"The Forgotten Garden" by Kate Morton

Four Stars

An unidentified child found abandoned on an Australian dock sets off a multi-generational search for her identity that spans an ocean and an entire century.

This gothic novel has it all dark family secrets, vindictive relatives, a daunting garden maze, even the mysterious and huge old family estate in the English countryside. I love mysteries and I love England so how can this be anything less than awesome? I picked up this book on the recommendation of a friend who said it just might be her new favorite book. When someone gives a book that high of a recommendation how can you say no? That is a lot to live up to and it didn’t disappoint. I wouldn’t rate it as my new favorite, but it is definitely on that list.

The book spans five generations of women, actually six if you count a few comments in passing, starting with number three, mentioning number four, then focusing on five and working backwards. I think the author went a little too far including generations number four and five, not because it becomes too confusing, but because it detracts from the most interesting part of the story that includes generations one through three.

The book draws many similarities from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden”, even including a cameo appearance by the author and going so far to imply that this family provided the inspiration for the story.

This book earned four out of five stars because of the extra generations. If it had stuck just to those first three it very well may have earned all five stars. All-in-all I highly recommend it.

There are some SPOILERS after this so there you go, fair warning.

Nell is generation number three and the little girl who was found alone on an Australian dock, but the story is told mainly from the perspective of her granddaughter, Cassandra. She has only a child’s suitcase with a few random possessions as a clue to who she is and where she came from. It’s not until much later in life that she begins the search for her identity which takes her from Australia to England and her family’s estate.

Just as she begins to unravel the long-buried family secrets, her daughter unexpectedly shows up and basically abandons Nell’s granddaughter to her care, effectively ending Nell’s search. Nell raises her granddaughter and eventually dies without ever discovering the truth. It’s only after Nell’s death that Cassandra learns of the secret and decides to find the truth. And this is where it gets too diluted.

Cassandra uses the same clues Nell had and a soggy old notebook Nell kept as a journal during her initial search. Cassandra follows the same path and eventually finds the truth, but the most powerful discoveries are the ones Nell made herself because it is so much more personal to her and she gets answers from people who were there and directly involved. Adding the extra generation of Cassandra was just too detached from the actual story and I found myself almost hurrying through her parts to get to the more interesting parts.

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett - Four Stars

This book has been on my radar for awhile and I’m a little embarrassed to admit it has taken me this long to read it. But I kept finding other things I wanted to read first. Then one of my good friends and book-recommenders said that this was the best audio book she has ever listened to and I absolutely had to hear it. I checked my local library and found that I would be in the high 80's on the waiting list for the audio book and decided that I would just go ahead and read the nice hardback that was waiting for me on my bookshelf instead.

The Help rates a solid 4 Stars. I was debating going 5, then decided that the fact that I was debating it meant it was a 4. A 5 star would not require any debate. But I really enjoyed the book. It’s about Mississippi in the 1960's and the relationships between white women and the black women who work for them, told from the perspective of two black women and one much younger white woman. The narrative hops between the three women and is very impressive with how each woman’s voice and language is distinct and identifiable. The plot is a little slow to develop but your interest is held by the stories and descriptions of what life was like during that place and time. Even when the plot did begin to develop I was still more interested in the stories and relationships between all of the women than in the actual plot events.

Each of the three women grow and experience character development to different extents. My favorite parts were the relationships between all of the women. The employers and the employees and other family members. These women would essentially let their help raise their children, some would become part of the family, others would feel as though they were less than the hired help, and in the end the kids who love their nannies so much, grow up to become their employers. The relationships between the hired women and the children were what got to me the most. There were several moments where I teared up, and one truly heart-wrenching scene where one of the women has to say goodbye to the two children she has essentially raised since birth.

While it is a fascinating glimpse into a world of change during that time in history, I think the true beauty of this book is its description and insights into the relationships of women. In identical circumstances some women grow together and form unbreakable bonds while others bring out the worst in each other and become lifelong enemies.

This is an amazing read for its historical aspect as well as its revelations of women’s behavior and relationships. I recommend it to everyone, particularly women.

I’m still waiting patiently for a copy of the audio book (I’m up to the low 40's!) and look forward to listening to possibly one of the best audio adaptations ever.

"Chasing Harry Winston" by Lauren Weisberger

Two Stars - It was Okay.

Two Words: Beach. Read.

This is by the author of "The Devil Wears Prada" so I assumed it would be pretty entertaining and good for a laugh or two. I was sort of right.

This story introduces us to three best friends living in NYC, all with great jobs (well, minus the one who lives off her trust fund), and pretty good lives. Adriana is rich and gorgeous and can get any man she wants. Leigh is fast-tracking to her dream job and has the dream boyfriend. And Emmy, a serial monogamist, has a boyfriend, even if he does cheat on her - a lot. And they're all just about to turn 30.

Long story short, Emmy gets dumped so they all decide to make a pact to change their lives, well except for Leigh who doesn't agree to do anything. Adriana is going to stop sleeping with every guys she meets and get engaged by the end of the year and Leigh is going to take a new job that involves a lot of traveling and sleep with one guy from every continent which they dub "Tour de Whore".

So okay, kind of interesting set up, might lead to some funny situations and character growth. But that's where the real set plot line ends. From here it starts to wander and the pact kind of gets pushed aside. It's also a little hard to follow time-wise because it jumps huge blocks of time making it a bit tricky to keep up with what's going on. There is also quite a large amount of time devoted to a pet parrot. Actually, there is a lot of time devoted to several plot lines that don't really go anywhere, and every time an interesting plot development is suggested, it gets dumped.

At the end I walked away hating one of the girls, thinking another one was just kind of pathetic, but thinking the last one was pretty cool and I'd actually like to see what happens to her, but I'm not going to tell you which is which. So while it isn't a particularly great read it was okay. It would definitely keep you entertained in an airport or at the doctor's office if you just needed something to pass the time.

"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood

Three Stars - I liked it.

This book is an excellent example of why I usually always listen to my friend C's book recommendations (I say usually because there was that instance of "Giants of the Earth" from high school. I still don't get it.). I have been meaning to read Margaret Atwood's other book, "The Handmaid's Tale", for a long time so when C suggested this one I checked it out the same day.

It's your typical doom-and-gloom, technology-will-destroy-us-all, sci-fi type of book, definitely not my typical read, and I was very pleasantly surprised by it. It begins by introducing the main character, Snowman, apparently the only surviving human of some great disaster that has wiped out the world. He now lives in a tree, wears only a sheet, and watches over a group of people called the Children of Crake who are a type of genetically enhanced human, physically perfect but minus all of the intellectual and emotional issues that inevitably lead to social problems.

The story is told sort of in reverse through Snowman's memories and I really enjoyed the writing style. The narrative jumps between Snowman's present and his memories, which slowly tell the story of what happened to the human race and how he ended up taking care of the "children". His memories also reveal the secret of who Oryx and Crake are and how their three lives intertwined with each other and the fate of the world.

I've decided to keep my reviews shorter, so I'm not going into detail or giving spoilers, but I highly recommend this book. It moves at a steady pace that keeps the reader interested, and has a nice balance between Snowman's past and present storylines. It definitely fits the genre of "Sci-fi for people who don't like Sci-fi."

"The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

Three Stars - I Liked It

I finished this book a few weeks ago and have been procrastinating a review because I’m pretty sure my review will be vastly different than most people’s. Although who knows? Maybe other people agree with me but haven’t said so just to go with the flow. So here goes.

I’m giving this book three stars. It kind of sat in the middle of “I liked it” and “It was OK”, so I rounded up.

Henry and Clare are in love. They have been since the first two times. First, when she was 6 and he was 36, then again when she was 20 and he was 28, for you see, Henry is a time traveler. This is their story where the past, present, and future do not always occur in that order and constantly collide, testing the strength of Clare and Henry’s love and their faith in each other.

Side Note: I think I like my little description better than the actual book jacket.

First of all, this is a book about time travel which is technically Science Fiction and I have always struggled with Sci-Fi. Most time traveling stories leave me with a lot of unanswered questions and generally confused overall. Except for J.K. Rowling’s Time-Turner in Harry Potter 3, that actually made sense. The wearer was simply rewinding time AND they could change things without affecting the entire space-time-continuum (whatever that actually is). And I digress.

Niffenegger does a pretty good job of laying out the rules and explaining how it all worked. The largest jump she asks you to take is in accepting that Henry’s traveling is triggered by something genetic inside of him which physically moves him though time. There is no outside force or item (like the Delorian or Hermione’s Time-Turner) , just him. I struggle a little with this point and I can’t say exactly why. It’s not that I disagree with it, I simply have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

But she did directly answer one of the things that had been bugging me for most of the book. Henry is usually spending more time in the past than the amount of time that passes in his present, i.e. he would be in the past for two or three days, yet only a few hours would have passed when he returned to his present. So how old is he really? Physically he has lived longer than his present would indicate. (I’m confusing myself just thinking about it and I know what I’m trying to say!) Anyway, Niffenegger dosen’t answer this question, but at one point Henry himself wonders how old he is physically, which made me think that at least she recognized that it would be a problem.

My second issue is that I just never connected with the book. In all fairness, this might be a “It’s Not You, It’s Me”situation, where my personal issues at the moment kept me from making a real emotional connection with these characters, and had I read it at another time I might have felt differently. Or maybe it is just the book, who knows. But I just never bonded with any of the characters to a point where I really, really cared about them. At times I even disliked them, mainly Henry and Clare.

I just have to say quickly that yes, I realize how blasphemous this is going to seem to a lot of you because I know A LOT of people who absolutely love this book. So I’m sorry, please don’t hate me.

SPOILERS BELOW

The romantic aspect of the story is that once Henry has met Clare in his present she becomes so important to him that he is drawn to her past and future as he travels. But, he only goes out and falls in love with her because that is what she said is supposed to happen because that’s what he told her would happen in the past. So in Clare’s past Henry is the one who knows everything and tells her that they’re in love, then, when the meet in Henry and Clare’s present, she is the one who knows everything even though he has never met her because he hasn’t traveled to her past yet. It’s all a giant circle of confusion.

I do find the idea that her love for him had such an impact that his need to be near her continually pulled him into her past. Who wouldn’t want a love that powerful? It all just comes back to me not liking the characters. Overall, Clare is okay. She’s a privileged rich kid who goes to college to become a paper artist. She makes sculptures out of paper. Now, I have actually seen some pretty amazing paper sculptures, but I can not think of a more perfect major in college and profession for a rich kid to pursue thank paper sculpting, I just found that sort of funny. There were also a few times where the author goes into quite a bit of detail on paper making and sculpting, which I felt were unnecessary and just completely unrelated to the story in general. Those parts really slowed things down and pulled me out of the story.

Here are my two main issues with Clare. One, when she first meets him in their present, she’s just instantly in love with him even though, at that time, he is a drunken, womanizing, drug-experimenting, jerk of a librarian. Up to that point she was in love with the Henry she knew from her past, the Henry of the future, who she had really only spent maybe a week’s worth of time with in her life, and who had been very careful to never reveal too much of himself to her. She was in love with an ideal Henry, not the guy standing in front of her. I think there should have been a bit more of a reality check for her once they actually met. More struggle in reconciling the two Henry’s. There’s also a scene where Henry from the past is having sex with Clare while present Henry is asleep in the same bed. A little weird for me.

And two, she sleeps with her best friend’s husband!!! I’ll admit, I didn’t completely hate her after this, but what am I supposed to do with this info except think she’s kind of a selfish … witch. Her best friend has taken her daughter out to try and help them both get over the loss of Henry (that’s right, he dies, I warned that there would be spoilers) and Clare sleeps with her husband, in their house, on their kitchen table. And this is the SECOND time she has cheated with him, the first time Clare was not yet with Henry and her friends were dating, but yeah, that’s still cheating. That’s a pretty big black smudge on your character. So she slept with her BFFs husband, and used him because she knew he was in love with her, all just to make herself feel better. Not. Cool.

Henry. Henry’s kind of a slimeball until Clare straightens him out a little bit. He’s a total womanizer who drops his on-again off-again girlfriend like a hot rock as soon as Clare shows up, completely destroying her life and even witnesses, possibly causes, her suicide. That’s really my only big issue with him. He’s kind of hard to connect to and I felt like he was sort of stand-offish to me as a reader in a way, but I think that is how he would actually be if he were a real person, because of his life experiences. He grew up kind of parent-less after his mother died and his father mentally checked-out, and he had some really rough experiences as he time traveled which have all had a part in creating who he is as a man.

I spent a lot of the book mad at Henry for not being willing to try and alter events and change the future. He was willing to “play” the stock market and lottery in order to provide a living for himself and Clare, but he would never try to alter events or change things. This especially bothered me once it became clear that he was going to die. Why wouldn’t he want to change that so he could be with Clare and they could raise their daughter together? It made no sense to me until I tried to look at it solely from Henry’s point of view. Henry has lost his feet at this point which he earlier described as the most important thing he had when he traveled, they were his only means of escape and they kept him alive. When he traveled without his feet he was trapped. He is depressed, lost, and now completely terrified of traveling and the only way for him to end the traveling is to die. So rather than try to change events, he simply decides to accept and almost welcomes his death. Even then it’s not like he’s really dead because he can travel from the past to visit.

There are so many other things I would like to hash out about this book but this has already gotten way too long as it is. So to wrap things up, I think I like the book better after writing this review, but I still only like it, I don’t love it.

"Impossible" by Nancy Werlin

“A family curse, three impossible tasks … only true love can save her.”

This is the short and sweet synopsis found on the back of this book that convinced me to read it. Not so much the true love part, but the family curse and impossible tasks sounded pretty cool. That and I really like the cover. But, as they say, you should never judge a book by its cover. Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise and other times it’s not as good as it looks.

This book was inspired by the ballad “Scarborough Fair,”recorded by Simon and Garfunkel. The song tells of a man issuing three impossible tasks to a woman “Else she’ll be a true love of mine.” Sounds more like a threat than a promise. Unless she completes these tasks she will have to be a true love of his... hmmm … so what happens if she doesn’t complete them … huh.

Lucy Scarborough is your typical teenager, except for the fact that she has been raised by her foster parents because her mom is the local crazy bag-lady. Her mother, Miranda, was only eighteen when Lucy was born and left her soon after. She has shown up occasionally throughout Lucy’s life, always singing the same song. A song that she claims is Lucy’s legacy. Lucy never thinks much of it, and almost dreads Miranda’s visits, until she finds herself in a very unexpected and scary position when she is seventeen.

That’s my teaser for the book and from here on there will be spoilers.
Lucy has her first ‘real’ date for prom and, if all goes well, she thinks Gray Spencer might even become her first boyfriend. However, on the day of the dance, three people come into her life and change everything. First, Zach, her childhood best friend, moves home from college and in with her family, second, Miranda makes an unexpected appearance, and third, her mother’s new associate at work, Padrig Seeley, a mysterious man with an intoxicating Scottish accent and the ability to always get his way, shows up for dinner. It starts with Padrig’s creepy advice on what she should wear to the dance and is quickly followed up by an attack of flying glass bottles and tin cans from Miranda, resulting in Lucy’s date escaping in his new Mini and her dress being ruined by blood and grass stains. But Gray comes back, Lucy finds another ensemble, and they make it to prom.

Things seem to be going well until the dance ends and Gray attacks and rapes Lucy. Lucy should hate him, but she can’t because during the entire attack she felt like it wasn’t Gray, it was as if someone had taken over his body. That, and Gray died in a car wreck hours after the incident. A few weeks later Lucy confirms her fears that she is pregnant, right at the same time Zach finds Miranda’s old diary, which she kept while she was pregnant with Lucy. It’s in that diary that Lucy finds out about the ancient curse which was placed on her family generations ago by an elf. But not the happy little elves of fairy tales, a real elf, the human-sized, mischievous kind that look down on humans and like to mess with them. This particular elf wanted Lucy’s ancestor, and when she turned down his offer of immortality to marry her true love and start a family instead, he decided to punish her. He cursed her that she would have a daughter at 18, and if she didn’t complete three impossible tasks before the baby was born she would go crazy and belong to him, and not just her, but her daughter’s daughters forever, until one of them breaks the curse.

That’s the set up, now Lucy has to solve three riddles and complete three tasks or she will go crazy after her daughter is born and her daughter will be the next in line for the curse. Number one – make a magical shirt without any seam or needlework, number two – find an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand, and number three – plow the acre with just a goat’s horn and sow it all over with one grain of corn.

I really had hope for this plot, unfortunately it never went anywhere. The whole plot of the curse and solving it really falls flat and practically disappears, overshadowed by the story of Zach and Lucy “falling in love”. It just gets weird and wonders around their relationship where Zach decides he’s in love with Lucy after she gets pregnant and Lucy thinks she’s in love with him, but isn’t really sure. It ends with Zach dropping out of college to marry Lucy before she graduates high school so they can raise her baby together. The curse plot really becomes a side-plot to the forced romance with random mentions of someone stumbling upon a way to solve one. I was almost mad that it got dumped for a love story that seemed forced and completely headed for disaster. That is actually when I checked out of the story, when she puts the main characters in this position that seems completely unnecessary and unrealistic. What parents are going to let that marriage take place? And why was it necessary?

That was actually a problem throughout. I had a hard time really connecting and then staying invested in the characters. A lot of it was related to my disappointment in the curse being kind of dropped and so easily solved. Instead of following Lucy on her journey of solving the riddles and completing the tasks, you’re drug along her weird relationship with a guy who was basically her brother growing up, then moves into her house and suddenly they’re in love and getting married. It’s almost a little creepy.

Padrig Seeley was also underdeveloped as a character. He, obviously, is the ancient elf who has nothing better to do than spend centuries tormenting this family of women. He was supposed to be this mystery man that is woven into the plot to be revealed at the end as the one who caused it all! (Sarcasm intended).
In the end, everything just felt force; the plot, the characters, and the resolution. I really wanted to like this book, like I said the cover is beautiful, but I just couldn’t. It definitely wasn’t the worst book I have ever read, but it fell short. I will definitely think twice about picking a book by it's pretty cover again.

Impossible gets: Two Stars – It was okay.

Welcome To My Bookshelf

Welcome to my Bookshelf. A place to share and talk about books.

I love to read. Always have, always will. If there's only one thing people know about me, this is probably it. And it's not just reading, I love books themselves. The feel of the binding, the crack of the spine when you open a book for the first time, the smell of the paper, ink and glue, it's all completely irresistible. A favorite game of mine is to wonder the aisles of a bookstore or library, running my fingers down the rows, looking for that next great find.

And once that book is found, you get to read it. There is nothing more exciting than reading a truly great book. The type of book that you can not wait to pick up again when you're forced to put it down, the one you find yourself reading until 4:00 a.m. because you kept telling yourself "Just one more chapter...", and especially the one that you can't stop thinking about and find yourself telling everyone you know to read. Those are the truly great books and the reason for this blog.

I needed a place to write reviews, share my opinions, and make recommendations beyond my rambling emails and late night talks with my best friend, C, who has suffered through more than one 'Literary Hangover' with me. And it has occasionally been known to happen that someone will ask my opinion on what to read. So here it is - a place for me to share my opinions and recommendations with those who want to know.

I hope you'll enjoy my thoughts and maybe even agree with me on some. Mostly I hope I can help you discover a book you may not have found otherwise.