Book Review - Suspiciously Reserved

Suspiciously Reserved: A Twist on Jane Austen's Emma by Samantha Adkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Honestly, I would have technically given this book 4.5 stars if there were an option for that here, because while I absolutely adored great swaths of the book, there were a few tiny issues here and there.

Suspiciously Reserved takes on the tale of Jane Fairfax, the lovely and sweet orphaned girl from Jane Austen's Emma, who gets shuffled a bit into the background in the initial tome. By setting the story in modern day Canada, the author makes the story accessible to a whole new audience and creates characters that anyone can relate to. The one - well not really a problem, more like a curious note - about this is that there were moments, particularly in dialogue, where I forgot that I wasn't reading a regency era piece. Adkins is so skilled at picking up the style of speech and the writing style of authors like Austen that my brain drifted right back to the original now and then, only to be brought back to "reality* when I realized someone was emailing. Or playing on a Wii. Hah! It made it a fun read, and I really loved that aspect of it.

The romance in this novel is sweet, and while filled with tension and drama, it reads as natural and evolves in such a way that you feel your heart soaring - and sinking - along with Jane's. There were times I wanted to hug Frank, and times I wanted to slug him. I was awfully emotionally involved in the story, as it really captured me. Because of that, maybe, I found the ending a little rushed. The number of typos and errors seemed to increase toward the ending as well, though there wasn't a significant number for a self-published book (I caught maybe half a dozen through the whole book, with four in the last 15% or so). Overall, this is a fabulous read, whether or not you were a fan of Jane Austen's Emma (who is a minor character in the book as well). Sweet, romantic and a nice getaway from a hectic life.



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Book Review - Goodbye for Now

Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book, even if it did break my heart just a little.

Sam is a great computer programmer. So great, in fact, that he creates an algorithm for his workplace - a computer dating service - that actually lets people find their soulmates. And fast. He tests it, and finds his own soulmate, Meredith, who he falls hard for (and vice versa) from the first date. The only problem is, when everyone finds their soulmate right off the bat, the company collects no monthly membership fees. You see where this is going, don't you? Sam gets fired.

While he's filling his days jogging, playing with Meredith's dogs and learning to cook, his relationship grows. But then, tragedy strikes and Meredith's grandma passes away. She is so broken that all he can think of is that he needs to find a way to help her reconnect with her loved one, especially when she says she'd give anything for just one more email. Back to the drawing board goes Sam, who creates this time a program that sees who a person really is through all their online activity - much like his soulmate program - and composes an email for Meredith.

Oh this book is so lovely. I adored Sam and Meredith both, and heck, even Livvie, the departed Grandma. I loved the world they were in, and I loved the premise of it all. Since in the real world, I love an IT guy myself, it touched me even more. The writing style was comfortable and conversational, but with some really amazing moments that elevate it to the art form it's meant to be. The characters are fantastic and very real. And I could see exactly how these programs would work, unlike some who've mentioned in reviews that they had trouble suspending disbelief, because I know how programs work, basically. It sparked a lot of conversations between my husband and I about the nature of human relationships and how the advent of AI will alter our realities.

In short, loved, loved, loved this book. I'll be looking for more from this author. I'd recommend this one to anyone who can read, it's that wonderful, but especially anyone with a relation to the computer industry.

*Book received at no cost through the GoodReads First Reads program

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Book Review - Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Live as TV's Most Influential Guru Advises

Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Live as TV's Most Influential Guru Advises by Robyn Okrant
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Oh dear, what can I say about this book that crashed my high expectations? I saw this on a to-read list of a friend on GoodReads, and it immediately appealed to me. I love experiment books. I love Oprah. A combination could only be the high spot of reading, no? I expected funny. I expected witty. I expected a light, entertaining read that would tickle me.

I didn't get that. Okrant did, indeed, watch every Oprah show for a year. She did, indeed, read every episode of O magazine. And she attempted to do every single thing that Oprah told her to do. But holy dang did she take herself and this experiment way too seriously, and did she ever stress out way too much over entertainment.

The basis for her experiment was the idea that no person could do everything Oprah wants them to do without going broke and insane. Well, no. Because I genuinely don't think Oprah - or any other maven of advising how to live a great life, like Martha Stewart, for example, who I also love and who the author holds up as a favourite of hers as well - actually wants you to attempt to do everything that they suggest. Some things aren't going to work for you, or appeal to you, or fit into your life. And so, those are the things that you don't do. Whereas others will make your life better, and those are the things you should do.

I thought this was pretty simple.

I usually watched every episode of Oprah, too, while it was on the air. Well, no, I DVR'ed every episode. Then I deleted the reruns, the shows about celebs I didn't care about, the shows about books I wasn't planning to read, the shows about stuff that didn't apply to me and I watched. Unlike Okrant, I did not watch the commercials, as I really didn't consider them a part of the whole "experience." I considered them annoying commercials.

I wanted to put this down multiple times. I kept waiting for that epiphany to hit. I kept waiting for her to get enlightened or something. I kept waiting for the big reveal or the big explosion of knowledge, or *something*, anything to happen. I kept waiting to get through the tediousness of how awful it was to go clothes shopping or have a husband who patiently allows you to buy quirky chairs for every room (if we were broke, mine would so not be on board. I even asked), or how much it costs to cook from recipes instead of throwing together what's already in your kitchen. Since I already cook from recipes I couldn't relate. I was annoyed. I was bored. But I kept reading because I had hope.

In the last two sections - November and December - I started skimming huge swaths of text, just looking for the payoff, but it never came.

I would have rated this as 1.5 stars if I could have. There were parts that were okay, and the premise is interesting, and maybe others will get stuff out of it that I didn't, but mostly... yeah, I didn't like it.

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Book Review - Crewel World

Crewel World by Monica Ferris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an okay read. If you know me, you know that I'm a needlecraft fiend. I even have a series of videos on youtube - check out CraftyDivaKat some time over there if you're so inclined. And so, after seeing my mom give this book a good review, along with others in the series, I thought I'd pick it up and give it a go.

Betsy is newly divorced from her cheater of a husband, and has sold all her worldly possessions to restart her life. The first step on that journey is a visit to her sister, so she makes the trek from California to Minnesota, where Margot owns a needlecraft shop called "Crewel World" in a little town outside of the twin cities. When Margot is murdered during the visit, it turns Betsy's world and her plans upside down. Not content with a police force that brushes off the crime as a burglary gone wrong, Betsy is determined to solve her sister's murder herself, and begins with the customers and employees of her sister's beloved shop.

The book was okay. I liked it; as far as cozy mysteries go this is fair enough. There were no overt problems with the writing itself, though it also didn't wow me. I liked the world of the needlecraft shop and could relate to many of the characters. I didn't, on the other hand, need lessons in what was what in that arena, so that got a little tedious sometimes. The characters were likable, but a little bit older and more stodgy than my preference usually is for reading. I'm not sure if I'll read others in the series.

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Book Review - A Piece of Me

A Piece of Me by Mechi Renee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I took a while to review this book, because I felt bad that I couldn't in good conscience give it a higher rating. I finally went through each poem based on the goodreads program, decided whether I thought "it was okay" or "I liked it" and figured out the majority. The majority I thought were okay.

As someone who writes poetry myself, I feel for this poet. A lot of my poetry is much like hers, which is to say, honest and real and open and emotional, but not necessarily the most lyrical or well-written. This book is about coming to terms with womanhood and sexuality. It's about balancing a spiritual life with a fulfilling life loving other women. It's agonizing in places, where you can feel the loneliness and pain of the author, and it's triumphant in places, where her raw pleasure in life itself is clearly on view.

Technically, it's not fantastic poetry. But I do think that many women will relate to this poetry and will relate to Mechi and her journey in life.

*Book received at no cost through the GoodReads First Reads program.

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Book Review - Insurgent

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After finishing this novel, I'm left wondering if the author is a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan movies. I suspect she may be.

Insurgent is book two of the Divergent trilogy and picks up the action immediately where Divergent left off. This left me a little bit stumbling and grasping in the first few chapters. It'd been a while since I'd read Divergent and I had to scour my memory for what exactly had been going on in those last pages. While I'm always complaining about serial authors putting too much exposition into books, having none isn't balanced either. You'll never be able to figure this book out if you haven't read Divergent. Don't even try. You'll just pull your hair out. And if you read Divergent more than say, six months ago, you may want to re-skim the last few chapters so you don't feel quite as lost and confused as I did at first.

Insurgent takes a different path than Divergent, which I think is to blame for so many people hating it. Divergent was a rebellious, adventurous romp until the last few chapters. It was pretty standard YA dystopia and while it had it's moments of violence and tragedy, they weren't overwhelming. Insurgent, on the other hand, is extremely violent, extremely tragic, and is a war story more than anything else. Like any war, people are going to be injured, and they are going to die. There's going to be so gratuitous violence that makes you shake your head.

There's also some emotional immaturity that is going to make you shake your head. Not because the teenagers are acting like teenagers, but because they're acting like 20-somethings who act like twelve year olds. We all know those people, who can't hold a relationship together to save their lives and are constantly posting their drama on Facebook and fighting in public and you just roll your eyes. Yeah, those people. I hate dealing with those people, and I had to in order to read this book.

So, I didn't think this was terrible, and I will very likely read the third book in this series. I also didn't think it was amazing or wonderful, though I thought very highly of Divergent. It was pretty good, it kept my attention, and it was very entertaining. A solid kill-some-time read.

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Book Review - Lock and Key

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book a lot. For a YA novel, it has a depth of emotional intelligence and full, real characters to rival any "adult" novel. I've been more and more into YA stuff lately, and this kind of book is exactly why. It's stylishly written, with a well-executed plot and it drew me in from the very start, which opens with a super likeable protagonist.

Ruby is pretty independent for a 17 year old. She deals with her mom, who is alternately dependent and dismissive of her daughter, taking her with to her job delivering lost luggage for airlines late at night and leaving her behind while she goes off to drink in bars and date men. When Ruby wakes up one day to find she's been left to deal with life all on her own, that independence gets tested. Bills? Laundry? Landlords? She thinks she has it covered until one day her secret solitary life is uncovered, and she's sent off to live with her older sister, whom she hasn't seen in years.

Lock and Key is, above all else, a story of what family means. It is about how the people who we surround ourselves with define us, and how we define them. It's about when it's okay to intervene, and when it's necessary to reach out to a friend, and when you have to step back and let people make choices on their own. It's about love, and where we can find it in our lives, and it's about who we depend on. It's a wonderful book for teens and adults alike, and I highly recommend it.

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Book Review - Winter Garden

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a ridiculously amazing novel.

Anya has two lovely daughters who are in the middle of living very different lives. Nina is a well-known photojournalist who travels the world and has barely enough time to occasionally make love to her gorgeous boyfriend, let alone set down roots anywhere. Meredith, by contrast, is firmly rooted right in her family's apple orchard, where she's taken over the business from her father, living on the land where he developed and grew his apples, married to her childhood sweetheart with two grown, college-age daughters. But when Anya's husband dies, it tosses her into a maelstrom of emotion, into the hidden memories of a past she has done everything she can to shield, to barricade away from her present day life. But it becomes impossible to bear the weight of hiding so much any longer, under the persistent care and questioning of her daughters, and so, she begins to unravel her past.

I couldn't put this book down. It is perhaps not the most well-styled book out there, but it is a phenomenal story, reaching back into history, into the days of pre-WWII Russia and the seige of Leningrad, through the German attacks and into the recovery after the war. It is tragic and horrifying, full of emotion and heartbreak, and it is life-affirming and beautiful, full of intimacy and love.

I adored this book. It made me cry. It made me laugh out loud a time or two. It made me appreciate how very, very blessed my life has been; even when tragedy has struck it has never been more than I could bear, never to the level that some families are devastated. It made me thankful. It made me randomly kiss my husband all over his face. It made me stay up until 4:30 in the morning to finish it :)

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