The Sugar Queen

The Sugar Queen, Sarah Addison Allen

Josey Cirrini has lived in this small ski town her entire life.  At 27, she lives at home with her mother and takes care of her, driving her to meetings, picking up groceries, and being her companion.  It's a dull life, and her mother is not nice.  The highlight of her day is when the mail is delivered, and she rushes down to have a two sentence conversation with the mailman.

To cope, Josey keeps a stash of snacks and romance novels in her closet.  But one day she opens it to find a stowaway, Della Lee Baker, the town vagrant, is squatting there hiding from her life.

This starts off a series of events that pushes Josey out of her comfort zone, away from her steady, boring and meanial life of servitude to her mother, and into her own.

I loved this book.  Josey is loveable and relateable and the little side mystery keeps things moving.  The chapters all being named after sweets was very cute, and like Allen's last novel, the magic is all here.

Chloe becomes Josey's first friend.  Chloe has this wonderful little habit that books appear before her whenever she is in need of them.  As a child, bored over the summer, a book of magic tricks and card games appeared at her feet.  As an adult, dealing with a cheating boyfriend, the book Finding Forgiveness haunts her as she sorts it all out.

It was endearing.  I liked it a lot and the twist at the end ... I should have seen coming, but I didn't.  Which that moment when you go, "Oh my gosh I should have known!" is just awesome.  I can't wait for Allen's next book, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, next March!

My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

Katie is 2 years old when she is diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia.  The doctor informs her parents that she will need a bone marrow transplant in order to surivive for even a few months or years, and neither her parents nor her brother is a perfect match.

The doctor tells her parents not to despair, that perhaps other siblings will be a match.

This sends Sara and Brian (Kate's parents) to a clinic to genetically engineer a perfect match for Kate.  Months later, Anna is born.

Fast foward 13 years and Kate is 16 and Anna is 13.  After all the treatments, Kate's kidney's are giving out and she needs a transplant.  After years of transplants, transfusions, and donations, Anna is expected to participate in this procedure to.  She surprises them all by hiring a lawyer, and filing for medical emancipation from her parents for the rights to her own body.

I have stayed away from Jodi Picoult because of the smaltzy titles and high drama themes.  But she is a favorite author of a good friend of mine, and this book in particular has intrigued me.  So I picked it up.  Dialogue, characters and side stories all aside ... this book really made me question what I would do.  What anyone would do.  Because honestly ... how far would you go to save your child?

It is very easy to judge Sara.  To say she's a monster for treating Ana and Jesse (her oldest son) this way; for abandoning and neglecting them to care for Kate.  But the world isn't fair.  And when one child requires 1000% more attention than the others ... how do you manage?  What do you do?  And when one child  can save the other ... don't you persue it?

One thing bothered me about this book ... the absence of religion.  I got the impression by a few flippant comments that were made that Picoult doesn't set a lot of store by religion.  But at a few points (maybe only two) characters say to Kate, "you'll watch us from Heaven," "We'll see you in Heaven," etc.  It felt like the author was picking and choosing which parts of religion she favored.

And really, she uses astrology in place of religion.  The stars as a substitute for scripture.

It wasn't bad or great.  It just was.

I've read many reviews that feel the ending of this book was a major cop out.  It didn't bother me in that way.  It was just the way these characters story ended.  I won't go further than that as I don't want to spoil it.

I can't say I enjoyed this, but I am glad I read it.  One of the best lines of the novel is this:

I realize then that we never have children, we receive them.  And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped.  But it is still far better than never having had those children at all. Pg 395.

I really got to thinking about some pretty serious stuff after reading this novel, and how much we all take for granted.  For that reason alone it's worth the read.  The fact that Picoult's a decent writer doesn't hurt either.

Bitsy's Bait and BBQ

Bitsy's Bait and BBQ, Pamela Morsi

Emma and Katy and Katy's son Josh, are driving into the Ozarks to look at a Bed and Breakfast that Emma just purchased with her divorce settlement.  On eBay.  Turns out, B&B has different meanings, the girls find themselves learning about spinners, lures and smokers.

Several months in, just as they are getting settled in, Katy's mamma's boy ex-husband and mother-in-law show up wanting to take custody of 5-year-old Josh.

The usual is what happens, I guess.  The rich, urban, socialite Mom thinks Katy is down home trash and not good enough for her son.  She also happens to think her son isn't good enough to be her son, and sees a second chance in trying to raise her grandson.

Emma is the overprotective older sister who thinks the rich-boy Sean (ex-husband) isn't good enough for her sister, whom she secretly sort of resents because she's always making sacrifices for her.

The rest of the characters - the people who live in Warbler Lake - are brilliant.  And the stuff about fishing and barbecue was a lot of fun and made the other formulaic stuff tolerable.  The romance between Sean and Katy sort of felt contrived, and the last "epilogue" chapter was a hodge podge wrap up that I skimmed through.

Nadine and her three kids were more interesting than either of the two main characters, and I would have liked to see or hear more about her and how she resolved things.  In truth, I think the novel spent more time on backstory for the interesting side characters than it did the two leads.  Which maybe is a bit backwards?

Any who.  I liked it.  It's not really Southern but its very Fannie Flagg.  It was fun to read about the fishing and bbq, and some of it was realy brilliant.

Seducing an Angel

Seducing an Angel, Mary Balogh

I have a guilty pleasure.  I read romance novels.  I know, I know.

I'm not going into detail here, because ... well it's a romance novel and it's not winning any awards any time soon (except maybe romance novel awards, which there are bunches of, I know).

But this little series set in Regency London is really quite fun.  It's a whole bunch of recurring characters (my favorite thing) and this is the 4th book.  Not my favorite one in the series, the first one may well be the best.

I have high hopes for the 5th one ... the cousins story.  But her website is wierd on when that one is due out.

With everyone married, and my traveling done, I am hoping to read some more in the last few days of July than I did in the mid days of July.  But if you look romance novels, specifically those with recurring characters where a whole family gets a happy ever after complete with 2.5 kids ... this series is the one for you!

Blue Moon

Blue Moon, Alyson Noel

It's three weeks after we last left Ever and Damen in Evermore, and Ever has decided that she will become an Immortal and spend eternity with Damen.  He's teaching her how to use her powers and blend in, when at school there's a new student, and suddenly Damen  isn't the same, and the whole school turns on her.

Ever goes to Summerland seeking answers to set things back right and is shown a way to save her parents and sister from the horrible crash the year or so before.  She'd lose Damen, but her family would be alive.

I liked this one.  It was an interesting story that kept me wondering what the heck she was going to do.  Parts of it dragged (descriptions of Summerland.  I get it. It's perfect.) and I couldn't understand why she would trust Roman and Ava.  I never trusted either one of them.  Especially after Ava's behavior in Summerland.  So some character inconsistencies maybe?  Or plot twists?  You decide.

And since the comparison is completely unavoidable, let me tell you something I discovered about this and the entire series while reading; I would let my daughters read this book before I let them read New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.

Why?  Because in New Moon, Bella goes apocolyptic over a boy.  Granted, it's a fairy tale and she's like the princess locked in the tower because her one true love abandoned her, but it's a bit too dramatic for any teenage daughter of mine.  Mine specifically.  Because she will definitely have moody, dramatic tendencies, and come by it naturally, because she's mine.

The other three Twilight novels, I'm okay with.  They have their own issues, don't get me wrong, but New Moon in particular worries me.

Anyway I digress.  But in Alyson Noel's novels, not only is sex only alluded to and the word never said (I think virginity was used once), but Ever has a life that involves more than Damen.  And yeah she loves him and he's her true love, but she has Haven and Miles, and Sabine, and her family, school, etc, and what it means to lose all of that for Damen and vice versa.

The question itself is dramatic, I know, but at least it's more normal than the year of sadness in New Moon.  That is a book that would require some serious conversations between me and any child of mine that read it.  Because the concept of doing scary things to move on from a love is really not that uncommon, and really dangerous for a teenage kid to read and have to contemplate without, ya know, adult supervision.

Back to Blue Moon.  It's YA, and distinctly different from it's unavoidable comparison cousin Twilight, and a series in a way that Twilight is more of a ... saga.  Hahaha, see what I did there?  I make myself laugh.

I liked it enough to think that waiting till January to find out how Ever deals with the revelations in this one is just mean.  Noel commented recently that Shadowlands went into editing just this month so I guess it takes 6 months to edit something into publication.  I'll be buying the next one.  It's worth reading if you liked Twilight and are into the whole teenage angst, love triangle, supernatural stuff.  And I am, at least perhiperhally.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling

As I said in a previous post, I read this novel in July of 2005 the week that it came out.  And I remember that after the somewhat (IMO) disjointed and frazzled Order of the Phoenix, that this book was much more structured and orderly plot wise and made much more sense.

And was intensely hard to read.  Well, not all of it, just the last three chapters.

Harry Potter is now in his 6th year at Hogwarts and as he arrives, Professor Dumbledore, still Headmaster at Hogwarts, has invited him to private lessons so that Harry may learn more about the Dark Lord and the prophecy that he was after in OotP.

In these lessons, Harry glimpses the past and Lord Voldomort's early years, and what his overall plan may be.  These educational classes show Voldy's parents, his upbringing in the orphanage, and his attempts to get a position at Hogwarts.  Through these trips into the Pensieve, Harry and Dumbledore see and guess / estimate at how best to vanquish him (to borrow a word from Charmed!).

There's so much going on in this novel, all of it wonderful, that you should just really read it for yourself.  I love these books and every time I visit them I laugh and remember how wonderful they are and why I love them.  It's the ultimate in comfort reading.

I'm excited about the movie coming out next week, and I've seen some reviews so far (I haven't read them!  I just saw headlines!) and they say things like best HP yet.

I can't wait.  The entire series should be read.  But don't take my word for it, I'm Dumbledore's man, through and through.

Scene from Harry Potter and HBP

This scene is actually pretty close to how it happens in the book! (I know, I just looked it up again, and I just read it yesterday!) But ... WHO is that person sitting on the stairs with the dark hair? Is that meant to be Tonks?

But ... this makes me happy on a couple of levels.  Because in the trailer when Lupin says "Draco Malfoy was been given the task by the Dark Lord" that irked me because we do not learn that until the very end, and Lupin most certainly didn't tell anyone that.  But this scene clears that up nicely.  He's mimicking back Harry's theory to Harry.  So all is well with the world.

So excited about the movie folks ... so excited. Can't wait for next Wednesday! I will forever associate Megan's wedding with "the week HBP came out in theaters!"

Which ... and this is sort of sad really. Because my Grandfather died on July 14, 2005, three days before the book came out. And his funeral is tied to that book for me too. Not in any real important way ... just that my Dad went to the book store at midnight to pick up our books and then flew to Kansas the next day and was irritated that he stayed up so late to get them when they were all OVER the place at the airport.

And then we all sort of peripherally glanced at our books during that weekend.  I read mine at home, in my bedroom, and I remember during the final fight scenes I was leaning over my book hitting my fists into the bed.  And then I cried.

HP and tDH was released in paperback on Tuesday so I have my complete set of those FINALLY. My husband thinks it's a tad ridiculous that I have three sets of these things but I couldn't NOT have the final one in paperback. I mean really.

And you know, DH is the only one I haven't re-read. I've read HBP like 3 times (this is my 4th) and the others I've lost track. The one I've probably re-read the least (aside from DH of course) is OotP.

But as I approach page 600 of HBP I'm stealing myself up for the end. I will cry. Big horrible tears.

Excited for the movie!  I really love this book.