This book was so enjoyable and cute for 70% of it. Graham and Zoey have an instant connection. Graham is a grumpy, Alaska native who runs a local diner, has a blind dog that he dresses up in outfits, and is a woodcarver in his spare time. Zoey is a tourist who has been saving up for this Alaska trip for years (so ~she’s not like other tourists~ in this typical rich area). Because of their instant connection, the story provides a lot of cute moments of them feeling like a couple from nearly the beginning. There’s also the cool backdrop of Alaska, the vacation romance element, and the small town vibe that I loved.

But, firstly, the book went on too long. It started to drag a bit. Then, there was repeating conflict. The big conflict here is that this is short term, since Zoey is a tourist. That’s all well and good, but the characters decide to “fight” about this over and over at the end which feels inconsistent with the rest of the story because they are not a tumultuous couple.

Also, Graham has a violent streak which was so unnecessary. I loved his grumpy personality with a heart of gold. But then, he has these moments of “alpha male” where he wants to punch any other guy that shows interest in Zoey, he punches a wall at one point, and actually ends up punching another male character for a reason that I think was really weak and unjustified. Zoey at one point does call him an “alphahole”, which is a romance community word for these type of toxic masculine characters, but beyond that the narrative doesn’t really address this behavior as bad. He even breaks the law a few times and it’s brushed off because “he’s a local and knows everyone.” It was an addition that felt unnecessary because his grumpy but loveable personality that was present for the majority of the book was just fine!

The combination of the book dragging on so that I lost some of the tension, along with the bad behavior dropped this from what would have been a 4 star down to a 3/3.5 star. This is going to be a series set in this tourist town, and I will likely continue as I did enjoy the setting and am intrigued about some of the side characters and their stories.

tropes:
– nicknames
– small town romance
– vacation romance: tourist + local

It is hard to describe the space that yawned open in the life of Camino Rios and Yahaira Rios after their father died in a flight crash. It is harder still to describe the truths he left behind, cutting swift and deep, like a knife: Camino and Yahaira are sisters who, for sixteen years, hadn’t known of each other’s existence. Their world too had tipped, and fallen, and the secrets their father held aloft over their heads are seized by gravity. Now it was just the two of them, and the slow, outgoing tide of aftermath.

Camino and Yahaira are both desperately pawing for the truth of their father as they might paw at beach sand in hopes of finding a shell, hunting in the rubble of his life for answers, and trying to find their way to each other across the Rubicon that divided their two worlds.

On the screen, beyond where she can see, I trace her chin with my finger. & for the first time I don’t just feel loss. I don’t feel just a big gaping hole at everything my father’s absence has swallowed. Look at what it’s spit out & offered. Look at who it’s given me.

There’s no doubt that Acevedo is one of the brightest literary talents around.

Tender, patient and raw as a wound, “Clap When You Land” burrows deep under its reader’s skin while at the same time nudging them into inhabiting the perspective of its characters. The author possesses a unique musicality for language—her writing buoys and soothes at once, and I wanted nothing more than to breathe the words in until they ached inside my chest, to nestle into the story’s steady warmth like a well-worn sweater. But for all the novel’s poetry and lyricism, Acevedo never forgets to tell a gripping tale.

There’s a chafed, bruised feeling to this book, and something in me splintered while reading it. “Clap When You Land” is a novel that explores the wrenching depths of what it feels like to lose something and be unable to move on, not only a literal person, but also a way of life. This is Cami and Yaya’s story of weary grief and visceral longing—the novel alternating between their voices—but you are in there too, and that makes their loss your loss, the ache your ache, the anger you anger, and the secrets their father had sealed away inside him like a box with another box inside it and another inside something you too must process and come to terms with yourself. All of it burgeoning within you with every turn of the page, welling up like tears. And that owes in huge part to the author’s deft, tender characterizations, and the way she artfully infuses her novel with great empathy—offering the reader so many questions, but not giving any direct or easy answers.

Yaya and Cami’s father had been the life of their small universe, and without him their world felt huge and empty, like a shipwreck hull. They loved him, and they mourned him, but they also wondered if they could ever really forgive him. In the fraying cobwebs of their memories, the side of their father that they saw was polished to such a high gloss of perfection—the loving, attentive father—but it is now vying with this newly revealed side of him—the terrible husband, the selfish man—and the two are clashing like swords. Does one side cancel out the other? Will Cami and Yaya ever be able to think of him and see only the word “father” and not the things he left behind?

This is the “gift and curse” both Yahaira and Camino are wrestling with throughout the story. Camino and Yahaira didn’t have to articulate the curious shape of their grief because they could see it mirrored in each other’s eyes. Cami, on the one hand, is grateful, but she can’t help but think a little bit secretly—and resentfully—in her heart that life for Yahaira has been as easy as pulling strings: Yahaira, after all, got to live with their father nine months a year in their New York apartment, while Cami is the one he left behind, fighting off the unwanted advances of an older neighbor who refused to take no for an answer. Yahaira, on the other hand, can see the sadness in Cami’s anger, the guardedness of grief, and she’s grappling with her own relationship to her mother, both of them filled with a sadness that they could not articulate without fracturing their relationship.

As for other thematic notes, the novel probes achingly at the question of identity, what it means to grow up in a world you felt only halfway inside of, and to question your claim to your parents’ roots when you’ve never set foot in their world. The novel cracks open all that wordless agony like an egg and leaks out the words: “Can you be from a place you have never been? You can find the island stamped all over me, but what would the island find if I was there? Can you claim a home that does not know you, much less claim you as its own?” The author also skillfully articulates how different tragedies are portrayed in the media, especially the ones that touch a marginalized community, and how those stories tend to be quickly robbed of their sharp edges, easily dismissed even while those communities are still wrestling with the loss.

That said, Acevedo tempers the sting of that harsh reality with the beauty of hope in a way that is deeply affecting. Yahaira and Camino’s feelings are twins, even if they are not, and the ravine between them gets smaller enough to close with every page. There’s also so much sapphic tenderness nestled into this story: Yahaira and Dre’s relationship filled me with so much warmth.

I tell her that when we land some people on the plane might clap. She turns to me with an eyebrow raised. I imagine it’s kind of giving thanks. Of all the ways it could end it ends not with us in the sky or the water, but together on solid earth safely grounded.

We all know Mary Kay Andrews is the Queen of summer reads. I read her books every May when they typically publish. I was super excited for Hello, Summer and let me just say this did NOT disappoint!

Conley is a big time reporter and is leaving her current company to start a bigger and better job. The day of her going away party her sister sends her an article that the company she’s transitioning to is going under and her current company already found her replacement. Not knowing where to go, she drives to her G’mama’s house in Florida to sort things out. Once she’s there she gets some pressure to help with the family’s local paper and it ends up being more than she bargained for.

Conley gets involved with a former high school flame as well as in the middle of a family political scandal. She is a witness at a scene of a crime and has to literally fight for her life. All the while she is trying to make amends with family she hasn’t visited in six years after she randomly shows up on their doorstep. Conley goes through about every emotion trying to really figure out what the important things are and she must learn to enjoy what’s right in front of her.

I loved this book so much and I think that it’s MKA’s best one yet. It is quite lengthy (500 pages) but I read it in under 2 days because I wanted to know what was going to happen with Conley and the rest of the characters. This is written in short chapters and they make you want to keep turning the pages as there were a few story lines going on at once. I felt the characters were relatable in some way or another. I also felt totally transported to the beach town Silver Bay and felt like a fly on the wall watching it all play out.

What I loved most about this book was it had everything I want in a book. It had characters I loved and characters I hated. It had a soft love story. It had a political family with a scandal. It has an investigation playing out. It has family drama, secrets and relationships that work through their problems. It had a strong female lead who figured out what she really wanted in life, not because anyone else told her what she should want. It had beautiful descriptions of the beach and sunsets. It just had everything I always look for in a beach read

Overall, this book was stellar. It may seem intimidating with the page count but don’t let that stop you. I promise it’s worth the read and I will definitely be recommending it to all during this summer season!

Thank you to St Martin’s Press, KCCPR and Tandem Literary for my ARC and finished copies of this book. Go pick this one up now!

The fourth book in Jasmine Guillory’s series focuses on Maddie’s mum Vivian Forest and her meeting a smart and handsome British man.

I like the way throughout the series the author created diverse characters that do not often get enough representation in romance books. This time she concentrates on slightly older protagonists – Vivian is 54 and has been divorced for more than three decades. She has also been working hard as a social worker in a busy hospital, raising her daughter as a single mother and taking care of her sister Jo who has had serious health probems. All this meant that she hasn’t had much time for travelling or holidays.

When Maddie Forest unexpectedly is invited to step in and substitute her mentor on a work trip to the UK which is scheduled around Christmastime, Maddie knows she can spend New Year with her boyfriend Theo, but Christmas…Christmas is for family, Christmas is for her mum. Luckily, Vivian is all in. The job is high profile as it involves the royal family and Ms Forest and Ms Forest get to spend a part of their holiday at a royal residence in the north of England. We do not see much of Maddie in this book as she is way too busy with clothes alterations and fittings, so Vivian has a lot of free time to explore the house and marvel at neverending cultural differences. Vivian’s meet cute, Malcolm Hudson has an important job- he is a private secretary of Her Majesty. He has been divorced for six years, and his private life very much centres around his sister and his 19 year old nephew Miles. Malcolm is charmed by Vivian’s smile and positive attitude: ‘She had such a strong and playful sense of self…She was neither demanding nor bashful; just friendly and inquisitive and smiling’. Christmas holidays and New Year are a special time when unusual things can happen and even the most careful and realistic people decide to give in to romance. Malcolm takes time to get to know Vivian and what is important to her, as much as it is possible in the short time they have together. I love the way Vivian vents her feelings on the subject of surprises and how they are often about what the other person wants, not the person they are surprising, and Malcolm takes it aboard to make sure she feels comfortable with the things he suggests.

The fairy-tale setting and royal guest appearances in the book might make you think that this romance is too far away from real life and difficult to relate to, but it isn’t the case. Vivian and Malcolm live thousands of kilometers away, but, ultimately, they will understand that the connection they have is special and worth the risk. You don’t have to be based in different countries to experience this feeling: No, we are too different…No, there is no way it will work… He/She is too set in his /her ways. His job/ college/family is too important for him…The logistics would be a nightmare… And another potentially beautiful relationship bites the dust before you’ve even given it a chance. Yes, our life experiences teach us that we have to be realistic and pragmatic, and avoid risks, and this is how we may end with a job that brings more money, but less joy and happiness, or refuse to apologise to a relative or a friend who might just have a different point of view, but be as right as we are. Vivian and Malcolm knew from the very beginning the risks, but, still, they decided to give it a try, and they certainly deserve their own happy ever after.

This was not a laugh out loud book for me, but Jasmine Guillory’s trademark sense of humour is still there, coupled with her impeccable writing style. If you loved her previous books, and the diversity of her characters and settings, you will definitely appreciate this slightly more mature romance. And if you love tea, scones, cucumber sandwiches and all things British, you will have even more reasons to enjoy this last instalment of Jasmine Guillory’s hugely successful Wedding series .

Thank you to Edelweiss and Berkley for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

I enjoyed reading THE WITCHES OF NEW YORK by Ami McKay and found it interesting, engaging, informative and well written. I liked the historical references, and was intrigued by the three main characters and Perdu, who looks like a raven, but is not a bird.
Adelaide Thom, claiming to be a mind reader, and Eleanor St. Clair, a keeper of spells, have a tea shop specializing in cures, potions, and palmistry and cater to Manhattan’s high society ladies. When Beatrice Dunn, a girl of sixteen and interested in magic, shows up at the tea shop, something happens!
Having enjoyed reading this book and The Birth House by Ami McKay, I wish to read The Virgin Cure also written by her.

A little tune that Eleanor’s mother used to sing at the onset of a thunderstorm,’a reminder of the dangers of getting caught in a tempest.’
‘Beware the oak, it draws the stroke. Avoid the ash, it prompts the flash. Creep under the thorn, it saves you from harm.’
Page 357

Some more of my favourite quotes from this book :-
“They’d lived there, just the two of them, in a house so large that even their shadows occasionally got lost.”
Page 13

‘May you rise with the sun, ready to make hay.
May the rains come at night to wash your cares away.
May you sleep with the angels sittin’ on your bed.
May you be an hour in Heaven a’fore the Devil knows you’re dead.’
Page 31

“Careful what you wish for, lest you receive it.”
Page 504

I am excited to add that I did get to meet Ami McKay and hear her read from this book! I think that everyone present enjoyed listening to her talk about her interest in witchcraft and extensive research in preparation to write this book. She welcomed and answered questions until there were no more.
As an aside, that same evening, I had the pleasure and surprise of a private encounter with Ami McKay. She is lovely!

This is the final installment in ‘Napier’s trilogy on one of the most famous non-Roman historical figures.
It starts off reasonably well enough with the siege of Viminacium, a legionary fortress though one which is nevertheless incredibly provincial in comparison to what it would have been like at the apogee of Roman might.
Napier’s sporadically used abilities for deep characterisation are at their most evidenced for the characters who feature predominantly in this part of the story – though a number of survivors do feature more or less throughout the rest of the book.
Sadly, that level of characterisation isn’t sustained through the rest of the book as it feels like the story is going through the motions to close the loop of the story rather than being driven by intrigue or passionate story-telling.

There are times when it actually becomes something of a slog just to keep going with the story and, I’ll be honest, if I didn’t already know that this was the end of the trilogy and the climax to the tale, I would quite easily have bailed midway through.
As it was, it was ultimately the final reckoning for both Aetius and Attila which kept me slogging through this book, which was at times more pompous and possibly even pretentious, certainly more so than I recall the author’s previous works being.

If I have to read one more case of a warrior quoting poetry to himself like some cheesy 50s MGM sword-and-sandals epic, I might just throw the book out the window. Not to mention that there is also a rather glaring error in that the characters refer to Constantinople as Byzantium, even though it had changed names almost a century earlier than the events in the book.

Overall, an initially appealing but gradually underwhelming, increasingly tepid affair which is also a relatively sound summary of the trilogy itself.

I first became aware of ‘Napier’ after reading his book on the Siege Of Malta in 1565 and, while there was still occasions where the pretense and poetry loving got a bit OTT, it was still a relatively rip roaring read. There’s relatively little, if any, of the same compulsion to this story. If I was being harsh, I could sum it up basically as a “by the numbers” story; average, standard fare. Kind of like the jacket potato of the historical fiction world.

If you’re genuinely interested in Attila the Hun, Aetius or the fall of the Roman empire, frankly a good non-fiction book would do a far better job of engaging with the reader than what’s on display here.

Distinctly average & bland.

In every way a leap up from the first.

For thirty pages I was uncertain; before page fifty I was won. Won by Attila, whom Napier has ambition to portray as a truly great man – and succeeds, for me. Won also by description of the steppe. The first had an element of fantasy; this doesn’t, but I was put in mind of fantasy whenever we journey over the steppe: description both very real in local detail and a little surreal, and just the sense of the unexplored, the strange (yet not fantastic) landscapes to be met with. Won, thirdly, by a philosophical vein in the book.

That’s largely from the person of Attila. Attila gave his first speech around page fifty, or more of a contemplation aloud over the campfire, for three pages. Near the end of the book we have a chapter called, ‘Attila Speaks, the Council Listens’ and that’s his fieriest speech, for seven pages. I was electrified by both. But it’s daring, isn’t it, it’s stretching the expectations of histfic – Attila speaks, for several pages, and when I tell you he quotes from a kindred spirit, he gives you a couple of proverbs from ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, you’re going to talk about trespasses against histfic, maybe. I happen to be an admirer of William Blake as of Attila, and I can see where their thoughts about the world might intersect. Does that make me the audience for this book?

There are two ways in which this is not the straightest of straight histfic. I can get bored with the straightest of the straight, so I’m happy with both of these: they either crank up my brain or they fire my imagination. I’ve told you one; the other has to do with history.

The plot of this second is, Attila unites the steppe. Black Huns, White Huns, the monstrous Kutrigur Huns, once-Huns who have settled and corrupted: by means fair or foul he has them declare a brotherhood, to be one army, Huns undistinguished, against the settled world. We visit the steppe from end to end; Attila has travel tales from his thirty years of exile, he has seen the Yellow River and the Great Wall, he has been to the Huns’ lost home in the Ordos. There you have it. Attila’s Huns keep a memory of China, and the name of China does not cross their lips – until Attila is bold enough, not only to remind them of their old humiliations, but to forge a nomad army and march, first against Rome and next, against the original enemy, the other empire that has done the Huns wrong. For Rome and China are two imperial peas in a pod, to nomad eyes, and Attila has speeches to tell you why.

Now, this can’t exactly be called historical. It draws on history before and after. I think he has drawn on Attila’s later distant cousin, Genghis – both for Attila’s life story, and for this grand conception of conquest east and west. These Huns can sing the Mongols’ origin legends, and the Turkic epic Manas. Of this I’m going to say, Napier widens history. He fits more history in. He has a time period, but he draws into that strands from before and after, because he wants to talk about historical issues – large ones. He wants to talk about the settled and the steppe, and to that end Attila, steppe spokesman, knows things he can’t have known, travels further than in any likelihood he did. As I say, this is fine by me, and makes for a fiction that comments on history.

There’s a Roman interlude, to keep us up to date with Rome and Constantinople. This wasn’t a trot-through, for me; I cared about the people we meet – Aetius and Athenais – and I’m glued to the page by his style. The scandal-sheet was a riot, as were the deviant adventures of Galla Placida’s daughter. Though the latter stopped being funny when she has a hideous forced abortion. Napier always has a heart for the unfortunate, and though awful things happen in this book, he writes about them with humanity. Only once or twice do I think his love of description runs away with him so that he glories in the porridge brains out the saucepan of the skull. With descriptive skills like his, I understand an ill-judged one or two.

Despite the subtitle, I bought this book expecting it to be more of a memoir than it actually is. I think Amy Tan’s main purpose in writing it was to set the record straight on a variety of topics, beginning with an inaccurate summary of her life that turned up in an edition of CliffsNotes. She does so in essays that directly address the points that need to be made, and also tosses in other writings that range from a college commencement address to an item she wrote for the newspaper when eight years old.

As such, it’s somewhat disjointed and uneven. Some parts appealed to me much more than others.

Early on, she provides some personal and family history, which includes plenty of elements readers will recognize from her fiction (a character who goes one day each year without speaking, for example, and most certainly the memorable voice of her mother). This is followed by a section in which she argues that readers ought not assume that her stories are autobiographical. (Maybe they aren’t, but reading between the lines in yet another section one can conclude that she sees a self-portrait in The Kitchen God’s Wife.) There’s also an eloquent rebuttal to the people in publishing and educational circles who insist on pidgeon-holing her as a representative of her ethnic group, gender, color, etc. and looking to her for politically correct lessons. That kind of writing, she feels (and I agree) amounts to propaganda, not literature. She says, “I write stories about life as I have misunderstood it. To be sure, it’s a Chinese-American life, but that’s the only one I’ve had so far.”

There are points at which it seems the lady protests too much. She mentions a journalist friend who says, “Any attention is valuable … If you receive any, you should be grateful.” I rather agree with that as well, because Tan’s path to literary success appears to have been unusually smooth. Better to be misunderstood by some harebrained people than completely ignored. This is not to suggest that she doesn’t deserve success; she emphatically does. But she too acknowledges that she has been lucky.

Her luck has not been only literary, since apparently she’s had more than her share of close brushes with death. For me, the final section is devastating. It describes a mysterious illness that overtook her and the frustratingly slow process of getting a diagnosis. Because of the story described in my own book, I recognized her discovery that most doctors and even professional medical societies are clueless when presented with something out of the ordinary. I recognized the cynical but helpful voices she found on Internet discussion boards, and her conclusion that, rare or not, this thing afflicts a heck of a lot of other people.

I found most of this book utterly fascinating. It sparked an interest in going back and rereading her novels. It reaffirmed an earlier impression that Amy Tan is someone I’d be glad to know (an impression that faded when I later visited her Facebook page). Most importantly, in discussing her life and what has been important to her, she shows how much of the joys and fears of this existence are common experiences