Book Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Remarkably Bright Creatures
Author: Shelby Van Pelt
Publisher: Ecco
Publication date: May 3, 2022
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors–until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

If I tell you that I’m recommending a book with parts narrated by an octopus, would you think I’m joking? I hope not, because I’m here to tell you that Remarkably Bright Creatures (a) has an octopus as one of its POV characters and (b) is simply too great to miss!

Remarkably Bright Creatures opens with Tova, a 70-year-old woman, a life-long resident of Sowell Bay, Washington, and a night-shift aquarium employee. Tova loves the solitude and peace she finds in lovingly cleaning every nook and cranny of the aquarium after hours, saying a quiet hello to each animal on display as she cleans the glass of their enclosures and wipes the floor.

Tova does not actually have to work for a living — she’s a widow with enough funds to living comfortably in her house and not worry about her financial situation. However, she’s also a deeply sad and lonely person. Yes, she has friends (the “Knit-Wits”) whom she gets together with each week, and the own of the local grocery store seems to have a massive (but unrequited) crush on her. For thirty years, though, Tova has been carrying the deep grief filling her heart after the death of her only son, 18-year-old Erik, in a boating accident that’s never been fully explained.

Soon after we meet Tova, we also meet Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who observes the world around him from within his enclosure, and who narrates the story of his captivity and his knowledge of his impending demise as he nears the end of his species’ typical lifespan. Marcellus sees all and understands everything he sees. He’s also an escape artist, letting himself out of his enclosure through the tiniest of gaps to roam the aquarium at night in search of treats (the sea cucumbers are particularly yummy, although he tries to hold back to prevent anyone starting to question why the sea cucumber population keeps decreasing).

Oh, and also? Marcellus is super funny:

IF THERE IS ONE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION HUMANS never exhaust, it is the status of their outdoor environment. And for as much as they discuss it, their incredulity is . . . well, incredible. That preposterous phrase: Can you believe this weather we’re having? How many times have I heard it? One thousand, nine hundred and ten, to be exact. One and a half times a day, on average. Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events.

When Tova and Marcellus cross paths on one of his midnight adventures, they connect and seem to understand one another. While Tova can only wonder whether what she picks up from him is real or just something she imagines, we know from Marcellus’s POV chapters that he knows much more than Tova could dream of, including some key facts about Erik’s disappearance.

As the story progresses, more characters are introduced… including Cameron, a 30-year-old man who’s been rootless and unable to stick with anything in his life, ever since being abandoned by his mother as a young child. When he stumbles upon a lead that might just help him identify his biological father, he hits the road for Sowell Bay, where his path becomes entwined with that of Tova and Marcellus.

Does this sounds weird to you? Yes, Marcellus is a very unusual narrator — but at its heart, Remarkably Bright Creatures is about connection, family, and love. Tova is a tough character in some ways, so entrenched in her ways, so determined to keep herself apart from others and not let herself be touched by other people’s care or warmth. Yet we see throughout the book how her pain and loss have informed the rest of her life, so even though she has good memories of her life with her late husband, the shadow of her son’s death has darkened every moment since.

I loved seeing Tova’s interactions with Marcellus, and how just that little bit of understanding that passes between them enables her to open up to life once more. The story of Cameron’s search for his father is amusing, but the outcome is obvious from the start, so while I enjoyed some of his misadventures, parts seemed to take slightly too long to get resolved.

That’s really just a minor quibble. Overall, I loved the freshness of the viewpoints in this story, and the lovely sense of heart and connection that lies underneath the action. The characters are memorable, the storytelling is lovely (and has plenty of funny moments to balance out the sadness), and the book ends with a very satisfying wrap-up.

I really enjoyed Remarkably Bright Creatures, and absolutely recommend it.

16Dec2022

Book Review: The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Vibrant Years
Author: Sonali Dev
Publisher: Mindy’s Book Studio
Publication date: December 1, 2022
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Kindle freebie
Rating:

When sixty-five-year-old Bindu Desai inherits a million dollars, she’s astounded―and horrified. The windfall threatens to expose a shameful mistake from her youth. On an impulse, Bindu quickly spends it on something unexpected: a condo in a posh retirement community in Florida.

The impulsive decision blindsides Bindu’s daughter-in-law, Aly. At forty-seven, Aly still shares a home with Bindu even after her divorce from Bindu’s son. But maybe this change is just the push Aly needs to fight for her own dreams.

As Bindu and Aly navigate their new dynamic, Aly’s daughter, Cullie, is faced with losing the business that made her a tech-world star. The only way to save it is to deliver a new idea to her investors―and they want the dating app she pitched them in a panic. Problem is, Cullie has never been on a real date. Naturally, enlisting her single mother and grandmother to help her with the research is the answer.

From USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev comes a heartfelt novel about three generations of hilarious, unconventional, ambitious women who embark on a shared journey of self-discovery. Join the Desai women as they come together to embrace the hijinks and heartbreak of facing their greatest fears to finally live their most vibrant lives.

Having read and enjoyed Sonali Dev’s Rajes series, which riffs on Jane Austen’s novels while also introduces a large, dynamic Indian American family, I was eager to grab The Vibrant Years when Amazon offered it as a free First Reads book in November. Seeing that this is Mindy Kaling’s first book club selection (Mindy’s Book Studio) made me even more keen to read it.

In The Vibrant Years, we follow three generations of interesting women as they navigate work, love, and family. Bindu inherits money (although she hides the true source from her family) and decides to break out of her steady, modest life as a widow and grandmother and become “vibrant”. She moves into a fancy senior community and becomes the belle of the ball, attracting both eager suitors and the envy and cattiness of what she refers to as “the coven” — the women of the HOA who watch and criticize her every move.

Bindu’s daughter-in-law Aly is a journalist with a local TV station who just can’t seem to get her big break. Despite landing the biggest interview imaginable for the station, her boss wants the more relatable (i.e., whiter) reporter to actually carry out the interview. Aly fights for herself and her career, while also worrying about her daughter and resenting her ex-husband, who never truly supported her professional goals and dreams.

Aly’s daughter Cullie is a tech whiz who, at 25, is the creator of the world’s most successful mental health app, but is now at risk of having her vision compromised by the funder’s pursuit of even more money. Her only hope of saving the app she believes in so strongly is to give the funder something new to profit off of, but her attempt to make a better dating app seems to be headed for failure.

As the story progresses, we get tantalizing hints of Bindu’s hidden past. Something significant happened when she was seventeen — but her enraged parents forced her into a very different life of domesticity and devotion to being a wife and mother rather than risk any hint of shame or scandal. Bindu has never talked about her past, but certain reminders continue to pop up, and it seems like the past won’t remain forgotten for much longer.

The Vibrant Years is perhaps more heartfelt and serious than the synopsis implies, but the promised “hijinks” definitely play a part too. The book neatly balances some truly awful (and hilarious) dating situations with the inner lives of the three main characters, adding humor to heartbreak and loss and self-doubt. (I’m not sure I’ve ever read about dates quite as bad as these… )

Bindu is really the star of the book, a truly “vibrant” woman who gives herself freedom to finally live her own life at age 65. She refuses to be the meek grandmother she seemed destined to remain, but instead puts herself out into the world with bold colors, independent choices, and a fiery defiance that is awesome to behold. There were times in the story when I wished the story of her teen years was told more sequentially, to give us time to really invest in it and see it unfold, but by the end of the book, it’s clear what happened. The revelations are powerful and emotional.

I felt less invested in Aly and Cullie, but still enjoyed their character development, their struggles, and their determination to achieve their goals and also fight for their chances at personal happiness. The dynamics between the three women are not always smooth and peaceful, but their love is unconditional. When’s the last time you read a book about such a loving bond between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? I really liked the strong and unconditional connection between all three characters. No matter the challenges, their love and support gets each of them through the worst days and helps them find hope.

Overall, I really enjoyed this family story. Each character is memorable in her own right, and the love between the three is what really makes The Vibrant Years shine.

10Dec2022

Book Review: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Dead Romantics
Author: Ashley Poston
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: June 28, 2022
Length: 366 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.

For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.

Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

This was a good one!

The plot synopsis is almost too complicated, but once you get into the story, the pieces fit. Basically, Florence is a ghostwriter for one of the most successful romance writers in the industry, but she’s behind on turning in the last book she has under contract. After a harsh betrayal and break-up a year earlier, she just can’t envision true love and happy endings any more. But the clock is ticking, and not finishing is really not an option.

Florence’s family owns the funeral home in a small southern town. She grew up with parents who were infuriatingly romantic and in love, and their home was filled with joy. Florence also has a secret — she sees dead people. Both she and her father have the gift of seeing and being able to interact with ghosts, but when this becomes public during Florence’s teens, she faces so much ridicule and bullying that she swears never to return to her hometown again.

Now an adult living in Manhattan, she’s stayed away for ten years, but is forced to go back and deal with the past when her father dies suddenly. Amidst the turmoil of family grief and planning a funeral, the ghost of Florence’s brand new editor shows up on her doorstep, which is especially concerning since she had no idea that he’d died.

Dead Romantics is a love story, but it’s so much more. It’s a loving depiction of a family that celebrates life and views death as just another part of the journey. It’s also a look at the internal life of a writer, and it’s a study of what it means to feel lost and hopeless and burdened by shattered illusions.

I love how Florence’s family is shown, and I love the rituals they invent and embrace to celebrate the life of a man who seems like the perfect husband and father. I also really enjoyed the strangeness of Florence getting to know the ghost of a man she’d only met once, and how their connection is able to develop and bridge the obvious gap between a living woman and a man who’s passed on.

I won’t give anything away… but I couldn’t see how there could be a solution to their situation that made sense.

There were no happily ever afters between an undertaker’s daughter and her ghost.

Surprise! The ending totally works, satisfied me, and left me feeling upbeat and cheery.

The writing is quite lovely, and having suffered a family loss recently myself, I found that certain passages really resonated:

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

There’s a certain character who deserves to suffer some truly bad karma and I felt a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see that happen… but then again, that’s not what this story was really about.

Overall, I’m really glad that I picked up Dead Romantics and gave it a try. It was just the right mixture of sentiment, humor, sadness, and joy that I needed this week. Having read this author’s Once Upon a Con YA trilogy, I was curious to see how she’d do with her adult fiction debut. I’m happy to report that she nailed it!

4Dec2022

Book Review: Husband Material (London Calling, #2) by Alexis Hall

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Husband Material
Series: London Calling, #2
Author: Alexis Hall
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication date: August 2, 2022
Length: 432 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Purchased
Rating:

In BOYFRIEND MATERIAL, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends…and somehow figured out a way to make it work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc’s feeling the social pressure to propose. But it’ll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a bowl full of special curry to get these two from I don’t know what I’m doing to I do.

Good thing Oliver is such perfect HUSBAND MATERIAL.

This Summer 2022, you’re invited to the event(s) of the season.

After giggling my way through Boyfriend Material earlier this year, I just knew I needed the sequel in my life. And for the most part, Husband Material does not disappoint… except for the ending. But more on that later.

Blatantly modeled on Four Weddings and A Funeral**, the plot of Husband Material follows Luc and Oliver, the extreme-opposites-extremely-attract couple from the first book as they navigate being in a healthy long-term relationship (a first for both of them) while seeing all of their friends embracing wedding planning and baby making.

Two years into their relationship, Luc and Oliver still have separate flats but are together constantly. They’ve each made progress with their own personal hang-ups and issues, love each other very much, and are still funny as hell. As they attend wedding after wedding, some of their differences seem more concerning — especially when it comes to gay identity vs mainstream norms, and whether finally being able to officially and legally go the traditional marriage route means that they should.

And that’s not even addressing the rainbow elephant in the room — Luc embraces the glitter and rainbows of his ideal of gay community, but Oliver finds it all too commercialized and judgmental. If he doesn’t want a rainbow balloon arch at his wedding, does that make him a bad gay? But if he denies Luc the balloon arch, is he forcing Luc to give up part of his own identity? (Seriously, they spend A LOT of time on the balloon arch debate…)

After an unplanned panic-driven proposal (from Luc, of course), the couple decide to get married, but their cute differences as a couple seem to morph into fundamental problems as they try to navigate actually planning a wedding.

I love Luc and Oliver as characters and was very happy to reconnect with them and see how their lives have progressed since the first book. Husband Material, as a second book, assumes that we know these people, so there’s less time spent on character development and much more on plot shenanigans, which is fine, but creates a shallower reading experience. We still get a taste for the two as individuals, but their escapades (and the ridiculous goings-on surrounding the various weddings) take center stage for perhaps too much of the book — so when we do get deeper character moments, the tonal shift can be a bit jarring..

As in Boyfriend Material, the writing is heavy on word-play and humor, and most of the time, that’s truly a reading treat — don’t we all need more silly and clever and laugh-out-loud funny moments in our serious lives?

A few little samples:

“As your token gay friend, it is my duty to say that you are a fierce, sickening, incredible woman and that when you find a man who deserves you, he’ll make you feel like a princess every day of your life in a way that somehow manages to avoid reinforcing problematic gender stereotypes.”

… I couldn’t tell if we’d had a fight of not, and if we had, whose fault it had been. I mean, I had kind of dropped him on extra-special date night. Like a dick. Except I’d only done that because I needed to take care of my friend. Like definitely not a dick. Fuck. I was in a grey dick area.

I was increasingly convinced that weddings were just an elaborate cycle of vengeance that had got really out of hand. Some pair of selfish bastards had forced their friends to come to a tedious party two thousand years ago and their selfish bastard friends had decided to pay them back by forcing them to come to a tedious party, and then some wholly independent group of selfish bastards had built an industry around it and here we were. An eye for an eye leaves the world overpaying for table settings.

I made the air-quotiest air quotes that ever air-quoted.

All fun aside for a moment, I will say that I did not care for the ending, not even a little bit. And without getting into spoiler territory, I suppose it was meant to show that Luc and Oliver works best when they forge their own path and do what’s really right for the two of them — but all I could think was that they could have avoided all the angst and mess if they’d only had a real conversation months earlier. So while I think the author meant for the ending to come across as nonconventially romantic, I was just unsatisfied and a little saddened by it all.

I had thought this was the final book of a two-book story, but it looks like more is on the way. According to Goodreads, there are two more related books yet to come, although I believe the focus will shift away from Luc and Oliver to others in their friend circle.

Despite my feelings about the ending of Husband Material, I enjoyed the writing and characters enough to want more, so I’m sure I’ll check out whatever comes next.

Spoiler ahead — look away now if you don’t want to know!

**Spoilery bit: I’d completely forgotten that the main couple in Four Weddings and a Funeral decide to have a life together without getting married at the end. I guess if I’d remembered that, then I wouldn’t have been so surprised / let down by the ending of Husband Material!

25Nov2022

Book Review: The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale by Stephanie Eding

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale
Author: Stephanie Eding
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication date: May 3, 2022
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

If you’re looking for:
Found family who always look out for you

A second chance romance with your high school crush

All the fried food that’ll take your mind off your troubles

A chance to start over and do things your own way
Then The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale is exactly what you need!

When 30-year-old Josie discovers that she’s unexpectedly pregnant with her ex-husband’s baby (darn that last attempt to save their marriage), she seeks comfort in deep-fried food at the county fair. There she runs into her two old friends, Ben and Kevin. While sharing their own disappointments with adult life, they devise a plan to move in together and turn their lives around. Soon Ben and Kevin make it their mission to prepare for Josie’s baby, not least by making sure Josie always has the food she’s craving. Maybe all together they can discover the true meaning of family and second chances in life…

What a cute story… with so much junk food!

Josie moves back to her small suburban home town after discovering her husband is cheating. After spending the summer living with her parents (who inform her that they’re about to downsize and really won’t have room for her in their new condo) and working at a smoothie shop (having left her home, husband, and steady teaching job back in Chicago), she’s broke, without a place to live, and oh yeah, just took a home pregnancy test and found out that yes, she’s pregnant with her soon-to-be ex’s baby.

Craving fried food, she stops at the county fair, where she runs into her high school friends Ben and Kevin. Over corn dogs, they catch up and share everything that’s gone wrong in their lives — Kevin works at a job he hates, and Ben dropped out of college when his girlfriend got pregnant and now works a dead-end job and has a daughter who can’t stand him. As Josie breaks down in tears over her mess of a life, a plan is formed: Ben and Kevin are roommates, and there’s room for a third. Josie needs a place to live, they could use the help with the rent, and hey, maybe together they can all turn their lives around. And thus, the Corn Dog Pact is formed.

The Corn Dog Pact is actually Kevin’s idea — written down and tacked up on their refrigerator. They each commit to improving their finances, their work lives, and finding love by the time the last of their 31st birthdays roll around. With a signed pact to keep them on track, Josie moves in — noting that she may have just moved into a frat house. Living room furniture consists of beanbag chairs and a gaming console, and she’s hard-pressed to find even a mug in the empty kitchen.

The three friends are good for one another, and little by little, they do actually start making progress on their lives. The guys are supportive — Kevin is a goofball with a heart of gold and Ben, Josie’s secret crush in high school, is a sweetheart who yearns for a better relationship with his 11-year-old and who would seemingly do anything to help Josie.

As Josie’s pregnancy progresses, we see the trio’s homelife (so much pizza and nachos!!), Josie’s advancing pregnancy, and her quest for teaching work. We also see how the three encourage little steps for each other. With Josie present, Ben is able to start connecting better with his daughter, and seeing Ben with Izzy helps Josie find a way to allow her ex to plan to be in her baby’s life.

I really enjoyed the storylines overall, although I did get a little tired of the horrifying food the characters eat ALL THE TIME. When Josie brings home a salad one day, they’re all aghast! Healthy food? What?? (Still, it is rather cute that each chapter title has a food in it — the author really sticks to the theme!)

At times, the story feels a little laggy. There are perhaps too many scenes of shopping, home decorating, and other elements of domestic life. It’s nice to see the characters working on themselves and on creating a home, but it gets to be a bit much after a while.

I will say that some of the scenes related to the pregnancy, and particularly to Josie’s labor and delivery, were especially well done. Josie’s experiences during delivery felt very real to me, perhaps because I had a similar experience to the character myself. It’s not the comedic or over-the-top kind of scene you sometimes see in fiction (or especially on TV shows) — I could absolutely relate to what Josie goes through, and loved how Ben and Kevin are by her side.

Overall, this is a sweet, engaging story, not particularly deep, but with enough personal growth to make it satisfying. The characters are funny and likable, and you can’t help but cheer them along every step of the way. There’s a romantic subplot too, but it doesn’t dominate or define the book. Really and truly, this is a book about friendship and how loving friends can help each other turn their lives around.

Worth checking out!

18Nov2022

Book Review: He Gets That From Me by Jacqueline Friedland

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: He Gets That From Me
Author: Jacqueline Friedland
Publisher: SparkPress
Publication date: September 7, 2021
Length: 295 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

As a young mother with a toddler and a live-in boyfriend, Maggie Fisher’s job at a checkout counter in downtown Phoenix doesn’t afford her much financial flexibility. She dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher, options she squandered when she fled her family home as a teenager. When Maggie stumbles onto an ad offering thousands of dollars to women who are willing to gestate other people’s babies, she at first finds the concept laughable. Before long, however, she’s been seduced by all the ways the extra money could improve her life. Once she decides to go for it, it’s only a matter of months before she’s chosen as a gestational carrier by Chip and Donovan Rigsdale, a married couple from New York.

After delivering twin babies and proudly handing them off to the Rigsdales, Maggie finally gets her life on a positive trajectory: she earns her degree, lands a great job, and builds a family of her own. She can’t fathom why, ten years after the fact, the fertility clinic is calling to ask for a follow-up DNA test.

I bought this e-book on a whim (it was 99 cents!), interested to see where the story would go. And while it definitely held my attention, I would describe He Gets That From Me as only partially successful.

As the story opens, we meet Maggie, who loves her baby Wyatt and her boyfriend Nick, but struggles to make ends meet. She regrets walking away from the college education her well-off parents were providing, a decision made after a teen-age trauma that made her flee parental control and judgment. When she sees an ad for gestational carriers, i.e., women to act as surrogates for those who cannot have children on their own, she doesn’t take it particularly seriously… but she can’t stop thinking about it, especially how the money could get her life back on track and allow her to finally pursue the education she gave up on.

We also meet Donovan, a New York real estate broker in a happy marriage with his husband Chip. They’re well-off and well-established, but desperately want a family together. As they enter the surrogacy process, they’re oh-so-careful at every step, making sure they’ll be legally protected and being very cautious in choosing their potential gestational carriers.

In the early chapters of the book, we jump backward and forward in time, and so we learn that Donovan has had himself, Chip, and their twin 10-year-old boys tested through an at-home DNA testing kit to help the boys with a class genealogy project. Donovan and Chip each provided sperm to use with their egg donor’s eggs, and based on the boys’ physical traits, they’ve long assume that Teddy is biologically Chip’s and Kai is biologically Donovan’s. Until the test results come back — and show that Kai isn’t biologically related to either of his dads.

As Donovan essentially freaks out and looks for answers, the couple assume a screw-up at the fertility lab. Perhaps their embryos were switched with someone else’s? Donovan even investigates whether babies could have been switched at birth. But no — all options are a dead-end until Maggie’s DNA testing confirms the obvious answer. Kai is biologically her son. How is this even possible?

Superfetation. Per healthline.com, “Superfetation is when a second, new pregnancy occurs during an initial pregnancy. Another ovum (egg) is fertilized by sperm and implanted in the womb days or weeks later than the first one. ” Oh, dear. So while two embryos from the donor eggs and Chip and Donovan’s sperm were transferred to Maggie, only one took… and then she and Nick conceived another fetus naturally, ending up pregnant with two unrelated fetuses.

Maggie, of course, is horrified. She and Nick tried for years to have more children, but whether from carrying twins or from a subsequent car accident, she ended up with uterine scarring that affected her fertility. She’s wracked by guilt: She agreed to carry someone else’s children, not to give away her own child.

An inevitable showdown between the two families quickly comes into play. After meeting Kai briefly, Maggie is convinced that he belongs with his biological family, and she and Nick sue for custody. Meanwhile, Chip and Donovan are desperate to keep their family intact and to protect Kai from being uprooted from the only life he’s ever know.

While the set-up is really engaging, I had some issues with the execution. For starters, I don’t truly believe that Maggie could think for one moment that removing Kai from his home would be in his best interest. They got from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye. What about visiting and getting to know one another? What about simply spending some time together, finding a way to be in each others’ lives? Nope, it’s full custody as the first and only option.

Some ugliness comes into play that seems out of character for Maggie. While Nick expressed some hesitation about becoming a surrogate for a gay couple when the option first was under discussion, Maggie was adamantly opposed to Nick’s homophobia and in fact broke up with him for a while over it. She cared deeply for Chip and Donovan and was committed to helping them create their family. Yet in the court filings, one of the arguments for claiming custody of Kai was that it would be in his best interest to be raised by a “traditional” family. Where did this come from? That was never Maggie’s belief.

I was left very unsatisfied by the end of the book. Certain twists are revealed in the epilogue that I found hard to believe, and the outcome of the custody case (trying to avoid spoilers here) was again a very black and white, all or nothing situation. I couldn’t help feeling that in real life, good lawyers and therapists would have encourage compromise and exploration of the true best interests of the child, rather than moving forward with a winner-takes-all lawsuit as the only possible answer.

At under 300 pages, He Gets That From Me is a quick read. While the premise is certainly interesting, I was too often frustrated by inconsistent or illogical actions and decisions to give this more than a 3-star rating. I could see this book generating good book club arguments for sure!

27Oct2022

Book Review: The Stand-Up Groomsman by Jackie Lau

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Stand-Up Groomsman
Author: Jackie Lau
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: October 25, 2022
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

A bridesmaid and groomsman put their differences aside to get their friends down the aisle in this opposites-attract steamy romantic comedy.

They say to never meet your heroes, but when Vivian Liao’s roommate gets engaged to her favorite actor’s costar, she has no choice but to come face-to-face with Melvin Lee again. He’s just as funny and handsome as he is on-screen…but thinks she is a snob and a sellout. It’s none of his business how she chooses to live her life, no matter how charismatic he is.

Mel is used to charming audiences as an actor and stand-up comedian but can’t connect to Vivian. She’s a smart, talented artist–which is why he thinks she’s wasting her life as a corporate finance drone. The only thing uniting them is their goal for the wedding to go off without a hitch.

As they collaborate on wedding cake and karaoke parties, Mel realizes he might have seriously misjudged this bridesmaid, while Vivian discovers the best man might just be as dazzling off-screen as he is on. With the wedding underway, maybe more than one happily ever after is in the future.

In this follow-up to Donut Fall In Love, a self-contained finance professional falls for a loud, outrageous stand-up comedian, and sparks fly — despite the fact that on the surface, at least, they’re complete opposites, and what’s worse, had an awful first meeting.

When Vivian meets Mel, she’s thrilled to be meeting the star of one of her favorite sitcoms. I mean, she’s done fan art about him! But he makes the mistake of assuming she’s like he used to be — someone pursuing a corporate paycheck rather than taking a chance and following their muse. Vivian is furious and would be happy to never see him again. Unfortunately for her, they’re going to be forced together over the coming year, as her roommate Lindsay has just become engaged to his best friend Ryan, and they’re both going to be in the wedding party.

As the wedding events seem designed to throw Vivian and Mel together, they form a tentative sort of connection, realizing that their outward differences mask some life experiences and personality quirks that make them more alike than they realized. Of course, the more time they spend together, they more their chemistry heats up, and it’s only for so long that they can deny that they’re better off as lovers than as enemies (or even frenemies).

The Stand-Up Groomsman is lots of fun, with tons of cute flirting, silly gift-giving, and shedding of inhibitions and defense mechanisms. I was impressed with the author’s ability to peel back the outer layers of the characters to show us how they’ve ended up where they are. Vivian confused me for much of the story — why was she so closed off? Why did she seem so unable to make connections or get involved with other people? But eventually, we learn more about her childhood and her parents’ expectations of her, and it finally all clicks and makes sense.

Melvin himself is all sorts of adorable. He and Vivian are both bisexual, and their frank conversations about sexuality are very refreshing — I haven’t come across all that many contemporary romance tales with such positive bi representation. (Mel’s bi identity is one of the many pieces of himself that becomes fodder for his stand-up routines, and it’s both sweet and funny to see how he works it into his set).

As the title indicates, Mel is a stand-up comedian as well as being a comedic actor. We see his stand-up shows throughout the book, and while some bits are quite funny, this is actually one part of the novel that perhaps didn’t work all that well for me. Reading a stand-up routine as part of a book’s narrative is just not the same as seeing a stand-up performance — and without the personality and physical presence, I just didn’t feel like the comedy translated all that well to the printed page.

That’s really just a minor quibble. Overall, The Stand-Up Groomsman is silly, sweet, and romantic, with some sexytimes in the mix too. (In terms of just how sexy, I’d rank this one as somewhere between steamy and graphic on my non-scientific, inexact ratings scale — it’s detailed and shows everything, but doesn’t cross into downright overly anatomical descriptions, if that makes any sense.)

On Goodreads, The Stand-Up Groomsman is listed as Donut Fall In Love, #2 — and yes, it is a sequel, but if you’re interested in this book, no need to get too hung up on reading the first book first. The couple from the first book are the wedding couple in this one, but really, you can read The Stand-Up Groomsman as a stand-alone and it’ll work just fine. (That said, Donut Fall In Love is super enjoyable, so why not read both?)

I’d definitely recommend The Stand-Up Groomsman for anyone looking for a light, contemporary romance with unusual characters and a sense of whimsy. Really a fun read!

20Oct2022

Audiobook Review: Rules at the School by the Sea (Maggie Adair, #2) by Jenny Colgan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Rules at the School by the Sea
Series: Maggie Adair / Little School by the Sea
Author: Jenny Colgan
Narrator: Jilly Bond
Publisher: Avon
Publication date: Originally published 2010; reissued 2022
Print length: 288 pages
Audio length: 7 hours, 32 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

It’s summer, but school is in session in the delightful second book of New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan’s utterly charming School by the Sea series, set at a girls’ boarding school in Cornwall.

For the second year at Downey House, it’s getting harder and harder to stick to the rules . . .

Maggie Adair’s first year as a teacher at Downey House was a surprising success. After making the leap from an inner-city school in Glasgow, she’s learned to appreciate the mellower pace of the girls’ boarding school by the sea.

Now engaged to her longtime boyfriend, sweet and steady Stan, Maggie’s just got to stop thinking about David McDonald, her colleague at the boys’ school down the road. Well, hasn’t she? Can Maggie take a leaf out of the Well Behaved Teacher’s exercise book and stick to her plan for a small but elegant wedding and settled life of matrimony?

Even as Maggie tries to stay within the lines, rules are being broken all around her. Maggie’s boss, headmistress Veronica Deveral, has more to lose than anyone. When Daniel Stapleton joins the faculty, Veronica finds herself forced to confront a scandalous secret she thought she’d carefully buried forever. How long will she be able to keep her past under wraps?

What does a new year of classes, rules, and camaraderie hold for the students and faculty at Downey House?

After listening to the first book in the Little School series, Welcome to the School by the Sea, I thought I’d wait a bit and enjoy the anticipation before listening to the second… but in the end, I just had to see what happens next!

In Rules at the School by the Sea, we start a new school year alongside teacher Maggie, headmistress Veronica, and the rambunctious group of girls — Simone, Fliss, and Alice — we got to know in the first book.

Maggie is much more settled into her life at Downey House. She’s more confident in her teaching abilities, and plans to grab her girls’ attention by focusing on romantic poetry from the World War I era during English lessons. Maggie and her long-time boyfriend Stan have recently become engaged, but Maggie seems to be in a bit of denial: She doesn’t really have any interest in wedding plans, and despite Stan’s urging, really doesn’t want to leave Downey House and look for a teaching job in Glasgow.

For Veronica, she’s both thrilled to have her biological son teaching at the nearby boys’ school, but also worried about whether news of her having once given up a baby for adoption will create a scandal among her staff and the parents. Meanwhile, she and Daniel are cautiously beginning to get to know one another, but Veronica is finding it almost impossible to balance her growing love for her son and his family with her deeply ingrained need for privacy.

And the girls — well, what can we say about a bunch of 14 (almost 15) -year-old girls in all their glorious confusion of hormones and growing up and still being so very young in so many ways? A new girl, Zelda — the daughter of a US army officer temporarily stationed in the UK — shakes up the group of friends with her brashness and American approach to school, while Fliss and Alice fall out over a boy and Simone takes Zelda up on her offer of a total image makeover. There are arguments and rule-breaking and hilarity, and it’s quite fun to see the girls’ petty squabbles as well as their friendship and commitment to one another.

Rules is quite a lot of fun, capturing the excitement of the school year from the perspective of the students as well as that of the teachers. Overall, I quite enjoyed this 2nd book, but I did feel particularly frustrated by Maggie’s romance story line.

Maggie has been with Stan for ages and cares for him, but she’s so clearly in love with (and better suited for) David, the English teacher from the boys’ school. Maggie spends the entire book trying to convince herself that her crush on David is just a passing phase, and that she really does want to marry Stan — but it’s entirely obvious that she and Stan have grown apart and want very different things out of their lives. It seemed as though there were plenty of opportunities for Maggie to face the truth and take responsibility for breaking off the engagement with Stan, but each time, she backtracks and recommits, even though she isn’t actually happy.

I know this back-and-forth love triangle stuff is supposed to add drama and tension, but after a while, it just makes it seem as though Maggie is emotionally unaware, and that doesn’t feel true to her character. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger ending in the final chapter, but it does appear that Maggie has finally had an epiphany and is on the verge of taking action… and I hope that’s really the case! (This is why I’ll probably grab the 3rd book the very first second that I can — I need to know what happens next!!)

On a more serious note, the problematic focus on Simone’s weight from book #1 continues here. Again, there’s nothing wrong with Simone making an effort to adopt healthy eating habits if that’s what feels right to her, but the over-emphasis on being slim in order to gain popularity and attract boys leads to an eating disorder for another of the girls in the group. On the one hand, I’m glad that the darker aspects of this focus on dieting are shown, but there’s still something very uncomfortable about how much weight and appearance matter in the girls’ lives. (Perhaps this is an aftereffect of the fact that this book was originally published in 2010 — if it were written today, I’d hope that the fat-shaming and focus on a specific standard for acceptable bodies would be addressed or eliminated altogether).

My frustration with the romance and the weight/dieting storylines aside, I did find Rules a sweet, entertaining, engaging read. I love how the storyline bounces between the adults and students, and how we get to see each sides’ attitudes and perceptions about the other. The characters are all quite endearing — even the obnoxious spoiled girls have something going for them — and the story as a whole is just such a yummy treat in the way it presents a somewhat idealized yet still modern-day version of life at a lovely boarding school.

This is the 2nd book in a series that was originally published over 10 years ago under a pseudonym, now being reissued with spiffed-up covers, titles, and the actual author’s name! The third reissue, Lessons at the School by the Sea, will be released in March 2023 — although since I have a paperback of the original version, I may have to read it much sooner. (Apparently, I am terrible at waiting.)

The audiobook is very enjoyable — I really liked the narrator’s approach to voicing the different characters. She does a very good job of capturing their personalities, although I found her version of an American/Texan accent for Zelda incredibly grating and overdone. Otherwise, though, it’s a charming listening experience.

And finally, one lovely bit is that the audiobook ends with a collection of Maggie’s poems — the poetry she teaches her class over the course of the school year. It was a sweet treat to get to hear all of these after the main story had concluded, and even though pieces of some of these are included earlier in the story, it was lovely to get to listen to them in their entirety. (My favorite of these is Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou — see the full text here).

Another nice little bit at the end — after finishing the audiobook, I picked up my paperback edition and discovered that the final piece included is step-by-step instructions for some of the dances that the girls learn, including The Dashing White Sergeant, Strip the Willow, and Eightsome Reel. (I can’t actually visualize the dances from reading the instructions, but seeing these pages is motivating me to go look for dance videos online.)

Wrapping it all up…

I love when a first book’s promise is delivered on in the second book, and that’s definitely the case with Rules at the School by the Sea. There’s much still unresolved plot-wise, but it’s wonderful to see these likable characters continue to learn and grow, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for all of them!

7Oct2022

Audiobook Review: Welcome to the School by the Sea (Maggie Adair, #1) by Jenny Colgan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Welcome to the School by the Sea
Series: Maggie Adair / Little School by the Sea
Author: Jenny Colgan
Narrator: Jilly Bond
Publisher: Avon
Publication date: January 1, 2008 (reissued March 29, 2022)
Print length: 304 pages
Audio length: 7 hours, 54 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Library (audiobook)
Rating:

The first book of Jenny Colgan’s delightful new four-part series, set at a charming English boarding school on the sea.

Maggie went to the window and opened it wide, inhaling the lovely salt air off the sea. Why had she never lived by the sea before? Why had she always looked out on housing estates and not the little white hulls of trawlers bobbing off in the distance?

It’s gloriously sunny in Cornwall as the school year starts at the little boarding school by the sea. Maggie, the newest teacher at Downey House, is determined to make her mark. She’s delighted by her new teaching job, but will it come at the expense of her relationship with her safe, dependable boyfriend Stan?

Simone is excited and nervous: she’s won a scholarship to the prestigious boarding school and wants to make her parents proud. Forced to share a room with the glossy, posh girls of Downey House, she needs to find a friend, fast.

Fliss is furious. She’s never wanted to go to boarding school and hates being sent away from her home. As Simone tries desperately to fit in, Fliss tries desperately to get out.

Over the course of one year, friendships will bloom and lives will be changed forever. Life at the Little School by the Sea is never dull…

Jenny Colgan books are always a treat, and this one was an especially nice surprise! Originally published under the pseudonym Jane Beaton starting in 2008, the three books in this series were hard to find in the US, and I finally landed copies of the UK editions (titled Class, Rules, and Lessons) by ordering via EBay.

The series is now being reissued by Avon, with books 1 and 2 available, and #3 coming in early 2023. Although I’ve had my paperbacks for several years, seeing the new editions made me realize that it was finally time to give this series a try!

The books are set at an English boarding school, Downey House, located in a beautiful old manor house on the shores of Cornwall. While there are several point-of-view characters, our lead character is Maggie Adair, a young teacher from Glasgow who applies to Downey House on a whim. Maggie cares deeply about education and providing opportunities for youth, but she’s frustrated by her early years of teaching in an underfunded school where the headmaster doesn’t even bother learning new teachers’ names, since he’s sure they won’t last. Maggie spends her days on discipline and making sure her students are safe and have food, rather than being able to actually teach her beloved literature.

The job offer at Downey is a surprise to Maggie, as well as to her long-term boyfriend Stan, a good-natured guy who just wants life to continue as it’s been, with pub quizzes and a non-changing status quo. But Maggie sees Downey as an opportunity to truly stretch herself and grow as a teacher, and hopes to one day bring what she’s learned there back to Glasgow and its lackluster schools.

Downey House is run by the stern but impressive headmistress Veronica Deveral, who has secrets of her own. It’s an all-girls school, with a partner boys’ school just down the road. Students enter at age 13 and continue on for six years. Most are from hyper-privileged families, with money (oodles of it), fancy homes and vacations, and the clear impression that the world is theirs. Not all, though — there are the occasional scholarship students, and one of these is Simone (originally with the last name Kardashian, but changed for the new editions to Pribetich).

Simone is from a working-class Armenian-British family, a brilliant girl who’s shy and insecure after years of bullying in her local school. Downey is a chance for her to shine, but even there, she’s ostracized by her classmates from day one because of her looks, her background, and her embarassing family.

Then there’s Fliss, the younger daughter of a very popular older student (she’s a prefect!), who absolutely doesn’t want to leave her friends back home and go to a stupid posh school. Fliss is determined to get kicked out, so she breaks rules, has a nasty attitude, and teams up with one of the worst girls there to cause trouble and act up.

Maggie has a hard time fitting in at first, and the girls are obnoxious as hell about her Scottish accent. Still, she’s clearly a gifted teacher, if a bit headstrong, and begins to make a difference, and she finds a friend in the glamorous French teacher (who smokes contraband cigarettes out the window) and the dashing English teacher from the boys’ school.

Jenny Colgan writes in her author’s note that she grew up loving boarding school books, but not being able to find any for grown-ups, she decided to write some! Reading this book, it occurs to me that everything I know about English boarding schools basically comes from Harry Potter! I mean, prior to HP, I’d never heard of school houses or prefects or any of the other terms and concepts of this type of school — but reading Welcome to the School by the Sea, I had fun seeing how pieces I assumed were Hogwarts-specific are actually just elements of a boarding school (sans magic).

At Downey, the girls are divided into four houses (Wessex, Plantagenet, York, and Tudor), and live in house dorms with their classmates. There are school uniforms, mandatory sports sessions, classes and exams, and annoying teachers to gossip about. There are also pranks, holidays, performances, and competitions, as you’d expect in this kind of story.

I really enjoyed the interplay between the characters, and appreciated that the characters we spend the most time with (Maggie, Veronica, Fliss, and Simone) are each given well-developed backstories and their own sets of challenges and adventures.

Maggie’s romantic life quickly develops into a love triangle. Stan is not supportive of her new position and gives her a very hard time about it for most of the book. He’s a lovable doofus, and Maggie has been with him since they were teens — but clearly, he’s not the right guy for her. Underneath his mocking and lack of support, he does truly care for Maggie, but even though they stay together, we know this won’t last. Meanwhile, David from the boys’ school is surprising, fun, and very much in tune with Maggie in terms of dedication to education, and they seem to work. The triangle is left hanging by the end of the book, but it seems pretty obvious that the Maggie/David pairing is end-game for this series.

A few bits seem dated, or perhaps don’t quite fit with current sensitivities. For me, the most annoying was the emphasis on Simone’s weight. When she arrives at Downey, she’s quite heavy. It’s clear that she’s been overindulged with sweets by her doting mother, and due to the bullying she grew up with, has found refuge in food and has always tried to avoid further ridicule by shying away from physical activity. That’s all fine, as far as backstory goes, but she continues to be referred to as chubby or fat throughout the book, and after a while, it starts to feel like too much. The fact is, at Downey, she discovers that she’s a gifted field hockey goalie and starts to eat a healthier diet away from her mother’s influence, so whether or not she’s still plus-sized, she’s definitely getting healthy, and that should be applauded.

Other than that, there’s some mean girl business that’s a bit too obvious, but I was happy to see unexpected friendships formed by the end of the first year, and assume we’ll see these characters and their relationships continue to grow in the next books.

The audiobook is quite fun to listen to (although the audiobook uses Simone’s original last name, so it’s a little inconsistent when compared to print editions). At the start, I found the audiobook hard to follow, as we’re introduced to so many characters right away, each with their own POV sections. After a while, it becomes clearer, and I appreciated the narrator’s ability to give the various characters their own distinct voices.

Overall, this is a fun, engaging listen, and I can’t wait for more! Book #2 (Rules at the School by the Sea) is now available, so I’m already in the queue for it at the library, and I hope to listen to the 3rd as soon as it’s released. As for additional books, the synopsis (above) refers to this as a four-book series, although in the author’s notes, she mentions intending to write six books… but as of this moment, I don’t see anything specific online about books beyond the current three.

If you’ve visited my blog over the past few years, you may have noticed that I’m a Jenny Colgan fan. It’s true!! Her books are sweet, good-humored, and full of engaging, funny characters, and she excels at building a fictional community around key lovable, memorable characters. I can’t get enough, and I’m always excited for her new releases. Bring on Rules… and keep ’em coming!

5Oct2022

Shelf Control #337: Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Domestic Violets
Author: Matthew Norman
Published: 2011
Length: 329 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned thirty-five, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day.

The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords, his pretentious archnemesis Gregory, and a hopeless, completely inappropriate crush on his favorite coworker. Oh . . . and his dog, according to the vet, is suffering from acute anxiety.

Tom’s life is crushing his soul, but he’s decided to do something about it. (Really.) Domestic Violets is the brilliant and beguiling story of a man finally taking control of his own happiness—even if it means making a complete idiot of himself along the way.

How and when I got it:

I received this book as a gift, as part of a book group book swap several years ago.

Why I want to read it:

My book group used to do book exchanges once or twice a year, where we’d draw random names and then send that person a few gently used books that we hoped they’d enjoy. I received a copy of Domestic Violets as part of package that included a few other paperbacks — honestly, I don’t remember which other books came with this one, but I do know that I’ve yet to crack this one open!

I don’t know that I would have chosen Domestic Violets on my own — I’m not as drawn to stories about adults taking a shot at adulting as I am to other genres and story tropes.

This book has an average rating of 3.86 on Goodreads, and I see some very positive reviews from people whose tastes are usually in line with mine, so that’s a good sign. Plus, my book group friends all are avid readers with wide-ranging interests, and I know that if one of them thought this book was good enough to recommend, then it’s probably worth the time to read.

I’m feeling pretty on the fence, though — I’ve had this books for years now, and haven’t yet felt the urge to pick it up and get started. I’d love to hear other readers’ opinions!

What do you think? Would you read this book? And if you’ve read it, do you recommend it?

Please share your thoughts!

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