Category: literary fiction

Fiction, literary fiction, romance, thriller

Book Review: Verity by Colleen Hoover

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Lowen Ashleigh is going through an eventful time in her life. Her mom has just died from cancer and the first time she dares venture outside her apartment for a work meeting since her death, a man is hit by a bus in front of her. Lowen is a writer. A struggling writer. She likes her private life, doesn’t do promo and just hasn’t had a lot of opportunities. Her work meeting is an offer by Jeremy Crawford, husband to the best selling author, Verity Crawford.

Verity has written a successful series but is unable to continue as she has sustained injuries from a car accident. Lowen is offered the opportunity to finish out the series for a substantial amount of money. She is also offered the chance to live at the Crawford residence to go over Verity’s notes and outlines for the series which is good timing since she is about to be evicted.

Lowen accepts, moves in with Jeremy, Verity and their lone surviving son and uncovers a whole lot more about Jeremy and Verity’s relationship while also developing feelings for Jeremy. We also get to learn more about Lowen’s past.

I have mentioned before that I am a newbie to Colleen Hoover. This is only my second book of hers with the first being It Ends With Us. I was told that that was a departure from her usual writing style but this is apparently also a departure as well. Hoover wrote this book independently from her contract (which makes it free on Kindle Unlimited!)

All that to say that I really enjoyed this book. I have been in a reading slump but this kept me intrigued and turning the pages. There was soooo much going on in this book. So many stories but Hoover found a way to not make it complicated. It was very meta because we are reading a book about a writer writing a book that is reading notes on another book that was being written for a writer by another writer (clap for yourself if this made sense to you haha!)

To make things clearer, I’ll reveal that while going through the notes, Lowen discovers Verity’s autobiography which becomes part of the story that we read along with her. This is where we find out about the couple and somehow the book becomes a thriller and I started guessing what happened (I was wrong). I should also let you know that there are a lot of sex scenes in the book that I have to say was well done. Not too smarmy and not too childish/prudish.

I didn’t quite like the ending but honestly it was not so bad considering the many plot threads in the book. I didn’t quite buy the feasibility of Verity’s storyline 100% but you know…creative liberties. It didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book. I completely recommend this book and it was an easy and quick read.

Have you read this one? Which book of hers do you recommend I read next?

Taynement

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith

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“It’s a particularly strange kind of loss, when something you don’t think you even want gets taken away from you.”

Three months after Greta James’ mother dies, she has an onstage meltdown a couple weeks before the release of her long awaited sophomore album. Trying to outrun the humiliation and self doubt, she agrees to accompany her father on an Alaskan cruise. A cruise that her father and mother had looked forward to for months and one they booked to celebrate their 40th anniversary. Greta has spent her entire career trying to prove her practical father wrong. Her mother, Helen, had been at every bar, every performance, cheering her on but her father, Conrad, had always felt that she should do something more practical and steady with her life.

“Maybe the point isn’t always to make things last. Maybe it’s just to make them count.”

This is essentially a father-daughter story. Greta and her father feel so lost after the death of Helen and they’re both trying to grief the best way they know how. On the trip is also 4 of her parents’ friends, two couples that her mother had convinced to come on the trip with them. This Alaskan trip becomes a chance for father and daughter to hash out their differences including talking about the infamous song she wrote about him. It was quite heartbreaking to see a man who loved his wife very much have to deal with her passing and still be subjected to the trip they had both wanted to go on for so long.

“It’s like that feeling of getting off a long flight and taking your first breath of fresh air. You were okay on the plane. You could breathe just fine. And you could survive like that for a pretty long time if you had to. But once you’re off, you realize you wouldn’t want to live that way forever. Not if you had a choice.”

Ben Wilder is also struggling with a major upheaval in his life. He has come on the cruise as an expert historian on Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, an adventure story Greta’s mum had loved so much. He’s here to give lectures as part of the entertainment offered on the cruise. Him and Greta hit it off on the boat but they live completely different lives in the real world and this might be the only time they can enjoy the bubble of being with each other.

“The truth is, being a parent is mostly just reacting. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don’t. You give what you can. And at the end of the day, most of it is just being there.”

When I grabbed this book, I expected it to be a deeply emotional read about a father and daughter trying to reconnect after they lose someone very important to them. While this is what this book is meant to be, I actually did not find it emotional at all. It was hard for me to connect with any of the characters in the book and I found the romance on the side a little distracting especially as it did not have a very satisfying conclusion. I never felt fully invested in any of the characters or the story. I never bought into the main character being a Rockstar plus I found her to be quite immature and angsty for her age. I wonder if because Smith usually writes YA books and this is her first adult novel, if some of that teenage angst bled into someone who’s supposed to be in her 30s.

I still think this is an easy read. I read this all in one day and while it may not stay with me past this year, it was a solid 3 star book for me. If you’ve been postponing this one because you’re worried it might be too heavy for you, I promise that it is not at all heavy.

Have you read this? What did you think? Have a happy reading week everybody!

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction

Book Review: We Are The Brennans by Tracey Lange

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Sunday Brennan is a 29 year old woman living in Los Angeles, California. 5 years ago, she up and left her family and boyfriend, Kale – who is practically a member of the Brennan family – without an explanation. One day, she wakes up and finds herself in a hospital, banged up pretty bad. She drank too much and got into an accident. Her emergency contact is her brother, Denny Brennan, the oldest child of the Brennan clan. He is back in New York with the rest of her family. Denny flies in to California and convinces Sunday to come back to New York to recuperate.

Sunday tries to get into a routine at home. Denny is planning to open a second bar with his best friend and Sunday’s former flame, Kale. Speaking of Kale, he is now married to Vivienne and they have a 4 year old son. As time passes and the unanswered question of why she left lingers among her siblings and Kale, secrets from the past resurfaces and collide with secrets from the present.

I love family dramas. They usually come with large families that are almost always dysfunctional so I was looking forward to this. It did not disappoint but I felt it was just okay. Despite having a long list of characters, Lange does a good job with writing and weaving their stories together. Each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective but each chapter begins with the last sentence from the previous chapter and I just thought that was such a pretty cool writing party trick because that had to be very difficult to do.

Slow build ups can be exhausting because you are just like “can we just get to it?!” This wasn’t an exception but it was not as annoying as it usually is because I actually enjoyed getting to learn about the Brennans starting from their parents coming from Ireland and building a life in America. Also, the family had so many secrets that it was like finding easter eggs along the way and being like “oooh, well that happened”

I think at a certain point, especially after a number of reveals, it was time for the book to be wrapped up but it didn’t wrap up when it should have. I hope this makes sense but as much as many things happened to the Brennans and the secrets they held, they felt like…boring people. Like, who were they besides the hand life dealt them. After learning about Sunday, her getting drunk and getting into an accident didn’t gel with what we had learned about her as a person.

I described this book as just okay earlier but it got a lot of hype in the book world. I think it’s definitely a mood read. It’s an easy read and with the good writing, it goes down easy.

Taynement

Book Related Topics, Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry

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“That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.”

Nora Stephens is an amazing book agent. She gets her clients the best deals and is called “The Shark” behind her back for her ruthlessness. The only person who matters to Nora is Libby, her little sister and her family. Nora has been taking care of Libby since their mother died and is determined to make sure that Libby keeps living a stress free life even though Libby is now married with two kids and another one on the way.

This is why Nora agrees to visit Sunshine Falls, North Carolina with her sister in order to destress before the baby comes. Small towns are not her thing but she has promised Libby two weeks of uninterrupted sister bonding time including completing a list of small town romance cliches while they’re there.

“That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.”

Instead of bumping into a smart and funny but totally hot farmer while living in the small town, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, an editor from the city who is in Sunshine Falls to take care of his aging parents and whip their affairs into shape. Charlie and Nora have met many times before but always on days when they both weren’t bringing their best to the world, so this presents a chance for them to start over and get to know each other as people not as an editor and agent.

“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt.”

I have unwittingly become an Emily Henry completist and every book of hers just keeps getting better. I’m actually scared to read her next book because I don’t see how she can keep this momentum forever. Henry reminds me of Nora Ephron so much. Her characters have depth and interact in ways that you can see why they would fall in love. Nora and Charlie are my favorite characters of hers till date. They are smart, older and know exactly what they want in life. They both know they don’t want to have kids and there is no grand announcement about why. It’s stated as a matter of fact and moved on from.

The banter between the two characters is smart and just snappy. It is the banter I have in my head when I picture the perfect relationship back and forth between two smart and well read people. I also like that Henry didn’t lean into the enemies to lovers trope. In my opinion, they were never enemies. They just had a bad work meeting that they both put behind them, so it was so easy to see how they’d meet in another context and get along very well.

“Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives.”

As much as this is a romance book, the best thing about Emily Henry’s books is that it’s never just about the romance. At the core of this book is a sister relationship. Nora and Libby have a very codependent relationship with Nora thinking she can shield her sister from all the hurt in the world. At first, I was very annoyed by this relationship and every time they would come up, I just wanted to go back to the amazing banter between the two main characters. But as the book unraveled and I got the backstory of their relationship and how young they both were when their mother died and the circumstances surrounding their mother’s death, I understood why Nora felt so responsible for an actual adult with a thriving family of her own now. The resolution to the sister relationship was very organic and satisfying.

“Can’t think of a greater symbol of hope than a person who’s willing to drag themselves out of bed and sing at the top of their lungs to a group of strangers trapped on a train. That tenacity should be rewarded.”

You know how at the 85-90% mark of every romance book, the main characters have some unresolved conflict then they break up before finally coming back together to give us the happily ever after we lovers of romance read these books for? This is the first time that I actually thought the conflict reflected real life. The circumstances surrounding their conflict was very mature and I could see why that would come up because they had already talked about it before they began their “relationship” so when it came up, I wasn’t surprised. Just grateful that Henry thinks very highly of her readers to sell us some silly conflict that doesn’t even make sense with the characters she has created.

“The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.”

That quote is exactly how I felt when I completed this book. If you’ve read People We Meet on Vacation and loved it, I promise you that this book is even better. Anyway, I really liked this one. I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, scifi

Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

It’s 1912, Edwin St. Andrew is exiled from polite society by his parents after ranting about colonialism at the dinner table and finds himself in Canada. He enters the forest one night to admire the Canadian wilderness and is shocked to see a sudden vision of a man playing a violin in an airship terminal. 200 years later, Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour on earth from the outer space colonies when she is asked about a strange passage in her best selling book. A passage that describes a man playing a violin in an airship terminal when suddenly the Canadian wilderness rises behind him for a couple of seconds. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts is hired to investigate this anomaly and determine if we are living in a simulation, he travels through time to meet each participant to interview them and finds so many different lives upended.

“You know the phrase I keep thinking about?” a poet asked, on a different panel, at a festival in Copenhagen. ‘The chickens are coming home to roost.’ Because it’s never good chickens. It’s never ‘You’ve been a good person and now your chickens are coming home to roost.’ It’s never good chickens. It’s always bad chickens.”

I genuinely do not know how to describe this book to you because I went in blind. I saw that Mandel had a new book out and I just downloaded it and read it without even checking to see what it was about. I recommend you go in that way because there is really no description for this book. It’s so many things at once. It is a pandemic novel, a time travelling novel, an apocalyptic novel, a human nature novel etc. I did not enjoy Mandel’s last novel, The Glass Hotel, as much as I did Station Eleven but this one is Mandel at her absolute finest. If you read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, you get to pick up the different little easter eggs she drops on the way. Characters from her previous books pop up in this one and it was so thrilling to recognise characters I thought I would never see again.

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you, with seemingly no intermediate step.”

As is the style with Mandel, this is a quiet slow build story. The exploration of what living in a simulation might mean for humanity is so riveting and her writing of human nature is absolutely beautiful. We begin with different chapters of characters in different centuries and settings with stories that seem totally unrelated and you wonder where exactly this is leading to. The way she ties the stories together beautifully at the end is so good. Mandel’s writing has such a nostalgic feel to it, how do you feel nostalgic about what is essentially a time traveling investigatory story? I don’t know but you do.

“Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to throw a grenade until you’ve already pulled the pin.”

If you enjoy slow burn books, then you should give this book a chance. If you’ve never enjoyed any Emily St. John Mandel’s books then this is not any different. The reasons you hated the others probably exist in this one. It’s very difficult to write a review for this book but I definitely recommend it if it sounds like something you’d like and with every Mandel book, you already know to expect very stellar writing. I think I’ve decided to be a completist where Mandel is concerned. I’m going to go and read her previous books before Station Eleven blew up and see. Anyway, I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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“Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren’t. And that’s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn’t special – it’s just annoying.”

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist, a single mother and a very reluctant cooking star host of the beloved, Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (continuously proclaiming how hard it is and using chemistry terms!) proves to be very popular and revolutionary. She’s not just teaching women how to cook but daring them to change the status quo of things in the early 1960s. How did a chemist with a masters degree get here? How did she end up in the kitchen? Well, you’re in for the most unusual love story.

“Imagine if all men took women seriously . . .“

Zott is the only female chemist at Hastings Research Institute, even though her male colleagues constantly come to her for help, they do not think she is smart enough. They find her too uppity because she refuses to make copies, make coffee, or anything else that her male colleagues aren’t required to do. They are also resentful of the fact that she is beautiful and does not want to date any of them, be groped or “accidentally” touched. She experiences so much sexism at work until she meets the often oblivious Calvin Evans.

My favorite thing about Garmus’ characterization of Evans is that she does not write him as a perfect paragon of feminism. Yes, he does not logically understand why Zott is not treated better, given the intellect she possesses and he takes her ideas seriously, but he is still just a man. He proposes to her even though she already told him she does not intend to ever get married. He automatically assumes that she would change her name and completely blanches at the suggestion that if it isn’t such a big deal then he should change his to hers.

This story is filled with so many great side characters. A neighbor that could have been the stereotypical nosy neighbour but Garmus writes her to be so much more. If you’re an animal lover, there’s a dog named six-thirty that most animal lovers would absolutely adore. I am not an animal lover but even I appreciated his contributions to the plot! A priest that fleets in and out of Calvin and Elizabeth’s lives, a very smart and delightful daughter called Mad! and a secretary at Hastings that makes Elizabeth’s life a living hell!

I’m getting weary of reading about quirky female characters who are written like they’re on the spectrum but are not written consistently. Elizabeth in my opinion was very naive, socially awkward and sometimes delusional. There are so many times I just felt like this character was not at all realistic.

The blurb on this book says it’s supposed to be laugh out loud funny, I didn’t find it funny. This book should actually come with a trigger warning – there’s a brutal rape, an attempted rape and suicide. I don’t think I even smiled once. The character said something about subsidized child care in Sweden and I had to google this because I was quite shocked that this would be a thing in the early 60’s which is when this book was set in and I was right, subsidized child care was not a thing till the late 70’s in Sweden. I wonder why her editor didn’t catch that.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book overall and would recommend it. I went into it with extremely high expectations built up by bookstagram and I think I was ultimately a little let down. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads. It is a debut novel and I must say, it read like one. If you enjoy quirky characters and a charming cast of support characters, then this one is for you.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, thriller

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

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“Sisterly relationships are so strange in this way. The way I can be mad at Rose but still want to please her. Be terrified of her and also want to run to her. Hate her and love her, both at the same time. Maybe when it comes to sisters, boundaries are always a little bit blurry. Blurred boundaries, I think, are what sisters do best.”

Rose and Fern are fraternal twin sisters. Fern is on the spectrum and Rose is very protective of Fern and is very involved in her life. Fern relies on her sister a lot and trusts her and would do anything for her. When Rose tells Fern that she has fertility issues and isn’t able to have a kid, Fern decides she needs to help Rose have a child and all she needs to do is find a man to impregnate her.

Fern lives a structured, routine life and keeps to a schedule. When she meets Wally at the library she works in, he brings a little disruption in her life – in a good way. We start to see the relationship between the sisters from two perspectives. Fern’s, in present day and Rose’s from when they were children via her journal entries till the stories collide and meet in the present day.

“Fern always seemed to have some sort of impenetrable boundary around her that made her immune to Mum’s reign of terror. I often wondered if that boundary was part and parcel of whatever was different about Fern.”

I don’t recall how or when this was on my TBR list but it was available and I dove into it and it was really a case of right time, right book. It basically is a story about family and how perspectives can be different even in the same environment. There were many things covered in this book – learning more about sensory processing disorder (which Fern suffers from) and being on the spectrum, mental illness, abuse, boundaries and more – but it was woven in seamlessly and did not feel overwhelming. Hepworth managed to place them in the right places with the right doses.

“The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside … and it is the librarian’s job to look after all those who do.”

It might seem like a little thing, but as mentioned before Fern worked in a library and seeing how much she loved her job, was good at it and was a place of solace for her, seemed like a subtle nod to us book lovers. Hepworth did a good job of character building and the library seemed like one more character that wasn’t left out. I liked how she didn’t have Fern’s autism be her one defining characteristic even if it was a big part of her life. Instead, we get to know about Fern’s love of bright colors and how bold she was.

“One thing I’ve learned about facing fear,” he says, “is that sometimes, it’s just too scary.”

I am not sure how to categorize the book. It’s definitely fiction but it had a mix of romance, [very low key] thriller in that it’s all leading up to a big secret/twist which I think was quite easy to figure out. I enjoyed the pacing of the book and all in all found it a pleasurable read. Oh and Hepworth is Australian, so the book is set in Australia. I gave the book 4 stars because the ending kinda hinted at a sequel and I think the book should be a one and done. I recommend this one!

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction

Book Review: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

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“And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart.”

Eleanor Bennett has just passed away. She leaves behind a recording for her two children, Byron and Benny who she fondly calls B&B. The recording is nothing either of them expected, especially Benny as she was estranged from both her parents and didn’t speak to them before either of them passed away.

In the recording, Eleanor reveals a lot of family secrets including a history on the Island she is originally from. She gives them one last request and drops a bomb at the same time. She tells them that she has left them a traditional Caribbean black cake in the freezer and they have to eat it together – with their long lost sibling.

“I hope that you won’t be afraid to make the same kind of choice again, if you feel that this is what you need to do to survive. Question yourself, yes, but don’t doubt yourself. There’s a difference.”

This book has all the ingredients for a compelling book – which it was, but for me, even though I liked it, I was not gaga about it like most in the literary world. It is a family multi-generational story with a lot of character. In talking about the Islands, Wilkerson sprinkled in some history that I found interesting. The book spanned from the Islands to the UK and then the United States with MANY characters. I found the book to be very descriptive so it made all the sense when I found out Wilkerson was a former journalist.

“You were never just you, and you owed it to the people you cared about to remember that. Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part.”

I mentioned earlier that there were a lot of characters, which may bother some people but it didn’t bother me because as long as a book is written well, I can keep up with the characters. That being said, we get insight into each and every character mentioned except for one, so you have a good idea of who everyone is. I do want to add that I don’t know if we were supposed to be sympathetic to Benny’s character because I wasn’t. I didn’t understand her reasons for being estranged from her parents and she sounded a bit spoiled and stubborn.

“I have lived long enough to see that my life has been determined not only by the meanness of others but also by the kindness of others, and their willingness to listen.”

The biggest drawback of the book was just how the author tried to write about any and everything and at some point, it could be a lot and you realize that it could have used some fine tuning. It’s almost like a book you have to take in small doses. Like I said earlier, I liked the book and do think it’s worth picking up, I just didn’t think it was outstanding. Also, is it just me or has anyone else noticed that we have a bunch of books that are centered around food?

Taynement

Fiction, Historical, LGBT, literary fiction, race, romance

Book Review: Olga Dies dreaming by Xóchitl González

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“You must remember, mijo, even people who were once your sails can become your anchors.”

Despite all the factors against them, Olga and her brother, Pedro ” Prieto” Acevedo made it in New York. Olga is a rich wedding planner for Manhattan’s elite while Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrified latino neighborhood in Brooklyn. On the surface, they’re living the American dream but there is something more going on underneath it all.

Olga may be creating dreams of love for other people but she is unable to fall in love herself until she meets Matteo, who forces her to examine long buried family secrets. 27 years ago, their mother, Blanca left them to advance a militant cause that was suppose to free native people all over the world. But with nothing achieved, she comes barreling back into their lives like she didn’t abandon her children all these years ago.

It took me a long time to pick up this book, because the cover and the blurb do it no favors. I think the blurb is quite accurate but I just didn’t expect it to have so much life and culture and such a strong narration. This book is told through the perspective of both Olga and Prieto and interspaced by the letters their mum writes them through the years. Letters that strictly scolds them for whatever decision that spreads through the grapevine that she disapproves of.

I enjoyed Olga’s narration the best, it’s filled with so much snark and wit while Prieto’s was almost stifling. The secret he’s hiding and the length he has gone to hide it is almost suffocating as he tells us upfront and then we carry it throughout the book. Prieto sets out to become a politician to help Puerto Rico and his Brooklyn neighborhood but along the way, he bites off more than he can chew.

The Acevedo family is so boisterous and filled with so much love and joy. I loved reading about everyone in the family, how they all chip in to help each other out and how they find the spaces they are needed to fill up, whenever anyone is about to be left behind. It reminds me of a big Nigerian family and I could relate so much to it.

While I enjoyed the characters in this book, I felt like the political commentary was not subtle at all. Maybe the author did not intend for it to be subtle but I felt at some point that I was being hit over my head with a hammer by a lot of it, especially on gentrification. I feel like it’s all been said before, and sadly, there wasn’t anything new. Also, this is largely a character driven book, so if you’re not into that, this book is definitely not for you because I feel like you live in the narrators’ heads a lot.

I also would love to read the reviews of actual Puerto Ricans for this book because it deals with a lot of actual law and politics involving Puerto Rico. I did not know that the PROMESA law was a real law signed in 2016 until I googled it. I wonder if actual Puerto Ricans enjoyed the use of this as a plotline especially as the opinions on this law and the way it was enacted afterwards is largely negative even though it was propped up by a lot of famous Puerto Ricans.

Anyway, this is a debut book and I can’t wait to read what else the author has for us in the future. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads. Have you guys read this one? Is this a book you have on your TBR list?

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

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Trigger warning: sexual assault, rape

“But it’s what we do, what we’ve done for years now. We drag our past behind us like a weight, still shackled, but far enough back that we never have to see, never have to openly acknowledge who we once were.”

Elle is a 50 year old woman who is married to her husband, Peter. We are introduced to them at The Paper Palace, the nickname of their family summer home in Cape Cod. Elle has come here every summer since childhood but this year, it’s different. Elle has just had sex with her childhood best friend, Jonas who is also married.

The book is basically a walk through of Elle’s thought process as she decides whether to leave Peter for Jonas or to stay with Peter and the life they have built. That thought process includes going back to the past and remembering all of the events that led her to this point.

“Ever since I was old enough to question my own instincts, my mother has given me the same piece of advice: “Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite.” We already know the right answer, even when we don’t—or we think we don’t. But what if it’s a trick coin? What if both sides are the same? If both are right, then both are wrong.”

I don’t remember how I came across this book but I remember the sentiment was people being disturbed. Still on a quest to read a book that moves me, I jumped on this and for a debut effort, it was pretty good. The format of the book has Elle as the only narrator and is told in two alternating story lines. The first in present day and the other, from childhood to the present touching on the major events that shaped her but don’t worry, it doesn’t get confusing and in fact the progression was done so well that it made you look forward to each upcoming time period.

“I wonder if he would love me if he could see inside my head-the pettiness, the dirty linen of my thoughts, the terrible things I have done.”

There is a pretty significant event that happens in the book that of course, I can’t give away but I assume it would be a talking point for many as a moral question. Was it deserved? or was it outright wrong?. Heller did a good job of developing the characters so well that you got a full sense of who they were and it was up to you as a reader, whether you liked them or not. I will say that I considered Elle’s mom a terrible mother and I wonder if I am in the majority or minority with that.

“…now there is no turning back. No more regrets for what I haven’t done. Now only regrets for what I have done. I love him, I hate myself; I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story.”

I will say that, I did not like the ending. In all art forms, I don’t like ambiguous endings. Don’t make me fill in the blanks, tell me what to think! Overall, it is a dark book and if you are someone who absorbs the energy of books you might want to think hard before getting into it. I think the book went a tad longer than it should have but it was written very well and showed how life can be messy and complicated with many grey areas. I enjoyed it.

Taynement