Jenn's Bookshelves

Marie spent six years in jail, charged with aiding and abetting after her boyfriend robbed a bank, killing one individual. She was convicted on the charges of accessory to murder and bank robbery. Said boyfriend hung himself in jail, so Marie is alone.  She survived her time spent in jail in part due to a book she read, Virginie at Sea. 

Despite her checkered past, Marie’s  childhood friend, Ellen, hires her as a nanny for her precocious daughter, Caitlin. Ellen’s husband, Benoit Doniel,  just happens to be the author of the book Marie cherish while in prison.

Marie is a very rude, selfish, manipulating character.  Her one good trait is that she truly loves Caitlin.  But when Ellen & Benoit discover Marie & Caitlin asleep in the bathtub, Marie is fired.  The only “real” life she has is spinning out of control and she desperately attempts to retain it. When Benoit suggests that they take off for Paris together, Caitlin in tow, Marie readily agrees.

The life she was struggling to hold on to continues on a downward spiral, and Marie soon discovers the only person she can rely on is herself, and the love of a little girl.

Let me start by saying that there are times that I curse myself for not reading a book sooner.  That happened in this case.  Within the first few pages, I was hooked, I couldn’t stop reading.  I read BAD MARIE in one sitting. It took me two hours to read; I simply couldn’t tear myself away from it.  Marie is a character with traits one is meant to dispise, but I found myself enjoying and appreciating her crude behavior. 

The book starts off with the line: “Sometimes, Marie got a little drunk at work.” Talk about an attention-getting lead sentence!  Based on the title alone, one would tend to think that Marie is a bad person.  In reality, she is not, just a victim of circumstances.  The time she spent in prison, six years of her young life, forever altered how she views friendships, love, relationships as a whole.  I feel that she reacted as best she good, given her history and her experience.

So, go out and pick up a copy of BAD MARIE now.  You won’t regret it.

Here are some other reviews of BAD MARIE:

Devourer of Books

Linus’s Blanket

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• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 0312429770
• Source: Publisher

Abbigail (Abbe) Deighton lives with her husband, Greg, and three-year-old daughter Cloe in Hawaii.  Greg, a minister,  is a caring, loving, husband.  Cleo is your typical toddler, keeping Abbe on her toes.

Abbe’s life is quite different than the one she had growing up in South Africa.  Her father was an alcoholic, physically and abusive toward her mother.  In Abbe’s eyes, her mother put up with the abuse for far too long.

Abbe’s life is ripped from her when Cleo is hit by a car and killed. She goes into a long depression, in a sense dying along with her daughter.

It isn’t until Abbe returns to South Africa that she discovers that she hasn’t been “whole” for some time.  She learns more about her parents’ deaths, and her life.

COME SUNDAY is a heart-wrenching tale of one mother’s grief after losing her child, and ultimately herself.  I literally sobbed through the first 50-60 pages.   As a mother myself, I can’t bear to think of how I would react if I lost one of my children.  However, this is not a tale full of dread and sadness.  It is not only a story of love and loss, but also a journey of rediscovery.  This path Abbe takes is uplifting and empowering, she learns more about her mother; she wasn’t the virtual punching bag Abbe grew up thinking her to be.  Abbe, always the minister’s wife, becomes an individual and finally begins to lead the life she’s meant to lead.

I highly recommend COME SUNDAY, I cannot sufficiently portray how much I loved this book.  Yes, the start of the journey Abbe faces is difficult, but the pain she goes through is worth it in the end.

Beauty, the servant from Abbe’s childhood, said it best:

“The death of our babies is not our punishment…We must carry our burden like the buckets of water the women carry on their heads.  Most of them carry small buckets because their necks are not strong enough.  But a few of the women, the strong ones, have to carry the big buckets.  They have to carry more water; they have to walk a long way.  Then, when the others have finished all their water and are thirsty again, the woman wit the big bucket comes home.  She puts it down and doesn’t have to carry it again for a long time.” (p. 253)

Please don’t let the dreariness of this book’s premise prevent you from reading it.  Just like Abbe’s journey, the reader’s initial sadness will be rewarded in the end.

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Related posts

• Inteview with Isla Morley, Author of Come Sunday (6)

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
• Source: Publisher
• ISBN-10: 0061906077

When they were young, Bobby rescued Cami from debilitating anorexia.  Decades later, she needs saving again when he decides he wants to end their marriage.  Cami is devastated.  She’s a veterinarian, running her own practice and Bobby owns his own restaurant.  While things weren’t perfect, she never expected this.

Earlier that day, Cami goes on on a horrible cruelty & abuse case in which she has to euthanize several horses beyond healing.  One of the survivors is a severely underweight horse with a serious back kick.  Even though he literally knocks Cami out when she attempts to load him onto her trailer, she can’t bear to leave him in the current conditions and she takes him home to her farm.

Despite the rough start, this horse, eventually named Moonshot, becomes a key part of Cami’s physical and emotional recovery.  Her form of healing is in the presence of animals.

She’s torn between following the advice of her family and trying to mend a broken marriage and finding a life of her own.  She starts to evaluate and reconsider the relationships of those around her: her parents who are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary; her brother and his lover, trying to adopt a baby; and her best friend Olive, just embarking on the adventure of marriage.

Inspiring her is their teen daughter, Gabriella.  Gabriella sees the pain her father has put her mother through and swears of marriage.  Cami can’t bear to see her daughter feel this way about love and marriage.  She must prove to Gabriella, and herself, that being true to yourself brings happiness.

I think I’ve read everything Katrina Kittle has ever written, and I’ve literally fallen in love with every bit of it.  Her books, the characters, the storyline are all very compelling, multifaceted, and really leave you contemplating your own life.  You close the book, the only words that come to your lips are “Wow!”, and you can’t wait to start the book all over again.The best way to sum up this book is to quote it directly:

“What a risk love was.  But the riskier the venture and greater the chance of failure, the higher the reward.” (p. 422)

WARNING-the rest of this review might be considered a spoiler!

My favorite thing about this book: the ending.  So many times I read books with similar story lines, and the woman feels the need to be in a relationship with a man.  She either begs for her husband to stay with her or rushes into another relationship.  Cami does neither, and I commend the author for writing such a strong and independent character.

Katrina Kittle will be on Blog Talk Radio on August 26th at 7pm ET. Here’s the link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/book-club-girl/2010/08/26/katrina-kittle-discusses-the-blessings-of-the-animals. Be sure to tune in, I know I will!

Thank you TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to participate in this tour.  Be sure to check out the other stops:

Thursday, August 19th: Booksie’s Blog

Tuesday, August 24th: The Little Reader

Wednesday, August 25th: Take Me Away

Thursday, August 26th: Books and Things

Buy this book now from:

These are affiliate links. If you purchase an item from either of these links I will earn a small commission, which goes toward the hosting of this blog & other routine costs associated with running this blog.

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• Source: Publisher

Delilah Blue is a twenty-year old budding artist, so desperate to enter art school that she begins to model nude for art students in an attempt to raise money.  She lives with her father, Victor, in a quaint little cabin outside of Los Angeles.  They moved to LA when Delilah was eight.  Since Delilah, now  called Lila, could remember, they lived a pretty secluded life. Her father wouldn’t let her play with other children growing up, and when she got old enough to enter college, refused to let her apply for financial aid.  Victor always claimed he was just protecting Lila but it did get to be a bit extreme.

Victor begins to experience moments of memory loss, confusion, and eventually anger.  Lila insists that he go to the doctor, but he keeps putting it off.  Around the same time a ghost from Lila’s past makes a reappearance: her mother, who allegedly abandoned her when she was younger.  Lila must come to terms with her past, including her feelings of abandonment, while dealing with her father’s illness and her future as an artist.

I’ve been a fan of Cohen’s writing since I reviewed her book Inside Out Girl (click to read my review.  I must warn you it was VERY early in my blogging career and is quite pathetic!) In The Truth About Delilah Blue, she continues to write about strong, deep characters who must overcome some sort of battle.  It may sound a bit cliche but I guarantee it is not.  Her prose is detailed, developed, and fluid:

To have a mother like Elizabeth, and then lose her-not because she was struck by a car or swept out to sea by a dangerous current, but because she wasn’t sufficiently enamored by you to hang around-it left a hole in who you were.  You became one of those people who radiated worthlessness.  You became a living, breathing, walking–and in Lila’s case, drawing, painting, getting naked–tragedy.

You can’t help but feel for Lila and all the pain she is forced to endure.  Cohen’s skillful writing paints the scene right before your eyes.  The scene becomes multi-dimensional, you not only picture the setting and the characters but you can genuinely feel the emotion flowing from the pages.

Writing of Lila’s reuniting with her mother:

When a child spends a lifetime, or close to it, waiting for one specific moment, something magical and faraway with the power to set her entire world straight, she imagines that someday from up, down, and sideways…But there’s a fact about someday that you can’t possibly understand until it has settled upon you.  Someday you’ve doomed the moment you wished it into existence.  You’ve already ruined it.  By imagining it even once, you’ve created an expectation someday can’t possibly live up to.

It was hard not to like Lila’s character.  She was extremely strong-willed and did her best to keep control over the havoc that was attempting to take over her life.  The characters of her father and mother were a bit more difficult to like.  Her father seemed stubborn and unreliable while her mother was extremely flighty and self-absorbed.  My favorite character, other than Lila would have to be Kieran, Lila’s young half-sister.  I truly felt for her; she was a child but refused or was unable to behave as one.

I highly recommend reading The Truth About Delilah Blue.  For me, it helped me appreciate what I had growing up, the relationship I had with my parents, and my childhood overall.  It’s the perfect book club read.  In the back of the book, readers can learn more about the author, including a short interview and a list of the author’s favorite female characters in literature.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review this book.  Check out some of the other upcoming stops on this tour:

Monday, June 28th:  Take Me Away

Tuesday, June 29th:  Galleysmith

Wednesday, June 30th:  Write Meg

Thursday, July 1st:  1330v

 Emmy Hamilton is a recent widow; her husband, a soldier, was killed in Afghanistan.  As to be expected, she’s having a difficult time getting over his death.  Her mother, Paige, insists that he would have wanted her to do more with her life other than stay in their small town in Indiana and work at Paige’s bookstore.  She encourages Emmy go to Folly Beach, a sanctuary for many, and buy the small town’s bookstore, Folly’s Finds.

Emmy is reluctant at first; she’s perfectly fine with staying where she is.  However, when her mother buys a box of books from Folly’s Finds, Emmy discovers that several of the books have messages written in them.  She’s always had a special “sense” about certain things, and when she touches a few of the books they send tingles up her spine.

She arrives in Folly Beach and meets Abigail, the current owner, and Abigail’s aunt Lulu.  Lulu is quite the interesting character; she’s not exactly pleased to see Emmy there.  Emmy purchases the bookstore, with the condition that Lulu will be allowed to remain as an employee of Folly’s Finds and continue to sell her very interesting bottle trees.

As she renovates the bookstore, Emmy continues to find old books with messages written in them.  They appear to be love notes written by a young man and woman during World War II. She eventually finds out more about the history of Folly Beach and of the couple who communicated via the old books from an initially reluctant Lulu.  She learns that it wasn’t merely a young love that was kept secret between the pages, she also discovers a possible murder & mysterious disappearance.

Karen White’s writing never ceases to amaze me.  I’ve read all of her previous work and have enjoyed each of them tremendously.  In On Folly Beach, White intricately weaves together two stories of love and loss.  The chapters shift between the 1940s and present day and this is done in a very fluid manner. Each chapter reveals a new piece to the puzzle. I instantly became invested in the storyline and the characters. White added a bit of history and folklore to the story, really enhancing the already powerful story. 

Lulu’s bottle trees intrigued me.  African slaves brought the tradition of the bottle tree to the United States in the 18th century.  The bottles on the trees ward off evil spirits; spirits who get caught in the bottles are unable to escape.  Here is a picture of a bottle tree:

 In the story, a young Lulu also uses the bottle trees to communicate with loved ones who have gone away. 

In case you haven’t realized it yet, I highly recommend these books.  The Southern setting, the mystery, the characters all come together to form a phenomenal read!  Be sure to stop by tomorrow for a guest post by Karen White and a giveaway!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review this book.  Please be sure to check out the other stops on this tour!

Monday, May 3rd: Rundpinne

Tuesday, May 4th: Downtown Southern

Thursday, May 6th: Life in the Thumb

Friday, May 7th: Café of Dreams

Monday, May 10th: Diary of an Eccentric

Tuesday, May 11th: Peeking Between the Pages

Wednesday, May 12th: Write Meg

Thursday, May 13th: Savvy Verse & Wit

Friday, May 14th: Luxury Reading

Monday, May 17th: Lit and Life

Wednesday, May 19th: Books Like Breathing

Thursday, May 20th: Jenn’s Bookshelves

Monday, May 24th: From the Land of Cotton

Tuesday, May 25th: Natalie’s Sentiments

Wednesday, May 26th: A Tale of This Newlywed

Thursday, May 27th: Good Girl Gone Redneck

Friday, May 28th: Flower Patch Farmgirl

Monday, May 31st: Sasha and the Silverfish

Tuesday, June 1st: Red Lady’s Reading Room

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• Review: The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (5)
• Review: Ashes to Water by Irene Ziegler (3)
• Mini-Review: Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (9)
• Guest Post & Giveaway: Karen White, author of On Folly Beach (7)
• A Glimpse Inside Chelsea Cain’s Portland (12)

Sarah Harper works in advertising. She’s working on a project that flaunts images of a scantily-clad woman’s breasts.  When she receives an email that flaunts this part of a woman’s anatomy she does the unthinkable: she forwards the email to her entire company.  Needless to say, the majority of the staff didn’t appreciate the email as much as she did and she’s terminated.

Sarah was planning to go home to Texas and visit her sister Mackie and her husband.  On the plane, she runs into someone she hasn’t seen in over a decade: her high-school boyfriend, Everett. Sarah broke up with Everett when they were teens, breaking his heart.  It’s obvious that Everett has aged well, but he ruins this lovely reunion by making a snarky remark about Sarah’s appearance.  She fumes the rest of the plane ride, desperate to remove herself from Everett’s presence.

When she arrives in Houston, she learns that Mackie’s attempts to become pregnant haven’t been successful.  In a possibly vulnerable moment, she offers to be a surrogate to Mackie and her husband, Clive. Sarah thought this wonderful experience would bring the two sisters together in a wonderful bonding moment, but that’s not exactly the case.  Her return to Houston brings up a whole host of emotions she hasn’t dealt with in years. 

The girls lost their mother to cancer when they were young. You can blame it on the hormones: both girls suddenly begin to realize how much they miss their mother, Sarah in particular.  When her mother passed away, she was forced to abandon the individual she was to become what was expected of her. 

I had no idea that it was my mother who made it possible for me to trip along so unself-aware.  That’s what I lost when I lost her, in addition to the universe of things a girl loses when she loses her mother: I lost hte person who knew me exactly for who I was and adored me anyway.

Sarah begins a mission to understand  just who she really is. Pairing that with being pregnant, the task wasn’t an easy one.

Get Lucky was a powerful and endearing story about the love between sisters and the love of one’s self.  I’ve been a fan of Katherine Center’s work from the start and this book just solidifies my love of her writing. Her characters are dynamic and multi-faceted.  The reader gets to delve inside the mind and heart of each of the main characters.  While each have very obvious and severe flaws, you can’t help but love each and every one of them.  While Get Lucky is considered chick-lit, realize it is much, much more than that. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get angry; it’s definitely a book that packs a punch and stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Alice Kirshall has a storybook life, or so it seems.  Her husband, Alex, a Hollywood entertainment lawyer signs on with a new client, actress Rose Maris. When Alex starts hitting the gym, Alice assumes he’s going through a mid-life crisis and writes it off.  But then he starts working later and later.  The intimacy in their relationship has dwindled down to nothing.

When Alice discovers she is expecting, Alex isn’t as excited as she would have hoped.  He actually begins to ignore her.  A few weeks later she goes  to the hospital due to severe pain and bleeding and Alex is nowhere to be found.  He shows up right as Alice is being carted into surgery for an ectopic pregnancy.  When Alice awakes, Alex is right by her side, crying with guilt.

Alice returns home and is immediately overwhelmed with phone calls.  She assumes the calls are from friends and family members calling to wish her a speedy recovery.  But the calls are coming from the press: a story has appeared in a tabloid, reporting that Alex and Rosie are having an affair.  Suddenly Alice’s storybook life starts to crumble into pieces.  She orders Alex out of the house and is left to deal with their five-old daughter, Gabby, the loss of their unborn child, and the loss of their marriage, alone.

As if all this isn’t enough to drive anyone insane, Alice learns her mother, Mary, is having problems at the home in which she is residing.  Mary has Alzheimers, and has recently begun using foul language that is upsetting the other residents.

Alice must pull herself together and deal with all this chaos in her life.  She, with Gabby in tow, must pick up the pieces of their life and move on.

How to I begin to relay how much I loved this book?  The characters are wonderful, so well-developed and real. Pieces of Happily Ever After is not your typical chick-lit.  The story and the relationships between the characters are so raw and emotional.  You can’t help but be swept up in this story. The emotions you’ll feel while reading range from joy to anger, and from happiness to tears. I loved this one so much I’ve read it twice and that still isn’t enough.  I want to learn more about Alice, what has become of her life.  When the book ended I felt as though I lost a close friend.  I very impatiently await the release of Zutell’s next book, whenever that may be.

Be sure to join the author, Irene Zutell for the final book club discussion for this book tonight from 6 to 10 p.m. EST (so 3 to 7 p.m. on the SheKnows book club message board!

Check out this funny video about Irene’ book, featuring her daughter, the inspiration for the character, Gabby!

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: HCI; Original edition (February 1, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 075731368X
• Source: Publisher

In her debut, Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair, Laurie Perry gave people an inside look at her quirky life as a recently divorced woman.  Now in Home Is Where the Wine Is, it’s the beginning of a new year and Laurie is ready to move on with her life.  She comes up with a list of resolutions for the following year:

1. Explore New Paths to Enlightenment
2. Take an Adventurous Trip
3. Knit Something that Isn’t Square
4. Go On a Real, Live Date
5. Grow A Garden.
6. Deal with My Issues
7. Try Something New (and not just new foods)
8. Do some other form of exercise other than knitting.

Each chapter of the book is then broken down into each of her resolutions. Her lessons on life that she uncovers while completing her resolutions are laugh-out-loud funny!

One of Laurie’s resolutions is to exercise. Following is an excerpt of a scene in which Laurie “responds” to a body’s natural “reaction” to yoga:

I laughed the loud, spontaneous way you do without first wondering if it is appropriate to be laughing.  And as soon as I realized that no, it was really NOT ok to these people (who take yoga very seriously) that I was laughing at  a perfectly natural bodily function, I tried to stop laughing, but I couldn’t.  I was too far gone.  I had become that horrible girl who keeps on trying to be quiet in a serious situation but ends up laughing so hard she’s crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and sides hurting from laughing so hard.  I was that awful, disrespectful girl…I was asked to leave the fancy yoga studio.

Several times throughout the book, I actually forgot I was reading a book!  Laurie’s tone is very conversational, like she’s talking to you directly. You get to experience her true feelings, no some second-hand narrative of her life. And, yes, while the book is absolutely hilarious, it’s also good for the soul. Laurie shows us all how to live our lives at their fullest, and how to have a good time while doing so!

We wake up each day and make it as good as it can be by deciding to see our lives as a continuum, not as a goal or a resolution on a piece of paper. Meet a goal and it’s over, on to the next goal!But a life lived for harmony, for balance, for goofiness, for jokes…that is living. It’s the tiny spaces in between the big goals that let me live…It’s so simple.  It’s not the resolutions, the tidy endings.  It’s all the tangles that make up a life.

As a special bonus, the book is full  of recipes (fried zucchini!) and knitting patterns, including:

* Personal Massager Cozy

* Quick Knit Date-Night Bag

* Felted Wine Bottle Cozy

* Wine Glass Flip-Flop Coaster

* Knitted Swiffer Cover

And, in case you haven’t guessed it by now, I highly recommend this book!  I recommend this book for every woman: a young twenty-something just really entering the dating world as well as a forty-something woman having to face the dating world for the first time in over a decade.  Perry’s writing will speak to every woman.

About Laurie Perry

Laurie Perry knits and writes in Los Angeles, California, where she chronicles her daily life on her online diary, Crazy Aunt Purl. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, MSN.com, Vogue Knitting, the Boston Herald, and The Palm Beach Post. Perry has written for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Winter Haven News Chief in Winter Haven, Florida. She is the author of Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair.

Follow Laurie on Twitter and check out her blog Crazy Aunt Purl.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to participate in this tour!  Please be sure to check out the other tour stops this month:

Monday, February 1st:  She Just Walks Around With It

Tuesday, February 2nd:  Jenn’s Bookshelf

Wednesday, February 3rd:  One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books

Thursday, February 4th:  Diary of an Eccentric

Monday, February 8th:  Knit and Tonic

Tuesday, February 9th:  You’ve GOTTA Read This

Wednesday, February 10th:  A Novel Menagerie

Thursday, February 11th:  Wendy Knits

Tuesday, February 16th:  Luxury Reading

Wednesday, February 17th:  Rundpinne

Thursday, February 18th:  Knitting Knot

Friday, February 19th:  Knit Read Cats Hockey

Monday, February 22nd:  Bookfoolery and Babble

Tuesday, February 23rd:  Booking Mama

Wednesday, February 24th:  Gaysknits…

Thursday, February 25th:  Stumbling Over Chaos

Friday, February 26th:  Tripping Towards Lucidity

On to the giveaway! I have five copies of Home is Where the Wine Is to give away!

This giveaway is open to residents of the US & Canada only.  To be entered, you must complete the form below.  Winner will be announced Monday, February 15th.

 I’m officially resurrecting my dormant Virginia is for…book lovers feature. I have a ton of great authors lined up to feature, but unfortunately sometimes life takes you over!  I promise to make this a monthly feature and give these amazing authors their due!  This month’s featured author is Laurie Brodie, author of  The Widow’s Season.

Paperback: 303 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), June 2009
ISBN: 0425227650
Source: Author

Sarah McConnell is still grieving the death of her husband, David, after losing him nearly three months ago in a flash flood.  His body was never recovered and while Sarah knew there was no way he could have survived the flood, she still needs that physical evidence of his demise before she can truly accept he is gone.

But then one day, she sees him at the grocery store.  She catches his eye but as quickly as he appeared, he is gone.  Reluctantly, she tells her friend Margaret, also a widow. To her surprise, Margaret doesn’t seem appalled by this news. She, too, used to see her husband everwhere after he passed away, nearly five years ago.  But her visions were of men who resembled her husband and obviously not her husband himself.

Margaret recommends that Sarah join her at her next bereavement group meeting.  Talking with other women experiencing the same grief might aid in her healing.  Also aiding her in this recovery process is Nate, her brother-in-law. He drops by and checks in on Sarah on a regular basis.  His resemblance to David is uncanny, almost so similar he could almost be mistaken for his older brother.

Sarah soon discovers that she’s not truly grieving the loss of her husband:

She was morning the loss of an idea, a vision of how her life should have been. And that vision had not been swept down the river three months ago; it had been dying slowly over the past few years, with each small dream that she abandoned.

Sarah had given up bits of herself in the years she was married to David. She dropped everything and moved to Jackson when he was offered a position there. She soon found a part-time job at the local college.

Once they were settled, Sarah and David tried to start a family. Unfortunately, they were unable.  Sarah was in a constant battle with her body, for some reason she was unable to carry a child to term. Sarah was devastated and sunk into a bout of depression.  David was unable to deal with her emotions:

She felt that her miscarriages were tainting his perfect world, a barren wife being the most ancient blight of all, and she sometimes suspected that the acidity of her mind might be poisoning her womb; no life could grow within a body so bitter.  Some nights David would stay at work just to avoid her tone at the dinner table.

So Sarah wasn’t really grieving David, but grieving the life and the family they could have had together.

Sarah joins Margaret for her bereavement group meeting.  She reveals her glimpses of David to the group of widows. Many of the women admit that they too have seen their husbands. Margaret is still hesitant to believe Sarah is actually being haunted by her husband:

…if you are really seeing David, there must be a reason.  Either he is somehow trying to reach you, or you are trying to reach him. Most likely it is the latter.  There’s probably somthing unresolved in your mind.

On Halloween night, David makes another appearance.  This time he doesn’t disappear.  Thinking of Margaret’s statement, she opens the door and invites David inside.

David explains that he was a victim of the flood but he was able to save himself from the raging rapids.  But instead of contacting Sarah and returning to his life, he has an unmistakeable desire to run away. So he continues to hid in their cabin in the woods. Even though he saw Sarah and Margaret arrive at the cabin a week after the flood, he remained hidden.

He invites Sarah to (once again) leave everything behind and come with him to live in the cabin. Sarah is unable to commit to an answer, but begins to visit David at their cabin.

Meanwhile, Nate continues to pay visits to Sarah.  Sarah can’t help to feel alive in his presence. He shows a level of respect and care for her that David was unable to show.  She is torn between the feeling she has when she is with Nate, and the feelings of loyalty she has for David.

Sarah’s decision is made after attending a performance with Nate at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  The lyrics seemed to describe Sarah to a “T”:

I am eager for the pleasures of the flesh

More than for salvation,

My soul is dead,

So I shall look after the flesh…

…The girl without a lover

Misses out on all the pleasures

She keeps the dark night

Hidden

In the depth of her heart;

It is a most bitter fate.

Sarah realizes that she has to make a decision: is she going to live for her dead/undead husband or for once, live for herself?

The Widow’s Season a lot more than what it seems. Reading just the description on the back of the book, it seems to be a ghost story.  But it’s much more.  It is not only a story of a widow’s healing, but also one that details her transformation into a seemingly completely different individual. The years she was with David, it was as if she were a caterpillar and she wasn’t able to fully transform into a butterfly until her feelings about her marriage and David were resolved.

While reading, I didn’t know what to believe.  Was David truly alive or was Sarah just haunted by his ghost? I won’t reveal the answer, but Brodie did an outstanding job of keeping the answer ambiguous.

Brodie’s writing is very emotional and captivating, a very absorbing read.  It’s also a very addictive piece. I couldn’t put it down until I learned the truth behind David’s appearances.  In case you haven’t noticed yet, I highly recommend this one!  It would be the perfect book for a reading group. There are several aspects and issues that can be picked apart and discussed.

About the Author:

I was born in Columbus, Ohio, with the name Laura Ann Fairchild. My earliest memories come from Seattle, Washington, where my family lived in the Magnolia neighborhood near the Puget Sound. I loved the deep, rainy colors of Seattle; one of my dreams is to buy a summer house on the Olympic peninsula.

At age eight, my family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I stayed through high school, spending most of my time writing poetry, playing tennis, and earning money as an amateur violinist. After graduating from Broughton High School in 1982, I went to college at Harvard, and lived in Cabot House with a group of eight talented and diverse women who inspire me to this day. Hello to all my roommates!

My favorite class was a poetry workshop with Seamus Heaney, and I graduated with a degree in English in 1986. While at Harvard, I played violin with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, touring in Russia, Europe and Asia. On an orchestra tour I met my future husband, trumpeter John Brodie. We married after my graduation, and lived in Washington, DC, where I worked on campaign finance reform for Common Cause.

In 1988 we moved to Lexington, VA, so that John could take a job as band director at the Virginia Military Institute. I commuted to Charlottesville to work on a PhD at the University of Virginia, and with the help of a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women and a Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Grant, I wrote a dissertation focused on widows in English literature. Since that time, all of my writing has been tied to women’s studies. My favorite chapter from that dissertation was on husbands who fake their deaths in order to spy on their wives, and that inspired my  novel, The Widow’s Season.

If you are a Virginia author and would like to be showcased in this feature, please contact me at jennsbookshelfATgmailDOTcom or fill out the form on my “Contact Me” page.

Heart Lake is a small, quiet lake-side town.  It seems to be experiencing a bit of growing-pains, however.  Citizens are no longer courteous to one another and it’s beginning to loose its Mayberry feeling.

The three main characters (Jaime, Sarah, and Emma) are local shop owners and close friends.  They decide to come up with a way to bring the “heart” back into Heart Lake.  Each of them decides to do one good deed a day in the hopes that their actions influence those of others, a sort of pay-it-forward campaign.

In the midst of this campaign, each of the main characters are experiencing their own personal drama. 

Jaime, Sarah’s niece, works at the town’s chocolate store.  She moved to Heart Lake to get away from an abusive marriage.  She’s in no rush to get into another relationship.  However, when she crosses the path of Jake Armstrong, a widower raising two young girls, her world is upended.  She’s proud of her independence and doesn’t want to get hurt again. But Jake is hard to resist. 

Sarah is experiencing serious grandchild withdrawl after her daughter’s family moves away.  She’s been a part of their lives since they were born and their absence is noticable.  Her good deed is to provide cooking classes to a handful of the young girls in town.  Her efforts seem to be in vain when one of her students takes advantage of her kindness.

Emma feels like a failure when her beloved quilt shop fails to take off.  She has a handful of customers, including one who always seems to forget her checkbook, and Emma has allowed her to create a pretty hefty tab. Will hard work ever pay off?

 Have you ever picked up a book, start reading it, instantly falling in love with the characters?  That’s what happened when I started reading Angel Lane.  I became wrapped up in the characters lives within the first few pages.  Roberts writes a very inspiring tale of how the actions of three individuals can influence an entire town.  My life has been very hectic for the past few weeks, but the citizens of Heart Lake provided me with a bit of peace.  And I’d be remiss not to mention the delicous recipes listed at the end of the book. I will definitely be trying out a number of them, specifically the one for pumpkin cookies!

I don’t like to compare one author’s writing to another’s, but I can’t help but notice a similarity between Roberts’ writing with that of Debbie Macomber.  Both women write inspiring tales revolving around a small-town community. Each have endearing characters that you can’t help but fall in love with.

If you are looking for a relaxing, easy read, then Angel Lane is the book for you. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I miss the characters. They really became part of my life. They’ve inspired me to pay-it-forward as well. I do hope the author has a sequel or a follow-up planned in the near future!

Thank you to Pump Up Your Book Promotion for giving me the opportunity to take part in this tour!