Tag Archives: book review

Review: Off Season, by Anne Rivers Siddons

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Off Season
by Anne Rivers Siddons
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I’m not sure if I introduced Anne Rivers Siddons’ work to my mother, or if she introduced it to me, but when you want something a little bit beachy and a little bit romantic, with vibrant women characters, no one beats her. This is especially true of her most recent book, Off Season.

In this novel, we are once again on the coast of New England, this time in Maine, in Carters Cove, following the life of a feisty girl named Lilly as she meets her first love (at the tender age of eleven), keeps tabs on the local osprey population, and does gymnastics in the basement gym built by her father.

As she grows up, we see her relationship with her artist-mother, her marriage to the devoted Cam, an architect, and the birth of her children, but her dog, Wilma, and the summer home in Maine are Lilly’s two touchstones, and at time function as additional characters.

Siddons excels at these gentle, dreamy stories of individual women, most of whom are somehow artistic, and the strong, complicated men they marry, and even when her tales veer into implausibility, they still leave you with the sense that you’ve read a really satisfying story.

Goes well with: Ice cold lemonade, a porch swing, and a cotton throw rug.

Review: Riding Lessons, by Sara Gruen

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Riding Lessons
by Sara Gruen
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Water for Elephants was one of the best books I’d ever read, so when I was in the Mexico City airport last week with 500 pesos and an extra ninety minutes before my flight – and nothing to read – I took a chance and got Sara Gruen’s earlier book Riding Lessons.

I was expecting plain prose that nevertheless forms incredibly vivid imagery, but I was not expecting a novel that was essentially a conventional romance, albeit one dressed up for dressage and including an angst-ridden mother-daughter relationship. What is it about everyone writing snotty teenagers into their work lately?

Simplified, the plot seems almost cliche: Annemarie has a tragic accident while competing in an equestrian event, turns her back on all things equine, marries a man she doesn’t really love, and ends up divorced with a snotty teenaged daughter. She moves back home to the family farm (and riding academy) where she makes her peace with her estranged mother and dying father, strikes up a romance with the local vet, whom she knew as a much younger woman, and yes, eventually does save the farm and live to tell about it.

Of course, there’s a second love affair in the tale as well: that of Annemarie and her horse, Highland Harry, who died in the tragic accident, and the new horse, troubled and injured, she adopts from the vet’s rescue, and insists is Harry’s long-lost brother.

Fans of romance and horses will enjoy this book, and I must admit, for a cliche it was still an enjoyable read, but I’m glad Gruen’s storytelling has evolved since this was originally published.

Goes well with: Strong coffee, worn jeans, and country-western music. Even if it does take place in New Hampshire.

Book Review: The Beach House, by Jane Green

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The Beach HouseThe Beach House
Jane Green
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I first saw The Beach House when I was working on a project for a writing conference I attended last August, but I resisted buying it. Then, last fall, I finally picked it up, because I was missing the sea and liked the title.

In this novel, Nan Powell, a sixty-five year old widow who lives in a sprawling home in a New England beachfront town, is faced with loneliness and a house that is both too large and to big to maintain, so she decides to rent out rooms for the summer.

As inevitably happens, the various tenants, who include a newly divorced mother and her teen-aged daughter, a recently divorced man who is coming to realize that he’s gay, and her own son who has never been able to commit to one woman, draw together to form a quirky, if loyal extended family.

What could be boring and predictable, in author Green’s deft hands, is lovely and poignant, at least in some places, and outright funny in others.

Goes well with a summer day and a pitcher of lemonade.

Star Trek: Exodus by Josepha Sherman & Susan Schwartz

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Star Trek Exodus
Star Trek: Exodus Book One of the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy
by Josepha Sherman & Susan Schwartz
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Fans of Star Trek have always wondered exactly what it was like when a significant number of Vulcans packed up their belongings like so much Delsey luggage, and moved away to eventually become Romulans. In this trilogy, we find out.

It’s a story that runs in two timelines at once. The first takes place in the days of Surak, and shows us the acts that led up to and caused the Sundering, and the second shows us Spock, Saavik, Uhura, and Chekov rushing off with cooperation from modern Romulans to face down a little known enemy called the Watraii, who are as obscure as they are dangerous.

Both story lines have a mix of action sequences and character sections, which allow us not only to catch up the the characters we know, but also grow to like the original characters we meet.

A further review will be posted when I finish reading the trilogy.

Goes well with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and ice cold milk.

Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey

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Kushiel's Scion
Kushiel’s Scion, by Jacqueline Carey
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Re-visiting the world of Terre d’Ange after more than a year since I last read about Phedre’ and Joscelin, and their adopted son Prince Imriel could have been a jarring experience – after all, Imri in this novel is no longer a child, afraid of monsters lurking beneath the bedroom furniture, but a young man about to attain true adulthood.

Jacqueline Carey’s world building is so detailed, however, that stepping back into Montreve, and the various other locations, was just like stepping into the kitchen of an old friend. Well, if that kitchen was in a time hundreds of years before now, and part of a society built on the concept of Love as thou wilt.

In this, the fourth novel of the Kushiel’s Legacy series, young Imriel is caught between being “good” and being true to himself, as a member of Kushiel’s line, and coming to grips with a childhood of abuse, and the darker desires he was born with. Amidst all this teen angst, there is a quest to find the source of a specific school of knowledge, and much ado with the ladies of the Court.

All in all, it’s a rollicking adventure that acts as the lead-in to the next two books in the series.

Goes well with a tankard of ale, hearty fresh-baked bread, and a good sharp cheddar.