What makes a happy family?
That's one of the questions this book proposes.
Willa and her mom escaped from Texas and Willa's abusive father. In Pennsylvania, her mom met Jack, married him, and they all live together with Jack's two daughters.
And they all actually get along and like each other. Oh, there are issues, of course. Jack's ex-wife is rich so Willa's step sisters get lots of expensive clothes and trips and lessons. But Willa doesn't seem to mind. Or does she?
Maybe that is why she sneaks down to the cellar to cut herself.
When Willa's biological father murders his new wife and two of Willa's half sisters then abducts the other child and heads to Pennsylvnia to find Willa, she finds out what her present family is made of. She also finds out what she is made of.
Susan Beth Pfeffer has written a YA novel that explores the workings of a blended family and has created a memorable character in Willa who is forced to find and stand up for herself. So many teenagers, nowadays, must deal with broken families. It's nice to see a book deal with modern issues featuring a strong female character.
My own daughter and her husband have split up and I worry how that will affect Kylie. She's only five, now, but it's bound to have some repercussions on her as she gets older. This is one book I'll be recommending she read in a few years.
I've been reading such good books lately! And this one is no exception. I didn't really like the cover but I'm glad I gave it a try, anyway.
Jane has escaped from a mental hospital and is now searching for her home...not the home where her biological parents live, but the place she was born...in the 1800s. Jane has images of another existence from another era and will stop at nothing to discover who she really is.
This novel is filled with great characters and the writing is down-to-earth...until it hits us with the supernatural. Sarah Kernochan does a superb job of making the extraordinary feel ordinary.
Holy tearjerker! I haven't read a novel like this, where I had to have a box of Kleenex nearby, for quite some time.
This book flips back and forth between Victoria Jones as an angry, emancipated eighteen-year-old living on her own to ten-year-old Victoria, damaged by foster care, living with Elizabeth who wants to adopt her. We know it's not going to happen right from the get-go but what transpired to force Victoria back into the system is what keeps this story moving.
Elizabeth is the one who taught her all about the language of flowers and Victoria is able to use that knowledge to help her begin a new life. But, first, she has to learn how to live without hating everyone and everything.
I'm a sucker for flowers, anyway, so this book with its many references to them was right up my alley! I stayed up late last night reading and wiping tears away!
I promised myself no more detours while reading this book. Luckily, it rained here most of last week so I had lots of time to finish it. And it wasn't difficult. There's just something about the characters in this novel that made me want to keep turning the pages.
The Kelleher family has beachfront property in Cape Neddick, Maine. (That's only about twenty miles from me so I'm familiar with the area.) The patriarch, Daniel, won it in a bet. For years they've enjoyed vacationing there. Now, Daniel is dead and his widow must decide what to do with it.
The book centers on four female characters: Alice, the matriarch, who was totally unsuited for motherhood and who has a devastating secret she's held inside for years; Kathleen, her daughter who has never gotten along with her; Maggie, Kathleen's daughter, pregnant and alone; and Ann Marie, Alice's son's wife, the only other family member Alice can stand.
They all gather at their summer home for a two-week period and sparks fly. These characters are so well drawn that even when you hate them, you love them. Told with humor and insight, this book and these people will stay with me for a long time.
I ordered Good Poems: American Places in the spring and have been slowly making my way cross country poem by poem.
Garrison Keillor collected poems of place about America and compiled them into this book. He's so smart! He knows how to pick poems that are easy to understand but have literary value, also.
I really enjoyed this road trip!
My friend, Deirdre, gave me the book Maine as a retirement gift a couple weeks ago. I love it! But I haven't finished it yet. Why? Because it's a real book and too big to take on the motorcycle with me. Instead I had my iPhone with the Kindle app on it when the bike broke down on the side of the road. While my husband was fixing it, I started reading Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. It was a quick read so I finished it before going back to Maine.
Gabrielle Hamilton grew up with a French mother who made exotic dishes that Gabrielle loved. She never forgot them. But, it took her many years and many mishaps to actually do something productive with her love of good food. She is now the owner of Prune, a restaurant in NYCity.
She's also a great writer! Each page is filled with delicious food and metaphors. Yum!
Then I returned to Maine.
But, it happened again! This time we were at the bait shop and I was waiting. So, I found a shady spot to sit outside and started another book on my iPhone.
I knew I'd zip right through this James Patterson novel. And I did.
Matthew Bannon is an art student. One day he finds a bag full of diamonds and decides to keep it. But some really bad people want those diamonds back and will stop at nothing to get them.
This is a typical Patterson thriller complete with surprise plot twists and a satisfying but intriguing ending.
Now, I'm going back to Maine. That's the beauty of it; it's the type of book I can leave for a few days but, when I return, it's like greeting old friends again.
This was such a difficult book to read! I squirmed, my heart fluttered, I couldn't breathe at times. That's how effective it is.
Christine has a rare form of amnesia. She wakes up every morning not knowing anything. And we wake up with her. We see her world through her eyes. Who is she? Who can she trust? There is a man in bed with her. Who is he? Does she have friends? Does she have children?
Something doesn't feel right to Christine. Her doctor suggests she keep a journal and he calls her every morning to remind her of it so she can read about her life. But, there is a message on the first page warning her not to trust her husband. Why? What has happened? How did she lose her memory?
We see Christine's life through the fog of her brain. We are her. We have to finish this book in one gulp or we won't sleep.
Good morning. Did you see the full moon last night? Two friends and I took a quick trip to the beach to watch it rise over the ocean. So beautiful!
The Silent Girl is an interesting novel because it is full of Chinese mythology. It stars two of Tess Gerritsen's most popular characters, Laura Isles and Jane Rizzoli.
In this one, they are looking for the murderer of a woman whose hand fell from a roof in Boston's Chinatown. It leads them back twenty years to a murder/suicide and the disappearance of young girls.
As usual I enjoyed Gerritsen's writing and always look forward to her books.
It's cloudy, here, on the Maine coast today. Sounds like a good reading day to me!
I thought for sure I'd like this book. A diabolical bad guy sends letters to someone he hates telling him to think of a number between 1 and 1000. After coming up with the first number that pops into his head, he then has to open another envelope and it reveals that very same number. My kind of book, right? Nope! I just couldn't get into it.
The writing is kind of old fashioned and I didn't like the characters. There was too much introspection by the main character, a retired detective. I don't know; maybe it was me and I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of book but I was very disappointed.
So, I moved on to this book, instead, and read it quickly. It's partly written from a young girl's point of view and partly from Jaycee as she is today twenty years after being abducted and turned into a sex slave for the demented Phillip Garrido. How Jaycee survives is an astonishing story.
I so admire her attitude and ability to endure and come out the other side fairly intact.
Her remarkable spirit shines through.
The last couple weeks have been crazy. We watched my mother-in-law's health deline quickly from independence to not even being able to walk. She ended up in the hospital twice and is in a rehab facility, now, to help her get stronger. All the tests came back negative so, hopefully, she'll recuperate. In the mean time, we have to care for my father-in-law who suffered a mild stroke last year and lost his short-term memory.
We also had a wedding in the middle of all this. My brother's son got married. It was a beautiful ceremony.
So, I haven't had an awful lot of time to read. So, I'm giving myself a kick in the butt to get off this computer and do just that!
