I was ready to put this book down after 20 pages since I found it disturbing but decided to forge ahead and was glad I did and ended up reading it in one day. It is not a book for everyone, I would not recommend it to my book club or the friends I share book recommendations with but I was drawn in in the way I am with Discovery Health Channel programming. The characters were deftly drawn and the writing flowed. Every chapter was in the first person of a different character and easy to follow. Save for the first 20 pages I enjoyed it in the way I enjoy Jody Picoult's books. But I would wager many readers will not get past the beginning which is too bad. It is a beautiful coming of age story with a twist.

Anyone who thinks her life is bad should read this book. I have no doubt the incidents described are true but I found myself getting angry as the author followed more and more in her mother's footsteps. Although I knew that the author's life would ultimately improve enough to write this book she spent very little time on her transformation. At some point I switched from thinking "poor Nikki" when she was young to being flat out disgusted with her as she reached high school and college. By the time she cleaned up her act I really didn't care. If you are a fan of The Glass Castle and similar dysfunction parent books you will like this memoir.

I would characterize this book as a Twilight Zone episode meeting a contemporary coming of age story. Life as we know it unravels just as a house of cards collapses, as real timers clash with clock timers as the earth slows on its axis. There is an optimism that breaks through the hours of darkness which I found reassuring. I could not put this book down.

Being from Chicago, Jewish and having lived in the UK and treated for an anxiety disorder with CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) while living there I felt particularly attuned to this book. I alternated feeling that the OCD aspects were very accurate to being incensed about the way it was treated as quirkiness. I thought the friend to lover relationship between Gloria and Henry was interesting but knew nothing about Van Morrison’s lyrics or the dead poets’ poems until I researched Van Morrison and realized how closely his anxiety issues paralleled Gloria’s. Further his bio says his lyrics go back to those of visionary poets. He also lived in the U.S. for a time before going back to the UK. Had I read this before getting very far into the book I would have realized how incredibly creative Kaufman was in weaving these two elements into Gloria and Henry’s lives. I enjoyed the book but was disturbed in parts also having a close family member with OCD who also will not take her meds. This would be a very good book for a book group and I would heartily recommend it….but read about Van Morrison first, it would make the book make more sense.

I felt this book was mediocre at best and would have put it down after 50 pages had I not been committed to reviewing it. The main characters did not engage me at all nor did the descriptions of Arcadia, the Utopian community in NY where Bit and his parents lived. The story jumped 10 years without explanation and I found that frustrating. I would not recommend this book to either of my book groups.

From the first page to the last I was enthralled with this quirky fun read. There was some symbolism that was immediately obvious, aka the book's title, the main character's first and last name, Mary Saint, and some not as obvious, as the location Swallow, NY and how "swallow" is translated in the Bible. A rock group called Sliced Ham and a drummer named Garbagio (well OK, it isn't his real name) just add to the cleverness of the book. The author was part of a singing group with her sisters in the 1970's and draws on her expertise of the music business to make the story even more enjoyable. Comical and creative, I liked the book a lot.

I found this book disturbing on many levels. I did not believe that a young child would have that much insight into God and heaven and wanted to shake the mother and say wake up, your son is DYING. I found it creepy that the author named the main character after her son which she says is her favorite boy's name. The relationships were predictable and I found the use of the Catholic Church to justify the mother's unwavering belief in miracles overused. The author's comments at the end of the book were interesting and helped explain why she wrote this book. I would not recommend it to my book groups.

Nancy Thayer has done it again with a wonderful story bringing Nantucket to life. A perfect read for a lazy afternoon this book addresses friendships, loss, infidelity and guilt. This is the kind of book I enjoy as respite after a particularly heavy duty book group read. I found it hard to put down and didn't want it to end but I hope there will be more from this author in the future.

This book is about a family that has no idea their deceased parents watch everything they do, kind of like Lovely Bones meets Touched by an Angel. The plot is a bit trite but it was an enjoyable story and I liked the character development. The story kept my interest and it would probably make a good book group discussion.

Customs, dreams, losses and relationships make this book a very good choice for book groups. At 16 Grace finds her way into a life she would have never imagined when arriving in NY from Trinidad She becomes a nanny to Ben who much to his mother's consternation, loves Grace unconditionally. Themes of friendship, family and pretending to be what one is not are woven throughout the book, making it a very emotional read

I enjoyed the book for what it was and tried not to think about all the accusations of Rodriguez's personal gain after The Kabul Beauty School. It basically tells the same story with a fictional cast of characters and is an easy read. However, if a book group has discussed her first book I would say this one can be passed on. It is just too similar. The title of the book reminds us it is a novel for good reason. A feature film on the beauty school is reportedly in the works besides the documentary which was released in 2004. This new book on top of the first one is definite overkill. But if you missed the first book and don't plan on seeing the movie, this is a nice read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Love, lust and adoration are very different things with relationships being built or falling apart based on perceptions, not truth. I am of similar age as present-day Annabelle and know people in relationships like those depicted in the book. I liked the first person narration alternating between the 1970's and the present. Younger readers may not "get" the decisions Annabelle made but those of us who have been around a while know that relationships are ever-evolving.

This memoir is only the beginning of the process for this writer and should rightfully be part one of a longer publication. Most of the book deals with the weeks and months after the author loses her brother and best friend and only the last part deals with her life several years later. How she got from a wild and angry teenager to the 40 year old she is today would have made more interesting reading. There is much more of the story to be told and I wanted to hear it.

It was refreshing to find a new author in the genre of my favorites, Robyn Carr, Sherryl Woods and Susan Wiggs.This novel, set in New Mexico, combines the author's interest in food with mystery, second chances and of course the requisite love story. I could have done without the author's inclusion of her recipes throughout the book since it has been done so much lately. I enjoyed how the author developed the relationships between the characters linking the past to the present but not in the ways I had expected.

This was an enjoyable read and I look forward to reading her first book.

The subtitle of the book, One Single Mother's Story described her life as a Black woman poet after marrying a prisoner, having his baby, moving on with her life and finally realizing that she suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and depression, things she thinks afflict many Black women. She did not really develop her relationship with Rashid which lasted 10 years and glossed over his deportation with very little emotion or explanation. She described herself as a survivor and called her daughter Nisa the evidence, her reason for living. asha (spelled with a small letter for unknown reasons) says she is the story of many single Black mothers but I think she was different in that she was blessed with education, a loving family and a great job. I found it difficult to generalize her life to single mothers who have not been that lucky.

Things happen in threes for a reason and the relationship between Susannah, Julian and Kit is only the tip of the iceberg. The story unfolds as triads form, meeting, overlapping and blending, one into the other, much like the collections of three that Susannah keeps in her glovebox. As the story unfolds not only does the landscape evolve from desert to ocean but the lives of the characters evolve also from drabness to beauty. Each is a study in contrasts, most notably Frankie who is quite literally trying to change her whole being. I found the book hard to put down and the author's use of language was exceptional.

As an avid reader of Holocaust themed literature this book was a departure for me. Its central characters are not the victims of the Nazis but victims who are Germans fleeing from the advancing Russian army. Having been in Nuremburg in 2006 I heard for the first time how terribly the German people suffered at the hands of the advancing Russian army. The author did a superb job of describing the disintegration of Germany and the horrors its inhabitants were subjected to through the last few months of the war. A map of Germany would have been useful for a better understanding of the area through which they traveled.

Although it took me a while to get into the rhythm of the book I liked the way it was structured and found myself drawn into the many relationships between the people who lived on and visited Himmel Street. Once you get past the fact that Death is the narrator and realize it is a book of faith not abandonment, the book comes alive. I found myself liking Mama and Papa although I expected them to be the evil foster parents depicted much of the time in literature. I half expected to find out that there was a pre-war connection between Liesel and Max or that Liesel was secretly Jewish. Having been to Munich and Dachau I was very aware of how close the camp was to its actual neighbors thus I could envision Liesel and Rudy watching the Jews being marched to the camp. I would not consider this Young Adult literature and am surprised it has been classified as such. When Max began his first book hidden in the basement I likened it to the diaries written on scraps of paper inside the camps which have become such an integral part of Holocaust history. This is a book with a unique premise that keeps the reader's attention about a time in history we can never forget.