The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

Amy  

women's fiction

Sophie amazingly inherits a house belonging to the great aunt of her ex-boyfriend.  This house is on a private island which was the site of a decades-old disappearance mystery.  However, the quirky generations of family members who grew up and still live on the island aren’t all happy about Sophie’s inheritance and, with the matriarch gone, cracks in the façade of a happy family begin to widen.

I’ve enjoyed several of Liane Moriarty’s books. The Last Anniversary was the earliest published novel of hers that I’ve read.  I could definitely tell that her story crafting wasn’t quite as strong in this early work but her characters were very entertaining as usual.  Mainly, the beginning suffered in structure. It jumped around and wasn’t easy to settle in to, especially since I was listening to the audiobook and had trouble remembering character specifics.  So many of them were introduced early without sufficient time to get to know them.  But, once I felt that I had gotten a good grip on the situations, I went back and listened to the beginning again and was so glad I did.  I had completely missed a lot of the nuance and foundation.

The story was engaging. I was very happy to spend time with the characters, learn about their lives, and couldn’t wait to find out how things would turn out.  Moriarty has a way of creating characters so that you feel like you know them.  They have their eccentricities but they aren’t unbelievably wacky. They allow us to laugh at ourselves. And her stories are always fun.

The audiobook is read by Heather Wilds. She is good when she’s acting the characters and even has several different voices. However, when she’s the narrator, she adopts an aggressive monotone, almost of news anchor formality, which does not fit the story and is very offputting.  I believe she is a large cause of my initial confusion with the story. Her voice kept distracting me because it was out of place. I’ll give her a B.

The Floating Feldmans by Elyssa Friedland

Lynnie

contemporary fiction

When the matriarch of a dysfunctional family decides to book a cruise for all of them on her seventieth birthday, what did she expect would happen?  Spoiler alert: they did not sit around all day drinking rum punch and singing kumbaya.  

Elyssa Friedland does not like cruises. That one fact is perfectly clear as you read this book- in her mind they are cramped, overcrowded, focused entirely around food, but the food is somehow difficult to get with all the people always wanting it. Gross.

Worse, however, Friedland doesn't seem to like her own characters which makes it really hard for a reader to like them. The Floating Feldmans are a dysfunctional family, full of secrets, unable to communicate with one another like grown-ups, and usually with one ulterior motive or another. The most likable characters are Freddy and Natasha (the black sheep of the family and his stereotypical young girlfriend) and Darius, the teenage son of Freddy's sister who is really just trying to keep his head down and survive high school; we don't get enough of any of those three. I was constantly distracted by the fact that author Elyssa Friedland named one of her main characters "Elise Feldman" though I don't know why- maybe it just felt like a lack of imagination.

The book simply never grabbed me- the writing was dreadfully dull and so full of the characters' inner-monologues that I eventually found myself skimming through the book looking for actual dialogue. Typically, characters would start a conversation, have four pages of inner monologue, and then jump back into the conversation long after I'd forgotten what it was about. There was also one character, the cruise director, who served no purpose whatsoever. If his character had been written out entirely I don't think it would have made a bit of difference.

So, I can't recommend this book. Clearly, according to Goodreads, lots of people love it, but I am not those people. It was very close to being a DNF for me several times and it probably should have been. 

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Amy       
Lynnie   

women's fiction

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner is a lengthy family drama that tells the story of two sisters’ lives from both of their perspectives over a span of 50+ years. 

Amy's Review

This novel gives the reader a good idea of life growing up in my parents’ generation and there were many similarities in the Kaufmans’ family history and my father’s family’s immigration history.  So, it interested me from that perspective.  Jo and Bethie were upbeat kids but encountered a number and variety of  difficulties.  In fact, the quantity of issues got to be a bit silly, frankly. It was almost as if you could think of any struggle people might have to face and it was experienced by one of them. And yet, they eventually got through them all or made peace with the situation.  Granted, it wasn’t always fun or easy or quick. But, they had resilience. Unfortunately, the story did not grab me.  I did not really care about the characters and the only gripping question was when Jo could finally love the way she wanted to love.  But, you already knew that would happen because of the first chapter.  Ultimately, it was a depressing story with an ending where the characters are finally enlightened and we can all agree it’s great that women in general have come a long way.  But, without the balance of happy times or even any endearing characters, it wasn’t my kind of novel.

I did not realize there were two narrators, Ari Graynor and Beth Malone, until I was 1/3 of the way through the audiobook.  To me, this novel did not need two narrators. They were both good voice actors.  Whichever one read Bethie did not know the proper pronunciation of Haman from the Purim story which was inexcusable to me.  Narrators should do research if they’re going to be pronouncing the names of specific people from the past. The one who read Jo was fine until she tried a southern accent. Ugh.  I don’t know which narrator read for which character so I’ll just give them a combined B+.

Lynnie's Review

Mrs. Everything follows the journey of two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from their childhood in 1950s Detroit as they grow and travel through life until 2016.

There were things I liked about this novel, particularly just the evolution of people over time as norms, values, and circumstances change.

Overall,  however, this book was exhausting as we watched these women ping pong from one trauma to another. At some point I started to make a list of things our characters endured though I won't add them here for spoiler purposes (hint: if you want to read the spoiler, go over to Goodreads- it's listed there). This family and these women are like the Forrest Gump of chick-lit... they go through EVERYTHING; and most of it isn't particularly enjoyable to watch. It's a lot like being beaten over the head with every feminist cliche ever- and I say this as someone who considers herself a feminist. It's not like I disagreed with the overall arch of the story, it was just so absurd at one point that I literally rolled my eyes after one more tragedy and found myself saying, "well of course this would happen, obviously."

Oddly, as much as we watch Jo and Bethie go through, we never get to share in their joy- we don’t see the Bat Mitzvahs, the weddings (other than the one that is rushed), the births... all Weiner chooses to share with us are the hard times. This is a book that could have used some joy.

I understand the frustration that may have driven Weiner to write this novel- to point out all the gains that women have made in the last 70 years and to also show us how far we still have to go, but when SO much happens to a couple of characters, it's hard to really feel the impact of any of these moments.

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

Amy  

young adult, fantasy

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby is a coming of age story set in small-town Illinois.

Finn’s life is fairly ho hum and it didn’t hook me.  I was more interested in what was going on with Roza, who had been kidnapped, because it seemed bizarre—it felt unreal in its oddity. But then the story continued to move too slowly and too oddly to hold my attention. I only kept listening because it was a book club book.  I’ve read a lot of YA novels and can often find much to enjoy about them when they are well paced and compelling. But, this one was apparently too “young” for me. I can easily see younger folks enjoying the characters and fantasy elements and the novel’s morals are certainly important for young adults…beauty is in the eye of the beholder, kindness matters, fight for what you believe in, dream, and know that not everyone is well-intentioned so be smart. But this wasn’t my kind of novel.

The theme of not being able to identify what is real and what is fantasy was woven throughout the characters’ interactions and the novel’s settings and the facts that Finn and Charlie each had diagnosable sorts of blindness strengthened that theme, albeit a bit inelegantly.  Some characters chose a sort of blindness and only saw what they wanted to see.  While others literally lived a fantasy.

Dan Bittner was a terrific voice actor with a very large repertoire of character voices and accents. I give him an A+!

Cookbook Reviews- Yotam Ottolenghi, Christopher Kimball, & Dana Angelo White

I love cookbooks but don't have the space for them in my kitchen. Therefore, I am a serial cookbook borrower- from the library or friends, it doesn't matter- I read them, write out the recipes that look good to me, and send the book back for someone else to enjoy. 
-Lynnie 


Ottolenghi SIMPLE by Yotam Ottolenghi


A beautiful and easy to follow cookbook. I've never read a cookbook by Ottolenghi before, but thoroughly enjoyed this one as our cookbook club selection for November, 2019. I've already tried a several recipes from the book and they were outstanding, particularly the Seeded Chicken Schnitzel, Lamb and Feta Meatballs, and Mustardy Cauliflower Cheese. There are about a dozen other recipes I'm eager to try. I love the variety and the focus on Mediterranean flavor and while there are some ingredients that might take some time to find (or make yourself), they are well-worth it.




Milk Street: Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball


Read this for our local library cookbook club. Christopher Kimball's Milk Street is known for it's interesting and diverse recipes and this cookbook is no different. The photos are beautiful and really highlight the recipes. There are definitely some recipes I'm eager to try and others which I simply would never bother with- some seem overly complicated for no good reason and others have some flavor combinations that just did not appeal to me.


Healthy Air Fryer Cookbook by Dana Angelo White 

Got an air fryer for the holidays and was interested in seeing what I could do with it. Not a lot in here that I didn't see online, but there were a few interesting ideas that I might try out. These days there are several different air fryer types on the market- this book is primarily for those like the original that have a pull out basket. If you have an air fryer "oven" like I do (basically a small convection oven) a lot of the recipes in here won't work for you or will need adjusting.