Little Black Dress

Little Black Dress, by Susan McBride.

I never meant to resurrect the dress. I had intended for it to remain out of reach so that there would be no more meddling. But I awoke before dawn with tears in my eyes after another strange dream bout Anna, and I knew I had to find it.

From the press release:
"Antonia "Toni" Ashton has worked hard to build a thriving career and a committed relationship, but she realizes her life has gone off-track. Forced to return home to Blue Hills when her mother, Evie, suffers a massive stroke, Toni finds the old Victorian where she grew up as crammed full of secrets as it is with clutter. While taking on the task of getting her mother's hosue and affairs in order, Toni discovers a mysterious black dress, woven from spider's silk. Toni soon realizes that the dress is more than an old relic; it is enchanted with magic that allows the wearer to glimpse into the future. As she looks to her own future, Toni uncovers long-buried secrets of her family's past. Through the dress Toni reconnects with her mother Evie and learns of her long-lost aunt Anna, a reckless woman who disappeared fifty years ago on the eve of her wedding. Alternating between the voices of Toni and Evie, LITTLE BLACK DRESS is expertly intertwined with dark secrets, enlightening lessons, and unspoken love of a rich and complicated mother-daughter relationship."

This novel reminded me a lot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, in that the magic "little black dress" fit Evie, her sister Anna, and Toni (Antonia). Readers who are a fan of that series, as well as those who like supernatural books/movies like Practical Magic, will enjoy this book, as well as pretty much ANYBODY who enjoys a good read. The narration is done by Toni and Evie, in alternating chapters, even though Evie is in the hospital in a coma, which forces Toni to return to Blue Hills, a tiny little town about an hour from St. Louis where she lives and operates her business, Engagements by Antonia.

I really liked how Toni's chapters were told in the present, in which we learn of her relationship - a bit strained - with Evie, and Evie's chapters were told in the past, in which we learn of her rebellious sister Anna and exactly what happened surrounding the circumstances of Toni's birth. The little black dress, of course, is ever-present within the entire book, and it begs the question: if you had a dress or some sort of talisman that could tell the future, would you use it? Or would you stay away from it?

4.5 stars out of 5.

*Check back later this week for an interview with the author, Susan McBride.

*Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this book to review; the opinions listed, however, are of my own.

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The Year Everything Changed

The Year Everything Changed, by Georgia Bockoven.

Lucy took the paper. Fifteen years ago Jessie found his oldest daughter living in Fresno and called her. She'd refused to have anything to do with him. She told him she would get a restraining order if he ever tried to see her. His letters were returned unopened. After a year he stopped trying.

When they'd gone over the information the detective would need to find Jessie's four daughters, Lucy asked if Elizabeth was the only one he'd ever tried to contact. She simply couldn't believe the man she knew would abandon his children the way her father had abandoned her. Jessie had hesitated before answering, plainly upset by the question. She'd let it go then. Now she decided to try again.

Jessie Reed is dying, but before he goes, he wants to see his four daughters again. None of them know the other exist, and some of them don't even know that he is their biological father. He has his attorney, Lucy, find the girls, and then send them a ticket to Sacramento so that he can see them one last time. When the girls arrive, they are astonished to find that there are four of them, ranging in age from 48 (Elizabeth) to 23 or so (Christina), and Elizabeth, the woman that perhaps knew him for the longest as her father figure, storms out of the office. The other three meet him, which is fortuitous, because he dies shortly after.

Lucy is sneaky and adds an addendum to their father's will, which leaves each of the sisters $10 million each: they must meet up once a month, together, to listen to the tapes he made of his life story, before they are eligible to receive their inheritances. The women are all wary of this at first, but soon they find that they actually do like each other, and there is a lot about Jessie that none of them ever knew.

This book was interesting because I had never read a story like this before. There are definitely stories out there of children not knowing they were adopted, or not knowing they had a brother or sister, but I was interested in seeing how not one, but FOUR women would not know they had (half-)sisters out in the world. Bockoven develops each of these characters, as well as Jessie, over the course of the narrative, and their stories slowly begin to entwine with each other's.

I could definitely see this book being made into a movie, and when I was reading it I was picturing Tom Selleck in the role of Jessie.

The Year Everything Changed will be in bookstores this Tuesday, August 23rd. I will be interviewing Georgia Bockoven as well in the next few weeks, so watch this blog for that interview.

3.5 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this book to review. The opinions listed, however, are all mine.

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Witches of East End

Witches of East End, by Melissa de la Cruz.

There was something not quite right about the three dead birds on the beach that morning, the ones she had buried a little ways away in the sand, but Joanna could not put her finger on it just then. Was it a threat? Or a warning? And for what? And from whom?

I love de la Cruz's series Blue Bloods, so when I heard she had written a book about witches for adults, I decided to read it; little did I know that some of the Force family from Blue Bloods would make cameo appearances in it!

The Beauchamp women have not been allowed to practice magic for a very long time, and they live a relatively peaceful life in North Hampton, New York. When strange things start happening in town after they start using their magic again, however, they must find out who - or what - is causing them to happen, and fix it before North Hampton becomes like a 17th century Salem, MA situation.

I really liked this book and there's going to be a sequel, as the author's bio on the back cover says she is currently working on it. It's definitely more "adult" than her YA novels, but didn't have anything too "gratuitous" in it. The witches are likable characters, and the ending definitely sets up the second novel well.

You can check out the "trailer" for this novel below, from de la Cruz's website:

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The Kid

The Kid, by Sapphire.

I have not read Push by Sapphire, but I have seen the movie Precious on which it is based, and it was a grim, heartbreaking story but also interesting. A friend of mine read Push and said that it was very hard to get through, since Sapphire wrote it in the way that the main character, Precious, would have – with bad grammar and spelling -- and The Kid follows in that vein.

*Read the whole review at BlogHer.com here.

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My Name is Memory

My Name is Memory, by Ann Brashares.

When he first appeared at school there was a lot of commotion about him because he was extremely good-looking. He was tall and strong-boned and self-possessed, and his clothes were a little nicer than most other kids'. At first the coaches were sniffing around for him to play football because of his size, but he didn't pursue it. As it was a small town and a bored town and a hopeful town, kids talked and rumors started. The rumors were ennobling at first, but then he made some mistakes. He didn't show up at Melody Sanderson's Halloween party, even though she invited him personally in the hallway, and everyone saw it. He talked to Sonia Frye straight through the annual junior/senior picnic, even though she wan an untouchable freak to people like Melody. It was a delicate social ecosystem they lived in, and most people got scared off him by the first winter.

Except Lucy.

Ann Brashares is the author of the Traveling Pants series, as well as one or two other adult books, and this book was fascinating; it was about reincarnation, a subject that I find very interesting, and a boy named Daniel who has "The Memory" - he remembers every single one of his past lives. In most of his lives, he is destined to meet up with "Sophia," though she may have a different name in each life, and he has known her ever since the beginning. In this life, she takes the form of Lucy, a senior in high school, and he is the same age as her, so he moves to her town, once he finds her, and enrolls in her high school. They have a brief rendezvous at the end of her senior year, at a dance, and then she doesn't see him for another 2 or 3 years. At first she was a little freaked out, because he tells her all that he knows, but while she is a student at UVA in Charlottesville, she comes to term with it, and then seeks to find Daniel again.

The ending was really open-ended, and I really hope there is a sequel, since I want to find out what happens to these characters.

5 out of 5 stars if there's a sequel; 4 out of 5 stars if there is not.

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Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay.

As she looked at Eva and her mother, the girl wondered if her parents had been right to protect her from everything, if they had been right to keep disturbing, bad news away from her. If they had been right not to explain why so many things had changed for them since the beginning of the war. Like when Eva's husband never came back last year. He had disappeared. Where? Nobody would tell her. Nobody would explain. She hated being treated like a baby. She hated the voices being lowered when she entered the room.

If they had told her, if they had told her everything they knew, wouldn't that have made today easier?

I just saw a screening of the movie Sarah's Key (see my review here) and so I wanted to read the book to see how similar the movie was and also if it was better than the movie, which books usually are. Surprisingly, I actually ended up liking the book better than the movie. The last 20-50 pages or so of the book are very different than the events in the movie, although the ending is pretty much the same, and I felt that the movie version of Sarah herself was more interesting than the book version.

Sarah and her parents and brother Michel live in Paris, in 1942, and are Jews. They must wear yellow stars on their clothing to signify this. One day, they are all arrested by the police, in the Vel d' Hiv roundup, and Sarah tells her 4-year-old brother Michel to hide in the secret panel in their bedroom; she will come back later for them. They are taken to the Velodrome and later, to a work camp, and Sarah worries about Michel every day. Finally, the adults are separated from the children, to be sent to Auschwitz (though they don't know that at the time), and the guards say the children will be sent along a week afterwards. Sarah and her friend Rachel manage to escape, and they find a nice family in France that takes them in. She knows she must get back to Paris to save Michel, though, and so she and the family end up taking the train back there eventually.

The Sarah in the book was a lot less naive than the Sarah in the movie, but her naivete is what makes the movie better than the book. There is a particularly heartbreaking scene, when she returns to her old apartment in Paris to let Michel out of his hiding place, and the movie did this very well; it is perhaps one of the saddest scenes I have seen in a film as of late. The book did this well too, except that the Sarah character is a bit more practical, though it doesn't make that one scene any less saddening.

3 stars out of 5.

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Silver Girl

Silver Girl, by Elin Hilderbrand.

"I want to give you a place to rest your mind. I want to spend time with you. I'm not completely selfless, Meredith. I'm lonely, too. I've been lonely every hour of every day since Wolf died. Ashlyn has made herself a stranger to me. We don't speak. There was a misunderstanding at the funeral." Connie shook her head. She didn't want to think about that. "She has no idea how cruel she's being. She won't understand until she has children of her own."

"I'm sorry," Meredith said. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm not allowed to contact either of the boys because of the ongoing investigation. And although Freddy isn't dead, he might as well be."

There was symmetry in their situations, but Connie didn't want to contrast and compare to determine whose situation was worse.

Meredith Delinn is married to billionaire Freddy Delinn, who is currently under investigation for operating a Ponzi scheme. The Feds think that Meredith was in on it as well, and they are planning to raid her apartment; before they do, however, she scatters to the safety of Nantucket for the summer, where her childhood friend and recently widowed Connie has a house. Meredith is hurting because she isn't allowed to contact her sons, in case they may have something to do with the scheme as well, and Connie is still not over the death of her husband, Wolf, almost two years ago, and the fact that her only child, Ashlyn, isn't speaking to her. Together, they will navigate through the events of their summer on Nantucket, some of which may be surprising.

I have read a few of Elin Hilderbrand's books and they are always interesting; this one was no exception. The characters are all very "real" feeling and easy to relate to - you could imagine knowing them in the real world. Freddy Delinn could be any number of characters in our current world that has come under fire for such things, and as such made for an interesting situation. I liked that the setting was in Nantucket as well, where the author lives, and where Meredith tries to seclude herself from the prying press and the investors that lost everything in Freddy's company, Delinn Enterprises, since they didn't know exactly how he was making money for them.

4.5 stars out of 5.

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