Review: The Bone Church by Victoria Dougherty

26 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Bone Church

Publication Date: April 15, 2014
Pier’s Court Press
Formats: eBook, Paperback

In the surreal and paranoid underworld of wartime Prague, fugitive lovers Felix Andel and Magdalena Ruza make some dubious alliances – with a mysterious Roman Catholic cardinal, a reckless sculptor intent on making a big political statement, and a gypsy with a risky sex life. As one by one their chances for fleeing the country collapse, the two join a plot to assassinate Hitler’s nefarious Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Josef Goebbels.

But the assassination attempt goes wildly wrong, propelling the lovers in separate directions.

Felix’s destiny is sealed at the Bone Church, a mystical pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Prague, while Magdalena is thrust even deeper into the bowels of a city that betrayed her and a homeland soon to be swallowed by the Soviets. As they emerge from the shadowy fog of World War II, and stagger into the foul haze of the Cold War, Felix and Magdalena must confront the past, and a dangerous, uncertain future.

Buy, read, and discuss The Bone Church

About the author, Victoria Dougherty

Victoria Dougherty writes fiction, drama, and essays that often revolve around spies, killers, curses and destinies. Her work has been published or profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, International Herald Tribune and elsewhere.

Earlier in her career, while living in Prague, she co-founded Black Box Theater, translating, producing and acting in several Czech plays. She lives with her husband and children in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Connect with Victoria

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My Thoughts

I was expecting The Bone Church to be a bit dark, a bit gritty, and incredibly honest, and this novel was all of those things. What surprised me was that amidst all the grit and darkness, there were these great moments of lyrical beauty and haunting spirituality.

Some of these moments were small – a comparison to the scent of coffee and oranges, the description of the texture of one of the many, many “Infant of Prague” statuettes that glutted the market, but it’s in those small moments, in those details, that Victoria Dougherty’s work really shines.

The story itself is gripping. We are sympathetic to Magdalena’s plight from the beginning, watching as she loses her identity and later, her marriage. We root for Felix, even when his behavior becomes a bit questionable. All of the other characters, many of whom would be easily interchangeable “stock” cold war figures in another author’s hands, have their own complications, secrets, and truths as well.

Put together, the setting, the characters, the period, even the weather, give us a picture of a part of history we typically only see from the point of view of much greater powers, and also serve forth a meaty story, rich with depth and intrigue.

Read this if you want something that manages to combine the best of LeCarre with the best of Sue Monk Kidd – a weird blending, but that’s how it felt to me. Read this if you want to be both entertained and enlightened.
Read The Bone Church if you want a good story that will linger with you for days after you’ve read it.
But definitely, read it.

Goes well with Lapsang souchong tea and navel oranges.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours (HFVBT), who graciously arranged for me to have a copy of the book. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click the banner above, or just click HERE.

Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Light Fantastic by Jeffrey Lang

24 June 2014 by Melissa

My Thoughts

I pre-ordered the digital edition of this book several months ago when it was first announced, so I knew it would be arriving on my Kindle around 2:00 this morning. I was pleasantly surprised when it actually showed up at midnight, because I’m very nocturnal. Translation: by the time I went to bed around 2 AM, I’d read 81% of this novel.

The Light Fantastic is the sequel to Lang’s own Immortal Coil, which, I confess, left me conflicted when I first read it. The adult part of me, the part that is an improviser and a writer, really liked it, though I felt that Data and Rhea’s relationship was both too fast, and not believable (this despite the fact that I liked Rhea as a character). The part of me that was 16 or 17 when TNG premiered on TV and crushed on Data had other issues, but adult-me was able to ignore them.

But then David Mack gave us is Cold Equations trilogy, and those expanded upon Data 2.0’s mindset and choices, and gave us better insight into the Fellowship of AI, and left a door open for more with this beloved character.

And now Lang has wrapped up a truly amazing arc. We get to find out how Data’s been spending the last two years of his life. We get a glimpse into his life with the newly restored Lal, his daughter, who is in the midst of the android equivalent of adolescence, and then she’s abducted – by Moriarty – yes, the hologram – and we’re thrown into a story that is both a mystery and a story about what it means to grow up, grow old, raise children, and explore one’s identity.

Data as a father is both hilarious and heartbreaking – especially as he’s still acclimating to his new body and his permanently engaged emotions.
Lal as a teenager is also hilarious, and frustrating, and it gave me new respect for the way my own mother must’ve felt when I was a teenager myself.

Geordi, of course, is along for the ride, because no Sherlock can be without his Watson, and along the way we are introduced to a few favorite characters from both TNG and TOS.

Overall, The Light Fantastic is a truly satisfying read, and if Data doesn’t sound exactly the way we’re accustomed to him sounding, well, he himself states in the novel that he isn’t entirely certain how much of him is HIM, and how much is leftover Noonian Soong.

The tag, of course, teases a new mystery, and I have no idea if that will pan out, or if the soft canon of the novels will eventually merge with the soft canon of the STO game and the Countdown to Trek 2009 (in which Data was Captain of the Enterprise), but if it doesn’t, I would totally buy a series of intergalactic mysteries featuring Data and LaForge.

Goes well with French-pressed coffee and a chocolate croissant.

Review: Painting Juliana, by Martha Louise Hunter

17 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Painting Juliana

Hardcover: 362 pages
Publisher: Goldminds Publishing, LLC (May 20, 2014)

A young girl’s terrifying nightmare, five mysterious oil paintings and a red, flaming firebird all carry the same message:

Stand still, look up and let the funnel cloud suck you up inside.

It’s the last thing Juliana Birdsong wants to hear. Now a woman who’s losing everything, she’s still running from the dream, and it’s catching up fast. When her Alzheimer’s-stricken father’s canvases come to life exposing secrets, heartbreak and yearnings that mirror her own, Juliana discovers that some memories can be a blessing to forget.

Hit with devastating loss and betrayals, her old life stripped away, Juliana has no choice but to call on the person who’s never helped her before. Steering the chrome handlebars of a vintage motorcycle down a long, tapering highway, she must face her defining moment. It’s the only way she’ll gain the strength and courage to begin painting Juliana.

Buy, read, and discuss:

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About the author, Martha Louise Hunter

Martha Louise Hunter has an English degree from the University of Texas. After writing magazine features, working in politics and owning homebuilding and interior design companies, she now has an estate jewelry collection, www.marthasjewelrycase.com.

With four children between them, she and her husband, David live in Austin, Texas. This is her first novel.

Painting Juliana was awarded finalist in the Writers League of Texas Mainstream Fiction Contest.

Connect with Martha

Website | Blog

My Thoughts

As the daughter of a type-A, independent woman who is also a staunch feminist, and as someone who is all those things herself, it’s always a little bit difficult for me to empathize with the kind of women, who, like the Juliana we meet at the beginning of this novel, sublimate all their dreams and desires and let their husbands rule their lives.

For the first few chapters, then, I wanted to grab the lead character and shake some sense into her.

Then my mad “willful suspension of disbelief” skills took over, and I was able to simply experience her story, which is wonderfully told by author Martha Louise Hunter.

I particularly liked Juliana’s interactions with her Alzheimer’s-stricken father, and with her brother and his partner. Those two (three) relationships helped form the picture of how Juliana became the woman we first encounter, but also let us see that she really did have a core of steel, just just needed to use it.

Weaving through the novel was Juliana’s discovery of her father’s artwork, and her response to it, and her eventual assistance in giving him his art back, because while her father was painting pictures, it was very clear that Juliana was painting herself a whole new life.

Hunter’s characters and dialogue never felt flat or false, and even though I initially didn’t particularly like Juliana, I found myself rooting for her in the end, and even applauding her ballsy-est moves.

If you want a great summer read that has a bit more depth than the typical “beach novel,” but isn’t asking you to remember chunks of European history in order to follow the plot, and if you enjoy reading about adult women who reinvent themselves, this novel should appeal to you.

Goes well with anything Tex-Mex and a pitcher of margaritas.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours, who provided me with a copy of the book. For more information, and the list of tour stops, click HERE.

Review: Bee Summers, by Melanie Dugan

10 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Bee Summers

The spring she is eleven years old, Melissa Singer’s mother walks out of the house and never returns. That summer her father, a migratory beekeeper, takes her along with him on his travels. The trip and the people she meets change her life. Over the years that follow, Melissa tries to unlock the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and struggles to come to terms with her loss.

Buy, read, discuss

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About the author, Melanie Dugan

Melanie Dugan is the author of Dead Beautiful (“the writing is gorgeous,” A Soul Unsung), Revising Romance, and Sometime Daughter.

Born in San Francisco, Dugan has lived in Boston, Toronto, and London, England, and has worked in almost every part of the book world: in libraries and bookstores, as a book reviewer; she was Associate Publisher at Quarry Press, where she also served as managing editor of Poetry Canada Review and Quarry Magazine. She has worked in journalism, as a freelancer, and as visual arts columnist. Dugan studied at the University of Toronto Writers Workshop and the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has a post-graduate degree in Creative Writing from Humber College. She has done numerous public readings.

Her short stories have been shortlisted for several awards. She lives in Kingston, Ontario with her partner and their two sons.

Connect with Melanie

Website | Blog

My Thoughts

First of all, it’s kind of weird reading a novel written in first person about a person who shares your first name. True, the Melissa in this novel is called “Lissy” by most people, but even so, I was always the slightly out of place, voracious reader, and as such I really identified with her, except that I never lost my mother – in any sense. That aside, I was instantly drawn into Lissy’s story. My own childhood involved moving (and changing schools) roughly every eighteen months, so her sense of displacement, especially the first summer she traveled with her father, was familiar to me, and helped draw me further in.

The story itself was compelling, both in seeing the way Lissy grew and changed – going from lost child, to accomplished adult – and also in the evolution of er relationships, not only with her father, but with the array of characters they encountered on their bee-related excursions, and the way those connections formed a whole picture, once you had enough distance to see it from the right perspective.

Bee Summers is a thoroughly engaging novel, that, while sad in places, is also incredibly satisfying and really real.

Goes well with peanut butter and banana sandwiches, drizzled with honey, and fresh, cold milk.

This review is part of a blog tour organized by the lovely folks at TLC Book Tours, who also provided me with a copy of the book. For more information, or the complete list of tour stops, click HERE.

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

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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

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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: Cutting Teeth, by Julia Fierro

5 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Cutting Teeth

Hardcover: 336 pages

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (May 13, 2014)

One of the most anticipated debut novels of 2014, Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow.

Nicole, the hostess, struggles to keep her OCD behaviors unnoticed. Stay-at-home dad Rip grapples with the reality that his careerist wife will likely deny him a second child, forcing him to disrupt the life he loves. Allie, one half of a two-mom family, can’t stop imagining ditching her wife and kids in favor of her art. Tiffany, comfortable with her amazing body but not so comfortable in the upper-middle class world the other characters were born into, flirts dangerously, and spars with her best friend Leigh, a blue blood secretly facing financial ruin and dependent on the magical Tibetan nanny everyone else covets. Throughout the weekend, conflicts intensify and painful truths surface. Friendships and alliances crack, forcing the house party to confront a new order.

Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife—the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It’s about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life’s greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets? And, perhaps most of all, Julia Fierro’s warm and unpretentious debut explores the all-consuming love we feel for those we need most, and the sacrifice and compromise that underpins that love.

Buy, read, discuss

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About the author, Julia Fierro

Julia Fierro’s debut novel, Cutting Teeth, was listed as one of the “Most Anticipated Books of 2014” by HuffPost Books, The Millions, Flavorwire, Brooklyn Magazine, and Marie Claire. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Guernica, Ploughshares, Poets & Writers, Glamour, and other publications, and she has been profiled in the L Magazine, The Observer, and The Economist.

Connect with Julia

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My Thoughts

Julia Fierro is an awesome writer.

I know that sounds really flippant, but seriously, she’s created this group of “mommies,” – a bunch of women, and one man – who are largely unlikeable, self-entitled, damaged people, and managed to make their lives and stories not only seem interesting, but in the process also made them into characters we can care about.

As a child-free woman in her early forties, I’m pretty certain Cutting Teeth was not written with me in mind, and, in truth, I found myself wanting to knock some sense into these people, make them wake up and realize that while their children really are not the little princes and princesses of the world, they are, in fact, actual (very small, unformed) people, and should be treated accordingly.

I also had to fight urges to crawl into the book and remind these women that it’s unhealthy (and kind of annoying) when women describe themselves as Moms or Mommies first, and only talk about their careers or the rest of their interests as things they squeeze in around the child. (This tendency annoys me in real life, as well.)

If these two statements make it seem like I didn’t “like” this book, you’re misreading. I did like it. I liked it well enough that even though I felt rather like a bug-eyed alien looking into a strange, new, world, I could accept these characters as people who could exist outside the scope of their pages.

And speaking of pages, Julia Fierro crafts an excellent story. The constant changing of POV means we get to see the way each character perceives herself, and the way each of them is perceived by the others. As well, while the women are incredibly three-dimensional, she did a good job of not making the men interchangeable hipsters or guys in pastel golf shirts and khakis (a peeve of mine that often comes up around this type of year.) Rip, the father in the group of “mommies,” Michael, and Josh are all just as dimensional as the women in their lives.

And yes, these people are largely unlikeable, so it’s pretty amazing that you end up feeling for them at the end. Cutting Teeth has struck the sweet spot of summer reading. Fast-paced enough to take to the beach, it’s also meaty enough to really sink your teeth into (no pun intended). Read it. You might find yourself shaking your fist at the characters, but you won’t be disappointed in the story.

Goes well with homemade lemonade and tuna-fish sandwiches. Followed by cocktails.

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: Midsummer, by Carole Giangrande

3 June 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Midsummer

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Inanna Poetry and Fiction Series (April 2014)

All her life, Joy’s been haunted by a man she’s never met — her visionary grandfather, the artist Lorenzo. At work on digging a New York subway tunnel, his pickaxe struck the remains of an ancient Dutch trading ship — and a vision lit up the underground, convincing him that he was blessed. As it turned out, his children did well in life, and almost a century later, his granddaughter Joy, a gifted linguist, married the Canadian descendant of the lost ship’s captain.

Yet nonno’s story also led to the death of Joy’s cousin Leonora, her Aunt Elena’s only child. It was a tragedy that might have been prevented by Joy’s father Eddie, a man who’s been bruised by life and who seldom speaks to his sister. Yet in the year 2000, he has no choice. Wealthy Aunt Elena and Uncle Carlo are coming from Rome to New York City to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They’ve invited the family to dine at the sky-high restaurant in one of the Twin Towers — above the tunnel where nonno Lorenzo saw his vision long ago. On the first day of summer, Elena and Eddie will face each other at last.

Midsummer is a story of family ties and fortune, and of finding peace as life nears its close, high above the historic place where nonno’s story began.

Buy, read, and discuss Midsummer

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About the author, Carole Giangrande

Born and raised in the New York City area, Carole Giangrande now resides in Toronto, Canada.

Her novella, A Gardener On The Moon was co-winner of the 2010 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest, and is published by Quattro Books. She’s the author of two novels (An Ordinary Star and A Forest Burning), a short story collection (Missing Persons), all published by Cormorant, and two non-fiction books. Her new novella, Midsummer, will be published in April 2014 by Inanna.

She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio (Canada’s public broadcaster), and her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in Canada’s major journals and newspapers. Her 50-part literary podcast Words to Go has been downloaded over 20,000 times in 30 countries. She comments as The Thoughtful Blogger, and she’s recently completed a novel. She’s a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.

Connect with Carole

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My Thoughts

You know how, when you have a large family gathering, one where the assembled family spans the generations, and everyone knows a different piece of family history, so you’re never entirely certain where things begin and end and what the real truth of any story might be? That’s the feeling I got from reading Carole Giangrande’s novella Midsummer, and in that sense, it was a lot like coming home, spending time around the seemingly-huge round dining table in my Italian grandmother’s house, hearing family stories.

But where my family is one ruled by drama and comedy, Giangrande’s story is a much calmer, more poetic look at family dynamics, and love and loss, and at the way history informs us.

Told mostly in the first person voice of Joy, granddaughter of Lorenzo, a manual laborer who finds the remains of a Dutch sailing ship in old (old) Manhattan, we are treated, not just to her life and perceptions, but also to those of her Aunt Elena, keeper of the family stories, her sheltered cousin Leonora, her father, and her own family, Dutch-born Adrian, and their two sons.

The language of the novella is absolutely luxurious, a blend of English and Italian that rolls of the tongue like honey wrapped around a Vivaldi symphony. More than once, I found myself reading passages out loud because I loved the language so much, to the amusement of my husband (and the confusion of my dogs). It’s also incredibly poignant as the action in the story takes place, not just in a world where the twin towers haven’t yet fallen, but in a world where they’re just being built. Passages like the one below, then, had a special resonance for this Jersey-girl-turned-Texan, who grew up in a Jersey shore community that was decimated by that disaster:

Because we were standing on an island, I imagined us gazing out over the sea, then turning to watch these two grey forms, their strange fragility of arches and latticework unmoored as they drifted upward, hovering over the city. Mesmerized, I began to wonder what was in the air down here, as all at once I stood inside the noon of midsummer, in an unknown June when the elegant towers would leave no shadow, would vanish into light.

Lyrical, languid, brilliant, Midsummer is a fast read for a slow and sultry afternoon. I highly recommend it.

Goes well with Caprese salad and iced tea.

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: Return to the Beach House, by Georgia Bockoven

27 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book Return to the Beach House

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (May 13, 2014)

Over the course of one year, in a charming cottage by the sea, eight people will discover love and remembrance, reconciliation and reunion, beginnings and endings in this unforgettable sequel to Georgia Bockoven’s The Beach House and Another Summer.

Alison arrives at the beach house in June to spend a month with her restless grandson before he leaves for his first year of college. More than a decade earlier, Alison lost her beloved husband, and has faced life alone ever since. Now she discovers a new life and a possible new love.

August brings together four college friends facing a milestone. During summer’s final days, they share laughter, tears, and love—revealing long-held secrets and creating new and even more powerful bonds.

World-class wildlife photographer Matthew and award-winning war photographer Lindsey arrive at the beach house in January, each harboring the very real fear that it will mark the end of their decade-long love affair. Alone in the house’s warm peace, they are forced to truly look at who they are and what they want, discovering surprising truths that will change their lives forever.

Buy, read, discuss

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About the author, Georgia Bockoven

Georgia Bockoven is an award-winning author who began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalist and photographer. Her books have sold more than three million copies worldwide. The mother of two, she resides in Northern California with her husband, John.

My Thoughts

I’d read the original The Beach House a couple of summers ago, and I love beach novels, so when I was offered the chance to read and review the latest installment in Georgia Bockoven’s collection, I didn’t just jump at the chance, I swan dove. Or maybe cannonballed. Whatever.

Having spent a significant chunk of my life living in San Francisco and San Jose, I feel a special kinship with Return to the Beach House. I’ve always wanted to rent one of those houses in Santa Cruz or Capitola or anywhere else along the Northern California coast for the summer, or February, or pretty much ever. If I were rich, I’d buy one, and live there full time.

But that’s about me, and not the novel.

Here’s what I love about this book: it’s a novel, but it’s also an anthology, because while everything is tied together by this wonderful house – so much so that the house itself really becomes a character, it’s also separate stories. Alison and her grandson Christopher are one story. The four “alphabet girl” friends are another.

The glimpses into the life of Julia, who owns the house, make lovely bookends, and further serve to tie everything together, and the stories are always related by theme, but if reading a traditional novel is too much for you in this 140-character world, this book will be palatable because of the way it’s crafted.

Conversely, if you’re not a fan of novellas or short stories, you needn’t worry, because there is enough continuity, enough of a through-theme, to keep everything feeling relevant and related.

Bockoven’s characters, especially the women, are vibrant, realistically portrayed people, and her sense of place is equally vivid. I could smell the salt, hear the surf, and feel the coarse, damp, Pacific coast sand under my toes.

Read this book, if you love great characters, and a story that’s light enough for summer without being at all frothy or fluffy. Read this book, if you want a summer beach read that is deeply satisfying. But definitely read this book.

Goes well with fresh fish from Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing, pasta, and San Francisco sourdough, with any local microbrew beer, or a California wine. (Fetzer “Sundial” Chardonnay is my fave.)

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

Review: Danger in her Words, by Barbara Barth

23 May 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Danger in Her Words

Genre: Romance/Suspense

Publisher: Gilbert Street Press

Publication Date: February 19, 2014

Paperback: 238 pages

A TV sitcom pitch gone wrong turns dog-column writer Susan Meyers in a tailspin. Sex Sells was the topic of the day at the writers’ convention. Susan decided to try something new and a steamy romantic novel seemed just the answer. A widow who hadn’t dated in three years, Susan was out of practice with men and sex. She turned to an online dating site to find inspiration for her book and unleashed a predator with the words she wrote. Tucked an hour away from her friends in a small town where she kept to herself, with only her tiny dog for company, Susan felt safe from the world. Little did she know her life was about to change.

A romp of a story about writing and finding yourself in this book within a book. If you love girl-talk, farmhouses, antiques, country towns, a touch of murder, a sprinkle of suspense, and a bit of naughty fun, come join Susan as she learns about life from her character Jamie. Two widows looking for love in all the wrong places might still get it right if they live long enough.

Buy, read, discuss.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Barbara Barth

Barbara Barth likes a lot of things: turquoise jewelry, surfing the ‘net, and margaritas, to name a few. Then there are the dogs. As many as her house can hold! This Georgia antique dealer and jewelry maker published a hobby newsletter for 13 years. After her husband died she recorded the year that followed in a series of essays. When she isn’t writing you can find her at the local thrift shops or pounding another nail into the wall to hang the paintings she can’t resist. She published a memoir The Unfaithful Widow and Danger in her Words is her debut novel.

Connect with Barbara

My Thoughts

When I was offered the chance to read and review Barbara Barth’s first novel Danger in Her Words, I jumped at the chance. Why? Because someday I’m going to be hawking my own first novel, and supporting other women writers is just good karma. Also, I’d just read a bunch of heavy novels, many of which took place in the Interwar period – the span of years between World War I and World War II. I wanted something light, and fun, and if it was a little bit salacious, so much the better.

What I got was a wonderful novel that’s really two stories in one. In one story, author Susan is settling into her life in huge farmhouse in a quiet village, and starting a new career as a fiction writer, while also opening herself to the possibility of a new relationship. She’s funny, and smart, and what I love about her is that she’s not twenty. (As someone who is also a couple of decades beyond twenty, reading about protagonists who are closer to my age, even if we don’t share the same experiences, is immensely gratifying.)

I also love that she has a dog. I work in dog rescue, and have three of my own (plus a foster-dog, most of the time) so if there’s a dog in a story, I’m much more likely to find that story relevant. Daisy is an adorable addition to an already great novel.

The second story is the novel Susan is writing, about a woman named Jamie who is obviously based in part on Susan. Jamie, too, is looking for love, or at least really good sex. Preferably both.

Both the actual novel, Danger in her Words, and the novel-within-the-novel are technically romantic suspense, and author Barth handled both the romance and the suspense well in both cases. A creepy stalker who trawls the internet for victims is incredibly plausible, but Barth never makes her novel preachy, though her characters are all self-aware, making internal observations when they engage in behavior that’s less than safe.

Similarly, the sex scenes are delicious, keeping the reader in the mood and never straying too far into silliness or too far the other direction into tab-A/slot-B clinicality. (Is that a word? It is now.)

I loved reading this book. I found the characters to be bright, realistic, and appealing, and it made me want to go live in a farmhouse (though, mine would have to be in a town where there actually is a Starbucks).

In fact, there’s only one thing I disliked about this novel, and I’m hesitant to write it, because it’s a personal thing, but I’m going to in the interest of honesty. In some of the sex scenes, the author uses the word ‘dick’ in reference to male anatomy. Now, this is a perfectly appropriate use of the word; it’s just that for me the word ‘dick’ isn’t at all sexy. When I use it, it’s a pejorative, as in Wil Wheaton’s go-to admonishment, “Don’t be a dick.” (For the record, I prefer ‘cock.’ Now you know.)

But that’s a minor thing, and, as I said, it’s my issue, and should in no way imply that Barbara Barth wrote anything other than a wonderful sexy novel that you should all go buy and read right now.

Goes well with homemade fried chicken and sweet tea from a local diner.

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by WOW – Women on Writing via their blog The Muffin. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click HERE.

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.