Sunday Skim

Week of 5/5/2019 and 5/12/2019:

Finished:

Look this week for reviews on each of these novels. I've been reading so much and catching up on reviews, I don't want to repeat myself.

Currently Reading:

Looking Forward To:

I have been flying through the best books lately. I really do feel that 2019 has been a fantastic year for publishing so far. I've got some great books to finish up for May and then it will be onto June reads! What do you guys think about 2019? Do you feel like you've read some particularly great books?

Julie's Review: Drawing Home

Author: Jamie Brenner
Series: None
Publication Date: May 7, 2019
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 368
Obtained: Great Thoughts, Great Readers Book Salon
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Bottom Line: Sometimes you have to fight for what is yours
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Summer has started in idyllic Sag Harbor, and for Emma Mapson that means greeting guests at the front desk of The American Hotel. But when one of the town's most famous residents, artist Henry Wyatt, dies suddenly, Emma learns he has mysteriously left his waterfront home - a self-designed masterpiece filled with his work - to her teenage daughter, Penny.  Back in Manhattan, legendary art patron Bea Winstead's grief at her lifelong friend and former business partner Henry's passing turns to outrage at the news of his shocking bequest. How did these unknown locals get their hands on the estate? Bea, with her devoted assistant Kyle in tow, descends on Sag Harbor determined to reclaim the house and preserve Henry's legacy. While Emma fights to defend her daughter's inheritance, Bea discovers that Henry left a treasure trove of sketches scattered around town. With Penny's reluctant help, Bea pieces them together to find a story hidden in plain sight: an illustration of their shared history with an unexpected twist that will change all of their lives. Drawn together in their battle for the house, Emma and Bea are forced to confront the past while facing a future that challenges everything they believe about love, fate, and family. ~amazon.com

Review: Throughout the course of this novel you really feel for both Penny and Emma but your empathy is really low for Bea. You understand where she’s coming from but your frustration as a reader comes from her lack of wanting to see the other side.

Emma's doing the best she can raising Penny as a single mom but it's tough with managing the front desk at the American Hotel, she can't always be every where. Up until this year Penny has been reliable and amiable but she's rebelling in a way that Emma can't even imagine. Penny is thrown by the death of Henry, her inheritance and trying to get her OCD under control. She's also trying to fit in and find her way in a small town.

Things go downhill for Emma quickly between Bea coming in to town and fighting the will of Henry and then her ex suddenly shows up to spend time with Penny. Emma is starting to wonder if being if being positive all the time is advantageous. At times you want Emma to wake up and be more aggressive than passive. 

I’m not quite sure she ever saw Emma and Penny’s POV it she came around because she finally understood what Henry was telling her through her drawings.

Ms. Brenner has a way with her words that lets you feel like you are in the room with these characters. She transports you to the settings of her novels in a way that you smell the ocean. I enjoyed how she brought Penny's OCD into the story and how she showed how she struggled to keep it at bay and how at times she couldn't.

I loved every moment I spent reading this novel.


Google+

Julie's Review: Waisted

Author: Randy Susan Meyers
Series: None
Publication Date: May 21, 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 288
Obtained: Great Thoughts, Great Readers Book Salon
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: 
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Alice and Daphne, both successful and accomplished working mothers, harbor the same secret: obsession with their weight overshadows concerns about their children, husbands, work—and everything else of importance in their lives. Scales terrify them. Daphne, plump in a family of model-thin women, learned only slimness earns admiration at her mother’s knee. Alice, break-up skinny when she met her husband, risks losing her marriage if she keeps gaining weight. The two women meet at Waisted. Located in a remote Vermont mansion, the program promises fast, dramatic weight loss, and Alice, Daphne, and five other women are desperate enough to leave behind their families for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The catch? They must agree to always be on camera; afterward, the world will see Waisted: The Documentary. The women soon discover that the filmmakers have trapped them in a cruel experiment. With each pound lost, they edge deeper into obsession and instability...until they decide to take matters into their own hands. ~amazon.com

Review: Waisted is a thought provoking novel about how women view themselves regarding beauty but the true focus is on weight. How far will each of them go to attain her ideal weight? How will it effect her psyche? Her relationships?

Alice is a smart, loving woman who struggles with her weight and her ass of a husband doesn't help. You see he met Alice when she was getting over her first real heartbreak, so she wasn't eating and at her thinnest. So after having their daughter, she gained weight and was having trouble keeping it off. He never complimented her and seemed embarrassed to take her anywhere. His image was very much tied to external beauty and therefore she didn't fit that image. So instead of losing weight for herself she does it to please him which leads her to binge.

Daphne is a brilliant make-up artist that doesn't live up to her mother's sense of beauty because she's overweight. Her mom is always making comments and cutting her down. It has penetrated every inch of Daphne's being and is affecting her marriage to her wonderfully supportive husband.

Alice and Daphne meet when they join a "camp" to get themselves in shape. Pretty quickly they lose the weight but what else are they giving up? Will they lose their sense of who they really are?! How do you reconcile yourself when so much of yourself has been wrapped up on a number on the scale?!

Ms. Myers has written a novel that every woman should read. She hits this subject matter on so many levels that it will resonate with everyone, thin or not so thin. It made me cry at some points because it hit home. I don't think weight is a strictly female issue but it is strictly female in how society views women with a few extra pounds on her frame.

This will be a book that I will push on people to read. I really can't recommend it enough.

  Google+

Julie's Review: Park Avenue Summer

Author: Renee Rosen
Series: None
Publication Date: April 20, 2019
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 368
Obtained: Great Thoughts, Great Readers Book Salon
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: An interesting look at a woman who was ahead of her time
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: New York City is filled with opportunities for single girls like Alice Weiss, who leaves her small midwestern town to chase her big-city dreams and unexpectedly lands the job of a lifetime working for the first female editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Helen Gurley Brown. Nothing could have prepared Alice for the world she enters as editors and writers resign on the spot, refusing to work for the woman who wrote the scandalous bestseller Sex and the Single Girl, and confidential memos, article ideas, and cover designs keep finding their way into the wrong hands. When someone tries to pull Alice into a scheme to sabotage her boss, she is more determined than ever to help Helen succeed. While pressure mounts at the magazine and Alice struggles to make her way in New York, she quickly learns that in Helen Gurley Brown's world, a woman can demand to have it all. ~amazon.com 

Review: Coming into this book I didn’t know much about Helen Gurley Brown’s start at Cosmopolitan. I can tell you that in my house growing up it was a bit too racy and I wasn’t allowed to throw it in grocery cart. 😉 As an adult it wasn't really on my radar either. Having said that I do love reading about women who break the mold and become successful in-spite of people trying to hold them down. That's exactly what Ms. Brown does and did well for decades. 

Alice was the perfect narrator for this novel. She's come to New York because that's where she feels she can pursue her photography and well her dad got remarried. She gets a job as Helen Gurley Brown's secretary and very quickly becomes protective of her and what she's trying to accomplish. She quickly learns the joys of corporate working when she's asked to spy on Helen for Hearst. 

There is much correlation between the growing pains that Cosmopolitan is going through and Alice's own growing up. She learns much about herself, what she wants and how she wants to get it in the time she spends with Helen.

Lovers of A Devil Wears Prada will thoroughly enjoy this novel.

Julie's Review: Swimming For Sunlight

Author: Allie Larkin
Series: None
Publication Date: April 23, 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 352
Obtained: publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Contemporary 
FictionRating: 5/5
Bottom Line: How do you fix yourself when you feel like you've been broken for so long?
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Aspiring costume designer Katie gave up everything in her divorce to gain custody of her fearful, faithful rescue dog, Barkimedes. While she figures out what to do next, she heads back to Florida to live with her grandmother, Nan.

But Katie quickly learns there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Nan—like the fact that in her youth Nan was a mermaid performer in a roadside attraction show, swimming and dancing underwater with a close-knit cast of talented women. Although most of the mermaids have since lost touch, Katie helps Nan search for her old friends on Facebook, sparking hopes for a reunion show. Katie is up for making some fabulous costumes, but first, she has to contend with her crippling fear of water. 

As Katie’s college love Luca, a documentary filmmaker, enters the fray, Katie struggles to balance her hopes with her anxiety, and begins to realize just how much Bark’s fears are connected to her own, in this thoughtful, charming novel about hope after loss and friendships that span generations.

Review: I kind of want to be a mermaid in a fantastic costume made by Kay! The descriptions of the costumes were so vivid, I felt like I was in the room with her when she was sewing.

Kaitlin, Katie, Kay has been through a lot. She was in a marriage that didn't really work for her and gave up everything in the divorce to keep her dog, Barky. She drives back home to Florida to live with her grandmother while she gets back on her feet. The thing is, I'm not sure she knows what that really means. Katie has been an anxious soul since she was a kid when her father died in front of her. She's dealt with it by closing herself off to most people. Except now her anxiety is affecting her ability to function and in a lot of ways her dog. I could also feel Kay and Barky’s anxiety as I read the words used to describe her fears. Her fears of losing the people closest to her. You can lose what you push away, right? 

The friendships that are threaded through this novel are special. I hope that when I’m an older lady, I have friends like that around me. They keep pushing Kay out of her shell so that she can deal with her fears, especially the one that revolves around water. You can't make costumes for mermaids if you don't understand how things move in water. 

Ms. Larkin does a fantastic job of making you understand anxiety and fears. How our experiences shape us as an adult and how mental illness needs to be recognized and dealt with. This is a very special novel and I can’t recommend it enough.

Google+

Sunday Skim on a Tuesday

Week of 4/21/2019 and 4/28/2019:

Finished:

Currently Reading:

Looking Forward To:

The best thing about business travel is that I can fly through books, which as you can see is what I pretty much did. Now not all of them were business trips books but 2 of them were. Although sometimes it's just nice to watch whatever you want on tv! Do you like to read on business travel? I find I get more reading done then than on a vacation with the family.

Google+Google+