Pretty Woman

Pretty Woman by Fern Michaels

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Fun, entertaining chick-lit romp which sometimes deviates into corniness, but has such endearing characters that you can forgive the lapses.

Rosie is married to a man who hates her. She's put on weight while ignoring his affairs and negligence of the relationship, and has poured herself into her sucessful business. Her best friend tried to warn her before the wedding, and when Rosie wouldn't listen, she left for Europe. Her loyal housekeeper tried to tell her, but she dismissed it. Now, she's having to face the realities of her life, and it isn't pretty... but with some work, it could be.

Best friend Vickie has returned from Europe, her new personal trainer is hot, her business is picking up massively and it's beyond fun for her to watch her exhusband struggling without her cash to buoy his extravagent lifestyle. To top it off, she wins the lotto's 300 million + jackpot. But if she turns in the ticket, she'll have to split it with her ex, which makes for a difficult series of choices to face.

Overall, this is a sweet, feel-good book. It isn't earth-shattering by any means, but it's a great way to while away a few autumn afternoons.



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The Cinderella Pact

The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Three best friends meet for comfort food at a favourite restaurant one day and are seated in the back, by the kitchen, despite requesting the window table they hold as their favourite spot. All three are horrified that they are being hidden away like a dirty secret, and resolve to transoform themselves into the princesses they feel they truly are by losing weight. All three choose different methods - gastric bypass for one, weight watchers for another, a personal trainer and nutritionist for the third, and all of them find their way to weight loss, but along the way discover that it's not a magic wand to solve the problems in their lives. If they had a husband they "settled for" before, he's no better once the weight is gone. A bad career that sucks your time and energy still sucks your time and energy. That boss that looked down on you - you thought because of your weight - is still a bitch when you're "willow thin". There is more to becoming a Cinderella than these woman thought.

This is a fun, light, quick read with interesting characters you can get behind and root for, and one in particular that I wanted to take home and make into one of *my* best friends. While the book does have a bit of annoying prosthetizing about both religion and weight loss, it's quirky and entertaining despite these flaws, and despite the frequent lapses into weight loss cliche.



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Never Knowing

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I couldn't put this one down. After a couple of late nights and a marathon of reading this morning, I found myself slapping the book shut with a sigh. Oh, how I love a great book that grabs me and just doesn't let go.

The story of Never Knowing is told through visits with a therapist, an interesting storytelling technique that I haven't run into before. I usually have issues reading with first person perspectives, but this made it natural, real, and "in the now" as each therapy session unfolded. I felt for the protagonist; I can't imagine my own reaction if I went to search out my birth parents and realized they were a serial killer and the one victim who got away. As the discoveries compound, the serial killer decides he'd like to be a part of his daughter's life, with disastrous consequences.

Pick it up. Trust me on this one. It is a fantastic winner.



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The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels -- A Love Story

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels -- A Love Story by Ree Drummond

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have been a fan of Ree's blog - Pioneer Woman - for a very long time. I found it thanks to some wonderful friends, the same ones who turned me on to Cake Wrecks and Regretsy and made me love blogs in general.

Because I have read her blog for years, I felt like I already knew most of Ree's story, read in bits and pieces, memories and thoughts and references in her recipes and photographs on Pioneer Woman, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book nonetheless. I loved hearing about her romance with Marlboro Man in all of it's rich detail and humiliating - at times - detail. Ree's self-effacing sense of humor and no-nonsense attitude toward life is refreshing, and she's very honest about her emotional struggles with her parents divorce and her thoughts on pregnancy and motherhood... nothing I wouldn't have expected from reading her blog over the years.

If you're a blog fan, you'll love her book. If you've never seen her blog, this will make you search out that blog, to find out more about the cowboy, the cooking, the cows, and the kids, all of which make for a wonderfully colorful tapestry of real life in the country.



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Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China

Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China by Beth Nonte Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I wish GoodReads allowed you go give half-star ratings, because I really think this is a 3 1/2 star, not quite four book, but I'm bumping up to be magnanimous. Or something.

This is a strange little memoir about a woman who goes to China to accompany her friend, who is adopting a baby there. The friend doesn't bond with the baby, and through some legal manuevering, the author becomes the adoptive mother instead. The tale of the trip is interspersed with the author's dreams/past-life memories of her own history in China as the wife of an ancient Emporer. Huh. She has a few odd experiences which she classifies as possible hallucinations while in the country, and phones home to tell her story of meeting the baby to her friend the psychic/mystic who appears to be her life coach or advisor of some sort.

If anything, this book made me very relieved in regards to our own potential for getting approved to adopt.

It was touching in places, and I was interested in reading about the instant bond she forged with her child, from the moment they met. I also appreciated the section about how abirth parent is not necessarily the parent the universe meant for a child, that there may be a spiritual parent out there who is waiting to connect to their child. That's how I feel sometimes, so I could relate. I firmly believe our child is out there, waiting for us to find him or her.

Overall, an interesting read for anyone interested in or going through the adoption process, though a little weird for a general read.



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Awaken

Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Seventeen year-old Maddie is popular; she has thousands of friends. The problem is, when she goes to book club, or to a movie, or shopping, she's actually alone in her room, looking at digitally projected images on the wall screens. When it's time for school, she attends DS, or digital school, a brainchild of a dictatorial former high-school principal tired of dealing with school shootings and violent epsiodes and who also happens to be Maddie's father.

The premise of this book feels all too real, and the explanation about climbing violence and escalating fear in the world was all too accurate. I can easily see how a society could be lured into feeling "safe" when they never have to leave their homes. I already prefer shopping online, especially at Christmastime - who needs to fight crowds when you can compare prices in tabs of your browser and only spend as much on shipping as you would on gas getting to the mall anyway? People all over the globe go to college online, and increasing numbers of high school students are taking classes online as well. We are headed in the direction of a digital world. But when we're all so plugged in, are we really disconnecting from one another?

There was a lady behind me at No Frills last night as we checked out our groceries, and she spent her entire time in the line chatting on her cell phone. When it came time for her to pay - we were still bagging her cgroceries - she didn't have enough for her bottle of Tums, her only purchase. I would have paid for them for her, I later told my husband, if I had felt any kind of human connection to her, but because she was talking on her cell the entire time, all I felt was irritation. A loss for us both, maybe. And the way the author and I both see the world as a whole drifting.



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The Soul Collector

The Soul Collector by Paul Johnston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Soul Collector is the second installment in a fun crime saga following writer Matt Wells. What isn't so fun is the antics of his former girlfriend, Sara, who is now following in the footsteps of her brother - the White Devil serial killer from the first book in the series.

Matt Wells is pretty savvy for a writer, going up against nasty bad guys, and solves some intricate puzzles along the way that had me scratching my head. I enjoyed the fact that this time I was surprised by the identities of the sidekicks, which I had figured out early on in the first book. I usually figure that stuff out early on, so I didn't count it against the author, but I do give him major kudos for fooling me this time!

The author also gets accolades from me for managing to conjure up an atmosphere of fear and horror without being overly graphic with the bloody gore. I don't like gratuitous nastiness that just turns mey stomach, and Johnston walks the fine line between making it authentic and frightening without just turning it gross.



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The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Not only one of the best books I've read this year, The Help is one of the best books I have ever read.

I was completely enthralled by the exquisitely detailed world of 1960s Jackson Mississippi that the author wove from details of battenburg lace, extra-strength hairspray and pastel ladies suits. I wanted to be Skeeter and Minnie's best friend... yes, both of them. My heart ached when they struggled, and leapt with joy when they triumphed, because I felt an honest emotional connection with these people and their world. It is rare for me to be as caught up in a book as I was with this book, but I can't deny it; I'm in love with The Help!

The Help follows the story of societal black sheep Skeeter, who went to college to learn rather than to earn her Mrs. degree like her friends. She returns to her home town of Jackson Mississippi and finds that she no longer fits into the mold that was cut out for her, to be a demure southern belle who accepts the status quo. Instead, she is uncomfortable with the social strata, with the expectations that are laid out for white ladies of her age, and with the way her friends treat their children, husbands, one another, and most significantly, the household help.

Setting out on a combined quest to tell the story of black household workers and to find the maid that raised her with such compassion, Skeeter finds herself caught up in the changing world of Civil Rights, with a richly painted historical backdrop of events including the Medger Evers assassination, the walk on the moon, Kennedy's presidency and assassination, Rosa Parks, lunch counter sit-ins, and the speeches and work of Martin Luther King Jr. She befriends Abileen, her friend's maid, who begins by assisting her in her writing of a housekeeping column, and winds up becoming a true friend, during an era when such relationships are more than verboten.

This phenomenal novel explores the ways in which women relate, from mothers and daughters, to childhood friends, to our ways of dealing with those who work in service. I see echoes of the way Miss Hillie dealt with Abileen in the way I see people speak to waitstaff and hotel staff today, and it hurts my heart to think we haven't quite outgrown all of our prejudices. Test yourself as you read; have you ever used this kind of dismissive tone, or that way of ignoring someone? Even if it is less harsh than the realities of the 60s, it's worth reminding ourselves that we need to constantly reexamine what we were taught as children and whether or not it affects the way we treat people today.

Read this book. Read it immediately. Then read it again.



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In The Night Room

In the Night Room: A Novel by Peter Straub

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Bizarre and fantastical tale of two writers caught up in supernatural events unfolding around them, involving ghosts, a wickedly rabid fiction fan, angels, and a spirit guide who communicated via email, mostly using 1337 5p34k. Which makes long passages of the book a headache to read if you, like me, hate that kind of thing.

I didn't enjoy this book. It was just odd, and for me to say that says a lot, being a chick who loves horror, dystopia and sci-fi, but the story line seemed contrived and self-serving, and half seemed to be a nod promoting Straub's earlier book (Lost Boy Lost Girl) which is mentioned often enough in the text that I considered starting a drinking game around it's mention.





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You'll Like It Here

You'll Like It Here by Ruth White

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Interesting YA take on aliens and dystopia.

The first chapter of the book seems oddly disconnected from the rest of the book. (Spoiler alert!) The author attempts to use the unreliable narrator technique and it falls flat, because it isn't that the narrator is unreliable, it's that she's outright lying to the reader and herself, is misrepresenting things in such a way that later it seems completely unconnected to her character. It's almost as though a different author wrote the first chapter (badly) and a more talented writer who understood the characters better took over from there.

After this initial speedbump, the book is a cute, fun read about a young alien girl and her family, struggling to survive after leaving the Earth of today for another dimension, where the government has been overthrown by big business, and a public kept in perpetual stupor works endless days for the reward of being put down at age 65. Oh yes, I yelled "Soylent Green is People!" the first time I saw the vacation 65 bus, I'll admit it. Anyone who is a fan of classic sci-fi will find familiar themes here, stolen from Brave New World, Farenheit 451, 1984 and other classics, reinterpreted for kids in an approachable format with likable characters.



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The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less

The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less by John Robbins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I wish I could convince everyone I care about to read this wonderful, enlightening book.

What does living the "good life" mean to you? Is it an ever more abundant pile of "things" that fill our ever larger homes that we spend less and less time actually occupying? Is it a bigger pile of cash in your bank account or a fancier car or a boat that you barely get to use because of all the hours you have to work to pay for it?

John Robbins, born heir to the Baskin and Robbins ice cream fortune had it all as a child, right down to the ice-cream-cone shaped swimming pool, but he chose to turn his back on the fortune his family had made to pursue a different kind of good life, one centered around the relationships we make with other people, living harmoniously with the earth, and giving back to the world around us rather than relentless consumerism and pursuit of a transitory wealth that won't carry with us when we leave this earth, no matter how hard we cling to it.

This book examines the trade-offs we make in our lives, from longer work days and dreary commutes to angry, violent children raised by a culture of television and convenience to an earth dying under the burden of too many people using industry to recklessly create too much garbage. How can we find real happiness, real contentment, among the rabble of today's more-more-more treadmill? When statistics show that once you rise above the poverty level, money does not increase your happiness (the richest tiny percent of Americans are no happier it seems that the simple-living Amish) how do you catch that elusive wish for a good life? Is it by having a family game night? Using green cleaners in your home? Offsetting your carbon footprint by trying to walk instead of ride, eat vegetables instead of meat?

For everyone there is a balance to achieve, and this book is about finding that balance in your own life. Peppered with anecdotes from his childhood and simple adult life as well as recipes for simple foods and green cleaning products, it's funny and useful and heartfelt. I appreciated the thought that went into this book, and the easy conversational style that makes it read like a chat with a good friend.



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Await Your Reply

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I really wanted to love this book. The author is critcally acclaimed and this novel in particular is said to speak for our current age. The theme of identity and truth is one I've been exploring a lot in fiction this year, and I was looking forward to this one very much.



The truth was, though, that the beginning, which starts in three unconnected narratives, bored me. I kept putting down the book and picking up something else instead (I usually have four to six books going at any one time, and I have started *and* finished at least that many since I started this book). It didn't grip me. But I kept on plugging away because I was supposed to like it. And it would get better, right?



Well, in some places in this book the insight and style are breathtaking. In other places, there are long passages that seem disconnected and trite. In some places, I ached for the characters, and in others I rolled my eyes, because it seemed like the author was trying too hard. Overall, it took me a while to manage my way through, and while I was somewhat disappointed, it wasn't awful. I think in some ways I just set my expectations too high for this book.



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