Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Flap Copy from ARC: "Maybe it was my droopy eyelids. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other. But when the anonymous online study called "Marriage in the 21st Century" showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn't long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101). And, just like that, I found myself answering questions ....

7. Sometimes I tell him he's snoring when he's not snoring so he'll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.

61. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man's children.

32. That if we weren't careful, it was possible to forget one another.

Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor's appointments, family dinners and budgets. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions. But these days, I'm also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpected turn. Soon, I'll have to make a decision - one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I'm too busy answering questions. As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac."

I really enjoyed this take on a modern marriage in the throes of middle-aged angst. Alice Buckle is a loving wife, mom and elementary school drama teacher whose insecurities and minor internet obsessions make her a very believable character. Her role in the novel is bolstered by a great supporting cast, including her maybe-gay adolescent son Peter, whose assistance and judgement Alice seeks for all fashion-related decisions; Zoe, her teenage daughter/mini-me who may or may not suffer from an eating disorder; and Nedra, Alice's gay lawyer best friend whose happy and sex-filled relationship torments Alice in this time of midlife crisis.

When Alice is approached to participate in an anonymous online survey about love and marriage, she jumps at the chance. She is soon connected to 'Researcher 101' and, in her role as 'Wife 22', shares intimate details, fears and stories with ease. Her responses to the seemingly random array of questions paint a vivid picture of Alice's early love and romance, and subsequently what she feels is lacking in her current relationship with her husband of 20 years. Alice soon comes to rely heavily on her internet relationship with Researcher 101, craving his communication to the point that she begins to feel the relationship has taken an illicit turn, and even considers relinquishing her anonymity to meet him in person.

How do we keep love and romance alive over time? How do we reconnect with loved ones from whom we've grown distant? How do we balance our kids, our jobs and our sex lives? These are Alice's personal dilemmas, ones with which I imagine many readers can relate. Melanie Gideon's prose is witty, her sense of humor self-deprecating but never cruel - I highly recommend this book as a fun and engaging summer read. I give it 4 1/2 stars, and look forward to reading more from this author.

Kiss, Crush, Collide by Christina Meredith

Flap Copy from ARC: "The golden girl who as it all. The irresistible boy from the wrong side of the tracks. She wants out. Kiss. He wants her. Crush. They collide."

I enjoy reading YA fiction and expect it to be as smart and interesting in its way as adult fiction. Unfortunately this book was neither smart nor interesting. The characters are 1-dimensional and a little inconceivable - I understand that Leah wants more from her life than what she's been handed on a silver platter, and more from her family and friends than they're capable of giving her, but she is as passive and as boring as a robot. The only thing she manages to accomplish in this last summer of high school is to cheat on her boyfriend, and even that she doesn't handle very well. I just wanted to scream at her, 'do something! say something! grow up!'

I was looking forward to a little romance, a few steamy moments, and some sort of satisfying resolution to the tried-and-true "girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks" plot. It could have been cliched, I was expecting that. What I was not expecting was such a flat and boring non-story. I give this book only 1 star, I recommend other readers go looking for teen romance somewhere else.

The New Republic by Lionel Shriver

Flap Copy from ARC: "Fat and ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portugese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about the beloved 'Bear', who is no longer lighting up their work lives.

Yet all is not as it appears. 'The Daring Soldiers of Barba' have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal, backward, and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents suddenly dry up?"

When I read "We Need to Talk About Kevin' several years ago, I couldn't put it down and I couldn't stop talking about it. I passed it along to friends and family, I recommended it to a book club, I wanted everyone to read and experience Shriver's unbelievably moving prose. Her characters and their emotions were truly alive, and I was engaged. When the opportunity for an advance copy of this 'old but new' book, 'The New Republic', I jumped, I couldn't wait to read another riveting Shriver tale. How sad to be so disappointed.

The premise behind the book is an interesting and relevant one: the real nature of journalism, and the power of the media to manipulate a story for its own purposes. Add to the mix a fictional, miserable corner of Portugal and the local terrorist group seeking independence for the people of Barba, and you have the potential for a humorous tale. Edgar Kellogg is our main character, a lawyer-turned-journalist and former fat kid whose inability to connect with other humans has left him floundering in his mid-thirties, still yearning for popularity and the approval of his peers. With a stroke of luck, Edgar lands a job as a stringer for a national paper and is sent to Barba to cover the terrorist activity and the disappearance of a revered journalist - once there, Edgar begins to see that all is not as it appears.

I just couldn't enjoy this book, I don't need to relate to characters, it's ok with me if they're not likable, but these weren't even interesting. I thought the first half of the book could have been cut in half again, which might have helped move along the fairly light plot, and perhaps made the mild twists a little more shocking. As it was, I felt bogged down in the characters' pretentious speak, and unable to engage with the story.

Shriver is a gifted and clever writer, and I look forward to reading something else from her - this just was not the book for me.

The Possibility of You by Pamela Redmond

Flap Copy from ARC: "1916: It was the one thing Irish nanny Bridget was never supposed to let happen. And then it did. 1976: Nineteen-year-old Billie discovers the family - and a closely guarded secret - she never knew existed. Present Day: After running from herself for years, journalist Cait searches for the mother who gave her away. Three women. Three unexpected pregnancies. Three journeys in search of families both real and imaginary, perfect and flawed."

This novel, told from the points of view of three women in very different times in recent American history, tackles the idea of personal choice and the impact those choices may have not only on one's own life but on the lives of generations to come. Cait is a modern day journalist with itchy feet and a newfound desire to locate her birth mother after she finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy. In 1972, Billie (newly orphaned after the sudden death of her father) travels to New York to meet her heretofore unknown grandmother for the first time, and struggles to piece together her past while facing an unexpected and unwelcome pregnancy. And in 1916 Bridget, a young Irish immigrant finds herself a widowed young mother. Redmond moves easily from one storyline to the one that precedes it, weaving the three women's lives into a unified and related narrative.

'The Possibility of You' was an easy read - once I sorted out in my head each of the three main character's timeframe and storyline, I had no trouble following the changing scenes and stories. There are no complicated plot twists, and honestly the characters themselves aren't wildly complex, although their dilemmas are certainly thought provoking. I sped through this novel, and am eager to read more from the author, whose work I haven't encountered before. I think Redmond tackles a very personal issue with grace, respecting the many possible choices her female characters might make and passing no judgement, only presenting their stories and consequences in a straightforward manner. I give this book 3.5 stars, I think it would make a great vacation read or book club selection.

Solomon's Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson

Flap Copy: "Thirty-eight-year-old Glory Solomon is struggling to come to terms with life on her California farm after the sudden death of her husband. When two lost souls walk into her life, Glory is completely unprepared for the changes they will bring. Juniper McGuire is a troubled, angry teenager from a broken family, in need of a home and the kind of emotional guidance Glory herself is looking for. Help comes in the form of Joseph Vigil, a wounded ex-police officer, who also bears scars from his past that he is trying to heal. Together these three survivors find in each other an unexpected solace, the bond of friendship, and a second chance to see the miracles of everyday life."

'Solomon's Oak' is a quietly memorable, moving novel featuring very ordinary people struggling to deal with love and loss in the midst of daily life. Glory is a young widow trying to cope with the demands of farm living after the sudden death of her husband; Juniper is a teen foster child grieving not only for a missing sister but for the subsequent loss of her own childhood; and Joseph is a wounded ex-cop, trying to find a new place for himself in the world after losing his careers, his wife and his partner all in a short span of time. With these sad characters, the book certainly might have taken a maudlin and depressing turn - instead, Mapson manages to capture the small joys and the laugh-out-loud moments that make a life, handling tragedy and hope with the same matter-of-fact approach. Though the story starts a little slowly, I suddenly found myself engrossed and finished the book in record time - I think Mapson's tale is delicately crafted and insightful, and highly recommend it as a story about real people and the real ways in which they move through their lives.

Come in and Cover Me by Gin Phillips

Flap Copy from ARC: When Ren was only twelve years old, she lost her older brother, Scott, to a car accident. But Scott has never left her. Since then, he has been a presence in her life, appearing with a snatch of a song or a reflection in the moonlight. Now, twenty-five years later, her talent for connecting with the ghosts around her has made her especially sensitive in her career as an archaeologist. More than just understanding the bare outline of how our ancestors lived, Ren is dedicated to re-creating lives and stories, to breathing life back into those who occupied this world long before us. As she stands on the brink of the most important discovery of her career, it is ghosts who are guiding her way. But what do two long-dead Mimbres women have to tell Ren about herself? And what message do they have about her developing relationship with a fellow archaeologist, the first man to really know her since her brother's death?"


This novel is part love story, part history, part ghost story, and part archaeological tale - and it sort of fails to be very good at any of them. The main character Ren is closed off and definitely more comfortable with ghosts and the past than with her life at present. Her brother Scott, who died when she was 12, visits her as a ghost and so now she sees other ghosts too, ghosts who help her in her archaeological digs. After a stunning find years before, Ren is now on the hunt for one artist of ceramic Mimbres bowls.

It seems like the book is decently well researched, but the characters themselves are flat, their story is incomplete and their dialogue is often so stilted, so cliched, that I often found it difficult to continue reading. The author tries too hard to create 'mood' or to imply emotions through her words, but does too much telling vs showing. As a reader, I felt like there was no chance to draw my own conclusions from the narrative; rather than telling me the air is charged with sexual tension, create chemistry between characters and make me feel the tension.

Quite frankly, the whole romance subplot just felt contrived. I was never convinced that Ren was capable of true feelings about anything- she seems to have abandoned ship when her brother died (even though they were never close) and she's estranged from her mother, so her closest relationships are with the dead people who stalk her at dig sites.

All in all, I was disappointed with this book, which had the elements of a good story but never really came together into an enjoyable read.

Girlchild: A Novel by Tupelo Hassman

Flap Copy from ARC: "Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scounts. She hasn't got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she's checked the Handbook out from the elementary-school library so many times that her name fills all the lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de los Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory's been told she is "third generation in a line of apparent imbeciles, feeble-minded bastards surely on the road to whoredom." But she's determined to prove the county and her own family wrong."


Creatively written, the story is at times funny, very real and normal and yet still horrifying in its tragic parts. The story is told in short chapters in a wide variety of styles, tied together loosely by Rory, the girl, reading from the Girl Scout Handbook and trying to model her life through the outdated and often irrelevant advice she reads there. There are also letters, parts of files from the state, pages that are mostly blacked out words and more - enough style that at times it overwhelms the plot, though for the most part I think the style was what carried the story. The reader gets a real sense of Rory and her life, from childhood through adolescence. There is a plot but the book is almost more about human resilience, the character of a family and a town and the nature of intelligence than it is about the story itself. I found the book sad and I didn't find the end uplifting in the same way as many other reviewers, but I did think the author managed to wrap up the tragic story with a little bit of hope.