Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

★★

Not one of my favorites - I thought all of the characters were just plain awful and the storytime dragged on and on.  I've heard good things about that author and am hoping her other books are better.

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

★★★

Way to unrealistic for me, but it made for a mostly entertaining audiobook to listen to.

The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg (audio)

★★★

"If you say something over and over again, it begins to lose it's meaning...Say anything enough times and it becomes gibberish."

This novel had an interesting premise and follows the storylines of several classmates as they attend their 40 year high school reunion.  Each had various expectation of the reunion and insight is given to their lives in the present and their experiences in high school.  A good reminder that some people change and others simply can't or choose not to and that your experiences in high school do not have to define the rest of your life.  The novel was entertaining enough,  but I felt sorry for most of the characters and (with a few exceptions) didn't like most of them all that much.  I was glad that some of them were able to find happiness in the end.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

★★★★

"Push yourself.  Don't settle.  Just live well.  Just LIVE."

I have been meaning to read this book for a long time - especially over the past few months with the sequel and then the movie coming out.  I enjoyed this book.  It was modern and centered on an unlikely romance between the two main characters.  The characters were perfectly written - I loved them and hated them at the same time.  They were quirky and a little crazy, must mostly real.  I kept hoping that ending would be different than I thought, but I knew it wasn't.  And of course I cried at the end, even though I told myself I wasn't going to.  

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

★★★ 1/2

"You could jump so much higher when you have somewhere safe to fall."

I couldn't wait to read this new book by Liane Moriarty - it didn't end up being anywhere nearly as good as her other two novels I read (Little Big Lies and the Husband's Secret), but I enjoyed it none the less.  A complex story of friendship, parenthood, relationships, and everything in between and what can happen when tragedy strikes.  I thought it took way too long to find out the tragic event that had happened, but the little girls provided a lot of entertainment and I enjoyed reading about all of the interwoven relationships between the characters.

The Hurricane Sisters

★★ 1/2

"We were an imperfect family.  I knew that.  But at last we were on each other's side, dug in with a new and more profound commitment.  Our happiness was hard won, it was ours and I was determined to keep us whole."

This was the first book that I have read by Dorothea Benton Frank.  It was a decent, light read, but it didn't really go anywhere.  The characters all seemed sort of a like and I couldn't force myself to really like any of them.  I guess this book was exactly what I was expecting - a good beach read - but not much else.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

★★★ 1/2

"It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast.  They just made you feel good."

For years, Claire Waverly has lived a quiet life in the town she grew up in.  She is content living alone and tending to her family's magical garden - where she grows plants that are able to chance the way people feel.  Then her younger sister Sydney shows up with her daughter and suddenly alters Clarie's quiet routines.  As the two sisters learn to live together after being apart for so many years, they learn things about themselves, each other, and the secrets of their family's past.

I have been meaning to read this book for years now and finally found sometime to read it now that the sequel, First Frost came out a few months ago.  This was definatly a ligher read, which a nice contract to book I have read lately.  The writing was ok and the story pretty predictable, but I enjoyed the plot and the characters.  I loved how the Waverley sisters find each other later if life and are able to develop a family - despite their many differences and troubled past.  And it had the perfect amount of realism to be magical, but also (mostly) believable.

Big Little Lies by Liana Moriarty (audio)

★★★★★

"Everyday I think, 'Gosh, you look a bit tired today,' and it's just recently occurred to me that it's not that I'm tired, it's that this is the way I look now."

"Reading a novel was like returning to a once-beloved holiday destination."

After finishing Moriarty's The Husband's Secret, I didn't think that this book could be any better.  But it was.  I don't know if I would say 'better' exactly - I still can't decide which book I liked 'better.'  They were different but equally wonderful.  I just think that I was more able to relate to this one because the characters were a bit younger and were going though times in their lives that were more similar to mine as oppose to the first book.

I loved this book - and the narrator was wonderful as well.  At the surface, this novel is about three women whose children are in the same kindergarten class.  There connection are further explored through out the novel, but that's basically it.  I normally don't read 'these types of books' - I usually find them a bit lacking of substance to say the least - but somehow the author was able to take a novel about 'kindergarten moms' and turn it into a complex and intreging story that I didn't want to put down. Ever.  

The author has amazing insight into the small-but-important daily details of wife and motherhood.  The thoughts and conversations that these women had were witty and thought-provoking and just down right hilarious at times.  I cannot remember reading a novel that had so much realistic truth to it.  The only one that comes close is 'Girls in White Dresses' that I read in my early 20s and captured perfectly that 'in-between' period where you should have your shit all figured out but don't.  

Was this 'chick-lit?'  I don't know, probably.  Should I have walked away wanting something with a little more 'substance' and a little less middle-aged 'mommy-drama."  Maybe.  But it was so much more than I was expecting and it didn't matter one bit once I started reading.  This book was honest in every sense of the word.

An outstanding and real and heartbreaking novel.  I can't wait to see what else Liana Moriarty has up her sleeve.

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (audio)

★★★★★

"None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have and maybe should have taken.  It's probably just as well.  Some secrets are meant to stay secrets forever.  Just ask Pandora."

This is the first novel that I have read by Liane Moriarty and I was pleasantly surprised.  I picked this up at the library as an audio book and had no real high hopes for it.  I had seen it on the best seller's list and some other lists in the past and didn't really have anything else that I wanted to listen to at the time. I was planning on it being some sort of 'chick-lit' average book that would - at the very least - pass the time on my way to and from work for a week or so.  Wow, was a wrong.

This novel is told from the point-of-view of three very different women whose lives begin to slowly come together.  At the center of it all is the secret of one women's husband and the ultimate question of how well you can ever really know someone - specifically your spouse.  Like the book, I wasn't expecting to like the characters as much as I did.  They were all significantly flawed and made a lot of bad choices, but each one began to grow on me.

I usually am not super into reading this type of book, but I was hooked from the very first page.  Even though the 'husband's secret' is the center of the book, figuring out the secret is not.  The secret is actually revealed fairly early on in the book.  I wasn't super surprised by it.  Which was fine because the real focus of the novel was not the secret itself, but how it unfolds and the people that it effects along the way.  The writing was wonderful and witty and the plot left me wanting to turn the pages faster than I could read them.  The dialogue and dynamics of the novel is pure brilliant.  And I absolutely loved the interaction not only between the characters but the inner dialog that was the driving point of the story.

Was this book perfect?  Not at all.  The characters were more-often-than-not superficial and there were way too many coinsidances to make this story at all believable.  But, all that aside, I thought the novel was extremely well done and I couldn't put it down.  So that gives it a 5 stars in my book.  Plus there was the epilogue.  Wow - just wow.  Very creative and thought-provoking and not at all what I was expecting.

Liane Moriarty is now one of the best new(ish) authors that I have read in awhile and I can't wait to see what else she has in store!

This book was #3 on my top ten list of 2015.

Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch

★★★★

"Finally, when she was six weeks old, I heard her stir in her crib, so I dragged myself in to begin the routine: diaper, nurse, burp, sing, nap all over again.  Katie was staring at her pink floral bumper guard and must have heard me enter.  She startled and started to wail, and my insides curdled at the sound of it.  But then, I poked my face over her crib, and she shifted her head and our eyes locked.  She can see me!  I thought.  She hushed immediately, and a tiny smile crept across her pink rosebud lips.  And I felt it: that rush akin to a drug-fueled high that mothers, explain as indescribable, that tug of love that knows no boundaries."

From the outside, Jillian appears to have the perfect life. Jillian strives to make a picture-perfect lifestyle for successful banker husband and eighteen-month old daughter - just like in the parent magazines that she obsessively reads.  Even though Jillian does everything right, she struggles with her slowly faltering marriage and the day to day repetition of her life as a stay at home mom.  When she hears that her ex-boyfriend Jackson is engaged, she starts thinking about what her life would have been like if she had married him instead. 

Suddenly, Jillian is transported back in time seven years.  She wakes up in her old apartment with Jackson where she works at her old job as an advertising agent.  Jillian is forced to make herself fit in to her old life and she begins to think that it is much easier the second time around.  Free from the duties of being married and parenthood, she is free to focus on her job and her personal life.  She dodges past fights with Jackson, reconnects with her mother who abandoned the family, and saves her best friend from miscarriages.  Things seem to be going great, except that she misses her daughter and starts to realize that her relationship with Jackson might not be as great as she once thought.  Reliving the past turns out to be a lot more complicated than Jillian thought.  Plus she keeps running into her husband Henry.  Jillian starts to realize that maybe that problem wasn’t her marriage or her mundane life, but herself.  Now she is forced to choose between her life with Jackson and her marriage with Henry.  And if she chooses Henry, she has to first figure out how to get back from her past.

I tend to enjoy women’s fiction novels that have a little most substance, but I actually found this book very entertaining.  I’ve read a lot of intense and “hard-issue” books lately so this was a nice change of pace.  I found myself liking the character of Jillian (even though her “perfect life” made me role my eyes more than a few times) and thought that the author did a good job of incorporating time travel without overdoing the details.  I really liked how different aspects of the character’s lives were slightly changed once Jillian arrived back in the past and thought that it was a very realistic portrayal of marriage and motherhood.  The ending was rather surprising as well.

Fly Away by Kristin Hannah (audio)

 

★★★

"You will always miss her.  There will be days - even years from now - when the missing will be so sharp it will take your breath away.  But there will be good days, too, months and years of them.  In one way or another you'll be searching for her all your life."

Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors and I am currently going through many of her audio books.  This novel continues the story of Kate's family and best friend, Tully, after Kate dies of breast cancer the the book Firefly Lane. Deal with the lose of their wife/mother/daughter/and friend, each character must put the pieces of their life back together.  

This book was ok, but not one of my favorite of Kristin Hannah.  I enjoyed hearing about what happened to the characters after Firefly Lane ended.  Overall, it was a little to sappy for me - I don't usually to well with authors over talking emotions.  The novel began with Tully in a car accident a few years after the death of Kate and proceeded with several different back story lines of each of the main characters.  If often felt like a mix of a Lifetime movie and Charles Dickenson's A Christmas Carol.  I was interested in what had happened to everyone in the story, but I felt that there were too many "ghost of Christmas past" aspects.  It sometimes hard to tell whose back story we were hearing and many of the events were repeated several times.  

I think my favorite part of the book was the story of Tully and her mother Dorothy.  Tully was raised by her grandmother and hardly knew her mother growing up.  In this novel, we get to see Dorothy's tragic young adulthood and what events lead her to keep her distance from her daughter.

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★

"This is what I like about photographs.  They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect."

 After a tragic car accident, Cara's father suffers from a brain injury.  Cara is forced to make the decision on ending her father's life with her brother Edward, who has been away for the past six years after a fight with their father.  As they discuss their option, a web of family secrets are unraveled.

I enjoyed this book a lot.  I loved Jodi Picoult's style of having multiple narrators and tackling tough subjects.  Each voice in the novel provides the reader with a unique aspect of the situation. This book focused primarily on family and the quality of life.  It also had a lot of animal aspects in it due to the fact that Cara's father was a zoologist and studied wolves for most of his adult life.  He was vary detailed in his study of wolf behavior and it was really interesting to learn about his story while his family was dealing with his injuries in the present.

The Smart One by Jennifer Close

★★★★★

"I just think you can't be so quick to be so sure of other people's situations.  Examine you own situations.  You also have a lot of choices.  It's not always easier for other people.  It doesn't work like that."

In Jennifer Close's second novel, she looks looks at family, growing up, and getting through life when it didn't go exactly as planned.  This is the story of the three Coffey children: Martha - nearly thirty and still living at home after she's couldn't handle the the pressure of a high-stress nursing career, Clarie - recently broken up with her fiance and having to move back home after running out of money to pay for her New York apartment, and Max - who has his life together, except for knocking up his college girlfriend.  Too old to live at home, the novel follows the Coffeys (and Max's girlfriend) through the struggles of transitioning into adulthood. 

I normally don't read a lot of "chick-lit," but this book had me hooked.  I loved the writing style and rare sense of humor.  The writing was good and the story was engaging, but the real reason I had to give it five stars was because of the realistic portrayal of life, love, and finding your way in a crazy, mixed up world.

Jennifer Close has this amazing way of writing the perfect book exactly when I need it.  I read her first novel, Girls in White Dresses over two years ago - right after I finished college, was some-what single, and had no idea what I was doing with my life.  When I was younger, I always assumed I would finish college and magically everything else would fall into place.  I quickly learned that wasn't the case!  The book was all about being surrounded by everyone you know getting married and and having a perfect career while you're just trying to figure out what you're doing next week.  

Two years later, I now find myself engaged and living with my boyfriend's parents.  I love them, but there is still the day-to-day struggle of dealing with crazy family drama and  trying to be on your own while still feeling like you're in high school.  Not to mention waking up one day and realizing that you're almost 26, getting married in 3 months, and still not an "adult."  This book captured this perfectly.  Jennifer Close a knack for writing the perfect book for getting you through those not-so-perfect situations.

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2014.

Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★

"If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened?  Or because you wish it didn't?"

I've read a couple of other books by Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care, My Sister's Keeper, and The Pact - and I always enjoy them.  I could deal with a little less of the court-scene drama but, they have all been page-turners and have surprising endings.  This book was no exception.  

The book begins with a 18-year-old Katie - an Amish girl who has just been accused of giving birth in her family's barn and murdering the baby.  When questioned, Katie and her parents claim to have to recollection of Katie giving birth or being pregnant.  Her boyfriend, Samuel, won't even admit to having sex with her.  Ellie Hathaway is a experienced lawyer who arrives in Paradise, Pennsylvania after a trying case and fight with her long-time boyfriend.  She has plans to relax in the Amish town and stay with her aunt, an ex-Amish women herself and Katie's aunt.  When Ellie hears about the accusation, she agrees to help defend Katie and moves into the family's house.

As the truth about Katie and the birth of her child begins to unfold, Ellie and Katie lives become intertwined.  Katie must learn to deal with the truth of what happened to her and Ellie takes a long, hard look at her own life. Both women are forever changed by this experience.  I'm not sure how accurate the Amish lifestyle was portrayed, but I found it really interesting.  It gave me a very different prospective of the Amish.  I'm still not sure how I felt about the ending, but as usual with Picoult's novels, I didn't see it coming!

Night Road by Kristen Hannah (audio)

★★★★ 1/2

"They were like soldiers who'd fought on a common battlefield, she and her son.  There were things to say, but they were just words, and they would come in time.  What mattered was that they had survived and that there was still love - between them and around them.  Everything else was a postscript.  There was really only one thing she needed to say to him now.  One question to ask. 'Do you still love her?' "

"That's how we do it, Zach.  We just...forgive.  I use to worry that you and Lexi were too young for love, and I still think of you as young, but you're not, are you?  None of us are, and life doesn't take the straight road."

" 'I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. I got...lost,' she finally said, and once she started talking, she couldn't stop.  She sat down on a granite bench and told Mia everything."

This was a wonderful book that I will be recommending to my friends and family for a very long time!  It has a little bit of everything -  a story about love, friendship, and family.  The characters must learn to forgive each other, and themselves, in the mist of a terrible tragedy.  The first part of the book was so-so.  I was a little annoyed by all of "teenage drama" at the beginning, but I began to like the book more and more as it went on.

The story begins with a young teenager named Lexi.  After a hard childhood living with a drug-addicted mother and many foster parents, she finally settles in with her great-aunt Eva.  On the first day of high school, Lexi becomes friends with Mia Farraday and the two become inseparable throughout high school.  Mia's parents, especially her mom Jude, becomes like a second family to Lexi and she finally feels like she has found a home.  

Early in their senior year, Mia's twin brother Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three develop an even closer bond.  They spend the next months making plans for their futures and enjoying every minute together.  One bad decision leads to a night that will change their lives forever.  In the years that follow, Lexi and the Farraday family are torn apart and must find away to put their lives back together.

I absolutely loved the second half of the book.  It was beautifully written and had a stunning truth that I don't normally see in these types of novels.  The narration of the novel alternated between Lexi and Jude - two very different point of views.  I loved the character of Lexi - she is one of the most realistic and heart-breakinging characters that I have come across in a very long time.  She tried so hard to do the right thing and put everyone she loved ahead of her. Lexi was forced to grow up in a matter of days and is forced with one hard decision after another.  I also loved the character of Jude.  At times, she frustrated me so much I wanted to scream.  Even though I understood where she was coming from, I could not get over some of the things she did.  By the end of the book, I not only understood Jude, but learned to love and respect her as well.  She had a sort-of wisdom that I greatly admired.  

"Night Road" was also the first audio book I listened to.  I have about an hour commute to work everyday, so I figured that it would be a good time to catch up on some extra reading.  I got so attached to the characters, I ended up bawling my eyes out the whole way home while listening to the last two chapters - and I'm not one for crying.  This book was highly unexpected.  I went into it thinking I would ready a good book - one with nice characters, a semi-interesting plot line, and a lot of "chick-lit" type drama.  Instead, I walked away with a stunning story that I will remember for a long, long time.  

This book was #10 on my top ten list of 2013.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

★★★★

"There are times in our lives when we have to realize our post is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it.  But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future."

"She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and donning them for an hour, a day, a week.  We think in some ways, we have all done this our whole lives, searching for the book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let.  As though we could walk in an look around and say to the grey-haired landlady behind us, 'We'll take it.' "

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

★★★

"Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and suppose.  Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die."

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

★★★★★

"In college, twenty-nine had seemed impossibly old.  By now, she'd thought, she'd be married and have kids.  But as each year went by, she didn't feel much different than she bad before.  Time kept going by and she was just here, the same."

"Ken was Mary's new boyfriend, a nice guy who made all their friend's comment, 'Oh, there he is.  That's what she's been waiting for,' as if finding your perfect match was a guaranty as long as you were patient enough."

This book tells the story of three women venturing out into the "adult world" and growing up after college graduation.  Struggling with careers, family, and new love these women must endure all of this while suffering through endless rounds of wedding and bridal showers when "everyone they know" is moving on with their lives and getting married.

I don't read too many "chick-lit" novels, they're usually a little too romantic and on the predictable side for me, but it's a good change every once and a while.  That being said, I LOVED this book!  The writing was hilarious (my mom had to ask me more then once why I was laughing...) and extremely relatable.  It was the perfect novel to read at that time in your life when everyone you know seems to have it all figured out and you're just hoping to make it through the week!

This book was #4 on my top ten list of 2012.

Knit Two by Kate Jacobs

★★★

"It's all about getting the hang of things...You'll figure everything out in time.  But for right now, just keep trying.  Pay attention and avoid the temptation to go further than you're ready.  Talk less.  And listen more."

Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

★★★★★

"And there's always a better time than right now and there always will be.  But right now is what we've got."