BookBrowse | Book Reviews and Recommendations

Reviews by Virginia M. (San Antonio, TX)

This Other Eden: A Novel
by Paul Harding

This was not a book for me (1/15/2023)

In writing this book, the author took the facts that were available about this actual incident in our American history and using his imagination created a story as it might have happened. It has been described by others as lyrically beautiful and as a book of astonishing …more poetic prose. I feel compelled to clearly state in the beginning that I did not find the prose astonishing or the story beautifully written. In fact, it was quite a struggle for me to read it. I guess this book just was not meant for me.

I am indeed grateful, however, that the First Impression program of Bookbrowse.com gave me the opportunity to read Paul Harding's book and thus initially introduced me to a part of the history of our country that I otherwise would have missed.

As a result of being introduced to the existence of such a community, I have since researched the history of Malaga Island and have confirmed for myself that this totally fictionalized story was indeed inspired by an actual historical event.

During my research, I discovered that another author took those same facts and imagined an entirely different sequence of events. I am reading that other book now (The Shadow in Our Bones by Tamara Merrill). In my opinion, this author is a much better storyteller and I feel confident that when I finish reading her book, I will give it a 4 or 5 rating.

The story in Harding's concerns an interracial community that successfully eked out a living in peace and harmony on a small island off the coast of the state of Maine for several generations from the late 1700's until the early 1900's. Then, in the hey day of the eugenics movement, a group of such believers convinced the governor of Maine that the community was a threat to society and all the people living on the island must be removed (using force if necessary). Otherwise, according to the group, the state of Maine would find that the mixing of the races had produced future generations of imbeciles, morons, and degenerates.

The truth is that there were some perverse relationships in the community and some eccentric citizens, but the findings of the eugenicists overlooked the fact that the current young people living on the island also included a mathematical genius, a little girl who was fluent in Latin, and a boy with an amazing artistic talent.

My problem with the book is the writing style of the author, however, I must admit that I probably don't have the credentials to criticize his style of writing when the authorities named him the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel which, as far as I can determine, was written with the same writing style.

Nevertheless, I found that many of his sentences were a source of confusion. Many of them are a paragraph long and at times during a sentence the author drifts off subject to throw in other extraneous information. Further, it bothered me that the author did not follow the normal pattern of writing such as use of quotation marks when appropriate.

I have decided to give this book a rating of 3 – but this may be an inflated rating. (less)

Two Storm Wood: A Novel
by Philip Gray

It was good but..... (12/5/2021)

I debated with myself for a long time about how I was going to describe how this book impressed me.

First, I will tell you that my very favorite kind of book is historical fiction and I enjoy those books which make history come alive for me. So, when I saw that the genre of …more this book was listed as historical fiction – I was certain that I would enjoy it. The fact that it was about WWI made me even more sure that t I would find it very interesting. I have read lots about the Civil War and WWII but not so many historical fiction books about WWI.

I read the publisher's description saying it was about an upper class British woman who decided to visit the battlefields in France and find out what really happened to her fiancé (who had been listed as missing in action.) In my mind I envisioned her traipsing through cemeteries and battlefields and trying to find individuals who were familiar with the events of the war, and I was not deterred by the references to her coming across barbed wire and rat infested tunnels. After all, I knew that stories set against the background of armed conflict are not necessarily pretty stories.

I was further warned by one review which said: "…she had read the book to read and learn more about WWI, but she had found the book to actually to be more of a thriller than a book for fans of historical fiction."

Now with that background, I have decided to give the author a rating of 5 stars for his skill in making the events in the book come to life. He displayed an amazing talent in conceiving the dark and gruesome plot. I usually feel disappointed if the historical fiction books I read fail to teach me something new about the period of history covered by the book. In this regard, one thing that piqued my interest was the fact that Edward became addicted to cocaine and opium during his military life. After finishing the book, I searched online to see how often this was ignored by those in charge. This led me to discover that use of mind-altering substances was often widely sanctioned and encouraged by our military in both World Wars to increase alertness and suppress appetite. I have been very naïve about this, but it came as a surprise. This and other aspects of the book will prompt many discussion areas for book clubs.

That said, I have also made a firm decision to give the book a rating of 1.5 stars as far as indicating whether I enjoyed reading the book. There are tons of interesting books available. Therefore, I prefer to avoid those that seem go overboard in including gratuitous raw and sickening descriptions. I understand, as General Sherman once said: War is hell. But I do not want to feel that I have been thrown into hell as I read a book. No thanks. (less)

The Forest of Vanishing Stars: A Novel
by Kristin Harmel

One of the Heroines of the WWII (5/8/2021)

My favorite kind of book is historical fiction. Therefore, I have read lots of novels about the Nazi treatment of Jewish people during WWII; however, this is one is quite unique, and I really enjoyed it. In it an old woman sneaks in the Berlin apartment of young Nazi and …more

The Four Winds
by Kristin Hannah

Very concerning (4/8/2021)

Our author is a very distinguished writer. She is able to describe events and characters so that they become truly seem to come to life right on the pages of the book.

That said - I was very concerned by the fact that she openly and blatantly advocated communism in the book.

Raft of Stars
by Andrew J. Graff

My apologies to the author (11/2/2020)

I have really debated with myself about what to say in this review. The problem is that, from the description of the book, I should have known in advance that I probably was not really going to enjoy reading it – so it would be hard to be really objective in my critique. …more

The Woman Before Wallis: A Novel of Windsors, Vanderbilts, and Royal Scandal
by Bryn Turnbull

Good but not great (6/28/2020)

This book is basically a story of the social life of two affluent American twin sisters during the 1920s and 1930s as well as also including the social escapades of their acquaintances. Further, depending upon your own personal point of view, the twins either lived exciting …more lives filled with romantic interludes involving a string of men with or without the benefit of marriage or else lived sordid existences with little value or meaningful contributions to the world at large.

One of the twins was Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, the wife of Reginald Vanderbilt who lived life to the fullest but ended up losing her legal right to raise her only biological child (Little Gloria – the famous fashion designer) due to her early choices to pass that child's nurturing to a nanny. The other twin was Thelma Morgan Furness who became a member of British aristocracy and eventually was the mistress of Edward, the Prince of Wales. Of course, we all are quite familiar with the fact that the Prince eventually abdicated the position of King of England in favor of having a married life with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, who supposedly had been a friend of Thelma's. I must confess that I was quite familiar with the controversy the Prince faced over the royal family's disapproval of his marriage, I really knew very little about Thelma or relationship to Gloria Vanderbilt. So this part of the story was new to me.

I enjoyed the easy to read style of writing employed by the author – which made the book flow effortlessly; however, I was annoyed by the choice of the author to use the popular technique of alternating time periods skipping ahead to the trial for custody of little Gloria and then back to what was going on in the social world of Thelma and her twin sister. The switch in time periods actually was easy to follow – but I would have preferred a strictly chronological story.

The aspect that really drove down my overall rating of my pleasure in reading the book was that the author had been described as a writer of historical fiction and so I unwittingly was anticipating that the romantic element of the book would have been enveloped by descriptions of worldly political and historical events during the time period covered by the book. In my opinion, the book described their lives as if they took place in a vacuum.

If you enjoy scandal and a riveting social life, I think you will love this book. If you want something with more historical substance, I think you will not be satisfied.

I received this book as part of the First Impression activity of BookBrowse in exchange for my review of the novel. (less)

Daughter of the Reich: A Novel
by Louise Fein

A new view of Nazi Germany (3/9/2020)

The story in this fascinating book is about life in Germany beginning in 1933 which was just prior to Sept 1939 when WW2 officially begins as Germany invades Poland. So it not the typical story of the conflict and the Holocaust. It is also unusual in that it is told from …more the perspective of the main character who is eleven year old German girl named Hetty Heinrich whose father is editor of a German newspaper while also holding a high-ranking position in the Nazi organization.

Now for those of you who do not want to read another book about the war, it is important to realize that our story begins and ends before Poland is invaded. As we read the book, we are skillfully allowed to see the world through Hetty's eyes and thoughts. And if you have wondered how the German citizenry were lulled into accepting Hitler and his campaign of hate, this story will hopefully answer sine of your questions.

As the story opens, we learn that 11 year old Hetty has been brought up to truly idolize Adolph Hitler and to believe the Nazi party line concerning the wonderful future to be enjoyed by Germans under his leadership. We also learn that she and her brother Karl enjoy a close relationship and she is often invited to join Karl and his good friend Walter in their activities. Walter is described as a tall kid with blue eyes and blond hair and a kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and strong personality.

Whispers of anti-Semitism are introduced in the very first Chapter and build throughout the book. Hetty's idyllic vision of the situation begins to erode as she begins to questions some of the ideology being thrust down her throat at home, at school and in her youth group when Karl puts an end to his friendship with Walter and Hetty finds out that Walter is a Jew – one of those dirty, lying, cheating Jews.

By this time, however, Hetty has fallen in love with Walter and she must then make a choice whether she, too, will end her relationship with him or she will secretly violate the directives of her family and her country.

I read opinions about how similar the situation in German at that time was to the situation in our country today. We are a divided country with one side complaining about how detrimental the influence of the media and mass manipulation can be to the country while the other side is outraged at the apparent lack of compassionate support our nation is offering to people who are being denied basic human rights.

The book could prompt meaningful discussions about the two viewpoints. (less)

The Prisoner's Wife
by Maggie Brookes

Fiction based upon fact (2/5/2020)

This novel takes place from June 1944 to March 1945 during WWII. It concerns a 20 year old Czech girl who, as a result of love at first sight, runs off to marry an English POW who happened to be assigned by the Nazi's to work on her family's farm. It is a novel based upon …more

Red Letter Days
by Sarah-Jane Stratford

The McCarthy Hearings (10/9/2019)

I am happy that I had the chance to read and review this book. I think I need to begin this review by giving a little background. In the era of the McCarthy hearings, I finished high school and began my college education. My life as a college student was vastly different …more

You Were There Too
by Colleen Oakley

Are Dreams a wish your heart makes? (8/10/2019)

This is essentially the story about the life of young married couple who live in a small town in Pennsylvania. Harrison Graydon is a Doctor. He loves his wife and, for the most part, life is good except for his emotional trauma over the death of one of his patients during a …more

Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant
by Anne Gardiner Perkins

My review (6/29/2019)

This book is an inspiring story of the strength, resilience, and courage of five particular female students out of a total of over five hundred. The five - two black and three white – had quite different backgrounds, talents, and ambitions and were part of the integration …more

The Last Romantics
by Tara Conklin

It was a good book but had issues the bothered me (11/27/2018)

I had a great deal of uncertainty about how to write my review of this book. I could have begun it by telling about what I liked or instead what I did not like although you can tell by my rating that I felt obliged to give it a rather high rating overall. Actually, I …more probably felt more intense about one thing that made me uncomfortable about the book. So I will start there.
I really wondered why, with what I considered a unique story line, the author felt obliged to include mention at the beginning and the end of the story something that infers a lack of faith in the ability of humans to solve problems. This bothered me. I have the most unrealistic wish – and that is that my grandchildren will have an opportunity to experience life in a state of innocence and naivety as I did – which I know is entirely impossible due to computers and TV and atom bombs. Of course, they would face medical problems and lack the luxuries that I now take for granted but my parents only had to worry about keeping food on our table and did not worry about me being kidnapped to become a sex slave. It is my deepest wish that 60 years from today (2079) my grandchildren or my great grandchildren (neither of which exist today) will not have to live close to a bomb or missile shelter because we earthlings are at war with somebody. The author wisely did not elaborate on the nature of why the sirens were sounding – were we afraid of our neighbors or of UFO’s? Anyway – as far as I am concerned, I cannot say I really enjoyed the book with that worry in the back of my mind.
To balance that objection, I can say I really did enjoy the author’s writing style. Although the middle of the book sort of dragged a bit – I like what I will describe as her folksy style of writing. Her sentences do not go on and on for a whole paragraph – and her vocabulary matched mine – I am neither a Neanderthal nor a rocket scientist.
The book traces the mother and her 4 children through a lifetime – actually a lifetime plus. The narrator is over 100 and still seemingly active in life when the story ends. In following these individuals through their life we read about almost all the various kinds of love that humans enjoy. The only variety of love that I did not identify was agape love – the love that demands nothing of your partner. There was fraternal love, maternal love, erotic love, and occasionally brotherly love although the brotherly love often had strings attached. It does not, thankfully, become involved in the popular plot lines of homosexuality or transgender issues – or at least if it did I was not astute enough to recognize it.
And while it does involve explicit sex, although there was ample opportunity for the author to gain another audience if she had chosen to do it, nor did the author resort to trash talk. Thank you, MS Conklin for those choices.
Finally, I will admit that I had finished reading the whole book and decided to take time to review the thoughts of another reader before I realized that the Skinner siblings grew up as part of a dysfunctional family. When I realized it – I gave myself a “thunk” on the head and wondered how I had missed it. And one of their problems in life is that they were seemingly afraid to have open communication. That will be a subject I may want to go back and re-visit because I usually have no problems hearing those alarms as I read the book.
The story is told through the voice of Fiona, the youngest of the 4 siblings in the Skinner family from 1981 for the next 90 years, and spans decades as the siblings navigate through their childhood and adulthood and the events that shape them. As we go through the book the story branches out and we delve into the adult life of the each of the narrator’s siblings. They all face problems of some sort – either in forming relationships or becoming addicted to some sort of activity.
I appreciate the opportunity given to me by the publisher to give an honest review of this book. (less)

My Lovely Wife
by Samantha Downing

Sorry for being an old fuddy-duddy (10/8/2018)

For me personally, this was not a lovely read – although someone else might think it rates 5 stars. My problem was not the author's writing style. If she been writing another type of book, I might have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My thoughts during the entire time I …more

Sold on a Monday
by Kristina McMorris

What it could have been (8/8/2018)

I have some positive things to say about Sold on a Monday but I also want to talk about certain things about the book that bothered me.

First it is an interesting story although I think that no one is really going to be surprised by the "living happily ever after" ending. I …more would also call it an easy read where I could relate to the life experiences of the two main characters and I never lost interest as I read.

Ellis is a young man trying to get ahead on his job as a reporter at a newspaper. He seems to be driven by a desire to make good in order to prove his worth to his father. He has a personal hobby of taking pictures and one day as he was passing through a rural area he took a picture of two boys on the porch of a weathered farmhouse. Later he discovers that there was a sign leaning against the porch of that house advertising that the boys are for sale. Then, through a series of circumstances, Ellis makes an unfortunate decision and the deception created by that decision haunts him as time goes by. It is a good illustration of the old adage: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when once we practice to deceive.

Lily is employed as a secretary at the same newspaper as Ellis. She has been living a lie in an effort to hide the existence of her young son who was conceived on the night of a dream date with a handsome young man. Lilly planned to give her baby up for adoption but she could not go through with that plan. Now she dreams of better paying job so that she can finally afford to live together as a family with her young son. Then, Lily unwittingly becomes a force in the deception that Ellis has created.

I think the author does a good job developing those two characters. I think the issues of deception, the love of a mother for her child, and the impacts that choices have on our life give the story some depth and the budding romance between Ellis and Lily gives it warmth. As another positive, I think the author succeeds in describing the stressful deadline driven life of reporters in the newspaper business.

The rest of the story is wrapped around those two people and that photograph and, as far as I am concerned, therein lies the problem that I had with the book. I think the author should have told us more about the two children and their mother that are involved in the story. The story of Ellis and Lily could have been told in an easy reading summer read – but the issues of what is treated as a side story could have made this a best seller. As written, we have very little opportunity to really experience the emotional wounds and despairs of those three individuals as it happens.
And if that side story has been brought front and center, the historical aspect of Great Depression would have come to life with the reader being able to sense the real difficulties of life during that period. After all it was that setting that made me want to read this book. I was not expecting another love story – I was expecting this to primarily be a historical novel about how hard times force tough decisions.

In summary, I think it was a good book and I enjoyed reading it and feel fortunate to have been given the opportunity to tell others about it. But I think the opportunity was there for the author to create a better book maybe even reaching up and making it one of the best. (less)

Vox
by Christina Dalcher

Terribly disturbing and Terribly good (5/7/2018)

This book was very disturbing because I can visualize it actually happening. I hated the story but I could not put the book down.
The premise of the book is that a radical arm of the religious right has taken control of our country and the laws of the land greatly restrict …more

A Place for Us
by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Outstanding!! (3/16/2018)

I was literally blown away by the experience of reading A PLACE FOR US by Fatima Farheed Mirza.

The book was quite different from what I expected. First, I need to explain that I am a senior adult who is looking as you say "in my rear view mirror" at my life and the life of …more

The Milk Lady of Bangalore: An Unexpected Adventure
by Shoba Narayan

My opinion (12/9/2017)

This book was not what I expected. I saw in BookBrowse that it was categorized as a "biography/memoir" and I somehow expected something different than what this book turned out to be. I thought it would be more of the typical type of memoir about some part of the author's …more

Never Coming Back
by Alison McGhee

Good artistry but... (8/28/2017)

I need to explain up front that I am a happy and healthy 83 year old woman living in a retirement community. Unfortunately, I have witnessed friends and family members reach a point in life where they, too, have become victims of dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Some of …more

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
by Cherise Wolas

It may be my own fault (5/17/2017)

When I read the description of this book on First Impressions in Book Browse.com, I thought it sounded interesting. Then when I received the book and skimmed through it I again thought I am going to enjoy reading this book; but then I started reading it.

The first 18 pages …more

Our Short History
by Lauren Grodstein

It was good and bad (2/1/2017)

I am puzzled about how I want to rate this book – I have very mixed feelings. So let me just list those feelings and then see what I liked and what I did not like:
1 – I liked Lauren Grodstein's style of writing – it seemed very informal. I felt like she and I were having a …more conversation instead of and it being the case of me reading a book she wrote. I may seek out of her other books to see if they are similar in style.
2 – I did not like the cover – to me, it was a complete turn off. It surely did not draw me in and I don't think I would have been inclined to pick it up to see what it was about. I guess the blue blobs are supposed to be clouds but I am not sure. I don't' think it is attractive nor is it inviting.
3 – I also did not like Karen Neulander. I realize that I have never been in her position – facing pain, death, and the knowledge that she would never be able to watch her son grow up and become a man. However, until the very end of the book she concentrates entirely on satisfying herself. Even her purpose in writing this memoir for her son is self- centered – it is not her purpose to give him morals to live by or citizenship tips. Instead it is her purpose to tell him about herself – supposedly, so he would know how much she loved him. I think her angst about her son becoming close to his father was based on her jealousy over that relationship extending into the future while her life with her son was near over. I got rather tired of her pity parties.
4 – I know I am going to sound like a prude, and I guess I am, but her constant profanity throughout the book bothered me. Especially – the "f" word and using the name of God and Jesus as expletives. She is writing the book for her son, for goodness sakes. What a horrible example to set for your son. Then I came to Page 234 – and she explains there that she is a Jew who does not believe in God. That explained a lot of things to me – about her love of self and her priorities in life; but it did not make me dislike her any less.
5 –I think this would be a good book for a book club. There are a whole lot of issues to discuss: e.g. should a political candidate's personal life be important in election decisions or should those decisions be based upon who will do the best job in office and is claiming to be a "Jew and an atheist" an oxymoron? I did some surfing after I finished the book and I found this quotation: "60 percent of American Jews believe that Judaism is mainly a matter of ancestry, culture, and values, rather than of religious observance. Hmmm? If there is eventually a Discussion Guide for Book Clubs published, this conundrum might be included in the guide. (less)

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Reviews by Virginia M. (San Antonio, TX)

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