Emily Alone by Stewart O'Nan This was a follow up to a book I read, I believe last month, by the same author called Wish You Were Here. This story follows the matriarch of the other novel, Emily, who is a widower nearing the end of her life and looking back on the life she has lived and forward to the time she has left. Her main companion, her sister in law, has a significant health problem at the beginning of the story and Emily is forced into more time alone then she has had in years. She is also forced into more independence as her sister in law is unavailable to drive her around and help her in the way she used to. I liked the novel a lot since the character was still fresh in my mind and while in the first book there were many narrators which gave the reader a more negative view of this character, in this novel she was the sole narrator and this gave me a as a reader the opportunity to see her in a new way and find empathy for her character. I can see why the author chose to revisit this character many years after the first novel was published, she did indeed seem to be an unfinished character.
Cage of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard This book was about a young mormon woman who found her two youngest sisters dead after a mentally ill man winds up on her family's property and murders them. She narrates the story of her parents forgiving the man and moving on with their lives, having two sons after the deaths and moving their family forward. The narrator though, Ronnie, cannot forgive and move forward and instead begins to try to figure out how to seek revenge on the man who killed her sisters and destroyed her family. She follows this man out to San Diego where he and his family move after he is rehabilitated in a state mental institution and then released. She goes to EMT school after graduating high school early but is leading a double life while she is in school and figuring out how to seek revenge on the man who killed her sisters.
I liked this author from another book of hers I read some time ago but I didn't really like this book. It was flat and the character jumped all over the time and kept alluding to the big event that would happen and it just didn't flow right. I actually felt like it read like a young adult novel, which there is nothing wrong with, and I now find it interesting that in going to the authors website to link the book, she does in fact write young adult novels. It seemed to lack the character development and plot I remember from her other novel. I'll probably still give another of her novels a try before giving up on her but I wish I had read something else of her's and not this one.
Ten Girls to Watch by Charity Shumway I really liked this book, especially for at least 2/3rds of it and the concept of it. This was about a young woman in New York trying to make it as a write. She winds up getting a temporary job writing an anniversary edition article for a magazine that yearly put out a 10 girls to watch article. Her task is to find previous winners and see where their lives are now. I liked the concept a lot and that this woman was a strong character. The uniqueness of each chapter discovering past winners of the contest and seeing where they were 10-50 years later was really interesting. Seeing how lives unfold and not always in the way one thinks they will through fictional characters was unique. For me the story lost it's positive storyline when it went too far in the romance direction and went from strong female role model message to, you need a man to be complete message. Pretty disappointing.
Marriage Matters by Cynthia Ellingson So here's the deal, I'm getting married in July and now when I go to the library and I see books with wedding related themes I grab them up. I must stop doing this. What a silly story this was. I should really have stopped reading it. While I appreciated the author's effort on getting us interested in the characters, the plot was so unrealistic it was impossible to imagine this happening. Three generations of women, one widowed grandmother, one unhappily married mother and one single granddaughter. All are suddenly planning wedding like ceremonies and decide to have one big happy ceremony all together. It was just a bit much. And I think honestly that each of the 3 stories on their own might have been okay but the combination all together just did not work for me.
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight What a story. From the beginning you know that Amelia a young high schooler is dead and her single mother is trying to piece together and solve the mystery of her death. We have the mother narrating from the present time and we have Amelia narrating in the past through her diary entries and text messages. I really liked the story and the ending was not as typical as I had predicted it to be. The writer wrote this in such a way that even knowing the girl is dead from the beginning of the novel, I kept wishing for some surprise change that would bring her back to life or even some twisted ending where she wasn't dead after all.
The Silent Wife by Asa Harrison Another really suspenseful good read this month. I threw this book on the ground after I read it but after thinking about it for a few hours after I realized that I actually really liked the book and how it ended. It's a his her's tale told both ways until the husband is dead. In hearing back and forth from the characters as a reader the sympathy moves back and forth with them until things take an odd twist with the husband not just being a cheater but having knocked up a younger college girl who happens to be the daughter of his best friend. The husband winds up dead and the rest of the novel follows the possibility of the wife having killed him. Overall I had some mixed feelings on this story but I liked the writing and I do think it's a worthwhile read.
