The Dovekeepers (Alice Hoffman)

Profoundly moving, Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers is historical fiction but thoroughly researched.  Since it was so long ago, no one can be totally sure of all the facts surrounding the Roman siege on Masada, but Hoffman's novel about one of the most important events in Jewish history is an important read for everyone.

The Dovekeepers tells the tale of four women with separate stories who, against all odds, make it across the desert to escape the Roman persecution in Jerusalem.  Each one is unforgettable and so important to Masada's narrative; how their stories, along with those of the men in their lives, eventually intertwine makes Hoffman's novel multilayered and rich.  What happened at Masada is not a secret, and knowing how these people would eventually take their fates into their own hands is both utterly inspirational and completely heartbreaking.

Hoffman is a responsible teller of this early historical event.  The book never goes overboard with the dramatics, as a novel like this shouldn't. I highly recommend The Dovekeepers for those who want to learn more about Masada's horror.

MY RATING - 4

West of Sunset (Stewart O'Nan)

Ahh, the glory days -- when Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Humphrey Bogart, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all roamed the earth at the same time.  Reading Stewart O'Nan's West of Sunset is like taking a trip back to this glamorous period, with cameos from the greats of Hollywood's Golden Age.

West of Sunset focuses on Fitzgerald during the last few years of his life, when Gatsby had been out for awhile, and the money was running out.  Literary buffs know that Zelda, his wife, had long suffered from mental illness and was confined to an asylum.  To make ends meet, Fitzgerald moved out to California to write dialogue for movie scripts; while there, he fell in love with a Hollywood gossip columnist and beganThe Last Tycoon.
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The best thing about West of Sunset is O'Nan's ability to form pictures in your mind.  I love historical fiction and especially this time period, but I think anyone would appreciate the author's depiction of this thoroughly flawed man just trying to put one foot in front of the other.

MY RATING - 4

The Book of Speculation (Erika Swyler)

I'm not quite sure how I feel after just finishing Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation.  On the one hand, I thought her writing was beautifully descriptive and exceptional at making me picture the joint stories in my mind. On the other hand, I didn't feel any sort of connection to the characters, which made the ultimate knowledge of their fates a little unsatisfying to me.

The Book of Speculation weaves two different narratives together, and Swyler does this very well.  In present day, Simon Watson is a librarian living by himself on Long Island Sound; his parents are both deceased, with his mother having committed suicide by drowning, and his sister Enola travels with a carnival as a tarot card reader. On the verge of losing both his job and his house (as it is crumbling and about to go over the bluff), he receives an old book in the mail out of the blue.  This book tells a story hundreds of years old of Amos and Evangeline, two young performers in a traveling circus.  Simon wonders why his grandmother's name appears in the book and why so many women in his family drown on the same day.  Will the book provide the answers?

As both narratives raced to their conclusions, I was disappointed by the payoff (or lack thereof), and as I stated, the lack of connection I felt with any of the characters.  However, that doesn't make the process of getting there any less fun.

MY RATING - 3

Summer Secrets (Jane Green)

I'm always up for the latest Jane Green novel, as I find her books comforting after a long day.  They're relatable, and more often than not, have likable characters that you root for.  I unfortunately didn't feel that way about Summer Secrets, and while I like Green's writing style as always, I found parts of the novel just too unrealistic.

Cat Coombs has a stressful job as a London based journalist, and she deals with that stress in a most unhealthy way -- plying herself with alcohol.  After way too many benders, she finds herself one morning waking up in a strange man's apartment.  Jason hadn't taken advantage of her; he simply wanted to make sure she was safe as he too is an alcoholic.  Jason begins to take Cat to AA meetings, but all that is interrupted when she goes to Nantucket (!) to meet her long-last father and siblings.  Her love of alcohol gets the best of her, and she soon winds up doing something there that she will regret for years to come.  The remainder of the novel picks up later in time, but Cat always has that incident in the back of her mind.  Time to make amends?

Much of this novel is very far fetched, and I found a lot of cliches that I don't usually find in a Jane Green novel.  It's not my favorite, but her novels are still perfect for packing in a beach bag for a long day near the water. It IS called Summer Secrets, after all.


MY RATING - 2

Golden State (Stephanie Kegan)

Family members of those who commit a crime are often scorned just as much as the actual perpetrators.  Along the same lines of Defending Jacob and We Need to Talk About Kevin, Stephanie Kegan's Golden State asks the question of how far would you go to protect someone you love? 

Natalie Askedahl is the youngest child in a family of prominent politicos.  Her life seems ideal, and she especially looks up to her older brother, Bobby, a mathematical genius; after he returns from college, things seriously change, with Bobby pulling away from his family and taking on a reclusive life.

When Natalie grows up, she seems to have it all -- a husband and two daughters, but she still desperately misses her brother.  A series of deadly bombings starts to occur across California, and the trail leads right to Bobby.  Will Natalie turn her brother in when she finds damning evidence?  What will this do to her mother and sister, who see it as the ultimate betrayal? 

I sailed through Golden State rather quickly, and it definitely is a real page-turner.  Kegan has a way with words that makes the reader want "just one more chapter."  Very solid novel.

MY RATING - 4

The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins)

As new books go, the buzz surrounding Paula Hawkins’s debut novel The Girl on the Train was practically deafening.  I was unable to get a review copy since it’s a UK book, and there were hundreds of people ahead of me on the library’s waiting list.  But when my book club calls, I must read, and when it finally arrived, I excitedly sat down to begin…

And I must say, I’m not quite sure what all the buzz is about.  Hundreds of 5-star reviews can’t be wrong, but calling it the next Gone Girl is a bit of a stretch.  For one, I loved GG and was fully engrossed in Nick and Amy’s story.  While this one definitely had its share of suspense and I liked Hawkins’ writing style, I was slightly let down by the ending.

The Girl on the Train is about – wait for it – a girl on a train.  We’re speaking about Rachel, a woman who rides the commuter every day, passing the same houses and seeing the same people.  But Rachel is definitely not all she appears to be, and the reader is left disoriented throughout her story (which involves periods she can’t remember), as well as Megan’s, a woman who suddenly disappears. I really enjoyed the way Hawkins interwove each character, all while muddling the readers’ perceptions of each one. 

I rapidly raced to the finish, but this is another book that really didn’t surprise me.  Hawkins leaves plenty of clues about what really happened to Megan along the way, so by the time I got to the ending, it was predictable. However, that doesn’t mean that getting there wasn’t a lot of fun!

MY RATING – 3.5 (can’t quite reach a 4, but above average enough not to get a 3)

Yes Please (Amy Poehler)

Next to Tina Fey, Amy Poehler is quite possibly my favorite female comedian (it's probably no coincidence that they're great friends). Seeing them both on screen puts me in an instant good mood. I found Fey's Bossypants laugh-at-loud funny, but alas, my feelings for Poehler's Yes Please were definitely not quite as strong.

The first thing you have to get used to is that there is no rhyme or reason to this book. Each chapter is about what Amy wants it to be, and it's almost like a constant stream of consciousness, with no order to her essays. I found that a little jarring, and I actually skipped some pages that made no sense to me (a cardinal sin in my book). Readers going into it thinking it's a straight-up memoir will be sorely disappointed.

That being said, Yes Please is a great cure for a bad day. Poehler of course talks about her time at SNL, Parks and Recreation, and as part of the Chicago improv scene, but I love how she writes things that we're all thinking but would never say. Don't worry -- she'll do that for you. I'm not sure what genre I would classify Yes Please, but I'm sure Amy Poehler wouldn't want to be pigeonholed anyway.

MY RATING - 3