Review: All the Best People (by Sonja Yoerg)

My rating:  5 stars


This was one of those rare books where, a few chapters in, I already knew that it would be at minimum a 4-star read, possibly even 5 star.  As I’ve said before, I’m stingy when it comes to ratings and I don’t give 5 stars very often, but when such a deserving book as this one comes along, I do not see how I can give anything less than 5 stars.  

Sonja Yoerg’s All the Best People captured my attention from the start.   The story is told from the alternating perspectives of three generations of women from the same family – Carole, her sister Janine, their mother Solange, and Carole’s adolescent daughter Alison.  Part 1, which takes place in 1972, sets up the story for us as we meet the LaPorte family through the voices of Carole, Alison, and Janine.   From the first page, we already know that Carole’s mother Solange was committed to a mental institution a few decades ago, though the reasons why and the details from Solange’s backstory are withheld from us.  Through the interactions of the LaPorte family, we are given some “clues” that point to a past family history filled with tragedy and sorrow -- through the character of Carole especially, we get the sense that some things happened in her childhood that seem to be coming back to haunt her now and suddenly, the blissful life she had built with her husband and three kids threatens to fall apart.  In part 2, we are taken back to the year 1926 and Solange’s backstory, starting with her marriage to Osborn Gifford.  From here, we start to put together the pieces of the puzzle and the “clues” from part 1 slowly gain clarity, with complex family dynamics and societal influences coming into play, culminating in us finally finding out what led Solange – a young mother at the time – to be institutionalized.  Part 3 brings us back to 1972, to Carole and Alison and their family issues, which finally reach breaking point as Carole suspects that she might have the same “mental illness” as her mother and is terrified that, just like Solange, she may get locked up in an institution, abandoned by her family, destined to live a life of loneliness and isolation.  Will Carole’s fate end up like Solange’s?  Will her family be able to overcome the dark legacy of mental illness that has haunted their family line for nearly 5 decades?  Though the ending was a bit flat for my liking in that it did not have the emotional pull that I was expecting, the revelations about the family lineage that came to light prior to that all but made up for it.

This book is both beautifully and brilliantly written!  It wasn’t until I got to the end of the book that I realized the brilliance of the structure – having Carole’s story told in the present, then switching to the past to tell Solange’s story, then coming back to the present when both stories seem to converge and ultimately things come to a head at the end.  The juxtaposition of both women’s stories, mixed with perspectives from Alison and Janine at just the right moments, presented a powerful examination of mental illness and its impact on family as well as how the choices and decisions one makes can have a lasting impact on future generations.  But it also went beyond that, as there was also an exploration of relationships (some kept together by love while others are torn apart by betrayal), human dignity and morality, family history, class differences, the role of fate, the importance of trust, etc.  There were even some “coming-of-age” elements with Alison’s story and also the recollection of Carole’s childhood!

Despite all I just wrote, I don’t think my review does justice to how great this book is.  It’s a highly recommended read, one that will resonate with readers and may even stay with you long after you’ve finished reading (which is the impact it had on me).

Received advance reader’s copy from Berkley Press via Penguin First-to-Read program

Read in April 2017

Review: The Light We Lost (by Jill Santopolo)

My Rating:  3.5 stars


Let me start off by saying that I have never been a fan of contemporary romance novels.  Nothing against the genre per se, it’s just that I prefer stories with more depth to them and unfortunately, a lot of the books I’ve read that fall into this specific category are typically lacking in this area.  While I would consider The Light We Lost as one of the better-written contemporary romance books I’ve read, it still didn’t quite hit the mark for me, especially from an emotional perspective.  In reading the reviews, I know a lot of people loved this book and found it to be a heartbreakingly romantic and moving love story, which I guess it was to some extent depending on how you look at it, but to be honest, I didn’t really feel it.  

The story started off well and in the beginning, I truly was moved by the special bond and love that the central couple Lucy and Gabe shared, but as the story progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the direction things were going, especially with the main character Lucy.  It was hard for me to understand Lucy’s thought process at times and some of the actions she took as well as reactions she had to things that happened actually frustrated me to no end.  While I didn’t really like Lucy all that much, I do appreciate the author’s attempts to make her character realistic in that, like all human beings, Lucy is not perfect – she makes mistakes (big ones as well as minor) and bad choices that of course have devastating consequences and have the potential to ruin the good life that she had worked so hard to build.  In this regard, even though I disagreed with a lot of Lucy’s actions, there were some parts where I was truly able to empathize with her.

One of the things that I found disappointing with this book was the lack of character development outside of Lucy.  She was pretty much the only character in the book who was fully developed – everyone else was essentially one-dimensional.  I’m assuming this has to do with the way the story was structured in that the entire narrative was told from the first person point-of-view, with Lucy “talking”’ to Gabe and essentially recounting her perspective of their story from the day the two of them first met.  This “spin” on the first-person narrative is indeed unique, but I also felt it kind of backfired in that I was basically able to guess the ending early on, barely a few chapters into the story.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I was not able to relate to the story as much on an emotional level.   

The summary hints at similarities to Me Before You in terms of romantic, “tug at your heartstrings” love story, but to me, both books were at different levels.  Me Before You had way more emotional depth – that book made me laugh but also made me cry, the ending especially.  This one didn’t have the same emotional pull – or perhaps it was just lost on me. 

Overall, I would say that this was a good book, just not my type of book.  It’s definitely well-written and as far as contemporary romances go, this one deserves to be near the top of the list in that genre.  Some of the dialogue was meaningful and the message about the consequences of choice definitely rings loud and clear. 

Received advance reader’s copy from G.P. Putnam via Penguin First To Read program.

Read in April 2017

Review: The Barrowfields (by Phillip Lewis)

My Rating:  4 stars

I had a difficult time starting this review because there are so many things I liked about this book that it was hard for me to just choose a few things to focus on.  But since I must choose, I would have to say that the beautiful writing, first and foremost, is what got me completely drawn into this book.  From the very first page to the very last one, the writing was lyrical, descriptive, engaging.  The author Phillip Lewis has a unique skill in being able to render vivid descriptions of people, places, events, etc. in a few short sentences, sometimes in a mere few words, and do it in a way that the reader feels fully immersed in what he is describing.  Some of my favorite descriptions in the book were of the old mansion situated on the side of the mountain in the fictitious town of Old Buckram, North Carolina – a formidable, intimidating structure that had seen its own fair share of tragedy in its decades of existence, which succeeded in giving the house a perpetually macabre, haunted aura.  The detail with which the house was described made me feel as though I was right there alongside the members of the Aster family as each of them either explored the house for the first time or had to bear witness to some tragic event that inevitably occurs in the house during the time that the family reluctantly occupies it.

In addition to the writing, another aspect I loved was the huge role that books (both reading books and writing them) as well as music had in the story.  As a book lover myself who also has a great appreciation for music, I could not help but become completely immersed in the narrator’s story, especially the parts about his family, specifically his father with whom he shared a similar passion for reading and also playing classical music.  As I followed the narrator’s story, I felt at times that I was riding on a roller coaster of emotions, especially during the first third or so of the story when books of all kinds were front and center and the characters seemed to play only supporting roles.  Even when the main characters became the focus of the story again, books and music continued to play a prominent role and were interwoven seamlessly throughout the rest of the story, which I loved.

This is an excellent book with an engaging story and relatable characters which easily would have been a 5 star read for me if it hadn’t been for the middle section of the book (roughly 30% to 40% if I had to quantify it) -- the entire segment where the narrator (Henry Aster the son) goes off to college and subsequently to law school.  While I understood the need for this segment to exist (as a means for Henry to flee from all the tragedy and pain of his past as well as a conduit for him to meet his true love), I felt that the way this section was written was very different from the rest of the book.  It felt very out of place to me, almost as though the entire section was taken from another story and dropped into this one.  I definitely felt that this portion of the book interrupted the flow of the story and I wanted nothing more than for the narrator to hurry up and finish school so the focus could shift back to his family and his hometown and everything that had happened that was part of the past he was desperately trying to flee.  After much consideration, I ended up begrudgingly giving this book 4 stars instead of the full 5 stars.

I decided to keep this review relatively short, as I feel like nothing I write can do justice to this book.  This is a book that needs to be “read” rather than “described” because that is the only way to properly experience and appreciate the story that the author has to tell (and yes, I am still in shock that this is the author’s debut novel – I will surely be on the lookout for subsequent works by this author).  Highly recommended read that is absolutely worth the time! 

Received advance reader’s copy from Hogarth / Crown Publishing via Blogging for Books

Review: The Idea of You (by Amanda Prowse)

My Rating: 2.5 stars

This book started out as a 3 star ("ok" read, not great but not horrible either), but a chapter or so in, it went down to 2 stars and truth be told, by the time I reached the halfway mark, I was so annoyed with the way the story was going that I was tempted to DNF the book right then and there. But not being one to abandon a book in the middle of reading unless there is a truly compelling reason, I stuck with it and ended up speed-reading through the rest of the book so I could get through it as quickly as possible (and move on to other books that I might actually enjoy reading). While the last 20% or so of the book – including the ending – didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would, the damage had already been done in that I was already annoyed with 80% of the book, so I couldn't really bring myself to raise my rating to anything more than 2.5 stars.

For me, what irritated me most about this book were the characters, mostly the main character Lucy and (to some extent) her husband Jonah. I was not able to identify with Lucy at all, which I found quite ironic given the fact that certain aspects of the character's life (prior to her marriage) paralleled my own – namely, Lucy's position in the beginning of the story where she is a career-driven woman who, finding herself still single as she approaches her 40s, begins to seriously contemplate what role marriage and children have in her future. The difference, of course, is that Lucy is "crazily" obsessed with wanting to be a mother and to have a baby of her own that she can dote on (in her own words, she was "desperate to be a mother"), to the point that it basically consumes every waking moment of her life and impacts everything she says, does, thinks. This is the case even after she gets married and not surprisingly, her overwhelming desire to have a baby ends up straining her relationship with her husband as well as everyone else around her. Personality-wise, the way Lucy is portrayed for majority of the story – as a woman who, despite being in her 40s and having a prestigious, high-level managerial position at her company, was highly immature, selfish, hypocritical, and often acted like a jealous, defiant teenager when dealing with all issues outside of work – made her a very unlikable character. I actually found it very difficult to feel any bit of sympathy for Lucy, despite all the struggles she endures throughout the story.

From a story perspective, I felt like things dragged on too much, with the focus for 90% of the book being on Lucy's desperate attempts to become a mother. I got tired of reading about the same thing over and over again, chapter after chapter: Lucy attempting to become pregnant, her nearly daily spats with her husband Jonah over trivial matters that almost always stemmed from her unwavering desire to have a baby, etc. The inconsistency of the writing also bothered me – not so much sentence structure or grammatical stuff, but rather the way the author seemed to "over-explain" things in some sections (especially when it came to Lucy's thoughts and feelings) but then "under-explain" in other sections (usually when it pertained to things not directly related to Lucy's desire to have a baby). It almost felt as though most of the dialogue in the book was meant "justify" in some way Lucy's every word, thought, and action, whether positive or negative.

To me, this is a book that has limited reading scope in that it likely won't appeal to those who may not have the same concerns, beliefs, experiences, etc. as the characters in the story. I clearly was not the target audience for this book, as I am not married (despite being nearly the same age as Lucy was when the story opened) and do not have children. Not to mention, my belief system also conflicts with what I perceive to be the "message" that the author (whether intentionally or unintentionally) seemed to be trying to convey throughout the book: that the only way for a woman to truly be happy in life is to get married and have children. Of course, I have nothing against marriage or having children (in fact, I love kids and have a nephew whom I adore), but I also don't see anything wrong with still being single. But this is just me….perhaps others who read this book may have a different perspective – for me, this book definitely wasn't my cup of tea.

Received advance reader's copy from Lake Union Publishing via NetGalley.