Review: The Virtues of Oxygen, by Susan Schoenberger

23 July 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Virtues of Oxygen

Paperback: 242 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (July 22, 2014)

From the award-winning author of A Watershed Year comes a heartrending story of unlikely bonds made under dire straits. Holly is a young widow with two kids living in a ramshackle house in the same small town where she grew up wealthy. Now barely able to make ends meet editing the town’s struggling newspaper, she manages to stay afloat with help from her family. Then her mother suffers a stroke, and Holly’s world begins to completely fall apart.

Vivian has lived an extraordinary life, despite the fact that she has been confined to an iron lung since contracting polio as a child. Her condition means she requires constant monitoring, and the close-knit community joins together to give her care and help keep her alive. As their town buckles under the weight of the Great Recession, Holly and Vivian, two very different women both touched by pain, forge an unlikely alliance that may just offer each an unexpected salvation.

Buy, read, and discuss The Virtues of Oxygen

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Goodreads

About the author, Susan Schoenberger

Susan Schoenberger is the author of the award-winning debut novel A Watershed Year. Before turning her attention to writing fiction, she worked as a journalist and copyeditor for many years, most recently at The Hartford Courant and The Baltimore Sun. She currently serves as the director of communications at Hartford Seminary and teaches writing classes at the Mark Twain House in Hartford. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband and three children.

Connect with Susan

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

You would think that a story about a woman who spends her entire life in an iron lung would be pretty grim, but The Virtues of Oxygen is anything but. Author Susan Shoenberger gives us not only a glimpse into what is now a very rare form of disability, but also a character piece about two women who are not in competition with each other, but work as partners.

Vivian, the one in the iron lung, is the perfect example of how the internet has, and still can, change lives. We get her backstory as a series of unaired podcasts, flashbacks into the life of a once boisterous and vibrant child, whose mind was both a blessing and a curse for much of her life.

Holly is not in an iron lung, but circumstance has given her a life almost as limited as Vivian’s. The death of her husband, the economic recession – both have conspired against her, to the point where she’s in danger of losing her house, when we first meet her.

Together, these two women move from companions to friends to a sort of chosen family, as each learns more about the other and herself, and opens herself enough to both give and receive assistance, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or financial.

Yes, there are other characters in the novel, but all revolve around these two strong personalities, Vivian and Holly. Holly and Vivian.

I’ll confess that while I’ve never been as close to Holly was at homelessness, I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck in a society where even those of us who would normally be considered upper-middle-class are sometimes one or two paychecks away from foreclosure.

I’ll also confess that Vivian made such an impression on me that I spent no small amount of time on Google, reading about real women who lived in iron lungs after being stricken by polio, including the woman whose story actually inspired Shoenberger to write this novel.

The Virtues of Oxygen is a gripping read, and the ending, while somewhat predictable, is also true to the characters the author created. It’s also the ending I wanted them to have, one filled with the easy breath of hope.

Goes well with Bacon, eggs, and a toasted English muffin, eaten at a local diner.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information, including the complete tour schedule, click HERE.

NetGalley Wrapup – 2014 First Half – Volume I

15 July 2014 by Melissa

At the urging of one of the blog tour companies I work with, I signed up for an account with NetGalley earlier this year. This allows publishers to send me widgets for the books I’ve agreed to review, so I can download them straight to my kindle. It also allows me to leave feedback – usually a few good lines from my review and a link to the rest – directly for the publisher.

I’ve been reading like crazy all year – as I always do – but I’m a little behind on reviews that are NOT for tours – so here’s my NetGalley wrapup for titles I’ve read in the first half of 2014 that do NOT have separate review pages in this blog.

Don’t Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski

I always love Sarah Mlynowski’s work and this is no exception. She’s funny, smart, and her characters – teens in this case – are always believable, although they tend to occupy a slightly heightened reality. Great work, great read.

The Art of Arranging Flowers, by Lynne Branard

If you, like me, have ever spent your last ten dollars on fresh flowers when you should have spent it on milk or bread, you will love this novel. It’s a delightful human story about relationships, loves, and lives, and of course flowers. Mix in a little bit of magical realism, and you have a bouquet of compelling storytelling wrapped in raffia. READ THIS BOOK

Dangerous Dream: A Beautiful Creatures Story, by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

I hadn’t read the books, but only seen the movie, when I read Dangerous Dream. Nevertheless, I was sucked into this richly created world and enjoyed finding out what happened next with the characters. It made me buy the books, for a better understanding of what had come before. It may be YA, but it appeals to all ages.

All of the above books are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Review: Chasing the Sun, by Natalia Sylvester

6 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Chasing the Sun

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: New Harvest (June 3, 2014)

Partially inspired by her grandfather’s kidnapping in Peru, CHASING THE SUN: A Novel (Lake Union/New Harvest; on sale June 3, 2014) is Natalia Sylvester’s suspenseful debut about a man whose wife is kidnapped just as their marriage is falling apart.

After going out for an errand, Marabela Jimenez doesn’t return home and her husband suspects she has left him – again. Only, the next day a letter arrives in the mail that reads:

Querido Andres,

I’m being held by three men who say they’ll keep me safe as long as you cooperate. They say that means no cops and no media. They say they’ll call when they’re ready to talk to you. Kiss our children for me and tell them not to worry. Keep me in your thoughts as I will be keeping you in mine.

Marabela

Despite their crumbling relationship, Andres quickly realizes he must do whatever it takes to get Marabela home. He can’t possibly afford the ransom the kidnappers demand or handle this threat to his family alone so he hires a consultant to help negotiate with the terrorists. He also reaches out to his estranged mother, who has never cared for Marabela and even reconnects with an old friend who may hold the key to his past and his wife’s future. As each day passes without the return of his wife, Andres is forced to come to terms with whether or not what he and Marabela have left is worth saving and how far he’ll go to bring her home.

Set against the backdrop of the political turmoil and terrorist threats of 1992 Peru, CHASING THE SUN is a story of how trauma has a way of exposing our most difficult truths and healing past wounds and regrets.

Buy, read, discuss

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Goodreads

About the author, Natalia Sylvester

Natalia Sylvester was born in Lima, Peru. She came to the U.S. at age four and grew up in South Florida, where she received a B.A. in creative writing from the University of Miami. A former magazine editor, Natalia now works as a freelance writer in Austin, Texas.

Connect with Natalia

Website | Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter

My Thoughts

Despite the fact that this novel opens with a kidnapping, and is mainly focused on a marriage that is falling apart rather than one that is coming together, the author’s sense of place, her vivid descriptions, her three-dimensional characters, are all so compelling that I literally could not put it down, reading it straight through in a single evening.

And not even in the bath.

It’s heart-achingly honest, sad but with bright moments, and ultimately so completely truthful that I felt as though I knew these people. And maybe that’s why it works, because while the situation is anything but normal, the characters are as real, as substantial, as our own family members, friends, and neighbors.

I really like that, unlike any other novel dealing with the same subject, the focus would have been on the one who was kidnapped, the wife, Marabela. Instead, it’s very much Andres’s story, and in choosing to make him our POV character, in choosing to have him be sympathetic, author Sylvester forces us to look at our own culture, our own relationships, and see exactly how we cast our gender and familial roles.

Chasing the Sun is simply brilliant. Deep, satisfying, literary brilliance.

Goes well with arroz con mariscos (though I prefer mine without octopus) and a really good wine.

This review is part of a virtual tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click HERE.

Review: The Dirty Book Murder: an Antiquarian Book Mystery, by Thomas Shawyer

29 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book The Dirty Book Murder: an Antiquarian Book Mystery

Publisher: Alibi (May 6, 2014)
Sold by: Random House LLC

In this smart, fast-paced mystery debut, Thomas Shawver introduces a charming, unlikely hero from the rarefied world of antique books.

Book merchant Michael Bevan arrives at the Kansas City auction house hoping to uncover some hidden literary gold. Though the auction ad had mentioned erotica, Michael is amazed to find lovely Japanese Shunga scrolls and a first edition of a novel by French author Colette with an inscription by Ernest Hemingway. This one item alone could fetch a small fortune in the right market.

As Michael and fellow dealer Gareth Hughes are warming up for battle, a stranger comes out of nowhere and outbids them—to the tune of sixty grand. But Gareth is unwilling to leave the auction house empty-handed, so he steals two volumes, including the Colette novel. When Gareth is found dead the next day, Michael quickly becomes the prime suspect: Not only had the pair been tossed out of a bar mid-fistfight the night before, but there is evidence from Michael’s shop at the crime scene.

Now the attorney-turned-bookman must find out who wanted the Colette so badly that they would kill for it—and frame Michael. Desperate to stay out of police custody, Michael follows the murderer’s trail into the wealthiest echelons of the city, where power and influence meet corruption—and mystery and eroticism are perverted by pure evil. Unfortunately for Michael, one dead book dealer is only the opening chapter in a terrifying tale of high culture and lowlifes.

Buy, read, and discuss:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Goodreads

About the author, Thomas Shawyer

Thomas Shawver is a former marine officer, lawyer, and journalist with American City Business Journals. An avid rugby player and international traveler, Shawver owned Bloomsday Books, an antiquarian bookstore in Kansas City.

My Thoughts

I stayed up all night reading The Dirty Book Murder, not because I’d forgotten that I was supposed to review it, but because it was that good. It opens a bit slowly, with main character Michael Bevan going to an auction because there’s some rare Japanese erotica he might want for his used bookstore, but very quickly turns into a fast-paced neo-noire murder mystery replete with mobsters, movie stars, and an estranged daughter.

It’s also got enough literary references, references, I might add, that are relevant to the plot, to make any bibliophile want to start tracking the various times Collette, Hemingway, and others are invoked by characters in the story.

And then there’s a hint of romance, though this book is in no way a love story, unless it’s a love of reading and literature, and the preservation thereof.

Author Shawyer shares a few traits (per his bio) with his main character, but he manages to do so in a way that is very much “write what you know,” and not at all “annoying author insertion.”

This book should appeal to both those who like their mysteries a little bit cerebral, but it should also be great for those who were raised on hard-boiled detective novels, as there’s a bit a both.

Goes well with Shepherd’s pie and Irish beer.

This review is part of a virtual tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click HERE.

Spotlight on The Witch’s Salvation, by Francesca Pelaccia

22 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book The Witch’s Salvation

Title: The Witch’s Salvation
Author: Francesca Pelaccia
Publisher: Francesca Pelaccia
Pages: 388
Genre: Historical Fiction/Paranormal
Format: Paperback, Kindle

A witch who demands humanity.

The immortal families who denied her of it.

Two mortals commanded to right the wrong.

That is the fate of the urban princess Anasztasia and the renegade prince Matthias, born shockingly mortal to two immortal families. If they go back in time and restore the witch’s humanity, she will grant them immortality. She will also break a 550 year-old curse that imprisons Matthias’s family in their ancestral homeland and exiles Anasztasia’s family from it.

But to make their lives their own, the heirs must return to the most dangerous day in their families’ past, Easter Sunday, 1457. This is the day Vlad III, aka Dracula, massacred nobles.

How can Anasztasia and Matthias reverse the past when their families won’t speak of their sins? How can they refuse when the witch owns their lives?

Buy, read, and discuss:

Amazon | Goodreads

Read an excerpt from The Witch’s Salvation

Prologue

In a cave shaped by five centuries of the earth’s temper, the wind’s hand, and the sky’s will, a witch stirs from beneath the dry leaves and twigs that make up her resting place. She pushes herself through, then brushes the blanket of brittle leaves from her furrowed face and shriveled limbs. But after five centuries of sleeping and waking in a bed of earth, she does not recognize foliage from skin.

She plants her emaciated feet on rough stones and drags herself across the cave to the aged branches of her door, her steps shaky like those of an infant learning to walk. The door grinds as it opens with one silent command. The world outside her hovel is as it is inside—dark, dank, musty, the bottom layers of centuries of overgrowth and the absence of human vanity. Yet she hears everything, worms burrowing, insects feeding, foliage breathing. They have been her companions and teachers through the ages as much as they have been her nourishment.

Her bones slipping against the shell of her body, she stumbles toward the ragged stump of an ancient beech. Over five centuries ago, she snapped the sapling from its roots, nurturing its swell to remind herself of the passage of the years, the turn of the centuries, and the approach of salvation. It is as old and as dead in life as she is, but it has kept her will strong and focus sharp.

Instead of resting her frail body on it, or sipping from the water trickling over one of its gnarled roots and collecting in a hollow at its base, she climbs onto it. She crawls to the middle, appearing no bigger than a rodent on a master’s grand table. Her pupils are dull and worn away, but she finds the first ring with her fingertips and begins to count. One, two, three, four, five…It is slow and meticulous work for one taught only the basics of language and numbers by those she once served. But her voice is strong, her need to count a hunger, her focus unrelenting.

Once she had magnificent eyes. Dark, almost black, alert and alive, eager to see the world, to touch it and to know it. Her hair matched the black of her eyes. Long and thick, it shone brighter than those nobles with marigold hair. Once, she was a young woman, until the nobles of the two warring families tore her from her family, wrenched her life from her body and her soul from her flesh, turning her into what she is now. Once, she had a name, a lovely, rhythmic name. But that was robbed from her, too, and she inherited another name. Strigoaic. Witch. A witch who was once a girl. A girl who once had a life. A life now trapped in death.

The Strigoaic counts the rings without stopping, her voice moaning through the clearing and the dense trees around it. She stops when her fingers grasp a ring larger and more pronounced than the others. Her heart begins to thump as it did when she first discovered it, as it did in her human life. Slipping over the edge of the stump, her fingers never leaving that ring of hope, she begins to count again, but from one, to two, to three, all the way to eighteen.

She lowers her head, a drop of blood falling from her eyes.

Crawling back onto the stump, she lies on it, the pulse of the ancient tree pounding against her palms and heating her chilled skin.

The time has come. After centuries of waiting, the time has come to summon those two nobles who robbed her of her humanity. But it is not them she wants. She has already punished them. She imprisoned one noble and his family in the boundaries of the earth once known as their homeland of Wallachia, while the other noble and his family she exiled from it. Unwise about her sorcery, however, she imprisoned and exiled them for eternity to an immortal life.

That will right itself in time, too. Now she wants—no, needs—the last born of each family. She decreed them, and she will have them. Clawing her fingers through the flesh of the stump, she lets a shrill break from her lips that shakes birds and trees and mountains.

The time has come to get her name back.

About the author, Francesca Pelaccia

The Witch’s Salvation is Francesca Pelaccia’s debut novel and the first book of The Witch’s Trilogy.

A teacher and now at long last an author, Francesca has written in other genres but enjoys creating and writing time-travel fantasies. Francesca blogs on the craft of writing, especially as it relates to genre, and reviews books.

Currently she is working on the second book of The Witch’s Trilogy entitled The Witch’s Monastery.

Connect with Francesca:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

More Info

This post is part of a virtual book tour. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, visit the tour page at PUMP UP YOUR BOOK.

Review: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose

20 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

• Print Length: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper (April 22, 2014)

Paris in the 1920s. It is a city of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club’s loyal denizens, including the rising photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol, and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine.

As the years pass, their fortunes—and the world itself—evolve. Lou falls in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more sinister: collaboration with the Nazis.

Told in a kaleidoscope of voices, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 evokes this incandescent city with brio, humor, and intimacy. A brilliant work of fiction and a mesmerizing read, it is Francine Prose’s finest novel yet.

Buy. Read. Discuss.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indie Bound | Add to Goodreads

About the author, Francine Prose

Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer.

The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York City.

My Thoughts

As I was getting ready for the last day of Dallas Comic-Con on Sunday, I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR, and this book – Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 was mentioned. Immediately, I grabbed my phone and tweeted, “Does anyone ELSE get excited when a book they’re already reading is mentioned by @NPR or @NPRbooks?” It was gratifying to learn that I am not the only one.

I had to leave the room before the show was over, so I didn’t get to hear the whole story, but that doesn’t matter. It was nice to know I was ahead of the curve on this book. At least, a little bit.

The Interwar period has been sort of haunting me lately, and Lovers… is just one of those pleasantly insistent ghosts. Told in many voices – a family historian, a young photographer, etc., it unfolds like a flower, or one of those paper “cootie catchers” we all made in childhood. There are stories within stories, and all involve rich characters, lush descriptions, and enough of the politics of the day to make you feel as if the Nazis are peering over your shoulder as you read.

I mean, seriously, Francine Prose nails it when it comes to “ominous.”

She also nails it when it comes to her vision of an underground club in Paris. What could have come off as a poor man’s La Cage aux Folles, instead, is so well described that I could smell the smoke from the cigarettes (I’m betting they were Gauloises) in their holders, and hear the soft, bubbling fizz of champagne and the gentle clinks and clicks of glassware and tableware. I could also envision the clothes, because we all know that the ambiguous cross-gender counterculture embraces the BEST couture in any age.

But it’s the story that’s important, and in telling Lou Villars’s story, Francine Prose shows us a spiral into evil, deception, and betrayal that manages to be gripping, sad, horrifying, and poignant all at once.

What would you do for love? What would you do for notoriety? For success? For money? For survival?

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 asks these questions, and if the answers aren’t always happy ones, at least they are finely crafted and brutally, brilliantly honest.

Goes well with champagne, dahling…or possibly absinthe.

This review is part of a virtual book tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click HERE.

Review: The Runaway Highlander by R.L. Syme

15 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Runaway Highlander

Publication Date: April 15, 2014
Formats: eBook, Paperback
Series: The Highland Renegades

Anne de Cheyne has a choice. She can play the dutiful daughter and allow her mother to sell her to a greasy English sheriff, or she can take control of her own life and find her own match. After a frightening run-in with her promised husband reveals a dark secret, she makes a desperate choice. Flight.

Aedan Donne needs easy money and no-questions-asked. When Milene de Cheyne offers him enough to pay all debts, requests complete silence, and pays half up front, just for a simple recovery, he can’t believe his luck… until he meets his mark. Anne’s beauty and passion ignite something Aedan can’t ignore, even as she leaves him in the dust. Suddenly, he finds himself wanting to capture the runaway Highland lady for himself.

The Highland Renegades Series

Book One: The Outcast Highlander
Book Two: The Runaway Highlander
Book Three: The Pirate Highlander — Coming Soon!

Buy the book, and start enjoying the romantic adventure of The Runaway Highlander

Amazon UK | Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | CreateSpace

About the author, R. L. Syme

R.L. Syme works at a youth theatre, teaching kids performing arts and musical performance classes/camps when she’s not writing. Otherwise, she’s putting her Seminary degree to good use writing romance novels. Let not all those systematic theology classes go to waste…

Connect with R.L. Syme

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

My Thoughts

I have a thing for men in kilts. There, I’ve admitted it. Now, I realize that Aedon Donne, the ‘hero’ of this novel does not likely wear a kilt, as he’s supposed to be working for the English king, and all, but in my head, every move is accompanied by a healthy dose of swirling tartan and well-muscled legs, and if you asked protagonist Anne de Cheyne, I’m pretty sure she’d agree with me.

I make fun, but the truth is that this book is a deliciously gritty, saucy romantic adventure of the kind that brings to mind old Eroll Flynn movies, if he’d made Highlander films instead of playing pirates all the time. Rooted in history, but not enslaved to it, this story has strong women, brave men, and a perfect balance of justice and romance.

The dialogue never seems stilted, as can happen in period pieces, and the characters never seem too contemporary, either. I haven’t read the first novel in this series, but if The Runaway Highlander is anything to go by, it must be a fantastic, satisfying read.

A little romance now and then is a good thing. When it’s written as well as R.L. Syme has written her books, it’s a truly excellent thing.

Goes well with anything but haggis. (Seriously, I wanted hearty stew and fresh brown bread when I was reading this.)

Virtual Book Tour Schedule
Wednesday, May 14
Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past

Thursday, May 15
Review at Bibliotica

Monday, May 19
Guest Post & Giveaway at Susan Heim on Writing

Tuesday, May 20
Review at A Bookish Girl (The Outcast Highlander)

Wednesday, May 21
Review at A Bookish Girl (The Runaway Highlander)

Thursday, May 22
Interview & Giveaway at A Bookish Girl

Friday, May 23
Guest Post at Layered Pages

Monday, May 26
Review at My Not So Vacant Bookshelf

Tuesday, May 27
Review at So Many Books, So Little Time

Thursday, May 29
Guest Post at Historical Fiction Connection

Friday, May 30
Review at Lily Pond Reads
Review at From the TBR Pile

Monday, June 2
Review at The Mad Reviewer
Review at Bibliophilia, Please

Tuesday, June 3
Review at The Most Happy Reader

Wednesday, June 4
Interview at The Most Happy Reader

Thursday, June 5
Review at A Bibliotaph’s Reviews

Friday, June 6
Review at Historical Fiction Obsession

Monday, June 9
Review at Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Wednesday, June 11
Review at Fic Central

Thursday, June 12
Review at Reviews by Molly
Interview at Books and Benches

Friday, June 13
Review & Giveaway at To Read or Not to Read

Review: The Supreme Macaroni Company, by Adriana Trigiani

7 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Supreme Macaroni Company

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 6, 2014)

New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani takes us from the cobblestone streets of Greenwich Village to lush New Orleans to Italy and back again, from the tricky dynamics between Old World craftsmanship and New World ambition, all amid a passionate love affair that fuels one woman’s determination to have it all.

For more than one hundred years, the Angelini Shoe Company in Greenwich Village has relied on the leather produced by Vechiarelli & Son in Tuscany. This ancient business partnership provides a twist of fate for Valentine Roncalli, the schoolteacher-turned-shoemaker, to fall in love with Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner with a complex past . . . and a secret.

But after the wedding celebrations are over, Valentine wakes up to the reality of juggling the demands of a new business and the needs of her new family. Confronted with painful choices, Valentine remembers the wise words that inspired her in the early days of her beloved Angelini Shoe Company: “A person who can build a pair of shoes can do just about anything.” Now the proud, passionate Valentine is going to fight for everything she wants and savor all she deserves—the bitter and the sweet of life itself.

Buy, Read, Discuss

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Add to Goodreads

About the author, Adriana Trigiani

Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her books include the New York Times bestseller The Shoemaker’s Wife; the Big Stone Gap series; Very Valentine; Brava, Valentine; Lucia, Lucia; and the bestselling memoir Don’t Sing at the Table, as well as the young adult novels Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight. She has written the screenplay for her debut novel Big Stone Gap, which she will also direct. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Connect with Adriana

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts:

In The Supreme Macaroni Company, Adriana Trigiani combines three of my favorite things: realistic romance, shoes, and Italian-American culture. Having grown up in a New Jersey Neapolitan family, it is the latter, especially, that really resonated with me. In the voices of Valentine, her lover Gianluca, and the rest of her family, I heard echoes of my own wild, crazy, broadly gesticulating, incredibly LOUD grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Not having read the previous novel in this series, I did feel a bit as if I had been thrown into the deep end of a pool, with leaky water-wings, but soon enough I had figured out all the relationships, and the experience ultimately enhanced my enjoyment of the story, because I imagine Gianluca felt the same way.

Trigiani’s characters all have delightful eccentricities, some of which are more subtle than others, but they all seemed like people I might know (or be related to). Having also grown up in a couple of family businesses, I could really identify with Valentine’s journey toward business success, a journey that was both aided and overshadowed by her family.

I thought the romance between Valentine and Gianluca was well-written, reminding me a little of my own parents’ relationship, though my stepfather is only 15 years older than my mother.

On the whole, this was a gripping family drama with enough romance to keep things tingly, despite a poignant ending, and enough talk of food to make even a gluten-free vegan crave a plate of lasagna with meatballs on the side.

Goes well with Cappuccino and cannoli, obviously.

This review is part of a virtual blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information and the complete list of tour stops, click here.

Mini-Review: Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas

28 April 2014 by Melissa

My Thoughts

Picking up where the Veronica Mars movie left off, this novel has everything I loved about the series and the film: Veronica’s personal brand of snark, the Neptune locals we know and love, and a mystery that wasn’t difficult to solve, but keeps us entertained, even so.

Fans of LoVe be warned: this novel takes place during Logan’s deployment, so don’t expect to see much of him.

Do expect a few lovely (and some not-so-lovely) surprises, and a good amount of Dick Casablancas being, well, Dick.

I’m not sure if this novel counts as canon – though since it was co-written by series creator Rob Thomas, it totally should, but even if we take it as a slightly alternate universe, it’s worth the read, and it’s an excellent way for people, (like me) who binge-watched the entire series before the movie was released (I’d seen it before, but my husband hadn’t) to get their latest “fix.”

Goes well with: a double-scoop of ice cream on a sugar cone, eaten at the beach.

Review: Resisting the Rancher, by Roxanne Snopek

25 April 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Resisting the Rancher

Resisting the Rancher

Publisher: Entangled Bliss
Pages: 213

Country veterinarian Celia Gamble is in trouble. A misunderstanding from her past is rearing its ugly head and the only person she can turn to is Jonah Clarke—her family’s lawyer and, as it turns out, her brother Zach’s best friend and her childhood crush. She always wanted Jonah to see her as a bona fide woman, but as a woman who’s being wrongfully blackmailed for seducing a married man? Not on her life.

Jonah is happy to help little CeeCee Gamble, if only she’d come clean about why she’s being blackmailed. But with Zach’s wedding on the horizon and Zach’s fashionista fiancée Desiree giving CeeCee a makeover, the little duckling Jonah remembers is turning into a definite swan. And the unwritten law on sisters is clear—hands off. Jonah must resist Celia or lose the only true family he’s ever known.

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About the author, Roxanne Snopek

Roxanne Snopek has been writing professionally for more than two decades and her work has appeared in publications varying from The Vancouver Sun and Reader’s Digest to newsletters for Duke, Cornell and Tufts Universities. She’s done corporate copywriting on topics ranging from pet food for Iams/Eukanuba, to employee profiles for VersaCold to air-conditioner maintenance for Home Depot. (That’s right. Air conditioner maintenance.)

But she’s also had a bunch of other stuff published, including one mystery novel, a couple of literary short stories and a non-fiction series. One summer, she wrote video game dialogue and narrative for Silicon Sisters Interactive, a project that combined her two favourite genres – mystery and romance – with the world of casual gaming.

In 2012 she sold her first romance novel to Entangled Publishing. THREE RIVER RANCH made the Barnes & Noble Top Ten list, The Amazon Top 100 list and is now the foundation of a multi-book series. Recently, the first three books sold to France.

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My Thoughts

I’m not really a fan of “formula” romances. There’s nothing wrong with them, and studies have been done proving that women (in particular) who read them tend to have better, more fulfilling sex lives than women who do not. They’re just not my typical cup of literary tea. That said, every once in a while, it’s nice to pick up something that’s sexy and romantic and just escape into a piece of fiction.

Roxanne Snopek’s Resisting the Rancher was an excellent choice for just such an escape. Her characters were three-dimensional and their interaction was both interesting and plausible. Main character Celia is likeable – and I’m not just saying that because I work in dog rescue – smart, and resourceful, and love-interest Jonah is equally substantial.

I also enjoyed the frenetic pace the author created by setting everything against the backdrop of a family wedding – what better event than that to bring out all the quirks and dramas that linger within relationships of all kinds?

In short, Resisting the Rancher is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon, and I’d happily dip my toes in author Snopek’s pond again – easy to do since this novel is part of a series.

Goes well with Grilled chicken Caesar salad and mango iced tea, followed by a froufrou cupcake.

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