Book Review: Love and Other Words

By Sara Steven

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly teen friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco reading books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads)

I’m not always a big fan of alternating timelines, but it worked well for Love and Other Words. The first description that comes to mind when describing the relationship between Macy and Elliot is slow burn. It’s a slow burn from their first meeting when they’re children, to the numerous times they’ve met as friends, to the black and white borders that they feel they might be able to blend together, all gray areas, into the space that divides them when they’re adults. It’s all a slow burn, captured wonderfully between the Then and Now.

It was such a unique concept, to have these two characters begin a special bond through the usage of words. It only made their connection feel deeper, made me feel even more invested in who they are and the relationship I want them to have, and when there is agony, I felt it even more because of their words. And I really appreciated the viewpoints through the years. The voice used for Macy and Elliot felt true to life, and I could see them growing up page by page, giving me a much better sense for the adults they turn out to be, and why they feel the way they do, why things happened they way they have. There are moments of frustration on my end, where I want Macy to relent some, where I want Elliot to fight harder, but it’s beyond who they are at any given moment. It was the right thing to do, and right for who the characters are.

There are supreme highs, and severe lows, the kind that make you feel sucker punched, and it made this novel all the more worth the read. It’s that slow burn combined with everything else that really keeps you hanging on until the last word.

Thanks to Leo PR for the book in exchange for an honest review.

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Cat Lavoie is not messing around...plus a special giveaway

We're glad to have Cat Lavoie back at CLC today to celebrate the recent publication of her latest novel, Messing with Matilda. In honor of this, she has a $25 Amazon gift card to give away as part of her blog tour!

Cat Lavoie is a chick lit writer from Montreal, Canada. She loves writing fun and quirky romantic comedies and is the author of BREAKING THE RULES, ZOEY & THE MOMENT OF ZEN, PERI IN PROGRESS and MESSING WITH MATILDA.

A fan of all things feline, Cat loves cats and hopes to someday have a house full of them in order to officially become a crazy cat lady. (But one or two cats will do for now.)

If she isn’t reading or writing, Cat enjoys listening to podcasts (mostly comedy and true crime) and watching way too much TV. She fell in love with London many years ago and hopes to go back one day. Cat is currently at work on her next novel.

To connect with Cat and find out more about her books, visit CatLavoie.com and follow @CatLavoieBooks on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Synopsis:
As a professional organizer in New York City, Matilda Hart wages war against chaos and clutter on a daily basis for her clients—and she vows to never let it invade her own well-ordered world.

But when her boyfriend decides to deviate from the path she’s been planning for them, Matilda's perfectly structured life begins to crumble. She reluctantly finds herself back in the tiny hometown she fled a lifetime ago—determined to lay low and avoid running into anyone she used to know. So why is she reconnecting with her former best friend and putting up with the bridezilla antics of Amber, her high school nemesis?

When Matilda is tasked with keeping the bride-to-be’s heartbroken ex away from the ceremony, she discovers she has history with the man who’s trying to sabotage the wedding. Matilda quickly realizes that teaming up with cute and quirky—but hopelessly devoted—Silas Flynn could be mutually beneficial. He needs help wooing the woman he considers the love of his life and Matilda can't pass up the chance to finally get back at the meanest of the mean girls by assisting Silas in his attempts to disrupt her wedding.

Will everything go according to plan for this mismatched pair? Or will working so closely together make uptight Matilda and laid-back Silas lose sight of their common goal?

One thing's for sure—things are about to get messy.

What is a memorable compliment you received about one of your books?
I love hearing from readers and I’m so appreciative when they take the time to contact me and tell me they enjoyed something I wrote. A few years back, a reader emailed me to say she’d burst out laughing on the bus while reading my second novel, Zoey & the Moment of Zen. I love to make people laugh so it made me really happy to know I’d brightened up someone’s commute.

What is one piece of advice you'd like to share with an aspiring novelist?
Keep writing. Even when it feels like you’ll never reach “the end,” or you have no idea what’s going to happen once you reach “the end,” keep writing and things will eventually fall into place.

If you could cast Messing with Matilda as a film, who would play the lead roles?
Such a fun question! My dream cast would be...
Matilda: Jenna Coleman
Silas: Johnny Flynn
Evie: Krysten Ritter
Amy: Sarah Hyland
Amber: Anna Camp

What is one item you can't live without?
I feel like a bit of a cliché, but I’m going to say my phone. I’d be lost without it—especially since I don’t know anyone’s phone number by heart. And I always have access to my books and my work-in-progress with the Kindle and Scrivener apps.

What is the last movie you saw that you would recommend?
I’m more of a TV addict than a movie buff, but I recently saw Paddington 2 and adored it. I’m a huge fan of Paddington Bear (I named one of my recently-adopted cats after him) and I love London, so that movie had me grinning from ear to ear.

Where is your favorite place to spend money?
I love trying out new makeup and skincare products, so Sephora is my go-to place when I feel like treating myself.

Thanks to Cat for chatting with us and sharing a gift card with our readers. Thanks to Karan & Co for including us in Cat's blog tour. Visit all the stops here. For more fun, sign up for the CatChats email newsletter! 

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Book Review: Flying at Night

By Jami Deise

I’m a huge fan of advice columns like Carolyn Hax’s and Amy Dickinson’s. One question that seems to come up a lot is a dilemma that seems specific to the “sandwich generation.” A reader writes in that a parent was abusive growing up. Now he’s old and sick and alone. What does the adult child owe to this parent? The professional advice-givers tell these writers to put their own emotional well-being first. Will caring for this parent trigger painful memories? Or will leaving her to the mercy of the system cause unbearable guilt?

This is the dilemma that faces Piper, one of three protagonists in Rebecca L. Brown’s debut novel, Flying at Night. Piper’s father Lance, nicknamed the Silver Eagle, is a narcissistic airline pilot whose wife and children were never good enough for him. But after a heart attack leaves him brain damaged, Piper’s mother Judy walks out on him, leaving him to the mercy of a sub-par nursing home. At the same time, Piper’s nine-year-old son Fred is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, as his difficulty in forming relationships begins to impact him in school. Even so, Piper moves Lance into her home and tries to juggle his therapy appointments with Fred’s needs, while her husband Isaac works 24/7. Gradually, Fred and Lance form their own relationship, a development that reminded me of the Harrison Ford movie Regarding Henry.

Brown tells the story through three first-person points-of-view: Piper’s, Fred’s, and Lance’s. Lance’s is particularly poignant, as the first few chapters take place before his heart attack. He is a confident man who loves his life, although he’s completely oblivious to the pain he’s caused his family. After the heart attack, his voice is very similar to Fred’s.

I did have some issues with the writing – Brown has trouble at times keeping Piper’s voice at a higher level than Fred’s and Lance’s. Piper is also written as a bit oblivious herself, blindsided by her son’s diagnosis (and unable to see his similarities to Isaac). I also found myself questioning the circumstances of Lance’s brain injury, as he is originally declared brain dead before regaining consciousness after being taken off life support.

But Brown is a debut novelist, and such weaknesses are understandable. (And isn’t this what editors are for?) She’s not Jodi Picoult, but Flying at Night will definitely appeal to Picoult fans, as well as readers who are not looking for fiction to escape reality, but to explain it.

Thanks to Berkley for the book in exchange for an honest review.

Spotlight and Giveaway: A Nantucket Wedding

A Nantucket Wedding by Nancy Thayer was published this week. To celebrate, Random House has THREE copies for some lucky readers!

Wedding bells are ringing, a family is reunited, and new love is blooming—for better or worse—in this captivating novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Island House and Secrets in Summer.

A few years after losing her beloved husband, Alison is doing something she never thought she would do again: getting married. While placing the finishing touches on her summer nuptials, Alison is anxious to introduce her fiancé, David, to her grown daughters: Felicity, a worried married mother of two, and Jane, also married but focused on her career. The sisters have a somewhat distant relationship and Alison hopes that the wedding and the weeks leading up to the ceremony will give the siblings a chance to reconnect, as well as meet and get to know David’s grown children.

As the summer progresses, it is anything but smooth sailing. Felicity stumbles upon a terrible secret that could shatter her carefully cultivated world. Jane finds herself under the spell of her soon-to-be stepbrother, Ethan, who is as charming as he is mysterious. And even Alison is surprised (and slightly alarmed) by her new blended family. Revelations, intrigue, resentments—as the Big Day approaches, will the promise of bliss be a bust?

Against the gorgeous backdrop of the sunswept island of Nantucket, Nancy Thayer sets the stage for a walk down the aisle no one will ever forget.

Photo by Katie Kaizer

Nancy Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of A Nantucket Wedding, Secrets in Summer, The Island House, The Guest Cottage, An Island Christmas, Nantucket Sisters, A Nantucket Christmas, Island Girls, Summer Breeze, Heat Wave, Beachcombers, Summer House, Moon Shell Beach, and The Hot Flash Club. She lives on Nantucket. Visit Nancy at her website and on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.




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Giveaway ends April 10th at midnight EST.

Book Review: The Last Suppers

By Sara Steven

Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them—sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff—left the place as soon as they could. Yet Ginny Polk chose to come back to work as a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls—the cries of men being beaten, the lines of shuffling inmates chained together. Yet she has never seen them as monsters, not even the ones sentenced to execution. That’s why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing their last meals.

Pot roast or red beans and rice, coconut cake with seven-minute frosting or pork neck stew . . . whatever the men ask for Ginny prepares, even meeting with their heartbroken relatives to get each recipe just right. It’s her way of honoring their humanity, showing some compassion in their final hours. The prison board frowns upon the ritual, as does Roscoe Simms, Greenmount’s Warden. Her daddy’s best friend before he was murdered, Roscoe has always watched out for Ginny, and their friendship has evolved into something deep and unexpected. But when Ginny stumbles upon information about the man executed for killing her father, it leads to a series of dark and painful revelations.

Truth, justice, mercy—none of these are as simple as Ginny once believed. And the most shocking crimes may not be the ones committed out of anger or greed, but the sacrifices we make for love. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.)

The Last Suppers was by far one of the most unique love stories I’ve ever read, set in a time and place that isn’t mentioned often. It felt as though there were a lot of mountains for Ginny and Roscoe, with their occupations, their past. Even the age difference between them feels like a huge hurdle. I appreciated the difficulty of all of it. It’s too easy to have two people fall for one another who seem destined from the stars. It’s quite another to put two people together who have so much going against them, yet they still try hard to fight the odds.

And why are the odds stacked against them? I felt as though who they are as individuals and coupled together shouldn’t be much of anyone else’s business, but it’s the nostalgia of Greenmount, deep Southern roots intertwining with every single character involved, creating who they are, not letting anyone go. It has a way of shaping motivations, of becoming the deciding factor in how the future presents itself, and it does that for Ginny and Roscoe. It’s as though their lives aren’t really their own.

I enjoyed the dysfunctional functionality of this couple, but the stories of the death row inmates at Greenmount are what really cemented me to this novel. I have always had this, “right and wrong” mentality to the way I view an issue, yet seeing the world through Ginny’s eyes opened me up. Their lives are told in such a way that it’s hard not to see them as human, just as Ginny does. There is no sugar coating of what they’ve done. It’s easy to see why they are perceived as monsters, but Ginny brings to light the men they were before they were monsters. The men who have families, traditions, last meals that are often tied to a significant memory that they want to take with them to the grave. To witness the interactions between Ginny and the families, or the death row occupants, it made my stomach twist in knots. Not so much over the finality of their lives, but at who’d they’d been, and ultimately, who Ginny and Roscoe and everyone else involved had been, before the crimes.

Thanks to Kensington for the book in exchange for an honest review.

Spotlight and Giveaway: The Good Liar

Today we're celebrating the publication of Catherine McKenzie's latest novel, The Good Liar (reviewed here). Kathleen Carter Communications has TWO copies to give away!

In internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Catherine McKenzie’s riveting and thought-provoking new novel, THE GOOD LIAR (Lake Union Publishing), the lives of three women are forever altered by a national tragedy—and by the choices made in its wake.

A year ago, Cecily Grayson became the poster child for a horrifying explosion that ripped a Chicago building apart. She was supposed to be in the building that day. Instead, she stood on the street and witnessed it going down, with her husband and best friend, Kaitlyn, inside. While she watched, a photographer snapped a photo of her—a photo that would become one of the enduring images from that day.

Franny Maycombe, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched the horror unfold on the morning news, knowing that the woman she was so desperate to reconnect with was in the building. As the anniversary dominates the media, the memories of that horrifying morning become dangerous triggers. 

A thousand miles away in Montreal, a third woman, Kate Ring, is working as a nanny for a wealthy family. Haunted by the anniversary of the Chicago explosion, Kate fights to keep her past from catching up with her. 

All three women are guarding important secrets. Just how far will they go to keep them?

“A riveting story that revolves around the aftermath of a national tragedy: three women, three separate yet deftly intertwined lives. I adored the look at the story behind the story, the background lives of the women we so often see in the news. The twists are shocking, the characters are well drawn but unpredictable, and the conclusion is as poignant as it is surprising. THE GOOD LIAR is thrilling, captivating, and not to be missed!”
—Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year and The Blackbird Season

“Lines will be crossed and secrets revealed when tragedy intersects three women in THE GOOD LIAR, a guilty pleasure you won’t be able to put down until the very last page. A must read!”
—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Good Widow

“In her latest, Catherine McKenzie continues to prove she’s a master at crafting psychological thrillers. In THE GOOD LIAR, we follow three women—Cecily, Kate, and Franny—in the aftermath of a horrific tragedy through their web of lies, secrets, and deceit. The story is layered with superb twists and expert pacing, deftly building in suspense until its stunner of an ending. A compulsive read that kept me guessing!”
—Kerry Lonsdale, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everything We Left Behind
and Everything We Keep

Photo by Jason Trott

Catherine McKenzie, a graduate of McGill University, practices law in Montreal, where she was born and raised. An avid skier and runner, Catherine’s novels Spin, Arranged, Forgotten, and Hidden are all international bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages. Hidden was an Amazon #1 bestseller and a Digital Book World bestseller. Her fifth novel, Smoke, was an Amazon bestseller, a Goodreads Best Book for October 2015, and an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2015. Her sixth novel, Fractured,
was a Goodreads Best Book for October and Fall 2016, a Buzzfeed Big Book of Fall 2016, and made numerous other Best Book lists including those for Real Simple, Redbook, PopSugar, and Read It Forward.

Visit Catherine online:
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here. 

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Giveaway ends April 9th at midnight EST.

Book Review and Giveaway: Other People's Houses

By Jami Deise

It’s generally not a good sign when a book starts with a detailed list of characters and a map. It signals a cast so lengthy that readers are going to have trouble following who’s who, and who is related to whom. Indeed, when I first opened Abbi Waxman’s latest novel, Other People’s Houses, and saw a long list of people and the aforementioned map, I shuddered. I have enough trouble keeping track of real people, much less fictional ones. And it did take me awhile to remember who was who. Not only was the cast lengthy, but Waxman chose to write the novel in omniscient point-of-view, which has fallen out of favor. (It’s hard to distinguish from “head-hopping.”) Still, I read on, and several chapters in, I was hooked.

Even with its multiple viewpoints, Other People’s Houses is mostly Frances’s story. She’s married to Michael; they have three children but no sex, and she is mom to the entire street. The story kicks off when she walks in on Anne having sex with a man who isn’t Anne’s husband, Charlie. Now Frances is stuck with a burdensome secret, and Anne knows she has to break off the affair before it blows up in her face. Also living on the street are Bill and his son Lucas (his wife Julie is on a mysterious work trip), and Iris and Sara and their son Wyatt.

Anne’s affair is the spine of the story, but everyone has something going on. Even the elementary-school aged children get scenes of their own. At first, I found this annoying, but then it became necessary for the story. Anne’s affair affects everyone, even other people’s children. Still, even in Anne’s point of view, Waxman never gets to the heart of why she cheated. Frances is the heart of the story, and the character most easy to identify with. She’s given up her career to take care of her husband, children, and house, and gained thirty pounds in the process. She’s lost her identity, sexuality, and sense of self in service to others and the image of ideal motherhood. Anne and Iris, who each have multiple chapters in their points-of-view, remain at an emotional arm’s length.

At times, the novel is funnier than the storylines, and several scenes and lines had me laughing out loud. Other times, I teared up at the characters’ pain, especially the children’s. Waxman and her characters make several cutting observations that had me highlighting my Kindle.

Other People’s Houses will remind readers of Liane Moriarty’s work, albeit without murders, and Moriarty’s fans will enjoy the book. Set in an upscale suburb of Los Angeles, Frances and her neighbors have first-world problems, but so do Moriarty’s. Waxman might not be lucky enough to have HBO commission a series starring Reese Witherspoon, but if she is, I would certainly be watching.

If nothing else, the book is an important reminder to never cheat with someone who doesn’t have as much to lose. And to make sure your phone isn’t hooked to any other devices before texting secrets.

Thanks to Berkley for the book in exchange for an honest review. They have one copy to give away!

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here. 

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Giveaway ends April 8th at midnight EST.