Counting by 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, is a novel about a very gifted twelve year old girl, Willow Chance, who loses her adopted parents in a car accident and has nowhere to go. Willow is a genius, and most likely on the aspergers spectrum, although it never says that for sure. She is taken in by a Vietnamese family, who she barely knows. She is also placed in the care of a lazy school counselor, and befriends a Mexican…
Small Blessings, by Martha Woodroof, is a sweet and funny novel about second chances. Set in a small college town in Virginia, four unlikely people come together to form a family. Woodroof has a gift for creating characters that the reader cares about. I found myself rooting for them all from the beginning. Funny, witty, charming, Small Blessings is a worthwhile read.
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife is a fascinating book that had me hooked for the first three quarters. Niffenegger is an intelligent writer, who creates unusual charcters that really draw the reader in, and I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen. It is about two 21 year old twins from Chicago who inherit their aunt’s flat in London when she dies. They have never met her and can’t figure out why…
Buster Midnight’s Cafe by Sandra Dallas is a story set in Butte, Montana. Dallas is a good storyteller, but I found the character names all a bit distracting, Effa Commander, Whippy Bird, Buster Midnight, to name a few. The story is about three friends growing up in prohibition era Montana. One of them first becomes a prostitute, then makes it big as a movie star in California. They fall in love, get married, live through the war, and through it…
Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen is an enchanting book about family, friendship and second chances, filled with just the right amount of magic. Addison Allen brings the world of Lost Lake Georgia so vividly to life in these pages, I could almost feel the humidity and sense the presence of alligators. I was longing to visit there. A wonderful read, that fans of her earlier novels will love, as well as readers new to Addison Allen.
Its not often that a book just stops me in my tracks, so much so that I have to keep putting it down and walking away while I let certain passages sink in. A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez is just that type of book. Julia Alvarez is one of my favorite Latin American writers Alvarez is from the Dominican Republic. I have always loved her novels and her poetry, but this little book is something much more personal….
That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay is a novel about two unlikely friends; one a famous American author and the other a shy English woman, who loves to garden. They find a common interest in their love of food and cooking. Their relationship takes place only through correspondence, yet it quickly becomes the most important relationship in both of their lives. At first I wasn’t drawn in to the characters, it seemed just another story of privileged people whining…
Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell is historical fiction based on Mozart’s life in late 18th century Vienna, and the life of opera singer Anna Storace. Shotwell imagines Mozart and Anna in love, even though they are married to other people. In this story Anna is his muse. It’s a wonderful picture of life in the opera at the time, in London, Italy and especially Vienna. Shotwell, an opera singer herself, has done much research and fills the book with vivid…
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan is a novel that has a fascinating concept, but didn’t really work as a good story. Egan explores the idea of image, that we are what we see. It is the story of a model in NYC who gets in a horrible car crash and her face, though still beautiful, is unrecognizable even to those who used to know her well. A plain looking teenage girl embarks on her own dangerous journey to be…
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout is a novel about family; two brothers and a sister raised in Maine, the brothers both become lawyers and move to New York, they drift apart and come back together through a family crises. Strout is a master at creating characters that feel so real it’s almost as if we already know them. She delves into the inner life of each character and brings their emotions to the page in the way few writers…