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: That night

Title: That Night
Author: Chevy Stevens
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook

Summary: Toni Murphy is a typical teenager--she has a boyfriend that she's crazy about, her little sister annoys her and she fights with her parents.  Toni's also bullied at school by a group of four girls.  These four girls seem bent on ruining Toni's life.

Toni's life changes forever when Toni's sister is killed and Toni and her boyfriend are charged and convicted with her murder.  After serving her time, Toni's back in her hometown.  She wants to prove her innocence and find her sister's killer.

Review:  I finished this book months ago and I'm just getting to writing the review.  I initially gave this three stars but I'm going to bump it up to four.  I really liked Toni and her toughness, as well as her drive to prove her innocence in a town where she was considered a bad seed.  For obvious reasons not a lot of people (including her parents) trusted her when she came back to town.  I suppose she really had nothing to lose.  A good murder mystery if you're into those!

Time to write: 4:22

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: 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.