Book Review: Love and Other Paradoxes

By Allyson Bales

Cambridge University, 2005: Student Joe Greene scribbles verses in the margins of his notebook, dreaming of a future where his words will echo through the ages, all while doubting it could ever happen.

Then, the future quite literally finds him—in the form of Esi. She’s part of a time-traveling tour, a trip for people in the future to witness history’s greatest moments firsthand. The star of this tour? Joe Greene. In Esi’s era, Joe is as renowned as Shakespeare. And he’s about to meet Diana, a fellow student and aspiring actress, who will become his muse and the subject of his famous love poems.

But Esi is harboring a secret. She’s not here because she idolizes Joe—actually, she thinks his poetry is overrated. Something will happen at Cambridge this year that will wreck Esi’s life, and she’s hell-bent on changing it. When Esi goes rogue from her tour, she bumps into Joe and sends his destiny into a tailspin. To save both their futures, Esi becomes Joe’s dating coach, helping him win over Diana. But when Joe’s romantic endeavors go off-script—and worse, he starts falling for Esi instead—they both face a crucial question: Is the future set in stone, or can we pen our own fates? (Synopsis courtesy of HarperCollins.)

Meet Me in Another Life is one of my favorite books and when I found out Catriona was coming out with another book, I NEEDED to get my hands on it IMMEDIATELY.  

I am a HUGE fan of parallel universes and time travel. I love the thought that there are multiple versions of me out in the universe doing different things based on the different choices that I made and I am a firm believer in destiny, deja vu, and the butterfly effect.  Silvey writes stories that capture the essence of those very things beautifully with characters you invest in and stories that keep you hooked. In her stories anything is possible and I LOVE that!

This is a fun, unique story that you can binge in one sitting.  It’s just over 300 pages and is lighthearted and very romantic.  There are two main characters, Joe from 2005 and Esi from 2044, and the way they meet is really one of my favorite meet-cutes of all time.  Esi is on a time travel trip.  Just the thought of that was so cool to me!  There are all these strangers in the street staring at Joe and it really made me think, could this be possible in real life?  When people stare at other people in the street are they also on a time travel trip?!  I know that's a little far fetched but imagine if that were really possible?  That is what this story made me constantly think about!

I love the deep character development you get in this one and how each character grows and learns things about themselves. What I loved most is that the entire story is told from Joe’s point of view.  It’s not often in a romance story that you get the male perspective and I really enjoyed that. And the ending...I can’t WAIT for you to read it!

I am really, really hoping there is a sequel for this one! 

Thanks to William Morrow for the book in exchange for an honest review. Purchase Love and Other Paradoxes here.

Also by Catriona Silvey: Meet Me in Another Life

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What's in the (e)mail

All (or most) of these books can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Apple, Kobo, etc.

NG = NetGalley

Melissa:

Don't Open Your Eyes by Liv Constantine from Ballantine (NG)

Tilt by Emma Pattee from Simon Element (NG)

The Best Worst Thing by Lauren Okie from Avon (NG)

Falling for You Again by/from Kerry Lonsdale (NG)

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch by Julia McKay from Putnam (NG)

First Time, Long Time by Amy Silverberg from Grand Central Publishing (NG)

The Fire Concerto by Sarah Landenwich from Union Square & Co (NG)

Hot Desk by Laura Dickerman from Gallery (NG)

A Summer for the Books by Michelle Lindo-Rice from Harlequin (NG)

Clementine Crane Prefers Not To by Kristin Bair from Alcove Press (NG)

Only Lovers in the Building by Nadine Gonzalez from Harlequin (NG)

The View From Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani from Random House (print)

Out of the Blue by Jenny Hale from BooksGoSocial (NG)

The Forget-Me-Not Library by Heather Webber from St. Martin's Press (NG)

A Mannequin for Christmas by Timothy Janovsky from St. Martin's Press (NG)

Full Bloom by Francesca Serritella from Random House (NG)

Sara:
An Ethical Guide to Murder by Jenny Morris from HarperCollins (NG)

Too Hot to Handle by Portia MacIntosh from Rachel's Random Resources (NG)

Destructively Mine by Krista and Becca Ritchie from Berkley (NG)

The Keeper of Lost Art by Laura Morelli from William Morrow (NG)

Asylum Hotel by Juliet Blackwell from Berkley (NG)

One More Day of Us by Shari Low from Rachel's Random Resources (NG)

Allyson:

Slow Burn Summer by Josie Silver from Random House (NG)

Jami:

Just Beachy by Wendy Wax from Berkley (NG)

Melissa S:

Passion Project by London Sperry from Viking (print)

Love on Tour by Lee Adams from BookSparks (print)

Charity Trickett Is Not So Glamorous by Christine Stringer from BookSparks (print)

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Book Review: The Fisherman’s Gift

By Jami Denison

Usually when I pick up a book about missing children and frantic mothers, it falls in my preferred genre of domestic suspense. But in her debut novel, The Fisherman’s Gift, Julia R. Kelly proves that a common plot can be the basis of a story in any genre. 

Closer to literary fiction than suspense or fantasy, The Fisherman’s Gift takes place in an isolated Scottish fishing village in 1900. After a storm, a young boy washes onto the beach, unable to speak and resembling Dorothy’s son, who disappeared on the same beach years ago. After Dorothy agrees to take in the boy until his parents can be located, strange coincidences begin to happen. 

With the language and rhythms of a fairy tale, the novel moves between past and present as readers see how Dorothy first came to the village and was ostracized by the women there; her doomed flirtation with the fisherman Joseph; her troubled marriage and motherhood. The book is not a fantasy about a child who somehow comes back to the scene of his disappearance. The spine of the story is Dorothy’s isolation as she struggles to fit into a village where she’s judged for being more educated than the populace. At the same time, Kelly gives us the perspective of some of the women doing the judging. Theirs are tough lives, with marriage the only option and a bad match a lifetime mistake. The story’s prose is poetic, and the descriptions of the storm-beaten wintry landscape are vivid. 

The Fisherman’s Gift is not a good choice if you’re looking for suspense or fantasy. But if you enjoyed A Light Between Oceans or you appreciate the small stories in the lives of Elizabeth Strout’s characters, you’ll find this novel compelling. 

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the book in exchange for an honest review.

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Spotlight: Jane and Dan at the End of the World

We're so excited that Colleen Oakley's latest novel, Jane and Dan at the End of the World, is now available! Melissa chose two of Colleen's previous novels as top picks over the past years and has this one in her five-book pile. It sounds a bit like the movie Date Night (from 2010) and is sure to be entertaining!

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.

Credit: Sarah Dorio

Colleen Oakley is the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise, The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, You Were There Too, Close Enough to Touch, and Before I Go. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages around the world and have won multiple awards including Georgia Author of the Year and the French Reader’s Prize. A former magazine editor for Women’s Health & Fitness and Marie Claire, Colleen lives in Atlanta with her husband, four children, three chickens, and a mutt named Baxter.

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Book Review: The Women on Platform Two

By Jami Denison

The “trad wife” lifestyle has become a popular trend online, so much so that it’s been credited with driving some young women to the Republican party in the last election. Ironically, these trad wives make a lot of money pushing content around the idea that women should not work. With gorgeous babies on their hips, these wives bake bread, feed chickens, and look over wheat fields. Their fans complain of having to work real jobs and want to spend their days barefoot, in the kitchen, caring for a toddler and pregnant. They complain about feminism and long to go back to the 1950s. 

These girls need a swift kick in the rear. Maybe Laura Anthony’s new book, The Women on Platform Two, will provide it for them. Taking place mostly in Ireland in the late 1960s-early 1970s, it provides a close-up look at what life is like for women trapped in a patriarchal system that insists their only purpose is wife and mother. For women who do not or cannot fall easily into those roles, there is no way out.

In 2023 Dublin, nurse Saoirse is fighting with her fiancé over her lack of desire to have children, when she finds a dropped photo in the train station. Running after its owner, Saoirse finds herself on the train to Belfast with Maura, an older woman who is eager to tell Saoirse the story behind the photo.

When Maura married Dr. Christy Davenport in 1969, she thought she’d found Prince Charming. Instead, he quickly turned into a controlling abuser, beating Maura for sins such as wearing trousers and expecting her to wait on him hand and foot. But everyone in Dublin thinks Christy is wonderful, and Maura knows that even her own parents expect her to stay in her marriage no matter what. After a beating from Christy causes a miscarriage, Maura realizes she cannot bring a child into the world with a father like Christy.

Maura’s best friend, Bernie, also has a reason to fear conception. After giving birth to three girls, Bernie’s fourth pregnancy ended early when she developed pre-eclampsia. Warned never to become pregnant again, Bernie’s marriage suffers as her husband Dan fears to touch her. When the women learn that contraception is legal in Northern Ireland, they join a women’s liberation group to bring condoms and birth control pills to the women of Dublin.

Reading The Women on Platform Two felt like watching an episode of Call the Midwife. The influence of the church, class issues, sexism, domestic violence, and pregnancy all play a part in the book and in the series. The characters in Midwife, however, are more dimensional than the characters in Women. Saoirse seems to exist merely to provide a modern audience for Maura’s story; Christy is a mustache-twirling villain with an unlikely ending. The train ride at the climax of Maura’s story seems to be the raison d’etre for the entire novel, and the characters suffer because of it. 

Still, the issues at the heart of The Women on Platform Two are important enough that the book deserves promotion. As the United States turns back the clock on women’s rights, these kinds of stories serve as an important reminder that women who don’t have control of their own bodies can’t control their own lives. Something to think about as TikTok pushes another video from a woman on a farm with eight kids. 

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

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Jacqueline Friedland is making it count...plus a book giveaway

We are thrilled to have Jacqueline Friedland back at CLC to celebrate the publication of her latest novel, Counting Backwards! Melissa chose one of Jacqueline's novels, He Gets that From Me, as a top pick a few years ago and is excited to read this one soon! It sounds like an intriguing story with a blend of current events and historical fiction. Thanks to Get Red PR, we have TWO copies to give away!

Jacqueline Friedland graduated Magna Cum Laude from both the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School. She practiced as a commercial litigator at the New York law firms of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP and Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP. After determining that office life did not suit her, Jacqueline began teaching Legal Writing and Lawyering Skills at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan and working on her first book in her limited spare time. Finally deciding to embrace her passion and pursue writing full time, Jacqueline returned to school to earn her Masters of Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, graduating from the program in 2016.

When not writing, Jacqueline is an avid reader of all things fiction. She loves to exercise, watch movies with her family, listen to music, make lists, and dream about exotic vacations. She lives in Westchester, New York with her husband, four children and two very bossy canines. (Bio courtesy of Jacqueline's website.)

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Synopsis:
A routine immigration case, a shocking legacy. Jessa Gidney’s quest for justice draws her into the heart of an abhorrent conspiracy. As she uncovers her personal ties to a heartbreaking past, her life takes a dramatic turn, in this emotionally riveting novel inspired by true events. 

New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all–a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage, and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family’s history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby ICE detention center. There she meets Isobel Pérez–a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter–but as she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel’s health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. One that shockingly has ties to her own family.

Virginia, 1927. Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a different future–one separate from her exploitative foster family–unknowing of the ripples her small, country life will have on an entire nation.

As Jessa works to assemble a case against the prison and the crimes she believes are being committed there, she discovers the landmark Supreme Court case involving Carrie Buck. Her connection to the case, however, is deeper and much more personal than she ever knew–sending her down new paths that will leave her forever changed and determined to fight for these women, no matter the cost.

Alternating between the past and present, and deftly tackling timely-yet-timeless issues such as reproductive rights, incarceration, and society’s expectations of women and mothers, Counting Backwards is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won. A moving story of two remarkable women that you’ll remember for years to come. (Courtesy of Jacqueline's website.)

"Friedland gifts readers with richly developed characters in a dual-timeline tale that explores fertility, inequality, and reproductive rights – both past and present with an eye toward the future . . .Counting Backwards is more than a powerful read, ultimately it teaches us ALL how to move forward."

~ Lisa Barr - New York Times bestselling author of The Goddess of Warsaw

"Counting Backwards is a tightly-woven dual-timeline novel that explores the way in which the sins of a family member can reverberate for generations and how society’s mistreatment of women hasn’t changed in decades. Jacqueline Friedland’s ripped-from-the-headlines story is an Erin Brockovich for our times."

~ Jill Santopolo - New York Times bestselling author of The Light We Lost

"Timely, perceptive, and inspiring, Counting Backwards is truly a book for this moment. Only an absolute pro like Friedland could write a book this smart and this pertinent that still makes readers cry at the end."

~ Lynda Loigman - Author of The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

What is a favorite compliment you received on your writing?
People have commented that my writing tends to take complex, nuanced, social justice issues and create these very readable, easily accessible scenarios to examine the topics. This way, people feel like they’re being entertained, but they’re actually learning highly relevant information about history or current events. What could be a better compliment than that? 

If you could tell the debut novelist version of yourself one thing, what would it be?
I think every book feels like a brand-new challenge. In the same way that raising children is equally challenging and equally important whether it’s your first kid or your fourth, each book deserves as much attention and requires as much work as the first. So I’m not sure how much wiser I am now than when I finished my first book. My best advice to my former self would be to just enjoy the ride and know that readers are going to say so many nice things to you, and it makes everything else worth it.

If Counting Backwards was made into a movie, which songs would be on the soundtrack?
I love this question. Top two songs in Counting Backwards: "All That She Wants" by Ace of Base and "America" by Neil Diamond.

What is the last book you read that you would recommend?
I absolutely loved What Happened to the McCrays by Tracey Lange. It’s sad, but so, so good. 

If your life was a TV series, which celebrity would you want to narrate it? 

Instead of picking a celebrity, I’m choosing a character from a movie. I would like the narrator to be Cher from Clueless. I love that while she at first comes across as silly or frivolous because she loves makeup and parties, she’s actually very caring and clever, and people just have a tendency to underestimate her. 

If we were to visit you, what are some places you would take us to see?
We would go to the waterfall that’s behind the train station in my town. It’s totally incongruous with the suburban surroundings where we are, and it’s this lovely secret little piece of nature waiting to be discovered. We would also go to Bronx River Books just a couple of minutes walk from that waterfall, so you could see my local indie bookstore and stock up on some new great reads. And then finally, we’d go to Martine’s bakery, across the street, and where we could sit and read our books while enjoying cappuccinos and the most delicious macarons!

Thanks to Jacqueline for chatting with us and to Get Red PR for sharing her book with our readers.

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 March 16th at midnight EST.

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Book Review: The Night Shift

By Sara Steven

I loved the anonymity, flexibility and solitude that working the night shift at Storage Queen gave me.

The unsociable hours paid well, helping me fund my university degree and giving me a quiet place to study while the world slept peacefully in their warm, cozy beds. It was the perfect job for me.

But that Friday night proved to be more than I bargained for when a man walked through the door, dragging a large suitcase.

My immediate instincts told me something was wrong.

That’s when my ordeal began.

I just had to make it through the night shift. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.)

Nina figured her shift at the Storage Queen would start and end like it always did; she’d come in at 6pm and take over for her boss, who always informed Nina not to call unless absolutely necessary. She’d sit at the desk, work on her homework and monitor her blood sugar levels for her type 1 diabetes, while she did all she could to stay awake until she’s relieved of her duties at 6am.

But when a strange man brings a large suitcase into the Storage Queen, it becomes a night of terror and suspense, with Nina doing all she can to stay alive.

The pace picks up from there, particularly after Nina leaves her post to investigate. The one lone drop of blood description reminded me of something straight out of Hitchcock. I could visually imagine the lens panning in while similarly pulling back, really highlighting the intensity of that for Nina. She laters discovers that the name the man had given her does not match any of the records they have on file for the storage unit, and the person it’s actually registered to is nowhere to be found.

As the reader, I wondered why the man was there. Why the Storage Queen? That was answered for me in the best of ways, with a malicious web that links back to Nina. I thought including Nina’s health information was a great way to add another level of intensity to the story, because it can’t be easy to try to monitor your glucose levels while you’re fighting for your life, particularly if you have no access to your medications or food or drink, along with the stress and fear on the nervous system. There were plenty of moments when it could have been all too easy for Nina to give up, but she doesn’t, at times to her own detriment. The ending was fairly explosive and wild, and the people who Nina felt were allies ended up blurred by their own greater need. I really liked how the characters aren’t easily recognizable as being protagonists or antagonists, which made it all the more suspenseful and unpredictable.  I will never look at a storage unit facility the same again!

Thanks to Rachel's Random Resources for the book in exchange for an honest review.

Purchase The Night Shift here.

Gemma Rogers lives in West Sussex with her husband, two daughters and a bouncy French Bulldog called Boycie.

Her love of writing began in her early teenage years, inspired by hours spent buried in Point Horror, Richard Laymon and Christopher Pike with the occasional Judy Blume thrown in for good measure.

Other passions include movies - horrors especially (who doesn't love a good scare), country walks, swimming and anything involving cake.

Her debut novel Stalker was released on the 10th September 2019, quickly followed by The Secret in January 2020, and The Teacher in May.

Gemma's fourth novel The Mistake was published January 2021, followed by The Babysitter in September.

The Feud came next in May 2022, then The Neighbour in January 2023 and The Flatmate in June 2023.

Gemma's ninth title The Good Wife came out in March 2024 and The Honeymoon is now available as well!

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