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Review: The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig

17 Feb

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I love this series, and this book is an example of what Lauren Willig always does so well.

Summary via Lauren Willig’s website:

As Napoleon pursues his plans for the invasion of England, English operative Augustus Whittlesby gets wind of a top secret device, to be demonstrated over the course of a house party at Malmaison. The catch? The only way in is to join forces with that annoying American socialite, Emma Morris Delagardie, who has been commissioned to write a masque for the weekend’s entertainment. Even so, it should leave plenty of alone time with Augustus’ colleague (and goddess), Jane Wooliston, who has been tapped to play the heroine. Or so Augustus tells himself. In this complicated masque within a masque, nothing seems to go quite as scripted… especially Emma.

What the cover blurb (and description above) miss is the framing contemporary story line, which continues through the series. American graduate student Eloise is living in England researching spies in Napoleon’s time. She discovers that this is harder than she expects, gets tied up in some intrigue of her own, and along the way, finds her own romance, one that doesn’t wrap up quite as tidily as those in the spy stories she’s encountering in her research.

I admit that as of the last installment, I thought the contemporary storyline was getting pushed further and further into the shadow of the historical. As the historical stories were becoming even stronger, I didn’t exactly mind, but I was happy to see it back with some real oomph here. It had real relationship questions mixed in with an absolutely goofy movie set plot, and I found it delightful.  It’s a bit more chck-lit than romance, and Eloise is far from perfect, and all in all, it worked for me.

I didn’t like the historical story quite as well as the last few, but that’s a high standard to hold. Certainly, it still stands up well to the genre as a whole.

As is typical for a Lauren Willig heroine, Emma is not your run of the mill society miss, and isn’t afraid to stand out in society. Her links to the Bonaparte family put her in an situation of interest to the network of spies these books center around, but her flirty personality and interest in her late husband’s mechanical endeavors make her interesting to read about.

I wasn’t enamored with her love interest, but he didn’t pose a problem for me either. Between the fun and frivolity of the masque the two teamed up to put on, the excitement of the spy story, and the interesting historical details, I was well entertained.

I always appreciate Lauren Willig’s notes from her historical research– the most unlikely seeming characters and events turn out to be those pulled from the past.

The big question when reviewing book 9 of a series is whether this one is a good place to start reading. This book would be fine as a standalone, but the series is worth starting at the beginning, and watching the plot build and the characters come and go.

I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to TLC and Dutton Adult books for providing my copy of the book and the chance to participate. For more thoughts on Garden Intrigue, check out the other tour stops:

TLC Book Tours

 
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Posted by on February 17, 2012 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

24 Aug

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Domestic Violets is a book which is simultaneously very odd and very down to earth.  I can see why people are adding it to their best of 2011 lists.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned thirty-five, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day.

The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords, his pretentious archnemesis Gregory, and a hopeless, completely inappropriate crush on his favorite coworker. Oh . . . and his dog, according to the vet, is suffering from acute anxiety.

Tom’s life is crushing his soul, but he’s decided to do something about it. (Really.) Domestic Violets is the brilliant and beguiling story of a man finally taking control of his own happiness—even if it means making a complete idiot of himself along the way.

When Domestic Violets started off with the main character talking about his erectile dysfunction, I knew this wasn’t going to be like anything else I’d read. It took me a little longer to decide if this was a good thing.

It was, largely because Tom Violet was such a great character– someone that wasn’t at all like me, but who had me very interested in his life none-the-less. I ended up reading it in a single day.

If I didn’t have much in common with Tom, I recognize my world in his.

I loved his skewed view of how to handle office politics. I’d hate to work with him, but I loved to read about his strategies at work, both before and after he makes his big decision there.

On a different note, I really appreciated the handling of the strained relationship between him and his wife. Not that I’d want to be in that relationship, but although the details are different, I recognize the kind of stress that happens in a marriage after some number of years have past.

I even appreciated the handling of the paths that can lead to adultery, even in people who really don’t think it could happen to them.

Tom has an entire network of interesting relationships– with his parents, his wife, his daughter, coworkers and friends.  Each was well written, adding to the picture of Tom as a person.

Beyond work and his relationships, Tom is dealing with the questions that many of us face in middle age: Who am I? Who do I want to be?  There are no easy answers for Tom, but what fun would it be if there were?

In the end, Domestic Violets features a funny guy facing the challenges of modern life, and I’m really glad I saw the world through his eyes for a little while.

Domestic Violets would make a great book club read, particularly for clubs that end up reading a lot of books from a female perspective.

I read Domestic Violets for a TLC Book Tour.  Thank you to TLC and Harper Perennial for providing me with a copy of the book and allowing me to take part in the tour.

TLC Book ToursFor other views of the book, check out the other tour stops:

 
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Posted by on August 24, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Money Can’t Buy Love by Connie Briscoe

09 Aug

Money Can't Buy LoveMy rating: 2 of 5 stars

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Lenora Stone used to say if she didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all. At age thirty-eight, instead of socializing with Baltimore’s A-list, she photographs them for Baltimore Scene, a glossy magazine filled with beautiful people who, unlike Lenora, never have to worry about car trouble and overdue bills. As much as she’d love to slam the door on her overbearing boss, quitting isn’t an option. She’s barely making her mortgage payments and, though her condo might not be a palace, it’s hers. Lately even things with her boyfriend Gerald haven’t been right. They’ve been together for three years but he can’t seem to ask the one question she’s been waiting for. But what Lenora doesn’t know is that her luck is about to change…

Just when she thinks things can’t get worse, Lenora wins the jackpot in the Maryland lottery. In a heartbeat, all her dreams become possible. She quits her job and indulges her every desire-starting with a shiny, silver BMW and a million-dollar mansion. Gerald is finally ready to put a ring on her finger and the city’s most exclusive women’s group is dying for her to join, officially moving Lenora from behind the lens, into the limelight. But in Lenora’s lavish new world, all that glitters definitely isn’t gold. Her old friend’s are concerned about her sudden changes, and Ray, a sexy, young landscaper Lenora covered for the magazine is looking for more than a purely professional relationship.

As her life starts to come together, the things Lenora holds dear begin to fall apart. Has her world really changed for the better, or does fortune come with a heavy price?

I’ve been thinking about this book for several days now, and I’m starting to think I’m missing something about it.

Books that pick up to read and don’t end up enjoying tend to fall a few categories:

  1. The book isn’t for me. I can see why others would like it, and I can appreciate aspects of it, but we’re not a good match.  A recent example of this would be The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock.
  2. The book isn’t well written. Honestly, this doesn’t happen all that often with professionally published books– my minimum standards aren’t all that high, and a publisher doesn’t often release a book that’s bad enough to be an actual problem for me, and make me really not enjoy a book with an interesting concept.
  3. I just don’t get the book. I’m missing some vital thing about it that would explain why it was worth spending my time reading it. The Finkler Question fell in this category for me.

I think Money Can’t Buy Love falls into category 3, simply because it doesn’t seem to belong in either of the other two.

It isn’t badly written in any general sense. The words flow well, the characters behave consistently, their voices fit with their actions.

But even with that said, I’m missing why I’d want to read this book, other than the description sounding promising (which is why I asked to read it in the first place. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have finished reading it if I didn’t commit to this tour).

On the one hand, what was missing for me in this book was the fun. I just didn’t want to spend any more time with the main character who made one bad decision after another, and not even in an entertaining sort of way.  I admit,

I’d have given a character in her teens or early 20s a little more leeway, but by her late 30s, I’d expect a woman to be making better choices– making mistakes is fine, but Lenora isn’t doing well in her behavior with her job, her friends, her love life or her finances at the beginning of the book.  After she wins the lottery, her decisions go even further downhill, and I didn’t enjoy watching it.

On the other hand, I didn’t feel that her mistakes were giving me any insight into myself or the world around me, so it didn’t even seem like something that I didn’t have to enjoy, because it was good for me.

So in the end, I’m sitting here thinking I missed something.

If you read and enjoyed this book, I’d love to hear why. Now that I’m done writing this, I’ll spend some time reading other reviews, to see if I can find what they appreciated about it..

I read Money Can’t Buy Love as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to TLC Books and Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a review copy and allowing me to participate. For other opinions on this book, check out the other tour stops:
TLC Book Tours

 
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Posted by on August 9, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock

04 Aug

This book and I did not get along. It isn’t that it was a bad book, it just wasn’t for me.

Description via Goodreads.com:

Life on the tiny island of Guernsey has just become a whole lot harder for fifteen-year-old Cat Rozier. She’s gone from model pupil to murderer, but she swears it’s not her fault. Apparently it’s all the fault of history.

A new arrival at Cat’s high school in 1984, the beautiful and instantly popular Nicolette inexplicably takes Cat under her wing. The two become inseparable—going to parties together, checking out boys, and drinking whatever liquor they can shoplift. But a perceived betrayal sends them spinning apart, and Nic responds with cruel, over-the-top retribution.

Cat’s recently deceased father, Emile, dedicated his adult life to uncovering the truth about the Nazi occupation of Guernsey—from Churchill’s abandonment of the island to the stories of those who resisted—in hopes of repairing the reputation of his older brother, Charlie. Through Emile’s letters and Charlie’s words—recorded on tapes before his own death— a “confession” takes shape, revealing the secrets deeply woven into the fabric of the island . . . and into the Rozier family story.

I picked this because I loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and The Book of Lies was also set on the island of Guernsey.  For future reference, this is a ridiculous way to pick a book.  Guernsey was a very gentle book, and this one, well “gentle” isn’t anywhere in my description of it.

For me, The Book of Lies was too heavy on the dark, without enough light to counterbalance it. All the characters were deeply flawed, without positive characteristics to allow me to relate. Cat was a smart (but not socially savvy) teen, and usually that’s enough for me. That’s probably why I kept expecting to start liking the book soon. Unfortunately, while I did feel sorry for her, I didn’t like the decisions she made, and I didn’t want to spend my reading time with her.

The other characters in the modern storyline were at least as bad. I’m sure they had positive attributes, but as reader, I never saw them. The teens were horrendous, the adults oblivious. I had hopes for the teacher, but he was too weak to be interesting (although he certainly didn’t deserve what happened to him).

I couldn’t get up enough interest in the historical storyline to care about the characters. It was written as an interview transcript, and the style seemed meant to distance the reader from the events. It certainly had that effect on me.

All that said, I still don’t think it was a bad book. It was well written, with characters that had stories that came through in their actions. It had history that I didn’t know about, and a very different perspective than I’ve seen about the lasting effects of life during wartime. The interweaving of the two time periods, and the similarities and differences in the plotlines in them, would have been compelling if I’d just been able to get into the characters a little more.

For someone with a little more tolerance for realistically disagreeable characters, this could be a wonderful read.  For me, well, I’m learning more about what I do and don’t like in a book.

I read The Book of Lies as part of a TLC book tour.  Thank you to TLC and Harper Collins for providing a copy of the book for me to read and giving me the opportunity to take part in this tour. For other opinions on The Book of Lies, visit the other tour stops (most of which enjoyed the book far more than I did):

 
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Posted by on August 4, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

15 Jul

State of WonderMy rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book, largely because it isn’t really like anything I’ve read before.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Nothing about Marina’s assignment is easy: not only does no one know where Dr. Swenson is, but the last person who was sent to find her, Marina’s research partner Anders Eckman, died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor as well as answers to several troubling questions about her friend’s death, the state of her company’s future, and her own past.

Once found, Dr. Swenson, now in her seventies, is as ruthless and uncompromising as she ever was back in the days of Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins. With a combination of science and subterfuge, she dominates her research team and the natives she is studying with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she may still be unable to live up to her teacher’s expectations.

The uniqueness of this book is not just the setting, although I admittedly have very little experience with books set in the Brazilian wilderness. In fact, I’m not thinking of any others offhand.

And it’s not just the medical thriller aspect. I read a bunch of those years ago, but it’s been a while. If research was involved, it was somehow involving a disease that would escape or unwilling research participants. In State of Wonder, the researchers were on the trail of an existing cure for infertility. Better yet, it actually looked at the ethics involved, both with the research and the cure.

The unusual plot and setting were what set State of Wonder apart. These built on a base of amazing writing and great characters. I don’t normally comment on the writing, but I went from this to a book that lacked in this area. I could really see what a difference it made in my overall enjoyment of the book, even when I don’t stop to appreciate the individual words.

I do usually comment on the characters, and they were a strength here. I thought Dr. Marina Singh was interesting as an M.D. turned researcher who is at a standstill in her life– until she is pushed into this trip to Brazil, forcing her to confront her past, present and future.

But as much as I liked Marina (as a character and as a person I’d like to meet), it was the other characters that really fascinated me– none more so than Dr. Swenson, living in the Brazilian jungles in her 70s. What is driving her to continue her research? Why does she avoid all contact with the company that sponsors her work? What secrets has she discovered?

State of Wonder was readable, enjoyable and thought provoking– an all-around win!

I read State of Wonder as part of a TLC Book Tour.  Thank you to TLC and HarperCollins for sending me a copy and allowing me to participate in this tour! For other opinions on this book, check out the other tour stops:
TLC Book Tours

 
11 Comments

Posted by on July 15, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Things We Didn’t Say by Kristina Riggle

06 Jul

Things We Didn't Say: A NovelMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to start out by saying I had somewhat mixed feelings about this book. I found it very well written, so much so that I found it a very uncomfortable read at times.

Summary via Goodreads:

What goes unsaid can sometimes speak the loudest . . .

What makes up a family? For Casey it’s sharing a house with her fiancÉ, Michael, and his three children, whom she intends to nurture more than she ever took care of herself. But Casey’s plans have come undone. Michael’s silences have grown unfathomable and deep. His daughter Angel seethes as only a teenage girl can, while the wide-eyed youngest, Jewel, quietly takes it all in.

Then Michael’s son, Dylan, runs off, and the kids’ mother, a woman never afraid to say what she thinks, noisily barges into the home. That’s when Casey decides that the silences can no longer continue. She must begin speaking the words no one else can say. She’ll have to dig up secrets—including her own—uncovering the hurts, and begin the healing that is long overdue. And it all starts with just a few tentative words. . . .

Things We Didn’t Say is a very character centered novel. All the characters were collections of problems and issues, with a few good characteristics that showed through. I admit, I’m more used to lead characters that are generally good, competent people, with enough flaws to keep them real, and this was part of my discomfort with the book– I was never entirely sure I liked any of the characters.

However, even if it wasn’t comfortable, it was real. The story was compelling, and the experience of reading it got so intense for me at one point that I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I peeked ahead to the ending, so that I could continue reading without the stress of worrying about the end result.

In the end, I found it intense, compelling, and very, very real.  I was very satisfied with the experience.

I read Things We Didn’t Say as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. For other opinions, check out the other tour stops:


 
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Posted by on July 6, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Almost Home by Mariah Stewart

19 May

Almost Home (Chesapeake Diaries #3)My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the first book in this series. I liked the second one a lot. This one was a solid “like”.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

When she was young, Steffie Wyler always knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life: 1. Make ice cream. 2. Marry the coolest boy in town. 3. Live happily ever after. These days, Steffie is the proud owner of One Scoop or Two, a wildly popular ice cream parlor. But the cool guy left town right after high school, before they could scratch the surface of their mutual attraction to see what, if anything, lay beneath. Steffie’s made a great life for herself in St. Dennis, but true love has never come knocking.

Wade MacGregor left for college in Texas and remained there to start a successful business with his best friend, Robin Kennedy, but he’s always felt something was missing. Then life throws him a curveball: A third partner has robbed the company blind, and Robin has died—but not before entrusting Wade with a precious secret. Now back in St. Dennis, Wade’s determined to do whatever it takes to protect his friend’s legacy—and to figure out, once and for all, if the sparks that fly whenever he’s with Steffie are just temporary fireworks or the lights in the window leading him home.

Certainly, I enjoyed returning to St. Dennis and all the characters from the previous books. I liked Steffie in her previous appearances, and had been looking forward to getting to know her better.

Part of the problem was that I didn’t feel like I had a deeper understanding of her character by the end of the book. Sure, she was fun to hang out with, and I really enjoyed the look into the working of her ice cream creation process, but I never felt I knew her as more than a good buddy.

Part of the problem is all mine. The base story was a very standard romance plot– girl falls in love with boy, boy moves away. Boy turns into man, girl turns into woman, but somehow something is missing in both of their lives until they meet each other again as adults.

For someone that likes romance novels, I have very little patience with the ideas of love at first sight and that there are matches that are fated to be. On the other hand, these are such staples of the genre that it makes no sense to fault a book for containing them.

Wade (the love interest)did have a creative story, one that I haven’t seen before. It had moments of both predictability and of being over the top in what it asked me to believe, but mostly it was the blend of fun and touching that I would hope for.

As with the other books in the series, the strength is in the characters and their relationships. I particularly like the links between friends that cross generations, and I think the way the books actually let some of the folks older even than me be real people is a very refreshing change of pace.

If you’ve been following the series, go ahead and pick this one up. If you haven’t, I’d suggest starting at the beginning.

TLC Book ToursI read Almost Home as part of a TLC Books Tour.  Thank you to TLC and Random House for providing me a copy for review.

For other opinions on this book, check out the other tour stops:


 
4 Comments

Posted by on May 19, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Wrecker by Summer Wood

11 May

Wrecker: A NovelMy rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Wrecker was a wonderful story about what it means to be a family.

Summary via the author’s website:

It’s June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay – a young innocent from a family farm down south – is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single mother in a city she could barely manage to navigate as just one.

Three years later, she’s alone again. Kids aren’t allowed in prison. And Wrecker, scared silent, furious, and hell-bent on breaking every last thing that crosses his path, is shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County.

There’s no guidebook to mothering for Melody, who thought the best thing in life was eighty acres of old growth along the Mattole River and nobody telling her what to do – until this boy came along. For Melody, for Len, for Willow and Ruth, for Meg and Johnnie Appleseed, life will never again be the same once Wrecker signs on.

And for Lisa Fay, there’s one thought keeping her alive through fifteen years of hard time. One day? She’ll find her son and bring him home.

None of the characters in Wrecker had lives that had gone as expected, and I really enjoyed seeing each of the stories unfold as I read through the book.

Wrecker can’t live with his mother– she’s in jail, and will be for a long time. His uncle agrees to take him in, only to realize that he can’t care for his wife, suffering from some form of dementia, and this extremely active 3 year old boy, determined to live up to his name.

The neighbors step in to help out– first overnight, then for a few weeks, and so on. These aren’t just any neighbors, but a group of four dropouts from society living on a small farm in the Redwood forests of far Northern CA. Each has their own reason for living there, each has a reason for being drawn to Wrecker–and in some cases, for keeping a distance from him as well.

Wrecker explores the stories of many of these characters as forming a new family forces them to face who they have been and who they want to become. It also tells the story of Wrecker’s mother, and particularly her relationship with Wrecker– from his birth, the decisions that landed her in jail, and the effects of realizing he was growing up with no contact with her.

Although the strength of the book was this range of characters and their interrelated stories, there were moments when this was the weakness as well– I wanted to spend more time on one story rather than moving on to another. In general, the approach worked well.

In particular, the interweaving of stories was amazing– the mixing of past and present, of the stories of individuals and of the interactions between them, and most of all, how these interactions changed each individual and influenced how their story proceeded.

Much of the flavor of the book came from the setting– I grew up at roughly the same time but in very different places. I had to keep reminding myself that it is part of the same world I lived in. This very small community near a tiny town seemed completely different from anything I’ve known, but still was very real and vibrant.

All in all, a touching story, well told.

TLC Book ToursI read Wrecker for a TLC Book Tour.  Thank you to TLC and Bloomsbury USA for providing me with a copy of this book for review.  For other opinions on Wrecker, check out the other tour stops:

 
2 Comments

Posted by on May 11, 2011 in books, reviews, tour, Uncategorized

 

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Review: Heart of Deception by M.L. Malcolm

21 Apr

Heart of Deception: A NovelMy rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This review was a very tricky one for me to write.  I had trouble capturing my feelings about this book in general.  More of an issue was that while I liked Heart of Deception, I’d expected to love it.  I really enjoyed Heart of Lies, and I thought the next book was going to be even better.  I also really enjoyed meeting M.L. Malcolm at BEA last year, and hate the thought of saying anything less than glowing about this book.

I need to be clear here. Overall, Heart of Deception was a good read for me. I just was hoping for more. I liked all of the aspects that I wanted more from. If I didn’t like them, then I could have just written them off.

So for every issue I have, keep that in mind.

What was this book about?  Here’s the publisher’s summary:

A man of many contradictions, Leo Hoffman is a Hungarian national with a French passport, a wealthy businessman with no visible means of support, and a devoted father who hasn’t seen his daughter in years. He is also a spy.

Recruited by the Allies to help lay the groundwork for their invasion of North Africa, Leo intends to engage in as little espionage as possible—just enough to earn his American citizenship so he can get to New York and reunite with his daughter, Maddy. But while Leo dodges death in France and Morocco, Maddy is learning shocking truths about her father’s mysterious past—haunting knowledge that will compel her down her own dangerous path of deception and discovery.

Part of the problem was that I couldn’t figure out what kind of book it was, so I could set my expectations accordingly. I love books that bend genres, but they have to blow away my expectations for all areas they touch.  That’s probably not a fair expectation, but there it is.

I really didn’t get enough of a feel for the time and place of Maddy’s world to see this as straight historical fiction.  Leo’s world was full of those details, but primarily as they related to the spy story.

The spy story is great for a subplot, but isn’t enough to sustain the book. Given the description of the book, I expected Heart of Deception to be more about Leo, but his sections weren’t what dominated the book, at least for me.

I continue to find Leo an fascinating character, able to negotiate any deal except the one that will reunite him with his daughter.

The other characters were interesting, but there weren’t enough of them with the depth for an all out family drama.

Maddy was almost enough to carry the book for me. While I didn’t always like her or her actions, she did make an intriguing character to follow.

I’m conflicted over whether I felt she was justified in her behavior toward her father (given what she knew, not what I as the reader knew). I don’t know if I ever quite bought into her grand love affair, particularly her lover’s side of it. I do think that there was depth to the book here that I didn’t quite latch on to; a comparison between Maddy and her mother, and the difference in the way they handled a sudden, all consuming passion.

The other characters weren’t as well fleshed out, and the only one I liked at all was Maddy’s old Katherine.

The various stories that made up the plot were good, but scattered. They didn’t necessarily connect up in a way that compelled me to see this as a cohesive book.

In the end, I think much of this book is a bridge between the first book in the series and the next one, which I believe is the last. I’m certainly looking forward to reading it, and hope that it redeems the issues I had here.

Would I recommend reading Heart of Deception?  Read Heart of Lies first.  If you enjoy it, go on to this one, but adjust your expectations better than I did.

TLC Book ToursI read Heart of Deception as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to TLC and Harper Collins for the opportunity to participate, and for providing me with a copy of the book to read and review.

For other viewpoints on Heart of Deception, see the other tour stops:

 
4 Comments

Posted by on April 21, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer

05 Apr

The entire time I was reading The Uncoupling, I had no idea what I thought of it. Now I’m done, I still don’t really know.

I can say that I was always eager to pick it up again when I had to set it down, and I was thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading.

When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata—the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war—a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don’t really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light.

Trivia: This is the first time that I learned a new word (or at least a new meaning for a word) from a book blurb. I kept having trouble picturing “the elliptical new drama teacher”, so I went to look it up. I’ve got a decent vocabulary (even if I can’t spell any of it), so I’m curious if I’ve managed to miss knowing a common usage for elliptical, or if other people were trying to figure this one out.

The entire book is a odd– the characters are people, but they also each represent something or some group of people. The language is almost stilted at times, deliberately invoking the feel of someone telling a story.

The Uncoupling reminded me a little of Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good. Both books are trying to use a story to make a point about society. I found The Uncoupling to be much more successful, both in terms of the making its point and allowing me to enjoy its effort.

The Uncoupling was funny, in the word choices as well as the situations that were set up.

It was also the most frank discussion of sexuality that I’ve read in a novel. The book set up a variety of different couples with normal sex lives, up until the Lysistrata spell takes effect. I was never quite satisfied with the generalizations the narrator made, however.

The characters were interesting, even if somewhat two dimensional, seeming more like characters in a play (Lysistrata?) than real people. They were oversimplified to strengthen their representation of a group, but I wanted them to be a bit more than that.

I think The Uncoupling would be a great book to read with a book club that’s willing to talk about sex (Sex in the books.  Not sex in real life, although that would be an even more interesting meeting).  I don’t think everyone will love it, but I don’t think they will like and dislike the same aspects, and it could be a good discussion.

 

TLC Book ToursI read The Uncoupling as part of a tour with TLC Book Tours.  They arranged for the publisher to provide me with a copy to review.

If you’d like to see other opinions on this book, check out the other tour stops:

 
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Posted by on April 5, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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