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Book Review: Chasing Echoes by Dan Goldman and George Schall

Stephanie3 Comments

Graphic novel time! I learned about Chasing Echoes by Dan Goldman and George Schall (Humanoids, 2019) from some sort of book list earlier this year, and the premise had me adding it to my TBR list (along with the fact that it was available at my library! Interlibrary loan still isn’t fully functional, and I’m not entirely sure if the other libraries in the area are back to allowing residents from out of town check out their materials yet. I’m just glad they’re open at all and am working my way through my TBR items that are available locally, trying to wait it out until things are back to whatever normal looks like after this is over…).

The story starts out with Malka, a youngish mother who’s obviously struggling with her life. She’s being evicted, her son has announced he’s going to live with his dad, and her daughter says she wants to follow suit when she’s old enough. Meanwhile, Malka’s extended family is off on an extended trip to Poland to try to track down the family history there that was destroyed by the Holocaust. Malka, who has positioned herself as the family historian who has kept records and worked to make connections between all the papers she’s managed to track down, hasn’t been invited, but a late-night Ambien-fueled plane ticket purchase by a relative has her scrambling to make it to the airport in time the next day. Suffice it to say, a lot of people in the family aren’t happy about this.

The trip exposes a lot of cracks and differences among the family, including the differences in how they each relate to Judaism, and illustrates the strain of generational trauma, along with the antisemitism that still rages in parts of Europe. The family struggles to pinpoint the location of the mill owned by their ancestors before the war and deal with the pain caused by having lost so much. In doing so, they grow closer, learn to understand and relate to each other a little better- even Malka!- but never lose their boisterous, outgoing, argumentative vibe.

Chasing Echoes is haunting, painful, wistful, and warm all at once, with plenty of measures of snarky humor thrown in for balance. The scenes in Auschwitz, especially when the family members are viewing the piles of hair, teeth, shoes, and eyeglasses were difficult; I had to put the book down for a few minutes and sit with that. Even now, the memory of those panels is harrowing and hits me right in the stomach and chest. That hair, those teeth, were people. Those eyeglasses, each pair was specifically made for one person: one person who sat in a chair, who looked into the optometrist’s equipment, who slid those glasses onto the bridge of their nose, and then that person was murdered. I’ve got tears in my eyes as I type this; there’s a heaviness here that if you’re not in a good place to handle, you may want to wait until you can, but don’t skip it if you can manage at all. These kinds of stories are important.

I enjoyed Malka’s growth and the change in how some of her family members viewed her over the course of their trip to Poland. This was a great example that a family doesn’t have to be perfect and can even have some pretty big rifts but can still function (even in dysfunction!) as a family. Chasing Echoes is a quick read, but it leaves an impression.

Follow Dan Goldman on Twitter, and visit him at Kinjin Story Lab.

Visit George Schall’s website and follow him on Twitter.

fiction · romance

Book Review: Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai

Stephanie3 Comments

For the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge, I needed a book recommended by my favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or online book club, and what a perfect time to pick up Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai (Avon, 2020), who had popped up on an episode of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books that I had *so* enjoyed. She’s smart, funny, witty, and such a joy to listen to; she tells great stories, has an amazing laugh, and I seriously live for the episodes when Sarah from Smart Bitches has her on. I read Ms. Rai’s The Right Swipe last year; I enjoyed it, though it was a little harder for me to relate to Rhiannon’s driven sense of ambition (I’m, uh, way more laid back and go-with-the-flow!). I enjoyed her writing style, though, and was eager to read more from her. And lo and behold, Girl Gone Viral was available via my library’s ebooks with NO WAIT. It felt like I’d won the lottery when I hit that check out button.

Katrina King is more than a bit of a recluse, but she’s working on it. Panic attacks, agoraphobia, and PTSD have steered her life for years, but she’s been working with a therapist and doing everything she can to take back control, and step by step, she’s making it work, adding places outside her home she can travel to. What’s not working is her mad, unrequited crush on her bodyguard, Jasvinder. He’s perfect, beautiful, everything she could ever dream of wanting in a man, and she’s like 99.7% sure he views her as just a client. Sigh. When a photo of Katrina and another customer at a cafe, complete with speculative Twitter thread, goes viral, Jasvinder takes Katrina to hide out at his family farm where she can be safe from the prying eyes of the world and from the people in her past who don’t have the best intentions.

At the farm, Jasvinder’s long-avoided family drama is front-and-center, as are his feelings for the woman he’s been protecting for years. He’s in serious, serious love, but how can he admit that without sounding like a creep? As his past elbows its way forward, his family situation needs immediate attention, and he and Katrina begin to grow closer. But it’s their mutual growth that feeds their mutual attraction…maybe going viral isn’t the worst thing that could have happened…

LOVED. THIS. SO. MUCH. I got Katrina. I could relate. She’s determined and driven like Rhiannon, but in a quieter way, and what really spoke to me was her panic disorder and agoraphobia, both of which I’ve been diagnosed with. I was never as severely affected as she is, but I know the terror of being stricken with a panic attack in public, how scary and embarrassing it is. I’ve had to sit down on the floor while waiting in grocery lines (those used to be my worst places, the places most likely to cause a panic attack. Grocery stores are actually *really* common places for people to have panic attacks), which was really embarrassing at the time. I understood her needing to work to grow her list of places she could visit; I had to do the same, years ago, and there are *still* places that are hard for me to go on my own, but like Katrina, it’s something I try to work on and keep pushing myself. I don’t know that I’ve ever so fully related to a fictional character before. Alisha Rai has done a fabulous job at portraying a character with my exact same brain malfunction, and I’m impressed and grateful to see that so well-written and so expertly crafted and handled in fiction.

Jasvinder.

Jasvinder.

SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON.

He’s a former Marine who struggles with PTSD and is dealing with something straight out of the headlines today, to which he reacts in completely understandable ways. He’s honorable, not wanting to overstep his boundaries with Katrina, but adorable in the ways that he loves her in secrecy. His love for and frustration with his family work together in such a realistic fashion; Ms. Rai nails family drama and the push/pull of navigating stressful relationships with family members over sensitive topics. Jas is seriously one of the most swoonworthy romance heroes I’ve read recently in contemporary romance, and I so enjoyed his chapters.

To sum it up, I adored this book. Loved Katrina, loved Jasvinder, loved their love story, loved Jasvinder’s dedicated, loving,opinionated family, loved his attempts to make new friends with Samson from The Right Swipe, loved Katrina’s friend group with Rhiannon and Jia (is Jia next???? OMG JIA IS NEXT AND I AM DYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYING! February is when this book is supposed to hit, and I for one am willing to fast-forward EVERYTHING to get there!!!). This was a lovely, lovely distraction from the mess of the outside world, and I didn’t want the book to end. Anyone know how to jump into the world of a book and never leave???

Visit Alisha Rai’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Monthly roundup

Monthly roundup: July 2020

Stephanie2 Comments

Hello, hello, and welcome to Pandemic Month 478274983249372, or so it feels! I’ve been fairly terrible about blogging this month, and I apologize. My brain is just exhausted and it’s been difficult trying to cram in everything I need to get done every day, so some things are falling by the wayside- seriously, you should see my laundry pile. YIKES.

We’re still hanging in there at the Only-Very-Occasionally-At-The-Library Household (I’ve made, I think, three trips to the library this month? It’s been awesome). We had a socially distanced picnic with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and nephew; we let the kids run around but only when they were wearing masks (which they do with no complaints, unlike so many of the adults I see on FB, seriously, wtf guys, my daughter was running far enough and long enough to get sweaty while wearing a mask, I think you can handle it for a ten minute errand to pick up Old Spice deodorant at Walmart…), and that was pretty much our highlight of the month!

Let’s recap this month, shall we?

What I Read in July of 2020

  1. The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt

2. How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

3. Billion Dollar Cowboy by Carolyn Brown

4. Till the Stars Fall by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

5. Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman

6. The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

7. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir by Esther Safran Foer

8. Hostage by Guy Delisle

9. Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace by Masha Gessen

10. Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares by Aarti Namdev Shahani

11. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. Roomies by Christina Lauren

13. Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren

14. Closer by Alexa Riley (no review; listened to the audiobook as I exercised. More on this below)

Many of the books I didn’t review fully were included in my mini-review post here. Somehow, when I was writing that post, Ester and Ruzya got left off, so let’s include that right now. Masha Gessen writes the story of her grandmothers surviving World War II and Stalin’s regime in Poland and Russia. It’s a bleak story starring two strong, determined women. I have a few other books by Ms. Gessen on my TBR and I’m looking forward to seeing how her storytelling style translates when it comes to less personal stories. Great book; difficult to read at times (more because of my mental exhaustion than anything).

Not a bad month for reading, all around. I’m finding I have a tougher time focusing on nonfiction right now; I’ve got what I’ve been referring to as ‘pandemic brain,’ where I’m just exhausted and can’t take in information quite as well. I’ve got an information-dense book going on right now that I began in the middle of the month, but I’ve had to cut it down to reading 25 pages a day and reading something lighter at night because I’m just too worn out. Such are these strange times, I guess.

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis REALLY irritated me. The ending was just… Have you read it? My husband was in the room as I read the last few pages aloud and even he was like, “WTF…” I don’t know how much of it my daughter really got, but we were super weirded out, and now we’re always joking about Susan, that nylon-wearing tart. SUCH a strange way to end a series, and my daughter and I are so glad to be done with it.

Five books marked off my reading challenge! Speaking of which…

Reading Challenge Updates

I’m close to being done! Check out these bad boys:

I’m currently reading a book recommended by Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, the podcast from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (plus I have another one on hold at the library!), so that’ll be checked off soon. I have a book by a journalist on hold as well; if it doesn’t come in after next month, I’ll maybe try to search for another one. And obviously I’m waiting to read a banned book, because Banned Books Week doesn’t come around until September. So, basically, lots of waiting going on around here. I’m glad to be mostly done with this, though I do miss the direction the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge gave me! 🙂

I’m holding off on the other challenges I was planning on participating in; my brain needs the break.

State of the Goodreads TBR

OY. 149 last month, 152 this month. Not a huge leap, but that’s because I knocked a few off of there this month, including Here We Are, Ester and Ruzya, How We Fight For Our Lives, and The Things a Brother Knows. I’m working on more, but I’ve strayed a few times because a lot of what’s on my TBR is heavier nonfiction and I simply cannot right this moment. Light and fluffy is winning.

Books I Acquired in July 2020

None!

Bookish Things I Did in July 2020

I’ve made three (I think) library appointments so far. It’s been awesome having new books around for my daughter. We’re doing about 3 hours of school per day, and a huge chunk of that is us reading together or me reading to her. We finished up the Molly series of American Girl books and have moved on to Kit; Molly’s sacrifices as a child growing up during World War II, and Kit’s struggles during the Great Depression have helped my daughter understand about sacrifice and working together for the common good. They’re excellent examples of why we stay at home, and why we wear masks in the rare instances when we have to be out in public. Reading these stories really illustrates these concepts for my daughter, and I’m really enjoying reading them with her.

We’ve also been reading a lot of stories of people who fought against injustice and worked to improve life for people (mostly in the US right now, but not all). Malala Yousafzai, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Soujourner Truth, Billie Jean King, Jane Addams, Florence Mills, John Lewis, Gordon Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rube Goldberg, Rosa Parks. There are *so* many interesting and beautifully illustrated biographies out there for kids, and I’m really enjoying using them to show my daughter what courage, dedication, sacrifice, and hard work look like.

I feel so fortunate that the library has at least partially opened again. 🙂

Current Podcast Love

I’m finishing catching up newer episodes of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’ve listened to a few different episodes of a few different writing podcasts, but haven’t fallen in love with any of them yet (I used to love Writing Excuses, but as I usually listen to podcasts as I’m falling asleep, I need something just a little bit calmer! They’re hilarious!). I’ll keep hunting until I find one that appeals to me.

I also discovered Read Me Romance, a podcast hosted by Alexa Riley and Tessa Bailey (Alexa Riley is a team, like Christina Lauren, so this is actually three people!). The hosts chat for the first 10-20 minutes of the podcast, and the rest is an audiobook chapter or two from a romance novella (sometimes written by the hosts, sometimes other people). I’ve been listening both as I’m falling asleep and when I’m exercising, and it’s fun. 🙂

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Currently on hold.

Real Life Stuff

Oof. What a month. It wasn’t busy, but the weight of all of this *gestures broadly at everything* has really started to bear down on me. The amount of people not taking this virus seriously- how did so many people graduate high school, COLLEGE, EVEN, and lack a third-grade understanding of science and basic, BASIC civics education?!?!?!? HOW??? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY WITH THESE PEOPLE? I have truly lost every last bit of patience on social media and I’m not afraid to let my ire out these days. NO, COVID-19 isn’t the sniffles. NO, you cannot have your tax dollars back when your child graduates high school and you (so you think) no longer use the services of the public school system. NO, there’s not a magic cure for cancer that scientists don’t want you to know (do you think scientists don’t die of cancer???). I seriously cannot with these people anymore.

*deep breath*

Life goes on around here. I’m missing my family an awful lot these days, which adds to my frustration when people are out there being stupid- they’re being stupid and those of us taking this seriously are stuck staying away from our loved ones even longer. It’s like we’re being held hostage by the dumbest people out there, and it makes me angry and sad. I do my best to keep it together for my kids, though. My son is getting ready to start his classes with the community college- all online, thankfully; we’re referring to it as the University of the Holy Basement (the basement is where his computer is located). My daughter and I do school in the mornings; she has a video chat playdate with a friend’s daughter most afternoons. They play dolls and other various toys, and it’s so cute hearing them chatter to each other. She looks forward to it every day.

I’m writing or, I should say, I’m trying to write. I wrote about 6000 words this month, which is pretty good, putting my current WIP at just over 28,000 words. Some days even trying to come up with a single sentence is difficult and like swimming through a pit of mud; other days, I dash off a thousand words at a pop without think. Slow and steady wins the race, though. I’ll get there. 6000 words is awesome progress, being that I was stuck at 19,000 words for so. freaking. long!

So what happens in August?

My son will start college classes, fully remote. My daughter’s school will begin fully remote- which is excellent, because, as I told the school on the survey they sent out last month, if they didn’t have a fully remote option, we’d be pulling her and fully homeschooling until it was safe (I love and support our public schools, but I’m not risking my daughter’s life. I’m able to keep her home and school her at home, and thus she’d be one less kid in the stream. I absolutely feel like because I can keep her home, it’s my responsibility to society to keep her home). The school is apparently working on ways to get kids back in the building safely, but even then they said they’ll still be offering the option of remote learning, and we’ll take full advantage of that. I’m happy to do it completely myself, but it’ll be much easier to have the guidance of the school and she’ll have fewer gaps in her learning when it IS safe to go back (meaning, she’ll have learned the same things they have and stayed on the same track. Were I to homeschool her on my own, she may learn other things and not exactly what they have. It’d be the same thing as transferring from one school to another, if that makes sense!).

I also turn 40 this month. 😀 What a way to celebrate that milestone, amirite???

Anyway, hang in there, friends. If you’re outside the US, hopefully your country is handling the pandemic well and things are getting back to normal for you. If you’re in the US like me, well, hopefully you’re doing the best you can under such awful circumstances. You’re all in my heart. Be strong, be creative, fight against injustice wherever you see it, wear your mask, wash your hands, and keep socially distancing so we can get through this and I can see my mom and dad again. My kids miss their grandparents. Love to you all. Be safe, and have as lovely of an August as you can make it. ❤

Catch-up post

A catch-up post full of mini-reviews!

Stephanie1 Comment

Eek! You ever have months where blogging just gets away from you? This was one of those months. It’s hard cramming in everything I need to get done every day, and sometimes at night I just want to collapse and not think anymore. And thus we have here a post to catch up on all the books I missed out on blogging about. I hate doing these; each book deserves its own post, but such is life, especially these days.

Ready? Let’s do this!

I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post Holocaust Memoir by Esther Safran Foer (yes, she’s Jonathan Safran Foer’s mother) was a book I grabbed during my first library appointment, on the New Books shelf. She writes of the story of searching for the family she lost in the Holocaust, of online searches, long-distance phone calls, dusty paperwork, and lengthy plane rides to visit the site of the villages where her family once walked. It’s moving, heartbreaking, and almost miraculous at times, especially when you see the picture of her family after reading all that had been done to ensure that they wouldn’t exist.

I just happened upon Hostage by Guy Delisle, whom I’ve enjoyed in the past, at that same library trip- literally just walked by the shelf this was on, on my way to searching for something else, and this leapt out at me. He tells the true story of a man working for Doctors Without Borders when he was kidnapped in the Caucasus region and held hostage for three months. You wouldn’t necessarily expect a man chained to a radiator for that length of period would make for an engaging graphic novel, but Delisle’s sparse style makes this book an absolute page-turner.

Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares by Aarti Namdev Shahani is a memoir of her family’s experience in America: surviving as undocumented immigrants, the greencards that helped secure their status, and the things that happened that showed them how quickly it could all go up in smoke. If you haven’t read much about the nightmare of the immigration process in the US, this might be a good place to start. If her family’s story had happened today, I don’t think the outcome would have worked out so well (although *worked out well* is relative here) and that hurt my heart for all the families struggling with these kinds of situations right now, but Ms. Shahani tells her story so smoothly, it nearly reads like a novel. I’d love to hear her speak one day.

I’d avoided reading Roomies by Christina Lauren for a while, but I needed something on the lighter side during my last trip to the library and since they’re a favorite of mine, I grabbed this. Roomies tells the story of Holland, who discovers the perfect musician for her uncle’s Broadway performance, only to find that Calvin, the Julliard-trained street busker, is Irish and here illegally. In order to help her uncle and feel like she’s really contributing to the theater (where she also works), she marries Calvin to help him obtain a greencard, but of course it’s all a bit more complicated than that. I avoided this one for a bit because I felt, and still kind of feel, that it’s a little tone-deaf in light of the horrific things the US is doing to undocumented people these days, and the book never mentions any of that (mostly because, I assume, it was written before all this came to light?). The book itself is extremely well-written and I very much enjoyed both the romance and Holland learning to be her own person and design her own course in life. If you can separate this story from the disgusting reality of what happens to brown people when they’re discovered to be here without papers, it’s a great read, but it’s painful when you’re aware of the realities versus the privilege Calvin had, both due to the color of his skin and his connections once he was brought into Holland’s circle. Excellent writing, great love story, hard to square with reality.

Another Christina Lauren novel for my lighter reading enjoyment. I didn’t like Twice in a Blue Moon as much I liked Roomies. It tells the story of Tate, the daughter of one of the most famous actors in Hollywood. She’s had no contact with her dad in ten years and no one knows where she went. She spills her secrets to Sam, a boy she meets on a trip to London with her grandmother. She and Sam are falling in love and it’s something major, something special…until he betrays her. Fourteen years later, Tate is one of the most famous actresses in the world, and the screenwriter of her new project is, of course, none other than Sam, whom she hasn’t seen since London. Messy? Oh yes. Liked it, but didn’t love it; I felt like Tate and Sam didn’t have quite the same chemistry as Holland and Calvin did, but it was an okay read.

And that’s it! All caught up. It wasn’t quite as many books as I had thought. I’ll do my best to update on a regular basis next month!!!

memoir

Book review: Wiving: A Memoir of Loving then Leaving the Patriarchy by Caitlin Myer

Stephanie2 Comments

I’ve made it clear many times on this blog that one of my favorite kinds of books to read are memoirs about people’s experiences leaving religious groups (the more restrictive the better, but I’m open to any kind of exodus here). What makes some people leave, when others can’t imagine departing? Are there differences between the messages sent and what is received? What are the factors that aid in leaving, where is the breaking point, how do they rebuild their lives in the outside world? The psychology behind all of this fascinates me to no end, and I was so pleased to be offered a review copy of Wiving: A Memoir of Loving then Leaving the Patriarchy by Caitlin Myer (Arcade, 2020). I don’t know that I’ve ever hit the ‘reply’ button in my email so quickly.

Caitlin Myer was born in the late 60’s into a Mormon family whose mother was plagued by bipolar disorder, spending much of her time closed in her bedroom and closed off from the hearts of her six children. Amidst that constant pain, Caitlin loses her best friend at age 7 to leukemia; her older cousin begins molesting her later on that same year. In a culture, both religious and secular, that pushes girls and women to focus on becoming wives and mothers to the detriment of all other accomplishments, she flounders, grappling for purchase onto any male that pays her the least bit of attention, regardless of the healthiness of that attachment. Often, the attachments cause her pain and impede her growth, and even leaving behind the restrictions of her birth religion and the chaos of her family doesn’t help. It’s only after years of struggle, painful life experience, and medical challenges that Caitlin begins to grow into the self she always knew she could be, beyond the restraints placed upon her as a child- not in a perfect manner, but with the deep wisdom that comes realizing that the only way to survive is to change the course of the story itself.

Wiving is prose that reads like poetry. Caitlin Myer has created a raw memoir, a full-on confessional in which she divulges her deepest secrets, with the effect of a mosaic, tiny bits and pieces that collectively add up to a singular whole of a woman who has suffered greatly to find her place in the world. Her early childhood, lost in a sea of siblings with parents focused solely on their own survival, led her to fill this void and seek out approval in the only arena she had been taught was acceptable, at the foot of any man who paid her the least bit of attention. “I never felt like I got enough attention,” she writes. “Maybe nobody ever does.” It’s hard to imagine how Caitlin’s parents could have done better in the circumstances in which they lived and were raised themselves, especially within the confines of her mother’s bipolar disorder and the lack of effective treatment at the time, but this does veer into the territory of cautionary tale for today’s reader.

Her condemnation of the patriarchy, both religious and otherwise, is worthy and on point. “It is simultaneously expected for a woman to arrange her life around a man’s needs, and shameful for her to do so,” she writes, a message echoed daily in opinion pieces which outline the impossible demands on all women- be feminine and sexy, but not slutty; have children, but not too many; have a job, but also be a perfect homemaker; be educated but don’t display your wisdom. “We have made a bright line between wife, whore, victim, and set each against the other, but they all grow from the same story,” she tells us, and it’s the truth. These patriarchal messages come in many forms, but they all absorb in a similar fashion, and the stories they create play out across cultures and societies in nearly identical ways. While Caitlin’s story isn’t a unique one, her telling is, skipping back and forth in time to create a raw tapestry of pain and growth, of decisions colored by the desires of others and choices made in the wake of her own hard-won sophistication.

This is not an easy read. There are obvious content warnings for molestation and sexual abuse, neglect, sexual assault, long-term illness and death. Ms. Myer’s pain is fresh and raw on every page, and it’s impossible not to grieve along with her for all that she’s suffered under the guise of becoming the perfect woman in the eyes of the societies in which she’s moved.

Wiving will take you on your own road of self-examination, of dissecting how the patriarchy and its constrictive rules have affected your life, life path, and behavior. We should all be as fortunate as Caitlin Myer to arrive at a place of such profound awareness and self-acceptance.

Thanks to Caitlin Myer and Kristen Ludwigsen of Mindbuck Media for the chance to read and review an advance copy of the book!

Wiving: A Memoir of Loving then Leaving the Patriarchy is available today, July 28, 2020.

fiction · middle grade

Book Review: Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman

Stephanie4 Comments

One of the last tasks I had to complete for the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge– until my library holds come in, that is!- was to read the first book I touch on a shelf with my eyes closed. That happened to be Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman (Puffin Books, 2005). I ran across this book earlier this year, pre-pandemic, at a local thrift store. It’s a late middle-grade book and the title intrigued me. I checked the book out on Goodreads before purchasing, however; I wasn’t looking for a faith-based novel (not my particular cup of tea, personally, though I’ve read a few okay ones in the past), but the reviews didn’t trend in that direction, so I coughed up a quarter and took it home (I love that thrift store so much).

Justine Silver has recently moved out of New York City and to the suburbs, where her new best friend, Mary Catherine, is Catholic. Justine’s intrigued, and so while Mary Catherine gives up chocolate for Lent, Justine decides…to give up being Jewish. Her secret practice of Catholicism, which takes place quite literally in her bedroom closet, involves confessing her sins to her teddy-bear-turned-priest, reciting the Hail Mary (just without the Jesus parts) and taking communion, which is made up of grape juice and last Passover’s matzoh. Close enough. Justine, whose family isn’t all that observant, is looking for religion she can connect with, and she’s hoping this is where she finds it.

Stress is running high in the Silver household, however. Bubbe, her grandmother, has just had a stroke. Justine’s worried she’s not going to get better. Her search for religious understanding causes even more disruption during this turbulent time, but it’s Bubbe who restores the family’s peace and helps Justine toward the path of ultimate understanding.

So. I really enjoyed this novel about a tween’s search for religious understanding. Justine is EveryKid at age eleven, quirky, awkward, nervous about all the changes in her life, and unsure of her place in this world. She’s searching for answers and meaning, and her parents haven’t done the best job of educating her in their own traditions in a way that grounds her. She sets off on a clandestine examination of her best friend’s faith, which seems mysterious and beautiful to her, testing it out in the only way she knows how, and when her secret practice is discovered, her parents aren’t happy. Justine’s grandmother intervenes the best she can, but ultimately it’s Justine who takes the reins and finds where she belongs on her own.

I’m not sure if this would have appealed to me at the age it’s meant for. It might have; I did enjoy reading explorations of religion even back then, but there are times when I felt that Kid Me might have found the story a little too esoteric for my maturity levels at that age. This is the type of book that I think would work best as a parent-child read, where you read it together and discuss afterwards. There are a lot of good topics to cover here: are we obligated to stay with the faith we’re born into, even if it doesn’t feel like home? What does it mean to try on a new faith? At what point should kids be able to make their own religious decisions? How should a family handle a child’s religious exploration, both of their own faith (if applicable) and of one that interests only the child? This should lead to some really great parent/child or family discussions, if everyone feels free to speak openly and honestly, without fear of retribution or shame.

Confessions of a Closet Catholic is a sweet book about a girl searching for a religious identity. I’m pleased to see that Sarah Darer Littman has written a plethora of other books; I really felt she covered a lot of the bases of a religiously questioning tween here and am looking forward to seeing if her obviously deep understanding of kids that age extends to other topics and ages. Have you read this or her other works? I’d love to hear about it! 🙂

(I feel like this review isn’t up to my normal standards; we bought a patio swing last week, and it turns out my old lady inner ears can no longer tolerate swinging for long periods of time. I’ve felt like I’ve been swinging for two days now, even though it’s been two days since I last got on the swing. Guess there’s a time limit for me! All that to say, it’s hard to come up with words when my brain and ears are making me feel slightly dizzy even when I’m sitting, so please forgive me.)

Visit Sarah Darer Littman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · romance

Book Review: Till the Stars Fall by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

Stephanie4 Comments

The next 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt I had to fill was ‘your favorite prompt from a past PopSugar Reading Challenge.’ Okay, cool. Since this is the first time I’ve participated in the challenge, I had to go dig through previous years’ challenges, until I found prompt #18 from 2017: A book I’ve read before that never fails to make me smile. I knew that was the one, because I’d been looking for an excuse to reread one of my favorite books of all time: Till the Stars Fall by Kathleen Gilles Seidel (Onyx, 1994). I first read this book when I was sixteen, having purchased it on a solo trip to the nearest bookstore to my hometown, about a 30-minute drive away. I was eyebrow-deep in depression all through my teen years, and occasionally, on really bad days, I’d drive to the bookstore and soak up the atmosphere there while searching for a book to take my mind off the darkness and self-loathing in my brain. I stumbled upon this book, bought it, took it home, read it…then read it again, and again, and again, and again. It’s probably my number one reread of all time, and I’m not much of a rereader. This book never fails to make me smile.

Krissa and Danny French are siblings growing up on Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. Their surroundings are both beautiful and desolate; theirs is a community whose economy depends solely on the mines. Their father, injured in a mining accident and who can now only pull light duty, is angry, sullen and violent towards Danny. Their mother is high-strung, full of criticism and only sees what she wants to see. Danny is viewed by his parents as the bad child, Krissa the good. It’s only when Krissa sees, for the first time, evidence of her father’s abuse on Danny’s skin that she begins to understand that her family is different from everyone else’s. And it’s on this occasion that things change between her and Danny.

Danny opens up to her about his plans, his goals, to leave the Range. He wants to get far away and he plans to go in style by getting into an Ivy League college. Unfortunately, his grades aren’t stellar and he needs to learn Krissa’s study habits to improve. With her help, he’s able to get himself into Princeton, but not before he convinces her to follow in his footsteps and get off the Range as well. Krissa’s not as certain as he is, but she knows she wants to see at least a little more of what’s out there. One of Danny’s tickets out is music- he’s a talented singer, a great guitar player, and his participation in choir (as difficult as it can sometimes be for a rebel like him) helps win him recommendations that lead to his college acceptance, and ultimately, change his life and Krissa’s.

At Princeton, Danny meets Quinn Hunter, the privileged son of self-involved parents. Quinn is as different from Danny as possible- he’s blond, polished, WASP-y, raised in a world of tennis lessons, sailing, and house servants. The two get off to a rough start, but Danny’s intrigued enough by Quinn to take a chance, and the two begin a friendship and a musical partnership that will take the world by storm. Danny writes the music, Quinn writes the lyrics, and together they form the band Dodd Hall (named after their Princeton dorm). In the spring, Danny’s sister comes out to visit, and with a single look, Quinn is not only smitten, he’s deeply, head-over-heels in love. And Krissa feels the same way- it’s because of Quinn that she decides to come east for school at all.

The book goes back and forth between the 70’s, during the heyday of Dodd Hall, their rise to fame and their fiery end, and the 90’s, when Krissa and Quinn haven’t spoken in 15 years and she’s divorced from someone else and has four boys, and she and Danny only speak once a month. As you inch forward with Dodd Hall’s story, you learn piece by piece what happened to them and how it affects Krissa, Quinn and Danny’s lives now. You read about the love story of Krissa and Quinn, the twisted triangle between Danny, Quinn and Krissa, and what happens when too much weight is placed on one side of that triangle. You learn how fame affects even the smallest aspects of a person’s life and how easily it can destroy everything, how fragile trust is, and how easily it can go up in smoke when manipulation enters the picture. Throughout the book are “excerpts” from “articles” in Playboy, Rolling Stone, and books on rock ‘n’ roll that really add that extra punch of realism to the story.

This is a story rich with emotion and description. At times, the writing gets a little flowery with the metaphors, but they still work well within the story to show the depth of the beauty of Krissa and Quinn’s love- before it all fell apart, of course; their breakup, if it can even be called that, was absolutely devastating to me when I first read it. I might’ve actually cried, and I know it at least made me feel sick to my stomach. It wasn’t until reading this as an adult that I fully understood exactly why Krissa did what she did and how trapped she must’ve felt. Struggling to find my identity after the birth of my daughter helped me relate to Krissa’s desperation for an identity outside the confines of Dodd Hall. The music, the fame, the love, the search for self, it all comes together to make such a wonderful, perfect book.

I never quite understood Danny when I was younger, and he’s still not my favorite. I was more like good-girl rule-follower Krissa. The book often talks about how working with your hands is soothing for the soul, and I smiled as I re-read that; it’s something I’ve incorporated into my life as an adult, but I hadn’t remembered that it came from this book (particularly the scene where Krissa’s making pierogies…which is also something I make by hand, and which I learned *could* be made by hand by reading this book. Don’t @ me, I never actually tried them until I was at least 18 and that was at college, and they definitely weren’t homemade then!). And Quinn… He was as close to a perfect romance novel hero as my sixteen year-old heart could have imagined. Rereading this helped me to realize how much Kathleen Gilles Seidel has influenced my own writing. This reread was a pure joy for me.

I own a paperback copy purchased from a used bookstore years ago, as my original copy was unfortunately lost; its pages are yellowing and the ink is a bit faded, but I will treasure it forever. Physically, the book has been out of print for years, but if you’re lucky enough to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited (I do not), you can read this book there, or pay a mere $1.99 to read it. (Many thanks to my friend Sandy for pointing this out! It gives me SO much joy knowing that people can still continue to experience the magic of this book.)

It’s been almost twenty-four years since I first read Till the Stars Fall, but the story hasn’t lost its shine for me. If you’ve read it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Or, alternately, do you have a book like this, one that you keep coming back to over and over again, that never loses its luster? What makes that book so special for you?

Visit Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s website here.

fiction · romance

Book Review: Billion Dollar Cowboy by Carolyn Brown

Stephanie1 Comment

Next up on the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge was (cue ominous music) a western. I’ve never really been a fan of that particular genre; ranching and horses and cows don’t interest me in the slightest. I had been planning on reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, but then I realized it was over 900 pages and noped out of that. Don’t get me wrong, I love big books, but my pandemic-exhausted brain seriously cannot right now. (I’ll put that one on the back burner for later, because everyone I’ve ever heard speak about that book has raved about it, so I’ll get to it at some point.) Fortunately for me, my library’s version of the Libby app had a section of all the western ebooks they own, including a whole lot of romances, which I hadn’t even thought to consider. Sure, let’s do that. After scrolling for a bit, trying to find one that both interested me AND wasn’t checked out (apparently herding cattle in Texas is a majorly popular fantasy?), I finally basically gave up and chose Billion Dollar Cowboy by Carolyn Brown (Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2013).

Laura’s sister has gotten herself into gambling trouble- AGAIN- so after asking a wealthy cousin to help with a loan to pay off her debts, Laura’s taken a job at billionaire Colton Nelson’s ranch in order to pay back the money she owes. Poor Colton’s had women throwing themselves at him since he won the lottery a few years ago, so his employees (including Laura’s cousin) come up with a plan: have Laura and Colton pretend that they’re dating so that Colton is finally left in peace. Laura’s not thrilled with this, but her cousin sweetens the deal by allowing her to talk to her sister in gambling addiction rehab, so she begrudgingly agrees.

They pull the scam off, presenting themselves to the tonwsfolk as a couple head over heels in love…maybe a little too well, since it’s not long before they’re sucking face for real. Laura’s not sure what she really wants, other than her independence; Colton doesn’t need a woman, but he’s sure enjoying this one. Throw in a handful of quirky ranch employees and family members, including a mercurial 16 year-old, and everyone has an idea of what Laura and Colton should be. But their relationship is something they’ll have to figure out themselves…

Ehhhhhhhhh. Didn’t love this one. It was readable, I’ll say that. I didn’t buy the chemistry between them at all, especially in the beginning, since it was based on things like, “OMG, we both enjoy the same obscure flavor of Sno-Cone!” …really? That’s what you want to build your relationship on? I didn’t see each character as that much of a catch, either. Laura’s personality is based on being a hard worker and also bailing her sister out at every turn (and her trust issues); Colton…also had trust issues, but didn’t seem to have all that much of a personality beyond that.

And then there was a scene when Colton was dressed in “cutoff denim shorts, boots, and the shirt he’d worked in that day, unbuttoned.” Uh…I don’t think that’s quite the super hot look the author thinks it is; all I could think of after reading that was, “This guy is definitely auditioning for The Village People.” (My own father used to mow the lawn in cutoff jean shorts in the late 80’s. It was…a look.)

Follow that up with the fact that there’s ZERO CONDOM USAGE in this book. HOW ARE ROMANCE AUTHORS STILL DOING THIS IN 2020? Well, okay, I looked at the copyright when I read this and it was published in 2013- so still, NO EXCUSES! Consent is sexy. Protection is sexy. If you can write, you can find a way to make keeping your partner safe hot, because otherwise, all I’m thinking when I read scenes like that is, “Someone is definitely getting that strain of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.” That, and, “And somehow they’re still going to be soooooooooooooooooooo shocked when she turns up pregnant.” Neither of which happened in the happy-flower-kittyland of this book, but reality? Yeah, no one likes the consequences of unprotected sex. Romance authors, wrap those fictional penises up, please.

And one more nitpicky point of contention. If your first sex post-coital pillow talk includes the phrase, “We worked up an appetite, didn’t we?”, I don’t know there’s a woman in the world that’s going to find this endearing.

As far as romances go, I found this lukewarm at best. Someone must like it; Carolyn Brown has written what looks like zillions of books, so these kinds of things must work for some readers, but I’m not one of them. If you’ve read any of her other books and enjoyed them, I’d love to hear about it. I don’t want to turn away from an author after not enjoying one book (unless the book was hella problematic, and then I’ll absolutely flee). The writing here was usually okay, but the story and the characters were what didn’t work for me. If you have a Carolyn Brown book that worked for you, I’d love to hear about it!

Visit Carolyn Brown’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir

Book Review: How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

Stephanie1 Comment

One more book down from the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge, and also one off my TBR (no worries, though, I’ve added like five more books since then, so it’s in no danger of getting smaller…). For this particular prompt, I needed a book with only words on the cover, no images or graphics, and the Goodreads group for this challenge pointed out that How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones (Simon & Schuster, 2019) both fit the bill and was on my TBR. Magic!

Saeed Jones, the son of a single mother, grew up in Texas. Growing up Black and gay in the South is no easy feat, and as he begins his own adult life, he struggles deeply with identity: who he is, where his sense of identity comes from, who his mother expected him to be, who his grandmother tried to force him to be, who he really wants to be. For too long, he uses sex as an escape mechanism, one that allows him to ignore the question about the things that define him, but always, always, he’s pulled back to the love his mother gave him, even through the pain of losing her.

This memoir is difficult to sum up. Saeed Jones writes about the struggle of living at the intersection of being Black and gay, but it’s more than that. His memoir is about identity, the difficulty in defining our images of ourselves amidst all the conflicting messages we receive from our families and the many cultures that surround us. Case in point: while Saeed’s mother raised him as a Buddhist, he spent summers with his very Christian grandmother, who had a very different idea of who her grandson should be than her own daughter did. His resulting search for identity, one we all go through to some degree as we transition from adolescence to adulthood, is fraught with challenges, ones that cause pain to both himself and others. Perhaps some of this is inevitable, but Saeed’s story makes it clear that it doesn’t have to be, that accepting people for who they are and allowing them to be themselves would lessen a lot of that pain considerably.

There’s strong sexual content in this book, along with multiple scenes of homophobia, and the serious illness and death of a parent. Go easy on yourself if these are things that will be difficult to read about right now.

How We Fight For Our Lives is a quick read, since Saeed Jones’s writing flows like water, but it will leave the reader with a lot to think about concerning who we are and how easily we’re able to define ourselves. If your transition from childhood to adulthood was a smooth one, where everyone accepted you at face value and allowed you to be who you needed to be, read this to learn how privileged you were and expand your sense of empathy.

Visit Saeed Jones’s website here and here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt

Stephanie1 Comment

Another prompt for the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge directed me to choose a book with more than 20 letters in its title. No problem! I went straight to my Goodreads TBR for this one, poked around, counted letters in a few different titles, and came up with The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt (Wendy Lamb Books, 2010), which clocks in at 22 letters. Success, and one more book down from both this challenge and my TBR. I love when that happens.

Levi Katznelson’s brother is coming back from the Marines. It was a shock to his entire family when Boaz signed up; everyone had been expecting him to choose one of the many colleges that had been after him, but Boaz has always had a mind of his own. His three years of service have changed him, however, and it’s evident upon his return that something is deeply wrong. Boaz retreats to his room, sleeps, uses the computer, and does little else. Levi’s bewildered; what happened to Boaz over there? Why is he like this now?

When Boaz disappears after claiming to leave to hike the Appalachian Trail, Levi knows something is up, and with the aid of his best friends, he joins Boaz on his mystery trip. He’s bound and determined to understand this stranger who has replaced his brother, but how will he manage this when Boaz can barely even look at him, much less speak?

Oof. What a heavy, important book. Dana Reinhardt has captured the hurt and confusion of a younger brother who doesn’t quite understand what his older brother is going through, and whose parents feel powerless to intervene. What do you do when the brother you always admired comes back a different person, one who is clearly suffering, but whom you can’t even get a single word out of? Boaz has been deeply affected by the things he’s done and seen during his time in the Middle East, but since the military deemed him healthy enough to successfully re-enter civilian life, his parents feel as though he just needs time. Levi, less optimistic than his parents, isn’t so sure.

My favorite character out of the whole book had to be Dov, Levi and Boaz’s cantankerous yet loving Israeli grandfather. He pulls no punches but cares deeply for his grandsons, and he adds a bit of levity and gruff, warm fuzziness to the story. Levi’s a bit of an EveryTeen, conflicted about the war, not quite sure he understands the purpose of it, unable to decide if he’s pro- or anti-war, but concerned for how much it has obviously affected his brother. He’s always been a little bit in Boaz’s shadow, and having Boaz retreat from life, leaving Levi alone, is new territory for him. In The Things a Brother Knows, Levi’s forced to grow up quickly and learn a few things about the realities of war and its affects that he never thought he’d need to know.

Sad book with a hopeful ending, but it’d be excellent reading for teens with a sibling or a parent in the military, or for teens considering the military as a career or life path. I’m in favor of people understanding all the potential outcomes of what they’re getting into (and I say this as someone who was a military wife for six years). Boaz came back physically unharmed, but emotionally, that was a different story, and Ms. Reinhardt adroitly illustrates that war isn’t just about the injuries you can see, and that it doesn’t just affect those who serve.

Visit Dana Reinhardt’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.