Review: A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

Life transitions are hard. Good ones and sad ones, they are all stressful and loaded with emotion. Having a child is a big life change. So is moving homes. Both disrupt life and force change. Characters in Ashley Hay's new novel, A Hundred Small Lessons, are facing major life changes and taking stock of their lives in this lovely, quiet, character driven, domestic novel.

When elderly Elsie Gormley falls and breaks a hip, her children, in their seventies themselves, decide that after rehab she can't return to the house she's lived alone in for thirty-seven years, instead placing her in a local retirement home. Cut adrift from the house that carried the memories of most of her life, her marriage, her motherhood, and her widowhood, she starts to drift between past and present in her mind, losing her place in the present and reality slowly, so slowly. Lucy Kiss, her husband Ben, and their one year old son Tom have moved to Brisbane, the city of Ben's childhood, buying Elsie's home. Although they have lived all over the world, Lucy really struggles with the move to Brisbane, the distance from her family, and motherhood suddenly being her only job. As Lucy tries to settle in and make Elsie's house her own, she conjures up the old woman, whom she has never met, as a sort of touchstone or imagined friend. In fact, Lucy is certain that Elsie has come back to the house to watch her several times, a fixation Ben finds ridiculous and frustrating.

The story moves from Lucy's present to Elsie's remembering of the life she spent in the house with husband Clem and twins Don and Elaine. The switches in narrative focus are often triggered by Lucy finding something of Elsie's or of thinking that Elsie has looked in on the house. There is a slow and mesmerizing feel to the narrative as it focuses on snapshots of ordinary life and the small moments of that life. Both Lucy and Elsie face struggles with motherhood: Lucy with the isolation and vulnerability of raising a child and Elsie with the relationship she never could seem to get right with her daughter Elaine. The intersections and parallels, as well as the divergences, of Elsie and Lucy's lives weave throughout the novel, forming the backbone of the minimal plot. The writing here is lyrical and moody and the setting is beautifully evoked in all of its wet and close glory. A meditation on aging, motherhood, house as home, and the passing of time, this is a deep and nostalgic read.

For more information about Ashley Hay and the book, check out her website or like her on Facebook. 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 for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Thrillers are not my usual reading choice. In fact, I don't think I've ever read one that I haven't been pushed to in one way or another. The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, billed as the next Girl on the Train, would definitely not ever have been on my radar if my book club hadn't chosen it as our monthly book. And because I try to let book club push me out of my usual reading (sometimes), I gamely picked this up.  Sadly, it confirmed that thrillers are not the genre for me.

Laura (Lo) Blacklock is a travel writer who can't quite commit all the way to her relationship with her boyfriend, Judah. Already struggling emotionally, Lo wakes up one night convinced that she isn't alone in her apartment. She's right. Traumatized by this terrifying home invasion, she jumps at the chance to get away by taking her boss's place on the maiden voyage of the Aurora, an exclusive luxury cruise ship traveling through the Norwegian fjords. The cruise ship only has ten guest cabins and is meant as an experience for the super rich after this first press junket. Still anxious and on edge as a result of the break-in, Lo is drinking too much and taking anxiety medication. When she hears a scream in the middle of the night and witnesses a person thrown overboard from the balcony beside hers, she is certain she's witnessed a murder. Except no guests or crew members are missing from the ship. Lo can't let it go, certain she saw what she saw, and she presses for an investigation even though, trapped on the ship as they are, the murderer must be among them.

Lo's increasingly paranoid first person account is interrupted every now and again by her boyfriend's worried emails, first to her and then to more and more people. The emails from Judah felt oddly out of place in the plot time line so instead of ramping up the tension, they were easily dismissed by the reader. In theory, given the plot, this novel should have been an amazing, tense, and thrilling tale, right? Well, there are some real problems with it. Although the reason Lo takes anxiety medication is well handled (the previous break-in), the fact that our heroine is constantly drunk to the point of being sick and is completely incautious about throwing around her murder theory, bumbling through an investigation, such as it is, make the story less intense. Sure, she's panicked and on edge after her own pre-cruise experience, but would a woman who is that traumatized seriously push back that hard on a murder no one else can corroborate? Add this unlikely scenario to the fact that Lo as a character is whiny and irritating and has zero aptitude as an investigator and you have a very unlikable, questionable main character. Lo may not be able to figure out the murderer until her back is against the wall, but the reader knows almost from their introduction on the page who it will be.

There were small irritants as well like Lo seeing the ship for the first time at the docks and noting how surprisingly small it was but then each and every time she entered a room on the boat, she remarked on how spacious it was, also commenting on the idea that she could get lost below decks. So was the boat large or small? It can't be both at once. And the coincidences. Puh-lease!  (spoiler ahead--highlight the following blank if you want to see the text.)  The guest who was supposed to be in cabin 10 stayed home because he too had a break-in occur at his house. Really? Worse yet, this is just coincidence and has nothing to do with the plot. One break in to establish a mental state works. A second one just to keep a character from appearing in the story, well honestly, that feels sloppy on the author's part. There's no other credible reason someone might skip a cruise? ::sigh:: On the plus side, there was a rising sense of claustrophobia that would be likely when you're trapped on a boat with a murderer and there's no phone or wifi to contact the outside world (although again, most boats nowadays use satellites to navigate so she really couldn't get a signal on her phone, ever?). And if the murderer was never in question, the actual details of the crime were in fact surprising, unlikely and out of the blue, but surprising nevertheless. Because of the first person narration, there were long repetitious stretches where we are told Lo's suspicions and then she repeats them again to the crew member assigned to help her question the crew in an unneeded by the reader second telling. The ending of the novel was frustrating (Lo's dimwittedness was on display again) and stretched belief (another spoiler ahead) (she plunged into the water forty feet--yes, forty feet *under* water--and had zero repercussions as she struggled to surface? That's five atmospheres down. Not a depth I'd want to hit without a decompression stop on the way up). Quite honestly the worst thing about this book for book club was that there was nothing in the book to discuss as a group so we were reduced to nitpicking at things like this.  And others had other details that bothered them.  Even before the meeting though, it hadn't been the most enjoyable read for me. But I am not a thriller reader. Perhaps those who enjoy the genre will have more success with this than I did if they can overlook the crazy plot holes, coincidences, and inaccuracies.

Thanks to 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.

No Time to Spare by Ursula K. LeGuin.

The book is being released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on December 5, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: “If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub.”

On cultural perceptions of fantasy: “The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”

On breakfast: “Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.”

Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s online writing, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her unceasing wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”

Review: Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

How do you define yourself? If you are a parent, does your sense of self rely on your children? If you are a daughter, are you defined by your parents? Do you identify with your professional self before anything else? Just who do you think you are and who do others think you are? What image do you present to the world? Edan Lepucki's twisty newest novel, Woman No. 17 addresses issues of identity, motherhood, art, and relationship.

Lady Daniels is the mother of two sons. Her oldest son Seth is 18 and completely nonverbal. She is careful to note that he is not autistic nor is he a genius; he's mute for no discernible physical reason. Devin, her younger son, is a chatty, busy toddler. She and her two boys live in a large and gracious home in the Hollywood Hills; her husband has recently moved out, at Lady's request, although he would like to reconcile. Lady is supposed to be writing a memoir but she needs help with Devin in order to find the time to write. When an ad for a nanny brings S Fowler (real name Esther Shapiro) into Lady's life, she quickly hires this young woman about whom she knows next to nothing. S is an artist who creates unconventional projects. Her latest performance piece is intentionally taking on her mother's persona, a fact she does not disclose to Lady. Nor does she disclose to Lady the growing connection she and Seth are developing.  But S isn't the only one with secrets in the Daniels home.  Lady has a few of them herself.  Lady needs S, just as S needs Lady, so the reader knows early on that things can't possibly end well between them.

The novel's narration is first person and shifts between Lady and S, revealing secrets held and secrets told from two different perspectives. Both main characters are rather hard to like, being both self-destructive and self-absorbed. Both women make terrible choices in their unsettling and dysfunctional lives, a fact that leads to a rising feeling of unease as the book goes on. There are certainly moments of humor to lighten the strange obsession and dependence at play here and they are much appreciated moments for sure.  The ending sort of fizzles out but the writing remains strong and unequivocal.  A novel of what art reveals and what it hides, the facades we take on in our public lives and how they are stripped away in our private lives, this is an edgy and uncomfortable read but one that is strangely hypnotizing. Whether Lady takes advantage of S or if S takes advantage of Lady is something I'm still trying to figure out even as I'm glad I don't know either of these women in real life.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Reviews posted this week:

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton

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

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

Raising the Dad by Tom Matthews came from Thomas Dunne Books.

When a dad learns an explosive secret about his dysfunctional family, everything changes. Sounds delicious, right?!

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: Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton

Most romances focus on the hero and heroine. M.C. Beaton's Emily Goes to Exeter, the first in the Travelling Matchmaker series, is not like most romances. Instead of centering on the couple at hand, this story takes as its main character Miss Hannah Pym, the long time housekeeper of the late Mr. Clarence of Thornton Hall. It's 1800 and Miss Pym is fascinated by the stage coach, "flying machines," that gallops past the estate every day on its way to Exeter. Upon receiving a bequest in Mr. Clarence's will and encouraged by his kindly brother, she can finally indulge her greatest romantic fantasy, travelling by said stage coach. She arranges her affairs and sets out on what turns into quite an adventure. When the coachman runs the coach into a rut and a storm blows in, the passengers of the coach are stranded at a local inn where the proprietor's wife is under the weather herself. Miss Pym proves to be a keen observer of human nature and a woman of action, taking charge of both the inn and her fellow passengers to keep things running smoothly. She has to contend with one spoiled society miss, badly disguised as a young man, trying to run away from the match her parents have made for her, the match himself, a widow fearful of life alone and the bully she's eloping with, a mild mannered lawyer, and several others as well. As she watches her fellow passengers, she quietly determines to help them along in their romantic lives.

Hannah is a mightily capable character. She's smart and compassionate and thinks the best of almost everyone. She's also a bit of a busybody and it's easy to see that she is perfect as an accidental matchmaker. Her delight in the little freedom that riding the stage coach gives her is infectious. The plot is full of hijinks and the story gives off a feel of true joie de vivre. There's nothing very complicated here and the brevity of the tale means that the other characters are of necessity sketched only in broad outlines but it's a short, light, and charming book for those who are looking for a little lovable sweetness in their historical romances.

Review: Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens

Stephanie Laurens is one of the biggest names in historical romance, having been prolific for years. She's an "auto-buy" author for many romance fans with at least nine series so far. By far the longest of her series are the Cynster books about the Bar Cynster family. Arguably (there is a prequel written long after the original novel of the bunch) the first book in that series, published way back in 1998, is Devil's Bride about the 6th Duke of St. Ives and his chosen bride.

Sylvester, known to all and sundry as Devil, is the 6th Duke, head of this large and intimidating family. Honoria Prudence Anstruther-Wetherby is a finishing governess on her way to her latest post when, in advance of a coming storm, she stumbles across a young man who has been shot and is bleeding out. No shrinking violet, Honoria tries to stem the tide of blood but cannot do anything else for him until a dark, imposing man on horseback arrives and helps her get the injured man to a woodsman's cottage. The two spend the night in the cottage with the dying man, thoroughly compromising Honoria. In the morning, she learns that her companion throughout the night was Devil Cynster and the dead man, his young cousin Tolly. Devil is determined to marry the lovely governess but she has no intention of marrying him, coming as she does from a family that is his own family's equal. She dreams of traveling the world, seeing Egypt, and remaining free of any marital or maternal ties. But Devil is used to getting what he wants. She stays at his family home throughout the ensuing funeral, meeting and being seamlessly folded into the Cynster family so skillfully she cannot object mostly because she wants to find who murdered Tolly almost as much as the rest of the Cynster men. None of the other women know that he was murdered and Devil doesn't want Honoria anywhere close to the quiet investigation he and the others are conducting so, of course, she inserts herself as often as possible.

Devil is an autocratic and arrogant character. He never doubts that Honoria will eventually cave to his wishes and marry him. And in fact he generally does have the upper hand and plays her so that she has no choice but to fall in with what he wants. But if he is strong-willed and single-minded, so is she, and she fights for the information she wants from him even as she gives ground in other ways. The narration moves back and forth from Honoria to Devil so that the reader sees each move in this game from both perspectives. The sex scenes between these two not quite combatants, not quite lovers are incredibly steamy and if Devil's restraint in the bedroom, waiting for Honoria to agree to marriage, is a little unrealistic, the unfulfilled, or perhaps more accurately unconsummated, desire arcing between them does heighten the sexual tension as the story goes on. As this is the introduction to the Cynster clan, there is an enormous character list in this book and none of the secondary characters are all that well differentiated from the others, with the notable exception of the Dowager Duchess. Laurens introduces each of the family members with a light hand, perhaps in anticipation of them having their own books in the series, which they eventually do. The murderer is never in question in the book, requiring little in the way of uncovering plot lines for the reader. (The characters, on the other hand, are frustratingly blind to the truth right in front of them.) Without much of a mystery, the second half of the book is chock full of extended sex scenes, Devil demanding Honoria agree to what they clearly both want, and her silence on the matter, followed by more hot, sexy times, renewed demands, and more silence (repeat at will). There's a certain something about the book which makes it definitely feel of its time, perhaps the very alpha male hero or maybe the heroine who gives up long cherished dreams without a backwards glance once her hormones fire up, but I am willing to try another Cynster novel the next time I get the urge to read an historical romance and see how I like the rest of the family.

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.

Chance Developments by Alexander McCall Smith.

The book is being released by Anchor on November 28, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Inspired by antique photographs, these five stunning short stories capture the surprising intersections of love and friendship that alter life's journeys. In “Angels in Italy,” childhood friends, separated by circumstance, learn the enduring power of a first love. “Sister Flora's First Day of Freedom” introduces us to a young nun who makes a difficult decision to leave the sisterhood and finds delightful new riches in the big city of Edinburgh. The enchanting “Dear Ventriloquist” tells of a mishap at a Canadian circus that sparks unexpected magic between a gifted puppeteer and a dapper lion tamer. Changing a tire changes the life of a young Irish teacher in “The Woman with the Beautiful Car,” and a young New Zealander learns what matters in life from his grandfather, a WWII veteran, in “He Wanted to Believe in Tenderness.” These charming and poignant stories are a testament to the power of human connection and brim with a grace and humor that could only come from the pen of Alexander McCall Smith.

Review: To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic

I had to read Leanne Dunic's slender book, To Love the Coming End, twice to get some sense of the tale contained within what others have called lyric prose. This was certainly not a traditional prose narrative, but rather a fragmentary collection of short meditations with a tenuous story running through them.

The unnamed narrator, an author, traveling to and remembering Japan, Singapore, and British Columbia, writes of loss and her missing or absent lover. She weaves heat, place, and the geological disaster of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in with this self-defining emptiness, this unrelenting void and explicitly draws the reader to the number eleven, not only as a date and a whole number itself but also as a figure of two ones, two people standing together and yet parallel, never coming together, separating in fact. There is a sense here of both connection to the natural world and a dislocation, a loneliness, and a sorrow of incompleteness as well. The language is confounding, hiding as much as it reveals. I had a difficult time connecting with the book. Many of the short, almost prose poems, felt like simply window dressing, a building of atmosphere for what, in the end, was a quite modest and even pedestrian story. Those who enjoy experimental prose/poetry will certainly enjoy this far more than I did, probably find more meaning in it, and can feel quite confident in their intellect surpassing mine as I've clearly struggled with this. Maybe on reads three or four I'd come to a better appreciation but I don't really want to try and tease out any additional meaning and that probably says it all.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Royally Wed by Teri Wilson
The Paris Secret by Karen Swan
Shelter by Jung Yun

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe

Reviews posted this week:

Royally Wed by Teri Wilson
Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

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

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones came from Algonquin and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Jones' Silver Sparrow was a beautiful book so I'm looking forward to this novel about a newly married couple whose lives are torn apart by a wrongful conviction that takes years to be overturned.

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.

Sunday Salon: Snapshots from a childhood in books

Recently I was asked to provide the title of a "lifetime" book that had the greatest impact on me and a brief explanation of that impact. Now if you're a lifetime reader, and I assume that most of you are, the list of books that you could use for this is not a short one. So the question then becomes, which one to use. Will you be judged for answering with less than an acknowledged classic? When I was in graduate school, a well-known professor asked each of us to tell the class about a book that had made us a reader. (Notice she didn't say "the" book, but "a" book. She was clearly a reader herself.) When it was my turn and I said that James A. Michener's Hawaii was a seminal work in my reading life, it was hard not to notice all of the (barely disguised) snorts of derision. And yes, it was clearly different than the rest of the canonical (and the more obtuse and confounding the better) works everyone else had cited but it was in fact a major influence on my reading. Should I have lied?* Even then I knew I shouldn't. Everyone has books, high brow and low that have shaped them but the impulse is surely to always go with the high brow, right? If you can overcome that gut reaction (and maybe you choose a high brow work anyway because it feels right to you), which part of your life should the book come from? Is there one that had a slightly bigger impact than the others on the list? Should you just choose the book whose impact you can most easily articulate? I considered many. Here are just a small sampling.

The Berenstain's B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain was the first book I ever read by myself. I still remember the feeling of exhilaration of knowing I'd read it myself, running down to tell my mom, who was on the phone in the kitchen (I can still see her twirling the phone cord as she chatted to whomever was on the other end of the line), and insisting on reading it to her right that very moment. Even at that young age, I knew I had unlocked something special.

Socks by Beverly Cleary was the book I checked out of the school library again and again. Despite the fact that this was classed as a "third grade" book, I, a mere kindergartner, had special permission to check it out. I loved this story of the grey kitten with white socks so much I don't know if anyone else ever got the chance to check that book out that year. I can still see the cover of this much loved tale (which doesn't match anything I can find online, interestingly enough) and I wish there was a way for me to get my hands on the certainly long since destroyed library due date check out card I signed over and over again that year.

One of the oldest books I have on my shelf is Jane Eyre. I don't mean oldest in terms of first edition or publishing date but just in terms of which book I personally have owned the longest. My copy came from Scholastic books when I was in elementary school. And no, it's not an abridged version. I adored getting the newsletters that came home from school every month and I went through my copy very carefully, circling the books I really wanted. My parents were always very generous with books but even they had to draw the line somewhere and I remember being told that I had to narrow my choices down; I might or might not have circled close to everything in those pages. It was hard to do but obviously Jane Eyre made my final cut. I loved the book but I think I ordered it as much because it was long as for the story. (Side note: I loved the Scholastic newsletters when my kids were of an age to get them too and ordered not only what they were interested in but books I thought they should want to read because I would have wanted to read them if they existed when I was their ages.)

Like so many girls my age, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume was a revelation and as an adult, I wish I had never done those "I must, I must, I must increase my bust" exercises (if you read it, you know what I'm talking about). But what I remember most is not its matter of fact handling of puberty and the emotional aspect of it that felt so very universal, but instead I remember talking about the book with my best friend Jenni, who lived two doors down. I'm pretty sure we were discussing it in lowered voices (who knows why, as it wasn't a patch on Forever, which I read not long afterwards, for forbidden topics) when my younger sister, clearly overhearing us, wanted to know what a period was. I told her to go ask mom, never dreaming that she'd ask my mother such an embarrassing question. This was probably the last time I underestimated my sister.  Her question earned me an our bodies ourselves talk about puberty and getting your period from my mother. Thank heavens mom (and Suzanne) never knew about Forever!

The World According to Garp by John Irving is the only book I ever hid from my parents. It was on their bookshelves and I have no idea exactly how I came across it since there was no dust jacket to tease me with the contents. (My dad has a thing about using the dust jacket as a bookmark and then throwing it away when he's finished with the book. Please direct all horrified hate mail his way and not to me as I already know this is a heinous crime against literature.) I don't remember how old I was but since I remember the room I read it in, I had to be somewhere between 9 and 14 when I read it. My mom did discover me reading it one day and took it away, replacing it with Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, and telling me that I was a little young for Garp. Since she just put it back on the shelf, I just took up reading it where I'd left off whenever I was home alone. (Sorry mom!) Maybe they were right to think I was too young to read it because to this day, more than a few decades since, I remember the sexy bits quite clearly.

But which book did I actually choose to highlight as the book that had a lifetime impact on me? Well, it was Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. I pulled this off the shelf at my grandparents' house when I was probably a pre-teen and once I finished it, I sat up late into the night for weeks and not only imagined myself as the main character, sobbing at all the tragedy in my imagined life, but I kept the story going in my head long past what the authors had written. I've never actually been brave enough to read the sequel that was written not too many years ago because I still cherish the memory of my childhood visceral response so much.

Everyone should have these books, or ones like them in their lives. What books made you the reader you are?



*For those who need to know if the professor was one of those snorting with derision, she was not. In fact, she lectured the class on snobbery and informed everyone that it was best sellers like this that made it possible for other, less commercially viable, books to be published. She also mentioned that Michener himself funded a poetry prize that wouldn't have been possible if his books hadn't been wildly popular. I did not know this when I offered up Hawaii but it made me happy and my fellow students were properly chagrined at the news.

Review: The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

When it came out in the news a couple of years ago that there was a perfectly preserved apartment in Paris that had been closed up and untouched since WWII, it was such an intriguing piece of news. Why would someone walk away from their apartment, never to return? What was in this unexpected time capsule? Were the people dead and gone, victims of the war? Were they still alive but unable to face the memories of the place? The truth could have been anything. The romance of it was in imagining the story behind all of it. If in fact, the real story did come out, it wasn't covered in the news anywhere near as completely as the discovery itself was. Karen Swan imagined her own back story for an apartment like this, complete with a fabulously wealthy family, war crimes, amazing art treasures, and closely held secrets in her newest novel, The Paris Secret.

When the Vermeils, a wealthy and high profile French family, discover that they own an apartment in Paris that hasn't been opened since 1943, they call in a discreet fine arts agency to examine, catalog, and potentially sell whatever might be inside. A codicil to Mr. Vermeil's late father's will forbids Jacques and his wife from going into the apartment themselves until after both the late Francois' and his still very much alive wife's deaths. Flora Sykes is the fine arts agent assigned to the strange and intriguing find, made even more exciting when the apartment turns out to be filled with valuable art. It falls to Flora to trace the provenance on everything they discover, including a long lost Renoir and smaller pieces by other famous artists. As Flora chases down the history of the pieces, she is also dealing with a devastating family situation at home in England. The urgency and discretion required by both situations are overwhelming; luckily Flora is a professional. Although she cannot or will not share everything that is going on in her life, she does have some good friends in Paris to lean on for support. They come in particularly handy when she clashes repeatedly with the spoiled, angry, obnoxious, and badly behaved in every sense of the word, adult children of Jacques and Lilian, Xavier and Natascha. But if playboy, partier Xavier is truly so unpleasant, why is Flora so pulled to him?

Of course, the family is, or should be, of little consequence to her; she is working on the amazing art. Unfortunately she can get no further on the provenance of the art treasures than that they were last known to be sold to a notorious Nazi collaborator, a fact that renders them close to worthless despite their authenticity. Dogged in her determination to find the proof that the Vermeil family came to own these pieces honestly and not simply because desperate Jewish families sold the only things they had of any worth in an attempt to escape Hitler's genocide, Flora digs deep, uncovering secrets that the will's codicil was meant to forever hide, changing and then changing again the Vermeil family's knowledge of itself.

Anyone who knows the art world will immediately see the difficulty in finding a long abandoned stash of valuable art in Europe and have certain expectations regarding the plot of the novel. Swan has done a good job leading even the non-art savvy to the same conclusions and then to twist the plot a hair's breadth, writing a very different story than the one the reader expects. But that's not the end of her slight of hand as she is clearly a master of the unexpected. The family crisis that consumes Flora is very slowly revealed and its importance seems to be only in adding to Flora's stress level until it too is takes on rather more weight in the narrative. While Flora is well fleshed out, some of her motivations or actions are given a tad bit of a short shrift, and despite being an expert at her job and therefore used to dealing with impossibly large sums of money and the people who have it, she is strangely uncertain and occasionally even timid in most of the dealings highlighted in the book. The secondary characters do change the direction of the plot on several occasions but, for the most part, they remain fairly unrealized beyond these plot diversionary roles. The romantic connection is background rather than the main focus of the novel although it grows in importance as the story progresses. There are a few hiccups in the plot such as why, if the family has never stepped foot in the apartment or have any knowledge of what's inside, do they immediately call a fine arts dealer to inventory the contents and why is it so easy for serious and real trust issues to be overcome in the end (over a mere half page) simply by declaring "love"? Over all though, this is an engaging imagining of the story behind an abandoned apartment and an interesting look into the world of fine art and the detective work required to verify and trace it. Readers who love uncovering deeply buried secrets, those who want a small glimpse into the rarefied world of the super rich, and those with an interest in art will find this a worthwhile read.

For more information about Karen Swan and the book, check out her publisher author page or like her on Facebook or Twitter. 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours and Harper Collins for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Waiting on Wednesday

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

Left to Chance by Amy Sue Nathan.

The book is being released by St. Martin's Griffin on November 21, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: No one knows why Teddi Lerner left her hometown, but everyone knows why she’s back.

Twelve-year-old Shayna― talented, persistent, and adorable―persuaded "Aunt Tee" to return to Chance, Ohio, to photograph her father’s wedding. Even though it's been six years since Shay's mother, Celia, died, Teddi can hardly bear the thought of her best friend's husband marrying someone else. But Teddi’s bond with Shay is stronger than the hurt.

Teddi knows it’s time to face the consequences of her hasty retreat from family, friends, and, her old flame, but when she looks through her viewfinder, nothing in her small town looks the same. That’s when she truly sees the hurt she's caused and―maybe―how to fix it.

After the man she once loved accuses Teddi of forgetting Celia, Teddi finally admits why she ran away, and the guilt she’s carried with her. As Teddi relinquishes the distance that kept her safe, she’ll discover surprising truths about the people she left behind, and herself. And she'll finally see what she overlooked all along.

Review: Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

After I blazed through the Outlander quartet twenty years ago (and yes, I know there are 4 more than that now as well as another two planned), I added a lot of Scotland set books to my collection. In fact, I probably added Karen Marie Moning's The Kiss of the Highlander specifically because the jacket copy on my mass market paperback sounds an awful lot like Outlander. There's time travel and romance and danger, a more modern heroine and an historical hero. In fact, while these elements are all there, this is a significantly different book than Outlander, more firmly in the romance genre and with the addition of magic and druids.

Gwen Cassidy's life is pretty dull. She works for an insurance company processing claims and she has no personal life to speak of. The tour around Scotland that she's signed up for is populated by senior citizens instead of potential love interests. She's never going to lose her virginity at this rate. When she heads into the Highland hills to have some time to be alone and think, she ends up falling into a hidden cave, landing smack dab on top of a braw, sleeping Highlander. When Drustan awakens, he tells her that he is The MacKeltar, that he's from 500 years in the past, and that he needs to get back to his own century to save his clan. She thinks it's possible he's a mental patient but she agrees to help him get back to his castle, thinking that she can then give over care of this strange but compelling man to his family. As she sees his reaction to the 20th century along the way to his castle, she starts to wonder if he is indeed telling the truth and, of course, to fall for him as he is falling for her in return.  When she sees who he really is and what he is capable of, history, the present, and everything around them will change for the two of them.

Gwen as the heroine is an interesting character. She is incredibly smart (a gifted physicist) but she's also rather pitiful and not great interpersonally thanks to her late, unfeeling parents who only valued her for her potential contributions to science. Drustan is very much a stereotypical sixteenth century hero. He's ridiculously chauvinistic, even when at the mercy of Gwen's time period and her continued goodwill. Of course, he is also chiseled and delicious looking so despite his overbearing high-handedness, Gwen's hormones cannot wait to tango with him. Her intelligence challenges him, something that he quickly learns to appreciate in the present day but that his past persona really struggles with, keeping them apart despite their white hot lust for each other. The plot is quite involved given the time travel aspect but everything is explained quite well and easily enough so that each part of the story is as believable as something predicated on magic and time travel can be. The ending was amazing and incredibly inventive and although there are more books in the series (and three prior to this one as well), this felt complete in its primary plot line. If you are a historical romance reader, a fan of sexy time travel, want to read an inversion of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, or just like the idea of a man in a plaid, this will absolutely be your guilty pleasure and I'm happy to say that although this was published in 2001, it holds up just fine in 2017.

Review: Royally Wed by Teri Wilson

I was 10 when Charles and Diana married in what was billed as a fairy tale wedding. We were awake at a ridiculous hour gathered around a television set holding plates from high tea in our laps as we watched the prince marry his princess. Leaving aside that this was real life and not a fairy tale, as future years would surely prove, it was a magical event and one I remember fondly. Thirty years later, while wearing a plastic tiara and noshing on delicate British snacks, I sat with friends and watched William and Catherine marry. Another stately, beautiful, and yes, magical royal wedding. Although I was in good company for both of these events, I do admit that even on a regular day, I have a bit of a soft spot for the British royals so I was more than happy to get my hands on Teri Wilson's Royally Wed, a short contemporary romance about a royal wedding, a princess, a Duke who may be hiding something, a gorgeous American, blackmail, and infidelity.

Asher Reed is having a bit of a rough time of it. A professional cellist, he has been invited to play a difficult solo at the wedding of the century after Yo-Yo Ma falls ill and has to cancel. The problem is that as a last minute substitution, he has no hotel room and hasn't practiced at all. The Queen installs him in Buckingham Palace, in The Blue Room, a room in Princess Amelia's suite of rooms and he is given access to St. Paul's after hours his first evening in London. He is affected by the gorgeous cathedral and the famous buried there, playing a hauntingly beautiful piece. It's the first piece he's played since his former fiancee dumped him for his mentor and Maestro.  That both his former fiancee and his Maestro are also in London to perform for the wedding is not making things easy for him.  Princess Amelia is also in St. Paul's, weeping over her upcoming marriage, not exactly the picture of a bride in love and eager for her wedding. And she's not that bride; this wedding is an arranged one to the father of Amelia's best friend. She isn't overjoyed to be marrying Duke Holden but she is trying desperately to live down the nickname of Princess Naughty and do what her family needs her to do. But she and Asher have an instant attraction and their close proximity and an incorrigible corgi named Willow conspire to throw them together, fanning the flames of desire in the mere 10 days before the wedding.

While this is the third book in the series, it easily stands on its own. Princess Amelia is both a sad and an appealing main character. She is clearly torn between her duty to her family and what she really wants, even before Asher enters the picture. For having a reputation as a bit of a bad girl, she is surprisingly naive about what marriage will require of her (yes, you'll have to kiss your husband and sleep with him too!) but when she is with Asher, she doesn't seem to be that completely innocent naif which makes for a bit of a strange dichotomy in her character. Wilson has done a nice job drawing the princess as having both a public and a private persona as well as how lonely it must be to have to be on guard all the time. Asher is a character to sympathize with, torn apart by circumstance, cheated on by his fiancee and the man who meant the world to him, now feeling as if his music has left him, unable to work through stage fright and play to his potential, and falling for a princess set to marry another man in mere days. The only other characters who are in the book for any meaningful span of time are Willow the corgi and James, seemingly the only attendant in the entirety of Buckingham Palace. This makes the book fly past at break neck speed, with only one real plot line. There are some fun nods to Charles and Diana's wedding and relationship that even casual royal watchers should pick up on sprinkled in the book (and in fact one of them makes for a rather pivotal plot point). Anglophiles, contemporary romance fans, and little girls who wanted to grow up to be princesses will enjoy this light and easy tale and may want to search out Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, the movie that served as inspiration for this breezy, quick read.

Thanks to Melissa at Pocket Books for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

Reviews posted this week:

The Little French Bistro by Nina George
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly
Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae

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

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Review: Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae

I have a wee bit of a fascination with Scotland and I've been trying hard to broaden my horizons with my reading lately so Molly MacRae's Plaid and Plagiarism, a Scottish Highlands set cozy mystery (a genre I rarely read) where the amateur sleuths have bought a bookshop should be a perfect way to ease into something not in my usual way of things, right? It certainly should have so I'm left wondering if it was the book or if it was me or some unfortunate combination of the two since the bones and the desire were there (so appropriate a phrase given a mystery, no?).

American Janet Marsh, her best friend Christine, Janet's daughter Tallie, and Tallie's college roommate Summer, have bought a Scottish bookshop called Yon Bonnie Books and are embarking on second careers as book sellers in the quaint Highlands town, Inversgail, where Christine grew up. Janet and her family used to spend summers in Inversgail and Janet ended up with the cottage they summered in after her divorce from her ex, The Rat. The four women, who used to be a librarian, a social worker, a reporter, and a lawyer respectively, plan to learn the book selling business from the former owners Kenneth and Pamela. They are also renovating the upstairs as a B and B and next door as a tea shop. When they first arrive, Janet, who is truly the main character and who the narrative focus is mostly on, discovers that she and Tallie cannot move into her cottage because it has been vandalized. The realtor is convinced that the local agony aunt, Una Graham, who wants desperately to be an investigative reporter, is behind the vandalism. But then Una's body, a sickle in her neck, turns up in the ugly shed at the back of Janet's garden. Secrets come to light showing that almost everyone in town had a reason to dislike Una so figuring out who disliked her enough to actually kill her won't be easy. As Una's body is found at Janet's and as the bookshop is also involved, the four new owners team up to try and discover the murderer at the same time they are trying to get ready for the local Inversgail Literary Festival and navigate the tensions in the local literary community.

As the first in a new series, MacRae introduced a lot of characters here in addition to her four bookshop owners. Creating so many characters and trying to give them each enough of a backstory that she wasn't just introducing names with no identifying characteristics, she also had to add plot thread after plot thread. This might have worked better with fewer secondary characters, waiting to introduce some of the locals later on in the series. As it was, there were too many characters and not enough fleshing out of those most important to this first book. The narrative pacing was uneven, slow and drawn out in the beginning and too quick in the end. The constant rehashing of what each of the four women knew took away from the story and could easily have been skipped. Their sleuthing was rather scattershot, making it surprising that they figured out who the murderer was (although on the plus side, the who of it was a surprise to the reader). In fact the plot, the characters, and the book as a whole could have used a lot of tightening up. I really did want to like this but found myself easily distracted from the story and had a hard time settling back down into it each time I picked it up. If you are a cozy mystery reader and are used to the long build up in the first of a series, you might appreciate this one enough to pick up the second. For me though, I just don't think I'm cut out for the slow start, or maybe mysteries are never going to be my thing.

Review: Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly

OK, a little bit of real talk here. $23.00 for a slender, little, less than 100 pages of text, hard cover book of "micro-memoirs"? What insanity is this? Surely this is a ridiculous price for something so physically insubstantial, right? I mean, the book, even with the bulk of the hard cover, is but the size of a paperback and with those few pages, well... And yet in my usual inimitable fashion, I ignored the price and bought it anyway. I can say that it was worth every penny. I read aloud from it to people I was with the weekend I bought it and raved with an unseemly enthusiasm, even to people who clearly wished me to stuff a sock in it already. Mississippi state poet laureate Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating and Cooling, a collection of "micro-memoirs," tiny memoirs akin to short stories or flash fiction, is funny and thoughtful, real and subtle, surprising and economical. She shares insights into her life in childhood and as an adult, into her marriage, into her parenting, and into memory, and she manages to do it in fewer words than I'm likely to use in this review.

Each micro-memoir is a short, tiny jewel, self-contained and complete within itself but a vital part of the whole. The book is not arranged chronologically and each piece runs from one sentence to no more than five pages. Fennelly's prose is spare and succinct and each word and idea are carefully considered with perfect turns of phrase. The book is deceptively simple, each instance building on the previous one, until the full impact of the memoir hits you. Some of the pieces are delightful, full of joy and love, and some are disturbing, telling of terrible, hidden things. My personal favorite will have me checking page 50 in all of my books for a long time to come. Bit by glorious bit each brief part reveals something more about Fennelly and about the experiences in life that have made her who she is. I couldn't stop turning the pages even as I willed myself to slow down and savor the writing. In the blink of an eye I'd come to the end of this magnificent, intimate book wishing that Fennelly lived next door to me so we could be friends. Read it. You won't be sorry.

Review: The Little French Bistro by Nina George

There's something so charming about the idea of moving to a small Breton village by the sea and starting a new life, right? If a person could be happy anywhere surely this would be the place. And if a person came to it unhappy with life, sad to her very soul, this would, without a doubt, be the perfect place of healing. Nina George's newest novel, The Little French Bistro, is set in one such place in Brittany.

Marianne Lanz is in her sixties but sounds older because she is tired and beaten down. She's trapped in a loveless marriage with a controlling husband and on a trip to Paris, she decides that she's through with life and determines to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Seine. Rescued by a bystander, she is taken to the hospital where her husband roundly chastises her for her seemingly impetuous and, to him, deeply embarrassing attempt before leaving her there so he can catch the bus back to Germany. She can find her own way home. Instead, inspired by a lovely, small, hand painted tile she finds by the nurses' station, Marianne runs away from the hospital, heading to the Port de Kerdruc depicted on the tile, thinking that it would be a beautiful place to die. Once again she survives her attempt.  Fished out of the water by a local fisherman and accepted by the local people despite an initial wariness, she settles in to make her home in this quaint and picturesque town. Kerdruc would be a beautiful place to die but Marianne quickly finds that it's an even more beautiful place to live.

This is very much a novel about second chances. Marianne finds the strength to stand up to her bully of a husband, emerging from lifelong oppression and carving out her own life in a new and welcoming place. In this she is inspirational but in presentation, this is more like a fairy tale than real life. And that's fine if that's what you want to read but the story brings up some very dark issues that shouldn't be so easily solved. Marianne is the character whose journey of discovery and starting over is the most obvious but each of the friends she makes in Kerdruc has a problem to solve or a situation to change so that they too can embrace life and reach for love. The secondary characters are all amiable and winsome and their kindness is clearly the most important thing in helping Marianne to heal but sometimes they blur together, not being quite as differentiated as they should be. The story is ultimately simple and life-affirming. Those readers looking for a warm, feel-good novel writ in soft focus will find this delightful and hopeful despite the darker undertones.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

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

The Temptation to be Happy by Lorenzo Marone.

The book is being released by Oneworld Publications on November 14, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Cesare is 77 years old, a widower and cynical troublemaker, a man who has always had trouble caring for others and has given up trying. Aside from an intermittent fling with a mature nurse called Rossana, who moonlights as a sex worker, he prefers to live his own life, avoiding contact with his neighbors and even his own children wherever possible. Until one day, the enigmatic Emma moves into the neighboring flat.

Emma is ​​married to a strange and sinister man. A man that seems so different from Emma. As Cesare investigates, and starts to uncover the truth of their relationship, he begins to rediscover an appetite for life, and soon he finds himself risking everything for a future he had never thought possible.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors

Reviews posted this week:

The It Girls by Karen Harper
The Welcome Home Diner by Celeste Ng
Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

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

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
The Little French Bistro by Nina George
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals

Transit by Rachel Cusk came from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

I am intrigued by any book that uproots a family (mother and two children) and causes them to have to examine what it means to live and be alive.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney came from St. Martin's Press.

I enjoy books where the main character takes a wander, not only giving the reader the present day but reminiscing about the history of place and time as well as jaunting through their own personal past and memories so I am really looking forward to this one.

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: Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

Book clubs are supposed to push you outside of your comfort zone so I occasionally suggest books to my book club that will do just that for me. In the case of Mo Daviau's Every Anxious Wave, I am neither a big music person nor a time travel reader so this was meant to stretch me in a couple of ways while still having enough familiar things in it to still keep me reading. (Do I know how to choose books outside my bubble or what?) And my book club, which is made up of people who are pretty like minded, agreed to go down this path with me.

Karl Bender is the former guitarist for the 90s indie rock band Axis and now owns a bar in Chicago. He is jaded and cynical but he does manage to have one friend, Wayne, a computer scientist. When Karl accidentally stumbles into a wormhole in the back of his closet, he tells Wayne about it and Wayne figures out a way to harness the energy of the wormhole. The two set up a business sending people back in time to see epic concerts they missed or ones they want to revisit. And that might have been all that happened with this odd portal until Karl sends Wayne to 980 Mannahatta instead of 1980 Manhattan. One typo and he's sent his best and only friend to a place where there's no power source to tap into to bring him back. Luckily Wayne can still communicate with the present via text and he suggests that Karl find an expert to help bring him back. So Karl looks through the Northwestern website and chooses astrophysics PhD student Lena Geduldig, mainly because she doesn't look like a stereotypical astrophysicist with her blue streaked hair and her band t-shirt. Karl might have lost Wayne but now he's got Lena and she comes with a freight train of her own baggage. Yet when these two people meet and start traveling to concerts together (leaving the issue of retrieving Wayne aside for the moment), they fall into a relationship. Eventually, like Wayne's desire to meddle in the past to save John Lennon's life, the impulse that landed him in 980, Lena wants to go back in time and change things about her own past, jeopardizing what she and Karl have and leading to the question whether we can or should right past wrongs if we have the chance.

Karl narrates the entire novel so that the reader is spared highly technical and detailed explanations of how the time travel portal works and how first Wayne and then Lena have harnessed its power. Asking the reader to simply suspend disbelief might be fine except that once time moves forward and backwards and spirals around itself, it can and does get confusing without any sort of grounding to explain it. in fact, I'm still not entirely certain where in the timeline we are at the end of the book. Neither Karl nor Lena are particularly appealing characters and their chemistry as a couple, at all points in the novel, is mostly missing or terrifically one-sided which makes it hard to root for Karl as he attempts to recapture a love that wasn't all that believable in the first place. I'm pretty certain I missed most of the music, band, and pop culture references. For those who catch the name drops and references, I suspect the story would be a more nostalgic, quirky romp than it was for me. The second half of the novel is much darker than the first half and deals with much weightier issues like rape, loss, fat acceptance, love, and belonging. I really wanted to thoroughly enjoy this book, to prove to myself that my little reading bubble could easily expand if I was intrigued enough with the underlying themes but it didn't click with me as much as I'd hoped. Maybe it's because of my usual reading preferences. Or maybe not. If you don't mind your characters on the emo side, you are an indie music geek, and you aren't too fussed by time travel that just is, you might really enjoy this book in ways I just couldn't.