Between You and Me by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Krauss

If you have read the Nanny Diaries or any of the other books by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss you think you know what to expect with this book and for the most part it does deliver on the behind the scenes lives of the untouchables, in this case a famous pop star and her assistant. But Between You and Me offers more than the predictable. The family ties that bind Kelsey and Logan and the stories that are buried deep within them add a depth to the predictable. This is an quick read but it is not always easy as the authors push the envelope and allow their characters to be truly real and not just caricatures.

While it is harder than the fluff one would expect from a summer read, it does deliver on those things that make a great summer read. The pace moves and the players are bigger than life. The characters are both empathetic and at times painfully pathetic. The decisions they make are at times dangerous but understandable considering the challenges of their circumstances. It is escapism, though at times I found myself preferring my own boring life the drama and pressure that the characters in this book endure.

This was another good vacation read, a break from the day to day and a chance to see that maybe my grass is greener, even if it is not at a Malibu mansion.

The Expats by Chris Pavone

I read The Expats by Chris Pavone while on vacation last week. I started it on the plane and had to finish it before I went to bed that night. It was a page turner. It made my long flight, the second in two days go by quickly which is always a blessing. I am not sure where I saw the book recommended first but the title appealed immediately to me for I have been an expat. Not an ex CIA agent turned expat wife like Kate Moore. No I was the more boring expat wife, the one that followed my accountant husband to Santiago, Chile, and then later Puerto Rico. I was like many of the wives in the book who joined the American Club and made friends with the other English speaking wives who had followed their husbands on assignment. So I related to that part of the story, to the idea that living overseas is like being a freshmen in college all over again, quick to make friends desperate to find our place in this new world.  I enjoyed reading of her life playing tennis and meeting friends after school drop off. I liked living vicariously through their travels. But even if you have never lived overseas, this book will keep you entertained because it quickly stops being a book about a housewife living overseas and becomes a thriller with all the elements of a spy novel. It can be a bit predictable but isn't that what we like from a good international crime mystery that includes members of the CIA and FBI? It doesn't telegraph the outcome but it does give you enough clues to piece things together as it moves along. I really enjoyed reading this book, clearly since I read it in one day. 

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. 

- Cheryl Strayed in "Wild"  

Yes, I know this is the first book in Oprah's Book Club 2.0 but thankfully I had already put the book on my library request list before Oprah's big announcement based on again a Twitter recommendation. I follow a bunch of book lovers on Twitter, but very different kinds of readers, so I have an eclectic wish list on Amazon of books I saw on Twitter.

This book was a stretch for me based on the subtitle - "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed. I am not an outdoorsy type of person. I have not camped since I was last forced to as a child, though I do have fond memories of camping with my family when I was young. I have occasionally hiked but I never with a backpack and never where I might have to actually use the woods as my bathroom. This book has all that, in vivid, engrossing detail. Lengthy passages of fauna and trails crossed by wild animals and restorative showers at base camps along the way.

But this book has more - it has the back story so beautifully interwoven that you can't stop reading. I found myself horrified by Cheryl's choices and understanding them all at the same time. I loved watching her adventure from the safety of my patio chair, though her writing was so perfectly paced that I often found myself breathing fast and then relaxing into the days of hiking. This is the story of a real person, this is her story, but she feels full in my mind after reading "Wild". I was broken by the end in the most delicious way, tears on the edges of my eyes.

Most of this book was a peak into a world that entices me but honestly, I know I will never encounter.   It was fascinating reading about a different world, different norms, a wholly foreign place even though I have lived only a couple hours from the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) most of my life. But there were also parts that tore deep, stories that I knew from my own life.

I loved this book. I know why Oprah chose it for it is the story of a woman who is broken and strong, alone and part of a community, hopeless and hopeful.

From My Other Blog - Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans

Before I started reviewing books at this blog, I often discussed what I read at my other blog Finding Fruit. Books are a large part of how I learn and grow and experience the world. Rachel Held Evans' book "Evolving in Monkey Town" was the first book I read by someone who had grown up in the church who was now asking questions about what she had been taught to believe. I don't want to give away too much but Rachel has an amazing blog where she writes about faith and life and declares herself a skeptic, a creative, and a follower of Jesus.

Read my post about her book here.

The Bungalow by Sarah Jio

This is another book recommendation from Twitter though I am not sure if it was someone reading it or if it was on a list of summer reads. And again Twitter was right. This was a good read.

As the back blurb states, The Bungalow by Sarah Jio is "A Sweeping World War II saga of thwarted love, murder, and a long-lost painting."

This is entertainment fiction well done. I say entertainment fiction because I just finished reading Judith Hougen's blog "Art and Entertainment: A Final Word on Sentimentality with Bonus True Confession" where she quotes Makoto Fujimura speaking at an International Arts Movement conference:

Entertainment gives you a predictable pleasure. Art…leads to transformation. It awakens you, rather than just satisfying a craving. We need the arts to awaken us to the realities of the Kingdom of God.

The writing was interesting. Bora Bora came alive with hibiscus, sand, and heat. The story moved quickly and kept you engaged. It may not have transformed how I think about art but it did help me imagine the world through the eyes of a nurse serving in the Pacific during World War II. I enjoyed reading the book by the pool during swim lessons and on the back patio in the sun and in bed as I tried to finish the last few pages before I turned off the light.

The only thing that I did not enjoy about the book was the Prologue. Not because it was not interesting or well written but because I don't enjoy prologues. I end up spending the whole book wondering how she is going to tie it all back to the prologue and missing some of the joy of not knowing how it will end.

I know that prologues don't give everything away and often try to surprise the reader but I still end up spending a lot of my reading through the lens of the prologue instead of just letting the story unfold. But that may just be me and my brain. If there is a puzzle before me I need to solve it and I can miss the beauty of the pieces and the whole as I try to make it all fit together.

Maybe I just need to skip the prologues from now on because if I had not read it first, I think I would have enjoyed this book even more.

Heft by Liz Moore

Last month, I saw this book being recommended on Twitter by a number of authors I follow. I am finding my library request list full of books I read about in someone's tweet. Some are spiritual, some are novels but they have all be read by someone I follow on Twitter. Sometimes I enjoy the book, sometimes I cannot finish it. But I like that it stretches my reading into areas I may not find myself on my own.

That is true of this book. I doubt I would have picked up Heft by Liz Moore on my own. The cover is not one that would have drawn my eye necessarily and the description on the inside flap might have even caused me to move on to another book.

"Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career--if he can untangle himself form is difficult family life."

But I didn't have that information when I ordered the book and once it had arrived I felt a need to at least give it a try. While it didn't keep me up reading late into the night, I am still glad I read it. It was a slower book, one you could put down but then had to pick up again. I really liked the people I met in this book. I love a book that can put you into a character so completely that you begin to truly understand them and the choices they make, even if they are so far from the choices you would make yourself. The characters in this book became so real to me that I was actually annoyed at the author for ending the story before I felt ready to say goodbye to them.

My other frustration with this book is that it actually deals with an issue I am writing about in my own book though the character deals with it in a completely different way. It was interesting to see how her characters responded to what happened. I couldn't see it that way until I read Heft. Which is the reason I love to read. Books allow me to get outside myself and my world view, to see things in a new way.

Favorite Authors - Laura Dave

Now that I have a blog about books I read, I can inundate it with my favorite books and authors and stop annoying my friends. Though I actually rarely talk books with my friends which is sad and probably part of the reason I miss college. It was fun to sit around talking about what we were reading for hours at a time since we really had no other responsibilities apart from studying and going to class.

Since I am still in the middle of my current read, I thought I would go write a couple of blog posts over the next few days about my favorite authors. Today I want to introduce you to Laura Dave in case you haven't met her.

Her can read all about her at her website - http://www.lauradave.com/. How cool is it that she has her own name as a web address? It's the dream I think of most of us working on our first novels. Someday...

She has written three books, all of which I loved.

I read London is the Best City in America first. It may be my favorite of her books. The characters are likable even in their unlikeable moments. I especially loved the main character, Emmy. She is returning home for her brothers wedding after leaving life behind and living in a small fishing village for the last three years. Laura Dave writes you into the book, allowing me to escape my routine for the hours I was reading.



I then had to find her other book, The Divorce Party: A Novel. I don't usually read books about divorce, and this was when my parents were actually separated and moving toward their own divorce, but I read this one because I knew Laura Dave would create sympathetic characters not caricatures and she did. She doesn't take sides. She tells the stories behind the story in such a way that each character is understood, not always liked but understood.



I had to wait for her next book, The First Husband, to be published. It was worth the wait. This is the story of Annie who is happy with Nick until he leaves her. She falls in love with Griffin and marries him quickly. But life is not a fairy tale and happily ever after is complicated, especially when Nick returns. Annie is forced to deal with the life she had imagined and the life she is living. This book examines marriage and commitment. Dreams and reality. Happiness and peace.


You can't go wrong with any of them. Her characters become real and also make the people around you who are facing these situations feel more real.