Object of My Affection

Posted on March 23, 2017 by opesopinions

objects Author: Jill Smolinski
Publisher: Touchstone
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Source: Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads: In the humorous, heartfelt new novel by the author of The Next Thing on My List, a personal organizer must somehow convince a reclusive artist to give up her hoarding ways and let go of the stuff she’s hung on to for decades.

Lucy Bloom is broke, freshly dumped by her boyfriend, and forced to sell her house to send her nineteen-year-old son to drug rehab. Although she’s lost it all, she’s determined to start over. So when she’s offered a high-paying gig helping clear the clutter from the home of reclusive and eccentric painter Marva Meier Rios, Lucy grabs it. Armed with the organizing expertise she gained while writing her book, Things Are Not People, and fueled by a burning desire to get her life back on track, Lucy rolls up her sleeves to take on the mess that fills every room of Marva’s huge home. Lucy soon learns that the real challenge may be taking on Marva, who seems to love the objects in her home too much to let go of any of them.

While trying to stay on course toward a strict deadline—and with an ex-boyfriend back in the picture, a new romance on the scene, and her son’s rehab not going as planned—Lucy discovers that Marva isn’t just hoarding, she is also hiding a big secret. The two form an unlikely bond, as each learns from the other that there are those things in life we keep, those we need to let go—but it’s not always easy to know the difference.

Ope’s Opinion: This story of two women, their relationships with their sons and their relationships with each other just didn’t draw me in. I couldn’t really relate all that much to either one of them. The part I did like is the cleaning up of Marva’s house! Is it crazy, but that was my favorite part of the book. I did enjoy the strange and unusual way that Marva and Lucy became friends.

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Invincible Summer

Posted on March 6, 2017 by opesopinions

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Author: Alice Adams
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Source: BEA 2016

Goodreads: Four friends. Twenty years. One unexpected journey. Inseparable throughout college, Eva, Benedict, Sylvie, and Lucien graduate in 1997, into an exhilarating world on the brink of a new millennium. Hopelessly in love with playboy Lucien and eager to shrug off the socialist politics of her upbringing, Eva breaks away to work for a big bank. Benedict, a budding scientist who’s pined for Eva for years, stays on to complete his PhD in physics, devoting his life to chasing particles as elusive as the object of his affection. Siblings Sylvie and Lucien, never much inclined toward mortgages or monogamy, pursue more bohemian existences-she as an aspiring artist and he as a club promoter and professional partyer. But as their twenties give way to their thirties, the group struggles to navigate their thwarted dreams. Scattered across Europe and no longer convinced they are truly the masters of their fates, the once close-knit friends find themselves filled with longing for their youth- and for one another. Broken hearts and broken careers draw the foursome together again, but in ways they never could have imagined.

A dazzling depiction of the highs and lows of adulthood, Invincible Summer is a story about finding the courage to carry on in the wake of disappointment, and a powerful testament to love and friendship as the constants in an ever-changing world.

Ope’s Opinion: Do you like books set in London with British flare to it? Then you might want to read this book. The characters and situations were predictable. For the most part, you get the surface facts of their lives, but not really the deeper meaning of it, so it was hard to get invested in how it was going to turn out in the end. It was an easy, sort of summer read, not deep or leave you with lasting memories.

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Life and Other Near-Death Experience

Posted on February 23, 2017 by opesopinions

life Author: Camille Pagan
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Genre: Fiction
Source: Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads: Libby Miller has always been an unwavering optimist—but when her husband drops a bomb on their marriage the same day a doctor delivers devastating news, she realizes her rose-colored glasses have actually been blinding her.

With nothing left to lose, she abandons her life in Chicago for the clear waters and bright beaches of the Caribbean for what might be her last hurrah. Despite her new sunny locale, her plans go awry when she finds that she can’t quite outrun the past or bring herself to face an unknowable future. Every day of tropical bliss may be an invitation to disaster, but with her twin brother on her trail and a new relationship on the horizon, Libby is determined to forget about fate. Will she risk it all to live—and love—a little longer?

From critically acclaimed author Camille Pagán comes a hilarious and hopeful story about a woman choosing between a “perfect” life and actually living.

Ope’s Opinion: This book started out kind of all over place. It felt scattered to me, but that may be how you feel when you get so much hard news at the same time. Then Libby seemed to run away – which may not have been a unusual reaction in those circumstances.

Although, this book had heavy subjects, it was a light, quick read. It was a different perspective then I expected.

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The Ordinary Life

Posted on February 20, 2017 by opesopinions

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Author: Jennifer Walkup
Publisher: Luminis Books, Inc.
Genre: Contemporary Young Adult
Source: Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads: Sometimes hope is the most extraordinary gift of all.

High-school radio host Jasmine Torres’s life is full of family dysfunction, but if she can score the internship of her dreams with a New York City radio station, she knows she can turn things around.

That is, until her brother Danny’s latest seizure forces her to miss the interview, and she’s back to the endless loop of missing school for his doctor appointments, picking up the pieces of her mother’s booze-soaked life, and stressing about Danny’s future.

Then she meets Wes. He’s the perfect combination of smart, cute, and funny. He also happens to have epilepsy like her brother. Wes is living a normal life despite his medical issues, which gives Jasmine hope for Danny. But memories of her cheating ex-boyfriend keep her from going on a real date with Wes, no matter how many times he asks her.

Jasmine can’t control everything. Not who wins the internship, not her mother’s addiction, not her brother’s health—not even where her heart will lead her. She wishes she could just have an ordinary life, but maybe what she already has is pretty extraordinary after all.

Ope’s Opinion: If you are looking for a wonderfully, sweet, young adult book for yourself or someone who loves young adult reads, I highly recommend this book. The characters are someone you know ( or maybe you ), the story is sweet ( but not saccharin sweet ), and you will enjoy all the relationships.

Jasmine’s life isn’t easy, but she makes the best of it. She is strong, independent, caring and stands on her own two feet. She is an example of a young adult I would want my teen reading about.

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Forever Beach

Posted on February 17, 2017 by opesopinions

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Author: Shelley Noble
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Source: HarperCollins

Goodreads: From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Colors and Breakwater Bay comes this heartwarming story of love, family, and redemption. Two young girls pledged to be best friends forever. Separated by circumstance and hurt, they are reunited years later as they struggle to put their differences aside for the sake of a special little girl—perfect for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Jane Green, and Kristin Hannah.

Two women…
One little girl…
Can they forgive the past in order to ensure the future of an innocent child…?

Once a foster child herself, Sarah Hargreave can’t wait to finalize the adoption of her foster daughter Leila. Sarah longs to give her all the love and stability she was denied in her own childhood. She’s put her own friendships and even her relationship with Wyatt, her longtime lover, on hold in order to give Leila her full attention.

When Leila’s biological mother suddenly reappears and petitions the court for the return of her daughter, Sarah is terrified she’ll lose the little girl she’s come to love as her own. Convinced the mother is still addicted to drugs, Sarah and her social worker enlist the help of high profile family lawyer, Ilona Cartwright. But when they meet, Sarah recognizes her as Nonie Blanchard who grew up in the same group foster home as Sarah. They’d promised to be best friends forever, then Nonie was adopted by a wealthy family, and Sarah never heard from her again. Sarah still hurts from the betrayal. But Nonie harbors her own resentment toward Sarah who she believes abandoned her when she needed her most.

Mistrustful of each other, the two women form a tenuous alliance to ensure Leila’s future, but when Leila’s very survival is on the line, they’ll have to come to terms with their own feelings of hurt and rejection to save the child they both have come to love.

Ope’s Opinion: Page one, I was immediately drawn into the book. There are some awesome twists and turns. The story is very intense right up to the end.

The characters are people you want to know and route for them to be happy.

I have a couple of other Shelley Noble books on my shelf. They have now moved up on my TBR list.

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Fly Away Home

Posted on February 9, 2017 by opesopinions

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Author: Jennifer Weiner
Publisher: Atria Books
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Source: Purchased

Goodreads: Sometimes all you can do is fly away home . . .

When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician’s wife-her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie-chick wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledges that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to her husband, the senator.

Lizzie, the Woodruffs’ younger daughter, is at twenty-four a recovering addict, whose mantra HALT (Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?) helps her keep her life under control. Still, trouble always seems to find her. Her older sister, Diana, an emergency room physician, has everything Lizzie failed to achieve-a husband, a young son, the perfect home-and yet she’s trapped in a loveless marriage. With temptation waiting in one of the ER’s exam rooms, she finds herself craving more.

After Richard’s extramarital affair makes headlines, the three women are drawn into the painful glare of the national spotlight. Once the press conference is over, each is forced to reconsider her life, who she is and who she is meant to be.

Written with an irresistible blend of heartbreak and hilarity, Fly Away Home is an unforgettable story of a mother and two daughters who after a lifetime of distance finally learn to find refuge in one another.

Ope’s Opinion: I am not sure what I was expecting when I started this book. The synopsis talks about a man cheating on his wife, so the fact that this was a sad, depressing book should not have been a surprise.

Sylvie put her husband above all else – mistake!
Diana’s character is judgemental when she has no right to be – look in the mirror!
Lizzie is flighty and actually the most enjoyable of the three.

There is a very explicit, crude sexual scene in the beginning of the book that just set me off from the beginning. It was to give you information about Diana. That information could have been dispensed in a much more subtle way and still gotten the point across. From there I just couldn’t like her.

The ending was not what I was expecting and not sure it felt satisfying either.

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Custody

Posted on July 21, 2014 by opesopinions

Author: Nancy Thayer
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Source: Purchased

Goodreads:

When Kelly MacLeod becomes a Massachusetts Family Court judge, she is determined to do what is right. But what is right when one’s deepest personal emotions clash with the law?

Anne Madison, a respected state reformer with political aspirations, wants custody of her 12-year-old adopted daughter Tessa, as does Randall Madison, a prominent physician. Tessa, caught between warring parents, on the brink of her own sexuality, wonders who her birth mother is, and tries to please those she loves at a cost that just might be too high.

How does one balance public service with private desires? What does it mean, legally and emotionally, to be a family? How does one move past anger and sorrow toward compassion and wisdom? How do adults learn to temper their own wills with the best needs of the child?

In order to must answer these questions, Kelly MacLeod must judge her new and mysterious lover, her own past, and the complications of many kinds of love.

Ope’s Opinion: The prologue took my breath away and made me want to read this story. The story was a slow build of tension. I did not want to put this book down. There were some very interesting twists along the way.

All the characters were fascinating. Each had flaws that made them feel real. I really liked the family dynamics in this story. It was interesting to see each family member react to the custody.

I wish Thayer had made a sequel instead of wrapping it up at the end of this book. I still want to know where everyone is now.

Rating: Four Chairs – I like this book so much I know several friends to share it with.

Just One Day

Posted on July 18, 2014 by opesopinions

Author: Gayle Forman
Publisher: Speak
Genre: Young Adult
Source: Purchased

Goodreads: From the New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay

Allyson Healey’s life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.

A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the “accidents” of fate, Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.

The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story—Just One Year—is coming soon

Ope’s Opinion: To me this book is a coming of age book. It was a very slow start. The one day seemed to go on and on for me. I did get bored with it. After Allyson went to college the book improved some, but never really swept me away.

I was a little tired of being sad in this book. I like when a character has obstacles to overcome, but it feels good when you see them triumph. There didn’t seem to be any success in this book.

I liked that Willem encouraged Allyson in the beginning to step out of her comfort zone and do something on the spare of the moment. But he is self centered and doesn’t really take care of her like he should. I do not understand what Allyson sees in him.

This book did not keep my attention enough for me to be interested in Just One Year.

Rating: Three Chairs – I like the book enough to suggest it to a friend or two.

The Tailgate

Posted on July 16, 2014 by opesopinions

Author: Elin Hilderbrand
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Source: Purchased

Goodreads: A digital edition short story about young lovers at separate colleges, exploring the early years of the central relationship in Elin Hilderbrand’s forthcoming novel, The Matchmaker.

Clendenin Hughes first kissed Dabney Kimball during a Nantucket snowstorm freshman year of high school. Ever since that moment – God, the rush, the chemistry! – Dabney has known that she and Clen are an unsplittable unit – essentially the same person in two different bodies.

Of course, with Dabney now at Harvard and Clen at Yale, those bodies are 140 miles apart. And traveling is a serious challenge for Dabney, for reasons she’d prefer not to discuss, reasons having to do with her mother (or lack thereof). But with the big Harvard-Yale game coming up, Dabney is determined to make the trek to New Haven to see Clen. She’s even borrowed a sexy black outfit from a classmate down the hall.

But when she arrives at the tailgate to see sparks flying between Clen and Jocelyn, a girl with dark blue eyes and luscious black hair, Dabney fears the collapse of a bond she has never questioned before, a bond so important that she’ll be lost without it. A stirring portrait of young love at a crossroads,

THE TAILGATE introduces two irresistible characters and invites us into a world we don’t want to leave. To learn the fates of Dabney and Clen, read Elin Hilderbrand’s forthcoming novel, The Matchmaker.

Ope’s Opinion: This story is very short and so will this review be. It is exactly what it is meant to be – a sneak peak into The Matchmaker to tempt you into reading the book.

This introduction will make you want to know more about Clen and Dabney. If you have already read The Matchmaker ( which I did – review June 9th ) this will be an interesting look at where it all began.

As usual Elin Hilderbrand, caught my attention and left me wanting more!

Rating: Four Chairs – I like this book so much I know several friends to share it with.

Blessings

Posted on July 11, 2014 by opesopinions

Author: Anna Quindlen
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Adult Fiction
Source: Purchased

Goodreads: Blessings, the bestselling novel by the author of Black and Blue, One True Thing, Object Lessons, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life, begins when, late at night, a teenage couple drives up to the estate owned by Lydia Blessing and leaves a box.

In this instant, the world of the estate called Blessings is changed forever. The story of Skip Cuddy, the Blessings caretaker, who finds a baby asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep her, and of matriarch Lydia Blessing, who, for her own reasons, decides to help him, Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person, a life, legitimate or illegitimate, and who decides; the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize winning writer about whom The Washington Post Book World said, Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.

Ope’s Opinion: I have had the privilege of hearing Anna Quindlen speak. I have read her non-fiction books. Now I have read her fiction. I think her fiction is my least favorite. I felt like her sentences ran on too long for me to keep up with what she was talking about ( maybe it was me ).

I did like the basic story Anna Quindlen was telling. Her idea for this book was an awesome one. I just kept getting lost in the descriptive details. It just moved too slowly for me.

The back story was necessary to understand why each person reacted the way they did, but it seemed to be most of the book. I wish this part had been a bit shorter.

I think I will look for a non-fiction from Quindlen for my next read of hers.