2015 Book #91 – Goddess of Suburbia

Posted in 2015, ARC August, Book reviews, Fiction, Reading Challenges, Women's fiction by rebeccabook17

Title: Goddess of Suburbia
Author: Stephanie Kepke
Date finished: 8/27/15
Genre: Women’s fiction
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
Publication Date: August 10, 2015
Pages in book: 218
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

Suburbia meets scandal in this hopeful and honest portrayal of that moment in every woman’s life when it’s time to make a change, even if that means risking losing it all. Goddess of Suburbia by Stephanie Kepke is a must-read for women looking to reconnect with their passions, and live authentically. When pillar of the community and PTA mom, Max, allowed her husband, Nick, to record a sex video of them on his cell phone, she thought of it as simply a way to keep Nick interested and entertained during his frequent business trips. But suddenly, Max is trending everywhere—her video lighting up the blogosphere and Twitter, thanks to the fact that she’s a genuine, imperfect woman. Now the paparazzi are chronicling her every move; her daughter wants to disown her; and her marriage has completely fallen apart. Just as things can’t get any more chaotic, Max’s college boyfriend, shows up two decades after he broke her heart. Now Max must learn to stop going through the motions of her life on auto-pilot and start living authentically, or risk forever being a suburban lemming running towards the cliff of old age.

My rating: 3.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for ARC August reading challenge, it is #12 on list from my sign up post. I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. This book is about Max Green, who overnight turns into a local celebrity when a sex tape of her is leaked to the press and spreads in popularity on the internet. Everyone starts being all judge-y, which honestly I felt was pretty stupid since the sex tape was of her having sex with her husband, not some random stranger. I don’t want to go too far into plot and what goes on because there was a lot happening and I don’t want to ruin the story for anyone with spoilers.
Overall I liked the book. It was edging towards fast-paced and it kept my interest throughout the story. Max really grew as a character through the story and it was excellent to see her ending up more sure of her strength than ever. It was hard to watch her suffer in the beginning of the book, she suffered from a lot of self-doubt and it affected a lot of different pieces of her life. She had support from her best friend Andi, who was a little too pushy at a couple points but that was exactly what Max really needed to get her but in gear and figure out what she was doing with herself. One of the things I didn’t necessarily like about this book was that I didn’t think the bad guys really got their karmic punishment in the end. I know everything ended the way it did on purpose for the sake of the children in their family but I really thought that there should have been some kind of punishment served in this scenario. Other than that and the lengthy amount of time that Max suffers from self-doubt, I ended up liking the story a lot and I liked most of the characters. It had a sweet ending and I was happy that Max ended up happy and fulfilled in the end!

The bottom line: I liked this book ok. There was a lot going on and it was a pretty quick read so it was easy to stay interested.

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

6Aug2015

2015 Book #81 – The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield

Posted in 2015, ARC August, Book reviews, Fiction, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

Title: The Guilty One
Author: Sophie Littlefield
Date finished: 8/5/15
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: August 11, 2015
Pages in book: 304
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

A man stands on the Golden Gate Bridge, poised to jump…if a woman on the other end of the phone tells him to.
Maris’s safe suburban world was shattered the day her daughter was found murdered, presumably at the hands of the young woman’s boyfriend. Her marriage crumbling, her routine shattered, Maris walks away from her pampered life as a Bay Area mom the day she receives a call from Ron, father of her daughter’s killer. Wracked with guilt over his son’s actions (and his own possible contribution to them), he asks Maris a single question: should he jump?
With a man’s life in her hands, Maris must decide, perhaps for the first time, what she truly wants. Retribution? Forgiveness? Or something more? Having lost everything, she’s finally free to recreate herself without the confining labels of “wife,” “mother,” or “mourner.” But will this shocking offer free her, or destroy her?

My rating: 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for ARC August reading challenge, it is #3 on list from my sign up post. I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. This book is about Maris Parker, whose daughter was murdered a year ago. As if trying to wake up each day and live with that isn’t difficult enough, her daughter’s killer’s father (Ron Isherwood) then calls her and basically offers to kill himself in a very “eye for an eye” situation where he gives up his life since his son took her daughter’s life. Plus her husband is leaving her.
Maris’ reaction to this phone call sets her (unknowingly) on a new life course. While she had planned to leave for her sister’s condo that afternoon, Ron’s call leaves her feeling unsettled and not quite ready to face the outside world. The next day she goes to Oakland to pick up a gift for her sister and its there that she meets Petra, who will help her quite a lot in the coming days actually. She ends up tagging along with Petra’s group of friends and hides herself away in a rundown apartment building in Oakland. It is there she learns that there are other people in the world who are hurting as well, if maybe in different ways. It is also in Oakland that Maris begins to find out who she is now, without the husband she’s been married to for 20 years or the child she’s raised for the past seventeen years. Maris discovers who she is as her own person again, and makes a few good friends along the way.
Overall I really did enjoy this book. There were a couple really good plot twists, both of which I actually never saw coming, and I liked Maris and Ron as main characters, they both had a lot of layers to dig through. I felt that Maris really grew as a character throughout the story. We really learned with her how to cope with the grief of losing a child, how to pick yourself up off the ground and push yourself to keep living life each and every day.

The bottom line: I really liked this book, it had a couple good shocker moments thrown in there and I thought the story line was well-paced. I was interested throughout the story and both grieved for and felt compassion for Maris’ loss. Good book, would recommend other readers to give it a try!

Favorite Quotes:
“You don’t do all of those things without building up a reserve for moments like this. Moments when the weak ones fail, the battered ones give up, the broken ones cry out for someone to take their hand.”
“How do you go back up the family tree, scrambling up the doomed bloodline, and make things right?”
“Her daughter was with her in the morning, when she stepped out of her apartment as the sun was just beginning to rise up above the distant hills.”

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

16Jul2015

2015 Book #72 – Cottage in the Country by Linn B. Halton

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Contemporary romance, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

Title: A Cottage in the Country
Author: Linn B. Halton
Date finished: 7/15/15
Genre: Romance (UK)
Publisher: HarperImpulse
Publication Date: July 16, 2015
Pages in book: 273
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

What do you do when your best friend has an affair with your husband of twenty-five years?
Well, you pack your bags, grab half of the equity in the house you’ve both lovingly restored and run away to an idyllic little cottage in the country.
Only, it’s not quite so idyllic when
1) Rustic charm sounds rather romantic, but the reality is something else …
2) The heavens decide to open on moving day and the rain just keeps on coming
Maddie Brooks grits her teeth and hires the highly recommended ‘man who can’, ex-soldier, Lewis Hart. As he rips out the very shabby, and decidedly not-so-chic kitchen, reality sets in. Not only is he the most abrupt person she’s ever met, but the man is a Neanderthal!
As the flood waters rise, and the village is cut off, everything that could possibly go wrong, does.
Hitting the big five-o is the final straw. No presents, family or friends—just infuriating Lewis, who can’t leave because the flood has now cut off his exit. How on earth is she going to get through this and put her life back together?
Can Maddie Brooks become that ‘fifty-and-fabulous’ woman of her dreams?

My rating: 1.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: (NOTE THERE ARE SPOILERS INCLUDED IN THIS REVIEW) This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book based entirely on its cover” check box since I requested this book based on the cover. I thought it was a really pretty cover and it looked like it would be a cute, sweet story. This book is about a woman name Maddie who wants to start over following her husband and best friend’s betrayal. About to turn fifty, she isn’t sure what to do now that she is one her own for the first time in a very long time.
To be honest I was not a fan of this book. I grew up in a matriarchal family and the women are all very strong people and while very opinionated, they all know what they want and aren’t afraid to take risks. I juts could not at all connect with Maddie as a character. I found her to be very weak, she latches onto Lewis after they have sex and then Ryan comes and tells her he loves her and then she latches onto him. She said multiple times that she doesn’t want to be alone. She seems pretty much scared to be without a man in her life and that is sickening to me. No person should be that dependent on someone else. I understand in a relationship there ends up being some sort of dependency but a person should never be that scared to survive on their own. There were parts I just wanted to slap Maddie. And Ryan said he’s loved her for like 25 years but at the very end she’s just like “Oh he’ll get over it” after she was basically telling him she would marry him. How callous is that? That’s just about the most selfish thing I ever heard. And she kept talking about how she wanted Ryan to take care of her. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! For goodness sake. And she loved the cottage and had wanted to make a new start but she was going to sell it just because Ryan wanted her to? Seriously??

Other than all of the obvious issues I had with Maddie’s character, I also had a lot of trouble with the plot. I hated the “twist” in the story when she goes to Ryan’s. I felt it through the flow of the story off a lot and didn’t make sense with the story line. And the story just didn’t make sense to me. What was the point of it all? That she went back to Lewis and they decided to move in together even though they barely knew each other? I just didn’t understand.
While I couldn’t connect with this story, it might be something for middle-aged women who are going through or have gone through a divorce. There is a message in this book that there is hope for life after a divorce, no matter what your age. This might be able to give people hope in similar situations.

The bottom line: I didn’t particularly care for this book. The heroine of the story seemed weak and flat to me.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

21Oct2014

Gone Girl Movie!!

Posted in Books made into movies, For the love of books by rebeccabook17

So last week I went to see the Gone Girl movie that came out based on the book and I have to say, it was SUCH a great movie! Movies many time will miss parts of a book that readers find essential, mostly because it is just impossible to include everything from an almost 400 page book into a movie that’s approximately 2 hours. Luckily the magic movie makers for this film only left out really 2 non-essential plot items (the Desi’s mother gets involved at the end and that Tanner Bolt’s wife gets involved in prepping Nick for the interview) that I’m pretty sure they skipped only to avoid introducing more characters into an already full screenplay.

Other than that the movie followed the book almost to a T. I loved it. The whole movie I was sitting there thinking, this is exactly like the book, its just so perfect. And I have to say, I don’t think they could’ve picked a better actor for the role of Nick. Ben Affleck was just superb in the role of an arrogant and slightly creepy jerk. Really all the casting was so well done, Amy’s role was perfect and Margo’s was very good and Desi’s role was well cast too. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a more well-suited cast.

Anyone who read this book and at least somewhat liked it, I would definitely recommend seeing the movie! Just a warning though a few of the scenes are pretty graphic (sex and violence). Nothing too crazy, though I have to say the scene towards the end involves a lot of blood so if you’re squeamish I would close your eyes for that one. I thought it was a great movie though and a pretty much perfect adaptation of the book.

Link to trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi78622489/imdb/embed?autoplay=false&width=480

Link to my review for the Gone Girl book: https://rebeccabookreview.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/2014-book-78/

Link to Gone Girl movie IMDB site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/

9Sep2014

2014 – Book #80

Posted in Book reviews, Fiction by rebeccabook17

The eightieth book I read in 2014 was The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger. This book is Rieger’s debut novel. I finished this book on 9/8/14. I rated this book 5 stars out of a scale of 5. This book centers mostly around Sophie Diehl, a criminal attorney at a firm in New England. Sophie is asked to do a favor for one of the partners in her office and complete the intake interview for a prominent client’s daughter who was just served with divorce papers by her husband of eighteen years.

As the story develops, we are brought into not only Sophie’s life but also the Durkheim’s and the Meiklejohns’. Told through emails, handwritten letters, memos and legal motions and other documents, this story of divorce and Sophie’s part in it is both riveting and fascinating. As Sophie struggles her way through litigating this divorce (she’s a criminal attorney, not a divorce attorney) she also tries to overcome how much this divorce reminds her of her parents own divorce. She begins to realize how traumatized she was by that experience, so much so that seeing The Durkheims’ daughter Jane go through the same process is heart-breaking to her.

And as Sophie continues to help her client (Mia) through the divorce as best she can, Sophie also has to deal with what has become a relationship issue as well. During the story she meets a man named Harry and forms an attachment to him. Little does she know that he isn’t exactly available. Sophie also deals with her issues with her parents, after an embarrassing encounter and follow-up email to her boss.

Overall, this was just such a great book. I know not many people enjoy books written in this style (epistolary) but I find them to be extremely interesting and fun. Though a little confusing at the beginning, once you get into the story its easier to get a hang of who the players are in this book. I thought Sophie’s character had great depth and I loved diving into her psyche. And Mia’s character was just perfect, she was hilarious and her jumble of emotions was portrayed excellently. While I might not recommend this book to everyone since the style might not be suited for all, I loved this book and was hooked pretty much from beginning to end. I didn’t want to put it down! I hope to see more from this author in the future, very well done!!

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Divorce-Papers-A-Novel/dp/0804137447/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1410261176&sr=8-1

Link to Wikipedia page on epistolary novels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel

The author does not currently have her own website, therefore I will include a little blurb About the Author:

SUSAN RIEGER is a graduate of Columbia Law School. She has worked as a residential college dean at Yale and an associate provost at Columbia. She has taught law to undergraduates at both schools and written frequently about the law for newspapers and magazines. She lives in New York City with her husband. The Divorce Papers is her first novel.

Also I just love it when books have the book discussion questions. I’d love to be a part of a book club again someday, and I love that there are so many books out there now that you can access the book discussion questions online. If anyone who has read the book would like to discuss one of the questions below, please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts!!

1. Is Sophie a good lawyer? Why? Why not?

2. At the beginning of the novel, Sophie feels she’s “treading water.” Why does Sophie seem to be having so much trouble finding her way? How does this change as the novel progresses?

3. Both of Sophie’s parents are European. How has that influenced who she is?

4. Why does Maggie put up with Sophie? Would you?

5. Is Dr. Durkheim the book’s “villain”? Why do you think he wanted a divorce? Do you think he knew about Jacques? Did your opinion of him change over time?

6. Mia confesses she initially withheld some information from Sophie. She also has a flair for the dramatic and loves to tell a good story. Do you believe her version of events? In an epistolary novel, how do you decide who is a reliable narrator?

7. Are Mia and Daniel equally to blame for the failure of their marriage? Do you think their marriage could have been saved?

8. Mia loved living and working in New York City, but she moved to New Salem for Daniel and his job. What were the trade-offs at that time? Do they seem worthwhile in retrospect?

9. What do you think was going on at the firm with Fiona? Why was she so hostile toward Sophie at the beginning? Did you agree with Fiona that her reprimand was unfair? Sexist?

10. Will or Harry?

11. There are three father-daughter relationships, all difficult: Mia and Bruce Meiklejohn; Sophie and John Diehl; Jane and Daniel Durkheim. Do they change over time? If so, what makes the change happen? If not, what is the sticking point?

12. There are two mother-daughter relationships: Elisabeth and Sophie and Mia and Jane. In what ways are these stronger than the father-daughter relationships? Weaker?

13. What do you think of the decision to give custody to Bruce in the event Mia dies before Jane is eighteen? Was Mia right to insist on that? How do you think Daniel felt?

14. Is the separation agreement fair and reasonable? Who came out better, if anyone?

15. What’s next for Mia? For Sophie?