a place at the table

a place at the table
susan rebecca white
fiction/contemporary
touchstone
published 2013

Alice Stone is famous for the homemade Southern cuisine she serves at Cafe Andres and her groundbreaking cookbook, but her past is a mystery to all who know her.  Upon Alice's retirement, Bobby Banks, a young gay man ostracized by his family in Georgia, sets out to revive the aging cafe with his new brand of Southern cooking while he struggles with heartbreak like he's never known.  Seeking respite from the breakup of her marriage, weathly divorcee Amelia Brighton finds solace in the company and food at Cafe Andres, until a family secret comes to light in the pages of Alice's cookbook and threatens to upend her life.

Meh.

That sums up what I felt about this book.  It was okay.  It didn't make me feel much of anything.  I wasn't astounded by secrets revealed (or really even a bit surprised).  I didn't fall in love with any of the characters (except maybe Bobby's grandmother) and I wasn't entirely happy with the ending.  But it wasn't a bad book.  It was easy to read and I did really enjoy Bobby's story.  Alice was interesting and mysterious, but the book really seemed to be about Bobby up until the last 5 chapters or so when she switches to Amelia who by then, I cared nothing about.

Maybe if the stories had been broken up more I would have been more invested in Amelia.  If we had switched around so that in the beginning we hear a bit from Alice, then Bobby then Amelia and then back to Alice and so on.  Instead, we start with Alice and her story is so shocking that you spend the rest of the book wondering where that's going to come in.  Then we move to Bobby and spend about 80% of the book reading about his life as a child, discovering his sexuality, his move to New York, falling in love, becoming a chef, etc.  So that by the time I got to Amelia I just didn't care about her.  She was no one to me.  I wanted to know what effect she would have on Bobby and what her purpose was for him.  I almost hated her just because she took the story away from Bobby who was infinitely more interesting that this whiny, bitchy woman.

Sigh.

the weight of blood

the weight of blood
laura mchugh
fiction/mystery
spiegel & grau
published 2014

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains.  Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane's mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child.  Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see.  Lucy's family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own.  Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family's influence, Lucy - darkly beautiful as her mother was - is always thought of by those around her as her mother's daughter.  When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls - the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn't save - and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri's death.

I can't put my finger on exactly why I didn't absolutely love this book, but there is something about it that keeps me from giving it more than three stars.  For one, there was no doubt within the first chapter of the book who was responsible for the girls' disappearances (to me).  But the how, why and where took a little longer, though not much.  My heart broke for Lila and I did enjoy the alternating perspectives, but Lucy....well, something about her just kind of kept her at arm's length for me as well.

I think the biggest thing that bothers me is there are times when Lucy gets information that needs to be shared, but she hold everything too close.  For what reason, I really didn't understand, but still felt odd to me.

Nonetheless, the book was a decent read.  I did enjoy Lucy's voice, Lila's as well and the other characters were colorful enough.

the museum of extraordinary things

the museum of extraordinary things
alice hoffman
historical fiction/romance
scribner
published 2014

Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses.  An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father's "museum," alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle.  One night Coralie stumbles upon a stiking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River.

The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father's Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as a tailor's apprentice.  When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman's disappearance and ignites the heart of Coralie.

I was incredibly disappointed in this book.  I admit, my opinion is colored in the fact that I don't usually enjoy historical novels, but really it was not a good book.  I think Alice Hoffman wanted to badly to write about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the fire of Dreamland in 1911 that she completely neglected the plot.  This was touted as a the story of two characters who come together and fall in love while surrounded by the mystery of a missing girl and while, for the brief moment Eddie was searching for the girl it was interesting.  And then, she wrapped that up with hardly a peep in a couple of pages and that was the end of that.  After that it was all about the fire of Dreamland.  Even that was disjointed and hard to follow.  I couldn't figure out how everyone ended up where they were and the culmination of the horrors in the book all come down to one short moment with hardly any fanfare at all.  It was a let down.

And as far as the love story was concerned, it was a joke.  I felt nothing for either character.  I could care less how they got together - which happens so far into the book I was beginning to think they book jacket lied to me.  Flat, unsympathetic, boring characters, and unrealistic relationships (Coralie and her father, Coralie and Maureen, Coralie and Eddie).  The characters I enjoyed (Beck, Ella, the liveryman, and Mr. Morris), the characters she wrote to have fire and substance were background characters we hardly got to see.  It felt like she poured all character into these roles and didn't save anything for Coralie and Eddie.

The writing itself was confusing and repetitious.  With the three different narratives the timeline jumped around oddly and there was so much overlapping that I sometimes thought I had accidentally jumped a previous chapter on the kindle.

A disappointment.