🦃📚🦃📚🦃 Happy Thanksgiving!

🦃📚🦃📚🦃

 

    I have been reading Roselle Lim a great deal, and this week it was Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune. The magical realism that pervades her books seemed especially strong. Her novels follow a pattern: a misunderstood woman with an underutilized ability finds her way to her strengths and a romantic interest, aided by magic. It's a formula that works. Lim is terrific at describing food and clothing. 

🥟🍜🍬

    The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan reminded me of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reed, not just in its subject matter, being gay and hiding it, but also in the tone of the book. The book features several voices, but they all talk about Annie/Cass/Cate — how they know her and what she means to them. It is a coming-of-age story about a small-town girl with big ambitions who struggles against loving someone. What path do you choose? What do you leave behind? What do you move toward? The characters are serpentine in their "villains" and "heroes." The book is about a writer whose writing serves as a means of sorting out her motives and feelings. I see a touch of magical realism in the book in how things work out. 

🚙📚🎭

💔👩‍❤️‍👨💖 🐋🐻‍❄️🦊 Fun, Serious, Weak Sauce

 

    Roselle Lim writes about food and locations so well that I get hungry and want to book tickets immediately. In Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop, Vanessa has had the ability to tell fortunes and prophecies since she was a small child, but she hates it and refuses to be trained to develop it. That's not working well for her or her love life, plus it may be making her ill. Her clairvoyant Aunt Evelyn offers to once again take up her training, and she reluctantly agrees. Her aunt is opening a tea shop in Paris, and that's where they head for three weeks of intensive instruction. She meets an attractive stranger and wishes she could be "normal," but her gift demands her attention. Vanessa is at war with herself.

Here is a link to a previous Roselle Lim book I reviewed: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Roselle+Lim

🫖☕️🌹

    Isola has been on my holds list for months because it was recommended on the podcast What Should I Read Next. It is a historical fiction book by Allegra Goodman. There was a woman named Marguerite de La Rocque, a sixteenth-century French noblewoman who was marooned on an island off the coast of Canada, then called New France. From the scant records of her life, Goodman creates a fierce survivor who endures cruelty at the hands of her guardian, perhaps because he wants her fortune. She is a wealthy orphan under his protection. Faith is part of everyday life, with daily prayers and exhortations to trust in the providence of God. I appreciate that Goodman doesn't dismiss faith, yet shows how being marooned on an island brings changes in Marguerite's understanding and trust. The novel is complex, and its central character grows from a helpless, naive orphan into a wise, brave defender of women. 

🐋🐻‍❄️🦊

    I read Ali Novak's My Return to the Walter Boys, and I found it weak. It is hard to reanimate the angst of will-they-get-together-or-won't-they a second time. They are teenagers, though, so anything is possible. 

💔👩‍❤️‍👨💖

✍️🦁📚🏠🐈‍⬛🏚️❤️🐴🤠A Strange Blend of Historical Fiction, Horror, and YA Romance

 

    This book was shared with me by my friend Laurie. I have read several biographies of C. S. Lewis, but never anything about his wife, Joy Davidman. Even though Becoming Mrs. Lewis, by Patti Callahan, isn't strictly a biography, it is a well-researched and thoughtful piece of historical fiction. Joy Davidman is a controversial figure in Lewis's life. Some critics think she pushed herself into Lewis's life in a stalker fashion; others see her as a brilliant mind in need of another brilliant mind to help her grow in faith. My favorite Lewis book is Till We Have Faces, which draws on the myth of Cupid and Psyche. At its core, it explores toxic love, one that seeks to possess and control. That's not the love that existed between Lewis and Davidman, and there is good evidence for that in his writing. I recommend this book to anyone interested in C.S. Lewis. 

✍️🦁📚

    We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is my book club book for November. As I have reached Shirley Jackson, I have learned that she is considered the Queen of Horror and has influenced Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and others. Her book is like a screwworm that slowly burrows into your brain. I spent the first part of the book thinking: what is happening, and the second part thinking: this can't be happening. The novel has an unreliable narrator who "ain't right in the head," but how and to what degree gradually dawns. There is a fragile balance between the isolated family of three and the local townspeople, who distrust and despise them. That the balance will be upended is plain, but the ticking down and the dénouement are exquisitely painful. 

🏠🐈‍⬛🏚️

    Looking for something less creepy, I read My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak. The inciting incident for this rich, New York teenager to leave her cultured life and all-girls boarding school to go live with a family of eleven boys on a ranch in Colorado is the death of her parents and sister in a car wreck. Novak does give her character angst and resulting trauma from her loss, but this is a teen romance novel with a love triangle driving the plot. There are many fish-out-of-water scenes, country-versus-city struggles, mean-girl jealousy, and romantic moments with hot guys. It was fun, and the ending surprised me. My age showed because I struggled with dating a sixteen-year-old who lived in the same house. The adults didn't seem to be aware of what went on. If you can suspend that it was a lighthearted, fun book.

❤️🐴🤠

🐈📝🐈‍⬛🥀🕊️🌹Sequels!

 

Mockingjay is the conclusion to The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I like how it made me think about war, children, and moral responsibility. I appreciate Collins' parallel structure in the three books: picture of life, reaping, training, games, and return. It was a worthy conclusion of an action series, though it could have used a Boss Battle. It ties up plot ends well and, at the same time, doesn't sugarcoat the fact that the trauma of living under an oppressive regime doesn't evaporate. What prompted me to reread the series is the release of the prequels. I reviewed Sunrise on the Reaping here: get-ready-for-jane-austen-plus-latest.html

🥀🕊️🌹

    We'll Prescribe You Another Cat is a sequel by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda, to We Prescribe You a Cat. There is a clinic for the soul somewhere in Toyoko that you can only find if you need it. Delightful chapters show how a cat can change lives for the better — helping those stuck and unable to speak. There is also more background on how the clinic "works." It is a quirky, fun premise.

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Ishida

🐈📝🐈‍⬛