Book Review: Real Moms by Lisa Valentine Clark

Title: Real Moms: Making It Up As We Go
Author: Lisa Valentine Clark
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

Back when I was an English major at BYU, there was a girl in a lot of my classes who was all the things I wished I was-- she was beautiful, confident, smart, and hilarious. I know this because she commented frequently in class and because I also knew she was in the "The Garrens," a comedy troupe on campus. So when I saw that she'd written a book, I thought, "why not?"

Twenty years later, Lisa is still adorable, smart, and funny. The things she has to say in Real Moms about parenting five kids are not putting herself in the position of a parenting expert, but as someone trying to draw lessons from real life. It was a fine, fun read, as long as the reader isn't expecting to be more than entertained. The book is pretty short and I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but several weeks later, I barely remember anything other than that there are plenty of ways to be a good mom, that motherhood requires improvisation, that moms shouldn't lose themselves to their kids, and that hard work is more important than natural smarts.

Book Review: Bet Me by Jennifer Cruise

Title: Bet Me
Author: Jennifer Cruise
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A sexy read, for sure!

Minerva is a cranky actuary who's trying to drown her sorrows with girlfriends at a bar one night when she overhears her ex making a bet with Cal, the hottest guy in the bar: that even Cal can't get Min into bed by the end of 30 days. The wager? $10,000. Cal doesn't want to make the bet, but due to a series of misunderstandings, but Min and the ex think the bet is on. She's understandably even crankier, but somehow, Cal and Min manage to fall for each other, despite the fact that she is decidedly NOT sexy, despite the fact that she's starving herself to fit into a dress for her sister's wedding and won't eat anything, despite both of their horrible families. If you like sexual tension and find food erotic, this is the book for you. If you like sexual tension and a girl who finally starts to see herself as sexy, this is the book for you. If you like sexual tension and hot guys, this is the book for you. Basically, if you like sexual tension and just about anything, this is a great read.

I thought Bet Me was a whole lot of fun. I especially liked seeing Minerva grow into herself and start seeing that all of the things she saw as liabilities (especially her body), other people could see as assets. I was sad when Min and Cal's story ended, because they were great fun to get to hang around with for as long as it lasted.

Book Review: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Title: Elsewhere
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A pretty clean read

Liz Hall is fifteen-- never been kissed, never driven a car, when she runs a stop sign on her bike, gets plowed over by a taxi, and dies. Soon, she finds herself in Elsewhere, which is basically an afterlife. Life in Elsewhere is pretty much exactly like life on Earth (people have jobs, live in houses with flush toilets, and obey the laws of the land) except that residents of Elsewhere age backwards. So Liz has fifteen years in Elsewhere, and when her time is up, she'll be a baby, ready to be reborn on Earth (strange concept right?-- are you still with me). Liz feels pretty gypped by the fact that her life is over before it really began, and after spending some time mourning and trying to communicate with people back home (strictly forbidden, btw) she gets on with her (after) life, finds a job and a boyfriend, and works at figuring things out.

I adored Zevin's novel The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, so I think my expectations for this book were quite high, even when I learned that this was YA speculative fiction (that's what you'd call it, right?). Elsewhere is totally unlike AJ Fikry, and it felt more like an experiment with a place, and what kinds of interesting twists on our life Zevin could make in Elsewhere than a great story about Liz and the people she loves. It's a fine read, but not one that kept me up in the night wanting more.

Book Review: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Title: Luckiest Girl Alive
Author: Jessica Knoll
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: This one is pretty dark-- violent, non-consensual sex, consensual sex, swearing

Ani seems to have the perfect life-- she's an editor at a magazine in Manhattan, she lives with her stockbroker fiance, she has a perfect body and perfect clothes and is planning the perfect wedding. But the veneer of perfection is thin, and underneath that perfect exterior is Tiffani FaNelli, the girl she once was-- the chubby insecure girl whose mom talked too loud and whose parents never had enough money for her to really fit in at her private school in Philly. Although Ani would say she has risen above her past (and we learn more about the dark secrets of that past as Luckiest Girl Alive unfolds), but she is not happy. In fact, the book opens with visions of Ani stabbing that perfect fiance with knives from their wedding registry.

I know that Luckiest Girl Alive is getting mixed reviews. Ani is an unreliable narrator, and she's pretty unlikeable too. While Knoll worked as a writer for the same kinds of magazines that Ani writes for, I don't think she made Ani unlikeable by coincidence. She name drops. She's obsessed with brands and with keeping herself thin. She's marrying a guy who seems more like an accessory than a partner. All in all, she's kind of a nightmare. She was a nightmare fifteen years ago, when she started at the Bradley School too. But Knoll does a great job making readers interested enough care about his damaged girl, and then lays out a harrowing, totally compelling story of what happened to Ani during that pivotal freshman year. I can't tell too much without giving things away, but this book is full of twists and turns, and deals with issues far more important (like sexual abuse, school violence, and class issues) than having the perfect boots for the season.

Book Review: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Title: The Royal We
Authors: Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: It's pretty sexy!

We all know the story of Will and Kate. Yes, that Will and Kate. They met in college, they fell in love, they broke up, they reunited, they got engaged, and married in front of more than a billion people. But what if Kate were Bex, an Iowan whose father is famous for inventing a couch that can keep your beer cold? In that case, you'd have The Royal We, which is blatantly Kate Middleton fan fic, and completely and totally fun and engrossing. Cocks and Morgan work together as a pretty great pair (unlike most writing pairs, it was hard to tell who wrote which pieces of the book), and they made Bex and Nick a totally adorable couple, with some interesting stumbling blocks in their relationship. If you're a fan of the royals, or if you grew up thinking that you'd go to England and Will would fall in love with you enough to overlook the fact that you were from the wrong side of the pond, or if you just like a totally engrossing, steamy, funny, (long) romance novel about two great characters, this is a perfect read. It's no longer beach season, but go run yourself a long bath, crack into this one, and pretend it's still summer.

Book Review: Another Day by David Levithan

Title: Another Day
Author: David Levithan
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: teen sex, swearing

In David Levithan's novel Every Day, a teenager, A, wakes up every day in the body of a different person. Sometimes it's a girl, and sometimes it's a boy. Sometimes their life is amazing and sometimes it's the pits. A's life has always been like this, and when he (she?) meets Rhiannon, life changes. A wants to stay in one place, to continue relationships beyond a single day. Every Day is a pretty darn fantastic experiment, and Levithan leaves readers with a fabulous cliffhanger.

So I expected a lot of Another Day. I expected that it would address the cliffhanger. I expected that it would advance the narrative. It doesn't do any of these things. Instead, it rehashes the entire story, this time from Rhiannon's perspective. Although I really liked Every Day, my main criticism of the novel at the time was that it felt a little too self-consciously experimental, like Levithan was prioritizing the "look what I can do" factor instead of focusing on storytelling. And I feel pretty let down by Another Day. I have a short attention span for books in series, and this one lost me. What's the good of a second novel if it doesn't get into the messy middle and advance the story towards the conclusion. While it was interesting to look at things from Rhiannon's perspective, this book felt a little more like one of those books where we get Twilight from Edward's perspective or 50 Shades of Grey from Christian's perspective. In other words, more of a piece geared toward hard-core fans, and I'm not sure the first book merits that all on its own.

Book Review: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

Title: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
Author: Jeanne Birdsall
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

When I was a little girl, I loved novels in series. Little House gave way to Betsy-Tacy and All of a Kind Family, and then I started reading Anne of Green Gables and read all eight books at least once a year until I left for college. I wanted my daughters to have this same kind of series experience, but sometimes I worry that the world has changed so much in the last thirty years that Betsy-Tacy doesn't have the same allure for my daughters that it did for me, and so far, they haven't shown much interest in any of the books series that I adored as a girl (which is fine, I guess, there are a lots of good books out there, right?). Then I came upon The Penderwicks, which my lovely friend Catherine mentioned in her list of top summer reads for kids in a segment on Channel 5. Maren and I started reading this together, but then she wanted to read something else, so I finished on my own. The Penderwicks is the first book in a series of five about four sisters who take a summer vacation with their widowed father to a cottage on an estate in the Berkshires. They have lots of adventures with Jeffrey, who lives in the big house with his imposing mother.

The Penderwicks is the kind of book that could take place in 1950 or 2015. While Birdsall mentions a computer once, the book feels totally timeless. The girls have the kind of unplugged, roaming adventures that parents think don't really happen any more. I loved the characters of each of the four girls, who are nicely differentiated by the author, and with whom most readers will find someone to identify. I'm definitely hooked-- I want to see where The Penderwicks go from here, and I want to take my kids to a cottage in the mountains without wifi and see what happens.

Book Review: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Nightingale
Author: Kristin Hannah
Enjoyment Rating:
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Wartime violence, French curse words

Vianne and Isabelle are sisters living at the outbreak of World War II in France. Both bear the scars of their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them when they were young girls, and while they share a bloodline, they don't seem to share a worldview. Vianne, a wife and mother living in a small village, is concerned primarily with keeping her family safe and protecting her home. Isabelle seeks adventure, and finds it in the Resistance movement, moving into Nazi-occupied Paris right when most Parisians are fleeing the city.

Like many readers, I have a little bit of fatigue when it comes to World War II stories. I feel like I've read a lot of them, and they're all emotionally difficult for me. While The Nightingale is no exception, it's a book that's engaging enough that I wanted to keep reading. Hannah does a lovely job exploring the strengths and weaknesses of Vianne and Isabelle's characters. These are two women who are complicated, who make grave errors due to the ways they view the world, and who have to pay for those errors. It's also a beautiful love story (actually two love stories) and a story of friendship, loss, and forgiveness. Hannah also keeps readers guessing with a third main character (an elderly woman who is hiding her identity and is presumably one of the sisters, but which one?) The Nightingale is the kind of audiobook you want to keep listening to all day long, and would make a really great book club read.

Book Review: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn

Title: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Paperback Copy
Content Alert: Perhaps some mild swearing

American Kathleen Flinn was in her thirties and living the dream of working as an executive in London when she was laid off from her job. In the ultimate case of turning lemons into lemonade, Flinn decided to take the opportunity to change her life and finally move in with the guy she was dating long-distance, while indulging in her lifelong dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu, the world-famous cooking school in Paris. Then she wrote all about it in The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.

While chef training is notoriously challenging and hazing is seen as part of the experience, Flinn's experience at Le Cordon Bleu is mostly positive, focusing on Paris, friends, and her blossoming romance. Sure, some of the recipes are weird or disgusting, the chefs can be unforgiving and uncompromising, but that's to be expected. This book is more of a love story than a war story. It's definitely one that made me want to get in the kitchen, go to Paris, and nurture love and friendships.

Book Review: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Title: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Author: Atul Gawande
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Hardback Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

I don't have much up-close and personal experience with death. I can count the number of dead people I've seen on a couple of fingers and I've never been with someone as their spirit passed from this life. Because of Ed's profession, and after watching several of our grandparents undergo a slow decline in quality of life, I do have a fairly clear picture of how I do and don't want the end of my life to look. According to Atul Gawande's important book, Being Mortal, the process of aging and dying has become so separated from most of our daily lives and so messed up by the idea that doctors should prolong life as long as possible, that the end of many people's lives is much more difficult than it may have been in the past.

Gawande delves into personal experience (sharing stories about the deaths of his grandfather, his wife's grandmother and his own father), as well as a wealth of other stories about people in all different kinds of end-of-life care, ranging from hospitals to hospice to living with family to assisted living and nursing homes (or a combination of several of the above). Gawande's mission is to preserve quality of life for people at the end of their lives and to help their families have the support they need to make this happen. The book is engagingly-written and important, and will definitely help readers know about what the options are for end of life care and how they can integrate them into their lives and the lives of people they love.