Absolution by Amanda Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**I received this book for free from the author in exchange for a honest review***

It has been awhile since I've read a romance and I was overdue! I really enjoyed this book and thought it was well-written. I only wish the ending had more detail (the proposal and the actual event). If I have any criticism it's only that I thought the characters were drama queens in that it took them forever to open up and be truthful with each other; I wanted to shake them sometimes! The reason Jack stayed away 4 years didn't make sense to me; he was afraid of what? He did what anyone would have done to save Ally and had nothing to feel guilty about. Just everyone's refusal to share anything was frustrating to me.

But other than that, I enjoyed the book and I'd like to learn more about the characters and what happens to them. Good job, Amanda Dick! Oh, and I loved the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. If I was reading a paper book, I would've highlighted each one because I want to remember them all.

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Before I Go by Colleen Oakley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This has now become my favorite book, so far, of 2015. Although it is not a “feel good – happy ending” book, I could relate a lot. It is about a young, married woman, Daisy, married to Jack, who is finishing up his dual degrees to become a veterinary doctor and a PhD doctor (a 7-year journey). Daisy is a breast cancer survivor of three years (after going through chemo and radiation), working on her graduate degree, and waiting to travel and have children with Jack once his degree is finished in a few months. Their whole life has been working towards this goal, and then what they will do “after.” She is about to celebrate her 3-year “cancerversary” when she has her annual tests and gets the news that her cancer is back, and this time it’s stage IV, incurable, and everywhere - brain, bones, breast, liver, lungs. She has a six-month prognosis to live. The book is all about her emotions, her fear that her beloved husband, Jack, can’t function without her, and that she needs to find him a second wife for after she’s gone. But then she has second thoughts about it and gets jealous thinking of him with someone else. She shuts her husband out, not wanting him to go to doctor appointments or surgeries with her, and not talking to him about her feelings or his. She literally shuts down. I think unconsciously she was pushing him away, thinking he might as well get used to not being with her, when all he wanted was to be with her. I wanted to shake her and tell her that she’s still alive, not dead yet, and she needs to LIVE her last months with him! The writing is beautiful and the story is so poignant, raw, and moving. I can’t believe it is Colleen Oakley’s first novel! The novel deals with many issues: death, life, love, the mother/daughter relationship, best friend relationship, introspection, letting go, and a host of other themes. I literally felt like I was inside Daisy’s head and could feel what she was feeling and think what she was thinking. Some of the sentences were written so perfectly and beautifully that I just stopped reading and pondered them.
I especially related to this book because I am a 10 year breast cancer survivor myself, and recently I had a scare, fearing that it had returned. Luckily, all my tests (first tests done in 10 years) were clear. But for a brief time I felt like Daisy, scared of a recurrence, but I was so lucky and fortunate that it was nothing. In her case, she was only 27, so very young, so her diagnosis was doubly scary. Also, I have a friend whose husband was recently diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, and what she is going through I can only imagine. So this book had special meaning for me at this time. It made my throat tighten at certain scenes and I cried throughout; it was very cathartic! Like I said, it is a heartbreaking book, but my favorite of this year. I highly recommend it.


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A book club pick I would never have picked up on my own, but I loved it!

Soulless by Gail Carriger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would never have picked this book up on my own to read, as I'm not into vampires and werewolves (except the Twilight series). But, as it was a book club pick, I went out of my comfort zone and read it. Actually, I listened to the Audible version and it was wonderful! I actually really enjoyed this book and found it humorous, a delight, and a breath of fresh air, a change from my usual reading. I liked the characters, the setting, and the story. My one complaint is that I don't think Alexia was soulless at all; I felt she had a lot of "soul." I loved her character, her wittiness, her intelligence, her love and caring for her friends and lover. The "sex" scenes, although not "too" explicit, were explicit enough to be pretty steamy, ha ha. I could see this book being made into a movie! The pronunciation of some of the names on the audio version were NOT how I would have thought how they were pronounced, so I enjoyed listening to the book for that reason.

I don't know if I will read the others in the series (too many books, so little time), but I might try them. If you want a light, fun read, I highly recommend this book, and can't wait for our book discussion at book club this weekend.

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I was excited to read this book from my favorite Little Couple!

Life Is Short (No Pun Intended): Love, Laughter, and Learning to Enjoy Every Moment by Jennifer Arnold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have watched every single episode of the t.v. reality show, The Little Couple, about the lives of the authors of this book. In fact, it is one of my most favorite shows. Therefore, I really enjoyed their book, although I knew most of the things in it already. The only thing new was finding out that Jen's parents had divorced, her dad had remarried and divorced, and then her parents had remarried each other! (By the way, I love her mom, Judy.) Jen and Bill appear to be one of the nicest couples on t.v., so respectful and loving of each other, so intelligent, hard-working, and loving and dedicated to their two children. I never hear anyone on social media bad-mouthing this couple or their show; they are truly well-liked. It is a testament to their character and how they are doing their show that people truly admire them. As an adoptive parent myself (from Guatemala) and a cancer (breast) survivor, I also could relate a LOT to their story, so this book was especially meaningful to me. I am so excited over their adoptions of Will and Zoey, both such cute kids. Will is so much like Bill that it's eerie and he was obviously meant to be his son! Zoey is so so cute. Both children appear very intelligent and I can't wait for the new season to begin to see how they are doing and how Bill's latest surgery went. The book was well written and I liked the alternating chapters from each of JEn's and Bill's points of view. For a change, even though it was an advanced uncorrected proof, I did not find any editing errors. Kudos to them for that! When I got this book, I dropped the other books I was reading to immediately read this one!

**I received this book free from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.**

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My favorite book of 2015 (so far)!

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All the Light We Cannot See is in my top 5 books read in 2015, so far. I listened to the Audible version and thought the narrator was perfect; I could always tell who was speaking. Although some reviewers complain about how the book skips around in time and character, I actually liked it. It went from Marie-Laure to Werner from the present to the past, alternating. I like how it all came together. Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her father and Werner lives in Germany with his sister and in an orphanage type of home. Marie-Laure became blind at age 6 and her father builds her a model of her neighborhood so she can become independent and find her way around. He works in the National Natural History Museum in Paris and Marie-Laure learns her academics from her father, from reading, and from the museum. Despite her blindness, she is very, very intelligent and loves to learn. Werner is also an extremely intelligent boy and is fascinated with radios. He learns to repair them and build them, to the point where the townspeople bring their radios to him to fix. When World War II breaks out, Werner is selected to go to an exclusive state school and when he finishes he goes into the Army where he is to find resistance people through their radio transmissions. Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris and go (with a valuable gem from the museum) to St. Malo, where her great-uncle, Etienne, lives, and where she lives out the rest of the WWII. Her uncle was a fascinating character. He was a WWI veteran who has not left his home in 24 years and is agoraphobic. He is wonderful to Marie-Laure and his back story, with his brother (her grandfather), is very interesting. As the story develops, you will discover how Marie-Laure and Werner’s lives will intertwine and how the war affects each of them. The French resistance movement plays a large part in the book, as does some fantasy surrounding the gem/diamond they are guarding. I didn’t really expect what happened towards the end (no spoilers!), but I also was not surprised. I found the book fascinating and from a different perspective of the war than that which I have previously read about. It will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend it.

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Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon!

It starts at 8 a.m. On Saturday, April 25, 2015!

A book people will be talking about this year!

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hausfrau – “housewife” in German. I can’t get this new book out of my mind and wanted to start reading it all over again when I finished it! If I had my own eBook or a paper copy I would have been highlighting like crazy throughout the entire book as there were that many things I wanted to remember – profound quotes, insights, meaningful words. The book is beautifully written (the author is a poet) and so thought-provoking! I predict that this will be a book people will be talking about a lot in 2015 and it is now, officially, my top book of the year, so far.

Anna is an ex-pat American married to a Swiss banker, Bruno, living outside Zurich, Switzerland. They have three children, two young sons and a baby daughter. Anna has never adapted to life in Switzerland, has no real friends, does not know the language/dialect, her husband is not very loving/supportive/present, her mother-in-law does not really accept her, and Anna really doesn’t know what to do with herself. She is not a typical housewife and is extremely lonely. She is not happy at all and has no real support system. She is finally seeing a psychotherapist (Jungian) and has, finally, after 9 years, started taking German lessons, as her children are bi-lingual and she knows almost no German after all this time living in Switzerland. She is severely depressed, but it is not really acknowledged or dealt with. She can’t sleep well at night and often goes outside in the middle of night to the top of a hill behind her home and sits on a bench. Her psychiatrist prescribes some medication, but Anna does not take it, and the doctor doesn’t follow up. The way Anna deals with her unhappy life is by having affairs, multiple affairs, which are meaningless and not fulfilling, except for the sex. She does not open up to anyone, including her therapist or her husband or her new Canadian friend she meets in German class, about her real feelings or what she is doing. She does not work outside the home and barely parents her children, although she loves them (her mother-in-law helps out every day); as she is too busy meeting her lovers and escaping from her life as a hausfrau.

It is interesting that I read this book right after reading another, similar book, A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison, which was also really good. They would be interesting to compare/contrast in a book discussion group, along with Anna Karenina, which Hausfrau has many parallels to.
Some of the events that happened towards the end and at the end I did not see coming, although they are totally fitting and very ,very sad. I’m still not even totally sure about the ending (what really happened), but it is very tragic. Anna was totally lost and felt she had no one to turn to, although she has an epiphany, of sorts, about how her life really was, but it’s really too late for late. Sad sad sad.

To get a flavor for the book, here are some telling quotes from the book:

“Narcissism isn't vanity, Anna. We're all narcissists to a degree. A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. You have little regard for those around you. You do what you will with a libertine's abandon. Boredom sets in. A bored woman is a dangerous woman.”

“...analysis isn't pliers, and truth is not teeth: you can't pull it out by force. A mouth stays closes as long as it wants to. Truth is told when it tells itself.”

“An obsession is a defense against feeling out of control. A compulsion is the failure of that defense.”
“Pain is the proof of life”

And there are so many more. The book is told from the present and the past and the psychotherapy appointments, all interwoven, and back and forth. Even the German lessons at her language classes are instructive and different from any language classes I ever had! I think there is not a page that doesn’t have some thought-provoking phrase in it.

There is SO much to say about this book, almost more than any other book I’ve read this year. I could go on and on. (I might edit/add to this review later, as I think about it more). I know it will stay with me a long time, and I know I will read it again. It just resonated with me and the author is a brilliant writer. I highly recommend this book!

*I received this book for free from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.*


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