Review: The Eight Mountains (by Paolo Cognetti)

 My Rating:  4 stars

This was a beautifully written story about the friendship of two young Italian boys, Pietro and Bruno – both of whom come from different backgrounds, yet from the moment they meet, they develop a closeness akin to two brothers.   Their friendship is indeed a special one, as Pietro is from the city and though he shares an almost immediate love for the Dolomites – the mountains located in the northeastern border of Italy where his family travels for vacation – he does not fully understand the deep relationship that his friend Bruno has with these mountains where he grew up, nor does he understand the inexplicable pull that these same mountains have on his own parents, especially his father.  Despite the divergent paths that their lives end up taking and the many months, even years, they often spend apart, the friendship between Pietro and Bruno endures over the course of several decades and later it is through Bruno that Pietro eventually comes to appreciate and connect to the late father with whom he had grown distant over the course of his life.  More than just a coming of age story, this is also one that emphasizes the bonds of family, especially that between father and son….at its core, this is a story about relationships in its many forms – between friends, various members of the family, love relationships, and of course, relationship with nature and its surrounding landscape.

There were so many things I loved about this atmospheric yet quietly written book:  the beautiful descriptions of the mountains and its surrounding landscape, rendered in a way that made the mountains an important character in the story;  the lyrical, contemplative prose, writing so full of depth and meaning, yet uncomplicated in its execution – I found myself highlighting extensively throughout my reading and even stopping at various points just to absorb and reflect upon what I had just read;  the characters whom I grew to really care about and root for, characters created by the author Paolo Cognetti so meticulously and presented with obvious care, yet were still realistically portrayed with personalities and flaws that we can all relate to -- characters that, by story’s end, made me feel a little saddened knowing that I would not be able to continue the journey with them.  I also loved the way all the different relationships were portrayed, especially the enduring friendship between Pietro and Bruno as well as the strenuous one between Pietro and his father…both relationships were poignantly drawn – touching, yet at the same time also heartbreaking. 

This was a book that captivated me from the beginning, found its way into my heart, and after that wouldn’t let go -- a short book, yet one packed with so much depth and meaning.  This was a lovely read, one that I won’t soon forget.  Definitely highly recommended!

Received ARC from Atria Books via NetGalley.

Review: Yo-Kai Watch 9 (by Noriyuki Konishi)

My Rating: 4 stars

My nephew is a huge Yo-kai Watch fan.  He started liking the franchise after playing the game on his Nintendo 3DS and from there, he started watching the anime series and of course collecting all manner of Yo-kai memorabilia, including the different generations of the watch itself as well as the medals, plushies, figurines, posters, toys, etc.  He even has special Nano blocks sets of his favorite Yo-kai characters, Jibanyan and Komasan (both of which took me hours to build, lol)!  As my nephew's gaming buddy, I was automatically given the "privilege" of sharing in his Yo-kai Watch obsession, and of course, being the bookworm in the family as well as already holding the honored position of "Designated Reading Buddy" with my nephew, I naturally seized the opportunity to cultivate the bookish side of his obsession.  To supplement his many toys and video games, I'm constantly on the lookout for Yo-kai Watch related books for him to read, though unfortunately, there aren't too many options out there in English.  A few years ago, I stumbled upon a Yo-kai Watch manga series by Noriyuki Konishi (which was translated and released in the U.S. starting in 2015) and when I showed it to my nephew, he instantly fell in love with the series – it is currently one of his all-time favorites and he re-reads various books from the series practically every month.  When I was browsing on Edelweiss a few days ago, I saw that the latest offering, Book 9 in the series, was available already so I jumped on requesting an advance copy and much to my delight, was approved fairly quickly.  My nephew of course wanted to read the book right away when I told him about it so that's exactly what we did last night for our nightly story session.  Both of us had a lot of fun reading this one and overall we loved it, though we did feel that some of the segments were a bit "wordier" than the ones from previous books so it did break the flow a little bit.  Also, my nephew wasn't as familiar with some of the newer Yo-kai characters, so we got a little sidetracked looking up some of those characters.  Aside from that though, this was all-in-all a delightful read and needless to say, my nephew can't wait to add the physical copy of the book to his collection once it releases in July!

Received ARC from Viz Media and Simon & Schuster via Edelweiss

Review: After Anna (by Lisa Scottoline)

 My Rating: 2.5 stars

I had heard many good things about Lisa Scottoline’s books and so when I was offered an ARC of her latest thriller After Anna, I went into it expecting an intense read.  The plot (from the summary) sounded promising and the first 2-3 chapters actually did draw me in, made me interested in the story and wanting to find out what was really going on with Anna’s murder and what Noah’s role was in it.  Unfortunately, the story quickly started falling apart for me (I was barely at the 8% mark on my Kindle) and kept going downhill the more I read – by the time I got to the end of the book, the story had become such a tangled mess that I felt like kicking myself for not having DNF’ed this earlier on (especially when I already have a long list of books I still need to get to).

There were so many issues I had with this book, I honestly don’t know where to begin with relaying my thoughts on this one.  I guess perhaps I should start with the writing, which was where I first found issue with this book.  Most of the book (way too much of it to be honest) consisted of back and forth dialogue between various characters – the “After” sections were mostly about Noah’s trial, with the dialogue centering heavily on the back and forth questioning between lawyers and witnesses, while the “Before” sections had line after line of dialogue between Maggie, Noah, Anna, and other characters, building up the “meat” of the story in terms of how Noah got to the point of standing trial for murder.  Dialogue is of course a necessary component of all novels and when it is done well, it can definitely enhance a story and give keen insight into the story’s characters, but when the dialogue is overdone to the extent that it was here, it actually bogs down the story more than anything else.  With that said though, the issue I had wasn’t just with the excessive amount of dialogue, but rather, how trite and superficial majority of the dialogue was, to the point that I felt most of it was unnecessary and the story would’ve been more coherent without it.  There were some chapters where characters took up pages and pages having long, drawn out, yet repetitive arguments with each other (some of the arguments actually reminded me of the way children argued with each other)…or a character takes several paragraphs, sometimes even several pages, to “get to the point” of what they were trying to say (i.e.: almost all of the conversations between Maggie and Anna).  Outside of the dialogue, there was also too much description of “unnecessary minutiae” – details that were not really relevant to the plot and made me wonder why they were included in the first place (i.e. that entire chapter where Maggie and Anna are at the Congreve Inn and we are told what their room looked like, the different things they ate, Anna’s “play-by-play” reaction to the movie they were watching, etc).  All of this, combined with the issues with the plot as well as a general frustration with most of the characters (more on both these points this later), made the story feel so tremendously draggy that I found myself skimming a lot, especially at the halfway mark when I started getting increasingly annoyed with the way things were going (or, more appropriately, NOT going) and so resorted to glossing over entire paragraphs – sometimes even entire pages – so that I could get to the end quicker.

In terms of the characters, I didn’t like the way any of them were portrayed, as they all came across as one-dimensional and superficial to me.  I was especially irritated with the character of Maggie, who was supposed to be a mature 40-something mother and career woman, yet for nearly 90% of the story that she was in, she acted like a petulant teenager throwing a tantrum each time things didn’t go her way.  In fact, in some of the scenes between Maggie and Anna, I actually got confused who was the teenager and who was the mother because they both sounded equally immature.  The character of Noah came across as too much of a caricature – perfect husband, perfect father, tall and good-looking, exceedingly intelligent doctor, patient, attentive, loving, basically he was the penultimate “perfect” man whom Maggie obviously adored – but yet, upon one “complaint” from Anna, Maggie goes from loving her husband to automatically hating him and then refuses all attempts at rational thought after that. And of course, Anna was a very stereotypical character, but what irked me most was how blatantly obvious it was from the getgo that something wasn’t right with her, yet Maggie saw absolutely no issues, had absolutely no doubts, even when evidence was staring her in the face.  I personally can’t stand characters that are written deliberately stereotypical, especially female characters, so the way both Anna and Maggie were portrayed in this story really got to me.

Where I saw the biggest problem with this story though was in the plot, which honestly had more holes in it than swiss cheese.   I had to suspend disbelief for practically the entire book in order to get through it -- the opening chapters were decent but the plot grew more and more outlandish as the story dragged on and by the end, the plot had gotten so out of hand that I really had to question whether I was still reading the same book.  One particular section in the second half of the book really made my blood boil (the part where one of the characters accompanies the police on a high profile sting operation – I’m trying to avoid spoilers so being purposely vague here) – the actions of the characters made no sense to me (not just in that one section but throughout the entire story) and it seemed like a lot of the time, drama was being created for drama’s sake.  Overall, the entire plot felt forced and with all the holes, the flow of the story was negatively affected to the point that it was a huge struggle to get through the book.

Though I can’t in good conscience recommend this read due to all the issues I had with it, I am obviously the outlier here as there are many others who liked this one, so I would recommend checking out the 4 and 5 star reviews as well before deciding.  Also, despite my disappointment with this book, I am still open to reading this author’s other works in the future, as I’ve heard her other works are better, but it’s definitely less of a priority for me at this point.

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

Review: Swimming Between Worlds (by Elaine Neil Orr)

My Rating:  4 stars

This was a book that took me awhile to get into and some sections were so slow-burn that it took some effort to push forward and continue reading, but I'm glad I stuck with it because in the end I was rewarded with a good story and characters that are hard to forget.  Set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the late 1950s/early 1960s, the narrative revolves around 3 main characters:  Tacker Hart, a gifted engineer and all-around popular boy-hero whose life is transformed after returning from a trip to Nigeria;  Kate Monroe, a young college graduate dealing with the loss of both her parents when a family secret she discovers in a letter threatens to tear her already fragile world further apart; and Gaines, a young African-American man whose separate encounters with both Tacker and Kate change the courses of their lives forever.  The story is set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, only in its early stages here, yet so important in driving the course of the narrative forward.   The author Elaine Neil Orr did a great job blending the historical context of the social unrest at the time that triggered the Civil Rights movement with the fictional story of Tacker and Kate's complicated relationship and the difficult path they must take in order to find love.   I also like the way the author developed the characters in the story, especially Tacker, as we were given the opportunity to delve deep into his thoughts as he tried to reconcile his experience in Nigeria with what he was seeing in his own community back home in Winston-Salem.  Gaines' impact on him was profound, as was the friendship of Samuel, one of the young Nigerian men Tacker met on his assignment, and to be honest, I enjoyed reading about these friendships more than Tacker's at times conflicted love relationship with Kate.  Perhaps this is because I wasn't too fond of Kate due to her being so self-absorbed most of the time (which I did find a tad bit annoying in some scenes), but I think it also has to do with the story being written in a way where the reality of what was happening in society at the time and Tacker's place in it trumped the love story, which was put more on the back burner.  I guess in a way, this was mostly Tacker's story and while Kate's role was important to the story as well, I felt the significance was more in her character reflecting the attitude of society at the time when it came to issues of race and equality and how that attitude differed so greatly from Tacker's.   

This was my first time reading Elaine Neil Orr's work and I am definitely interested in reading more of her books.  The writing was well-done and though I felt some parts were a little overwritten, that didn't affect my enjoyment of the story at all.  There were also the themes of "water" and "swimming" that were huge parts of the book, though the author worked this into the story so well that I actually didn't realize the subtle references throughout the book until I was nearing the end.   My one complaint was that I sensed a certain level of emotional restraint in the telling of the story, reflected more significantly in some characters' narratives (Kate for example) over others, and while this didn't detract a whole lot from the events or how they unfolded in the story itself, it did affect the emotional impact that a story like this one should / could have had on its readers.  The biggest example of this was in the ending, which was unexpected (and quite honestly a bit shocking), and I feel should have elicited a far more emotional response, but the way it was written felt a bit glossed over.  With that said though, this was overall a thought-provoking read, another book that, despite its setting in an earlier time period, is very much timely, especially given everything happening in our world currently.  Having grown up in the U.S. studying and reading about the Civil Rights movement primarily in history books, I appreciate the fact that books like this one help put into perspective the real-life impact of that history to ordinary lives – one of the aspects I love most about historical fiction.  This one is definitely recommended!

Received ARC from Berkley Books via Penguin First-to-read program.

Review: The Recipe Box (by Viola Shipman)

 My Rating: 4 stars

 

This is the second book I’ve read by Viola Shipman and so far, this is definitely my favorite out of the two.  Last year, I had the opportunity to read this author’s second novel The Hope Chest and while it was an enjoyable read for me, it didn’t capture my heart like this third book The Recipe Box did.  At the heart of this book was a wonderful story about family, love, relationships, identity, and one of my favorite topics :  FOOD -- not just any food though – pies, cakes, tarts, cookies, and all manner of delicious baked goods!  The story centers around Sam, a young sous-chef for a fancy bakery in New York who ends up quitting her job and returns home to Michigan, where her family owns an orchard and pie shop.  Having grown up on the orchard surrounded by a loving family as well as the two women who inspired her love of baking – her mother Deana and her grandmother Willo – Sam returns to her childhood home to “lick her wounds,” sort out the mess she made of her life, and hopefully gain some clarity on the next steps for her future.  Sam is welcomed back with open arms and quickly falls back in step with working at the orchard alongside the women in her life who had always meant so much to her – together, as they work through the recipes in the family’s recipe box, Sam not only develops a deeper understanding of her family’s treasured history and legacy, she also embarks on a journey of self-discovery that reignites her passion for baking as well as opens her heart to love.

I enjoyed this gem of a story that was filled with characters I adored from the start!  I love stories about strong, smart, independent-minded women and this story had plenty of them – from Sam to Deana to Willo, also the generations that came before them with Madge and Alice, even though not mentioned as much but yet still so important to the story, I loved all these women!  With well-written and descriptive prose, the story was incredibly atmospheric, to the point that I felt as though I was transported to the Mullins family orchard right from the very first page.  In fact, I would say that the setting of the orchard (and pie pantry) became actual “characters” for me, coming vividly alive as the story unfolded and we learned more and more about Sam and her family with each chapter.  I felt that the story itself was lovely and heartwarming, though yes it was a bit predictable and perhaps a little too saccharine and sweet, but that’s fine because it was the perfect escape for me after a series of heavier reads and also me dealing with a few rough patches in my own life.  From the moment I started reading, I was expecting a light-hearted, feel good story with a plot that wasn’t too complicated and also characters I could possibly relate to – I ended up getting that and much, much more!  Included at the end of each chapter was the recipe – ingredients and step-by-step instructions – for making each of the desserts featured in the story, which was a lovely surprise and an aspect of this book that I loved!  In addition, I also enjoyed reading about the origin of each recipe as well as explanation of the real-life significance behind each dessert in the author’s note at the end of the book.  Even though I most likely won’t attempt to make these desserts myself due to the fact that I’m a lousy cook and an even worse baker, I am also blessed to have wonderful women in my family who are fantastic when it comes to turning food into delectable creations so I know for sure they will enjoy trying these recipes out!

I recently found out that Viola Shipman is actually the pen name for Wade Rouse, a male author who writes under his grandmother’s name to honor her.  Just like with his two previous novels The Charm Bracelet and The Hope Chest, this book The Recipe Box was also inspired by one of his grandmother’s heirlooms that was passed down to him.  As he writes in his author’s note, this book “is a tribute to our elders, especially the women in our lives whose voices were often overlooked in their lifetimes.”  What a wonderful way to honor his grandmother and also remind us as readers to treasure the elders in our lives and continue to pass along their love, lessons, family stories, and heirlooms to those we love as well!  Wonderful book and definitely a highly recommended read!

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley.