The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore

The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder by Erin Blakemore
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy provided by the publisher in conjunction with TLC Book Tours

This delightful essay collection explores the literary heroines of our time as well as the female authors who created them. Scout Finch, Scarlett O’Hara, Jane Eyre, and the rest – each of these characters has something to teach us about our own lives, and their creators’ stories are just as important.

Can I just say how much I loved this little book? I tried to read it slowly, one essay at a time, but by the time I got halfway through I just devoured the thing! Each essay is such a gem – I honestly don’t know that I liked any one best, they were all so entertaining and surprisingly profound.

The way Blakemore chose to write these essays was just perfect. Each essay was focused on one literary heroine, but also on the author who created her. She showed how what the author was going through, personally and professionally, at the time she wrote the book reflected back onto her character. Each essay also has a life lesson, based on both the heroine and the author, that we can each take something away from. These lessons, to be honest, were actually very well done and I personally got a lot out of them.

Reading this book made me want to go back and revisit all the novels that Blakemore referenced! I highly recommend The Heroine’s Bookshelf, in fact I think it is a must-read for the heroine in us all!

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe
Published by Henry Holt and Co., an imprint of Macmillan

Rob Lowe has spent basically his entire life in the Hollywood spotlight. At fifteen, he was a teen idol and by twenty, he was entrenched in the group of famous teens nicknamed the Brat Pack. As an adult, he enjoyed continued success with roles such as Sam Seaborne on The West Wing, thriving in both his career and personal life despite his struggles with addiction and other issues. In this memoir, Lowe goes beyond the obvious facts of his life to share with the reader details he literally would previously only tell his friends.

I am a huge fan of Rob Lowe, always have been, so when I saw him discussing his new memoir on the Oprah show, I knew I had to read it. And when I realized he narrates the audiobook himself, I was certain that the audio was the way to go with this one.

I enjoyed this memoir immensely. I loved getting a peek into Lowe’s past – the dynamics of his family, his experiences growing up in Hollywood, and how he first got into acting as a child. I have to say that there is quite a bit of name-dropping in the book, as Lowe was friends at a young age with some of America’s most famous celebrities, but it’s never off-putting. The way Lowe weaves these famous names into his stories is done perfectly, and really helped me see what a well-liked guy Rob Lowe is. I loved the opportunity to learn about Lowe’s journey toward sobriety, as he struggled quite a bit with his addiction before entering rehab. It was quite inspiring to hear his story since he is one of the very few celebrities who has remained sober over the years. I can only imagine the kinds of temptation those in recovery face while living and working in Hollywood, and Lowe gave the reader a pretty detailed look into this side of the business.

I have to say that if you plan to read Stories I Only Tell My Friends, do yourself a favor and get the audiobook. As Lowe narrates it himself, it’s a great listening experience – it feels like he is telling you this story personally, as though you are two friends just chatting about his past. Plus, since he wrote the book himself, his enunciation and delivery are completely spot-on. He knew exactly how he wanted this story told, so who better to tell it than Rob Lowe himself? It was absolutely perfect.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends is a must-read for any fans of Rob Lowe. Even if you only have a mild interest in this actor’s life, I would still recommend the book as it is highly entertaining and surprisingly insightful. I enjoyed it all around.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
Published by Knopf, an imprint of Random House

The Kellehers have spent their summers at their beach house in Maine pretty much forever. Now Alice, the family matriarch, is living in the house in Maine full-time after the death of her husband Daniel, and three younger Kelleher women have come for a visit unexpectedly the same week. Maggie, Alice’s granddaughter, has just broken up with her boyfriend and is also carrying his baby, and comes to Maine to decompress and figure out what to do with her life. Kathleen, Maggie’s mother and the black sheep of the family, never planned to come back to Maine but her daughter’s situation compelled her to descend on the cottage. And Ann Marie, who married into the Kelleher family, sees herself as the only one who really cares for Alice, and as such isn’t thrilled to find Maggie and Kathleen also at the cottage during “her” time with her mother-in-law. As the four women struggle to get along, years of disagreements and harsh words infect their every interaction, to the point where the reader can’t help but wonder if this family will ever be able to tolerate each other.

Maine is a complex, layered novel with some of the most interesting and compelling characters I’ve read in a long time. I have to address something right off the bat – these characters are NOT likable. I wanted to slap each one of them on multiple occasions, in fact. But the fact that they were all such train wrecks is what made them so compelling. We all know people like the Kelleher women in real life – people who just cannot get along with their family members, people who are set on having a negative attitude about everything, people who refuse to see the reality of life that is staring them in the face – and that is what made me love this book so much. These women are messed-up, they are rude, they are insensitive, they insist on hurting the people who love them, and all these things make them completely, heartbreakingly, realistically flawed.

And Sullivan’s writing is to die for. I loved her first novel, Commencement [my review], partially because of the smart writing, and Maine is no different. She manages to make her characters sound intelligent but also like real people at the same time. I’m reading another book right now with super-intelligent characters and incredibly smart writing, but the characters don’t seem realistic to me. Not so in Maine - these are highly educated, crazy-smart women who also manage to seem like people I could be friends with (or in this case, enemies, since I wouldn’t actually want to befriend these women in real life).

A few reviews I’ve read have made mention of the fact that there’s very little plot in this book, and although I suppose I would agree with that statement, personally I didn’t find that problematic at all. I loved getting to know these four women and understanding the complex relationships between them. There is a ton of history in this family that Sullivan had to flesh out, and there are several major secrets that are revealed toward the end, so I was entertained enough by these aspects of the novel. I enjoy character-driven novels more than plot-driven ones usually anyway. So if you take issue with very little plot, Maine may not be your cup of tea, but it didn’t bother me one bit.

By now I think I’ve made it quite clear how much I enjoyed Maine. I think J. Courtney Sullivan is exceedingly talented and I will happily read whatever she writes in the future. If you enjoy character-driven novels with excellent writing, this book is for you.

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
Published by Scholastic Press

In this third installment of Stiefvater’s Shiver trilogy, Grace and Sam are fighting harder than ever to be together. The wolves are being hunted and both of their lives, as well as those of many of their friends, are in danger. They have to live with the fact that huge secrets are being kept from the most important people in their lives. And of course, both Grace and Sam live with the constant threat of winter, always looming over them.

I can’t really summarize Forever properly because any real summary of what happens in this book would include major spoilers for the first two books in this series, Shiver and Linger. So if you are reading this and haven’t yet read those two books, stop what you’re doing and go pick them up! This is a great series and I definitely recommend all three books.

Okay, now onto my feelings on Forever. I definitely enjoyed it. There was more of a desperate, panicky feeling to this book than the other two had, just because of the imminent danger the wolves were facing. As a result, it was pretty fast-paced and I had difficulty putting it down, which is a very good thing. I felt desperate just as the characters did – I was desperate to find out what would happen to Grace and Sam, desperate for them to beat the odds and end up together in human form.

I quite enjoyed getting to know Cole and Isabel better in this book. Their characters really blossomed and I am glad that Stiefvater chose to give them such a prominent place in this series – they really added to the overall feel of the novel.

I was satisfied with the ending of Forever. It wasn’t exactly perfect, but I am going to allow myself to believe things worked out exactly how I wanted them to. Overall, this is a great series and I would highly recommend reading all three of these books!

Miles from Ordinary by Carol Lynch Williams

Miles from Ordinary by Carol Lynch Williams
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin, an imprint of Macmillan

Thirteen-year-old Lacey begins this day excited to begin her summer job at the library and hopeful that her mother’s first day at work at the grocery store will be a success. Her mother has seemed much better these days – her erratic behavior and talk of the ghosts in their home have died down quite a bit – and Lacey is sure that their life can finally start being more normal. But the day quickly spirals out of control as Lacey returns to the grocery store in the afternoon to find her mother gone, and with no other adults in her life to turn to, Lacey must figure this out on her own.

Carol Lynch Williams has a gift. She has the unique ability to truly get inside the mind of a young teen girl, to the point where I felt like Lacey was a real person and was telling me this story herself. To say that I was captivated by this story of one fateful, horrible day in Lacey’s life would be an understatement. I was entranced by this story and read it in one very quick sitting, breathless from the excitement of it all. I found myself literally holding my breath, hoping and praying that the things Lacey most feared regarding her mother’s disappearance weren’t true. I wanted desperately for Lacey to find her mother and get her some help so that she could just be a normal teenager and have the life she was meant to live.

In this short book, Williams managed to create a complete and incredibly real character in Lacey. My heart really went out to her as the situation with her mother was just heartbreaking. What made it worse was that Lacey had no other adult in her life to turn to – it was just her and her mother against the world. While Lacey was amazingly smart and resourceful for a thirteen-year-old, no child should have to make the kinds of adult decisions that Lacey was forced to make. It just broke my heart in so many ways.

I have to say that while this novel is devastating and difficult to read, it is amazing and I highly recommend it. Miles from Ordinary is so short that it can be read in one sitting, and it is so captivating that you won’t be able to put it down anyway. You will fall in love with Lacey as I did and hope and pray the whole way through that things will work out for her. Carol Lynch Williams is fantastic at what she does and her books are not to be missed.

Faith by Jennifer Haigh

Faith by Jennifer Haigh
Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins

Sheila McGann has always been close with her older brother Art, a Catholic priest. When Art finds himself accused of sexually abusing a young boy in his parish, Sheila travels back to her hometown of Boston to be with Art and the rest of their family in this trying time. As Sheila’s been estranged from her family for years, she is surprised to find her mother in a state of complete denial, her father’s dementia has rendered him incapable of understanding the situation, and her younger brother Mike has already decided that Art is guilty of the crime. Art, unfortunately, is unwilling or unable to defend himself, which leaves Sheila confused and not sure what to think.

I’ve been stewing over this review for quite some time now because I’m trying to figure out the best way to communicate just how good Faith really is. I honestly had no idea what I was in for when I began reading this novel. I was expecting it to be so much about the crime Art was accused of, but the book is about so much more than just that. The most central aspect of the story is the various dynamics and relationships within this family, and how each member of the family reacts so differently to the news of Art’s possible crime.

These characters snuck their way into my heart and won’t be leaving any time soon. Art especially, even though the reader gets to know him only through Sheila’s eyes, captured my attention and I was completely swept away by his story. While the question of his guilt or innocence pervades the entire story and is a focal point for much of the novel, by the end of the novel it’s almost irrelevant - the reader has already become enamored by him and completely sympathetic to the way he grew up, his relations with his other family members, etc. It almost doesn’t matter if he committed the crime, especially once the entire book is finished – read it and you’ll see what I mean.

Jennifer Haigh not only knows how to create complicated and honest characters, she knows how to write a story that will hold a reader’s attention. Even though this novel is very character-driven and quiet in its own way, I was spellbound by the plot. I was anxious to find out what would happen to several of the characters, how certain familial relations would turn out, and I did care of course how things ended up with Art’s situation. I wanted to spend every possible minute with this book until I finished it – I was that captivated.

I listened to Faith on audio and I have to say that it was an excellent choice. The narrator, Therese Plummer, was the perfect person to tell this story and I loved listening. I am sure the book would be just as good in print but I am here to tell you that the audio is wonderful.

I very highly recommend Faith. I doubt I’ve expressed clearly enough what makes this book so excellent but I would just encourage you to read it for yourself to find out. I absolutely loved it.

The Sunday Salon

Good morning, Saloners! It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these, although I have no idea why. I guess life has been getting in the way. Things over here have been good, just busy. With a puppy in the house and an always-exciting, ever-changing situation at my job every day, I haven’t felt like doing much on Sundays. But here I am. After a few days of way cooler than normal temps here in Central Florida, today is absolutely beautiful so I’m hoping to spend some time outdoors this afternoon.

As far as reading has been, I’ve been in a pretty big slump as of late. I just haven’t been overly inspired by much these days. I did finish Pregnant Pause by Han Nolan last weekend and was surprised to enjoy it as much as I did. I’m currently reading several books, which are all good, and I’m hoping one or two of them will help pull me out of this slump. First I’m STILL reading Gone With the Wind. The Heroine’s Bookshelf did a readalong of this one, which I joined but then fell sadly behind in. I’m almost 3/4 of the way done with the book, so I should finish it soonish, but I’ve just been reading a chapter here, a chapter there, which takes forever for a 1000 page book. But I’m loving it, actually. I am also reading The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore (the book, not the blog) for a TLC tour, and I’m liking this one a lot. It’s short and I’ll probably finish that up today. Then we have Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand for book club. Guys, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m having so much trouble getting through this! I know everyone loves this book, but I am having extreme difficulty forcing myself to read it. Maybe I haven’t gotten to the good part yet? I’m certainly going to make a valiant attempt to finish this for our book club meeting this week but I must admit I don’t know that I will. I’m listening to The Marriage Plot in my car, and finding it highly enjoyable so far. Although at 13 discs, it’ll be a while before I finish. Last, I picked up Domestic Violets on Friday to attempt to break my slump, and I think it might be working! 150 pages in and I’m loving this one.

I’ve been thinking lately about getting more into short stories. I always enjoy short stories when I read them, and I own a few short story collections that I haven’t yet read, so I’m trying to figure out a way to feature them on the blog more frequently. Does anyone know of a short story meme already out there? Like Saturday Shorts or something like that? Please let me know because I’d love to get on board with that. If not, I might start one myself.

With that, I’ll wish you all a happy Sunday! What are your plans for the remainder of this weekend?

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens
Published by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan
Review copy provided by the publicist

Sara Gallagher, who was adopted shortly after her birth, has always wondered about her birth parents. As the only adopted member of her family, her two sisters’ bonds with their parents have always made her feel like an outcast in her own home. Finally, she locates her birth mother, only to have the woman reject her completely. When she discovers the truth about her conception – her mother was the only person ever to escape a serial murderer and rapist, and the killer is most likely her birth father – she begins to understand why her birth mother might not want Sara in her life. But Sara is determined to know the truth about her parentage, and so she begins a quest to meet the man who may have fathered her – the same man who has killed dozens of women over the years.

I had high expectations for Chevy Stevens’ second novel since her first book, Still Missing, had a profound effect on my emotional state. I must admit that Never Knowing was not quite as bone-chillingly creepy as Stevens’ first novel, but I still raced through the book and enjoyed it quite thoroughly.

From the first page of this novel, it’s extremely easy for the reader to empathize with Sara. She’s pretty much a tortured soul – she feels alone in her own family, as her two sisters are clearly closer to her parents than she is, and she desperately wants to understand her true origins. Plus, she has a young daughter of her own, so her hunger to learn the truth about her biological parents is magnified even more now that she has passed her unknown genes onto another person. Even though I knew that what she would learn about her father was not good news, I still felt compassion for her and empathized with her need to know the truth. If I were in her position, I would want to know as well.

As soon as Sara actually speaks to her biological father, the book takes off running and doesn’t quit until the end. This is the point at which the action really starts, and when I say action, I mean this book gave me serious heart palpitations and caused quite a bit of stress! I was terrified right along with Sara but also morbidly curious about who this man really was right along with her.  Part of me wanted the whole thing to be just a sick joke, that her father would turn out to be a regular guy and there would be some kind of mistake to make people believe he was a killer, I cared for Sara that much. I wanted things to work out for her.

The pace of this novel kept me turning pages frantically, to the point that I read almost the entire thing in one sitting. It truly held my attention, through all the twists and turns, and I loved every second of this ride. It was thrilling and scary and sad and exciting all at once. I highly recommend Never Knowing. Chevy Stevens is one talented lady.

The Civilized World by Susi Wyss

The Civilized World by Susi Wyss
Published by Holt Paperbacks, an imprint of Macmillan
Review copy provided by the publicist

The Civilized World, a novel in stories, features a host of characters and several different plot lines. So to save myself time and anguish, instead of summarizing it for you I’ll just use the publisher’s summary.

When Adjoa leaves Ghana to find work in the Ivory Coast, she hopes that one day she’ll return home to open a beauty parlor. Her dream comes true, though not before she suffers a devastating loss—one that will haunt her for years, and one that also deeply affects Janice, an American aid worker who no longer feels she has a place to call home. But the bustling Precious Brother Salon is not just the “cleanest, friendliest, and most welcoming in the city.” It’s also where locals catch up on their gossip; where Comfort, an imperious busybody, can complain about her American daughter-in-law, Linda; and where Adjoa can get a fresh start on life—or so she thinks, until Janice moves to Ghana and unexpectedly stumbles upon the salon.

At once deeply moving and utterly charming, The Civilized World follows five women as they face meddling mothers-in-law, unfaithful partners, and the lingering aftereffects of racism, only to learn that their cultural differences are outweighed by their common bond as women. With vibrant prose, Susi Wyss explores what it means to need forgiveness—and what it means to forgive.

Another reason I’m using the publisher’s summary here is because attempting to write this review is reminding me of what a bad blogger I have become. I know that I really enjoyed The Civilized World but unfortunately I can’t remember much else about it. Horrible, right? Part of it has to do with the fact that I read the book over a month before writing this review. (Hence the bad blogger.)

But anyways, I typically love books written in this novel-in-stories format, and The Civilized World was no different. I definitely enjoyed getting to know the characters, and while there were many of them for such a short book, I had no trouble keeping them straight. And I remember thinking the writing was beautiful.

I’ll leave you with this: if you like multicultural fiction and/or novels disguised as short stories, give The Civilized World a try.

Carry Yourself Back to Me by Deborah Reed

Carry Yourself Back to Me by Deborah Reed
Published by AmazonEncore
Review copy provided by the publicist

Former country singer Annie Walsh, recovering from a bad breakup with the love of her life, Owen, spends her time in Florida in her home with her dog, interacting with the rest of society as little as possible. But when her brother Calder is accused of murder, Annie’s quiet existence is shattered to its core.

When I began reading Carry Yourself Back to Me, I liked Annie’s character immediately. She is a broken soul who has been through a lot in life – a successful career, a sordid family past, and a love affair for the ages. But when Owen left her, her life was in tatters and she didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. In addition, she was pregnant when he left and unable to tell him, so the fact that he never knew about the pregnancy left a huge emptiness in her heart. I truly empathized with her pain and over the course of the entire novel, I just kept hoping that something would work out for her, that she would be able to heal from the pain in her life and become whole again.

Unfortunately, Annie’s character turned out to be the only aspect of this novel I really loved. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the book, because while I was reading it I did, but it just wasn’t memorable. In fact, as I’m thinking about it now I can’t recall how the novel ends. It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention, I just wasn’t wowed by the plot or the ending enough for the details to stick in  my brain.

That being said, I did enjoy reading Carry Yourself Back to Me and I loved the character of Annie, so I can still recommend the novel. While it isn’t the type of book that was emotionally impactful or will stick with me for a long time, reading it was an enjoyable experience.