A couple of weeks ago, (I am waaay behind on posting), the NYC Ladies Fine Dining and Fiction Book Club got together at Circo to discuss Mademoiselle Chanel, which was selected for the group by one of our regular members. It was a book I'd been excited about reading for a long time so I was quite happy with the choice. I really enjoyed the book and it's quite evident that the author did an ...
Historical Fiction
Review of “Modern Girls” by Jennifer S. Brown
Rarely, upon finishing a book, am I at such a loss for words. What I want to know is: Where is the rest of the book? Modern Girls had the potential to be so much more... Rose and Dottie, a Jewish mother and daughter living in 1930's Manhattan, become pregnant at the same time. Neither is exactly thrilled to learn that they are in the family way. Rose is in her early 40's and will ...
Review of “Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House” by Kathleen Grissom
"I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven." -Harriet Tubman I absolutely loved The Kitchen House and was thrilled when I heard Kathleen Grissom was writing a sequel. Though Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House is a ...
Review of “The Midnight Watch: A Novel of the Titanic and Californian” by David Dyer
The Midnight Watch provides us with a beautifully written, compelling, and moving account of the failure of the Californian, a fellow White Star Line ship, to respond to the distress signals of the Titanic in those fateful early morning hours of April 15, 1912. Eight individual white rockets indicating distress were fired from the deck of Titanic. Second Officer Herbert Stone, of the Californian, ...
Review of “Jane Steele” by Lyndsay Faye
Jane Steele is a well-written, fun, and quirky read. I haven't read Jane Eyre and wondered if it would make a difference in my ability to follow the book. It didn't. Each chapter begins with a passage from Jane Eyre but this book is its own story and you won't be impeded in any way if you haven't read it. (Though I wonder at how I, calling myself a reader, could have made it this many years ...
Review of “Behave” by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Behave by Andromeda Romano-Lax is the story of Rosalie Rayner Watson and her marriage to psychologist John B. Watson, who came to be known as the Father of Behaviorism. This happens to be another of those books that's tough for me to review as there is a great disparity in what I feel about the author's abilities as a writer and story teller and my overall impression of the book. I think the ...
Review of “The Summer Before the War” by Helen Simonson
Helen Simonson has proven she's no one-trick pony. The author of the NYT bestselling debut, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, has left no doubt that she is here to stay. The Summer Before the War transports us to the beautiful seaside town of Rye, East Sussex. My mind's eye has conjured a bit of a Pleasantville feel to this innocent pre-war town where everything is just as it should be at the ...
Review of “Sisi: Empress on Her Own” by Allison Pataki
I really loved The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki and was super-excited at the opportunity to read and review Sisi: Empress on Her Own. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me. I'm not sure if, in part at least, it's because I didn't read The Accidental Empress. I found the comparison to Princess Diana to be quite a stretch since Sisi seemed to face consistent criticism for her lack of ...
Review of “Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe” by Dawn Tripp
Wow. Dawn Tripp can write! "Here I am again. Held down, held back, in a power struggle with some arrogant man, his ego and incompetence that has nothing to do with my art. It's like they're all together in some maddening conspiracy to make me good enough, but not good enough to topple them." Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe is a beautifully written account of Georgia O'Keefe's life. As a ...
Review of “Free Men” by Katy Simpson Smith
Though Free Men is the story of a slave, an orphan, and Creek Indian, it is not so much a story about being a slave, orphan, or Indian. At its essence, it's really a very poignant story of relationships, injustice, loyalty, and how we perceive ourselves. It's 1788 and the unlikely trio of Bob (escaped slave), Cat (a misunderstood, fragile, and traumatized white man), and Istillicha (a Creek ...
