Month: June 2019

I recently finished The Favorite Daughter by Kaira Rouda.  The main character in this book, Jane, is a mother of 2.  She recently lost her older daughter, Mary, and questions remain as to what happened.  When the book begins, they are approaching the one year anniversary of Mary’s death.  Jane has spent a year, heavily medicated, to get through the grief of losing who she believed was her perfect daughter.  During that year, her husband has been working longer hours and her younger daughter, Betsy,  is keeping secrets.  The family appears to be falling apart and Jane has made it her mission to find out what is going on and what actually happened to Mary.

I don’t want to give any spoilers.  But, I have read a lot of books that follow what I have mentioned before as being in the “Gone Girl” genre and this one definitely follows that same genre.  As we all know, Amy was a certifiable lunatic in Gone Girl.  Compared to Jane in The Favorite Daughter, Amy was actually very sane and normal.  To say Jane is crazy, would be an understatement.  While I had fun reading this book, I did have a hard time dealing with the true insanity of Jane, I can’t remember the last time I read a character that was crazy and so void of humanity.  In a word, WOW!

The Favorite Daughter gives us a very fictional glimpse into the perfect, All American family living in Orange County California.  The neighborhood that they live in is over the top idyllic and the people who live there are nothing more than characters.  If this is what it is really like to live among the rich in California, I will continue to be happy in Midwestern America.  No one seems real in the story, making it hard to actually care about the characters.  That being said though, I did have fun reading the book and read it quickly.  It is a very easy read and while the ending is very predictable, Jane is very transparent, the story will draw you in.

Don’t expect great literature with this one.  I came across one very glaring mistake the author made while writing the book.  Throughout the story she talks about all the years her girls were one year apart in school.  However, when the oldest daughter goes to college, the younger daughter is starting her junior year of high school.  This was, in my opinion, a major mistake that the editor missed.  That set aside,  expect to have fun reading it and know that the ending will be very satisfying.  I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.  I would have given 3.5, with a half star for the fun factor if that was an option.

I recently finished the World War II drama Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein.  This was one of those books that I started and had to promise myself that I would not stay up until 12:30 am reading.  I did not fulfill that promise to myself and finished it in 2 nights, it was that good.

Set in Berlin in the 1930’s, best friends Ilse and Renate, have spent their childhood together.  They share secrets and make promises to each other to remain best friends forever.  As the Nazi party continues to strengthen in Germany, they find that maintaining their precious friendship is going to be impossible.  Renate’s family reveals a secret that will make it impossible for her to sustain her lifestyle, her social connections and education.

After introducing Ilse and Renate, the book jumps to 1980’s New York City and the reader is introduced to Ilse’s daughter Ava.  Ava was born at the start of WWII and never knew who her father was and never knew why she was surrendered to an orphanage as a young child, only to be retreived by her mother years later.  She spends her life begging her mother for answers, but receives nothing from Ilse.  Finally, after years of estrangement from Ilse she receives a letter from Germany that includes the story of her mother’s life through a series of letters that her mother wrote over several decades to Renate.  These letters explain to Ava why her mother was distant and cold during her childhood.  It also explains the mystery of her father and those years in the orphanage.  The answer is shocking.

I really liked this book for several reasons.  I have read so many WWII books over the years.  The events of 1940’s Europe provided endless material for historical fiction.  Personally, I have always felt an obligation to read those stories so that I can understand why the holocaust happened and what drove millions of people to follow a madman blindly.  In all honesty, I have been backing away from those books a little bit because they all seem to end in the same place, a death camp. While I know that was the story for millions of victims, it was not the story for all of Hitler’s victims.  Make no mistake about it though, just because this story does not end in a death camp, that doesn’t make the outcome any less tragic. In the end,  the brutality these families live through ends before they have to enter a death camp.

I realize that while this book was historical fiction, it also had the element of mystery and suspense.  The big reveal is saved for the last few pages,  which allowed the book to hold my attention until the very end.  I kept asking myself, what is the secret?  So many scenarios went through my mind, but honestly, I wasn’t prepared for the end.  That is what makes a good story great!

I also appreciated that the author had the ability to make me really hate Ilse through almost the entire book.  I mean, she is really portrayed as an awful woman.  Her final letter allowed me to realize their was so much more to her.  I can’t say I walked away feeling pity or sorry for her, or that I even liked her at the end.  But, I ended the book understanding her a bit more.

I gave Wunderland 5 stars on Goodreads without hesitation.

In 2003 I went to an author lunch with a friend of mine.  We went to a French restaurant on Lake Michigan and indulged in some truly delicious and memorable food.  The author we saw was Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine.  She was on a book tour promoting Gourmet magazine’s first cookbook.  With the guidance of my dear friend Amy, I had only recently discovered that I appreciated foods that went beyond my midwestern roots.  While I love a good casserole, I realized I also love salad with baked goat cheese, a perfectly roasted chicken or mushroom risotto.  The world of food had been introduced to me.

Save Me the Plums, written by Ruth Reichl, tells the story of her years at Gourmet magazine as editor.  It follows other books she has written, my favorite being Tender at the Bone.  I highly recommend that one, the stories she tells about her mother are laugh out loud hilarious.  Save Me the Plums gives the backstory to how she fell into such a great job, the politics of running a magazine, the personalities of the people she worked with and the ultimate dismantling of Gourmet magazine.   I enjoyed the book, but it was not great, it had some flaws.

I found it hard to keep track of all the people.  I understand that when you run a magazine, it is a team effort.  But, there were just too many personalities to keep track of.  I don’t know how she could have revised that aspect, but it was hard to follow.  I also felt like she jumped over huge periods of time without a lot of detail.  She goes from complaining about slumping sales, to bragging about robust sales very quickly without a lot of explanation as to why.  That happened quite a few times throughout the book.  It made it hard to follow.  I was also disappointed in the ending.  She devoted very little to explaining how and why the magazine came to an end.  It felt like she purposely skipped a few facts?

That being said, having met her, she came across as a genuinely warm and kind person.  I loved the stories about her interactions with her son.  It made the story seem more genuine.  She talks about the relationship with her husband, they come across as a happy couple.  She talked about the tense relationship she had with her mother and her fondness for her father.  Again, all things that made me like her, therefore, liking the book more than I would have had I not met her.

Save Me the Plums is an easy read, with some recipes included, which I plan on trying.  I gave it 4, very reluctant stars, on Goodreads.  I would recommend that if you want to read this, start with her first book and read them all first.  By doing that, you will have a better idea of what happened in her life to bring her to the world of food.