To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal

Judith Blunt is from a broken home.  She decided as a teen to live with her father, a college professor and she moves from Vermont to Nebraska where she meets Willy Blunt.  He is a carpenter in his mid twenties.  When her father thinks maybe she is maybe going to settle with Willy rather than pursue an education he pulls strings and gets her admitted to Stanford. After some violence connected with Willy’s work she decides maybe getting out of town is wise.  She goes off to California abandoning her great love and does not look back until she is a middle aged woman.

She seems to have a good life and a happy marriage but when her daughter rejects the bedroom set that Judith had as a child she decides to rent a storage unit to keep it.    At any rate,  she goes off the rails and decorates the storage unit like her teenage bedroom bringing back teen memories of her lost love Willy.  She also has suspicions that her husband might be having an affair.  Judith hires a detective to find her old beau and buys a throw away cell phone to receive private messages and spends time in her storage unit/bedroom.  Once Willy is found, Judith decides what she needs is to reconnect with Willy.  She makes some arrangements for someone to cover her work and makes excuses to her husband and off she goes to Nebraska to see Willy Blunt and find what he is up to---  obviously not a good idea. She reconnects with Willy and they revert to their teenage selves.   I  will say no more as I am getting into spoiler territory.  The story is told in alternating chapters Judith as a teenager and Judith as an adult.  The characters are well developed and while I enjoyed the read I did not like the people at all.
~Maggie

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An Unexpected Guest by Anne Korkeakivi

This is a graceful novel about an elegant American wife of a British diplomat that is posted to Paris.  It all takes place in a single day when Clare Morehouse, a capable hostess, is having the most important dinner in her husband’s career----her gracious entertaining will determine if her husband gets the coveted assignment to be the ambassador to Dublin.  Her husband thinks this is exactly what  Clare wants since she is Irish American.   Clare is ambivalent about the assignment  because of a youthful passion that had her involved with an IRA member.  She had unwittingly transported both guns and money for the IRA cause.  Clare keeps her cool in her preparations for the perfect dinner---dealing with a cantankerous cook, an ineffective housekeeper, a call from her son’s prep school headmaster telling her he was being suspended and encountering her IRA guy that she thought dead.  Enough already, but as she is waiting for her dinner guests she sees a terrorist on the television that is suspected of an assassination that day.   Clare knows that he is not the assassin since she was giving him directions to a doctor’s office when the assassination took place. Does she contact the police and risk her husband losing his new assignment? 


This sounds melodramatic but it is not.  It is a well written and a delicious read and Clare is a well developed and likeable character.
~Maggie


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Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

If you read Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick you know that he writes very sinister fiction---Reliable was a debut novel and a tough act to follow.  However, Heading Out to Wonderful is just as compelling and equally dark. 

 
Charlie Beale arrives in Brownsburg with two suitcases---one full of knives ,the other full of cash.  We do not get any back story to why or how he accumulated the cash.  But he soon gets a job and he is the best butcher ever---so we know why he has the knives.  He soon falls in love with the wife of the richest man in town, Boaty’s wife Sylvan Glass---Sylvan was not her birth name but we are never told that as it would be according to her, unbelievable.  Many questions are never answered:  Where did Charlie come from?  What is his background?  What about family and why did he take a five year old for his meetings with Sylvan?  Charlie also has a problem being contained in a house and prefers sleeping on the ground by his river land. 


In spite of unanswered questions and unreasonable behaviors this is a great read---unputdownable.
~Maggie


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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl is a page turner with well developed characters.  The story is told from alternating his/her points of view.   Nick and Amy Dunn are a couple downsized from big New York City jobs and they return to Nick’s down at the heels hometown for a new lease on life. Nick and Amy are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy goes missing.  Amy has left behind an extensive diary and clues to her disappearance.  Also, Amy is the child of famous authors, and as the star of  their books, the national media is interested in her disappearance.  As the diary is read and the clues followed, Nick realizes it is all an elaborate hoax and that Amy is setting him up for her murder while everyone else including Amy’s parents are thinking he killed her.  We soon find out that Nick was not the ideal husband and Amy far from a good wife.  Amy is not only a bad wife but a diabolical person.  I hope I have not given away too much.  I do not want to ruin an excellent read for you.  There are no draggy parts and one changes sides from Nick to Amy---as to who was the wronged party. 

This is a great read and a suspense novel a bit different from usual fare-----loved it.
~Maggie

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The French Gardener by Santa Montefiore

Review by Jan:

I have posted this review once already on our Not Your Ordinary Book Group blog, so for those of you who follow both blogs please forgive the redundancy.  Our book group lately has been choosing books that lean toward contemporary fiction, like The French Gardener.  This is the May read for our book group.  We do have book group copies available that are not on our catalog, both in eReader and book format.  If you would like a copy, please let us know.  contact us

First I will begin by saying I fell in love with the environment of this story. It's set on an English country estate, with neglected gardens, stone bridge covered streams, and an abandoned cottage complete with a scrapbook filled with secrets. It reads more like contemporary fiction, or women's fiction, rather than a typical romance.

It begins with Miranda Lambert, an ex-Londoner and writer who we soon learn is not entirely happy living in the country as she secretly sobs in her closet over her unused Jimmy Choos. Her husband, a banker, travels from London to spend the weekends with her and their two children. She is a posh socialite more comfortable in the city than the country that she now inhabits. Her children are lonely and unhappy, starving for attention; her son acts out in aggressive ways, torturing the neighbor's poor donkey and biting classmates.

I was drawn to champion this woman as soon as her husband hit the pages. David is arrogant, belittles his wife, and having an affair with her best friend! On his weekends home, he watches golf and ignores his family. Miranda, after a scolding from her husband to "get it together", hires a cook, housekeeper, and a mysterious French gardener. While cleaning out an abandoned cottage on the estate, she discovers a journal written by the previous owner who was lovingly called Shrub by her husband. The journal chronicles Shrub's love affair with her own French gardener that happened thirty years prior.

We soon learn that Shrub's French gardener in the past is also Miranda's French gardener in the present; Jean-Paul is older but still handsome. The gardener returned for Shrub but found a troubled family in her place. In honor of his lost love, Jean-Paul agrees to stay and rebuild the overgrown garden. As the garden comes back to life so does the family who lives amongst its magical surroundings, and as Miranda reads the secret journal readers also journey through a forbidden love story.

This book intertwines two story lines quite nicely. I will say I enjoyed this book despite the heavy influence of infidelity throughout, both in the past and present. Shrub's affair in the past helps Miranda forgive her own husband's infidelity in the present, so while the affairs are distasteful, there are lessons learned. It is a story filled with secret discoveries, forbidden love, and human weakness. The setting is exquisite, a gardener's ultimate dream, and the cast is fun and quirky. The only other spoiler I will give is that I think it wrapped up the French gardener's storyline in a satisfactory way. I enjoyed the journey of Miranda and her family toward happiness and forgiveness, although I wouldn't have minded if she had punished her husband just a tad longer before allowing him back home.

Hope to see you in our library someday soon,
Jan

Heft by Liz Moore

Review by Maggie:

Arthur Opp is nearly 600 lbs and has not left his Brooklyn brownstone in nearly ten years.  Fortunately for him he owns his home and has a trust fund that enables him to have all the food he wants delivered to his home.  Although he was always misfit he was an academic before becoming a recluse.  He kept up a correspondence with a former student but has not heard from her in years.    Out of the blue he gets a letter and she wants to visit with him----Arthur feels he must warn her about his living conditions (he has not been upstairs in his house in many years climbing stairs is too difficult) but he welcomes the idea of being back in touch.  She has secrets of her own---one being she has a teenage son-----

Soon Arthur has cleaning lady that he develops a friendship with and we then hear of his back story.  In the meantime, the novel alternates between Arthur’s life and the tale of  Kel the teenage son of his former student.  It is easy to like Arthur and I found his sections more interesting than Kel the teenage boy.   It is a very compelling read----one cannot help but like Arthur.
~Maggie

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