Review: Little Wonders by Kate Rorick

In my (now many) years of being a mom, there have certainly been times I'm not proud of how I behaved. I've yelled at my kids for so long the car windows steamed up. I've carried a tantruming child out of a store and then practically had to sit on him to get him buckled in his carseat because he was arching out of that seat as hard as he could (and nameless lady I didn't know who stopped to tell me that you "don't want to be the neighborhood bitch, but..." as you proceeded to tell me it was my own fault that he was in full on meltdown, I still hate you 21 years later and send malice your way for piling on to a clearly harried mom doing the best she could). And there are more, although different, instances like that that, probably even more than I remember. Thankfully none of them were recorded and posted to the internet. I know I've made mistakes but that humiliating kind of proof is forever. Kids are humbling and they can be infuriating, and parents can have meltdowns. But we sure aren't supposed to show that. If we do, we open ourselves up to accusations of being a bad mom. Just google the term mom-shaming on the internet and see what comes up. No mom is immune and there is perhaps a little feeling of schadenfreude when the person doing that thing you, as a "better" mother, would never do is a celebrity or even just that one mom at school or in your neighborhood who you've always resented a tiny bit. But of course, no matter which mother it is directed against, mom-shaming is ugly and hurtful and it doesn't take into consideration the very human feelings of the mom in question or the fallout that might happen in the rest of her life if she is so publicly pilloried. Kate Rorick's newest novel, Little Wonders, takes on just that topic. What happens when a "perfect" mom is caught having a meltdown, that meltdown goes viral, and her whole life is upended?

Quinn Barrett is the PTA President. She's a talented interior designer working on a major project that is set to be featured in Martha Stewart's magazine. She is organized and focused and she takes no prisoners. Her life is carefully curated and polished and she is determined that everything will be perfect, always. And it is. Until it isn't. The morning of the Happy Halloween Parade at her 3 year old son Ham's Little Wonders Preschool, the very best school (it's for potential prodigies after all) in the posh Boston suburb of Needleton, starts off badly but Quinn absorbs every misstep and keeps pushing through until the moment just before the parade that Ham refuses to wear the lovingly and meticulously crafted spaceship costume she has made for him. It is the final straw and Quinn completely loses it, stomping on the costume and yelling at Ham. If only no one had seen.  But Daisy Stone, a mom new to the area, homesick for her funky Los Angeles and feeling like the proverbial fish out of water with her electric blue hair and full tattoo sleeves in this wealthy, conservative town, videos the whole scene and then emails the video to her friends back in LA where one of them promptly shares it. Quinn's gone viral; suddenly she loses her position on the PTA, her job shoves her into the background to minimize the fallout, and her marriage is on shaky ground. Meanwhile, Daisy is overwhelmed by guilt but can't come clean because she's afraid of the consequences if she does and it doesn't help that her cousin by marriage, Shanna, has orchestrated the preschool's coup against Quinn and is now (over)using Daisy as her right hand woman. After further fallout, Daisy and Quinn strike up a tentative friendship and now Daisy really can't tell Quinn that the initial video is her fault.

Quinn is very much the stereotypical "perfect" mom, with her surgeon husband, cute kid, beautiful home, great job, and a housekeeper helping to hold it all together. She is clearly walking a razor's edge and yet she gives off an air of impenetrability and invincibility. Even though the reader can see that she's eventually going to slip, she still isn't a terribly appealing character for some reason. In the book, she has no friends until Daisy, and quite frankly, it's not hard to see why not, so focused on perfection and the superficial, allowing no room for error or humanness. Daisy is portrayed as Quinn's diametric opposite. Where Quinn is cold, Daisy is warm. Where Quinn is conventional, Daisy is funky. Daisy is stifled by the life that is Quinn's preferred milieu. Even so, it is no surprise to see these two women prove that underneath the visible trappings, they aren't in fact too different. All of the portrayals here are a little over the top and stereotypical though, even in the secondary characters. Shanna is conniving and scheming, the villain who gets a little too much glee out of Quinn's misfortune. Quinn's husband Stuart is suave and distant but almost always described as with a romance hero's sly smile. Daisy's husband Robbie is oblivious and hard working, happy to have his family back in the town where he grew up. The community itself is portrayed as uptight, judgmental, and insular, responsible for all of Daisy's unhappiness and the reason the repercussions for Quinn's meltdown are so long-lived. Rorick does do a good job showing the nasty underbelly of competitive momming, especially in the world of an elite preschool. The school-wide newsletters that start each chapter are a delight to read, with their snarky portions crossed out and rewritten in that strange, celebratory exuberance of school newsletters everywhere. Quinn learning to let go of her rigid ideas and learning to be a kinder, gentler, happier person is a nice long arc. Daisy embracing herself and who she is is a bit shorter but still given enough room in the narrative. Another character, though, is redeemed altogether too quickly and unconvincingly. The ending of the novel is too easy and too fast given everything that went before and has a lot of last minute revelations and their resolutions. Although I have known moms with varying degrees of these characters, I still had trouble entirely connecting to this book and these particular character. Then again, I may not be the target audience given that I looked the PTA President in the eyes, laughed, and said, "No. I don't really like people," when she asked me to head up a committee.  Clearly I'm neither a Quinn nor a Daisy.  But I'm sure there are moms and non-moms out there who would be interested in this tale of cutthroat parenting, finding balance the hard way, and the importance that the internet and ever present cameras play in our lives these days.

For more information about Kate Rorick and the book, check our her author site, follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and publisher William Morrow 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 over the past week are:

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead by James Kirkwood
Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Yellow Earth by John Sayles
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Reviews posted this week:

The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

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

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Beginning with Cannonballs by Jill McCroskey Coupe
The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair
Faces: Profiles of Dogs by Vita Sackville-West
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Difficult Light by Tomas Gonzalez
Adults and Other Children by Miriam Cohen
Grief's Country by Gail Griffin
Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube
Search Heartache by Carla Malden
What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
The Book Keeper by Julia McKenzie Munemo
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Slice Harvester by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead by James Kirkwood
Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

Review: Slice Harvester by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf

When I went off to college a hundred thousand years ago, there was a pizza chain near the school that sold two small pizzas for $5. It was a college student's dream, cheap, fast, filling, and delivered very late at night. Except the pizza was disgusting. It came as a surprise to no one that they closed the summer after my freshman year because of health code violations. Before coming across Speedy's, I never would have guessed that pizza could be gross. Mediocre, yes. Disappointing, yes. Sublime, rare but yes. Disgusting? Who knew? Apparently Colin Atrophy Hagendorf knew. Slice Harvester is his memoir of eating his way across Manhattan, one pizza slice at a time, what was going on in his life as he ate all of that pizza, and his nostalgia for the punk scene of an earlier time.

Hagendorf was a NYC bike messenger, occasional punk rocker, and full time partier when he came up with the drunken idea to try all of the pizza in Manhattan on a quest for the best. Somehow, despite his level of intoxication when the plan hatched, he managed to not only remember the plan, but to set about doing it and to chronicle his attempt via 'zine and blog. Taking more than two years to eat one plain slice from each and every one of the more than 400 pizza places in Manhattan, Hagendorf does more than taste pizza. He reminisces about growing up outside of the City, joining the punk community, and lets the reader into his life and his relationships. This is not really about all the pizza he eats, it is about Hagendorf and how he became who he is. He chronicles partying that is out of control, the way that his alcoholism almost derailed his budding relationship, and his quest to really figure out who he is and who he wants to be.

In addition to his tales of his own life, Hagendorf introduces the reader briefly to some of the people important in his life, to random (and occasionally famous) people who eat with him along his quest, and to at least one pizza parlor owner's family journey to making pizza in Manhattan. He includes the punk community he's long been a part of, not only in the person of his fellow diners but also in terms of their culture. And this is the first place this memoir breaks down for a reader who is not punk. If you miss the cultural references because you have different touchpoints, you won't understand (or frankly, care about) many of his comparisons, missing a lot.  Each chapter of this "memoir in pizza" starts with a drawing and review from his blog or 'zine.  This is the second place this failed for me.  If I had read the blog before getting the book, I doubt I would have bought this as his reviews sound like nothing so much as a high schooler who thinks he's being clever.  Instead the descriptions are overwrought and reaching.  Over all, his narrative style is meandering and hearing about his excesses and his morning puke got old pretty quickly. He clearly wanted to assert his bona fides as counter culture and punk here but I'm not sure that a stunt memoir was the way to go about it, unless the stunt was something less prosaic than eating pizza. Actually, a straight memoir about being punk, rather than interleaving living that life with his "slice harvesting," might have been more unusual and interesting than this half in, half out memoir ended up being. Perhaps I'm too old and too conventional to be the right audience for this one but I would have thought that pizza, good and bad, both actual and as a metaphor for life, should have been for everyone.  Well, except for Speedy's pizza.  Because that stuff was gross.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst.

The book is being released by She Writes Press on April 7, 2020.

The book's jacket copy says: A chance meeting with a charismatic photographer will forever change Elizabeth's life.

Until she met Richard, Elizabeth's relationship with Georgia O'Keeffe and her little-known Hawaii paintings was purely academic. Now it's personal. Richard tells Elizabeth that the only way she can truly understand O'Keeffe isn't with her mind--it's by getting into O'Keeffe's skin and reenacting her famous nude photos.

In the intimacy of Richard's studio, Elizabeth experiences a new, intoxicating abandon and fullness. It never occurs to her that the photographs might be made public, especially without her consent. Desperate to avoid exposure--she's a rising star in the academic world and the mother of young children--Elizabeth demands that Richard dismantle the exhibit. But he refuses. The pictures are his art. His property, not hers.

As word of the photos spreads, Elizabeth unwittingly becomes a feminist heroine to her students, who misunderstand her motives in posing. To the university, however, her actions are a public scandal. To her husband, they're a public humiliation. Yet Richard has reawakened an awareness that's haunted Elizabeth since she was a child--the truth that cerebral knowledge will never be enough.

Now she must face the question: How much is she willing to risk to be truly seen and known?

Review: The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Everyone handles grief differently. Some people want to bury it, some to shout it from the rooftops. Some people need to talk it through with others while some look for solace in a higher being. Holding onto grief and internalizing it without embracing or accepting it can tear apart the closest families, severing bonds once thought unbreakable. This is the case with the Olander family in Shilpi Somaya Gowda's newest novel, The Shape of Family, about a family disintegrating in the wake of a terrible tragedy, one that each member carries forward, shaping their futures in ways so unlike their pasts.

Keith, a successful investment banker from a financially insecure background, meets and marries Jaya, who works in international relations and grew up living all over the world as the cultured daughter of an Indian diplomat. The two of them settle in California and start to raise their family, daughter Karina, in eighth grade when the novel opens, fully cognizant that her mixed race heritage keeps her from feeling like she fits in anywhere, and mischievous, sweet eight year old son Prem. Their lives are not perfect but they are mostly happy with the balance they've struck. And then a terrible tragedy hits this small, self-contained family, and everything spirals out of control. They are cracked wide open in the wake of the devastation wrought by this sudden, unexpected, and unimaginable catastrophe, each character retreating away from the others, facing their guilt and the grief on their own, connections to each other stretching and tearing. In their individual, isolated spirals, they each try to move forward and forge a new life, without fully coming to terms with their loss and Prem, once an integral piece that held them together, is now helpless to stop the familial disintegration.

The novel's narration moves among the four Olander family members, with Karina being the biggest focus. The story is heartbreaking and the characters' grief is palpable as each withdraws into themselves and away from their once strong connections to each other. There are a lot of issues explored here beyond grief and what the shape of a family is: divorce, cutting, cults, the obsessive pursuit of money, complete immersion in religion, self-worth as defined by a job, love and relationship, and morality, as well as the suggestion of both rape and suicide. Perhaps there are a few too many topics. The first third of the book is quite grief heavy but it has a stronger focus than the last two thirds, mirroring the weaker bonds between the family members the further they get from the tragedy but also loaded with more and more issues. The ending here is hopeful, which is welcome after such an intensely sad story but it moves quite heavily into explanatory writing rather than allowing the hope to be revealed organically. There's so much pain in this novel but, in the end, what matters is that love remains and it will always be included in the forever changed shape of the family. Readers who enjoy novels of families facing adversity and sorrow and seeing the characters' subsequent responses to tragedy will enjoy immersing themselves in this novel.

For more information about Shilpi Somaya Gowda and the book, check our her author site, follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and publisher William Morrow for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Not a very good week at all! Here's hoping this coming week is better. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past week are:

The Road to Delano by John DeSimone
The Book Keeper by Julia McKenzie Munemo
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Slice Harvester by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf
The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Yellow Earth by John Sayles

Reviews posted this week:

The Road to Delano by John DeSimone

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

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Beginning with Cannonballs by Jill McCroskey Coupe
The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair
Faces: Profiles of Dogs by Vita Sackville-West
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Difficult Light by Tomas Gonzalez
Adults and Other Children by Miriam Cohen
Grief's Country by Gail Griffin
Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube
Search Heartache by Carla Malden
What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
The Book Keeper by Julia McKenzie Munemo
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Slice Harvester by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf
The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Life From Scratch by Melissa Ford came from me for myself.

Yes, I have a thing for food books. What of it? This story of a woman who starts a food blog to teach herself to cook, to vent her unhappiness, and to share her life sounds like yummy fun.

Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams came from William Morrow and LibraryThing.

I have enjoyed Beatriz Williams' books before so I am looking forward to this one about a photographer and war correspondent researching a lost aviation pioneer and the woman she hires to help her, a woman who might have once been the disappeared aviator's student.

Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner came from Berkley.

Hollywood and rumors, what could be more delicious and escapist?

Stet by Diana Athill came from me for myself.

Athill is a beautiful writer and learning about her life as an editor should be amazing.

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 was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Last Summer of Ada Bloom by Martine Murphy.

The book is being released by Tin House Books on April 7, 2020.

The book's jacket copy says: A big-hearted story of a family filled with secrets, and the ways they grow up—and apart—over the course of a single, life-altering summer.

In a small country town during one long, hot summer, the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is straining against the confines of her life, lost in regret for what might have been, when an old flame shows up. In turn, her husband Mike becomes frustrated with his increasingly distant wife. Marital secrets, new and long-hidden, start to surface—with devastating effect. And while teenagers Tilly and Ben are about to step out into the world, nine-year-old Ada is holding onto a childhood that might soon be lost to her.

When Ada discovers an abandoned well beneath a rusting windmill, she is drawn to its darkness and danger. And when she witnesses a shocking and confusing event, the well’s foreboding looms large in her mind—a driving force, pushing the family to the brink of tragedy. For each family member, it’s a summer of searching—in books and trees, at parties, in relationships new and old—for the answer to one of life’s most difficult questions: how to grow up?

The Last Summer of Ada Bloom is an honest and tender accounting of what it means to come of age as a teen, or as an adult. With a keen eye for summer’s languor and danger, and a sharp ear for the wonder, doubt, and longing in each of her characters’ voices, Martine Murray has written a beguiling story about the fragility of family relationships, about the secrets we keep, the power they hold to shape our lives, and about the power of love to somehow hold it all together.

Review: The Road to Delano by John DeSimone

Movements like Eat Local and Farm to Table have people very cognizant of where their food comes from these days. People want to know that the food is ethically sourced and the farm workers are well treated. There's more of a spotlight on migrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, and the ways they are exploited to harvest the crops we all want on our tables. Certainly we're not even close to perfect in our ethical treatments of people, livestock, and land, but over all, the improvements have been vast and the farming industry knows it is under more scrutiny than it once was. How did it get this way though? How many people know about César Chavez and his fight to unionize the vineyards in Central California, his determination to achieve his goals by non-violent methods, or his hunger strike? How many people know just how recent this movement was? John DeSimone's novel, The Road to Delano, is set firmly in the 1950s farming world, a world on the verge of change, undergoing a difficult and contentious revolution.

Jack Duncan was eight when his father, Sugar, a farmer, died in a car accident, having gone off the road on his way home from a grower's convention. Jack's always been told that his father had been drinking when he died. Now ten years after Sugar's untimely death, Jack and his mother are on the verge of losing the single acre their house sits on, the last acre they still own of the vast farm that Sugar had been building but had apparently gambled and lost in a card game, to back taxes. So Jack sets off on the old, but still functional farm combine, to sell it in town and get the money to save the Duncan home. Along the way he stops to help an older man in the road. Herm had been his father's best friend and he tells Jack that Sugar's death was not an accident and that he, Jack, deserves to know the truth. Jack, and his friend Adrian, son of a Mexican American farm worker, are set to leave Delano come August for college, hopefully with baseball scholarships in hand. But the knowledge that Herm has given to Jack eats at him and amidst the escalating tensions that Jack can't fully understand, he wades into the dangerous world of the ongoing strike, learns firsthand the reasons behind César Chavez's movement, and goes toe to toe with the powerful growers of the area.

Jack's desire to do right by the people he cares about, saving their family home for his mother, naively poking into the past and his father's death looking for justice, standing by Adrian and his family no matter the danger in that stance, drives the plot forward. As a not quite 18 year old boy, who is neither a grower's son nor a farm worker's son, there's much he doesn't understand about the way his world works and he makes mistakes and missteps that are much more catastrophic for others than for him. Always possessed of a good heart, he learns as the novel goes on, maturing and growing in compassion, wisdom, and skill.

DeSimone does a good job weaving the potentially championship baseball season for the team with both grower's sons and farm worker's sons on it and Jack and Adrian's struggle to block out everything except that small white ball and the diamond with the volatile and unpredictable atmosphere of the town. If the novel starts with simmering tension, it ratchets up exponentially and the focus narrows as the pages turn. Jack is well drawn and complex as a character, struggling to live up to his father's reputation, burning with an anger that wants to explode, but also trying as hard as he can to do the right thing, urges that sometimes are in complete opposition to one another. The growers he's up against are less well developed, portrayed as one dimensional, solely bad people, despite one's son saying that his father isn't a bad guy and the expository speech of another telling Jack about the pressures of being a grape farmer. Nothing in the grower's characters proves they are anything but greedy, nasty, brutish human beings who aren't averse to killing people, if not directly, then at least with full knowledge of the result of their actions. Jack's late father is portrayed as having had the courage to pursue what he knew was right for the people he employed, for the land, and for his own conscience, the diametric opposite of all the other growers. Only Jack shows any nuance whatsoever. The unrest and air of barely suppressed violence, along with the appearance of Chavez and his determination to keep the cause nonviolent, is quite well done and illuminates a piece of modern history that so many do not know about. The ending of the story, while releasing some of the pent up pressure, still captures the cost to so many, of this fight for their lives. This is a political, fast paced, and historically accurate thriller of a read.

For more information about John DeSimone and the book, check our his author site, follow him on Instagram, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and publisher Rare Bird Books for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Not a very good week at all! Here's hoping this coming week is better. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past week are:

The Moonglow Sisters by Lori Wilde
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Yellow Earth by John Sayles
The Book Keeper by Julia McKenzie Munemo
The Road to Delano by John DeSimone

Reviews posted this week:

The Moonglow Sisters by Lori Wilde

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

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Beginning with Cannonballs by Jill McCroskey Coupe
The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair
Faces: Profiles of Dogs by Vita Sackville-West
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Difficult Light by Tomas Gonzalez
Adults and Other Children by Miriam Cohen
Grief's Country by Gail Griffin
Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube
Search Heartache by Carla Malden
What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Second Home by Christina Clancy came from St. Martin's Press.

I'm a total sucker for books that deal with summer homes and this one about a family deciding what to do about their Cape Cod home and the secrets and memories contained within it really calls to me.

The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane came from a lovely book friend on Litsy.

A short essay celebrating the joy and gifts of reading, this looks beautiful and amazing.

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 was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood.

The book is being released by Sourcebooks Landmark on April 7, 2020.

The book's jacket copy says: She built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow.

Emily Warren Roebling refuses to live conventionally--she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's determined to make change. But then her husband Wash asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible.

Emily's fight for women's suffrage is put on hold, and her life transformed when Wash, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. Lines blur as Wash's vision becomes her own, and when he is unable to return to the job, Emily is consumed by it. But as the project takes shape under Emily's direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building--hers, or her husband's. As the monument rises, Emily's marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it?

Based on the true story of the Brooklyn Bridge, The Engineer's Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattan's elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P.T. Barnum. It's the story of a husband and wife determined to build something that lasts--even at the risk of losing each other.

Review: The Moonglow Sisters by Lori Wilde

As an older sister myself, I have a soft spot for stories about sisters. My own relationship with my sister has changed in ways big and small over the years, evolving from the days I declared to my mother that she was my baby, not my mom's, to being irritated with her always wanting to tag along with me, to being friends. We are quite different as adults but we will always have a bond and despite occasional frustrations (probably on both our parts), there's no one I'd rather be stuck with as a sister. So when I saw the premise of Lori Wilde's new book, The Moonglow Sisters, I was quite excited to read it. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to what I'd hoped.

The three Clark sisters were once as close as sisters could be.  Orphaned young and sent to live with the grandmother they had no idea existed in Moonglow Cove, Texas, the golden haired girls were nicknamed the Moonglow Sisters. Madison, the oldest, was always organized and in charge, carefully controlled, caring for her younger sisters as if she was another parent. Middle sister Shelley looked just like their late mother but was the impetuous, wild, and carefree rebel of the family. Little sister Gia was the peacemaker, bridging the gap between her two wildly different sisters, wanting only for everyone to get along and be happy, the consummate people pleaser. But after "The Incident with Raoul", the sisters' relationship was broken. Maddie fled to New York, launched a very successful lifestyle TV show and became famous. Shelley escaped to Costa Rica and hadn't been home since. Gia went to college and then to Japan to study under a famous kitemaker, before coming back to Moonglow Cove and the beach to try and make a go of it with her kite business. When their dear Grammy is diagnosed with a glioblastoma and must have brain surgery, she instructs her best friend, Darynda not to tell Gia until the surgery is underway. At the same time, Gia will read the letter that Grammy has written, asking her to finish the quilt they'd all left unfinished so long ago. But she must call her sisters home to help her finish it. The question is whether the three women, still nursing their hurts, can get past what happened 5 years ago with Raoul, can share their secrets, and unravel the misunderstandings that tore them apart even as each sister faces her own role in their rift, learns truths about herself, and changes in order to move on.

Opening with Grammy penning the letter to the sisters before her surgery, the sisters are described as very different but each a vital part of one complete kite. In one sense this makes sense in that the letter is written to Gia, the kitemaker, but since the rest of the story uses quilt imagery, this seems a bit of an incongruous analogy, especially as Grammy herself is a quilter. In the letter she exhorts Gia to "repair the riff" between the sisters. And while using the word riff instead of rift could be a dialect thing, there are no other instances of dialect terms. And it's hard for me to get past an obvious mistake like that right off the bat. The three sisters are drawn as very different in personality and they stay strictly true to those depictions throughout the novel. They each guard their secrets carefully even if sharing them could have made life far easier very quickly. As the sisters and the town come together to help save the Moonglow Inn (and just why the town is so invested in the sisters is unclear other than they were once close to each other), they will have to reveal themselves, laid open and honest. All three of the women learn their life lesson at almost exactly the same time, leading to three major climaxes all at once. Gia's pretend engagement to next door neighbor Mike, undertaken as the way to keep the sisters together to work on the quilt, is the romance thread of the plot and it can't decide if this is a romance or a women's fiction novel. Whatever it is, it has one of the strangest sex scenes I've ever read (unnecessary as well). The deus ex machina moment with Raoul returning, forcing the sisters to finally have it out over "The Incident with Raoul" comes completely out of the blue and the epilogue is awkward and too much, too tidy. The novel tries to tackle a lot of issues: perfectionism, family, cheating, miscarriage, cults, sex addiction, cancer, homosexuality, intolerance, being orphaned, healing, and communication with varying degrees of success. The biggest reveal of the novel was completely obvious from the beginning, so it just petered out. The novel felt muddled to me and I'm still not sure whether I want to be team quilts or team kites.  A quick, uncomplicated read, it needed tightening and focus.  Others really like this a lot though so if you're looking for a light, easy beach read, maybe this one will be for you.

For more information about Lori Wilde and the book, check our her author site, follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and publisher William Morrow for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Not a very good week at all! Here's hoping this coming week is better. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past week are:

The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn
Search Heartache by Carla Malden
What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
The Moonglow Sisters by Lori Wilde

Reviews posted this week:

The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn
The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams

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

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Beginning with Cannonballs by Jill McCroskey Coupe
The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair
Faces: Profiles of Dogs by Vita Sackville-West
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Difficult Light by Tomas Gonzalez
Adults and Other Children by Miriam Cohen
Grief's Country by Gail Griffin
Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube
Search Heartache by Carla Malden
What the Lady Wants by Renee Rosen

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock by Jane Riley came from me for myself.

This is a quirky sounding tale of a strictly regimented man who loses the woman he loves and must learn to loosen himself up some if he ever wants a chance at happiness and love. I do like books that promise to be charming and delightful like this one.

Mobile Library by David Whitehouse came from me for myself.

Will you look at that cover?! ::swoon:: If I needed to escape bullies and an abusive father, I'd want to abscond in a mobile library so I am curious about this book, which promises to be both hard and redeeming.

Mr. Darcy's Guide to Courtship by Emily Brand came from me for myself.

Do I need a reason that's more than "because Mr. Darcy?" I mean, advice from Mr. Darcy on courtship? Don't mind if I do!

Seven Days in Summer by Marcia Willett came from Thomas Dunne Books.

With summer coming, what's better than a book about family and friends gathering at or staying away from the beach house they've been coming to for years. This is the stuff of delicious stories and tensions and I can't wait.

A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson came from a lovely book friend on Litsy.

Will these two opposites, who have been in love for a couple of years now, find enough commonality, especially in the face of an 8 year old surprise, to stay together and make a life? I liked the author's previous book so I'm 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: The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams

Sometimes friends press books into my hands despite the book not being my usual kind of read. A collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories is definitely one of these kinds of books. The title of the book, giving away the thematic link through all the stories, made me think of Pinky and the Brain and their plans to take over the world. Of course, my friend loaned the book to me specifically for the Diana Gabaldon story in it, a story adjacent to the Outlander world, focused on Master Raymond and the Compte St. Germain. But because I am a completest of the worst sort, I had to read all of the stories, not just the one she thought I'd be curious about.

As in all collections, some of the stories were more entertaining than others. I particularly like the ones that were comedic in tone with bumbling super villains but then I always liked the campy "Kapow" and "Bam" of the 1960s era Batman tv show too so my taste may be a tad suspect. I am certain that there were many stories that allude to characters or novels in the genre that I completely missed, not being much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader, which those who catch the references will probably find enhance the stories. My level of familiarity is with The Incredibles, the aforementioned Pinky and the Brain, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and for a non-cartoon reference, the baddies in James Bond.  Hardly a breadth of literary knowledge of the genre.

Each story in the collection starts with what appears almost to be a case file written by the editor. It summarizes the category of the story, who tells the story, the rule of supervillainry that the story illustrates, and who the story is about. Sometimes these little intros are fun and other times they are too much, giving away more than should be told in advance of the actual story. The stories themselves are of varying lengths and varying seriousness. Some appear to be part of their authors' larger universes while others seem to be stand alone. A unique idea for a collection, I'm not sure this necessarily made me any more likely to read some of these authors but for the most part, it was a fun and unlikely bit of reading for me.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves.

The book is being released by William Morrow on April 7, 2020.

The book's jacket copy says: Resonant with the emotional power of the bestselling novels of David Nicholls and Jojo Moyes, a rich and poignant debut about lies, loss, and a transcendent love at the heart of a troubled marriage.

A lifetime together.
Six months of silence.
One last chance.

By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Not a sentence, not a single word. Maggie isn’t sure what, exactly, provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas.

Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that has become, for Maggie, deafening.

Then Frank finds Maggie collapsed in the kitchen, unconscious, an empty package of sleeping pills on the table. Rushed to the hospital, she is placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors assess the damage.

If she regains consciousness, Maggie may never be the same. Though he is overwhelmed at the thought of losing his wife, will Frank be able to find his voice once again—and explain his withdrawal—or is it too late?

Review: The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn

While we are certainly not even close to perfect today when dealing with mental illnesses like PTSD or post-partum depression or addiction, we are certainly more open and advanced than we were just a few decades ago. Once we locked people up or sent them away, not knowing how to treat these illnesses. But even in doing so, we learned and pursued new ideas meant to help those suffering and remind them of the messy, magnificence of a life lived fully open. In Kayte Nunn's newest novel, not only does one character, suffering post-partum depression and guilt learn to live and love again, but decades later, two much younger women learn to open themselves respectively to love and experience, to embrace the new and the scary in order to have a chance at their happiest lives.

Opening in the fall of 1951, Esther Durrant and her husband are taking an odd and unexpected vacation together, ending up on isolated Little Embers Island in the Scilly Islands. But it's not really a vacation. John, in desperation, is committing Esther to the care of his old friend Dr. Richard Cresswell because Esther has not been well since the birth of her second child. Esther is completely betrayed and blindsided by being left on this remote and calm island with nothing on it save the asylum and two abandoned cottages. Initially distraught and angry, she comes to care for her fellow patients, three men who fought in WWII and the cook, although she does not much like the nurse. As her heart opens to the island and its healing quietness, she also opens her heart in other ways.  But her former life, her husband, and her toddler son beckon.

In 2018, Rachel, a marine biologist in her mid-thirties, leaves the tropical island where she's been living and researching for the past year or two for London and then her newest post researching warty venus clams and climate change in the Scilly islands off the Cornish coast. She has hopped from research job to research job, intentionally never forming an attachment to people or places and she expects this assignment to be no different. Rachel is out in a small tin boat starting preliminary research when she is caught in a sudden, fierce storm and the boat's engine quits, prompting her to try to swim to the closest island, Little Embers. Injured and stranded on the island with a woman named Leah, a gruff hermit of sorts, Rachel finds a book and unsent letters in an antique suitcase in the house. Reading them, she is transported by the strength of the love she reads in them.

Also in 2018, twenty something Eve has given up her trip to Africa with her boyfriend in order to take care of her beloved grandmother, who is recovering from a nasty fall. Her grandmother was once a celebrated mountaineer so while her Grams recovers, Eve intends to help her write her memoir as well as potentially figure out what she wants to do with her life.

The novel is set in two different times but it is really a triple-stranded narrative. Esther's time and experiences at Little Embers, what really happened after her second child's birth, and the decisions facing her as she comes back to life dominate the story. Rachel's tale of tightly guarding her heart, her near miss in the storm, and how finding the letters to "E" from "R" changed her comes in a close second. Eve's story of taking care of her elderly Grams has less weight in this braided narrative but is still vital to the story line as a whole. It isn't hard to figure out where the story is going in any of the three narratives but its predictability makes it no less charming a tale to read. Esther and Rachel in particular are well drawn and pleasant to spend time with as they try and see what their futures should look like. Esther is constrained by her times in a way that Rachel is not and although the contrast is subtle, in the end it is very definitely there: two bold, courageous women choosing their own paths, a lesson that the younger Eve is only just realizing. There are a couple of plot threads here that are a little too easily resolved and it is more a love story (or more properly the love story of a lifetime and a possible love story) than a historical novel but it was an engaging and pleasing read.

For more information about Kayte Nunn and the book, check our her author site, follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and publisher William Morrow for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Not a very good week at all! Here's hoping this coming week is better. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed over the past week are:

Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Amazing Gracie by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn

Reviews posted this week:

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Amazing Gracie by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff

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

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams
Beginning with Cannonballs by Jill McCroskey Coupe
The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair
Faces: Profiles of Dogs by Vita Sackville-West
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
Difficult Light by Tomas Gonzalez
Adults and Other Children by Miriam Cohen
Grief's Country by Gail Griffin
Moments of Glad Grace by Alison Wearing
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John came from me for myself.

A comedy of manners centered around several women who all work at a department store in Sydney in the 1950s, this looks like it will be a lot of fun to read.

A Work of Art by Micayla Lally came from me for myself.

When a woman and her boyfriend break up, she rediscovers her love of art but what will happen when she reconnects with him again? I do like to see women reinventing and empowering themselves so this should be a good read.

The Switch by Beth O'Leary came from Flatiron Books.

A grandmother and granddaughter switching lives? Thinking of my mom and my daughter, this concept makes me giggle and I can't wait to read about it in this.

The Road to Delano by Beth John DeSimone came from Rare Bird Books and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A novel about a high school senior who can't wait to leave his town and the political roilings behind, plans change dramatically when he's presented with evidence that his father was murdered just as his family's farm is on the verge of being sold for taxes. This looks like a tough but really interesting read.

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.