Review #2: The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy, by Sara Angelini

It has admittedly been a long time since I read Pride & Prejudice. My memories of that book have probably been conflated with the several retreads that have come out in the last twenty years, most notably Bridget Jones. And maybe I need a reread in order to compare Austen to Angelini. Or maybe P&P just isn't that great (blasphemy!)? But it feels like I'd remember if Original Recipe Darcy was this much of a prick.

Judge Fitzwilliam Darcy is a British barrister with an expertise in international law, who also happens to be the youngest judge in San Francisco. Elizabeth Bennet is a young attorney who appears before him on a regular basis. Elizabeth's sister Jane falls in love with Darcy's best pal Bingley, who is the brother of Darcy's friend-with-benefits, Caroline (which itself feels kind of out of the realm of believability), which allows Elizabeth and Darcy to bump in to each other in a variety of awkward situations. There's conflict, some barbs thrown, and some misunderstandings, along with a token Gay Best Friend Lou, a bachelor auction where Elizabeth bids $50,000 for Darcy, only to be outbid by Caroline, and a British estate called, naturally, Pemberley.

Okay, fine. We have all the players, up to and including Mrs. Bennet, who is desperate for her daughters to marry. And who also gets stoned for Christmas dinner.

Except not fine at all. Darcy is a prick. Like a Grade A, Genuine Jerk. I get that he's supposed to be kind of crabby and curmudgeonly. But this is not what this Darcy is. The version is like a milquetoast iteration of Christian freaking Grey, complete with a scene involving a riding crop. He is a demanding, petulant, spoiled little brat who goes to Elizabeth's boss and tells him - after he and Elizabeth have broken up and she has said in no uncertain terms that she wants to foster her career instead of their relationship - that they are having an affair. Which they are not, since they, you know, mutually decided to end it. Which leads to her boss freaking out and immediately sending her to another city because this could jeopardize the sale of his firm and his retirement (dude, this isn't Suits). It essentially upends her entire life, forcing her to move or else risk her reputation. It never occurs to anyone that Darcy should consider stepping down; the courts are too overwhelmed and they are short a judge and it "wouldn't be fair". Darcy has about eleventy billion more options - a different court district, stepping down from the bench to practice law, the aforementioned Pemberley estate - than Elizabeth, who is just starting out in her career. But it's Elizabeth whom Darcy expects to completely change her life.

If that wasn't enough, the plot holes are big enough to drive a semi through. I'm not sure how the whole lawyer/bar thing works, but my guess is that you can't be a British barrister, come over to San Francisco on a lark, and suddenly become a judge in California. Don't you have to, you know, pass the bar over here? American laws and British laws are similar, but even I know that you can't practice law in Alabama if you only passed the bar in Alaska. It's also never made clear what kind of law Elizabeth is practicing here, nor what kind of judge Darcy is, only that the "courts are backed up" and there are only a few judges in the city/county/town/wherever they are. And Elizabeth tries several cases a day in front of Darcy, yet has time to meet with clients, and apparently her office is in the courthouse, even though she's clearly in private practice. And it only takes a few hours to fly from California to London. Direct.

And then we come to the sex scenes. They...are not sexy. Your mileage my vary, but the use of the word "titties" when having your characters engage in sexy times talk would not be my first choice. And then there is this scene, after a brief interlude between Darcy and Elizabeth during Jane and Bingley's wedding reception, where Elizabeth uses a trick that Gay Best Friend Lou taught her. (In person, by the way. With real life props. Ew.)

"It seems I have misjudged you, Mr. Hurst. I owe you an apology," Darcy said to him, staring straight ahead. Lou said nothing. "And a car," Darcy continued. He saw the corners of Lou's mouth curl up in a reluctant smile. "And possibly a retirement plan of some sort," Darcy continued.Lou laughed. "She wouldn't take all of my advice," Lou replied and took a sip of his drink."There was nothing lacking in her performance, I assure you," Darcy replied and took a sip of his own drink. Their eyes met in the mirror.Lou replied, "Yes but it would be vastly improved by the removal of her front teeth."

EW EW EW EW EW.

(Also, that's a direct quote. The writing is... well, that's a direct quote.)

Maybe I'm getting to be old-fashioned in my old age, or maybe I'm just a prude, but this scene squicked me out. It comes almost at the end of the novel, just before the magical wedding and the obligatory epilogue where Darcy has been brought to his knees by his love for his newborn daughter. And I think the reason that this scene bothered me so much is that it's just so indicative of the whole attitude of the story. Darcy calls the the shots. Darcy doesn't have to give up his career. Darcy's career - and reputation - are never on the line. Darcy doesn't have to move. Darcy doesn't even have to reciprocate in that aforementioned scene. Darcy gets the girl, keeps his job, keeps his reputation, keeps his money, and is even cheered and lauded by his colleagues when they see him kissing Elizabeth. I wonder how that would have played if the roles had been reversed.

Hard. Pass.

Review #25: Tricky Twenty-Two, by Janet Evanovich

Somewhere on my Stephanie Plum journey, I missed number 22. And I have to be honest, I don't quite remember what happened. Wacky shenanigans, Bob pooping everywhere, Lula, Grandma, Mrs. Plum ironing, Morelli being a cop, Ranger hotly being hot... it's all the same, just with a different bad guy.

There's something about a fraternity (is there a college in Trenton?), a murder of a guy nobody liked, and I kind of remember some sort of radioactive bug or some other kind of weird bioterrorism in the basement of either the college or the fraternity. Which begs the question: is Stephanie really the gal we want protecting us from this? This seems like a bad idea. Thank goodness for Morelli and Ranger. 

I also remember Lula going for a gun and instead pulling out a vibrator, which is just about the most Lula thing ever written. I'm sure that Stephanie got the bad guy through no fault of her own, I'm sure she danced the no underpants dance with Morelli once or twice, and I'm sure Ranger thoroughly kissed her and called her Babe a few times.

I'm also sure that Ranger didn't sleep with Stephanie in this episode, because I'd remember that. For. Sure. Which, is it time for me to admit that maybe I'm just reading these cause I want Ranger to be naked?

Review #8: Three Wishes, by Liane Moriarty

Lyn, Cat, and Gemma Kettle, beautiful thirty-three-year-old triplets, seem to attract attention everywhere they go. Together, laughter, drama, and mayhem seem to follow them. But apart, each is dealing with her own share of ups and downs. Lyn has organized her life into one big checklist, Cat has just learned a startling secret about her marriage, and Gemma, who bolts every time a relationship hits the six-month mark, holds out hope for lasting love. In this wise, witty, and hilarious novel, we follow the Kettle sisters through their tumultuous thirty-third year as they deal with sibling rivalry and secrets, revelations and relationships, unfaithful husbands and unthinkable decisions, and the fabulous, frustrating life of forever being part of a trio.

Three Wishes is Cannonball favorite Liane Moriarty's debut novel. It follows the Kettle triplets - Lyn, Cat, and Gemma - over the course of one year. In true Moriarty fashion, she begins with the trio having their birthday dinner, laughing and drinking and clinking champagne, until one is stabbed in the belly with a fork. Then we spin backwards, and enter in to their lives. 

Lyn is the super OCD triplet: everything in her life is just so. She's a "woman who works", she has children, she has a loving but sometimes forgetful husband, and she's struggling to keep it all together, even though her outward appearance shows that nothing is wrong. Cat is the triplet who is desperate to have a baby, who has literally put all her eggs in one basket, and when she becomes pregnant, she finally has everything she ever wanted...until she loses that and her husband in one fell sweep. And Gemma is the wild child, the free spirit who runs every time a relationship turns serious, who is so adrift she doesn't even have a permanent address. Toss in a divorced mother and father who are having a clandestine affair, an unexpected pregnancy, some infidelity, some sister fighting, and you have the makings of a good beach read.

And that's just what this is: a beach read. It's a perfectly serviceable novel to have with you on vacation, at the beach or on the plane, easy to pick up and put down. There aren't any big overarching themes or giant secrets... this is just a nice, frothy novel, and a pretty decent debut. Moriarty has made a name for herself, and so readers who go back to this first effort may be a little disappointed, but it's enjoyable enough.

Review #6: High Noon, by Nora Roberts

I do this thing where I keep a running list of my book titles in my drafts folder, so when I have downtime, or when the inspiration strikes, I can go back and write my reviews. I'm very undisciplined in my review-writing, as evidenced by the fact that it's May July and I'm reviewing stuff I read in January. Anyway, I was going down the list and saw the title High Noon and had to look it up on Amazon. Usually the cover sparks a memory. It did not. So I read the synopsis, which did spark a memory, but also reminded me that the entire time I was reading this, I was pretty sure I had read it before, but yet could never quite remember for sure.

Anyway, on to the synopsis. Lt. Phoebe MacNamara is the Savannah Police Department's hostage negotiator. When she is tasked with talking a suicidal bartender down from the ledge on St. Patrick's Day, the mysteriously wealthy bar owner is very intrigued. Duncan pursues her, much to Phoebe's surprise. After all, who would want a single mom with a precocious young daughter, an agoraphobic mother, and a crumbling Savannah estate? But want her he does, and they set out to have a good old fashioned romance, only to have it threatened by danger coming from within her own department. And just when they think they've solved all of those problems, a new one crops up, and this one threatens Duncan's own family and friends, and Phoebe has to save the day again.

It's classic Nora Roberts: a strong and stubborn female protagonist, an equally strong and stubborn (and not at all commitment-phobic) male counterpart, danger, a parental figure, people who depend on our heroine to save the day, and a semblance of family. Think about it. All her books - even when she writes as J.D. Robb - follow that same basic structure, and while that does tend to get old, there is something comforting in knowing that at the end of the day, the heroine's going to kick some ass, take some names, and get the guy. 

Review #5: Truly, Madly, Guilty, by Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty is a favorite around here, and I remember reading, but not reviewing (I think that was the year I dropped the ball), The Husband's Secret and really enjoying it. Boss read it just before me, so I had someone to chat with about it. And while I haven't gotten around to Big Little Lies yet, everyone seems to love it. So it made sense to pick up anything by Moriarty in hardback for $1 at a yard sale.

And it was...okay.

At the center of the book is an event that happened at a Sunday afternoon barbecue and each principal player's feelings of guilt and responsibility towards that event, as well as their feelings of guilt and responsibility towards the people in their lives. Sam and Clementine, a young married couple with two adorable little girls, are the quintessential harried parents. Sam was recently promoted, yet feels like he's wasting his time and talent in the corporate world. Clementine, a classical musician, suffers from audition anxiety and, truth be told, a little bit of mommy regret. Their lives are messy, their house messier, and they can never seem to find a complete pair of shoes. Erika, Clementine's best friend, and her husband are quite the opposite: they are child-free (although apparently not by choice), mess free, and both struggle with the shadows of their childhood. Erika's mom is clearly mentally ill, and her hoarding tendencies are just the tip of the iceberg. Tiffany and Vid, Erika's next door neighbors, are introduced to the story by hosting a spontaneous afternoon barbecue, and it is at their house where the "incident" takes place.

Moriarty has cornered the market on the flash forward / flash backward style where a mystery is introduced at the beginning and the reader doesn't find out what the mystery is, let alone the resolution, until three quarters of the way through. And while this worked for The Husband's Secret, I'm not so sure it worked here. Additionally - and I realize I'm going against the grain here - I wasn't all that enamored of any of the characters. Truth be told, of the main six, the only two I liked were Tiffany and Vid. And perhaps Erika's husband, but he was so dull that I can't remember his name. Lots of reviews that I have read talk about Erika and Clementine's friendship and how it's a great example of adult female relationships, but honestly, I'd rather not have friends than have a friendship like that.

Truly Madly Guilty didn't put me off Liane Moriarty - I have a review of Three Wishes coming up (eventually) - but I don't know as it was worth the hype, and if Big Little Lies is anything like this, I'm not sure I'm going to rush out to read it.

Review #1: Turbo Twenty-Three, by Janet Evanovich

Note: Spoilers abound.

Are there really spoilers in a Stephanie Plum book, though? I mean, we know that Lula is going to wear outrageous outfits, that Grandma is going to do something wacky, that Mrs. Plum is going to drink a little bit of Four Roses in her iced tea glass, and that Stephanie is going to have some near-death experiences.

In installment 23 (are we really up to that number?), we open with Stephanie and Morelli’s relationship status upgraded to engaged to be engaged. Apparently, Joe had some sort of medical thing in the last book which made him feel especially domestic for a short while. Stephanie’s on the hunt for Larry Virgil, who is out on bond for stealing an eighteen-wheeler full of bourbon, and she and Lula catch him stealing another eighteen-wheeler, only this time, it’s full of ice cream and a dead guy covered in chocolate sauce. So, you know, a typical day in Trenton.

In the meantime, Ranger needs Stephanie to go undercover at the ice cream plant, which is sort of related to the stolen truck full of ice cream and dead guy. The B stories this time include Grandma getting engaged to a biker bartender in one of the more delightful Grandma side-stories, and Lula and Randy Briggs (the short guy) filming themselves in their birthday suits wandering about Trenton for an audition tape for “Naked and Afraid”. Think about that visual for just a few seconds.

But what you really need to know, is that Stephanie sleeps with Ranger. At the Contemporary Resort at Disney World. Twice. While wearing Tinkerbell underwear.

The last few Stephanie books have felt pretty formulaic, and they have been, but they’re still fun, and I’m still reading them. Plus, you know, Ranger. It’s hard to give him up.

Review #53: The Almost Archer Sisters, by Lisa Gabriele

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. It was...fine? 

From Amazon (cause I'm lazy): Georgia "Peachy" Archer always thought she was happy with her choices in life: quitting college, marrying young, raising two boys in the same small town where she grew up. But just as Peachy's life is beginning to settle into a careful routine, her sister's life begins to dangerously unravel. Beth Archer chose a different life: fancy apartment in Manhattan, fancy friends, making lots of money. She's been on her own since she was a teenager, and she's still on her own, outgrowing dress styles and boyfriends faster than Peachy can inherit them. But on a visit home one weekend, Beth upends everything Peachy thought she knew about being happy. 

There's more, of course. There always is. Warning: spoilers ahead:

Peachy catches her husband with Beth in the pantry one night. And by "with Beth", I mean that Beth is bent over the shelves, hanging on for dear life, with Peachy's husband firmly entrenched behind her, setting the flour sacks a-rattling. There is no doubt in anyone's mind what's going on. So from the beginning, Beth is painted as the bad guy. We're not supposed to like her, and Gabriele does a good job of making that happen. Through flashbacks, we learn how selfish Beth is, going off to meet her destiny in New York as soon as she's old enough to hit the road, allowing Peachy to be the one who discovers their mother's lifeless body in their tree fort when the girls were young. Beth is painted as a tramp, always dating a new guy, always flitting in and out of town, acting as though she's too good for their little one-horse farm. Peachy, on the other hand, is the martyred sister, the one who dropped out of college when she became pregnant with her first son, who stayed behind with their dad (who is a fun character and I wish we had seen more of him). Peachy's days are full of the mind-numbing things that a mother of two young boys must do, complicated by the fact that her eldest son has a form of epilepsy that requires strict record keeping and preparedness for almost any contingency.

Except.

Except things are revealed about Peachy that made her much less of a sympathetic character to me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was something about Peachy that I couldn't stand, and the longer the book went on, the more I disliked her, which made me dislike the book, because I knew Beth was supposed to be the bad guy, but I wasn't feeling anything but sadness and regret for Beth. And I don't want to read a book where I feel sympathy for the woman who is having an affair.

The blurb on Amazon says that The Almost Archer Sisters is a refreshingly honest portrait of sisterhood, motherhood, and female mayhem. In the first place, "female mayhem"? What the hell is that? I'm not even addressing that. Secondly, I don't think this was an honest portrait - refreshing or not - of anything other than two very selfish women.

Review #51: Me Before You, by JoJo Moyes

I've been sitting on this review for awhile now, and not just because I procrastinate with the best of them when it comes to my reviews, but because I honestly do not know how I feel about this book. I think I know how I'm supposed to feel about it, but I'm not even a hundred percent sure of that.

I'm sure you know the story, especially since the movie came out a few months ago. Quiet, shy, relatively poor Louisa loses her job at the local diner, and finds herself answering a help wanted ad for a companion for a quadriplegic. Will Traynor, former Master of the Universe, is the man in need of companionship, having been relegated to a wheelchair after a freak car accident stole the use of most of his body. They could not be more different - where Lou is sweet, Will is acerbic; where Lou's family struggles to make ends meet, Will's family has enough money to buy the town - and yet, somehow, magically, they find themselves falling in love. But Will wants to kill himself, and that's where the conflict comes in.

On the surface, the novel is fine. It's an interesting premise - what happens when or if love isn't enough - and Moyes has a perfectly serviceable writing style. I think that most of the backlash from this book (and movie) has been about Will's ultimate choice: his decision to end his life because he's a paraplegic. The argument is that Moyes paints the paraplegia as life-ending, that someone in a wheelchair can't live a full and happy life. But I don't think that's what Moyes intended for the reader to think. I don't think that's why Will wants to kill himself. Above and beyond the wheelchair and the paralysis, Will is suffering, and he's suffering greatly. Imagine that every movement is steeped in pain, that every meal is a battle, that just going to the bathroom, let alone out to dinner or the store, is a challenge of epic proportions and requires more planning and baggage than most people's weekend trips to the beach. Will is tired, tired down to his very bones, and no amount of starry-eyed love is going to make that better. Is his desire to end his life any different from the woman who is suffering from terminal cancer and doesn't want to live trapped in a body that no longer works? Or the man who lays down after his wife of sixty years dies and wills himself to join her in death? Would we condemn them as so many have condemned Will? 

My issues with the book are focused on other things. I have some nits to pick with some of the secondary characters and I felt like Moyes needed to spend some more time on them, making them a little bit less heavy handed and perhaps more nuanced. I couldn't stand Lou's boyfriend Patrick; he was all wrong for Lou, it made no sense that they were even together in the first place, and I had nothing invested in them as a couple. I wanted Patrick to go away. He was simultaneously dull and the character who made me the most angry. He was, basically, a controlling, selfish, self-centered bore. Lou's parents and sister were fine, but they were not well-fleshed out and I wished we had had some more scenes with them. There was opportunity there, especially with Lou's sister, to build some good relationships, but Moyes let the pitch go by. The secondary characters in Will's life, though - his parents and his nurse - were more finely drawn and I felt like the reader had a much better understanding of their motives. 

But mainly, I kind of didn't like Will. Like Patrick, I found him to be controlling and selfish and self-centered. I love a good alpha male as much as the next girl, but this went beyond that. Even in death, it felt like he still controlled Lou. And this was only exacerbated by Moyes' decision to make Lou extraordinarily meek and mild throughout most of the book, even going so far as to give Lou a backstory involving a sexual assault that in a weird way took me out of the story. I couldn't tell if that was in there to explain Lou's reluctance to leave the village or if Moyes felt like she needed more pages, but it seemed incongruous with the rest of the novel. 

Having said all of this, I still cried like a baby at the final scenes between Will and Lou, even though I nearly tossed the book across the room when I got to the epilogue and realized that Will was still calling all the shots.

So I don't know. All this, and I still don't know how I feel about the book.

I think I'll skip the sequel though.

Review #48: Curious Minds: A Knight and Moon Novel, by Janet Evanovich

I wanted to like this. I really, really, really did. But I couldn't. Mom and Aunt both loved it, said it was laugh out loud funny, that Janet had finally come back after kind of veering off there with Stephanie and Ranger and Joe awhile ago. But I just didn't love it. I don't even think I really liked it.

Sutton (who co-writes the Lizzy and Diesel series) and Evanovich's new series - because it's of course going to be a series - is about Riley Moon, a junior analyst at the mega bank of Blane-Grunwald. She's Harvard-educated, and the blurb says that her "aggressive Texas spitfire attitude" helped her land the job, which she just started as the novel opens. She's thrilled with the new job, although she isn't sure about her first assignment: babysit billionaire werido Emerson Knight, who is insisting that the bank show him the family gold. But she figures it's no problem - she'll take him to the bank, show him the gold, and that will be that.

Except there are shenanigans afoot at Blane-Grunwald and the gold is "unavailable for viewing". In the quest to find the Knight family gold, Riley and Emerson uncover an Dr. Evil-like plot with the bank stealing the gold of other countries and attempting to devalue the dollar, somehow allowing the head Grunwald to take over the world. There are also explosions, a dead body, some visits to Area 51 (cause everyone knows that there are no aliens out there, just gold), and a few wild animals running loose on the Knight estate. 

So here are some of my many beefs with the book. First of all, I never got the feeling that Riley was an "aggressive spitfire". She was kind of mamby-pamby, as my mother would say. Which I recognize isn't a real word, but I'm sure you can figure out what she means. I mean, she could shoot a gun and could think her way out of a situation, but she never really gelled as the character I either wanted her to be or Janet envisioned. Secondly, Emerson was supposed to be eccentric, but what he really was was an amalgamation of several different eccentricities and none of them added up. It was like Evanvoich just looked up eccentric characteristics on line and picked a few unrelated ones. I think he was supposed to be charmingly weird, but instead he was just...weird. Thirdly, I didn't really understand the whole devalue-the-dollar-take-over-the-world plot. Maybe that's cause I don't really get how money works, beyond the basic plot points of knowing that I need it, my kid spends it, and I never seem to have enough of it. Do other countries really have piles of gold bars in reserve? And do they really keep them locked in the basement storage vaults of an American bank? That seems...ill-advised. It feels like a lot could go wrong there. 

But I think my biggest issue was that there was just no heat between Riley and Emerson. All of Evanovich's duos have a spark, witty repartee, or some sort of chemistry. All of them. And Riley and Emerson were, quite frankly, about as sexy as Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson. I mean, if Ned Nickerson had pet zebras and a fast car. And was less of a stick-in-the-mud. And less boring. I kind of never liked Ned. Anyway, Stephanie and Ranger and Morelli all have fantastic chemistry. Kate and Nick from the Fox and O'Hare series have great snarky comments back and forth. And even Lizzy and Diesel are hot, especially when he just appears the way he does. But Riley and Emerson did nothing for me. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

When I made the blah face to Mom about this one, she reminded me that One for the Money wasn't all that great right out of the gate, which makes me want to go back and read it again and reevaluate. And maybe this is Janet's set up to what will eventually be a good series. I'll give it one more go for the next one, but she's got to ratchet up the snark and heat and humor. And tone down the twee expressions that Riley uses. ("Crap on a cracker"? Um, no.)

Also? They're doing the James Patterson thing where the font gets bigger, the chapters get shorter, and still charging $21.95 for a hardback. This is not a $21.95 book.

Review #45: All Shook Up, by Susan Andersen

I downloaded this from the library, read it in about three hours, and pretty much promptly forgot about it. It was fine. Kind of like three buck Chuck. Not great, maybe you need an ice cube or two, and relatively forgettable. Kind of bland, like cream of chicken soup. (There's a mash up that I don't think I'd like, though: cream of chicken soup and three buck Chuck? Ew.)

J.D. Carver is "a man with a past" who has come to Star Lake Lodge to claim his inheritance - a half share of the Lodge left to him by a woman who took him in as a troubled teen. The inheritance comes at just the right time, since J.D. just turned in his now-former boss for using sub-par construction materials, and cost all of his friends their jobs. The former boss went to prison, of course, but not before he blacklisted J.D. in the town, so the share of the Lodge fell in to his lap at just the right time. Druscilla ("Dru") is "a woman with a reputation" (which, by the way, the "reputation" is the fact that she got pregnant with her long-term boyfriend who skipped town shortly afterwards and from what I could tell, never had sex again, so let's not slut shame, okay?), niece of the Lodge's owners, and single mom to a pretty cute ten year old son.

Sparks fly, of course, when J.D. and Dru meet, and it's the old "hate-each-other-on-sight" trope. I never really understood that storyline. I don't get how you can go from wanting to strangle each other to passionately kissing in the space of thirty seconds, when you just met two hours ago. That doesn't feel like a recipe for a healthy, stable relationship. Anyway, J.D and Dru connect, have some naughty adult time, and are slowly making their way towards one another. But then a man from J.D.'s past comes back with revenge on his mind, putting J.D.'s new-found family at risk, and J.D. decides to bail to protect everyone. Before he can get out of Dodge, though, he finds himself at the business end of a gun, and Dru comes in to save the day, letting everyone live happily ever after.

I will say that I enjoyed that Dru saved J.D.; that was a nice change of pace from the damsel in distress thing. Dru's actually a pretty strong woman in this book, now that I'm thinking about it. I was going to downgrade to two stars based solely on the ridiculous "woman with a reputation" slut shaming business, but now I'm remembering that I really liked Dru's solid and stable presence, so back up to three stars I go.

Review #44: How to Party with an Infant, by Kaui Hart Hemmings

Mele Bart thought that when she told her boyfriend Bobby that she was pregnant, he'd want to get married. It turns out that he did, but to someone else. Two years later, and the wedding is about to take place, and Bobby wants Ellie to be the flower girl. Mele doesn't want Ellie to go without her, so she declares that she's attending as well, and bringing a date. The only trouble is she doesn't exactly have a date, so she makes one up, confident that her friend Henry will help her out. Her friends - Annie, Barrett, Georgia, and, yes, Henry, parents she met through the San Francisco Mommy Club - aren't so sure she should go, but they appear to be willing and supportive of whatever decision she makes.

As the wedding date looms, Mele needs something to take her mind off the upcoming nuptials, and decides to enter the Mommy Club's cookbook contest, answering the contest's questionnaire with stories of her friends and their children. Mele pulls no punches, and she airs everyone's dirty laundry, including her own. The question "does your husband cook?" is answered with a biting essay about how she's pretty sure he does, but for someone else, because he's someone else's husband. Mele lists what food she'd make for each friend, each story, but Hemmings misses a big opportunity to include a recipe or two.

If there's a downfall to this book, it's that I think that Hemmings wasn't quite sure who she wanted Mele to be. In some respects, I could completely identify with Mele, who was intimidated by many of the mothers she met, but who also secretly scoffed at their high-end lifestyles. But what bothered me was this: Hemmings never really allowed Mele to speak her mind, except for in one scene near the end, and, vulgar though it may be, it's pretty fantastic and I actually cheered when I read it. I just wanted that Mele, the one who stood up to the Mean Girls of Mommyhood, through the whole book, not just in one tiny bit of dialogue at the end. It was almost as though Hemmings was afraid that she'd offend someone, and instead of writing the book she wanted to write, it felt like someone told her she had to tone down Mele's bite and acerbity, and so the reader is left wanting a bit more.

Interesting note: How to Party with an Infant is written by the author of The Descendants.

Reviews #39 - 41: Kristan Higgins Audiostyle

I have a pretty long commute, and I spend a lot of time in the car. There's only so much NPR I can handle during election season, and listening to audio books appears to keep the road rage to a minimum. But I need them to be light and fluffy romance novels, or else I can't also concentrate on driving. I live in Florida, home of the alligators, the snowbirds, and the worst drivers known to man, so I've got to pay attention. So some Kristan Higgins novels fit the bill. Also, they were what was available from the library.

But honestly? I can't remember much about them. They were fine, if a bit formulaic. I'd have been irritated if I spent money on them. They're the equivalent of a Lean Cuisine macaroni and cheese. They give you the idea that you're eating macaroni, but it's certainly not the gouda mac and cheese that costs $8.50 at the local fancy pants restaurant. They're not even the blue box of Kraft mac and cheese. But they're okay, and sometimes, they're what you want.

In The Best Man, Faith Holland, one of three daughters of the Holland family that runs the Blue Heron Winery in Manningsport, New York, returns to the farm, ready at last to settle down and join the family business. She's been gone all the time because her former fiancé, the dreamy local doctor, literally dumped her at the altar and came out to the entire town at the same time. Faith blames her ex-fiance's best friend, local sheriff Levi Cooper, for her humiliation. So when Faith and Levi meet again, sparks fly, even though they can't stand each other. An interesting twist on this is that Faith is prone to epileptic seizures, which Higgins never uses as a capital T Thing, they're just a part of her life, like having dark hair or brown eyes. (Although there is a plot point where Levi was the one who took Faith to the nurse after a seizure in high school.) Of course, the love/hate turns to love/love, and they live happily ever after.

That brings us to The Perfect Match, which features the middle Holland daughter, Honor. Honor thinks she's dating her lifelong crush, but really, it's a friends with benefits situation, and three weeks after a painfully awkward proposal scene, he's engaged to Honor's best friend, who, bizarrely, still wants Honor to stand up for her at her wedding. Staid, boring, Honor, who - I'm not making this up - always wears a headband like she's eight - impulsively agrees to marry a charming but gruff British professor, who needs a green card in order to stay in New York so he can stay close to his unofficial stepson Charlie and see him through his teen years. It's the old marriage of convenience trope, which works for a reason, and the book was fine. But Honor kind of irritated the ever loving daylights out of me. She ran the vineyard, allowed her family to take advantage of her, and never stood up for herself. She couldn't even tell her best friend, who had been schtupping the love of Honor's life behind her back, to go jump in a lake, for Pete's sake. In fact, she was still considering being the maid of honor at the wedding. What the hell, Honor? Grow a backbone, sister. I can't remember how this one ended, but my guess is happily ever after.

Leaving Manningsport and moving over to Georgebury, VT, we meet Callie Grey and Dr. Ian McFarland in All I Ever Wanted. Callie is staring down the barrel of thirty, in love with her boyfriend-slash-boss, who, it turns out, is getting married to the daughter of the company's biggest client, who, it also turns out, has it in for Callie. Callie's heartbroken over losing Mark, but through a confluence of events (that I can't remember), she takes up with the very single, very good looking, very aloof new town veterinarian. There's also a B story about Callie's overbearing, confirmed spinster older sister falling in love with their mother's undertaker (they run the town funeral home), and Callie's dad trying to get back in to Callie's mom's good graces after fooling around on her twenty years ago. (There was potential for humor when Callie's mother forced her dad to introduce her to each of his former paramours, but it just fell flat and felt kind of sad.) Like The Perfect Match, I can't remember how it ended, but I'm sure if was happily ever after.

Higgins is a fine writer. It's not high literature, but it's enough to keep me from stabbing the old people clogging up the roads at rush hour.

Review #38: Who Do You Love, by Jennifer Weiner

This made the rounds a few weeks ago (baxlala and Jenny S posted reviews last month), and I pretty much agree with them, that this was good, but not great, and certainly not as great as I've come to expect from Weiner.

Rachel, who was born with a heart defect, is a veteran of hospitals, and she's wandering about one night at eight years old when she meets Andy, also eight, in the ER waiting room. Andy's been brought in because he fell off of a hotel balcony and broke his arm. Andy's all alone; the hotel staff was unable to locate his mother. The hospital can't treat him without a parent present, and so Rachel tells him a story to calm his fears and keep him occupied. Andy's mom arrives, he's whisked behind the doors, Rachel is sent back to her room, and they never see each other again.

Until they meet in Atlanta on a church outreach program the summer before their junior year, building houses for the less fortunate. Andy recognizes Rachel and they spend an idyllic few days together. From there, it's two more years, not until Rachel's grandmother takes her to Philadelphia for a stopover before her graduation trip to Europe, that they see each other again. They manage to form a romantic relationship, even though Andy is busy with school and running and Rachel is busy with college and her sorority, until their own growing pains push them apart again. The book continues in this vein: they probably come together and fall apart about a half dozen times, with sections alternating between Rachel's perspective and Andy's. Eventually, Andy and Rachel split for good. Rachel becomes a social worker, marries, and has children. Andy, a competitive runner who went to the Olympics only to eventually have his career tank when it's revealed that he used performance enhancing drugs, begins rebuilding his life working at a HomeGoods store. Years later, Rachel's husband has left her for another woman, and she's at the HomeGoods store shopping for a shower faucet, and lo and behold, there is Andy, ready, willing, and waiting.

The more time I've had away from this novel, the less enchanted I am by it. There is huge potential here, and Weiner had the ability to knock this out of the park. Instead, she wrote a fairly dull romance novel with a preposterous premise, too many coincidences, a too-abrupt ending, and a heroine that, in the end, still needed the man to feel complete. It was perfectly serviceable as a romance paperback, but I've grown to expect more from Weiner. If it were anyone else, I'd be knocking it down to two stars.

Review #36: American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Lots of people (do I have to tm Donald Trump?) around here have been reading Curtis Sittenfeld lately. I've seen the Pride & Prejudice remake reviews, but that wasn't available on my library's website, so I downloaded American Wife instead. In my head - and most likely because of the cover - I thought it would be about a Jackie Kennedy-esque first lady, but instead, it became increasingly clear that it's a thinly veiled tale of First Lady Laura Bush.

American Wife is the story of quiet, unassuming Alice Lindgreen, an only child from a small Wisconsin town, who meets and marries a boyishly charming and wealthy man who eventually becomes governor and then president. The first half of the book deals with Alice's childhood and upbringing, detailing her high school years, a tragic car accident on the eve of her senior year in which the object of her affection is killed, and her subsequent involvement with the dead boy's older brother, which results in an unplanned pregnancy that reveals some surprising news about her eccentric grandmother. Sittenfeld then moves on to Alice's life as a young, unmarried librarian, describing her time spent at the local elementary school and her friends' concerns that Alice hasn't married yet. Eventually, Alice meets Charlie Blackwell, the son of the former governor, and the only brother in the family to not be involved in politics. Charlie comes from a privileged background, he's charming and impish and, despite the differences in their beliefs, Alice can't resist him, and so they marry and have a daughter. For a little while, Alice and Charlie seem happy, but it quickly becomes obvious that Charlie has a drinking problem, and an employment problem, and a being a decent husband problem. The family doesn't really know what to do with him, but he is installed as a part owner of the local baseball team just about the time he also becomes a born-again Christian, and that seems to settle him down and it feels as though Charlie finally begins to grow up.

The second half of the book jumps from Charlie's time with the baseball team to his presidency; his time as governor warrants just one paragraph. It's post 9/11, and Charlie is running an increasingly unpopular war in the Middle East, his poll numbers are tanking, the father of a dead soldier has camped out across from the White House demanding an audience, and there's a woman who is threatening to reveal that Alice had an abortion in her teens. This could be disastrous for Charlie - he ran as solidly pro-life - but Alice is at the point where she kind of doesn't care any longer. Much of the second part of the book deals with Alice's weariness at the inconveniences Charlie's presidency has caused: the lack of privacy, people speaking out against her husband, the fact that she is suddenly one of the most famous women in the world. But what she focuses most on is her inability to speak her mind. Alice has very different opinions from Charlie - on the war, on abortion rights, on religion, on education, on just about everything - but as First Lady, she must remain loyal to her husband, even when she feels he is wrong.

Reviews I've read on American Wife are mixed. Sittenfeld is a fine writer - she certainly knows how to weave a good tale - but I struggled with the characters. Alice was on the edge of dull, occasionally showing bits of strength, but I found myself frustrated with her, although to be fair, I think she was frustrated with herself. Alice wanted to be more, she had the potential to be more and she knew it, but she held back, and I'm not sure whether I found it admirable that she did what she thought she had to in support of her husband, or irritating that she wasn't more outspoken and brave. Charlie was self-centered and annoying, a bro before the term was coined, and wildly immature. Traits that I think Sittenfeld meant to come across as charming - the boyishness, the dreamy qualities, the little boy still in love with baseball - instead made Charlie seem woefully stunted and too childlike to be taken seriously. The best character in the novel was Alice's grandmother, a strong, independent, slightly eccentric and very mysterious woman who introduced Alice to the love of reading (as an aside, Sittenfeld redeemed herself with her treatises on various novels; it's very obvious that she's a book lover of the highest order, and so I loved her a little bit for that) and took her out to show her the world.

American Wife just felt uneven, as though Sittenfeld - like Alice - couldn't quite decide what she wanted it to be. Perhaps this just isn't her best effort. But I trust my Cannonballers, so Eligible is still on my TBR list. 

Review #30: The Lifeboat, by Charlotte Rogan

Both JB and Boss read The Lifeboat and I think that they both liked it more than I did, although I just asked Boss and he said after having been away from it for awhile, he felt it was fine but kind of flat. JB said it was a fascinating look at human behavior, and I suppose he's right, but it just didn't set me on fire the way I think it did him. I think that this is one of those books that you have to be in the right mood to get everything you can out of it, and I suppose I just wasn't in the right mood. Plus, I really hated the main character, which Boss says is a dumb rule, that I have to like the characters, but I can't stand unlikable narrators, and I find that it colors the whole book for me.

It's the summer of 1914. It's been two years since the sinking of the Titanic, and in that time, Archduke Ferdinand has been assassinated, World War I has broken out in Europe, and the Germans have sunk the passenger ship Lusitania. Twenty-two year old Grace and her newly minted husband Henry board the Empress Alexandra for passage across the Atlantic, Henry glad-handing and laying the foundation for some business deals, with Grace reflecting on how lucky she is to have landed such a wealthy husband. When an explosion rocks the ship, Henry presses Grace in to a lifeboat, telling her he'll catch the next one, and before she knows it, she's being lowered in to the cold Atlantic with 38 other people. It quickly becomes evident that the lifeboat is not designed to hold 39 passengers and over the next three weeks, the lifeboat will lose its share of passengers in a variety of ways before they are rescued, and it's these losses that land Grace - and others - on trial for murder. 

Grace is an unreliable - and extraordinarily unlikable - narrator. Everything is told in her voice, through her lenses, and so the reader never feels as though they are getting the real story, only what Grace has concocted (or her lawyer has told her to say), and it goes without saying that she's painting herself in the best light possible. Perhaps that's what was Rogan was going for, but it was a style that left me feeling uneasy. And as Grace told her story so dispassionately, I found myself caring less and less about who survived and under what circumstances the passengers were rescued. (And frankly, a little disappointed that Grace survived when so many others didn't.)

But despite my intense dislike for Grace, I found the overall theme of The Lifeboat fascinating, even if I didn't necessarily find the actual book all that fantastic. The real story isn't about whether Grace is telling the truth, or whether Mr. Hardy really was hiding something, or whether Mrs. Grant really is guilty of murder. No, the real story is about what happens when we strip away the bonds of human decency and have to fight for our individual survival, even if it means bringing harm to others. We all like to pretend that we'd be the bigger person, the one to jump overboard when the boat becomes too full, the one to give up our ration of food or fish or water to the weaker in the group. But would we really? In the end, aren't we all survivors - animals, really - and wouldn't we, absent any law and order or societal norms, return to that animal-like state and do anything necessary to ensure our own existence?

The Lifeboat was fine. It has the potential to make a great movie (Anne Hathaway is rumored to be playing Grace, although there is no shooting schedule yet), but as a novel, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

Review #27: Sex, Lies, & Online Dating, by Rachel Gibson

I feel like I've read Rachel Gibson before, but when I looked through her author page, all of the books looked both similar and complete foreign at the same time. I'm sure I've read something; I just can't remember it right now. (Update: I found it. After reading the review, I can say that I have absolutely no memory of reading it.)

Lucy Rothschild is a mystery novelist who is researching for her next novel. Quinn McIntyre is a local homicide detective with a potential female serial killer on the loose. Lucy goes undercover to some online dating sites, looking for the next victim for her book, and Quinn is also undercover online, searching out his murderer. So when "nurse" Lucy and "plumber" Quinn meet, neither of them knows the true story, but they both know the other is lying. Of course, Lucy fits the profile, so Quinn starts digging a bit, but then Lucy acquires a stalker of her own, and Quinn realizes that not only is Lucy not the killer, she's also in danger. Hijnks ensue, scary things happen, Lucy has lots of margaritas with her three author friends (perhaps a set up for three more books?), and finally she and Quinn pull their heads out of their rear ends and realize they belong together.

This was an enjoyable read on a rainy Saturday. It's not great literature, but it's okay, and the characters were pretty likable. And Lucy has some good points about internet dating; specifically the aging, balding, overweight, unemployed men who are only looking for women who are under 27 with the "sorry, no fatties!" added to the end of their profile. And I'm not saying that aging, balding, overweight, unemployed men can't achieve that goal of dating the perfectly young, perfectly healthy, perfectly proportioned beautiful woman, but generally, they need to bring lots of "roses" to that date. Lots and lots.

My favorite part of the whole book, though, is this snippet that I found when I went to Amazon to pull the link for the review: Rachel's storytelling career began at the age of sixteen when she ran her Chevy Vega into the side of a hill, retrieved the bumper and broken glass from the ground, and drove to her high school parking lot. With the help of her friend, she strategically scattered the broken pieces and told her parents she'd been the victim of a hit and run. They believed her, and she's been telling stories ever since.

I kind of want to be friends with her now.

Review #19: You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs, by Laurie Graff

I'm not sure quite how to classify You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs. It reads like a memoir but I think it might be fiction. Either way, it's an interesting look at dating adventures.

The novel opens with our narrator Karrie Klein attending yet another bridal shower for yet another friend, enduring the questions about when it will be her turn to get married. She doesn't normally worry about her perpetually single status, but she's 45, her acting prospects are drying up, her dating prospects are even slimmer, and suddenly, she's awake in the middle of the night reevaluating her life and recounting her paramours.

As the title suggests, you have to kiss a lot frogs, and boy, does Karrie have a lot of frogs in her life. There's the "Famous Actor" who barks like a dog, the man who gets upset that he had to pay for her coffee, and the one who didn't love her nearly as much as his parents did. I laughed out loud at some of the stories and visibly cringed at others, while there were one or two that left me shaking my head at her willingness to turn a blind eye to things even as I recognized that I've done that at times, too. Anyone who has ever dated will recognize some of the characters here and they will either raise their eyes to the heavens to give thanks for not having to be in the scene any longer, or they will wholeheartedly sympathize with Karrie and wish that their stories didn't so closely parallel hers.

So many times, these types of books end up with the heroine meeting Prince Charming in the final chapters. We just can't seem to get away from that fairy tale ending, or at least the feeling that that is what happily ever after looks like. What I liked most about this book was that there was none of that. Karrie doesn't meet Prince Charming. What she does do, though, is fall in love with a sweet little dog, and the two of them lived happily ever after.

Review #18: This Lullaby, by Sarah Dessen

I follow John Green on Facebook and a few months ago, he posted about Sarah Dessen's new novel (the name of which escapes me at the moment), and I figured that since I harbor a) a secret love for YA fiction and b) a secret love for John Green, I'd give her a whirl and downloaded This Lullaby, which was what was available from Overdrive. And it was... okay, I guess?

The story follows eighteen year old Remy during that magical time between high school graduation and the start of freshman year. Remy's in the throes of planning for college (a west coast school, because she's going as far away as possible) and also in the midst of planning her mother's fifth wedding when she meets Dexter, a member of a local band in town for the summer. Dexter is immediately a smitten kitten, but Remy, cynical in a way that only eighteen year old fictional girls can be, isn't so sure she likes him. There's a lot of back and forth banter, typical teenage drama, and a smelly but faithful dog. Rounding out the cast of characters are Remy's friends (I guess the kids call them a squad now - I'm so old): darkly humorous Chloe, Lissa, who is always emotional and a bit of a drama queen, and Jess, who is practical and a little bit dull. In other words, a poor man's teenage version of the Sex and the City women: Remy is Carrie, Chloe is Samantha, Lissa is Charlotte, and Jess is Miranda. We also have Dexter's friends and bandmates, who are written as such scatterbrains that I found it hard to believe they managed to find the town, let alone a place to live and some gigs, Remy's aforementioned wacky mom, the car dealer husband, and her weird brother, who is equally infatuated with both his pet lizards and his girlfriend Jennifer Anne. Anyway, Remy mainly resists the pull of Cupid's arrow while Dexter happily surrenders to it, and there is a lot of angst and hand wringing about what she should do.

Remy's thing is that she doesn't believe in love. Not the true love, fairy tale kind of love anyway. Her dad left when they were young; his claim to fame is a song called "This Lullaby" that he ostensibly wrote for her, and it's one of those songs that gets played for the father/daughter dance at every third wedding in America. Because of her dad's disappearance, and probably thanks in no small part to her mom's eleventy billion weddings, Remy feels as though love is just an illusion. But Dexter...Dexter could possibly change her mind, although Remy is also determined not to let him. College and her future is too important to get hung up on some guy.

The overall theme here is good. I have to give Dessen major points for having Remy still leave for school and follow her dreams, no matter how much she may have been tempted to stay behind. And points, too, for not making Dexter a total jerkface and allowing him to be confident enough in their relationship to give Remy the time and space she needs to become an adult, regardless of whether she'll end up with him. In a world of Bellas and Annas giving up their world for Edwards and Christians, it was nice to see two young adults make some pretty responsible decisions.

But somewhere along the line, Dessen kind of lost me. And maybe this is a small nit to pick, but I just didn't really like Remy. I found her just a smidge unbelievable: a seventeen year old who is the only girl in the salon who knows how to handle the demanding women who come in, the girl who is not only responsible for her older brother and his daily life but also her mother's wedding(s), the girl who has saved thousands of dollars to drive across the country to go to college. I don't know. Maybe Remy just has her shit together more than I did at that age. Or maybe Remy just comes across as thinking she has her shit together. Maybe that's it: I'm old enough to know that just because she thinks she knows everything, she really doesn't.

I'm not Dessen's target audience, of course, and so I'm sure the things that bothered me about this novel wouldn't even occur to someone in the right demographic, so probably all this means is that I'm too old to be reading this genre. This Lullaby wasn't bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, and in writing this review I'm feeling more positive about the book, but it just didn't hit it out of the park like I expected it to.

Review #17: Bittersweet, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

I'm woefully behind in my reviews, and so I've had some time and space apart from this novel, and I have to tell you, I still don't know what to think. I can't tell if I loved it for all of its gothic-ness, or I hated it for all of its horrible characters. So I'm giving it three stars, because that feels like a solidly middle-of-the-pack recommendation, but if you pick this up, know going in to it that you might get to the end and ask yourself what the hell you just read.

Mabel Dagmar is on scholarship at a very expensive east coast college, and she shares a dorm room with the cooly aloof, terribly popular, beautiful Genevra Winslow. For months, Mabel isn't sure that Ev even knows of her existence, and then suddenly, Ev invites her to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her family's summer cottage. When Mabel arrives, she finds that Bittersweet isn't so much a cottage as it is a compound that supports the nearby town. Each member of Ev's family has their own little house, and Ev and Mabel settle in to the cottage that is to become Ev's. Welcomed in to the Winslow clan, Mabel suddenly has everything she's always wanted: a family, access to money, friendship, and love. But there are dark secrets behind the drawing room curtains, and soon Mabel must choose between exposure and expulsion or keeping her mouth - and eyes - closed.

I don't want to give too much away, but this family makes the Dollanganger family from Flowers in the Attic seem like the Waltons. Murder, rape, incest, coverups, extortion, embezzlement, kidnapping -  it's all just a normal summer for the Winslow family. This book is a creepy, weird, and oddly fascinating read, and I kind of wanted to take a shower afterwards.

Review #11: Mohawk, by Richard Russo

I read Richard Russo's Empire Falls a few years ago and described it as a slow burn. I put it down several times, thinking I was bored with it, but after a few days, I found myself thinking about the characters and then devouring 150 pages at a time. Mohawk had the same effect on me, only reduced by about 50%.

Set in Mohawk, NY, a dying northern industrial town, Mohawk is very much like Empire Falls in that it's not really about anything other than the stories of the town's residents. There are unhappy marriages, unhappy wives, unhappy factory workers, unhappy waitresses...it seems as though the entire town is a little bit grey and downtrodden.

But that's classic Russo - stories about the quiet desperation that is played out in small towns across the country, towns that are hanging on by the barest of threads. Stories of the waitress who has worked at the same greasy diner for twenty years, serving men as they grow older with each cup of coffee she pours for them. Stories of the long suffering wife who harbors a secret crush on her cousin's husband, dreaming of the day when they can run away together, and then when the opportunity is finally there, when they can finally be together free of their spouses, she backs out and retreats to her mama's house. Stories of the town bookie who tries to pay a dead man's winnings to his widow, only to be greeted with scorn and suspicion. 

This wasn't Russo's best - in fact it almost felt like a practice novel for Empire Falls - but Russo at his worst is still a much better writer than most.