Recent Reader Reviews

Lisa Jewell has outdone herself with THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN. Although I normally prefer thrillers, which Jewell excels at writing and which I mistakenly thought this was, THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN is riveting and had me glued to the pages as much as any thriller.

The house is beautiful in a beautiful neighborhood with other beautiful houses. But Lorelei loves things: bright things, colorful things, potentially useful things, things in bulk, all sorts of things. And all are things she just can't throw out.

Lorelei and Colin have four kids who grow up in this house of more and more things that their mother can't …more throw out. Each of their lives is examined over the years, and we see how the house they grew up in and their mother's madness affected them and their decisions.

I highly recommend this book. (less)

4.0

Status, lies, headstrong…

Evelyn and her mother Cecilia are ejected from their home in York in 1899. The family WAS aristocratic but lost their wealth and status due to reasons I won’t reveal. Without her mother’s knowledge , Evelyn applies for & accepts a job as an assistant at Morton’s Emporium (Bookshop).

A tale of secrets, 2nd chances, miscommunication, trust, success , and family drama.



THOUGHTS:

This book is advertised as historical and romance. I saw some historical as in wardrobe, transportation, cultural norms, and business mentions. I didn’t deem it as totally romance either. (Which is good for me …more because I don’t intentionally read romance!) I regard this as more of a character-driven fiction book about family drama with a touch of history and romance added to the mix.

My gut reaction to characters:

Evelyn - frank, outspoken / determined
William - mysterious / good intentions?
Cecilia - image-conscious / pushover where husband is concerned

Aunt Clara - crusty / testy
Lady Violet - snooty / hoity - toity / self-important

Supporting cast had a mix of personalities.

Debut book!

Beautiful cover (less)

This book was a perfect way to kick off my summer reading!

Olivia Dumont is a ghostwriter who is deeply in debt due to a lawsuit stemming from another author who she spoke out about and legal fees. So when the chance to write a memoir of a famous horror author, the choice was simple. However, the author turns out to be her estranged father who has Lewy Body Dementia and about 20 legal pads on which he has scrawled his story about the murders of his two siblings 50 years ago.
The story is told from her father's writing (Vincent), his sister Poppy's diary and films, and the research that Olivia undertakes. It also …more served as a vehicle to reconnect with her father as his memory failed.

Throughout the book, the reader understands Olivia's complicated past with a mother who walked out on the family, being sent to a Swiss boarding school at 14, and the possibility of selling her home to pay off the author and lawyer.

I loved the way Olivia used her journalism background to delve into 1975 newspapers, and to meet with people in Ojai who knew her father's family in 1975 - including the man next door. She found 10 of Poppy's films which she had digitalized and reviewed to "get to know" her aunt and uncle.

I thought the story was well crafted, intriguing, and suspenseful The mystery was unraveled in a clever believable way. The author definitely picked up California in the mid 70's noting songs and typical 70s activities.

I flew through this book in 2 days. I received an ARC of this book from BookBrowse and I am leaving my opinions voluntarily. (less)

Olivia Dumont is pretty much broke.

When she is asked to ghostwrite a book for none other than horror author Vincent Taylor who is her father she hasn’t talked to for years, she has a difficult decision.

But….with overwhelming debt she agrees.

When she sees her father after thirty years, she finds out he is very ill and has written a memoir about his childhood.

That childhood is one that is a horror story. He was accused of killing both his brother and his sister.

Will she find out what she never knew about her father and the murders of her aunt and uncle

How will this all play out for Olivia?

Writing this book turns …more out to be more difficult than she thought it would be and not what she wanted to find out about her family.

Fans of Julia Clark will enjoy her newest tense, pull-you-in read that started out slowly but ends with a bang. 4/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own. (less)

THE GHOSTWRITER by Julie Clark

Can ghostwriting bring you closure? That’s what Olivia Dumont, a ghostwriter is asking herself.

June, 1975, two teenage siblings are found dead in their home. Vincent, the only surviving sibling has never been able to shake the whispers and accusations. Decades later Vincent has had a great career of being a horror writer and his estranged daughter, Olivia, has reluctantly agreed to ghostwrite her father’s last book. Is Vincent ready to talk and tell the truth after fifty years of silence? Is Olivia ready to face the disfunction and trauma at the core of her family?

Another riveting …more read by Julie Clark. The characters are relatable and well developed in this dysfunctional family drama thriller. Poppy was my favorite character in this story, as I found her to be true to herself at such a young age. The deadly secrets from Vincent’s childhood will keep you turning the pages. I look forward to what this skilled author does next.

Thank you to BookBrowse and publisher for the ARC to read. (less)

"Properties of Thirst" by Marianne Wiggins tells us about World War II from the perspective of the United States mainland. If you live in a temperamental land, a Japanese camp (nomenclature is essential) is unwelcome. We have a wide range of well-developed characters to show how Pearl Harbor and the incendiary attitude toward the Asian population changed lives in Southern California.

The story, surrounding the neighboring landowner and the Department of the Interior architect, shows people going about their jobs with at least some good intentions. Some even try to create for the subjugated. Schiff, the working …more stiff from the Department of the Interior entrusted with the home for 1,000 Asians, falls for the landowner's daughter, and things become complicated.

With Father, Son, Daughter, and Architect, you learn a lot about their backgrounds, to the point that you do not know the main character, which works. Shiff battles politics in his duty to build a camp and finds people upset with the process in various ways, citing the hypocrisy of FDR's Four Freedoms while denying rights to citizens.

The collection of viewpoints enables you to take a break from the most emotional storylines. Very little death occurs "on screen," but the time is heavy, especially for amateur history students. You have so many cultures represented (Jewish, Asian, and Hispanic) that you can focus on the turbulent era and realize that it affected many people in many ways.

Wiggins lost the ability to read or write after a stroke, so she wrote "Properties of Thirst" over a few years after her daughter helped her finish, making this a fantastic achievement. The characters here are special and enjoyable, and the book's non-linear storytellers will please those who want to think about what they are reading; my thumb is up with much admiration. (less)

Imaginatively written by Alice Hoffman, this is the multilayered story of a house and the surrounding farmland located on the outer reaches of Cape Cod and its many occupants over the years. The house was first constructed in the 1700s when Massachusetts was occupied by the British, and each chapter moves ahead in time to the next family, all of whom live in what becomes known as Blackbird House.

Although this is a novel, it reads like a collection of closely interwoven short stories with each one of the 12 chapters building toward the next to catapult the novel forward in both time and plot.

Some of the …more characters we meet include:
• The Hadley Family opens the novel when John builds the house for his beloved wife Coral and their two sons, Vincent and Isaac. John is a fisherman, but the British occupation forbids him from pursuing his trade. If he is captured fishing on the open water of the ocean, he'll be imprisoned in England. But his family needs to eat.

• Ruth Blackbird Hill teeters on the edge of insanity when she loses her home to a ravaging fire, choosing to live without shelter on the beach in all seasons, accompanied only by her cows and her red boots. Kind women in the village intervene, and Ruth's life changes when they bring her to the farm that Lysander purchased from the Hadleys.

• Two sisters, Violet and Huley, live with their widowed father in the house. Huley is beautiful. Violet is disfigured with a large violet-shaped and violet-colored birthmark on her face. One day a professor from Boston comes to the village to investigate a sighting of a sea monster, and the girls' lives change forever.

• It's 1969, and teenage Maya's hippie parents have bought the old house that doesn't even have proper plumbing. In the winter, they have to use the outhouse. In the winter! Her parents live in a bubble by themselves, leaving Maya and her brother almost abandoned. It is only far later in her life that Maya comes to appreciate and better understand the love her parents had for each other.

• The last two chapters feature the same set of characters, set about 25 years apart. Emma is seven years old and has successfully battled leukemia when her parents impulsively buy Blackbird House as a summer escape. What happens that first summer is both joyful and heartbreaking. Fast forward to Emma's 30th birthday when her parents gift her the house. She returns on Midsummer's Night, a time when you become who it is you really are.

At just 250 pages, this is a short, character-driven novel that has a powerful message about love and family and the importance of community. Symbols abound and are woven through every chapter in some form—from water and fire and earth to blackbirds, including a white blackbird in the flock, and the color red.

Told with candor and compassion, this is a fierce but also lyrical and insightful tale. (less)

If you're a James McBride fan, this is a must-read book. If you haven't yet treated yourself to this award-winning author's novels, don't read this memoir of his life and his mother's life quite yet. I've only read two of his novels—"Deacon King Kong" and "The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store"—but it's fascinating to see how the seed of some of his story ideas came from his mother's storied and remarkable past. Read a novel or two or three first and then treat yourself to this masterful memoir.

James McBride is the eighth of 12 children born to a White woman and a Black father. His father, Andrew Dennis McBride, …more died before James's birth. His mother, Ruth McBride Jordan, remarried several years later to another Black man named Hunter Jordan; the couple had four children, but most importantly, Mr. Jordan treated the McBride kids as his own. Lots of love to go around. McBride loved Hunter Jordan dearly and thought of him as his father.

Ruth was not only a White woman living in a Black world in a time when society mightily disapproved of this, but also she was the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. In addition to regularly sexually abusing her, her father was cruel and vindictive. Ruth ran away from her Suffolk, Virginia home on day after her high school graduation, and when she married a Black man, her family declared her dead to them. They sat shiva for her. She found solace in the Christian church, something that held her up after the tragic loss of her two husbands.

Discerning his mother's life story was a difficult, years-long project for James McBride. Ruth was a very private person and saw no need to dredge up the past. But James was insistent. As he says, "It took many years to find out who she was, partly because I never knew who I was."

This memoir switches chapter-by-chapter between Ruth's life story and James's life story when he grew up poor in Brooklyn and Queens with little money, little food, and sleeping four to a bed. Some of the stories—especially Ruth's—are so astonishing as to feel made-up, but it's all true. James truly did come from two worlds—one White, one Black—and this has greatly informed and influenced his writing. Even though he was brought up a Christian, he says he has a Jewish soul inherited from his mother.

McBride's thoughts and ruminations on race and the struggles he had with his racial identity are candid, but also heartbreaking, and form the backbone of this brilliant memoir. His mother truly was an extraordinary woman, raising 12 children in poverty. She enforced strict rules and focused on their education. It paid off. Two became medical doctors, one a psychologist, one an Ivy League college professor, one a registered nurse and midwife, one a chemistry researcher, one a medical practice office manager, one a computer consultant, and two teachers. And James McBride himself is not only an accomplished musician, but also the 2013 winner of the National Book Award for "The Good Lord Bird."

This is a fascinating, almost mesmerizing book that reads more like a novel than nonfiction. It is filled with sincere, forthright, and brutally honest revelations that truly capture their lives—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It takes a lot of courage to be this truthful.

The meaning of the book's title? When he was little, James asked his mother the color of God's spirit. "Oh boy…God's not black. He's not white. He's a spirit," his mother told him. "What color is God's spirit?" asked James. "It doesn't have a color," she said. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color." (less)

Yes, I was late getting to CLARK AND DIVISION, and anything I say about it has probably been said already. But did I like it? Yes--mostly.

CLARK AND DIVISION is a historical mystery. In my opinion, that makes it better than most historical fiction. Plus, apparently, Naomi Hirahara based her characters on real people and their stories. And her mystery was based on a real case. That's why I liked it.

it is 1944. A Japanese American family was finally allowed to leave the concentration camp where they had been incarcerated in California. They are now in Chicago and soon learn that the eldest daughter, Rose, who went …more to Chicago ahead of her parents and sister, is dead, run over by a subway. Her 20-year-old sister, Aki, investigates this "accident" throughout the book. Was this really an accident? Aki doubts it. But was the official finding, that Rose committed suicide, correct? Aki is sure that's not right. Could someone have pushed Rose? That's the mystery.

Even more than the mystery, though, CLARK AND DIVISION is about the Japanese American experience postdetainment. This historical fiction is the reason, I'm sure, the book won so many awards. (less)

This is one of those delicious mystery/thrillers that is unputdownable while you're reading it (or more likely devouring it), but chances are you won't remember it weeks or months later. It's the equivalent of literary dessert. Oh, so tasty!

Written by Alafair Burke, this is the story of three best friends, the secrets they closely guard and the lies they tell each other and themselves until their lives implode after a murder and they are forced to face the truth—no matter how difficult that truth may be.

It's summer and rich girl Kelsey Ellis invites her besties Lauren Berry and May Hanover to join her for a week …more in the Hamptons in a home she has rented on the bay. Kelsey works for her very controlling father in the sprawling and highly successful family real estate business in Boston. Lauren is a classical musician and the director of the Houston Symphony. May is a new professor of law at Fordham University, having just left the Manhattan district attorney's office. All three have endured being socially "canceled" after three completely unrelated, embarrassing, and highly public events that diminished their professional and personal lives. Now they are off for a bit of R&R in the tony Hamptons.

The first night together, they go to Sag Harbor for drinks with Lauren driving. She spots a primo parking space and patiently waits while the driver in the huge pickup holding the space takes his sweet time pulling out. Just as he does and before Lauren can scoot into the space, it is taken by another couple. When they get out of their car, they turn to the three women and gloat. Seriously gloat. Well, that's maddening! This becomes the main topic of conversation over drinks, and they decide to write notes to the driver. It's fun. It's harmless. And the notes get stuffed into a purse. The note Kelsey writes says, "He's cheating. He always does." Unbeknownst to Lauren and May, Kelsey goes one step further, tucking the note under the wipers of the car. It's just a harmless prank that is payback for stealing the parking space!

The weekend is fun and relaxing until the driver of that car turns up missing, and Kelsey, Lauren, and May are targeted as suspects by the police. What started as a silly joke quickly spirals out of their control. They spin elaborate lies—so many lies. They guard deeply-held secrets—so many secrets. And the plot twists and turns, keeping the reader guessing until the end.

This is an ideal vacation book—fast and easy to read and totally riveting. (less)