Edsel Bronfman is different and I didn't quite believe he could be real for awhile. The result of a one night stand and raised by a single mother who is now slipping into dementia, he finds himself at 34, alone and leading a routine life. One phone call changes that. He wins an all expense paid trip to Florida for a time share presentation. Two catches shape the story. He must have a companion and there is a time limit. Then crazy things begin to happen and Bronfman starts to discover himself. This is a coming of age story it can happen anytime in your life. I found the book slow going for the first half of the book and then I couldn't wait to see how it all turned out.

I found this book a pleasant surprise. It made clear a very confusing and complicated time in history. By culling the experiences of the Petrograd ex-patriot community, through old letters and diaries, we got a first hand account of the daily events during the months leading up to the October revolt and the actual takeover. It made clear the many factions opposing one another and how the Bolsheviks a well organized minority became the ultimate winners. The actual words of the people who were there made history come alive.

The Secret Ingredient in Pies is a love story, romantic and familial, with more than a little magic tossed in. Too many pies, wishes and secrets mixed in with predicable characters make this an easy summer read. This was an interesting and creative book but not my cup of tea. A perfect beach book.

The children are all grown up. They are the two girls, Sally and Charlotte, that Joan brought to the marriage and Perry and Spin that came with Whit. Add to the group, Everette, the caretaker's son. You might say that Lakeside Cottage and Holden, the private school, are almost minor characters.
The story takes place after Whit's death. His will ensures that Lakeside Cottage will belong to his boys. Joan has been permitted to continue to live there. Sally visits often and Chalotte lives there and writes a blog and rarely leaves the grounds. Spin brings his fiancée, Laurel, home to meet the family. He is a teacher at Holden and met Laurel while skiing. As Laurel gets to know the family we see that there is another side to their seemingly ideal childhood.
Ann Leary is skilled at character development and I especially liked frugal, self centered Joan. She enjoyed telling about her glorious youth and that she ran five miles a day. An interesting minor character is "Mr Clean" who would break and enter cottages and never steal a thing but did a little cleaning while there.
I'm very stingy with my stars but believe this is a solid four. I stayed up past my bedtime to finish and will pass it on to a friend today. This is a good book club book as each character would make a good discussion.

I am an impatient reader and always feel annoyed when a plot thread is interrupted for a flashback or in this case a mythological tale. Joshilyn Jackson is a skilled writer and in her hands this device is well done and makes sense. This was the best way to explain the characters and how their history made them who they are. Having taught twelve year olds for close to fifty years, I never quite understood the bond between a child and a dysfunctional parent. Kai, the mother, kept her children, Paula the angry one, Julian the one she gave away, and the child she left behind when she died, tied to her with her great love. This is a great book for book clubs. There is a lot to discuss.

Having read "Fear of Flying" as a young woman, I was anxious to see if Erica Jong had interesting insights on the loss of youth and dying. She does. As we age we deal with the death of our parents and ultimately with our own mortality. I found some parts of the book much like the experiences we all have facing life's challenges, and then there were some parts I found outrageous and typically the old sexual Erica. As with all of her writing, you are left with food for thought.

I now have a better understanding of what it feels like to be a second generation Cuban in America. Lizet is torn between her personal ambition and loyalty to her cultural heritage. She is a scholarship student at a prestigious college in upstate New York. She has to adjust to cold weather and academic problems due to her inadequate preparation for higher education. Back in Little Havana her family is broken and her mother has become involved as an activist in the case of Elia Hernandez. This is obviously the Elian Gonzalez controversy from fourteen years ago. How Lizet deals with her new life makes an interesting story.

Iris is having a very hard time. She lost her husband, her job and has newly discovered health problems. After this depressing, slow start, "Her Name Is Rose " takes off. Because of a death bed promise to her husband, Iris tries to find her adopted daughter's birth mother. Rose, a talented violinist who is studying in London, was born in Ireland to an American mother. Iris has reason to believe that she will find her living in Boston. The story tells of the search and her experiences in America and finally concludes back in Ireland. This is a warm story and I cared what became of Rose and Iris. My book club would enjoy this book

The "Blue Stars" in the title refers to the banners displayed by the families of American Servicemen. This book is about two of these families. They are very different culturally and financially. Ellen, a college professor, is the legal guardian of Michael who has lost a leg in Iraq. Lacey is a personal trainer whose husband ,Eddie, has a head injury that has caused brain damage and blindness. Both families are less than functional but all difficulties are put aside as Ellen and Lacey move to Washington to be with their damaged men. The workings of Walter Reed and the sub-standard housing for the families of wounded servicemen are exposed and loyalties are tested. This is an interesting book, engaging and well written. It is an excellent book club selection.

I read "Her" in one sitting. This is an exquisite short novel. The author develops the two main characters bit by bit until readers feel they know them well. Not so fast! Doubts build gradually. The frazzled Emma is the older mother of two small children who is barely coping with the demands of keeping house and raising children without help from her husband. Nina is a serene artist. She is the mother of a teenager who is facing the prospect of an empty nest. In alternating chapters, Nina and Emma give their versions of a number of events in their friendship. Nina makes it clear that their paths have crossed but Emma has no inkling that they have ever known one another. I found "Her" very we'll written. It's fascinating and disturbing

I can't believe that one family could have so many dysfunctions. It read like a social worker's entire case load combined. It's understandable that one problem could breed many but this many? That said I can't believe how much I enjoyed this book.

The style bothered me at first. The shifting from year to year from e-mails to actual events but I realized that this was a very clever way to disclose secrets that led up to important happenings.

Most of the book revolved around Lorelei's hoarding problem and the kind of person and mother she was, four children and four ways of dealing with it. Megan became a neat-freak, Bethan a weak child-woman. Rory escaped the house but not his problems with the help off a strong woman. Rhys escaped in his own way.

I found the book entertaining but a little over the top, and the title ending in a preposition made me cringe.

This book is the painstakingly researched but very readable story of the men and machines that brought rapid underground transit to New York City and Boston. In the half century after the Civil War, America saw the engineering marvel of the Brooklyn Bridge, the use of electricity to illuminate our buildings,electric motors to do many laborious jobs, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, and man's first attempts at flight.The entrepreneurial spirit was alive in America and men with vision and courage pushed through political snarls and almost impossible physical obstacles to build subways.This book gives us an insight into the lives of the men who accomplished this task. I'm only an occasional non-fiction reader but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have recommended it to two book clubs.

Buying In gives the reader a not very pretty picture of the people involved in our banking system. Sophie, the ambitious girl from a small town, finds that it takes dedication and sacrifice to succeed in big business. As the story progresses, we meet Ethan her hard driving boss, Vasu and his family from India, Sophie's father ,her friend from home, Kim. The story takes us through the ups and downs of a merger that the bank is managing and financing. Loyalties are challenged, jobs are lost, lessons are learned, and lives are changed. Or are they? The story was interesting but it was hard to find a sympathetic character I the whole book.

This book is enlightening as well as a good story. Through flashbacks, a young American girl tells the story of Los Golondrinas, an order of nuns with convents in Spain and South America. The reader is introduced to five young girls from the time of the Spanish Inquisition who for various reasons sought asylum in the convent in Spain. We get a good look at the terrors they experienced and the courage of the nuns helping women in a male dominated world. There are love stories, a little art history and even a mystery that keeps the reader enthralled until the end. Even though I liked this book, I found myself flipping back and forth to keep the characters straight. A timeline or list of characters would have made the experience better.

A marriage, strained by boredom, infidelity,and public humiliation ends in divorce. The story tells how the three people most involved go on. The wife discovers new talents and starts a very successful career. Her husband handles his disgrace and punishment in a very unexpected way. The daughter is left in limbo and probably has the most difficult time coping with the notoriety,new places and friends and just being an adolescent. Side stories enrich the plot and tie together the theme of seeking forgiveness and admitting mistakes.
When I finished this book, I kept thinking about it. It is a skillful work that takes an ordinary story makes an extraordinary point in unexpected ways. I loved it.

The lesson learned from this book is things aren't what they seem. Could Sunny have more problems- strange astronaut husband- autistic child- and a mother in a coma? Yet she seemed to be able to handle anything that came her way. Once she began to wear a wig to deny her baldness, she built a world that seemed normal. An accident tore the wig from her head anther facade crumbled and she faced her true self.
The premise of the novel is intriguing but I was confused by the flashbacks and wished the ending had been clearer and more conclusive.

Wife 22 was not my cup of tea. Perhaps my age and intolerance for living life electronically is the reason. It reinforces my belief that we live in a superficial world of quick posts and instant information and miss the warmth of face to face involvement.
William and Alice are husband and wife that share a house and two children but their marriage has become routine. The children, Zoe and Peter are typical children with normal growing up problems that Alice completely misdiagnoses. She is sure her sensitive , loving son is gay and her daughter has an eating disorder.
The minor characters are interesting and much more attractive than Alice and William. I would like to know more about Nedra, Bunny and Charlotte. They all have more wisdom and kinder dispositions.
The writing style is jarring, switching from Facebook posts to Google searches to straight narrative. I think the format will be very appealing to the computer generation, not me.

"A Good American" turned out to be surprisingly good. It started out being interesting but ordinary. As it went on it gathered steam and got better and better.

The characters that I thought improbable developed and became real. There were some that were unreal but entertaining, a dwarf, a giant, a very seductive school teacher and a bartender that fell down drunk every night, to name a few. Characters came and left only to reappear later in the story. When Frederick sang in France with a piano player from Missouri, I thought I know who he was but who under the age of seventy would know. Later in the story, much later his identity is revealed.

Although the main theme of this book is patriotism and the love an immigrant can feel for America as he raises his family and becomes a citizen, there were numerous threads woven through the story. Frederick's talent and love for music is passed down to his boys. The Kaiser Medal, although it's history caused Jette to be ashamed, is stolen and used bring change to many lives. There were interesting sub-plots concerning religion and race.

I enjoyed this book and will definitely recommend it to my book club.

I have rewritten this review three times and each time felt I hadn't put my finger on what disturbed me about this book. Was it the format with alternating narrators? Was it too many serious social problems superficially covered? Was it that there were too many characters and I had to keep referring to the family tree? The story was interesting and I am a fan of family sagas. My main problem was with character development. The author could have made the characters more three dimensional. The motivation for some of their actions seemed contrived and not consistent with who we had been led to believe they were.

I got it about secrets being corrosive and how they eat you up bit by bit, and how secrets destroy relationships for generations. I'm sure this book will be popular with book clubs but it's not for me.

The story begins with Casey moving in with Michael and his three children. Her sudden role as mother is daunting since Casey's ex-wife, Mallory, the children's birth mother, is a highly dysfunctional woman who is determined to undermine Casey. As with many patched together families there are many problems. Angel, the oldest daughter, remembers how bad life was with her mother but resents the new woman in her father's life and suspects Casey has secrets. Dylan has a good relationship with Casey and Jewel has made an adjustment. A family crisis brings Mallory into the house and the friction causes all the problems to rush to the surface. Each chapter is written by one of the main characters, a device to gain insight into the thoughts and actions of each. Though I became involved with the characters, their apparent inability to make good choices frustrated me . This is a book in need of someone with a cool head.