It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past two weeks are:

started a bunch; finished none

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

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 Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Reviews posted this week:

The Vicar's Daughter by Josi S. Kilpack
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson

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

Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

Monday Mailbox

More NRGM submissions filling the mailbox and they still have to be kept secret but check out this amazing trio instead! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry came from Custom House and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I've heard nothing but wonderful things about this tale of a widowed amateur naturalist and a local vicar both interested in why locals claim that the mythical Essex Serpent has returned after 300 years. This juxtaposition of science and religion should be fascinating indeed.

The Beach at Painter's Cove by Shelley Noble came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

How could I possibly pass up a book about the Whitaker girls, as I am one myself? OK, so we're not exactly four generations of women reuniting in a crumbling family mansion by the sea, but I still can't wait.

A Speck in the Sea by John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski came from Weinstein Books.

A true adventure at sea tale about a man who was tossed overboard in the middle of the ocean while his partner slept below, this tale of the search and rescue should get my heart pumping for sure!

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson

Nowadays you can swipe right or scroll through dozens of people suggested by an algorithm on any number of internet dating sites in the search for your soulmate but before the internet, those searching for love had far fewer resources. They could hope to just meet someone serendipitously, they could ask for their family and friends to introduce them to likely partners, or, just before World War II, they could sign up with the Marriage Bureau, a brand new matchmaking service opened in 1939 and located in London. Penrose Halson, who not only ran her own matchmaking service in the Katherine Allen Marriage and Advice Bureau and eventually bought the original Marriage Bureau but also used the service herself, has written a charming, entertaining history of the unconventional agency and the tales of some of the clients and the matches they made under the bureau's auspices.

Audrey Parsons went out to India to marry a man near her uncle's remote tea plantation. Once there she knew they wouldn't suit and she ended by returning to England. This wasn't the first time that a trip to India and an engagement didn't end at the altar for her, much to her parents' chagrin. What she did come home with though was the seed of the idea, proposed by her uncle, that would eventually become the Marriage Bureau. Enlisting her friend, Heather Jenner, a socially astute divorcee, the two women determined to start a business that would match up eligible single men and women with suitable people they might not otherwise meet. Jenner and Parsons, the latter using the name Mary Oliver to hide her potentially scandalous actions from her parents, built the first matchmaking business of its kind even as the shadow of WWII loomed ever closer. The two women insisted on interviewing each of their clients, and they maintained a meticulous record of each person in order to find good and viable matches for as many people as possible. They took into consideration not only class and age but also some interesting and unique wants and likes. Their businesslike approach and astute use of feel-good publicity grew their business into a thriving concern and many people did in fact find their partner and happiness through the auspices of the Marriage Bureau.

This delightful true story captures the imagination of the reader much as the business did of a nation starved for positive news in the face of an imminent war. The tales of the real people who turned to Jenner and Oliver run the gamut. Some people were delights while others were positively difficult and demanding. The way that they carefully vetted all clients was fascinating and reflected the mores and attitudes of the time. Starting in 1939 and initially thought of as a good way for expats only back in Blighty for a brief time to find a wife, the bureau expanded to take on all sorts from local to international and it stayed as busy, if not more so, during the war, as it had beforehand. Because of the inclusion of the stories of the matches, the narrative has a very episodic feel to it.  Its general tone is sweet and cheerful although there are certainly some very poignant and sad tales included as well.  The very end includes lists of actual comments the interviewers made about the clients and some were a bit horrifyingly unkind but they were entertaining all the same (although I shudder to think what notes on me might have looked like). The book only covers the first ten years of the bureau's existence and I would have liked more on how the bureau evolved over the years, even if only in an epilogue. This is a quick read, a fascinating snapshot of a time and a society, a very different angle on the war years indeed.

For more information about Penrose Halson and the book, check out her publisher's author website or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and William Morrow 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.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. The book is being released by Pamela Dorman Books on May 9, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart.

Review: The Vicar's Daughter by Josi Kilpack

There are some novels that you should, by all rights, enjoy. They have all sorts of elements that usually guarantee your gushing enthusiasm. But somehow, in practice, they end up not working for you at all. Unfortunately Josi Kilpack's The Vicar's Daughter was one of these for me. A historical romance with more than a hint of a Cyrano de Bergerac story line, this should have been right up my alley.

Twenty year old Cassie Wilton is the youngest of six sisters. Her father, the vicar of the title, and mother can only afford for one daughter to be out in society at a time but Lenora, the sister just older than Cassie, is so shy and uncomfortable in social situations that she's not likely to get married any time soon. And Cassie, who has her eye on a young local man and feeling as if her own chances of marriage dwindle as time goes by, doesn't want to wait her turn. When Lenora comes home from a ball with a handkerchief she was lent during an allergy attack and tells Cassie about the kindness of Evan, the owner of the handkerchief and a former clerk new to town who has been named as his wealthy great-uncle's heir, Cassie hatches a plan to bring Lenora and Evan together. She writes letters to Evan in Lenora's name, eventually falling for him herself, even as he's falling for the Lenora he believes is the author of the letters. All of a sudden it looks like Cassie's meddling is going to lead to unhappiness and heartbreak for all three people involved.

This should have guaranteed I like the book but I didn't like Cassie much nor did I like her selfishly milquetoast sister. That her parents catered to her sister without regard to Cassie's feelings in any way was incredibly frustrating, even if Cassie was annoying. That Evan was unfamiliar with the social rules of those who were once firmly his superiors is believable but that those he consulted gave him such poor advice (perhaps understandable from his rival for Cassie's affection but inexcusable from his uncle) was crazy-making. Quite frankly, he didn't have much of a presence in the book at all despite being the ostensible hero. More fleshed out than Evan's character, the female characters were not consistent in their actions. Cassie docile and abashed all of a sudden and Lenora inexplicably finding a backbone only when it suited to move the plot away from an untenable situation just didn't ring true. There were dolloping heaps of sanctimony and moralizing to go around and the actual romance felt thin and unsubstantiated. Those who want a story about self-sacrifice and forgiveness might find what they're looking for in this clean romance, I guess I prefer more romance in my romances (and no, I don't mean that as a euphemism for something else).

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past two weeks are:

Miss You by Kate Eberlen
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

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 Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley

Reviews posted this week:

By the Wayside by Anne Leigh Parrish
Hard-Hearted Highlander by Julia London
Miss You by Kate Eberlen

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

Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
The Vicar's Daughter by Josi S. Kilpack
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

Monday Mailbox

More NRGM submissions filling the mailbox and they still have to be kept secret but a nice quartet I can tell you about. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

On the Sickle's Edge by Neville D. Frankel came from Dialogos and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Generational sagas are kind of my kryptonite so I am looking forward to this one about seven generations and their lives in South Africa, the Soviet Union, Latvia, and the US.

You're the One That I Want by Giovanna Fletcher came from Macmillan.

A love triangle with best friends? Oh yeah, this one will be in my beach bag this summer for sure!

The F Word by Liza Palmer came from Macmillan.

How can you pass up a book titled this? I don't know if the word I'm thinking of (and so are you, if you just admit it) has any connection to the story of a woman who appears to be perfect until her past, in the person of her old high school crush, comes calling but I am looking forward to finding out.

The Bad Luck Bride by Janna MacGregor came from Macmillan.

An historical romance where the bride is considered cursed since she's been engaged time and time again but never managed to make it to the altar? Just up my alley.

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.