Passage is the true story of the author's mother, Grace, who was adopted as a baby and lived through war, heartache and abuse before passing away after a battle with cancer.
In order to give a proper review, I feel like I need to turn my usual format on its head.
Structure/Plot: The book is divided into six sections, starting with some introductory content written by Sandy Powers.
We meet Sandy as she's grappling with her mother's death. In sorting her mom's belongings, Sandy uncovers documents and journals that inform her that Grace was adopted. They also detail her mother's life during World War II and the Cold War, where she worked undercover for the FBI. All of this is news to Sandy and is told using what I can only describe as a collection of memorabilia -- news clippings, journal entries, official documents, etc.
At only 128 pages, it was a breeze to read. And with the structure of the book, many pages aren't full, containing only contain a short news clipping or a few journal entries.
Characters: The majority of the book is told from Grace's point of view through her journal entries and other memorabilia she had collected and Sandy is now reading for the first time.
In theory, this is a great backbone for an interesting novel. A daughter uncovering a mother's hidden past. However, Grace's journal entries are short and sporadic. Weeks, months, and even years pass between some entries. This leaves the reader (and Sandy, I'm sure) with a very basic picture of Grace, but never much depth. You're left with more questions than answers. In my opinion, this is where the book falls short.
That being said, the lack of information offered in the book does make me empathize with Sandy, a character in her own right. I can't imagine how she must have felt reading this basic summary of her mother's history without the luxury of being able to ask her mother for the full story.
What could have made the novel richer would have been more of Sandy's feelings and thoughts as she uncovered her mother's secret life. Though she was young, she was alive when her mother was a spy. Does she remember anything about it? What about the feelings and thoughts of her father and siblings?
The last line of the book reads, in part: "
My mother. How little I knew her. I buried my face in my hands and cried."
To me, that emotion is where the real story begins. Yet, it's not even explored.
While I felt this was a good skeleton for a great book, the reality left too many gaps to make it compelling. 2 stars.
I received a free copy of this book to review, but my thoughts and my review are my own.
The Priest and the Peaches is the story of the Peach family, immediately following the death of their patriarch. There are five kids, led by Teddy and Joanie, only 18 and 17 respectively. As they bury their father, they contend with what he left behind -- unpaid bills, debt, unsatisfactory living conditions, but also a whole cast of characters ready to pitch in and help.
Rose's family wants her to marry Michael, a handsome man who is a good match, but Rose wants to do something else with her life. So she runs away, lies to become a military nurse, and meets all sorts of characters while finding her true place in life. Alex joins the army to forget about Rose, the girl he's loved from afar since he was 12. And in forgetting about Rose, he distracts himself with another woman Chloe who he eventually marries out of obligation, not love. And Michael joins the army out of obligation, hates Alex, and continually tries to convince Rose to marry him to gain her father's inheritance. 
My husband has been in the military for quite a while, and being a military wife, I approached this book with eagerness and excitement. I love reading military memoirs and I wanted to add this one to the top of my favorites list. This book was advertised as a memoir of a US Army sniper who was sent on a secret mission to assassinate Saddam Hussein. I wanted to love it; I wanted to be enraptured by each and every word and while I fell in love with Robin, both as a man and a soldier, this book just did not measure up.
Set in 1973, The Platinum Loop by Austin Williams is a new novel scheduled for release in November 2011. Desperate and broke, low-class film producer Gene saves celebrity paraphernalia hustler Floyd in Vegas as he's getting beat up for a deal gone sour. Floyd talks Gene into returning to his Hollywood accommodations to see the best item in his collection - the platinum loop, a raunchy home movie of Marilyn Monroe with some unknown man. Unfortunately the platinum loop isn't all that Floyd made it out to be and Gene and Floyd spend the next few weeks trying to put together something that their rich buyer will purchase. 
In Delivery, Livi Wilson runs her family business, a flower shop, while grappling with grief over the loss of her brother and family friends too soon.
I’m going to be up front: I did not enjoy this book. In fact, I nearly left it unfinished, but I knew that in order to provide a full review, I needed to finish it. Plus, I have a slight obsession with finishing every book I pick up. So, I muddled through.
I was excited to read Flesh and Bones for a couple reasons: I always like starting new books (duh!) and it was the first book I would read on my brand new Nook e-reader.
This Paper World by Jeff Lane tells the story of a typical college guy finding out he's not so typical after all. Jim Hunt is experiencing life away from home in South Florida, when he begins to have nightmares that will lead him to his true destiny. While on winter break back home, he meets with his old neighbor who tells him he was made for something more, something greater than this earth has to offer... he's a Champion. He realizes that what he thought was just fun games of shooting and endurance with his neighbor, Park, was really training for who he would one day become. Problem is, Jim isn't sure he wants to be a Champion. 
The full title of the book is Shift: 13 exercises to make you who you want to be. I was expecting 13 written out, well-defined exercises for me to do to get some motivation and put my life back on track. It started out well; at first I thought the book was going to be about shifting my perspective and teaching me to think about things in a different way, which is where the first half was leading me. But around the middle of the book I got lost and couldn't figure out again what the purpose of the book really was or how I was supposed to use it. The last half of the book is full of what Yamazaki calls techniques (there's 17 of them), and I'm just not sure how those were different than the 13 shifts. Or again how I was supposed to use them.
The story is set in Baja California and stars washed-up sports writer, Trace, as he enters into Bonnie Miller's culinary boot camp. The boot camp days are short-lived as Trace helps Bonnie to clear up something in her past, and they both get caught in a quick and crazy Mexican adventure full of mud, murder, and mischief. 
