Nothing to Fear but Ferrets

 By Linda O. Johnston

A Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mystery

Kendra is studying in preparation for a bid to regain her license to practice law which she lost when she was wrongly accused of being a murderer. 

After losing her lawyer job, Kendra moved into the garage apartment of her home and rented the actual house to a young couple, Charlotte and Yul.

Charlotte is a former contestant on a reality TV dating show. As the winner, she was awarded one million dollars but lost a lover when she was informed that the rule was the winner could take the money or take the lover but couldn't take both. So Charlotte chose the money, which is how she affords the rent on Kendra's large and luxurious home. However, the catch to the money was a rule that she had to give up her love match, Chad, and never seem him again or she would forfeit the money. She picked the money, later claiming that Chad was a phony whose only reason for being on the show was for the exposure which he hoped would help his career in show business.

Charlotte and Yul enjoyed holding parties and one night Chad showed up at one of their parties uninvited. When Charlotte discovered he was there, they got into an argument and she sent him packing. But then Chad turned up dead, laying on the floor of the house, with Charlotte's and Yul's pet ferrets released from their pen and nibbling on his dead body.

Charlotte talks Kendra into investigating the murder even though Kendra is not certain that about Charlotte's or Yul's innocence. She does it anyway because if it is determined that the ferrets caused Chad's death, then the ferrets will be euthanized. Which is not what either Charlotte, Yul or Kendra want.

This was a pretty good mystery even if the murderer improbably tried to affix blame to the ferrets. The story is also mildly humorous which I felt added to the story.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

The Lotus Palace

 

By Jeannie Lin

Yue-ying is servant to her beautiful sister, Mingyu, who is a courtesan in a brothel in China, The Lotus Palace. Yue-ying used to be a prostitute until her sister bought her and brought her to live with her in the Lotus Palace. 

Mingyu is the star of the Lotus Palace, being very popular with the men who visit the house. Yue-ying looks a lot like her sister but has a large birthmark on her face that most customers find upsetting. So she serves as her sister's personal servant.

Bai Huang is a man of noble birth who visits the Lotus Palace to spend his time and money on Mingyu. He is really there for Yue-ying but she keeps him at arm's distance, choosing to disbelieve his interest in her is sincere and not some kind of joke or setup. Mingyu knows of his interest in her sister and it bothers her and creates some distance in her relationship with Yue-ying.

The Lotus Palace is not the only brothel in the area. Huilan was the famous courtesan and main attraction at the House of a Hundred Songs. Huilan and Mingyu knew of each other and sometimes spent time together at parties and other social events. When Huilan was found murdered in her bed, it was only to be expected that the authorities would have questions for both Mingyu and Yue-ying, hoping they might know of Huilan's activities before her death. Both women have nothing of consequence to tell the investigators. 

Yue-ying decides to do a little investigating on her own and discovers that Bai Huang is also investigating Huilan's death and also the death of an unknown man on the nearby waterfront. Pirates are not unknown in the area and the man's death could have some connection to piracy and human trafficking.

This was an OK read. The romance between a humble servant/former prostitute was a tad unbelievable. Housefuls of beautiful, willing women and the rich guy chooses the woman with the huge birthmark on her face.

Another problem I had with the story is the killer turns out to be a very minor character in the story that we never hear very much at all about. 

Overall, I'd say I liked the story. Apparently it is one of the first books in a series of mystery stories set in the Pingkang li area. 

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

 

By Jeanette Waterson

An novel, even though the main character is also named Jeanette and her and the author were both adopted by religious fanatics. So that's something.

Anyway, fictional Jeanette is adopted by Christian fundamentalists. Well, actually the mother is the religious nutter. The father is a nonentity in the story. The mother, Louie, is quite devoted to her religion and her adopted daughter is being raised in the faith too. No problem, the daughter is nearly as gung-ho as the mother. That is until love enters the picture, in the form of another girl.

So Jeanette's first love is a girl and so is her second love and her third love and so on. Which is ok until Louie finds out and blabs everything to the church she is devoted to. And the churchy people decide Jeanette is possessed by the devil and needs an exorcism. Jeanette doesn't respond well to the exorcism and becomes quite ill. 

When she recovers, it soon become apparent that the exorcism was a failure because Jeanette is still falling in loves with girls. Eventually her sexual preference results in not only being kicked out of their little church but out of the only home she has ever known. Now nearly grown, she has to find work and make her own way in the world without the love and support of her adoptive parents. 

This supposedly comic novel, per the blurbs on the cover ("[Waterson] has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel." "A daring, unconventional comic novel . . . told with romping humor" "quirky and subtle hilarity of Winterson's autobiographical first novel") was boring and not what I would call comical or subtly hilarious. And it is interspersed with some weird fantasy stuff that was puzzling and I supposed was an allegory for the character's feelings or life or whatever, but I didn't care for those intrusions into the story. 

But apparently the literary world loves this novel, so what do I know? Nothing, most likely.

This is not a review but is a distillation by John Crace (Digested Classics it's called) from The Guardian. It pretty much covers the main points and I get the feeling he didn't really care much for the fantasy bits either.

Everyone Worth Knowing

 

 By Lauren Weisberger

Bette Robinson is a young woman who is bored by her job working at a Manhattan banking business. Finally she reaches her breaking point and impulsively quits her job. Afterward, she kind of drifts for awhile until her Uncle Will gets her an interview with an up and coming public relations firm run by Kelly, the one who coined the title of the book: 'So how do you know all these people?'

She [Kelly] just laughed. 'I have an office full of people whose job it is to know everyone  worth knowing.'

 Kelly's business, as described by Bette's Uncle Will: "Darling, she does a lot more than just plan parties. She chitchats with club owners and trades on gossip she has about other people's clients to the columnists so they'll write good things about her own clients and sends gifts to celebrities to convince them to attend her events so the press will as well—all the while looking very pretty when she goes out every night. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to see you in event-planning."

Bette does become an event planner and finds she has a knack for the job. It's very intense and complicated, requiring massive coordinating and planning and contacts with VIPs and their clients. At first it is a bit overwhelming but Bette powers through. She becomes involved with one of the VIP celebrities, Philip Weston, but their relationship is mostly just for show. She meets another man that she finds very appealing but this man, Sammy, seems aloof and possibly already involved with another woman.

As she grows in competence, Bette finds satisfaction in her ability to handle everything her new job requires of her. But it turns out to be a 24/7 job and her social life falls apart when all her spare time is taken up by the work. She realizes that no job is more important than the people in your life. She is losing touch with friends and family because her life is being consumed by her job.

This was an interesting story, a look behind the scenes of a successful PR business.  Besides the two love interests, Bette also has to cope with misleading stories about herself showing up in the gossip pages due to her connection to Philip Weston.

The book is rather long, my copy was 367 pages which seems to be par for the course these days. Too long, in my opinion. Still overall I enjoyed the story.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Wishes

 

By Jude Deveraux

Bernie's funeral was poorly attended. Indeed, no one there really mourned her death. Married several times, each man for his money, concerned with her own comfort and pleasure, Bernie couldn't see much past the end of her own nose.

Upon coming to herself in the afterlife, unsurprisingly Bernie did not rate heaven. Instead she is in the Kitchen, a kind of halfway house for women who didn't make the grade to entry into heaven. But that's ok, because she can earn her way into heaven by helping those who are alive and are struggling. Interestingly, who the unsaved women of the Kitchen can help can be anyone in the history of humankind. 

So Bernie picks Nellie Grayson, a woman in her late twenties who lives in 1896 Chandler, Colorado. Nellie takes care of her younger sister, Terel, who is twenty and their widowed father, Charles, a businessman. Nellie is the unpaid laborer in service to her father and sister, but she loves her family and accepts her lot in life is to take care of her sister and father for as long as they need her.

When Bernie first observes her target, she is drawn more towards the young, slim sister, Terel, not Nellie who is plump and tends to stress eat. Bernie, when she was alive, was very careful to keep her weight down and exercise regularly. What Bernie misses is that Terel cares only about herself and manipulates her older sister ruthlessly. Bernie has been given the power to grant three wishes to help out Nellie. But the wishes Nellie makes are not for herself but instead are to make Terel and Charles happy. She wishes that Terel be as popular with the townsfolk as Terel wants to be. Her next wish was for their father, Charles, to be very successful in his business so he can afford to buy Terel all the pretty dresses she wants. And Nellie's third wish was to be of service to her family for as much as they wanted her to be.

These wishes were great for Terel and Charles, but Nellie was not happy. She had met a nice man who was very interested in her, but Terel and Charles interfered in that relationship. Terel because she wanted the man for herself. Charles because life was easier having his eldest daughter taking care of himself and Terel. The unfairness of it all didn't matter as long as they got what they wanted and they truly didn't care if Nellie ever had a life of her own.

Bernie eventually sees that Terel is not a sweet young girl but is a stone-cold bitch. She also sees that the Nellie is a loving, generous, kind woman who deserves better than being an unpaid servant to her selfish family. So now Bernie has to figure out how to fix the mess she accidentally got Nellie mired in.

What a soap opera this novel is! Nellie is a total doormat who fails to see the truth about her nasty little sister. She also fails to stand up for herself against the unreasonable demands of the two of them on her time. Even when the love of her life enters the story, she allows sis and dad to ruin it for her. It takes poor Nellie forever to realize the complete selfishness of Terel and Charles. In the process, she nearly drives her new man away when she refuses to believe him over the lies she is being fed by her own family. Nellie has a good heart, but wow, is she ever dense and so gullible. 

Backpack

 

By Emily Barr

After her mother died, Tansy,  was feeling the need for a change. Her mother left her a goodly amount of money and so Tansy decides to have an extended vacation to the Far East. The plan, originally, was that her boyfriend, Tom, would come too. But at nearly the last minute, he backed out. That doesn't stop Tansy from going on her trip, even though the thought of traveling alone scares her.

But she follows through and heads off to strange new lands. At first, she sneers at her fellow backpackers but soon enough finds that she is doing the same cliché things they are doing. She makes some friends and finds that the traveling is easier if you are with some people you know a bit. 

She actually meets a man that she at first is not too interested in but that changes over time. Although she still has her sights set on the absent Tom, who she feels is her true love, she embarks on a love affair with the new man, Max. 

The longer she stays in the East, the better she feels about herself. And being with Max is part of the reason for that. Nevertheless, when Tom lets her know he will be coming out there too, she dumps Max and runs to join Tom at the island resort where he will be staying. Before long though, Tansy realizes that Tom is not the love of her life and that she has made a very big mistake.

Added to all this is a serial killer in the area who seems to be targeting women who are very similar in appearance  to Tansy herself, making all the young, blonde, European woman like herself who are traveling in the East very nervous and wary.

I can't say I really liked this story. I've said this before, but it's hard to like a story where you don't like the main character. And I really didn't like Tansy. Not one bit. I found her to be a very unpleasant person. And it turns out she has a horrific secret that, I think, proves she really is bad news.

Also there are several sections in the book where the author lectures the reader on various topics including alcohol, opium, Vietnam war, cocaine and the decay of modern Western society. Her lecture on the decay of Western society is one of the shorter ones:

Decadence, after all, comes from the Latin word for decay. The more time I spend away, the more strongly I feel that Britain, Europe and America are corrupt societies on their way out. They are past their peak, collapsing, with too much money and luxury. They have lost the most basic humanitarian instinct to share. From here, it seems obvious that no society can survive once its members lose that impulse. 

I don't know if this is just intended to be Tansy speaking or if it is the author's opinion too. But I did not appreciate the "I'm better and smarter than you" attitude of these lectures. Even though that may be the case.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Someone Else's Shoes

 

By Jojo Moyes

Nisha has been traveling with her husband and together they are staying at a fancy hotel in London, England. But what Nisha doesn't know is that her spouse has plans that definitely do not include her: cutting her off without a cent or even access to her own clothing or money. So she is stranded in a foreign country wearing only a bathrobe and slippers since her clothes were mistakenly taken at the gym where Nisha was doing her daily workout.

When she is finally able to get in contact with her faithless spouse, he informs her that she will get nothing from him until she returns the expensive shoes she was wearing when she went to the gym. A very strange request, indeed, but one she feels forced to do. But how is she supposed to track down the unknown woman who took her bag with her clothes and the special shoes?

Meanwhile, the woman who took the bag, Sam, has an important sales meeting to attend, one her success at her job may depend on. She opens the bag and instead of her ordinary clothes there are very expensive and glamorous items. Sam doesn't intend to keep the bag but a time crunch has her in a bind and she is forced to wear the expensive shoes to her sales calls. Interestingly, these power shoes give her that extra boost of confidence and the sales calls work out very well.

Sam has more in common with Nisha than either knows. Sam is facing marriage problems too. Her spouse has been depressed after the death of his father and he has been so shut down for months that most of his time is spent on the couch or in bed, accomplishing nothing at home, including failing to find a new job. Sam is getting pretty tired of carrying the full load all on her own and there is a man at her work who has indicated he is attracted to her.

And poor Nisha, accustomed to a life of luxury after years of marriage to her extremely wealthy husband, has been forced to get a job or end up living on the street. The job she finds is as a maid at the very hotel where her horrible husband is staying with her replacement. But even though the work is not what Nisha has been used to, she finds the people she is working become more important to her than just as coworkers.

I did enjoy this story even the plot was a tad ridiculous and not in an amusing way. Parts of it brought tears to my eyes. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Accomplice to the Villain

 

By Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Book Three in the Assistant and the Villain series.

Evie has a new job, as assistant to Trystan Maverine, whose title is The Villain. Even though Trystan is The Villain, he is not as bad as one might think. Indeed, it didn't take Evie long to fall hard for the man and try her best to get a similar response from him. But he is a busy man and even though he is very much attracted to her, he is not receptive to her signals, no matter how blatant they are. He has a lot on his hands, as it seems something is very wrong with the magic in the kingdom and the king is not on Trystan's side and Trystan also has to deal a prophecy that foretells doom and gloom due to the fading magic. The prophecy is part of the reason that Trystan is unresponsive to Evie's advances. Which makes for much tension and suspense in the love story of these two characters.

Speaking of characters, the book is loaded with them, but even more than the main characters, the most appealing is probably the little frog, Kingsley, with his funny little signs that he uses to communicate since he can't speak beyond frog croaks, I suppose. 

The book is humorous and much of that humor is provided by Kingsley's signs, along with the witty dialogue and the clash between Evie and Trystan. 

I have to admit this review is based mostly from what I read about the book online. Because I really didn't like it, managing to read to only Chapter 5. I also have read no other books in the series, I didn't know it was a series so I didn't know what I was getting myself into. 

Two things I didn't care for was that it lacked an even flow and I often didn't understand who these people were and why they were acting the way they were. I also really didn't like the way Evie was throwing herself at Trystan, it just came off as unattractively aggressive. I set the book aside and thought I would eventually pick it back up and give it another go. But every time I thought I should go ahead and power through my distaste, I just did not want to. So I gave up and gave to someone else who was familiar with the series and was looking forward to reading it.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Betting On You

 

By Lynn Painter

Charley and Bailey met onboard an airplane and Bailey decided Charley was Mr. Nothing and wrote him off. But then they both got jobs at the same place and eventually became friends, of a sort.

Bailey's parents are no longer together and Bailey's mom has a serious boyfriend, Scott, that Bailey finds too intrusive. Charley is in a similar situation except his mom is actually pregnant by her lover. So teenage Charley and Bailey have this in common, along with their jobs at the same place. 

Charley made a bet with Bailey. He claims boys and girls can't be just friends. Bailey maintains that they can be just friends. But of course, these two kids fall for each other. This is a romance, after all. And of course complications occur and the kids break up! But good news! Yay! They get back together! 

This was an OK read if a tad boring. I'm a bit too old for a book like this but I imagine younger people might enjoy it quite a bit. A couple of quotes I found amusing are, first, when Charley describes his response to his mother's boyfriend constantly being at the house: "I say, Dude, why don't you stay at your own house like you aren't a mooching loser?" And when Charley is talking about Bailey's  mom and boyfriend being concerned about Charley and Bailey spending too much time alone together on a group trip to Colorado: "They think we're only friends, but they still need to guarantee—because they're responsible adults—that we're painfully aware that we can't sneak into each other's bed and bang one out in the Rockies." I thought that was funny!

Here a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Witchcraft For Wayward Girls

 

By Grady Hendrix

Neva (Fern) is a hapless teen girl who fell for a boy and then lost him when she found out she was pregnant. This being in the early 1970s before Roe vs Wade court decision in 1973 that gave females the right to control of their own bodies, her parents placed Neva in a home for Unwed Mothers. For the sake of anonymity, none of the girls staying there used their real names and were given names by the woman who ran the facility, Miss Wellwood. She gave all the girls botanical names and Neva became Fern.

Life in the home was pretty strict and straitlaced. But overall, the girls were treated well. They had to work, maintaining the home, cleaning and doing chores and laundry. And the woman running the place, Miss Wellwood, was religious, so religion was a part of their every day lives, especially as they are viewed by the society of the time as wayward and in need of redemption. The worst thing about the experience was the pressure placed on the girls to give up the babies for adoption, for the girls' and the babies' own good they were repeatedly told. The second worst thing was the home was located in Florida and the building did not have central air conditioning. Only a few of the offices had air conditioning and summer temperatures and humidity were uncomfortable, to say the least. 

But the girls were well taken care of by the onsite doctor who monitored their health and guided them toward optimal outcomes for themselves and their unborn babies. Fern was only fifteen and she may have found the treatments a bit surprising and unpleasant but the treatments were entirely appropriate, if a bit overly strict at times. For example, some of the girls were experiencing higher than normal blood pressure and so salt was limited for all the girls, not just those  affected. 

Every few weeks, a bookmobile would stop by the home and the girls could check out books. The librarian, Miss Parcae, helps Fern with her bladder problem (having to go too frequently) and gives her a slim paperback titled How to Be a Groovy Witch, and she advises Fern to keep it hidden from the adults in charge of the home.

It doesn't take the girls, Fern's roommates and friends, too long to figure out that the book is magical and that the spells in the book actually work. But once they successfully cast a spell that helps one them suffering from really bad morning sickness by casting it onto the doctor who did nothing to help her with the sickness, Miss Parcae tracks them down and explains the book's magic is mostly hidden from them because they are beginners at magic. As they gain more power and knowledge, more information will become available in the book. But that won't happen if the girls don't "renounce God and turn your back on the world of man and pledge eternal loyalty and obedience to me" [Miss Parcae]. Tempted by the power of the magic and looking for some control over their own lives, the girls agree and perform a ceremony led by Parcae who pricks their thumbs and presses each bloody thumb to a page in the magic book. The four girls, including Fern, do this willingly and thus their coven is formed and their oath to Parcae is enacted. Which was probably a stupid thing to do and shows why contracts signed by children are, for the most part, not binding.

The main reason the girls got involved in this magic business is because one of them, Holly, is only fourteen and destined to end up back at home and under the control of the man who abused her and got her pregnant. This man intends to adopt Holly's baby who will become his next victim. Although Holly spoke up about the abuse, no one believes her because he is pastor of a church. She even told the social worker at the Home about it and was ignored. The girls see magic as the only way to keep Holly and her baby safe from being sent back to her abuser. However, as the days pass, one of the girls get cold feet about their oath to Parcae and refuses to help when the other three attempt to call up a storm they hope will cover Holly's tracks when she runs away from the home to join Parcae's coven. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

This was an interesting book and I enjoyed reading it. However, I was expecting a more lighthearted book about pregnant teens and witchcraft and this was not that book. It is quite serious in tone. At the end of the book, Neva finds the phone number of the woman who was her baby and calls her. The woman asks, "You're the one who gave me away?" Neva replies, "No" I say, and my voice is louder now because you have to understand. "No, I didn't give you away. I didn't give you away, my baby. I never gave you away. You were taken." Beautiful way to end the story!

Remarkably Bright Creatures

By Shelby Van Pelt

A mystery story without a murder and a detective (of sorts) who isn't a mammal.

The "detective" is an observant old octopus that lives in an aquarium in a town, Sowell Bay, on the West Coast of the USA. We find out, later in the story, that the octopus was a rescue who was injured and given to the aquarium to rehabilitate and ended up staying there.

The octopus, who is called Marcellus, has a close friend at the aquarium, an older lady, Tova, who comes in to clean in the evening after the aquarium is closed. Tova knows a secret about Marcellus. That he knows how to escape his tank and he travels around the aquarium at night, visiting the other tanks and snacking on the other creatures displayed there. Tova discovered him tangled up and stuck one night and she freed his from his bonds. 

Marcellus knows he is quite elderly, octopuses only live three to four years, and his time is running out. But he has developed a bond with Tova and he senses things about her and knows she still grieves the loss of her only son, Erik, who was just eighteen when disappeared one day while out boating. His body was never found and exactly what happened to him not known. 

Tova has an accident at work and has to take a few weeks off to heal. The aquarium hires a man who is new to the area to handle the cleaning until Tova returns to work. Cameron has come to town looking for the man he hopes is his father. Cameron's mom never revealed who his father was and she vanished from Cameron's life when he was just a youngster. Cameron has reason to believe that a man from Sowell Bay may be the man he is looking for. But he has not been able to confront the man, who always seems to be away on business. About to run out of money, Cameron takes the janitor job at the aquarium.

Marcellus quickly discovers some very interesting information about Cameron, information that Tova needs to know. But getting that info to Tova is going to take all his octopussy wiles to accomplish. And when he succeeds, Tova repays him in the kindest way possible.

This was a charming story, especially the interactions between Tova and Marcellus and his ruminations on his life in the aquarium and on the humans who come to peer at him. All the characters in the story are decent, caring people, sometimes a little misguided, but essentially good at heart. Even the man for whom Cameron came to Sowell Bay to find.

 

 

A Knight In Shining Armor

 

By Jude Deveraux

Dougless (the female main character) has traveled to England with her boyfriend and his teen daughter to get to know the daughter better. But it has not been going well and after an angry confrontation, boyfriend and daughter have left and abandoned her in the graveyard of an ancient church. 

Feeling like an absolute failure at life, her tears call forth a knight in shining armor, Sir Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck, who died back in the 1500s. Apparently he was buried in his armor, along with jewel encrusted weapons, he is a walking fortune in gold and gems. Which is a good thing, it turns out, because boyfriend's teen daughter has stolen Doug's purse. (What a strange name Dougless is for a heroine in a romance novel.)

Nick is a bit upset that some witch has called him forth from his grave and wants to be released from her summons. But Doug has no clue how she did it nor how to undo it. So together the two must figure out how to survive in modern day Britain, Doug with no money and no ID and Nick lost in a time 180 degrees different from what he knows. Good thing Nick was buried with a small bag of coins from his time that are worth so much the coin expert they visit eye's probably nearly bug out of his head.

The first part of the book is the best, I think, with Doug helping Nick live in the modern world. The second part has Doug back in Nick's time. Unfortunately, that Nick has forgotten all the time they spent together in the future, leaving Doug in a rather precarious position and existing on the good graces of his very mercenary mother. Doug's mission in the past is to save Nick's life. He will become the victim of the insidious plot of an dangerously ambitious woman and an angry cuckolded husband. 

I didn't find the second part as interesting as the first. Mainly I think because Doug found herself quite at home and happy in the past, coping well without all the modern comforts and conveniences. When I think about the state of medical care back then and of women's rights, I find it nearly impossible to believe any modern woman would be happy to be back in those primitive times. Which is why I really liked the ending of the story, it made a lot of sense to me, well, as much as a ridiculous fantasy love story can make sense.

Here is a review of the novel from the website Dear Author by contributor The Fallen Professor. 

The Romance Readers' Book Club

 

By Julie L. Cannon

Fifteen-year-old Tammi lives with religious fanatic Granny Elco. Granny works Tammi hard and keeps a tight rein on the girl. Tammi tries to live up to Granny's expectation but at fifteen she is starting to think for herself and is secretly rebellious against all Granny's rules, to a limited extent.

Granny is trying to raise Tammi in the faith just like she raised her daughters. Oddly, though, her daughters grew up to live their own lives without much concern for their mother's rules and restrictions. One daughter, Nanette, ended up married to a unfaithful alcoholic and living in Las Vegas. The other daughter, Minna, lives near her mother but dresses as she pleases with short skirts, heels, makeup. Poor Tammi has to wear the dowdy, churchy clothes Granny chooses for her. 

One day, while out trick-or-treating with her Uncle Orr, they stopped by one house but the woman who lived there didn't have any Halloween treats to give out. Instead she filled their sack with trashy romance novels.

This was a new world of reading for Tammi and reading these semi-explicit stories got her teenage juices flowing. She shared the stories with Orr, but he was just confused by them. (He is mentally slow.) She told Granny's daughter Minna about the books and together they started the Romance Reader's book club, which consisted of Minna, Tammi, Orr, LaDonna (a schoolmate of Tammi's) and LaDonna's cousin Parks.

Nannette comes home from Vegas for Christmas with her teenage son, Leon. Leon is a couple of years older than Tammi and gorgeous. But he seems indifferent to Tammi's charms and she is determined to win him, just like the girls in the romance books she and the book club have been reading (minus Orr because the stories got him too upset and they had to continue the readings without him). 

Meanwhile, the state of Georgia is experiencing an extended drought and the local minister is haranguing his congregation that the Lord is withholding the rain as a punishment for the people's sins and that they need to get right with God and give up their sinful ways. Young and inexperienced Tammi takes this warning to heart and decides that her reading of suggestive romance novels is what is keeping the life-giving rain away. And so she ends the book club. But the temptation is too great and she falls back into sin. She just can't resist these books. And she just can't tame her passion for the unresponsive Leon and starts her campaign to win him based on the plots of the romance novels she is reading. But he remains elusive. Turns out he has decided to dedicate his life to God and saving souls from eternal damnation. Poor Tammi. 

This was an OK read. Everybody caves to religion at the end including Tammi who fails to see through the nonsense. Disappointing read. 

Normally I wouldn't read a book about religious people. But the blurbs on the book fooled me. The blurbs hinted that Tammi finds her way out of the religious nonsense. I did look at the publisher before reading it to see if it was by a religious publisher but it is Penguin/Plume publishing and that is not a publisher that focuses on religious books.

Just for fun, here is an example of the "steamy" sections of the books the club is reading:

"Running Bear emerged from the Atawah River, his biceps bulging and glistening beneath his lovely red skin. Nekoosa, crouched behind a pine, was keeping her eyes on the small indents at his waist. They begged for the caress of her lips. She would never forget his scent—elusive, musky, laced with traces of the river. Nor could she forget their wild, abandoned love in the shadowed forest. Without a sound, she crept out, her soft mound aching as she remembered all too well how he brought her to the point of ecstasy many times.

She approached him, her tightened nipples pointing the way, desire so strong it was as if she'd lived only for the moment when they would be united in the flesh again, until his hardness pressed against her with a savagery all its own."

Yeah, pretty dorky stuff. 😃

Here is a review of the novel by the All About Romance website.

Bet Your Bottom Dollar

 By Karin Gillespie

First book in the Bottom Dollar Girls series.

Elizabeth works in a dollar store in a small town in South Carolina. She doesn't expect much from life and views herself as very ordinary. She is also recovering from being dumped by her fiancé who left her for another woman. 

A friend introduces Elizabeth to her grandson, Timothy Hollingsworth, who has come home to run the family business, a paper company. The friend talks Elizabeth into giving Timothy a chance and they start dating. At first, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere and Elizabeth is getting discouraged. She enjoys being with Timothy but can't figure out why he doesn't seem like he wants a more intimate relationship. Turns out that he is a bit on the shy side and it isn't much longer before he pops the question and the two of them have a quickie wedding and are married. 

Problems arise because of questions about both of their pasts. For instance, why does Elizabeth look so much like Timothy's grandmother when she was a young woman? Who was the mysterious man Elizabeth's mother was involved with before she married Elizabeth's father, a man she only refers to in her diary as B? And why did Timothy's parents treat him so coldly that he feels so disconnected to both his mother and his father, who is no longer alive? 

Meanwhile, the man who dumped Elizabeth is back trying to win her over again, claiming that he made a terrible mistake and he never stopped loving her.

This was an OK read. This one was also supposed to be funny but wasn't. I did enjoy reading it and I enjoyed the mystery but it just never seemed to be the "delight" the blurbs promised. Or that I would "laugh myself sick" reading it. Neither of those things happened. It was fine. But not interesting enough to entice to read the other two books in the series.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the novel.

I Still Dream About You

 

By Fannie Flagg

Margaret Fortenberry is a beautiful woman. She was so pretty that she had a real chance to be crowned Miss America. But unfortunately, she was Miss Alabama at the time of the civil rights struggle and the state of Alabama did not welcome the reforms. And so the judges of the Miss America pageant decided picking Miss Alabama would be too controversial. And so Maggie missed her chance at big time success. Truth is, beyond being staggeringly good looking, she really didn't have much to offer the world. She wasn't particularly talented or smart and, even though beautiful, she was too short to make in the world of high fashion modelling. And so, she ended back in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, selling real estate. She never married and she never had children, she lives alone without even a pet to keep her company. And now in her early sixties, she is seriously planning to kill herself.

But daily life keeps getting in the way of Maggie executing her plan. She keeps having to put it off to handle the problems that just refuse to stop popping up and getting in her way. Until finally, things calm down enough for her to put the plan in motion. Her clothing has been donated, credit cards paid off, utilities cancelled, bank account closed, key hidden under the doormat and a goodbye letter left on the table in her apartment. Nothing and no one to stop her. 

Maggie's sorrow and disappointment with the mistakes of the past and with the loneliness of her declining years are understandable. I suppose most people in their later years look back and regret wrong decisions, I know I do. For one, I wish that I'd finished college. Maggie has her regrets too, mainly that she turned the hometown boy down when he proposed to her, instead heading off to New York to make it in the big city. Part of her depression is rooted the death of the woman she worked for at the real estate office who died very suddenly and unexpectedly. This woman, Hazel, was successful, driven, and, at the same time, kind and considerate of her fellow humans and of the people who worked for her. Her death left a painful void in Maggie's life and without her leadership, the company is struggling. 

So, although I did understand Maggie's suicidal depression, [SPOILER] I have read several Fannie Flagg novels over the years and I really doubted she would end up dead. She was the perfect heroine of a Fannie Flagg story, beautiful, kind, good natured. There was no way Fannie was going to let her kill herself. I did find it a bit amusing how fate keeps Maggie from going through with her plan. 

It was a good story even if Maggie seems a bit clueless throughout the novel. She's a sweet lady and she certainly got her happy ending. In spades!

Kirkus Reviews has a review of this novel. 

Everything I Never Told You

 

By Celeste Ng

Marilyn and James met in college. Marilyn was studying to become a doctor and James was a professor. They started dating and Marilyn became pregnant. They got married at city hall, against Marilyn's mother's objections. Doris Walker did not want her daughter marrying an Asian American man.

Being pregnant, Marilyn quit college and became a mom instead. Secretly, though, she still dreamed of going back to school and getting her medical degree. So when her two children reached grade school age, Marilyn moved away and enrolled in college again. But she wasn't gone long, because she soon discovered she was pregnant. So back to being a wife and mother and finally giving up on her dream.

When Lydia, James and Marilyn's second child, was sixteen she died of drowning. It was eventually ruled a suicide, as there was no indication of foul play. This was a terrible blow to James and Marilyn and to their two other children, Nath, the oldest and Hannah, the youngest. Nath and Lydia had been very close and Nath was the only one in the family who knew Lydia was unhappy. Because Marilyn, thwarted of her dream, had transferred it to Lydia. She talked herself into believing that Lydia's dream was to become a doctor. But Lydia was just going through the motions, studying hard only to please her mother, not actually caring about the career her mother was pushing on her.

And there's Nath. A studious teenage boy who has a dream too: he wants to be an astronaut. But his father wants his son to be the guy he wasn't when he was in school: a popular jock. But Nath is not a jock and he is not popular and his father thinks his dream of becoming an astronaut is stupid. 

Meanwhile, Hannah. The invisible child. As her parents' dreams for the two older kids occupies so much of their time, Hannah gets overlooked. Just a grade schooler, she lives on the edges of the family, idolizing her older brother and sister, loving her mother and father, and staying under the radar.

It's a complicated family relationship and Lydia's death and James' unfaithfulness has thrown everything into chaos.  

This was an OK read. I found Marilyn's and James' blindness to how their  expectations of their children are ruining their relationship with the kids very strange, given how smart they think they are. I also got rather bored with the story and really just wanted to finish it, get it over with. And there is a lot of stuff about how James and his two Asian-looking kids are treated like outsiders by the locals.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

 

By Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant is a single woman of nearly thirty. She works in an office and has been there for nine years. She's a bit of an odd duck and has no close friends at work. Or any friends at all. 

As a child, she nearly died in a house fire and has a scar on her face that some people find distressing or off-putting. But she is a fairly practical person and her solitude doesn't bother her much. Or rather, she deals with it on the weekends by drinking vodka by herself in her apartment. Her only company is a houseplant she calls Polly.

Three things happen that begin to chip away at her solitude, all three involving men. First, she develops a crush on a singer, Johnnie. Second, a new employee at work, Raymond, seems to like her and invites her to have lunch. Third, while out one day, she and Raymond see an elderly man collapse on the street. They stay with the man, Sammy, until the medics arrive. They also accompany Sammy to the hospital. Eleanor and Raymond become acquainted with Sammy's family and attend a welcome home party in Sammy's honor after he gets out of the hospital. And Raymond also introduces Eleanor to his mother who is quite elderly and suffering from arthritis. 

Eleanor is not romantically interested in Raymond. She has constructed an improbable fantasy around the singer, Johnnie. The good thing is that it has given her the motivation to update her look with new clothes, makeup and a new hairdo. As a result, her coworkers have also warmed up a bit to her and she has been offered a promotion and a small raise. She is finally starting to live a little. Then she goes to see Johnnie perform and something about it causes her to realize that she was just fooling herself. She goes on a bender, drinking herself into stupor. Raymond comes to check up on her and cleans her up. Clearly, she needs professional help. So she starts seeing a therapist and the walls she built around the fire that left her scarred slowly start to come down and she faces the truth she had hidden from since she was just a kid. 

This book is ride. Eleanor is a funny sad lonely woman. Her story is so tragic, so very sad. But she is hilarious at times, in the first part of the story, the part the author calls the Good Days, her observations are so amusing. I really enjoyed her take on things. But the last section, the Bad Days, was not amusing. I cried so much, reading her sad struggle with abuse and depression, how the system failed her as a child, her loneliness, her trauma, her suffering overlooked or unseen. 

When Raymond took her to his mom's house for a visit, Eleanor recognized all she had missed in life as a child:

"I placed the laundry basket on the ground and took the peg bag ... and hung it on the line. The washing was dry and smelled of summer. I heard the syncopated thud of a football being kicked against a wall, and girls chanting as a skipping rope skimmed the ground. The distant chimes of the ice-cream van were now almost audible. Someone's back door slammed, and a man's voice shouted a furious reprimand at—one hoped—a dog. There was birdsong, a descant over the sounds of a television drifting through an open window. Everything felt safe, everything felt normal. How different Raymond's life had been from mine—a proper family, a mother and a father and a sister, nestled among other proper families. How different it was still; every Sunday, here, this."

Eventually Eleanor realizes that her crush on Johnnie is merely that. Watching him onstage, it bursts upon her that she has been lost in a fantasy, a lovely fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless:

"I didn't know the man onstage before me, didn't know the first thing about him. It was all just fantasy. Could anything be more pathetic—me, a grown woman? I'd told myself a sad little fairy tale, thinking I could fix everything, undo the past, that he and I would live happily ever after and Mummy wouldn't be angry anymore. I was Eleanor, sad little Eleanor Oliphant, with my pathetic job, my vodka and my dinners for one, and I always would be.  Nothing and no one —certainly not this singer ...—could change that. There was no hope, things couldn't be put right. I couldn't be put right. The past could neither be escaped nor undone. After all these weeks of delusion, I recognized, breathless, the pure, brutal truth of it. I felt despair and nausea mingled inside me, and then that familiar black, black mood came down fast." 

But the book has its lighter side, Eleanor's little comments on the people around her:

• "Heather [a social worker] used to do that too; I assume it's part of the job, checking to make sure I'm not storing my own urine in demijohns or kidnapping magpies and sewing them into pillowcases." 
•  "Sexual union between lovers should be a sacred, private thing. It should not be a topic for discussion with strangers over a display of edible underwear."
• "I have often noticed that people who routinely wear sportswear are the least likely sort to participate in athletic activity."
• "The streets were all named after poets ... who wrote about urns and flowers and wandering clouds. Based on past experience, I'd be more likely to end up living in Dante Lane or Poe Crescent."

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Little Fires Everywhere

 

By Celeste Ng

Mia Warren has a complicated past, a past her teen daughter Pearl knows nothing about. 

All their life together, Mia has been on the run, running from who knows what. Now she and Pearl have settled into a new town, one Mia has promised will be their permanent home. This is a lie, although Mia did not know it at the time. Because the past catches up with Mia and once again they are running away. But this doesn't happen until the end of the story. 

So Pearl finds herself getting to know the family of the woman who is their landlord. Elena Richardson is an upper class woman with a four teen kids and a family history dating back to the early days of her home town, a suburb of Cleveland, Shaker Heights. The duplex that Mia and Pearl move into came to Elena as an inheritance from her mother. 

Mia and Pearl have never had much in the way of money and seeing how the Richardson family lives is a new experience for Pearl. She becomes really close to the two teen boys, Moody and Trip. Moody becomes her best friend and Trip becomes her lover, much to Moody's distress. 

Meanwhile, Elena's youngest daughter, Izzy, finds a refuge from her mother's constant criticism by helping Mia with her art work. Mia is a talented photographer who is still in the struggling artist phase of her career. Some day she will likely be a famous, well-paid photographer, but now she and Pearl live on her work as a waitress and, later, as housekeeper for the Richardsons. 

Mia makes friends with a young Chinese woman, Bebe, who lost track of her baby after she abandoned the baby at a fire station. Mia overhears a friend of Elena's talking about the baby she is adopting who was abandoned at a fire station and she lets Bebe know. When Elena discovers it was Mia who tipped Bebe off, she takes it personally and decides to dig into Mia's past.

Elena's anger is more that just distress at her friend's problems. Part of it is resentment of Mia, whose lifestyle reminds Elena of her own ambitions as a young woman. But Elena's digging upsets everyone and she herself pays the greatest price when her youngest daughter sets the family home on fire and disappears. This happens in the very beginning of the novel, so this is not a spoiler.

So the big mystery is what is Mia's dark secret about her past. Turns out it isn't a dark secret and it isn't even a big scandal. She just changed her mind about something and made her parents angry, adding to their disappointment in her chosen career as an artist/photographer. 

Towards the last quarter of the novel, I was getting bored with it and pretty much skipped through a lot of it. I didn't find Mia's failure to honor her contract shocking. I did find her cavalier treatment of her parents and theirs of her rather off putting. And the rootless lifestyle she put her daughter Pearl through, never staying long enough in one place to really become part of the community. Her solution to her problems is to pack up and disappear once again, taking Pearl along, no choice in the matter. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

My Name Is Lucy Barton

 

By Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton is a young mother who became ill and had to spend many weeks in the hospital, trying to get her health back. Her mother comes to the city to be with her daughter at this time and stays by her side until it is apparent that Lucy is on the mend.

While there, she and Lucy share some memories of their time together. Lucy wants to have a closer relationship with her mother. But her mother just does not seem capable of being the mother her daughter would like to have. Unspoken questions cloud their relationship, including questions about Lucy's father and possible abuse. 

When the mother sees that Lucy is no longer in danger of dying, she leaves, still unable to tell her daughter that she loves her and leaving unanswered the questions Lucy has from the past. But even so, she has shown her love by being there until she was certain Lucy was getting well.

I cannot say I enjoyed this book. I kept waiting for the plot but it was just trips down memory lane for Lucy and her mom. In, fact, a couple weeks later, and I can barely recall any of it. I did finish it and was glad I did. 

Here is a review of the novel by Fiction Writers Review.

The House on Mango Street

 

By Sandra Cisneros

A  collection of poetical short stories about the various people who live on Mango Street, with a young girl named Esperanza as the main character, observing the lives of those around her. Mango Street is located in a rundown part of town with people coming and going, some never staying long and many as immigrants from other countries. 

Many of the chapters are very short, just a paragraph of two. The author is a poet and her chapter on "Four Skinny Trees" is really poetry:

"They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things. 

Their strength is their secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.

Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.

When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be." 

And these two chapters about what Esperanza wants out of life. The first in "Beautiful & Cruel":

"I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for.

Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Netty has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty.

My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.

I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." 

 

And this one in "A House of My Own":

"Not a flat. Not an apartment in the back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.

Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem." 

 

An excellent ambition, in my opinion, and one I have yearned for since I was about the age of Esperanza, a young teen. Decades later I am still waiting.