Review: The Bitch is Back, edited by Cathi Hanauer

About the book, The Bitch is Back the-bitch-is-back-cover

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (September 27, 2016)

More than a decade after the New York Times bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young women, nine of the original contributors are back—along with sixteen captivating new voices—sharing their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family, independence, body-image, health, and aging: the critical flash points of women’s lives today.

“Born out of anger,” the essays in The Bitch in the House chronicled the face of womanhood at the beginning of a new millennium. Now those funny, smart, passionate contributors—today less bitter and resentful, and more confident, competent, and content—capture the spirit of postfeminism in this equally provocative, illuminating, and compelling companion anthology.

Having aged into their forties, fifties, and sixties, these “bitches”—bestselling authors, renowned journalists, and critically acclaimed novelists—are back . . . and better than ever. In The Bitch Is Back, Cathi Hanauer, Kate Christensen, Sarah Crichton, Debora Spar, Ann Hood, Veronica Chambers, and nineteen other women offer unique views on womanhood and feminism today. Some of the “original bitches” (OBs) revisit their earlier essays to reflect on their previous selves. All reveal how their lives have changed in the intervening years—whether they stayed coupled, left marriages, or had affairs; developed cancer or other physical challenges; coped with partners who strayed, died, or remained faithful; became full-time wage earners or homemakers; opened up their marriages; remained childless or became parents; or experienced other meaningful life transitions.

As a “new wave” of feminists begins to take center stage, this powerful, timely collection sheds a much-needed light on both past and present, offering understanding, compassion, and wisdom for modern women’s lives, all the while pointing toward the exciting possibilities of tomorrow.

Buy, read, and discuss The Bitch is Back

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the editor, Cathi Hanauer cathi-hanauer-ap

Cathi Hanauer is the author of three novels—My Sister’s Bones, Sweet Ruin, and Gone—and is the editor of the New York Times bestselling essay collection The Bitch in the House. A former columnist for Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen, she has written for The New York Times, Elle, Self, Real Simple, and other magazines. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, New York Times “Modern Love” editor Daniel Jones, and their daughter and son.

Connect with Cathi

Website, | Facebook | Twitter


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

I loved this book. It’s funny and feisty and fierce, but at the same time it’s serious and poignant. Some of the authors included are women whose work I’ve been reading all my life and some are new to me, and even when they were describing situations that were foreign to me I found their words interesting, relevant, and often provocative. These are real women writing about their real lives. They write about marriage and family and being single and being professional and turning your back on what people expect.

They write with honest voices full of wit and wisdom and no small amount of warmth.

And these writings very obviously come from a place where Truth is deeply rooted.

Ordinarily, this is the part of my review where I would pick out a few favorites from the collection of essays and highlight them, but I can’t do that. Why? Because to highlight any of them feels like slighting the rest.

Instead, let me just share my enthusiasm, no – my delight – in the fact that this true stories were from women my age and older. Strong women. Smart women. And, yes, bitchy women, but only in the sense that these women have reclaimed the word ‘bitch’ and made it representative of feminism, personal choice, and self expression in only the best ways. If these women are bitches, then, damn! I want to be a bitch, too.

Essay after essay, I could not stop reading these words. The woman who declared that she was trans after years of marriage and still shares a home and a life with her original wife. Beautiful. The college president owning her fight to stay youthful. I completely get that. The book unwinds, the tales go on, and  – seriously – I read in the bathroom a lot, and my feet fell asleep more than once because I was so engaged in these words.

I’ve found myself enthralled by books before. I’ve found myself completely engaged in stories both fictional and non.

But The Bitch is Back grabbed my attention from the first word of the forward, and never let me waver until I’d sucked the last sentence into my soul.

Read it. I promise. You’ll find yourself nodding you head and smiling and laughing  – and sometimes cursing – only to smile and laugh and nod some more.

Goes well with whatever you love. I chose coffee and a toasted bagel and Greek yogurt with fruit and honey.

 


Tour Stops TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, September 27th: Dwell in Possibility

Wednesday, September 28th: G. Jacks Writes

Thursday, September 29th: Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Monday, October 3rd: Thoughts On This ‘n That

Tuesday, October 4th: Bibliotica

Wednesday, October 5th: Book Hooked Blog

Thursday, October 6th: In Bed with Books

Monday, October 10th: A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall

Tuesday, October 11th: Stranded in Chaos

Thursday, October 13th: West Metro Mommy

TBD: Doing Dewey

 

Agatha Christie: Closed Casket, by Sophie Hannah

About the book Closed Casket Closed Casket

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (September 6, 2016)

“What I intend to say to you will come as a shock…”

With these words, Lady Athelinda Playford — one of the world’s most beloved children’s authors — springs a surprise on the lawyer entrusted with her will. As guests arrive for a party at her Irish mansion, Lady Playford has decided to cut off her two children without a penny . . . and leave her vast fortune to someone else: an invalid who has only weeks to live.

Among Lady Playford’s visitors are two strangers: the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited — until Poirot begins to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murder. But why does she seem so determined to provoke a killer? And why — when the crime is committed despite Poirot’s best efforts to stop it — does the identity of the victim make no sense at all?

Buy, read, and discuss Closed Casket

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About series creator, Agatha Christie Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976.

Learn more about Agatha Christie through her official website.


About the author, Sophie Hannah Sophie Hannah

Sophie Hannah is the New York Times-bestselling author of numerous psychological thrillers, which have been published in 27 countries and adapted for television, as well as The Monogram Murders, the first Hercule Poirot novel authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie.

Connect with Sophie

WebsiteFacebook | Twitter


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

It’s never easy when a new author tries to take over from a legend. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books have been written by multitudes of authors hiding behind the existing pen names since forever. Robert Goldsborough successfully stepped into Rex Stout’s shoes and gave us the continuing stories of on Nero Wolfe a couple of decades ago.  With this novel, Closed Casket, Sophie Hannah has stepped up to write about one of Ms. Christie’s beloved creations, Hercule Poirot, and I have to confess, I asked to review it as much because as I love the dapper Belgian as because I was curious to see if he was safe in Hannah’s hands.

I needn’t have worried. Closed Casket is everything a Poirot novel should be… interwoven plot lines, layers of social behavior, clues upon clues, and through it all, his keen intellect leading us down the path to the solution.

From the moment we are first introduced to Lady Playford this novel is compelling. Why leave all your money to someone who may well die before you? Why invite a private detective and a Scotland Yard inspector to a weekend in the country? Why indeed… if it isn’t to force deep truths from your friends and family?

It’s hard to review a mystery without spoiling it… suffice to say that all of Hannah’s characters are well drawn. I heard echoes of David Suchet’s performances in Poirot’s speech, and would happily watch a weekly police drama featuring Catchpool. It felt a little like Playford was meant to represent Christie herself, in a way, but I think every reader will come away with that sense, even if it isn’t accurate.

As with all Christie mysteries, this isn’t a novel that involves car chases or gun fights. There is little ‘action,’ there is no gore. This is not a spy thriller.

What Closed Casket is, is a perfectly plotted, well drawn continuation of a beloved character’s adventures. Hannah’s writing was endorsed by Christie’s estate. I hope she continues to write in this world, but I’m also intrigued to check out her other works.

Goes well with a pot of tea, a plate of scones, and whatever you do, don’t look behind that billowing curtain.


Tour Stops TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, September 6th: A Chick Who Reads

Wednesday, September 7th: I Wish I Lived in a Library

Thursday, September 8th: A Bookworm’s World

Monday, September 12th: Joyfully Retired

Tuesday, September 13th: A Bookish Way of Life

Wednesday, September 14th: Dwell in Possibility

Monday, September 19th: Reading Reality

Wednesday, September 21st: 5 Minutes For Books

Thursday, September 22nd: In Bed with Books

Friday, September 23rd: Bibliotica

TBD: A Wondrous Bookshelf

Review: Life After Coffee, by Virginia Franken – with giveaway

About the book Life After Coffee Life After Coffee

  • Paperback: 266 pages
  • Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (September 13, 2016)

When globe-trotting coffee buyer, Amy O’Hara, assures her husband—who stays at home to watch the kids—that it is He Who Has it Harder… she doesn’t really believe it. That is, until the day she gets laid off, her husband decides to devote all his waking hours to writing a screenplay, and she discovers she’s actually the world’s most incompetent mother.

Amy’s only possible salvation is to find another high-flying job as quickly as possible, but with the coffee industry imploding around her—and the competing buyers in her field being much hipper prospects—things look pretty dire. Even if Amy does manage to find full-time employment ever again, as her life slowly becomes more and more entwined with her children’s, how will she be able to bear leaving them to travel for weeks on end?

When salvation appears in the form of a movie-mogul ex-boyfriend who wants to employ her husband and rekindle their relationship, Amy starts to find she’s sorely tempted…

Buy, read, and discuss Life After Coffee.

Amazon | Books a Million | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Virginia Franken Virginia Franken

Virginia Franken was born and raised in Medway, Kent, the place where Henry the 8th sent his wives on holiday in the hope that they’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes and save him the trouble of beheading them. Most her childhood was spent wearing a dance leotard and tights, and at age 11 she attended the (sort of) prestigious dance school The Arts Education School, Tring, where she spent her teen years trying to do pique turns in a straight line and getting drunk in the village. (The inability to do the former possibly informed by too much opportunity to do the latter).

After graduating from The University of Roehampton, she worked on cruise liners as a professional dancer before deciding she’d had enough of wearing diamanté g-strings for a living and somehow managed to bag a job in book publishing.  Getting fed up of having to choose between paying the rent or buying groceries, she eventually moved from London to Los Angeles where life was affordable and every time she opened her mouth she got to act all surprised and flattered when someone said they liked her accent. She then spent years trying to convince everyone else that it was them who had the accent, but this was never met with anything more emphatic than a polite, “Is that so…”

These days she lives in Monrovia, near to Pasadena, with two kids, a dog, one ever-lasting goldfish and her bearded lover, in a house that’s just a little bit too small to fit everyone in quite comfortably. She gets most of her writing done when she should be sleeping. LIFE AFTER COFFEE is her first novel. If enough people buy a copy, there’s a good chance she’ll write another…

Connect with Virginia:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

I fell in love with this book just from the title, and that initial crush was fully realized before I was three chapters into this funny, fast paced, breezy read about a woman who has to learn the hard way how to balance her career, marriage, and motherhood, a task made more urgent when she’s fired from her globetrotting coffee-buying job and suddenly has to be the primary caregiver to her two children.

Amy, the main character is engaging and likeable, even if there are moments when you want to grab her and shake her. Patrick, her writer husband wavers between being a true helpmate and being a ball of depression. The two kids are sticky, adorable, and somewhat troublesome, and felt just real enough that I could feel bad for them, and laugh at them, without feeling guilty.

First-time novelist Virginia Franken deftly manages her characters. While some of their choices make you want to shake the until they can’t see straight, those low-percentage decisions only serve to make Amy, Patrick, and the people they encounter feel more real, especially next-door neighbor Lizzie who starts out as an antagonist of sorts, and morphs into an ally, if not a friend, by the end of the story.

I really appreciate Franken’s use of first-person in Life After Coffee, and commend her on Amy’s dialogue in particular. At times, I had to remind myself that this was a novel and not a super-candid memoir.

If you want a novel that is both fantastically funny and a fast read, Life After Coffee would be an excellent choice.

Goes well with coffee, obviously, and a toasted English muffin with the nut-butter of your choice. I like cashew.


Giveaway Life After Coffee

One lucky reader in the U.S. or Canada will get a copy of Life After Coffee mailed to them by the publicist. How? you ask. I’ll tell you:

There are three ways to enter (one entry per person for each choice, so if you do all three, you’re entered three times).

  1. Find my tweet about this book and retweet it (I’m @Melysse).
  2. Find  my  Facebook post about this book  and like/share it (I’m MissMelysse).
  3. Leave a relevant comment on this post.

Winner will be chosen from those entries received by 23:59 CDT on 25 September 2016.


Virginia Franken’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS: TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, September 13th: A Chick Who Reads

Wednesday, September 14th: Chick Lit Central – author guest post

Friday, September 16th: Bibliotica

Monday, September 19th: Books and Bindings

Tuesday, September 20th: Wall to Wall Books

Thursday, September 22nd: Back Porchervations

Monday, September 26th: Write Read Life

Wednesday, September 28th: The Book Chick

Monday, October 3rd: Rebel Mommy Book Blog

Thursday, October 6th: Tina Says

Friday, October 7th: Mrs. Mommy Booknerd

Monday, October 10th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Tuesday, October 11th: A Bookish Affair

Wednesday, October 12th: Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall

Thursday, October 13th: From the TBR Pile

Monday, October 17th: All Roads Lead to the Kitchen

Tuesday, October 18th: 5 Minutes for Books

Wednesday, October 19th: Reading Cove Book Club

Thursday, October 20th: Mom’s Small Victories

Monday, October 24th: Caryn, The Book Whisperer

Sunday, October 30th: Writer Unboxed – guest post

Review: The American Girl, by Kate Horsley

About the book,  The American Girl The American Girl

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (August 2, 2016)

From a bright new talent comes a riveting psychological thriller about an American exchange student in France involved in a suspicious accident, and the journalist determined to break the story and uncover the dark secrets a small town is hiding.

On a quiet summer morning, seventeen-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. Barefoot, bloodied, and unable to say what has happened to her, Quinn’s appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes—the French family with whom she’s been staying—have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family’s disappearance.

Though she is cynical about the media circus that suddenly forms around the girl, Boston journalist Molly Swift cannot deny she is also drawn to the mystery and travels to St. Roch. She is prepared to do anything to learn the truth, including lying so she can get close to Quinn. But when a shocking discovery turns the town against Quinn and she is arrested for the murders of the Blavette family, she finds an unlikely ally in Molly.

As a trial by media ensues, Molly must unravel the disturbing secrets of the town’s past in an effort to clear Quinn’s name, but even she is forced to admit that the American Girl makes a very compelling murder suspect. Is Quinn truly innocent and as much a victim as the Blavettes—or is she a cunning, diabolical killer intent on getting away with murder…?

Told from the alternating perspectives of Molly, as she’s drawn inexorably closer to the truth, and Quinn’s blog entries tracing the events that led to her accident, The American Girl is a deliciously creepy, contemporary, twisting mystery leading to a shocking conclusion.

Buy, read, and discuss this book

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Kate Horsley Kate Horsley

Kate Horsley’s first novel, The Monster’s Wife, was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Best British Crime Stories. She co-edits Crimeculture, a site dedicated to crime fiction and film offering articles, reviews, and interviews with writers.

Connect with Kate

Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram | Google+


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

I love a good thriller and The American Girl offers up thrill after thrill from the moment Quinn Perkins  stumbles out of a French forest and gets hit by a car, through every plot twist and mysterious turn as American journalist Molly Swift goes head-to-head with local authorities to determine the real story behind the foreign exchange student’s surprising appearance, and, indeed the rest of her time in St. Roch.

I liked the convention of alternating chapters between amnesiac Quinn’s flashbacks, her present-day video blog (an activity her therapist assigned) and Molly’s observations, especially since the former is confined to a hospital bed in a coma for the first quarter of the novel, and remains in the hospital (but awake) for much of the rest of the story.

I have to admit, I did find myself a bit distracted by Quinn’s name. Is she meant to be an homage to the character from the television show Scandal, who also has an amnesiac Quinn Perkins at the enter of the story, or did the author merely draw the name from mid-air? I wish I’d thought to relay a question through the blog tour host and publicist to find out.

I also have to confess that while I enjoyed the mystery/thriller aspect of this book a lot, I found that some of the individual story elements were a bit predictable. Molly’s flirtation with the local law enforcement is one; whether or not we should trust Quin is another.

Still, even with some minor flaws, the overall tenor of this novel is exactly what it should be for a story this dark and this intimate. The characters at the center of it – Molly and Quinn – are painted with deft strokes, the supporting cast with slightly less definition, but enough to be believable. Similarly the tone  – moody and murky – kept me involved in the mystery rather than working it out long before I was finished.

If you want a novel that sustains a nice creepy mood, tells a gripping story, and is otherwise well-crafted, you should read The American Girl.

Goes well with a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke.


Tour Stops TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, August 2nd: A Bookish Way of Life

Wednesday, August 3rd: A Bookworm’s World

Thursday, August 4th: Literary Feline

Monday, August 8th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Tuesday, August 9th: Kahakai Kitchen

Wednesday, August 10th: Luxury Reading

Thursday, August 11th: Bibliotica

Thursday, August 11th: FictionZeal

Monday, August 15th: Buried Under Books

Monday, August 15th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, August 17th: Comfy Reading

Thursday, August 18th: StephTheBookworm

TBD: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

TBD: Book Hooked Blog

 

Review: Home Field, by Hannah Gersen

About the book, Home Field Home Field by Hannah Gersen

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (July 26, 2016)

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football.

As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program and brought the state championship to the community. When he married Nicole, the beloved town sweetheart, he seemed to have it all—until his troubled wife committed suicide. Now, everything Dean thought he knew is thrown off kilter as Nicole’s death forces him to re-evaluate all of his relationships, including those with his team and his three children.

Dean’s eleven-year old son, Robbie, is withdrawing at home and running away from school. Bry, who is only eight, is struggling to understand his mother’s untimely death and his place in the family. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie, a freshman at Swarthmore, is torn between her new identity as a rebellious and sophisticated college student, her responsibility towards her brothers, and reeling from missing her mother. As Dean struggles to continue to lead his team to victory in light of his overwhelming personal loss, he must fix his fractured family—and himself. When a new family emergency arises, Dean discovers that he’ll never view the world in the same way again.

Transporting readers to the heart of small town America, Home Field is an unforgettable, poignant story about the pull of the past and the power of forgiveness.

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Hannah Gersen Hannah Gersen

Hannah Gersen was born in Maine and grew up in western Maryland. She is a staff writer for The Millions, and her writing has been published in the New York Times, Granta, and The Southern Review, among others. Home Field is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Connect with Hannah

Website


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

As we head into summer’s home stretch, I find myself anxious for the cooler (well slightly cooler – I live in Texas, after all) temperatures of autumn. Even now in the first half of August, even though the temperature is regularly over 100, there’s a thinner quality to the summer light.

Home Field does not take place entirely within the summer, but in part one of this deftly crafted family drama, grieving father and high school football coach Dean reflects that he needs August so that he and the boys he coaches can recharge before the craziness of the school year sets in.

In many ways, I feel like we all need this novel, in much the same way. For all it deals with deep issues  – the death-by-suicide of Dean’s wife, Stephanie, Robbie, and Bry’s mother,  Nicole, the various ways different people process such an event, and the eventual healing that starts even though it meets a bit of resistance – this is a gentle story. It perfectly combines the immediate pain and loss of this family with the setting of small-town America.

I’ll confess that eighteen-year-old Stephanie is the character I most understood, despite the fact that I’m more a contemporary of her father – but I know too well the way we distance ourselves from our mothers, even when we’re still alive, and, like her, I went through a period when my hair was dyed black. (My hair is currently streaked with pink, but for very different reasons.) I thought the combination of her outer rebellion and her inner commitment to academic excellence was incredibly well-written.

But Dean, the father, the coach, felt very real to me as well. I felt for him at every moment of this novel, and wanted so much for him to find his rhythm and make the connection with his children that was missing a little bit in all of their grief.

Overall, I felt that Home Field was an absorbing, satisfying read, and I look forward to more from Hannah Gersen.

Goes well with smoked ham, roasted red potatoes, and crisp apple cider (hard or not, as appropriate).


Tour Stops TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, July 26th: BookNAround

Thursday, July 28th: A Bookish Way of Life

Friday, July 29th: Broken Teepee

Monday, August 1st: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Tuesday, August 2nd: Lesa’s Book Critiques

Wednesday, August 3rd: bookchickdi

Thursday, August 4th: A Bookish Affair

Monday, August 8th: Bibliotica

Tuesday, August 9th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, August 10th: Sweet Southern Home

TBD: A Tattered Copy

Review: Leaving Blythe River, by Catherine Ryan Hyde

About the book,  Leaving Blythe River Leaving Blythe River

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (May 24, 2016)

New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde returns with an unforgettable story of courage.

Seventeen-year-old Ethan Underwood is totally unprepared to search for his father in the Blythe River National Wilderness. Not only is he small, scrawny, and skittish but he’s barely speaking to the man after a traumatic betrayal. Yet when his father vanishes from their remote cabin and rangers abandon the rescue mission, suddenly it’s up to Ethan to keep looking. Angry or not, he’s his father’s only hope.

With the help of three locals—a fearless seventy-year-old widow, a pack guide, and a former actor with limited outdoor skills—he heads into the wild. The days that follow transform Ethan’s world. Hail, punishing sun, swollen rapids, and exhausting pain leave him wondering if he’s been fooled yet again: Is his father out here at all? As the situation grows increasingly dire, Ethan realizes this quest has become about more than finding his dad.

From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes a story of nature revealing human nature—the trickiest terrain. Navigating an unforgiving landscape, Ethan searches himself for the ability to forgive his father—if he finds him alive.

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Catherine Ryan Hyde Catherine Ryan Hyde

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty published and forthcoming books. Her bestselling 1999 novel Pay It Forward, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List; Jumpstart the World was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the Antioch ReviewMichigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly ReviewPloughsharesGlimmer Train, and the Sun, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts and the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her short fiction received honorable mention in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, a second-place win for the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominations for Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have also been cited in Best American Short Stories.

Ryan Hyde is also founder and former president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.

Connect with Catherine

Website | Blog |Facebook | Twitter


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

Catherine Ryan Hyde is an excellent writer. She sets vivid scenes and her characters are well-drawn. Her work, which I consider to be literary fiction, always delves into the human psyche in interesting ways.  So, maybe it’s my failing because while I appreciated the care and craft that went into this book, and enjoyed the supporting characters in the novel (especially crotchety old Jone) I found that I had a difficult time connecting to this novel in any meaningful way. This surprised me, because when I read and reviewed The Language of Hoofbeats a couple of years ago, I loved it.

The story in this novel is fairly typical – a city boy watches his parents’ marriage dissolve in front of his eyes, and after his parents finally split, he’s sent off to live with his father, in a rented A-frame on the fringes of a national part, while his mother is traveling.

Ethan, the boy in question, is our POV character, but I had a problem sympathizing with him. Maybe I just don’t ‘get’ teenage boys, or maybe I just didn’t like the character, but even though he went through some rough issues – getting mugged, for example – I felt like a lot of what happened was because he made low-percentage choices way too frequently. I wanted him to blow up at his father, and at least communicate, and he never really did, and I think, because I am the kind of person who blows up (but then I’m done, I don’t let things linger) I couldn’t related.

Then there are his parents… his mother never really felt like a fully-realized character to me, but then, she’s not really a main character, more like a means to an end. It’s clear that Ethan recognizes that his mother loves him. But there was just something off about him.

Ethan’s father, I wanted to shake until his brain rattled. With this character, author Hyde did her job too well – creating a character who was so self-entitled and oblivious that it provoked a strong reaction from me, but I couldn’t feel sorry for him, even after he disappeared.

I did, at some point, want to give poor Ethan a hug.

Bottom line: There are some great character moments in this novel, and the story is well written and well constructed, but I had a hard time connecting with it.

Goes well with chicken stew. 


Catherine Ryan Hyde’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS: TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, May 24th: Peeking Between the Pages

Thursday, May 26th: Kritter’s Ramblings

Friday, June 3rd: Write Read Life

Monday, June 6th: Just Commonly

Monday, June 13th: Puddletown Reviews

Tuesday, June 14th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Wednesday, June 15th: The Magic All Around Us

Thursday, June 16th: Book Dilettante

Monday, June 20th: FictionZeal

Tuesday, June 21st: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, June 22nd: Hoser’s Blook

Friday, June 24th: Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews

Monday, June 27th: Bibliotica

Thursday, June 30th: I’d Rather Be at the Beach

TBD: Sweet Southern Home

Review: The Woman in the Photo, by Mary Hogan

About the book, The Woman in the Photo The Woman in the Photo

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (June 14, 2016)

The lives of two young women—bound by heritage and history—are changed forever by one epic event . . .

1889: Elizabeth Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, spends every summer with her family on a beautiful lake in an exclusive club. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains above the working-class community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the private retreat is patronized by society’s elite. Elizabeth summers with Carnegies, Mellons, and Fricks, following the rigid etiquette of her class. But Elizabeth is blessed (or cursed) with a mind of her own. Case in point: her friendship with Eugene Eggar, a Johnstown steel mill worker. And when Elizabeth discovers that the club’s poorly maintained dam is about to burst and send 20 million tons of water careening down the mountain, she risks all to warn Eugene and the townspeople in the lake’s deadly shadow.

Present day: On her eighteenth birthday, genetic information from Lee Parker’s closed adoption is unlocked. She also sees an old photograph of a biological relative—a nineteenth-century woman with hair and eyes likes hers—standing in a pile of rubble from an ecological disaster next to none other than Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. Determined to identify the woman in the photo and unearth the mystery of that captured moment, Lee digs into history. Her journey takes her from her hometown in California to Johnstown, from her present financial woes to her past of privilege, from the daily grind to an epic disaster. But once Lee’s heroic DNA is revealed, will she decide to forge a new fate?

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Mary Hogan Mary Hogan

Mary Hogan is the NAPPA Award-winning author of seven young-adult books. Two Sisters is her first novel for adults. She lives in New York City with her husband, Bob, and their dog, Lucy.

Connect with Mary.

Website | Twitter


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

I began reading The Woman in the Photo thinking I would prefer the historical chapters more than the contemporary ones, and was surprised when I found that not to be true. Instead, I liked both time periods equally.

In the past, we meet Elizabeth Haberlin, aged twenty, on a seemingly interminable train ride to her family’s summer home. But the train eventually does roll into the stop, and Elizabeth (or Lizbeth, as her eight-year-old brother calls her) is reunited with her friend, Eugene Eggar, a townie – a mill worker.  In the present, we meet Lee (named Elizabeth at birth, but adopted as a baby), newly turned eighteen, and living with her mother in someone’s pool house because of familial financial woes. She’s just been provided with a clue about her birth mother – a faint clue – but a clue nevertheless.

I loved the way author Mary Hogan wove these two tales together, the chapters in the past driving relentlessly forward, the chapters in the present looking backward. Almost, it made me wish for a magic mirror so that Lizbeth and Lee could come face to face, but maybe, metaphysically, they did, because while this book is about influences of Destiny and DNA, it’s also about choices and family, and what constitutes the latter.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this novel as a whole, and took it not only as a sort of family saga, but also as a portrait of the many ways in which young women make the decisions that set the paths of their lives.

And what a rich portrait it is, with believable, complex characters, vivid settings, and just enough real history to lend credence to the story without overwhelming it, or sounding more like a history book and less like a work of fiction.

Readers of historical fiction and contemporary fiction will find something to like in The Woman in the Photo.

Goes well with roasted, herbed chicken, a tossed salad, and iced tea. 


Tour Stops TLC Book Tours

Tuesday, June 14th: BookNAround

Wednesday, June 15th: Books Without Any Pictures

Friday, June 17th: A Bookish Affair

Monday, June 20th: Reading Reality

Wednesday, June 22nd: A Chick Who Reads

Friday, June 24th: Bibliotica

Monday, June 27th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Tuesday, June 28th: Lesa’s Book Critiques

Wednesday, June 29th: Ms. Nose in a Book

Thursday, June 30th: Broken Teepee

Review: Incarnation, by Laura Davis Hays

About the book, Incarnation Incarnation

  • Paperback: 388 pages
  • Publisher: Terra Nova Books (March 1, 2016)

When Kelsey Dupuis takes a job working in a genetic engineering lab in the high desert of New Mexico, she begins to suffer from oceanic nightmares that soon escalate into waking visions, warnings, pleas for help, and finally visitations from a dark-braided, green-eyed girl named Iriel. Kelsey wrestles with the notion that Iriel could be a past life self who once lived in an ancient watery place no longer on this earth. At the same time, she confronts ethical issues at work, and a lover who becomes more and more abusive. As Kelsey seeks the truth, she learns that Iriel escaped an arranged marriage in her own time, and lived to witness the destruction of her ancient homeland, helpless, despite her formidable powers, to stop it.

Incarnation is the story of one woman’s confrontation with history as she learns the meaning of a soul-twin’s life and its karmic implications. Forced to relive her deepest fears, Kelsey is able to face her entwined past and present with courage, innovation, and forgiveness in order to break the chain, free her soul-twin, and become more truly herself.

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


About the author, Laura Davis Hays Laura Davis Hays

Laura Davis Hays is the award winning author of Incarnation, a metaphysical thriller set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a remote Island off the coast of Belize, and the lost continent of Atlantis. She is also the author of the forthcoming fantasy series, The Atlantis Material, and a collection of linked stories set in Denmark, her ancestral homeland, in the early part of the 20th century.

Laura writes with a mind balanced between right and left-brain capabilities that leads to a combination of flights of fancy and complexity of structure in her work.

A graduate of Rice University, Laura lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Jim, and two cats, Rufus and Dexter.

Connect with Laura.

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

I love a good Atlantis story, and I love a good contemporary thriller, and I love female characters that are flawed, interesting, and real. This book has all of the above, in spades, and is also really well written.

Kelsey, the protagonist, reminded me of so many women I know, women who work in sciences but also have a strong spiritual side, even if they aren’t actually religious. I liked that her life wasn’t perfect, that she had conflict. Too often, fictional characters have such idealized lives that it can be difficult to relate. She had a journey from skeptic, to believer, to active participant in a metaphysical and I thought the way that journey corresponded to the different locations where events took place was excellent crafting on the part of Laura Davis Hays.

It’s difficult to really talk about any part of this novel without risk of spoiling it but I do want to point out that Hays made each location – Santa Fe, the island off the coast of Belize, and Atlantis itself – into characters as much as places, and each of them helps to inform the story, just as the characters of Kelsey and Iriel affect each others lives, across centuries.

If you want a book that doesn’t really fit into any box  – it’s a metaphysical mystery, but it’s not supernatural, and it’s kind of a thriller but it’s also an action/adventure story – then give Incarnation a try. You won’t regret it.

Goes well with dorado tacos and spicy black bean chili.


Laura Davis Hays’ TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS: TLC Book Tours

Monday, May 16th: Worth Getting in Bed For

Wednesday, May 18th: The Magic All Around Us

Friday, May 20th: Bibliotica

Monday, May 23rd: Patricia’s Wisdom

Wednesday, May 25th: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, May 31st: Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews

Wednesday, June 1st: From the TBR Pile – excerpt

Monday, June 6th: The Warlock’s Gray Book

Thursday, June 9th: The Sassy Bookster – excerpt

Friday, June 10th: Write Read Life

Monday, June 13th: A Bookaholic Swede – excerpt

Wednesday, June 15th: Palmer’s Page Turners

#Bibliotica reviews The Railway Man’s Wife, by Ashley Hay

About the book, The Railway Man’s Wife The Railway Man's Wife

  • Publication Date: April 5, 2016
    Publisher: Atria Books, 288 Pages
  • Format: Hardcover, eBook, & AudioBook; 288 Pages
  • Genre: Historical Fiction/Literary

Amidst the strange, silent aftermath of World War II, a widow, a poet, and a doctor search for lasting peace and fresh beginnings in this internationally acclaimed, award-winning novel.

When Anikka Lachlan’s husband, Mac, is killed in a railway accident, she is offered—and accepts—a job at the Railway Institute’s library and searches there for some solace in her unexpectedly new life. But in Thirroul, in 1948, she’s not the only person trying to chase dreams through books. There’s Roy McKinnon, who found poetry in the mess of war, but who has now lost his words and his hope. There’s Frank Draper, trapped by the guilt of those his medical treatment and care failed on their first day of freedom. All three struggle to find their own peace, and their own new story.

But along with the firming of this triangle of friendship and a sense of lives inching towards renewal come other extremities—and misunderstandings. In the end, love and freedom can have unexpected ways of expressing themselves.

The Railwayman’s Wife explores the power of beginnings and endings, and how hard it can sometimes be to tell them apart. Most of all, it celebrates love in all its forms, and the beauty of discovering that loving someone can be as extraordinary as being loved yourself.

Buy, read, and discuss The Railway Man’s Wife

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound | Goodreads


About the author, Ashley Hay Ashley Hay

Ashley Hay is the internationally acclaimed author of four nonfiction books, including The Secret: The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron, and the novels The Body in the Clouds and The Railwayman’s Wife, which was honored with the Colin Roderick Award by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the most prestigious literary prize in Australia, among numerous other accolades. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.

For more information please visit Ashley Hay’s website.

 


My Thoughts Melissa A. Bartell

“This is how you touch grief.” Ani Lachlan’s thought a short while after hearing of her husband’s work-related death rocked me in a way that few sentences have. So much so that as I read the line, I texted it to a friend.

Ani is the railway man’s wife, but she’s also a book lover, a reader, mother to an adorable young girl, Isabelle, and a woman who, like most of us, possesses more inner strength than she at firest realizes. This novel is really her story, and I found it quite easy to connect with her, and her life in a coastal village in Australia.

Early in the novel  – chapter two – Ani and Mac are on a shopping trip, and their last item to purchase is “something magical” for their daughter’s birthday. They choose a kaleidoscope, and I can’t help feeling that this story was also a kaleidoscope of sorts, in that everything happens within a constrained set of parameters, in a close town, within a relatively few changes of scene, despite the emotional twists and turns. Yes, it’s a satisfying 288 pages, but it’s a literary novel, so it’s okay that this lyrical story never explores much beyond the town limits, or that we only really see a few locations. It’s not about place, anyway, it’s about people, and they way they respond to love, loss, grief, and solace.

Author Ashley Hay works magic, populating her pages with people who leap of the page. Ani, of course, and Mac, her husband. While we don’t really get to see a lot of them before he dies, what we do see is so emotionally truthful that I reacted to news of his death with that visceral knife-in-the-gut feeling. Their love for each other, and for their daughter, is imbued in every page of the story. Similarly, the characters of Roy, the WWII veteran who writes poetry to process his pain, and Frank, who is carrying his own guilt and hurt, felt dimensional and real. I believed their dual gravitation toward the (sort of) oblivious about it Ani.

The post-war coastal Australia setting worked well for me – a story like this needs to be set against the blue expanse of the sea.

This is a story about grief and loss and love and hope, and while it is both literary and historical, its themes are universal ones, and it feels contemporary in terms of language and style, but not in an anachronistic way.

This is a novel that touched me.

I think it will touch you, too.

Goes well with a bowl of clam chowder, crusty bread, and a mug of brisk, black tea.


Giveaway The Railway Man's Wife

One lucky reader in the United States will win a paperback copy of this book. To enter, find me on Twitter, follow me, and retweet my tweet about this book review OR leave a comment here (you must use a valid email address) and tell me about your favorite library.

The winner will be chosen by me, and their information will be forwarded to the tour host/publicist for fulfillment. This may take up to six weeks after the day of the end of this blog tour.

This giveaway opportunity is open until noon, central time, on Wednesday, May 18th.


Railway Man's Wife Blog TourBlog Tour Schedule

Monday, April 18
Review at #redhead.with.book

Tuesday, April 19
Spotlight & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More

Wednesday, April 20
Review & Giveaway at Flashlight Commentary

Monday, April 25
Review & Giveaway at Poof Books
Review at Just One More Chapter

Tuesday, April 26
Spotlight & Giveaway at A Literary Vacation

Wednesday, April 27
Review at Ashley LaMar

Monday, May 2
Review & Giveaway at The Maiden’s Court

Tuesday, May 3
Review at Book Nerd
Review at Queen of All She Reads

Thursday, May 5
Review & Giveaway at Bibliotica

Friday, May 6
Review at Back Porchervations

Tuesday, May 10
Review at CelticLady’s Reviews

Monday, May 23
Giveaway at Passages to the Past

 

 

 

Reader, I Married Him, edited by Tracy Chevalier #review #tlcbooktours

About Reader, I Married Himthe book Reader, I Married Him

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (March 22, 2016)

This collection of original stories by today’s finest women writers takes inspiration from the famous line in Charlotte Brontë’s most beloved novel, Jane Eyre.

A fixture in the literary canon, Charlotte Brontë is revered by readers all over the world. Her books featuring unforgettable, strong heroines still resonate with millions today. And who could forget one of literatures’ best-known lines: “Reader, I married him” from her classic novel Jane Eyre?

Part of a remarkable family that produced three acclaimed female writers at a time in 19th-century Britain when few women wrote, and fewer were published, Brontë has become a great source of inspiration to writers, especially women, ever since. Now in Reader, I Married Him, twenty of today’s most celebrated women authors have spun original stories, using the opening line from Jane Eyre as a springboard for their own flights of imagination.

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads


Featured Authors

Featuring:

Tracy Chevalier – Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Sarah Hall – Website | Facebook

Helen Dunmore – Website | Twitter

Kirsty Gunn – Website | Facebook

Joanna Briscoe – Website | Twitter

Emma Donoghue – Website | Facebook | Twitter

Susan Hill – Website | Facebook | Twitter

Elif Shafak – Website | Facebook | Twitter

Evie Wyld – Website | Facebook | Twitter

Patricia Park – Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Salley Vickers – Website | Twitter

Nadifa Mohamed – Twitter

Esther Freud – Website

Linda Grant – Website | Twitter

Lionel Shriver – Facebook

Audrey Niffenegger – Website | Facebook | Twitter

Namwali Serpell – Website | Twitter

Elizabeth McCracken – Website | Facebook | Twitter


My ThoughtsMelissa A. Bartell

I’ve had a long relationship with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It began when I was pretty young –  nine or ten, I think – and found it on the shelf above my bed in the room I always used when I visited my grandparents over the summer. I remember reading it during a wild summer storm, and rereading it again several years later. It’s one of those novels I go back to, every so often, finding something new in it with every visit, as if it’s the book that’s changing, instead of me.

When I was offered the chance to review this anthology of short stories, all by women, inspired by Jane Eyre’s iconic line, “Reader, I married him,” I knew I had to read this book.

It’s a funny thing. I write short stories, but I don’t often read them any more. So first, this book reminded me that short stories are a great way to sample the work of a new author, or at least, an author who is new to me.

The stories in this anthology range from close interpretations (Grace Poole’s version of the story is especially poignant) to stories that only have unconventional marriages, or vague hand-waving in Jane’s direction to connect them with the original work.

I couldn’t possibly review all of them, but five of my favorites were:

  • “Dangerous Dog,” by Kirsty Gunn – a woman saves a dog and introduces would-be bullies to the joys of Jane.
  • “Reader, I Married Him,” by Susan Hill – about a rather famous unconventional marriage involving an American divorcee and an abdicating ruler.
  • “The Mirror,” by Francine Prose – a dark look at what happens in Jane and Rochester’s marriage after the novel ends. A concise, compelling, psychological thriller.
  • “Dorset Gap,” by Tracy Chevalier, who edited the anthology – Ed and Jenn met at a rave the night before, and now they’re on a hike.
  • “The Orphan Exchange,” by Audrey Niffenegger – re-sets the novel in a contemporary, albeit war-torn, country, with an ending that I’ve always suspected was a possibility.

But those five stories are only a representative sample… this collection looks at marriage from so many angles, and uses Jane Eyre as the connecting tissue, even if sometimes it’s not obvious.

What I loved is that each of these twenty-one tales was written by a woman, and each was completely relevant to modern readers, in a way the Brontë sisters’ work was to their contemporaries. As well, I’m tickled that there was diversity – older women, young girls, gay men, and lesbians, several religions, and many cultures (including one story about an Argentian-raised Korean woman in New York) were represented.

What I didn’t love is that there were only twenty-one stories. I’d love to see more. I’d love to see an annual contest sort of like the Strange New Worlds contest that used to be run every year for Star Trek fans, where aspiring writers could write their own short stories inspired by Jane.

Still, if the worst thing you can say about a book is that it left you wanting more, I think the author – or authors, in this case – has done their job.

Whether Jane Eyre was a literary companion of your childhood, or you met her later in life, there’s something for you in this collection, Reader, I Married Him.

Goes well with, a proper English tea, or a bowl of venison stew served near a crackling fire on a cold and rainy day.


 

Tour StopsTLC Book Tours

Tuesday, March 22nd: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Wednesday, March 23rd: 5 Minutes For Books

Thursday, March 24th: A Bookish Way of Life

Friday, March 25th: Jenn’s Bookshelves

Monday, March 28th: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, March 29th: Raven Haired Girl

Wednesday, March 30th: BookNAround

Thursday, March 31st: Reading Reality

Friday, April 1st: View from the Birdhouse

Wednesday, April 6th: Bibliophiliac

Thursday, April 7th: Bibliotica