The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens

Title:  The Wife’s Tale

Author:  Lori Lansens

Release date:  February 10, 2010

Publisher:  Little, Brown and Company

Pages:  368

Genre:  Women’s fiction

Source:  LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Mary and Jimmy Gooch have been married for twenty-five years when, out of the clear blue sky, he disappears.  It becomes abundantly clear to Mary that Gooch is not only missing, but has run away from her and their marriage, and so she boards a plane for the first time in her life and sets out to find her husband.  Although Mary has spent her entire life trying to hide her large body from the world, when she arrives in Los Angles she realizes she has nowhere to hide, and must be her real self with strangers, and her mother-in-law, for the first time.  What she discovers about herself changes her, and her future, forever.

The Wife’s Tale is a character-driven novel in the deepest sense.  The entire novel is told from Mary’s point of view, the book is about everything she experiences, and the novel is about her growth as a person throughout the course of her time in L.A.  With a novel so centered on one character, it’s extremely important for that character to be well-written and easy to love, and Mary Gooch is exactly that.

I completely believed Mary right from the start.  She was super easy to empathize with, I couldn’t help liking her, and rooting for her to realize what a great person she was, and what an even greater person she had the potential to become.  I think I connected with her so well because I was able to see aspects of my own personality in hers.  While I have never struggled with my weight to the degree that Mary did, I constantly battle feelings of insecurity, of not feeling pretty enough, smart enough, GOOD enough to take my rightful place in the world.  So I understood the debilitating fear Mary had of breaking out of her comfort zone, the fear she had that if she tried something new, she would surely fail at it.  I definitely connected with Mary in a major way.

I was less interested in the plot of The Wife’s Tale than I was in Mary’s transformation, but Lansens threw in a couple of minor characters I was able to also root for, which was nice.  And I can’t say that I love where things ended up in the final pages, but I think it made sense given the rest of the story.

The Wife’s Tale is a solid piece of character-driven fiction, which I’m happy to say I can highly recommend.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Title:  The Time Traveler’s Wife

Author:  Audrey Niffenegger

Release date:  May 27, 2004

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pages:  546

Genre:  Adult fiction

Source:  Personal copy

I first read The Time Traveler’s Wife about six years ago, when it was first published, and ever since then I have counted it among my favorite books.  I was a little nervous to reread it, because I know that at twenty years old, I was a much different person than I am now, and perhaps my enjoyment of it might have diminished with the years in between.  I needn’t have worried because the novel was everything I remembered it to be, and I loved it just as much, if not more than, I did the first time I read it!

If you are unfamiliar with the plot of this novel (hard to imagine anyone would be, but just in case…), the story centers around Clare and Henry.  Henry is a time traveler – although his time traveling is completely involuntary, sort of like a genetic disorder.  One minute he’ll be in his normal life, the next minute he will be sucked into the events of twenty years ago, for example.  And when he’s back in time, he’s completely a whole person – the people there can see him, talk to him, touch him, etc.  Anyway, Clare meets Henry for the first time when she is a kid – he time travels into her backyard – and in Henry’s present, he and Clare are married.  So Clare effectively knows Henry her entire life, and she knows from a young age that she is going to marry him.  Henry meets Clare for the first time in his present at age twenty-six.  It sounds confusing, but Niffenegger makes it flow really well, so it’s not confusing at all when you’re reading about it.

This novel really is the ultimate love story.  It is a tale of epic love, of love that knows no bounds, of love that literally never dies, of two people destined to be together regardless of the hell they have to go though (individually and as a couple) to make that happen.  The way their love changes and grows over time and goes from innocent first-time love to a mature and stable marriage is a joy to read about.

Having read this novel twice now, I feel that I KNOW these characters.  I feel like they are a part of my life, like we were friends once or something.  This will give you a good idea of how well they are written, about how realistic Henry and Clare are in this story.  Because their story felt so real to me, I must admit that I bawled like a baby for the last 100 pages of the novel.  I haven’t cried like that while reading a book in a long time.  This book just does that to me.

Anyway, I still love this book.  If you haven’t read it yet, please do.  Whether you love or hate it, I want to know your feelings and why!  Because seriously, folks, this is one amazing novel.  Please read it for yourself to find out why.

The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman

Title:  The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes

Author:  Carl Hoffman

Release date:  March 16, 2010

Publisher:  Broadway

Pages:  304

Genre:  Nonfiction, World Issues, Travel, Memoir

Source:  Publisher

Carl Hoffman set out on a journey to travel on the world’s most life-threatening and dangerous modes of transportation in order to expose the reality of millions of people worldwide for whom travel is a daily struggle, so different from those of us who get to sit back, relax, and enjoy the experience of traveling.  Part journalistic expose and part memoir, Hoffman’s fascinating look at how the majority of the world lives will make anyone thankful for the comforts we enjoy on a daily basis.

I really got into this book.  It is exactly the type of nonfiction that I love – the kind that enables me to learn something while also having that personal touch that keeps me connected to what’s written in its pages.  I liked Carl Hoffman right away, although it was clear that this journey was his way of escaping some of his issues at home, he went into it with a hopeful heart and really good intentions.  He risked his life many times over in order to experience what millions of people have no choice but to experience every day of their lives.

Learning about how dangerous so many different types of transportation are was astounding.  There are some airlines that have obscene rates of fatal crashes, ferries that sink a couple of times a year, and trains that derail with startling frequency.  Hoffman experienced all of these.  Obviously, he lived to tell the tale, but it was so interesting to learn about the risks people are forced to take just to live a regular life – to get to work, school, or to visit family.

I don’t have much else to say about The Lunatic Express other than the fact that I highly recommend it.  If you like interesting nonfiction with a memoir feel, this is the book for you.

Moral Disorder and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood

Title:  Moral Disorder and Other Stories

Author:  Margaret Atwood

Release date:  September 19, 2006

Publisher:  Anchor

Pages:  240

Genre:  Adult fiction, short stories

Source:  Library

Moral Disorder is composed of about ten short stories, all involving the same Canadian family at various stages of their lives, and featuring various members of said family, with Nell at the forefront.  Nell goes from an eleven-year-old girl who learns she’s about to become a big sister, to caretaker of her sister (who ends up with a mental illness), to a mistress of a man she falls in love with whose wife asks her to fill the void in her husband’s life.  The stories go back and forth in time, painting a picture of Nell’s life that is nonlinear, but mostly complete.

One day, I hope to say that I’ve read all of Margaret Atwood’s books.  She is an author I truly enjoy, respect, and can’t really get enough of.  So it was with quite a bit of hope and excitement that I opened Moral Disorder, and unfortunately, it wasn’t everything I had hoped it to be.

My first problem with the book is really my issue alone.  I don’t know if I’m just slow, or what… but I didn’t realize until I read more reviews of this book that all the stories centered around Nell.  Several of the stories didn’t mention her name (even though she was narrating them, apparently I didn’t “get” that the narrator was Nell), and so I was unsure exactly who was involved in which stories.  This definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the book – after all, I was supposed to understand that this character was the same person throughout all the stories, and that completely escaped me.

Also, I didn’t find the stories themselves to be terribly compelling.  Some I enjoyed, but for the most part they fell flat for me and I never found myself immersed in the characters or what was happening to them.  Perhaps it’s because Atwood’s talent lies so much in the slow build, in keeping the reader guessing, and allowing the reader to slowly get to know and fall in love with her characters, that her particular style of writing didn’t translate so well to short stories.  Or maybe I just didn’t like them, I don’t know.  But it didn’t work for me overall.

BUT I’m still glad I read it, because eventually I would like to read all of Atwood’s books, and this is one of them!  So there’s one positive.

Nerds Heart YA: Purple Heart vs. In the Path of Falling Objects

I am pleased to welcome you all to my blog for my portion of the Nerds Heart YA tournament!  Today Katie from Read What You Know and I are deciding between Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick and In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith.

Warning:  This post is a bit on the long side.  It contains two reviews with our final decision at the end.  Enjoy!

Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick is told from the point of view of Matt Duffy, an eighteen-year-old Army private currently serving in Iraq, and when the story begins he finds himself in a military hospital with a brain injury.  Although Matt is awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery in the situation that landed him in the hospital, he doesn’t feel so brave.  His last memory from the day of the injury is watching a young Iraqi boy with whom he had gotten close, Ali, get shot and killed.  He can’t figure out what exactly happened to Ali, but he feels that somehow he was involved in his death.  Matt recovers enough to be sent back into combat with his squad, and it is then, surrounded by his best friends, when he starts to put the pieces back together of what exactly happened the day he was injured and little Ali was killed.

Purple Heart really, really got to me emotionally.  I have a personal connection to the book because my younger brother Alex is currently serving our country in the U.S. Marine Corps, and I kept picturing him in Matt’s situation.  Although my brother has yet to be deployed, it will probably come soon, and as he’s about Matt’s age, I just couldn’t help thinking of Matt as my little brother.  So I definitely connected with the book on a personal level.

Besides my own emotional connection to the novel, I thought it was really well done overall.  It is a pretty short book, but grabs the reader immediately, drawing you into Matt’s world as he tries to untangle the web of secrets surrounding what happened to him and Ali.  McCormick doesn’t waste a single word as her sparse prose fits the tone of the novel exactly.  And while Matt is really the only main character in the book for the first half, once he got back with his squad I really enjoyed getting to know them and I loved reading about how their relationships were – they were a super close-knit group simply because of the situation they were in together.  They were one another’s family, friends, everything.  Their relationships, their camaraderie, the love they had for each other – it all felt very real to me.

While I was kept in suspense about the truth of what happened to Ali throughout the book, I never felt like it was a “suspense” type of read.  For me it was more of a character-driven novel, about how war can and does affect people, especially the eighteen-year-old kids who make up the majority of our military.  I thought the book was expertly well done in that it truly opened my eyes to what it must feel like to go through actually having to fight in Iraq.  And, of course, like I said earlier, I was personally impacted by the story in a big way.  While I guessed some of the ending, ultimately McCormick did manage to surprise me and the ending was about as satisfying as can be, although of course it was very emotional.

In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith begins with Jonah and his younger brother Simon attempting to flee their home after their father went to prison and mother abandoned them.  Pretty early into their journey, they decide to hitchhike and take a ride from Mitch, who they quickly learn is a sociopath, and his pregnant friend Lilly.  As they drive more and more, the boys experience Mitch committing murders, threatening all of their lives, and generally acting completely insane.  Their ride with Lilly and Mitch is interspersed with Jonah’s reading of letters he’s received from his brother serving in the Vietnam War, with both stories coming to a shocking climax at the end of the book.

I didn’t know what to expect with this one.  Based on the book jacket’s description, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it much, but I was wrong.  This book is an absolute thrill ride that did not let me out of its grasp for one second.  It was literally a train wreck – horrible things just kept happening, and as much as I wanted to look away, I was fascinated by it, absolutely glued to the pages.  I kept thinking that eventually something would go right for Jonah and Simon, and honestly – things just kept going from bad to worse.

I definitely liked the characters in this book (well, the good guys – Jonah and Simon especially), and I felt that they were written very well.  I absolutely believed Mitch to be a sociopath – he was about as psychotic as they come while still being able to function in the real world.  I felt deeply sorry for Lilly, as she had actually chosen to spend her time with Mitch, and he was clearly obsessed with her (although they weren’t together), and she had nowhere to go if this trip with Mitch didn’t work out the way she’d planned.  I did feel that the characters were all a bit one-dimensional, although Simon was the most fully realized, in my opinion.  He made some terrible decisions, but like any kid, he had to learn for himself who to trust and what to do in these terrifying situations.  He grew up over the course of the novel and I enjoyed seeing him do so.

The juxtaposition of Jonah and Simon’s current story with Jonah’s reading of his brother’s letters from Vietnam felt very authentic to me, and helped make the story more than just a thriller.  I really felt for his brother – trapped in this horrific war that he was morally opposed to, forced to fight and kill people, with no feasible way out.  He was incredibly depressed and it was clear that he loved Jonah and Simon very much and wanted so badly to see them again.

The ending was somewhat expected, but overall a shocker in the execution of it all.  I was totally along for the ride throughout the entire book and was happy to see some kind of resolution in the end, even though it certainly wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies.

In terms of which book will move on to the next round, I personally could have gone either way.  I connected emotionally to Purple Heart and I think McCormick tells a very important story, but I was more entertained by In the Path of Falling Objects.  Ultimately I was really won over by my personal ties to Purple Heart as well as the important message that McCormick offers.  As Katie was learning very strongly toward Purple Heart, together we came to the decision that Purple Heart will be moving on. Yay!

Savage Lands by Clare Clark

Title:  Savage Lands

Author:  Clare Clark

Release date:  February 2, 2010

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pages:  416

Genre:  Historical fiction

Source:  Library

Savage Lands is a story about the first French settlers to come to America and the women who were sent immediately following to be their wives.  Elisabeth Savaret is sent by her family to marry a man she’d never met in Louisiana, and she is as surprised as anyone else when she finds herself falling in love with her husband, Jean-Claude.  Along with Elisabeth’s story is the story of Auguste, a young man who is sent to live among the savages in the New World in order to gain alliance with the tribes to strengthen France’s position against the English.  Throughout this sprawling historical novel, as Elisabeth and Auguste’s lives intersect, the reader is treated to a beautiful description of what life was like for those first settlers in the New World.

I’m not sure what made me pick up Savage Lands, as based on what the book jacket says I wouldn’t think I’d enjoy it (I must have read a glowing review or something).  But I did really like the book, and I actually think it would appeal to lots of different kinds of readers.

First of all, there’s the historical fiction aspect.  Any lover of historical fiction will be entranced by the descriptions of the Southern United States three hundred years before the present day.  I thought this was one of the best things about the book – I completely immersed myself in the world drawn by Clark, I felt like I jumped right into Louisiana and experienced it right along with Elisabeth, that’s how vivid and wonderful her descriptions were.

Also, Savage Lands has adventure!  Lots of it!  It has men going to war with Native Americans, English and French against each other, everyone dealing with not enough food, unfamiliar sicknesses and no medicines, and people generally being very upset at living in this “godforsaken place”.  I have to admit that the adventure bits were my least favorite parts of the book, but for many readers they do add that certain something.

But what really made the book go from good to great for me was the beautifully drawn, completely complex characters Clark presented.  Elisabeth is a woman I could really become friends with – I loved her tenacity, her spirit, the way she didn’t become like all the other women just because it was expected of her, the way she loved Jean-Claude with her whole heart, everything about her I loved.  She was not without her faults, of course, which helped me believe in her character and root for her throughout the entire book.  I liked Auguste’s character less, but I still found him to be a fully realized, expertly drawn character that I could absolutely believe in and get behind.  Without these amazingly rendered characters this story would have just been a story – but because of this aspect, to me, it felt completely real.

Savage Lands is an excellent read with a little something for everyone.  I haven’t seen this one around too much, so I’m here to tell you – don’t miss it!

The Language of Secrets by Dianne Dixon

Title:  The Language of Secrets

Author:  Dianne Dixon

Release date:  March 23, 2010

Publisher:  Doubleday

Pages:  272

Genre:  Adult fiction

Source:  Publisher

Justin Fischer hasn’t seen or spoken to his family in more than ten years, so when he moves back to California from London, he knows it’s time he finally reconnected with them.  When he goes to his old childhood home, he learns that his parents are dead, and upon visiting their graves, he finds next to theirs a headstone with his own name on it.  As Justin has very few memories from the first eighteen years of his life, he sets out to uncover the mystery of his life – what really happened to him as a child, and who is he really?

The Language of Secrets has a lot going on, and it absolutely kept me on my toes.  I couldn’t put the book down as I raced through it, waiting not so patiently to find out how exactly Justin’s story would play out.  The novel is very plot-heavy, and as such it’s difficult to discuss much about it because I’d rather not give away any spoilers.  Suffice it to say that the plot is engaging, interesting, and with plenty of twists and turns to hold just about any reader’s interest.

The point of view in The Language of Secrets switches back and forth from Justin’s in the present day to his mother’s, a few decades earlier.  For me, this was an extremely effective way for Dixon to tell the story because telling both Justin’s and Caroline’s stories parallel like this gave me answers at just the right pace.  Slowly but surely, the facts of Justin’s life came together, and in a more interesting way than if the book was written from Justin’s perspective alone.

The one weakness I feel needs to be pointed out about this novel is the characters weren’t as strong as I would have liked them to be.  As the book is really plot-driven, weak characterizations aren’t the worst thing ever and certainly didn’t ruin the book for me, but I just think that had Dixon developed her characters more fully the book would have had that extra punch to take it from good to excellent.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading The Language of Secrets and if you like a novel that is strong on plot that will keep you guessing, I think you’ll enjoy it too.  There is plenty to discuss here, and for that reason I can see this novel being a great choice for book clubs.

Alone With You: Stories by Marisa Silver

Title:  Alone With You: Stories

Author:  Marisa Silver

Release date:  April 13, 2010

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster

Pages:  164

Genre:  Adult fiction, Short stories

Source:  Publisher

These eight stories are about damaged people, people who have been scarred by something or someone in their lives, people who have been tarnished by disease, abuse, family strive, and other maladies.  Yet each story is a tale of resilience, a tale of someone or several someones who know how to deal with what life throws at them, pick through it to find the beautiful pieces within, and carry on.

I really enjoyed reading this book of short stories, so much so that I think I’ll read them again soon.  I could have gobbled this one up in an afternoon, but with short stories I like to draw them out over a couple of days, so that’s how I went about reading this book.

It is always difficult for me to review short fiction because each story can be so different, how do you review the book as a whole?  So I figured in this case I’d tell you about two of my favorite stories of the bunch, and why I enjoyed them so much.  The first is “The Pond”, a story about a twenty-four-year-old mentally retarded woman named Martha who finds herself pregnant with her first child.  The story is told from the point of view of Martha’s parents, Julia and Burton, who resign themselves to the fact that they will be raising Martha’s child and aren’t exactly looking forward to the next twenty or so years of being parents all over again.  The story spoke to me so much, I think, because of the resiliency of Martha, and of her determination to be a mother even though she couldn’t quite grasp the concept of what that would entail.  The story ends with Martha’s son, Gary, as an eight-year-old boy, and Burton is watching the two of them together, and he comes to the sudden  understanding that Martha truly IS a mother to Gary, however capable she is of doing that job – to Gary, she is the only mother he will ever know, and he loves her with his whole heart.  That scene brought a tear to my eye, it was so hopeful, so full of human emotion, so full of love.

The other story that really spoke to me is “Three Girls” a story about three sisters, Connie, Jean, and Paula, who pretty much have to take care of each other due to the fact that their parents are less than perfect, sort of absorbed in their own worlds, and possibly alcoholics.  The relationships between the three of them reminded me a bit of my own with my siblings when we were younger.  I am the oldest of four, and although my parents did the best they could, four kids is just hard (especially with the fact that we treaded precariously on the poverty line for most of my childhood).  And so often I found myself taking care of the two littlest ones, or I would find my brother (only two years younger) defending me on the playground when someone was picking on me (I was a nerd, and he was “cool”).  I know the feeling of being surrounded by siblings, and having a love/hate relationship with that fact.  So, although this story wasn’t the most hopeful, it did have a personal connection for me and I really loved that.

Alone With You is a fantastically written collection of short fiction that took me by surprise a bit.  It always manages to shock me when an author of short fiction can manage to make a twenty-page story so real, can manage to draw complex characters in such a short time, can even make me cry about characters I’ve only known for twenty pages.  This is a collection not to be missed.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Title:  Hush, Hush

Author:  Becca Fitzpatrick

Release date:  October 13, 2009

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing

Pages:  291

Genre:  Young adult fiction, Urban fantasy

Source:  Personal copy

Caution: This post might get a bit spoiler-y.  I usually don’t do that, but in an effort to explain myself adequately I may give away some plot points.

Hush, Hush has been talked about as the next Twilight, and I must admit that I can see how the stories are similar.  In both books, a good girl falls for the bad boy.  In both books, that bad boy turns out to be some kind of supernatural being.  In both books, the boy must save the girl in order for them to have any type of relationship, even though that relationship is, of course, full of problems due to the human being/supernatural being dichotomy.

Let me come right out with it – I did not enjoy the experience of reading Hush, Hush.  Very rarely am I this explicit in my dislike for a book, but in this case I feel I can be nothing but honest.  And honestly, the entire novel made me cringe.  I read a review of Hush, Hush awhile back that went on and on about how this novel is so damaging to young girls because it encourages them to fall for a stalker, how it insinuates that abuse in a relationship is okay, etc., and I completely agree with that.  (EDIT: I found said review, it’s courtesy of Bookshop)  Nora Grey, the protagonist of Hush, Hush is not a stupid girl.  She knows when she meets Patch that he is bad news.  He is creeping her out, she thinks he might be following her, and she doesn’t want anything to do with him at first.  However, when she goes to her teacher to ask that they not be lab partners any longer because she is scared of him, the teacher dismisses her concerns and instead tells Nora she is required to tutor Patch.  Okay – if this happened to my daughter at school I’d be furious!  No way.  Yet, in this novel Nora is forced to go along with the assignment.  What does this teach teen girls?  It just upsets me so much.

Furthermore, there is another boy besides Patch who Nora is scared of – a kid named Elliot, who her best friend Vee likes.  Well, some bad stuff happens to the two of them (a guy jumps in front of Nora’s car, Vee is attacked, Nora’s room is broken into and ransacked while she is in the house), and Nora is convinced it’s Elliot doing these things.  Yet Vee tells her she is crazy and spends tons of time with Elliot anyway.  This whole Elliot thing made me so mad – when I was in high school, if I was convinced that someone was out to hurt myself or my best friend, I would do everything in my power to make sure the two of us stayed away from that person.  But in this novel, Elliot simply gains a bigger and bigger presence in the girls’ lives.

For those of you who have read the book and are thinking now, “but Patch didn’t turn out to be so bad, and Elliot was actually not the person who did all those horrible things”, I know that, and to me that is not the point.  The point is that whether or not these two were or were not out to hurt Nora and Vee, the two of them would have fallen for these guys either way.  Nora fell for Patch while thinking that he could possibly be stalking her.  And Vee kept getting closer and closer to Elliot, at the same time that Nora was warning her about the potentially terrible things Elliot was doing to the two of them.  The point is that Hush, Hush made me feel like falling in love with someone who stalks you and hurts you and possibly steals from you, possibly assaults your best friend, is perfectly okay.  And if the book managed to get that message across to me, a twenty-six-year-old woman who has plenty of experience with bad boys, been stalked myself, and isn’t looking to fall in love with anyone except my husband, imagine what kind of message is coming across to a fourteen-year-old girl.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

Add that to the fact that the book didn’t particularly wow me in terms of plot, well-written characters, or atmosphere, and I really just did not enjoy it one bit.  Sorry, Hush, Hush fans, but I just cannot endorse this one.

BBAW is here!

It’s that time of year again.  The third annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week is upon us; it will take place September 13-17.  This is a week that is dedicated to appreciating book bloggers, to loving each other and praising each other and being proud of ourselves for our reading, our blogs, our friendships with one another, and everything else that comes with book blogging.  There are also awards!  The awards are going to be a bit different this year; instead of bloggers being nominated first by a committee, bloggers will be nominating themselves for whichever award(s) best fit their blog.  I was a little hesitant to do this myself, as I am really not one for self-promotion, but after a little encouragement from another blogger I decided to throw my hat in for something.  Last year I was nominated for Best Eclectic Book Blog, and as I do think I read from a wide variety of subjects and genres, I feel that this category fits me perfectly.  Here are the five posts I’m submitting for my consideration for this award:

• A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufield
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• Dreamland by Sarah Dessen

In the mix we have a nonfiction graphic book about Hurricane Katrina, a literary fiction novel that has a bit of a thriller-type edge to it, a historical fiction novel dealing with GLBT issues, a classic book that has stood the test of time, and a young adult novel about a girl in an abusive relationship.  As an added bonus, I LOVED all five of these books, so do yourself a favor and read the reviews if you haven’t already.  Maybe you’ll be inspired to pick one of them up!

I highly encourage every one of you book bloggers to register for BBAW even if you don’t want to be considered for an award in anything.  It’s going to be a super awesome, happy week and I wouldn’t want any of you to miss out on it!