Review: The Things We Wish Were True, by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

19 September 2016 by Melissa

About the book The Things We Wish Were True

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (September 1, 2016)

In an idyllic small-town neighborhood, a near tragedy triggers a series of dark revelations.

From the outside, Sycamore Glen, North Carolina, might look like the perfect all-American neighborhood. But behind the white picket fences lies a web of secrets that reach from house to house.

Up and down the streets, neighbors quietly bear the weight of their own pasts—until an accident at the community pool upsets the delicate equilibrium. And when tragic circumstances compel a woman to return to Sycamore Glen after years of self-imposed banishment, the tangle of the neighbors’ intertwined lives begins to unravel.

During the course of a sweltering summer, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the neighbors learn that it’s impossible to really know those closest to us. But is it impossible to love and forgive them?

Buy, read, and discuss The Things We Wish Were True

Amazon | Books a Million | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen is the author of five previous novels and speaks to women’s groups around the United States. She is the cofounder of the popular women’s fiction site She Reads and is active in a local writers’ group. Marybeth and her husband, Curt, have been married for twenty-four years and are the parents of six children, ranging from young adult to elementary age. The family lives in North Carolina. Marybeth spends most of her time in the grocery store but occasionally escapes long enough to scribble some words. She is always at work on her next novel.

Connect with Marybeth

Website | She Reads | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I always enjoy novels that involve many characters, or groups of characters, each with individual arcs but intersecting plots. Maeve Binchy was a master of such stories. This is the first of Marybeth Mayhew Whalen’s that I’ve encountered, but if it’s anything to judge by, she’s also masterful when it comes to interweaving separate stories.

And this novel is very much a collection of separate-but-intertwined stories. Two children whose mother works like crazy, but never seems to have enough, a wife who cannot seem to function any more, pairs of adults and children who don’t always connect – it’s a microcosm of American suburbia, drawn with just enough darkness at the edges to keep the sweet moments from being saccharine.

This typical suburban life was never my reality, and I’m wondering if the sense that I was looking through a slightly distorted lens, a warped window or clouded mirror was because of my own disconnect from such neighborhoods – everyone I knew growing up went to beaches or had their own pool, so a community pool was never part of my experience – or intentional on the author’s part, but the feeling worked for the story, making the people of Sycamore Glen feel like folks you don’t really know, but have maybe seen at the grocery store and so have a passing familiarity with. It’s similar to the sense of an endless summer, but a little more heightened.

Whalen’s characters all felt dimensional. I don’t have a favorite… they were all so well-drawn, that to pick one out seems impossible. Jencey, I think, the mother on the run from a bad relationship, her two kids in tow, really stood out for me, as did Bryte, but Cailey, the bright, determined little girl half of the sister-and-brother team in the rental house really shone. I’d love a folllow-up novel tracking her as an adult. She had grit and spunk, and those things appeal to me.

Overall, this is a perfect summer read, but it’s not a novel that would be out of place at any time of year. It is well crafted, with excellent characters, a connective plot that is quietly compelling, and a theme of resilience, neighborliness, and hope.

Goes well with egg salad sandwiches and lemonade.

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS

Monday, August 29th: Kritter’s Ramblings

Wednesdsay, August 31st: Reading is my Superpower

Wednesday, August 31st: Mrs. Mommy Booknerd

Thursday, September 1st: Girls in White Dresses

Friday, September 2nd: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, September 6th: Reading Cove Book Club

Wednesday, September 7th: Caryn, The Book Whisperer

Thursday, September 8th: Books and Spoons

Friday, September 9th: Books and Bindings

Friday, September 9th: Books a la Mode – excerpt

Monday, September 12th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Tuesday, September 13th: I’d Rather Be at the Beach

Thursday, September 15th: Thoughts on This ‘n That

Friday, September 16th: A Splendid Messy Life

Monday, September 19th: Bibliotica

Wednesday, September 21st: Palmer’s Page Turners

Thursday, September 22nd: Just Commonly

Monday, September 26th: A Bookish Way of Life

Monday, September 26th: FictionZeal

Thursday, September 29th: 5 Minutes for Books

Friday, September 30th: Not in Jersey

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

15 September 2016 by Melissa

About the book 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 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

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

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).

Find my tweet about this book and retweet it (I’m @Melysse).
Find my Facebook post about this book and like/share it (I’m MissMelysse).
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:

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: Home Field, by Hannah Gersen

8 August 2016 by Melissa

About the book, Home Field

• 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 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

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

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: Vanishing Time, by Katharine Britton – with Giveaway

2 August 2016 by Melissa

About the book, Vanishing Time

Paperback: 306 pages
Publisher: Brigham Books; 1 edition (June 8, 2016)
Language: English

Cama Truesdale’s ex-husband and young son leave Boston for a fishing trip in South Carolina’s Low Country. In the early morning hours, Cama is jolted awake by a phone call. There’s been a fire on board the boat. Her ex-husband is dead. Her son is missing and presumed dead. As she sets off for South Carolina, Cama’s belief that her son Tate is alive is unwavering. But her frantic search soon stirs up painful memories that send her reeling back to her childhood and the mysterious car crash that killed her black mother and white father. As the clock ticks down, exhausted, haunted by dreams, and stymied by the police and local community, she enters a world in which she must rely on instinct over fact, and where no one and nothing is what it seems—not even the boundary between the living and the dead.

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | iBooks | Goodreads

About the author, Katharine Britton

Katharine has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Dartmouth College. Her screenplay “Goodbye Don’t Mean Gone,” on which “Vanishing Time” was based, was a Moondance Film Festival winner and a finalist in the New England Women in Film and Television contest. When not writing, Katharine can often be found in her Vermont garden, waging a non-toxic war against slugs, snails, deer, woodchucks, squirrels, chipmunks, moles, voles, and beetles. Katharine’s defense consists mainly of hand-wringing after the fact. Also by Katharine Britton: “Her Sister’s Shadow” and “Little Island.”

Connect with Katharine

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter

My Thoughts

A couple of years ago, I reviewed Katharine Britton’s novel Little Island, which I really loved, so when her name appeared in my email, inviting me to read and review her latest work, Vanishing Time, there was no way I was going to decline. I fell just as much in love – perhaps more so – with this novel, and I’m pleased and honored that she asked me to review it.

If you read the blurb, you may get the impression that this novel is going to be a dark and plodding story about a mother searching for her presumed-dead son. Well, there is a lot of searching for the boy, but in no way is this story dark. Sure, there are some heavy moments, but Britton excels as writing the everyday touches of humor and grace that touch even the worst of our days. The result is less Cama’s search for her son – though that’s crucial to the novel – but Cama’s journey to her authentic self, which happens in spurts and sprinkles, from the first page to the last.

Crafting such a story at all takes a delicate hand, but Britton’s work is that delicate. In this richly satisfying read, she’s given us a glimpse at the Low Country lifestyle that I’ve always been drawn to in literature, even using Gullah phrases as chapter headers (a delightful treat, and wonderful detail).

She’s also populated the story with a cast of characters who practically leap off the page and invite you for pie. Sam, the lawyer-turned-touchstone who provides Cama with a solid presence during her search. Phoebe, who owns the cottages on Pawleys Island, and even best-friend Ellie in California, are all written with as much dimension as Cama herself, and as Tate, the little boy Cama is so desperate to find.

What could easily have become a maudlin story about a mother’s plodding search for her missing child becomes, in Katharine Britton’s deft hands, a compelling story that uses the search for self and the search for truth as dual themes connected by the reminiscence of love gone sour, a bit of action/adventure, and just a hint of new love if you turn your head and squint a little.

I love this book, and Britton’s writing voice (which has matured a bit, and flows more easily than it did in Little Island) is clear, strong, and completely captivating.

Goes well with, shrimp po’boys and sweet tea.

Giveaway

One lucky reader (US/Canada) will win a print copy of this book, autographed by the author.

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

Find my tweet about this book and retweet it (I’m @Melysse).
Find my Facebook post about this book and like/share it (I’m MissMelysse).
Leave a comment here on this post telling me where your roots are. Is there a place that feels more like home to you than any other? Is it the place where you were born?

Contest is open until 11:59 PM CDT on Friday, August 12th.

Review: The Memory Painter, by Gwendolyn Womack

21 July 2016 by Melissa

About the book, The Memory Painter

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador (July 5, 2016)

What if there was a drug that could help you remember past lives?

What if the lives you remembered could lead you to your one true love?

What if you learned that, for thousands of years, a deadly enemy had conspired to keep the two of you apart?

Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist, whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there’s a secret to Bryan’s success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. Bryan believes these dreams are really recollections?possibly even flashback from another life?and he has always hoped that his art will lead him to an answer. And when he meets Linz Jacobs, a neurogenticist who recognizes a recurring childhood nightmare in one Bryan’s paintings, he is convinced she holds the key.

Their meeting triggers Bryan’s most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s, died in a lab explosion decades ago. As his visions intensify, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried.

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Goodreads

Watch the trailer for this book

About the author, Gwendolyn Womack

Gwendolyn Womack began writing plays in college and majored in Theatre at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She received an MFA in Directing Theatre and Film from California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Memory Painter is her first novel.

Connect with Gwendolyn

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

My Thoughts

I was part of a book blast for the hardcover version of this book a year ago, but didn’t get to read it until I signed up to be part of this blog tour. I’m sorry I had to wait for such a gripping story, but, wow! Am I glad I finally read it! This is a great story that not only taps into the power of our dreams but is also a compelling mystery/thriller. Why is Bryan suddenly painting the same scene from Linz’s nightmare? Is it possible something else is going on? And why are people after them.

At times haunting – especially when Bryan is in the throes of a painting session – and at other times heart-poundingly exciting – with just enough romance to balance everything else. The dialogue is incredibly well written, and the characters seem like people you’d totally want to eavesdrop on in your local coffee shop.

If you want a story that defies categorization, keeps you in suspense to the end, and makes you question everything you think you know about dreams and creativity, and where both come from, Gwendolyn Womack’s The Memory Painter will give you the perfect blend of entertainment, insight, and provocation of ideas.

Goes well with baguette, brie, red wine, and a rainy day.

Tour Stops

Monday, July 4th: Lilac Reviews

Tuesday, July 5th: Kahakai Kitchen

Wednesday, July 6th: Dreaming Big

Thursday, July 7th: 100 Pages a Day…Stephanie’s Book Reviews

Friday, July 8th: Art @ Home

Monday, July 11th: A Bookish Affair

Wednesday, July 13th: Ms. Nose in a Book

Thursday, July 14th: Broken Teepee

Monday, July 18th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Tuesday, July 19th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, July 20th: Ms.Bookish.com

Thursday, July 21st: Bibliotica

Review: After Alice, by Gregory Maguire – with Giveaway

14 July 2016 by Melissa

About the book, After Alice

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (July 5, 2016)

From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis’s Carroll’s beloved classic.

When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance?

In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings—and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late—and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is “After Alice.”

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror Mirror; and the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. Now a beloved classic, Wicked is the basis for a blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Connect with Gregory:

Website | Facebook

My Thoughts

I’ve been a fan of Gregory Maguire’s work since Wicked first hit shelves eons ago. (I read it before it was popular, before there was a musical, before Amazon became my primary source of books, because I saw it on the “New Fiction” shelf at Barnes & Noble.) I remember thinking that I loved his way of not only twisting a common story – providing backstory, highlighting one of the supporting characters, writing prequels and sequels.

In reading After Alice, and having had a lot of experience with improv in the intervening years since my first introduction to Maguire’s work, I realized that he also uses the style of the original work as a jumping-off point. I won’t call him a mimic, because he isn’t mimicking Lewis Carroll here, so much as evoking it. In a way, the title thus becomes a pun. Yes, it’s after Alice’s adventures, and the impact they caused both to the ‘real’ world and to Wonderland, but it’s also ‘after’ Alice in the sense of ‘in the style of.’ Gotta love a good literary pun.

One of my favorite books is The Annotated Alice, which has both the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the sequel Through the Looking Glass, and a ton of notes in teeny, tiny print. My copy wasn’t handy as I was reading this, and having it certainly isn’t necessary in order to appreciate Maguire’s novel, but I kind of wish I’d had it to read along-side, even so.

But back to After Alice. It’s the story of Alice’s childhood friend Ada, whom the help seems to find a bit disagreeable (the governess has a bit of inner monologue where she reflects that the child is so inactive that at some point she’ll require a wheel chair) who inadvertently follows her friend down the rabbit hole, and it shows how a different perspective, a different personality, completely changes the interactions with the characters we all know and love.

More than that, however, this is a look at the way society in the late 1800’s looked at people, and especially girls and women, who didn’t fit into cultural norms. More than once Alice is referred to as being ‘off with the fairies again,’ and there are also a lot of observations about how Miss Armstrong, the governess, might as well be invisible, as she exists between the real ‘help’ – cooks and maids – and the upper class employers who pay her to care for Ada.

As always, Maguire’s wit is reflected in his writing, and the end result is a smart, funny, engaging novel that, like most good stories, exists to entertain on one level, while also provoking thought on another. It’s better appreciated if, like me, you know the original story, but it’s certainly a great read even if you don’t.

Goes well with hot tea, and scones with clotted cream and jam (but only every other day.)

Giveaway

One lucky reader from the United States or Canada will win my copy (trade paperback) of this book.

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

Find my tweet about this book and retweet it (I’m @Melysse).
Find my Facebook post about this book and like/share it (I’m MissMelysse).
Leave a comment here on this post telling me what fictional world you’d love to explore. Wonderland? Narnia? Somewhere else?

Contest is open until 11:59 PM CDT on Thursday, July 21st.

Tour Stops

Tuesday, July 5th: Ms. Nose in a Book

Wednesday, July 6th: Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile

Wednesday, July 6th: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Friday, July 8th: Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers

Monday, July 11th: Freda’s Voice

Tuesday, July 12th: Ms.Bookish.com

Wednesday, July 13th: Jen’s Book Thoughts

Thursday, July 14th: Bibliotica

Monday, July 18th: A Book Geek

Tuesday, July 19th: Savvy Verse & Wit

Wednesday, July 20th: Adorkable Me

TBD: Book Hooked Blog

Review: In Twenty Years, by Allison Winn Scotch

12 July 2016 by Melissa

About the book, In Twenty Years

Paperback: 332 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (July 1, 2016)

Twenty years ago, six Penn students shared a house, naively certain that their friendships would endure—until the death of their ringleader and dear friend Bea splintered the group for good. Now, mostly estranged from one another, the remaining five reluctantly gather at that same house on the eve of what would have been Bea’s fortieth birthday.

But along with the return of the friends come old grudges, unrequited feelings, and buried secrets. Catherine, the CEO of a domestic empire, and Owen, a stay-at-home dad, were picture-perfect college sweethearts—but now teeter on the brink of disaster. Lindy, a well-known musician, is pushing middle age in an industry that’s all about youth and slowly self-destructing as she grapples with her own identity. Behind his smile, handsome plastic surgeon Colin harbors the heartbreaking truth about his own history with Bea. And Annie carefully curates her life on Instagram and Facebook, keeping up appearances so she doesn’t have to face the truth about her own empty reality.

Reunited in the place where so many dreams began, and bolstered by the hope of healing, each of them is forced to confront the past.

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

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

About Allison Winn Scotch

Allison Winn Scotch is the bestselling author of five novels, including THE THEORY OF OPPOSITES, TIME OF MY LIFE, and THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND. Her sixth novel, IN TWENTY YEARS, will be released in June of 2016. In addition to fiction, she pens celebrity profiles for a variety of magazines, which justifies her pop culture obsession and occasionally lends to awesome Facebook status updates. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Connect with Allison

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I have a ‘thing’ for reunion stories, and I really enjoyed the complex characters, and interwoven relationships in this particular reunion story, In Twenty Years.

Opening twenty years ago, at Penn, a group of friends are sharing a house and wondering what the future will bring. Twenty years later, the woman who was always the cohesive force of the group – Bea – is dead, and on what would have been her fortieth birthday, the rest of the group returns to the same house.

Secrets and lies abound. Relationships past and present are deconstructed and reconfigured, and at the center of it all is Bea’s driving force. She may be dead, but her presence is felt as the once-friends, now essentially strangers begin the truth-telling that must occur before forgiveness and forward movement can occur.

It’s interesting seeing what each of these people were, and what they each become – how life isn’t completely sweet for the college sweethearts Catherine and Owen, and how Lindy (a musician) and Colin (plastic surgeon) both have to daily confront both youth-culture and their own youthful wishes, wants, and indiscretions, and how Annie portrays a life online that is really nothing like the truth.

These people, depending on your age, could be your parents, your cousins, your younger/older siblings, or your contemporaries, but each of them feels supremely real, perfect in their imperfections, and relevant both to the story as a whole, and the world beyond the pages of any novel. We may not know these characters, but I’m betting everyone of us knows someone like them, or is someone like them.

Allison Winn Scotch does a great job of making twenty-somethings sound young but not stupid, and making forty-somethings sound age appropriate as well. The voices of the characters mature but remain identifiable. I appreciated that nuance.

This is a novel that entertains, yes, but it also makes you think – about who you were, and who you are, about regret and forgiveness, and, ultimately, about the choices each of us makes every time we must face a hard truth. Brilliant writing. Great characters. Read this book.

Goes well with a watermelon, arugula and feta salad, with iced tea – or Mexican take-out and cheap local beer… depending on your age.

Allison Winn Scotch’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, June 27th: The Reading Date

Tuesday, June 28th: Just Commonly

Wednesday, June 29th: Diary of an Eccentric

Thursday, June 30th: West Metro Mommy Reads

Friday, July 1st: View from the Birdhouse

Monday, July 4th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Tuesday, July 5th: 5 Minutes for Books

Tuesday, July 5th: Why Girls Are Weird

Wednesday, July 6th: Book Mama Blog

Wednesday, July 6th: The Baking Bookworm

Thursday, July 7th: Lavish Bookshelf

Friday, July 8th: Not in Jersey

Monday, July 11th: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, July 12th: Bibliotica

Wednesday, July 13th: Thoughts on This ‘n That

Thursday, July 14th: All Roads Lead to the Kitchen

Friday, July 15th: Good Girl Gone Redneck

Monday, July 18th: A Bookish Way of Life

Tuesday, July 19th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Wednesday, July 20th: Dreams, Etc.

Monday, July 25th: Bookmark Lit

Tuesday, July 26th: Kritter’s Ramblings

Thursday, July 28th: Palmer’s Page Turners

TBD: Brooklyn Berry Designs

Review: Keep You Close, by Lucie Whitehouse – with Giveaway

30 June 2016 by Melissa

About the book, Keep You Close

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (May 3, 2016)

When the artist Marianne Glass falls to her death, everyone insists it was a tragic accident. Yet Rowan Winter, once her closest friend, suspects there is more to the story. Ever since she was young, Marianne had paralyzing vertigo. She would never have gone so close to the roof’s edge.

Marianne–and the whole Glass family–once meant everything to Rowan. For a teenage girl, motherless with a much-absent father, this lively, intellectual household represented a world of glamour and opportunity.

But since their estrangement, Rowan knows only what the papers reported about Marianne’s life: her swift ascent in the London art world, her much-scrutinized romance with her gallerist. If she wants to discover the truth about her death, Rowan needs to know more. Was Marianne in distress? In danger? And so she begins to seek clues–in Marianne’s latest work, her closest relationships, and her new friendship with an iconoclastic fellow artist.

But the deeper Rowan goes, the more sinister everything seems. And a secret in the past only she knows makes her worry about her own fate . . .

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

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

About the author, Lucie Whitehouse

Lucie Whitehouse grew up in Warwickshire, England, studied classics at the University of Oxford, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughter. She is author of The House at Midnight, The Bed I Made, and Before We Met.

Connect with Lucie

Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I love a good thriller. I love the mystery, and the sense of jeopardy that comes with the not knowing, and I love the way a well-written thriller hits you right i the sweet spot of the amygdalae, and makes your skin shiver.

From the very first page of Keep You Close, author Lucie Whitehouse has set the absolutely perfect tone. It starts with a snowy night, a rooftop quarrel, and a deathly fall. It broadens into the friends and family, specifically Rowan, who were close to Marianne, the victim, and running through it are the dual threads of the artists’ personality – how being creative often skews you perceptions and the way you engage in relationships, and art – from the very first scene where Marianne comes in to find papers and sketches arrayed like fallen snowflakes around her house.

While it’s Marianne’s death that we are meant to be comprehending, this novel is very much Rowan’s story. In memories, it has elements of a chummy college years story, but those memories serve the twin purposes of grounding us in the heightened reality in which Keep You Close takes place, and in showing us how a rift between best friends can echo through the years.

As we discover Rowan and Marianne’s secrets, as the jeopardy to Rowan increases, Whitehouse’s storytelling just gets better and better. This novel isn’t quite a roller coaster, but only because it’s more atmospheric than that. Rather, it’s a gracefully unwinding spiral, and a compelling read.

Goes well with fresh from the vendor fish n’ chips, steaming hot & wrapped in newspaper, served with a craft ale or lager.

Giveaway

This one’s a quickie for the weekend. ONE reader from the US/Canada will get a copy of this book.

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

Find my tweet about this book and retweet it (I’m @Melysse).
Find my Facebook post about this book and like/share it (I’m MissMelysse).
Leave a comment here on this post telling me about a phobia you have. (I’m terrified of spiders.)

Contest is open until 11:59 PM CDT on Monday, July 4th.

Winner will be contacted by me, but fulfillment will be from the publicist for this book, and may take up to six weeks.

Lucie Whitehouse’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS

Monday, June 6th: Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Thursday, June 9th: Dreams, Etc.

Friday, June 10th: Worth Getting in Bed For

Monday, June 13th: Back Porchervations

Tuesday, June 14th: Write Read Life

Wednesday, June 15th: Just Commonly

Thursday, June 16th: Kritter’s Ramblings

Monday, June 20th: Puddletown Reviews

Wednesday, June 22nd: Stranded in Chaos

Thursday, June 23rd: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Monday, June 27th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Monday, June 27th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday June 29th: Books and Spoons

Thursday, June 30th: Bibliotica

Review: Leaving Blythe River, by Catherine Ryan Hyde

27 June 2016 by Melissa

About the book, 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 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 Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer 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

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:

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

24 June 2016 by Melissa

About the book, 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 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

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.