Tag Archives: Fiction

The Moonlight Palace, by Liz Rosenberg – Review

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About the book, The Moonlight Palace The Moonlight Palace

Paperback: 174 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (October 1, 2014)

Agnes Hussein, descendant of the last sultan of Singapore and the last surviving member of her immediate family, has grown up among her eccentric relatives in the crumbling Kampong Glam palace, a once-opulent relic given to her family in exchange for handing over Singapore to the British.

Now Agnes is seventeen and her family has fallen into genteel poverty, surviving on her grandfather’s pension and the meager income they receive from a varied cast of boarders. As outside forces conspire to steal the palace out from under them, Agnes struggles to save her family and finds bravery, love, and loyalty in the most unexpected places. The Moonlight Palace is a coming-of-age tale rich with historical detail and unforgettable characters set against the backdrop of dazzling 1920s Singapore.

Buy, read, and discuss The Moonlight Palace

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About the author, Liz Rosenberg Liz Rosenberg

Liz Rosenberg is the author of more than thirty award-winning books, including novels and nonfiction for adults, poetry collections, and books for young readers. She has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Paterson Prize, the Bank Street Award, the Center for the Book Award, and a Fulbright fellowship in Northern Ireland in 2014. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Binghamton University, in upstate New York, where she has received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has guest-taught all over the United States and abroad, and has written a book column for the Boston Globe for the past twenty-five years. Her previous novels, Home Repair and The Laws of Gravity, have been bestsellers in the United States, Europe, and Canada. She and her husband, David, were raised on Long Island, and went to the same summer camp at ages seven and eight, respectively.

My Thoughts

TLC Book Tours provided me with a copy of The Moonlight Palace via NetGalley, which meant the version I was reading was an uncorrected proof. Some of the punctuation and capitalization hadn’t yet been standardized in the ebook I had, but rather than finding it annoying, I actually think it lended to the otherness that pervaded the novel.

Rosenberg’s writing in this novel is lyrical, as if we’re seeing Agnes, her family, and the boarders in their once-grand (and now putting the ‘shabby’ in ‘shabby chic’) home, through a gauze filter and soft pink light. I got the sense that she was being meticulous with her word choices, because once I started reading The Moonlight Palace, I was completely absorbed.

Agnes, of course, is a wonderful character, and we get to experience her coming of age in a way that makes us realize how jaded we Westerners can be, at times, while also appreciating how very lucky most of us are. I’m not certain that the author meant her book to force readers to confront their inherent privilege, or if it’s just that’s that where my own consciousness was when I was reading it. I think it’s possibly a little of both.

But political and cultural awareness aside, what Rosenberg has done is give us something that could have been a Singaporean version of Tales of the City or Grey Gardens (and yes, I’m aware of how vastly different those two works are), and instead, has woven a tale that puts us in the middle of the same sights and sounds that Agnes experiences, with her perspective to aid our understanding.

The Moonlight Palace is a wonderful novel, and it will draw you in, and keep you there, until it finally releases you to go hunt down a warm meal and a hot cup of tea.

Goes well with Coconut curry chicken and strong black tea.

TLC Book Tours

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

Monday, October 6th: Reading Reality

Monday, October 6th: Great Imaginations

Tuesday, October 7th: A Bookish Affair

Wednesday, October 8th:  Savvy Verse and Wit

Thursday, October 9th:  A Bookish Way of Life

Friday, October 10th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Monday, October 13th: Bibliotica

Tuesday, October 14th: Book Dilettante

Wednesday, October 15th: Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Thursday, October 16th: Brooke Blogs

Friday, October 17th: Good Girl Gone Redneck

Monday, October 20th: The Whimsical Cottage

Tuesday, October 21st: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Wednesday, October 22nd: BookNAround

Thursday, October 23rd: Broken Teepee

Friday, October 24th: Wensend

Monday, October 27th: Books on the Table

Tuesday, October 28th: Missris

Wednesday, October 29th: Time 2 Read

Thursday, October 30th: Kahakai Kitchen

Date TBD: Lavish Bookshelf

Butternut Summer by Mary McNear – Review

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About the book, Butternut Summer Butternut Summer

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (August 12, 2014)

Caroline’s life is turned upside down the moment her ex-husband, Jack, strides through the door of her coffee shop. He seems changed—stronger, steadier, and determined to make amends with Caroline and their daughter, Daisy. Is he really different, or is he the same irresistibly charming but irresponsible man he was when he left Butternut Lake eighteen years ago? Caroline, whose life is stuck on pause as her finances are going down the tubes, is tempted to let him back into her life . . . but would it be wise?

For Caroline’s daughter, Daisy, the summer is filled with surprises. Home from college, she’s reunited with the father she adores—but hardly knows—and swept away by her first true love. But Will isn’t what her mother wants for her—all Caroline can see is that he’s the kind of sexy “bad boy” Daisy should stay away from.

As the long, lazy days of summer pass, Daisy and Caroline come to realize that even if Butternut Lake doesn’t change, life does. . . .

Buy, read, & discuss Butternut Summer

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About the author, Mary McNear Mary McNear

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Mary McNear is a writer living in San Francisco with her husband, two teenage children, and a high-strung, minuscule white dog named Macaroon. She bases her novels on a lifetime of summers spent in a small town on a lake in the northern Midwest.

Connect with Mary

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My Thoughts

Mary McNear has created, in Butternut Lake, the kind of small town most of us would secretly love to live in, even when we pretend to be ultra-sophisticated urbanites. She’s also created a group of characters, old and new, who feel like just the sort of people who would actually inhabit such a town. I fell in love with her work when I read and reviewed Up at Butternut Lake in April, and that love has only grown stronger with Butternut Summer.

In this book we have a lovely dose of family drama – Jack has been estranged from his wife Caroline and their daughter Daisy for most of the latter’s life – set against two romances – the slow, reconnection between Jack and Carolyn, and the almost-immediate connection between Daisy and Will. Each relationship is given its own attention, and its own rhythm, and McNear has done a particularly good job at showing the reluctance of former lovers to risk renewing their relationship as well as the intensity of young love.

While it’s not a character, per se, the local diner, Pearl’s is as important to the plot of Butternut Summer as the U.S.S. Enterprise is to Star Trek. Not only is it the center of much of the action, saving the place is a core factor of Caroline and Jack’s relationship. It’s the coffee shop we all wish we could visit, park Luke’s, part Mel’s, and part something else entirely, and visiting it again through this novel reminded my of my own childhood visits to my own family’s diner in New Jersey.

If you want a compelling story full of interesting, believable characters and a rich setting, you need to read Butternut Summer.

Goes well with Broasted chicken and mashed potatoes, and a glass of iced tea.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: Early Decision by Lacy Crawford (@lacy_crawford)

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About the book Early Decision Early Decision

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 26, 2014)

A delightful and salacious novel about the frightful world of high school, SATs, the college essay, and the Common Application—and how getting in is getting in the way of growing up

Anne Arlington is twenty-seven, single, and in demand: she is the independent “college whisperer” whose name is passed from parent to parent like a winning lottery ticket, the only tutor who can make a difference with the Ivy League.

Early Decision follows one application season and the five students Anne guides to their fates: Hunter, the athletic boy who never quite hits his potential, a kind, heavily defended kid who drives his mother mad; Sadie, an heiress who is perfectly controlled but at the expense of her own heart; William, whose intelligence permits him to dodge his father’s cruel conservatism but can’t solve the problem of loneliness; Alexis, a blazing overachiever whose Midwestern parents have never heard of a tiger mom; and Cristina, who could write her ticket out of her enormous, failing high school, if only she knew how.

Meanwhile, Anne needs a little coaching herself, having learned that even the best college does not teach a person how to make a life.

In this engrossing, intelligent novel, Lacy Crawford delivers an explosive insider’s guide to the secrets of college admissions at the highest levels. It’s also a deft commentary on modern parenting and how the scramble for Harvard is shaping a generation. Told in part through the students’ essays, this unique and witty book is so closely observed that it has been mistaken for a memoir or a how-to guide. A wise and deeply felt story, Early Decision reveals how getting in is getting in the way of growing up.

Buy, read, and discuss Early Decision

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About the author, Lacy Crawford Lacy Crawford

For fifteen years Lacy Crawford served as a highly discreet independent college admissions counselor to the children of powerful clients in cities such as New York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London. Her “day jobs” included serving as senior editor of Narrative magazine and director of the Burberry Foundation. Educated at Princeton and the University of Chicago, Crawford lives in California with her husband and two children.

Connect with Lacy

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My Thoughts

If you, like me, remember being flooded with college applications in high school, each one more interesting and attractive than the last, then this book, Earl Decision is for you.

The story is fresh and original – instead of a coming of age novel about one kid getting into his or her dream school, it’s a novel about a woman, Anne, who gudes kids toward finding the school that best matches their dreams, allowing both the kids and Anne herself to come of age along the way.

Anne is twenty-seven, but that’s not important. Coming-of-age is something that can be done no matter what age you are. Some of us are still doing it in our forties – figuring out our dreams, our desires, and how they mesh with the prosaic reality of everyday life.

But I digress. What I loved about this novel, was the crisp, contemporary language, and the way Anne adapted her use of language for whatever situation she was in. Talking with a bigwig lawyer, she used more formal speech. Speaking with a lazy high school boy, she turned to soft joking. It’s a skill we all need, and many of us lack.

I also thought the book felt cinematic. I could totally see it as a movie on ABC Family or Lifetime, with a quartet of well-scrubbed twenty-year-olds playing the teenagers and Amy Adams or Allison Mack (has she done any work since Smallville) playing Anne. What I mean is, the places described in this novel felt real. You could feel the air conditioning, hear the lawn mowers, taste the tea.

Finally, I thought the convention of showing us the examples of student essays was fantastic. It took me back to my own high school days, and the endless practice essays our teachers would make us write. (I confess, my default essay mode is a five-paragraph persuasive essay to this day.)

Whether you’re looking at colleges right now, or have a child who is approaching the application frenzy, this novel will entertain and educate, and never disappoint, except when you reach the last page, and realize it’s over.

Goes well with A fruit and cheese plate and mango iced tea.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: A Matter of Mercy by Lynne Hugo (@LynneHugo)

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About the book A Matter of Mercy A Matter of Mercy

Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Blank Slate Press (August 1, 2014)

Caroline Marcum thought she’d escaped the great mistake of her life by leaving Wellfleet harbor, but is forced to face it when she returns, reluctantly, to care for her dying mother. Ridley Neal put his past-and his prison term-behind him to return home to take over his father’s oyster and clam beds. Casual acquaintances long ago, when a nor’easter hits the coast, Rid and Caroline’s lives intersect once again. When Rid and two other sea farmers are sued by the wealthy owners of vacation homes who want to shut them down, and Caroline accidentally meets the person she most wronged, they each must learn to trust-and love. Inspired by a 1996 lawsuit, A Matter of Mercy is a riveting novel about treasuring the traditional way of life in the shallows of beautiful Cape Cod bay by discovering where forgiveness ends. And where it begins.

Buy, read, and discuss A Matter of Mercy

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About the author, Lynne Hugo Lynne Hugo

Lynne Hugo is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient who has also received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

She has published five previous novels, one of which became a Lifetime Original Movie of the Month, two books of poetry, and a children’s book. Her memoir, Where The Trail Grows Faint, won the Riverteeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize.

Born and educated in New England, she and her husband currently live in Ohio with a yellow Lab feared by squirrels in a three state area.

Connect with Lynne

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My Thoughts

I read A Matter of Mercy during a month when I was also attempting to write an produce a podcast every day as part of the Dog Days of Podcasting Challenge, and I have to say, even though emotions run high among the characters, author Lynne Hugo captured the feeling of living on the shore so well, that the novel itself felt restful while I was reading it.

But ‘restful’ should in no way be interpreted as ‘boring.’

The two main characters, Caroline “CiCi” Marcum and Ridley “Rid” Neal are each interesting in their own right, each recovering from a somewhat tumultuous past, and each a little bit cracked around the edges, if not actually broken. Caroline has returned to Wellfleet to see her mother through the older woman’s final days with ovarian cancer. (As someone who watched a dear friend of my mother’s go through just such a disease – there is no cure – those scenes were especially poignant for me). Rid is running the family oyster business. Together, they learn to forgive, to let go, to grab onto something new, and even to find love.

What I really loved about these characters, and all the characters in the novel, is that all of them were richly layered. Even Caroline’s mother, whom we see pretty much entirely cloaked by her cancer, is a vibrant soul, and through Caroline’s rememberances we learn about both women. There’s a flash of memory, early on, where Caroline recalls her mother brushing out her hair, as a child. What mother and daughter haven’t had that same experience?

Likewise the men in the novel are really dimensional. I’m often frustrated by women who write women characters really well, and then turn all the men into cardboard cutouts, but Lynne Hugo is a master of her craft, and every person we meet, friend or foe, local or summer person, feels like a real person.

The novel was, of course, inspired by an actual summerfolk vs. locals lawsuit, as happens wherever people want the shoreline to be more about development, and less about sustainable lifestyles, but while the suit may have been a jumping-off point, it’s clear that Hugo’s work is her very own.

I want to add a note, as well about the author herself. When I received the ARC of this novel, directly from the author, she’d included a bunch of promotional bookmarks and postcards, and a really lovely note apologizing for the sending of an ARC! As well, she signed it, which makes it all the more special.

Bottom line? This is a wonderful, poignant, novel by an extremely classy woman, and you should waste no time reading it. Don’t let the shoreline setting confuse you; this is a year-round novel. It’s not just for summer reading.

Goes well with a raw oyster bar (hello, Ceviche) and a good local microbrew beer.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: Camp Utopia and the Forgiveness Diet, by Jenny Ruden

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About Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet

Paperback: 300 pages
Publisher: Koehler Books (July 1, 2014)

Sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern knows the only way out of spending her summer at Camp Utopia, a fat camp in Northern California, is weight-loss. Desperate, she tries The Forgiveness Diet, the latest fad whose infomercial promises that all she has to do is forgive her deadbeat dad, her scandalous sister, and the teenage magician next door and (unrequited) love of her life. But when the diet fails and her camp nemesis delivers the ultimate blow, Bee bids sayonara to Camp-not-Utopian-at-all to begin what she believes will be her “real” summer adventure, only to learn that running away isn’t as easy—or as healing—as it seems.

Her wry and honest voice bring humor and poignancy for anyone, fat or thin, tired of hearing “you’d be so pretty if…[insert unwelcome judgment about your appearance from loved one or perfect stranger].”

Buy, read, and discuss Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet

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About the author, Jenny Ruden Jenny Ruden

Jenny Ruden has published short stories and essays in Nerve, Salon, Eclectica Magazine, Literary Mama and High Desert Journal. She won an Orlando award for creative nonfiction, was named a finalist in Glimmertrain’s short fiction contest, and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize two years in a row.

She has worked with teenagers for over ten years as a teacher of Reading, Writing and GED, and has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband, two daughters, two basset hounds and cat in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Connect with Jenny

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My Thoughts

Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet is everything I needed to read when I was fourteen, and sixteen, and twenty-one. It’s fresh, funny, and grounded in a heightened reality that never takes itself too seriously.

Protagonist Bethany is painfully real, depicted at the age when so many of us were battling the desire to conform to peer-defined norms with the equally strong urges to be true to ourselves. She faces the world with a combination of spunk and sadness, idealism and naivete that make her pop out from the pages and seem as if she’s recounting her story from across the kitchen table. So much did I feel for her, that I wanted to pull her into a hug, and assure her that things would eventually get better, even if she never lost an ounce.

While her sister (and her sister’s boyfriend) were also interesting characters, it is TJ, the boy-magician next door, who really captured my attention. How many of us have just such an unrequited love in our lives, even today. How many of us have done stupid things in an attempt to seem bolder, more interesting, more attractive?

Jenny Ruden has written a story that is part comedy, part drama, and wholly true, in the way that the best stories always are. Maybe you can’t lose weight by writing names on pieces of paper, but you can gain a stronger perspective of who you really are in the world by reading this novel.

Goes well with a plate of apples, strong cheddar cheese, and a handful of cashews, and a glass of peach iced tea.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: Further Out Than You Thought, by Michaela Carter

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About the book, Further Out Than You Thought Further Out Than You Thought

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (August 5, 2014)

From award-winning poet Michaela Carter comes a taut and erotically charged literary debut, set against the chaos of the 1992 L.A. riots, about three twentysomethings searching for meaning in their lives

In the Neverland that is Los Angeles, where make-believe seems possible, three dreamers find themselves on the verge of transformation. Twenty-five-year-old poet Gwendolyn Griffin works as a stripper to put herself through graduate school. Her perpetually stoned boyfriend, Leo, dresses in period costume to hawk his music downtown and seems to be losing his already tenuous grip on reality. And their flamboyant best friend and neighbor, nightclub crooner Count Valiant, is slowly withering away.

When the city explodes in violence after the Rodney King verdict, the chaos becomes a catalyst for change. Valiant is invigorated; Leo plans a new stunt—walking into East L.A. naked, holding a white flag; and Gwen, discovering she is pregnant, is pulled between the girl she’s been and the woman she could become. But before Gwen can embrace motherhood, she’s forced to face the questions she’s been avoiding: Can Leo be a father? Can she leave the club life behind, or will the city’s spell prove too seductive?

Weaving poetry and sensuality with an edgy urban sensibility, Further Out Than You Thought is a celebration of life, an ode to motherhood, and a haunting story of love, friendship, and one woman’s quest for redemption.

Buy, read, and discuss Further Out Than You Thought

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About the author, Michaela Carter Michaela Carter

Michaela Carter is award-winning poet and writer. She was born in Phoenix, Arizona, studied Theater at UCLA and holds an MFA in Creative Writing. Her poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, won the Poetry Society of America Los Angeles New Poets Contest, and appeared in numerous journals.

Recently she co-founded the Peregrine Book Company, an independent bookstore in Prescott, Arizona, where she works as a book buyer and storyteller. She lives in Prescott with her partner and two inscrutable children, and teaches creative writing at Yavapai College. This is her first novel.

Connect with Michaela

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My Thoughts

Reading this book was like living the life I didn’t actually have when I was in my twenties. Like Gwen, I was in California during the Rodney King riots; unlike her I was in the relative sanity of northern California, which was largely untouched by those events. Like Gwen, I was dating someone who would probably have been better as a short-term relationship, than not. Unlike Gwen, by the time I was twenty-five, I’d met my now-husband, and had stable employment that didn’t involve nudity.

The fact that some of Gwen’s story resonated with me, even though we’re vastly different people, tells you how much I enjoyed reading Further Out Than You Thought (A LOT) and should also give you a clue as to what I thought of the author’s work, but to be explicit: I think Michaela Carter is an important voice in contemporary fiction. She has a knack for creating vivid characters that are real enough to feel like people you might actually encounter, while still existing in the somewhat heightened reality that fictional characters tend to inhabit.

Similarly, she creates situations that resonate with her readers. Who hasn’t been torn between the comfort of a known relationship – even one that isn’t healthy – and the knowledge that breaking out of that comfort is the best thing you can do for yourself? Who hasn’t made a few low-percentage choices with jobs, school, and family from time to time?

This book isn’t a comedy, but like all really good stories, it’s replete with the sorts of organic comic moments that come from a life well-lived, just as it’s also got a full measure of pathos, but never lets you feel like you’re drowning in sadness or grimness.

While I, personally, would have dumped Leo in chapter one, I can see why Gwen remains attached to him, and I think all women have had a Leo in their life: the sensitive romantic who is completely ill-equipped to exist in the real world.

This novel is just gritty enough, just based in reality enough, just funny enough, just dramatic enough, to give us an accurate portrayal of the secondary coming of age that happens to most of us in our twenties. Better yet, it leaves us – or at least it left me – satisfied with how the story ended, and eagerly awaiting whatever author Carter publishes next.

Goes well with an iced cafe latte and two slices of pepperoni pizza, served on a paper plate, and eaten on a foggy beach.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: Sweet Water, by Christina Baker Kline

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About the book Sweet Water Sweet Water

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (July 1, 2014)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train comes a novel about buried secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness

Cassie Simon is a struggling artist living in New York City. When she receives a call from a magistrate telling her she has inherited sixty acres of land in Sweetwater, Tennessee, from her grandfather, whom she never knew, she takes it as a sign: it’s time for a change. She moves to the small Southern town where her mother, Ellen, grew up—and where she died tragically when Cassie was three.

From the moment she arrives in Sweetwater, Cassie is overwhelmed by the indelible mark her mother’s memory left behind. As she delves into the thicket of mystery that surrounds her mother’s death, Cassie begins to discover the desperate measures of which the human heart is capable.

Buy, read, and discuss Sweet Water

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About the author, Christina Baker Kline Christina Baker Kline

Christina Baker Kline was born in England and raised in Maine. The author of five novels, including the runaway bestseller Orphan Train, Kline has taught literature and creative writing at Yale, New York University, and Fordham. She lives outside of New York City.

Connect with Christina

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My Thoughts:

This is one of those books that had me reading passages – especially the italicized parts that took place in the past – out loud, so I could feel the way the language fit in my mouth, as well as my brain. I don’t do this a lot, but when I do, it’s always with a book I want to truly savor.

Author Christina Baker Kline has woven a tapestry depicting a mother and daughter who never get to interact directly, but impact each other’s lives both directly and indirectly. Cassie, the daughter, is curious, questing, artistic. Ellen, the mother, long since deceased, feels like a living presence, despite existing only in flashback-like sequences.

The supporting characters – Cassie’s lover, her father, Ellen’s friends – are woven just as vividly as the women at the heart of the story, and even Sweetwater itself feels more like a character than a mere place.

This novel isn’t particularly long, but it also isn’t a fast read. Instead, it’s one to be absorbed slowly, like an unwinding country road through a field of wildflowers.

Goes well with Sweet tea, fried catfish, and hush puppies.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: Inamorata, by Megan Chance

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About the book, Inamorata Inamorata

Paperback: 420 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (July 8, 2014)

American artist Joseph Hannigan and his alluring sister, Sophie, have arrived in enchanting nineteenth-century Venice with a single-minded goal. The twins, who have fled scandal in New York, are determined to break into Venice’s expatriate set and find a wealthy patron to support Joseph’s work.

But the enigmatic Hannigans are not the only ones with a secret agenda. Joseph’s talent soon attracts the attention of the magnificent Odilé Leon, a celebrated courtesan and muse who has inspired many artists to greatness. But her inspiration comes with a devastatingly steep price.

As Joseph falls under the courtesan’s spell, Sophie joins forces with Nicholas Dane, the one man who knows Odilé’s dark secret, and her sworn enemy. When the seductive muse offers Joseph the path to eternal fame, the twins must decide who to believe—and just how much they are willing to sacrifice for fame.

Buy, read, and discuss Inamorata

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About the author, Megan Chance Megan Chance

Megan Chance is a critically acclaimed, award-winning author of historical fiction. Her novels have been chosen for the Borders Original Voices and IndieBound’s Booksense programs. A former television news photographer and graduate of Western Washington University, Chance lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters.

Connect with Megan

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My Thoughts:

Inamorata is exactly the kind of novel I generally really love, historical, but in a period not too far from our own, lots of art and music, romance and intrigue, but for some reason I had a difficult time getting into it, re-reading the prologue several times.

Finally, things began to click and I fell into the story I’d been anticipating. Love, scandal, personal and political machinations abound, and the twins, Joseph and Sophie, are catalysts for all of it, while Odile and Nicholas give us the most compelling characters, at least in my opinion. All the characters circle around each other, though, and just as in real life, none of them are truly heroes or truly villains, though Nicholas is the primary antagonist.

I liked that author Megan Chance didn’t give us entire backstories for these people, instead letting us come to know them slowly, both in their novel-present self-assertions, and in the flashbacks that revealed their histories, slowly, the way you learn about actual people…one glimpse at a time.

I also really liked the author’s choice of Venice as a setting, rather than, Paris, London, or Rome. Venice is such a magical place all on its own, and adding these characters – especially Odile – to that city was completely inspired.

And that’s what Inamorata is really about – inspiration, where we find it, what we do with it, and who we use in the process.

Goes well with Buttery rosemary roast chicken, and a glass of chardonnay.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

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About the book, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas 2 AM at The Cat's Pajamas

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Crown (August 5, 2014)

2 A.M. AT THE CAT’S PAJAMAS begins on a quiet morning in a Philadelphia apartment the day before Christmas Eve, where we meet the precocious and smart-mouthed nine-year-old Madeleine Altimari. Madeleine’s mother has recently died, and her father is still lost in his grief. Meanwhile, Madeleine finds solace in music and aspires to become a jazz singer. Just two days shy of her tenth birthday, she is about to have the most remarkable day of her life.

After facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine decides today is the day to find Philadelphia’s legendary jazz club, The Cat’s Pajamas, and make her debut. On the same day, Madeleine’s fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene, who has moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with her high school love. And across town at The Cat’s Pajamas, club owner Jack Lorca discovers that his beloved venue may close be closed due to financial woes by the end of the night. As we follow these three lost souls over the course of twenty-four hours, we also meet a cast of unique and brilliant characters who surround them – from the warm-hearted cafe owner Mrs. Santiago to Melissa, the former “snake lady” exotic dancer who might be Lorca’s last hope for love. With sharp wit and irrepressible spirit, Marie-Helene Bertino turns Philadelphia into a magical place where anything can happen.

Buy, read, and discuss 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas
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About the author, Marie-Helene Bertino Marie-Helene Bertino

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the story collection Safe as Houses, which won the 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Prize and The Pushcart Prize, and was long-listed for The Story Prize and The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.

An Emerging Writer Fellow at New York’s Center for Fiction, she has spent six years as an editor and writing instructor at One Story.

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My Thoughts

There’s an entire episode of the TV series How I Met Your Mother devoted to the concept that “nothing good happens after two am.” This novel, however, turns that concept on its ear.

Marie-Helene Bertino has created a collection of characters who could populate almost any large city. All of them are a little bit eccentric, incredibly interesting, and compelling to read about. Any one of them could have been the central character in this novel, but the author chose to make nine-year-old Madeleine the focal point, and in doing so, she’s given us the best child character ever.

She’s also proven that you can write a book about a child without it being children’s literature (not that there’s anything wrong with that), which is something a lot of contemporary authors seem to have forgotten.

In any case, nine-year-old Madeleine reminded me of, well, me at that age. Okay, I wasn’t into smoking, and I didn’t curse (much) but the very structured singing practices in my room? Check. The not having a ton of friends? Check. (I have a few very close friends, but I was never one for big crowds.) The never quite fitting in, and mostly not really caring, except maybe a little? Check and check again.

It is these very real factors that made Madeleine sing on the page even when she wasn’t actually, you know, singing.

I also liked the way the novel is set in today’s world, but had a very noir feel to it. No, it’s not a hardboiled detective novel, but it feels like it could slide into such a story for color, and be right at home.

The adult characters are just as well-defined, and well-realized. I was often annoyed with Sarina (Madeleine’s teacher) for not standing up to the principal and being more of an advocate for Madeleine, just as I wanted to slug Madeleine’s father, a lot, and then hug him after. Even the glimpses into the mind of Pedro the dog (no, really) were fascinating to me, because everything just…worked.

At times poignant and sweet, at times pathetic and sad, and at times raucously comic, this novel defies categorization, but should not be overlooked. It’s fantastic, and fresh, and if you don’t read it, you’ll be missing a treat.

(Also, you can feel smug about how you’re ahead of the cultural zeitgeist because 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition on Saturday.)

Goes well with espresso and a plate of cannoli…or a caramel apple.

TLC Book Tours

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

Review: The Little Women Letters, by Gabrielle Donnelly

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About the book, The Little Women Letters The Little Women Letters

USA TODAY sings that “Fans of Louisa May Alcott can rejoice” thanks to this charming and uplifting story of the imagined lives of three of Jo March’s passionate, spirited descendants—that’s Jo March from Little Women!

With her older sister, Emma, planning a wedding and her younger sister, Sophie, preparing to launch a career on the London stage, Lulu can’t help but feel like the failure of the Atwater family. Lulu loves her sisters dearly and wants nothing but the best for them, but she finds herself stuck in a rut, working dead-end jobs with no romantic prospects in sight.

Then Lulu stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great-grandmother Josephine March. As she delves deeper into the lives and secrets of the March sisters, she finds solace and guidance, but can the words of her great-great-grandmother help Lulu find a place for herself in a world so different from the one Jo knew?

As uplifting and essential as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Gabrielle Donnelly’s novel will speak to anyone who’s ever fought with a sister, fallen in love with a fabulous pair of shoes, or wondered what on earth life had in store for her.

Buy, read, and discuss The Little Women Letters

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About the author, Gabrielle Donnelly (from her website) Gabrielle Donnelly

Gabrielle Donnelly was born in London and has known that she wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. She read, wrote, and daydreamed her way through grammar school in North London and to a Bachelor of Arts degree from London University; when she was 22, she got her first job as a reporter in the London office of the DC Thompson newspaper The Weekly News; she has made her living as a journalist ever since.

In 1980, realizing that she had lived for all of her life in London and deciding that she should probably at least briefly experience living somewhere else before it was too late, she moved to Los Angeles for a six-month-long working vacation. She has never returned. She writes about show business for a variety of British magazines and newspapers, and, as a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, votes every year for the Golden Globe Awards.

The Little Women Letters is Gabrielle’s fifth novel. Previously, Holy Mother, Faulty Ground, and All Done With Mirrors were printed in Britain by Victor Gollancz; The Girl In The Photograph was printed in America by Penguin Putnam. The Little Women Letters is the first to be published in both countries, and she says it is the one she has had by far the most fun writing.

A committed singleton throughout her twenties and thirties, she surprised herself and everyone else at over forty by falling madly in love with and marrying Los Angeles-born computer specialist Owen Bjornstad. They live in Los Angeles in a spectacularly untidy house a couple of miles from the ocean, and make each other laugh a very great deal.

Gabrielle is a Corporator of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Museum in Concord, Massachusetts.

Connect with Gabrielle

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I don’t remember how I heard of The Little Women letters, but it might have appeared on my radar (bookdar?) around Christmas, after watching The March Sisters at Christmas and finding a forum thread talking about other contemporary interpretations of Alcott’s classic story.

I didn’t actually buy my copy until March (we got our check from the class action suit against a certain bookseller named after a river and a tribe of warrior women, and bought a ton of kindle books), but I read it in one sitting on a blustery spring day, and really enjoyed the experience.

At first, I thought it was an odd choice to have only three sisters instead of the expected four, but it made sense in the end. I also liked the twist of Lulu (the Jo surrogate) following a path slightly different than what the reader – at least this reader – was led to expect.

Overall, this is a lovely, entertaining read about fully-fleshed-out, smart, interesting young women, and the convention of treating the source material as if it were real works wonderfully.

Nothing ever seems hokey, and nothing is ever too sweet or too perfect, despite the ultimate happy ending.

Goes well with hot tea and apple crumble.