BOOK REVIEW│The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

Motherhood in the suburbs is an adventure unto itself. Social systems are constructed on your children’s achievements, your helpfulness in your community and your popularity among your fellow soccer moms. It can be a boring existence and it can be one that is easily shattered when you step out of the Stepford Wives Club.

For Lara Love Hardin, her step out comes when her million dollar home on a quiet cul-de-sac is met by the police who are there to arrest her and uncover what she has been doing behind the Stepford Wives façade. Hardin has been stealing her neighbor’s credit cards to fund her heroin addiction and now she faces being charged with 32 felonies and a lengthy jail sentence as she goes from soccer mom to inmate S32179.

Hardin quickly discovers that much like the intricacies of suburban soccer mom life, prison life also offers it’s own social system where candy is currency and tampon boxes make furniture. Also, there is the sad realization that not even prison can quell the adolescent behaviors that permeate through mom social life. Hardin quickly learns what it takes to climb the prison social ladder and becomes “the shot caller.”

In a memoir of falling from soccer mom social status to numbered prisoner, Hardin shows that even rock bottom doesn’t mean it is the end of your life. After her stint in prison, she goes on to become a ghost writer, writing her way through healing and redemption in a memoir that has you laughing, crying and cursing your way through as Hardin shows you that the hardest part of all is forgiving yourself. Powerfully raw–this memoir made me struggle through her journey with her, as a mother myself, I found it hard to sympathize with her and her return to drug use despite the damage it was doing to her young children. However, what kept me reading and loving her writing and her journey was that she told it with humor and humility and ultimately by having her darkest secrets discovered she was able to find herself, find forgiveness and build a new life.

Book Information

The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin will be released on August 1, 2023 from Simon and Schuster with ISBN 9781982197667. This review correspond to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review│A Perfect Vintage by Chelsea Fagan

Lea Mortimer specializes in restoring French Chateaus into boutique hotels. She relishes in the fact that she is a single, untethered woman who excels at her job and works well with the often aristocratic families that she often finds herself working for.

Only this summer is shaping up to be a little different for Lea. Sure, she still has a hotel to open…on time…but she has also invited her best friend, Stephanie, who is struggling through her own divorce and her daughter to accompany her to the Loire Valley. It was her friend’s one request when she called her on a rainy day to tell her that she had, in fact finally left her husband. Only Lea wasn’t exactly ready for that one request. Their presence shakes up Lea’s sophisticated world and threatens to make her miss her mark on her hotel opening and on landing the prestigious award that was just within her grasp. Even more shocking is the romance she soon finds herself in with the son of the estate’s owner that she is working to open as a hotel.

What flows is a secret romance that Lea and her handsome love interest are struggling to keep a secret, a lot of delicious French wine and a chateau that is about to experience its own rebirth. There is nothing to not like about this fun, summertime novel– the tasteful romance, the beautiful scenery and the friendships kept me reading even when I had other responsibilities to tend to. It has been sometime since I was able to lose an afternoon to a book and not feel too guilty. Fagan transported to my own time spent in gorgeous French chateaus drinking too much Beaujolais and falling in love. It also didn’t hurt that Lea’s friend, Stephanie, was figuring out her own life in none other than Morristown, New Jersey. From one Jersey girl with a love of France to another perhaps fictional one…I was hooked.

Overall, a delightful and airy debut novel from Chelsea Fagan. I hope she sticks with this genre, I would like to read more from her.

Book Information

A Perfect Vintage by Chelsea Fagan is set to be released on June 6, 2023 from Orsay Books with ISBN 9781662938627. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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The Hart Home │Life Got Away from Me

There was a time where I was reading and reviewing books every other day here and I LOVED it.

Paris, 2007.

Then, I got pregnant again and over the summer we welcomed our first daughter, Violet. She came fast and fiercely into this world and totally shook up our house after two boys. They just love her and I know even after I am gone, she will always have two older brothers watching her back.

And then I went back to work even though I reached the end of wanting to teach full-time. Never thought it happened, but I would have made a deal with the devil himself if it meant I could be home.

And THEN, I finished writing my novel that I have worked on and off with for years. I just could never get it right and then suddenly it poured out of me in a couple of weeks.

And THENNN, I got offered a publishing contract and now I am in the middle of contract negotiations, trying to hire a publicist and sitting back looking at how my life blew up again.

And THEENNNN, I was offered all of these college-level writing courses to teach which I was so excited to take, but also made me realize that I wasn’t done with full-time teaching completely, but I was just done teaching middle school all day. It’s exhausting.

So I am in the midst of focusing on the part of career that gives me joy and releasing my first novel in seven years. While keeping tiny humans alive and eventually working my way back towards sharing all of the books I love on here.

I am alive. And busy. And grateful.

Hope all is well with you!

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BOOK REVIEW│ATTRIBUTION BY LINDA MOORE

The early 2000’s was a great time for art history books. Of course there was Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code but you also had Tracey Chevalier writing Girl with a Pearl Earring and several other art historical novels. I couldn’t put those books down and in many ways, they helped to further my passion for art history and complete my undergraduate degree in it. I was immersed in their worlds almost immediately and the luscious of the art history periods they were covering just drove me further into the story.

When I first picked up Linda Moore’s Attribution, I was immediately transported into her story the same way I had been in the early 2000’s with other art history novels. Moore starts off her tale by showcasing the misogyny that can plague art history departments if you allow it to. I remember it well as an undergraduate– male professors always loved to tell you you didn’t have what it took, but you overcome it. Moore’s Catherine Adamson is struggling through a similar departmental struggle with her dissertation chair who never is happy with where she is going and inwardly she fears being let out of her graduate program which is why she doesn’t argue with him when her chair sends her down into the basement of the department to catalog any and all works that she finds.

While there, Catherine stumbles across a forgotten room and a stashed away canvas that by the pigment alone tells her is much more valuable than its current surroundings. At first, Catherine is unsure of what to do– leave it? Share the find with her chauvinistic professor? Find a way to catalog it? Catherine is not given much time to decide as her discovery is followed rather quickly by an unnerving meeting with her chair that leaves her rattled enough to forget the painting. Only then, she’s suddenly outside with the painting and unable to get back because the building has gone into lockdown…something very valuable has been stolen!

At first Catherine thinks of the painting, but how would anyone know it was missing since it was uncovered in a secret room, buried in a long forgotten chest? Circumstances and chance quickly push Catherine into the heart of the mystery as she finds herself on a plane to Madrid instead of one home to Michigan for Christmas.

In the vein of Katherine Neville’s The Eight, Moore quickly engulfs us in the mysteries of the past, of women who struggled long ago and of Catherine’s own journey towards her future. Her plot is rich in art world references and lush prose that intrigues you to keep reading. It is an art history fiction that leaves you thinking as Moore teaches us the importance of truth and honesty, even if it was forgotten to the past.

Book Information

Attribution by Linda Moore was published in October 2022 by She Writes Press under ISBN 978-1-64742-253-0. This review corresponds to a paper galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review│Batten Down the Belfry by Diane Kelly

Whitney Whitaker and her cousin, Buck, are back at it flipping houses in this fourth installment of Kelly’s house-flipper mysteries. This time they have their eyes set on an old church. Whitney is drawn to the abandoned church with its beautiful stained glass and is eager to make the abandoned space come alive again. They want it to become an entertainment venue.

Only, the owner of the farm next door, Nolan Sibley, is not too supportive of their plans and asserts a legal claim over the church property that puts Whitney’s and Buck’s flipping dreams in jeopardy. As the legalities play out, Whitney and Buck decide to move ahead with renovations despite the harsh welcome they received from Nolan– greetings with a cattle prod and a church full of horses! Things only get worse when Whitney’s cat, Sawdust, finds a body in the bell tower. It is the body of the man who had only recently delivered their replacement windows.

Whitney’s boyfriend, Colin, is assigned the case, but it becomes a complex case to solve after a second murder occurs nearby. This mystery will definitely keep you guessing until the very end while still maintaining the cozy-mystery feeling that the earlier books have done so well.

Book Information

Batten Down the Belfry by Diane Kelly will be released on February 22, 2022 from St. Martin’s Press with ISBN 9781250816030. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review│The Island House by Amanda Brittany

Get ready to be immersed in a atmospheric, Gothic-esque tale of a young girl who is struggling to remember the early years of her life and the lives of two siblings, Verity and Hugh, living in their strange island home with their ventriloquist/magician father who has hired a trail of nannies to care for them, only they never last too long…

In the vein of And Then There Were None, Alice arrives on the island following the hit and run death of her mysterious father. She is eager to solve a family mystery and purposefully travels back to her family’s old home, now a hotel. Only, once she arrives everything falls apart. Guests start being murdered one by one and a storm sweeps in, trapping the survivors in the hotel. This creepy and anxiety-filled setting lends well to the mental state of the main character as she navigates surviving as well as uncovering her family’s story as well as their lives.

The story moves from the present day back to the story of Hugh and Verity and their upbringing at Flynn House. Their story lends well to the creepy, dark feeling of the hotel, the island and the murder mystery unfolding before us.

This was definitely one I could not out done and eagerly finished in one sitting after I put my kids to sleep. It’s a perfect locked-room mystery for a quiet Friday night with a glass or two of wine.

Book Information

The Island House by Amanda Brittany was released on August 11, 2021 with ISBN 9780008362898 from HQ and HQ Digital, an imprint of Harper Collins UK. This review corresponds to an electronic galley supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review │Peter Green and the Unliving Academy by Angelina Allsop

“Fourteen-year-old Peter Green woke up knowing only three things: the proper way to put on a tie, that lemon custard was disgusting, and that he was dead.”

Peter has died and he has no memory of it or his life before his untimely death. He has found himself with a ticket to a special school of dead orphans just like himself: Mrs. Battisworth’s Academy and Haven for Unliving Boys and Girls. There he finds many kids just like him– dead and forgetful of their life before. Now, as supernatural beings, all of the children are figuring our what their powers are as is Peter, but Peter can not seem to shake the feeling of having forgotten something extremely important. Is is someone that he loved? Is it someone who was important to him in life? Or, is it something more sinister…like someone that he has forgotten is in serious danger?

The students at Mrs. Battiworth’s won’t be allowed to have their memories back until the graduate, however. Peter’s adventure unfolds with magical creatures, teachers who are snakes and enchanted objects like the chalk…that BITES!Together with his unique group of friends, Pete is off for an adventure through his life in purgatory or is it his death? Either way, this novel is full of magic and adventure.

Even though Pete is 14 years old at his death, the character reads as several years younger than that. The novel does not explore big coming-of-age things or even romance that older middle and younger high schoolers tend to gravitate towards, but rather, it focuses on the friendships and the experiences that Pete and his friends undertake in the afterlife. Peter Green and the Unliving Academy is best suited for early middle school to upper elementary, in this teacher’s opinion.

Be prepared for a large cast of characters and a lot of action throughout the novel. Even the slow parts weren’t all that slow and this made for a nice Friday night read.

Book Information

Peter Green and the Unliving Academy by Angelina Allsop was released on November 18, 2018 by TCK Publishing with ISBN 1631610643. This review corresponds to a paper galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review│Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Although a fictional recreation, Miss Austen gives us an explanation as to a question that have puzzled Austen academics for years: why did her younger sister burn all of her letters after her death?

Hornby creates for us a believable adventure that centers around these letters and the life of Jane’s sister, Cassandra. We are taken through the years before and after Jane’s death as Cassandra settles into a life of routine in a rural English cottage. She goes on to visit a family member at a vicarage that is about to be cleared out for its new occupant. The mother of the vicarage has in her possession letters that were written between Jane and Cassandra and they are ones that she prefer not to give to the world.

Cassandra takes possession of the letters and begins to read them as she is drawn back in time to the events and emotions that are present in the letters. Hornby beautifully weaves together the fictional retelling of the letters with events and the loves of both of the Austen girls. While the plot is not outlandish and over the top, Horny has a talent for creating realism in her historical fiction that lifts the family of Austen off of the page, endearing them to the reader.

This was a charming take to read that made for an intriguing take on the famous Austen letters and a plausible reason as to why Cassandra chose to destroy them rather than allow the world to have them. Any Austen fan will love to curl up with this well-written novel as they daydream about bonnets, pinafores and endless English county sides.

Book Information

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby was released on April 7, 2020 from Flatiron Books with ISBN 978-1250252203. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review │ The Nun’s Betrothal by Ida Curtis

Anyone else feeling the pressures lately of the pandemic? I know it is getting the better of me. It is very hard to be buying and selling a home while teaching from home at the same time with two babies underfoot. There are days where I just want to scream because I feel myself getting pulled in a zillion directions. I must have repeated over a hundred times, “I just need 20 minutes to myself” to my husband…daily.

When I finally started to get those 20 minutes daily, I knew I needed more of an escape so I picked up Ida Curtis’s The Nun’s Betrothal. I was immediately transported to ninth-century France where Gilda, is just about to take her vows to enter the convent. A long cry from my modern working-mom life in New Jersey!

However, just as Sister Gilda is about to take her vows, she becomes tasked, along with the handsome Lord Justin, to investigate the marriage of Count Cedric and Lady Mariel for evidence of the need for an annulment. Together, they uncover that Lady Mariel believes that she actually married Cedric’s half-brother, Phillip, at the their marriage ceremony and that Cedric is planning to marry Lady Emma once the annulment is granted.

Rather quickly, Gilda and Justin are thrown head first into the dramas and struggles of courtly life as they try to sort out the truth while fighting to ensure that everyone gets their happy ending. Curtis shines in her mystery of being able to set the mood of a historical period well. It brought to life the court of King Louis, the Pious and really illuminated the mystery that Gilda and Justin were working to solve. Along the way, the two do fall in love and there is a separate romance that develops between them.

Unlike other romance pieces, Curtis takes a different approach and rather than having an overbearing father or even the King, disapprove of their match, she rather has the struggle be Gilda’s desire for her own freedom to be what causes tension between the two. Gilda has to decide if she wants the freedom that life as a nun would give her in terms of her independence or if she will too find that in Justin and in true love. I enjoyed the breaking away from traditional romance tropes and that Curtis allows her characters to marry for love or decide to not marry at all…which realistically probably would not have occurred many times during this time period, but it was a fresh approach overall and if you’re also like me and can do without the bodice-ripping genre of romance…then you will enjoy this novel.

The Nun’s Betrothal is the second book of a series with Song of Isabel being the first. Ida Curtis was a Connecticut native that went on to call both Canada and Seattle her home. She was a retired college advisor and a polio survivor. She resided in Seattle with her husband Jerry until her passing in January 2020.

Book Information

The Nun’s Betrothal by Ida Curtis was released on July 7, 2020 by She Writes Press under ISBN 1631526855. This review corresponds to an advanced paper galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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Book Review │Have you Seen These Children? by Veronica Slaughter

As this pandemic feels like it will never end in New Jersey, I am struggling to balance virtual teaching, a newborn, a toddler, selling our house and buying our new one all while trying to keep myself writing. It is a crazy time in the Hart Home for sure. Sleep is a short lived commodity, so it was a very big deal for me to give up a night of it to finish Veronica Slaughter’s Have You Seen these Children?.

Her memoir tells the story of how her American father kidnapped her and her siblings from their mother in the Philippines, bringing them to the USA where they moved constantly from state to state to avoid being found. They lived a life full of fear and abuse as the hands of their father. As a mother, I was immediately drawn to the story because I wanted to make sure that these children eventually got home to their mother and away from their abusive father. I was taken down a late-night roller coaster of emotions that left me sobbing in parts reading what Veronica, Valerie,Vance and Vincent endured and lived through at the hands of their manipulative father.

As a mother, this memoir encapsulated my worst fears: having my children kidnapped and having no way of protecting or rescuing them. They were taken from their mother at such pivotal ages that even after being reunified, their experiences at the hands of their pathological father shaped their adult lives and their future trials. Veronica was 8-years old at the time she was taken, and while not the eldest still had the maturity to know the importance of keeping them all together as well as raising and protecting her younger brother. In many ways, it is her wherewithal that keeps the children together and makes this tragedy one that could have had a much worse ending.

Overall, Have You Seen These Children? is a bitter-sweet memoir that will keep you glued to its pages until you have finished it. It will make you laugh and cry as well as play on some of your worst fears. At its heart, it is a tale of love and the trials that we face in ensuring that love remains even if we don’t all get a Hollywood ending. Even in all of the hate and tragedy, the message is still clear: love and sibling bonds can and will survive even when evil wants to destroy them.

Book Information

Have You Seen These Children?: A Memoir by Veronica Slaughter was released on August 18, 2020 from She Writes Press with ISBN 1631527258. This review corresponds to an advanced paper galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

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