Book Review: The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead

The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead by Paul Elwork

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One day in 1925, 13 year old Emily Stewart discovers that she has an unusual ability – she can secretly crack a joint in her ankle that sounds like a mysterious knocking sound. Emily and her twin brother Michael decide to put on little performances for the neighborhood children and convince them that these “spirit knockings” are coming from a teenage girl who drowned nearby several years before. Word of these spirit knockings spreads and soon adults wanting to connect with dead loved ones of their own are asking for sessions with Emily and Michael. The twins agree and soon they are in over their heads trying to help adults deal with real grief issues, guilt and family secrets.

At the same Emily and Michael are conducting the spirit knocking sessions and discovering the family secrets of some of the adults in town, Emily is discovering that her own family harbors secrets in its past as well by secretly reading a scrapbook her mother has put together and by talking to her nanny (who was Emily’s mother’s nanny as well.) The book flashes back to these earlier time periods in Emily’s family history as she is learning about them.

This book is more than just a creepy ghost story. It’s about lies – the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we tell others and whether or not it’s ever okay to deceive someone. And it’s about grief and guilt and how those two emotions are intertwined and at times inseparable.

This book had so many layers and was really well-written. It’s another fantastic offering from Amy Einhorn books. I really liked it and highly recommend it.

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(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)

Book Review: Runaway

Runaway by Meg Cabot

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Runaway is the third and I’m assuming final book in Meg Cabot’s Airhead series. This review assumes that you’ve read the first two books in the series and may have spoilers for them if you haven’t.

In Runaway, Em Watts has finally figured out what sinister project Robert Stark has been up to all this time and works with her friends to expose him. Along the way she and Christopher try to make the transition from best friends to boyfriend/girlfriend.

I had Robert Stark’s secret project figured out well before Em and the gang did and it got kind of frustrating watching them trying to figure it out when it was SO OBVIOUS! Also, I felt like Em had changed in this book and not for the better. She seemed to have developed some of Nikki’s shallowness. For example, she thought several times that Nikki’s new body was just not attractive and was kind of catty about it. Maybe Cabot did that on purpose and it was a statement about how being in an attractive body or in the modeling industry can change your perspective? Em just didn’t seem like the same character to me and that was disappointing.

Aside from those two things, I enjoyed this book as a fun book to listen to in the car and I was satisfied with how everything wrapped up in the end.

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Book Review: Annie On My Mind

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seventeen year old Liza first meets Annie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The two become fast friends even though they are very different. Liza comes from an upper middle class family and goes to private school and hopes to go to MIT when she graduates. Annie comes from a lower middle class family and is a talented vocalist who attends public school and hopes to attend college at the University of California, Berkley. Their relationship quickly grows more and more intense and soon the girls share their first kiss. Annie and Liza are both confused by this and struggle with the possibility that they might be gay.

The book is an exploration of the friendship and love between the two girls. It was originally published in 1982; it was fascinating to see how far we as a society have come with regard to attitudes about homosexuality. In many ways this book wasn’t much different from any young adult novel about first love. In fact, when this book published it was the first of it kind – a young adult novel with homosexual protagonists that had a hopeful message.

I listened to the audio version of this book, which included a recent interview with the author at the end. One of the things the interview asked her about was if the book had ever been banned in light of its controversial subject matter. She said the only place it had ever been banned was in Kansas City. Since I’m from the Kansas City are I found this particularly interesting and horrifying. You can read more about that on the Wikipedia page for the book.

I really enjoyed this book both as a young adult romance and as a piece of LGBT history.

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Book Review: What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling

What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling: How A+ Parents Can Give Their Traditionally Schooled Kids the Academic Edge by Linda Dobson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t think anything in this book was revolutionary but it put into words the philosophy my husband and I already have with our boys and gave some more concrete examples of things we can do. The main premise is that the primary responsibility of parents is to help their kids develop a love of learning and help them access more information about topics that interest them, not drill facts into their heads or use rote learning techniques.

The author is a homeschooler herself and has written many books on homeschooling. There is a bias for homeschooling present in the book but it wasn’t so prevalent that I couldn’t overlook it.

I recommend this book for parents of traditionally schooled children who want to make sure that school doesn’t quash the love of learning in their children or for parents of children who have lost their love of learning and need it rekindled.

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Book Review: Invisible River

Invisible River by Helena McEwen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When Evie goes to art school in London, she leaves her alcoholic father on his own only to have him show up drunk on her doorstep a few months later. Luckily Evie has made some good friends at school who can support her through this time.

This was a sleepy, meandering book. The author is great at using descriptive language and the book is filled with her robust imagery. The problem is that there isn’t that much plot or character development behind that imagery. I didn’t feel connected to Evie or her friends – I was able to put the book down for long periods of time without thinking about it.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)

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Book Review: Illyria

Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Maddy and Rogan are first cousins; actually their fathers are identical twins so genetically they’re half-siblings. They share the same birthday, are each the youngest of six children and grew up together on the same street. They are also passionately and hopelessly in love with each other. They steal time together hidden away in Rogan’s attic where they find an enchanted toy theater.

Maddy and Rogan’s great-grandmother was a famous stage actress. When Maddy and Rogan are both cast in their school’s production of Twelfth Night, they realize the extent of their own talents for acting and must decide what that means for their futures, both together and separately.

Okay, I’ll just be honest here. After reading the other reviews of this book, I’m feeling pretty dumb. It’s gotten rave reviews all over the place and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. I enjoyed it but I feel like I must have missed something. I wanted more. I wanted to know why the theater was in the attic and why it was enchanted and who put it there. I kept waiting for it to have more of a role in the story and it never did. I think this line from a review on Amazon sums it up nicely: “Though more practical-minded readers may have a hard time grasping the point of this short novel, Hand’s writing is beautiful and her imagery vivid.” I am too practical (and maybe not smart enough) for this book.

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Book Review: Queen of Babble

Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lizzie Nichols has a problem – she can’t help spilling secrets. When she decides to spend the summer in London with her boyfriend, she accidentally gets him trouble with her big mouth and they break up. She ends up spending the summer in the South of France, working with her best friend catering weddings at a chateau.

This was a fun, lighthearted piece of chick-lit. Even though Lizzie doesn’t always make the best decisions, she’s funny and likable and I was rooting for her all the way through the book. Sometimes in these types of books the clueless heroine stresses me out so much that I can’t enjoy the story (e.g. the Shopaholic books) but that was not true in this case.

I listened to the audio version of this book. It’s narrated by Justine Eyre who also narrated Cabot’s Heather Wells mystery series. She does a great job with all the required accents – American, English and French.

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Book Review: Night Road

Night Road by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

This is the first Kristin Hannah book I’ve read so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found it to be a Lifetime Movie in print form. It had the requisite broadly painted characters – the overprotective mom (Jude), the detached father (Miles), the son who’s the most popular kid in school (Zach) and his misfit twin sister who has grown up in her brother’s shadow (Mia) and Mia’s best friend Lexi – the kid who has grown up in foster care and come out of it with a martyr complex.

Jude has got to be one of the worst mothers ever. She is today’s typical helicopter mom, directing every move of her children’s lives while indulging them in the worst way. After the tragedy that is heavily foreshadowed in the first pages of the book happens, she becomes the most self-involved bitch you can imagine. I had no sympathy for her and couldn’t find any redeeming qualities about her.

I found the things that happened to Lexi, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks that befriends Mia, fairly unrealistic. Being a foster parent myself, I know that a social worker does not just wake a 14 year old child up at the break of dawn and say, “Guess what – we’re flying halfway across the country so you can live with your aunt.” – unless they are a very bad social worker. She would talk to the child about it well before the moving day and at least have the child talk on the phone to the aunt before moving in with her. Anyway, I found just about everything that happened to Lexi or that she did pretty unbelievable but I just had to let that go so I could enjoy the story.

I really wanted to dislike this book. Especially since I’ve recently read Every Last One by Anna Quindlen which has similar themes but a much better developed characters and better written story. The whole time I was reading Night Road, I was thinking to myself how predictable the story line was and how one-dimensional the characters were. But just like I can get sucked into a Lifetime Movie while flipping channels and two hours later wonder why I watched the whole thing, I could not put this book down. It’s definitely a guilty pleasure read.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)

Book Review: The Weird Sisters

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The three Andreas sisters have all come back to the small town they grew up in and moved back in with their parents under the pretense of helping their ailing mother. However, they're really all running away from something: Rose, the caretaking, controlling oldest sister is avoiding her increasing stressful relationship; Bean, the middle sister struggling to form her own identity is running from troubles at her job; and Cordy, the vagabond youngest sister, is unmarried and pregnant.

Shakespeare references are found throughout the book. The sisters are all named after characters in Shakespeare plays and their father, a college professor, prefers to communicate by quoting Shakespeare instead of using his own words. I don't know much about Shakespeare beyond Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book. (Although if you are a Shakespeare expert, you will enjoy it that much more I'm sure.) Sometimes the sisters didn't even understand what their father was trying to say!

This book was just wonderful! The author did a fantastic job of making each sister a believable, sympathetic three dimensional character. I could relate to some aspect of each sister. The author tells us their story in a unique way – the book is narrated by all three sisters in first person at the same time, as if they were one person. It sounds strange but it really works to show how close the sisters are and how intertwined their lives are whether they like it or not. Overall, this was a beautifully written engaging story.

The Weird Sisters is published by Amy Einhorn Books and therefore part of the Amy Einhorn Books Perputual Challenge. I received a copy courtsey of the author via a giveawy hosted on Beth Fish Reads.

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Happy Valentine’s Day

We had a great Valentine's Day at our house. The boys made me "the biggest Valentine EVER". They also gave me baked heart shaped sugar cookies that they baked with Travis. Apparently they did this Sunday morning while I was sleeping off a cold. I didn't hear or smell anything!

West saw these nesting owls at Urban Outfitters last month and fell in love with them. I'm not really sure why. He talked about them all the time and was desperately trying to save up his tokens to buy them. We went ahead and gave them to him for his Valentine's Day present. He was thrilled! He played with them the rest of the night and tucked them in to his bed by wrapping them up in a burp cloth.

Cash loved his LilKinz bluejay. He named him Blues.

After gifts, it was time to eat our heart-shaped pizza. Yum!

We wrapped up the night with some very serious Webkinz playing.