Book review: Under the Influence

Title: Under the Influence
Author: Joyce Maynard
Rating: 4 out 5 stars

Summary:  Helen is facing a lonely life after her drinking led to the end of her marriage and losing custody of her young son Ollie.  Her visitations with Ollie are awkward and she makes ends meet as a school photographer and waitressing at catered events.

When Helen meets Ava and Swift Havilland, she falls under their spell.  They're wealthy philanthropists with a seemingly perfect marriage and glamorous life.  They take her under their wing and welcome her and Ollie into their well-connected world.  Ava and Swift's generosity includes offering to help Helen regain custody of Ollie.  

But then Ollie is a witness in an accident involving Swift and his son and Helen begins to see the Havillands for what they really are and finds herself at a turning point.  

Review:  If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I love a good story about addicts.  The title's a play on words and the recovery part is more of a sub-story, although it's the circumstances of Helen's sobriety that led to the friendship between her and Ava.  I'm not sure if I've read Maynard's other work before (although I'm reading another one right now), but I like it.  There's something clearly more sinister going on but Helen is blinded by Ava and Swift's money and attention, that she chooses to ignore what's right in front of her.  She was, as the book states, under the influence.  It takes her son being used as a pawn for Helen to wise up and see the truth.  Good summer read!

Time to write: 4:46.  

Book review: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits

Title: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits
Author: Kevin Roose
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Wall Street. It used to be the go-to job of Ivy grads looking to make money and set themselves up for a long boring career that would make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.  But how has the 2008 crash changed this career path and does it still hold the same appeal to today's generation getting out of college?

Review:  I was intrigued by this book and the peek it provided into a world that holds no interest to me yet I'm sort of fascinated by it.  What's the point of working 100 hour weeks if you can't enjoy life?  I liked that some of these kids didn't buy into the hype.  This world will always hold some appeal to some but it's promising to hear that it seems to have lost its luster.

Time to write: 1:56

Book review: Everybody Rise

Title: Everybody Rise
Author: Stephanie Clifford
Format: Audio book
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Evelyn comes from new money.  Her social-climbing mom is constantly pushing her to connect with Evelyn's prep school alum and find a successful and wealthy man to marry.  When Evelyn gets a job at "Facebook for the elite", she finally gets her in. The problem is that Evelyn makes up lie after lie to keep up appearances until she can't get out of her own way or climb over the huge mountain of debt she's gotten herself into.

Review:  I was on the fence about giving this review three stars, but I couldn't do it.  That being said, the book isn't terrible in the way you think it might be.  I gave this book the rating I did because it was stressful to listen to Evelyn's attempts to horn her way into the world of the extremely wealthy.  Listening to her get herself more and more into debt was tense.  You also knew that it wasn't going to end well for her, so I was constantly waiting for that.  I think there were funny parts to this book but I was so stressed out I didn't notice.  Also, I listened to this book and many of the characters' voices were like nails on a chalkboard. I almost switched to a physical book format but I stayed with the audio version, which lost it another star. Do what you will with this information.

Time to write: 5:10

Book review: We Were Liars

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Format: e-book
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Cadence Eastman comes from a wealthy family.  She spends her summers on her family's private island off of the Cape with her cousins Mirren and Johnny, and Gat, who is the son of one of her aunt's boyfriends.  When Cadence is 15, there's a terrible fire on the island.  Cadence returns the island when she's 17 and tries to piece together the events of the fire.  The story flips back and forth between the summers when Cadence is 15 and 17.

Review:  It turns out this is a Young Adult (YA) novel.  Who knew?  This book is also positioned as a suspense novel but I don't think I'd characterize it as that myself.  I'd say this is a coming-of-age novel.  Anyway, this book is great if only for the ending alone.  I almost don't want to say too much here at the risk of giving away the book, so just trust me on this one.

Time to write: 1:34

Book review: Big Little Lies

Title: Big Little Lies
Author: Liane Moriarty
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Summary:  This story revolves around three friends who live in an affluent seaside town: Madeline, Celeste and Jane.  All three have children that recently started Kindergarten.  Jane, only 24, doesn't fit the profile of the other moms, but Madeline and Celeste take her under their winds.  At the kindergarten orientation, Jane's little boy Ziggy is accused of bullying a little girl.  This event divides the town into who sides with the mother of the little girl and who sides with Jane, Celeste and Madeline.  Meanwhile, Celeste and Madeline are dealing with their own challenges around family and husbands.  Things come to a head on the school's Trivia Night. when somebody dies.  Was it murder? Just an accident?

Review: I love Liane Moriarty's work, although I didn't realize until I finished this that this was her work.  In the interest of full disclosure, I listened to this book on CD and because Moriarty is an Australian author, it was read by somebody with an Australian accent.  That probably helped me like the book a little more, but I still really liked this book.  There's a great buildup to the night of the Trivia Night where the murder happens.  For some reason I thought at first it was a woman that had died but it wasn't.  I don't want to reveal too much, but this was the kind of work that I couldn't stop listening to but I started to dread the book ending.  Another awesome peace of work by Moriarty.

Book review: Wise Men

Title: Wise Men
Author: Stuart Nadler
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary: Arthur Wise's career as an attorney has taken off in ways he could have only dreamed about.  He uses some of his newfound wealth to buy a family beach house in a town called BluePoint, located on the far end of Cape Cod.  The property comes with handyman Lem Dawson.  Lem's niece lives nearby and Arthur's son Hilly falls in love with her.  The problem?  Lem and his niece are black, which doesn't sit well with Arthur.  Their lives change forever one fateful night.

Review:  It's hard to write reviews for books that I finished a few weeks ago.  When I think back on this book, nothing remarkable comes to mind.  As rich kids go, Hilly is tolerable.  He shuns his father and his wealth.  I think "obsessed" is too strong a word, but I initially found Hilly's strong preoccupation with Savannah (Lem's niece) to be unconvincing.  I liked how it turned out though.

Book review: Bittersweet

Title: Bittersweet
Author: Miranda Beverl-Whittlemore
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Picture courtesy Amazon

Summary: Mabel Dagmar just wants to belong.  On scholarship at her East Coast college, her roommate is the beautiful, enigmatic and blue-blooded Geneva Winslow, Ev for short.  Ev ignores Mabel for a good part of the year until one day Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer with her as her guest at the Winslow family's Vermont compound.  Mabel sees this opportunity to ingratiate herself with Ev and belong to a well-known and very wealthy family.  As she becomes more and more ingrained with the family, Mabel is faced with a decision of whether to expose the secrets this family has kept hidden for so long or to accept them and become one of them.

Review: Wow.  I've expressed some frustration recently about books (like this one, this one, and even this one) where the characters are wealthy and are dealing with their own challenges.  But give me a book about a very wealthy family with some truly f***ed up stuff and I'm smitten.  Mabel's character is pathetic in her desperation to be liked by Ev and her family.  But she's also manipulative in her own ways.  At the end you truly don't know who to trust.  This book was awesome and just what I needed to cleanse my palate on "why do I keep reading books about wealthy people".

Book review: Secrets of the Lighthouse

Title: Secrets of the Lighthouse
Author: Santa Montefiore
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Ellen Trawton is running away.  She hates her job and is engaged to a man that she doesn't want to marry.  She escapes to the Irish town where her mom grew up to live with an aunt that she's never met.  While there she discovers an entire extended family that her mom has never mentioned.  There's also a sexy (but brooding) widower.  The widower's dead wife isn't very happy that her husband might be starting to move on (five years after her death, I might add).

Review: I'm pretty sure I already started this review, but sometimes Blogger gets a little testy and doesn't like to save my drafts.  I hate re-writing reviews.  It makes me crabby.  However, this book is a delightful frothy confection.  And there are angels (well maybe one angel and a ghost).  I like angels.  Nothing earth shattering, pretty formulaic, but who cares?  It's a book version of the rom com. Also, can we talk about how unique the author's name is?  I have no idea if that's her real name, and I can't imagine what it's like to grow up with the name Santa.  I surmised from reading up on the author that she grew up wealthy.  Maybe Santa is the English counterpart to Muffy or Tinsley? 

So why not the full five stars? Because, Ellen comes from a wealthy family.  And has the luxury of quitting her job and escaping to Ireland.  Perhaps I need to start getting my book suggestions from publications other than People magazine.

Anyhoo, if you're looking for an easy read during the cold winter, I highly recommend this. 

Book review: Psychos: A White Girls Problems Book

Title: Psychos: A White Girls Problems Book
Author: Babe Walker
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Babe Walker is fresh out of rehab and looking to get her life back. She has the luxury of endless money, so this book is about her post-rehab adventures. 

Review: I felt a lot better about disliking this book when I read in People magazine that Britney Spears loved it, although I'm not sure I believe she actually read it.  I don't really see Britney as much of a reader.  I digress.  As I mentioned in my review on You Should Have Known, I'm getting a little tired of reading about characters that are rich and don't have to work.  This is a mocu-memoir (If that's not already a real word then I'm making it up right now), I think.  I'm pretty sure this person isn't real but is some persona that somebody made up.  But again, I'm becoming older and out of touch, so...who knows.

Perhaps this is a sign that I'm getting old, but I didn't really get this book.  In fact, I started reading it awhile ago but then put it down because I couldn't get into it.  I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humor but I didn't really find this book that funny.  All I kept thinking was, "she would be more interesting if she didn't get bailed out all the time".  To Walker's credit, she has a blog too, which I enjoyed more than this book.  But not enough to provide any sort of link on this review.  

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.