Tag: Fiction Review

Books, Fiction

A Christmas Revelation by Anne Perry

RaeAnna

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A Christmas Revelation | Sweater (so soft and cozy) | Shoes (so sparkly) | Jeans

Read Yes
Length 160
Quick Review Set in Victorian London, this mild mystery is a sweet story about the meaning of Christmas spirit and never giving up.

Victorian London is an iconic Christmas setting perfect for any holiday mystery. Anne Perry sets A Christmas Revelation in the middle of not-so-respectable London. It’s a short novel perfect for a busy reader this holiday season.

Worm is a nine year old orphan wandering the streets of London, when he sees a beautiful young woman abducted. He lives at a medical clinic with Squeaky, a brothel owner turned bookkeeper, and an assortment of other characters. Worm goes home with the woman on his mind. He confides in Squeaky, who tries to distract him with the Christmas story. Squeaky is an old grump with no holiday spirit, but as he describes the traditions and history to Worm, who’s never had a true Christmas, he begins to melt a little. What ensues is a scramble for decorations and to find the woman because no matter how much Squeaky tries, Worm can’t forget about the woman he saw.

Perry does a very good job of showing the situations of the characters in A Christmas Revelation. In short books, it is easier to tell rather than show the reader. Perry does not succumb even in the earliest pages, “He walked quite quietly, since his boots were very thin…” She writes in the third person narrative, which allows the reader to see the thought process of both Squeaky and Worm. They are on opposite sides of the age spectrum of age, but they bond over a common goal. Perry does a decent job describing the thought process of Worm, but does a better job of getting in Squeaky’s mind. She easily narrates the ways an adult simplifies and side-steps complicated issues for children.

A Christmas Revelation is a sweet Christmas novel under 200 pages. It is small and easy to read. If you’re looking for something light with a super sweet ending, this is a good one. Anyone can easily finish it by Christmas. I read it in two hours.

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Memorable Quotes
“It was a deep sin to ignite dreams in a child that you could not live up to.”

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Title: A Christmas Revelation
Author: Anne Perry
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780399179945

Books, Fiction

One Day in December by Josie Silver

RaeAnna
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One Day in December is the must read Christmas book of the year. | Dress (it’s perfect for all occasions) | Heels (they go with everything | Belt (It’s a great pop of color) | Watch (so dainty!)

Read Yes
Length 416
Quick Review One Day in December was a surprise. It has the happy ending you want in a winter/Christmas novel, but it was complicated the way life and feelings and friendship are. Josie Silver didn’t simplify it.

Happy December!!! It’s officially Christmas month, which means it is the month of all good and happy things. At least for me. If it’s not so good and happy for you, you should pick up this book. It’s the must read winter book of the year. One Day in December was picked by Book of the Month and by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. All month long, I’m reading winter and Christmas inclined novels because I can.

One Day in December is a great place to start with the Christmas novels. It’s not too cheesy, even though it is truly just a love story. I knew exactly what the ending would be from the very beginning, so it won’t leave you speechless.

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I took pictures at Levy Park in Kirby because there are iconic London phone booths! It’s fitting.

Laurie and Sarah are best friends living in London. One December, Laurie is on a bus when a beautiful man catches her eye and she his. They aren’t able to make a connection, but they can’t stop thinking about each other. Laurie and Sarah spend a year looking for bus-dude until Laurie finds him as Sarah’s new boyfriend, Jack.

The story of One Day in December follows Laurie through pivotal moments over the next ten years. The narration is mainly told by Laurie, but Jack tells his side of the story occasionally throughout the novel. The characters are all well developed. None of them come off in a bad light. They’re easy to empathize with because Silver does a good job laying the foundation and explaining the situation and the motivation behind their actions or lack thereof.

The novel is written with British spelling and cultural references. I like that the editors kept this style for American publication. The references were hard to understand sometimes because they aren’t necessarily relevant to the American audience. I love it because it reminds us there are cultures outside of our own.

I really enjoyed that One Day in December is set in London. It’s hard not to enjoy a winter novel when you’re imagining you’re in London. I wouldn’t say it’s a great novel, but it is perfect for this time of year.

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Memorable Quotes
“But I love you,” he says, as if it’s a magic phrase that trumps any other.”

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Title: One Day in December
Author: Josie Silver
Publisher: Broadway Books (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525574682

Books, Fiction

Alaskan Holiday by Debbie Macomber

RaeAnna

Read No
Length 256
Quick Review Alaskan Holiday is a really good example of what I don’t like in a book. Sappy romance, a pretend strong female character, bad grammar, terrible plot, and over all not put together well. Upside: there is a dog.

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Don’t waste your time reading Alaskan Holiday | Pants (I wear these A LOT) | Shirt (truly one of my favorites) | Shoes (you need) | Watch | Hair Bow

Happy first day of December!!! I’m starting off my holiday reading with a real low point. It’s not the worst book I’ve read all year, but it’s in the top three! Which means, in all hopefulness, that the reading quality can only go up the rest of the month!

I pretty much began reading Alaskan Holiday by Debbie Macomber feeling that it would be awful. It was. It was not good. It’s like a Hallmark movie in book form so a more painful time commitment.

The two main characters are Josie and Palmer. They’re in the middle of nowhere Alaska. A place so remote almost everyone leaves during the winter months and is only reachable by plane. Josie was the chef during the season, and Palmer lives there permanently. Palmer falls in love and asks her to marry him. The rest of the novel unfolds to the exact ending you know is going to happen.

Alaskan Holiday is incredibly sexist. There is the effort of having a strong, career oriented woman as the lead, but the whole novel falls into the trope of ‘need to calm this wild, career woman down to get her to settle into a small boring life.’ The woman gives up everything for the man. This is bolstered by the fact that there are several other women trying to convince Josie she can be happy in the middle of nowhere because love. Palmer is awful. I really hated his character. He oozes the quiet, toxic masculinity that is a total turn-off to any actual strong, career oriented woman I’ve ever met. His machismo was irritating after page 2. His jealousy is beyond aggravating. I couldn’t take it.

There is a lot of telling and very little showing, so the storytelling is Alaskan Holiday is as bad as the characters. The story spends 130 pages, out of 220, setting up a story that could have been easily summed up in 25 pages. The story reads like a teenager’s diary, but not an insightful, wise teenager. There are also a lot of grammar errors.

I was really unimpressed by Alaskan Holiday. It was pretty much a waist of my time. Luckily it was so bad and easy to read, I was able to read it in a less time than a Hallmark movie takes.

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Memorable Quotes
“I’m a man who needs to work with his hands, not just his brain.”

Title: Alaskan Holiday
Author: Debbie Macomber
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright 2018
ISBN: 9780399181283

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Books, Fiction

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 496
Quick Review A tail of ruin and riches, love and heartbreak, joy and sorrow. History and fantasy entwine in Imogen Hermes Gowar’s debut novel The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock to completely captivate the reader.

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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock || Fountain in Charleston

I was hesitant about this novel. I don’t read much historical fiction anymore because I have a tendency of getting caught up in the historical inaccuracies because I love history. So when The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar arrived on my doorstep, well, I hoped the writing was as pretty as the cover. I was exceptionally surprised.

Set in London of 1785, Mr. Hancock is a middle-aged merchant widowered many years prior. Anjelica Neal is a courtesan with a tenuous position but a lot of confidence. They are both getting by without experiencing joy. Their lives have completely different trajectories and motivations. Due to circumstance, they are brought together.

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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

Courtesans are often the subject and driving force behind historical fiction. It’s rarely done well or with any respect to the conditions sex workers were forced to live and work under. This is different. It’s gritty and real. It doesn’t use courtesans as a thinly veiled excuse to create sex and passion for women readers thirsting for a little jolt into their lives. Instead The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock uses courtesans and a brothel to critique modern day racism, sexism, and sex work. A staunchly feminist piece of piece of literature, it drags the reader into a plot of betrayal, obsession, and mysticism.

I’m not a huge fan of fantasy. I like my literature real and a little bit stressful. Imogen Hermes Gowar creates a completely believable fantasy for me because the mermaid isn’t a star in this. Though it motivates the plot, it sits in the backseat letting the more realistic plot play out.

The writing and narrative style is beautifully constructed. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock focuses on the perspectives of Mr. Hancock and Anjelica Neal shifting from chapter to chapter. Every once in a while, a secondary character’s perspective will be explored to add layers and complexities to the world created.

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Memorable Quotes
“Men are not fearful; they build one another to greatness. Women believe their only power is in tearing one another down.”
“Treat them as if they are the centre of the world, and they do not hesitate to believe it. A charmed life these men lead…”

Title: The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
Author: Imogen Hermes Gowar
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780062859952

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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Books, Fiction

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur

RaeAnna

Read No
Length 219
Quick Review All the makings of an incredible novel, but instead it is forgettable even as you’re reading it.

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Reading The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur in Vizcaya’s Gardens in Miami.

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur is a novel I tried very hard to like. Unfortunately, it just didn’t come together in a memorable way. It’s not a bad book. It’s not a bad story. On paper, the novel should be incredibly interesting and compelling. It just doesn’t manifest as such.

So here’s the story. There are two families coming together for a rehearsal dinner. Each family doesn’t much like the other because they’re vastly different. It takes place in the garden of one family. There are several generations present. Each person has their own inner dialogue and issues they are dealing with at the party. Including but not limited to: a love affair with a priest, a secret marriage ceremony, an old lady reminiscing on her lesbian tennis match, pretentious in-laws, idiosyncrasies, and so much more.

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The cover of The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur.

The action takes place in the span of one evening. It’s a snapshot of lives being lived. The plot isn’t based in actions but the inner dialogues of the characters themselves. It is an exploration of human emotions, which is neither comprehensive nor enthralling. The narrative is also interesting because the story is told from every character’s perspective. I love this take. Unfortunately Mazur crammed The Garden Party’s pages with so many points-of-view, it became confusing. At times, there were up to four perspectives in the span of one page. Too much. Too many.

Very few of the characters felt compelling or even realistic. They seemed like caricatures of stereotypes of people we are all familiar with. The children speak like snobbish middle aged men. Not like the small children they are. It just wasn’t believable. There’s also some plot holes. I’m sure Mazur wanted them there to emphasize the fact that life is never visible and people have their own individual journeys.

It should be a family drama packed little novel. In fact it is a clever little novel full of insight and uniqueness. It just isn’t one of those books you’ll return to or ever think of again, except if you see the cover because it’s quite pretty. Even as I was reading the story, I was forgetting who people were.

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Memorable Quotes
“…that women were really dressing for other women.”
“…it was women who understood what other women wore, while men simply reacted.”

Title: The Garden Party
Author: Grace Dane Mazur
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780399179723

Books

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

RaeAnna

Read Sure
Length 352
Quick Review Through the Victorian language of flowers, a newly emancipated foster girl finds acceptance and forgiveness.

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I love my flowers from Amanda Bee’s Florals!

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh was loaned to me by my friend, Amanda of Amanda Bee’s Florals. It’s a great easy read combining a few things I love: language, flowers, and books. I needed something light to interrupt the maelstrom of books I’m reading to catch up after vacation.

Victoria Jones is newly emancipated from the foster system. She had always been a problem child and felt no reason to change. Homeless, she found a job in the one place she could: a flower shop. Her only good foster home taught her about the Victorian meanings for flowers. Her years of challenging everyone and everything combined with the foster system and constant changes, she lacked social skills. Flowers were her only means of feeling whole and communicating with the world.

Diffenbaugh demonstrates a deep understanding for the struggles foster kids endure in the system. She and her husband adopted a son out of the foster system, and the co-founder of the Camellia Network. It is an endemic close to her heart. The Language of Flowers is deeply touching and heartbreaking. Victoria yearns for the universal human desires of connection, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. Flowers help her find everything she is looking for from within and the outside world.

The meanings of flowers have always intrigued me, so this was fun to read. At the end of the novel, there is a short dictionary of flowers and their meanings. The writing is well-done and compelling. The plot is well thought out and supports the underlying theme that the foster system repeatedly and continually lets children down every step of the way. It wraps all the loose ends up nicely into a happy ending. The foreshadowing throughout the book is subtle, but still obvious enough the plot lays itself out in the first 87 pages.

I enjoyed reading The Language of Flowers in an afternoon. It was a pleasant surprise from what I thought it would be: a sappy love story. It has much deeper themes with an underlying call to action.

Memorable Quotes
“Mothers must all secretly despise their children for the inexcusable pain of childbirth.”

Title: The Language of Flowers
Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780345525550