From The Kitchen of Half Truth by Maria Goodin

March 20, 2013 by 1 Comment

ITCHEN

From The Kitchen of Half Truth by Maria Goodin
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Genre: Contemporary
Length: Full Length (339 pgs)
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Stephantois

Scientist Meg May can’t remember her childhood, but that’s just fine, because her cooking-obsessed, head-in-the-clouds mother told her everything: Meg’s father was a French chef who died in a tragic pastry accident; her mom dipped a younger Meg’s toes in coffee because they were so sweet. Meg used to love these stories, but as she spends one last elegiac summer with her dying mother, savoring fleeting days and absorbing cooking lessons, she longs to know the truth. However, her mother is in denial about their past, as well as about her health, and Meg may not have the chance to discover who they are in time.

A delicious debut, full of quirky humor and depth of feeling, From the Kitchen of Half Truth explores the lies we tell ourselves in order to create the life we want.

Where do I begin…I have so many good things to say about this book. Let me start by saying it’s one of those stories that made me upset that it had to come to an end. It held me captivated from first to last word. I love the premise of this book, about a mother and daughter relationship, and how sometimes we take things and people for granted in our lives. However, what I loved most about it is Ms. Goodin took a very different approach to a topic that yes, one too many authors have tackled. She gave it a new spin and I think that’s what held me spellbound as I turned the pages.

The story starts in a very lighthearted way. I found myself laughing at the mother in this story because of her antics and the tales she spun to her then naïve daughter. But then as the book progresses you realize that the story is going in a different direction and it’s getting more serious as Meg tries to piece together her childhood. I sometimes wanted her to find the truth but then I wanted her to remain blind to what really happened to her mother and how she came to be.

I won’t spoil it and give away any of the plot but I know you too will be captivated. You’ll go through a range of emotions, you’ll laugh, and then you’ll cry because the last third of this book is so moving. I think like me, you’ll find just a little piece of yourself in all the wonderful characters.

This book is released in April and I highly recommend you get yourself a copy and put it on your spring/summer reading list. This is a wonderful debut book for this author and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her work.

Filed Under: Mainstream Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

What a Mother Knows by Leslie Lehr

March 15, 2013 by 2 Comments

MOTHER

What a Mother Knows by Leslie Lehr
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Genre: Contemporary, Suspense/Mystery
Length: Full Length (384 pgs)
Rating: 4.5 stars
Reviewed by Cholla

An unsettling, emotional and suspenseful novel of the unshakable bonds of motherhood, in which Michelle Mason not only loses her memory after a deadly car crash, but can’t find her 16-year-old daughter, the one person who may know what happened that day. But the deeper Michelle digs, the more she questions the innocence of everyone, even herself. A dramatic portrayal of the fragile skin of memory, What a Mother Knows is about finding the truth that can set love free.

After months in the hospital following a horrendous car accident, Michelle Mason is finally able to come home. The trouble is, nothing is as how she remembered it. And is that due to her faulty memory or is there something else at work? When Michelle discovers that one of the things missing is her daughter, all hell breaks loose. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her girl.

The struggles that Michelle endures throughout the course of this novel almost ripped my heart out. She’s made to feel feeble, inferior, and pretty much made to believe she’s losing her mind. But she knows better. She knows her daughter like no one else and knows she wouldn’t up and disappear without a darn good reason. I have to hope that I’d be as dedicated, determined and ballsy as Michelle was if anything ever happened to either of my girls. I’d love to have her on my side, penchant for recklessness aside.

About a third of the way into this book, I began to realize that this might be my first interaction with an unreliable narrator. For me, I usually go in knowing the narrator is a crackpot or just a liar, but in this case, you really don’t know for sure. Michelle has had a serious brain trauma and, although she’s beginning to remember bits and pieces, you’re never really sure what’s real and what might be imagined. That bit of doubt made the story, for me, that much more enjoyable. That absolute need to find out what happened intensified and made it almost impossible to put down.

What a Mother Knows is an intense and emotional rollercoaster ride. Never knowing where Michelle’s instincts might take her next, you’re brought along to find out when she does. As a parent, I was completely invested emotionally in her story and struggle to find her daughter, crying for her, being outraged with her, simply hoping and praying that everything would work out in the end. It’s been a long time since I’ve read something that’s taken such a strong hold on me.

Filed Under: Mainstream Fiction, Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

The Devoted by Jonathan Hull

February 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

DEVOTED

The Devoted by Jonathan Hull
Publisher: Dancing Horse Press
Genre: Action/Adventure, Contemporary, Historical
Length: Full length (315 pgs)
Heat Level: Sensual
Rating: 5 Stars
Review by: Stephantois

From wartime Italy to the American West, Jonathan Hull takes readers on a heartrending passage through the lives of three families torn by history and bound by an unshakeable – and at times forbidden – devotion.

Ryan Brooks never forgot the powerful hands that pulled him from the wreckage of his parents’ station wagon that summer in 1960 when he was ten and his childhood came to a fiery end during a family vacation. Thirty years later, Ryan returns to Wyoming to thank the dying rancher for saving the life he is still trying to be worthy of. The chilling sight of Mike O’Donnell’s deeply scarred hands is just the beginning of Ryan’s journey as he soon finds himself caught between the rancher’s captivating – and married – daughter, Shannon, and his mysterious Italian wife, Alessandra.

When Mike’s deathbed confession sets Ryan on a search for the truth of what really happened the day his parents died, he unearths a long-buried secret that leads to a mountain cave in Northern Italy and Alessandra’s dangerous love affair with a haunted young German soldier. As past and present collide in an intricately woven story of love and redemption across generations and continents, Ryan discovers that the answers he seeks are inscribed deep in the hearts of those whose lives – and courage – he must measure against his own.

I have to admit there are only a few fiction books that make it to my ‘keeper’ shelf. Books that, no matter how many years pass, I won’t part with them, promising myself that one day I’ll re-read them and get lost in their pages once again. The Devoted is one such book. In fact, it was such an enjoyable read that it will stand out as one of my favorites of 2012.

Mr. Hull pulled me into the story from page one and kept me turning the pages from there on. I found myself picking up the book and wanting to read more even during the busy holiday season. The prose was beautifully written and peppered with captivating characters who I felt came to life as the story progressed.

In fact, it’s not just one story but a collection of wonderful tales cleverly weaved together. I love a story with a secret and The Devoted has many. It’s one of those novels that gets you thinking about the decisions we make and how they impact not only us, but other people too.

It’s both a contemporary story, and also one set during World War Two which makes it not only riveting but tugs at your heartstrings. And yes, has you reaching for a tissue or two.

I loved all the characters and was cheering for all of them. The dialogue was very natural sounding and the pacing, despite this being over three hundred pages, sailed along.

Mr. Hull is a new to be author but after reading The Devoted I’m going to seek out his previous books and will eagerly await his next novel.

If you’re looking for a great book to kick off your 2013 reading I can highly recommend this one to you.

Filed Under: Mainstream Fiction, Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Angry Woman Suite by Lee Fullbright

January 25, 2013 by 18 Comments

MEDIA KIT NEW TAWS cover (2)

The Angry Woman Suite by Lee Fullbright
Publisher: Telemachus Press
Genre: Historical Psychological Mystery
Length: 382 pgs
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Rose

Secrets and lies suffuse generations of one Pennsylvania family, creating a vicious cycle of cruelty in this historical novel that spans the early 1900s to the 1960s.

Raised in a crumbling New England mansion by four women with personalities as split as a cracked mirror, young Francis Grayson has an obsessive need to fix them all. There’s his mother, distant and beautiful Magdalene; his disfigured, suffocating Aunt Stella; his odious grandmother; and the bane of his existence, his abusive and delusional Aunt Lothian. For years, Francis plays a tricky game of duck and cover with the women, turning to music to stay sane. He finds a friend and mentor in Aidan Madsen, schoolmaster, local Revolutionary War historian, musician and keeper of the Grayson women’s darkest secrets. In a skillful move by Fullbright, those secrets are revealed through the viewpoints of three different people-Aidan, Francis and Francis’stepdaughter, Elyse-adding layers of eloquent complexity to a story as powerful as it is troubling. While Francis realizes his dream of forming his own big band in the 1940s, his success is tempered by the inner monster of his childhood, one that roars to life when he marries Elyse’s mother. Elyse becomes her stepfather’s favorite target, and her bitterness becomes entwined with a desire to know the real Francis Grayson. For Aidan’s part, his involvement with the Grayson family only deepens, and secrets carried for a lifetime begin to coalesce as he seeks to enlighten Francis-and subsequently Elyse-of why the events of so many years ago matter now. The ugliness of deceit. betrayal and resentment permeates the narrative, yet there are shining moments of hope, especially in the relationship between Elyse and her grandfather. Ultimately, as more of the past filters into the present, the question becomes: What is the truth, and whose version of the truth is correct? Fullbright never untangles this conundrum, and it only adds to the richness of this exemplary novel.

A superb debut that exposes the consequences of the choices we make and legacy’s sometimes excruciating embrace.

The Angry Woman Suite tells the story of a family through multi-generations–a family linked not by blood but by something deeper. Superbly written with a complex plot, it begins with Elyse trying to make sense of why her stepfather is the way he is–and what in his background made him that way.

The story is told through the points of view of three very different people–each in their own time– and through the pages of a diary.

Not only multi-generational, it is multi-leveled…. this is a book that will probably take more than one reading to fully comprehend. There are many mysteries and secrets, and the author, purposefully, leaves the ending ambiguous. It’s richly drawn with artists and musicians; historians and writers–all trying to express the truth as they see it. And, that is the key, I think, to the book…. seeing the truth as the different characters see it is a clue to what the truth really is.

The Angry Woman Suite is a book with depth and complexities not often seen in the genre. Recommended for mystery lovers who enjoy complexity and a book outside the norm.

Filed Under: Mainstream Fiction, Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,