauble, it's one thing but when it's something as personal as coveting your sister's royal lover, that's quite another. For the de Mailly-Nesle sisters, this sororal competition reached new levels. Four of the five sisters became, in turn (and sometimes even overlapping their turns), mistresses to King Louis XV, each one having a different effect on the King and on the court at Versailles. Sally Christie's captivating historical novel, The Sisters of Versailles, inspired by the true story of these sisters, imagines the power and machinations that accompanied their ascendances into the King's bed and their eventual eclipsing as Louis' favorites.

When Louis XV starts to tire of his queen, his advisors found it imperative to find him a mistress despite his initial Catholic guilt. The mistress that they found for him was Louise de Mailly-Nesle, a young woman at court whose own mother had had her own scandalous liasions and whose husband cared nothing at all for her personally nor for her residence in the King's bed. As the oldest of the Nesle sisters, it was through Louise and her connections at court that her younger sisters each, with the exception of Hortense, the family's beauty, came to hold sway in the King's bed as well. The sisters were very different in personality, ranging from constant and devoted to determined and manipulative, from to sweet and unthinking to scheming and savvy, and yet each one of them entranced the King in her own way, even if they have been reduced to a surprising but fascinating footnote in the history of the French monarchy.

Told in the first person by each of the five sisters, and in retrospect by Hortense, the one sister never to be the King's mistress, the narration also includes the seemingly innocuous letters that the sisters sent to one another over the years that a Nesle sister graced the bed of their monarch. Each sister is quite distinct and different, with very different reasons for being interested in the King, very different takes on morality, and different ways of approaching the complicated life at the court of Versailles. Christie has done a great job presenting the time period and the undercurrents at play in the court. The politics of the novel are sometimes a little bit light as its focus is more on the backstabbing and cunning deceit practiced by the Nesle sisters both towards each other and towards those who would oust them from their sovereign's favor. Those people around them who see these young women as a way to curry favor with Louis glide on and off the stage, doing their utmost to use the King's personal life to further their political ambitions and hopes. The novel is detailed, full of scandal and intrigue, brimming with betrayal and duplicity. It is a both a tale of the ultimate unimportance of the women who swirled around the King and an intriguing lesson in their momentary power. Perhaps this novel is enough to bring Louise, Pauline, Diane, Hortense, and Marie-Anne back into the forefront of history, to make them more than just a curiousity. In any case, it is a fast and fascinating read and bodes well for the next novel in the trilogy, the tale of the next royal mistress, one whose name history has not forgotten, Madame de Pompadour.

For more information about Sally Christie, take a look at her website. Check out the book's Good Reads 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

A college visit with my daughter, followed with being sick and a lot of sleep does not add up to a good reading and reviewing kind of week for me. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Reviews posted this week:

The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson

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

The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
My Fat Dad by Dawn Lerman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman

Monday Mailbox

What a quartet of amazing looking books!  This past week's mailbox arrivals:

I'm Glad About You by Theresa Rebeck came from Putnam.

About two people who are meant to be the loves of each others' lives but meet too early to make that happen, this story of what their lives go on to look like is incredibly intriguing to me.

An Improper Arrangement by Kasey Michaels came from HQN.

I do enjoy a good romance so this one about a young woman falling for the man charged with making her debut easy and successful even as a secret threatens to expose her family's reputation sounds juicy.

Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours.

The words "Reader, I married him," thrilled my twelve year old heart the first time I read Jane Eyre so there was no way I could pass up a collection of stories inspired by Bronte's masterpiece and written by some of the most fabulous women writing today.

Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman came from Atria Books.

I loved A Man Called Ove by Backman and although I wasn't wild about his next book, I am always up for finding another of his eccentric, flawed characters on my bedside table so I am looking forward to this one about a fussy woman who must coach the town's children's soccer team.

If you want 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.

Waiting on Wednesday

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

The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman. The book is being released by Thomas Dunne Books on March 22, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: Lose yourself to the magic of The Charm Bracelet.

Through an heirloom charm bracelet, three women will rediscover the importance of family and a passion for living as each charm changes their lives.

On her birthday each year, Lolly’s mother gave her a charm, along with the advice that there is nothing more important than keeping family memories alive, and so Lolly’s charm bracelet would be a constant reminder of that love.

Now seventy and starting to forget things, Lolly knows time is running out to reconnect with a daughter and granddaughter whose lives have become too busy for Lolly or her family stories.

But when Arden, Lolly’s daughter, receives an unexpected phone call about her mother, she and granddaughter Lauren rush home. Over the course of their visit, Lolly reveals the story behind each charm on her bracelet, and one by one the family stories help Lolly, Arden, and Lauren reconnect in a way that brings each woman closer to finding joy, love, and faith.

A compelling story of three women and a beautiful reminder of the preciousness of family Viola Shipman's The Charm Bracelet is a keepsake you’ll cherish long after the final page.

Review: The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson

I first read Joshilyn Jackson's fiction many years ago. gods in Alabama (intentional lower case g) was quirky and madcap and highly entertaining with a dark undercurrent hidden deep in the kudzu. I was hooked. And over the years Jackson has proved herself adept at this particular brand of Southern fiction: the quirky, the dysfunctional, the secretive, and the long tradition of oral storytelling translated to the page. Jackson's latest novel, The Opposite of Everyone, is firmly rooted in this same immediately identifiable sub genre, the one that subscribes to the southern aphorism "Here in the South we don't hide crazy. We parade it around on the front porch and give it a sweet tea." There's almost nothing more readable than this unique brand of crazy and Jackson doesn't disappoint here.

Paula Vauss is a successful high powered divorce attorney in Atlanta. Her firm handles the high profile, major money at stake divorces in the city and Paula generally gets involved only when things get nasty. She is ruthless and abrasive, hard nosed and unforgiving. Although she realizes that often times her clients are not innocent victims, she does have a moral code, fighting for the underdog who is at least closer to right than their soon to be ex spouse. This incarnation of Paula is a far cry from her childhood. Born to a teenaged mom who named her Kali Jai after the Hindu goddess Kali, young Kali/Paula and mom Kai drifted around as Kai went from boyfriend to boyfriend, many of whom were petty criminals or wastrels of some sort. It was a difficult, itinerant childhood. As hard as the constant moving around was, Paula idolized her mother, drinking in the wonderful changing stories, all based in Hindu myth but illuminating her own life, that Kai told her. But when 11 year old Paula wants to go back to the previous boyfriend and the life they had with him, she makes a decision that will change everything forever, landing her in the foster care system, ultimately resulting in a lifelong rift between her mother and her, and leaving her with a mountain of guilt. When the monthly check Paula sends her mother comes back to her with a cryptic note and the information that Kai is dying and then her mother's biggest secret shows up unannounced at her office, Paula is forced to face the truth of her past, what it means to be a family, the importance of forgiveness, and the way that her childhood decision formed her into the woman she is today.

Paula starts off as a not entirely likable character. She's, caustic, rigid, and emotionally unavailable. But as the narrative moves between the present day and her past, between her work and her insecurities and the vulnerabilities of her childhood, she becomes much more understandable and humanized. She's a strong, kick ass lead character even though she has been damaged and carries enough guilt to bury a weaker woman. Her soft spot for other struggling people, be it the pro bono cases she takes on or her relationship with her on again off again lover Birdwine, an alcoholic private investigator, adds another dimension to her character. This is a novel of reinvention and forgiveness, external and internal. Paula's quest to find her mother before it's too late mirrors her own quest to finally accept and forgive herself and to learn to open her heart to others. Although at first it seems that she only razes all of the lives she touches, she learns to cautiously begin again, building something new and fragile and valuable out of the ashes, building a family. She truly is Kali the destroyer and Kali the creator, just as her mother always predicted. Jackson has written a complex and realistically flawed character in Paula and the narrative moves along at a constant pace, sprinkling humor in to leaven some of the darker or sadder moments. The novel is a quick, entertaining read and Jackson knows how to tell an engaging story for sure. Those who like a little dark dysfunction with their eccentric Southern stories will love this latest offering.  Plus it has murder kittens in it (and no I'm not explaining that; you'll have to read it to understand) and no one should pass up murder kittens.

For more information about Joshilyn Jackson, take a look at her website, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Reviews posted this week:

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

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

The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
My Fat Dad by Dawn Lerman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston

Monday Mailbox

This past week, it was good to be me! I do so love to drive past the house and notice book shaped mail on the front stoop. Plus I was lucky enough to win a Facebook contest from Simon and Schuster so I got a marvelous book filled parcel. I must have been living right or something! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman came from Harper and TLC Book Tours.

About two people who compromised on their dreams long ago setting out on a journey westward to find answers to what has changed so drastically in their adopted young son, this sounds like it will be a search on which I'll be glad to go along.

Love That Boy by Ron Fournier came from Harmony Books.

Parenting is hard. So hard. I can't wait to read this story of a father and son and the expectations that might not be met but always teach us something in this parenting memoir.

The Secrets of Flight by Maggie Leffler came from William Morrow and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Containing decades old secrets, a WWII female pilot, a writing group, and an elderly woman and the teenaged girl she enlists to tell her story, this novel looks fabulous.

Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper came from Counterpoint and TLC Book Tours.

A novel about Alice James, the sister of Henry and William, who is confined to bed but can still put pen to paper? Oh, yes please!

The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie came from Atria Books and TLC Book Tours.

I've already read and enjoyed Christie's first novel, The Sisters of Versailles, and look forward to more of the machinations and intrigue of the court in this novel focused on the Marquise de Pompadour.

The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley came from Atria Books.

About a young woman, a yachtswoman, whose adoptive father dies, this tale of discovering her Norwegian origins and learning of a century old story tied to Edvard Grieg sounds completely intriguing.

The Flood Girls by Richard Fifield came from Gallery Books.

Small town Montana, quirky characters, and a prodigal daughter trying to make things right, this promises to be wonderful and hilarious all at once.

This Was Not the Plan by Cristina Alger came from Touchstone.

A widower with a five year old learns what it means to be a father in this emotionally rich sounding novel. I can't wait!

Mrs. Houdini by Victoria Kelly came from Atria Books.

How could you not want to read a book about Bess Houdini and the fact that she sees Harry's coded messages to her from the afterlife over and over again? A love story and a mystery all at once, this looks delectable.

Opening Belle by Maureen Sherry came from Simon and Schuster.

About a woman on Wall Street who still has to pick up most of the slack at home, when her ex-fiance reappears in her life and she bands together with other women to be treated as equals, this book about change and having it all and being properly valued looks so, so good.

Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta came from Scribner.

About two filmmaker friends who befriend a third woman, whose most intimate experiences are via the phone, this looks subtly subversive and utterly engrossing.

Two If By Sea by Jacqueline Mitchard came from Simon and Schuster.

When a police officer whose family perished in an Australian tsunami pulls a young boy to safety and then chooses to raise him rather than give him to the authorities, his life will be complicated in strange and wonderous ways he never imagined in this thrilling looking novel.

If you want 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: Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

When we sit in our comfortable homes, on our cozy couches, warm, dry, and full, it is hard to imagine lives other than our own. Even if we see the horrific ways that some people are forced to live on television, it all feels very removed from us. But when we encounter it in a book, we are right there with the character, facing the terror, the want and deprivation, and the brutality that is life in some corners of the world. It gets under our skin and inhabits our minds with its truths. Uzodinma Iweala's visceral and compelling novel, Beasts of No Nation, is one of those books that does not allow the reader to look away from the inhumanity, horror, and loss of innocence that even young children experience daily in a world rent by civil war.

In an unnamed West African nation, Agu is a child soldier. He was conscripted into the guerrilla army when he was found hiding in an abandoned village. Although just a boy, his choice is to become a soldier or to die. So he joins an army without a direction, not understanding its greater purpose, learning to kill simply because the Commandant orders him to do so. He is merely a pawn in a war he doesn't understand and is forced to choose a side he knows nothing about. Although Agu's family is gone, he befriends one of the other boys, Strika, and vies for attention from the brutal Commandant just as if from a benign father. Interspersed with the marching, the physical deprivation, and the atrocities of Agu's new life, are memories of a more peaceful time, life before the war came to his village. Agu was the son of the local school teacher. He was curious, intelligent, and present. These memories of his past are so at odds with his present that it is painful. The Agu of the guerrilla warriors is unquestioning, shut down, and as disconnected from emotion and morality as he can make himself be so as to survive. But what will it mean to survive in such a place and such a state as this? He is indeed one of the beasts of the title.

This is a very slight but powerful novel, heartbreaking in its depiction of this almost unimaginable reality. It is a searing look at the horrors our modern world has created and the stripping of humanity that it allows. Agu tells his own story in first person, present tense, keeping the narrative tension high and immediate throughout the entirety of the story. He narrates in a sing-song pidgin English which takes a little getting used to and is an odd choice of narrative voice given that this is fictional, not a translation, and the author himself is a native English speaker. It does give the reader more of a sense of foreignness than a more traditional grammar would have and perhaps adds to the childishness of Agu's voice as well. The ending is abrupt and almost trance-like but contains wisps of hope amidst ancient-feeling sadness. This is not a book for the faint of heart. It is raw and disturbing. It is unrelenting and graphic. There is no sense of right or good in the conflict and there's brutality on both sides.  Agu himself is both victim and perpetrator.  Iweala has imagined a terrible, terrible story here, but one that we cannot ignore. I promise that Agu and his fate will haunt you.

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.

Locally Laid by Lucie Amundsen. The book is being released by Avery on March 1, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: How a Midwestern family with no agriculture experience went from a few backyard chickens to a full-fledged farm—and discovered why local chicks are better.

When Lucie Amundsen had a rare night out with her husband, she never imagined what he’d tell her over dinner—that his dream was to quit his office job (with benefits!) and start a commercial-scale pasture-raised egg farm. His entire agricultural experience consisted of raising five backyard hens, none of whom had yet laid a single egg.

To create this pastured poultry ranch, the couple scrambles to acquire nearly two thousand chickens—all named Lola. These hens, purchased commercially, arrive bereft of basic chicken-y instincts, such as the evening urge to roost. The newbie farmers also deal with their own shortcomings, making for a failed inspection and intense struggles to keep livestock alive (much less laying) during a brutal winter. But with a heavy dose of humor, they learn to negotiate the highly stressed no-man’s-land known as Middle Agriculture. Amundsen sees firsthand how these midsized farms, situated between small-scale operations and mammoth factory farms, are vital to rebuilding America’s local food system.

With an unexpected passion for this dubious enterprise, Amundsen shares a messy, wry, and entirely educational story of the unforeseen payoffs (and frequent pitfalls) of one couple’s ag adventure—and many, many hours spent wrangling chickens.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston

Reviews posted this week:

The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

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

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
My Fat Dad by Dawn Lerman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

Monday Mailbox

More traveling in my world this past week (and I'm not done yet!). This pair actually arrived when I was home to appreciate and stroke them with pleasure. :-) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Girl From the Paradise Ballroom by Alison Love came from Broadway Books and TLC Book Tours.

About a man and woman who first meet at the Paradise Ballroom and then again years later as WWII is exploding, this forbidden love story should be gripping.

When I'm Gone by Emily Bleeker came from Lake Union and TLC Book Tours.

After his wife dies, a man left to raise their three children by himself starts getting letters his late wife wrote him delivered to their home. This sounds like a tearjerker for sure!

If you want 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 Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Nowadays when we think of places associated with the development of the atomic bomb, we of course think of Los Alamos, NM and Oak Ridge, TN. But we wouldn't always have named them. In fact, we wouldn't have known the bomb was in development, never mind the secret places where it was coming into being. Secrecy was key. Even now when we know about the Manhattan Project and its eventual outcome, thanks to as yet unexamined papers and documents about it, we may still not know the whole story, something Denise Kiernan, in her narrative non-fiction account, The Girls of Atomic City, tries to remedy in some small part.

While young men all over the country were being sent overseas to fight, young women were also looking to contribute to the war effort. Some of the young women looking to help end the war ended up at a place that wasn't on any map: Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These young women were from all over, but especially the South. They came for a variety of reasons: economic, personal, job related. Most of them had very little idea what they were doing at Oak Ridge. All of them knew enough not to question their work or the work of others around them.  And even when the war was over, they've mostly kept to this imposed silence until fewer and fewer of these women are left to tell their story.  Interspersed with the stories of a small selection of women who worked at Oak Ridge during WWII is a more general timeline of the Manhattan Project as a whole, technical details about the creation of the atomic bomb, and the scientific history that brought us to the possibility of splitting an atom and creating a weapon out of that reaction.

Kiernan interviewed some of the remaining women from Oak Ridge, getting them to open up after decades of silence about their work and their life in the hastily constructed town deep in the mountains of Tennessee. Many of the women came from similar backgrounds, poor and no more educated than high school and it was often very hard to keep these strangely incurious young women and their pasts straight.  While the book purports to show what daily life was like in this restricted, top secret place, the only time that this is accomplished in more than very general terms is when Kiernan discusses Kattie, the sole African-American woman in the book. The rest of the women were not as well differentiated as might have been hoped and often blended together.

There is important information here, information that should be not only available but should be common knowledge for its importance in our history, but the way that it is presented is occasionally confusing and repetitive making it a much more difficult read than it should have been. The narrative structure, with the intervening parts about the the greater project, was choppy. The women were presented fairly vaguely which meant the reader fails to connect emotionally with any of them. And each of the women's stories end with their marriages or children without examining the lifelong impact the work had on them either in terms of their health or of their mental well being, a strange omission indeed. I wanted to thrill to this story of the unearthed secrets of the time and place, knowing what a huge piece of our not so distant history this represented but I ended up disappointed and feeling like I too was trapped in the endless mud that blanketed so much of wartime Oak Ridge. The book did make me want to learn more so in the end though, so maybe it did what it was supposed to do after all.

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.

3 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad. The book is being released by Penguin Books on February 23, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?

In her brilliant, hilarious, and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their physical appearance, and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform. As caustically funny as it is heartbreaking, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl introduces a vital new voice in fiction.

Review: The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

I used to race through walks, treating them as a purely exercise related thing. The older I get though, the more I ramble instead. Now when I walk outside, I am slower. I notice the budding trees. I appreciate the light, delicate birds that fly across my path. I stand and stare at the deer I come across so as not to startle them into running off. And while this all sounds idyllic, I also see the dog poop that no one has bothered to pick up. I notice the bits of trash and detritus that have blown out of garbage cans. I startle over snakes or small dead critters. I swat at mosquitoes. But these latter things do not take away from the beauty of the former. They are a part of the whole but they are not the whole. So when I ramble through nature and life, I can focus on the less pleasant experiences and allow them to drive me inside my house of my shell, or I can accept them as part of the makeup of a generally pretty wonderful experience. In Aidan Donnelley Rowley's beautiful novel, The Ramblers, her characters are learning to experience the whole of everything without letting the unpalatable or scary overwhelm the amazing, promising parts of their lives. Each has faced a loss that continues to mark them and to direct their reactions until they understand that the beauty of life is in the living of it, the opening up to experience, and the courage to risk your heart. As they ramble through this ode to New York City and their own lives, they discover that they may not be following the map they once planned for, but because of that they are finding that most wonderful thing of all: unexpected joy.

Clio is a respected ornithologist who also takes groups on bird watching walks through the Ramble in Central Park. After one of her walks, she met older, handsome hotelier Henry. The two seemed perfect for each other. Both are workaholics and neither are looking for marriage and family. Until Henry changes his mind and wants to build a shared life with Clio. But Clio hasn't been entirely truthful with Henry and her secret, the reason she doesn't want to commit, may scare Henry off. She can't decide if telling him or walking away from him would be worse. As she grapples with her fears, her roommate Smith is having to look head on at her own loss. Her younger sister is getting married and every aspect of the wedding reminds Smith of the ex-fiance she still loves. When she hears how he has moved on in his life, she is devastated. Couple that with the fact that she sees Clio on the cusp of a huge, potentially life changing decision and the fact that Smith is still living in the same building as her parents, still just a part of her extremely wealthy family rather than an individual standing on her own two feet (even her very successful organizing, life coach business was started with seed money from her father despite his disapproval), and she is feeling left behind and lonely. Tate, a fellow classmate of both Clio and Smith's at Yale, is back in New York and hurting. He developed and sold an app for a lot of money but that success didn't stop his wife from leaving him. So he's come back to the East Coast in order to pursue his love of photography, something that took a backseat to business for too long.

The novel is narrated from each of the three main characters' perspectives, showing their innermost fears and what holds each of them back. They are all complex and real feeling with distinctive voices. Clio, Smith, and Tate are all privileged but their problems are universal and they, as characters, are sympathetic despite their privilege. The novel is intimate feeling but with a satisfying depth to it. Rowley details mental illness and its toll delicately and respectfully. And she writes with an engaging, smooth adeptness that keeps the reader invested in each of these broken but healable people. This is a novel of loss and acceptance, fear and love, friendship and possibility, and it celebrates the power of finding joy in the small things around us, opening our hearts to trust, and the happy surprise of finding the unexpected. It was a delightful read.

For more information about Aidan Donnelley Rowley, take a look at her blog, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter or Instagram. Check out the book's Good Reads 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley

Reviews posted this week:

Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff

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

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
My Fat Dad by Dawn Lerman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie

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.

My Father the Pornographer by Chris Offutt. The book is being released by Atria Books on February 9, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: After inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and ‘80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir.

“Clearing Dad’s office felt like prospecting within his brain. As I sorted, like an archaeologist, backward through time, I saw a remarkable mind at work, a life lived on its own terms.”

When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and 1800 pounds of porn. Andrew had been considered the “king of twentieth century smut,” a career that began as a strategy to pay for his son’s orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the ‘70s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel was at its height.

With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. In this fashion he wrote 400 novels, ranging from pirate porn and ghost porn, to historical porn and time travel porn, to secret agent porn and zombie porn. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became, and the more difficult it was for his children to penetrate his world.

Over one long summer in his hometown, helping his mother move out of the house, Chris began to examine his deceased father’s possessions and realized he finally had an opportunity to come to grips with the mercurial man he always feared but never understood. Offutt takes us on the journey with him, showing us how only in his father’s absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy. This riveting, evocatively told memoir of a deeply complex father-son relationship proves again why the New York Times Book Review said, “Offut’s obvious kin are Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Ernest Hemingway.”

Review: Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff

If you're a parent, you've probably found yourself wishing for more time to accomplish something or maybe just for time to slow down. Our world is so crammed full of commitments and everything important seems to pass in such a blink of an eye that there never seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything you need or want to do. Now imagine that you are a single mother whose ex hasn't been particularly helpful in the past but now wants to reexamine your custody agreement, especially in light of everything you've been missing lately, and a stranger gives you the ability to be in more than one place at a time. It sounds like a godsend, doesn't it? At least at first it did to Jennifer Sharpe, the main character in Kamy Wicoff's novel, Wishful Thinking. And then it didn't.

Jennifer is a single mom in New York City. Norman, her ex, has been pretty non-existent in her boys' lives since the divorce so she's had to shoulder everything. She switched jobs to have more time with her boys, Julien and Jack, but recently her lower key, lower paying non-profit housing authority job has ramped up to not only mimic the private sector but even to exceed its pressures and workaholic expectations. At the same time, her long time babysitter wants to cut back on her hours so she herself can go back to school. Jennifer is frazzled and overwhelmed by all the competing claims on her time. When her wealthy new boss offers her a bonus if she and her new coworker, Alicia, get their project, originally called It Takes a Village and re-dubbed One Stop, a single community center designed to house all social services offices and centrally located in the neighborhood they serve, Jennifer has to devote even more time to work.  Since there's no way to make a day have more than 24 hours, her time with her boys suffers. Losing her phone, with its jam-packed calendar, is just the latest disaster in a life getting out of control. Miraculously, a neighbor finds and returns the phone, having installed a new app called Wishful Thinking on it. That it purports to be for women who need to be in more than one place at the same time makes Jennifer skeptical but when she has to work late and is faced with missing Julien's guitar recital, on a whim she decides to try this strange and intriguing app. Amazingly, it works.  But in order to use it again, Jennifer has to track down her neighbor, Dr. Diane Sexton, the inventor and a brilliant physicist, and convince her that she, Jennifer, is the perfect person to be used in a clinical trial of this time travel technology. She has to agree to limit her use of the app and after she tells her best friend, Vinita, a doctor, about it, she agrees to medical monitoring as well.

At first she is thrilled to be able to be superwoman at work and still spend quality time with her boys, no longer missing the events of their lives. But she soon discovers that work expands to fill the time she has available and instead of feeling fully present at the important moments in her life, she is still juggling everything: a crazy work schedule, the needs of her boys, and the sleep deprivation that is a symptom of her increased, clandestine overuse of the magic app. Jennifer has more time than ever before but it is every bit as filled as before she could travel through wormholes and gain extra time in her day. The question is not whether she can do it all with Wishful Thinking's help but whether she is happier and more fulfilled as a person as a result and what the ultimate fallout of relying on this technological miracle might be.

Wicoff has written a fanciful and entertaining look at the impossibility of having and doing it all and the costs for those who try. No one can do everything all by themselves, something that Jennifer easily recognizes for the people she's designed One Stop to benefit but she is unable to see the value and necessity of help and community in her own life, at least until she's pushed to breaking. This novel is both a mother's wish fulfillment--after all, who hasn't wished for more hours in the day--but also a cautionary tale about the connections we make, the value of vulnerability, asking for and accepting help, and the importance of finding your own personal balance and contentment. The novel hits at the myth of the Supermom, that impossible socially constructed role model, who unfortunately makes so many women feel inferior or incapable, but in an accessible, light, and engaging way. There is a light romance here as well as looks at the various different relationships that make up our lives and the people who form our community. You'll zip through this frantically paced, sometimes predictable novel without any of the panic that the pace induces in Jennifer, simply enjoying her interactions with the people around her at work and at home as she learns what it means to be present in the here and now of life. A fun and frothy read, it might just cause you to look at your own self-imposed expectations about what you can and should be accomplishing in your daily life.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I spent this week all over the place. First I was in Denver for ABA's Winter Institute. Then I was in Cincinnati with my daughter on college visits. Starngely enough, other than on plane rides and layovers, this didn't leave me much time to read (although obviously I had long plane rides and many layovers) or review anything. But on the non-book front, I sure accomplished a lot! This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie

Reviews posted this week:

nothing yet

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

Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff
The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
My Fat Dad by Dawn Lerman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon

Monday Mailbox

Although I was in Denver for Winter Institute and had to send my numerous acquisitions home this past week, adding them to this list would make the page enormous and unwieldy so I'm going to refrain. I'll just stick with the books that were sent directly to me and call it good (and they do look good). This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Bomb Girls by Daisy Styles came from Penguin.

About a quintet of young women who are all conscripted into wartime work in a munitions factory in Britain, this should be a different and engaging sort of look at a friendship novel and at WWII.

The Crooked Heart of Mercy by Billie Livingston came from Penguin.

Tragedy, scandal, a priest, and a marriage that needs saving, this should pique your interest as much as it does mine, right? (Plus, just look at that cover!)

If you want 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.