What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

You may recall that this is the year that I'm reading all of Janssen's favorite books from last year. I'm doing pretty  good with her list on my own, but when BlogHer book club offered me a chance to review one of them for you I couldn't pass it up. I don't know that I've ever read an amnesia story before (despite my love of romance novels, tyvm), but since Janssen loved it, I had to try.

So, Alice falls off a bike at the gym, hits her head, and wakes up ten years in her past. She doesn't remember her children (oh this killed me to imagine, but Moriarty does a good job of balancing being sad at not remembering and not really being affected, cause DUH, she can't remember them!), she doesn't remember why she's on the outs with her sister, she doesn't have a clue why she's divorcing the husband she's madly in love with, and she's shocked at her 39 year old self. What Alice Forgot is both funny and heartbreaking, often on the same page. It really makes you (made me, anyway) think about what your choices do to you. Little things add up until you become a person you can't imagine being and might not even like, if you weren't her.  At the same time, it's chick lit- it's not heavy and slow and full of tremendous imagery.  It's a serious situation but still manages to be fun and romantic. (When is Janssen gonna start replyin to my posts with "I told you so" is the only question I have now.)

This post is a sponsored review from BlogHer Book Club. To see more opinions and discussions please click here. All opinions in this review are my own.

The First Husband by Laura Dave

The First Husband by Laura Dave is the most recent book for the BlogHer Book Club. I signed up for it because it sounded sweet and romantic (something BHBC books don't tend to be) and like something I would enjoy.  Annie Adams has it all, a great job, a long term boyfriend, a great dog. Until the day her boyfriend comes home and announces he needs a break. Annie moves on, meets another great guy, and marries him in a whirlwind courtship. Then, just as she's questioning her place in his world, her ex comes back and asks for a second chance. (That's all from the book cover, no spoilers.)

Ok, so you guys have been reading me for years, and most of you skip my romance reviews (don't deny, I can tell) but if you've paid attention at all, I typically avoid anything with two love interests. This time I took a deep breath and told myself I'd power through, that most books end satisfactorily, and this would too. But then a funny thing happened- it turned out that the book wasn't so much about them as it was about her. The longer I waited for the inevitable showdown, the closer to the end of the book I got, and ultimately, it was perfect and painless.  Dave does a great job, a terrific job, of getting into Annie's head and making the struggle real, without really painting anyone as the bad guy. It's never about the guys (tho I admit to having a favorite, and I suspect it's intended that way,) but always about Annie herself.  I enjoyed this one a great deal and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys chick lit with a strong romance.

The First Husband
by Laura Dave (@lauradave on twitter)
Penguin Books
2011
For more information and links to reviews, visit the BlogHer The First Husband page here.

Disclaimer: I am compensated for my review and participation in the BlogHer Book Club, but all opinions are my own.

Beautiful Disaster by Laura Spinella

Mia Wells is about to reach all her career goals, she's in the biggest meeting of her life when she receives the phone call of her life- her soulmate, the one who vanished, has returned. Unfortunately for Mia he's in the hospital in a coma, leaving so many questions unanswered.  Twelve years ago Mia and Flynn were an unlikely pair- a college student and a drifter with a past- and then Flynn disappeared without an explanation leaving Mia to recover from her heartbreak alone. Now she has to decide if she's going to walk away from the life she's built with Michael for the man she's always loved.

Beautiful Disaster isn't really the type of book I usually pick up. I tend to stay away from books that are marketed as romantic but have two potential love interests. I was a bit worried that I'd hit a point that made me so uncomfortable with the relationships that I would need to stop reading, but it never happened. The conflict is there but it's handled as honestly and briefly as possible given the circumstances.   

The author does a great job of telling the story from Mia's point of view, and making you really believe in her love for Flynn, but drops the ball a bit with Flynn and Michael. I'm sure her intent is to make them both sound terrific, but she ends up with two guys who are too good to be true. They both end up as caricatures of great guys and it's hard to believe. 

One other small quibble- there is a side plot that involves colleges in the South and the author places the University of Alabama in Birmingham instead of Tuscaloosa. It is possible she's referring to UAB but that's not how it's written. Fact check!

The story of Mia and Flynn is beautifully told, the pacing of the book is great and I enjoyed reading it, but in the end it didn't make my top five of 2010.

You can find Laura Spinella on the web here. Thanks to the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read it as well. This was the first piece of mail I got in the new house.


Beautiful Disaster
by Laura Spinella
Berkley Books
2011
370 pages
Source: publisher


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TBR Day: Enchanted, Inc by Shanna Swendson

Today is the first day of the 2009 TBR Day Challenge, hosted by avidbookreader. This year she's changed the focus a little to be more geared towards romance, which is fine, but I was not able to meet this month's challenge which was Category Romances. (If you're not a big romance reader, this means the Harlequins and other little paperback romances that are new every month.) Short of going out to my garage and raiding the incredibly old TBR out there, I didn't have even ONE category book on my shelves. I decided to go with a chick lit style book assuming there would be some romance in it.

Enchanted, Inc by Shanna Swendson is a cute little book. It seems like a cross between real urban fantasy (Briggs, Hamilton, Butcher) and fun chick lit like Kinsella and Meg Cabot. The basic plot is that Katie is a normal girl from Texas who moves to New York and discovers that magic is real. Unlike most people, Katie is immune to magic, which means she doesn't see illusions and she does see things like fairies and gargoyles. Katie assumed that the weird things she was seeing was just weird New Yorkers and that since she was the "hick" that she would eventually become accustomed to seeing them. As it turned out, most people don't see what she does. This makes her valuable to the magic side because she can run interference for them and see when someone is trying to pull something over on them.

There's a little bit of a romance in the book, but I certainly wouldn't classify it as a romance. Throughout the entire book there are different potential suitors- her roommate fixes her up every weekend, her boss is hot, her other boss is charming (but it's an illusion!), she kisses a frog who becomes (what else?) a prince. There isn't a sequential falling in love storyline in this one, but when I went to Amazon for the link just now I noticed that it's a series of 4 books, so I assume it'll be a running thread through the entire series.

As with all fantasy, there is a point where you have to suspend disbelief and just go with the magical elements. For the most part, I thought the author did a good job of explaining it to be believable, but then she'd throw in a little detail that was an exception to the rule. The exception would be there solely to move the plot along, sometimes with details that could have just been left out entirely. She occasionally talked around the explanation in a way that seemed purposely hard to follow and I got the feeling that we were just supposed to take it at face value and not try to parse out the explanation. This doesn't bother me too much, as it IS a light weight fantasy. It's not trying to be Harry Potter or Kim Harrison's excellent world. It's a slim book, 308 pages, there's just not a lot of time to full flesh out the details. I would assume she does so in the later books.

Overall a good book, but not a great one. If you enjoy both Kim Harrison and Meg Cabot, I think you'd enjoy it. If you like a little more meat to your fantasy, skip it.

TBR Day: Mike, Mike, & Me by Wendy Markham

I finished this month's TBR Day book last week, but here I am on the day of trying to quick write my review. Figures.

Mike, Mike, & Me is a Red Dress Ink book. It caught my attention because it's about falling in love with Mike, which is something with which I was familiar. I ordered it from Paperbackswap, then it sat on my shelves along with everything else. It is firmly in the realm of chick lit and doesn't pretend otherwise. Told in both the present and the past, this is the story of Beau, a tired, slightly unhappy housewife. She moved to New York straight out of high school while her high school boyfriend, Mike, moved to California for school. They have always had a long distance relationship, but Beau is hoping he'll take a job in NY to be with her. One day at the airport, while waiting on Mike's plane, Beau meets Mike. After fighting with Mike about moving to NY, she impulsively calls Mike for "not a date." Things continue and Beau realizes she really is in love with Mike, but which one?

The chapters alternate from the present, where Beau is feeling unappreciated by her husband (Mike) and her kids; to the past, where Beau is falling in love with Mike. In the present, Beau has gotten an email from Mike which has stirred up the question: did she make the right choice? In the past, Beau is wearing leggings and Aqua Net and thinks Madonna must surely be a fad, while trying to make a decision. The entire book takes place over a couple of summers, the present summer, and the summer in the past when she had to decide between the two Mikes. Confused?

This is a really cute story. It's pretty well done on keeping you guessing on which Mike she choose (the reader doesn't find out til the very end.) Beau admits from the very beginning that she was always spoiled and used to getting her way, so you aren't overly annoyed by that. Her kids are barely in the book and not a distraction. The way she kept having to obsessively check her email to see if he replied was great. Both Mikes are appealing, even though I did have a favorite. Present Mike (the one she married) is clearly madly in love with her and trying to make her happy, even when she can't see it.

The bad- She can't see it. She flares up at him for no reason several times, which got old. I understood that she was having a crisis, but geez. The parts in the 80s are cute, and occasionally very witty (Milli Vanilli!) but by the end felt way overdone. She's a bit of a novice at email, and it really felt fake that she wouldn't be more familiar with it.

The very best part of the book is on the first page-

That they shared both a name and my heart is one of life's great ironies, don't you think?

Then again, maybe not. According to the United States Social Security Administration, Michael was the most popular boys' name in American between 1964 and 1998. Odds are, if you're a heterosexual female who was born between those years- as I am- you're going to date a couple of Mikes in your life. As I did.

Meanwhile, if you're a heterosexual male who was born in those years, you're going to date a couple of Lisas. That was the most popular girls' name the year I was born.

I'm not Lisa.

But I am! So that cracked me up. I got your Mike and Lisa right here!

Overall, good, but not great. Memorable only because of the device of keeping you guessing. If you read a lot of chick lit, I'd say pick it up but if you don't, skip it.

TBR Day: gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

"THERE ARE GODS in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus."



With a first line like that, how can this NOT be a great book? I first put gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson on my PBS wishlist some time last summer. I wanted to read it for Maggie's Southern Literature Challenge. Well, I failed the challenge and I never read the book either. I did, however, add it to my list of books I was DEFINITELY going to read in 2008. I started reading it on Sunday, at the tail end of a perfect day spent on the back deck. From start to finish, I felt no urge to dip into any other book.



I've been reading Joshilyn Jackson's blog for a while. I knew she was funny, but I guess I just didn't expect her humor to carry over to the book so well. She has quite the way with words, and knows just how to turn a phrase to evoke a perfect picture. For example, her blog is called Faster Than Kudzu. Now, if you're not from the South this will mean nothing to do, but if you are from the South you know, that's FAST. There are trees under those vines.
Here's a little snippet from a recent blog post:

"WHAT RADICAL DOOM IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN IF WE PUT UP A PIER IN THE PLACE
WHERE A PIER HAS STOOD FOR HALF A CENTURY?

My patented radical Doom-meter needle barely moved. It didn’t even get
past diddly into SQUAT territory."

Here's Publisher's Weekly summary of the book, stolen from Amazon.com:

From Publishers WeeklyArlene Fleet, the refreshingly imperfect heroine of
Jackson's frank, appealing debut, launches her story with a list of the title's
deities: "high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus." The first
god, also a date rapist by the name of Jim Beverly, she left dead in her
hometown of Possett, Ala., but the last she embraces wholeheartedly when high
school graduation allows her to flee the South, the murder and her slutty
reputation for a new life in Chicago. Upon leaving home, Arlene makes a bargain
with God, promising to forgo sex, lies and a return home if he keeps Jim's body
hidden. After nine years in Chicago as a truth-telling celibate, an unexpected
visitor from home (in search of Jim Beverly) leads her to believe that God is
slipping on his end of the deal. As Arlene heads for the Deep South with her
African-American boyfriend, Burr, in tow, her secrets unfold in unsurprising but
satisfying flashbacks. Jackson brings levity to familiar themes with a spirited
take on the clichés of redneck Southern living: the Wal-Mart culture, the subtle
and overt racism and the indignant religion. The novel concludes with a final,
dramatic disclosure, though the payoff isn't the plot twist but rather Jackson's
genuine affection for the people and places of Dixie. Copyright © Reed Business
Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Now doesn't that sound good? Now imagine you're from Alabama, lived there for the first 27 years of your life, and have now been living in South Dakota for the past 6 years? Doesn't it sound great? Well, it is. The story alternates between the present and the past and hits both perfectly. Somehow she manages to tell you what happened and still keep you in suspense about.. what happened. The characters are great including the character of Alabama itself. I loved so many of the scenes with Burr and her family, Jackson totally nails the old home racism. Arlene has promised God she won't lie and some of the ways she gets around that are amazing. (Yes, I realize the author had plenty of time to think of creative ways of NOT lying. I'm still impressed.)


If you want a sneak peak, you can follow this link and read the first chapter at Amazon.com. I recommend that you do, and then, buy the book and read the rest. This is such a great debut book, once again I am amazed at what authors seem to have in their heads, just waiting to be written into a book. I have her second book (Between, Georgia ) sitting on my shelves, and I think I might just read it next!

You can see the other TBR Day participants here.

This is my fourth book for the July Book Blowout.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Bridget Jones's Diary was first published when I was in college- in 1996 I think, I don't have the book here to check. It was a huge hit and became a bigger movie. I often see it listed as the beginning of chick lit and Bridget as a favorite chick lit character. (But don't ask for cites, I am too lazy to find them.) I have a vague memory of reading it then, but my records don't seem to back me up, so perhaps I skimmed it. Reading it now, it is entirely possible that I wasn't interested. Bridget was 30 and single, smoked and drank. All things that did not apply to me. However, it comes up often enough on the internet that I thought perhaps I should read it to refresh my memory.

Bridget is single and in search of a man. She worries about her weight, she wants to quit smoking, she has the stereotypical gay best friend. Her mother is an embarrassment to her and her married friends (the Smug Marrieds) want to fix her up. As the title would suggest, the book is formatted as a diary and covered one year from New Year's to New Year's.

While I am a fan of chick lit, I was not overly impressed with Bridget Jones's Diary. The diary format (which I usually LOVE) was clunky to me with phrases like "get up straight away when wake up in mornings" and then entire sections written in third person that no real person would put in their diary. Some of the situations she found herself in were funny, but many of them were contrived (really, who puts pans of uncooked food on the kitchen floor? And if you did, would you REALLY step in them?) Bridget herself is easy enough to like but her two female friends (Sharon and Jude) were incredibly annoying. I can see how this became the beginning of chicklit as it has every stereotype in it. (Feminist friend, gay friend, feng shui friend, mom is who finding herself after years of marriage, sucky job, bad habits, unattainable man, bad boy boss/bad office relationship.) It has been compared to Pride & Prejudice, and indeed the male lead is named Mark Darcy, but I think it's an awfully big stretch. Besides the fact that they don't like each other in the beginning (which frankly is the basis for every other romance novel written) I don't see many similarities. There are a few conversations at the end that could be similar, but Mr. Darcy isn't really a central character until near the end.

I didn't really dislike the book, but it would never go on a favorites list. I'm glad I read it, since it does hold a important spot in chick lit, and it's really fast and easy to read.

This books fills the "New Classic" portion of Trish's Classics Challenge.

Every Boy's Got One

Every Boy's Got One is the story of Jane and Cal who are in Italy to witness the elopement of their best friends. Jane is a cartoonist and Cal is a foreign journalist, and they have nothing in common. Dislike is instant, before they even know each other's names. Jane thinks the elopement is incredibly romantic, and Cal thinks love doesn't exist. Due to an unfortunate turn of events (of course) they are thrown together to save the wedding. The plot is predictable, you KNOW how it ends from page one. There aren't really any surprises along the way.

This was a very fast book to read. It's written entirely as email and journal/diary entries between the main characters. It took me about 3 hours to read. I think if it had been any longer that element of the book would have gotten tiresome, but it did make the pages speed by. I liked the story, and loved the setting, but if it weren't for the unusual way it was written I think it would be pretty forgettable. This was my second Meg Cabot and I'll certainly read more of them, but I won't be buying up her backlist just yet.

Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

I've heard a lot about Meg Cabot. The author of one of the blogs I read daily is her biggest fan. She wrote The Princess Diaries. How could I not have heard about her? Several weeks (ok, months) ago I purchased this book on the buy 3 for the price of 2 table at Borders. This is one of the few books I've bought new in months. It sat there forever, mocking me for paying money and then not reading it.

Last weekend I woke up before either boy. Mike was sleeping on the couch, Tristan was in his crib. I didn't want to wake either of them by wandering the house and the book I was supposed to be reading was in the living room, so I picked this one to fill in. Turns out, it was an excellent book. Very fast paced, very funny, easy to read.

Size 12 is Not Fat is the story of Heather Wells. Heather is a washed up former teen pop star (think Debbie Gibson). She's recently broken up with her fiance (think Justin Timberlake) and is broke. Her mom and manager ran away with her fortune and her dad is in prison. Heather takes a job as assistant director of a dorm, I mean, residence hall, at New York College. When the second freshman girl dies she becomes convinced that it is not accidental and the story takes off from there.

This was very like Nancy Drew for grownups. It's not a dead serious mystery, I'm sure any true mystery fan will know who-dun-it for the first time it's hinted at. Heather is a very likeable character. She's not perfect. She's a size 12. She makes mistakes. The story is told in her voice, and we hear her thoughts all the way through, including when her thoughts stray. I found it to be very easy to read, and will definately read more of Cabot's books. For a quick sample of her writing, her website and blog are here.

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

I've been working hard to finish up several books that I've half read. One of those was Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. This was Giffin's first novel and the story of Rachel White and her best friend Darcy. On Rachel's 30th birthday she gets drunk, ends up in bed with Darcy's fiance and they fall in love. (All of that is on the back of the book! No Spoilers here!) Now, if you know me AT ALL, you know that this is not the kind of plot that I usually enjoy. It's the betrayal of the friendship that bothers me, not so much the affair. I was really interested to see how the author would be able to pull it off and make me feel sympathy for Rachel and Dex. I assumed there would come a point where it would just be To Much for me (as often happens to me with conflict in books) and I would just stop reading. That never happened. The book is so well written and smooth that soon you find yourself rooting for Rachel. It's all wrapped up really neatly at the end, maybe too neatly, but overall was a good book.

There is a sequel called Something Blue, but don't read the synopsis unless you want to know ending of Something Borrowed. I will read the sequel just to see how she can turn Darcy back into someone I like.