Less than a quarter of the way into Invincible Summer and I realize why the novel feels so comfortable—I’ve superimposed the characters from Four Weddings and Funeral over the ones Alice Adams creates. This is not a bad thing because the story is not derivative, but you do have a small, tightly knit, British group of friends who get together once a year, not for ... Read More...
The House of Hidden Mothers
The House of Hidden Mothers is a melting pot of a lot of timely themes, but author Meera Syal manages them without overwhelming the flavor of the story. Forty-eight-year-old Shyama owns a successful beauty salon in London where she lives with her thirty-four-year-old boyfriend Toby and her daughter Tara, who’s attending university. By and large she is happy with her ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Happy summer, book lovers! I hope you're all getting to enjoy nice weather, sunshine, and, of course, some great reading. In an effort to help, I'm back with three books that left me thinking It's Not You, It's Me. If Whitney Terrell’s goal in his novel The Good Lieutenant is to mimic warfare, then he succeeds. The novel opens with the search for ... Read More...
Everyone Brave is Forgiven
Novels about World War II have opened with any number of emotions but I’m relatively certain that Chris Cleave has the market cornered in Everyone Brave is Forgiven, when he begins with eighteen-year-old Mary North gaily volunteering fifteen minutes after Britain declares war on Germany. It will be exciting and a lark! Even after she finds out that all she’ll be doing is ... Read More...
Wealthy Women: Mini-Reviews
It’s no secret I like sorbet reading—the kind of fiction that is light on the brain and cleanses my mental palate for the heavier novels that linger in my heart and mind after I’ve finished them. This could also be called chick-lit, but while I think that’s a fun term I know there are plenty of women that think it's offensive. Political correctness aside, what I’m ... Read More...
The Mime Order
I don’t read a lot of young adult science fiction but when Samantha Shannon’s first book The Bone Season came out I was intrigued enough that I was curious about the next chapter in the life of her protagonist, Paige Mahoney. Shannon returns Paige to London after she escapes from Sheol I, a penal colony, in The Mime Order. As what is known as an Unnatural (a human with ... Read More...
