Three books I loved and one I most certainly did not. CBR12 Reviews 36-39.

More quick reviews as the 2020 deadline approaches…and yes, I’ll be including blurbs because I read some of these MONTHS ago.

The books I loved:

First off, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler.

Blurb:

Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.

Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.

But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.

I…..honestly remember almost nothing about this book, other than the fact that I very much enjoyed it and was sad when it ended. 

Amy Byler is a 40-something sort-of-single mom who needs a change. Her husband abandoned her and the kids a few years prior without a word, and she’s been raising them on her own without any idea when or if he will be back. When he reaches out to her out of the blue, asking to spend the summer with the kids, Amy decides to go to New York City for a librarian conference. She can stay with her college roommate and become reacquainted with herself.

While her husband works at trying to get her to take him back, Amy is busy exploring the dating scene in NYC. She meets a handsome librarian at her conference and sparks immediately fly.

I enjoyed the various plot points here: the single mom back on the dating scene unsure of how to proceed; the college roommates realizing that they may have taken different paths, but that they are still the same people they used to be; and the librarians who just love books and want to help kids love reading. Highly recommend.

Next, The House in the Cerulean Sea. 

This book was simply a delight.

Blurb:

Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world.

Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place―and realizing that family is yours.

Linus lives in a world where magical creatures are real, and spends his days working for mysterious government agency that keeps track of any children born with magical powers. These children are sent to live in “orphanages” that are managed by the government, and Linus’ job is to make sure they are being treated well and that the children all have their powers under control.

When he is sent to a secret orphanage on a month-long assignment, he meets a group of magical children (in more ways than one) and their guardian, Arthur. Over the course of his four weeks, the kids and Arthur change Linus’ life forever.

I loved every single thing about this book. I originally didn’t review it, because I just didn’t eat to talk about it. I wanted to keep it in my head and in my heart. I still don’t really even want to talk about the details, but just want to say: if you are looking for a book that might make you feel better about the shit year that 2020 has been, this might just be it.

Next up, a book I very much imagined I wold like that much, but ended up enjoying quite a bit,  Boyfriend Material.

Blurb:

WANTED:

One (fake) boyfriend

Practically perfect in every way

Luc O’Donnell is tangentially―and reluctantly―famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he’s never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately, apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.

I’m going to make a secret confession: last year I read Red, White and Royal Blue. And I didn’t love it. I really wanted to, but something about it really just didn’t work for me. I know that isn’t a very popular opinion, but I wanted to come clean about it.

This book was everything I was hoping RW&RB would be. I found it charming and funny. I rooted for the main characters and couldn’t wait for them to get together. I wanted nothing but the best for them. I wanted to be in their London — going to the same restaurants, sitting on the same park benches, visiting the same museums — and was jealous every time they went out someplace new.

I loved the secondary characters — Luc’s coworkers were hilarious, in particular Alex (who was like a Jeeves & Wooster character come to life); Bridget, who seems to have one work-related misadventure after another; and the James Royce-Royces. 

I will 1000% be looking out for new books from Alexis Hall in the future. This was fun.

OK. So. Now that I’ve talked about the good books I’ve read this year, I need to take a few minutes to talk about a book that really annoyed the crap out of me.

A few years ago, I tore through a series of books about a young girl named Jessica Darling written by Megan McCafferty. When I heard that she had a new book about growing up in the 80s called The Mall, I was like TAKE MY MONEY, and pre-ordered on the spot.

UGGGGGGGGGGH.

I really disliked this book.

Blurb:

The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after. 

But you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.

Cassie was the worst. She was so annoying that I couldn’t enjoy the early 90s mall vibe that I should have loved. I hated every decision that she made and every word that came out of her mouth. She was spoiled and selfish and obnoxious and she infuriated me.

So many wasted opportunities here. In particular, the cute Asian potential boyfriend who worked in the record store and the former best friend, Drea. Here’s what I would have preferred: a story about a cute Asian guy in New Jersey who likes The Smiths and Joy Division and works in a record store while he figures out what he wants to do with his future. That might be a book I would enjoy, especially the part where he meets a horrible girl named Cassie, has a fling with her, and the dumps her and goes on to live a woderful life filled with new wave music.

Not my “best of” but YMMV. CBR 12 Review 34-35.

In which it becomes clear to me that a “best of” list means next to nothing.

I’m trying (and doubt I will make it) to catch up with my long backlog list from 2020 and to actually reach my goal of 52 reviews. Putting together mini-groups to review together has made this somewhat easier, and yes, I know that some of my groupings are probably random.

Here we have two books that I thought were fine. I probably wouldn’t recommend them to friends, but if they came up in conversation I would happily discuss their merits and their faults. But I have seen them on many “best of” 2020 lists and am just not feeling it.

First up, a book that everyone read, The Glass Hotel.

Mandatory blurb:

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

Reader, I was shocked when I saw this on a best-of list on the mothership last week. Because, to me, it was a huge disappointment.

We all adored Station Eleven, I know. I think after two readings (one in a pandemic!) it’s probably be on my top-ten list of all time, and in my top-two pandemic novels (is that a thing?). So I wanted to love The Glass Hotel, and simply did not. 

I wasn’t quite finished with it when we had our online book club discussion, and was glad to see that I wasn’t alone in my disappointment.

I did love a few things about the story. Its been a while since I read this, so apologies for the fuzzy details.

The hotel seemed like a beautiful place to visit. If it existed in real life, I would put it at the top of my vacation list post-pandemic. I liked the character of the caretaker who decides that he could happily live out the rest of his days at the hotel, simply to be surrounded by peaceful beauty.

I was fascinated — and horrified — by the plot with the shipping executive who lost everything in the Ponzi scheme, and ended up living out his retirement in an RV doing odd jobs in various locations. And it was about this time that I first saw the trailer for the new Frances McDormand movie, Nomadland, which seemed to be about a similar situation. I had no idea (which is on me for being uniformed) that this was a common thing and it made me so mad.

That’s pretty much it.

I disliked the main characters. I LOATHED Paul. I didn’t care about Vincent at all. 

I was furious at everyone involved with the financial scheme. I am aware that they hadn’t signed up for what they ended up with, but still. I felt sorry for their children and families. Not them.

The Shakespearean use of the ghosts in the prison didn’t quite work for me, and I disliked Jonathan so much that I didn’t care.

One last tiny gripe: I usually enjoy shout outs and call back to other works. I always enjoy the Easter eggs that Stephen King drops into his books, linking everything to Derry or the Dark Tower. But I was so annoyed that Miranda from Station Eleven showed up here. I have no idea why that rubbed me the wrong way, but I literally said “NO” out loud.

The next book is on a billion year end lists. And while the writing is good…I maybe just didn’t get it?

Memorial is about family — both the kind that you are born into, and the kind you make for yourself. It’s about loss. It’s about the beginning and the ending of relationships. So many people that I respect in the book world raved. And I was like, ok?

Blurb:

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a Black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years—good years—but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. There’s the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike’s immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known. And just maybe they’ll all be okay in the end.

To be honest, I wish I had read this blurb before I read the book, as it provides a much more optimistic view of the story than the one I came away with.

It was a weird story. Mike taking off to see his dad in Japan that he hadn’t seen in years, and ditching his mother in Houston with his probably-soon-to-be-ex boyfriend. Meanwhile, Benson’s family has a crisis, Benson doesn’t know what to do about anything , Mitsuko has a million secrets, and everyone cooks all the time. While all of this is going on, Mike is finding out some truths about his parents, learning how to run a bar, and getting to know the city of Osaka.

The writing was amazing. I loved the details about Houston and Osaka. I could picture Mike’s father’s bar in a tiny dark alley, filled with the regulars who made it their second home. I wanted to eat everything in this book — the homemade recipes that Mitsuko taught Benson, the Houston street food that Benson and Omar would eat, Mike’s makeshift recipes that he practiced for work — and I wanted to wash them down with a cold beer or two.

I really wanted Mike and Benson to become better people and have an AH-HA moment. Maybe they did? A tiny ah-ha? But it wasn’t enough for me to get past some of the cruel things they had done to each other while their relationship was struggling. It was painfully realistic, and maybe that’s not what I was looking for in my fiction?

Maybe my issues are my own. Could just be the wrong book at the wrong time for me, and in a non-horrible year, I might have felt differently about it. No doubt that Bryan Washington is tremendously talented and I wish him all the success in the world. I’m assuming that this will end up as a small Tom McCarthy-type independent film, that I would absolutely see. 

A disappointment, a pleasant surprise, and an I-should-have-known-better. CBR12 Review 31-33.

Continuing with my year-end wrap-up of books that I didn’t feel like reviewing earlier, this post will feature three “sequels” to books I have previously read and reviewed.

First up, Well Played. Truly, a disappointment. I was so looking forward to this one, a follow-up to last year’s fun and charming Well Met.

Still set in the weird little Maryland town that obsesses over a summer Renaissance Faire, this time we focus on Emily and Simon’s friend Stacey, who worked as a pub wench with Emily in the last book. She’s looking for love and constantly regretting the fact that she still lives at home (in an apartment over her parents’ garage) and missed out on her big chance in New York when her mom got sick a few years ago. She has a fling with a hot, kilted singer during the Faire, and then drunkenly emails him when his band moves on to the next town.

Stacey and “Dex” start to email back and forth, flirting and getting to know each other. Soon enough, Stacey really thinks she might be in love with Dex and can’t wait for him to come back to town.

And here’s where I’m going to spoil this book:

Stacey is not emailing with Dex. She is emailing with his cousin, Daniel, who is in love with Stacey, and pretends to be Dex all year long. This is a crappy premise and I didn’t care for it.

Honestly, I only finished reading to see how the whole nonsense was going to be resolved, and to see if Daniel would admit that what he did was not OK. He didn’t really, so big miss for me. 

However, I am a glutton for punishment, and I will most likely read the third book, Well Matched, when it comes out this year.

Next up, a delightful sequel to an ok book from last year .

Not Like the Movies takes everything I really didn’t love about Waiting for Tom Hanks — Annie, her obsession with romantic comedies, her movie star boyfriend, her career — and ditches it for a real human being with real problems, Annie’s friend Chloe from the coffee shop.

Because Annie is the worst, she has written and sold a screenplay about Chloe and Nick (her boss at the coffee shop who clearly is into Chloe), which is so obviously about them that they both start to wonder if the screenplay is right, and if they are supposed to be together.

Annie has other things going on too — her dad’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse, her brother has suddenly returned to Ohio from Brooklyn after years away, her serious attitude toward her business classes and her dream to open up her own bakeshop. She doesn’t really have time to worry about whether or not she and Nick have good banter or who is flirting with who.

I really like Annie and Nick as the leads here. They are normal, sensible, regular human beings. They mess things up before they figure out how to fix them and move forward. They talk and they learn things about each other. Their relationship plot has a lot more going for it than a simple meet cute, spill coffee on a movie star plot. 

I still rolled my eyes every time Annie popped in to the story, but the writing is so fricking charming that I didn’t really mind.

Lastly, here’s where I should have known better. Not really a sequel, but sort of — Recipe for Persuasion is about Ashna Raje, a minor character in last year’s Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors. Ashna is a chef who grew up living with her cousins from the last book — her father and their father were brothers who grew up as Royalty in India. 

Ashna is obsessed with saving her father’s restaurant, which has fallen on hard times since his death 12 years ago. Her friend China (who I’m sure will be the star of book three) is a producer for The Food Network, and convinces her to be a contestant on a new show about cooking with celebrities, which will be hosted by DJ, Trisha’s boyfriend from the last book.

Ashna gets paired with Rico Silva, the most famous footballer in the world. And, her first and only love, who she hasn’t talked to in twelve years. Rico only signed up for the show in order to get closure with Ashna, as he hasn’t been able to love anyone like he loved her since then.

WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

One reason only: I am a sucker for anything related to Persuasion. You can take your Darcy and your Tilney. I am 100% #teamwentworth.

But guess what? This story, while sort of following the plot of Persuasion, really isn’t a retelling of that story. And the only time it even references Persuasion, when China tells a little joke about Captain Wentworth, it is followed up with a quote from Sense & Sensibility and then China says OOH I LOVE PERSUASION and I got so mad I could’t see straight.

Apparently, I expected all of the issues that I had with P&P&OF (AND DON’T FORGET THE BOLLYWOOD BRIDE) to have magically disappeared and self-corrected. 

Spoiler alert: They did not. 

Thanks, Beth O’Leary, for making 2020 a little less cruddy. CBR12 Reviews 29-30.

My 2020 was all about comfort reading. I bought a bunch of well-received mysteries and horror novels and then, when I started reading them, I just couldn’t deal. My brain wasn’t up for anything that wasn’t a happy ending. So I’m glad I discovered Beth O’Leary. 

Last year around this time, I was in London, and I saw ads for The Flatshare in all of the tube stations and at all of the bookstores. Not knowing anything about it, I bought it, threw it in my suitcase, and promptly forgot about it when I got home. And then a few Cannonballers started to review it…and I remembered I had it, and there was much rejoicing.

A quick blurbing:

Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met.

After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art.

Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He’ll only ever be there when she’s at the office. In fact, they’ll never even have to meet.

Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes – first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs, and the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more.

But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea…especially if you’ve never met.

CUTE, right?

I really liked the fact that these characters were capital-A Adults, who had real, important things going on in their lives. It wasn’t just a meet-cute, fall in love story. It was a story about two people who find each other, support each other, and make each other’s lives better.

Leon’s brother is in jail, serving time for a crime he swears he did not commit, and Leon spends all of his free time trying to help get him home. Leon’s very practical girlfriend thinks this is a waste of time and effort, which leads to many disagreements between them.

Tiffy is pretty much suffering from PTSD after her last boyfriend. She just needs some time to figure that out. She has lovely friends who have been trying to help her through her breakup, but they just can’t seem to get her to see just how bad things were when she was still with her boyfriend.

Of course Leon and Tiff become the supportive friend that they each needed at exactly the right time. 1000% expected and yet not in the least disappointing. 

I really enjoyed it and was so pleased to see that she had another book, The Switch, out in paperback, which I ordered from my local bookstore and had delivered to my doorstep later that day.

Blurb, part two:

When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some long-overdue rest. 

Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen.

So they decide to try a two-month swap.

Eileen will live in London and look for love. She’ll take Leena’s flat, and learn all about casual dating, swiping right, and city neighbors. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire: Eileen’s sweet cottage and garden, her idyllic, quiet village, and her little neighborhood projects. 

But stepping into one another’s shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected. Will swapping lives help Eileen and Leena find themselves…and maybe even find true love? In Beth O’Leary’s The Switch, it’s never too late to change everything….or to find yourself.

This one was also quite cute. I love any book that takes place in a quaint British village filled with CHARACTERS. But I didn’t quite love it as much as The Flatshare.

I very much liked Eileen, and was glad that she was out finding herself (and dating!) in London, but didn’t necessarily buy any of her “lets fix up the lobby and create a seniors club” plot. I enjoyed how she bonded with all of Leena’s friends, and that none of them seemed bothered at all to be hanging out with an octogenarian.

I didn’t quite love Leena as much. Yes, she had PROBLEMS she needed to work out, and the countryside seemed to be helpful in that regard. But her whole plot just seemed forced in order to offset Eileen’s. I feel like the book was supposed to be about Leena, but I thought the real star was Eileen.

Leena seemed to have created most of her own problems. I mean, clearly she couldn’t have prevented her sister’s death (NOT A SPOILER), but she was so stubborn her relationship with her mother that so easily could have been fixed in two seconds. And the same with her boyfriend, who really, absolutely, was the worst. She should have sent him on his way the minute he didn’t have time to visit her in the country.

Nevertheless, cute shenanigans in a wacky small town, a big goofy dog, and cute kids in strange costumes will always win me over in the end.

Glad to see O’Leary has a new book coming out in a few months. Can’t wait to go out to a real bookstore next year and buy it.

Realizing that I need to review some of these books so that I remember I actually read them. CBR12 Reviews 27-28.

Every year I keep a long list of the books that I read during CBR that I didn’t have a chance to review. Looking at the very long list for 2020 made me realize that if I don’t write down my thoughts (as I have for the past 11 years), I will never remember that I read any of these. Ergo, here are some smaller reviews, wrapped up in a larger review. I hope to spit a few of these out before CBR13 starts!

The Bromance Book Club is the first in a hopefully charming series of books about a group of guys in Nashville who are successful athletes and other high-profile professionals who get together and talk about how reading romance novels is beneficial to their relationships. They all learn to follow the lead of their fictional heroes and find new ways to communicate with their girlfriends/wives and hopefully improve their lives.

This first installment is about Gavin, a Major League Baseball player, who’s wife Thea has recently asked him for a divorce. He has been living apart from Thea and his twin daughters, and its killing him. Gavin is reluctant to tell anyone what’s been going on in his marriage, and at the start of the story, has turned to drinking instead of talking. His friends come to his rescue, and hand him a Regency-style romance, telling him that this book will help him win Thea back.

To say that Gavin is doubtful would be an understatement.

Meanwhile, his wife, Thea, is just trying to get on with her life with her daughters and maybe go back and finish her degree. She quit college when she got pregnant and since then her only job has been mother and baseball wife.

I enjoyed the story and the idea of the book, but I didn’t really love Gavin or Thea, or her sister Liv. And the “Grand Gesture” at the end annoyed the crap out of me. But I found most of the rest of it charming and fun and would definitely pick up another installment in the series.

Next up was the delightful audiobook (free on Audible!), Call Me Maybe. I only found out about this one thanks to Ingres77’s review earlier this year, and was glad I did.

Vera is a quirky and fun small business owner living in Brooklyn. She is attempting to launch a company that specializes in gift boxes (like gift baskets, I guess?) tailored to specific people and occasions (cute, but HOW DOES SHE AFFORD AN APARTMENT IN BROOKLYN?). In order to do that, she needs a new website, which for REASONS has to be much more complex than her old laptop’s operating system can handle, so she has to call the website company’s customer service line for help.

And then she talks to her helpful and friendly customer service rep, Cal, for something like 9 hours. Sure! Why not?

Over the course of the next week or so, Vera and Cal continue their conversation. Her website is still buggy, and it really needs to work FOR THE BIG SHOWCASE ON FRIDAY! Cal really wants to help her so that the customer is happy, but mostly, he just loves talking to her. Vera keeps calling to check on the status, but mostly, she just wants to chat with Cal.

Both Vera and Cal have other things going on, of course. Cal has some weird family dynamic that caused him childhood trauma that still lingers. Vera’s family doesn’t have a lot of faith in her business, and jokes around that she’s a quitter, which really bugs her. And there’s a strange subplot about Vera’s brother trying to set her up with his friend Fred, who plays the flute.

Vera might be a little too quirky and cute, but I really didn’t mind. During COVID it seems like all I can manage are feel-good stories with happy endings, so this really fit the bill for me. And did I mention it was free?