I have loved reading and meeting authors for as long as I can remember! As an elementary teacher I integrated literature into every part of the core curriculum. Since my retirement, reading and flower gardening are my two favorite pastimes. I look forward to sharing my passion for reading by providing reviews of the books I've read. Perhaps you will join me as I explore new authors and genres!
Heather Webb’s Strangers in the Night paints a portrait of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s tumultuous relationship with bold, startling strokes layered with tender, revealing highlights. With massive amounts of resources and meticulous research Webb creates a biographical novel that reads like a diary, told alternately from Frank and Ava’s point of view. Readers cross countries with Ava, Frank usually following, from America, to England, Africa, and Spain. The years spanning the 1940’s to 1960’s cover their individual highs; marriages, movies, and enormous achievements, and lows; deaths of friends, divorces, and attempted suicides.
Heather Webb’s characters are portrayed in situations with intense emotional dialogue and interactions, including fights, breakups, and making up! It’s exhausting to imagine that Frank and Ava lived and loved for so many years riding on such a rollercoaster of feelings and events. Webb entwines the drastic swings in their relationship contrasting heartwarming strolls along the sidewalks of NYC at Christmas with loud, disturbing arguments in restaurants along with pages, and pages more of loving or volatile adventures; all of which involve copious amounts of alcohol.
Heather’s recounting of Frank and Ava describing each other is especially inciteful for readers. Frank on why he fell in love, “It was how she wore her beauty; her intelligence, wit, and generous laugh.” And Ava described Frank as “raucous and edgy but tender, passionate, loved music, books, and art.” Both really simple and tender at heart.
While strong, independent Ava’s career is blossoming Frank’s is faltering. Hollywood friends like Howard Hughes, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Grace Kelly have positive and negative impacts on their relationship and careers.
Frank and Ava made over sixty movies each, so plenty of viewing choices. After reading Strangers in the Night, do add Frank’s From Here to Eternity and Ava’s Mogambo to your watch list. Next choose a Frank Sinatra playlist to imagine Frank telling Ava one more time, “I love you, baby”.
Andrea Dunlop’s Women Are The Fiercest Creatures, set in Seattle, opens with a quick overview of Jake Sarnoff’s life as CEO of STRANGERS, a startup company on social media connecting people through common community engagement. Dunlop quickly engages readers with a “missing baby” scene and then flashes back 8 months to complete the backstory of Jake’s company, his college friend and cofounder, and the woman involved in helping to build the company. Dunlop creates suspense and anticipation as the women in Jake’s life deal with remorse over past and present decisions, conviction believing they’ve done the right thing, and coping with the outcomes. At the novel’s heart is making choices and proving that author, Andrea Dunlop is indeed correct, Women Are the Fiercest Creatures.
Book Summary
In this wildly addictive novel, three overlooked women take on the charming, manipulative tech CEO who wrote them out of his startup’s history.
Anna Sarnoff is still reeling from her quickie divorce from tech wunderkind Jake Sarnoff. Forced out of the company that she helped Jake build, Anna is trying to pick up the pieces of her life, navigating the waters of solo parenting their two teenage boys and adapting to her new role of ex-wife. To make things more complicated, Jake seems to want her back…and his persuasiveness tempts her to say yes.
Across town, the brilliant and striking Samanta Flores-Walsh, Jake’s college girlfriend, is busy raising her teenage daughter and running her thriving yoga studio. Although their relationship ended years ago, unanswered questions from their time together gnaw at her, and when she learns that Jake is planning to take his billion-dollar company public, she starts to wonder if perhaps it isn’t too late for justice.
Finally, there’s Jake’s much younger new wife, Jessica, who’s struggling to stay afloat as a new mom while her high-profile husband grows increasingly distant.
Set in the wealthy enclaves of Seattle’s tech elite, the lives of these three women grow entangled as long-held secrets are forced to the surface, threatening to destroy their families. Written with razor-sharp intelligence and heart, Women Are the Fiercest Creatures is a searing look at the complexities of family and the obstacles women navigate in every aspect of their existence.
Andrea Dunlop is the author of We Came Here to Forget, She Regrets Nothing, Losing the Light, and Broken Bay. She lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, where she works as a social media consultant.
The Lost English Girl by Julia Kelly is based on a family story handed down through her British mother’s side of the family. Set in Liverpool, England, on the brink of World War ll, Kelly examines the daily life and choices of Viv Byrne, Catholic, and Joshua Levinson, Jewish, in alternating points of view. Viv wants to escape her strict mother’s scrutiny and Joshua dreams of playing saxophone in a band, not becoming a tailor like his father.
At the emotional core of the novel readers are immersed in the social and religious situations facing Viv and Joshua. Each family plays a prominent role in how independent decisions impact others as Viv and Joshua deal with responsibility and duty. The internal and external conflict of Kelly’s characters builds as the war continues. Viv is dealing with separation, becoming a “bread winner” and finding her voice while Josh copes with being a foreigner in the U.S. and guilt related to his decisions.
Beginning September 1, 1939, approximately 1.5 million children were relocated to the English countryside for protection from bombing strikes. Known as Operation Pied Piper this political and historical account of parents sending their children away connects readers to Viv as she is faced with making gut wrenching decisions. Kelly explores the psychological impact of the evacuation on children through the lens of Catholic and Jewish families. She sites abandonment issues, including anger, rejection, disappointment, and the pains of family reunification after years of separation.
Through the war years Viv and Joshua grow and change in many ways readers will appreciate. Kelly introduces conflict between characters that creates emotional angst; specifically, a priest that Viv’s family relies on and actions of Viv’s sister, Kate. Their questionable choices are in direct contrast to Joshua’s father. Kelly’s depiction of Mr. Levinson’s empathy and extreme sensitivity to Viv and her feelings makes him an absolute role model and a bridge to current social and religious climates.
Through this harrowing story readers will feel empathy for families fleeing the Ukraine when Russia invaded in 2022. The Lost English Girl– a story of choices and how much the human spirit can withstand to find ways back to those we love.
An enchanting Cinderella story that keeps readers hoping for that ‘happily ever after.’ The setting for Jennifer Deibel’s The Maid of Ballymacool is Ireland, 1935. She has included all the necessary characters for a fairy tale set in the twentieth century. Main character, Brianna Kelly is the abandoned baby left on a doorstep with directions for her care. The stepmother role is played by rejected Maureen Magee, headmistress of the Ballymacool House and Boarding School for Girls; where baby Brianna is condemned to a lonely, rootless life of solitude. Brianna’s only friend is Finnuala, a wise, auld woman who lives in the woods where Brianna escapes to find peace and beauty; away from the beatings and abuse she receives from the dreaded Magee. From what seems like another world and yearning for a purposeful life, comes the handsome prince, kind, compassionate, book lover Michael Wray of nearby Castle Wray. Michael is sent to help discipline his obnoxious, ill-mannered cousin, Adeline, a boarder at Ballymacool; a well written bratty character to dislike. The only link to Brianna’s past is a chain with a pendant bordered with fleur de lis and hand carved letters on the back.
Jennifer Deibel deftly weaves mystery and romance into this tale along with lush descriptions of Castle Wray; its history, its grounds and Ballymacool’s aging, dreary interiors but peaceful surrounding woods. As the mystery unfolds between the House of Ballymacool, the guest cottages, and the woods, the characters slowly develop fresh hope, trust, and a need for forgiveness. Securing the bonds of family and the importance of finding one’s true identity are key themes that make The Maid of Ballymacool a delightful, fulfilling Cinderella story.
Jennifer Deibel is a middle school teacher and freelance writer. Her work has appeared on (in)courage, on The Better Mom, in Missions Mosaic Magazine, and others. With firsthand immersive experience abroad, Jennifer writes stories that help redefine home through the lens of culture, history, and family. After nearly a decade of living in Ireland and Austria, she now lives in Arizona.https://www.jenniferdeibel.com/
The lasting impact war and motherhood has had on the beloved girls of Cornwall is the focus of book #4 in Betty Walker’s Cornish Girls series. The Cornish girls are ‘doing their bit” at home in 1943 while sons, fathers, lovers, and friends have left to serve Britain during World War ll. Walker quickly engages readers with Lady Symmond’s announcement of her impending marriage and move to Scotland. From this point on readers are immersed in the lives of the Cornish girls; their angst, fears, worries, nightmares, and dreams for a future with their loved one at war. Some marry and become expectant mothers, some find purpose in caring for orphans or for wounded soldiers in the convalescent home. One is a mother with a son whose father is missing in action. Each of Betty Walker’s endearing mothers of Cornwall find hope in supporting one another. The mothers and the readers learn that “Love is what we fight for. That, and the next generation.” A heartwarming way to spend an afternoon with a cup of tea, while looking forward to Book #5: A Wedding for the Cornish Girls.
BOOK DESCRIPTION BY AVON :
Can the bonds of motherhood give them the strength they’ll need to get through the war?St. Ives, Spring 1943. After having given up her baby at seventeen, Sonya is inspired by her work at the orphanage to discover what happened to her daughter twenty-five years ago. Reunited, they struggle to bond whilst braving the war together. Nurse Lily has returned to St Ives to finish training as a midwife. But when old flame Tristan is brought in wounded, she realises she must put the past in the past to care for him, and perhaps then she’ll realise her own dreams of motherhood… And working at Tristan’s convalescent home, Mary longs for the romance she reads of in her novels. But her overprotective mother is making that hard for Mary at every turn…In times of war, the Cornish Girls can rely on one another to make it through. But can they lean on the bonds of motherhood for support too?
Brianna Kelly was abandoned at Ballymacool House and Boarding School as an infant. She has worked there since she was a wee girl and will likely die there. Despite a sense that she was made for something more, Brianna feels powerless to change her situation, so she consoles herself by exploring the Ballymacool grounds, looking for hidden treasures to add to the secret trove beneath the floorboards of her room.
When Michael Wray, the son of local gentry, is sent to Ballymacool to deal with his unruly cousin, he finds himself drawn to Brianna, immediately and inescapably. There is something about her that feels so . . . familiar. When Brianna finds a piece of silver in the woods, she commits to learning its origins, with the help of Michael. What they discover may change everything.
Fan favorite Jennifer Deibel invites you back to the Emerald Isle in the 1930s for this fresh take on the Cinderella story, complete with a tantalizing mystery, a budding romance, and a chance at redemption.
The Maid of Ballymacool Excerpt
The table hadn’t been set? Of course, it wouldn’t have been. That was always the last thing Brianna did before retiring for the night. Mary would have done it, she was sure, so Magee must have instructed her not to. Brianna stood in the corridor looking from the kitchen door back to the direction of the dining room, torn on whether or not to deliver the food first or go back and bring the dishes and food all at one time. A stirring of footsteps overhead caught her attention. The girls were lining up and would be marching down the stairs any moment.
She scurried back to the kitchen, set down her tray, and loaded a second one with plates, cutlery, teacups, and serviettes. She propped the door open and then lifted the food and settled that tray into the crook of her right arm. Then, she carefully finagled the tray of dishes onto her left arm. The weight of them both nearly toppled her, but she steadied herself and made for the servants’ quarters. Taking care to roll her feet smoothly from heel to toe so as not to jostle anything, she kept her gaze on the entryway at the end of the long corridor.
Suddenly, the back door slammed open, and Brianna was flung against the wall. By some miracle, she managed to hang on to the tray of dishes, but the food toppled onto the floor with a sickening splat.
“Oh, good gracious me. I beg your pardon.” Mister Wray cupped her elbow with his hand and inclined his head to look at her face. “Are ya alright?”
She puffed at a strand of hair that had fallen over her face. “I’m fine.” She puffed again, but instead of helping, it frayed the strands, some of which curled into her eye. She clamped them shut against the sting.
“Allow me.” Tender fingers brushed the hair from her face, gently grazing her forehead and temple. Goose bumps prickled her skin at his touch. “There. Can you see now?”
Brianna blinked hard and forced herself to meet his gaze while heat crept up her cheeks. “Aye, thank you.” She knelt down, setting the tray of dishes carefully on the floor, then started picking up the broken pieces of pottery.
“No, no, please let me.” He knelt beside her and started scooping handfuls of porridge and eggs back onto the fallen tray. “’Tis my fault,” he added. “I was rushing to not be late to breakfast and carelessly neglected to look where I was going.”
Brianna opened her mouth to respond, but Magee flew around the corner and shrieked. “What have you done now, you amadán?”
Brianna blanched at the word. Being called a fool stung, but no more so than Magee’s use of Irish. Irish Gaelic was only allowed in certain circumstances within the walls of Ballymacool. “As a center of decorum and propriety, we will speak only proper, civilized English,” the headmistress had said when one of the boarders deigned to converse in her first language. Magee’s slip into her native tongue belied just how furious she was.
“My apologies, marm,” Brianna said. “Twas an accident.”
Magee’s lips clamped into a thin line. She planted balled fists on her hips. “I’m growing quite weary of hearing that from you, Brianna. And to add insult to injury, you’ve forced Mister Wray to help you.” She turned her attention to the man. “Please, sir, you mustn’t help her. This is a problem of her own making.”
Mister Wray stood, hands held in front of him, porridge dripping from his fingers. He studied the headmistress for a moment before responding. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It was I who ran into Brianna in my haste to be on time for breakfast. Therefore, ’tis only right that I be responsible for cleaning this mess.”
Fire flashed behind Magee’s eyes, and she scowled at Brianna. She opened her mouth to retort but closed it again when she looked back at her guest. A guest who, Brianna noticed, somehow still managed to be blindingly handsome even while covered in porridge.
Jennifer Deibel is the author of A Dance in Donegal (winner of the Kipp Award for Historical Romance) and The Lady of Galway Manor (a Parable Group bestseller). Her work has appeared on (in)courage, on The Better Mom, in Missions Mosaic magazine, and in other publications. With firsthand immersive experience abroad, Jennifer writes stories that help redefine home through the lens of culture, history, and family. After nearly a decade of living in Ireland and Austria, she now lives in Arizona with her husband and their three children
The Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab- First Published in the Historical Novels Review Magazine, February 1, 2023-Issue #103
Once We Were Home is based on the true stories of hidden children, the youngest survivors of the Holocaust who eluded the Nazis by hiding in convents, orphanages, and other places. Jennifer Rosner places four hidden children into families who are living with prejudices true to the 1940’s. Her hidden children are Mira and her baby brother, Daniel, out of a Polish ghetto; Renata, moved to England without explanation by her mother to hide German bloodlines; and Roger, concealed in a Catholic monastery in France. The children must at times hide in plain sight, so Mira becomes Ana, and Daniel, Oskar. Rosner creates dialogue laced with candor and reality as Roger masks his confusion with endless questions, riddles, and jokes. She continues themes from her previous novel, The Yellow Bird Sings, by exploring themes of longing for connection and finding one’s roots.
By 1968, the paths of the young adults intersect in Israel. Rosner sinks readers into each of their adult worlds as they navigate the past; filled with distress and torment, overcoming tribulations and sorrow. Like Renata’s matryoshka dolls, nesting one inside the other, Rosner slowly unveils the familial connections and roots of the four hidden children. She also treats readers to the return of a beloved character from The Yellow Bird Sings.
Rosner’s novel reflects personal interviews and in-depth research of those involved in the redemption of Jewish children. She illuminates the complex and opposing political and religious viewpoints of the adults and organizations involved in the kidnapping, or considered by some to be reclaiming, ransoming, or redeeming of the children. Representing thousands of Jewish children saved, Rosner’s heart wrenching revelations of hidden children in Once We Were Home will persist in readers’ minds for seasons to come.
Jennifer Rosner is the author of the novels Once We Were Home and The Yellow Bird Sings, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award; the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard, about raising her deaf daughters in a hearing, speaking world; and a children’s book, The Mitten String, which is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifer’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Massachusetts Review,The Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family.
Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 1900, is the sultry setting for Diane C. McPhail’s novel, The Seamstress of New Orleans. Howard, a Chicago cotton broker has mysteriously disappeared, and Benton, a New Orleans gambler has fallen to his death from a train trestle. The deaths of these two men and their widowed wives, Alice, and Constance, are intertwined like the moss hanging from the sprawling oak trees, and as murky as the Mississippi River delta. Unraveling the details of these mysteries is complicated by the social demands and politicizing of Mardi Gras balls and accounts of clandestine visits to Storyville, notorious for prostitution and crime. McPhail bases her mystery around the first all-female Mardi Gras Krewe and the gangsters known as the Black Hand. The Mardi Gras revelers and the gangsters are participants in the grand affair of death and disappearance that only Alice and Constance can unmask. A Mardi Gras ball gown is slowly pieced together and as it nears completion, symbolizes the growing independence of Alice and Constance. Bonds of friendship and secrets of the heart are tested as the Mardi Gras festivities begin. This is a delectable, intriguing jaunt behind the beaded curtains and the iron gates of the famous New Orleans Garden District. For a turn of the century peek at the “Big Easy” read The Seamstress of New Orleans.
Diane C. McPhail is an acclaimed artist as well as an award-winning author. Diane is a member of the Historical Novel Society, at whose national conference she has presented, and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. A popular retreat leader and teacher, Diane keeps herself busy in Highlands, NC, with writing and painting, with her husband, Ray, and a fuzzy white dog called Pepper.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
“The year 1900 ushers in a new century and the promise of social change, and women rise together toward equality. Yet rules and restrictions remain, especially for women like Alice Butterworth, whose husband has abruptly disappeared. Desperate to make a living for herself and the child she carries, Alice leaves the bitter cold of Chicago far behind, offering sewing lessons at a New Orleans orphanage. Constance Halstead, a young widow reeling with shock under the threat of her late husband’s gambling debts, has thrown herself into charitable work. Meeting Alice at the orphanage, she offers lodging in exchange for Alice’s help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all‑female krewe of Mardi Gras. During Leap Years, women have the rare opportunity to take control in their interactions with men, and upend social convention. Piece by piece, the breathtaking gown takes shape, becoming a symbol of strength for both women, reflecting their progress toward greater independence. But Constance carries a burden that makes it impossible to feel truly free. Her husband, Benton, whose death remains a dangerous mystery, was deep in debt to the Black Hand, the vicious gangsters who controled New Orleans’ notorious Storyville district. Benton’s death has not satisfied them. And as the Mardi Gras festivities reach their fruition, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance even as it threatens the lives they’re building . ” Thanks to NetGalley for the book description and digital access.
A heart gripping account of the unthinkable choices men and women face when deciding to serve in the military to defend their country. An Enemy Like Me is a love story woven with soul searching dialogue and heartfelt confessions. This novel magnifies then analyzes the fear and misgivings that rise unexpectedly in private thoughts and dreams but are consciously pushed down to survive and function in daily living.
Teri M. Brown exhibits exquisite prose as she takes command of her characters’ development by sharing their feelings through wartime situations and realistic dialogue. Told in alternating points of view between Jacob, born of German immigrants in America, his wife Bonnie, and four year-old son, William, as they navigate World War ll and the post war years.
Teri M. Brown’s depiction of Jacob saying good-bye as he boards the train reporting for duty sums up the feelings of the novel perfectly: “Patriotism mingled with heartache. Loyalty mingled with selfishness.”
BOOK DESCRIPTION
How does a man show his love – for country, for heritage, for family – during a war that sets the three at odds? What sets in motion the necessity to choose one over the other? How will this choice change everything and everyone he loves?
Jacob Miller, a first-generation American, grew up in New Berlin, a small German immigrant town in Ohio where he endured the Great Depression, met his wife, and started a family. Though his early years were not easy, Jacob believes he is headed toward his ‘happily ever after’ until a friend is sent to an internment camp for enemy combatants, and the war lands resolutely on his doorstep.
In An Enemy Like Me, Teri M. Brown uses the backdrop of World War II to show the angst experienced by Jacob, his wife, and his four-year-old son as he leaves for and fights in a war he did not create. She explores the concepts of xenophobia, intrafamily dynamics, and the recognition that war is not won and lost by nations, but by ordinary men and women and the families who support them.
Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown came into this world with an imagination full of stories to tell. She now calls the North Carolina coast home, and the peaceful nature of the sea has been a great source of inspiration for her creativity.
Not letting 2020 get the best of her, Teri chose to go on an adventure that changed her outlook on life. She and her husband, Bruce, rode a tandem bicycle across the United States from Astoria, Oregon to Washington DC, successfully raising money for Toys for Tots. She learned she is stronger than she realized and capable of anything she sets her mind to.
Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others. https://www.terimbrown.com/bio.html
Alisha “had it all.” An expanding business, a family, a dream life in London. She thought she was happy, but she really, really wasn’t. She was stuck.
Hurtling towards forty during the pandemic Alisha Miranda feared turning into a middle-aged woman whose best years were behind her. As CEO of I.G. Advisors, she and her husband helped connect companies and foundations with charitable organizations, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and UN Women! So yes, Alisha was successful, but unsatisfied, riddled with guilt. During a much needed night out with her friends, Alisha admitted she wasn’t sure she was “living the dream.” What resulted was a conversation centered around becoming an intern in careers she had harbored in her dreams. All the “what ifs.” The year of 2020 became Alisha’s “what if year.”
The internships included a Broadway theater, a virtual fitness studio, a London art gallery, and a luxury hotel in Scotland. Learning life lessons along with Alisha during her four internships are treats to be treasured. Just a few: How to be uncomfortable in not being the expert in the room, how to do small tasks carefully and find joy in completing them, pay attention to intentionally seeking joy, look for right brained, creative activities, find confidence in applying skills in completely different fields. And many more!
Be entertained and enlightened. Read Alisha Miranda’s My What If Year and know: “It’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.”
The Grateful Reader 