Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. 

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

What can I say? I absolutely loved this book! Moriarty keeps the reader engrossed with her effortless prose and gossipy passages that introduce the reader to more characters and provide just enough foreshadowing to keep them intrigued. And it is so believable! She then takes the reader back in time to sort out all of the incidents which lead up to the big event—the murder. The witnesses’ descriptions of what exactly happened on the Trivia Night are amazingly comedic and distorted. There are three sides to every story; mine, yours, and the truth.

The characters are so varied and layered—Moriarty encompasses all types of mums and personalities. Many of these characters exhibit the type of schoolyard behaviours other characters' children are accused of (cruelty and bullying). Each character is also hiding something be it a personality trait, or a deeper, darker secret.

I highly recommend this book—a really fun read!

Adultery by Paul Coelho

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

I'm so torn...I wanted to love the book, I really did! There’s no doubt that Coelho is a fantastic writer, after all he does write poetry. However, I think this novel was a bit of a struggle. Was this done on purpose because the main character, Linda, a thirty-something journalist/mother/wife is struggling? Linda is going through her own crisis (albeit self inflicted). From the outside looking in, she has everything - she is married to a man who adores her (the "husband" as he's referred to in the whole book), a job where she is respected, money, a fabulous home, yet is not happy and feels that she is in a downward spiral.

Having interviewed a writer who talked about the meaning of life, Linda becomes manic in her efforts to find her own purpose and self-diagnosis. She treats what she thinks may be depression with a relationship (if you can classify it as such) with an old flame, Jacob, who is now a politician and known for his infidelity. Linda thinks this new found fling is just what she needs because it is giving her purpose and is thrilling because it is so out of character. Speaking of out of character, I think what she was planning to do to Jacob's wife was far fetched.

Another problem is that none of the characters were particularly likeable, especially Linda and Jacob. I thought this book would have been more interesting had it been penned from Jacob's wife.

The location seems to be of importance, it is mentioned several times and almost becomes like a character. Perhaps symbolic of the put-together, perfect world of Linda?

The novel is entirely written in first person and I think this did a disservice to the story. There was so much more to tell, I felt that Coelho only scratched the surface.

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

A Stolen Life was such a hard book for me to not only to read because of the subject matter, but to rate. I really wanted to give her 5 stars - for a victim to be able to come forward and tell her story is so courageous, but I just couldn’t get past the writing. Her voice in the story was so childish and I don’t know if this was done on purpose to project how innocent she was, or because of the fact that she only had a grade 5 education, but it was very distracting for the reader. There were narratives that contained vocabulary well above what the average reader would encounter and I felt like her editor actually did the book a disservice by introducing these words that clearly are not the authors. There were also many inconsistencies with tense and timelines that were confusing when going from past to present so frequently in such a short book. 

This book is an astonishing account of a shocking act of cruelty and violence to a child/young woman. The fact that she remained and continues to remain so positive after everything that happened to her is a testament to the human spirit and is incredibly moving.

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour was just okay for me. I wasn't laughing out loud like other reviewers, perhaps it was the genre that didn't appeal to me. Nonetheless, I found the subject matter interesting, we live in a time where the social media drives our identity and the internet responsible for our thought process (Wikipedia is a credible source, really?). I'm sure this book I'm sure will strike a chord with many readers.

Paul O'Rourke is the novel's first person narrator. Is he unlikable? For me, yes. He's a bit on the dull side, and I couldn't really relate to him or buy into his character. But was that the point, to come up with a character that was so self-absorbed and uninteresting that becomes a target for identity theft when he really doesn't have much of one? The most interesting part of the story for me was how Paul is so intrigued by himself, or who he is perceived to be. Ferris really does well with this angle.

The ending left me wanting. Again, why did this man choose Paul to impersonate, he's not even interesting? The book ends rather abruptly even though Paul seems better off for what he has experienced. All-in-all, the book left me flat.

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The Glass Kitchen: A Novel of Sisters by Linda Francis Lee

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan... and never cook again. 

But when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise two daughters on his own. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from. What seems so simple on the surface is anything but when long-held secrets are revealed, rivalries exposed, and the promise of new love stirs to life like chocolate mixing with cream. 

The Glass Kitchen is a delicious novel, a tempestuous story of a woman washed up on the shores of Manhattan who discovers that a kitchen—like an island—can be a refuge, if only she has the courage to give in to the pull of love, the power of forgiveness, and accept the complications of what it means to be family.

Charming! This story was as delightful as the recipe, a very fun read. I adored the sisters, their names, and their personalities. I loved how New York City became almost another character, the setting really worked for me however, I didn't care for the repetitive mention that the sisters were from Texas...

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LINDA FRANCIS LEE began her writing career in college where she published her first article. She has since written more than twenty books that are published in sixteen countries.

Lee is a native Texan now living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

A special thank you to Goodreads First Reads for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars! I forgot how delightful this series is. After reading Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie I remembered thinking that I needed to get my hands on the next book as I was so enchanted by the 11-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce. Flavia is a brilliant and unique child, absolutely charming—Bradley does a great job with her voice.

Flavia is quite the detective, and Bradley brings a fresh approach to the classic mystery—again, this is done through Flavia's narrative and his spot-on writing.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag works as a sequel to the earlier book rather than as a stand-alone novel; readers may not get the family dynamics and Flavia's quirky love of all things poisonous. Bradley walks a fine line with Flavia's precocity and childishness. She seems to be so intellectually advanced, yet stunted emotionally. I think this is what makes her such a successful sleuth and I cannot wait to see where Bradley takes her in the next installment.

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ALAN BRADLEY is a New York Times bestselling author. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Winn Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. 

Bradley was born in Toronto and lives in Vancouver.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Heartbreaking. 

I could only skim this book and am at a loss at how to rate it given the disturbing subject matter.  Therefore, I will score based on the writing versus the content. 4/5 stars as the author was compelling, articulate, and well-researched.

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DAVE CULLEN is the author of the New York Times bestseller Columbine, a haunting portrait of two killers and their victims. He has written for New York Times, Newsweek, Times of London, Washington Post, Slate, Salon, Daily Beast, and Guardian. Cullen spent ten years writing and researching Columbine.

A Gift for My Sister: A Novel by Ann Pearlman

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

Ann Pearlman writes about female friendships and relationships.

A Gift for My Sister is the second book in the Christmas Cookie Club series. In this book she explores the depth of the human heart through a sister relationship.  Tara and Sky share a mother, but other than that, they seem to have little else in common.

When a series of tragic events take place, the sisters must come together and face heartbreak and past demons. The journey they embark on forces each woman to walk in the other’s shoes and examine what sisterhood actually means to them.  The two women must navigate through tragedy and chart a course for their relationship since it is unknown territory for both.

Although the book was an easy read, it still manages to keep the reader's interest. Pearlman tells the story through both sister's perspective and creates a unique voice for each character. At first, Tara seems to cry out for attention and almost becomes a stereotype while Sky, unlikable at times, is Tara's opposite. Pearlman's character juxtaposition is interesting in that it creates a whole—there is almost a yin and yang effect—while examining another kind of female relationship, the one between sisters.

The recipes at the end were a nice touch.

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ANN PEARLMAN is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Nominee and bestselling international writer.  She is the author of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, cookbook and illustrated short stories.

She lives in a forest near Ann Arbor, Michigan.