Nanny Returns

Nanny Returns, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.

...these parents see the aforementioned fifty thousand as an investment in the brand their children will be wearing for life, trotted out at every job interview and cocktail party; it will buy them entree into colleges, clubs, and gated communities. For the reputation of the school to suffer, it would be as if they walked out of Bergdorf's with their ten-thousand-dollar bags dangling off their elbows, only to find them being sold on the street for twenty bucks.

This was the sequel to The Nanny Diaries, which I have read - however, I remember the movie version more. The novel kind of hopped all over the place, but it did have a concrete plot: Nanny and her husband "Harvard Hottie" (aka Ryan) from the previous novel have come back to New York after traveling everywhere for his job, and they are looking to raise a family. However, Nanny's old charge Grayer X soon is back in her life, and once again she is trying to fix his extremely broken home life.

The novel was good but I think the first book was more organized (or what I remember of it).

2.5 stars out of 5.

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Winter Garden

Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah.

I take the tiny scrap of her paper with her name on it and hold it in my hand. How long do I sit there in the snow, stroking my baby's coat, remembering her smile?

Forever.

This is Kristin Hannah's newest book, and it might just be her best. She details a family who has recently been devastated by the death of their elderly father, and Meredith and Nina now have to deal with their mother, a woman who has never shown them much warmth. There is a reason for this, however, that has everything to do with her past, and throughout the novel, her past is shown in the guise of a fairy tale.

By the end of the book, I was practically in tears. The ending is very sad, but parts of it were happy, so I suppose you could call it bittersweet.

4 stars out of 5.

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The Overnight Socialite

Sorry it's been so long since my last post! I have been blogging about movies over at my other blog, Yes/No Films, and between that and work, I haven't had much time to read.
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The Overnight Socialite, by Bridie Clark.

The game was changing; he couldn't deny it. Take Southampton, studded with McMansions, brand-new Bentleys, and various arrivistes waving their wealth like nautical flags - the place felt utterly transformed since his youth. Uproars in the economy had separated the bulls from the steers, and the bulls that survived were hardier, fiercer, tougher to ignore. The socialites were far worse.

This book was very cute. Wyatt bets his friend Trip that he can transform any young lady in Manhattan into the city's newest It-Girl; when he sees Lucy Jo shivering in the rain at a bus stop, he has found his lady. Lucy wants to be a fashion designer but just got fired at her minimum wage job at a designer's factory, and this is the perfect opportunity for her. At the end, of course, both Lucy and Wyatt get more than they bargained for, and the story moves on from there.

This was a chick lit book but the writing is more "serious" than other chick lit I have read - less fluffy, I suppose one would say. I could definitely relate to the characters, and Wyatt and Lucy make a lovely pair, even though he was "born to money" and she is just starting to realize what his world entails.

3.5 stars out of 5.

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Italian for Beginners

Italian for Beginners, by Kristin Harmel.

But consistent was good, wasn't it? It was safe, reliable, predictable. I had always been proud of being that person everyone could count on, the one who would always be there, who security guards could set their watches by, who arrives at work early and stayed late, who held everything together while everyone around her fell apart.

This novel was a great piece of chick lit, and I had not previously heard of Kristin Harmel; now, however, I want to read all her books. Cat is thirty-four years old and her little sister, who is twenty-nine, is getting married. Their grandmother launches into a loud and quite embarrassing shpiel at the wedding, asking (as the semi-senile person she is) why it's Becky (the younger sister) getting married and not Cat. Cat recalls being at her most happiest when she was on study abroad in Italy, and after encouragement from her father, she goes back there, in an unprecedented (ie, last-minute) move for her. She thinks she knows what she wants to find there, but instead everything goes in a way different direction, and she finds that different - and taking risks - doesn't always have to be bad.

The prose flows very easily in this book, and I wanted to stay up the whole night to finish it (sadly, I had to get some sleep before work). Harmel is also the author of The Art of French Kissing, among other books, which takes place (you guessed it) in France, and I can't wait to read that novel next.

4 stars out of 5.

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The Christmas Cookie Club

The Christmas Cookie Club, by Ann Pearlman.

I am the head cookie bitch and this is my party.

The Christmas cookie club is always on the first Monday of December. Mark it on your calendar.

I only read the front flap of this book when I checked it out of the library, so it was a surprise to later read the back flap (author's bio) and see that not only was the author from Ann Arbor, but the book was set there too!
(which I probably could have figured out once they started mentioning Zingerman's and the Gandy Dancer, among other places!)

Marnie is the "head cookie bitch," and each year she invites 11 other women over to her house for her annual cookie club. There are rules, some of which include that you must make 13 dozen cookies (1 dozen for each woman and 1 dozen to donate to a hospice) and you MUST attend the club each year, with these cookies, or else you forfeit your spot - and apparently there is a LONG waiting list to get in. The women are all great friends and as tragedies and miracles happen in their lives, they share them with one another.

The book was a little schmaltzy at points, but each of the women had a different story to tell, which made it interesting. I loved the Ann Arbor references and what was also interesting was that at the end of the book, the author confesses that she actually IS in a Christmas cookie club herself, which is where she got the inspiration for the book.

3 stars out of 5.

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The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova.

Marriages are like certain books, a story where you turn the last page and you think it's over, and then there's an epilogue, and after that you're inclined to go on wondering about the characters or imagining that their lives continue without you, dear reader. Until you forget most of that book, you're stuck puzzling over what happened to them after you closed it.

Elizabeth Kostova is a graduate of the MFA program at Michigan, so I had definitely heard of her before reading this book; in addition, her first novel, The Historian, got very good reviews. I haven't read The Historian but I decided to read this novel, her second. She weaves together 3 or 4 different stories into one cohesive dialogue, and it is interesting to see how the stories all combine and are related to one another. Dr. Andrew Marlow's patient Robert Oliver is a renowned painter, but he tries to attack a painting at a museum, and is then put in psychiatric care. Dr. Oliver wants to find out what is wrong with Robert, and why Robert won't talk any more, and to do this he must delve into his past - he visits his ex-wife, Kate, and his once-lover, Mary, and in doing so becomes entangled with Mary himself. His search takes him around the globe, to Paris, Acapulco, and other places, and soon the search becomes more of an obsession than something that is necessary.

The novel was a little confusing at parts, otherwise I would give it a higher rating.
3.5 stars out of 5.

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Ford County

Ford County, by John Grisham.

Although I like Grisham's books, I am not a big short story fan (thereby making me a hypocrite, since all I write are short stories!), but this one was very good. All of the stories take place in Ford County, Mississippi, which was also the setting for Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill. The stories were all great but my favorite one was "Casino":

And every outfit was adorned with an astonishing collection of gold - thick watches, bulky neck chains, bracelets, belt buckles, collar pins, tie bars. Bobby Carl gathered gold the way some women hoard shoes.

There are 7 short stories in this collection, and all make for easy reading.

4 stars out of 5.

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