|
|
 Georgina Jackson is a serious, literary writer – which is her world means she’s writing quality stuff, but sales are low and people are uninterested. Though her first novel was a success by those standards, she’s struggling with book number two and has no idea whether she’ll be able to stay in her beloved England after her research money runs out. So when her agent pitches her as the ideal writer to complete a Jane Austen book based on a single chapter, Georgina knows she can’t do it – especially because she hasn’t ever read a single book by Jane Austen – but she capitulates anyway because she desperately needs the money.
I liked a lot of things about this book. For one thing, I can completely understand an American in love with England, especially London. I’m a ridiculous Anglophile myself and I could completely identify with Georgina’s longing to stay. I nodded my head every time she listed all the wonderful things she’d miss about England – and as she travels a bit searching for inspiration, I recognized the places she went and I could just feel the appeal coming through the book’s pages.
I also am a huge fan of Jane Austen – I love her work and I often get annoyed that people fail to see more than the romances which make up her books’ plotlines. (Seriously, why do we always dismiss things the minute we learn they’re romantic?) As she wanders the streets and bumps into all the people who are crazy about Jane Austen, Georgina listens to their conversations about the books and can’t understand why everyone cares. I was clamoring for her to just read them for herself – nothing irritates me more than someone who disdains a book without trying to read it first – but in the end I found I really liked her slow discovery of the books’ appeal. The author really got into how fabulous Austen’s books are and it formed a crucial part of the story; she had plenty of opportunities to explain just why her books have universal appeal even now.
I did think Georgina herself was annoying for most of the book, though; I’m not really the type of person who can understand constant procrastination with deadlines looming, so I just wanted her to sit down and write a book already. I’m no author but I can pretty reliably sit down and force out a couple thousand words a day; if she’d just done that from the start, she might have had something she could have worked with. And then there was her refusal to even read Jane Austen for pages on end, and her snobbery, despite the fact that she goes on trips to get into the proper atmosphere. She improved by the end in terms of openness, especially with a couple of sweet romantic interludes, but overall I had trouble understanding her and thus couldn’t really identify with her. The secondary characters were particularly charming, especially Henry and his 14 year old runaway sister, and did help to lessen the annoyance I felt with Georgina.
While the main character got on my nerves, I still found Writing Jane Austen to be a wonderful book in many ways. I think it would be perfectly suited to someone who loves Jane Austen or just loves England and London in particular.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review.
 Margaret Oades isn’t exactly thrilled that she has to move her entire family from England to New Zealand in the late nineteenth century, but she loves her husband and, as a woman with children, has few other options. And anyway, they will return in two years, or at least that’s the plan; her house is attacked by Maori, native New Zealanders, and she and her children are spirited into the night and enslaved for six years. In the meantime, Henry Oades, Margaret’s husband, is convinced that his family has perished, and moves to California, where he marries once again. When Margaret shows up on her doorstep, new wife Nancy Oades has no idea what to do – but the case of the two wives of Mr. Oades incites public scandal and personal difficulty that will impact the lives of all concerned in remarkable ways.
This was such an intriguing historical novel. First off, the initial setting of New Zealand in the late nineteenth century was fairly new to me in fiction, but New Zealand is one of the places I’ve had to write about at work, so I’ve done some research. This is the first time I can recall reading about it in fiction and it was marvelous to have it come to life, if only for a few pages before the horror happened. Throughout, through, I really enjoyed Johanna Moran’s writing, and I found the whole book smooth and atmospheric – the locations felt different and I appreciated each of them differently.
I also loved the characters here, mostly the wives. I immediately liked Margaret and found it hard to believe that I could like Nancy, too, but somehow I appreciated both wives and their difficulties while loving a single man. The novel conveys magnificently the strength of women; despite slurs again their reputations, physical violence, and simple jealousy, Nancy and Margaret remain admirable characters and hardly ever miss a step. While Mr. Oades, despite his seemingly kind and giving nature, remains just a shadow throughout the novel, even when he’s grief stricken about the deaths of his family members, the two women really come to life. If I couldn’t understand why they loved Henry, I could understand perfectly their reasons for staying with him; this is true of Margaret in particular. Nancy, it seems, could have easily left despite her recent marriage, but she is still in love with Henry.
The idea of this novel is great, too, in that it covers a little known lawsuit that actually existed in California. At this point, there appears to have been something of a hysteria against bigamy due to Mormons’ multiple marriages before reliable laws were enacted. I would find such censure in real life heartbreaking – as if Margaret Oades and her children hadn’t been through enough already – but sadly not unbelievable, especially not at this time. I was eager to know a few more details about the real life case and I wish someone would write an actual history about it.
Until then, though, The Wives of Henry Oades is a really engaging work of historical fiction – especially recommended if you’re interested in reading about strong women who make the best of what life hands them.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Amazon Vine program.
 Amandine is an aristocratic child born of scandal in Poland just before World War II. She is born nameless, with a heart condition that means her continued survival is unlikely. Unable to bear the child’s presence, Amandine’s grandmother sends her to foster in a convent in France, careful to hide all traces of her ancestry bar one, an heirloom necklace. She even tells her daughter, Amandine’s mother, that her daughter has died while having surgery as an infant. Instead, miraculously, Amandine grows up dreaming of her mother, finding substitutes along the way, but never losing grasp of the fact that she has a mother who might want her. When World War II breaks out, Amandine and her guardian Solange set out across France, determined to find a safe haven in a country torn apart by war, and perhaps to find someone who recognizes the peculiar antique necklace Amandine wears.
In terms of plot, Amandine gets off to a painful start. The first chapters are riddled with the old countess’s (the grandmother’s) memories and the story of Amandine’s birth. There are pages of description and little to no action. Once Amandine gets to the convent, things pick up slightly and it’s easy to feel for the poor girl. When she goes to school, she is constantly mocked and also suffers when she has to watch the other girls reunite each weekend with their families. She has her long term guardian, Solange, but she’s no substitute for Amandine’s mother, no matter how much they love one another. Even as a child, Amandine is full of spirit and determined to defend herself and those she cares about, which makes it very easy for us as readers to care for her in turn. The rest of the characters are very well fleshed out, with believable internal conflicts revealed fairly slowly as the first half goes on. I really felt that this was a book populated by people, not just characters, if that makes sense.
The plot picks up even more once the war arrives and with a few perspective shifts; the contrast between war-ravaged France and Poland and the initial chapters in the convent is striking. De Blasi effortlessly conveys the utter pointlessness of the war and the fragility of life at the time with a few well-written passages. Characters that were built up in the first chapters as complex human beings are struck down with barely a moment’s notice. The author’s writing is beautifully descriptive and I got a real feel for convent life and the French countryside, which makes the chapters about war even harder to read in comparison. And throughout, I was constantly hoping for Amandine to find her mother, which adds an extra layer of tension to the book’s concluding chapters.
Despite a slow start, Amandine revealed itself as a complex, engaging historical novel with strong characters and a distinct French atmosphere. It’s the perfect choice for the historical fiction reader craving a thoughtful read.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
 Tilly Farmer loves everything about her life. She loves her high school sweetheart husband, her job as a guidance counselor, and her residence in the same town she grew up in. She and her husband Tyler have decided to try and have a baby. As far as Tilly is concerned, her life is just about perfect. Then an old friend turns up in town, and Tilly gains the ability to see someone’s future when she looks at their photograph. In a matter of months, her perfect life has begun to unravel, and she has to face the uncomfortable truth that it may never have been perfect at all.
I went into this book with fairly low expectations. I know a lot of bloggers who really enjoyed this, but I usually am not a big fan of women’s fiction; people living in “my” world often don’t do it for me. I just mentioned this in another review, The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan. That didn’t happen here, and in fact I found myself really enjoying this novel, perhaps because Tilly is so very different from me that I might as well have been reading a book set in a fantasy world.
The truth that this novel revolves around is the fact that Tilly is willfuly blind. When the story starts, she expresses her enthusiasm for the high school prom and how eager she is to sponsor it. It’s very clear to us that she never quite got past high school and is constantly reliving those glory days every minute of her life. While helping students achieve their goals is admirable, Tilly never seems to have her own, and is instead content with what she has – or the illusion of it. She thinks it’s cute when her husband falls asleep watching sports instead of going to bed with her, believes her father has finished drinking, and tries to persuade her best friend to stay with her own high school sweetheart husband even though he’s cheated on her. Tilly needs that gift of clarity, and it’s only when she starts to confront the uneasy reality of her life that the whole book starts to shine.
What I think I liked most about this book is that it looks at what’s underneath the ideal American life. Tilly looks, sounds, and has even convinced herself that she’s happy. But she isn’t, and those issues only come out when you look a little closer. Her mother’s death, her father’s alcoholism, her dissatisfied and distanced husband, and even her own desire to take care of her siblings are all problems that she can only confront once reality is presented to her. She moves from contentment to happiness, which made the entire book a rewarding read. The ending is slightly open, but I was left with confidence that Tilly was on track to make the right decisions for her future.
The One That I Want left me eager to read more of Allison Winn Scotch’s work. If you enjoy women’s fiction, don’t miss this.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Read It Forward program.
 Project Noah is a secret government program to create the perfect super soldier by turning convicted criminals into vampires. In an ideal world, these vampires would then be set on their enemies; they’re so difficult to kill that a few of them could decimate armies. But this isn’t an ideal world, and there is no way to control the vampires. When they break free and the horror is unleashed on the entire United States, only a select group of survivors remain to live in the light and keep fighting for their humanity.
The Passage is easily this summer’s most hyped read. It’s been endorsed by famous authors and some of my favorite book bloggers alike, which made it essentially a must read for me, too. That’s why I snapped it up from Amazon Vine the minute I had the chance and took a long haul flight as the perfect opportunity to bury myself in this supernatural thriller.
I found it wasn’t a perfect read; for one thing, I expected it to be quite fast paced, but I had a hard time getting into it. With a full 7 hour flight, I wanted to find myself compelling enough to read the majority of it in one stroke, but I found it moved surprisingly slow at the beginning and couldn’t hold my attention while other stuff was going on. In the end it took me a good few days of holiday time to read, which was surprising for something I thought would be a heart-pounding thriller that would keep me up all night dying to know the resolution to the story.
It was very good, though, for the tale it was, and I was genuinely interested in the characters and the story as it progressed. I found I was much more interested in the story after the epidemic began; I liked in particular how the character Amy tied everything together and made the story a coherent whole instead of a few related storylines. The book is smoothly written, with moments of brilliance and mediocrity in about equal measure. It feels nicely epic, as it should when the whole world is essentially at stake after an apocalypse. And the ending – I am not even sure what to say about the ending, except that it leaves me wondering and I thought was the perfect way to finish it, while leaving me wondering what’s next if this is truly the first of a trilogy.
The Passage doesn’t quite live up to its over-hyped reputation, in my opinion, but it does provide an entertaining, scary, and often gripping read that is perfect for the beach, especially if you have a few hours to get going in the story. I would definitely recommend it to horror fans and in particular those who enjoyed The Stand by Stephen King.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free through the Amazon Vine program.
 In one of many falling-down apartment buildings in Siberia, a group of people are trying to live with a ghost who won’t leave them alone. Mircha died in the winter from a fall, and as such hasn’t been properly buried. So he feels free to haunt the inhabitants of the building; his wife and son, Azade and Vitek, Olga, a newspaper translator, her son Yuri, his socially conscious girlfriend, and Tanya, a dreamy former museum guide. When a group of judges suggest that the museum where Tanya works, a collection of replicas and fakes, be judged for an award and funding, Tanya is chosen for the task and must enlist the whole building to help her succeed. But with a reckless ghost and a group of untidy children regularly hanging around, she fears her goal is impossible.
I think my first reaction to this book is ambivalence. I am fascinated by Russia; I love Russian history, Russian literature, the Russian language (I studied it for years), and visiting the country is one of my goals in life. So I fully expected to love this book, and was disappointed that it didn’t quite live up to expectations.
For one thing, it just felt meandering all over. There’s some supernatural activity going on; there is rather obviously a ghost haunting an apartment building, for one thing, but there is also a hole that goes nowhere and sprouts peculiar objects and a couple other strange things. I like magic in books, obviously, but there didn’t seem a reason for it here. It didn’t add anything but confusion to me. The story itself isn’t really that coherent; there’s a goal, but the chapters switch between characters and the book loses momentum pretty quickly every time.
Secondly, I just felt the whole plot bordered on ridiculous. The museum is not really a museum. How could it have won any awards when it is basically just a bunch of fake stuff that Tanya has mostly made? Statues are made out of foam, paintings are imitations, and worst of all, the icons are made out of popsicle sticks, foil, and gum, personally by Tanya. I could understand that the author was trying to get across that Russia isn’t what Americans think it is, especially after they’ve visited, but for me she went a step too far and I just struggled to enjoy the book. Although I will admit I had to laugh when she showed the visitors their copy of the rather disgusting fetus exhibit, which I think was collected by Peter the Great originally. I’m pretty sure most people would have a similar reaction!
If I liked anything, I did like Tanya, a chubby Russian girl with big dreams, all of which she writes down in her little book. She wants to become a stewardess on Aeroflot, Russia’s best airline, but she needs to lose weight first and just can’t manage it. She’s also very in love with Yuri (although why, I couldn’t tell you) and longs for him to abandon his noisy, greedy girlfriend Zoya but isn’t quite sure how to get him for herself.
Unfortunately, the many strands of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight just never really tied together for me, and I didn’t quite get the point. Sadly disappointing.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 The Radleys live on a perfectly normal street in the perfectly normal town of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire. In fact, they do everything in order to be normal; they go to school, they go to book clubs, they even sometimes attend church. But the secret is that the Radleys aren’t normal, but it’s such a secret that their children don’t even know. They won’t be without that knowledge soon, though, and when they find out what they really are, they’ll struggle to keep it a secret for long.
The Radleys has been moderately hyped over here in the UK, so I was a little concerned as to how I was going to react to it when I finally got to read it for myself. Luckily I really enjoyed it, and I found it both an interesting fantasy novel and a critique of modern middle-class British life. The Radleys are vampires from a famous vampire family, but they choose to be abstainers. Peter, the father, has been a vampire his whole life, whereas his wife Helen was only converted after she fell in love with him. The two children, Clara and Rowan, start the novel with no idea that they’re vampires. They don’t know why they’re excessively pale and always wear sunscreen, are always tired during the day, or suffer from migraines on a regular basis. Then, Clara is attacked, and everything changes.
I liked that this book was an urban fantasy which is completely different from the rest – the world is the same except for vampires, but the story doesn’t center on a pretty girl. Instead, we have this middle class family who really struggle to have normal lives, except for a wayward relative who comes along to mess everything up every now and again. The beginning almost reminded me of Harry Potter, with the family trying desperately to be normal and even the children trying to pretend that they’re not something out of the ordinary. Of course, the stories are nowhere near the same in terms of plot, but that’s the closest comparison I could think of.
I not only appreciated the story for itself, but I thought it was a very British, very humorous take on middle class life over here. By being so very typical, the Radleys made me wonder what other “typical” middle class families might be hiding, and why we really need to put up that front of normalcy when we might all be just a little bit weird (though we’re clearly not vampires). It’s quite a clever book and undoubtedly I didn’t catch all the little jokes that Haig made, but I enjoyed it a lot when I did find them.
Overall, I would definitely recommend The Radleys and I’m glad it’s been picked up for a film version – I think it would make a great one. For more information and sample chapters, check out the Facebook page.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
 Verna Krone leaves school after eighth grade to help her family get by. She’s sent to help out at a farm, where the master of the house leers at her and she misses her family regularly. She doesn’t stay long, though, and through a series of jobs moves herself up in the world until she makes a connection that enables her to become a nurse. Verna sees her true purpose in life as helping people and somehow she ends up helping a well-respected black doctor perform abortions, a profession that at this point in history could never lead to anything good.
This book was incredibly compelling for me from beginning to end. We find out right at the start that Verna is helping the doctor with his abortions, then head back into the past to learn about her life and how she got there. Hers is really a very sad story of a woman constantly used and mistreated by men, which makes her hard and often unyielding – it’s no wonder she wants to help other women get out of their mistakes. She has enough bad relationships to make anyone wary of men.
I loved that this was essentially a true story rewritten in fiction. Part of me wondered if it would have actually been better as non-fiction, but I think it did its job really well. It does contain a number of little messages within; first and foremost that money isn’t really all that brings happiness. I think that, for most people, this is pretty obvious, but Verna was poor for so long that she truly thought money would solve her problems. It also focuses a lot on local politics towards the middle and end and the level of corruption was extremely depressing. I know these political machines existed to gain votes, but that doesn’t always make them easy.
The novel also deals with racial politics, especially at the end. Because Verna is white, she receives natural advantages, even when she’s poor. This is contrasted drastically with the doctor, who is black, and they have a number of uncomfortable interactions where the reader can simply feel the prejudice between them, the wrongness of it, and a desire to eradicate it.
Taylor’s choice to write the story in first person made Verna as a character very easy to feel close to despite her faults. I kept hoping for her life to get better, for her to learn a bit more about the good side of life, but she’s constantly battered on all sides. I did wish that we could have known a little more about the older Verna, when she became the author’s grandmother. Instead it ends just before that. But I think it’s a good sign that I was eager for more, to see how Verna kept on changing and growing as a person even into old age.
The Blue Orchard is a fascinating book that explores many issues of its time effectively and compelling. It’s the perfect historical fiction choice for those interested in a variety of aspects of postwar American life and I’d definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 This book is the sequel to Dragon Keeper. The books are virtually one story, so read that one first (and before you read this review!)
The dragons and their keepers continue their slow and perilous journey up the Rain Wilds river. As they journey closer to the land they hope is fabled Kelsingra, the secrets that the small society has kept from each other are finally coming clear. Thymara is astonished to discover that her fellow marked Rain Wilders are blatantly defying the rules of their society back in Trehaug and for the first time realizes that she can be more than just a strange-looking girl who should have been killed at birth. She also grows closer to Alise, former Bingtown lady, who also has a few uncomfortable truths about her life to face on the journey.
Robin Hobb is one of my favorite fantasy authors. I really enjoyed Dragon Keeper but I was disappointed that it ended so abruptly – it was pretty clear to me that the two were truly meant to be one book. So I wasn’t surprised that this picked up exactly where the last left off; it followed through really well and successfully concluded this story and in turn the story of the dragons which had really begun in the Liveship Traders trilogy. This is perfectly understandable even if you haven’t read that trilogy, though; it’s just a matter of added depth and richness to Hobb’s world.
This is a book I was thrilled to sink my teeth into. I love living in Robin Hobb’s worlds and I could have happily spent way more than 500 pages immersed in this one. The characters are always so interesting and engaging and that’s especially so in this one. Their disputes really come to a head and all secrets from the first book are finally revealed and even developed further.
This book is really about the women; Thymara and Alise each find their freedom in different ways. They’re equally trapped by society before the embark on their journey; Thymara is so heavily marked that she’s forever an outcast, forbidden love, children, or a normal life and considered an abomination. Alise, on the other hand, is stifled by fitting in perfectly, by marrying a man she did not love and who did not love her but who was an excellent catch nonetheless. By traveling with the dragons, both women find themselves and embrace their freedom to be who they want to be, not who society says they should be.
Robin Hobb continues to produce writing that is genuinely amongst the best in epic fantasy today. Honestly, I wish I could read all of her books over again for the first time. Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven together make up a wonderful duology and one that I will happily recommend to all who enjoy fantasy.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Amazon Vine program.
 Young Louisa May Alcott dreams of becoming a writer. She’s already published stories and dreams of making her living with her pen, but her father’s situation necessitates a move to the tiny town of Walpole, New Hampshire. Her family is forced to live on the charity of others due to her father’s refusal to work, but the four Alcott girls are still welcomed by the local townspeople. The young people, naturally, form their own groups, and within them a number of love stories take place. For Louisa, the young shopkeeper Joseph represents a different life, but she struggles to fit her love for him in with her aspirations as a writer.
I expected to love this book since it seems almost everyone I know has. I did enjoy it, but I definitely failed to fall in love with it. I loved Little Women as a child; it was the first novel I ever managed to read and I’ve read it countless times since then. I still hadn’t had any idea that the family was based on Alcott’s own, in some respects, but I clearly recognized many of the characters and enjoyed that connection in particular. I was, of course, one of the many girls who couldn’t understand why Jo didn’t marry Laurie (yep, I was a romantic when I was eight years old), but I could understand Louisa’s decisions here.
Louisa’s father Bronson was easily the most irritating character of the book for me. He lectures his daughters and his wife on proper behavior and tries to inspire his “values” in them, but despite his perfectly able-bodied status he refuses to work and instead spends days in his study reading and writing. Not for profit, of course; work is somehow not appropriate for him but it’s fine for his daughters to go off and earn money to support his lifestyle. It all made me quite angry, especially that the women were in such a position that they couldn’t leave him to suffer along on his own as they should have done.
I liked the romances and the community of young people; I thought it was all sweet and well done, even if I already knew how it was all going to end due to knowing a little about Alcott’s life. Knowing the ending of the book had no influence on how I felt about the middle bit, even if I did wish Louisa would run off to be with Joseph. I really wanted more of the genuine historical background; I understand that Alcott burned her letters
To be honest I’m not sure why I didn’t love it; I felt it was lacking something, but it’s hard to put my finger on it. I feel I should have enjoyed more a book with such strong literary and historical ties. Though I can recommend The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, especially to fans of Little Women, I wish I had felt towards it what everyone else seems to.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Amazon Vine program.
|
|
Recent Comments