Band of Sisters

A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smith’s Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend Emmeline Van Alden reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit.

Four months later, Kate and seventeen other Smithies, including two trailblazing female doctors, set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies, and good intentions—all of which immediately go astray. The chateau that was to be their headquarters is a half-burnt ruin. The villagers they meet are in desperate straits: women and children huddling in damp cellars, their crops destroyed and their wells poisoned. 

Despite constant shelling from the Germans, French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army, the Smith volunteers bring welcome aid—and hope—to the region. But can they survive their own differences? As they cope with the hardships and terrors of the war, Kate and her colleagues find themselves navigating old rivalries and new betrayals which threaten the very existence of the Unit.

With the Germans threatening to break through the lines, can the Smith Unit pull together and be truly a band of sisters?  

I simply loved this book...this story and everything about how this book came about. I listened to it on audiobook. I also listened to a few interviews with the author and found her story about how she found these women amazing. She writes with love and tells their version or a version of their story based on the letters from the girls of the unit themselves.

I finished The Kiss Quotient. 4.0 stars Summary: Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...

This book is rated R...so don't read it if you have a problem with that. The very premise means they are going to be busy. The basic plot is a gender-swapped Pretty Woman.

Stella is autistic and loves math. She is very very good at it and her job in economics perfectly suits her.

Michael is a stud muffin and a perfectly handsome book boyfriend. He's got the dark, handsome, haunted thing going for him.

The book is filled with family and side characters that are a lot of fun. There's a twist towards the end that I did not see coming, it's pretty funny and will have you shocked and laughing.

As always, I'm interested in the author and how they came to be published. The Kiss Quotient is no different. She was diagnosed as autistic in her thirties when she thought her daughter was autistic. It was not an unsurprising diagnosis and explained a lot of her growing up. Helen Hoang attended Pitch Wars and was able to make connections to get her novel published. The series has two other stories, all in the same world.

To Blog again

I'm trying this again. I joined bookstagram. It was truly only a matter of time. I'm reading several books at the moment. Daisy Jones and the Six I'm 35% of the way through (thank you Goodreads) I'm enjoying this book for much. I love how each character has their own voice. One Day In December I'm about 20% through and I don't have an opinion yet. It's just okay. I don't want to DNF it...we'll see. This Kiss Quotient. I 65% of the way through this book. I'm enjoying it so far. It's a lot of fun and gives me insight into how the autistic brain works. It's also clearly a gender-swapped Pretty Woman. I started using Audible and finished American Royals. I started reading the book and then decided to give audible a try. It made sense, I'm a busy mom, I work full time and I commute...which cuts into my reading time. I thought this was book was much fun. I loved the idea of an alternate America where we have a monarchy. I'll probably try and get my hands on the sequel. #Allhailqueenbee With my Audible subscription, I get all kinds of freebies. I also listened to Anne of Green Gables read by Rachel McAdams. It was amazing. It's already one of my favorite books of all time and she is absolutely the perfect person to read the book. I'm in the middle of Anne of the Island which is also free. I'd forgotten about this book. It's okay so far. It's good revisiting Anne again.

The Martian

 I was at lunch with a friend last weekend and we were discussing something and all of a sudden a joke from a movie popped into my head and my friend's husband knew what I was talking about.

It had to do with The Martian by Andy Weir. I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read the book. Luckily we are the sort of nerds that go to bookstores often, and I found a copy of the book.

I mentioned in an early post that the story of how The Martian was published was kind of amazing and very inspiring to me. He was a computer programmer for twenty-five years but always wanted to be a writer. So, he wrote a book as a hobby and people liked it. The liked it so much that it got the attention of an agent and a publisher. It's a modern day Cinderella story.

It’s a fun book to read. When I first started reading the book, I intended to review the first few chapters, but I read over 120 pages in one sitting.

The thing that strikes me most about this book is that I don’t want to leave the universe that Andy Weir created and I love the voice of the main character. To me, that’s what makes this such a compelling story.

I could care less about the science or if it could happen. I’m most certainly not a huge fan of science fiction and under normal circumstances wouldn’t have given this book a chance.

I think that’s a lesson I need to take to heart when creating my characters. It’s not the story, because I won’t be the first writer to write a coming of age story, but if people can root for my protagonist, then I have something.

Also, I found some of his earlier writing online. He’s written Doctor Who Fan Fiction and some other stuff. It was like his training ground.

Currently, there’s some fan fiction about The Martian. I wonder how that feels as an author: for someone who wrote fan fiction to now have fan fiction written about the characters they created.

The Life We Bury

                                                 
I've had a very long week, and haven’t felt much like writing or reading. It doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes the children run me ragged and my only desire at the end of the day is to sit in a quiet room away from other humans.

I was thinking about a book I read recently called “The Life We Bury” By Allen Eskens. It's one of those that sticks with you long after the last page.

This is the Synopsis from Goodreads:

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.

Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. 

Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?

I normally don’t like murder mystery stories. However, the few I’ve read and finished, I’ve enjoyed.

I loved the way this story was told and I loved Joe. He was a hard-working kid who was trying to escape his alcoholic mother. Joe has always had to take care of his family and is now running from his mother and autistic brother.

The main plot points of the novel are interesting. Carl's life was tragic, but not an uncommon story. To be honest, it wasn’t the mystery that had me so intrigued, it was the B plot that had me up past my bedtime reading. It was so true to life, one day Joe is a college student writing a paper, the next he’s bailing his mother out of jail on DUI charges or taking his brother home to live with him.

Joe’s brother is autistic. I absolutely LOVED this plot point. I loved the honest portrayal of a sibling with autism and the way Joe was protective of him in the way a brother would be protective of his younger brother. I also liked that for Joe, having an autistic brother was just apart of his life and most importantly, Jeremy wasn't his autistic brother, he was his brother.

 I really really liked his neighbor turned loved interest, Lila Nash. I hope she's in the sequel because I wanted more of them. I also loved that Lila made instant friends with Jeremy.

The author Allen Eskens, was working as an attorney when he wrote this. He even went as far as taking writing classes, his website says that: after law school, he studied creative writing in the M.F.A. program at Minnesota State University-Mankato, as well as the Loft Literary Center and the Iowa Summer Writer’s Festival. Okay, my bucket list begins and ends with attending the Iowa Summer Writer’s Festival.

I had a book hangover after this one. I didn’t want it to end, a fact I tweeted (using an old account) to the author, and he retweeted me and followed me. I’m going to send Mr. Eskins this blog. If he reads it, he should know that he is an inspiration to me. I can’t wait to read the sequel (it’s pre-ordered at Barnes and Noble), and I am trying very hard to get my hands on your other books.

Morning Rambles

I have to leave for work in a few minutes and I’m crabby. Awesome, way to start a day spent with children. Even the coffee isn’t helping and I love coffee more than should be possible. I wish I could curl up with a book and get sucked into another world. Its days like this being an adult is overrated.

I was thinking about a book I read a few years ago called “Ten Girls To Watch” by Charity Shumway. I read in the midst of a lot of life drama that I won’t go into and that book was an escape. It made me want to write more.

The novel was partly autobiographical in the best ways. The character was her but not her. The author has fallen off the map and isn’t active on social media otherwise I would tell her how much I loved her book. If you haven’t read it, try and get your hands on a copy. I'll link the Goodreads page below.

It’s getting late, I should leave. I’m going to read more of Eleanor tonight and post something.

Ten Girls To Watch

The First Post...or who is the lady?

I am a writer. I am sitting at my computer typing words and hoping they make sense and that someone will read them. Most importantly, I hope someday, someone will pay to read the words that fall out of my brain, specifically in the form of a novel.

I have an idea for a novel that is very very very loosely based on my parents that I am about half done with the first draft. It's a coming of age story that asks the question "What do you do after you fell on your ass and got back up?" What is the other side of the rainbow? It's a love story, a coming of age story and I'm gonna finish the first draft or die trying.

I am a reader. I have a "to be read" mountain range...(more about that later).

Saying I love books is the understatement of the year.

I am a mother. I love my little boy. with every part of my heart...in fact, it beats for him. He causes it to skip beats, fall to my knees and quicken. He's the light in the darkness of life.

I've read my Harry Potter and you can't tell me that Lily Potter is the most amazing fictional mother in the history of...ever. She cast a spell on her son so that as long as he returned to his bloodline, he would be protected from Voldemort. It was an ancient form of magic Voldemort couldn't understand.

A mother's love is fierce and begins the minute they are bent over the toilet with morning sickness. It isn't meant to be understood until a person takes one look into the eyes of the tiny human they created, and know from the deepest part of their heart, that this baby is without question their reason for waking up in the morning.

I'm a wife, married to a wonderful man for four years, but together for fourteen. He's my prince (actually he's my Luke Danes and I hope you got that reference and if you didn't, go watch Gilmore Girls) and we are living our very own messy (quite literally) version of happily ever after.

There is a pimple-faced teenager who is as old as my relationship and I look forward to the day the pimple faced teenager turns into a fully grown adult with a job and mortgage. In short, my life began when I fell for him and any course it takes would be meaningless without him to share it with.

I am a preschool teacher. Four-year-olds are awesome, I love the age and developmental stage. I hope they walk away from my classroom with a love of the written word...and the ability to share, sharing is caring

This blog isn't here for me to talk about my job or the two people who make life worth living, this is my outlet from the stress of life. I need to branch out as a writer. I'm not going to get an MFA or run off to Paris and write my magnum opus. I'm going to write the novel that lives in me in the midst of being a wife and mother with a full-time job. So far, my thoughts on this blog are to write about what inspires me as a writer from the point of view of a reader and vice-versa.

So, if you made it through all that, congrats. I hope you stick with me.