The Garden of Small Beginnings
Lilian Girvan is a textbook illustrator and single mother of two girls who, three years later, is just getting the hang of it after the sudden death of her husband. When her boss asks her to take a gardening class to aid in her illustration of some plant guides, it seems like a great way to get herself, along with her kids and her best friend-sister, out of the house. Little does she expect how it will help her move on with her grief, as she meets an eclectic new group of friends and even starts to develop a romantic relationship. It's all teed up to be a quirky and heartwarming tale, but Lilian's narration is quite a wise-cracking, self-deprecating style, so it doesn't end up overly sweet. A nice light read and a look at what it might be like to lose a spouse at such a young age, and learn how to keep on living even with such a huge loss, and all the added weight of solo breadwinning/child caring/etc. 3/5 stars
Rabbit Cake
Pre-teen Elvis Babbitt is a girl in possession of all the facts: about animals, science, and the fact that the grieving process for her mother will take 18 months (thanks to a counselor's office pamphlet). Rabbit Cake takes her through those months and the advertised stages of grief, from her honest, smart, observant, and darkly comic perspective. As she tries to understand what was going on in her mother's life leading up to her drowning while sleepwalking - and the things that just don't add up about the story she's being told about it - she also has to hold her own in a slightly crazy home situation with a grieving father who has started wearing his wife's bathrobe around the house, and a sister who has dangerous sleepwalking tendencies of her own, plus a mission to bake a Guinness record-breaking number of rabbit-shaped cakes. This is a great read - at times heartbreaking, others heartwarming, and often darkly funny - that explores family, loss, and coming-of-age in the midst of loss from a very original voice. I've seen it recommended for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and while the subject is maybe a bit darker, I would say it's a good comp if you liked the girl's voice in that one too. 4/5 stars
What Remains True
Alternating among first-person perspectives of the various characters - mother, father, daughter, aunt, therapist, and even dog - this family drama gives readers a front-row view of what it might be like to lose a 5-year-old son in a car accident. The story starts in the aftermath, with the characters barely functioning or relating to each other in their grief, then moves to a later time when they all start seeing a family therapist, then moves back to what everyone was doing/feeling the day before the accident, back when they were by all appearances a perfect and happy family, and then finally ends with everyone at last being able to tell the story of what happened the day of the accident, and through it come to terms with their grief and their guilt in each feeling like it was their fault. It was moving and insightful at times to look at the ways a family would handle a traumatic loss of this magnitude, and how they might learn to move back to the land of the living instead of being swallowed by their grief forever, but I HATED that the dead son and the dog had chapters they narrated. They just felt superfluous, and their voices were inconsistent, and really brought down the star rating here... You want a well done version of a young person's view of grief? See Rabbit Cake above! And good thing I got it free as a KindleFirst read. 2.5/5 stars
When We Were Worthy
In the small town of Worthy, Georgia, where high school football reigns supreme, the town is thrown into an all-encompassing tragedy when three popular cheerleaders are killed instantly in a car accident caused by another high school classmate racing his new car. Alternating between the stories of one of the girls' mothers, the reckless driving boy's mother, another cheerleader who was supposed to be with the girls but wasn't, and a new-to-town substitute teacher who has a host of problems of her own, we see how they deal with their individual grief and survivor's guilt, and also through them how the town deals with its collective grief and the taking sides of whether there should be a criminal trial resulting from the accident. Meanwhile, there's some secret undercurrent going on with how the football players are treating girls, and the town is turning a blind eye... The back cover promos say this is great for fans of Big Little Lies, and I can see some parallels with the cast of female protagonists, and how the story of the big inciting event gets pieced together gradually through their various threads, but it doesn't have that satirical sort of tone. I'd say it's more like reading Beartown or Megan Abbott's You Will Know Me - if you liked those, you'd probably like this one. Also if you like Joshilyn Jackson's books as much as I do, this might be up your alley too (though again slightly different in tone, there are some similar characteristics). Like all of the above, I was instantly totally wrapped up in this story and the characters of this small town - definitely a good read. 4/5 stars
Bonfire
Abby Williams is an environmental lawyer whose job of uncovering corporate environmental violations brings her back to her small hometown, where Optimal Plastics basically runs everything - supplies the majority of the jobs, and the majority of the money for everything from Little League uniforms to a new community center. But are they also engaging in a major cover up to hide that their byproducts are actually making people sick? Having left the town 10 years earlier and not returned because of the baggage of her mother's death and also her high school classmate Kaycee's disappearance, Abby has to take on her own past at the same time as taking on the potential corporate scandal. Her grief over losing her mother, but also of never quite being able to process the disappearance of Kaycee, who loomed so large in her life, kind of defines Abby - those missing pieces haunt her life daily, especially once she has returned home. This propels the story along as it leads Abby to see conspiracies and also to make some poor decisions that affect her job and relationships (like breaking into a storage unit), but it just wasn't quite enough to make the story engaging or interesting for me. I felt pretty meh about it overall, thinking that if you're going to read a story about someone who returns to their hometown to investigate some kind of mystery, and in the meantime something they have long buried in their past resurfaces, then I have way better examples, especially The Dry and The Long and Faraway Gone. 2.5/5 stars
Whew, there were some good stories here, but a girl needs something light and happy after all of this focus on grief. I've got The Music Shop as my latest Book of the Month pick, and I'm hoping it leans more toward heartwarming than sad!
Sharing on Show Us Your Books, What We're Reading Wednesday, Book by Book.
Lilian Girvan is a textbook illustrator and single mother of two girls who, three years later, is just getting the hang of it after the sudden death of her husband. When her boss asks her to take a gardening class to aid in her illustration of some plant guides, it seems like a great way to get herself, along with her kids and her best friend-sister, out of the house. Little does she expect how it will help her move on with her grief, as she meets an eclectic new group of friends and even starts to develop a romantic relationship. It's all teed up to be a quirky and heartwarming tale, but Lilian's narration is quite a wise-cracking, self-deprecating style, so it doesn't end up overly sweet. A nice light read and a look at what it might be like to lose a spouse at such a young age, and learn how to keep on living even with such a huge loss, and all the added weight of solo breadwinning/child caring/etc. 3/5 stars
Rabbit Cake
Pre-teen Elvis Babbitt is a girl in possession of all the facts: about animals, science, and the fact that the grieving process for her mother will take 18 months (thanks to a counselor's office pamphlet). Rabbit Cake takes her through those months and the advertised stages of grief, from her honest, smart, observant, and darkly comic perspective. As she tries to understand what was going on in her mother's life leading up to her drowning while sleepwalking - and the things that just don't add up about the story she's being told about it - she also has to hold her own in a slightly crazy home situation with a grieving father who has started wearing his wife's bathrobe around the house, and a sister who has dangerous sleepwalking tendencies of her own, plus a mission to bake a Guinness record-breaking number of rabbit-shaped cakes. This is a great read - at times heartbreaking, others heartwarming, and often darkly funny - that explores family, loss, and coming-of-age in the midst of loss from a very original voice. I've seen it recommended for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and while the subject is maybe a bit darker, I would say it's a good comp if you liked the girl's voice in that one too. 4/5 stars
What Remains True
Alternating among first-person perspectives of the various characters - mother, father, daughter, aunt, therapist, and even dog - this family drama gives readers a front-row view of what it might be like to lose a 5-year-old son in a car accident. The story starts in the aftermath, with the characters barely functioning or relating to each other in their grief, then moves to a later time when they all start seeing a family therapist, then moves back to what everyone was doing/feeling the day before the accident, back when they were by all appearances a perfect and happy family, and then finally ends with everyone at last being able to tell the story of what happened the day of the accident, and through it come to terms with their grief and their guilt in each feeling like it was their fault. It was moving and insightful at times to look at the ways a family would handle a traumatic loss of this magnitude, and how they might learn to move back to the land of the living instead of being swallowed by their grief forever, but I HATED that the dead son and the dog had chapters they narrated. They just felt superfluous, and their voices were inconsistent, and really brought down the star rating here... You want a well done version of a young person's view of grief? See Rabbit Cake above! And good thing I got it free as a KindleFirst read. 2.5/5 stars
When We Were Worthy
In the small town of Worthy, Georgia, where high school football reigns supreme, the town is thrown into an all-encompassing tragedy when three popular cheerleaders are killed instantly in a car accident caused by another high school classmate racing his new car. Alternating between the stories of one of the girls' mothers, the reckless driving boy's mother, another cheerleader who was supposed to be with the girls but wasn't, and a new-to-town substitute teacher who has a host of problems of her own, we see how they deal with their individual grief and survivor's guilt, and also through them how the town deals with its collective grief and the taking sides of whether there should be a criminal trial resulting from the accident. Meanwhile, there's some secret undercurrent going on with how the football players are treating girls, and the town is turning a blind eye... The back cover promos say this is great for fans of Big Little Lies, and I can see some parallels with the cast of female protagonists, and how the story of the big inciting event gets pieced together gradually through their various threads, but it doesn't have that satirical sort of tone. I'd say it's more like reading Beartown or Megan Abbott's You Will Know Me - if you liked those, you'd probably like this one. Also if you like Joshilyn Jackson's books as much as I do, this might be up your alley too (though again slightly different in tone, there are some similar characteristics). Like all of the above, I was instantly totally wrapped up in this story and the characters of this small town - definitely a good read. 4/5 stars
Bonfire
Abby Williams is an environmental lawyer whose job of uncovering corporate environmental violations brings her back to her small hometown, where Optimal Plastics basically runs everything - supplies the majority of the jobs, and the majority of the money for everything from Little League uniforms to a new community center. But are they also engaging in a major cover up to hide that their byproducts are actually making people sick? Having left the town 10 years earlier and not returned because of the baggage of her mother's death and also her high school classmate Kaycee's disappearance, Abby has to take on her own past at the same time as taking on the potential corporate scandal. Her grief over losing her mother, but also of never quite being able to process the disappearance of Kaycee, who loomed so large in her life, kind of defines Abby - those missing pieces haunt her life daily, especially once she has returned home. This propels the story along as it leads Abby to see conspiracies and also to make some poor decisions that affect her job and relationships (like breaking into a storage unit), but it just wasn't quite enough to make the story engaging or interesting for me. I felt pretty meh about it overall, thinking that if you're going to read a story about someone who returns to their hometown to investigate some kind of mystery, and in the meantime something they have long buried in their past resurfaces, then I have way better examples, especially The Dry and The Long and Faraway Gone. 2.5/5 stars
Whew, there were some good stories here, but a girl needs something light and happy after all of this focus on grief. I've got The Music Shop as my latest Book of the Month pick, and I'm hoping it leans more toward heartwarming than sad!
Sharing on Show Us Your Books, What We're Reading Wednesday, Book by Book.
