BOOK REVIEW: Talk of the Town by Mary Kay McComas

Poking around in the refuse center for pieces for her metal sculptures, Rosemary Wickum turns up a man--the local recycling wizard who accepts the challenge of winning her cold heart back to love.

I find that as I am reading a lot more and putting off writing review, seeing as I’m finishing books in the middle of the night when I ‘should’ be sleeping, that writing reviews is getting more difficult.  ‘Talk of the Town’ by Mary Kay McComas is not exception to this new conundrum.  It’s been a minute since I finished it and went on to other books thinking I’d write my review later.  And later became later, and later still.  But here’s what I do remember.  I liked this book.  The premise was good.  It was original and creative.  Artist using recycled refuse meets trash mogul.  He falls head over heels at first sight whereas she falls back into her daily life and routine punishing herself for a lifetime.  He goes out of his way to win her heart.  She gives in some then pushes away.  The entire small town gets involved in their interplay.  But to be fair, he helps push them all in.  

I can actually say I learned a lot about the waste industry.  So therefore I must count this title as slightly educational, for me at least, as well.  The premise was good, wait I covered that.  The writing was good.  Not over the top stellar but also not lazy and unimaginative.  My biggest issue with the story was more in line with the editing.  There were typos and grammar errors.  Also a few Kindle formatting errors.  And while I do not hold the book responsible for those errors they did affect my rating. 

‘Talk of the Town’ was an easy weekend read.  I bit of education wrapped into an unlikely love story.  A few fun surprises.  A lot of town ‘gossip’.  A whole lot of compassion and tenderness and love with a quirky old man and an incorrigible teenager thrown in for good measure.  I can honestly say this is a story I would more likely than not re-read.  

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About Mary Kay McComas

Mary Kay McComas is an acclaimed romance novelist and the author of twenty-one short contemporary romances, seven novellas, and three novels. McComas has received numerous honors and prizes for her work, including the Washington Romance Writers' Outstanding Achievement Award and two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times (one for Best New Novel and another for Most Innovative Romance Series). She has recently contributed to Nora Roberts's J. D. Robb fantasy anthologies, with highly praised paranormal romance stories. McComas and her family live in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

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BOOK REVIEW: Firefly Beach by Luanne Rice

Under the summer sky, anything is possible....

Author of the acclaimed novels Cloud Nine and Follow the Stars Home, Luanne Rice returns with another moving portrait of a family in crisis—as three sisters come face-to-face with the past and find in each other the courage to go on.

Coolly sophisticated and steadfastly single, Caroline Renwick has always been the sister everyone could count on. As she and Clea and Skye gathered at Firefly Hill, their childhood home, Caroline thought that they had all put the past behind them. But as summer gets under way, a mysterious man arrives—a man who has the power to bring it all back....

Joe Connor was only six when his father died at Firefly Hill. Though he and Caroline had never met, the five-year-old girl reached out to him. They became pen pals and friends, until a teenaged Joe finally learned the truth about what had happened to his father that night. Now, after years of silence, Joe is suddenly here ... and Caroline still feels a connection. But she can't help but wonder if this handsome man holds the key to her family's healing—or its destruction. And in his presence, how long will she be able to guard her heart?

'Firefly Beach' is not my first Luanne Rice novel and I seriously doubt it will be my last.  Truth is I know it won't as there are more sitting on my bookshelf right now waiting for me to choose one.  I really enjoyed the story, liked the characters and at times wanted to beat their heads, or mine, into a wall.  Set in New England three sisters live their adult lives in the shadows of the past.  Being the children of a famous artist just adds flavor.  Three separate women living three separate lives all in the shadow of each other.  While living under a cloud of the past that they, and their mother, cannot seem to spread beyond.

At times I literally wanted to bash heads.  Someones.  Anyones.  I got so frustrated with everyone alluding to and talking around these horrible things that had happened to shape who each sister had become.  Rarely did they actually talk about it.  Work through it.  They talked around it.  And that made me want to bash heads.  But it also made me actually think.  Not something you expect from what you picked up and anticipated to be a beach read.  How often does each and every last one of us tiptoe around our own stories.  How often do we talk around, walk around, think around those big tings that helped to create who we are, flaws and all?  Instead of dealing with it, moving past it, and filing it into the bin of done and over with thanks for the experiences and the knowledge. I am just as guilty as the next person of letting the big stuff continue to dominate my choices and decisions instead of learning from it and then moving forward. We are all guilty at some point of letting our pasts dictate our futures.  Rice did an excellent job of telling the story so the reader knew what was going on while also playing out these all to human circumstance.  I think of all the girls, Skye and their mother gained the most throughout this novel.  They gained self-respect, they gained a sense of self and in the mother's case she gained a sense that she was enough for her daughters in the best way she could be at any given moment.  Not necessarily what they wanted or even needed but she was enough.

I'm glad I own this book because it is one I would read again.  I also think that it is one that in re-reading you will pick out more things that were missed the last time around.  I have to apologize for thinking that 'Firefly Beach' was just a beach read, and not because of the title.  It's a book that makes you want to bash heads but also makes you think.  If you really think you can find the parallels, in thought process if nothing else, to yourself and others you know.  Hopefully through the characters' growth you might just find a little bit of growth for yourself as well.

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About Luanne Rice

Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two novels including THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF SISTERS, her first YA novel. Five of her books have been made into movies and mini-series, many have been New York Times bestsellers and two of her pieces have been featured in off-Broadway theatre productions. She divides her time between New York City and the Connecticut shoreline.

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BOOK REVIEW: Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

Sometimes all you can do is fly away home ...

When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician's wife-her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie-chick wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledges that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to her husband, the senator.

Lizzie, the Woodruffs' younger daughter, is at twenty-four a recovering addict, whose mantra HALT (Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?) helps her keep her life under control. Still, trouble always seems to find her. Her older sister, Diana, an emergency room physician, has everything Lizzie failed to achieve-a husband, a young son, the perfect home-and yet she's trapped in a loveless marriage. With temptation waiting in one of the ER's exam rooms, she finds herself craving more.

After Richard's extramarital affair makes headlines, the three women are drawn into the painful glare of the national spotlight. Once the press conference is over, each is forced to reconsider her life, who she is and who she is meant to be.

Written with an irresistible blend of heartbreak and hilarity, Fly Away Home is an unforgettable story of a mother and two daughters who after a lifetime of distance finally learn to find refuge in one another.

Before I even begin I have to clarify that I have yet to read something I don't like from Jennifer Weiner. 'Fly Away Home' is another re-readable book by her. It fits the classic chick lit mold without the '...and they lived happily ever after'. Or everything solved and wrapped neatly in a happy little bow. Honestly, either of those outcomes almost always feels contrived and unrealistic.

You know the story. Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Get married. Have children. Work their way up the career ladder, in this instance politics, and achieve their dreams. Good child. Screwed up child. Boy screws up. Girl is heartbroken. Meanwhile good child screws up. Screwed up child finds her way, kind of. Bare bones but an outline we can all identify with. But that doesn't tell the story and it wasn't wrapped up neatly in a bow either. Sylvie and Richard fall in love at college, he follows his dreams into politics. Sylvie manages his career, their lives and home and to some degree their daughters. The good child, Diana, is a doctor, married with a son. She chose her marriage based on not having what her parents had and finds herself unhappy. And the day the news that her dad had an affair with a political aide breaks she's in the midst of her own affair. Lizzie, the screwed up child, is fresh out of rehab...again, and learning how to date sober while babysitting her nephew.

Girl leaves boy to try to decide what she wants from life and her marriage. Good daughter leaves husband but also gets dumped by her fling. Screwed up child gets pregnant and hides it from everyone, walking away from the father because she is scared of rejection. Most of the story is wrapped up in some variation quite neatly. Good daughter and husband divorce but amicably. Screwed up daughter lives with her sister and watches her nephew while reuniting with baby daddy. Girl and Boy talk but no decisions are made as to their future. Though he decides to retire instead of shoot for the oval office.

It's a good story. A great lay in bed on a cold winter day with hot cocoa read or a beach bag book in the summer read. It's not going to make have deep thought provoking thoughts but you might actually think a time or two. It didn't leave me feeling overly emotionally invested but I did feel a kinship for the characters. It's a good book. I can't say it's great. I can't say it's amazing. But I can say I would read it again.

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About Jennifer Weiner

Jennifer Weiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fourteen books, including Good in Bed, The Littlest Bigfoot, and her memoir Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing. A graduate of Princeton University and contributor to the New York Times Opinion section, she lives with her family in Philadelphia. Visit her online at JenniferWeiner.com.
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BOOK REVIEW: Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

 In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard's world changed forever—-when Caitlin Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha's Vineyard, a magical, wind-blown island where two friends became summer sisters...

Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin has begged Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—for the friend whose casual betrayals she remembers all too well. Because Vix wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart...

I loved Judy Blume as a kid, and teen, and still as an adult.  I first read 'Summer Sisters' many years ago and fell in love with Judy Blume as an adult reader all over again.  Yes it's chick lit.  Yes it's slightly cheesy.  It's slightly unbelievable but it's completely engrossing. 

Victoria and Caitlin have the unlikely friendship between the new popular mysterious girl and the under the radar not exactly misfit but not exactly anybody you notice girl.  You know, the kind of friendship all girls want for themselves at that age.  Caitlin's life is everything that Victoria believes her's is not.  They have a lifetime friendship, despite the ups and downs and ins and outs of lives lived in different worlds.  You know, the kind of friendship most women want for themselves.

Totally chick lit, 'Summer Sisters' is the lifetime of friendship between two girls that grow up together, grow apart together, grow back together, and despite the ups and downs always still care for each other.  Slightly cheesy as reality, despite our own fantasies of lifetime friendships, it still delivers the belief that anything is possible.  Slightly unbelievable in the adventures the girls find themselves in, the experimentation they choose to engage in, and the craziness that is the life of Caitlin. 

'Summer Sisters' should never be confused as a young adult or teen selection.  There is no doubt as you read through their lives that Victoria and Caitlin were written for an adult audience.  Though to be fair, a lot of current young adult books I come across contain an equal amount of sex.  There is a lot of sexual experimentation and experiences. 

At the end of the day 'Summer Sisters' will always fall on my favorite books shelf because Judy Blume grew up.  She took what that I loved about her books as a child and as a teen and tailored those things to an adult audience.  She created characters you could believe in, even when you can't begin to relate to their experiences.  She created characters that, despite never being able to relate to their life, you can see yourself in.  Their struggles and achievements and the life lessons they learn along the way.

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About Judy Blume

Judy Blume is an American writer known for children's and young adult fiction. Some of her best known works are Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Deenie, and Blubber.

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BOOK REVIEW: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in the New York Times about a hit play she's directed, her mother gets described as a "tap-dancing child abuser." Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda. Devastated, Sidda begs forgiveness, and postpones her upcoming wedding. All looks bleak until the Ya-Yas step in and convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos, called "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." As Sidda struggles to analyze her mother, she comes face to face with the tangled beauty of imperfect love, and the fact that forgiveness, more than understanding, is often what the heart longs for.

Truth, I've seen the movie.  I'm not sure how, if at all that colored by ideas regarding the book.  To be fair I didn't see the movie when it was at it's height of popularity and everyone was doing Ya Ya things at parties, with the family or with their friends.  It's difficult for me to see a movie after I have read the book.  Predominately because I feel like the movies never do the book justice.  However, 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood', despite the differences between the book and the movie, was done well as a book and as a movie.  Perhaps because I read the book after the movie, it's rare I do it that way.

I truly enjoyed this book.  I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the characters.  I reminds me a little bit of 'Sex in the City'.  Just go with me for a minute.  I have a friend who loves the show and the movies.  The intertwining of friends lives and the comfort of having friends at hand for the good, the bad, the ugly, the amazing.  I have another friend who said once that she could never be a 'Sex in the City' friend and if that is what was being sought in friendship then to look elsewhere.  The Ya-Ya's are 'Sex in the City' friends.  Always there, good or bad.  Always ready to hold up a friend, or the child of a friend.  Always there for the fun times and the hard times. Friends for life, no take backs.  They carry each others secrets and burdens.  The carry each others joy and laughter.

Friendship like that, today, is rare.  Friendships that span a lifetime are hard to find.  In today's world people are on the move.  We are more globally minded and leave behind parts of ourselves where we go. To stay in one area for a lifetime and be around the same people for a lifetime is something of the past.   Even if one or two stay the chances of four staying is small.  We go to college, we move to the city, we get careers and married.  Your friends from school change to your college friends.  They change to your career friends.  You may hold the friendships from childhood in memory but rarely do they continue in reality.

I think I liked this book mostly for the relationships.  To have those types of friendships is something we all long for, whether we realize it or not.  Someone to trust with your secrets, your heartbreaks, your tears.  Someone to trust with your joys, your hopes and dreams, and laughter.  We all long for someone to have a history and a future with.  And as women this is position that only a girlfriend, or girlfriends, can fill. 

I think, somewhere in writing this review, I've changed from writing an actual review to writing a blog post of thoughts and life lessons.  What I do know is that I believe that Rebecca Wells did an amazing job of creating an amazing cast of women that fills a space that we all long for in one way or another.  She's created women who knew how to care for each other.  She also created an imperfect world where no one is perfect, no matter how much they try or pretend to be.  Everyone is broken in one way or another.  And those women tried to teach us that no matter how good or bad a situation is.  No matter how vulnerable you feel you have to keep going.  Your time will come.  And those that love you will carry you through it all.

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About Rebecca Wells

Writer, actor, and playwright Rebecca Wells is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Ya-Yas in Bloom, Little Altars Everywhere, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which was made into a feature film. A native of Louisiana, she now lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

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