The Summer of Yes

Finished September 2

The Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh

This is a great summer novel, perfect for vacation reading. The main character is Kelsey Worthington. One day, on her way to work, after picking up her boss's coffee for a favour, she is hit by a car that jumped the curb. The next thing she knows is waking up in a hospital bed. She is lucky to not have more serious injuries than she does, and she begins to reconsider some of her life choices. 

When the other bed in her room is taken by legendary businesswoman Georgina Tate, she thinks of it as an opportunity. Not necessarily to further her career in publishing, but to get her out of her rut. 

As the women exchange advice, Georgina finds herself swept along in Kelsey's plans to have a summer of saying yes to opportunities. 

One of her first steps once she is out of the hospital is to reengage with her best friend, and then to take a leave of absence from her job to work on her own writing dreams. 

Georgina has focused her life on her business, leaving little room for the family that moved away from her years ago. Now that she is facing health issues, she too is thinking about her life and what she gave up in her quest for business success. 

This is a tale of second chances, risk-taking, and being open to what life offers you. A book that is full of emotions. 

A Short Walk Through a Wide World

Finished July 9

A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke

This fantasy adventure book follows French native Aubry Tourvel, as she is forced to leave her home in Paris at the age of nine and keep moving. At nine she finds a puzzle ball that seems attracted to her after a neighbour passes away. She and her older sisters make a wish at an unusual well they find near them, but she can't bear to give up the ball. Soon after, she begins to bleed and convulse. Her parents take her to the doctor, but her symptoms disappear on the way there, only to reappear as she nears home again. She flees, and her family follows at first, but soon her father and sisters return home, and her and her mother keep moving. The strange malady will only let her rest a few days in one place before reappearing. 

When Aubry realizes that her situation has put a strain on family finances, she determines to go alone and leaves her mother in the night, gradually learning skills to survive. 

When we first meet her she is in her forties and in a village in Siam when her malady hits. An New Zealand family travelling by riverboat rescue her and she tells her story to them, and so also to the reader. We also see her thoughts as she chooses what to leave out along the way, the things that are truly difficult or shocking, but we see how she makes her way and also the secret doors that appear when she most needs them. 

Aubry has travelled through deserts, across mountains, and around the world more than once. When she finds herself up against severe weather, or other dire circumstances, a door will be there, in the middle of nowhere, a door that she can open and find herself in a vast underground library. She is always drawn in by the books there, books that are told in pictures, stories from every time and place, about every subject. These stories add to her knowledge and help her understand the world she must navigate through. It is a life that is lonely at times, but one that also opens her to new friendships, new languages, and new experiences. 

This is a story of adventure, of courage and resilience, of risks and rewards, unexpected friendships, and even love along the way. 

I found this book thoroughly engaging and hard to put down. This is a debut novel that is a definite winner. 

Together We Will Go

Finished August 6

Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski

This is a road trip novel with a twist. Mark Antonelli is a man who has tried to make a living as a writer and has been unable to do so. After the last rejection, he decides to use his savings to buy a used tour bus and do a road trip from his home in Florida across the United States, picking up passengers as he goes along, and ending up in San Francisco where they will find a cliff at sunset and drive over. He place an ad online for a short period and gets numerous responses and then removes the ad in case someone tries to trace it. 

He hires a driver, Dylan, who is ex-military, and while he is aware of the plan, does not want to die himself, and won't be taking the final drive. Mark has set up a system on board the bus that people can log into and tell their stories. There is a cloud backup. This is part of the plan, The participants will sign a form giving the rights to their stories, and after the end of the trip the texts will be automatically put on to the public for greater understanding of how people struggle with different issues.

The story is told through these diary-like entries that people make, including some that are voice-to-text, and through emails and texts exchanged between the participants and with a few people not part of this trip. This means that we see both interactions between the characters as well as their pasts that led them to this choice, and their thoughts that they record. 

The characters that join the bus make their choice for a wide variety of reasons, from chronic pain, medical issues that they haven't been able to afford to resolve (because this is the U.S. where healthcare isn't a given), addictions, mental health issues, social issues like being ostracized and bullied, and guilt over past actions. All of the characters feel their issues are significant enough that they don't want to go on, they don't want to continue the struggle, and being aware of their thought processes is quite eye-opening. 

As they go along, they interact with the outside world, and sometimes that has consequences that they haven't prepared themselves for. 

This is a moving story with an unexpected ending. And yes, that cat on the cover does have a meaning.

The Cow Said Boo!

Finished September 30

The Cow Said Boo! by Lana Button, illustrated by Alice Carter

This delightful tale is perfect for coming up to Hallowe'en. The book begins with the cow hanging out her laundry while dealing with a head cold. Instead of saying "Moo!", it sounds like she is saying "Boo!", so when she stumbles into the clothesline and gets a sheet caught around her, she ends up scaring all her other farm animal friends by looking and sounding like a very large and scary ghost.

As often happens when people are scared and then find out that the thing that scared them wasn't really scary, after their fear ends, at first they get a little angry.

But that night, a fox creeps onto the farm up to no good, and the cow is able to scare the fox as well, saving all her friends from this dangerous intruder. Her friends realize that not only had she saved them, she was ill, and so they rally together and look after her until she is well and can say "Moo!" again. However, as often happens when you spend time closely with someone who is sick without protection, the other animals have now caught her cold, and so the noises they normally make come out sounding odd as well. 

The back inside cover offers instructions on how to wash your hands (or hooves and paws!) properly to keep from getting or passing along a cold through touch.

The illustrations really bring the story to life and show the personalities of the animals. 

A fun and lighthearted read about a group of friends. 

The Ever Open Door

Finished November 29

The Ever Open Door by Julie Band

This debut novel was inspired by the author's own grandfather coming to Canada as a Barnado Homes orphan. Here the Barnado is a small but essential part of the plot. 

The main character here is Rachel Gilmore, oldest daughter of a shipowner in Liverpool in 1888. As the story begins, Rachel is at an event where her stepmother is being honoured. Because her stepmother is ill, Rachel is accepting the honour on her behalf and is escorted by her father. 

Rachel is a smart young woman and has been helping her stepmother with the household accounts as well as her father with his business accounts. 

Her stepmother is a trained midwife and has been working with the city's poor for years, and lately Rachel has been accompanying her on many of her visits. Now she has volunteered Rachel to help another agency with their books. Mrs Birt runs an agency that send orphaned children to Canada, and hopefully to a better future. 

Rachel's father's business is tight financially, and the investors and banks are applying pressure, and her father is considering all his options for the protection of the business, but when he is injured during the unloading of one of his ships, the family faces more immediate difficulties. 

Rachel is a girl who is smart and observant, and she notices the expressions and actions of the people around her. But she is also naive, despite her charitable activities and some of her choices get her into difficult situations. With her stepmother still not well, and her father's business tied up in legal situations, she tries to protect her younger sister Emily and herself. But sometimes she finds herself out of her depth and put into circumstances that place her and her reputation in danger.

I liked the spunk of the main character, and her resolve to do the right thing, even when it is a difficult one. She looks for opportunity and has ingenuity in her ideas. She is also a kind girl, raised to treat people of all classes with respect, and this serves her well. 

I also liked how the plot developed, slowly at first and then becoming a real page turner. I want to know more of Rachel's story to see where it leads. 

Hamnet

Finished October 6
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

This book imagines the life of William Shakespeare's family in a new way, focusing on his wife and children. The book jumps from 1596 when Hamnet died at the age of eleven back to 1580 with William's first meeting with his wife Agnes (her real name in history is sometimes Agnes and sometimes Anne), their courtship, marriage, and growing family.
In real history the cause of Hamnet's death isn't specified, but the plague was an active disease in this time, with the theatres that Shakespeare's plays among others played in closing for a few months in "plague season" throughout the country.
When William first met Agnes, he was tutoring Latin and still living with his father, John, a glover. Here, we see their courtship, not necessarily approved of by either family, but occurring in places where they wouldn't draw a lot of attention.
Agnes is a very interesting character, a woman whose mother died when she and her brother were both young, who spent a lot of time outdoors, who gained a knowledge of the use of herbs and plants from her mother and what her mother left behind, who had a kestrel and had bees. She is a strong personality and more than an equal to her husband. She also has a sixth sense. She knows the future in many cases, just through touching someone and once married starts running a natural healing business from her home. She senses her husband's challenges, particularly with his domineering and sometimes violent father, and works to push him to what she can sense his future will be, even if it causes issues within their relationship.
The young Hamnet is an exuberant boy, but very close to his twin sister Judith, and as Judith gets sick near the beginning of the book, he worries and tries to find help for her, a situation that is very traumatic for him. As I read, knowing that Hamnet would not survive this illness, I felt for Agnes and William and watched how they dealt with this loss.
This book won the Women's Prize for Fiction award earlier this year, a well-deserved honour.

Leave Me

Finished July 2
Leave Me by Gayle Forman

Maribeth Klein has a busy life as a magazine editor in New York City. She is the mother of 4-year-old twins, and her husband also has a demanding career. So when she gets chest pains at her desk one day, she pops a couple of Tums and keeps doing all the things that she needs to do. But when they don't seem to be working and she's feeling worse she mentions it at her scheduled ob/gyn appointment. Her doctor sends her to the hospital, where she learns that she's been having a heart attack for the last few hours and needs a stent. During that procedure, things get worse, and she ends up having emergency bypass surgery.
After a week in the hospital, Maribeth is home, where her mother has come to help. Unfortunately, Maribeth's mother isn't particularly helpful, and everyone seems to expect her to just pick up where she left off, and seem annoyed when she isn't able to do that. Desperate at her situation, Maribeth listens to her inner self, and does what many women dream of, but few actually do, and leaves a note and runs away to be by herself.
She ends up doing a lot of thinking, about her life, about her beginnings, about what she wants. And she makes new friends, who like her for herself, and encourage her.
This is a story of a woman reaching her breaking point, and doing something positive for herself. It's about realizing that we all need to ask for help sometimes, and that's okay. This is a book that is also a wake-up call to treat yourself well, because as important as it is to help those you love, you can't do that if you don't ensure you're good first.

Vital Signs

Finished January 7
Vital Signs by Tessa McWatt
This short novel is written in first person by a man faced with his wife's sudden illness. Mike's wife Anna has begun to speak in apparent nonsense as a result of a brain aneurysm that could kill her at any moment. As the couple and their three adult children (Fred, a doctor; Charlotte, self-possessed and private; and Sasha, an eager to please dancer) deal with the reality of the illness and the treatment choices, Mike also deals with his guilt over an affair he had years before.
Mike is a commercial designer, specializing in logos, and he attempts to use such drawings to communicate with Anna. He struggles with the urge to confess his guilt while knowing that his motivations are selfish and ill-timed. This is a book about relationships and the secrets and confessions change it. It is interesting being inside Mike's head as he goes through this process and struggles with things.