State of the Union by Nick Hornby

Title: State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts

Author: Nick Hornby

Publisher: Riverhead Books 2019

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 132

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Tom and Louise meet in a pub before their couple's therapy appointment. Married for years, they thought they had a stable home life--until a recent incident pushed them to the brink.

Going to therapy seemed like the perfect solution. But over drinks before their appointment, they begin to wonder: what if marriage is like a computer? What if you take it apart to see what's in there, but then you're left with a million pieces?

Unfolding in the minutes before their weekly therapy sessions, the ten-chapter conversation that ensues is witty and moving, forcing them to look at their marriage--and, for the first time in a long time, at each other.

A random library shelf pick. I had heard of the television adaptation of the book and I always want to read the book before seeing the adaptation. This is a slim little novella featuring the scenes from a marriage was an interesting experience to read. We only get so much information from Tom and Louise. In fact most of the writing is dialogue. There’s very few descriptions throughout. I read this in one day, picking through each week’s entry. Overall, I really enjoyed this novella. Although there isn’t a big definite ending and I’m not sure it’s the happiest book. It’s very much in line with the mood of Hornby’s other works. I can’t wait to watch the television show.

Next up on the TBR pile:

If, Then by Kate Hope Day

Title: If, Then

Author: Kate Hope Day

Publisher: Random House 2019

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; Alphabet Soup - D; Literary Escapes - OR

In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. Ginny, a devoted surgeon whose work often takes precedence over her family, has a baffling vision of a beautiful co-worker in Ginny’s own bed and begins to doubt the solidity of her marriage. Ginny’s husband, Mark, a wildlife scientist, sees a vision that suggests impending devastation and grows increasingly paranoid, threatening the safety of his wife and son. Samara, a young woman desperately mourning the recent death of her mother and questioning why her father seems to be coping with such ease, witnesses an apparition of her mother healthy and vibrant and wonders about the secrets her parents may have kept from her. Cass, a brilliant scholar struggling with the demands of new motherhood, catches a glimpse of herself pregnant again, just as she’s on the brink of returning to the project that could define her career.

At first the visions are relatively benign, but they grow increasingly disturbing—and, in some cases, frightening. When a natural disaster threatens Clearing, it becomes obvious that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same.

I grabbed this book because of a description in Book Pages. And unlike some of my previous reads this month, I loved the weird nature of the storyline. I really dove into the world of small town Oregon and the interconnecting lives. It took me a bit to sort through what was actually going on, but once I did, I was thoroughly invested. I loved every single one of the main characters. They aren’t super likable at times, but that’s what makes them human. I was rooting for them to make good choices and survive until the end. I sped through this book almost in one sitting because I could not put it down!

Next up on the TBR pile:

A Curve in the Road by Julianne MacLean

Title: A Curve in the Road

Author: Julianne MacLean

Publisher: Lake Union 2018

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Pages: 266

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; Women Authors;

Abbie MacIntyre is living the dream in the picturesque Nova Scotia town she calls home. She is a successful surgeon, is married to a handsome cardiologist, and has a model teenage son who is only months away from going off to college.

But then one fateful night, everything changes. When a drunk driver hits her car, Abbie is rushed to the hospital. She survives, but the accident forces unimaginable secrets out into the open and plagues Abbie with nightmares so vivid that she starts to question her grip on reality. Her perfect life begins to crack, and those cracks threaten to shatter her world completely.

The search for answers will test her strength in every way—as a wife, a career woman, and a mother—but it may also open the door for Abbie to move forward, beyond anger and heartbreak, to find out what she is truly made of. In learning to heal and trust again, she may just find new hope in the spaces left behind.

This isn’t a bad book, but I definitely think this book is just not for me. I wasn’t a fan of the first person narration that, at times, seemed to move back and forth throughout the timeline. Abbie and Zack were decent enough characters. I just didn’t get a great feel for Abbie beyond the trauma. I may have liked this book if it started before the accident to allow for the reader to get to know our main character. But most of all, I wasn’t a fan of all the coincidences and reveals. Too much. It made the entire storyline much too unrealistic for me.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Title: Turtles All the Way Down

Author: John Green

Publisher: Dutton 2017

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 286

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges:  Monthly Key Word: All; Modern Mrs. Darcy - Same Author; Literary Escapes - Indiana

Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
   
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

I had heard that the main character suffered from generalized anxiety disorder, but wasn’t quite sure what to expect going into this book. John Green perfectly describes anxiety and specifically thought spirals. I was uncomfortable in my many parts of this book as Aza’s experiences are very similar to mine at times. I really felt for Aza and her daily struggles. I loved hearing her inner thoughts on a variety of topics but specifically her thoughts on the self. I couldn’t put this book down. I was hooked from chapter one. The plot was okay and the mystery of Russell Pickett’s disappearance kept the book moving, but I was here for the characters. I loved the relationship and ultimately the honesty between Aza and Daisy. I really put myself in Aza’s mom’s shoes in many places through the story. I finished the book and am left with a feeling of understanding. There are others that struggle with anxiety just like me. (Logically I know this, but sometimes my depression brain tells me that I’m the only one.) Most definitely an amazing book and one that I really want to put in many specific people’s hands.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

Title: The Bookshop on the Corner

Author: Jenny Colgan

Publisher: William Morrow 2016

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 427

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; Popsugar - Makes Me Nostalgic; Alphabet Soup - C

Nina is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile — a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. 

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Title: Jane Steele

Author: Lyndsay Faye

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 2016

Genre: Fiction - Retellings

Pages: 427

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: UnRead Shelf; Popsugar - Retelling of a Classic; Women Authors

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: Can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past?

I was super excited about the premise and was super excited to read this retelling of Jane Eyre. But the first volume really bored me. There was too many reference and similarities to the original Jane Eyre. It was constant. Too much… I thought it weird that this retelling was set in a universe where the original book exists. It took me awhile to deal with this fact. And the section about Jane’s childhood was not amazing. Thankfully volume two was so much more interesting! The story really picked and up and I sped through the rest of the story. Jane really started growing on me as a character and the additions of Sardar Singh and Mr. Thornfield completed the story.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

Title: The Dreamers

Author: Karen Thompson Walker

Publisher: Random House 2019

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 303

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; Popsugar - College Campus; Alphabet Soup - W

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.

Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

I had heard so many great things about this book, but didn’t really know what to expect. What I got was a beautiful story of life past and present. The book is about a mysterious dreaming illness that infects a small town in California, but really that’s just a plot device. We focus on a few different families and see how they react to the illness and then later how some of them react to waking back up. I loved Sara and Libby'‘s story as well as Annie and Ben. We get such interesting characters packed into very little space. When I first started reading, I thought the quick cuts and almost unfinished passage would bother me, but instead they feel more like dreams. There is a stream of consciousness quality to the writing that I actually really enjoy. After reading this one, I want to pick up Walker’s previous work: The Age of Miracles.

Next up on the TBR pile:

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Title: A Place for Us

Author: Fatima Farheen Mirza

Publisher: SJP for Hogarth 2018

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 385

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Popsugar - Includes a wedding; Women Authors; Literary Escapes - California

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best? 

Our book club selection for March and I’m pretty disappointed in this one. It was billed as a moving story of a family growing, changing, and healing. I just couldn’t get behind it. The story revolved around the father and son and I just couldn’t seem to care about either one. The mother and sisters seemed to exist only to support the two males in the house. I get that many of the familial relationships were influenced by the family’s religion, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like those relationships. Beyond my issues with the characters, I was deeply annoyed by the time jumping and POV switching. Without warning, the author constantly shifted the timeline or the POV. I spent way too much time figuring out who was talking, but more importantly, when they were talking. And then having the story told multiple times throughout the novel adding bits and pieces along the way was just too repetitive for me. I was very bored throughout most of this book.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Open House by Elizabeth Berg

Title: Open House

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Publisher: Random House 2000

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 240

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; Popsugar - Meant to Read in 2018; Women Authors

Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember—and reclaim—the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. 

Quite a disappointing read for me. This was recommended by Oprah and a few other bloggers that I follow. I had previously read another of Berg’s novels, Tapestry of Fortunes, and found it fairly charming. This one just fell a bit flat for me. I could not stand the main character and wasn’t all that inspired by her boarders. Struggled to finish this one. Just not for me.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Title: Purple Hibiscus

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publisher: Algonquin Books 2003

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 307

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual - 21st Century Women Authors; Popsugar - Fave Color

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.

As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father's authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins' laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.

A very powerful story about family. I was rooting for Kambili and Jaja throughout the novel. I just want them to have a good life aware from hardship and strife. Of course, that wasn’t to be, but it was nice to see them gain strength over the course of the story. Adichie crafts a richly descriptive world. I especially loved the descriptions and passages about food. I wouldn’t say I loved this book, but I really enjoyed the journey.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Author: Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

Publisher: Dial Press 2009

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 288

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual - 21st Century Women Authors; Popsugar - Vegetable; What’s in a Name - Vegetable

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. . . .

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

I finally picked up this raved about book and absolutely loved it! The first 25 pages were a bit slow as we introduce the characters and the backstory. Once Juliet arrived on Guernsey I couldn’t stop reading. It was just too engaging! I fell for every single inhabitant on the island and even the ones not on the island. I love the epistolary structure of the book. It adds just a bit of fun and novelty into a great storyline. At times I was almost in tears learning about the characters. But at other times, I was laughing at the jokes and misadventures. This is a book that is going to be kept on my read and loved shelf for years to come. I’m certain I’ll be rereading this in the coming years.

Next up on the TBR pile:

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Title: An Object of Beauty

Author: Steven Martin

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing 2010

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 295

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: TBR Pile

Lacey Yeager is young, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the NYC art world by storm. Groomed at Sotheby's and hungry to keep climbing the social and career ladders put before her, Lacey charms men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness. Her ascension to the highest tiers of the city parallel the soaring heights--and, at times, the dark lows--of the art world and the country from the late 1990s through today.

This book has been sitting on my shelves for a few years and now I know why. It’s not a bad book. In fact, I think the right person would love this book. I am not that person. I just felt ambivalence toward the book and characters the entire time I was reading it. I wasn’t rushing to read the next page or staying up for one more chapter. I thought about abandoning it at one point, but pushed through to find out the end of Lacey’s story. My main issue is with the characters. None are likable or relatable. I just couldn’t get behind anyone and ultimately didn’t care what happened to them.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Title: Little Bee

Author: Chris Cleave

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2009

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 290

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: TBR Pile; Seasonal Series - Recommendation

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn’t. And it’s what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed the plot and the characters. It was a fascinating look at refugees. The storyline had some interesting twists and turns. I really liked that the characters were flawed making them much more realistic. But the writing just bugged me. I couldn't really get behind the first person narration. It was just too stifled for me. 

Next up on the TBR pile:

How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush by Emmy Abrahamson

Title: How to Fall in Love with a Man Who Lives in a Bush

Author: Emmy Abrahamson

Publisher: Harper 2018

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 231

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Reading Assignment; Modern Mrs. Darcy - In Translation; Seasonal Series - Read by the pool

Vienna: famous for Mozart, waltzes, and pastry; less famous for Julia, a Swedish transplant who spends her days teaching English to unemployed Austrians and her evenings watching Netflix with her cat or club hopping with a frenemy. An aspiring novelist, Julia’s full of ideas for future bestsellers: A writer moves his family to a deserted hotel in the dead of winter and spirals into madness! A homely governess loves a brooding man whose crazy wife is locked up in the attic! Fine, so they’ve been done. Doesn’t mean Julia won’t find something original.

Then something original finds Julia—sits down next to her on a bench, as a matter of fact. Ben is handsome (under all that beard) and adventurous (leaps from small bridges in a single bound). He’s also sexy as hell and planning to shuffle off to Berlin before things can get too serious. Oh, and Ben lives in a public park.

Thus begins a truth stranger than any fiction Julia might have imagined: a whirlwind relationship with a guy who shares her warped sense of humor and shakes up the just-okay existence she’s been too lazy to change. Ben challenges her to break out; she challenges him to settle down. As weeks turn to months, Julia keeps telling herself that this is a chapter in her life, not the whole book. If she writes the ending, she can’t get hurt.

My mom picked up this book at a free library event and thought I would like this quirky story. Unfortunately, most of it just fell flat for me. I was intrigued by the storyline. I loved the character of Ben. But... the writing was very juvenile. Choppy sentences. First person narration that read more like a blog post than a book. I don't know if it has something to do with the translator, or that's really how the book is written. All I know is that I kept having to stop reading with thoughts like "Is that really the sentence you want to put into print?" Some may like this little book, I didn't.

But what if the ending isn’t hers to write?

Next up on the TBR pile:

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Title: Sourdough

Author: Robin Sloan

Publisher: MCD 2017

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Popsugar - Involving a Heist; I Love Libraries

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

Overall, I really enjoyed our book club selection this month. I loved Lois's adventure with the sourdough starter. I loved all the descriptions of the starter and the bread it created. I loved the relationships Lois cultivated at General Dexterity and the Marrow Fair. I even enjoyed hearing about the other residents of the Marrow Fair, especially Horace. What I didn't love was the weird pseudo-corporate espionage that happened in the last 30 pages or so. I didn't like the characters involved and I certainly didn't like the outcome. Plus the way it was written made the ending seem very forced and abrupt. I would have liked a bit more to draw the conflict out. Oh well. At least most of the book was very entertaining.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Title: The History of Love

Author: Nicole Krauss

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company 2005

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 252

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual (21st Century Women Authors); Modern Mrs. Darcy -- Recommended by Someone with Good Taste;  I Love Libraries

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).

I really really wanted to like this book. It's our book club selection and I've heard so many great things about it. I loved the final scene between Alma and Leo. I loved the mystery of the novel and the characters' pasts. And yet, I just couldn't find myself to love this novel. The format of pseudo-stream of consciousness and enumerated memories threw me off. I kept getting lost as to the multitude of characters and their perspectives. I even found myself confused by the time period on certain pages/chapters. I can see that this is a worthwhile book and I'm sure that there are people who love this one. That person is just not me...

Next up on the TBR pile:

Circling the Sun by Paula McClain

Title: Circling the Sun

Author: Paula McClain

Publisher: Ballantine Books 2015

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 366

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Women Authors; 52 Books - W39

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl’s truest self and her fate: to fly.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. A found another historical figure that I did not know of before. I loved the overall storyline and characters. I enjoyed learning more about Kenya and the general atmosphere of Africa during the early 20th century. I could really feel Kenya in the book. Unfortunately, the book lost a star due to the writing and chapter transitions. I just wasn't a super fan of how the jumps in time were handled.

The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio

Title: The Last Camellia

Author: Sarah Jio

Publisher: Plume 2013

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 306

Rating:  4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Read My Own Damn Books; Popsugar - Murder Mystery; Women Authors

On the eve of the Second World War, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes.

More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate?

Our book club selection for September and a book that's been on my shelf for awhile. This was such a quick read for me. I think it took me a total of 3 days to read and I wasn't spending that much time reading. I quickly fell into the story wanting to know what happened to Flora and what would happen to Addison. The back and forth between the two time periods worked just fine. I was intrigued by the botany and the big mystery of the camellia. I loved the side characters in the historical sections especially the children. I also love that the manor seemed to become another character in the story. With all these good things, there were a few elements that bugged me. I didn't feel very connected to Addison at all. Her backstory bugged me. And I definitely didn't really see the relationship between her and Rex. It just wasn't that well developed. And the ending on Addison's side was super rushed and weird. Not satisfying at all.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Title: Everything I Never Told You

Author: Celeste Ng

Publisher: Penguin 2014

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 297

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Popsguar - Summer; Women Authors; 52 Books - W31

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

This was our book club selection for August and I have to say that I'm disappointed. I don't think this is a bad book necessarily. I just didn't really connect to the characters or like the plotline. It reminded me of The Virgin Suicides without the atmosphere. I wasn't very excited about anything that happened. The emotional connection to the characters just fell flat for me. After so many recommendations and appearances on Best of Books lists, I was expecting something that would really hit home. But nope... Oh well.

After You by Jojo Moyes

Title: After You (Me Before You #2)

Author: Jojo Moyes

Publisher: Viking 2015

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 352

Rating:  4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library; Women Authors

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

It took a few chapters before I really dove into this book. But once I did, I read the entire thing over two days. I dove right back into Louisa's life and I really enjoyed reading about how she's moved past Will's death. There were a few times that I got a bit choked up, but no instances of ugly crying like with the first book. Still, I really did enjoy it. Definite recommendation.