This Life I Live

Author: Rory Feek

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc 2017

Pages: 240

Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: By inviting so many into the final months of Joey’s life as she battled cancer, Joey and Rory Feek captured hearts around the world with how they handled the diagnosis; the inspiring, simple way they chose to live; and how they loved each other every step of the way. But there is far more to the story.

“My life is very ordinary,” says Rory. “On the surface, it is not very special. If you looked at it, day to day, it wouldn’t seem like much. But when you look at it in a bigger context—as part of a larger story—you start to see the magic that is on the pages of the book that is my life. And the more you look, the more you see. Or, at least, I do.”

In this vulnerable book, he takes us for the first time into his own challenging life story and what it was like growing up in rural America with little money and even less family stability.

This is the story of a man searching for meaning and security in a world that offered neither. And it’s the story of a man who finally gives it all to a power higher than himself and soon meets a young woman who will change his heart forever.

In This Life I Live, Rory Feek helps us not only to connect more fully to his and Joey’s story but also to our own journeys. He shows what can happen when we are fully open in life’s key moments, whether when meeting our life companion or tackling an unexpected tragedy. He also gives never-before-revealed details on their life together and what he calls “the long goodbye,” the blessing of being able to know that life is going to end and taking advantage of it. Rory shows how we are all actually there already and how we can learn to live that way every day.

A gifted man from nowhere and everywhere in search of something to believe in. A young woman from the Midwest with an angelic voice and deep roots that just needed a place to be planted. This is their story. Two hearts that found each other and touched millions of other hearts along the way.

Review: Gosh, this book didn't start out as much, but by the end I was a puddle. Moving, is the best word I can think of to describe it.

I wasn't a Joey + Rory fan years ago, although I had heard of them as country artists. However, I did casually follow Rory's blog following Joey's battle with cancer and eventual passing. This book wasn't what I had expected, but it's touching.

I found few Joey + Rory videos on youtube, as well as Rory's speech at Joey's memorial. Life may be a lot of things, but fair isn't one of them.

It Happens All the Time

Author: Amy Hatvany

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Atria Books, 2017

Pages: 320

Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Amber Bryant and Tyler Hicks have been best friends since they were teenagers—trusting and depending on each other through some of the darkest periods of their young lives. And while Amber has always felt that their relationship is strictly platonic, Tyler has long harbored the secret desire that they might one day become more than friends.

Returning home for the summer after her college graduation, Amber begins spending more time with Tyler than she has in years. Despite the fact that Amber is engaged to her college sweetheart, a flirtation begins to grow between them. One night, fueled by alcohol and concerns about whether she’s getting married too young, Amber kisses Tyler.

What happens next will change them forever.

In alternating points of view, It Happens All the Time examines the complexity of sexual dynamics between men and women and offers an incisive exploration of gender roles, expectations, and the ever-timely issue of consent.

Review: Ninety percent of this book was solid writing. I don't know what happened at the end, but the author seemed to fall apart. The last few chapters seemed sloppy and rushed. They just didn't have the same intensity or pull that previous chapters had.

This was an emotional read because I liked both characters, and I liked them together. I felt so badly for each of them and the way things turned out. I finished this in the morning and as the day went on I found myself needing to kick them out of my head as I thought about them and their unfortunate decisions as if they were real people in my life.

As a mother of two daughters and a son, it gives me a lot to think about. There are also several lessons to be learned within these pages. Now, how to communicate them?

The Roanoke Girls

Author: Amy Engel
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Crown/Archetype, 2017
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: After her mother's suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran…fast and far away.

Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.

As it weaves between Lane’s first Roanoke summer and her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

Review: This may be the most disturbing book I have ever read as far as subject matter goes, but the author wove quite a story that kept me interested. I also felt very strongly about the characters and their decisions. It was an interesting roller coaster of a ride, that's for sure.

A Piece of the World

Author: Christina Baker Kline

Genre: Fictional Memoir

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017

Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s mysterious and iconic painting Christina’s World.

"Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden."

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.

As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

Review: I have not read The Orphan Train yet so this was my first introduction to Christina Baker Kline. This isn't the fastest moving or most exciting novel. There's no plot twist or other surprises. It's profound in a much simpler way. 

A Piece of the World is the culmination of one woman's interest in a famous painting and her hours of research into the subject. Proof that inspiration can be found just under our noses.

The Kommandant's Girl

Author: Pam Jenoff

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: MIRA, 2007

Pages: 400

Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days Emma’s husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city’s decrepit, moldering Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob’s Catholic aunt, Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile.

Emma’s already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety—and her marriage vows—in order to help Jacob’s cause. As the atrocities of war intensify, Emma must make choices that will force her to risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves.

Review: I was so excited to read another Pam Jenoff novel, but when compared to The Orphan's Tale this is lacking in plot and depth. The Orphan's Tale seemed like a fresh new story line; not your typical WWII era novel or love story. 

The Kommandant's Girl was also impossible to put down and I was emotionally invested, but at it's core, it's a story you've read before. This is why it receives a Do Not Recommend rating. There are too many fantastic novels out there to settle for something that's good not great.

The sequel, The Diplomat's Wife, takes a supporting character, Marta, from this novel and provides her with a platform to have her voice heard.  I need to take a break from novels set during WWII and I didn't love Marta so I am ending the series here, at least for now. Emma is also mentioned in the sequel and I did some digging online to see how her story line resolves.

The Girl Behind the Door

Author: John Brooks

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Scribner, 2017

Pages: 224

Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room. Casey was gone, but she had left a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry. Within hours a security video showed Casey stepping off the bridge.

Brooks spent several years after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for her first fourteen months, to her adoption and life with John and his wife, Erika, in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers.

In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks’s “desperate search for answers and guilt for not doing the right thing without knowing what it was reveals the utter helplessness of suicide survivors” (Kirkus Reviews). Ultimately, Brooks comes to realize that Casey probably suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. She might have been helped if someone had recognized this. The Girl Behind the Door is an important book for parents, mental health professionals, and teens: “Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly” (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa County Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge).

Review: This book as a whole is a quick, heart-breaking read. Unfortunately, for the Brooks everything they did was the wrong thing to do with a child with an attachment disorder. They had the best of intentions and so many dreams for their daughter, and didn't have the resources or support that they needed. Maybe the Brooks' can make a difference for other children and families' who find themselves in similar situations. Maybe that was the purpose of Casey's life, however, short it was. Some people make their mark in life, others in death.

It's an all-around sad situation, and I feel bad for everyone involved that the end result was Casey's suicide.

The Secret Life of Violet Grant

Author: Beatriz Williams

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2015

Pages: 528

Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked City: a story of love and intrigue that travels from Kennedy-era Manhattan to World War I Europe.

Fresh from college, irrepressible Vivian Schuyler defies her wealthy Fifth Avenue family to work at cutthroat Metropolitan magazine. But this is 1964, and the editor dismisses her…until a parcel lands on Vivian’s Greenwich Village doorstep that starts a journey into the life of an aunt she never knew, who might give her just the story she’s been waiting for.

In 1912, Violet Schuyler Grant moved to Europe to study physics, and made a disastrous marriage to a philandering fellow scientist. As the continent edges closer to the brink of war, a charismatic British army captain enters her life, drawing her into an audacious gamble that could lead to happiness…or disaster.

Fifty years later, Violet’s ultimate fate remains shrouded in mystery. But the more obsessively Vivian investigates her disappearing aunt, the more she realizes all they have in common—and that Violet’s secret life is about to collide with hers.

Review: This may be the most successful example of dual-narrators that I have ever read. I loved both Violet and Vivian's story, and the back-and-forth storytelling worked. These were strong women with fascinating character traits. I loved this book.

I also love Williams' conversational writing style. It just works for me and I can't wait to read more by this author.

Other books by Beatriz Williams that I have read and reviewed:

The Wicked City