BEFORE THIS IS OVER by Amanda Hickie

July 6, 2017

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Rumors of a deadly virus have already begun to spread, but Australia has so far remained safe. For Hannah, though, it is a concern. A cancer survivor always anxiously aware of any minute change in her own health, Hannah also has two sons and a husband to care for. And so when talk circulates of the virus’s potential spread, Hannah starts to prepare. Stockpiling food and other necessities is at the forefront of her mind in the beginning and she feels she’s done well enough at that, ensuring the men in her household don’t dip into the emergency stash along the way. But even she realizes that keeping her eldest son from participating in a school trip, when no infection has yet to reach their shores, might be a bit of a stretch.

And yet, her concerns are founded. The virus hits Australia while her oldest son is separated from the rest of the family. She berates her husband for heading into the office and keeps her youngest son home from school while the teachers and principal believe she’s being ridiculously paranoid. And again her concerns turn out to be founded when one of the men in the office and children at the school become infected. And when her son’s school trip is trapped by blockades and quarantine measures, Hannah’s husband finally agrees it’s time to take matters into their own hands.

I loved Amanda Hickie’s debut. In a time of ebola and zika, amongst others, the fear of viral apocalypse definitely seems like a reality we could very well face. Amanda Hickie herself was inspired to write the book based on her own fears after threats of a SARS outbreak.

And those fears ring true in Hannah. The story is tinged by that fear, imbued with a sense of paranoia and dread that infects the reader from the very first page. Which of course makes it a perfectly intense read.

Before This is Over is the kind of book that will appeal to a wide audience. The outbreak aspect makes it dark and satisfying for dystopian and post apocalyptic fans, but there’s a definite literary lean to the novel that will appeal to more than just genre fans. And considering the book raises a lot of questions, most importantly how far would you go to protect the people you love most, I think it would make a great pick for book clubs looking for a very discussion worthy and timely read.

7/17 Becky LeJeune

BEFORE THIS IS OVER by Amanda Hickie. Little, Brown and Company (March 28, 2017).  ISBN 978-0316355452. 400p.

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KISS CARLO by Adriana Trigiani

July 4, 2017

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The 4th of July seems like a good time to talk about Adriana Trigiani’s latest, a book about Italian immigrants living the American dream.

I always look forward to a new book from master storyteller Trigiani, and she never disappoints. Kiss Carlo is another terrific Italian family story, this time set in the late 1940’s in Philadelphia. Dom and Mike are brothers who own a cab company, but when their father dies, he leaves behind a rift between the brothers that forces them and their families apart for more than a decade. Dom opens his own cab company and adds a telegraph office as well, run by Mrs. Mooney, a “colored” woman who loves the family like her own.

Nick is an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle Dom in a basement apartment. He works in the family business, driving cab #4, and Mrs. Mooney is like a second mother to him. He moonlights at the Borelli theater, where he does everything and anything from cleaning the floors to feeding the actors their lines.

Calla Borelli took over directing the plays from her retired father. The Borelli theater is a community theater that puts on productions of Shakespeare, but ticket sales have been steadily declining and the family is barely hanging on. Calla has to fire Nick, they can’t afford him anymore except at the last minute, he has to fill in for one of the actors, and Nick falls in love with the stage.

Nick has been engaged for seven years, since before the War, to Peachy, but as he is tempted by Calla, and in love with acting, he realizes he can’t see a future with her. In nearby Roseto, the town is expecting the Ambassador Carlo from their sister city in Italy for a Jubilee celebration. Nick is to deliver the telegram stating that the ambassador has been taken ill and won’t arrive, but instead, Nick convinces Mrs. Mooney to go with him while he poses as the Ambassador and all sorts of hijinks ensue.

All of Trigiani’s books are about “la famiglia” and no one does a better job of it; you can practically taste the macaroni and gravy as you read. If you are looking for a beautiful escape, look no further. Kiss Carlo is an intoxicating getaway, a vacation read I wouldn’t want to miss, and neither should you!

7/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

KISS CARLO by Adriana Trigiani. Harper (June 20, 2017). ISBN 978-0062319227. 544p.

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THE LIGHT IN SUMMER by Mary McNear

June 29, 2017

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A Butternut Lake Novel

This was my first time reading this author, and I intend to read more of these Butternut Lake books. This was a really good, fast fun read, perfect for summer.

Of course it probably helps that the main character, Billy, is the small town librarian – that always gets me interested. She is a single mom, the result of a one-night stand, her first time having sex, when she was 18 years old. The father was a fishing guide in Alaska, and by the time she realized that she was pregnant, he had moved on with no forwarding address. Luckily, she has wonderful parents who support her and help her raise her son, Luke.

Fast forward several years and Luke is a young teen. Billy’s dad passed away, and they are both having a hard time dealing with it, but Luke refuses to discuss it. He has made a couple of new friends and is getting into trouble with them – getting suspended on the last day of school, then getting arrested for graffiti. This is a very small town in northern Minnesota, and the cop knows Luke is a good kid so he gets off with just a warning. But Billy is worried about how to handle this new person who is living in her son’s skin.

One day at work, Billy is looking out the window and sees a man driving a Porsche being ticketed. Cal is really good looking and turns out to be staying with his sister for the summer, while going through a divorce and selling off his partnership in a Seattle architecture firm. Eventually, Billy and Cal meet and there is a strong attraction, but things move slowly for a while. Billy is dealing with Luke, and Cal has his issues but they keep bumping into one another and things progress nicely.

This was a one night read for me. I loved these characters and the small town life – an idyllic summer read. Unfortunately, my library only has digital audiobooks of her earlier books – going to have to see what I can do about that!

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE LIGHT IN SUMMER by Mary McNear. Thomas Dunne Books (September 6, 2016).  ISBN 978-1250089090.  304p.

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THE IDENTICALS by Elin Hilderbrand

June 28, 2017

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The problem with this book is that I liked the characters so much that I was truly sorry to turn the last page. I want to spend more time with them, I want to see what happens in the rest of their lives.

The title refers to identical twins, Tabitha and Harper Frost. Growing up, they were as close as you’d expect identical twins to be, but then their parents divorced. Eleanor, the tyrannical, blue-blooded mother, decreed that each parent would take custody of one child, splitting the fourteen-year-old girls apart. They both want to go with their easy going father, but a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors makes the determination and shapes the rest of their lives.

Harper goes off to live with her father in his ramshackle house on Martha’s Vinyard, while Tabitha lives in the family compound 11 miles away on Nantucket. Harper makes one bad decision after another and is often the talk of the town. But her latest peccadillo – an affair with her father’s married doctor, really pushed the Vinyard folk over the edge.

Tabitha, who also never marries, nonetheless has children with her partner. But the wedge between the twins becomes insurmountable after Tabitha gives birth to a second child, premature son, who dies a few months later. Tabitha blames Harper, but her grief is neverending, chasing away her daughter’s father, who eventually marries and has his own family.

Eleanor, the family matriarch, is a fashion designer, somewhat reminiscent of Gloria Vanderbilt. Tabitha lives with her surly, out of control teenage daughter in the guest house on the property, and works for her mother, managing the store on Nantucket. And then her father dies.

Harper plans the celebration party her father wanted, and her mother, sister and niece all attend, but the rift is still strong. He has left the house to both girls, leaving them with a dilemma; sell it as a teardown, or invest beaucoup bucks and renovate, selling for much, much more.

Meanwhile, Eleanor gets a bit tipsy at the funeral celebration and ends up falling down the stairs when she gets home, breaking her hip. Tabitha leaves her daughter alone, goes with her mother to Boston, where they will have to stay while Eleanor recuperates from surgery.

Harper goes to Tabitha’s house to take care of her niece and run the store. Eventually Tabitha goes to their father’s house to try her hand at renovating, so in effect, the women trade lives for a summer. And what a difference a summer can make.

Once again Hilderbrand has created a world I long to visit. This is another terrific read from one of my favorite authors.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE IDENTICALS by Elin Hilderbrand. Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 13, 2017). ISBN 978-0316375191. 432p.

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THE SWITCH by Joseph Finder

June 26, 2017

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Finder takes a step outside his usual corporate thriller zone into political & suburban territory when there is a computer mixup at the TSA line at LAX. I have to say I loved the premise of this book; it seemed so believable.

Michael Tanner owns a small, wholesale elite coffee business that is not doing terribly well. In fact, he’s close to closing the doors. On a return trip home to Boston from L.A., he barely gets through security in time to catch his flight. Eventually he realizes that he must have grabbed the wrong laptop. This one has a little sticky note on the bottom with the password, and he quickly finds out it belongs to a powerful U.S. Senator. Curious, he pokes around and discovers some highly classified information, which he promptly shares with a Boston Globe reporter friend. When his friend commits suicide a couple of days later, Tanner is alarmed.

Meanwhile, back in Washington D.C., the senator’s chief of staff , Will Abbott, is in a panic. He’s the one who illegally downloaded the top secret documents onto the senator’s laptop so she could peruse them on her flight home from L.A. She knows the password is available, and they both are extremely worried – this could end her career, and Will could end up in prison.

It’s a fairly simple matter for the D.C. powers that be to determine whose computer they have and where the Senator’s computer should be, but when Tanner is confronted, he denies he has the Senator’s computer – and things go rapidly downhill from there.

There are a lot of bad – and often unbelievable – decisions made along this journey, and it often seemed repetitive. The characters weren’t really fleshed out enough to make me care what happened to them and I constantly had to think about who was who – who had the crying baby? Whose wife took off? So while I loved the beginning of the book,  in the end, the premise was better than the actual story. This was a disappointment from one of my favorite authors.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE SWITCH by Joseph Finder. Dutton (June 13, 2017).  ISBN 978-1101985786. 384p.

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THE SECRET INGREDIENT OF WISHES by Susan Bishop Crispell

June 22, 2017

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A delicious read filled with magical realism, pie and wishes fulfilled – what’s not to like?

Rachel Monroe has a special gift, or a curse as she thinks of it. She can fulfill wishes. She first learned she had this as a child when her younger brother was annoying her and she wished him gone. He disappeared along with everyone’s memories of him – except her. Her parents took her to one psychologist after another, and eventually she was hospitalized until she agreed that he never existed.

While hospitalized, she met her best friend, the only one who really understood. As she got older she refused to wish for anything and refused to hear wishes, but nonetheless, as people around her wished for things, little pieces of paper, like the fortunes from fortune cookies, would float into her orbit. If she read them, the wish was granted so she tried very hard not to. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore and by the time she was 26 years old, she knew she had to escape.

Rachel takes off in her car until it breaks down in the small town of Nowhere, North Carolina. The car dies in front of an old Victorian home and the owner comes out, offers to call for help and invites her to stay until her car is fixed. Her name is Catch.

Catch also has a gift. She’s a terrific baker and supplies pies for the town’s restaurants and residents, but her real gift is the ability to make people keep secrets. A neighbor will appear at her back door and ask for help and Catch bakes them a special pie and the secrets are kept.

These two women forge a friendship based in understanding one another. Rachel is attracted to Catch’s neighbor, a young, good looking man who befriends her. But as the town learns about Rachel, things take an ugly turn. Rachel has to decide if this is where she belongs after all.

Fans of Amy E. Reichert or Menna van Praag will love it. I did.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE SECRET INGREDIENT OF WISHES by Susan Bishop Crispell. Thomas Dunne Books (September 6, 2016).  ISBN 978-1250089090.  304p.

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THE LIGHT WE LOST by Jill Santopolo

June 20, 2017

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Lucy and Gabe met as students at Columbia University in New York City – on September 11, 2001. Yes, that September 11th. There was that shared trauma, but something more and Lucy was upset to find out shortly thereafter that Gabe had a girlfriend. But she moved on.

Until they met again. And it didn’t work out again. Or the next time. Star crossed lovers? Perhaps. And then finally the time was right.

By then Lucy was a successful children’s television producer and Gabe had found his calling in photojournalism. They quickly moved in together and were deliriously happy. At least Lucy was. They were in love, but Gabe was feeling stifled in his career. He wanted to go to where there were wars, where he thought his photographs might make a difference. And without telling Lucy, he arranged for such a job. Until he had to tell her because he was leaving. She was crushed.

Lucy eventually moved on. She met a man and slowly, very slowly, he wooed his way into her heart and eventually they married. But Gabe kept popping up every few years or so. At a reunion. On a stopover in NY. Lucy’s husband wasn’t a fan, but he dealt with it as best as he could. And Lucy was happy, for the most part. But Gabe was always there in her heart and after thirteen years, their history would finally catch up with them in a devastating way.

This book was unputdownable and I loved it, despite shedding tears along the way. The writing reminded me of Rainbow Rowell and especially Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, so if you are fan of those authors, try this one.

A terrific, terrible modern romance.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE LIGHT WE LOST by Jill Santopolo. G.P. Putnam’s Sons (May 9, 2017).  ISBN 978-0735212756.  336p.

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THE ALICE NETWORK by Kate Quinn

June 18, 2017

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She resisted.

The Alice Network was a real spy ring comprised of women during World War I led by Louise, the “Queen of the Spies.” This completely fascinating book is historical fiction based on rather mindblowing facts. It moves back and forth between World War I and the end of World War II with one character, Eve, the link between the wars.

Eve was a young girl with a stutter who really wanted to contribute during the war. She was recruited into the elite Alice Network, where she worked undercover as a waitress named Marguerite in a restaurant in Lille, France during the war.

The owner of the restaurant, René Bordulon, was a collaborator with the Germans, and all the top German brass frequented his restaurant. Eve was fluent in French, English and German but because of her stutter, she was able to play the simpleton who barely spoke French. Eventually René made his move on Marguerite, and they began an affair. She was petrified but got so much good information over pillow talk that it was worth it.

Meanwhile American Charlie St. Clair was on the hunt for her cousin, missing since the end of WWII. Charlie had a “little problem,” she got pregnant while at college and her mother has taken her to Europe for her “appointment” to get rid of the little problem. But Charlie wants to find her cousin Rose, her best friend growing up, and she refuses to believe that she is dead as her parents have told her. Shortly after arriving in Europe, she runs away from her mother and meets Eve, an older woman now with horribly disfigured hands, a vile mouth, and a severe case of PTSD. Nonetheless, Eve agrees to help and her driver, a big Scotsman, drives off with the women in search of Rose.

The story moves back and forth between Eve’s time as a spy during the war and the search for Rose, and eventually the story becomes even more intertwined. This is riveting stuff even though at times, it was quite difficult to read. The author’s notes at the end parses fiction from fact and the facts heavily win out. An excellent read for fans of historical fiction, especially with a women’s bent. This would be a fabulous choice for a book discussion as well.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THE ALICE NETWORK by Kate Quinn. William Morrow Paperbacks (June 6, 2017).  ISBN 978-0062654199.  528p.

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BEFORE GREEN GABLES by Budge Wilson

June 16, 2017

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The Prequel to Anne of Green Gables

Yes, that Anne of Green Gables, most recently reimagined as a Gothic nightmare on Netflix as “Anne with an E.” The Montgomery book was one of my favorites in childhood. Then I reread it in my children’s lit class in library school and loved it even more. Gothic nightmare is so not for me, but this book, this prequel, most certainly is.

The original (and subsequent sequels) are ostensibly children’s books but adults will certainly find much to enjoy as well. This prequel is an adult book and I don’t think it works the same way backwards; most children would probably not enjoy this but I sure did.

I have a new supervisor at work and she asked about a shelf full of children’s books that were in the reference workspace, including several copies of Anne of Green Gables. I explained that one of our librarians had attempted an adult book group that would read children’s literature, including Anne. It didn’t go well, I’m very sorry to say. But I mentioned how much I loved that book and she asked if I had read the prequel that came out a few years ago and my jaw dropped – I had missed it completely!

In the original, we meet Anne around age twelve when she is adopted. The book hints at some unhappiness in her past, and this prequel expands on it. We learn what happened to Anne Shirley before she got adopted and I was mesmerized, first by the writing, so reminiscent of the original, and then by the story itself. If you are a fan, you probably read this already but if, like me, you somehow missed it, do yourself a favor and find a copy. I’m so very glad I did.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

BEFORE GREEN GABLES by Budge Wilson. Berkley; Reprint edition (February 3, 2009).  ISBN 978-0425225769.  400p.

 

 

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COME SUNDOWN by Nora Roberts

June 11, 2017

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I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was who in this book about four generations of women living and working together on a ranch/resort in Montana. I finally got it but not until most of the way through the book but that’s on me. And really, it wasn’t all that important in the scheme of things.

Bodine runs the resort side of the family business and she’s really good at it. As a child she had a crush on her older brother’s best friend, Cal, but he left to do horse work in Hollywood before she grew up. Now he’s back and the chemistry between them is definitely there. He’s been hired on the ranch side of the business but when some employees retire, she hires him for the resort and things start heating up.

The day after Bodine’s mother got married, her sister Alice ran away from home. She never came back and Bodine and her brother never knew her. The story moves back and forth occasionally between Alice’s life and the rest of the family and the difference is stark, to say the least.

Bodine and Cal are out riding one morning when they find a woman’s body on the side of the road. It is one of the resort’s bartenders and she’s been murdered. Then a short time later another body turns up, and the small town sheriff has his hands full with the murders as well as his deputy who has some bad blood with Cal from when they were kids.

You can see the ending coming from a mile away and frankly, I wasn’t even looking so that was a bit of a disappointment. I’ve only read one other Nora Roberts book (I know, I know, she’s written well over 150 books!) and I loved that one (The Obsession) but this was one was just okay.

6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

COME SUNDOWN by Nora Roberts. St. Martin’s Press (May 30, 2017).  ISBN 978-1250123077. 480p.

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