Book review: The Children's Crusade

Title: The Children's Crusade
Author: Ann Packer

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook

Summary: Bill Packer buys land when he's starting out in the Bay Area as a young doctor.  It will be the perfect place to raise a family that doesn't exist yet.  He meets Penny Greenway and they have four kids.  Years later, the youngest, James, appears and uproots the other kid's lives.  What does James want after all these years?

Review:  As previously stated in past reviews, I'm a sucker for three things--post apocalypse stories, addiction tales and dysfunctional families.  Side note; Imagine a story about all three?  Well, this one is just the latter but it's still good.  There's a good balance of shifting between the parents and the kids, although the ending is a bit fuzzy for me.  Also, it takes place in the Bay Area.  Overall, good character depth and things aren't fully resolved, which I like.

Time to write: 2:56

Book review: A Fall of Marigolds

Title: A Fall of Marigolds
Author: Susan Meissner
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary: This is a tale of two women--Clara and Taryn.  Clara is working as a nurse on Ellis Island in 1911.  She can't bear to return to Manhattan after witnessing the man she loved fall to his death during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.  Taryn's story takes place in Manhattan in 2011.  Taryn's husband died on 9/11.  Taryn was supposed to meet him in the Tower to tell him she was pregnant but she was running behind and she survived while her husband died.  Their stories are blended by a beautiful scarf that provides comfort to both of them in their time of need.

Review: I wanted to like this book more.  There was nothing wrong with it.  It just wasn't great.  Maybe I feel like it should have been more heavy.  There are some heavy topics here but it didn't get too deep.  Everything was pulled together in a pretty bow at the end and sometimes I get disappointed by those.

Time to write: 1:38

Book review: Us

Title: Us
Author: David Nicholls
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: Douglas is a pretty reserved and straight-laced guy.  Despite this, he wooed the artistic Connie into marrying him almost 30 years ago and now their son Albie is 17 years old.  Right before the family is set to depart on a month-long European tour, Connie announces that she wants a divorce.  Should they cancel the trip?  Of course not!  Douglas wants to use the trip to persuade Connie to stay and to attempt to get closer to Albie.  What could go wrong?

Review: One Day is one of my favorite books of all time so I was excited to see Nicholls' latest book.   I couldn't bring myself to see the movie version of One Day because I'm not a huge fan of Anne Hathaway and I didn't want to see yet another movie epically fail to do a book justice.  I digress.

It took me a while to get into Us, but once I did I enjoyed it.  This book certainly didn't go the way I thought it was going to.  How could it?  Here's what I liked:

1. The back story on how Douglas and Connie met.
2. How Douglas' initial perspective on his relationship with his son didn't portray the full story.
3. The disastrous start to the trip and how it evolved.
4. Douglas' acknowledgement that he had made mistakes and his attempts to fix them.
5. The ending.

So why not the full five stars?  Because initially it wasn't one of those books that I was dying to read at the end of the day.  I'd pick it up and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't one that I wanted to stay up all night reading.

Time to write: 6:26

Book review: I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

Title: I am having so much fun here without you
Author: Courtney Maum
Rating:  2 out of 5 stars

Summary: British artist Richard Haddon's first solo show in Paris has been a resounding success but he's too broken up over his mistress leaving him to enjoy it.  When he discovers that a painting that he originally gave to his wife was sold, he's jarred back to reality and realizes he wants to stay with his wife. Unfortunately at the same time, Richard's wife founds out the extent of the affair and she kicks him out of the house.  Thus begins a series of attempts of Richard trying to woo back his wife.

Review: Remember the post about a book not being memorable but not terrible?  This is another one of those.  This is another one of those books where I read the reviews when I was getting ready to write this and I thought, "what am I missing?  Is it me?  Am I not a sophisticated enough reader?"  Well, maybe I'm not sophisticated, but if you want sophisticated reviews, I encourage you to check out The New Yorker or The New York Times Book Review.  For regular ol' folk like me, this book wasn't particularly memorable or didn't grab me.  So there.

Time to write: 2:05

Book review: Inside the O'Briens

Title: Inside the O'Briens

Author: Lisa Genova

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: The O'Briens are born-and-bred Irish Catholics who live in Charlestown.  Patriarch Joe is a 44-year-old cop married to Rosie and a father of four.  When Joe is diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, his world and his family's world is changed forever.  As his family witnesses his deterioration as a result of his disease, his children grapple with whether they should get a genetic test that will identify if they carry the gene that will lead to their own Huntington's diagnosis later in life. Two of his kids want to know and have to deal with their test results.  Two others struggle with whether they want to know, and the not knowing leads to its own stresses.  In the meantime, Huntington's continues to take away Joe's ability to be a cop, husband and dad.

Review: I initially gave this book three stars, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.  As somebody that has potentially passed on the BRCA gene to her daughters, I am sympathetic to the guilt that Joe felt passing the gene for this disease on to his children.  Additionally, as somebody that inherited the BRCA gene from my mom, I am also sympathetic to not blaming a parent for passing something like this on.  However, let me state that passing along the Huntington's disease gene is far worse than passing on the BRCA gene.  Genova did a great job describing this disease (or at least I was convinced).

As somebody that wasn't born and bred within certain towns in Massachusetts (translation: "blue-collar", non-wealthy towns?  I'm trying not to insult friends that are born and bred in Massachusetts here), I'll never be a townie.  As a result, I don't think I'll ever truly understand townies.  I don't think the author is a townie.  As a result, I'd argue that she didn't really capture what it's like to be a townie.  I could be wrong--she could have nailed it.  But something about the way she created these characters seemed oversimplified.  That said, I liked the kids a lot.  I think it was more her depiction of Joe and his wife Rosie that sort of bugged and led to four stars over five. However, I LOVED the ending.

Time to write:  9:10

Book review: Landline

Title: Landline
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: Georgie McCool's marriage to Neal is in bad shape.  A successful show runner, the TV pilot that she's been developing since college is finally getting picked up.  The problem?  It's a few days before Christmas.  And Georgie, Neal and their two daughters are supposed to head to Nebraska to visit Neal's family.  Georgie is forced to choose between family and work and she chooses work. Neal is pissed to say the least and takes the girls on his own to Nebraska.

Georgie ends up spending a lot of time at her mom's house and calls Neal at his mom's house when she cna't get ahold of him via his cell phone.  She quickly realizes that the Neal she's talking to is the Neal she knew when they first met.  Georgie has her future in her hands--would her and Neal have been better off if they had broken up?

Review: That's a long summary for me.  As somebody that struggles to balance work and family life, this book resonated with me a lot because I'm often pulled in both directions and I end up feeling like somebody is going to lose because I can't balance the two effectively.  And while Georgie and Neal's marriage isn't perfect, it has produced their two daughters, so even if Neal ends up leaving Georgie, that makes Georgie and Neal worth it, right?  But would their lives have been better if they hadn't gotten together?  I've always loved books like Sliding Doors and The Post Birthday World and while this isn't quite along the same lines, your mind sort of wanders to that place at times.

Time to write: 4:29

Book review: Sisterland

Title: Sisterland
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary: Kate and Violet, twin sisters, have known since they were little that they were different because of their "senses".  Kate has ignored her skills and has focused on a suburban life near St. Louis raising her kids with her husband.  Violet, the more eccentric of the sisters, has used her skills to make a living.  When Violet senses that a major earthquake is coming to St. Louis, the sisters are reunited and Kate is torn between shunning her sister and quietly wondering that Violet may be right.

Review: I read this book a few months ago but I'm behind on my reviews.  However, even when I'm behind I start the draft and put my rating in and then come back to it.  When I came upon this draft I couldn't remember what the book was about at first.  I knew it was about identical twin sisters but I couldn't recall any details beyond that.  When I reread the summary online I thought, "huh, only three stars?  Because this was considered to be one of the best novels of 2014."  However, I am always wary of those raves.  What can I say?  I'm a skeptic.  I thought about upping the rating to four stars but I can't really remember what happens in the end, so clearly it wasn't memorable enough for my terrible memory.  I guess this book was good enough?  I think I liked it, but the inability to remember why leaves me at three stars.

Time to write:4:11

Book review: Before I Go

Title: Before I Go
Author: Colleen Oakley
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Summary: Daisy Richmond is 27 and married to Jack, the love of her life.  In her early 20s she battled breast cancer and she's just found it's back. And this time it's terminal in a "6-months to live" terminal.  What's going to happen to Jack when she's gone?  Daisy wants to be sure that Jack is left in good hands after she dies, so she makes it her mission to find Jack a new wife before she goes.  Except that when Jack ends up getting close to a woman that Daisy perceives to be the perfect fit for Jack, Daisy worries that she's lost Jack even before she's actually passed away.

Review:  This is one of those books that when I picked it up from the library and the jacket I thought, "this might not be the best book for me."  But I loved it.  I'd call this sort of "heavy chick lit."  I mean, Daisy's terminal.  But there are funny parts too.  And Jack is a great guy, but terminal cancer can tax even the strongest of marriages.  I don't want to give the ending away, but did I mention her cancer is terminal?  It doesn't end well.  Make no mistake--this is a tearjerker of a book.  I realized it's been a while since I read a tearjerker.  They're pretty cathartic.  I finished this book last night and I was hoping that my sobbing wasn't waking up Aaron.  If you're in the mood for a tearjerker, check this one out.

Time spent on review: 3:39

Book review: Everything I Never Told You

Title: Everything I Never Told You
Author: Celeste Ng
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  The Lees are an interracial Chinese American family living in small town Ohio in the 1970s.  Marilyn and James  have complicated relationships with their three children--Nathan, Lydia and the overlooked baby, Hannah.  Lydia is her parents' favorite, but with this favoritism comes incredible pressure.  When her body is found in a lake, the tenuous strings that were holding the family together begin to strain and fall apart.

Review:  The perspective shifts from everybody in the family both before and after Lydia's death as each respective family member tries to process her absence.  Marilyn pushes Lydia to be successful in school so she can have the career that Marilyn never had.  James pushes Lydia to be popular.  Lydia is neither but she doesn't have the heart to tell her parents.  Nathan is heading to Harvard in the fall and Lydia is anxious that she's about to be abandoned and will have to deal with her oppressive parents on her own.  Her hopelessness leads to her suicide.

For some reason it has taken me a long time to write this review.  I thought about downgrading this from four stars to three but ultimately decided against it.  I think the reason it took me so long to write this review is this book tackles complicated topics--family dynamics, marital strife and wanting the best for our children but being blind to the fact that our children are not mini versions of ourselves.


This book was particularly heartbreaking to read as a parent.  Every parent wants their children to be successful, smart and have friends.  I'm dreading the moments in my girls' lives when they are disappointed or hurt.  As parents we try everything we can to shield them from that and yet we know we can't.  And it can be hard to remember that our children are not us.  They will have their own experiences and their own responses to those experiences.  Hopefully we can provide a home that is slightly less dysfunctional than this one, but every family has problems.  Perhaps this is the reason why it took me so long to write this review. Not necessarily because it was a *bad* book (it wasn't), but because it was so serious and layered.  As a result, a serious and layered review.

Book Review: Catching Air

Title: Catching Air
Author: Sarah Pekkanan
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary: Kira Danner is looking for a new start.  Frustrated and unhappy with her law career, she happily quits when Rand, her husband Peter's brother, asks if they want to join them in Vermont to start a B&B with Rand and his wife Alyssa.  Peter and Rand aren't very close, so the request is surprising, but this might be what the brothers need to start over.  The B&B gets busy fast, so they end up hiring Dawn, a mysterious stranger with secrets. 

Review:  This book is fluff in a good way, but not a great way.  At the risk of giving the ending away, what I liked is I wasn't 100% positive that everything was going to work out in the end.  I'm disappointed to say that it did.  Bor-ing.  It is wrapped up in a pretty little bow and that just isn't very interesting.

Book review: Astonish Me

Title: Astonish Me

Author: Maggie Shipstead

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: Joan is a ballet dancer who helps an acclaimed Russian ballet dancer defect many years ago.  Joan retires from ballet when she becomes pregnant and subsequently moves to California with her husband and young son.  When Joan's son is revealed to be an very talented dancer himself, secrets from the past are revealed.

Review:   While I've never danced and I hesitate to push my girls into dancing, I can't help but be fascinated by ballet dancers and the world in which they live.    I admit, I didn't see where this book was going initially.  One of the advantages and disadvantages of writing a review a few weeks after I finish a book is my perspective changes on it.  Sometimes this perspective changes for the positive, other times for the negative.  In this case, I think it's positive.  But I loved the insight into the world of ballet.  I have no idea if it was accurate or not, but it was still interesting.  

Book review: You Should Have Known

Title: You Should Have Known
Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: Grace Sachs has an enviable life--she lives in Manhattan with her pediatric oncologist husband and son.  A successful therapist, her first book, You Should Have Known, is about to be released.  The premise of her book is that women generally have only themselves to blame when their relationships begin to fall apart.  Grace argues that problems of infidelity or poor money management or emotional unavailability are obvious very early on, but women have a tendency to overlook these things.  In other words, they should have known.

When the mom of a kid at the school that Grace's son's attends is murdered, Grace is stunned when the cops show up at her door asking the whereabouts of her husband.  He could never do such a thing--he's a pediatric oncologist loved by his patients and their parents.  Turns out, he's also a sociopath.  Grace's life as she knows it disintegrates.

Review:  When I read books like this I can't help but wonder what I would do if I were in the same situation.  Inevitably, the women in these books seem to have more resources than me.  In Grace's situation, she has the luxury of escaping to her summer place in Connecticut, where she takes the next few months off so she can process what has happened and what her next steps will be.  Granted, the summer place isn't winterized and Grace and her son end up moving there in the winter. So they have that to deal with.  But both their Manhattan apartment and the Connecticut summer home are paid for because they've been in Grace's family for years.

I know I shouldn't take these books so literally--they're fiction.  But I can't help it.  In Grace's defense, she states a few times in the book that they couldn't afford their Manhattan apartment if they had to buy it with their salaries. But she still has it.  And yes, I realize these people aren't real.  But it's this inability for me to relate to her convenient financial situation that led me to give this four stars over five.  If my husband turned out to be a sociopath, I would still have a mortgage to pay with two kids in daycare.  I wouldn't have the ability to run away to our summer place.  If I was lucky I'd have friends that would let me stay at their summer places, but I'd still need to work to pay for the aforementioned mortgage and other bills.

The rest of the book was great.  There's the right amount of buildup to Grace's discovery, and her reaction feels real and raw.  But I just couldn't get past my frustration (and envy?) that her financial situation oversimplified things for me.

Book review: All Joy and No Fun

Title: All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting
Author: Jennifer Senior
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Summary: Parenting is tough.  This book outlines in great detail and with a lot of supporting studies how tough parenting is no matter what age your children are. 

Review:  I couldn't finish this book.  It was too stressful.  In hindsight perhaps I thought this book would be funnier.   I think I was looking for confirmation that I'm not the only one that gets overwhelmed with parenthood sometimes.  And I got that confirmation.  Ms. Senior does a fantastic job citing study after study of how parenting has changed.   And there's certainly room for debate on the influences of those changes and if parenting has changed for the better or worse. But it wasn't very reassuring or comforting.

All it did was make me feel more incompetent than I already feel at times and dread adolescence even more than I already am. Not because it's going to be a difficult time, but because that's when they're going to start to distance themselves from me, and that makes me really sad.  Because as much as they drive me crazy sometimes, the best part of my day is when they come running up to me when I get home with big hugs. Well, this has been an uplifting post.  No worries, I have two more to write and post soon.

Book review: All Fall Down

Title: All Fall Down
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Summary: Allison has it all--a beautiful house in the suburbs, a beautiful little girl, and a flourishing career as a blogger. Despite this "perfect" life, she's not as happy as things appear.  For one, her marriage is struggling--her husband sleeps in the spare bedroom and Allison is starting to suspect he's having an affair, or close to having an affair.  Also, her dad just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Holding it together for the perfect life is really stressful. Fortunately she has her friends Oxy, Vicodin, and Percocet to help her out.

Review:  I listened to this book on CD in my car.  This book is stressful at times, probably because this woman's life so closely resembled my own.  Also, the daughter's voice was really whiny.

As many women out there know, life is overwhelming sometimes--kids, job, husband, and everything else--it can be a LOT to manage.  As I listened to this story (and as I listen now to my own whiny children and can't they just give me 10 minutes to finish this long overdue post?), I couldn't help but think, "wow, this could be me".  And if this is why people become addicted to pain killers, I can totally see why.  There's so much to do in so little time, it's great to have something to take the edge off and relieve some of that stress so you don't have to worry so much.  Unfortunately it can get expensive, especially when you have to seek out illegal ways to get it once you get cut off from your docs.

While this story hit close to home, I love a good addiction story.  One of my favorite shows used to be Intervention.  Once I had kids I had a hard time watching the ones with the younger addicts--those broke my heart--but it was fascinating to watch Allison's spiral into addiction and her subsequent attempt at recovery.

This was one of those books where as I went through each CD I got a little sad that I was one CD closer to the end of the book.  Despite how stressful it was to feel like I was listening to my life, I didn't want this story to end.  Highly recommended. 

Book review: And the Dark Sacred Night

Title: And the Dark Sacred Night
Author: Julia Glass
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Summary: Kit Noonan has been drifting for awhile.  He's an unpublished PhD who's been job searching for some time. Finally his wife gives him an ultimatum--he needs to find his dad.  In fact, she's kicking him out of the house until he finds his dad.  Kit's mom has always hid his father's identity from him, but Kit explores other avenues to figure out who his dad is.  He finds a new family, but it also makes him realize that his "real" father isn't necessarily sperm-related. 

Review: The other day my husband Aaron told me he was reading my reviews and he commented that I was so nice in my reviews.  My response was, "I'm not trying to be the New York Times Book Review."  I've made the same comment about People magazine--their reviews are very nice as well, and are typically in the 3.5 to 5 star range.  But it did get me thinking--have I been overly nice or have I just been reading good books lately?  Or is it because even if I don't love a book, who am I to say it's bad?  I've never tried to write a book.  I've thought about it, I suppose, but I've never explored the process of writing a book.  It seems hard.  What is this review about?

My conversation with Aaron has at least for the short term led me to take a more critical eye to the books I read.  The first victim of this is And the Dark Sacred Night.  I'd like to think that even before I had the above conversation that I would have given this book three stars at most.  It just wasn't very interesting.  Yet it wasn't boring enough to put down.  It was just...eh.  The story would present a scene, meander to a flashback, and by the time it came back to the present I would have forgotten what was going on.  I also think Kit's biological father's family accepted him far too easily.  There was also more to explore--Kit's stepdad had a son that was an alcoholic, but there wasn't a lot of depth to this.  I'm always perplexed when a character's described with what seems to be important details, but the author never really explores it.  Also, Kit's wife kicks him out, but beyond the first part, there's no further exploration of their relationship.  Everything just felt undeveloped.

What do you think?  A more thorough review than what I usually put together?