Aladdin’s Samovar

Genies are way cooler than vampires and a whole lot more fun.

Amber finds a genie named Jasper standing in front of her fireplace having just extricated himself from the samovar on her mantle. Think about that for a second. The book is full of stuff like that. Things go downhill from there in a hurry. Many of the world’s best comedians say that comedy is the hardest art form. Lauren Sweet has made it look easy. The book is funny throughout. She makes some of the jokes pay multiple times without their seeming tired. I laughed on almost every page. Some of the jokes work on multiple levels and pay on all of them.

The plot holds together well and I give it 4 ½ stars. The half star has to do with the number of times I thought “Tell me she’s not going there,” and she went there anyway. There were totally predictable parts and lots of surprises. It almost all worked. The bits that didn’t really didn’t matter.

I give five stars on characters. All the major characters are well thought out and intriguingly complex. Amber is the deepest with her conflicted emotions and shattered sense of reality. Jasper is nicely done as well. Indigo verges on stereotype, but she pulls away from the precipice in just the right level of insanity. Even the minor characters are clearly defined. To reveal any more would spoil the fun.

Style is four stars. Lauren has a habit of lumping action and dialogue together in the same paragraph. I find that confusing and sometimes it is hard to follow who is speaking. So, folks, I have just said the worst thing I can say about this book. How big a deal is that? Not very. If I were not also a writer, I probably would not have cared, but they asked my opinion, so there.

So the worst things I can say about this book are its paragraphs and its occasional obvious entanglements. For me that is high praise. I loved this book and recommend with only one caution. Do not drink coffee or tea while reading it. You will embarrass yourself.

My favorite quotes are at the end of the book, but to put them in the review would spoil the fun. Here is one from early on. Amber’s mother, Indigo, meets Jasper the Genie for the first time immediately after Amber has rescued Indigo from the police or the police from Indigo depending on your point of view.

“Stop cooking,” Amber said. Her stomach growled. Jasper remained focused on the gravy, though she thought she saw his lips twitch. “You have to get back in your samovar before someone sees you.” There were assorted thumps from the front stoop, and the doorknob rattled. “Right now!”

Jasper added flour and stirred. “I can’t go back in the samovar until you make a wish. I have to service you.”

“Service me?” Amber repeated, sure she had heard wrong. Her mind skittered off into various scenarios involving sculpted abs, adult themes and questions of whether genies were anatomically correct.

As if his clothes could read her mind, Jasper’s outfit suddenly grew smaller…and smaller… Amber watched in horrified fascination as it morphed into a stripper version of a tuxedo: jacket, bow tie, and thong. Yeeps. Amber thought she might be getting heart palpitations. She backed up another step. “Did you say service me?”

Jasper gave the gravy another stir and turned back toward Amber. She found herself staring at the front of his thong, which sported a red satin heart. Hot flash. Amber dragged her eyes to his face. “Oops,” he said, all innocence. “I meant ‘serve.’ My bad.”

“I don’t want you to service—uh—serve me!” Amber managed to squeak the words out while trying to find somewhere to look that wasn’t a satin thong pouch or nearly naked genie flesh. This was definitely not in the fairy tales. “My mother’s here, for God’s sake!” The doorbell rang. Impatiently.

“Excellent,” Jasper said. “We can ask her what she thinks you should wish.”

Not in a million years. Amber probably couldn’t even imagine the things Indigo would want her to wish for. Strike that. She’d just imagined a number of the things Indigo would want her to wish for. “Oh, no you don’t,” Amber said. “Serve—later. Go—now!” She pointed towards the dining room and the samovar.

“Can’t. That’s not the way it works.” Jasper half-turned, giving the gravy another quick stir. Then he leaned forward and raised the spoon to her lips. “Taste that.” She tasted automatically, realized that she was submitting to this ridiculous farce, and batted the spoon away. He tasted it himself, with a considering frown. “A little more salt, I think.”

“Go!”

Jasper put the spoon down. “Make your wish.”

“I’m not ready!” There was no way she could think under this kind of stress.

He shrugged. “Then I have to stay in your home and serve—” he drew out the word, silently adding the final syllable to turn it into ‘service’—“until you are.”

Amber stared at his lips, so mesmerized she didn’t hear the footsteps in the foyer until it was too late. She whirled around. Indigo was standing in the kitchen doorway, spangled caftan waving in the breeze from the front door, her hair wisping out like an aureole around her head. Of course. Why should a mere locked door stop the Mistress of the Universe? Indigo’s hands were clasped ecstatically to her breast, and she was gazing past Amber at Jasper, her mouth pursed in the same round ‘o’ of surprise and pleasure as when she first saw Amber at the police station.

Amber’s two worlds of insanity collided in her brain, causing synapse overload. She just kept looking from Spangly Mom to Stripper Genie and back again, mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out. How did one explain? Where did one start?

Indigo bravely stepped into the conversational breach. “A friend of Amber’s!” she exclaimed. “And a pot roast!”

Lauren will later make the “serve – service” pun work with a reference to the science fiction classic “Serving Man” in much the same fashion as she gets lots of mileage out of all the jokes.

And when was the last time you heard a vampire or a genie for that matter say “My bad.” And mean it?

I enjoyed the book. It is suitable for high school, but it is targeted at the mainstream adult reader. Read it on the airplane so everyone will wonder what’s so funny.

On a final note, I am so over vampires and it is nice to see the Genie angle work so well. In another era, this is what Barbara Eden should have been.

ABOUT:

When Grant’s ex-girlfriend, Emily, found herself homeless, he felt compelled to take her in. Since they shared so much in common, it seemed only natural that he would develop feelings for her again. His life, like hers, lacked a foundation: his beliefs were mixed up; he had no contact with his family; and he had no clear direction. If anything was sustaining him, it had to be the shelter. In dogs, Grant recognized an extraordinary irony. As far as animals go, dogs are the perfect conductor of unconditional love, and yet they are reliant on fate as to whether or not that love ever finds an object. By advocating for lonely dogs, Grant is able to find a renewed sense of purpose. The job, however, comes with a heavy emotional toll that is preventing his relationship with Emily from blossoming into something more. With Emily threatening to leave and the demands of his job catching up to him, Grant knows the choices he makes during this period of transition will have lifelong implications.

REVIEW:

Being a dog lover and owner myself, I had high hopes for Joel Robitaille’s book, A Dog’s Religion. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story with its lead character working in an animal shelter which provides a catalyst for his outlook on life, while outside the shelter we become wrapped up in his personal life involving girlfriends and various other pals.

Grant, our central character, dropped out of seminary school and is finding meaning in his life by working at a local dog shelter. Grant’s philosophy about dogs quickly captures your attention with lines like this:

Working at the animal shelter has afforded me two observations: a dog without a master has no religion; and there is no sin more punishable in this world than failure to find love.

…and this…

The injustice is that a dog—the conceptual embodiment of innocence and loyalty—should never end up a casualty of human conflict. Their whole lives are like a suspended childhood; that’s to say, very few dogs get to depend on their own devices.

…and even this…

If dogs end up in pounds and shelters because of rejection, what is it that provides them with acceptance? If they are not adopted, it’s truly the people who care for them that decide whether the rejection in their lives is exaggerated or whether acceptance is proffered.

Unfortunately, Grant is also having girl troubles.  Let’s just say there’s a reason they say a dog is man’s best friend. Grant is having a sexual relationship with Megan, but he does not approve of her casual drug use so he can’t see himself having a serious relationship with her. Meanwhile, Emily is living with Grant but encouraging him to have an open relationship and see other people because she’s not ready for a sexual relationship with Grant despite the fact that they sleep in the same bed.

If you think that sounds a bit odd, there’s a whole array of characters coming and going which each have their own eccentricities as well. We meet another volunteer at the shelter who Grant and his friend nickname Gizzer. There’s Tamer, the ladies man who owns a pizza parlor. Two pastors, one of which used to be Grant’s best friend until he slept with Emily. And later, a red headed bear of a man named Brad who Grant befriends at a hospital one night, and who has a strange fascination with porn. Grant’s rocky relationship with his parents also provides a brief and disturbing plot line.

The story is driven mostly by intellectually strained banter between the characters as Grant seeks advice from his friends on his love life. Most of it reads like drunken fodder that was intended to be a screen play written back during someone’s college days. When I wasn’t asking myself, “Do people this age really talk like this?”, I wanted to rip into the story and punch them all hard in the face.

Outside of the shelter, Grant comes off as a whiny preachy 30-something who can’t get laid. When he and Emily actually become engaged, even though they haven’t had sex, I shook my head in disbelief but kept reading because I wanted to see what train wreck lay ahead for him.  And let’s just say I wasn’t disappointed.

When things at the shelter don’t go well, the book loses its focus on dogs and dives even deeper into the odd relationship between Emily and Grant. Secrets are exposed. Words are exchanged. And if this was a new Fall mini series, it’d be canceled after the first season and fans would be outraged.  Anyone remember “October Road?”

The book is written well and contains minor editing mistakes, mostly missing words. I was totally enamored by Grant’s psychology on dogs and their shelter hierarchy.  There’s a scene where Grant struggles to put a dog to sleep that will definitely pull at your heart strings.  But such as it is in real life, I really got tired of hearing about this guy’s girlfriend troubles.

Synopsis:

At thirty-two, newspaper reporter Molly Hacker vows to never attend another wedding until she has had her own. And that’s a problem because Molly’s younger sister, Hannah, is going to be married in one year. Armed with snark, wit, and fabulous good looks, “Picky Molly” embarks on a quest to find Mr. Right in her hometown, Swansea, an elegant bedroom community of NYC.

Things get complicated fast. In no time at all, Molly has four “men of interest” and the memories of a lost love to send her overanalytic, befuddled mind into serious overdrive. Determined not to let her “helpful” girlfriends help her right out of another relationship, Molly tries to keep mum on the state of her love life. Her BFF male coworker, Randy, becomes her closest confidant as he stumbles over romantic issues with his new Mr. Right, Kyle. Meanwhile, Molly’s BFF gal pals aren’t too happy about being left out of the loop.

Tweaking Molly’s last nerve is the town’s most visible socialite, Naomi Hall-Benchley. For self-serving reasons, Naomi is hell-bent on setting up “Picky Molly Hacker,” and she doesn’t care who she has to manipulate or hurt to do it. Just how far will she go?

“Molly Hacker Is Too Picky!” takes the reader on a yearlong romp through Molly’s mind and a joyride through her life. Her dating life, town secrets, a group of quirky, crazy characters, and Naomi’s machinations collide head-on at a holiday gala that will change the social landscape of Swansea forever. As the New Year rolls in, Molly gets earth-shattering news. Can she go on? Will life ever return to abnormal again?

Review:

I loved this book. I tried to think of another way to start this review, but that is the overwhelming thing that comes to mind. Reading Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! is like getting together with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while and catching up on all that has happened in her life during the past year. You know the experience… two friends sitting down over coffee, refilling cups a few times, but then ultimately gabbing as the coffee turns stone-cold. People nearby are muttering because you’ve held down the best table in the joint for hours and show NO signs of moving on. And when you pull out your phone as the conversation winds down, you’re shocked to find that so much time has passed, I mean, really, you only started talking half an hour ago, right?

Molly Hacker, reporter for the Swansea Herald, is very single when the book opens, attending a wedding with her best-friend Tony whom she has always been in love with, but he happens to be married to his high school sweetheart. She is still trying to get over a broken heart from her last relationship with Leo, but is having a difficult time with it. And friends, family, and enemies are NOT helping. In fact, the helping hand of friends, while not responsible for the end of her last relationship, gave it a good shove in that direction. But with her nemesis, Naomi Hall-Benchley, Molly’s single status is a challenge, and she considers Molly’s say in the matter immaterial. As we romp through this romantic comedy, Molly winds up juggling no less than four men, in the small community of Swansea where everybody knows everybody else’s business and considers it their own. That’s not a feat most women (or men) could pull off. *Whispers* And Molly is no different.

Maybe one of the reasons I connected so well with this book is that like Molly Hacker, I took my time to find the right guy. Before I took the trip down matrimony lane, I wanted someone I fully connected with, someone who wasn’t second-best or settled for. Because I knew that was a recipe for a quick trip through divorce court. I also had the pressure from friends and family (although thankfully none from my mother) about when I’d finally settle down. And like Molly, I didn’t give my heart easily, but when I did, it was completely.

Brodey does a fantastic job with the characters, even down to Molly’s cat, Captain Jack. I expected no less because last year I read, Squalor New Mexico, and thoroughly enjoyed Brodey’s character development in that book. Randy was an instant fave and the banter between him and Molly is priceless. The only one who borders on caricature is Naomi Hall-Benchley, and it works and I believe is deliberate… and haven’t we all had a Naomi in our life in one way or another?

My life has been in hyper-busy mode of late, and there appears to be no end in sight on the to-do list, so I thought I’d read Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! a chapter a night before going to sleep. Yes, it’d take me longer to read, but at least I’d feel like I made progress with it since it is something I have been wanting to read prior to its release. Well, as things go, one chapter turned into two, and two into three, and so on. Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! cost me some precious hours of sleep, but it was well worth the resultant bags under the eyes. And before I conclude and tell you that you’ll be missing out on a great romantic comedy if you skip this one, Molly has been blogging for the past year on her website and the posts are just as charming and engaging as the book, with illustrations created for each post. It is well worth a read and a comment or two. Stop by and check it out. And below is Molly as she raps about her experiences. So??? What are you waiting for? Pick up a copy of Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! or put it on your to-be-read list today.

Though I am a gay male and admit I have never read any lesbian erotica, I was more than willing to give Ms. West’s short story “Night Train To Florence” a try after having read her novel The Leaving just a few months ago. West wrote it with pure perfection when it came to good story telling and strong characters, so I expected her shorter work to be no different and I truly was not disappointed.

Night Train is the story of two young female students in Italy getting ready to return back to Florence after their travels. Though the narrator goes unnamed, we get to know her through various details she provides about her friendship with her companion, Liz, and the time they have spent together.

West focuses the attention of her two characters on the littlest of nuances such as two girls they see playing Frisbee in the street or a pipe that a fellow male passenger is smoking. We learn of their likes and dislikes and there are brief glimpses at their life and family away from each other. It is these small details, often explored in just a handful of sentences, that really give the story color.

Eventually, the two explore their sexuality and deeper feelings for one another that night on the train. Our narrator admits to being a novice when it comes to romance in general with boys or girls, but Liz – the stronger personality of the two – carries on, eagerly wanting to pleasure her friend. West treats this scene almost innocently between the two, though still awkward, revealing both emotion and fragility rather than necessarily trying to light a spark in the reader. The real naughtiness comes from the fact that an older male passenger is sleeping not too far away from them, but they remain uninhibited.

Though previously published in an anthology, this work can truly stand alone. It shows the shy walls that can often be let down when two friends connect on a more personal way. There are no enticing steamy relationships leaving the reader eager for more hot adjectives, but rather a real life honesty that is more true to life.

Robin Nolet’s book starts out with a very applicable quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle.  We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us.  But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other, and are invigorated by the stretching.  In The Shell Keeper, the island is the Colorado skiing town of Blue River and the shells tossed on the beach are Gwen, Claire, and Del.  Thrown together by tides they cannot fathom, the women find a common thread that brings them together as friends despite their best intentions to remain strangers.

The book lets us spend time with each of them alone, and as a group.  Like most people who have spent any time at all in the sea of humanity, all three have the bumps and bruises from being caught in the surf of relationships.  Del’s emotions are the most raw, her marriage is crumbling and the whole town seemed to know of her husband’s infidelity except her.  While Del struggles openly with the collapse of her marriage, Claire internalizes her feelings of betrayal from a long-ago cheating husband and an inconsiderate friend.  Gwen is the rock of the group, but also not without a philandering ex and some baggage that occasionally boils to the surface.

The scene is set mostly in the bakery that Gwen attempts to keep in the black with the help of her new husband and college-age son.  The walls of the bakery are adorned with her water-color paintings, not of the town’s inhabitants, but of the town’s inhabitants – if they were seashells.  Her one brush with the sea when she was 12 has given Gwen a perspective of humanity as hermit crabs, trying on this shell or that, trying to make one work as a permanent identity.

Nolet’s writing is direct and to the point, but it doesn’t lack for charm.  In this paragraph, Del has taken a new job at a women’s shop and I enjoyed the detail of this description:

Del wrapped the cardigan in Imagine’s trademark powder blue tissue, sealed the tissue with a white sticker embossed with a pearlescent “I” and tucked the package into a beautiful, powder-blue lacquer-finished bag with powder blue ribbons for handles.  Across the front of the bag was another pearlescent “I”.  She inserted the customer’s receipt into a small, matching envelope and added it to the bag. 

The women aren’t as well sketched as the shopping bag.  We get some clues to their physical appearance, but not a full picture.  Nonetheless, we can picture them; the somewhat matronly Gwen, the pretty but slightly severe Claire, the tussled Del who is stronger than she thinks.  We may even know them, or people very similar to them.

The book explores love, betrayal, redemption, friendship, and family in a way that is very relatable.  By the end, you can’t help but think about the shells you’ve tried on yourself, the ones that never quite felt right, the ones that looked good but didn’t fit, and the ones that ultimately felt like home.  In The Shell Keeper, Robin Nolet paints three compelling portraits of realistic women leaning on each other to get through a rough patch in their lives.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Sometimes, the least likely encounter changes everything… Jane Pepper is a thirty six year old editor in a small Baltimore press. Until the past year her life has been comfortable and enviable, but when her daughter develops leukemia, then accidentally dies, only Jane knows the reason for the accident. Keeping the secret may cost her her family, her career, and her sanity. Human rights photographer, Riva Hakim, the only child of multi-racial, multi-faith parents, has survived a volatile, itinerant childhood and loveless marriage to gain international acclaim for her work. Now, at fifty-two, and under contract to write her memoirs, she must put away her camera and find a way to frame the past before she can face the future. But that future is turned upside down the morning she finds a stranger named Jane Pepper on her doorstep. Spanning both sides of the Atlantic from Washington D.C. to the Canary Islands to Sudan, Alabaster Houses is the story of an unlikely friendship between two women who are both at a critical crossroad in life.

REVIEW:

Every once in a while there’s a book that almost gets away, especially when you are like me and read and review mostly indie or small press titles.  I just can’t read them all.  That’s almost what happened to Lara McLaughlin’s Alabaster Houses which was first queried to me last October.  Other reviewers passed on it, but there was something in this book that made me pick it.  And now I’m glad I did.

This is the story of two very different women, who share common struggles in life.  It is about how they got to where they are in life, and more importantly, how they became friends.

Jane Pepper works for a small publishing house.  She lives with her young son, Nick, whose father has recently left them. Amy, her teenage daughter from an old love affair she had with a professor before she got married, has recently died of leukemia.  Jane is stricken with grief over Amy, and soon finds herself alone when Nick goes off to Ecuador with his father.  She adopts a dog in an attempt to fill her house back up again, but what Jane really needs is a friend. That’s when she meets Riva Hakim.

Riva is an acclaimed photographer.  Her husband, Per, died two years ago in a car accident. Per also happens to be Amy’s father.  When Jane seeks out Per for the possibility of a bone marrow transplant to save Amy, she meets Riva instead. Almost a year passes before the two decide to meet again and share their stories with each other. Riva is dying of cancer and has written her biography.  Jane becomes the editor of the biography, but in turn the two women become the stability that the other needs as their memories play out on the page.

Much of Riva’s point of view reads as chapters from her biography.  Her childhood was a constant struggle in faith, being raised by a Jewish mother and a Muslim father.  The reader grows with her as a character as she goes off to university, quickly adopting American ideals and falling in love with Per, but still hiding in the shadows of her family’s culture like a woman shielded by the folds of a hijab.

Jane’s story is intertwined with Riva’s and shows the reader a smaller snapshot of time going back only to when she was first pregnant with Amy, and then to when Amy was first diagnosed and started having complications, and then up to her death.  Amy’s personal diary even serves as a chapter in the book. We meet a few of Jane’s love affairs, including how she met her husband, but we are intentionally robbed of the one she had with Per.

McLaughlin has purposely left parts of the story out, leaving those details to be developed by the reader’s imagination.  She keeps thing interesting by following a non-traditional plot line. The series of events switch from present to past quite often and without warning, but the book is still very easy to follow.  In fact, the first chapter is entitled The End and immediately lets you know each woman’s condition. The books with the forward Jane wrote for Riva’s bio. No spoilers here!

It is important to note this book is not just about marital affairs or affairs of the heart.  It is instead a story about affairs of the soul.  Just as Riva struggles with faith in God and men (her father and her husband) throughout life, Jane struggles with her grief not only for her daughter but for her own relationships as well.

It is about the spaces between the heart beats where our tears hide and our laughter is born. It is about life, and the things that happen to us in it when we were too busy doing something else.  It is a reminder that the bonds we share with loved ones, family, friends new or old, are what really matter. Our memories and our homes are empty without them.  But my life and my soul are more full thanks to reading this book. Yours will be too.

Synopsis:

Normal young women go on dates on Saturday nights. Betty “Boo” Boorman goes on ghost hunts. The paranormal investigator is more comfortable around ghosts than guys, anyway. A violent haunting forces Betty to team up with her rival ghost hunter, the arrogant Carter Lansford. When the violence is turned toward her, though, Betty enlists the help of a handsome stranger, who introduces himself simply as Maxwell, Demon. Her ghost hunting is cut short when she’s threatened and, finally, attacked. Either someone wants her to stay away from a paranormal investigation or Maxwell is more trouble than she realizes. As Betty begins to fall for Maxwell’s mysterious charm, she starts to wonder if her life—and her soul—are worth the risk.

Review:

I’m not a fan of the “romance” genre, but I have enjoyed a few modern women’s lit pieces like Debora Geary’s Matchmaker 2.0. What I mean by modern is that we have a stronger, more dominant, female character in the lead.  She’s not the delicate daughter of some rich rancher who is about to be ravaged by an outlaw or hunky Indian that looks like Fabio. And our female author has an obvious interest in driving the storyline with a strong plot rather than steamy make-out sessions.

I have to admit I almost turned down Beth Dolgner’s Ghost of a Threat simply because of its cover.  Sure, there are no massive male pecs or shaded breasts, no pouty lips or looks of ecstasy, but even this image of the shirtless male embracing a woman almost  pigeon holed the book for me. That is until I read the sample.

We open with a man named Sam who has mysterious things happening in his home one night.  We later learn he’s even been scratched.  He contacts Betty Boorman for help. She’s the  leader of The Savannah Spirit Seekers, a local paranormal investigation group. Unfortunately, he also contacts her rival, Carter Lansford, who runs his own group.  Carter has written a book and is more about the publicity and show rather than the actual investigating.  He’s even known to call press conferences for some of his larger investigations.

Betty bites her tongue, but Carter is so impressed with her work that he invites her to assist him with a huge investigation he’s landed at the Everett-Tattnall House. Betty accepts because she knows the house’s history and wants the chance to investigate it, but when a bizarre stranger named Maxwell shows up at the press conference, things are about to get interesting.  Especially when Maxwell’s business card says he’s a demon.

I thought Betty was a likable character.  There’s a lot of humor here which really kept the dialogue interesting. I’m also have a huge interest in ghosts and paranormal investigation, so I enjoyed that part of the story very much and its probably what kept the pages turning for me. The book takes place in Savannah, Georgia – the perfect setting for ghost hunting.  I had the pleasure of visiting there in 1997, so I was familiar with a lot of the real places mentioned in the book. That also made it a great read for me because I could connect with where the action was taking place.

These aspects of the story definitely outweigh the romance.  Sure, there’s Betty falling for Maxwell while her friends are encouraging her to date, but the other story lines going on here were much more entertaining for me. Interesting characters and interesting places definitely make this paranormal read worth a look!

I selected The Brevity of Roses to review based on the Amazon preview. It intrigued me because it was well written and made me wonder what happened next. I wasn’t disappointed once I read the whole book, it remained well written and hard to put down.

One thing I like about independently published books is that they often defy rigidly defined genres. While I would never go out of my way to read a genre romance, I enjoy love stories. In The Brevity of Roses, Lewis gives us not one love story, but two.

Jalal is a man at war with himself when we first meet him. A strung-out womanizer who is over the go-go lifestyle of a Wall Street broker, Jalal moves back to the west coast to be closer to (but not close to), his family. A man who has always had a proclivity for older women, he meets Meredith who is many years his senior. Their love burns bright and hot, but we don’t get to see much of it when her life is cut tragically short. Now Jalal must piece himself back together… enter love story number two.

I liked some of the quirky touches to this book. Jalal and his family are Persians who emigrated from Iran when he was young. The Persian family is close, but Jalal has always had conflict with his father due to sibling rivalry and a misunderstanding. They give a colorful counterpoint to the brooding and emotion of the love story. In fact, the theme of ‘daddy issues’ is a recurring one among all of the main characters in this book. All of them have strained relationships with their fathers, although it is left up to us as readers to determine if this is part of the attraction they feel for each other.

I’ve told you what I liked about the book, now I have to tell you my only gripe. The characters in The Brevity of Roses aren’t very relatable. Jalal is an independently wealthy poet. Meredith is an independently wealthy heiress. They spend a lot of time traveling, drinking wine, and dining out when they aren’t circling each other warily or falling into bed together. I guess that’s the fantasy this type of book is supposed to represent, allowing the reader to be someone with nothing to worry about but finding love. To me though, it had the opposite effect and threw me out of the story a bit.

If you like books without a single serial killer, police detective, hot shot lawyer, or vampire to be found but lots of romance and (sometimes messy) inter-personal relationships then The Brevity of Roses should definitely be on your reading list. Linda Cassidy Lewis is a virtuoso with the English language and this book is a joy to read.

It’s not often that I read a book that stays with me.  By “staying with me” I mean I think about it and the characters long after finishing the last page.  I can recall the events that took place, and often every character’s name, as if they were real pages from my own life story and real people that I know and love.  A book like this is usually one that I consistently suggest to other readers that I know will appreciate it as much as I did.  Appalachian Justice by Melinda Clayton is all of this.

Clayton weaves a small town Southern drama that is reminiscent of only the pain and brutality that the beloved Flannery O’Connor delivered in her short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” or the love and tenderness shown in Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.”   The voice of her characters and their personal handicaps resonates with Southern charm and honesty that runs deep in my own backwoods roots, and that I still appreciate in classic Southern lit because it hits so close to home.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. Imagine them spoken aloud in the heaviest Southern drawl you can possibly muster…

I wasn’t old enough back then to see the things Momma thought she saw, so I cain’t speak as to their existence. Don’t get me wrong; Momma would not lie, but sometimes the way one person see somethin’ ain’t necessarily the way another person does. She didn’t feel a part of the town, but I did.

One thing about getting older, she had learned, was that all the lies you’d told yourself to simply make it through the days were no longer content being silent.

“In a little town like Cedar Hollow, it don’t matter who you really are, you have to be who they expect you to be; that’s the only way they’ll ever let you be.” She sighed, and it was a lonely sound. “My whole life, I’ve been livin’ by somebody else’s idea of who I’m supposed to be. It takes a whole lot of courage for a person to live by her own ideas, and Billy May, I ain’t never been the courageous one.”

“When you get right down to it,” I said after a minute, raisin’ my head, “at the end of everythin’, all any of really want is to be remembered by somebody.” I stopped, not knowin’ how to explain what I meant. “It’s a terrible thing, to think everybody you loved has forgot about you…”

Appalachian Justice is the story of Billy May Platte, a half-indian woman living alone on Crutcher Mountain after a painful childhood provided reason for her to escape the clutches of the small mining town of Cedar Hollow.  With her parents gone, at age 14, Billy May befriends Corrine and their innocent love for each other is soon shattered when Corrine’s brother and her friends discover their secret.  Their small minds, fed by sexual voracity, are intent on teaching Billy May a lesson.

Years later, Billy May, now age 44, finds the past resurfacing when a young girl named Jessie escapes to the mountain after being raped by her step-father, one of the same men who hurt Billy May so long ago. Can Billy May confront her past in order to come to the aid of Jessie?  A harsh winter settling in on Crutcher Mountain is not the only thing that makes her choice difficult.

The story switches between 1975 and 2010, told through Billy May’s eyes in present time when she is an aging woman in the hospital lying on her death bed.  Her mind keeps taking her “back to the mountain” when she first met Jessie.  Along the way, her own childhood is revealed through her story and through other points of view provided by the various townspeople who were once Billy’s friends.  They were unaware of her haunted past and as the truth is revealed, they too come to Billy and Jessie’s defense in hopes of keeping the past from being repeated.

A story that is at times disturbing and uncomfortable, Clayton has done what few authors since the fictional Jo in Alcott’s Little Women have been able to achieve.  She writes with honesty and from the heart.  She remains truthful to her characters and does not hold back. Her story is not sensationalized. And that is exactly why hers is a book that will stay with me – in my heart and on my bookshelf – a read that I am anxious to share and experience again and again.

A group of exchange students meet up in turbulent Spain to spend seven months working there.  We get to know them as they navigate a foreign country amid all the chaos and random attacks.  However we never learn the backgrounds of the other interns even though we know they are full of enthusiasm and a sense of adventure.

Jaime Aragon flees the violence of Manila only to enter another country where violence is run rampant.  The picturesque city he imagined to be arriving in is anything but – full of pollution and crumbling tattered buildings, but he grows to like the place that is made even more pleasant by his new-found friends.

He must learn Spanish quickly before he takes up his new job in two weeks time.  This is all prearranged for him before he arrives in Bilbao as well as his assigned apartment space that accommodates different interns from across the globe every year.  He manages to learn enough of the language to get him by until he learns more and he ends up excelling in his new job.

The small town called Bilbao that he lives in temporarily is in the Spanish Basque country where everywhere there are acts of terrorism going on.  This book contains lots of action while also describing local events and characters in detail.  For instance, there may be an ambush at a marketplace full of party goers celebrating some event.  You never know when and where disaster may strike.

Two of the people in the group, Allison and Jaime, fall in love but are afraid to let go because they both have a terrifying past where people they love have met demise. Tragedy seems to follow this couple around.

This novel is well written and intriguing with all the festivals, bombings, love and lust between the interns, etc.  The book is full of captivating stories and is a fast moving tale that will keep you reading to see what happens to all the people involved. The cover is colorful and is a good match for the story being told.

Be prepared for lots of excitement and adventures as our group of interns gets into all sorts of predicaments.  I think perhaps it would have been nice to know about the other intern’s backgrounds, but we do get to see the background of Jaime and Allison as the story goes on and thus know why they have a slow moving relationship.

There were many Spanish words and phrases used in this book, but it was all translated so non-Spanish speaking readers could follow the story with no problem.

This is a novel of romance written from the male perspective.  Jaime is smitten with Allison but too shy to tell her so.  He finds her mysterious and beautiful and she captivates him, but she always seems to be out on dates with different Spaniards he meets.  When he finally makes his move, the story is written around them as they yearn to uncover each others backgrounds.