This is a very quick read and I read this chick-lit book in several hours. I generally enjoy some chick-lit novels but this one was somewhat disturbing to me. It's a story about a fictional young White House female Intern who is tempted initially by the president to start an affair with him but falls in love with him. I'm sure this book will sell well as many readers will be enticed by the subject. But it's actually fictional, (which must be stressed) The intern is a product of the authors' imaginations and is portrayed quite sympathetically. The president is a less convincing character in this novel. His motivations don't quite ring true to me. The style of the authors' prose is "contemporary slick" and filled with "clever" turns of words in the style of previous books written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (one was "the Nanny Diaries") which was a best seller and which I enjoyed much more than this book. It's probably because I was a bit disturbed by the topic since it the authors based the novel on a scandalous, painful, sensational and demeaning true event.

Vaddey Rattner has written in lovely, poetic prose and poetry an autobiographical novel of her brutally painful childhood during the Khmer Rouge Cambodian Holocaust. I admired this book. It must not have been easy to write about such suffering in forced labor camps and the loss of her family members and millions of other human lives. The story begins with a lyrical portrait of her life before the Khmer Rouge started its insane path of attempting to "socialize" Cambodia and its horrendous purge of both suspected intellectuals and formerly well-off citizens. Starvation, Murder, Suffering are the themes throughout the second half of the book and I found myself horrified by the tragedy.

Having just finished "The Caretaker" A .X. Ahmad, I realized that I had stopped reading only once to take a break while reading this captivating novel. The pace of the plot was in the fast "thriller" category, and the several simultaneous themes were brought to a climax with much clever and ingenious techniques. The protagonist (a former Captain in the Indian army in its battles with Pakistan who has moved his family to the US) was a most sympathetic character. While by no means did I find the plot truly plausible (I can't imagine it REALLY being realistic)), it was an entertaining and absorbing read especially when I suspended my normal common sense. The author is obviously knowledgeable of the countries in which the novel takes place and overall it was very much an impressive literary debut.

I totally enjoyed reading this book! It's a sly and witty story of a charming woman who is actually a con artist and perhaps almost a bordeline person in her morals. I couldn't put this book down and read in all day so that I could finish it since it was so engrossing. May Dugas was an actual person but this is a partially fictionalized historical novel. If you like vicariously living a unique woman's life of indulging her whims and staying ahead of the law again and again, then you will certainly enjoy reading it.

Only rarely have I experienced in a book such pain and horror while at the same time experiencing such beautiful writing. The author, Sahar Delijani has written a novelized version of 3 generations of her family in Tehran, Iran.

Starting with the imprisonment and execution of some of her family members in 1983 in Evin Prison the author proceeds through two more generations until some of the third generation members of the family have emigrated to other countries by 2011.

Past and present are intertwined in extremely moving and vivid prose. Unbearable secrets are gradually revealed to the younger generations. I have read many books dealing with the worst world situations (Soviet Union, China, Nazi Germany, Rwanda and more) and can only be grateful that writers such as Sarah Delijani are brave enough to enlighten me of the horrors that exist in so many places.

I highly recommend "Children of the Jacaranda" although it is so painful to read. I often needed to take a break with tears in my eyes although I couldn't NOT finish it! This is a first-rate fictionalized memoir.

"The Spy Lover" by Kiana Davenport will remain long in my memory. (Only a small percentage of the many books I read do.) This tragic story, while graphic in it's description of battles in the Civil War, delves deeply into the nature of the love, loyalty and racism. The characters of the novel were made real to me and I was deeply moved by this book and I highly recommend it not only for its historical content but for it's literary merit.

I admired the author's skill in allowing the reader to enter the mind of her main character Dr. Jennifer White as she progressively deteriorated into dementia. It was horrifying to share with Jennifer her initial awareness of her disease. At first keeping a diary of her thoughts but inevitably losing more and more current memory and sense of time, Jennifer increasingly confuses past and present until her inevitable mental destruction. The sense of loss was felt by this reader through the skill of LaPlante's writing. The reason I did not give this book 5 stars was because I felt that the secondary plot of having a murder mystery was not necessary in this moving novel. It distracted me and I felt it hurt the unity of the theme of the novel which focused on dementia and it's effect on others.