TEN TINY BREATHS (K. A. TUCKER)

 

 

Story Description:

 

Atria Books|September 24, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN:978-1-4767-4032-4

 

Just breathe, Kacey.  Ten tiny breaths.  Seize them.  Feel them.  Love them. 

 

Four years ago, Kacey Cleary’s life imploded when her car was hit by a drunk driver, killing her parents, boyfriend, and best friend.  Still haunted by memories of being trapped inside, listening to her mother take her last breath, Kacey wants to leave her past behind.  Armed with two bus tickets, Kacey and her fifteen-year-old sister, Livie, escape Grand Rapids, Michigan, to start over in Miami.  They’re struggling to make ends meet at first, but Kacey’s not worried.  She can handle anything – anything but her mysterious neighbour in apartment 1D. 

 

Trent Emerson has smoldering blue eyes and deep dimples, and perfectly skates that irresistible line between nice guy and bad boy.  Hardened by her tragic past, Kacey is determined to keep everyone at a distance, but their mutual attraction is undeniable, and Trent is desperate to find a way into Kacey’ guarded heart – even if it means revealing an explosive secret that could shatter both their worlds. 

 

My Review:

 

Twenty-year-old, Kacey Cleary and her fifteen-year-old sister, Livie board a bus in Michigan headed for Miami, Florida.  Their parents had been killed in a drunk driving accident four years ago and now they’re on their own.  They have nothing to keep them in Michigan and just decide Miami would be a nice place to start over. 

 

They were staying with their Aunt Darla and Uncle Raymond but Uncle Raymond had a hard time keeping his hands and other body parts off young, Livie so they took off.

 

The girls found a cheap apartment on desperateforanapartment.com and it was only a half hour from the beach.  The apartment is small and dingy.  The first thing Kacey wants to do is strip the beds and wash the sheets in the hottest water possible.  She heads to the laundry room in the basement where she meets, Trent Emerson who had also just recently moved in.  He was strikingly handsome with a ripped body and the most beautiful blue eyes and long eye lashes. 

 

Kacey has been very closed since the fatal accident and comes across as a hard-ass to everyone.  She doesn’t trust people, won’t allow anyone to touch her, nor will she shake hands with anyone.  Young Livie always springs into action and saves her during moments of introductions. 

 

Although Kacey has this hard-ass demeanor and works very hard at keeping everyone at a distance, keeping that up with Trent becomes more difficult.  Trent is so enamoured with Kacey and is trying hard to find a way into her guarded soul, ‘’even if it means revealing an explosive secret that could shatter both their worlds.’’

 

I totally enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting.  The tension kept mounting and mounting and mounting until finally, BAM!  The secret was out!!!!  I sure didn’t expect that.  This book would appeal to people of all ages. 

 



THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT (AMY TAN)

 

 

Story Description:

 

Harper Collins|October 21, 2013|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-1-44341-022-9

 

From the lavish parlours of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village – a sweeping, evocative epic of two women’s intertwined fates and their search for identity. 

 

Violet is one of the most celebrated courtesans in Shanghai, a beautiful and intelligent woman who has honed her ability to become any man’s fantasy since her start as a “Virgin Courtesan” at the age of twelve.  Half-Chinese and half-American, she moves effortlessly between the east and the west.  But her talents belie her private struggle to understand who she really is and her search for a home in the world.  Abandoned by her mother, Lucia, and uncertain of her father’s identity, Violet’s quest to truly love and be loved will set her on a path fraught with danger and complexity – and the loss of her own daughter.  Lucia, a willful and wild American woman who was once herself the proprietress of Shanghai’s most exclusive courtesan house, nurses her own secret wounds, which she first sustained when, as a teenager, she fell in love with a Chinese painter and followed him from San Francisco to Shanghai.  Her search for penance and redemption will bring her to a startling reunion with Flora, Violet’s daughter, and will undo all that Violet believed she knew about her mother. 

 

Spanning fifty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement sweeps the reader along a deeply moving narrative of family secrets, the legacies of traumas, and the profound connections between mothers and daughters, returning readers to the compelling territory Tan so expertly mapped in The Joy Luck Club.  With her characteristic wisdom, grace and humour, Tan conjures up a story of the inheritance of love, its mysteries and senses, its illusions and truths. 

 

Review:

 

The Valley of Amazement was truly an amazing book!  An epic tale of the most magnificent proportions.  Amy Tan has written her best book yet.  I couldn’t put it down and at a hefty 589 pages I still read it in just over a day.

 

The book spanned fifty years and two contintents – China and America.  Two women, Violet and Lucia lost to each other through no fault of their own once again meet and try to flesh out what happened to them.  This book made me laugh, made me cry and left me feeling hugely satisfied.  For as long as the book was, I still wanted the story to continue on even further.  This is a book not to be missed and should be read by everyone.  I will be keeping this as part of my permanent collection.

 



UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE (AI MI)

 

 

Review:

 

House of Anansi Press Inc.|April 6, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-1-77089-350-4

 

Under the Hawthorn Tree takes place in 1974 during the heart of the Cultural Revolution in China.  Jingqiu is a high school student who is very good at writing essays and is chosen as one of the students to travel to a small village to interview the people, write up her conversations so that they may be used as new textbooks. 

 

While there she meets Old Third and falls hopelessly in love but is his love ‘true’ and returned at the depth to which hers is?  Love is a funny thing and at times people do all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally do all in the name of love.

 

The story was so well-written, so engrossing that I couldn’t turn the page fast enough.  I was totally lost in the novel.  I’ve had it on my ‘to be read’ pile for a while and now wish I had of read it much sooner than I did.  This is a book that would definitely be enjoyed by everyone.  I might just read it again myself.  

 

 



BANQUET OF LIES (MICHELLE DIENER)

 

 

REVIEW:

 

Gallery Books|October 22, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-1-4516-8445-2

 

“LONDON, 1812: Giselle Barrington is living double life, juggling the duties of chef with those of spy catcher.  She must identify her father’s savage killer before the shadowy man finds her and uncovers the explosive political document her father entrusted to her safekeeping.    

 

Posing as a French cook in the home of Lord Aldridge, Giselle is surrounded by unlikely allies and vicious enemies.  In the streets where she once walked freely among polite society, she now hides in plain sight, learning the hard lessons of class distinction and negotiating the delicate balance between servant and master. 

 

Lord Aldridge’s insatiable curiosity about his mysterious new chef blurs the line between civic duty and outright desire.  Carefully watching Giselle’s every move, he undertakes a mission to figure out who she really is – and, in the process, plunges her straight into the heart of danger when her only hope for survival is to remain invisible. “

 

I totally fell in love with this story and couldn’t put it down for a second. I was even walking around the house holding the book while waiting for things to cook or the kettle to boil.  I’d not heard of this author before and actually just picked up the book on a whim and I’m certainly glad I did. 

 



THE LONGEST RIDE (NICHOLAS SPARKS)

 

 

Review:

 

Grand Central Publishing|September 17, 2013|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-1-4555-2065-7

 

Ninety-one-year-old, Ira Levinson found himself in big trouble.  His car has gone off the road in a snowstorm and down a steep embankment.  Already frail and in poor health he is completely isolated and all alone.  Will someone see his car down the embankment and rescue him, or will he suffer from his injuries and the cold and succumb to his death?  As Ira fights with himself to stay conscious, a blurred image appears beside him – his dead wife, Ruth who has passed away nine years ago.  Ruth talks to Ira about the life they lived together to keep him focused, alert, and thinking to prevent him from lapsing into unconsciousness.  Ira has a difficult time at first believing that Ruth is really there with him but finally reconciles it in his mind and accepts it.  Ira and Ruth talked back and forth about the good times and the bad times in their marriage.  Ira has been deeply, deeply in love with his beloved Ruth and missed her more than words could ever express. 

 

College student, Sophia Danko is at a western dance with her friend and roommate, Marcia.  Not feeling up to dancing and not knowing how to line dance, Sophia goes outside into the fresh night air.  Within a few minutes her drunk ex-boyfriend, Brian strolled up and began to hassle her.  When he grabbed her by the wrist he was hurting her.  Just then a strikingly handsome cowboy named, Luke came to her aid.  Within seconds he had, Brian lying down, face first in the dirt with his boot on the back of his neck.  After finishing with Brian, Luke and Sophia strike up a conversation and it doesn’t take long for them to begin dating. 

 

Luke ends up showing Sophie a whole new word that she has never seen before – that of rodeo’s and farming.  As they get to know each other they horseback ride, attend rodeo’s together where Sophie watches Luke bull ride.  They are falling more and more in love.  Sophie begins to ponder what a permanent future would be like with Luke – that is, if the secret he is keeping doesn’t totally destroy their relationship first. 

 

Soon, the lives of Luke and Sophie and Ira and Ruth will come together in the most unexpected way. 

 

I loved The Longest Ride.  The plot was great, the characters well fleshed out and the ending totally blew me away.  I didn’t see that coming at all.

 

Nicholas Sparks has written another winner, a book to be enjoyed by all. 

 



TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY (SHONA PATEL)

 

 

Story Description:

 

Harlequin|September 24, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-7783-1547-6

 

Layla Roy has defied the fates.  

 

Despite being born under an inauspicious horoscope, she is raised to be educated and independent by her eccentric grandfather,Dadamoshai. And, by cleverly manipulating the hand fortune has dealt her, she has even found love with Manik Deb, a man betrothed to another.  All were minor miracles in India that spring of 1943, when young women’s lives were predetermined if not by the stars, then by centuries of family tradition and social order.

 

Layla’s life as a newly married woman takes her away from home and into the jungles of Assam, where the world’s finest tea thrives on plantations run by native labor and British efficiency.  Fascinated by this culture of whiskey-soaked expats who seems fazed by neither earthquakes nor man-eating leopards, she struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives with whom she is expected to socialize, and the peculiar servants she now finds under her charge. 

But navigating the tea-garden set will hardly be her biggest challenge.  Layla’s remote home is not safe from the powerful changes sweeping India on the heels of the Second World War.  Their colonial society is at a tipping point, and Layla and Manik find themselves caught in a perilous racial divide that threatens their very lives. 

My Review:

Layla Roy was born underneath an unlucky star which makes her a “manglik” according to her Hindu culture.  For Laya, growing up in the 1940’s, this is bad news because Mars is predominant in her Hindu horoscope and this angry red planet makes people rebellious and militant by nature.

However, this began to change for Layla on April 7, 1943.  Three things happened that day but the most important was that Layla Roy, seventeen-years-old, fell in love with Manik Deb. 

Dadamoshai, Layla’s grandfather was opening a new girl’s school in their town.  The morning of the opening there were protestors carrying signs with misspelled words.  Earlier that morning, Dadamoshai had chased the demonstrators away down the road yelling at them to “learn to spell before you go around demonstrating your nitwit ideas.” 

Dadamoshai was an advocate of English education and nothing bugged him more than the massacre of the English language.  He was an imposing man and had once been the most powerful District Judge in the state of Assam.  People respectfully stepped aside when the saw him coming.  To most people he was known as Rai Bahadur, an honorary title bestowed upon him by the British for his service to the crown. 

Layla’s life as a newly married woman takes her away from home and into the jungles of Assam, where the world’s finest tea thrives on plantations run by labor and British efficiency.  She struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives with whom she is expected to socialize and the peculiar servants she now finds herself in charge of.

But navigating the tea garden set will hardly be her biggest challenge.  Layla’s remote home is not safe from the powerful changes sweeping India on the heels of the Second World War.  Their colonial society is at a tipping point, and Layla and Manik find themselves caught in a perilous racial divide that threatens their very lives. 

Before marrying Manik, Dadamoshai and Layla had a housekeeper, Chaya, who was a slim woman with soft brown eyes and a disfiguring burn scar that fused the skin on the right side of her face like smooth molten wax.  It was an acid burn.  When Chaya was sixteen, she had fallen in love with a Muslim man.  The Hindu villages killed her lover, and then flung acid in her face to mark her as a social outcast.  Dadamoshai had rescued Chaya from a violent mob and taken her into his custody.  What followed was a lengthy and controversial court case that saw many people go to jail.  Although, Dadamoshai was considered a highly respectable man, this showed his human nature and the compassionate side of his personality. 

Both Layla’s parents had died, which is why she was living with and being raised by Dadamoshai.  Her father was a freedom fighter and died in the cellular jail.  Her mother drowned in a lily pond.  She killed herself. 

Teatime for the Firefly was a phenomenal story for a debut novel.  It had a little of everything in it:  mystery, suspicion, love, hate, thrills and chills and everything else you could possibly think of.  I’d been wanting to read this for a while and kept putting it back on my TBR pile and now I’m sorry I waited so long because this was one well-written, interesting, and powerful story.  Congratulations Ms. Patel on a fantastic debut novel!!!!  You deserve a standing ovation!

 



THE SPARK: A MOTHER'S STORY OF NURTURING GENIUS (KRISTINE BARNETT)

 

 

Story Description:

 

Random House of Canada|April 9, 2013|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-0-30-36279-7

 

Every mother teaches her children they shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but few mothers have had to live that lesson like Kristine Barnett.  When, at the age of two, her son Jake received diagnoses that progressed from Asperger’s to autism, doctors, teachers, and therapists saw only the autism.  Not Kristine.  She saw a beautiful little boy and she simply could not accept the bleak life of limitations being projected for Jake.  The Spark is a moving, terrifying and inspirational story of her courageous journey with Jake, a journey that is a testament to the ferocity of a mother’s love.  Where others saw bizarre behaviour and emotional withdrawal, Barnett saw a spark in her son, an intelligence that just didn’t know how to talk to the world.  Over the course of ten years she nurtured that spark with unwavering faith and a tenacity that is, in the truest sense of the word, awesome.  And the child, who therapists said shouldn’t bother trying to learn the alphabet or tie his shoes, is now researching quantum physics at Indiana University, giving engaging interviews on TV and inspiring students to stop learning and start thinking.  He is just 14.  But this beautiful joyful book is so much more than the story of an exceptional mother and her genius son.  In a voice that could be your neighbour, your sister, or your best friend, Barnett shows us how to see children, whether those with autisim or their non-spectrum friends, as she does – as unique people with infinite potential.  She shows us that every child has a spark waiting to be discovered.  If you are a mother, or have a child in your life, The Spark is simply the most compelling book you will read this year. 

 

My Review:

 

The Spark was the most compelling and profound memoir I’ve read in a long while.  Kristine Barnett is not only a genius in my opinion, but a superwoman with herculean stamina and an unbelievably powerful advocacy quotient to her personality. 

 

After being told that her 2-year-old son, Jake had autism and would likely never talk or read or even tie his own shoelaces by the age of 16, Kristine refused to believe that.  After allowing herself to grieve over the news she jumped on the bandwagon to get Jake the help he needed and hasn’t stopped to this very day. 

 

Kristine ran a home daycare and had worked with children of various ages and various learning disabilities so she wasn’t totally blind coming out of the gate.  After a great deal of reading and research about autism, Kristine and her husband, Michael engaged, Jake in every type of therapy available to them.  Jake’s therapy schedule was so full that she would literally fall into bed each night totally exhausted. 

 

With careful observation of Jake and what he did activity wise between therapy sessions gave her ideas on how to best help and advocate for her son.  She figured out that most of the therapy focused on what Jake could “NOT” do, not on what he “COULD” do.  This just didn’t make sense to Kristine and she soon found herself creating her own activities out of things she either made herself or bought.  This set Jake up for a lot of successes and encouraged him to keep learning.  Although, Jake had stopped talking, Kristine was still able to communicate with him through the activities they shared together. 

 

Jake’s IQ was higher than Einstein’s had been and he had a photographic memory, and “taught himself calculus in two weeks!”  At age 9, little Jake “started working on an original theory in astrophysics that experts believe may someday put him in line for a Nobel Prize.  By the time, Jake was 12, he had become a “paid” researcher in quantum physics.

 

Without Kristine, Jake would have stagnated.  She had earned that all the basic knowledge a child needed had to be acquired by the age of 5, so this gave Kristine 3 years to pull off a miracle. 

 

After observing his boredom and further withdrawal from the world with the various therapists coming to their home each day, Kristine made a decision against the advice of the therapists and even her husband, Michael.  She pulled him out of therapy and began preparing him on her own for full mainstream kindergarten.  A feat no one believed ever possible. 

 

Thus begins, Kristine’s journey to “follow Jacob’s spark – his passionate interests.”  Through hard work, long hours, determination and commitment, Kristine along with her husband, Michael, friends and others in their community prevailed. 

 

Kristine Barnett is an intelligent, tireless, superwoman.  THE SPARK is dramatic, inspiring and transformative.  This is a woman who faced overwhelming obstacles but through sheer determination, stamina, and an overwhelming love for her son, changed not only his life and his future but also the lives and futures of many other children. 

 

THE SPARK is a memoir that should be read by every parent, every teacher, and a copy should be in every school and public library.