This novel alternates the stories of two ambitious women who have to struggle to become successful. The author compares and contrasts Catherine the Great's life with that of present day Tanya Vandermotter, a Russian art expert working for an art auction house. Both women have common traits: they are both immigrants and feel isolated from their family culture. They are willing to sacrifice personal relationships to get ahead. They confront moral dilemmas along their path of success which causes them to make difficult choices. Although the author parallels these womens' story arc, the result is sometimes a bit contrived because the differences in Catherine's closeted and isolated world in 1700's Russia is hard to compare with Tanya's busy jet-setting world based in present day NYC. However, the author's writing is fluid and intelligent and usually easy to follow. Overall, the novel was enjoyable and the topic was enlightening. Unfortunately there was a lot of 'over the top' description of immigrant angst and the ending was weak so I only gave the novel 3 stars.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced novel of murder and especially intrigue in early 18th Century London. The protagonist, Tom Hawkins, is a charismatic rakish "gentleman" who loves excitement and can't stay out of trouble. The novel starts with a scene where Tom is on a cart headed to the gallows for a murder he did not commit. The rest of the story is a flash back to explain his predicament. The background story is an exciting "who-done-it" with many interesting characters including Queen Caroline, wife of King George II. This is a very readable novel full of plot twists and fully fleshed characters from all walks of life. I highly recommend it.

This is one of the most original novels I have read in a long time. It was hard to wrap my head around wormholes and time travel, but the character portrayals carried the story and kept me reading. The author fleshed out both Karl and Lena, the "odd couple" in this story so well that I feel like I could recognize them if I met them in a bar (in the present at least!). I also loved that Wayne, Karl's best friend found peace, happiness and acceptance in a totally different world. I strongly recommend this novel to adventuresome readers who are willing to suspend present reality for a possible future reality of time travel and asteroid collisions. I would give this 5 stars except the ending got a little too confusing and funky to follow. In general though, an exciting and original novel!

Caroline Jacobs finally decides to confront her old best friend about an injustice 25 years ago while they were in high school together. This is the main impetus of the plot and it actually sounds a little trivial, right? However, the author introduces other dilemmas in Caroline's life that make this novel richer and more thought provoking than I expected. However, I was disappointed that the author didn't round out some of the other important characters such as Polly, Caroline's daughter and her mother, Penelope.

The novel was an enjoyable and a quick read. I would recommend it to young people and especially teenage girls since many of the themes are related to teenage/high school situations involving girl friends, parents and cliques.

This novel is a powerful and absorbing family saga, a story of terrible losses as well as a unique coming of age story. Through a series of flashbacks and flashforwards we learn part of the past history of Owen and Emily and the tragedy in their lives. Then the author focuses on their now 17 year son and main character, Walt Stahl. Walt works as a tour guide at the "Viva Las Vegas" museum and somehow supports his ill father. His life experiences are very limited until he meets Chrysto, a charming and handsome Greek still life model that Walt has been drawing. His relationship with Chrysto becomes all-consuming and stretches Walt's previous boundaries. The author writes exceptionally well and the book was engaging and difficult to put down. He also uses graphic illustrations very effectively to help the reader understand Walt's perceptions of his family history. I particularly liked the novel because of its unique subject matter. Very enjoyable!

This novel was entirely enjoyable. Fishbowl is a metaphor for the apartment building "Seville on Roxy". In this novel we get a small snippet of the life of many of the residents who live in this apartment building and they are all wildly original characters. From cross dressers to a child with seizures to a agoraphobe (and many other interesting residents) we get a peak into their private lives briefly through the eyes of our hero protagonist, Ian the goldfish. It is an original premise, well written and a lot of fun to read.

I enjoyed this novel on many levels. First of all, this mystery is tightly drawn thus the story arc is compelling and easy to follow. Secondly, the characters were very fully developed. We learn the history and motivations of not only the protagonists, but also the antagonists. The author points out that the motives the characters have in the present are complicated by their past lives, especially in the case of the Chinese characters, the trauma they all suffered as teens during the Cultural Revolution. Thirdly, the Hong Kong, Lamma Island, Shenzhen settings were so exotic that it was a delight to read and learn about them. Finally and most importantly, Sendaker writes so darn well that I could not put the book down! It has been a long while since I have read such an intriguing page turner. I strongly recommend this novel.

I enjoyed this novel of 3 generations of midwives. The narrative style with each character telling her story in alternating chapters was engaging and made the story line easy to follow. Since I am a women's health nurse practitioner, I particularly liked reading about the midwifery practice and deliveries. The three female protagonists were well developed and believable. The male side characters were more two dimensional, but since the story was not really about them, it was less important. My only criticism is that the story arc was very predictable and it became melodramatic near the end with Neva and Patrick's relationship. Otherwise I would recommend this novel to any woman who wanted a "light" read.

This was a WOW book as far as I was concerned. It was a carefully crafted suspense that I could not put down. Nina and Emma were very realistic characters with very different lives. The reader could empathize with both of their situations up to a certain point. But that NINA--what a clever stalker! We learn slowly but surely that she is out for revenge of some kind. However, she certainly weaves a very benign web of deception for Emma. Poor Emma is out of her element as Nina's ultimate plan of revenge is finally revealed.

The ending was one of those "up in the air, the reader can take it from there" endings. Somehow, that was OK with me. The beauty of this novel was the suspense and the growing anticipation of disaster that Harriet Lane creates. Loved it!

In this novel I learned a lot about the conflict in Syria in the 1980's which has unfortunately spilled over into present day revolution and war in Syria today. For this reason I enjoyed reading the novel. However, I feel the female narrator of the story was not a character that was believable. Her attitudes were not realistic for an innocent 17 year old girl.
In general I find that male authors often cannot put themselves in a woman's mind and write a believable story as if they are a woman. I certainly believe this is the case with this novel. Khalifa writes a very descriptive political novel which evokes a time and place that is distinctive, but he is not successful at convincing the reader that the narrator is a real person. In fact most of the female characters were difficult for me to believe. They were often depicted as 2 dimensional and either reprehensible such as Marwan who was chained to her room for loving an inappropriate man, or almost saintlike like Saafa. I also found the story line disjointed and often confusing. The reader learns great details about a certain minor character, but then never hears about the character again. I enjoyed learning about the Syrian political conflict, but the characters in the novel were a disappointment.

Certainly this novel had some very appealing themes: academic stimulation, freedom to choose when to work and when to relax, escapism and of especially friendship. Will Baker, the protagonist, is immersed in an academic environment studying literature, a topic that he relishes. The author gives us great detail about Will's excitement in studying and learning. He is able to research and write intensely on his own schedule and is also able to socialize, drink, party and have deep involvements with his new Oxford friends and lovers whenever he chooses. Charles Finch does a magnificent job of conveying a young man's daily academic life, exuberant friendship with housemates along with his angst of deep and complicated love for Sophie. The reader is treated to great discussions of the complexity of human interactions. However, the novel is, in the end, a slice of life. The novel tells us of one year in a young American man's life in Oxford, England between 2004-2005. Although the writing was quite good, the descriptions were often long winded. The details of Will's daily life became uninteresting after 2/3 of the novel because there was no significant change or revelation into how the year transformed him. The reader gets the feeling that Will shall forever see the pinnacle of his life be the year at Oxford, and frankly, it really isn't that interesting to the rest of us.

This author puts the readers back in the early 1980's during Northern Ireland struggles between the IRA and Protestant British rule. We navigate this time frame with a cast of incredibly quirky and interesting characters who are doing their best to avoid being caught up in the violence. Bessie and her young son, Herkie are just trying to lay low and scrape together some money to get to "Amerikay". Lorcan is using his skill as an artist to avoid being killed by the IRA. Father Cassidy a handsome priest, Rose McFadden a nosy and talkative neighbor and Gusty Grant a mechanic and peeping tom round out the major characters we meet.
At the beginning of the novel I had the mistaken impression that the story would be predictable and the story arc very straightforward. Also, Bessie 's character is pretty rough around the edges and I didn't think I could really "get into her". However, the more I read I found the complexity of each character grew as the author filled in a lot of details. Also the plot took a lot of unpredictable twists. I totally enjoyed this novel and I was really rooting for Bessie by the end of the novel.

"The Sisterhood" follows the trail of a medallion and of the Chronicle of the Convent of the Golondrinas. This trail crosses more than 5 centuries and 3 continents. The reader is introduced to many characters: nuns, orphans, parents, boyfriends, husbands etc.

With all of the time, place and character changes, I found myself just trying to follow the plot line or story arc. However, there were so many off-shoots of the story arc ( the Inquisition, religious intolerance, Inca culture, Spanish imperialism, feminism, art appreciation) that the novel becomes muddled and even simplistic.

In fairness, Helen Bryan's writing is very readable. The premise of the novel is intriguing, but I think she tried to fit too many themes, characters and sub-plots to make an effective novel.

This novel was a slow meander through Emily's Bean's life and thoughts 1 year after her divorce from David. Throughout the novel she just can't seem to put her life with David in the past and move on with all the possibilities of the future.
There were many aspects of the novel I enjoyed: the writing was very descriptive, the character development was focused and Emily's character as well as some of the lesser characters were fully fleshed out. I really liked the honest and unapologetic description of Emily's sexuality. The biggest fault I had with this novel is that it didn't really "go" anywhere. By the end of the novel, Emily is stuck in the same state of mind that she was in when the novel started. The story arc looped back to the beginning with no development. Sadly, the reader is left with an ending which is the same as the beginning: Emily continues to mourn for her past life and her ex-husband David.

In this novel I learned a great deal about art: art auctions, art purchasing and art forgery. The subject was fascinating and a topic I had never read about. Even more fascinating were the 2 troubled main characters, Elm and Gabriel. The author filled out details about their past and present lives with such insight that the reader could understand why these characters made choices that compromised their ethics. These characters, however, learned that ignoring their moral compass caused irreparable changes to their professional and personal lives.
This novel would appeal to an adult reader that likes character driven novels. The details in the novel about art production and dealing was somewhat tedious and the novel might profit from some editing. However, I think this would make an interesting book for a book club discussion.

I was fascinated with the real story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Brisland. I especially liked that the author gave us a thorough background of these young women's childhood and early life leading up to their fame as world travelers. This well researched background makes it easier for the reader to understand how these independent women were able to develop their unique strength of character. This character made it possible for them to embark on a race around the world alone, in 1889, when women generally stayed at home and raised children. The historical detail about life in the 1889 era enriched the book significantly. It really brought the story to life. The only detractor to this fine book is that the author sometimes went overboard with his historical minutia so that the Bly/Brisland story became sidetracked.

Helen Armstead, the housewife, mother turned PR expert is the main character of this novel. She is part of the two main overlying themes of the novel. First there is the theme of acceptance of blame and subsequent redemption. Both Helen's husband, Ben, and her old classmate, Hamilton, have severe breakdowns which cause them to behave badly. The breakdowns themselves are not the important part of the novel, but their mutual but separate need for redemption and even absolution and Helen's role in their achiving this redemption is the topic the author explores. Both these men find it necessary to clear their conscious and Helen helps them achieve this in different ways. The second theme is Helen's outstanding success at becoming independent and financially successful in the business world with no formal training. In her new job she also deals with her clients' blame and their acceptance of blame I applauded Helen's success and felt that Jonathan Dee wrote convincingly of her struggles and good fortune. Sub themes of teenage Sara's difficult adjustments and disappointments were interesting. The weakness in the novel was the incomplete resolution of Helen's challenge in her last assignment with the Catholic church. Her assignment was sensitive and extremely difficult (and perhaps too sensational to be believable) and Dee did not bring this part of the story to a reasonable conclusion. Overall, the novel was readable and enjoyable and Dee really brought the character of Helen to life.

I never expected to like a book about unscrupulous and violent gangsters. However, I have to admit this story was so well written and the characters were so fleshed out and believable that I enjoyed the novel very much. It was a real page-turner. Joe, the main character of this novel, was an entirely likeable guy who happened to be a gangster or as he liked to think of himself, an outlaw. Although I do not agree with Joe's way of life and his methods of "making a living", Dennis Lehane's talent for writing created a protagonist that is hard not to root for. I think that anyone that enjoys good writing and an interesting plot would enjoy this book. I am certainly going to be checking out other Lehane novels after reading this one.

This novel is a totally engaging story. I fell in love with Sunny, the main character. She is an altogether believable woman with a complex past and unusual current dilemas. She and her husband Maxon are true soul mates and they have a very unique relationship. But as we meet Sunny, she is going through a rough spell; she is in her late pregnancy and has a challenging 4 year old and a very ill mother. One of the themes of Shine Shine Shine is of "fitting in" socially and what this means for different characters. Another major theme involves the ultimate acceptance of human imperfections, both personal and of others. I strongly recommend this novel. It is very well written with an strong narrative and engrossing story.

This was an intriguing historical fiction based loosely on the life of a black woman, Mary Bowser, who was a spy for the Union during the Civil War. I enjoyed learning about Richmond and the life of slaves and free blacks in a city before and during the war. I was familiar with slavery in plantations and in cotton and rice fields, but not in cities. I think readers will be interested in learning how important spies for the Federals were in the overall effort of winning the war. Although the author had little facts to develop Mary's character, she did a good job of creating a believable and well-rounded woman with opinions and strengths. My one criticism is that too much time was spent on Mary's early life in Richmond and Boston. The novel really became interesting in Book Three during the war years.