I'll Be Your Blue Sky by Marissa de los Santos

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is the third installment from Marissa de los Santos about a large blended family. I haven’t read the first two, and while this book does still work as a standalone novel, it might be better to read the other two first if only to know who everyone is. (There is one dizzying paragraph that tries to explain how everyone is connected to each other, but it probably serves better as a reminder than a primer.) This installment features Claire, a young woman who’s about to marry an overly-possessive and easily-angered man, but is having seriously cold feet the day before her wedding. A chance meeting with an elderly woman, Edith, makes her call it off, only to find out a few weeks later that not only has Edith died, but she’s left Claire her beach house on the Delaware coast. This sets Claire off on an adventure, both to figure out what she wants out of love, and also what Edith was up to by leaving her the house. There are flashbacks to the 1950’s from Edith’s point of view, and we slowly learn that the two of them are more connected than just a chance meeting. While some might complain that the ending was too pat, I thought she tied it up nicely, and the whole book was quite beautifully written.   

Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

If you can get over the initial premise of this book (husband Mel has created an abattoir in the garage where he tortures and kills women and his family is none the wiser until a car randomly plows into the house one day revealing all), then this is great read. Even the (now-ex) wife Gina/Gwen (she’s been on the run since she was cleared of any wrongdoing in the killings, because “how could you NOT know?” wonders how she could have not known. Now she has to worry about other people wanting to take their vengeance out on her, whether it’s internet trolls, family members of the victims, or her butcher-ex, who is still trying to exert his influence from prison. At first Gwen seems a bit paranoid, but when her worst fears start to come true and her fake identity has been compromised, we realize what real threats she and her children are under.  Even the remote community of Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee is no refuge, and when women start to turn up dead disposed of in the same manner as her husband once did, Gwen is under the microscope once again. This book isn’t for the faint of heart, but not overly gruesome either. And it does end on a cliffhanger, so that you’ll race to read the next installment, which I’m still not sure I want to do …

The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypole White

Barbara Claypole White tackles the impossible in The Promise Between Us. She lets you into the mind of someone with obsessive compulsive disorder just enough to give you a realistic look at what their life must be like, and then reigns it back a little so that you don’t shut the book in dismay. Katie Mack abandoned her young daughter when she was just an infant as thoughts of harming her swarmed her mind. She thought the girl would be safer without her, and by the time she got treatment and found herself in a semi-stable state, her husband had moved on and told their daughter that she was dead. Over a decade later Katie randomly comes back into contact with her daughter, only to realize that her own mental illness was now manifesting itself in her daughter. Her attempts to help her and deal with her own continuing issues make up the bulk of the story.

Some books are easier to read than others. If you’re looking for a fluffy beach read for entertainment purposes, this is not it. But it is an important read, and a timely one. OCD has received some national attention lately, largely due to John Green’s novel about the disease and his admission that he suffers from it as well. If you want to understand more about it (guess what, it’s not just about compulsively washing your hands) and how it can destroy people and families (and build them back up again), then this is a must read.

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

In The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen take you on a wild roller coaster ride full of twists and turns. Vanessa and Richard’s marriage has fallen apart, and he’s dating a new (and younger) woman, whom Vanessa is stalking. Nellie is bright-eyed and excited for her future with Richard, but she has some lingering trauma from college and feels like someone is out to get her. While cleverly done, the first part of the book feels too similar to Girl On The Train somehow; woman is left by husband, is falling apart and drinking too much, and is following her ex and his new girl. The first twist takes it on a different course, which was well done, but by then end it’s almost one twist too many. 

There’s a lot of gaslighting going on in this book (definition per Wikipedia: a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief.) This is sort of trendy now I guess, but it does make me wonder – isn’t the whole psychological suspense genre with an unreliable narrator one big gaslight on the reader anyways? Something to ponder…

Between Me and You by Allison Winn Scotch

Told in two timelines from two points of view, Between Me and You by Allison Winn Scotch is one of those “big concept” books. We get to see Tatum and Ben’s relationship from Tatum’s point of view move forward in a normal timeline, from meet-cute in a bar during college to their first kiss in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. In alternating chapters, we see Ben’s side of the story, but working backwards from their present-day separated status. What makes a seemingly perfect couple fall apart? The trappings of their Hollywood lifestyle and respective ups and downs in their careers doesn’t help (he’s a writer, she’s an actress), and somehow this feels like a behind-the-scenes peek at what many famous “It” couples must have gone through.

I love the idea of juxtaposing all the great parts of a relationship with all things that no longer work, and the execution of this concept was really well done. The one downside is that you have to relive some of the sadder parts of the story twice, such as 9-11 and the loss of a family member. All in all though it’s a great read, particularly if you’re fascinated by the "Brangelinas."

Tips for Living by Renée Shafransky

Nora Glasser is living a nightmare. Not only did her famous artist husband leave her for a younger (and more fertile) woman, but then they have the audacity to move to her small town and rub her nose in their happiness and wealth. Nora has to see them living their extravagant lifestyle with the daughter she always wanted, while she walked away with nothing, except a precious journal of sketches of her that her ex, Hugh, now wants back. Not even her Pilates class is sacred, as Hugh’s new wife, Helene, shows up to that too. So it’s no surprise that she fantasizes about doing them bodily harm, but when that actually happens in real life, Nora is suspect number one. To make matters worse, she can’t trust her own memory, and worries that she’s the one who committed the crime. Tips for Living leaves you wondering until the end: did she or didn’t she? This debut novel by Renée Shafransky is a fast-paced page turner with a satisfying (but unpredictable) end.

Not Perfect by Elizabeth LaBan

Have you ever faked your way through a day, pretending that everything was fine when you were really losing your mind? Now picture doing that for months on end, trying to keep up appearance while your whole life falls down around you. Such is the plot of Not Perfect by Elizabeth LaBan. Tabitha Brewer’s husband, Stuart, walked out on her a few months ago, leaving her alone with their two kids and without any income coming in. Tabitha hasn’t told anyone about her predicament, even her best friend, but as Stuart’s “business trip” gets extended longer and longer, the perfect façade starts to crumble. Tabitha’s children are struggling, she can’t seem to find a job, and she doesn’t even have the money to replace the burnt-out lightbulbs in the kitchen let alone put food on the table. Rather than admit that she is in serious trouble and ask for help, she starts stealing in random ways, and seems stuck in limbo, not knowing completely why he left and if he’ll ever be home.

The story has some hilarious plot pots (eating some marijuana edibles with an eighty-year old woman!), and some sad ones, but the overarching theme is what is really intriguing to me. As a woman and mom who tries really hard to keep her family functioning and her act together, I can relate as to how hard it is to ask for help, and how the pressure to keep everything perfect and high-functioning can often be overwhelming. LaBan nails that feeling on the head, and then reminds us that it is okay to be “not perfect.”

The Wake Up by Catherin Ryan Hyde

The Wake Up is a bit of a slow burn of a novel that sucks you in by then end. We first meet Aiden Delacorte as he is getting ready to meet his girlfriend’s kids for the first time. While Gwen’s daughter and Aiden seem to hit it off well, things do go so smoothly with her son, Milo. Withdrawn, barely eating, and with a propensity to hurting animals, Milo is clearly a damaged child, and not very likeable. Aiden has to grapple with whether he can forgive the boy for some things he has done, and come to terms with the terrible things that Milo endured. While any novel involving child abuse is a difficult read, there is a fundamental question in the novel that intrigued me – we can forgive a child’s bad behavior when we know it is a result of unspeakable things that were done to them, but when that child grows up and repeats those unspeakable things we are usually not as forgiving.

As a side plot, Aiden had something that he refers to as his "wake up." After being shut off to all emotion after his mother left his father when he was a young boy, he one day starts to feel all of the emotions of his animals. The deer he shoots, the cows he raises, the rabbits about to be turned into dinner by his neighbors, etc. This makes him have to re-evaluate his life and his work. This semi-magical plot aspect was a little weird, but as someone who doesn't believe in magic but fully believes in fairies that take my stuff and hide it from me, I guess a little bit of the whimsical is okay every now and then.

Artemis by Andy Weir

It’s hard for any writer to follow up a major success, and Book #2 usually doesn’t turn out as well as Book #1. So it was no surprise that Artemis, by Andy Weir, was a bit of a disappointment, but what was surprising was how much of a disappointment it was. Set on the first and only colony on the moon in the not-too-distant future, Weir did create a compelling world where rich tourists come for a once and a lifetime experience in 1/6th gravity (Disney in Space!), but the plot and character development was heavily bogged down. Jazz is a young porter who has spent most of her life on the colony and probably can’t go back to Earth without getting very sick. She’s messed up every opportunity for a good living that has come her way, including trashing her father’s welding business and failing her EVA exam. Life on the Moon is expensive though, so when a lucrative but illegal business proposition comes her way that involves a lot of dangerous stuff, she jumps right in, and of course, bad things then happen.

In an attempt to re-create The Martian’s strengths (fast-pacing, quirky narration, using SCIENCE to solve problems, and an easy adaptation to the big-screen), we are left with a non-stop run of drama and physics/chemistry 101 with a twenty-something female narrator who thinks and talks exactly like a fifteen-year-old boy. Perhaps Weir wanted to challenge himself as a writer by taking on a female narrator, but it was so off-putting at times. She seems like a sci-fi fantasy projection: beautiful with a gorgeous body, tough-talking, will have sex with almost anyone apparently, and of course, is a genius. Oh, but she does cry in the corner on several occasions, just to remind you that she’s a woman. Hope they make her more realistic in the inevitable movie.

A Tangled Mercy by Joy Jordan-Lake

A Tangled Mercy tells the dual tales of present day Kate, who is having somewhat of a breakdown after the death of her mother, and Tom Russell, a slave in Charleston in 1822 who gets swept up in a revolt. Joy Jordan-Lake expertly weaves these disparate timelines together, which are each compelling in their own right. Kate returns to Charleston from her PhD work in the Northeast to pick at the threads of her mother’s mysterious life, pushing to find the answers that have eluded her for so long. Tom wants to keep his head down and manage as best as he can, given the circumstances, but has to watch as his love is raped by her owner and live with the uncertainty that their expecting child may or may not be his. It’s hard to reveal much more without giving away some of the interesting interconnections and plot twists, but the title “tangled” really does explain it well.

The Copenhagen Affair by Amulya Malladi

After a lifetime working in the corporate world as an overlooked minority woman, when Sanya finally gets the promotion she deserves, she loses it. Completely. First she can’t stop laughing, then crying, then she says nothing at all, hiding out in her bed for almost a year. Her husband, Harry, has a business opportunity in Copenhagen, but is also looking for a way to bring his formally cheerful and productive wife back, and he convinces Sanya to go with him. The new setting and different kinds of people she meets slowly bring Sanya out of her shell, but in an I-don’t-give-a-f$$k kind of way. The results are hilarious. As she mingles with Danish high society, she tells them what she thinks, and/or refuses to play their games, and you’ll want to take a bit of her spirit with you at the end. 

The rest of the plot includes some shady business dealings, propositions between married people, and a tall, dark and handsome stranger who seems to be the only one who understands what Sanya is going through. Harry, meanwhile, sees his marriage falling apart, and fights to bring Sanya back not just from depression but to their marriage. All in all a highly entertaining read, and worth it alone for setting. Come for the scenery and stay for the story.

The Trick by Emanuel Bergmann

The Trick alternates between pre-WWII Europe and present day LA. In the earlier narrative, Moshe runs away from his abusive father, the Rabbi Laibl, to join the circus and become a mentalist/magician. In the present story, eleven-year-old Max is searching for a magician to cast an eternal love spell on his parents, who are divorcing. He ends up finding Moshe, or The Great Zabbatini, at the end his life, and tries to enlist his help in keeping his family together. Moshe is reluctant initially, but then realizes how nice it is to feel needed, and that helping the boy might also help himself.

The earlier timeline is compelling, with Moshe's circus experience and love-of-his-life story set against the lead up to the war. This would make a great book in its own right. The later timeline is funny, with Max and Moshe's hi-jinks providing some laugh-out-loud moments. Moshe has now become an alter cocker, or old fart, and is grumpy and hysterical at the same time. He even turns out to have a special connection with Max and his family, though not the one you might think at first. As a whole, this book is definitely a worthy read.

When We Were Worthy by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

In When We Were Worthy, the small town of Worthy, Georgia, is turned upside down when three cheerleaders die in a car accident. The town turns against the boy who hit them and his mom Darcy, and questions surround the location of a fourth girl, Leah, who should have been in the car with them. Marglyn, whose daughter was killed, is wracked by grief and regret. Then there’s Ava, who recently moved to town with her husband who grew up there, but is having trouble fitting in, and formed an inappropriate relationship with one of her high school students. The narrative alternates between the four women, with intersections, accusations, and eventually resolutions between them all.

I liked Marybeth Mayhew Whalen’s previous novel, The Things We Wish We True, which was also set in a small town and also told from multiple points of view, and I liked this one as well. She has a great knack of capturing the feel of a small town, whether it’s the positive way that everyone connects and helps each other, or the negative ways that people judge and ostracize each other. The multiple narrative trick can be a bit tough to follow at times though, and I’d love to see what she can do with only one narrator at some point. 

Working Fire by Emily Bleeker

Working Fire starts off with every EMTs worst nightmare: running a call on your own family member. Ellie’s dropped out of med school and moved back to her hometown to help her sister, Amelia, take care of their dad, who’s had a stroke. Even though Broadlands is the last place she wants to be, things seem to be going alright for Ellie – she likes working as a medic and just got engaged to her boyfriend. Then there’s a shootout, and both her sister and her brother-in-law have been hit. Ellie is first on scene, and the prime suspect is none other than Amelia’s high school boyfriend, who just happens to be her fiancee’s brother. Such is life in a small town.

Told in alternating timelines, Emily Bleeker works the case forward and also show glimpses of the past couple of months and what (might have) led to the shooting. While it seems hard to find a domestic suspense novel that’s told start to finish these days, it does work well in this scenario once you get past the first few chapters. Bleeker gets your adrenaline pumping with the first response scenes, but then lets you catch a breath and go back to the family’s mostly jovial domestic life. It’s a little disconcerting at first, but eventually the timelines meld and the pace picks up continuously. A solid effort and worthy read.

A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

While I didn't think Shari Lapena's last book, The Couple Next Door, was ah-mazing, it wasn't bad either, and I enjoyed it on the whole. I guess the same can be said about her latest release, A Stranger in the House. In fact, I could say exactly what I said in my review of Couple and still have it hold true: "After so many good books with unreliable first person narrators, to have the whole thing done in the third person ends up feeling cold and unpersonable." (me, a year ago)

It starts off with a car accident, and the woman who was driving the car, Karen, can't remember what led up to it, but she was driving frantically in a "bad" area of town. And there just happens to be a dead body near the scene of where Karen had her accident. Was she fleeing the scene? Did she kill someone? And why does she have no past before the few years she's spent with her husband, Tom. As the police start to connect the dots, her obsessed neighbor begins inserting herself into the situation, and, as they say, the plot thickens. Read this on the beach, by the pool, or whenever you want a distracting but not too captivating read, and expect a now "classic" Lapena twist at the end.

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

A fifteen-year-old girl is dead, found lying in the snow one cold February morning, and a suburban Colorado town is turned upside down. One by one, members of the community are suspected of killing Lucinda: was it the janitor that found her, the weird boy who was stalking her, her ex-boyfriend, the list goes on… Told from the perspectives of that weird stalker, Cameron, another teenage girl, Jade, who saw Cameron outside Lucinda’s house that night and is carrying a torch for the aforementioned ex, and a middling police officer, Russ, who so happens to be the former partner of Cameron’s dad, before he committed a crime and disappeared. It’s a small town, obviously. While dead “girls” are a dime a dozen these days, in A Girl in Snow, the dead girl is more of an afterthought. We don’t really get to know her, and what we do see doesn’t leave much of an impression. Instead, it’s all about the three narrators, and, in a nutshell, how messed up they are.

Cameron is deeply affected by his dad's disappearance, and while he might have had some type of personality disorder regardless, his troubles manifest themselves in weird ways, like killing pet birds and standing outside people's houses at night. Jade is psychically and emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother, but seems to be holding it together better than anyone else, except for when it comes to her childhood best friend, Zap, who ditched her for Lucinda and popularity. Then there is Russ, who is going through the motions of life without much feeling, as he's chosen to bottle up his deepest desires. Danya Kukafka does an amazing job of exploring their pasts and current motivations, and while the final reveal was perhaps a little obvious, this didn’t bother me so much, as I was more intrigued by the strength of the writing and the characters. Some reviewers seem confused by this book, because most of the characters are teenagers but it is more maturely written and also quite lyrical. Is it YA, literature, or a thriller? Who cares! It’s truly great. 

A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi

In A House for Happy Mothers, Amulya Malladi tackles some of the moral and ethical issues surrounding surrogacy programs in India. Priya, an American born half-Indian, and her native Indian husband Madu, are living the perfect life in Silicon Valley, save a child or two. After several miscarriages, and considerable strain to their relationship, they try one last time, via a surrogate in India. The baby is genetically theirs, but growing inside the womb of Asha, a poor but proud mother of two. Asha has been coerced into this by her family as a way to help secure their financial future and provide a better education for their gifted son, but struggles to remain detached from the life growing inside her.

This book explores all of the questions that surrogacy in a poor country raises. Yes, it’s providing a large sum of money to someone who probably lives on $2 a day, but at what cost? There is a lot of shame associated with this practice, and the women must pretend it never happened. They must go through all the toils and discomforts of pregnancy and labor, without the gift of a child at the end. We also see some characters coming back for a second or third time, as either the money was squandered initially or because for a poor person, there is never enough really. 

While there is a very hopeful and uplifting message to this book, having just read and watched A Handmaid’s Tale and its forced surrogacy program, it’s hard not to see some parallels. Apparently there are more laws in place now to help protect the surrogates, and efforts have been made to eliminate some of the worst offending “baby mills,” but it’s easy to see how this is a situation still ripe for exploitation.   

Finally, I listened to the audio version of this book, and it is wonderful! The narrator, Deepa Samuel, does an amazing job with literally dozens of different characters voices. She manages to create a unique Indian accent for each one, and her performance was truly stunning. This is definitely a book worth listening to.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson is a hard book to categorize. It's about teenagers, but is written for adults, with plenty of sex and drugs and shocking behavior. It takes place in a well-to-do suburb of San Francisco, following a group of kids as they grow from middle-school twerps to high-school aged perps. "Look at what awful things your despicable children could be doing!" This book screams this at every turn. First they gang up on a boy in middle school with unrelenting cyber-bullying until he jumps from the Golden Gate bridge. Then one has an affair with her teacher, another runs an SAT scam when not dealing drugs, a third runs away to star in gay porn films ... the list goes on, each chapter more tawdry than the last. At the center of it all is new teacher Molly, who wants to connect with the "cool kids" (she wasn't one herself), and thinks they're all angels and that she alone can make a difference. Molly is you, by the way, the parent who has their blinders on and thinks their child can do no harm.

Is this a cautionary tale of what parents might expect from their children these days? Besides the cyber-bullying, which wasn't available to us gen-exers, there's nothing in here that couldn't or didn't happen to teenagers a generation ago. We've just all glossed over those days, moved on to respectable adulthood, but then love to read about naughty teenagers in almost a cathartic way: "I was never this bad," or "My kids aren't doing this." Well, you might have or they might be, but do you really want to read a whole book about it? Still not sure what the answer is to that one.

Mrs. Saint and the Defectives by Julie Lawson Timmer

In Mrs. Saint and the Defectives, forty-something divorcee Markie uproots her son and her life after her ex’s very public affair. She lands in a new town next to an elderly French woman called Mrs. St Denis, or Mrs. Saint to all those who can’t properly pronounce her name. Mrs. Saint takes an instant interest in Markie and her current state of affairs, giving the term “nosy neighbor” a whole new meaning. From getting her “defectives” – a group of adults who have a variety of issues who seem to be supported by Mrs. Saint – to help her move in, to new patio furniture and a dog for her son, Mrs. Saint steadily works her way into Markie’s life, whether she wants her to or not.

This book is full of laugh out loud moments, as well as some darker and more touching turns later on when we realize the true reasons behinds Mrs. Saint’s motivations. What sticks out most for me about this book is that it’s about Markie re-connecting with herself and her son. Too many divorcee books feel compelled to include a new love interest along the way, as if that is the only way for a woman to get back to herself. Bravo to Julie Lawson Timmer for breaking the mold a little.

Everything We Left Behind by Kerry Lonsdale

This book takes us back to the majorly f-ed up Donato family, and if you haven’t read the first book, Everything We Keep, there is almost no point in reading this one, as it’s hard to pick up the threads of the plot – I even had a hard time in sections as I forgot some of the plot points from the first book. Long story short, it is five years later and James wakes up from his “fugue” state. He’s been Carlos for over six years, has two kids and a long-term girlfriend, but remembers none of it. He wants to go “home” to California and reclaim his former fiancée Aimee, and he uproots his family and discards his old life. But remnants of Carlos remain, and there’s some unfinished business with his cousin/half-brother Phil, who is about to get out of prison.

James needs to remember the circumstances surrounding his accident in order to know what kind of a threat Phil is to him, and he has to navigate the increasingly complicated web of his family: Aimee has moved on with Ian and has a child with him, his mother was pretending to be his neighbor for the last five years to get to see her grandkids, and he somehow fell in love with his dead wife’s sister. There’s plenty more sex in this iteration, and the book moves along at a fast pace, making it a worthy beach read. Oh, and there’s a hint at the end that there might even be a third offering in the future, though if James/Carlos changes personality again I might not be interested in the result.