Grace is a married mother of three. Her youngest, three year old Jack, is terminally ill. She has a background in epidemiology. She also is having an affair with her high school boyfriend. An allegation is made by an unknown party, accusing Grace of Munchhausen’s by proxy – making Jack sick in order to get attention from medical personnel. She is horrified to realize that she does perfectly fit the profile of a MBP mother. This book was absolutely heartbreaking, but I absolutely adored it. […]
Wink wink nudge nudge, parenthood, amirite?
2.5 stars In the 2016 winner of the Most Thinly Veiled Memoir award, Greg Olear Josh Lansky spends a really long day parenting his two young kids, Roland and Maude. Yes, Maude. And Roland. There’s your first sign that this guy is going to be kind of insufferable. He lives in an extremely detailed city called New Paltz, a yuppie paradise so thoroughly described that there’s no way the author doesn’t live there. Check the dust jacket, yep. New Paltz, NY. Okay, well, that’s fine. […]
Sisters Seem Fun Sometimes, Sometimes Not So Fun
So this is final Liane Moriarty book until she publishes something new! Excuse me while I experience some sadness. Ok, done. Having just finished the Last Anniversary and the Hypnotist’s Love Story and being mildly disappointed with them both (they were good, not great), I wasn’t sure what I was going to get with Three Wishes. I’m happy to report that I wasn’t let down. Three Wishes tells the story of the […]
Another tangled web of suspense by a true master
Lescroart has managed to produce another masterpiece of murder, corruption, and deceit in The Keeper, with the action this time centered around the character of Abe Glitsky in a brand-new role. Los Angeles prison guard Hal Chase’s wife has gone missing, and Hal—as the lead suspect in the as-yet unproven murder—hires defense attorney Dismas Hardy. It turns out Hardy’s wife had been the missing woman’s therapist and knows a few things about the marriage that she’s not allowed to tell. The tension ratchets up very […]
Sweet but boring immigrant’s tale
This simple little novel, frankly, left me cold. A slow pace, pedestrian language and dialogue, an uninspired plot and a “surprise” ending which goes nowhere, left me rather stunned that this book was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Brooklyn is the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman in the post-war years who lives with her country mom and smart ambitious older sister Rose. Three brothers have left home to work in Dublin. Dad died years earlier. As little to no work is […]
A Tale of Loss, Redemption and the Human Condition
A challenging but tenderly rendered novel about the consequences of loss. Intertwined plots focus on the traumatized marriage of Vermont couple Laura and Terry Sheldon who two years earlier had lost their young twin daughters to a flood, and also on the fragile psychological state of 10-year-old Alfred, a young African-American foster child placed in the Sheldon’s home. The author successfully switches viewpoints from one character to the next, without losing the flow of the story and at the same time giving us an inside […]