Review: Driving Lessons, by Zoe Fishman

9 April 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Driving Lessons

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (April 8, 2014)

Sometimes life’s most fulfilling journeys begin without a map.

An executive at a New York cosmetics firm, Sarah has had her fill of the interminable hustle of the big city. When her husband, Josh, is offered a new job in suburban Virginia, it feels like the perfect chance to shift gears.

While Josh quickly adapts to their new life, Sarah discovers that having time on her hands is a mixed blessing. Without her everyday urban struggles, who is she? And how can she explain to Josh, who assumes they are on the same page, her ambivalence about starting a family?

It doesn’t help that the idea of getting behind the wheel—an absolute necessity of her new life—makes it hard for Sarah to breathe. It’s been almost twenty years since she’s driven, and just the thought of merging is enough to make her teeth chatter with anxiety. When she signs up for lessons, she begins to feel a bit more like her old self again, but she’s still unsure of where she wants to go.

Then a crisis involving her best friend lands Sarah back in New York—a trip to the past filled with unexpected truths about herself, her dear friend, and her seemingly perfect sister-in-law . . . and an astonishing surprise that will help her see the way ahead.

Read and discuss Driving Lessons

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About the author, Zoe Fishman

Zoe Fishman is the author of Balancing Acts and Saving Ruth. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and son.

Connect with Zoe

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

In many ways, Sarah reminds me of me when I first left the San Francisco Bay area of California and moved to South Dakota, where I married my husband. My big move happened at the very dawn of our marriage, but after returning to California three years later, we moved to Texas during our tenth year of marriage, and I faced many of the same issues Sarah did: redefining my career, learning to live in a place where public transportation simply does not exist, and learning to fit into a culture that was vastly different from what I was accustomed to.

It’s for this reason that I identified with Sarah so much, even feeling a bit of envy when she realized she was pregnant (we have dogs, but no human children). She read like a real person to me, one I’d have loved to meet for coffee or sushi some afternoon.

All of the other characters were well-drawn as well. I particularly enjoyed Ray the driving instructor, and Sarah’s sweet husband, Josh. While the latter was not on very many pages, he reminded me very strongly of my own sweet, gentle, incredibly patient husband.

As to the novel itself, it is a shining example of what contemporary women’s fiction can be: laughter through tears, humor that comes from life, and characters who aren’t all either twenty-somethings in stilettos or older married women who hate their lives. In fact, reading this book felt like visiting a small town for a few days – you’re welcomed like family, but no one makes you feel bad when it’s time to leave.

I haven’t read any of Zoe Fishman’s other work, but if Driving Lessons is anything to judge by, I’m sure I’d love everything she writes.

Goes well withBBQ brisket, potato salad, and iced sweet tea.

This post is part of a virtual book tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information, or the complete list of tour stops, click here.

Review: Black Chalk, by Christopher J. Yates

3 April 2014 by Melissa

About the book Black Chalk

Hardcover: 352 pages

Publisher: Random House UK; First Edition edition (April 1, 2014)

One game. Six students. Five survivors.

It was only ever meant to be a game.

A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results.

Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round.

Read & discuss Black Chalk

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About the author, Christopher J. Yates

Christopher J. Yates studied law at Wadham College, Oxford from 1990-93 and initially pursued a career in law before he began working in puzzles, representing the UK at the World Puzzle Championships. Since then he has worked as a freelance journalist, sub-editor and puzzles editor/compiler. In 2007 he moved to New York City with his wife, and currently lives in the East Village.

For more information on Christopher, please visit his website, christopherjyates.com.

Click here to read the first two chapters of Black Chalk

My Thoughts

Wonderfully constructed, wonderfully plotted, and completely gripping – that’s my description of Black Chalk. We’re dropped into the narrative with a visit to the apartment of someone who has physical mnemonics for every part of his life, and left to wonder what caused this obsessive hermit behavior.

All too soon, we spiral into the rest of the story, one that spans 14 years, includes six people, and is completely entangled in a psychological game that began when they were freshmen (freshers) in college and continues to influence their adult lives.

With twists and turns that are the textual equivalent of the best roller coaster rides this book’s only flaw is that at some point, it had to end.

Goes well with A bento box and Japanese beer.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops for Black Chalk, click here.

Review: Vintage, by Susan Gloss

2 April 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Vintage

Vintage

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (March 25, 2014)

At Hourglass Vintage in Madison, Wisconsin, every item in the boutique has a story to tell . . . and so do the women whose lives the store touches.

Yellow Samsonite suitcase with ivory, quilted lining, 1950s

A small-town girl with a flair for fashion, Violet Turner had always dreamed of owning a shop like Hourglass Vintage. But while she values the personal history behind each beautiful item she sells, Violet is running from her own past. Faced with the possibility of losing the store to an unscrupulous developer, she realizes that despite her usual self-reliance she cannot save it alone.

Taffeta tea-length wedding gown with scooped neckline and cap sleeves, 1952

Eighteen-year-old April Morgan is nearly five months along in an unplanned pregnancy when her hasty engagement is broken. When she returns the perfect vintage wedding dress to Violet’s shop, she discovers a world of new possibilities, and an unexpected sisterhood with women who won’t let her give up on her dreams.

Orange silk sari with gold paisley design, 1968

Betrayed by her husband, Amithi Singh begins selling off her vibrant Indian dresses, remnants of a life she’s determined to leave behind her. After decades of housekeeping and parenting a daughter who rejects her traditional ways, she fears her best days are behind her . . . until she discovers an outlet for her creativity and skills with a needle and thread.

An engaging story that beautifully captures the essence of friendship and style,Vintage is a charming tale of possibility, of finding renewal, love, and hope when we least expect it.

Read and Discuss Vintage

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About the author, Susan Gloss

Susan Gloss

Susan Gloss is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin Law School. When she’s not writing fiction, Susan can be found working as an attorney, blogging at GlossingOverIt.com, or hunting for vintage treasures for her Etsy shop, Cleverly Curated. She lives with her family in Madison, Wisconsin.

Connect with Susan

Web | Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter

My Thoughts

I remember exploring all the different closets in my grandmother’s house – her bedroom, the guest room, the wardrobe in the middle bedroom – taking out dresses from different periods, trying them on, clacking around in too-big shoes, and too-long necklaces. Vintage isn’t about that, but it had the same soft-focus feel.

Violet, the owner of Hourglass Vintage, struck me as being a person I’d love to have a coffee with, while Karen, her lawyer/friend with a nursing baby struck me as the person I sometimes (but not often) wish I was. April, the young teenaged) woman who comes into Violet’s life first by buying, then returning a vintage wedding dress is a bright soul, and reminds me very much of the daughters of some of my friends.

This feeling was enhanced by the author’s decision to open each chapter with the profile of a vintage garment or accessory, each of which is related to the overall story. It makes you feel like you’re in Violet’s store, looking at the items she has for sale.

It is this easy familiarity that is part of the reason Vintage is such a great read. From the first page, I was enchanted, as well as slightly regretful that in the years we lived in South Dakota, we never managed to visit any part of Wisconsin – including Madison – except for an accidental detour into Eau Claire on the way to Minnapolis. (There were cornfields involved. It was a thing.) As I wrote to author Susan Gloss in a comment on her blog (see link above), her writing voice makes you feel like you’re chatting with an old friend.

And let’s not underestimate Gloss’s nuanced tone. This story could have gone to extremes, becoming either maudlin or saccharine-sweet, but it didn’t. It has elements of romance, yes, but it reads like the best contemporary fiction. The relationships, both the friendships between women of different generations, and the romantic relationships with men, feel completely organic and believable.

This is not a book to rush through, although it is a fast read. Instead, it’s a novel to be savored, preferably while wearing a vintage outfit and your grandmother’s ancient pearls.

Goes well with: Hot tea with lemon and cucumber sandwiches.

This review is part of a virtual book tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information about Vintage, by Susan Gloss, visit the tour page by clicking here.

Review: The Accident by Chris Pavone

26 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Accident

The Accident

Hardcover: 336 pages

Publisher: Crown (March 11, 2014)

From the author of the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-winning The Expats comes an elegant and riveting espionage thriller about spies, secrets, and the devastating power of the truth.

In New York, in the early dawn hours, literary agent Isabel Reed is reading frantically, turning the pages breathlessly. The manuscript—printed out, hand-delivered and totally anonymous—is full of shocking revelations that could bring down one of the most powerful men in the world, and initiate a tremendous scandal implicating multiple American presidents and CIA directors. This is what Isabel has been waiting for: a book that will help her move on from a painful past, a book that could reinvigorate her career . . . a book that will change the world.

In Copenhagen, CIA agent Hayden Gray has been steadfastly monitoring the dangers that abound in Europe. His latest task is to track a manuscript—the same manuscript that Isabel is reading. As he ensures that The Accident remains unpublished, he’s drawn into an elite circle where politics, media, and business collide. On the one hand, the powerful mogul who has unlimited resources to get what he wants. On the other, a group of book professionals—an eager assistant, a flailing editor, an ambitious rights director, and a desperate publisher—who all see their separate salvations in this project. And in between, the author himself, hiding behind shadowy anonymity in what he hopes is safe, quiet Zurich.

In this tangled web, no one knows who holds all the cards, and the stakes couldn’t be higher: an empire could crumble, careers could be launched or ruined, secrets could be unearthed, and innocent people could—and do—die.

Buy a copy, and immerse yourself in this story.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the author, Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone

CHRIS PAVONE is the author of the New York Times-bestselling The Expats, winner of the Edgar Award. He was a book editor for nearly two decades and lives in New York City with his family.

Connect with Chris

Website | Read an excerpt from The Accident

My Thoughts

“Los Angeles has the film business, and Paris has fashion; Berlin is for espionage.” I was hooked on The Accident from the very first page, but it’s that sentence that really sold the book for me. It’s an unspoken observation by one of the lead characters, CIA agent Hayden Gray, and it’s the perfect example of snappy language found throughout this book.

A book about a manuscript is more than a little meta, but author Chris Pavone pulls it off with aplomb. His bio says he used to work as an editor, so it makes sense that the characters in the publishing world rang true, but the parts of the book that dealt with espionage felt as true to life as anything LeCarre or Clancy ever produced, with a good deal more depth than others.

Dialogue never seemed stilted, technology never seemed misused, and the story was gripping from the first page to the last…and as I tweeted earlier today: READ THIS BOOK. You won’t regret it.

Goes well with a perfect cappuccino and a plate of half-moon shaped lemon cookies.

This review is part of a blog tour. For more information, and the complete tour scheduled, click here.

Review: Clever Girl, by Tessa Hadley

25 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Clever Girl

Clever Girl

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper (March 4, 2014)

Like Alice Munro and Colm Tóibín, Tessa Hadley possesses the remarkable ability to transform the mundane into the sublime—an eye for the beauty, innocence, and irony of ordinary lives that elevates domestic fiction to literary art. In Clever Girl, she offers the indelible story of one woman’s life, unfolded in a series of beautifully sculpted episodes that illuminate an era, moving from the 1960s to today.

Written with the celebrated precision, intensity, and complexity that have marked her previous works, Clever Girl is a powerful exploration of family relationships and class in modern life, witnessed through the experiences of an Englishwoman named Stella. Unfolding in a series of snapshots, Tessa Hadley’s involving and moving novel follows Stella from childhood, growing up with her single mother in a Bristol bedsit, into the murky waters of middle age.

It is a story vivid in its immediacy and rich in drama—violent deaths, failed affairs, broken dreams, missed chances. Yet it is Hadley’s observations of everyday life, her keen skill at capturing the ways men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles, pressing us to exclaim with each page, Yes, this is how it is.

Buy a copy, and start reading

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About the author, Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is the author of four highly praised novels: Accidents in the Home, which was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award; Everything Will Be All Right; The Master Bedroom; and The London Train, which was a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of two short-story collections, Sunstroke and Married Love, both of which were New York Times Notable Books as well. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker. She lives in London.

My Thoughts

I have to confess, I had a bit of struggle getting into Clever Girl, not because the writing was bad – it’s not – Tessa Hadley is a detailed and compelling author – but because of the formatting. You see, instead of quotation marks, dashes are used throughout to set off dialogue. (Note: my review is based on an ARC, and I’m not certain if that formatting remained in the final version.). It’s not a structure I’m unfamiliar with – a lot of English novels use it (and a few American ones, as well), though it’s not something you often see in contemporary literature – and at times I found myself confused about exactly who was speaking because there was a hard-return that hadn’t translated, or because I’d missed a dash.

Formatting aside, however, Clever Girl really captured my attention and imagination. I love that the lead character, Stella, was so well drawn, so specific, that even when she meets a neighbor as a child her observation is that the other girl doesn’t have high standards in selecting friends.

It’s this snarky observational style that ultimately won me over, possibly because it’s similar to my own style (I was much snarkier as a child than I am now, by the way, and I was also an only child of a single mother through my formative years.)

It’s difficult for me to review this other than to point out that this is Stella’s story, told by Stella, and while many people think writing an entire novel in first person is easy, I promise you it’s NOT. But Tessa Hadley makes it seem easy, and I finished the book feeling as though I’d made a new friend in Stella, and hoping my standards were up to hers.

Goes well with Curry and a really crisp hard cider.

This post is part of a book tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For the entire tour schedule, click here.

Review: The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh

20 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Moon Sisters

The Moon Sisters

Hardcover: 336 pages

Publisher: Crown (March 4, 2014)

This mesmerizing coming-of-age novel, with its sheen of near-magical realism, is a moving tale of family and the power of stories.

After their mother’s probable suicide, sisters Olivia and Jazz take steps to move on with their lives. Jazz, logical and forward-thinking, decides to get a new job, but spirited, strong-willed Olivia—who can see sounds, taste words, and smell sights—is determined to travel to the remote setting of their mother’s unfinished novel to lay her spirit properly to rest.

Already resentful of Olivia’s foolish quest and her family’s insistence upon her involvement, Jazz is further aggravated when they run into trouble along the way and Olivia latches to a worldly train-hopper who warns he shouldn’t be trusted. As they near their destination, the tension builds between the two sisters, each hiding something from the other, until they are finally forced to face everything between them and decide what is really important.

Buy a copy, and enjoy the story:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the author, Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh is the author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy and the cofounder of Writer Unboxed. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children.

Connect with Therese

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

What does hope taste like? How does love smell? For a synesthete, these are valid questions. Actually they’re valid questions for me, as well, and I don’t consider myself synesthetic at all, merely imaginative. For me, for example, comfort smells like the waxy-metallic-papery aroma of slightly sun-warmed Crayola crayons.

But I digress.

In The Moon Sisters Therese Walsh gives us a lovely, provocative story of two sisters, one of whom is a synesthete, and the other of whom tries to be a pragmatist. Olivia knows what hope smells like, and she’s on a mission to find it – considering it the unfinished business of her recently-deceased mother, while Jazz, responsible for her younger sister, is the practical one.

Author Walsh has given us, in Olivia and Jazz, two incredibly real young women, who seem vastly different from each other, but at the same could never be anything but sisters.

The use of synesthesia could have been a gross malfunction; instead, Walsh has blended lyrical reality with wistful magical realism, and a very human poignance.

I wanted to find the cranberry bog with Olivia, and I also wanted to hold her back, like Jazz. I wanted sit in their kitchen and play synesthetic memes with both women – “What color is friendship? Describe the taste of snow.” Instead, I’ll have to settle for re-reading the book – I was originally given an ARC and the hardcover, final edition came much later – and then devouring Walsh’s other work.

As for The Moon Sisters…my best advice is that you read it, because it will make you see life and death, sisterhood, and even your own senses, in a completely different way.

Goes well with Sun-brewed iced tea and lemon pound cake with fresh blueberries.

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information, and the complete list of tour stops, click here.

Review: The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld

18 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Enchanted

The Enchanted

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper (March 4, 2014)

A wondrous and redemptive debut novel, set in a stark world where evil and magic coincide, The Enchanted combines the empathy and lyricism of Alice Sebold with the dark, imaginative power of Stephen King.

“This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it, but I do.” The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs with the devastating violence of prison life.

Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners’ pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honesty and corruption—ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.

Beautiful and transcendent, The Enchanted reminds us of how our humanity connects us all, and how beauty and love exist even amidst the most nightmarish reality.

Buy a copy, and start reading.

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About the author, Rene Denfeld

Rene Denfeld

Rene Denfeld is an internationally bestselling author, journalist, Mitigation Specialist, and fact Investigator in death penalty cases. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Oregonian, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is a published author of four books including the international bestseller The New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order, Kill The Body, The Head Will Fall, and All God’s Children: Inside the Dark and Violent World of Street Families.

Connect with Rene

Website | Facebook

My Thoughts

A book about life on death row should not be able to be described with words like “beautiful” and “haunting,” and yet, those are the two words that come to my mind when I think of this book.

I read most of it in the course of one evening, much of that time spent soaking in the bath. Needless to say, I was so entranced with author Rene Denfeld’s use of language that not only was I stopping to read bits of it aloud (I needed to TASTE the words), thus alarming my dogs, but the water had gone cold, and I had become a complete prune before I could tear myself away.

The story itself is rather grim: a prisoner awaits execution, and uses books and his imagination to transcend the bars that imprison him. An investigator (the Lady) digs up as much information as she can in order to save the lifers, but the work is slowly eating away at her soul. A fallen priest offers whatever spiritual solace he can.

While the Lady and the Fallen Priest do move toward, and into, a relationship, there is no way this can be described as a romance, nor is any of it terribly happy.

What it is, then, is terribly, awfully, human. Poignant, visceral, naked humanity, wrapped in amazing language that drips from your tongue like the slow creep of river water down the prison’s stone walls.

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For more information, visit the tour page for this book by clicking here.

Review: Three Souls

11 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Three Souls

Three Souls

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (February 25, 2014)

An absorbing novel of romance and revolution, loyalty and family, sacrifice and undying love

We have three souls, or so I’d been told. But only in death could I confirm this….

So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife. Beside her are three souls—stern and scholarly yang; impulsive, romantic yin; and wise, shining hun—who will guide her toward understanding. She must, they tell her, make amends.

As Leiyin delves back in time with the three souls to review her life, she sees the spoiled and privileged teenager she once was, a girl who is concerned with her own desires while China is fractured by civil war and social upheaval. At a party, she meets Hanchin, a captivating left-wing poet and translator, and instantly falls in love with him.

When Leiyin defies her father to pursue Hanchin, she learns the harsh truth—that she is powerless over her fate. Her punishment for disobedience leads to exile, an unwanted marriage, a pregnancy, and, ultimately, her death. And when she discovers what she must do to be released from limbo into the afterlife, Leiyin realizes that the time for making amends is shorter than she thought.

Suffused with history and literature, Three Souls is an epic tale of revenge and betrayal, forbidden love, and the price we are willing to pay for freedom.

Buy a copy, and read it for yourself.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the author, Janie Chang

Janie Chang

Born in Taiwan, Janie Chang spent part of her childhood in the Philippines, Iran, and Thailand. She holds a degree in computer science and is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio Program at Simon Fraser University. Three Souls is her first novel.

Connect with Janie

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I’ve been reading a lot of novels set in the “interwar” period between the first and second world wars this year, and Three Souls is the most recent of them, and also the last for a while. It’s an interesting period, and I’ve loved that two of the books set during these years focused on Asia, rather than being totally Eurocentric.

This book, in particular, I found to be really enjoyable, as it so nicely blends elements of magical realism – our narrator is dead at the novel’s beginning, after all – with pragmatic reality – “You haven’t seen me in years, and the first thing you notice is my new glasses?” (That’s a paraphrase, because I closed the book and lost the page, but it’s a close paraphrase.)

Whether the narrator is describing her disappointing wedding night or talking about the poet she wants and can’t have her voice is clear. We know her, and I, at least, resonated very strongly with her desire to choose her own path.

Three Souls is my first introduction to Janie Chang’s work. I really hope she ends up being prolific, because I love the way she writes, and I found this novel, in particular, to be not just engaging, but entrancing. Brava, Ms. Chang!

Goes well with strong black tea (Lapsang Souchong, maybe?) and far too many pot-stickers (I like the Korean version) to confess to in print.

This review is part of a virtual book tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For the tour page, and more information, click here.

Review: Deceiving Lies by Molly McAdams

7 March 2014 by Melissa

About the book, Deceiving Lies

Deceiving Lies

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (March 4, 2014)

The irresistible, blazing-hot sequel to New York Times bestselling author Molly McAdams’s Forgiving Lies

Rachel is supposed to be planning her wedding to Kash, the love of her life. After the crazy year they’ve had, she’s ready to settle down and live a completely normal life. Well, as normal as it can be. But there’s something else waiting—something threatening to tear them apart.

Kash is ready for it all with Rachel, especially if “all” includes having a football team of babies with his future wife. In his line of work, Kash knows how short life can be and doesn’t want to waste another minute of their life together. But now his past as an undercover narcotics agent has come back to haunt him . . . and it’s the girl he loves who’s caught in the middle.

Trent Cruz’s orders are clear: take the girl. But there’s something about this girl that has him changing the rules and playing a dangerous game to keep her safe. When his time as Rachel’s protector runs out, Trent will turn his back on the only life he’s known—and risk everything if it means getting her out alive.

Buy a copy

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About the author, Molly McAdams

Molly McAdams

Molly McAdams grew up in California but now lives in the oh-so-amazing state of Texas with her husband and furry four-legged daughters. Her hobbies include hiking, snowboarding, traveling, and long walks on the beach . . . which roughly translates to being a homebody and dishing out movie quotes with her hubby, or hiding in her writing cave trying to get her characters’ stories out.

Connect with Molly

Web | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

While I received a copy of the book immediately preceding Deceiving Lies, both arrived at my door the night before I left for vacation, and I didn’t have a lot of time to read, so I jumped directly into book two – this book – in order to finish on time. (As it was, I still had to move the date.)

In any case, jumping into this series in the middle wasn’t much of a problem, as Molly McAdams writes characters so real, so familiar, that it was very like visiting long-lost relatives: the rhythms are in your blood, but the details are new.

What I especially like is the way McAdams writes relationships. While Rachel and Kash are young, they’re still absolutely adults – dealing with adult issues, like when (and whether) to start a family, adopting an animal, old lovers, etc, and I felt like the shoe conversation in the first few chapters was especially dead on. I mean, my husband and I had similar conversations when we were first combining our households.

I don’t read a lot of “typical” romances, but McAdams’ series is anything buy typical. This novel, in particular, included a nice balance of jeopardy, drama, and happy relationships, which made it the perfect beach book, even though it didn’t take place anywhere near the beach.

Goes well with limonada mineral and grilled shrimp tacos.

This tour is part of a virtual book tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For more information, click here.

Review: The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro

25 February 2014 by Melissa

About the book, The Perfume Collector

About The Perfume Collector

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (February 4, 2014)

London, 1955: Grace Monroe is a fortunate young woman. Despite her sheltered upbringing in Oxford, her recent marriage has thrust her into the heart of London’s most refined and ambitious social circles. However, playing the role of the sophisticated socialite her husband would like her to be doesn’t come easily to her—and perhaps never will.

Then one evening a letter arrives from France that will change everything. Grace has received an inheritance from a mysterious benefactor, Eva d’Orsey, whom she’s never met.

So begins a search that takes Grace to a long-abandoned perfume shop on Paris’s Left Bank, where she discovers the seductive world of perfumers and their muses, and a surprising love story. Told by invoking the three distinctive perfumes she inspired, Eva d’Orsey’s story weaves through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London.

But these three perfumes hold secrets. And as Eva’s past and Grace’s future intersect, Grace must choose between the life she thinks she should live and the person she is truly meant to be.

Buy a copy:

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About the author, Kathleen Tessaro

Kathleen Tessaro

Kathleen Tessaro is the author of Elegance, Innocence, The Flirt, and The Debutante. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband and son.

Find out more about Kathleen at her website and connect with her on Facebook.

My Thoughts:

Kathleen Tessaro knows how to hook readers. With both description and dialogue, she had me invested in Eva d’Orsey from almost the first page of The Perfume Collector and when I ‘met’ Grace several pages later, I was instantly invested in her as well.

As someone who has a love/hate relationship with ‘period’ pieces, I really appreciated the level of detail Tessaro put into this novel. Paris in the 20s felt distinctly different from Paris and London in the 50s and so on. As well, Paris and London were distinct from each other, set apart, not just by fashion and street names, but with subtle changes in language choice and tone.

These things, as much as plot, are what make novels work for me.

But The Perfume Collector did not suffer any plot-related shortcomings. It was gripping, compelling me to read it straight through, skipping at least one meal, and causing at least one tub of bathwater to grow cold while I was in it (my ultimate measure of a great novel is ‘does it keep me in the tub?’).

I haven’t read Tessaro’s other work, but if they’re half as good as The Perfume Collector I simply must.

Goes well with Croque monsieur and fizzy lemonade.