It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams
Nine Island by Jane Alison
Roughneck Grace by Michael Perry
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
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 Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
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 Odds of You and Me by Cecelia Galante

Reviews posted this week:

Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith
The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams

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

The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore
My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
Roughneck Grace by Michael Perry
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill

Review: The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams

I have developed a real love for stories set in the 1920s. Prohibition and the Jazz Age are simultaneously so seedy and so glamorous. There's just something so seductive about the time, juxtaposed so teasingly with underground, unspoken violence. Beatriz Williams' newest novel, The Wicked City, is set firmly in this glittering, dangerous world in New York City and in the small town Appalachia of a big time bootlegger.

It's 1998 and Ella Gilbert has left her husband after she finds him having sex with a prostitute. She's moving into an apartment on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, a place she'll be able to create a new life for herself. On her first day there, she meets Hector, a musician and the building handyman of sorts and she's drawn to him just as she's drawn to the building. He warns her not to go down to the laundry room after dark but she forgets his warning when she remembers that she's forgotten her laundry down there. Strange and alluring noises come from behind the wall and she wants to go investigate.

Flip to the 1920s. Geneva Rose Kelly, more familiarly known as Gin, is a flapper. Typist by day, she flirts with her wealthy college boyfriend in speakeasies by night, especially the speakeasy on Christopher Street. After a raid on said speakeasy, Gin ends up talking to Oliver Anson, a Prohibition agent who wants her help bringing down her step father, the man who has become one of the biggest bootleggers and distributors on the East Coast. Reluctant to help Anson, but just as reluctant to turn on her abusive, lecherous step father, Gin ends up entangled in the whole thing whether she wants to be or not.

The narrative shifts back and forth between Ella and Gin's presents although the 1920s is more fleshed out than the late 1990s and Gin tells her own story in first person while Ella's is a more distant third person narrative. Gin's story is the more compelling and dynamic one (as is she as a character, sassy creature that she is) so the imbalance works. Williams does a good job evoking the language of the 1920s and subtly changing Gin's language depending on whether she's in NYC or Appalachia. Clearly Ella and Gin are women of two different time periods although both are learning strength, determination, and independence after having fled from their first lives.

As the tie between Ella and Gin starts to come clearer, the pace of both narratives picks up steam. Williams' careful readers will recognize the Marshalls and the Schuylers from previous books and while the new reader isn't missing too much not knowing them yet, the connection makes the story just that tiny bit richer. There is a small paranormal element but it only pertains to Ella's narrative thread and doesn't overwhelm the otherwise straight realism. There are a few unresolved but important plot lines, including the questions of Gin's biological father and Ella's find in her role as a forensic accountant that could have been pursued a bit further.  Maybe in a future book?  But the dichotomy of Duke Kelly's murderousness and his benevolence towards the small town in which he lives is intriguing and terrible and the truth about Gin and Anson is captivating enough to carry the novel. This is a rollicking good read with heart pounding action, murder, deception, and lies. Williams' devoted fans will be delighted by it, historical fiction fans will thrill to it, and readers who enjoy nothing more than a good tale will be pleased to have found another novel that feeds their need so well.

For more information about Beatriz Williams and the book, check out her author website, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter or Instagram. Also, check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the HarperCollins 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.

Schadenfreude by Rebecca Schuman. The book is being released by Flatiron Books on February 7, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: You know that feeling you get watching the elevator doors slam shut just before your toxic coworker can step in? Or seeing a parking ticket on a Hummer? There’s a word for this mix of malice and joy, and the Germans (of course) invented it. It’s Schadenfreude, deriving pleasure from others’ misfortune. Misfortune happens to be a specialty of Slate columnist Rebecca Schuman―and this is great news for the Germans. For Rebecca adores the Vaterland with the kind of single-minded passion its Volk usually reserve for beer, soccer, and being right all the time.

Let’s just say the affection isn’t mutual.

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love – in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that’s nearly impossible to master), a culture (that’s nihilistic, but punctual), and a landscape (that’s breathtaking when there’s not a wall in the way). Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood 90’s teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites, until two men walk into her high school Civics class: Dylan Gellner, with deep brown eyes and an even deeper soul, and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan’s backpack. These two men are the axe to the frozen sea that is Rebecca’s spirit, and what flows forth is a passion for all things German. First love might be fleeting, but Kafka is forever, and in pursuit of this elusive passion Rebecca will spend two decades stuttering and stumbling through German sentences, trying to win over a people who can’t be bothered.

At once a snapshot of a young woman finding herself, and a country slowly starting to stitch itself back together after nearly a century of war (both hot and cold), Schadenfreude, A Love Story is an exhilarating, hilarious, and yes, maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.

Review: Emma by Alexander McCall Smith

My book club tries to read a classic every year. And I love Jane Austen. So you'd have thought I'd be thrilled to re-read Emma, wouldn't you? In fact I tend to dislike Emma the character rather a lot. Having read it multiple times already in my life, and disliking her more each time I read it, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and opted to skip it this go-round. Instead, I picked up this modern retelling of the tale by Alexander McCall Smith to see if I could muster up more sympathy for her in a more modern setting. And I did, at least to an extent. McCall Smith does a good job of capturing and updating Austen's Emma without entirely losing the things that made the plot run.

Starting back with Mr. Woodhouse's birth and early life, McCall Smith fleshes out what makes the distracted, hypochondriacal man tick. Once that is established, he moves on to Emma's childhood and upbringing, explaining satisfactorily how two young girls in the present day would end up with such an old fashioned thing as a governess. The back story that doesn't come with Austen's Emma is actually rather protracted here but since the characters have already been rounded out by Austen, having more history on them, explaining how they came to be who Austen made them is rather nice. The plot, an immature and meddling young woman trying to pair up all the wrong people because of her own unintentional snobbishness and preconceived notions, is maintained and there are certainly moments of humor. Because the focus on adult Emma, recently finished with her interior design degree at university, and her matchmaking doesn't happen quite as early as in the original, the secondary characters are not nearly as full and integral to the story here, leaving the focus on Emma's unchecked unkindnesses to those she professes to love and her unasked for interference in their lives. McCall Smith's Emma seems to have a dawning self-awareness sooner than Austen's Emma though, which is not a bad thing. In contrast, Mr. Knightley is far less present in this novel than he was in the original. The courtship is foreshortened and the ending is speedily dispensed with in about two pages.

Although I've focused on the differences between the Austen and the McCall Smith, this is easily read by those who have never read the original. In fact, people looking for a one to one concordance between the books will be disappointed. Some situations have been left out and others elaborated on in ways that Austen could never have imagined two hundred some years ago. But this isn't Austen; it's McCall Smith and reads like it. McCall Smith is a charming writer and his version of Emma is a satisfying one. He has modernized it but not beyond all recognition. There are still some small threads that are oddly old fashioned but readers familiar with his gentle, courtly manner of writing will not be surprised. Not a bad re-telling over all and one that many Austen fans will appreciate, as will those folks coming to the story for the first time.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

A week of multiple migraines and not feeling great, my reading was pretty curtailed and my reviewing was non-existent. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
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 Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Roughneck Grace by Michael Perry
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams

Reviews posted this week:

nothing

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

The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith
Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore
My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney

Monday Mailbox

This is actually two week's worth since I was too lazy to post last Monday. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Sinful Scottish Laird by Julia London came from HQN and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A sexy romance with a man in a kilt, do I really have to say anything more? ;-)

The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled From India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson came from Oneworld and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

About a poor Indian man who rode a bicycle all over the Middle East and Europe in search of a woman he once painted in New Delhi, this true story is just the kind of thing that captivates me.

Breaking and Holding by Judy Fogarty came from Lake Union and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Tennis, an obsessive affair, and secrets, how could this be more appealing?

The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I like William's work and books set in the 1920s and this one about a woman who has left her cheating husband only to discover the speakeasy history of her new building's basement and her connection to one of the charming women who frequented it sounds fantastic.

The Road to Enchantment by Kaya McLaren came from St. Martin's Griffin.

If your mother started a new life opening a winery and goat ranch, you''d probably prefer LA once you were an adult too but when a trifecta of bad things happen and Willow has to go home, she just might find out she belongs in ways she never imagined. Sounds wonderful, 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.

Waiting on Wednesday

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

My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella. The book is being released by The Dial Press on February 7, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Part love story, part workplace drama, this sharply observed novel is a witty critique of the false judgments we make in a social-media-obsessed world. New York Times bestselling author Sophie Kinsella has written her most timely novel yet.

Everywhere Katie Brenner looks, someone else is living the life she longs for, particularly her boss, Demeter Farlowe. Demeter is brilliant and creative, lives with her perfect family in a posh townhouse, and wears the coolest clothes. Katie’s life, meanwhile, is a daily struggle—from her dismal rental to her oddball flatmates to the tense office politics she’s trying to negotiate. No wonder Katie takes refuge in not-quite-true Instagram posts, especially as she's desperate to make her dad proud.

Then, just as she’s finding her feet—not to mention a possible new romance—the worst happens. Demeter fires Katie. Shattered but determined to stay positive, Katie retreats to her family’s farm in Somerset to help them set up a vacation business. London has never seemed so far away—until Demeter unexpectedly turns up as a guest. Secrets are spilled and relationships rejiggered, and as the stakes for Katie’s future get higher, she must question her own assumptions about what makes for a truly meaningful life.

Sophie Kinsella is celebrated for her vibrant, relatable characters and her great storytelling gifts. Now she returns with all of the wit, warmth, and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her bestsellers to spin this fresh, modern story about presenting the perfect life when the reality is far from the truth.