After You by Julie Buxbaum

Title:  After You

Author:  Julie Buxbaum

Release date:  August 24, 2009

Publisher:  The Dial Press

Pages:  352

Genre:  Women’s fiction

Source:  Author

Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her eight-year-old daughter, suddenly and without premeditation.  And although Ellie’s life is in Boston and Lucy’s life was in London, after her friend’s death Ellie drops everything – job, family, marriage – and travels to London to care for Ellie’s grieving husband Greg and now motherless daughter Sophie.  As Ellie spends more time with Lucy’s family, in Lucy’s home, she begins to discover that perhaps Lucy was less than honest with her about a lot of things.  And as she confronts the secrets Lucy left behind, she is forced to take a second look at her own life, at her own marriage, and ask herself some hard questions about what she’s really doing in London and what that means for her life.

I had heard really great things about Julie Buxbaum’s books, so I was excited when I received After You in the mail and began reading it.  I have to say that I wasn’t totally enthralled with the book in the beginning.  I think this is because it starts off very abruptly:  Ellie is already in London, and the reader learns then about what happened to Lucy, not the other way around.  I might have done better with some background on the characters before being transported into their lives.  But honestly, this shaky start is mostly irrelevant because I ended up really enjoying the novel overall.

While I didn’t particularly like Ellie, I sympathized with her from the start.  I could see how she made the decisions that she did – she felt like Sophie had nobody in the world to turn to in her grief, and who better to come to her rescue than her mom’s best friend, her godmother, her favorite “aunt”?  In addition, it was clear that Greg needed her around – it’s obvious to the reader that had Ellie not been there, Sophie would have been very alone and probably hungry from Greg’s lack of ability to take care of himself, much less his daughter.  So Ellie being in London for a short period of time was a given – but the question is, how long really did she need to be there?  According to her husband, not long at all.  It did seem like somewhat of a selfish decision for Ellie to stay in London for as long as she did – I just didn’t understand how it is possible for someone to put life on hold for so many months.  What about her job, family, marriage, and other commitments?  It seemed like there was something else tying Ellie to London – maybe something she was trying to avoid back home.

After You did end up to be a very heartwarming story, though.  It was sweet to see how reading The Secret Garden together really cemented the bond between Ellie and Sophie and helped Sophie deal with her grief.  I loved watching Sophie grow up a little, come to terms with her mom’s death (as much as is possible for an eight-year-old), and become quite the intelligent and well-spoken little girl.  I felt that the novel’s best parts were in the last 100 pages.  This was when things really came together for me, when I really understood and cared about the characters, and because of that I loved where Buxbaum took them towards the end.  I loved the resolution to everything and the way that, although things were not perfect, it certainly felt like they were going to get through the hurdles to come after the book’s end.

This novel is a sweet story that touches on some extremely important subjects.  After You sits firmly in the genre of women’s fiction, the writing is smart and the  characters are believable, and for the most part, likeable.  I definitely shed a few tears over this one, which for me is the mark of a good book.  Any fan of women’s fiction, chick lit, or even “softer” general fiction should definitely pick up After You.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Title:  Hate List

Author:  Jennifer Brown

Release date:  August 31, 2009

Publisher:  Little, Brown

Pages:  416

Genre:  Young Adult Fiction

Source:  Library

In May of Valerie Leftman’s junior year of high school, her boyfriend Nick brought a gun to school and went on a rampage, killing eleven people and wounding many others, before finally turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.  While Val didn’t know about Nick’s plans ahead of time, his intended victims all came out of a list she and Nick had started, a Hate List of the students and teachers who had made their lives miserable over the years.  What follows for Val is a summer of pain – police questioning her, adding her as a suspect in the shooting, friends turning their backs on her, and unbelievable scrutiny and distrust from her family.  Now it’s September, and Val has to go back to school to complete senior year – she has to deal with her guilt for making the Hate List in the first place, her grief over losing Nick, who she still loves, and figure out her place in this world she has never really felt a part of to begin with.

Hate List is powerful with a capital “P”.  There is so much to love about this novel I don’t know quite how to explain it right.  Val is one of the most honest, believable characters I have come across in fiction lately.  The thing about Val is that she doesn’t make any excuses.  For herself, for Nick, for the Hate List, for anything.  She feels unbelievably guilty for writing the list, yet she knows in the bottom of her heart that she truly never intended to actually hurt anyone with it – and she had no clue that Nick was planning on doing what he did.  At the same time, she is terribly candid about the reasons for why the list began, and why it continued.  Simply put, she and Nick were in a lot of emotional pain from years of torment by various people at their school.  It started as a way for them to vent their frustration and anger about how they were being treated on a daily basis.  That makes sense to me – you are bullied, you are upset, hurt, pissed even, and you have to do something with all that emotions.  The Hate List was Val’s something.  She was completely unaware that Nick’s something was much worse than writing a list.

At the same time as Val’s having all these guilty feelings, she’s missing Nick terribly.  He was her boyfriend for a long time, and she truly loved him with her whole heart.  She acknowledges that she probably missed some signs of his violent ideas because her love for him made her blind to them.  She acknowledges that he “joked” about doing something to end their misery in school, but she never took him seriously.  Yet she still loved him, and loves him even after everything that happened.  She knows what he did is about as wrong and awful as it can get, but he was still the love of her life, and to Val, Nick was truly a good person underneath what he did.  To Val, Nick wasn’t defined by the shooting, but by their life together.  And that makes sense to me too – you can’t just stop loving someone because they do a terrible thing.  When you love someone that much, it is inside you, it consumes you, and even though you can look at their actions from a critical point of view and understand how terrible they acted, you cannot just turn your love off.

It was so upsetting to me to read about how Val’s parents and former friends treated her.  I get that they weren’t in her head like I was, they didn’t see her true thoughts and feelings, but they are her parents, for goodness sakes.  It broke my heart how cruel and heartless her father was towards her after the shooting.  He didn’t even want to hear what she had to say, he just decided she was guilty and treated her as such.  Her mother wasn’t as bad, but she had such a tight leash on Val it was as if she decided she was guilty too.  Neither of them really wanted to listen to their daughter, to try and understand the pain she must be feeling.  Again, these aspects to the story were painfully realistic as well.  Everything about Hate List, while it broke my heart and made me cry several times over, was so unbelievably well-written and true to these characters and this situation, including Val’s parents.

Can you tell how much I loved this book?  I truly thought it was an amazing novel, and I can’t recommend it enough.  While it deals with an extremely painful and difficult subject, it’s really not all that gritty or dark.  It actually ends up being very hopeful in the end.  And I know you’ll fall in love with Valerie just like I did.  Everything about Hate List was just perfect.

An announcement

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been only halfheartedly reading, blogging, and keeping up with your blogs over the past few weeks.  I’ve been doing okay, but not to the degree I wish to keep up with everything.  The reason for this is that… dun dun dun…

We’re moving halfway across the country next month!!

I currently live in the Chicago area, and at the end of December my husband and I will be moving to Florida (Orlando area)!  It’s a HUGE change for us, and it’s going to be a ton of work with packing and renting out our place and just the physical act of moving all of our stuff that far away… but it’s so going to be worth it.  We’ve both been granted transfers at work, and it’s always been my dream to live in a warm climate.  So, we’re going to try it out and see how things work for us!

As you can probably imagine, I’m going to be even MORE absent from the blogosphere than I have been recently in the upcoming month just due to everything we need to get done this month, as well as the fact that I still have to work my regular job and squeeze in as much family/friends time as humanly possible before we leave.  I’ll still post reviews, but I am not reading very much so they may be few and far between.  And chances are, between Christmas and New Year’s I’ll be offline entirely because we move that week and plus it’s the holidays, so ya know… I’ll probably just ignore the computer for a week.

So, yay for me!  I’m beyond excited and also insanely nervous.  But I just thought I’d let you all know about my big news, especially because I don’t want you guys to feel like I’m ignoring you for the next month!

 

Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

Title:  Keeping the Moon

Author:  Sarah Dessen

Release date:  September 1, 1999

Publisher:  Speak

Pages:  240

Genre:  Young Adult Fiction

Source:  Personal copy

Colie Sparks is nervous about this upcoming summer – she has to spend two months with her eccentric aunt Mira while her fitness-instructor mother tours the country teaching people about how to lose weight and get fit.  Upon arriving at Mira’s, Colie meets Norman, a teenage houseguest of Mira’s, and Morgan and Isabel, the girls who work at the local cafe where Colie ends up taking a summer job.  Although Colie has always felt shy and insecure about herself, this may finally be the summer for her to step out of her comfort zone, make her first true friends, and start to figure out who she really is.

What I love about Sarah Dessen’s book is that there’s always this aspect to them of the main character growing as a person.  Keeping the Moon is no exception.  Colie and her mom used to be very overweight, and even though they’ve lost it and now live healthy lives, Colie still feels ugly and sad inside.  She’s never really had any friends, no boy has ever been interested in her, and her own mother doesn’t spend a ton of time connecting with her.  So it’s difficult for her, at first, to adjust to the fact that people – Mira, Norman, Morgan, and Isabel – actually want to spend time getting to know her… and they actually seem to like her!

So, really, Keeping the Moon is about Colie’s journey to understand, accept, and even love herself when she never had before.  And I really, really liked it.  Colie felt real to me – I personally identified with so many aspects of her personality, and I was just hoping for her to find herself and appreciate the person she truly was.  As always, Dessen wrote superior supporting characters, and I loved getting to know them too.  Isabel was actually my favorite – even though she seemed hard and unfeeling at first, she was actually the person who had the most in common with Colie, and who ended up caring about her the most.  I loved where Dessen took Colie and Isabel’s friendship.

I honestly don’t think that I can say a bad thing about Sarah Dessen, just because I’m such a big fan of her work.  The good thing is that in the case of Keeping the Moon, I’m not even tempted to.  This is a sweet novel with wonderful characters and a great message for teen girls.  I’m so happy that I read it.

Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

Title:  Best Friends Forever

Author:  Jennifer Weiner

Release date:  July 13, 2009

Publisher:  Atria

Pages:  368

Genre:  Fiction, Women’s Fiction

Source:  Publisher

Addie and Val have been best friends since they were in elementary school.  Now, the two are in their thirties, and Addie lives alone in her parents’ old house in their hometown, while Val is the weathergirl at a Chicago TV station, and not only do they have nothing in common anymore, but they really don’t speak with one another at all.  On the night of their high school reunion, Addie is home recovering from a terrible date when Val suddenly shows up at her front door, scared out of her mind, and tells her that something awful has happened and Addie is the only one who can help.  The two then take a trip cross-country as they slowly, but surely, rekindle their long-lost friendship.

I have read and loved most of Jennifer Weiner’s books, so I obviously assumed that Best Friends Forever would be no exception.  Perhaps my hopes were a little too high for this one because at the end of the day, I thought the book was just okay.  I don’t know… I liked it, it just wasn’t what I was really expecting.  Let me explain.

First of all, there were really two main plots in the book.  There was the main story, which was Val and Addie together, getting to know each other again and becoming friends again.  Their story was told from Addie’s point of view, and it alternated between the present and flashbacks from the past, giving the reader a complete picture of their friendship over time.  And then there was the second story, about the detective that was trying to solve the mystery of what happened that night when Val came to Addie’s house and asked for help.  And the storyline with the detective, Jordan, I just plain did not like.  For me, it distracted from Addie and Val and their friendship.  That was what I really wanted to read about.  So every time the book would switch to Jordan and his search, I would just get annoyed.  I mean, I understand how that was a part of the entire novel, and important to the development of the characters, but honestly I just did not enjoy that aspect of the book whatsoever.

I also felt that Weiner could have gone deeper with these characters.  Perhaps if the whole Jordan thing wasn’t in the book, there would have been more time devoted to developing Addie and Val, I don’t know.  But many aspects of their personalities just seemed very stereotypical and it’s not like Weiner to stereotype her characters.  They are usually complex and full… Addie and Val were decent characters, I just think they could have been better.

Best Friends Forever definitely isn’t all bad.  I finished the book, didn’t I?  Weiner’s smart and sassy writing, which I have come to expect from her as an author, was in full force throughout the novel.  She’s great at dialogue, both between characters and inside the main character’s head.  I felt like I really was able to get inside Addie’s brain and get to know her through her speaking in first person to the reader.  I felt like she did a great job at showing us, slowly, how the relationship between Addie and Val developed when they were kids and then how it unraveled in their high school years.  There was a good build up of suspense for me, waiting to figure out what happened to cause their falling-out in their teens.

I also have to admit that I really liked how the book ended.  I can’t deny my love of a happy ending, and Best Friends Forever definitely delivered on that front.  It didn’t really surprise me, but then again I wasn’t looking for a surprise, so that was okay.  I was just looking for things to work out for these ladies and for the most part, I got what I wanted with the ending.  Jennifer Weiner definitely knows how to tie up loose ends, something I appreciate in a feel-good novel like this one.

So, overall, Best Friends Forever wasn’t my favorite read, but it was okay.  I’m not sure I’d fully recommend the book, but I will say that if you’re looking to try Jennifer Weiner, I’d start with Good in Bed or In Her Shoes – those two are much more representative of the awesomeness that is Jennifer Weiner.

Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

Title:  Going Too Far

Author:  Jennifer Echols

Release date:  March 16, 2009

Publisher:  MTV

Pages:  256

Genre:  Young Adult fiction

Source:  Library

Although Meg has always been somewhat of a troublemaker, she also has big dreams of leaving her small town life forever as soon as high school is over.  Now, just a week before her senior year spring break, she and a few friends are arrested for walking on this railroad bridge that several kids died on years back.  As punishment, Meg must spend eight hours every day for a week riding along with the police officer who arrested her, John.  Turns out John is just a year older than Meg, and although he stayed in their Alabama town after graduation, he has plenty of demons of his own to deal with.  As the two get to know each other, they realize they have much more in common than they would have expected… and it takes very little time for them to start bringing out both the best and worst in one another…

I really, really liked this novel.  The romance between Meg and John was just so genuine and believable, it was absolutely my favorite thing about the book.  I just loved how it evolved from them disliking each other, to getting along but not understanding each other, to having crushes on each other, to an almost relationship.  The progression of things really reminded me of a Sarah Dessen novel (and you all know how much I LOVE Sarah Dessen).

I really felt for Meg throughout the book.  She was so hardworking, caring, and smart, but because she looks a certain way, and lives in a small town where rumors are abundant, everybody assumes so much about her.  Sure, she had broken a couple of rules in her day, but truly she was just a great student who helped out her parents’ restaurant in her spare time, counting the days until college.  I totally understood her frustration with her small-town life and needing to get out of there.  I didn’t live in a small town in high school, but by senior year I was more than ready to get out and get to college, so I definitely understood Meg’s desire to leave.

Overall, Going Too Far is a sweet young adult novel with complex characters and a realistic romantic connection.  Jennifer Echols is definitely an author I’ll be watching out for.

WG: Best of 2009

This week’s Weekly Geek’s assignment is to list our favorite books published in 2009.  I actually read a fair amount of books that were published this year, and here’s my list.

1.  The Laws of Harmony by Judith Ryan Hendricks (my review) —> women’s fiction, general fiction

2.  North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley (my review) —> Young Adult fiction

3.  Sleepwalking in Daylight by Elizabeth Flock (my review) —> women’s fiction, general fiction

4.  Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (my review) —> Young Adult fiction

5.  City of Refuge by Tom Piazza (my review) —> general fiction, “historical” fiction (takes place during Hurricane Katrina, does that count as historical?  I’m not sure.)

6.  Willow by Julia Hoban (my review) —> Young Adult fiction

7.  Hate List by Jennifer Brown (review coming soon) —> Young Adult fiction

I decided to go with seven favorites instead of ten because seven is my favorite number.  Also if I picked ten I wouldn’t be true to my real favorites, and would just start listing books I liked.  These seven are books I adored.

Happy Weekly Geeks.

Shattered Dreams by Irene Spencer

Title:  Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife

Author:  Irene Spencer

Release date:  August 21, 2007

Publisher:  Center Street

Pages:  432

Genre:  Nonfiction, Memoir

Source:  Library

I decided to read Shattered Dreams because I read a review of Spencer’s new book,Cult Insanity: A Memoir of Polygamy, Prophets, and Blood Atonement and thought it sounded interesting, but figured I should probably read her first memoir before her new one.  And as most of you probably know, I’m fascinated by polygamy and have read many books, both fiction and nonfiction, on the subject already.  So why wouldn’t I want to read another one?

Spencer’s story is different from many polygamy stories in that she actually wanted to marry her husband.  She was his second wife (of an eventual eight or nine total wives) but she was actually in love with another man when he proposed, and felt that God had told her to marry Verlan (her husband, not the one she was in love with at the time).  Because she felt that God told her to marry Verlan, she broke it off with the love of her life and entered into a polygamous union.  And throughout her marriage, not only did she want to be around her husband, but she truly could not get enough of him.  She was jealous of the other wives’ time with him, and even though she was close with several of the wives, she would always compete for his attention whenever she could.  And even though they truly lived in poverty, beyond anything I’ve read about in other books about polygamy, she didn’t completely hate her situation most of the time.  Spencer truly felt called to being a plural wife and a mother (she ended up having thirteen children in total) and believed for most of her life that living “the principle” was God’s highest calling for a person – even though, generally speaking, she was pretty unhappy doing it.

What Shattered Dreams is about is Spencer coming to the slow realization that polygamy is not all it’s cracked up to be.  That women only being allowed to be intimate with their husbands 5 or 6 times per year, while husbands are intimate with their wives whenever they wish, doesn’t make sense.  That raising a family under a curtain of secrecy because of an illegal lifestyle just doesn’t help children in the long run.  That God cannot possibly want His people to raise their children in poverty and squalor because there’s no way one man can financially support fifty children.

What I liked about Shattered Dreams was the fact that I could really understand Irene Spencer.  That was hard, too, because in the beginning when she was so in love with her boyfriend and ended up breaking up with him to marry Verlan, I wanted to shake her and say, “STOP!  You KNOW this cannot end well!  Don’t marry him!”  But based on everything she’d ever been taught about God, she truly believed that was God’s plan for her.  I felt so sad for her, that she was so brainwashed to believe that this kind of life was what God wanted for her.  It really broke my heart.

It was interesting to see that Verlan never really was abusive to his wives and children, at least not any time that was documented by Spencer.  There was a lot to hate about Spencer’s life, but abuse (as far as I could tell) wasn’t part of it.  It sounds awful that it’s “interesting” to find a lack of abuse in a polygamous family, but it seems from everything I read on this subject that physical, emotional, and sexual abuse are rampant in these communities.  So it was refreshing to see that even though Verlan had plenty of faults, and I personally believe this family was extremely misdirected in their faith, it didn’t seem to be the case that any type of abuse was really going on in their family (besides the obvious neglect that must occur when caring for so many children with such limited resources).

I’m glad I had the chance to read Shattered Dreams, and it definitely gave me another look into polygamy, different from several of the ones I’ve had in the past.  I don’t know if I’ll be picking up Cult Insanity anytime soon, but I would be interested in hearing more from Irene Spencer so I’m sure I will get to it eventually.

New Challenges

Here are a couple of new challenges I’ll be joining in 2010.

First is S. Krishna’s South Asian Author Challenge.

I’m going to go with reading 5 books.  I figure that’s a pretty easy commitment for an entire year – of course, I hope to read more than just 5 but we’ll see.

The second one is the GLBT Reading Challenge, or The Challenge that Dare Not Speak its Name.

I’m going to be reading at the Lambda Level, which is just 4 books, but obviously hoping to read many more.  Again, we’ll just have to see!

I’m sure I will end up joining several more challenges in 2010, as I was pretty good about the challenges I did this year with regard to actually completing them.  I’m feeling pretty confident in my ability to do these things!

The House on Tradd Street by Karen White

Title:  The House on Tradd Street

Author:  Karen White

Release date:  November 4, 2008

Publisher:  NAL Trade

Pages:  352

Genre:  Women’s fiction, mystery

Source:  Library

 

Melanie Middleton is a realtor who specializes in historic Charleston, South Carolina homes, even though she personally hates old houses.  When a new client passes away – a man Melanie met exactly one time and didn’t exactly get the warm fuzzies from – and leaves her his huge historic home to restore, Melanie must think twice about her rule against living in old homes as a stipulation of the will is that she physically live in the house for one year.  So she sets to work restoring the house, enlisting her best friends, her (formerly) estranged father, and Jack Trenholm, a true crime writer who is researching the history of the family who owned the home for a new book.  There is definitely a mystery wrapped up in this house, and it’s up to Melanie and Jack to solve it.

I’ve seen this book around a lot in the past year or so, but I wasn’t too interested in it until after reading Karen White’s The Lost Hours (my review).  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Lost Hours, and so I finally picked up another one of White’s novels.  I absolutely enjoyed The House on Tradd Street and now I’m really starting to kick myself for not having discovered Karen White earlier in my reading life.  This book kept me entertained throughout, it held my attention, and I was able to become immersed in the characters and the story very early on in the novel.

Melanie was absolutely my favorite character in the book.  She was smart and sassy, a successful businesswoman who knew how to take care of herself and knew exactly what she wanted out of life.  But those characters contributed to some of her weaknesses too – she had a difficult time with trust, she wasn’t interested in depending on anyone else, and she had this attitude where she was not open to changing her mind about things (about seeing the beauty in old houses, for instance).  These flaws made her realistic, someone I could relate to and get to know.  In addition, liking her so much made me really appreciate her development and growth as a character throughout the book.  It was such a joy to watch.  I definitely liked Jack too, but I found aspects of their relationship to be slightly odd.  For example – he moved into her house after they’d known each other for how long?  And as soon as she mentions going on a date with someone else he gets super possessive and acts like a teenager because why?  Besides those minor flaws in their relationship, I enjoyed reading their witty banter back and forth as they grew to know and care about one another.  It was definitely a sweet and fun relationship.

I truly enjoyed the mystery aspect to this novel.  I thought it was crafted very intelligently because I personally had no idea what would happen in the end.  I was surprised but also satisfied with the conclusion of the book.  To me, that’s the mark of a perfect mystery – when the conclusion is a surprise to me, but it makes sense how everything turns out.

The House on Tradd Street was a truly satisfying mystery with enough focus on the relationships to classify it as women’s fiction as well.  I think Karen White is a truly talented author and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.