Book Review: Late Summer

The Expats by Chris Pavone- Although The Expats is a spy novel, and I’ve never liked spy novels, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it, possibly because Kate Moore, the female protagonist, is a CIA agent turned stay-at-home mom which maybe I found more relatable than a James Bond-y sort of book.  Kate and her husband and sons live in Washington DC where she works secretly (even her husband doesn’t know) as a CIA agent.  When her husband gets a dream job opportunity, she decides to chuck it all and move with him to Luxembourg and become a boring old (her words, not mine) stay-at-home mom.  Of course, once there, strange things begin to happen and she finds herself embroiled in an international affair.  I found the book hard to put down, even though I was a little annoyed by the author’s trudging around in the middle of not-much a lot of the time, as  Kate does a lot of soul searching and self-questioning and second guessing (of both her choices to be a boring stay-at-home mom and the strange goings-on).  I gave Dave this one to read and he liked it too.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen-I really like Anna Quindlen’s novels (remember Every Last One??),but this was a memoir and not too interesting at that.   I don’t have too much to say about it.  Except maybe bleh.

 

 

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson- I bought this one from Amazon a few months ago (I couldn’t find it in the library) and had been squirreling it away since then just for my beach vacation, and I loved it and it was totally worth the wait!  Jenny Lawson, otherwise known as The Bloggess, is a well known blogger (though I don’t follow her over on the right) who wrote the famous “Metal Chicken” blogpost that went viral a few months ago.  I’ve hyperlinked it in that last sentence, make sure you go read it if you haven’t already!  Anywho, now she wrote a book and that book is laugh out loud FABULOUS!  Unfortunately, Lawson makes good and abundant use of the F Word and is not afraid to talk about her ladyparts, so if you are easily offended you may not want to read either the book or the link.  If you do want to read this hilarious book, and I hope you do, see me, you can borrow it.

 

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert-This was the latest choice for my book club, and I was less than thrilled when I found out it was about lepers in Hawaii. Apparently, back in the late 1800’s, when Hawaii still had a king, and when foreigners were just beginning to travel to Hawaii, the new people brought with them a ton of illnesses and diseases to which the isolated Hawaiians had never built up an immunity.  One of these sicknesses was leprosy, and so many Hawaiians became ill, disfigured, and died, that anyone found to have leprosy was quarantined on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i.  Written as historical fiction, the 5 year old protagonist, Rachel Kalama, contracts the illness and is cruelly wrenched away from her family and taken to Moloka’i. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it?  But I LOVED this book!   First of all, I learned so much about Hawaii’s history, and I really loved Rachel’s character. There are some Hawaiian words thrown in here and there and someone at book club told us the trick is to pronounce each and every vowel in them, if that helps you!  Be careful that you order/borrow the correct book.  There is another book out there called Moloka’i about the same subject, and I don’t know if it’s any good. Read the one by Alan Brennert!

The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner-  Weiner has written another mediocre book.  I don’t know what has happened but I’ve sludged my way through her last two or three books which were all a far cry from her early novels like Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Goodnight Nobody (my personal favorite).  In this novel, Ruth and her grandma move to Hollywood so Ruth can pursue a writing career there.  At one point early in the novel, her script for a television show is picked up and the rest of the book is either flashback/history of Ruth or how Ruth makes her script into a tv show.  It was interesting reading about how a tv show is made, but I never really connected with Ruth and had to force myself to read this instead of just go to sleep every night.

I hope you’ve found something good to read! 

Happy Back-to School today!!!  Woo-hoo!