The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker

by Kate Alcott

Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis: Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be her personal maid on the Titanic. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men—a kind sailor and an enigmatic Chicago businessman—who offer differing views of what lies ahead for her in America. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes, and amidst the chaos, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat.  

 
The survivors are rescued and taken to New York, but when rumors begin to circulate about the choices they made, Tess is forced to confront a serious question.  Did Lady Duff Gordon save herself at the expense of others? Torn between loyalty to Lucile and her growing suspicion that the media’s charges might be true, Tess must decide whether to stay quiet and keep her fiery mentor’s good will or face what might be true and forever change her future.

From the publisher

Review: I wanted to really like this book because of its subject.  Sadly, I was disappointed by the writing and the story.  Based on the description of the book, I thought that more of it would take place upon the Titanic.  There was very little of the story aboard the ship-the ship sank within the first 50 pages or so of the book (I can't tell you exactly as I was reading it on my ipad).  Most of the story focused on life after the sinking and the hearings afterwards and I found it to be not so thrilling.  The book also promises to be romantic and while there was some romance, it was not well developed and seemed very one note.  Another problem I had with the book was the characters.  I felt that the characters did not stay true to themselves nor did they seem believable.  The writing style just seemed weak.  The author also threw in some random events-like the suffrage movement that really didn't fit in the story.  It was a quick read and somewhat enjoyable but I spent most of the book noticing its flaws.

Rating: 3 stars

The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper

Kate Morton

Genre: Women's fiction

Summary: (from the publisher)
From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Distant Hours, The Forgotten Garden, and The House at Riverton, a spellbinding new novel filled with mystery, thievery, murder, and enduring love.

During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.

Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.

Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

Review:  I enjoyed learning more about life in London during the blitz, but I felt like the constant jumping back and forth between the present and several different times in the past was too confusing to make this a pleasurable read.  The book was long, took a while to get into, and I didn't find myself liking any of the characters.  While the ending helped me understand the characters better, it was too little, too late.

Rating: 3 stars

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

by Robin Sloan

Genre: Fiction

Summary: (from the publisher)  A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.

With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the twenty-first century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that’s rare to the world of literary fiction. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious reader, no matter the time of day.

Review: This was such a fun book - reminiscent of "The Shadows of the Wind" but much easier and more enjoyable to read.  It's part mystery and part fantasy, with code-breaking, code-writing, enduring friendship, quirky characters, love of printed books, love of technology, random funny bits, and even a little romance.  Some of the secondary characters seemed to have more personality than the main character, which was a little unusual, and I wondered if Google had sponsored the book since it was mentioned positively so often.  While I couldn't put the book down in the beginning, I felt like the end was a little lackluster, although certainly more believable than the ending I had been imagining.  It definitely appealed to the book lover and the geek in me!

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife

by Paula McLaine

Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis: A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time—Paris in the twenties—and an extraordinary love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

In Chicago in 1920, Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and finds herself captivated by his good looks, intensity, and passionate desire to write. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group of expatriates that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

But the hard-drinking and fast-living café life does not celebrate traditional notions of family and monogamy. As Hadley struggles with jealousy and self-doubt and Ernest wrestles with his burgeoning writing career, they must confront a deception that could prove the undoing of one of the great romances in literary history.

Review:  This book was slow for me to get into but I finally did.  The Paris Wife is a fictional story of the first wife of Ernest Hemingway.  I found it hard to like this book because Hadley (Hemingway's first wife) was such a weak woman.  She was surrounded by women in Paris who were strong albiet had loose morals and drank a lot but yet Hadley never stood up for herself and Hemingway walked all over her.  Hemingway was not a likable character either.  Perhaps in real life Hemingway was not a likable person and maybe the portrayal of him in the book was accurate.  I find it hard to like a book when I don't like the main characters.  I also greatly disliked their life style.  Again, this is probably how the "lost generation" as they called themselves lived but it was so hard to condone their activities.  I feel like the book is well written but just not a book for me.

Rating: 3 stars

Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop

Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop

by Lisa Shulman

Illustrated by Ashley Wolff

Genre: Picture book

Synopsis: Old MacDonald is busy building something.  One by one, all the animals on the farm come to help too.  All of them except for the babies, who hover at the door, trying to see what it is.  With a rurr rurr, tap tap, chip chip, scritch scratch, squeak squeak, and swish swash, soon the project is done.  What do you think it is?  With fun sound effects and a familiar cast of animals, this twist on the classic nursery song is sure to be a hit with any kid who loves tools or loves to sing.

From the book jacket

Review:  My kids really like books that are set to music and the also really like tools!  This book is right up their alley.  Old MacDonald is a female sheep who is building something and other animals come to help.  With each verse, another animals comes in with a different tool and the sound effects are the noises that a tool would make.  It's a fun song to sing and a nice twist on an old classic song.

Rating: 4 stars

Cock-a-Doodle Dance!

Cock-a-Doodle Dance!

by Christine Tricario

Illustrated by Rich Deas

Genre: Picture Book

Synopsis: In rootin', tootin' Texas is a gloomy, grouchy farm where animals work overtime and life has lost its charm.  But when Rooster catches a jitterbug, all the animals catch boogie fever and can't stop dancing!  Pigs polka.  Sheet shimmy and swing.  Chickens cha-cha.  What will Rooster cock-a-doodle do to stop the barnyard bash?

From the book jacket

Review: This story is so fun and so are the illustrations!  All the animals on the farm catch dancing fever and do that instead of doing the work that they are supposed to do like producing eggs and milk.  The story is written in rhyme and is full of dance vocabulary.  The back inside cover of the book actually explains all the different dances that they use in the book.  My kids really enjoyed listening to this book although the vocabulary is more advanced than my children's vocabulary so I had to stop often and explain words (because I was asked what the words meant).  I even enjoyed reading this book and was entertained by what else the author and illustrator would come up with!

Rating: 5 stars

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui

Genre: Memoir

Synopsis: “I’m a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no.”

 
Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.

Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.

Recently honored alongside Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice as one of Glamour magazine’s women of the year, Nujood now tells her full story for the first time. As she guides us from the magical, fragrant streets of the Old City of Sana’a to the cement-block slums and rural villages of this ancient land, her unflinching look at an injustice suffered by all too many girls around the world is at once shocking, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable.

From the publisher

Becky's Review: Nujood's bravery is remarkable for a 10 year old.  How amazing she is that she journeys on her own to the courthouse to ask a judge for a divorce from her husband!  This story is simply written and is told by Nujood to Minoui.  At that time of Nujood's marriage, she was only literate enough to write her name.  Other reviews have a problem with this book because Minoui clearly added flowery language and that maybe it should have been written by her as a 3rd person memoir.  While that all may be true, I did not read the story as a critique of its writing style.  I read it for the compelling story which is so tragic but yet true in parts of the world.  It's an easy read, one that I read in a day.  I think it's a great story to read as it's eye opening.

Marcie's Review: I completely agree with Becky's review.  Certainly there were some flaws in the book, but I kept reminding myself that the author was a 10-year-old abused child.  My biggest complaint was that sometimes the voice of 10-year-old Nujood came through, and at other times, the voice of Minoui was obvious.  Becky said it was an easy read, and I would agree, except that the topic is disturbing and thought provoking.

Becky's Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Marcie's Rating: 3 1/2 stars