Recent reads

Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford. Publisher summary: A Bonfire of the Vanities for the 21st century mixed with Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and Amor Towles's Rules of Civility.

I wanted to throw up while reading this book, but in a good way? It was just so hideously awkward and nerve-wracking to watch the heroine, ordinary Evelyn, try to pass herself off as a member of New York's elite upper class, knowing that she couldn't (could she?) possibly sustain it. The social striving reached Whartonesque proportions pretty quickly and then kept going. On the one hand you're rooting for E. to pull it off, on the other, you wonder why she wants so badly to fit in with these awful people and it makes Evelyn seem a little awful, too. But that just means you can sit back and enjoy her missteps along the way. NOTE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher. 

The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly. Publisher summary: From former NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly comes a heart-pounding story about fear, family secrets, and one woman's hunt for answers about the murder of her parents.

I am a little obsessed with NPR so when I heard news correspondent Mary Louise Kelly had written a novel I had to get it. This is the story of Caroline Cashion, who one day wakes up with neck pain, goes to the doctor, and finds out she has a BULLET lodged in her neck near her spine. Of course she has no idea how it got there and finding out dredges up a bunch of secrets in her past. I feel like I keep reading books in this suspenseful, the-next-Gone-Girl genre, and while this one wasn't my fave, I really, really appreciated that I did NOT see the end coming in any way. My eyebrows went way up and stayed that way for the last 20 pages.

The Blondes by Emily Schultz. Publisher summary: A hilarious and whipsmart novel where an epidemic of a rabies-like disease is carried only by blonde women, all of whom must go to great lengths to conceal their blondness.

That premise in itself is interesting enough to sustain an entire novel but you also have main character Hazel thrown together in the chaos with her boyfriend's very angry, um wife. And oh yes, Hazel is pregnant with his baby. The result is awkward, sinister, redemptive -- a great mix. This book IS funny -- but there were also moments that chillingly brought back events of the past year, of riots and uprisings and people being taken down in the streets, only this time the image featured (usually affluent) blonde women, which was a weird juxtaposition that made you think about things in a new way, probably just as the author intended.

The Lake House by Kate Morton. Publisher summary: Living on her family's idyllic lakeside estate in 1930s Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, inquisitive, innocent and precociously talented sixteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure...

I haven't been too impressed with Kate Morton's last few books, finding them a little convoluted and too pat. But this one reminds me of her first, The House at Riverton, the one that originally turned me on to her. Everything ties up neatly at the end, which usually bothers me, but isn't that what you expect from Kate Morton?

A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan. Publisher summary: Elisabeth Egan brings us harried mother Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age. 

So the book opens when Alice's husband spectacularly quits his law job and she must go back to work for the first time since her children were born. Just like in real life, you can't please everyone in the working mom/stay at home mom debate and there are a few points in this book where I found myself angry on behalf of one or the other group. But I did enjoy some of the details of Egan's plot, especially reading about the "innovative" (read horribly corporate and awful) book company Alice goes to work for. NOTE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.