The Secret Keeper

Of the four Kate Morton books, this one was my least favourite, but it was still a good read. As her mother’s health declines and dementia takes over, Laurel begins to unearth secrets that explain a secret Laurel has kept for decades. Kate Morton did a great job of weaving past and present and keeping me guessing about what actually had happened and when and why characters acted one way but later on it appeared they had acted another.

(August 2013)

The Forgotten Garden

This was the other new book my new friend at the library suggested. I loved it. Again it’s a book with a past and present story, unlike in Lighthouse Hill, these two stories are most certainly connected. There are almost three stories, although two of them belong to the same character. The title suggests the classic The Secret Garden and I loved that Frances Hodgson Burnett makes an appearance in the novel. I read all four of Kate Morton’s book and I think this one was my favourite, although I did love them all and I’m eagerly awaiting the next one (I heard it was coming out this year!) If you need a book to read, I’d recommend this one for sure!

(July 2013)

Lighthouse Bay

I actually did write a few drafts of some of the books I read in the last year…here are some of my thoughts immediately after reading this.

New baby = not a lot of time to read. I don't get a lunch break these days and our apartment has been so stifling hot that J has been staying up super late. Her room is by far the hottest in the house and by the time I tuck her in, feed C and possibly wash the dishes, it is time for me to go to bed so I can get up around 4:30 for C's middle of the night feed. Which is a long way of saying I don't get to read before bed anymore.

But I need to read. That's just who I am, so I decided I'd pick out a book for myself at the library when I took J last week. I stood there contemplating the books and the nice lady next to me loaded me down with 3 books. I went in looking for an easy and walked out with The Book of Negros, which I read a long time ago, and two totally unknown books. It turns out they were both written by Australians. I started one as soon as I got home and couldn't put it down and then I got distracted by this book.

Lighthouse Bay tells the stories of Libby and Isabella. Libby's lover had just died and she returns home to Australia from Paris to live in a cottage he bought for her near her childhood home. She has been gone for 20 after making a tragic mistake that her sister may never be able to forgive her for.

Isabella arrives at Lighthouse Bay in 1901 after washing up on shore, the sole survivor of a ship wreck that kills her husband. She has to fight for her survival and figure out how to get out of Australia.

This is the kind if book I like to read when I don't want to concentrate too hard - I didn't have to draw a family tree or make a character list, so that was good and it made this a perfect book to read while C was eating or when I had an extra 15 minutes. I liked that the two stories, while loosely linked were independent of one another. I found it interesting that the author chose to write the older story (Isabella's) in the present tense while Libby's present day story was written in the past. Isabella's story was more flushed out and more detailed, but to me that made sense. Her struggles have bigger consequences than Libby's did. A wrong decision or mistake by Isabella and her life could have been over...Libby was never at risk of losing her life.

I will probably see if I can find Wildflower Hill next. It seems to be the better liked novel of the two by people who have read both.

(July 2013)

Update and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was pregnant and I thought I’d be able to read 24 books in 2013. That number was based on a certain number per month before baby arrived and a different number per month after baby arrived. Baby was a month early and adjusting my goal for that, it works out to 14+9=23. And I managed 23 books. So I made my goal.

January 2014 rolled around and I decided to go easy on myself. I had an infant and a kindergartener and I was going back to work, so the 2014 goal is 12 books. A book a month seems manageable, so we’ll see how it goes!  There is a lot happening in the next six months, so I might be a bit ambitious.

Also, there is a new tab for The Big Read. I have challenged myself to read 50 of those books for my most recent 101 in 1001 challenge. We’ll see how I do…

But now, while I managed to make my book target, I didn’t manage to keep the blog updated, so here, and for the next few weeks, are the books I read in 2013 and at the beginning of 2014. As well as I can remember them. Mommy brain and all.



I really liked this book. I inherited my mom’s fascination with World War II history and this book had that. I didn’t realize that Guernsey Island was occupied during the war and, while I didn’t quite get there, I thought I’d go read a bit more about it. When I was off work after I hurt my back, my mom brought me a set of DVDs to watch called Island at War. I really enjoyed them and I found myself wishing there were more episodes as I watched the last one. This book reminded me of that series. It was good and I think I want to reread it.

(January 2013)

Pay The Devil

Oh, Jack Higgins, you’re back. And yes, this is the same cover as yesterday’s post. Two books in one and according to the price tag on the back my mom paid $4 for the book. Great deal!

Pay the Devil is not a Sean Dillon book. It was written by Higgins under the pen name Harry Patterson in 1962 and in 1999 parts of it were rewritten and it was published under Higgins’ name. While the story is not a Dillon story, it is definitely a Higgins’ story – an American civil war vet heads to a family property in Ireland and discovers a land in upheaval. He ends being a sort of modern-day Robin Hood and then fleeing Ireland for America. It was good. It was fast – I read it in an afternoon.

Teaser Tuesday - Wolf Hall

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just started a new book from a pile of birthday and Christmas gifts that goes back at least three years...Today's my teaser is:

He smiles at the thought of the Cromwells having a family name. Or any reputation to defend.

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, page 141

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Chaperone

For some reason Laura Moriarty's name seemed so familiar to me, but it wasn't until after I'd finished The Chaperone that I realized it was because I'd read The Center of Everything a long time ago...

I started out enjoying The Chaperone. Cora Carlisle, a house wife from Wichita, Kansas, accompanies Louise Brooks to New York City so that Louise can audition with a dance company. I didn't realize until after I'd read the book that it was based on the real Louise Brooks. The story of Cora (based on Alice Mills) is Laura Moriarty's creation and it's quite interesting.

The tension between Cora and her husband was obvious from the first time she describes them together, but the source of the tension was definitely not what I expected it to. Cora's life story has so many twists and the twist that is the last part of the book really surprised me.

Louise Brooks drove me nuts and her mother made me tear my hair out, but when I read some actual accounts of Louise Brooks' life, it was a lot easier to understand.

I actually quite enjoyed the booked even if some of the twists in Cora's life seemed a bit far fetched.

The Gods of Gotham

Sigh. This book came with high praise and excellent reviews. And I just thought it was kind of ho-hum. It wasn't horrible. I didn't have to force myself to read it, but it wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. I had to get it back to the library (I may have possibly incurred a small fine so I could finish it) because I had four books come off the hold list at the same time and they all had additional holds on them so I couldn't renew any of them. So maybe I didn't enjoy it because I was rushed?

There were plot twists and there was flash English and there were prostitutes and crooked cops and priests and preachers and good girls who weren't really good and bad girls who might not really be bad and a big fire and a crime scene or two, but it just wasn't doing it for me. And the map in the front of the book sucked - I figured out where Five Points was and the wards were labelled, but the streets weren't.

The flash or flash-patter bugged me. I had to keep consulting the glossary but not all the words were there. And I can't really find any references online to flash - is it real???

Has anyone else read this? I'd really love to hear someone else's thoughts on it!

The Tin Princess

This is and isn't part of the Sally Lockhart series, The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North and The Tiger in the Well being the others. It features some of the same characters, including Sally, but it focuses on her friend Jim and Adelaide, a young girl who vanished in The Ruby in the Smoke. As with The Tiger in the Well, I started reading this book to get through the series, but then it actually became kind of interesting. I felt it was a bit farfetched, but it was interesting.

And now I'm quite happy to moving forward to something else...

Would I recommend The Tin Princess? Maybe. I feel like I probably would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't thinking of it as part of the Sally Lockhart series.

The Tiger in the Well

Does anyone else remember when I started this challenge I made some rules? Mostly rules for me, but rules nonetheless? (Although really, I'd call them guidelines more than rules...) Specifically, rule #1? About not finishing a book if I wasn't enjoying it?

Yeah. Me too. I remember that.

But I didn't follow that rule with this book. I struggled with this one. It was long. It involved plot elements from the first book, which I read back in February and that book is back at the library, so I couldn't flip back and check things out. I had trouble concentrating, mostly because I was reading to distract myself and it was only working some of the time...

Once I got to the last five or six chapters, I did start enjoying what I was reading, but before that, not so much. I felt like there was too much going on and too many little threads of story happening, some of which were relevant and some of which were not. And I was frustrated. And I'm sure that was the intention of Philip Pullman. Lots of the stuff going on in the book wouldn't be tolerated in our society and yet it was commonplace in late 19th century London. I also really wanted them to Google a bunch of things and maybe use GPS cell phone pinging to locate people and things. And that is a sign that I watch too many procedural dramas. Yes, that I do.

Do I recommend it? Well, I didn't think it was a good as The Ruby in the Smoke or The Shadow in the North (what's with Pullman and this series and it's "The Blank in the Other Blank" titles?), but it was interesting. It was maybe too long. And I maybe need to let go of my sentimentality...I'd read the first two, so I had to finish (sort of) the series.

So do I recommend it (yes, I asked that already and got all parenthetical on myself)? Well, maybe. I'd recommend the first two and then suggest you try number three...you might like it better than me...you also might be more focused than I was...

Goodnight Mister Tom

I read Goodnight Mister Tom in just a few hours. (WWII obsession...check) I loved this book even though there are some painfully sad parts. I love that grumpy Mister Tom softens and that scared Will becomes comfortable and happy and I love that something so wonderful could happen in the middle of such a horrible place in history. I haven't read a book recently where I wanted the book to keep going and not stop - I have been reading a bunch of series and I know there is more to come, so even though I feel like those stories are not complete, I know there is more coming...it's different - I really wanted to read page more about Will and Mister Tom.

Under A War-Torn Sky

As I've mentioned before, I inherited a bizarre love of World War II from my mom - not just novels, but history too - so this story about Will, an American pilot, and his journey through occupied France after being shot down by a German plane grabbed my attention and held on. And I've just discovered there is a second book - A Troubled Peace - that I'm trying to track down in the library system.

The story of Will's journey through France and all of the people who helped (and some who hindered) his quest for freedom reminded me of how lucky we are to live in a time of relative peace. At least in North America.

The book also reminded me of a book I read when I was a kid - it was a banned book I think because it told a sympathetic story of a family on the wrong side of the war. I'm trying to track it down, but I can't remember many of the details...

Anyway, Will relies on the generosity and discretion of the people he encounters in the French countryside to find his way back to Allied troops so that he can go home - he meets a variety of resistance workers - the farming family who's young boy is Will's caretaker, Claudette, a feisty young girl who wants to be more involved than her boyfriend will allow and various groups of maquis of assorted political persuasions, but all with the common goal of liberating France from the Germans and the puppet Vichy government.

I'm on a hunt for good non-fiction about the French resistance now, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

The Shadow in the North

I didn't enjoy The Shadow in the North as much as I enjoyed The Ruby in the Smoke, but it was still quite good. I found it harder to follow because Sally and Fred weren't exactly working together but were working on the same case. There was a big gap between books and I missed Rosa. Pullman did a good of explaining the changes to the business and in the characters' lives during the gap.

I loved how independent Sally was, but I wonder how realistic it would have been. The University of London was the first university in England to admit women and grant them degrees in 1878, so I guess it's possible...

I hope I like The Tiger in the Well more than this one!

The Ruby in the Smoke

I'm not sure why I picked this book up. Actually, I picked the first three of four up. I really liked The Golden Compass and have meant to read the other two books in the series His Dark Materials, but I have never gotten around to doing it. I also had a stack of about ten other library books to read when I decided to take these three books home.

Well, I'm glad I did. Sally Lockhart is a great, independent character. She had a very unconventional upbringing by a single father after her mother was killed in a mutiny in India. After her father dies, she is sent to live with a distant relative, Aunt Caroline. She gets mixed up in a big mess involving stolen books, opium, a cruel woman living in Wapping, a photographer and his sister, Trembler their employee, a young boy named Jim and a few other assorted characters. And with the help of Jim, Trembler and Frederick and Rosa Garland, she gets to the bottom of the mystery and finds out a few pieces of her own story that are a great surprise to her.

So, it's on to The Shadow in the North. I have a lot of reading to do before the library demands all of their books back!

Bonus Book: Sarah's Key

It's time for me to get moving...it's now less than a week before the end of October and I still have part of August, all of September and now all of October's books to post.

I saw Sarah's Key ages ago, but the book diet was still being enforced (common theme or what?) I needed a book to keep me entertained when we went to Manning Park for my cousin Amy's wedding and I thought this would be the perfect book to take. Except one evening I picked it up and started reading. And that was the end of that plan. It only took me a couple of nights to devour this book.

I inherited my love of reading from both of my parents, but my strange love of all books World War I and World War II and Holocaust and Russian Revolution I'm going to attribute solely to my mom (my dad introduced me to the Hardy Boys and spy and detective novels and Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell and books of that genre). So this book was definitely on my radar for a while before the book diet ended.

I loved how the first part of the book alternated between the stories of Sarah and Julia and then Julia picked up the whole story and became Sarah's voice. Sarah is a young Jewish girl who locker her young brother in a secret cupboard when the rest of the family is arrested in the Vel d'Hiv. She struggles to survive and return to Paris to save her brother. Julia is an American journalist married to a Parisian who is assigned to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv, a piece of French World War II history that is seems many know little about.

Julia's investigation into the Vel d'Hiv leads her to Sarah's story and in turn a story of her own.

I really liked this book. I flew through it and I think I will go back and reread (parts) of it. I have this bad habit of reading really quickly and enjoying what I read, but then I can't remember what the story was, or I mix two or three stories together.

Definitely a book I recommend - has anyone else read it?

The Help

EDITED TO ADD: SPOILER ALERT IN THE COMMENTS

Oh look, a break from Harry Potter!

I saw The Help a long time ago in the bookstore and read the back and thought, hmmm, I might want to read that. But I was still on the book diet, so I put it down and figured that I'd ask for it for my birthday or borrow it from someone or visit the library. And because there are eighty million books out there to choose from, I promptly forgot about it (that's how excited I was to read it).

Then Alex and I went to a movie. In the movie theatre. And it had trailers. And because we went out like regular grownups, we watched the trailers. And one was for The Help. And I thought, hmmm, I might want to read that.

And then it was my birthday. And then it was summer. And then I was in the bookstore after going out for dinner with Alex the day after being sent home from the emergency room for the second time and we stopped at the bookstore on our way home, as we often do. Weird? Maybe. Maybe not.

And I saw The Help sitting there. And the book diet had been lifted. And I was feeling miserable and pathetic and sorry for myself, so I decided to engage in a little retail therapy. Okay, maybe a lot of retail therapy. And then I came home and a couple of days later all the internets could talk about was The Help (I think maybe because of the movie...but seriously, it felt like two out of every three blogs was talking about The Help)

I enjoyed it. I didn't really get the Gone With the Wind or To Kill A Mockingbird comparisons, but did enjoy the book. I felt like the relationship with Stuart was somewhat underdeveloped and I wanted more about it (not more relationship, just more about his previous relationship and his motivations...)

The end felt a little too contrived for me. It was as if she didn't want to go with a happily ever after ending, so she threw if off a bit, but it didn't feel right...anyone else feel that way?

I would recommend The Help for sure. I will be reading it again, when I get it back from my mom!

When We Were Strangers

I picked up When We Were Strangers because it was the book Laurie's book club over at Crazy Aunt Purl was reading in, oh, February.

Because of the parameters I set for myself in this challenge and the book diet, I requested the book from the library. I was the first one to get it, but it didn't make it into circulation until May. And it's taken me a few weeks to read it. At one point I put it down and thought I wouldn't be able to finish it. But I'm glad I kept going because I did quite enjoy it in the end! My only frustration with the story was that although the author did a good job of describing her characters, I still had a hard time picturing them. I'm not sure why ... maybe because I mostly read before bedtime and my brain was shutting down? I don't know...

Opi, Irma's village, is in the same region that my maternal grandmother's family was from - it is a very beautiful part of Italy...we spent part of our honeymoon there (although we were pretty much on the opposite side of the region)

I enjoyed the book...I like how Irma learned from what happened around her and in most instances made positives out of very negative situations...and I love how she adapted her sewing skills into a completely different career. I liked that the ending wasn't all happily ever after except that it was...that like doesn't make sense but if you read it, you'll understand what I mean.

The discussion over at Crazy Aunt Purl in March is here and there is also a Q&A with Patricia Schoenewaldt over there too.

Mrs P's Journey

I'm a couple of days late posting about October's book...

After I read about this book on Ann's blog, My Villa Life, I had to search it out. Partly because I love maps. Partly because I love London. Partly because I was intrigued by this woman's story.



I have read a bunch of background and it's hard to say whether this is a true, non-fiction biography or a historical novel. Certainly it's based on facts and many of them from Phyllis Pearsall, but there is a lot that the author had to fill in herself. I had trouble categorizing it...

I also had trouble finding it. It appears it is out of print in North America and the VPL didn't have it. But the UBC library did. So that's where I finally got it. I don't often get books from the UBC library mostly because you only get them for two weeks, not three. But, unlike the VPL, you can renew them as many times as you want as long as there are no holds.

Phyllis had a colourful childhood and yound adulthood and it definitely helped frame how the A-Z was born, but I loved the last part of the book that detailed how the A-Z came about. I love the A-Z. One of my favourite things to do when I lived in London and had enough of people was to get on the underground and get out and wander with only my A-Z as company. I figured it was pretty hard to get lost in London - if you had an A-Z you could figure out where you were and if you could find a tube station (the A-Z could tell you) then you could home. Maybe you could find yourself not knowing where you were, but you weren't lost!

I liked this book and if you like London or maps, it's definitely something worth reading. The editor side of me wasn't happy with a few things that were missed (how many siblings did Bella have? Five or eight?) but overall, I was happy with my choice.

Thanks Ann for writing about it...I never would have known it existed otherwise!

Bonus Book: The Constant Princess

I've read a few Philippa Gregory books and quite enjoyed them. I started The Constant Princess when we were on holiday in July and then picked up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Constant Princess was forgotten. Until I got a notice from the library on Saturday reminding me that it is due back on Wednesday and I've used up all my renewals on it.

ugh...must stop being lazy and delete the old photos on my memory cards so I can use my camera and not my phone for these pictures

So, I looked and it and figured I could read it four nights - I was halfway through it after all. Heck, technically I had five nights because as long as it was in the return box before the library opened on Thursday, they consider it being returned on Wednesday.

I finished all but about 25 pages of it on Saturday. And the rest of it before breakfast yesterday.

And I was disappointed. It wasn't that good. And I kept reading because I was hoping it would get better.

I enjoyed it up until Arthur dies. Then it just annoyed me. And that's when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made her appearance (it's also when I started getting sprinkled by the beach some other reader took the book to).

So, when I picked it up again, I thought it might be better, maybe a little vacation from it would help. But no.

It still annoyed me.

Part of it was the way King Henry, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella all treated Catalina while she awaited her fate after the death of Arthur (which is essentially based on fact and was not out of the ordinary for the time) and the various voices used to tell the story. I'm not entirely convinced by the alternating narration and found it hard to read. Catalina's (later Katherine's) thoughts seemed overly whiny to me.

While this wasn't my favourite Philippa Gregory novel, I would definitely read more of her books - historical fiction is one of my favourite genres.