Sneak Peek Into What I've Been Reading!

It's always fun to see what girls in our book club are reading outside of the books we've selected for the year. Today I'm going to share some of the books I've read recently and dish on my favs!

One Month of Reading, Reviewed

Today I thought I'd share what I read during the months of February, and March so far, with short reviews of each book. Maybe you'll find something that looks like your next read!

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea

This middle grade novel about one classroom of 5th grade students is told from the points of view of seven different students, showing us how their dynamic young teacher, Mr. Terupt, changes each of their lives. It's rated very highly on Goodreads, and I chose it to fill a category on my Worthington Ave. 2016 reading challenge: a book that's set where you were born (Connecticut).

I thought it was cute, and can imagine myself loving it back when I was an elementary school kid. As an adult, it was sweet and fun, but not a life-changer.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo 

The once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a mysterious darkness filled with lethal monsters. When her best friend is attacked, unremarkable Alina discovers a power with the potential to destroy the Shadow Fold forever.

This trilogy is very popular and I've heard a lot of praise for it. I enjoyed it, but the world-building and characters felt weak to me -- I never felt like I understood the world, or the magic, or even the characters themselves. I started the second book, hoping for more substance, and quickly abandoned it. Not for me.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

Here's another book I chose to fill a Worthington Ave. reading challenge category, this time "a book based on a fairy tale." I chose this modern retelling of Sleeping Beauty. As a child, Ivan stumbled onto a clearing in a forest where he found a beautiful woman sleeping on a pedestal, guarded by a magical force. After pushing aside the memories for a decade, he returns to make sense of what he saw, and is drawn into a centuries old fairy tale.

I thought it was creative, but it was a major chore for me to finish it. Long and slow!

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

I love reading Liane Moriarty (my other favorites are Big Little Lies and The Husband's Secret), and this one was an absolute delight, too. Sophie Honeywell unexpectedly inherits the home of her ex-boyfriend's elderly aunt on a quiet island that is home to an unsolved mystery. She moves to the quiet island and learns that everyone there seems to be hiding something. It's fast and enjoyable and funny without ever feeling too 'fluffy.' Chapters are alternately told by different characters, and the parts told by a new mother going through postpartum depression made me absolutely ache. They hit a bit too close to home for me. Loved it all, though.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

24-year old Ashley Cordova's death is ruled a suicide, but an investigative journalist suspects there is more to the story than meets the eye -- Ashley's father is a reclusive cult-horror-film director whose dark and gritty films seem perhaps too horrifying to be entirely fictional. The story only becomes more strange the deeper he digs, and family secrets come to light.

There were parts of this book that I loved, and ideas in it that I thought were really interesting. But overall, it felt too long and, in the end, totally underwhelming for me. Womp womp.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

This was our book club selection this past month -- see our posts about our meeting HERE and HERE!

I never would have picked this book up on my own. Fantasy isn't really my thing, and the plot sounded complicated and confusing to me. But this is a prime example of how great a book club can be for pushing you out of your comfort zone, because I loved this novel and can't wait to get my hands on the sequel! It was exciting and engrossing, and I didn't find the magic or fantasy elements confusing (which is what often turns me off of fantasy).

The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris

This historical fiction begins with a search for the missing daughter of a prison guard on Alcatraz and the only prisoner who knows her whereabouts, then moves back to the childhood of a young Irish immigrant in the early 1900s, alone on a ship full of immigrants entering New York Harbor.

I thought it was a really interesting setting and I loved the history. I wish that a little more time had been spent on the Alcatraz portion of the story, which I thought was so interesting. I've always wanted to visit it!


What have you read recently?

Visit me at my blog, Maybe Matilda!

Top 10 Summer Reads for 2014!

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It's that time of year again! School's out, vacations are planned, the days are long and everything can be done poolside! Besides our amazing 2014 Delicious Reads Line-Up there are lots books we're looking forward to reading this summer. Today I'd like to share our Top 10 Summer Reads for your reading pleasure. Let's get this party started!

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Rainbow Rowell is the author of another awesome book, Eleanor and Park, which was a fantastic young adult novel. This new book, Landline, is geared to adults- it’s about and woman named Georgie and her struggling marriage to Neal. Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past, and has to decide if she wants to fix her marriage or if it would be better if they had never been together in the first place. They depth and description of the relationship in Eleanor and Park was fantastic so I’m hoping this one is just as amazing.

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I’m going to put the book blurb for this one because it’s so interesting and different:

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

Doesn’t that make you want to read it??? Me too.

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This book promises to be one of those books that will stay with you for a long time. It’s about a social worker named Pete who helps a undernourished, almost feral eleven-year old boy in the Montana wilderness. Pete’s journey to help this boy lands him in the middle of an FBI manhunt that will make it impossible to put down.

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We just read The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty and we loved it! Here's our Picture Recap I, Picture Recap II and Our Book Review. Liane Moriary's new book, Big Little Lies comes out July 29, 2014. Big Little Lies is the intersection of three women’s lives: Madaline, the funny, 40 year old woman who is working through the fallout from her divorce, Celeste, the beautiful mom who seems to have everything lined up perfectly and Jane, the young mother who has been mistaken for the nanny. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands, second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

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Everyone loves The Office right?? Well B.J. Novak, aka the actor, writer and director of The Office delivers his debut book this summer. It should be an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly debut collection that signals the arrival of a welcome new voice in American fiction. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, Novak’s assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving-often at the same time.

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Killing Ruby Rose by Jessie Humphries is about a seventeen year old vigilante with killer taste in shoes. When she ends up taking out a murderer to save his victim, she discovers she's gone from being the huntress to the hunted.

Ruby must discover who's using her to implement twisted justice before she ends up swapping Valentino red for prison orange. With a gun named Smith, a talent for martial arts, and a boyfriend with eyes to die for, Ruby is ready to face the worst. And if a girl's forced to kill, won't the guilt sit more easily in a pair of Prada peep-toe pumps?

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I heard about this book at the Storymakers 2014 Writer's Conference and I was swept up by this young author's story. Fifteen-year-old Maya Van Wagenen made the brave decision to spend a year following the advice of a 1950's popularity book, Betty Cornell's Teen Age Popularity Guide. She followed it step by step and didn't tell anyone what she was doing. This memoir is her story, which has already landed a movie deal. The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise—meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humor and grace, Maya’s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.

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If I Stay, by Gayle Forman is on our list because the movie adaptation is coming out in August! If you haven't read it yet now's your chance! It's about Mia, a girl who has everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, admiring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. In an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the only decision she has left. It is the most important decision she'll ever make.

Here's the official trailer!! I can't wait to see it!

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The premise of this book just sounds so interesting I have to pick it up: Paul O’Rourke is a man made of contradictions- he loves the world, but doesn’t know how to live in it. He’s a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online “Paul” might be a better version of the real thing.

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This thriller sounds really exciting! Check out the blurb: Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him when there's a textbook murder… because Pilgram wrote the book.

There you have it! Our Top Ten 2014 Summer Reading Suggestions! Now all you need to do is head to your nearest bookstore, jump online to order or get downloading! I hope you saw something that piqued your interest!

Happy summer reading!

Warmly,
Brooke

"The Husband's Secret" Part III Book Review {by Liane Moriarty}

TITLE OF THE BOOK: The Husband's Secret

AUTHOR: Liane Moriarty

PUBLISHER: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam

NUMBER OF PAGES: 394

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2013

GENRE: Fiction

Book Summary: Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive.

Our Star Rating: 4 Stars

Kellie did such an amazing job with this discussion.  When everyone came in, we were all handed a personalized letter with the message:

"For my book club friend, Kate

to be opened only in the event

of the discussion"

Then we all gathered out on her beautiful patio to begin our discussion.  Kellie opened by asking the question everyone had asked themselves a million times while reading this book, "Would you open the letter?"  There was no hesitation and the answer was unanimous, yes we would all open the letter as soon as we found it.  The real discussion came when we were all asked what would we then do with that shocking, unanticipated confession.  We all had ways we hoped we would react, but decided that when faced with such a raw reality, we have no idea how we would respond.

Kellie then asked everyone individually to open their letter and read it to the group.  Each letter was thoughtfully written and posed a question about a theme, character or situation from the book that we would then discuss here are a couple of examples of ideas that we discussed:

"To error is human, to forgive, divine"

There is a definite strong thread of the idea of forgiveness throughout the book.  Every character is faced with the decision to forgive or not at some point in the plot.  We were all posed the question would we be able to forgive knowing the information that Rachel acquires, or that Cecilia discovers or that Tess is confronted with from the beginning?  We had very mixed answers, some talked about the circumstances, some discussed how they sincerely hoped they would react while others definitely felt they would not be able to.  It was definitely an interesting discussion.

The issue of parenting and the role of fathers

This was a fascinating question to discuss.  Throughout the book you read about many different families as well as generations.  They all go about life in very different ways.  At one point in the story one mother says to another "You're a mother, you would do anything for your child, as would I" we discussed different boundaries we set for our children and if there were limits to what you would let them get away with.  Most everyone in the group agreed that they thought it was necessary for children to experience consequences for their actions, and while it would be hard to be in the situation that some of the mothers in the book found themselves in, we agreed that it would have been better to not make excuses and to confront the difficult consequences of their children's actions.

The role of fathers was an unusual question that generated quite a bit of discussion.  We talked about how the father's role has evolved and how they are more involved in family life now.  It was interesting to hear about everyone's home life while they were growing up and how it differs now with their husband and their own children. Fathers are more involved in the child rearing process now a days, they have a more equal role in their children's lives, for the most part.  In older generations, fathers were seen more as the bread winners and rarely had any interaction with their children.  There are a couple of fathers in the book who interpret their role as father very differently from each other, and it was interesting to go back and analyze them in the light of this discussion

The idea of how grief can be entangled with guilt

Every single character in this book is riddled with grief at some point in the story, and it was interesting to analyze all the different ways in which they dealt with it.  Everyone griefs in a different way, and we discussed how their different grieving processes changed the outcome of the story.  We discussed alternated endings if some of the characters had just dealt with their grief in different ways.  We also talked about how guilt affected some of their grieving and how that, as well, altered some major life decisions.

Is a secret better left a secret 

We wrapped up the evening by discussing the controversial question of is a secret better left untold.  There were a lot of different feelings on this one, but almost everyone agreed that if they were Cecilia, they would never want to find out the secret her husband had been keeping for years. But then we brought up poor Rachel and how the secret of how Janie died, had taken over her life and had never let her fully move on, she had become obsessed with unraveling that horrible secret.  We talked about when holding a secret before telling asking yourself, who will this benefit, am I looking for an outcome that will only benefit me, or will others gain something from learning this information.  We also agreed that it definitely depends on the circumstance.

Other topics we discussed were divorce, the Berlin wall and how it symbolized the secret, ethics and values, emotional cheating vs. physical cheating, which is worse?, phobias, and marriage.  This book is the perfect book club book, there are endless things to discuss!  

Content Categories:

Language/Profanity: Heavy

Sexuality: Heavy

Violence: Medium

Drug and Alcohol use: Mild

This review was written by Kate

"The Husband's Secret" Part II Book Club Ideas {by Liane Moriarty}

Welcome to Part II of our meeting for THE HUSBANDS SECRET where you will find everything you need to host the perfect book club for this book!

After we finished eating our delicious Australian BBQ dinner (which can be seen in Part I of this post) we settled in our seats to see what our Moderator Kellie had in store for our discussion. 

Kellie handed each of us a personalized letter addressed on the envelope with:

"For my book club friend _________

to be opened only in the event of this discussion."

Inside each letter was a different discussion question for us to read and gossip about as a group. GENIUS!

If you would like to print off the letters/discussion questions for your book club then you can do so HERE!

Before we started our discussion, Kellie had a unique game planned inspired by the book character Tess, who seemed to have anything and everything you could ever want in her purse! Kellie had everyone grab their purses and she asked people to pull out random items and who ever did it first got a point.  Some of the items requested were: nail polish, a pen, hair brush, socks, Costco Card etc. It was hilarious to see who had what in their purses! 

You can download the Purse Game HERE.

Julie won the big prize which consisted of :

-A cute red purse

-One of our book club books that we are reading this fall

-Some "delicious" Vegemite

-And a playlist Kellie put together

After the game we all opened our letters and began our discussion.

Kellie put together a Powerpoint for the Husbands Secret that can be used for your book club meeting or you can just read up on the author and many other interesting tid bits from the book. 

You can find the Powerpoint for The Husbands Secret HERE.

Kellie also created a wonderful SPOILER FREE character list to help keep who's who straight in the book which can be found HERE.

 We were STILL talking about this book even after we had concluded and people were heading home!

Kellie sent each of us home with an 80's Playlist she put together inspired by the music that Janie listened to that was briefly mentioned in the book. Kellie had this playing in the background while we ate and I can tell you that most of us were tapping our toes and singing along!

The Husbands Secret made for such a great night of eating, chatting, discussing this great book and having loads of fun! I would recommend this book to any book club or friend and I'd love to hear what you thought of this book in the comments!

See part I of the Husbands Secret post HERE

"The Husband's Secret" Part I Book Club Ideas {by Liane Moriarty}

This Books Moderator was

KELLIE!

*As Moderator, Kellie planned the entire evening: finding all of the book inspired décor, putting together the menu, hosting the giveaway, creating the discussion questions and giving each of us our own SECRET letter that we opened during the discussion!

THANK YOU Kellie!

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"None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives  could have and maybe should have taken. It's probably just as well. Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever. Just
ask Pandora." — Liane Moriarty (The Husband's Secret)

We read THE HUSBANDS SECRET for the month of May and discussed it first thing in June and can I just say,

...this book is fantastic!

I loved it. I finished it in no time flat because I HAD to know how it was all going to end!

This book has gotten loads of attention and good reviews for a reason, do yourself a favor and read this book asap!

WHY ARE THERE THREE DIFFERENT BOOK COVERS??

         Moriarty likes to have a different book cover for United States, United Kingdom and Australia for all her books.

*The cover with the balloon is the Australian book cover.

*The cover with the shattering flower is the American book cover.

*The cover with the butterfly in the jar is the United Kingdom cover.

Kellie did a great job making sure each book cover was represented in the decor she set up!

Since this book was based in Australia and was written by an Australian author, we decided to have an Australian inspired BBQ complete with shrimp on the barbie.

Check out our complete Australian BBQ menu...

Kellie ordered some of the infamous VEGEMITE from Australia  for us all try....
...How was it you ask? Let's just say that she had PLENTY of it leftover.
Vegemite is a yeast extract that has a salty, malty flavor and is used on toast and sandwiches and must be an acquired taste because it's no peanut butter!

Chanel brought her super tasty quinoa and spinach salad that she blogged about HERE and trust me, you will WANT this recipe for your next get together because it will blow your mind with how good it is!

The Food was seriously SOOOOO GOOOOOD!

[I dare you to resist licking your screen]

And can we talk about the desserts...
YES LETS!
(Have I mentioned that I LOVE when authors mention lots of desserts in their books?!)

We were treated to FRENCH MACAROONS, HOT CROSS BUNS & INDIVIDUAL PAVLOVAS with a delicious strawberry sauce...Drool.

You can find a similar hot cross bun recipe HERE and the individual pavlova recipe can be found HERE.

Here's a little "DID YOU KNOW" about Liane Moriarty.

Liane's been heli-skiing, skydiving and scuba diving but now prefers to run around with her kids. She mentions that she only ever went skydiving once and has no intention of ever doing it again. She likes to give the impression that she's led an incredibly active, athletic life to make up for all the hours she now spends lying around reading novels and eating Turkish Delight!

In honor of Liane, we made sure to have lots of Turkish Delight around to nibble on while we discussed her brilliant book.
You can find the Pomegranate delights HERE and the fruit delights HERE.

It's no secret that there is a LOT more to share with you about our book club meeting on The Husbands Secret so make sure to check back this Wednesday for the final post with all of our meeting details and all the printables and downloads you could ever want!