Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, by Beth Hoffman

January 7, 201028 Comments

Finished 1-2-10, rating 5/5, fiction, pub. 2010

I stared at my hands, not knowing how to respond. I’d never heard of a holy man named after a llama, I’d never heard of a great gaping vagina, and I didn’t know a thing about the black boomerang of karma. All I knew for sure was this: I had been plunked into a strange, perfumed world that, as far as I could tell, seemed to be run entirely by women.

Chapter 8

Cecelia Honeycutt is a twelve-year-old Ohio girl who has grown up with a mentally ill mother and a mostly absent father. When her mother is killed in an accident CeeCee is shipped off to her great-aunt Tootie in Savannah, Georgia. Here, CeeCee is surrounded by wealth, beauty, and the constant love and support of Aunt Tootie and Oletta, the cook who is really a part of the family. CeeCee is still dealing with guilt and abandonment and grief, but she is also falling in love with where she is, the south.

Okay, first book of the year and the one I’ll be judging others by since I’m giving it 5 stars. This book made me cry and laugh and left me with a smile on my face, not something that happens very often. CeeCee was a charming girl who had led a hard life to date and my heart broke for her. I loved her and her mistakes were both funny and important, reminding me that she was still just a girl no matter how grown up she sometimes seemed.

The other main player in this story was Oletta. She was an important woman to CeeCee and CeeCee was just as important her. The friendship between the two was the glue that held this story together. I also loved all of the other kooky women CeeCee met and they each left an imprint on her heart and sense of well being. This book is a love affair with the south, especially southern women. I love that, although I’d like to note that us northerners are not all that bad and have our virtues too 😉

I highly recommend this one! Hoffman’s debut novel was simply wonderful. I received this for free from Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.

The Girl on Legare Street, by Karen White

December 17, 2009December 18, 200910 Comments

Finished 12-16-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2009

Book 2 in the Tradd Street series

“And?” I prompted.

“They found human remains inside.”

I didn’t respond. I was on my knees following the trail of salt, realizing too late that the grainy spills resembled footprints. I held my breath as if preparing to dive into water, and stopped when I saw that the trail of salt led to the back stairway.

“Jack?” I whispered. ” I think we have a problem.” And then I dropped my phone and started to scream.

Chapter 5

Melanie is a successful and attractive Charleston realtor who also has the uncanny gift of being able to interact with ghosts. She has recently reconciled with her recovering alcoholic father and when her mother, who has been absent from her life for 30 years, waltzes back into town she has enough. Her mother pulls strings with Melanie’s boss and she s forced to help her mother buy her childhood home, just a short walk to her own home. Melanie is uptight and plans every detail of her life and her mother and friend with sparks, Jack, do not fit into her plans.

The historical home that her mother bought has been haunted since her mother was a child and the spirit is gaining strength and hatred. The two must come to terms with each other. And Jack has started dating a woman who rankles Melanie and much of the book is spent with the silent treatment being used by both of them. But the puzzle of the past and the details of who this evil spirit may be brings them together, if only to solve the riddle of Melanie’s heritage.

As with the first book, I really enjoyed the ghostly elements of the story. These evil ones can do real damage! I enjoyed Melanie more in this one, but Jack less. I really thought he behaving stupidly, but maybe that’s not too far from reality. Melanie and Jack keep dancing around each other and a little of that can go a long way. And I confess that I really didn’t like the very end. The plot all comes together in a satisfactory way, but the addition of the last page or two was unnecessary.

I would recommend this book and the first one, even if you are not into ghosts, I’m certainly not and I think these are fun mysteries.

Stop by the TLC website and see who else has reviewed this book. I received this book from the tour for review.

You will choose 50 of the books I will read next year. If you help me you could win a $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble. Go here to vote. (Right now the top vote getter is A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving)

The Year of Pleasures, by Elizabeth Berg

November 25, 2009November 25, 200910 Comments

Finished audio 11-23-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2005

Betta Nolan is recently widowed and feeling alone in the world. With no family, her husband had been the center of her universe and now in her mid-fifties she is set to embark on an adventure. She sells her home in Boston and buys a large Victorian home in a small town outside of Chicago. She chose the town at random and bought the house on a whim and she has her weak moments where she thinks she has made a big mistake. Betta is still grieving and by making a few new friends and finding old ones she is able to start healing.

Betta’s heartbreak was touching and I felt for her as she tried to let go of her old life and forge ahead with new dreams. It was easy to put myself in her place. I was proud of her for taking her friend’s advice to purposefully do something everyday that makes you happy. We should all take that advice.

I really liked this book. I’ve seen people compare Berg’s books to sitting down with an old friend and I agree. There is a familiarity in her writing that draws me in. I felt that way about this one, but it was not without faults. A few of the storylines were skipped over at the end and I felt a bit cheated out of knowing what happened. So, while this wasn’t my favorite Berg novel I did enjoy it.

This was a library copy.

Killing Floor, by Lee Child

November 22, 200915 Comments

Finished 11-21-09, rating 4/5, mystery, pub. 1997

Jack Reacher series, book 1

They had come prepared. They’d known there was going to be a lot of blood. They’d brought overshoes. They must have brought overalls. Like the nylon bodysuits they wear in the slaughterhouse. On the killing floor.

Chapter 12

Jack Reacher is an ex-military cop who is roaming the United States, seeing the country he barely knows after a lifetime (36 years) spent on military bases around the world. A random memory of a story that his brother told him makes him step off the Greyhound bus and walk 14 miles to the small, pristine town of Margrave, Georgia. As he is having breakfast at the diner he is arrested for the murder of two bodies found while he was on the road. And this is where the fun begins.

Jack has an alibi, but that will not save him from dangerous time in prison or from people trying to frame him. He does get some help from new friends, but he will have to rely on his own considerable skills to get him out of this mess. And Jack is more than able to take care of himself.

I love graphic, gritty, and grisly mysteries. I wouldn’t want to read a steady diet of them, but occasionally that’s all that will fit the bill. This one fits all of those descriptors and a few more. It is an amazing debut novel from Lee Child, it even won a few mystery awards when it was first published.

I really liked this book and it can be read as a stand-alone novel. There is nothing left hanging that will make you finish the series unless you need more of Jack Reacher. And for me, Jack is not a guy I fell in love with. He’s a hard man and while some of the book may have had too much detail, there was too little time spent addressing Jack’s sense of right and wrong. So, I was left feeling a little uneasy about him.

I liked this book and if you like the Jason Bourne type character then I think you will like this one. I will read the next in the series to see the growth of Child and Reacher from book one to book two.

This was a library book.

The House on Tradd Street, by Karen White

November 19, 200913 Comments

Finished 11-10-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2009

I recalled that when I was a child, before I’d learned to ignore such things, if I were paying very close attention, I could hear the murmur of very low voices all the time as if someone had left a radio on in a distant room. But tonight all I heard was silence, and the pressing thought inside my skull. The photo album.

I put on my robe and slippers and headed toward the guest bedroom, turning on every light as I went. Regardless of how many times I saw them, it was always easier to see dead people when the lights were on.

Chapter 11

Melanie Middleton is a very successful real estate agent in Charleston, an expert at selling historical homes while having no love for them at all. When she visits a new client one day and becomes the owner of his historical house a few days later due to his death, she is not happy. She is forced to live in the house for a year and is given an allowance to restore it. Only she is not the only one in the house. The spirits who stay there both fight her and push her into solving a generations old mystery.

Her best friend Sophie and estranged father are both on board to help, as well as a good-looking true crime author working on his next big story. Before long Melanie is forced to confront her past with her father and accept the help of a man she knows is silently grieving. And these ghosts are not the Casper kind. They can do real damage.

I really liked this book. Melanie is a feisty 39 year-old woman who has relied on no one to achieve success and I was rooting for her to comes to terms with her father and grow to love the house. The mystery of the missing diamonds was one that had me guessing til the end and the ghosts, while unnerving, added depth to the story.

White writes with great humor and attention to detail and I am looking forward to the next book with Melanie.

This was a library book.

Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding

November 12, 20098 Comments

Finished 10-31-09, rating 3.5/5, fiction, pub. 1996

completely exhausted by entire day of date-preparation. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer–there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed.

Sunday 15 January

Bridget is a single thirty-something Londoner in a dead-end job who is shagging her boss. This is her diary of a year that details her weight, alcohol intake, cigarettes smoked and is an irreverent look at a woman not sure who she is or what she wants. Well, besides shagging her boss. She’s barely able to run her own life. let alone those of her parents, who are splitting up. Bridget is helpless, funny, and charming.

I was shocked to realize as I finished this book that I actually preferred the movie. Granted it is a favorite of mine, so expectations were high, but I really thought the movie was more fun and more romantic. The book had a harder edge and while I usually like that, the movie had already won me over. The mother in this movie was horrible and I was surprised that the movie did not really include the character of Tom, who I really liked.

This book was good and I liked it. Bridget is a character was easy to fall in love with and hard to forget. I think I’m going to watch the movie tonight and relive the laughs. Look for my review of the movie tomorrow.

This was from my personal library.

The Divorce Party, by Laura Dave

October 22, 200911 Comments

Finished audio 10-22-09, rating 4.5/5, fiction, pub. 2008

Narrated by Susan Ericksen

If you knew that your marriage would end in a divorce party 35 years later, would you still go through with it? What’s the distance between staying and walking away? Gwyn and Thomas are part of the Hampton elite, rich, beautiful, two kids, grandchild on the way, and they are getting divorced because Thomas has found Buddhism. Or is this true?

Their son, Nate and his fiancee, Maggie begin the day of the divorce party at home in Brooklyn with secrets of their own that only get more complicated once they arrive in Long Island. Maggie is about to meet Nate’s parents for the first time at a party she can’t quite come to terms with. And Nate has kept his immense wealth from her. Why and is there more he’s not saying?

I love books and movies about marriages. The happy, the sad, the damaged. There is something so complicated about this relationship and no two are ever the same. Gwyn is facing the end of her marriage, but there is still something there, love or hope, or both. And Maggie is faced with a future husband who is willing to keep the most basic truths about himself a secret from her. The chapters alternated between the two women and I loved it. It was thoughtful and thought-provoking, meaningful and sad and I could not stop listening until it was done.

I have to be in the right mood for a book like this, but if you are I think you will really take something away. I was totally caught up in the lives of Gwyn and Maggie for 6 hours and I wouldn’t have missed a minute of the Divorce Party.

I checked this audio book out of the library.

The Appeal, by John Grisham

October 14, 20093 Comments

Finished 10-14-09, rating 3/5, fiction, pub.2007

“There are two fees. First, a million as a retainer. This is all properly reported. You officially become our client, and we provide consulting services in the area if government relations, a wonderfully vague term that covers just about anything. The second fee is seven million bucks, and we take it offshore. Some of this will be used to fund the campaign, but most will be preserved. Only the first fee goes on the books.”

Carl was nodding, understanding. “For eight million, I can buy myself a supreme court justice.”

Wes and Mary Grace Payton have been fighting a huge chemical company in the courts for years, trying to get justice for a small Mississippi town decimated by years of poisoning by Krane Chemical Corporation. Carl Trudeau doesn’t take this lawyers seriously and is shocked when the jury sides with the plaintiff for $42 million and decides that it is time to put his money to work and buy an election.

This story has a bit of courtroom drama and lots of the ugly side of politics. There was a clear contrast between the haves and the haves nots, the rich and the poor, the power players and the powerless, and it was easy to root for the Davids as they battled Goliath. Most states still elect state supreme court justices and this books shows how easily these elections can be bought. And it is only the voters who suffer from the manipulation.

This was a cynical and probably very accurate look at the election process we have in place and it will anger you. Many of you know that I have been working at the elections the past few years and I encourage everyone to vote, but more than that I want people to vote with knowledge. This book shines a spotlight on this problem. I could go on for a while about this, but that’s a whole different post.

I really liked the first half of the book with the environmental focus, thought the middle was slow with way too much detail on the campaign play-by-play, and really hated the end. If you are interested in politics or are a Grisham fan you may like this more than me. Although, I’m interested in politics and I didn’t love it.

This came from my own library.

The Taking, by Dean Koontz

October 8, 20098 Comments

Finished 10-8-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2004

Nevertheless, though this cross-section of humanity had shared the same experiences and had drawn the same conclusions – that their species was no longer the most intelligent on the planet and their dominion of Earth had been usurped – they could not come together to devise a mutually agreeable response to the threat. Four philosophies divided the occupants of the tavern into four camps.

Chapter 19

Molly and Neil live in a small mountain town, secluded from the big cities and vacations spots. One night it starts raining, only the rain is not rain and it is raining everywhere in the world at once. Molly and Neil decide they need to join with others for safety and head to town, where they find four groups of people. At the meeting place in the tavern they are cut off from the world, no television, internet, phones and there are those who think the world is ending and they plan to meet their maker drunk and happy, those who say to wait to talk to the invaders, those who want to stock up on gun power and take the fight to the occupiers, and those on the fence, undecided between three bad choices.

Molly, with some prodding by a dog named Virgil, decides she and Neil need to round up all the children and get them to safety, although they have no idea where that may be. The world is being consumed by a fungus and ghostlike entities that can walk though walls. As Molly and Neil head around town there is peril at every turn and the Earth’s final days seem like a foregone conclusion.

This book is a spooky nightmare full of despair and surprising faith. It is an alien film come to life on the page and seen through the eyes of a young woman trying to do the right thing even if she doesn’t know what that is. This book will scare you and it may depress you, but it will also make you think. I wish I could tell you about the unexpected ending, because there is a lot to discuss, but I can’t without ruining the book.

I really enjoyed it and it is perfect if you are in the mood for some spooky Halloween reading.

This book was from my personal library.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote

October 4, 200910 Comments

Finished 10-02-09, rating 4/5, fiction novella, pub. 1958

“I could hear Doc Golightly’s footsteps climbing the stairs. His head appeared above the banisters and Holly backed away from him, not as though she were frightened, but as though she were retreating into a shell of disappointment. Then he was standing in front of her, hangdog and shy. “Gosh, Lulamae,” he began, and hesitated, for Holly was gazing at him vacantly, as though she couldn’t place him. “Gee, honey,” he said, “don’t they feed you up here? You’re so skinny. Like when I first saw you. All wild around the eye.”

I love the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and wanted to read the novella it originated in. This is a short story that is edgy and provocative in a way the movie was not. There were many passages that were in the movie word for word, but oftentimes they were completely out of context. The movie was romantic and Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly was flawed and vulnerable, but not so with this amazing story.

Paul writes the story of his time spent with Holly Golightly years after they have seen each other for the last time, when he puts her on a plane to Brazil. He decides is finally time to document the refreshing Holly and his love for her. They lived in the same apartment and saw each other in passing for a while before their friendship blossomed. His position was to view her from afar for the most part as the friendship stopped and started often.

Holly Golightly was an independent woman who knew what she wanted and didn’t let things like facts get in the way. She was a phony, but a good phony. Truman Capote wrote a beautiful novel and even though it differed quite a bit from the movie, I loved it on its own merit. If you are a fan of the movie you really must read this. At around 100 pages it won’t take you long.

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Tag: fiction