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Release Day Blitz: LEAVING LUCY PEAR by Anna Solomon
Two-time Pushcart Prize-winner Anna Solomon’s new novel, LEAVING LUCY PEAR, is officially out today! It is a moving exploration of motherhood, friendship, and marriage, and a perfect beach book for readers who like their summer reading smart and nuanced! Early reviews are unanimous in their enthusiastic praise, calling the novel “truly new and fresh” (Good Housekeeping), “beautifully told” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune), and “fully-fleshed, compassionate, and satisfying” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Novelists Sue Monk Kidd, Celeste Ng, J. Courtney Sullivan, and Paula McLain are also early fans. ABOUT THE BOOK In 1917, Beatrice Haven—the unwed teenage daughter of wealthy Jewish industrialists in Boston—sneaks out of her uncle’s house on Cape Ann in the…
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Special Feature: ENCHANTED AUGUST by Brenda Bowen
Last summer I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing ENCHANTED AUGUST by Brenda Bowen and now it’s coming to paperback this summer! This fun summer beach read, is out in paperback on July 5th from Penguin Books with a gorgeous new cover. A Maine Literary Awards finalist, ENCHANTED AUGUST transports readers to a tiny island in Maine, telling the story of four mismatched people who learn that sometimes—if you’re lucky—a change of scenery can lead you right back to where you belong. Romantic, optimistic, and as refreshing as a summer cocktail, the novel itself is a perfect escape. Mary Kay Andrews agrees—she recently recommended ENCHANTED AUGUST as a summer…
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Review: Re Jane by Patricia Park
This is the year of all things Jane Eyre! With it being the 200th anniversary for Jane Eyre, there are TONS of retellings out there right now! Jane Eyre isn’t my most favorite Bronte book but I do admire Jane’s spirit and it’s always fun to read modern retellings of classics! So even though this book sounded a little different….I like different…..so I agreed to read it and see what it’s all about! For Jane Re, half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet vulnerable, Jane toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and politely observes the traditional…
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Review: Just Life by Neil Abramson
As a general rule, I typically decline any and all books to do with dogs because they just give me too many feels…..good bad or otherwise! However, there was something about this one that sounded really intriguing…..maybe it was the hint of a scientific type of story line…..I don’t know but something just said ‘read me’ about this book. An unidentified virus is spreading through the New York City neighborhood of Riverside, near Central Park. Despite the desperate need for answers, the medical community can only determine the cause is zoonotic, suggesting birds one day and dogs the next as the possible source. Despite the lack of information, the politically…
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Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
This book came across my desk for review a couple of months ago and initially I passed on it for review and agreed to do a special feature instead. I wasn’t sure that I could fit it into my review schedule and I wasn’t sure it was something that I really wanted to read. However when I did the special feature, I completely rethought my decision! After reading the discussion questions of the feature, I was intrigued. This book sounded like it was going to be raw, honest, and dark but yet poignant and meaningful. This book was all of these things and more! This book is set up with…
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Special Feature: RE JANE by Patricia Park
RE JANE: A Novel (Penguin Books ; On-sale: April 19, 2016; $16.00; ISBN: 978014310794) by Patricia Park is a fresh, contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre and a poignant Korean-American debut novel that takes its heroine Jane Re on a journey from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul—and back. For Jane, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet vulnerable, she toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and politely observes the traditional principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys,…
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Review: Lies and Other Acts of Love by Kristy Woodson Harvey
I don’t typically read a lot of ‘Southern fiction’ or women’s fiction, but there was something about this intriguing cover and description that lured me in. After sixty years of marriage and five daughters, Lynn “Lovey” White knows that all of us, from time to time, need to use our little white lies. Her granddaughter, Annabelle, on the other hand, is as truthful as they come. She always does the right thing—that is, until she dumps her hedge fund manager fiancé and marries a musician she has known for three days. After all, her grandparents, who fell in love at first sight, have shared a lifetime of happiness, even through…
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Special Feature: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
Since the book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, has been released at the end of February it’s been on everyone’s lips not to mention all over social media! From People, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post to magazines such as O to Cosmo and Marie Claire, pretty much anyone who has picked it up has been blown away. Roxane Gay has even called the book “necessary” and “Beautiful” and just this week highlighted it in a recommendation list for iBooks. People are saying that it’s one of the most powerful novels they have read. Many are saying that author Mona Awad is saying things that have been in the…
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Review: The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell
This year seems to be the year of Jane Eyre re-imaginings! And I am not complaining in the least because I love the Brontes so I am gladly reading many of the re-imaginings that are coming out! Needless to say, that’s what caught my eye about this latest novel, The Madwoman Upstairs! The only remaining descendant of the Bronte family embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family’s long-rumored secret estate, using clues her eccentric father left behind. Samantha Whipple is used to stirring up speculation wherever she goes. As the last remaining descendant of the Bronte family, she’s rumored to have inherited a vital, mysterious portion…
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Spotlight Feature: WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT by Kim Barker
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, the upcoming movie starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton and Alfred Molina, is based on Kim Barker’s memoir of her time reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan (book originally published as The Taliban Shuffle). To check out the trailer for this hot upcoming new film, click here. Kim uses her sharp wit and humor to describe her dangerous and exciting time in these troubled countries in her book, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Anchor; February 23, 2016). Kim first arrived in Kabul in 2002, with nothing more than a passport and a dire need for a translator. Despite the dangers and the shaky circumstances, Kim’s love for…