If The Shoe Fits

Finished June 11

If The Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy

This is the first book in a new series called Meant to Be. This is a romance novel that breaks a few norms. It is loosely based on the Cinderella story, but doesn't follow many of the expected lines. The main character here, Cindy Woods, is a plus-sized beauty. She has just finished her fashion degree at the Parsons School in New York City, specializing in shoe design. Cindy's mom, Ilene, died when she was a kid, and her father Simon remarried to a powerful media producer a few years later. Her stepmom, Erica, has two daughters just slightly older than Cindy, Anna and Drew, and although they ran in different groups in school, they treated each other in a friendly and respectful way. When Simon died suddenly in Cindy's senior year of high school, all three girls were hit hard as Simon was the homebody, the one that provided an anchor and this loss brought them closer. No evil stepsisters here. Anna and Drew are only 9 months apart in age, look like twins, and have begun a career as Instagram influencers. There are also three younger siblings, Mary, Gus, and Jack, triplets that were born through a surrogate planned before Simon's death and carried through after. 

Cindy thought she'd done her grieving at the time of her dad's death, but when her stepmother moved house last year, and all the accumulated possessions were gone through, Cindy found herself hit hard again. Her last year at Parsons wasn't as successful as she'd hoped, which is why she hasn't got plans now, other than to nanny the triplets until a more permanent solution is found. 

Even before Erica and Simon married, Cindy was a fan of one of the reality shows that Erica produced, Before Midnight, a bachelor-type show where a man was set up with multiple women and sent on dates, narrowing it down through the series to a woman that he would then marry. The new season is about to start production and when a couple of women drop out last minute, Anna, Drew, and Cindy get drafted in to take their places. For all of them, this will give some more media exposure, helpful to Anna and Drew in their Instagram influencer roles, and Cindy to highlight some of her fashion creations. Erica worries about the possibility that Cindy will attract negative attention, but Cindy isn't phased.

Cindy's best friend was her roommate at Parsons, Sierra, and she is already missing her even as she returns home to sort herself out and decide where her career lies. The two women talk often and the sudden decision to join the show means that they won't be able to connect for a few weeks. 

When Cindy discovers that the male lead on the show is a man she's met briefly before, things start to get real. 

I loved Cindy's character, she's witty and fun, and a caring person, but not one people can walk all over. She makes friends easily and bonds pretty quickly with some of the other women on the show. We see how, despite the rivalry that naturally exists, people make connections and work together on things. I don't watch reality television, or much of any television really, but this felt a lot more interesting when you learn some of the backstories to the characters that have signed up for the show. 

The writing pops and there is lots of humour and emotional connections with the plot. A fun read.

Bitter Orange

Finished June 9

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

Most of the action of this novel takes place at a country house in 1969, but the narrator is looking back on this time as she is dying some years later. Her name is Frances, and she is a woman out of sync with her times. She has lived with her mother until her mother died recently and has taken on work to catalogue the outbuildings and external elements of a country house for the American that recently purchased it. She is a large woman with no experience with men, other than her father who left the family for another woman when she was a child. 

She has developed an interest in architecture of the type she has been hired to describe and written articles, for free, for a small publication in the field, which is how her new employer discovered her.

When she arrives at the house where she will stay due to her tight financial situation, she finds a couple already there. The man in this twosome, Peter, is also working for the American, describing the house itself, and its contents. The woman is Cara, who seems to wild swings of emotion and who is very attached to Peter, although they are not married. Despite herself, Frances gets drawn into their strange relationship, and ends up caught in a situation that will change her life forever.

For me Frances was a victim of her upbringing, her parents' lack of good parenting, and her naivety. Cara is unwell, and prone to violent emotions and wild stories. Peter is both mercenary and weak. Frances just wants to have a friend. 

This is a sad story and I both felt for Frances and was annoyed at her acceptance of her situation. The story is very well written and I found myself caught up in it, both wanting to find out what happened and dismayed with the way things developed. 

The title related to a fruit tree found on the property, which had an abundance of ripe fruit, but it was not edible.

Who Rescued Who

Finished June 8

Who Rescued Who by Victoria Schade

Elizabeth Barnes is a coder and communications executive who has recently worked at a female-oriented tech company. She reacted with a poor joke when under pressure during an interview and was let go as a result. As she struggles to decide what to do now, she gets a call out of the blue from a uncle she didn't even know existed. Elizabeth's father died a few months ago, and he never told her that he had family back in England. He's also left her with one final task that she can do if she accepts her uncle's invitation.

As a city girl, Elizabeth isn't prepared for lift on a small rural farm, with no Internet access. But she finds that her uncle and aunt are very welcoming, and the backstory that her father never shared with her is one that is meaningful to her. As Elizabeth makes friends, discovers that she can have relationships with animals, and reconnects with art, she also finds that life is deeper than the hectic life she's been living lately. 

Elizabeth's discovery of an abandoned puppy has her making unexpected connections, and spending time with her artist uncle has her rediscovering her own artistic endeavours at a younger age. It doesn't hurt that there are some rather good looking and nice men around the village as well as a great coffee shop for her caffeine fix.

This is a book about a woman who's been lonely for a long time without realizing it until faced with the possibility of genuine connections. 

Very Nice

Finished June 6 

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky

This novel is set around a young writer, who had a successful first novel and is trying to find a way forward, one of his students, the student's family, and the writer's friends and acquaintances. 

The writer is Zahid Azzam, a man rebelling from his mother's expectations, dealing with the loss of his grandmother, struggling financially, and facing writer's block. Zahid has just finished a teaching contract at a university in New York City and, because he must return to India to see his dying grandmother, leaves his dog with one of his students temporarily. He has sublet his apartment, and made a foolish personal choice. When he returns to the U.S. sooner than anticipated, he must find somewhere to stay, try to overcome his writer's block to fulfill his new book contract, and consider his future.

His student, Rachel Klein, is young, nineteen, and has a summer job at a kid's day camp. She is staying at her childhood home in Connecticut with her mother Becca, whom her father left recently for a younger woman. Part of the reason she agreed to look after the dog was that the family dog of the same breed recently died.

Becca is a schoolteacher, so has the summer off. She is still grieving the loss of her dog, Poppy, and this new dog that her daughter has brought home, becomes a replacement for that dog in many ways. When Zahid arrives, Becca invites him to stay and a dynamic begins with these three characters. 

The supporting characters of Rachel's father, Zahid's subletter and her sister, and the brother of one of the children in Rachel's camp all have important roles in this plot as well.

This is a story of impulse and regret, of resentment and jealousy, of the ways in which people are focused on their own needs instead of those of the people around them. 

Heart of Palm

Finished June 5

Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith

This book takes place in a small town called Utina along the Intercoastal in Florida.The story is set around one family, the Bravo family. Years before, a chance encounter between Dean Bravo and Arla Bolton led to their marriage and four children. The Bravo family already had a reputation, but Arla was in love and couldn't be swayed by her parents class concerns. 

The story is set decades later, after a tragedy has come to the family and years after Dean has left. After he left Arla bought a restaurant and her son Frank manages it. Daughter Sofia cleans it to a shine every day before it opens, and still lives at home with her mother. Carson has a career in the financial services industry and lives not far away with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Bell, but things are going wrong in both his professional and personal life.

With developers suddenly interested in both the family home, Aberdeen, and the restaurant, the family must come together and decide what is the best decision for the future. 

There are many connections between the different characters, and different kinds of love. There is rivalry and guilt, and regret. There are dreams that have been set aside, and dreams lost forever. This novel really brings you into the intricacies of this family, and the small town that they are a part of. We see the back story of how they got to where they are, and some of the things that led to their decisions. The town is gentrifying, and things are changing, and the family must come to decisions both as a unit, and as individuals. 

I loved this story and how we gradually got to know the different members of the family, seeing how they felt and what their individual story was as well as how they fit into both their family and their community. 

The News Where You Are

Finished June 2

The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn

Set in England, this book follows a middle-aged man as he worries about his mom, tries to protect his father's legacy from disappearing, and tries to remember those whom it seems no one else is remembering. Frank Allcroft is a presenter for a program called Heart of England Report that does stories on local news for a large area of England. Frank has been in this role nearly twenty years, and was a reporter prior to that. His father was an architect of the mid-twentieth century, lots of concrete and streamlined shapes and as the book opens the second last of the buildings that he designed has been slated for destruction. Frank's dad died when he was only eleven, but their relationship wasn't a close one. Frank's mom is living in a retirement home and seems disengaged with life, and negative in attitude. 

Frank's eight-year-old daughter Mo, is a lively part of this book, trying to find ways to cheer her grandmother up, looking at things with a viewpoint Frank finds constantly surprising, and generally being a kid who cares about the world around her. 

Some of the stories at Frank's work are about people who died and weren't discovered right away. He has started keeping track of these forgotten people, going to their funerals, and trying to remember them in some way. He can't even really explain why he does it. He's made an acquaintance with a woman who worked in the coroner's office who tried to find next of kin for these people and arranged the clearing out of their belongings.

Frank's predecessor, a charismatic, somewhat self-centered man, named Phil, who had moved on to other shows, was killed a few months ago in a hit and run accident that remains unsolved. 

As we discover more about Frank and about Phil, we see how different they are and how the people that interacted with them both see them. 

One man who came up recently in the news, found dead on a park bench, was Michael Church, a man that Jo is trying to find family for. Frank recognizes Michael's face and works his memory to place how he knew him. Once he does that, he finds himself trying to find out more about Michael, following up various clues to this quiet man. 

I found this book fascinating, joining Frank in wanting to know more about Michael and hoping that his mother would find something that would pull her out of her mindset. It has you thinking about the legacies that people leave when they die, how others remember them, and the lives that they touch. 

French Dirt

Finished May 30

French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman

This book is about the time the author spent in a small village in southern France. It was a twelve month period, where he and his girlfriend rented a large stone house (owned by an American couple who had renovated what had previously been a silkworm nursery). He had planned for several months in advance to budget enough money to afford to do this, and they were watching their money carefully. 

At first, they walk around the village and surrounding area, and watch the people, and then they begin to reach out to their neighbours and ask questions and learn about things. 

Richard gets to know the man, Jules, who will help him make a garden of his own (the first he's ever had) when he trades his labour for firewood for the winter. The area is one of many vineyards, most of which get made into supermarket wine, and the wood he gets is mostly old vines, which suit the purpose admirably. His labour is in one of these vineyards, clearing out stones and other impediments to the vines with a group of local farmers. Richard spent his life in large American cities mostly in apartments where he didn't have an opportunity to garden, but he'd been interested since he was a child following his grandmother's gardener around when she visited his parents home near the ocean in the summer. He is in his forties when he has this experience, but it made a huge impact on his life. He changed the name of the village to protect the privacy of the villagers he became friends with over the year, many of whom he remains friends with still.

His Dutch girlfriend Igminia plays a minor role here, and it seems that their relationship didn't last much longer, but the focus of the book is on the village and the garden. He talks about the house, the village, the people that he met while living there, and the garden he created. You definitely get a good sense of the amount of work he put into the garden, visiting it twice daily and spending several hours there. He mostly borrowed the tools he needed, and he had to haul water from a nearby stream, and later, during the hottest part of the summer in August, had to borrow water storage containers and pump water into them from a river with the help of Jules. He asks for advice from his new friends, watches them garden, and works in local gardens as well. 

You can see the love his has for this activity and its results. I really enjoyed this book.

Little Snow Landscape

Finished May 26 

Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser, translated by Tom Whalen

This collection of short works by the Swiss writer Walser is organized in chronological order of writing. The first short piece, less than a page, is an ode to his home, and the last item is another longer nonfiction piece on his childhood in his hometown of Biel. In between there are both fiction and nonfiction pieces, some about travelling that he did on foot and by train in both his country and in Germany where he lived for many years. I think these were the ones I enjoyed most.

There are others that seem to be jottings of thoughts, such as "Hats" which looks at both headgear and words related to the German word for hat. 

Some of the fiction is more fantastical and he writes in first person, taking on different characters with unexpected meanderings. There are some references to class, such as servants and employers, workers doing tasks, and decisions made about activities due to financial constraints.

The title story is the enjoyment of venturing out for a walk on a morning after a fresh snow. It is a lovely piece. 

This is a nice book to dip into in those short periods of time waiting for someone or for an appointment.

Taking the Reins

Finished May 24

Taking the Reins by Katrina Abbott

This teen novel is the first in a series set at a high end boarding school (Rosewood) in the United States. The central character is Brooklyn Prescott, who has returned to the country after living in England for the last two years. Her father is involved in government security and the name she goes by is not her real one, a precaution arranged for her safety. 

She is a bit nervous about some of the celebrity-related and wealthy girls she'll be going to school with, but also eager to make a fresh start. She feels that she has been less outgoing and popular than she would prefer. She finds that even though it is an all girls' school, there is plenty of interaction with the nearby all boys' school which caters to a similar demographic. 

The school does has some quirks though, like the requirement to participate in the school through doing regular work at the school. When she finds that she has been assigned laundry work, and that her shift conflicts with the dressage club that she's been pining to join, she must try to find a way to make it work. 

There is lots of socializing here, and we hear more about that than the studies, and we also begin to see the hierarchy that has developed at both schools and the way that the students interact even outside of sanctioned times. 

With romance, a bit of suspense, and lots of action, this book is a quick read. 

June Reviews for the 14th Annual Canadian Reading Challenge

 Welcome to the spot to post your last month's reviews for this challenge. I'll be hosting the 15th annual challenge starting on July 1st. 

Please link to your review below.