Category: Fiction

Fiction, Romance, Women's Fiction

How To Walk Away, by Katherine Center

Kristie

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Katherine Center’s sassy females are just so dang likeable! And some of these life-altering events are big, things we can only pray we never have to experience.

Our sassy female in How To Walk Away is Maggie Jacobsen. Her event is….a spoiler that I’m not going to divulge here. Let’s just say that everything was in place for her life and her future and what happens next sends those plans down in flames. (hehe)

What makes How To Walk Away a reader’s escapist delight is the journey. That journey is fun, witty, karmic, and emotional. There is something life-affirming to the style Katherine Center uses because it’s something many of us have experienced–your life is headed in one direction, gets derailed, and you end up in a better place than you could’ve imagined. And though that derailment isn’t very fun as it’s happening, the ending would not have been possible without it. When it’s all over, you’re a little stronger, a little wiser, and a lot happier–just like these characters.

I know, vaguest review ever. I’ll just conclude by saying that Maggie’s journey is worth the read. (Mine was a zippy 3 hours. I could not put the book down!)

8.5/10 Stars

Disclaimer: While sassy females are going through that process of mourning the life they knew, they sometimes get frustrated and angry. Those emotions can bring out some choice words. One particular choice word that starts with F appears about 10 times in this book. I’m very much not a fan of that language, but it’s there and it didn’t keep me from reading. Still, now you know.

Fiction

Someday, Someday, Maybe, by Lauren Graham

Kristie

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Someday, Someday, Maybe, by Lauren Graham is a book that has been in my peripheral vision for a while. It has great reviews and a beloved author. However, Lauren Graham is not beloved because she is an author, but because of her role as the sarcastic and charming Lorelai Gilmore, on Gilmore Girls.

And therein lies the problem. Lauren Graham was not the writer of the show that made her famous, yet she tries to channel her alter ego of the early 2000’s into Frannie Banks, a hybrid of the author and the actress. True fans might be more forgiving than me, but my struggle to like this novel was akin to Frannie’s struggle as an actress in New York City.

Frannie has set a three year deadline for herself. If, at the end of three years, she has not found success, she will admit defeat and move on to something else. Meanwhile, she’s making pennies as a waitress, sharing an apartment with roommates Jane and Dan, and playing phone tag with her concerned father.

Being leashed to this character through her ups and downs in these scenarios does not make for much of a plot. Instead, we’re introduced to a plethora (don’t you love that word?) of potential plots that never quite gain traction. How I would’ve loved to read a story about Frannie’s relationship with the guy she ends up with, or delve further into the father/daughter relationship. I would’ve been satisfied if the story had started where this one ended.

Instead, Lauren Graham chose a segment of Frannie’s life that isn’t really that interesting with a character who is pretty one-dimensional. The doodles in Frannie’s Filo-fax were a cute touch, but not enough to keep the story afloat.

After finishing Someday, Someday, Maybe, I zipped through a book by Katherine Center (my next review.) Her sassy female characters are created so effortlessly, it made me think that this was probably what Lauren Graham was trying to accomplish…but didn’t.

A swing and a miss on this one.

7.5/10 Stars

P.S. I did start watching Gilmore Girls for the first time ever and am liking it very much. The moral of this story? Stick with what you know. Not everyone was meant to be a writer. (And that is OK!)

Fiction, Magical Realism, Young Adult

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton

Kristie

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Clearly, magical realism needs to be a new category on my site. So let it be done.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender…I’m still trying to decide my feelings about this book as I write this review. Kirkus Reviews expressed it so well: Lyrical magical realism paints four generations of women with tragic lives until a shocking violation fixes everything. (Although I’m not sure I would agree with the word “fixes.” Maybe “ended everything…” And where a female character is involved, the word “violation” can only mean one thing. A bit graphic for a YA novel, IMHO.)

Kirkus Reviews also mentions what so many others have too, which is that the main character, Ava Lavender–if you could call her the main character–isn’t born until nearly halfway through the story, although she narrates it from the beginning. The first half is all about her ancestry, starting with her great grandparents in France. This would be interesting if it were relevant, something only the reader can decide. I did not find it to be so. The tragic genealogy of Ava’s family did not explain the odd fact that she was born with wings, that her twin, Henry, was most likely autistic, or that their mother can predict certain events from their smell.

Like the unique plot, the writing quality is also up for debate. Poetic? Or tedious? I suppose if the writing were truly moving the plot forward, I would’ve appreciated it more, but when so many of the characters at the beginning have no real bearing on the supposed “main character,” I couldn’t help but question the point of the book’s first half. It was like the author was just warming up for the real story…such as it is.

Strange as it may seem, my favorites were Ava’s best friend, Cardigan, and her brother, Rowe. I loved the way they saw beyond her “deformity” and viewed her as just another girl. I also enjoyed the characters of Gabe and Wilhelmina, both steadfast presences in the lives of Ava’s mother and grandmother.

When I’m longing for the “sidekicks” to reappear, that, to me, indicates something is lacking in the story.

This is labeled as a Young Adult novel, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The plot is pretty “out there” and too much is unresolved at the end. (An ending I’m still trying to correctly interpret.)

7/10 Stars

Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Kristie

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Is it possible for a book written completely in an epistolary style and a movie adaptation that takes great liberties in plot to compliment each other perfectly? The answer is a resounding “yes.” I give you The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by the late Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, Annie Barrows.

I will admit I began the book first and then abandoned it for several weeks. Reading a book that is all letters back and forth felt a bit tedious. (Although it may have been my own timing.) It was like opening a box of letters in someone’s attic and, while reading them, trying to create a timeline, a narrative, and full-bodied characters. My imagination at the time (or lack thereof) needed help. Shortly thereafter, a friend mentioned the movie’s release on Netflix and how much she loved it. Being a period piece, British, with four cast members from my beloved Downton Abbey was all I needed to know.

Soon I became engrossed in the lives and stories of London writer Juliet Ashton and her new pen pals and friends on the island of Guernsey. The movie’s casting, production quality, and acting more than made up for the changes it made to the book–changes I only realized later while reading. It gave faces, voices, and personalities to our darling, witty Juliet and Guernsey natives Dawsey, Isola, Eben, Amelia, Eli, and Kit, as well as the Society’s leader, Elizabeth McKenna, and Juliet’s publisher, Sydney Stark. All changes were immediately forgiven.

I know, this is sounding more like a movie critique than a book review…

Historically, the novel opens a window to a section of World War II that most of us have never known, the German occupation of the Island of Guernsey and the effect it had on the residents. The island was no more a refuge but a prison, with those living there completely cut off from news and communication with the rest of the world, including the United Kingdom, where the Guernsey children were sent. It is a life that we, who have never known war on the home-front, can scarcely imagine. There are a few scenes in the book that describe the horrors of the time that, gratefully, were omitted from the screen. Reading about them was enough for me.

That really is what the story is about–the power of the written word and the light it brings, especially when the world outside is so dark.

As a stand-alone novel, it is difficult for me to review it without including the film because they work in tandem so well. This is a rare occasion where watching the film first really worked for me when I read the book, and all I have to go on is my own experience. Still, that experience was a delightful one. I recommend them both whole-heartedly.

9/10 Stars

 

Fiction, Short Stories

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Kristie

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In eight short stories, the reader is tossed in the middle of specific family situations. It could be about spouses, siblings, parents and children, roommates, or lifelong acquaintances whose lives intersect at the most unexpected moments.

There is no beginning and no end to each story. Events have already begun happening when the reader arrives and continue happening when the reader exits. We are a fly on the wall, sometimes in a room where characters are conversing and sometimes on the walls of their minds. We learn of the high expectations for Indian immigrant children: multiple university degrees, marriage, a family, a successful career, and the perpetuation of those expectations. Anything less shames the parents and previous generations.

The writing is exquisite. If writing has a “volume,” this one is quiet and steady but not monotonous. There is great power in the quiet. Every move a character makes is part of his/her development. Every decision affects the outcome. We learn about what is said versus the large amount that is not said. The gap between the two usually has fateful consequences. There is love, hate, disappointment, redemption, loss, and learning. The last three stories blend together beautifully. And, although it is fiction, the people feel incredibly real and biographical.

What a delight to read such high quality writing as Unaccustomed Earth. I had no idea what to expect, but I came away feeling like I knew more about the Indian immigrant culture in the United States.

9.5/10 Stars

 

Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

The Astonishing Color of After, by Emily X.R. Pan

Kristie

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Back from a 3 week vacation through Utah, so I’m trying to catch up. I’ll be pasting in my Goodreads reviews on a few books I read while we were away. 🙂

Suicide, depression, grief. These are heavy subjects. Leigh Chen Sanders is trying to cope with all of them. Her mother is gone, depression has clouded their family for years, and now she and her father are trying to pick up the pieces.

And her mother? Her mother is now a bird. A red, fleeting bird who is always just beyond her grasp. Leigh is convinced of it. She is also convinced that the answers she seeks are in Taiwan with the grandparents she’s never met. Her father agrees to take her there.

The rest is a journey of memories and family revelations.

The Astonishing Color of After was my first foray into magical realism. I love the title and the concept of Leigh mentally transferring her mother’s spirit into a bird. But the story fell flat. Leigh is the crankiest, most unlikable character. She is rude to everyone, offended by everything, and acts as if her grief gives her a free pass to treat people horribly. She is at constant odds with her father, who is clearly just trying to keep the family afloat in these challenging circumstances. Yet Leigh never sees beyond her own needs.

The color imagery felt forced. Leigh is an artist and she thinks and feels in colors. But having a character like Leigh create beauty and meaning while being constantly sour does not work. I didn’t care for her, so I couldn’t care about her. Her supposed self-discovery is as ridiculous as her sudden lightheartedness at the story’s conclusion. Everything is tied up in a neat little bow….after all that? My head was spinning.

The reviews I read on the book were overwhelmingly positive, so I dove in with high expectations. Overall I found it to be tedious, very boring, and frustrating. I felt disconnected throughout the entire story and deeply disappointed in the unrealistic ending.

7.5/10 Stars

(My Goodreads Review)

Fiction, Young Adult

The Secret Sense of Wildflower, by Susan Gabriel

Kristie

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A wonderful, heartbreaking story full of depth, tears and redemption. It took just 3 hours to read.

Wildflower is Louisa May McAllister. Yes, Little Women is her mother’s favorite book and yes, she has sisters named Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. That is part of the book’s whimsy. Most of its charm is captured in the 1940’s language of the south, so much so that I found myself reading in my head with a regional accent.

But this is Appalachia and life there is harsh. The McAllisters are mourning the loss of their daddy, dead nearly one year after an accident at the sawmill. Nell, their mama, drifts from day to day, never shedding a tear. Wildflower is part physical orphan through her daddy’s death, but part emotional orphan from her mother. Confidantes are few.

When things are lighter, I felt like I was reading a hybrid of Cold Sassy Tree and Christy. Wildflower reminds me a lot of Will Tweedy in Cold Sassy–observant, with many layers unseen by the surrounding adults. There is, however, a brief but horrible scene that robs Wildflower of her childhood and her innocence. The “secret sense” she prided herself in tried to warn her, but she ignored it. That decision changes everything.

By sheer happenstance, I’ve recently read several books with strong, resourceful female protagonists. The Secret Sense of Wildflower continues this trend. It is, at different times, darling and funny, but also raw and revealing. The language matures alongside Wildflower, becoming more stoic as her reality shifts from child to adult.

I recommend the book, but know what you’re about to read. Teens and adults alike will find it powerfully moving.

9/10 Stars

Fiction, Mystery, Series & Collections, Young Adult

Truly Devious, by Maureen Johnson

Kristie

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What you lack in any investigation is time. With every passing hour, evidence slips away. Crime scenes are compromised by people and the elements. Things are moved, altered, smeared, shifted. Organisms rot. Wind blows dusts and contaminants. Memories change and fade. As you move away from the event, you move away from the solution.  –Truly Devious

This book was recommended by “The Clockwork Reader” Booktube channel. Hannah, the channel’s creator, was so passionate about how good it was that I decided to give it a try. She reads a lot of fiction and comments on a great variety within the genre. That, plus her soothing voice, are making me a return watcher of her channel. Plus, I desperately needed something to balance out my two previous reads.

Advertised as a YA mystery novel, the story in Truly Devious is so slick and the characters so well crafted, that adults would love it too. So, yes, my first Booktube recommendation was a complete success.

Set at Ellingham Academy, a distant cousin to Hogwarts minus the magic, the school is as unique as its students. Built in the 1930’s by newspaper tycoon Albert Ellingham, the school earned unwanted notoriety when the founder’s wife and daughter were kidnapped shortly after its completion. A few years later an overly-curious student is murdered, presumably by the same person, a teasing riddler using the pseudonym of “Truly Devious.”

Fast forward another few decades. The crimes remain unsolved, making them the prime focus and school project of new student, Stevie. She, like all other Ellingham scholars, was chosen as part of an elite program. Plucked from high schools around the country, those admitted are allowed to pursue their own educational paths. Each has a talent, a project, and a goal. The academy’s job is to help them reach those goals.

Stevie is all about solving mysteries, listening to true crime podcasts, and reading the classics by Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Her instincts are sharp and her perception is honed. The Ellingham crimes are the perfect cold case.

Truly Devious is masterful storytelling. The author, Maureen Johnson, creates an automatic challenge by having so many smart characters, and she meets that challenge with both grace and gusto. The story tick tocks between time periods. There are the days after the initial kidnappings in 1936 and modern day with Stevie and her classmates.   Each time period has a very specific style and it is almost like you’re reading two books at the same time. I also loved some of the poetic rhythms in Stevie’s thoughts and the subtle creativity the author uses in students’ names, especially “Hayes” and “Ellie.” If you read it, you’ll understand.

But be warned, the reader is toyed with almost as much as the characters. The end of the book is not the end of the story. Some questions are answered, some are not, and new ones appear. In any other circumstance that would be maddening. Not here. The next book in the series, The Vanishing Stair, will be released in January and it’s already in my calendar.

9.5/10 Stars

 

Fiction, Young Adult

Well, That Was Awkward, by Rachel Vail

Kristie

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Cute, witty Cyrano de Bergerac-type tale for the texting generation. Gracie Grant is the main character, with her best friend, Sienna, and best neighbor, Emmett, as her closest confidantes. They’re in 8th grade, experiencing all of the early teen anxiety you would expect. Gracie’s situation is a bit unique because she’s her parents’ surviving child. Bret is the deceased older sister she never knew. Sometimes Gracie talks to her. Sometimes she’s jealous of her. Sometimes she’s mad at her. Ofttimes she feels the weight of her parents’ loss, never wanting to upset them or cause them more pain. As if being in 8th grade wasn’t hard enough.

The writing has that staccato rhythm of teen language. We’re always in Gracie’s head and it’s pretty darn full. Thoughts come in spurts, often expressed immediately after. But, being fourteen also means a lot of self-doubt. A LOT. Every character has it, plus a hundred other insecurities that manifest themselves in different ways–sometimes with regret that requires awkward backpedaling. The author does a decent job of creating individual kids with all of these overlapping qualities.

Texting is the teen language and used frequently in the story. The kids have instant access to each other. (With plusses and minuses to this.) They’re also never alone as long as they have their phones. (Is alone such a bad thing?) And then we have the “texting personality” which is different from the “in person personality.” If the texting personality has, well, MORE personality, then what? You’ve got an already angsty teen with two competing personalities. (Yes, that was on purpose. And if you read that quickly you will get the pace of the book.)

Target audiences will certainly relate to Gracie, her friends, enemies, and frenemies.

Meanwhile, I’ve never been so glad to not be a teenager anymore.

8.5/10 Stars
Fiction, History

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford

Kristie

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My poor heart is sentimental

Not made of wood

I got it bad and that ain’t good.

–Duke Ellington, 1941

Few things delight this reader more than becoming emotionally invested in a book that turns out to be even better than I could’ve hoped. In turn, few things frustrate me more than reading about a shameful time in US history that is rarely taught in schools. That is what happened to me while reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford.

The story centers on the innocent friendship of Henry Lee and Keiko Okabe. It is 1942, Seattle. The only two Asian students “scholarshipping” at an all-white prep school, they meet by working side-by-side in the cafeteria but soon become inseparable. As a child of the 1970s and 1980s, some of my best friends were Japanese and I respected them immensely, but 1942 was a very different time. Even Americans of Japanese-descent were regarded as the enemy. Henry’s father feels this hatred especially personally, having arrived alone in America years before at age 13 from China, orphaned by war with Japan.

Like young children today, Henry and Keiko see their similarities more than their differences, and Keiko’s educated parents are likewise enlightened and inclusive. Henry’s father, however, cannot and will not see anything redeeming in the Okabes. To him they are mere representations of the people who slaughtered his family.

Fast forward to 1986. Henry is 59 and a recent widower. The nearby Panama Hotel has just been sold and, like a dusty time capsule, its basement is full of items once belonging to Japanese families nearly 50 years before. Items they could not carry to internment camps. Items they meant to retrieve after the war was over. Items they never saw again.

Suddenly, memories of the past are thrust to the present.

Through the wide eyes of young people whose childhoods are systematically being robbed, we see the harsh realities of war on the American home-front. But this is different than watching fathers and brothers enlisting and not coming back. This is watching families driven from their homes and businesses in ways that seem decidedly un-American. And yet, it happened.

Despite reading some mixed reviews on Goodreads and a self-imposed hesitant start, I started devouring this book more and more. Besides falling in love with Henry’s developing courage and Keiko’s sweet innocence, I began to recognize the value of a book like this. It is important. Denying history does not erase it. If anything, it creates the danger of repetition.

There are so many potential discussions with this book (making it the top book club selection of Fall/Winter 2009-2010.) It’s a treasure. You will remember it and its characters for a long time.

9.5/10 Stars

 

Fiction, Romance, Women's Fiction, Young Adult

Love & Gelato, by Jenna Evans Welch

Kristie

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This cute story is the debut of Jenna Evans Welch, daughter of author Richard Paul Evans (The Christmas Box, The Locket, The Walk, and so many others.) When I started the book I thought the reader demographic was women, but I quickly discovered it is Young Adult Fiction. That is FINE. I’ve read enough YA Lit to see the way boundaries are constantly being pushed with sexual themes and coarse language, so it is comforting to know a new author like Welch is providing cleaner options. If I had a teenage daughter, I would have no problem recommending this book. (age 15+ IMHO)

Speaking of teenage daughters, on to the plot, told in first person by 16 year-old Lina Emerson. Lina, originally from Seattle, has just suffered the worst loss of her life, the death of her mother, photographer Hadley Emerson. Now, at her mother’s request, Lina is off to Florence, Italy to stay with her mother’s art school friend, the dependable Howard Mercer, who is superintendent of a World War II cemetery.

All of the adventures in Love & Gelato take place in just under a week, a dizzying pace for anyone over 21, but not so for an emotional teenager. The day after her arrival, Lina meets Ren (short for Lorrrenzo..be sure to roll that “r”) Ferrara. Ren introduces Lina to other ex-pat kids and possible classmates (if she decides to stay,) shows her Florence’s points of interest, and becomes Lina’s confidante on her quest to discover her mother’s connection with the city–and with Howard, who may or may not be Lina’s father.

Like most teenagers, driven more by heart and hormones than their heads, Lina jumps to certain conclusions without all the facts. But what I enjoyed most was the writing, which had plenty of wit as Lina sizes up each new person and situation she encounters.  Her “map” to the city is an old journal belonging to her mother. Those entries I found to be a bit flat and forced–the author is obviously trying to create a separate, distinct voice–but they were not numerous enough to detract from the overall story.

The sequel, Love & Luck, is also available, and centers around Addie, Lina’s American best friend with whom she frequently calls or video-chats for advice and support.

Love & Gelato is sweet and engaging, without being too saccharine or sarcastic, a tough line to walk with YA Lit. It is a quick read (one day for me) and a simple escape. I even found myself Googling some of the tourist spots mentioned, which was helpful. Now I just need to buy some gelato.

8.5/10 Stars

Fiction

A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler

Kristie

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I am one of those curious people who wonders about the meaning of a book title, especially when it is vague. And, although the phrase “a spool of blue thread” doesn’t appear until the very end of the book, I must admit–I’m still wondering. (Forgiveness? Longevity? An unending series of life and death?)

The Goodreads reviews on A Spool of Blue Thread are extremely mixed. That doesn’t surprise me at all. There is no doubt that Anne Tyler is a terrific writer, skilled at mapping out the human condition and little details we all absorb but rarely discuss. Some will find great depth in this book’s pages, others will see it as a story that goes on and on with no real point or climax. I lean toward the latter.

Until the “semi” explanation of the title manifested itself, my impatience kicked in and I began tapping into my Humanities degree, where symbolism was a favorite subtopic. The story, like a spool of thread, is linear at first. But, as time goes on–like the spool unwinding more and more– it begins to zig zag back and forth, losing it’s initial direction and original purpose.

Through it all we follow multiple generations of the Whitshank family. The first and second generations are only described in depth after three members are dead and buried, which felt like an unnatural backpedaling to this reader. I suppose the point–if there is one–is to show that even as families change and people grow up, everyone ultimately begins and ends at the same place. We’re all children dependent on our parents, teens who rebel on some level, young adults carving our niche in the world, and older adults wondering where it all went before quietly leaving this earth. Our only artifacts being people’s memories of us and a collection of belongings to be sold, donated, or, if we’re lucky, lovingly treasured. It’s a cynical cycle, but an honest one.

A reader who is content with this type of horizontal plot packaged in very capable writing will enjoy the book. A reader looking for an engaging, memorable story will not. At best, we will all recognize someone in the Whitshank family as a person we know or to whom we are related. Perhaps even ourselves. As a reader, however, I did not find myself rooting for any particular character and am ready to move on.

8/10 Stars