The things I liked about this book:
1. The WRITING! There wasn't a single word that was too much or too little.
2. The characters - the 3 main male characters were very believable and my empathy and understanding came pretty naturally.
3. The story was good. Not a "page turner", but it was interesting enough to keep reading. Maybe I should say "stories". There were 4 main characters and they each had their own individual story. I loved Jean-Paul!

The things I didn't like so much:
1. Camille - she was the 4th main character...and I felt she was a bit "off".
2. Using the famous people as a back ground seemed superficial or something. But I did look up Josephine Baker to learn more about her.

This was such a strange book - the 1st I've ever read by Rawi Hage. Reading reviews of his others makes me think all of his books are of the same sort of strangeness. You will probably LOVE them or HATE them...(I'm closer to the hate side.)
The setting was placed in Beirut during the civil war. The main character was Pavlov who was the son of an undertaker killed in a bombing raid. There wasn't much of a plot - basically each chapter was the story of a different person or, in some cases, two people, in one case a dog, who Pavlov knew. There was some interconnection between the people but not enough to enhance or describe much character development.
Pavlov was a reader of the Greek classics and somewhat of a philosophical person so much of the book was his musings on different topics - quite often death and all the things related to death.
The only reason I read the entire book was because every now and then there was a gem of a phrase, metaphor, description or thought, especially in the beginning that, in my opinion, made it worthwhile.

This story was rather confusing for me. I don't know enough about mental illnesses that involve multiple personalities to know if it is actually possible that this could happen. (Can the physical violence the character of Plasterer did to Denis occur? Can a person beat up himself?)
Also, sometimes when I was reading sections of this book I would ask myself, "Is this supposed to be funny?" It was an awful way that the main character had to live - with his four roommates who were all alter identities - but sometimes the author added humorous parts that seemed sort of out of place and disorienting. Or maybe I was reading it wrong.
I'm glad I read this, it leaves me with a desire to find out more about this particular mental illness. I'm not sure I could recommend it as a "good" book, though.

This book was just ok in my opinion, and pretty typical of most books by Berg. The potential for a really good story always seems to be there, but that's about as far as it goes. Story of Arthur Truluv had just a bit too much treacle to make it a good book. The characters were just a little too nice, it was predictable, and everything was nice and tidy at the end. And to make it worse, there were dead characters, and dying characters all over the place but I couldn't feel much compassion for any of them, or the survivors. The whole story was just too superficial.

This was really quite an incredible book! I am having a hard time writing a review for it because I don't know where to start. The characters, place, relationships, voice - all were so important to the plot, and they were all handled so well.
I didn't always like what happened, or the characters, but that makes the book more realistic IMO, and when I didn't like the character or characters I could empathize with them. The main character Henry had a candor about him that drew me into his story completely, as did his honesty about his relationships with Threnody and Story.

I highly recommend this to people who like emotionally intense stories that have a lot of depth. I think that the maturity of this debut novel speaks well of Phillip Lewis and I am looking forward to more books by him.

Cara Brookins's debut memoir "Rise: How a House Built a Family" was at best interesting and heart warming, and at worst rather disjointed and a bit muddled sometimes. She's a good writer! - this story about how she, along with three of her children (she has four kids, but the youngest was too young to participate, other than to add some comic relief now and then) undertook building a home was coupled with another equally interesting story about the family recovering from a relationship involving domestic violence and severe mental illness.
Her writing style is warm, intimate and plain spoken so it drew me in like a good conversation. The two-part story kept me interested, whereas I think either story told by itself might not have been so engaging.
I liked how she wrote lovingly and respectfully about all her children, and also about her own parents even though her own childhood hadn't been all idyllic.
I wished she would have tied up what I feel were some loose ends. She didn't go into the end of her third marriage to Matt yet her second chapter told of a harrowing episode of domestic violence in that marriage. And there were also several construction issues that weren't resolved for me as the reader. The imagined Benjamin and Caroline characters were rather odd. These are minor complaints though, I overall enjoyed reading this book and will read the novel she talked about working on if she ever publishes it.

What a good book! It was also disturbing in a lot of ways - the "alternative history - what if?" aspect, the relevancy of white privileges in the book and currently, prejudices, and the ability of so many people to ignore inhumanity of any size scale going on around us. The cruelty wasn't always "in your face graphic", for which I was thankful, but I think because it was quite often suggested rather than graphic it added to the tension and suspense of the novel.
I found the character of Victor very well drawn and unique, and even though he was hunting escaped slaves I was sympathetic to his powerless situation. I found it interesting that nearly every main character in the novel was somehow powerless in different ways, and I sort of wanted to cheer when now and then the power shifted to the good guys!
The ending didn't leave me hanging at all, but I can see a sequel with Victor as the main character again. I am glad I read this book, and I would definitely read a second one.

The author, Brendan Jones, has set up for himself a hard act to follow with this absorbing debut novel when he writes another book! I loved the weird, quirky Alaskan characters, flaws and all. I loved the main character, spunky Tara. And I loved the sensitive and beautiful descriptions of the Alaskan landscapes, weather, and atmosphere.
Tara leaves her Philadelphia home in sorrow, anger, and confusion to go to Archangel Island, Alaska to work and rid herself of the emotional demons following her. She was a boxer in So. Philly and I think this training gives her a confidence and dogged resolve which in turn helps her get by in the hard scramble world of men. Yet it also sometimes gets her in trouble relating to the circumstances of her existence and the people she meets.
I enjoyed watching her personal growth in the two year's scope of the novel - in her relationships with her father and boyfriend (both left behind), her Alaskan friends, and her responsibility to her adopted and rescued dog Keta.
I didn't understand all of the mechanical descriptions of the boats but this didn't subtract from my enjoyment of the book.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable and engrossing read!

I thought that Maud's Line was a good story. The characters were all authentic (some a little bizarre, which added to the interest of the story rather than detracting from it), and well drawn. The setting was in Oklahoma in the late 1920s on Cherokee Indian allotments, evocative and sometimes beautiful.
I liked the interest the author showed in placing Maud's close knit family ties as a central concern through-out the entire novel.

Harsh living and social concerns were also a theme through-out the novel, and while the plot was a little dramatic it seemed to work and was quite engaging. Good job on a good debut novel, Margaret Verble.

As the reader, I was never sure as to whether or not I should believe all of Dr. Baird's account of his hospitalizations in two mental institutions 1940's, which was somewhat disconcerting. I liked the book, I gave it a 3, but I was mostly interested in the daughter's search for her father, and what his absence had done to her. I admired her final determination to give him a voice and record his life as well as she could from his own record, correspondence, and medical records. She states that to finish the book was one thing she most wanted to do in life. I am glad I got to read her final product.

Set into the gorgous Sri Lankan backdrop, this magnificent debut novel by Nayomi Munaweera follows the unlikely friendship of children, sisters Yasodhara and La, and the Tamil boy Shiva, into adulthood and the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war.

Initially when the violence starts to escalate, the families of the children emigrate; Yasodhara and La to the United States and Shiva to London. Later, as adults they return and the course of the novel veers toward a violent and heartbreaking ending with the introduction of Saraswathi, a broken and vengeful Tamil freedom fighter.

This superb novel never takes sides in the conflict and is written with the lushness of all the different Sri Lankan histories and backgrounds. The story relates personal viewpoints of characters reduced to trying to maintain their humanity despite the absurdity of the violence inhabiting their lives. A must read!

Was this a love story? A coming of "old age" novel? A story about the results of grief unshared? I felt like it could have been a good story about any of these topics but that the author couldn't really decide which one of them to handle well, so he handled them all somewhat poorly.
The way the story was written in two very different parts was interesting and done well. The clues given in the first part which indicated all was not as it seemed kept me reading into the second part. Without those intriguing morsels I probably wouldn't have continued with the book.
The second half was predictable, the timeline was somewhat unclear at times, and the characters were predictable and trite - an affair with a "queasy" tennis pro, a suicide attempt, an introduction to a rebellious teenager son who later died in the war, and the ending was all too easy…

Sometimes the probability of something happening vs. the possibility of that thing happening can make or break a novel. This debut novel's plot seemed implausible to me, which made it somewhat of a drudgery to read. The saving factor was that it was well written and the characters were basically, though perhaps a little routinely, interesting (especially the weak Marta). Hector could have been a little more developed, I never felt like I really "knew" him. I never liked Marta, but she was a rounded character for the most part.

I would give the novel a "poor" rating for the plot seeming to be so improbable, but the writing, dialogue, and characters were all somewhat well done, so I gave it an "average" rating.

Spy Lover by Kiana Davenport mostly takes place during the civil war and the brutality and horror of that war almost edges out the other characters of the story: Johnny Tom who fights for the North, his daughter Era who is a spy for the North, and Era's lover, the Confederate soldier Warren. Johnny Tom's character is enlarged by his being a Chinese immigrant and this fact adds more layers of intensity to this already intense story.
Era's cover as a spy is a nurse in the war, the story begins with Era and Warren meeting each other as Era helps nurse Warren back to health from a wound. Their love affair deepens, as does the Era's guilt at the secret she is hiding from Warren. Era's being a spy is a result of her trying to find her father whose affiliation to the North is another secret Era is keeping from Warren.
Nobody comes out clean in this book, especially the North or South "militaries", but the love and presence of the three main characters is amazingly told. I came away feeling like my life was enriched by reading about these three people, and they will stay with me for a long time.

I really don't know what to say about this book. It is a wonderful story, I loved it but I don't know to whom I could recommend it. There is so much brutality in it, and it is filled graphically with the butchery of the Civil War that there were times I had to put it down, or skip parts. It is a VERY difficult read.
Having said that, it is also a love story that has so much substance to it I will want to recommend it to everyone I know. The love between the two main characters, Warren and Era, is wholly believable, but the love between the father, Johnny Tom and daughter, Era, is even more so. (Johnny Tom is a character that will stay with me for a long time.)
This book is Davenport at her best with characters, character development, and story. While it doesn't have the historical sweep of Song of the Exile, her historical focusing in Spy Lover gives this book its intensity and power that is quite incredible.

The power of this debut novel Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer comes from, ultimately, the unique and often startling voice of the author.

The story takes place at some point in the future, Maxon the husband (autistic and genius) is on his way to the moon to place a colony of robots there to start building a place for humans. His departure sends Sunny, his wife, into a tailspin of sorts, and she is forced to look at what she has done and not done with her life. Her mother, Emma, who is a strong presence through-out the story, is dying from cancer, and Sunny has to come to terms with this event in her life, as well as the absent Maxon.

All this drama could be just any average book, but this one is entirely saved by the way Netzer manages to adjust the mood, dialogue, emotions and situations while keeping the drama reined in just enough to keep hold of the story and yet let it go where it needs.

I loved this book, and am anxiously waiting for Netzer's next.