Friday, March 30, 2012

Review: Being Lara by Lola Jaye

This novel of interracial adoption, being different, prejudice, and unconventional but loving family tackles many issues that continue to be current today even as families made up of people of different races have become more and more common. It is certainly less unusual to see children who are a different race than their parents strolling down the street together and many children nowadays are adopted from foreign countries. And adoption as a whole is more open and less stigmatized than it once was.

Opening with Lara's thirtieth birthday party, a small family affair, she is completely gobsmacked when she opens her eyes after blowing out her candles to see an unfamiliar woman standing at the door. She doesn't recognize the woman but she has the sense that deep down, she does in fact know this woman. Lara Reid is the Nigerian born child of white British parents, adopted at the age of three when her mother, a former pop star, decided to donate some money to a Nigerian orphanage and fell in love with little Omolara while she was there. Lara has spent much of her life feeling her "otherness" or like the "alien" a nasty child once called her in school. Her family is incredibly loving and supportive but the fact that she was once abandoned at the Motherless Children's Orphanage has marked her personality deeply. Despite her upbringing, she is unable to commit to relationships, certain that those around her whom she cares about will in turn eventually leave her too.

If Lara is indelibly marked by her early life and adoption, her mothers, both adoptive and biological, are also forever changed by her presence or the lack thereof in their lives. Both Yomi, her biological mother, and Pat/Trish, her adoptive mother, faced difficult early lives on the edge of poverty. The triple-stranded narrative tells the stories of both of these women and all that led up to Lara's being adopted as well as telling Lara's story. While the background information is very necessary to the story, the jumping from woman to woman and from time period to time period (including Lara's childhood as well as her present) was awkward at times. But having Lara's biological mother arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a birthday celebration and then slowly starting at the beginning of her tale without revealing why she has searched out her daughter now definitely added to the dramatic tension.

Some of the issues surrounding adoptions, such as adoptive parents feeling rejected if a child chooses to know or learn more about her biological family are handled a bit superficially here. And Lara is a much less sympathetic character than either of her mothers, who really shimmer on the page. The contrast of Lara's insecurities with her successful career, handsome and always attentive boyfriend, loving and understanding family, and fantastic flat is a bit overdone and obvious. But the reality of a child who felt different and faced prejudices that her parents could never know is well done and makes the reader pause to think. Despite the potential heaviness of some of the issues weaving through the plot, this is a fairly light examination but generally enjoyable.

For more information about Lola Jaye and the book visit her website, check out herFacebook page, follow her on Twitter or read her blog. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Review: A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois

A terminal diagnosis, the looming end to a relationship, those moments before the buzzer when a team is too far down to come back, a futile gesture, doggedly continuing a lost cause. How does a person go on in the face of certain defeat? That is the central question swirling throughout the narrative in DuBois' debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes.

It is 1979 and young chess prodigy Aleksandr Bezetov moves to Leningrad starting to win his way ever closer to being declared the world chess champion even as he unintentionally joins a small dissident political group devoted to exposing the abuses of the Communist government. He treads a thin line between being worthy of adulation and of being arrested (or worse) as far as the government is concerned.

Twenty-five years later, American Irina Ellison, who once watched Bezetov's chess matches on tv with her father, is looking for answers to how she should live her life. She watched her vibrant, intelligent father die a slow and horrifying death due to Huntington's Disease and she knows that she carries the same genetic ticking time bomb. She hasn't allowed herself to develop any close relationships with others, dreading the day she first manifests the jerking characteristic of the disease.

And then Irina finds the carbon of a letter from her father addressed to Bezetov at the height of his career asking the improbable question of how to continue to play a game in the face of certain defeat. There is a non-answer from an unknown woman but no acknowledgement of the letter from Bezetov and so Irina decides that she is going to go to Russia and find the answer herself, even if it will be difficult to secure a meeting with Bezetov, who is now running a presidential campaign in opposition to Putin, having lost his chess title to IBM's computer many years prior.

As these two troubled and lost souls swirl around each other, with Irina ultimately coming to work for Bezetov's campaign, there is a continual exploration of the necessity and desirability of pursuing lost causes. Irina tells her own story in first person while Aleksandr's tale is told in the third person omniscient. This makes the story slightly more Irina's than Aleksandr's. Both characters though are very introspective and suffer from disappointment. Irina's manifests itself as a sort of aimlessness while Aleksandr's comes out as a dogged need to thrust himself into the political spotlight no matter that he fully expects to lose the election and perhaps be assassinated as well. Both characters, despite their obvious parallels, are very different, almost equal and opposite sides of the coin of life. How they each choose to move forward despite the fact that the endgame will certainly not be theirs is fascinating to watch.

The narrative itself is slightly depressing but the writing is gorgeous. DuBois has drawn a cold, unforgiving, and secretive place in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, imbuing it with an appropriate sense of tired menace. Setting here accurately reflects the internal struggles of the trapped characters. And while Aleksandr and Irina may have seperately found the way to persevere in the face of truly insurmountable odds, they are joyless in their discoveries. Perhaps that, ultimately, is the question that Irina should have asked: How to go on in the face of certain defeat but to still find happiness or at least satisfaction in the game. DuBois is a very talented writer and the book is one that will haunt me for some time but it definitely exudes an air of gloom, greyness, and resignation.

For more information about Jennifer DuBois and the book visit her website. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to The Dial Press for sending me a copy of the book for review. This review is part of a TLC Book Tour

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

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.

Paris in Love by Eloisa James. The book is being released by Random House on April 17, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: In 2009, New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life—discovering corner museums that tourists overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen’s sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband’s notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools—not to mention puberty—in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina’s raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).

Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a most enchanting family, framed by la ville de l’amour.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Snapshots from my day...

Day two of spending all day in the middle school media center running the spring book fair. We are out of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. Need I elaborate on how the kids are taking this news? Need I say how displeased I am that the only thing they are interested in reading right now is not available for them to buy from us right now?

W. played in his second official high school tennis match ever. Normally he only plays the exhibition matches because he's not one of the top six. And he and his partner, another freshman, won their match 10-7! Woo Hoo! Go boys!

Being trapped at school for so many hours, I haven't had a chance to sneak in any exercise and it's making me positively nutty. Given that this is totally unlike me (to crave exercise), I'm pretty sure I am completely and totally broken. And I forced T. to leave soccer practice as soon as it was over instead of letting him goof off with his team like usual so I could get in a couple of miles before it got too dark to run. Someone needs to take my temperature and quick!

I was enjoying my music so much that I plugged the iPod in while I washed dishes. I was totally rocking out to it when T. came up from the basement with his hands over his ears and told me to "Turn that racket down." Then he got all huffy about having to listen to "that old music." I don't intend to be nice and turn up the car radio when his favorite band is on anymore. Does this interchange make him old and intolerant or me?

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Review: Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton

Appearances, propriety, morality, and the restrictions placed on women. Although Jetta Carleton wrote Clair de Lune in another era, the issues of acceptibility, expectations, and obligations still dog us today.

Set in 1941 during the spring before Pearl Harbor when there was still some hope that the US would not get involved in the war in Europe, Clair de Lune is the story of a young woman named Allen Liles. Having grown up on a farm, Allen earned her masters degree so that she could teach college on the way to her ultimate dream of being a writer in New York City. Her debts and her mother's desire for her railroad her into accepting a job teaching English at a small community college in a Missouri city even as she keeps a tentative grasp on her dream of becoming a writer herself. And although teaching is not her dream, Allen is quite a dedicated teacher, interested in her subject matter and desirous of challenging her students. She is much younger than most of her colleagues and so her personal life is quiet, unremarkable, and lonely, even boring.

Then Allen, thanks to her mother's idea, decides to add a class for those students who are motivated and intelligent. And in this class she discovers two students, George and Toby, with whom she becomes friendly, inviting them back to her apartment for impromptu literary salons of a sort. Because they are so close in age, the three of them quickly lose their prescribed roles of students and teacher. This is problematic both ethically and socially and could cost Allen her job. But none of this occurs to her as she enjoys an almost carefree friendship with the two young men, roaming the streets of the city with them after dark, exporing their town, drinking and playing about, until word gets out about her inappropriate friendship. And then Allen must decide what it is she really wants out of her life.

Allen as a character is both sad and admirable. She knows that the constrained life of women in the early 1940's, marriage and motherhood, is not her goal even though this isolates her from her peers and co-workers. Her only young female colleague, Maxine, lives out the engagement and marriage role concurrently with Allen's innocent cavorting and Allen watches clinically, knowing that Maxine's choices won't be hers. But the courage to strike out counter to society's expectations remains cloaked throughout most of the narrative.

As America slowly wakes from its pre-war innocence, so too does Allen Liles. While the narrative itself is fairly quiet, mirroring Allen's life, it builds a narrative tension that is both expected and unavoidable but right and necessary to Allen's becoming her true self. The writing is lovely and poetic and while Allen is the only character fully developed, this is pitch perfect reflecting her solitary life and the superficial way that she never really fully knows those around her, colleague, acquaintances, and even George and Toby. Carleton has written a thoughtful and deep examination of what it means to settle and the courage it takes to break free of the obligations and expectations that led to the settling in the first place. This novel depicts its time beautifully but it makes us stop and reflect on these same questions now.

Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Waiting on Wednesday

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

The Lilac House by Anita Nair. The book is being released by St. Martin's Griffin on April 24, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: Meera, always gracious Meera, is happily submerged in the role of corporate wife and cookbook writer. Then, one day, her husband fails to come home.

Overnight, Meera, disoriented and emotionally fragile, becomes responsible not just for her two children, but also her mother, grandmother and the running of Lilac House, their rambling old family home in Bangalore.

A few streets away, Professor J.A. Krishnamurthy or Jak, cyclone studies expert, survivor of one marriage and many other encounters, has recently returned from Florida, to care for his nineteen-year-old daughter, the victim of a tragic accident. What happened on her holiday in a small beachside village? The police will not help, Smriti’s friends have vanished, and a wall of silence and fear surrounds the incident. But Jak cannot rest until he gets to the truth.

THE LILAC HOUSE reveals how Meera and of Jak's paths cross and how they are uniquely able to help each other uncover the truth about the secrets of their pasts and the promise of the future. THE LILAC HOUSE is a moving story of redemption, forgiveness and second chances.

Monday, March 19, 2012

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Some weeks just aren't conducive to reading or reviewing. Lats week was one of them but I did manage to squeak in some reading, just not much reviewing. Can't let myself get too far behind so with luck, the predicted rain will actually occur this week and I won't be so distracted by outdoor stuff. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott
Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee
Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois

Reviews posted this week:

Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole

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

Other Waters by Eleni Gage
The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate
Cruising Attitudes by Heather Poole
One Night in London by Caroline Linden
The Might-Have-Been by Joseph Schuster
Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott
Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee
Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton

Monday Mailbox

It's a good week when a pair of books as good looking as this week's arrivals appear in my mailbox. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

When All That's Left of Me Is Love by Linda Campanella came from Tate Publishing for a blog tour through TLC Book Tours.
A memoir about a daughter's last year with her dying mother, I expect this to be a difficult but rewarding read.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon came from Harper Perennial for a blog tour through TLC Book Tours.
The true story of a woman who not only started a business to support her siblings but also mobilized her community under the Taliban, this one sounds like an important and brilliant story.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Diary of an Eccentric as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Review: Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole

Once upon a time, I thought being a flight attendant was a glamorous job. See the world for free and all that jazz. And then I met some flight attendants who, while they love their jobs (most of the time), quickly disabused me of that particular fantasy. Heather Poole's insider memoir Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet serves the same function. Like many jobs, being a flight attendant is only glamorous from the outside looking in.

Poole started as a flight attendant at a cut rate carrier (now out of business) but quickly interviewed for the same position with a major airline and was hired. She gives the reader a glimpse into the extensive training involved in the job and the ways in which different aircraft require different protocols in terms of safety and also in terms of service. She discusses her fellow new recruits and what they faced as they joined the ranks of the more experienced flight attendants. Large portions of the book detail the expensive and cramped living conditions flight attendants endure living in "Crew Gardens" (Kew Gardens), New York, the abyssmally poor pay, and the stress of being the lowest person on the totem pole and having to consistently work the unpredictable reserve slot. Certainly not an easy lifestyle and one destined to be very hard on a social or personal life. Poole does dish on ill-behaved passengers and the unrealistic expectations placed on flight attendants by some of the more egregious fliers but these stories are short and anecdotal compared to the tales of a flight attendant's lifestyle.

The memoir is breezy and conversational and it is clear that it evolved from blog posts as it reads like a string of stories one friend would tell another one about her job rather than a tightly threaded narrative. The chapters jump around from tales in the air to training and back again so it's definitely not a chronological story and the anecdotes contained in the same chapters are sometimes only very tangentially connected. Some of the more technical aspects of bidding trips or seniority or being on reserve were a bit convoluted and not particularly necessary for a layman's audience as they were just confusing (and to be fair, probably every bit equally as confusing for the new flight attendant). But overall the book was humorous and offered cynical-about-the-public me more affirmation that people are demanding, selfish, and generally not nice, especially to anyone working in a service industry. That Poole and her fellow co-workers can keep their tempers in the face of some of the worst ingratitude and unpleasantness is a credit to them. And I'm glad that she can laugh about it in hindsight and that she invites us to laugh about it with her.


For more information about Heather Poole and the book visit her website, Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Waiting on Wednesday

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

The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe. The book is being released by Voice on April 10, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: Katherine Howe, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, returns with an entrancing historical novel set in Boston in 1915, where a young woman stands on the cusp of a new century, torn between loss and love, driven to seek answers in the depths of a crystal ball.
Still reeling from the deaths of her mother and sister on the Titanic, Sibyl Allston is living a life of quiet desperation with her taciturn father and scandal-plagued brother in an elegant town house in Boston’s Back Bay. Trapped in a world over which she has no control, Sibyl flees for solace to the parlor of a table-turning medium.
But when her brother is suddenly kicked out of Harvard under mysterious circumstances and falls under the sway of a strange young woman, Sibyl turns for help to psychology professor Benton Derby, despite the unspoken tensions of their shared past. As Benton and Sibyl work together to solve a harrowing mystery, their long-simmering spark flares to life, and they realize that there may be something even more magical between them than a medium’s scrying glass.
From the opium dens of Boston’s Chinatown to the opulent salons of high society, from the back alleys of colonial Shanghai to the decks of the Titanic, The House of Velvet and Glass weaves together meticulous period detail, intoxicating romance, and a final shocking twist that will leave readers breathless.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Monday Mailbox

Just because I haven't managed to post the delectables that have arrived in my mailbox lately doesn't mean they haven't been drool-worthy. They totally have! So I am putting them all into this belated post so everyone can see what a lucky girl I am lately. This past couple of week's mailbox arrivals:

Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee came from Jessica at Berkley/NAL.
This book about a single woman in a quirky, small Southern town sounds like a complete and total kick.

Cruising Attitudes by Heather Poole came from the publisher for a TLC Book Tours tour.
I personally don't like the public very much so I could never work a job like flight attendant but I do enjoy reading stories of the folks with the patience to do so, especially when they are dishing about the general public's (expected) poor behaviour.

Daughters by Elizabeth Buchan came from Catherine at Penguin.
As an adult daughter myself (and the mother of a teenaged daughter to boot), this exploration of mothers and daughters and how they relate to each other as adults sounds terribly intriguing.

Being Lara by Lola Jaye came from the publisher for a TLC Book Tours tour.
Figuring out identity as an adopted child, and one of a different race than her adoptive parents, is a major theme in this fantastic looking novel. Can't wait!

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray came from Jocelyn at Kelley and Hall.
Just look at the cool cover on this one! I love the small black dog whose leash makes the profile outline of the middle aged protagonist who wakes up one morning to discover that she is becoming invisible. Just whets the appetite, doesn't it?

Gossip by Beth Gutcheon came from Leyane at William Morrow.
You know the saying "If you have nothing nice to say, come sit by me?" I totally feel that way about this book about a trio of women in an uneasy friendship.

Arranged by Catherine McKenzie came from William Morrow.
An American woman with no cultural ties to arranged marriages enters into one. What a cool premise for a book!

Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton came from the publisher for a TLC Book Tourstour.
Newly rediscovered novels always pique my interest and this one of a love triangle in the early 1940's where things go too far definitely caught my eye.

Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
What would I do if my husband could have me declared insane just because I disagreed with him and how could I possibly escape the disagnosis and the asylum? Books like this always make me grateful to live in the time I live in but I do enjoy reading about earlier times when life could be completely untenable for women, dependent on men's kindness and honesty.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Diary of an Eccentric as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Spring seems to be a season for me that slows my reading and reviewing down to a crawl for some reason. Could be because it's birthday season here. Could be because kid sports' stuff swings into high gear. Could be because I am consumed with organizing the final book fair of my middle school mom career. Could be because the weather is so nice I'm outside playing tennis or running. Could be any of these reasons or none of them. In any case, there's a paucity of books read and reviewed over the past few weeks for whatever reason. I've lumped several weeks together so it definitely looks more impressive than it is. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan
Other Waters by Eleni Gage
The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
Cruising Attitudes by Heather Poole
One Night in London by Caroline Linden
The Might-Have-Been by Joseph Schuster

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott

Reviews posted this week:

Spin by Catherine McKenzie
Fitzwilliam Darcy: Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud
Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

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

Other Waters by Eleni Gage
The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate
Cruising Attitudes by Heather Poole
One Night in London by Caroline Linden
The Might-Have-Been by Joseph Schuster

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

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 Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino. The book is being released by Algonquin Press on March 20, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: Calvin Moretti can't believe how much his life sucks. He's a twenty-four-year-old film school dropout living at home again and working as an assistant teacher at a preschool for autistic kids. His insufferable go-getter older brother is also living at home, as is his kid sister, who's still in high school and has just confided in Cal that she's pregnant. What's more, Calvin's father, a career pilot, is temporarily grounded and obsessed with his own mortality. And his ever-stalwart mother is now crumbling under the pressure of mounting bills and the imminent loss of their Sleepy Hollow, New York, home: the only thing keeping the Morettis moored. Can things get worse? Oh, yes, they can.

Which makes it all the more amazing that The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac is not only buoyantly fun but oftern very, very funny. In this debut novel, Kris D'Agostino has crafted an engrossing contemporary tale of a loopy but loving family, and in Calvin Moretti, he's created an oddball antihero who really wants to do the right thing-if he can just figure out what it is.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Review: The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

If you have never tried a recipe of Ree Drummond's (aka The Pioneer Woman), let me heartily recommend pretty much anything but especially her cinnamon rolls. My family has been enjoying them ever since she posted them on her blog years ago. Drummond is a phenomenal cook and an entertaining blogger. I enjoy my hops by her place on the internet when I find the time and I generally print out a recipe or two to try but I'm not a daily, devoted reader so having the chance to read about how she fell in love with her husband and went from being a big city loving, suburban kind of girl to living on a cattle ranch in the middle of Oklahoma without being chained to my computer sounded very appealing. And her love story is definitely sweet.

Leaving Los Angeles and a relationship that wasn't right for her, Ree decided to move to Chicago with a few months at home in Oklahoma to recharge. She moved back in with her parents and set about readying herself for life in the Windy City. One night out at a bar with her friends, she spots a cowboy across the room and is immediately drawn to him with his Wranglers, his prematurely grey hair, and his cowboy boots. Meeting the Marlboro Man that night forever changed her life in ways she never expected. Several months later and mere weeks before her planned move to Chicago, he called her and they went out on their first date. Ree chronicles their budding love affair even as her parents' marriage is crumbling and the tension at home is enough to make her question the reality of lasting love. She also describes the culture shock she faces as she becomes more and more involved in life on a working cattle ranch.

It is clear that the bulk of the book was written as short blog posts. There is a lot of repetition both in her descriptions of Marlboro Man physically and in what they do (lots and lots and lots of kissing and cuddling, mixed in with more kissing and cuddling). There was no doubt from the first kiss that he made her toes curl and her ovaries jump for joy and while the constant repetition made it clear how attracted they were to each other, it was a little much at times. The courtship phase of their relationship was definitely more elaborate than the first year of their marriage. In fairness, as Ree suffered from serious, debilitating morning sickness for many of the first months, there probably wasn't a whole lot to tell from that portion of time but it felt a little as if the marriage got short shift compared to the dating.

As happy as she and Marlboro Man were (are), sadness and stress did invade their seemingly charmed world but much of it was downplayed and dropped nearly immediately. When Ree runs over her beloved dog Puggy Sue, she is devastated but goes on her date that night anyway. She agonizes over her parents' failing marriage but mainly drops it in the rosy glow of her own love. And when Marlboro Man's aunt dies of breast cancer not long after their wedding, Ree feels out of place and saddened by the family's grief but moves on to other tales almost immediately. Even when their finances take a terrible hit while she and Marlboro Man are on their honeymoon, she glosses over the anxiety and stress that must have dogged them across Australia.

Despite the sometimes immature, superficial feel to the emotion, this is still a sweet story about an abiding love and the radical adjustments a person is willing to make for "The One." Ree is funny and just as willing to show herself at her worst as she is at her best. She can laugh at herself, her misconceptions, and the almost unbelievable situations in which she finds herself. Fans of her blog will definitely see the Ree they know and love in this memoir and those who don't know her yet will appreciate her cheerful, girl next door accessibility even if by the end they might yearn for a little less sweet and a little more depth.

For more information about Ree Drummond and the book visit her blog, Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

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