Postingan

Menampilkan postingan dengan label sister

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Gambar
  Last year's Big Summer was the first Jennifer Weiner book I'd read and I enjoyed it very much. That Summer has completely different characters, but Cape Cod plays a big role in this novel, too.  Diana Scalzi is fifteen years old and has the world ahead of her the summer she spends on Cape Cod, nannying for her mom's friend Dr. Levy. She even meets a boy named Poe who just graduated from Emlen, a private boy's school that is the place to send the sons of the wealthy and powerful. They spend time on the beaches, getting to know one another. Diana is smitten, and believes Poe is, too.  Until one night, at the end of the summer, when Poe gets her drunk, and rapes her. It changes Diana forever. Revenge comes back years later, just when she thinks she's able to let go and move on. However, Diana finds out revenge isn't that easy. Diana "Daisy" Shoemaker is married to Hal, an older, handsome lawyer. Their daughter Beatrice is a teenager who recently was kic...

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Gambar
  Click here to order from Amazon I've got mixed feelings about Libertie. I was excited to read it and was looking for a good historical novel. It delivered in some ways, and fell flat in others.  Libertie is about a young woman who is the daughter of a light skinned female doctor living near New York City in the mid-late 19th century. Libertie's mother often passes for white, but Libertie, on the other hand, is very dark-so much so that people comment on her skin often. Her mother's deepest wish is to have Libertie become a doctor and join in her practice. Libertie, for a long time, also believes in this dream, but as she grows older, her enthusiasm fades.  Libertie witnesses her mother bring a man back to life after he's escape slavery by being drugged and put in a coffin. That episode leaves Ben Daisy mentally fragile, as does his inability to come to peace with his escape from slavery.  Libertie sees first hand her mother's attempts to cure Ben--a...

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Gambar
Order here from Amazon This was definitely a novel that hooked me from the beginning. I know I'm really into a book when I get annoyed at everyday life getting in the way of me sitting and reading! I had to wait an extra day this weekend to focus on the last hundred pages   this morning and woke up early just to finish.  I'll warn folks right now that there are some gruesome parts in the story. So if you have a queasy stomach you are forewarned.  This novel takes place in the Swiss Alps at a new resort called Le Sommet. This resort is unusual in that it was a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients back in the 1920-30's.  Not a place I'd want to stay at, for sure. But  it's been redone at great expense and is upscale luxury for those who want to ski or be pampered in the spa.  Elin Warner has arrived with her boyfriend Will for an engagement part for her brother Isaac and his fiancé Laure. Elin is a mess. She's a police officer from En...

Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

Gambar
  This is one of those series of books that I've seen around so many times over the years, and never picked it up. The new show on Netflix (September 23) had me deciding it was finally time to read the first in the series and see just what it was about. I had another one of those "why did I wait so long?!" moments when I finished it this morning.  Enola Holmes is the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. Years after her brothers were born, their mother produced Enola, embarrassingly at an older age when respectable women didn't have babies. Enola is now fourteen, and it's her birthday.  She lives with her mother at the family estate, and she's had a pretty free life since her father died years ago, and her brothers have not visited in all that time. She's smart, quick, and loves to ride her bike. She's corset free, and happy about it. Until the morning of her birthday, when her mother steps out the door and never returns.  Enola doesn't u...

The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

Gambar
This book has been so patient with me. I bought it in 2017, and it has had a place of prominence on my bookcase. The bookcase that I walk past multiple times a day; the one just outside my kitchen. The bright cover always catches my eye, and I think "I've got to read that someday".  It took a pandemic, but here we are--it's read, and I'm so glad I waited until now to dive into it.  I read Abbi's novel The Bookish Life of Nina Hill    last August (click on the title for my review) and loved Abbi's style of writing: a bit of snark, a bit of humor, and a whole lot of heart. Contemporary women's fiction that I really enjoy, and sometimes have a hard time finding just the right fit. Abbi's writing fits me perfectly. So when I realized this was the same author, I really wanted to read it--and I needed something a bit lighter, and something that had to do with gardening.  Lilian Girvan is a single mother of two young girls: Annabel and Clare. Her hu...

The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street by Karen White

Gambar
It's safe to say I'm a HUGE Karen White fan, and especially of her Tradd Street series. I eagerly await the next in the series, and dang it all-- I found out there's going to be just one more in the series. I'm glad, because this one ends with a bit of a cliffhanger that absolutely must be resolved.  I don't want to give a lot away, since this is the sixth in the series. But the basics of the series I can certainly share: Melanie is a real estate agent in her hometown of Charleston. She sells a lot of old historic homes, and she loathes them, mostly because she can see and hear the dead. A town with the history of Charleston has spirits everywhere, and Melanie isn't a fan of her talent, inherited from her opera singing mother.  Melanie's home on Tradd Street was inherited from an old man who enjoyed Melanie's company, and knew of her talents. He was convinced his home would be safe in her hands. And through this series, it is safe in her hands after she ...

Death and Other Happy Endings by Melanie Cantor

Gambar
What would you do if you only had 90 days to live? How would you handle it? Denial? Rage? Give up? Or, as Jennifer Cole does, refuse to take the medicines the doctor prescribes, and decide to mark the days off the calendar?  Well, Jennifer does more than that. She realizes this is her one final chance to let three people who shaped her life know exactly what they did to her. Those people are: her older sister Isabelle, her ex-husband Andy, and her ex-boyfriend, Harry.  Isabelle  --the pretty one (Jennifer is the smart one) who cruelly snatched Jennifer's college boyfriend away from her, and lives a happily married life with two perfect daughters, and never has anything nice to say to Jennifer.  Andy, her ex-husband, who left her for another woman (the horrid Elizabeth) after Jennifer's third miscarriage, is a complete toad. Jennifer thought they had a happy marriage, and his announcement that he had been having an affair and was leaving her were low blows. Even ...

The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story by Cara Robertson

Gambar
I'm always interested in reading about Lizzie Borden, her life, and of course the infamous murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts on August 4, 1892. Not only was she found not guilty of their murders, but Lizzie and her sister Emma inherited their father's modest fortune, and she never left Fall River. Instead, she bought a large house, named it Maplecroft, and lived the life of a shunned citizen until her death in 1927.   The Trial of Lizzie Borden is an examination of the murder, inquest, and trial that took place in 1892-93. What I like about Cara Robertson's approach is that she doesn't try to solve the mystery--did Lizzie do it? If not who did? Instead, she presents all the evidence, the trial transcripts, and all of the newspaper headlines and articles of the day. You decide, at the end, whether you believe she committed the murders-and if she did, if she acted alone, or was in cahoots with her sister.  What I find fascinati...

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

Gambar
I've been waiting for the latest Simone St. James to be released for MONTHS.  I've read all of her books, and in my opinion, this is her best book.  One of the main reasons I love Simone's novels so much is because they're ghost stories. I have been a fan of ghosty stories since I was a little kid.  These are like Mary Downing Hahn books for adults.   What makes Broken Girls different than her previous novels is the modern setting. Set in the small town of Barrons, Vermont, the narrative moves between 1950 and 2014. In 2014, 37 year old Fiona Sheridan still struggles to move past her older sister's brutal murder in 1994.  Found on the playing fields near Idlewild Hall, a boarding school for girls, her sister Deb's boyfriend was convicted and has spent the last 20 years in jail. Fiona saw the destruction of her parent's marriage, and the unraveling of her famous journalist father's career as a result of that dark November night.  She herself, a jou...

I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around by Ann Garvin

Gambar
My friend Mad loaned me her copy of this novel, otherwise I would have missed it completely.  It took me awhile to get around to reading it, but it is a quick read once you start.  It is funny, sad, and captures the stress of trying to take care of an aging parent while still attempting to have a life. Tig Monahan is a woman in the middle of a whole lot of change.  Her job as a therapist is ending, her boyfriend Pete is moving to Hawaii and expects Tig to come along with him; her mother Hallie is suffering from dementia and has just been moved to a nursing home.  Tig is unhappy, and the world is moving way too fast for her to cope.  It's especially hard for Tig to reconcile the woman her mother is now with the woman she used to be.  A successful veterinarian with her own practice; a single mother bringing up two girls after her husband's unexpected death.  A take charge, no fear kind of lady.  But that's all gone now; Hallie is lost in her memorie...

The Rules of Love and Grammar by Mary Simses

Gambar
I read Mary Simses' first novel The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe  last year, and while I enjoyed it, wasn't wowed by it.  In her second novel, Mary Simses does a much better job keeping my interest, but I still have some issues with characters and plot.   Grace Hammond is a 33 year old New Yorker who comes home to Dorset, Connecticut one summer to stay with her parents while the ceiling in her apartment is repaired after a water leak in the apartment above hers.  She's also just broken up with her boyfriend, and lost her job.  A whole lot of misfortune all at once.  Fleeing to her parent's house gives her time to lick her wounds and figure out what she's going to do when she returns to New York.   That summer, director Peter Brooks is in Dorset filming a movie that is semi-autobiographical.  He's a son of Dorset, and people are very excited to have a famous director and his stars descend on the town.  Grace and Peter were friends ...