If you read me, you know I enjoy historical cozy mysteries and the “Gaslight Mysteries” featuring turn of the century, NYC midwife Sarah Brandt. The latest has recently been published and I bought it with a gift card I received from my friend as a birthday gift.
While I think it’s best to read this series in order, one can read them individually. In this installment, Sarah learns that a woman has arrived at the mission, looking for little Catherine and she fears that she will lose the child she has grown to love as her own. However, the woman soon turns up murdered and Sarah and Malloy need to protect Catherine while figuring out exactly who wants her and why. Sarah’s parents get in on the action and help to solve the mystery. At the end – finally! – Sarah and Malloy are together (which has been coming and hinted at for a looong time).
This was an enjoyable and easy read. The only beef I had with it was the amount of surprising personality changes among the characters, especially with Sarah’s parents. At one point, the characters were all looking at each “in surprise” so often that even I was confused how quickly the about-faces had occurred! However, the changes had to happen in order for the plot to move forward and for Sarah and Malloy to get together.
If you have followed this series, I think you’ll like this one!
My daughter and I returned from the store and saw this little friend in the backyard. He let us get pretty close to him as he nibbled clover in the grass! đŸ™‚
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melanie at http://www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com You, too, can participate by posting a picture and linking it to Melanie’s site! (Appropriate content, please!)
Coming out next Tuesday, June 25, is Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel SISTERLAND – a story weaving twins, relationships, ESP, marital issues and relationships, and earthquakes into its plot. Twins Daisy and Violet share a special bond and use their ESP to gain popularity in school. When accused of being a witch, Daisy decides to never use her “senses” again. The girls grow up and Daisy changes her name to Kate, marries a stable young college professor, and has two children. Vi embraces her quirkiness and becomes a psychic, using her powers to locate an abducted child. Now in current day, the girls are in their twenties and living where they grew up, St. Louis . Vi becomes convinced that a major earthquake is looming. Kate agrees. Violet’s prediction going public leads to a chain of events that threatens all that Kate holds dear. Will the prediction prove to be right?
This story certainly had a lot going on in it! Along the relationship front, Kate is struggling with her at-home mom role, while building a “best friendship” with her neighbor Hank (whose wife works with Kate’s husband). Violet is tentatively trying out a lesbian relationship. Meanwhile, Kate is quite tethered to her two children who are about 1 and 3 (one is nursing – quite regularly throughout the book). I found the ESP portion of the book really interesting. Their “senses” (as they called them) weren’t extraordinary or freaky. They just knew things with a certainty, or had dreams of things. A lot of it seemed like good guessing and common sense to me (with the exception of finding the abducted child by visualizing his kidnapper). I kept reading this book and couldn’t put it down because it was moving towards the date of the predicted earthquake (October 16). I had to know: would it happen? Would they be okay? What would happen if Vi was completely wrong?
I won’t say whether the earthquake happens or not — but I will say some things do occur that are brought about by everything happening in this book. At one point I almost shouted at Kate: “NO! Wait! Stop! Don’t do this!” I found Kate a very likable character, though she was rather immature and self-centered. I thought it was interesting how the twins were so disparate in personality at the beginning of the novel – almost like two parts of the same person – and then both went more to the middle of the continuum. Violet was a bit of a disaster in the beginning, then made some strides to get her life together. Kate was ultra-organized to the point of being an autotron, and she became more human. I liked this piece of character development.
One thing that did throw me off was the point of view at the end. Throughout the book the story is told in Kate’s voice, moving towards October 16, with various pertinent flashbacks thrown in to provide “back story”. Then, post 10/16, the story moves to a future perspective, telling the story from looking back on it from a few years afterwards. This shift threw me for a bit and felt awkward to me.
Overall, I really liked this novel. I loved PREP and AMERICAN WIFE and really like Ms. Sittenfeld’s writing. Her characters are well drawn and she has a flair for humor.
Thank you, Net Galley and Random House, for my ARC – I was quite psyched to get it!
A while ago, Cinthia Ritchie contacted me and asked if I’d like to read and review her book DOLLS BEHAVING BADLY. It sounded interesting and funny, so I said yes. In the course of reading this book I misplaced it (it fell under the seat in my car!) so it took a while for me to read and finish it.
DOLLS BEHAVING BADLY is the story of Alaskan single mom, Carla, and her attempts to make it through the grind of daily life. She has a highly gifted young son, Jay-Jay, a pregnant sister, Laurel, an ex that she still hooks up with (Barry), a long dead but still present Polish grandma, and a teenage babysitter who pretty much has moved in with them (Stephanie). Her best friend has her own issues and Carla and she work together at a Mexican restaurant – “Mexico in an Igloo”. Carla has been inspired by a speaker on Oprah to keep a diary and take control of her life. Add to this a new love interest, anthropologist Francisco, and Carla’s secret side occupation (making erotic, X-rated Barbie dolls) and you have the makings of a laugh-out-loud story with zany antics and characters that are so human and flawed that they become highly lovable.
I laughed out loud while reading this book and couldn’t help but root for Carla and her family. I loved the setting of Alaska (the only state I’ve never visited!) and the fact that while all these people had their problems, they were all just doing their best to get through life.
Thanks, Cinthia, for sending me your book to read!
I’ve been posting about some great events lately at my local favorite indie bookshop and last night’s event was no exception. J. Courtney Sullivan read from and answered questions about her newly released novel THE ENGAGEMENTS. This is a novel about love and marriage, about diamonds and marketing campaigns. It should prove to be an interesting read!
J. Courtney Sullivan is also the author of MAINE and COMMENCEMENT.
She was quite gracious and a great speaker! I look forward to reading her book.
Last weekend my best girl and I did a local 5K Color Run. If you’ve never heard or done one, they are a walk/run where every half mile you are squirted with colored cornstarch. It was quite fun and celebratory! The origins, as I understand them, are in the Indian celebration of the coming of spring (Holi) – the color is often called Holi color. We started off wearing white shirts and ended up quite multi-colored! đŸ™‚
You can join in the fun of Saturday Snapshot — just post a pic you or a friend took (appropriate content!)Â and link to the host –Â Melinda’s blog at www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com
I really enjoyed Beth Hoffman’s first novel, SAVING CEE CEE HONEYCUT. (Here’s a link to my earlier review of “Saving Cee Cee Honeycut”: https://drbethnolan.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/review-saving-ceecee-honeycutt-by-beth-hoffman/). I follow Beth on twitter and she seems like an incredibly nice person. Plus she has that “Southern writer touch” that I love so much in novels. So – I was quite thrilled to receive a copy of LOOKING FOR ME through Net Galley recently. I saved it a bit so that I could savor it while I read it. I love Ms. Hoffman’s characters and I knew that I would not want this story to end!
In LOOKING FOR ME, Teddi Overman is an artist – a furniture restorer – who owns her own shop in Charleston, S.C. Teddi comes from a humble family in Kentucky, and in flashback we are told her back story. Years ago her beloved and sensitive brother, Josh, has left and not returned. The family comes to believe that he is now dead, perhaps dying in an accident in the woods or from exposure. Teddi has some ghosts from her past to deal with, along with her incomplete grieving of her loss of Josh. Then events occur which suggest that maybe Josh is still alive. Teddi must return home and face the past – and the present.
Once again, I loved Ms. Hoffman’s characters and her story-telling! These people stayed with me so much, I actually dreamed about them one night. đŸ™‚ This story’s sense of hope and strength left me feeling positive. I highly recommend it -especially as a summer read!
Thanks, Net Galley and Pamela Dorman Books, for my copy – it made my day!
I had the chance to head over to the Concord Bookshop yesterday to hear Erika Robuck talk about her book: CALL ME ZELDA. She chronicles (in novel form) the time that Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott’s wife) spent in a mental institution. Ms. Robuck is clearly an expert on the Fitzgerald’s, and her knowledge and admiration of them shined throughout her talk.
I enjoyed hearing her and meeting her – and I look forward to reading her book!
I saw this sign at the Louvre when we were there in the fall and loved it. Nothing says “no loud talking” like an ancient Egyptian who is making too much noise!
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at http://www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com. It’s easy to participate. Just post a pic you or a friend took (appropriate content please!) and link it to Melinda’s site!
It seems that RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA is all over the blogosphere these days, so I requested it from the library. There were a ton of holds already ahead of me. When it didn’t materialize after a month, I purchased it for my kindle. I had heard a lot about this book and it didn’t disappoint me!
In RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA, high powered attorney Kate Baron gets a phone call from her daughter’s private school that there’s been an incident of cheating and her daughter is being suspended. When she reaches the school, her daughter Amelia is dead, apparently having committed suicide by jumping off the roof. “Sorry” is written on the wall near where Amelia was. Then Kate receives a text: “She didn’t jump”. Thus begins Kate’s journey into discovering who her daughter really was – her secrets, her desires, her inner self. Kate harbors a lot of guilt for being a working single mom, and she seeks to prove that Amelia did not commit suicide and she did not plagiarize. The more she digs, the more she finds, and that makes her rethink all that she thought she knew.
This story is told in present day tense (Kate’s voice) and then through flashback (Amelia’s voice), texts, blog posts, and emails. Even though it jumped around a lot chronologically, I liked that way of telling the story.
There were some of elements in this story that did NOT work for me (SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!). For instance, this principal at Grace Hall had a lot of spare time on his hands (having worked in independent schools for over twenty years I can tell you that spare time for a headmaster is rare!). Also, no one questioned the writing on the wall at first. And Amelia didn’t think it odd that Ben got her private cell number supposedly from Princeton since they would be attending a summer session there (strangers, but both attending, and Princeton just gives it out?). Kate, supposedly brilliant, was the last to figure out who Amelia’s father was (I figured it out before she did – lol). And that English teacher?? Can we say: quick way to lose your job?
But – overlooking these things – I found this novel to be compelling and thought-provoking, suspenseful and exciting. I could hardly put it down because I wanted to know what happened. My only sadness was that it started with Amelia’s death and I knew she wasn’t coming back. Having the book in her voice and getting to know her made for a poignant reading experience.
Here’s a book trailer I found on You Tube for this book — also found on the Amazon page — it’s interesting and thought-provoking!!
Beth's Book-Nook Blog 