Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber

Ellie Haycock is straddling two worlds and not very successfully. As a teenager with VACTERL syndrome, hospitals and surgeries have become, if not a normal part of her life, then a very common occurrence. When she's not having surgeries to correct the disease's many debilitating effects, she wants to live as normal a life as possible - hanging out with her boyfriend Jack, her friend Brooke, winning speech competitions and dreaming of being an actress. Unfortunately, a mysterious lung ailment has her back in the hospital's Family Home among the typically temporary friendships there, contemplating another scary surgery that may (or may not) be what gets her back to her "real" life. What's more terrifying than another surgery, though, is when Ellie's desperate attempts to keep her two lives separate, sheltering her "normal" friends from the cruel realities of her disability and eagerly leaving behind her "hospital" friends in between surgeries threaten to alienate everyone she loves.

Ellie is a vivid, if occasionally frustrating, narrator. Faced with her "normal" friends during her hospital time, she can't bear to share even the smallest tidbit of what she's going through. Instead, she quickly makes a group of hospital friends, including Caitlin, another teen with VACTERLs, Luis with the "little c" cancer, an overly chipper volunteer named Veronica, and prickly Ryan Kim who changes her perspective and maybe...her heart? The unique setting makes fast friendships and perhaps even some romance more believable than they would otherwise be.

This book gives readers an inside look into the struggle of being a constant patient without ever having the luxury of being able to hope to leave the hospital cured. Ellie's frustration with the constant swing of the pendulum between what she considers her to be her real life and her life in the hospital is palpable. Additionally, her mother is one of those parents who shares her whole life story via a blog, that as she grows older, feels more and more invasive. If you've ever seen a blog/Facebook page/Instagram, etc. featuring a very sick or disabled kid and wondered how weird it would be to be that kid, this book is for you.

Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal is an excellent coming of age book with a welcome unique perspective on disability that mingles tough topics like medical autonomy, not being heard by doctors, and privacy with the more typical page-turning stuff of romance and friendship drama. At times it felt like everything was happening a little too quickly, Ellie was a little too obtuse about reality, and the dialogue had a tendency to reference thoughts that were more implied than actually written which left me feeling occasionally like I'd missed something. In the end, though, I was touched by Ellie's discovery that all her lives add up to just one and that there is healing to be found in letting people in.

Thanks to the publisher for NetGalley review copy.  Book hits shelves March 5th.

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The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds

The Rapture of Canaan is the story of a young girl’s coming of age within the confines of the Christian cult her grandfather devised. She struggles to understand her place in a community ruled more by her grandfather, Pastor Herman, than by Jesus. She’s desperate to avoid the sin her grandfather preaches against and uncertain why she doesn’t feel the connection to Jesus that has her family speaking in tongues and crying out to God during Sunday services. Into this confusion comes James, her prayer partner, and the two are equally torn by their desire to please God (or maybe just Pastor Herman) and to explore their newfound feelings for each other. When Ninah finds herself pregnant and abandoned, she fears her life in the church and the only community she’s ever known is over, but it may be that her indiscretion and its unexpected outcome will change the lives of the congregants of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind forever.

This story starts off quickly with simple prose and a sympathetic narrator in Ninah. She has had the laws of the church drummed into her but finds herself confused that all the rhetoric and suffering for Jesus doesn’t produce the spiritual outpouring in her that she witnesses in the rest of her family and community. In fact, at points in the early going the writing style actually seems too simplistic, and I found myself bored for just the briefest moment before the story rapidly picked up steam.

As Ninah begins to experience the consequences of her pregnancy, the book plumbs the depths of radical religion, the fragility of community, the mysterious ways of God, and the weaknesses of self-proclaimed arbiters of right and wrong. Reynolds has created a very captivating picture of a community dominated by a charismatic leader. Ninah’s journey to discovery of what she herself will choose to believe is compelling reading.

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Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark

Author Agnes Lee has made a name for herself with a series of children’s books about character, Nan, a self-assured little girl who gets into all kinds of adventures, but her passion is more for the "fly on the wall" series of novels she writes under a pen name about her fellow moneyed Philadelphians.  Her friend Polly Wister has made a life for herself as a mother and as a wife, dedicated to brightening the lives of those around her, soothing her husband’s fragile ego and striving never to rock the boat.  Both born to generational wealth in an era when a woman’s best hope and expectation was to make a matrimonial match, the two take sharply divergent paths in their lives, but those paths always lead to summers on Fellowship Point in Maine.  Agnes, having recently received a cancer diagnosis, is determined to find a way to preserve the wildlife sanctuary that exists on the families’ lands there and to finish one final novel before the end of her days.  Unfortunately, money-grubbing cousin Archie and Polly’s husband, Dick, who is rapidly descending into dementia, stand in her way.

Fellowship Point is a long, contemplative book that touches on many themes – feminism, friendship, philosophy, aging, love, and land ownership.  More than that, however, it’s a touching character study that illuminates the beauty of a friendship between two women who often couldn’t be more different from each other growing old side by side.  I couldn’t put down this tale of forthright, opinionated spinster Agnes with her hidden heart of gold and equilibrium-seeking Polly whose deference and willingness to put her family’s needs ahead of her own belies an inner backbone and intelligence that often is a surprise even to her.

In Dark’s hands, Agnes and Polly’s beloved Maine comes vividly to life, and provides a setting rife with both fond and dark memories for the pair of octogenarians to reflect upon.  I loved this story and the unique perspective of these women who are not ready to be pushed aside, even though society and their families both are hard at work trying to minimize them as they age.  The slow unveiling of Agnes’s secrets keeps the pages turning, but arguably the best thing about Fellowship Point is the thoughtful depiction of a lifelong friendship between women who know each other often better than they know themselves. 

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An Honest Lie by Tarryn Fisher

Artist Rainy Ives moves from New York City to the Pacific Northwest both to be with her new partner Grant, but also to escape the last tendrils of her dark past.  On isolated Tiger Mountain, Rainy struggles to fit in with Grant's friends, a slightly catty group that doesn't easily welcome outsiders.  Nonetheless, Rainy manages to cling to the edges of the group.  Feeling like she doesn't fit in, she is more than a little surprised when they invite her on a Las Vegas girls' weekend.  With some pressure both from the women and from Grant, Rainy finally agrees to go, but, for Rainy, a trip to Las Vegas is more than just an awkward social event, it's a return to the very doorstep of the place that houses her worst memories.  When her friend Braithe disappears in Vegas, the only way to save her is for Rainy to slip back into the life that she was so desperate to leave behind.

Fisher has penned a page-turning thriller that unfolds in two timelines weaving Rainy's childhood memories with the friends' weekend of light Las Vegas debauchery until the two finally intersect with Braithe's disappearance.  Braithe's bizarre behavior leading up to her vanishing adds still another dimension to the mystery.  Rainy is a sympathetic character and An Honest Lie is a fast-paced and satisfying story of her finding her strength and the redemption of facing down her childhood demons one last time.

(Disclaimer: Review copy received from the publisher in return for review consideration.)

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Backlist Bonanza: Reviewlettes

This summer has found me reading books that have been on my shelves seemingly forever, with mixed results.  Some I wish I head read long ago.  Others I wish hadn't been burdening my shelves with for so long.  Here are my takes on a few of them.

In Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin imagines what is ultimately a pretty dull afterlife.  When people die, they arrive in Elsewhere on a boat and age in reverse until they are born again to a new life.  Liz Hall, a fifteen-year-old struck by a cab on her way to the mall, arrives in Elsewhere thinking she's dreaming.  When it becomes apparent that she is not, she has terrible trouble adjusting to her new reality, opting to spend all her time looking back at her old life, even tracking the hit-and-run driver who took her life rather than  embracing the chance to get to know the grandmother she never met in life.  I wish more time had been  spent on fleshing out Zevin's creative afterlife than on transporting Liz's teenage angst into the great beyond.  Liz read a little a young for her age, and her Elsewhere love story as well her grandmother's willingness to enable her destructive behavior seemed unrealistic.  All in all, Elsewhere was a quick read about learning to live and love in the now, but ultimately I think it was a little too "young" for this adult reader.

The Bright Forever turns a lens on the would-be idyllic small town of Tower Hill, Indiana and reveals its dirty underbelly when Katie Mackey, daughter of the owner of the town's glass making factory, goes missing in early July.  Told from the perspective of high school math teach Henry Dees; his neighbors, Clare and Ray Wright; and Katie's older brother Gilley, The Bright Forever taps into all the secrets that lurk beneath this small town idyll.  Junior and Patsy Mackey would do anything for family, except one thing.  Mr. Dees loves Katie a little a too much.  Ray Wright has a thing for pills.  Clare can't bear to be alone, and Gilley will never forget the night he ratted out his sister for not taking her library books back, because she never came back from the library.

This is a sad story and one that will make readers uncomfortable at every turn.  It's at once a riveting page turner with a mystery waiting to be revealed, but also difficult to turn those pages as the flawed characters reflect on their troubling secrets and the pain that brought them to the fateful summer of Katie's disappearance.  Despite the challenge of reading a book with such dark subject matter, The Bright Forever is redeemed by Martin's skilled depiction of summer, small town life and his sensitive handling of his deeply flawed characters.  Never are you inclined to like them, but in Martin's capable hands, these characters become people we can understand.

In The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff reimagines the life of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's many wives, who left the Mormon church and set in motion the dismantling of Mormon polygamy.  Interwoven with Ann Eliza's story is the modern-day story of Jordan Scott, who was exiled from his town and church, an isolated fundamentalist enclave where polygamy still thrives.  Returning to help his mother, a 19th wife who stands accused of murdering her husband, Jordan is forced to come to terms with the life that he was made to leave behind and the hold it has on his mother.  

If I had one complaint to make about The 19th Wife, it would be that it goes on just a little too long.  At the beginning of the novel, the pages flew by, but the ending chapters dragged a bit and left me the slightest bit unsatisfied.  Aside from that minor quibble, The 19th Wife stands out as a meticulously researched and well-told historical novel.  Ebershoff reinvents Ann Eliza Young and her family using a variety of fabricated primary sources that add up to a compelling picture of the very human history of the Mormon church and the controversial figure of Ann Eliza.  Jordan's story adds a bit of mystery to the mix as he attempts to unearth the truth about who killed his father.  In the process, he reveals the lasting trauma of living in a polygamous society, the very expected trauma that seemed to drive Ann Eliza to speak out about it so many years before, a trauma so wrapped up with love, family, and blind faith, that it is difficult to understand, much less escape.    

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The Syrena Legacy Series by Anna Banks

When Emma literally stumbles into a violet-eyed stranger on the boardwalk of a Florida beach, it's definitely not love at first sight, more like humiliation at first sight.  The encounter is quickly forgotten, though, when Emma's beach trip ends in tragedy.  That is, until the handsome stranger shows up again in her New Jersey high school classroom.  

Galen is a Triton royal given leave to live life on land and be a Syrena ambassador to humans.  When he spots Emma using a gift that has disappeared from among his people, he can't believe it, and he really can't believe she doesn't know she even has the gift.  Determined to find out her secret, he follows her home, but he has to admit that it's not the importance of Emma's gift to his people that attracts him to her.

Unbelievable hijinks ensue as Emma and Galen's relationship blossoms from suspicion to love.  Soon Emma is exploring a world she never knew existed and is suddenly plunged into the dramas of mermaid-kind that strike even closer to home than she could ever have imagined.  

When I'm looking for something a little lightweight and fast reading to enjoy, YA romance is what I

reach for.  The premise of Of Poseidon is a little absurd, but Banks sells it and I couldn't pull myself away from Emma and Galen and their star-crossed romance.  The main character's irritating penchant for childish verbal ticks ("ohmysweetgoodness" or "fan-flipping-tastic") tested my patience, but the fast moving plot saved me from putting this down.  The second book, Of Triton, is arguably the better of the two with Emma maturing into her new life and Galen's chapters revealing more of the Syrena world.  

The second book has a satisfying conclusion, while the third, Of Neptune, shoots off in a new direction, a direction with an overprotective love interest and the beginnings of what looked to be an irritating love triangle, not to mention the return of "ohmysweetgoodness."  I decided within 60 pages that while Banks wrote a trilogy, I was happy to leave this series a duology.  

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Reviewlettes: Unpopular Opinions

So, one of the things 2020 has brought me is....an unusually high number of books read.  Since I am a garbage blogger but still a blogger in my heart, I feel compelled to comment on all the books I read on the internet before I give them away.  This ends pretty poorly for me considering I reviewed all of maybe five books in 2020, so I'm pretty much just floating around on a wave of books I'm never likely to get around to reviewing.  By way of assuaging my guilt and perhaps letting a few books get out the door and on to their next adventure: reviewlettes!

I read The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue with unfairly high expectations since I count his The Stolen Child among my very favorite books.  Unfortunately, it did disappoint.  It tells the story of Jack Peter and his parents.  Jack Peter is on the spectrum and draws monsters that somehow manifest into real life.  Unsure about how to handle an increasingly violent Jack Peter who refuses to leave the house, his put-upon parents and best friend, Nick, are now harassed by all manner of things that go bump in the night.  It's eerie, and it has an interesting twist, but the characters often felt strange and wooden.  A subplot about a shipwreck seemed unnecessary and odd word choices kept jolting me out of the story.  All in all, the book felt like it was trying very hard to accomplish something, but the something is uncertain and the pieces just never quite added up.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson was a book club selection, and for once, I have the unpopular opinion on it.  Most of my book group loved it, but I was underwhelmed.  The Book Woman tells the story of Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian in Kentucky during the Great Depression and also the last of the blue people of Kentucky, marked out as different by the strange blue hue of their skin.  This story had a lot of potential, and Cussy Mary is definitely a lovable character, but the story felt too shallow, electing to cover a fantastic range of topics instead of digging deep into one or two.  If it had only been about packhorse librarians and blue people, it might have been more satisfying  Instead it covered profound poverty, racism, educational failures, union sentiment, medical experimentation, unexpected love, being true to yourself, and more.  The book is riddled with tragedy, but I didn't know the characters well enough to be affected by it.  Richardson clearly did a lot of research into this time and place and the people who lived there and then.  Unfortunately, it felt like she was so attached to all of the research that nothing was left out and the book felt stretched thin.  Nonetheless, this book is well-loved, so I might just be the odd one out on this one.

Americanah is the first book I've ready by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and.....I didn't really like it.  Americanah tells the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, a couple in Nigeria whose happily ever after is dismantled when the two have very different immigration experiences, Ifemelu to the United States and Obinze, illegally, to the UK.  As Ifemelu plans her return to Nigeria and imagines being reunited with Obinze, the story unpacks their histories.  I think this book is Important with a capital I, but as storytelling goes, it fell flat.  I appreciated the many insights into our ingrained white American biases presented within the framework of Ifemelu's blog and experience.  Much of this was very eye opening.  I appreciated, objectively, the high quality of the writing.  My biggest problem with the book may have been that I just didn't like Ifemelu.  Her social circles in the U.S., both white and black, were irritatingly pretentious.  Her self-destructive tendencies were aggravating.  I grew weary of the story not seeming so much a story as a message I was supposed to be getting.  I think there's a good non-fiction book hiding in this fictional narrative, and I wish that had been the focus.  I look forward to reading other books by this author, but this one didn't quite work for me.  

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The Switch by Beth O'Leary

On my short list of good things about 2020 (it's a very short list), I'd have to say audiobooks would rank pretty high.  Audiobooks are kind of a recent thing for me.  I always thought they felt a little bit "cheaty" as reading goes, plus, I just don't seem to absorb things as well when I listen to them as when I read them, so I always figured a good story would be lost on me if I listened to it.  While they'll never replace my love of the written word, I've really appreciated listening to stories this year.  When you're living alone through a pandemic, it's kind of nice to hear another voice.  It's even nicer when the other voice is reading you an absorbing story.  

I snagged a "listen now" copy of The Switch by Beth O'Leary from NetGalley.  I tend to try to make my audio listening a little lighter weight than my reading because I truly do have the attention span of a flea when listening, particularly when multitasking, which audiobooks were pretty much made for multitasking, no?  Anyhow, The Switch totally fit the bill for me.

Leena Cotton is at a loss when she has a breakdown at a work meeting and is forced to take a 2 month sabbatical.  (Seriously, though, why can't this happen to me?)  Having recently lost her sister to cancer and become alienated from her mother in the process, she can't fathom what she will do with two months where she can't lose herself in work.  Meanwhile, Leena's grandmother, Eileen, has been left by her philandering husband at the age of 79.  She'd love to get back out there and meet a new man, but the dating pool in her small Yorkshire village is, well, puddle-sized.  

When Leena discovers her grandmother's list of eligible bachelors in the village, all of whom have been found wanting, she decides her grandmother should try online dating.  Unfortunately, the online dating landscape has little to offer.  That is, unless Eileen goes to London.  An idea is born, and suddenly Leena and Eileen are swapping lives.  Leena will take over her grandmother's spot on the neighborhood watch committee and handle all of her projects, like planning the May Day festival, while Eileen will try out London life, moving into Leena's flat with Leena's roommates Fitz and Martha.

In alternating point of views, narrated perfectly by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Allison Steadman, the two women navigate the unknown, carving out places for themselves in their new surroundings. Each finds her new life challenging but rewarding, and each brings a little of herself to her new situation and leaves the lives of those around her better for it.  Leena finds herself falling for a handsome country schoolteacher while Eileen has a fling with a West End theater actor only to find that maybe she's looking for love in the wrong place after all.  

The book is filled with quirky, lovable, believable supporting characters, and the two Cotton women are admirable main characters.  While definitely part of the romance genre, The Switch goes deeper to explore the need for genuine human connection among friends and even among strangers while also exploring themes of healing after loss.  The Switch is a a lighthearted but by no means fluffy feel-good novel.  

Highly recommended, especially on audio!

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

When Vanessa Wye returns to her private boarding school, Browick, for sophomore year, she's uncertain what the year holds for her.  Having lost the friendship of her freshman year roommate, Jenny, she's starting anew and alone.  A scholarship kid at a wealthy school with high expectations, she's easily overwhelmed by the work and embittered at the loss of her friend.  Isolated and vulnerable, she welcomes a newfound connection with her English teach, Mr. Strane, who singles her out, gives her extracurricular books to read, and makes her feel special.  While it seems to begin innocently enough, Strane's behavior soon begins to edge into the inappropriate, oddly personal compliments, stolen touches, and eventually a whole illicit relationship.  But it's what Vanessa wants....or so she thinks.  As the pair's relationship escalates to an inconceivable pedophilic fantasy, Vanessa, believing herself in love, puts everything on the line.

As soon as he says this, I become someone somebody else is in love with, and not just some dumb boy my own age but a man who has already lived an entire life, who has done and seen so much and still thinks I'm worthy of his love.  I feel forced over a threshold, thrust out of my ordinary life into a place where it's possible for grown men to be so pathetically in love with me they fall at my feet.

In alternating chapters, we get a glimpse of Vanessa's adult life as she watches events unfold when another student of Strane's reports his sexual misconduct.  Suddenly, Vanessa's life is in the spotlight as Taylor searches for allies to speak out against Strane, but Vanessa doesn't see herself as a victim, never has.  Her life tells a different story, though.  Struggling under the weight of her wasted potential and broken relationships, Vanessa finally begins to plumb the depths of the damage Strane's attentions did to her.

I think it will be just one of many unbelievable things about 2020 that one of my favorite books of the year will be one about a young girl and the pedophile she loves, but here we are.  My Dark Vanessa is as compelling as it is hard to read.  Vanessa is a marvelously drawn, emotionally complex character, clearly damaged by her high school relationship with Mr. Strane that reaches its tentacles into her adult life, and yet stubbornly unwilling to think of herself or be thought of as a victim.  Russell has achieved that fragile balance of creating a character who really isn't likeable and creating a character who still draws readers' sympathy and hope for redemption.  My Dark Vanessa is a vivid and layered story about power, consent, abuse, victimhood and the far-reaching repercussions of a dark and twisted "romance" that should never have been.  Highly recommended, if you have a stomach for the subject matter.

Copy provided to me by the publisher in exchange for review consideration.

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Historical Reviewlettes

These reviewlettes are historical in more ways then one.  First of all, they're all historical fiction.  Secondly, I read them all like a ludicrously long time ago, so the finer plot points are lost to the sands of time and memory.  That said, I seem to be fully incapable of sending them off on their next adventure until I comment on them in some way because they were all so good.  

First up, we have The Gown by Jennifer Robson.  And really do I even need to tell you to read this book?  I mean, look at it, with a cover like that, this book sells itself.  Amiright?

Not convinced?  OK, fine, I'll try to use my words.

The Gown is set in post-World War II London where Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin meet in the embroidery workroom of Norman Hartnell's famed fashion house.  Ann is an English girl who began at Hartnell as an apprentice and risen through the ranks.  Miriam has come from France, having survived the Holocaust, now seeking to put her prodigious embroidery skills to work.  Though the hardship and scarcity of the war linger, the excitement of Princess Elizabeth's upcoming wedding finally gives the British people cause for celebration, and the gown will be made at Hartnell.

The historical tale was so rich, it hardly needed a modern day perspective of Ann's granddaughter unearthing her grandmother's long kept secrets, but the modern perspective didn't take away either.  I loved this tale of friendship, its capturing of England's hesitant first steps away from the war, the setting of the fashion house, and the excitement of the wedding.  The Gown is a beautifully told story of two friends and England's reawakening after the ravages of World War II.

Next up, we've got The Visitors by Sally Beauman.  I've always been a touch fascinated by Egypt and the Pyramids, and I was totally taken in by this historical tale of two young girls who become friends in 1922 Egypt, just at the time that the excavations in the Valley of Kings finally yield the ultimate find.  I loved how this book was told from the perspective of two young girls, one the daughter of expatriate archaeologists.  They're caught up in the middle of the Egypt-mania that has seized the English.  The tensions between the wealthy sponsors of the digs and the ambitious archaeologists determined to find Tutankhamun's tomb are rife.  The girls realize something untoward is afoot but can't quite grasp it.  This is a long book that doesn't feel long.  I relished every page of Beauman's richly drawn Egypt and her cast of characters all entangled in the intrigue of robbing a nation of its treasures at any cost.  If I reread books, I'd reread this one.

Last but not least, Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.  Tipping the Velvet is the first Sarah Waters novel I read but I hope it won't be the last because it was fantastic.

In it, oyster girl, Nan King, falls in love with Kitty Butler, a girl playing a boy in a music hall act.  Nan is swept away to London where the two perform together and carry on a covert love affair, The two are desperately in love but too afraid of being discovered to last.  Abandoned by Kitty, Nan finds herself alone in gritty Victorian London with nothing but a broken heart and a trunk full of male clothes from the act.  As a boy, Nan works the streets.  At loose ends, she takes up with all manner of characters, and the story reveals the dirty underbelly of Victorian London as Nan embarks on a number of troubling sexual "adventures."  This book, too, is the richest of historical portrayals and Nan is a remarkable character.  Her story from its beginnings with a sweet and exciting love affair to her search for love and belonging in all the wrong places and on to the redemption that seemed unreachable but perhaps is not, is totally compelling.

All of these reads are so remarkable that even years after reading, I still remember them well!

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Inside Out by Terry Trueman

In this very short novel, we meet Zach just at the moment the coffee shop he's sitting in is being robbed by two desperate young men.  It quickly becomes apparent that something is not quite right about Zach.  He's not scared, he doesn't seem to know when it's best to keep quiet, he's much more interested in getting a maple bar than in getting out of harm's way, and, honestly, he's not quite sure the situation he's in is even real.  When the police arrive, the robbery escalates to hostage situation.  Over the course of the next few hours, secrets will emerge.  Zach is sick, and he needs his medicine, but the people in the back room of the coffee shop need a hero, and Zach might just be the only guy who can be one.

Inside Out is a fast paced book that grips from the very first page.  In addition to the action and suspense of the coffee shop hostage situation, there's a lot going on in these few pages not the least of which is Zach's struggle against his mental illness.  In Zach's narration and intervening notes from his medical file, a door is opened into living with mental illness.  While the book is intended for a young adult audience, I found Zach's perspective illuminating, giving me a better understanding of his disease.

At the risk of spoiling such a short book, I'll say no more about the plot.  What I will say is that I was impressed with how Trueman brought a plot rich book together with a strong portrayal of a mentally ill character and gave sympathetic eye to all three of his male main characters.  If you're looking for a quick read that packs a punch, give this one a try!

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Catch a Falling Star by Kim Culbertson

When superstar Adam Jakes rolls into the small town of Little, California to film a Christmas movie in the middle of summer, native Carter Moon is unruffled.  Happy in her small town, working in her parents' café, Little Eats, Carter's never gotten caught up in all the hoopla about Hollywood.  Adam is an overgrown child star fresh out of rehab and also looking to rehab his image after a very scandalous public break-up with a Disney starlet.  When Adam's manager stumbles over the only dark spot marring Carter's simple small town life, he sees an opportunity he can't pass up.  Soon Carter is playing a role of her own, small town love to Adam Jakes.

I have to admit, I've got a real weak spot for a well done YA romance.  My favorites are the ones that don't let the main character become a lifeless puppet of the love story, and Catch a Falling Star definitely doesn't.  Carter comes off as a real, genuine person who is struggling to find her place in the world, but doesn't know it yet.  Easily content with her life and its routines, happy to help those around her and watch the night sky with her friends, she doesn't ambitiously imagine a life for herself in some unknown elsewhere, but her parents want her to open her eyes to a world that's a little bigger than Little.

As Adam and Carter's scripted courtship deepens to something more than staged photo ops and  publicity stunts, the pair start to open each other's eyes to different ways of life.  Adam's worldly ambition plays nicely off Carter's small town contentment, and it's satisfying to watch both characters realize that maybe there's a sweet spot in between where they both could land.  In addition to likeable, if flawed, characters, Culbertson's small town summer setting leaps off the page.

Catch a Falling Star is a great coming of age story for both characters taking on themes of what it means to grow up and carve out a place for themselves in the world.  I loved this page turning read with a little extra substance!

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The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

I’m not sure why it took me so long to read this one, perhaps because it’s such a slim volume that seems to get swallowed up in the overabundance for my bookshelves.  

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is the beautiful, poetically rendered story of Japanese picture brides, lured to the American west coast in the early 20^th century by promises of a new life and young husbands made wealthy in a nation where the “streets are made of gold.”  The reality of the life they find is much different, filled with grueling work, devious men, ignorance, and racism.


Otsuka tells their stories as a collective, using the first-person plural “we” throughout the book, and what could easily become an irritating conceit is instead wielded with power to tell the story of many in few words.  While there may not be a specific character to latch on to, Otsuka manages to beautifully capture the essence of a whole experience, nimbly passing from woman to woman, from the farm worker, to the laundress, to the maid until she has drawn out the breadth of their experience.  A powerful story, beautifully told.  Highly recommended.

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Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrall

I have this super duper bad habit.  I buy ebooks like a fiend, not that I don't buy all books like a fiend, but it's a little too easy to fire off $1.99 to Amazon and have a shiny new ebook at your disposal that you ultimately never read because...time.  I love paper books.  99 times out of 100 I will choose to read one of my overabundance of paper books over picking one of the many very exciting titles sitting neglected on my Kindle.  Honestly, it takes my old friend the LibraryThing "choose a random book from your library" function to even get my eyes on an ebook.  Now, if I only I had all my ebooks cataloged there.  That's a work in progress I'll never hope to catch up with.  Happily, though, the randomizer drew one from ebook obscurity for my first read of the year, and I'm glad because it was a winner.

Natural Flights of the Human Mind introduces two damaged, mysterious characters in a seaside village on the English coast.  The first is Peter Straker, a misfit who lives in an abandoned lighthouse that each day grows closer to falling into the turbulent sea.  Despite having no job, Straker lives a regimented life governed by numbers and routine.  Creeping in around the edges of his carefully managed, solitary life are the voices of the 78.  The 78 are the victims of a mysterious accident Straker believes himself to have caused.

Imogen Doody is a school caretaker determined to live life on her own terms after a young marriage that ended in disaster.  Fortified by a powerful anger that gives her the control over her surroundings that she desperately craves, she's willingly walled off from any human companionships, fending of all advances from her family and would-be friends with her prickly attitude.  Fatefully, she comes into some abandoned property from her long lost godfather.  As she struggles to restore the abandoned cottage, Doody crosses paths with the mysterious Straker, and the two make a connection that sets in motion a series of extraordinary events that neither could have anticipated that sets them both on the path to destruction...or redemption.

This books is definitely a slow burn, carefully drawing out the often unlikeable but all-too-sympathetic main characters, peeling off the layers of their stories little by little, revealing their damaging histories, unpacking the troubled pasts that led them to their solitary, broken lives. The seaside village where the two collide, despite its beauty, is rendered starkly, a place of exile for Straker who hopes the whipping coastal winds will one day be powerful enough to sweep him and his lighthouse away.

If you're the sort of person who's ever wondered what the life of somebody foolishly or even unwittingly responsible for tragedy would be like, Natural Flights of the Human mind is a compelling glimpse into that psyche.  I never expected this one to be a page turner, but I found myself rushing toward the finish desperate to see if the troubled characters Morall had brought me to care for would find redemption.  Flights is a haunting and beautiful story of perils of inadequacy and guilt and the power of love and forgiveness.

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The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

In the 1600s, Emer Morrissey was a frightful pirate marauding the Caribbean seas in search of treasure to steal and hoping to once again meet her long-lost love.   That is, until the night she is cursed to one hundred lives as a dog.  One hundred dog lifetimes later, Emer is back in the body of Saffron Adams, the hope of her lower middle-class family.  Unfortunately for the Adams family, Emer has no interest in lifting the family out of poverty through higher education, but she may just know where to find the buried treasure she left behind.

I really thought that The Dust of a 100 Dogs had a really fun concept that I would enjoy, but nearly the whole thing didn’t work for me.  The characters are woefully one dimensional.  The good characters are too good, the evil characters too evil, the conflicts too easily begun and resolved, and the reincarnation portrayed poorly.  At the beginning of the novel, Saffron’s thoughts and actions are nearly entirely Emer’s.  If they are not the same person, then Saffron is utterly controlled by Emer, driven by Emer’s desire to have back the treasure denied to her and filled with Emer’s violent pirate thoughts.  By the end of the book, however, it was like King made a last-minute decision that Saffron ought to have a voice too, but it was too little too late to be anything short of a tack on.  

Flashbacks to Emer’s early life in an Ireland being destroyed by Oliver Cromwell’s armies are the best and most compelling part of this book, perhaps because it’s the only part that feels genuine.   Once Emer flees the husband her uncle has sold her to in the aftermath of the war, Emer, desperate, decides she’ll board a ship bound for the Caribbean, where other men are looking for wives or worse.  This is where things fell apart for me.  For one, if you ran away from a lousy, rotten husband to be impoverished on the streets of Paris, why would you think you’d make out any better rolling the dice on a mystery husband in the Caribbean?  For two, I just never really managed to buy Emer as a proper pirate.  She kind of dithers her way into the whole thing after fleeing the next d-bag husband in line, and using her pent-up loathing for all the men who took what wasn’t theirs in a battle.  All the sudden, she’s a sea captain with pirate fleet robbing Spanish treasure ships.  There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for it other than she doesn’t want to get married to a French d-bag and she need something to do while she moons over the lost love her of her Irish youth that she hopes against hope to meet again.  She’s supposed to be this feared killer, but it all seems to be a bit of an act, and a poor one.

Maybe I’m expecting too much.  This is, after all, a swashbuckling YA tale of reincarnation and piracy.  I’m probably not supposed to read so much into it.  I’m supposed to appreciate Emer as a strong female character and enjoy her adventures at sea.  However, despite her murderous abilities, she somehow never stopped seeming like victim to me, and The Dust of a 100 Dogs, with its many lifetimes’ worth of stories to tell never came together into the more multi-dimensional story I was hoping for.

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Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Look at this, people.  Here it is still 2018.  I've finished two whole books, and I'm already writing about the second.  Somebody stop me or I'm going to start having expectations of myself.

Picking up a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, for me, was mostly an exercise in nostalgia. I went through my traditional mystery-lover stage pretty early in my reading career, and when I was in the seventh grade, I was sure I was going to read all the Agatha Christie books, and all those The Cat Who... books, and more, so many more delicious mysteries.  Alas, my reading tastes shifted as I grew older, and my consumption of the entire collection of the delicious new (at the time) copies of Central Columbia Middle School's Agatha Christie collection never came fully to pass, though I did get a few under my belt before my reading tastes shifted to thrillers and horror in high school.  So, reading Murder on the Orient Express was an effort to recapture the reading days of my youth, even though I think I was more of a Miss Marple girl than a Hercule Poirot fan, but, be that as it may, I enjoyed my blast from the past.

Hercule Poirot is returning by train from Syria after solving one case and rushing to England to attend to another when he finds himself in the midst of still a third case when a suspicious gentleman is murdered on the Orient Express.  With no police on board and their progress halted by a snowdrift, it falls to Poirot to gather the evidence of the many potential suspects traveling in the Stamboul-Calais carriage.  Interviewing everyone from the victim's secretary to the honorable Princess Dragomiroff to a Colonel and a young woman from England he'd had a chance encounter with on his previous train, Poirot has to discern the lies from the truth to discover the secrets of both the killed and the killer.

A relative minimum of reliable evidence, an abundance of characters who don't seem quite shady enough for murder, and a healthy dose of lucky guesses make Murder on the Orient Express a fun whodunit.  Its exotic locale in the midst of a snow storm combined with the sinister atmosphere of a marooned train that almost certainly contains a killer adds to its attraction. 

I've always been and still am a fan of the sort of deductive reason, psychologically based crime-solving that marks Poirot's style.  Sure, modern forensics are great, but isn't it more fun to cleverly manipulate potential subjects into tipping their proverbial hands?  There's no doubt that Christie is a master of the genre, and Murder on the Orient Express kept me guessing until the very end when the good detective finally untangles the improbable truth.

(Copy received free from the publisher in exchange for review consideration.)

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My Best Reads of 2017

Happy 2018, everybody!  Before I set my sights fully on the new year, I've got to take a look back at the best books from last year.  Honestly, it was a rough year of reading and blogging for me.  I don't have actual reviews written for my favorites, so this is as much a "reviewlette" post as it is a "best of" post.  I encountered lots of DNF duds and a fair amount of books that I finished that left me feeling pretty "meh," but, in the end, I got more reading done than I expected and encountered a few gems along the way.  Here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay - I read this waaaay back in the beginning of 2017, so I really have to reach back over the months for memories of it, but it was great.  It's the story of the four Turner sisters whose mother transforms them into a vaudeville act when their father is injured on the job.  I don't know how to describe it other than to say that this book is historical fiction at its most fun.  I loved getting acquainted with the vaudeville circuit through the Turner girls' eyes.  They meet all kinds of people and find success they never expected and some romance along the way.  To say that it's "fun" I don't mean to imply a lack of seriousness.  As they rise to fame the Turners encounter poverty, gain new understanding of racism and discrimination, and are touched by tragedy, all of which add enough heft to story for it to be a truly satisfying read.

2. Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson - Joshilyn Jackson has been waiting on my bookshelves a long time.  I'm glad the randomizer finally helped me rescue her from the deep recesses of my shelves.  Shandi Pierce and William Ashe meet during an armed robbery at a convenience store.  She's a single mom who has convinced herself she's had a virgin birth, he's a scientific savant with a recent past filled with tragedy.  She thinks that destiny brought them together, but there's much more to William Ashe's story than meets the eye.  This book is hilarious in a totally effortless way, is full of lovable characters, and definitely was not the story I was expecting.

3. The Passage by Justin Cronin - This is as good as everyone has been saying for years now while I've been waffling over attempting it due to its enormous size.  I'm a sucker for dystopian/apocalyptic stories, and this one is a champion of the genre. It reminded me a bit of the feeling of reading The Stand, terrifyingly possible, fascinatingly written, weaving between several stories of a nation laid waste by a misguided government experiment.  It's always those misguided government experiments, isn't it?

4. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - Be still my heart!  I re-read a book.  I'm not really good at Dickens' full length works - the ones I've read drag so horribly in the middle - but I'll always have a soft spot for A Christmas Carol.  There's just something about the idea of Christmas that Dickens preaches in this book that always gets me, more so now that I'm a crusty old grown-up more often tempted to be Scrooge-y over the holiday.  It seems to grow a little more humorous, a little more serious, and a little more relatable every time I read it.

5. A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline - (Sorry, this one is super long.) I have the hardest time writing about the books I love the most. Usually, when I truly love a book it's because I'm so engaged on an emotional level with it that I can't disentangle myself from it long enough to give people a reason to like it that isn't totally unique to my own psyche.  So it was with this book which was my favorite among favorites.  In it, Kline imagines the life of the subject of one of Andrew Wyeth's paintings, Christina's World.  My heart broke for proud Christina, crippled at a young age by polio, whose determination not to give into the pains of her failing body leaves her unwilling to accept help or pity but also desperately limited by the path she has chosen.  This isn't a cheery book.  It's a hard to look at a character whose lot in life is often frustration, humiliation, and heartbreak as the able bodied people in her life come and go while she is consigned to a life of difficulty, a life that misses out on so much a "normal" life would offer.  Kline's talent in making me care so much for this proud, sometimes selfish, sometimes downright ornery character imprisoned by a world both of her own and her disability's making, is what makes this book shine.  A few times during the reading, I found myself worrying over the ending. How can this end without doing a disservice to the character and the rest of the story?  How can it end without being too trite or just too depressing? I need not have worried.  The ending strikes the most pitch perfect of notes between bitter and sweet, revealing a life that is so much more than the sum of its parts and inspiring that much more love for both the painter and his subject.

6. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver - If this is Barbara Kingsolver's debut (er, I think it is, actually), then I can't wait to read more of her recent work.  I fell in love with the plucky, courageous Taylor Greer from page one as she abandons her Kentucky home to move west to Tucson, Arizona desperate to evade a certain fate of wedlock-free baby-raising.  This is the fastest reading essentially  plotless book you'll ever meet, filled with excellent characters from Taylor herself, her worrywart roommate Lou Ann, no-nonsense Mattie down at Jesus is Lord Used tires, a pair of Nicaraguan refuges, and baby Turtle who is obsessed with vegetables.  These folks are irrepressible and jump off the page.  I'll be back for more Kingsolver, for sure.

7. The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison - This one snuck in just under the wire as I closed it with satisfaction on the afternoon of New Year's Eve.  If this blurb looks familiar to you, then you must follow me on Litsy. ;-)

The blurb on the front cover of one edition calls it "stealthily powerful," and truer words were never spoken.   Ben Benjamin and the collection of misfits who accompany him on his journey from abject tragedy to redemption and healing are sometimes pathetic, often hilarious, and ultimately (unexpectedly) heartwarming.

Honorable Mentions: Coventry by Helen Humphreys (where the writing stuns, but the plot's cheap twist knocks it down a star), Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers (that captures high school hell so very, very terrifyingly...which also held it back from being fully a favorite) and The Train of Small Mercies (for being a book I thought I would DNF but ended up being a solidly likeable book, if not quite best of the year material)

Linking up to the last prompt of #AMonthofFaves

Brought to you by Traveling with T, Estella's Revenge, and Girlxoxo

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The Hummingbird by Stephen Kiernan

In a Nutshell:  Deborah Birch is a gifted hospice nurse experienced in guiding her patients and their families through the struggles of death and dying.  Barclay Reed is a disgraced historian turned ornery old man who has summarily dismissed numerous nurses before turning to Deborah to see him through his final days.  As Deborah struggles to care for the lonely, angry old man who challenges her to read the unpublished manuscript of the book that saw his career go down in flames, she also faces a challenge at home, that of her PTSD-afflicted veteran husband, Michael.  As good as she is at helping those facing the hardest struggle of their lives, it may be that only an angry professor on his death bed can help her reach her husband before it’s too late.

The Good: The professor’s book happens to cover a little-known piece of World War II history (spoiler alert!!!!) that is based on actual events. Though its appearance interrupted the rest of the narrative, the story was a compelling surprise to me. (Okay, that’s all with the spoilers.)  Deborah’s first person narrative of her successes and struggles as a hospice nurse is a unique window on what has to be one of the most difficult yet valuable professions.

The Bad: Deborah occasionally seems like a female character being written by a man, which... she is.  She and her husband’s pet name for each other is “lover” and the way she lusts after her husband comes off very ...male.  Also, I was consistently irritated that she was so attuned to her patients’ needs but so incredibly tone deaf to the “mood in the room” when interacting with her own husband.  Some of Deborah’s experiences in hospice, are bit too textbook-y, as if Kiernan read up on a bunch of manuals about how to practically deal with death and dying and plugged them into his novel in too close to non-fiction format. 

The Verdict: Somehow I’ve now managed to read Stephen Kiernan’s whole catalog so far, and I can tell you that The Hummingbird is my least favorite of the three.  The whole narrative seems a bit wooden at times which kept me from fully engaging with a book that should have been an emotional roller coaster.  The Hummingbird has its high points, but it didn’t feel genuine enough to really reel me in.

Review copy received from the publisher in return for review consideration.

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The Baker's Secret by Stephen Kiernan

In a Nutshell: Vergers is a coastal French village occupied by Nazis who are using the beaches to fortify their claim over much of Europe.  Emmanuelle is a baker with no bakery, a girl alone with her grandmother whose mind is slipping, who ends up sustaining a village in shortage by her wits and an uncanny ability to reallocate sparse resources and secret favors to those who need them most.  The only thing Emma is short on is a little hope for herself, but a little hope might surprise her when she least expects it.

The Good:  A rich community of characters, a beautiful depiction of provincial France, the French perspective on a major World War II turning point, a writing style that makes France during the Nazi occupation seem somehow fairy tale-esque. 

The Bad:  Needs more exposition.  In a book full of “are things as they seem?” with the small and large acts of resistance from the occupied villagers, I was dying for a little more “this is the rest of the story on X character.” 

The Verdict: I like Stephen Kiernan’s books, enough to give them four stars on Goodreads, but there’s always just a little something missing that keeps me from all-out loving them.  I loved all the parts of this book but, as a whole, it just falls the tiniest bit short.  That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend The Baker’s Secret. It’s a welcome addition to the World War II historical fiction genre I love so much.

Review copy received from the publisher.

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Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

When one of my best friends heard I was traveling to Italy - more specifically, to the Cinque Terre, she enthusiastically recommended Beautiful Ruins, a book that takes place in a sixth, more isolated, village Walters imagines for his story.

Beautiful Ruins opens with a beautiful film actress arriving in Porto Vergogna, Italy in 1962.  She was in the film production of Cleopatra but now she's sick and being sent away to await her lover in this obscure coastal village.  There, blue-eyed Pasquale Tursi is carrying on his father's legacy, imagining his forgotten village and his dead father's hotel will someday attain the tourism fame of the Cinque Terre. 

As Dee Moray settles in at Pasquale's hotel, the oddly named Hotel  Adequate View (yes, there's a story there), I was convinced I would love this book.  Walters paints a beautiful picture of a quiet village still dominated by fishermen and memories of the war.  Pasquale's earnest attempts to cater to his beautiful American visitor and the tenuous friendship the two form are enchanting.  The village and the story has a nice bit of quirk that complements the sweetness of Dee and Pasquale's fumbling relationship, such as it is.

Then along comes Richard Burton and the fictional Michael Deane, erstwhile film producer and all-around self-involved douchebag, accompanied by a jump in time to modern day California and the whole thing came off the rails for me.  Walters departs from his promising beginning to introduce us to Deane and a pack of less than lovable losers including Deane's development assistant, Claire, who came to work looking for the next big film and ended up working on some garbage reality show called Hookbook.  There's Shane, who has a tattoo of a made-up Bible passage that he spent his whole life living by until it failed him catastrophically, until he heads to Hollywood to pitch his terrible movie idea to Michael Deane.  Finally there's Pat Bender, washed-up frontman of a band everybody forgot, a screw-up who lost the good things in his life to drugs and bad decisions.
This is all to say that I loved the flashbacks to 1962 Italy and ensuing hijinks, but grinding through the present day with Walter's over-quirked, generally unpleasant West Coast set who are alternately trying to get ahead and right past wrongs left me cold.  All that said, Walter does manage to bring things full circle in a way that tugged gently at the heartstrings as one character starts to redeem himself and in so doing sets a lot of wrongs right. 

Walter is undoubtedly an excellent writer.  Beautiful Ruins is packed with perfect description that captures Italy's incredible coast and quaint villages.  The dialogue is fast-moving and realistic.  Even the structure of the story itself is admirable, peeling itself off in layers to reveal what Dee and Pasquale and Richard Burton, and even the unlikeable Michael Deane started in 1962.  Walter's biggest problem is his characters.  At times their exaggerated qualities chip away at their humanity and leave caricatures in their places, which makes Beautiful Ruins a little hollow on the inside.

"...but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope.  There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant - sail for Asia and stumble on America - and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along."

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