Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg is a beautifully written and engaging novel that I couldn’t put down. Eve, the main character, lost her first husband in a car crash thirteen years ago. Chuck, her second, and much younger husband, has just walked out on her and the kids during the middle of a garage sale never to return. Eve is left to pick up the pieces. Rosenberg has created a character in Eve that is so real, sad, flawed, vulnerable,…
Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago, is historical fiction about 19th century Puerto Rico, during the days of the sugar cane plantations. I was really excited to read this novel, as I have loved all of Santiago’s other books. This is the story of Ana, who left Spain and travelled to Puerto Rico with two brothers to take over a sugar cane plantation during the mid-1800’s. We follow Ana through her adventure to the new world, falling in love, being the patrona of a plantation,…
Disappearing Moon Cafe by Sky Lee is a fascinating and disturbing novel about four generations of Chinese women that make up the Wong family. Immigrants to Canada in the early 1900’s when there were 10 Chinese men to every 1 woman. This had many disastrous repercussion, one of which was rampant incest. While trying to keep track of all the people in this family tree and uncover all the secrets of their true identities, I felt quite overwhelmed. The story is…
This month’s choice for my local library’s book club pick is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I have seen the movie Smoke Signals, but didn’t know it was written by Alexie, and I haven’t read anything else by him. I was in for quite a wonderful surprise with this novel. Based on Alexie’s own life story as a teen growing up on a reservation in Wellpinit, Washington and going to an all white school 20…
Scones and Bones by Laura Childs is the first of the Tea Shop Mystery novels that I have read. I was simply drawn in by the cover and always love a book about a good cup of tea-and Childs knows her tea, that’s for sure! Like Alexander McCall Smith, Childs has written several different series of books. This is book #12 in her Tea Shop Mystery series, but each one stands alone. Filled with mystery and intrigue, pirate lore and…
When The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer came out, there was so much hype about it, I finally read it. I didn’t like it at all. However, I thought I would give her new book, The Uncoupling a try. Though I am still not a Wolitzer fan, I did like it more than The Ten Year Nap. Set in the suburbs in New Jersey at a small high school, we find out what happens when a new Drama teacher…
I usually really enjoy Sarah Addison Allen’s novels for the magic realism they are filled with. However, her latest, The Peach Keeper, is not my favorite. The book never really delved deep enough into the characters, especially the character of the myserious travelling salesman Tucker Devlin, who is at the heart of this story. I never really understood him at all, there just wasn’t much to go on. The novel is set in the South and follows two women into an unlikely…
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is a wonderful book to get lost in. A big, thick, well drawn out mystery starting with a little girl arriving alone by boat in Australia in 1913 and not knowing her name or where she came from. It’s such a delicious mystery that I don’t want to spoil the fun by telling too much here. Only that the little girl returns to Cornwall as a much older woman and searches for the truth…
Friendship Bread is a lovely, feel good novel from Hawaiian author Darien Gee. Set in the small town of Avalon, we meet 3 very different women, each healing from their own personal tragedies. They come together to share a cup tea and some Amish Friendshp Bread. Before long the whole town is involved. I loved the characters and the town that Gee has created and I wanted to bake right along with them. Recipes are given at the back of the…
The lastest offering from Elizabeth Berg, Once Upon a Time, There Was You, is not my favorite book by her. It is the story of John and Irene, long divorced whose only common interest is their 18 year old daughter Sadie. There were some very distubring events in this book which I was not expecting in a Berg novel. She used these, I think unecessarily, to bring John and Irene back together again to protect Sadie, and through the process, re-evaluate…