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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:

 
2 Comments

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

 

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Review: Horns by Joe Hill

09 Mar

HornsMy rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

Horns is a book that worked for me in more ways than I was expecting.

From the TLC Book Tours website:

Merrin Williams is dead, slaughtered under inexplicable circumstances, leaving her beloved boyfriend Ignatius Perrish as the only suspect. On the first anniversary of Merrin’s murder, Ig spends the night drunk and doing awful things. When he wakes the next morning he has a thunderous hangover . . . and horns growing from his temples. Ig possesses a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre gift he intends to use to find the monster who killed his lover. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. Now it’s time for revenge . . .

It’s time the devil had his due. . . .

I’ve been reading a lot of good books recently that don’t have strong male characters, or if they are strong, it’s in the wrong way, where that strength is used to hurt others, or at least not used in a way I find interesting to read and think about.

I figured sometime soon I would search out a book with a male character that was interesting in a positive way– an ordinary guy doing his best with what life throws at him and his family.

It never occurred to me that this would be that book.

Sure, Ig gets a little further into the battle of good vs. evil than I had in mind. It isn’t always clear which side he’s on, what with the horns and all.

But at the heart, Horns is the story of how Ig deals with the destruction of the life he’d been building with the woman he’d loved for years. Flashbacks to his childhood contrast with where his life is now. Ig was an interesting, nuanced character, and really made the book work.

And yes, Horns also works very well as the supernatural thriller I was expecting to read. Ig fully exploits the rather frightening abilities that appear with the horns on his head, and finds the person responsible for the terrible crime a year ago– and much, much more.

Within this thriller, within the character driven story, are fascinating reflections on the nature of good and evil, of religion, of where some of our ideas about these come from, and where they sometimes go wrong.

TLC Book Tours

I read Horns as part of a TLC Books Tour.  I was asked to mention:

The first 1000 people to preorder Horns and then email joehill@harpercollins.com with proof of purchase will receive a specialized bookplate from Joe – he’s been signing and doodling all sorts of creations on bookplates for days now! For more information on this giveaway and the rest of Joe’s books, visit www.joehillfiction.com and follow Joe on Twitter @joe_hill.

For other opinions on Horns, check out the other tour stops:

 
10 Comments

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

 

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Review: Moonface by Angela Balcita

16 Feb

Moonface: A True Romance by Angela Balcita

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

A true life adventure by an author with a story to tell and the voice to tell it in.

Summary via Goodreads:

The moving and hilarious true story of a young woman who found romance and laughter in the midst of illness

At the age of eighteen, Angela Balcita had reached a point in her life when her health could not keep up with her optimistic personality. After suffering kidney failure and after her body’s rejection of the kidney her brother donated to her, she was in desperate need of a transplant.

Lucky for Angela, she had found the ultimate partner in crime: her boyfriend, Charlie. Although they had known each other for only a short period of time, Charlie offered Angela his kidney. The ensuing story is unforgettable, with readers following Angela and Charlie’s journey through preparations for their respective surgeries; the procedures themselves, difficult yet emotionally riveting; the process of recuperation through the relapses; and the eventual healing—both inside and out—that greets this undeniably powerful duo.

By far, the thing that sticks with me from Moonface is the author’s voice. She has a way of writing that is funny without being comic, that makes her feel like someone that would be really interesting to know, and that I was getting to know her through her book. She was funny and very human.

And yes, she was an interesting character, beyond being an interesting person. She faced real challenges (She had kidney disease that caused her kidneys to fail, and she received a transplant from her brother, and when that failed, another transplant from her then boyfriend). She also faced the normal challenges of deciding what to do with her life– college, working, relationships, whether to become a mother. Her illness runs through these decisions, complicating them but not defining them.  She’s very opinionated, knows what she wants, and takes action to make it happen– even when that goal (pregnancy with a transplanted kidney?) isn’t the wisest course to pursue

The other characters provided spots of color and interest in a story that was clearly about the author herself. Arguably, I should have gotten to know Charlie more deeply than I did, but on the other hand, that might have distracted from the focus, which led to a very coherent narrative. I liked the glimpse into the life of her Filipino family, Charlie’s Irish/German one, and the highly assorted collection of friends they made along the way.

While Charlie’s character may not have fully come through, their romance does. Their love comes through in small ways and in big ones, through fun and carefree times, through misunderstandings and through large challenges.

I’m looking forward to Angela Balcita’s next book, although I hope her life is not eventful enough to lead to another memoir!

TLC Book ToursI read Moonface for a TLC Book Tour.  Thank you to TLC and Harper Perennial for the opportunity to participate and providing me with a copy of this book to review.

For other opinions, check out the other tour stops:

 
3 Comments

Posted by on February 16, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser

03 Feb

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

I’m having some trouble with capturing my reaction to this book. Overall, the content and presentation were very interesting, but I don’t necessarily agree with all of his conclusions.

Summary via TLC Book Tours:

America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they’re dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly… Or are they?

As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America’s income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites.

Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can “shrink to greatness.” And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country.

After reading the first chapter, I was very concerned about the rest of the book. It presented a whole bunch of opinions, stated as fact, with very little to back them up. I felt like arguing with all of them, even the ones I agreed with.

Luckily I did better with the rest of the book, where the arguments are arranged logically and supported with studies of particular cities.  I really liked the looks at different cities around the world, at what aspects of them work and which don’t, and the history that led them to where they are now. For the most part, it was very thoughtful analysis, leading me to think about what it means for a city to be successful, and what can happen to make a city become more successful.

The one ongoing issue I had was with what was being compared at any given point in time.  Sometimes it was city life vs. rural life, at others it was city vs. suburban life.  It was never a three way comparison, and sometimes it needed to be.  It wasn’t always clear at each point what definition of “city” was being used– for the most part, I think my community wasn’t included in what he considers a city– except in his sections on Silicon Valley.

There were still some conclusions that I did not feel were supported by the facts given, and some where I could see the argument being made but still didn’t agree. These were outweighed by the number of times the book had me thinking about issues and solutions I hadn’t even considered before.

Looking at the title, did he convince me that cities make us:

  • Richer?  Yes, he swayed me on this one.  In general, cities will help you move up in income.
  • Greener?  Yes, he convinced me here as well.  Cities make more efficient use of resources.
  • Healthier?  No,  I believe him that city residents are healthier, but I think this may be due to who wants to live in the city.  I don’t think they are any less healthy, however.
  • Happier?  No, this is where I’m least pursuaded.

This would be a good book to read with a friend or two, to discuss the ideas and to compare notes on experiences with different cities. I’ve got some quibbles with his comments on Silicon Valley, the only “city” mentioned that I have real experience with. I wonder what people from other parts of the country (or world) would think of the arguments regarding their homes.

TLC Book ToursI read Triumph of the City as part of a  TLC Book Tour, and the publisher provided me with my copy of the book.  Thank you to Penguin Press and TLC Books for the opportunity to participate.  For other opinions on Triumph of the City, check out the other tour stops:

 
6 Comments

Posted by on February 3, 2011 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

24 Jan

The Weird SistersMy rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I’m not sure I can write a coherent review of The Weird Sisters, but I’ll give it a try!

Summary via Goodreads:

There is no problem that a library card can’t solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they’ve been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected.

I know some of what I liked about The Weird Sisters.

I liked the sisters. All three of them. Even the thieving adulteress. Even the flaky pregnant one. Even the controlling, rule following stick-in-the-mud.

I particularly liked the growth all three of them showed over the course of the book.
I liked the relationship between them. Even when they really weren’t friends. And I liked the relationship with their parents. It’s loving, but far from perfect. Just like a real family.

I liked the general bookishness of the family.  That everyone picks up and puts down books all over the house. I particularly like that the book they pick up isn’t necessarily one they set down.

I liked all the Shakespeare references (particularly since I’m reading a Shakespeare play with my daughter’s class right now). I was worried that they would feel gimmicky, but it didn’t. They added some quirkiness to the book.  I think if I looked a little harder, they’d add some depth as well.

I loved the narrator, a combination of the three sisters talking with one voice. It took me a little while to catch on (I think this was me being slow. I hope this isn’t a spoiler, something the reader is supposed to take some time to figure out). Again, this could have been gimmicky, but I found it a very interesting literary device. It allowed me as reader to see a situation from multiple points of view simultaneously.

I know what I shouldn’t have liked (but it didn’t seem to affect my enjoyment of the book). Way too many pieces of the setup and the plot are too much like other books I’ve read recently. There’s the smart sister and the pretty sister, and we get the addition of the “nothing compared to the other sisters” as a bonus. The flaky mom who gets sick, and her family coming home and paving the way to them discovering themselves and healing their relationships with each other.

I think it is the delivery that allows it to occupy at different space than the others I’ve read recently. In particular, it’s the narration, although it’s also the the writing, the details of the characters, and so on.  It’s also that questions of family relationships are universal enough to deserve revisiting.  Still, Ruth (if you are reading this), based on your reaction to The Opposite of Me in book club, you might want to skip this one.

I enjoyed reading The Weird Sisters, and I’m looking forward to Eleanor Brown’s next book.

TLC Book ToursI read The Weird Sisters as part of a TLC Book Tour.  I asked to be included as soon as I read the description of the book, and I want to thank Lisa for bringing The Weird Sisters to my attention, and for giving me the chance to participate in this tour.

For other opinions, visit the other tour stops:

 
8 Comments

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

 

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Review: Secrets to the Grave by Tami Hoag

21 Dec

Secrets to the GraveMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK, calling this book a fun read, or an entertaining one doesn’t quite send the right message. It’s a compelling mystery, with some great characters. It’s also quite disturbing, deliberately so.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Marissa Fordham had a past full of secrets, a present full of lies. Everyone knew of her, but no one knew her.

When Marissa is found brutally murdered, with her young daughter, Haley, resting her head on her mother’s bloody breast, she sends the idyllic California town of Oak Knoll into a tailspin. Already on edge with the upcoming trial of the See- No-Evil killer, residents are shocked by reports of the crime scene, which might not have been discovered for days had it not been for a chilling 911 call: a small child’s voice saying, “My daddy hurt my mommy.”

Sheriff’s detective Tony Mendez faces a puzzle with nothing but pieces that won’t fit. To assist with his witness, Haley, he calls teacher-turned-child advocate Anne Leone. Anne’s life is hectic enough-she’s a newlywed and a part- time student in child psychology, and she’s the star witness in the See-No-Evil trial. But one look at Haley, alone and terrified, and Anne’s heart is stolen.

As Tony and Anne begin to peel back the layers of Marissa Fordham’s life, they find a clue fragment here, another there. And just when it seems Marissa has taken her secrets to the grave, they uncover a fact that puts Anne and Haley directly in the sights of a killer: Marissa Fordham never existed.

Secrets to the Grave looks at several aspects of violence, starting with an extremely brutal murder of a young mother, and the attempted murder of her 4 year old child. Several other characters are brutally attacked, some characters are living with the results of previous violence– some recent, some from childhood long past.

I started to list all the characters I liked, but decided not to bother. The book is full of generally likable but interesting people. If Vince and Anne walk a little too close to the too good to be true line, they have enough personality and struggles to keep them worth reading about.

The children are a large part of what makes the book interesting and disturbing. Disturbing, due to what 4 year old Haley has been through; disturbing, due to what 12 year old Dennis has done, and even more, what he’d like to do. Again, each is an intriguing character on their own (well, as much so as a realistic 4 year old can be), and they way they work into the events of the story builds on that.

The supporting cast of police officers and suspects and other people of interest were varied in situation and personality. I admit to having some trouble keeping track of the names of some of the characters– I think this is my weakness, and it is one that came back to bite me toward the end of the book. Until then, I could keep the characters straight by context, but a few references at the end left me with the sinking feeling that I wasn’t quite sure who was being referred to. I’d recommend paying closer attention that I did to this aspect.

Another detail of this story that interested me was the choice of setting it in the 1980s. I occasionally wondered if the only reason for this decision was to avoid computers and cell phones. Mostly, it didn’t matter, but occasionally it seemed like the author was winking at the readers, about things we know or take for granted, but which weren’t yet part of the lives of these characters. In addition, there were a couple of points where I was pulled out of my reading, wondering if this or that detail was authentic to the time period. Probably they were but it still disrupted my reading to think about it.

If you like a violent but thoughtful mystery with well thought out characters, check out this book.

Secrets to the Grave will be released on December 28. I read it as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to Lisa for the chance to participate!

For other opinions of the book, check out the other tour stops:

 
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Posted by on December 21, 2010 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

16 Dec

Goodnight TweetheartMy rating: 3.5 stars

I found Goodnight, Tweetheart a fast, fun, very light read. It worked on that level, but it left me wishing it was just a little more.

Abigail Donovan has a lot of stuff she should be doing. Namely writing her next novel. A bestselling author who is still recovering from a near Pulitzer Prize win and the heady success that follows Oprah’s stamp of approval, she is stuck at Chapter Five and losing confidence daily. But when her publicist signs her up for a Twitter account, she’s intrigued. What’s all the fuss?

Taken under the wing of one of her Twitter followers, “MarkBaynard”—a quick witted, quick-typing professor on sabbatical—Abby finds it easy to put words out into the world 140 characters at a time. And once she gets a handle on tweets, retweets, direct messages, hashtags, and trends, she starts to feel unblocked in writing and in life. After all, why should she be spending hours in her apartment staring at her TweetDeck and fretting about her stalled career when Mark is out there traveling the world and living?

Or is he?

Told almost entirely in tweets and DMs, Goodnight Tweetheart is a truly modern take on a classic tale of love and loss—a Griffin and Sabine for the Twitter generation.

The biggest problem with the book is that I kept thinking I’d seen this movie before. The twist of the pen pals meeting over Twitter vs. e-mail or old-fashioned snail mail was fun, but I never got a feeling for the Twitter world– the thing about Twitter is that it is a public conversation, and we never see that aspect of it.

Abby and Mark immediately take their conversation to direct messages, and out of the Twitter world. I would have loved to see Mark comment on a tweet that Abby sent out to her fan followers (once she had settled in a bit), or some other such interaction with the rest of the world.

I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t enjoy Mark and Abby’s interactions, I did. They were fun and clever and showed a nice process of them getting to know each other.

There was never any doubt that Mark had a secret, the only question which secret it was. I was betting against “married with wife and kids in the other room”, but there were a number of other possibilities that would have fit the situation. Because Mark is hiding for most of the book, and all we do see of him is the 140 character messages, he never turns into a real person to me.

Abby was real. I enjoyed her character, and the portrait I had of her (which was still fairly shallow, but fine for a book that took under 2 hours to read). I particularly enjoyed seeing her as a writer, overwhelmed by her initial success and not sure where to go next. I wished I’d seen more of her second novel, as a way to get to know her more deeply.

Again, I enjoyed what was here. I read it very quickly, smiling most of the time. It just didn’t quite leave me satisfied in the end.

I received Goodnight, Tweetheart from the publisher as part of a blog tour.  Thank you for allowing me to participate.

 
1 Comment

Posted by on December 16, 2010 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: A Secret Gift by Ted Gup

01 Dec

I’m doing something here which I’m not sure I’ve ever done before– I’m reviewing a book before I’ve finished reading it.  My holiday weekend didn’t prove as conducive to reading as I’d hoped, and in the end, I wanted to savor this book.

A Secret Gift is a true story of the Depression and what life was like then.  In particular, it’s the story of one man (Sam Stone, Ted Gup’s grandfather), and the lives he touched with one specific act of generosity.  These effects are not limited to the immediate recipients of Stone’s gifts– the author traces the families of these individuals, and sees where their lives have gone.

Sam Stone was a man who knew the meaning of Hard Times, but while others were struggling in 1933, he found himself in a fairly secure position.  He set out to anonymously offer a small amount of money to 75 people who wrote him.  He halved the intended amount and increased the outreach to include 150 checks.

Years after Stone’s death, Ted Gup (an investigative journalist by trade)  inherited some of his grandfather’s belongings, including the letters from those that were selected to receive the money.   As America hit a new round of Hard Times, he thought  back to these letters, and went to investigate, searching public records and talking to the descendants of about 50 of the recipients.

Gup shares the letters  with the reader, and tells us what he learned about the recipient and his/her family, usually giving the current situation of the living descendants.   He often relates the story of the recipient to that of his grandparents, building a picture of  Stone, his family and his town.  Gup builds a story of how interrelated everyone in the town was– not just through his grandfather (whose identity as the giver was not revealed until 75 years after the events in question), but through the actions of each resident as well.

Some lives were touched forever by these $5 gifts, in others it doesn’t seem to have been more than a small blip.  Some families recovered fully from the Great Depression, others never escaped those depths.  All these stories and more are told here.

The author uncovered more than he ever imagined about his grandfather, who had an interesting life and many secrets he kept throughout it.

The stories are told very simply, which allows the power of each one to come through, rather than be buried in words and description. The book hasn’t struck me as sappy, but as a straightforward portrait.

I love the attention to detail and research that Gup displays.  I’m staggered by thinking of the amount of time searching through records, talking to descendants, and then correlating all of the above.  It’s all laid out in a straightforward, accessible form.

As I said at the beginning, I’m not done yet.  In general, I wouldn’t have any trouble finishing a book of this length and complexity in a day, and I’ve spent 3 (I’d allocated 7, but life didn’t cooperate).  When it came down to it, I simply didn’t want to push through.  I knew if I did, I’d miss out, and I wasn’t willing to do that.  I’ll finish in the next day or so.  In the unexpected event that my opinion changes significantly, I’ll update this review, and post pointers on Twitter and my blog.

I recommend A Secret Gift for those that like to read about people who make a difference to others and to those that enjoy building a picture of another time.  This is a book I’m very glad to be reading, and one that I plan to share with others.

TLC Book ToursI read this book as part of a tour for TLC Book Tours.  Thank you to TLC and the publisher (Penguin Press) for providing me with the copy of A Secret Gift and the opportunity to participate.  For more information on A Secret Gift (including the book trailer), see the Penguin Press page or check out the website of your favorite bookstore. For other views on this book, visit the other tour stops:

 
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Posted by on December 1, 2010 in books, reviews, tour

 

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