Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Myers

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Posted on September 15, 2014

Accidents of Marriage

by Randy Susan Meyers

published by Atria Books

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

This is a very well written story of the ugliness of life. Maddy and Ben are married and raising three children in Boston. Maddy works full time as a social worker, while also raising the children. Ben is a public defender who worked long hours. He is also a very angry person, who regularly explodes at his wife and children. One day, Ben is running late when Maddy calls him for a ride after her car is towed. His anger and frustration grows so out of control on the ride into the city and his road rage leads to a devastating accident. Maddy suffers a serious brain injury and a very long recovery is in her future. The story then focuses on the aftermath of the accident and the impact it has on the whole family, especially Ben, Maddy, and their teenage daughter Emma. Ben fears he will be brought up on charges and does his best to convince himself and everyone around him that he was not at fault. Emma is left to care for her two younger siblings and Maddy is understandably frustrated at her slow and painful recovery.

While I was frustrated at times with the story, it was captivating. I felt terrible for Maddy, yet wondered why she would allow herself and her children to be continually abused emotionally by Ben. Emma had most of my sympathy, as the teenager who has way too much thrust on her all at once, without any adult guidance. This was a very good story of a dysfunctional family doing its best to heal. The author shows us how damaging words can really be.

Summary

Accidents of Marriage explores a topic rarely shown in fiction: the destruction left in the wake of spouse’s verbal fury. Ben never meant to hurt Maddy. He never imagined his recklessness would lead to tragedy.

Maddy is a social worker trying to balance her career and three children. Years ago, she fell in love with Ben, a public defender, drawn to his fiery passion, but now he’s lashing out at her during his periodic verbal furies. She vacillates between tiptoeing around him and asserting herself for the sake of their kids – which works to keep a fragile peace – until the rainy day when they’re together in the car and Ben’s volatile temper gets the best of him, leaving Maddy in the hospital fighting for her life.

Randy Susan Meyers takes us inside the hearts and minds of her characters, alternating among the perspectives of Maddy, Ben, and their fourteen-year-old daughter. Accidents of Marriage is a provocative and stunning novel that will resonate deeply with women from all walks of life, ultimately revealing the challenges of family, faith, and forgiveness.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

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Posted on September 5, 2014

The Children Act

by Ian McEwan

published by Nan A. Talese

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

I am not sure why I wanted to read this book, other than the subject really interested me. I have strange feelings toward the author. I respect his talent immensely, but can not help but feel very bad after I read a book by him. Atonement, maybe his best known novel, is wonderfully written, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. I think I feel the same about this book. The part of the book that deals with law is fascinating, as is the main character Fiona, when she is dealing with a case, or thinking on others. It is her personal life that is a mess, and just gets messier. As the story unfolds, I cheer Fiona along. I sort of wish she would go all crazy on her idiot husband when he asks for an open marriage, but totally credit her for not breaking down and being all weepy- why cry your eyes out for a total jerk. I loved the case of the 17 year old Jehovah’s Witness, who is choosing to follow his religion rather than accept a blood transfusion that will save his life. As Fiona delves into the law behind this case- The Children Act- we see not only her intelligence, but also her humanity. Unfortunately, Mr. McEwan doesn’t like to wrap thing up in nice little packages, but prefers to show the harsh realities of life. Even the best characters have flaws, and they always come out. I would definitely recommend this book. It is a very well written story that left me feeling sad.

Summary

Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child’s welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.
But Fiona’s professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses. But Jack doesn’t leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case—as well as her crumbling marriage—tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.

The Tumble Inn- a review

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Posted on August 18, 2014

The Tumble Inn

by William Loizeaux

published by Syracuse University Press

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

I admit it- I chose this book TOTALLY based on the cover. Look at it- so peaceful, adirondack chair right on the lake, a little sepia tone. The summary intrigued me too- pretty much turning in your boring life to do something so different and challenging- so exciting. I loved journeying through the first few years at the Tumble Inn with Mark and Fran. This was the fasted and lightest part of the book. When their child, Nat, becomes a teenager, the story slows down and becomes a little deeper. Then tragedy strikes this small family and the pain and sadness seeps through to the reader. I finished this book quickly, as the story moves fast at first, and the writing is very smooth. Though not exactly what I was expecting- something a little lighter, like an early Tom Hanks movie?-I would definitely recommend this. Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?

Summary

Tired of their high school teaching jobs and discouraged by their failed attempts at conceiving a child, Mark and Fran Finley decide they need a change in their lives. Abruptly, they leave their friends and family in suburban New Jersey to begin anew as innkeepers on a secluded lake in the Adirondack Mountains. There they muddle through their first season at the inn, serving barely edible dinners to guests, stranding themselves in chest-deep snowdrifts, and somehow, miraculously, amid swarms of ravenous black flies, conceiving a child, a girl they name Nat. Years later, when Mark and Fran are nearing middle age and Nat is a troubled teenager, Mark’s life is ripped apart, forever changed, and he must choose between returning to his old home in New Jersey or trying to rebuild what is left of his life and family in the place of his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.

The Tumble Inn is a moving drama about home and about the fragility and resilience of love

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

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Posted on August 8, 2014

The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

published by Atria Books

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

This is the story of the Bird family that live in a beautiful cottage in Cotswolds- Lorelei and Colin, and their four children. We begin on Easter Sunday, 1981 and when life seemed perfect and the following 30 years. The story is told in flashbacks from the perspectives of different characters and always at the heart is tragic Lorelei. Death, trauma, and mental illness plague the family and the different relationships that make it up are show to the reader in glaring honesty.

When I started reading this book, I thought it would be like many others I have come across- odd family, tragedy, and growth- but it was SO much more. Lisa Jewell has woven a fascinating story here and I didn’t want it to end. This is definitely a book to read.

Summary

Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and tow-headed twins Rory and Rhys all attend the village school and eat home-cooked meals together every night. Their father is a sweet gangly man named Colin, who still looks like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish, round-framed glasses. Their mother is a beautiful hippy named Lorelei, who exists entirely in the moment. And she makes every moment sparkle in her children’s lives.

Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they’ve never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in — and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family’s desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home

The Girls of August by Anne Rivers Siddons

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Posted on July 30, 2014

The Girls of August

by Anne Rivers Siddons

published by Grand Central Publishing

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

This was a fun, very quick read (2 days max). I enjoy the flow of Siddons’ writing and usually like the work itself quite a bit, but I felt like this book was missing something. It takes place on a small Gullah island off of Charleston, SC. Three women who became friends years before when their husbands were in medical school together used to vacation every August together, but stopped a few years earlier after the sudden death of their fourth friend. They are now taking another vacation, with the new wife of their late friend’s husband, a 23 year old whom they all hate. Each of these women are struggling with their own personal demons. I liked the premise, but it seemed strange to me why these women would spend two whole weeks with a young girl they really dislike, and were pretty mean to. I almost wish the author would have given us the first half of these women’s story- how they met, their early friendship, and their yearly reunions. This was enjoyable, but it definitely left me wanting more from the story.

Summary

Every August, four women would gather together to spend a week at the beach, renting a new house each year. The ritual began when they were in their twenties and their husbands were in medical school, and became a mainstay of every summer thereafter. Their only criteria was oceanfront and isolation, their only desire to strengthen their far-flung friendships. They called themselves the Girls of August. But when one of the Girls dies tragically, the group slowly drifts apart and their vacations together are brought to a halt. Years later, a new marriage reunites them and they decide to come together once again on a remote barrier island off the South Carolina coast. There, far from civilization, the women make startling discoveries that will change them in ways they never expected.

About the Author

Born Sybil Anne Rivers in Atlanta, Georgia, she was raised in Fairburn, Georgia, and attended Auburn University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority.
While at Auburn she wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, that favored integration. The university administration attempted to suppress the column, and ultimately fired her, and the column garnered national attention. She later became a senior editor for Atlanta magazine. At the age of thirty she married Heyward Siddons, and she and her husband now live in Charleston, South Carolina, and spend summers in Maine.

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

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Posted on July 24, 2014

One Plus One

by Jojo Moyes

published by Pamela Dorman Books

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

I am a big fan of this author and have enjoyed her books in the past, so I was really looking forward to reading this. It honestly started a little slow for me. I could not really believe what a mess Jess’s life was, or how royally Ed could screw up without someone stopping him. Once they actually got on the road and headed to Scotland on their crazy road trip to the Math Olympiad, I was totally hooked. I loved these two main characters and how funny they were when they interacted. I also love how good of a mom Jess is trying to be and how she is always thinking things will work out. This is a lite and fun read- a little different from Moyes’ other work, but very well written and engaging.

Summary

Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight-in-shining-armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages . . . maybe ever.

My Rating

4 out of 5

The Collector of Dying Breaths

1 Comment

Posted on July 7, 2014

The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M.J. Rose

published by Atria Books

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

My Review

It turns out this is the 5th book in the author’s Reincarnationist series, yet that did not take anything away from this story, though reading the 3rd and 4th books might help little with the backstory. I really enjoyed this book, as I love when there is a story behind things such as scents and flowers. I loved the story of the perfumer Rene le Florentin, his apprenticeship with the Monks, and his eventual rise to perfumer of the powerful Catherine de Medici. There was so much espionage, intrigue, and murder in the royal court. Add to that the powerful motivation to find the secret f immortality by collecting the dying breath of a person.

The story goes back and forth between Rene and present day with mythologist Jac L’Etoile. Hers is the story that might be aided by reading the previous two books in the series, but only a little. She becomes embroiled in finishing the work of Rene, after the mysterious death of her brother.

A great read that I did not want to put down- I definitely recommend this book!

Summary

Florence, Italy—1533: An orphan named René le Florentin is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. Traveling with the young duchessina from Italy to France, René brings with him a cache of secret documents from the monastery where he was trained: recipes for exotic fragrances and potent medicines—and a formula for an alchemic process said to have the potential to reanimate the dead. In France, René becomes not only the greatest perfumer in the country but the most dangerous, creating deadly poisons for his Queen to use against her rivals. But while mixing herbs and essences under the light of flickering candles, Rene doesn’t begin to imagine the tragic and personal consequences for which his lethal potions will be responsible.

Paris, France—The Present: A renowned mythologist, Jac L’Etoile, is trying to recover from personal heartache by throwing herself into her work, learns of the 16th century perfumer who may have been working on an elixir that would unlock the secret to immortality. She becomes obsessed with René le Florentin’s work—particularly when she discovers the dying breathes he had collected during his lifetime. Jac’s efforts put her in the path of her estranged lover, Griffin North, a linguist who has already begun translating René le Florentin’s mysterious formula. Together they confront an eccentric heiress in possession of a world-class art collection. A woman who has her own dark purpose for the elixir… a purpose for which she believes the ends will justify her deadly means. This mesmerizing gothic tale of passion and obsession crisscrosses time, zigzagging from the violent days of Catherine de Medici’s court to twenty-first century France. Fiery and lush, set against deep, wild forests and dimly lit chateaus, The Collector of Dying Breaths illuminates the true path to immortality: the legacies we leave behind.

The Art of Arranging Flowers

Vienna Nocturne

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Posted on May 26, 2014

Vienna Nocturne

by Vivien Shotwell

published by Ballantine Books

2014

I received this book from the publisher through Librarything in exchange for an honest review.

Summary

In late-eighteenth-century London, a young girl takes her first singing lessons with a mysterious castrato in exile. Her life is forever changed. Having learned everything he can teach her, Anna leaves behind all the security and familiarity of home and journeys to Naples and Venice to struggle and triumph in Italy’s greatest opera houses. Only sixteen, she finds herself in an intoxicating world of theaters, nobility, and vice, overwhelmed by her newfound freedom and fame. Her first bitter experience of love and heartbreak inevitably follow.

Within a few years, Anna is invited to sing in Vienna, the City of Music, by the emperor himself. There, in a teasing game of theft and play, Anna first meets Mozart, a young virtuoso pianist and striving, prodigiously talented composer. They are matched in intellect and talent, and an immediate and undeniable charge forms between the two, despite both being married to others.

As her star rises in Vienna and her personal life deteriorates, Anna experiences an ultimate crisis. During this trying time, her only light is Mozart: his energy, his determination in her, and his art. She, in turn, becomes his hope and inspiration, and his joy, as he writes for her some of his most exquisite and enduring arias—music that will live on as his masterworks.

Rich in historical detail and beautifully wrought by Vivien Shotwell, an author who is herself an opera singer, Vienna Nocturne is a dramatic tour de force of a woman’s struggle to find love and fame in an eighteenth-century world that controls and limits her at every turn.

My Review

Vienna Nocturne is a well written historical fiction novel by first time author Vivien Shotwell, a classically trained singer. It tells the story of real life English soprano Anna Storace, and imagines a very complex and loving relationship between the singer and the composer Wolfgang Mozart. This is a wonderful story of live, passion, and music. The love between Anna and Mozart was so beautifully written,even though no actual evidence exists that Mozart and Storace had an affair, he did write some of his most beautiful arias for her, including the role of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you enjoy opera and/or historical fiction.

More about the author

website

http://vivienshotwell.com

Vivien Shotwell is a classically trained singer with degrees from Williams College, the Yale School of Music, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. As an undergraduate voice student at Williams, Shotwell first sang the beautiful aria “Non temer, amato bene” (“Don’t fear, greatly beloved”), which Mozart wrote for and performed with the young soprano Anna Storace, and knew she had to tell their story. A daughter of independent booksellers, Shotwell was born in Colorado, raised in Nova Scotia, and now divides her time between Halifax, Nova Scotia, and New Haven, Connecticut. This is her first novel.

Left Neglected

5 Comments

Posted on May 14, 2014

Left Neglected

by Lisa Genova

published by Gallery Books

2011

I borrowed a copy of this book from my local library.

Summary

Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children—Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus. Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son’s teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it’s a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny—her new, true life—may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice.

My Review

I honestly liked this book, even though I wasn’t into it at first. And honestly, the timing was a little creepy. I finished this book the day after a woman in North Carolina died when her car veered into oncoming traffic. If you haven’t heard about this yet, here is a link. She had just seconds earlier posted on Facebook that the lyrics to the song Happy made her happy. In this book, Sarah is so intent on getting as much work done as she can that she does almost the same- looks down at her phone while driving on the highway and veers into oncoming traffic. While she was working and not posting on FB, both fiction and reality scare the hell out of me. I try my best to not do this ever while behind the wheel, but it has become so prevalent in our society. My son is taking Drivers Ed now, and will be able to drive with a permit when he turns 16 in August. I would take diapers and spit up any day over this new reality of mine.

Back to the book- I really did enjoy it. Lisa Genova brings us an interesting character in Sarah Nickerson. Watching her struggle not only with this bizarre condition. but also with her changing relationship with all f her family kept me captivated in an unexpected way. I would definitely recommend this book!