The BookFetish Blog

Ella Bean is no fairy tale wicked stepmother. She loves her husband Joe and she loves his children, Annie and Zach, as if they are her own. In fact, while Annie remembers her birth mother, Paige, Ella is the only mother Zach has ever known. But one day, Ella’s idyllic world is shattered when her husband drowns in a tragic accident, taking with him secrets she didn’t know he was keeping. Now, Paige wants Annie and Zach back in her life, and Ella begins to realize that she may not know the truth of Paige and Joe’s past. What unfolds in The Underside of Joy is both an uplifting and heartbreaking story of two women who believe themselves to be the best mother for Annie and Zach.

Sere Prince Halverson really weaves quite a story here.  In a classic fairy tale, this would be a story of good versus evil.  Instead, we get something much more complicated. Perhaps no true heroine, perhaps no real malice. What we learn is that everyone has secrets. The stories behind these secrets shape who we are and how we relate to the people in our lives. Some secrets we keep because they are too painful to remember. Others might lead us to walk away from what we most love.  Yet the repercussions of these actions, and the quest for the truth, ripple much farther than we can anticipate.

That’s exactly what happens here.  As Ella prepares to fight for custody of Annie and Zach, she learns there is much she doesn’t know about Joe’s family, who she has come to know and love.    She learns that secrets from her own past have enabled her to see only what she wants to see.  I’d love to say more about that here, but if I do, I’ll be spoiling major plot points but suffice it to say that Halverson deftly explores secrets and truth in a multitude of layers.

I struggled a bit with the ending of the novel. A part of me thinks it was wrapped up a little too neatly, that too many people get bogged down in the messiness of life to make this ending work in reality. But another, bigger, more hopeful part of me thinks that if people are striving to be their best self, to be generous enough to do what is best for them and others,  then this is precisely the ending we should have.   I’ll let you come to your own conclusion on that one.

The Underside of Joy  was a wonderful read, and a stunning debut novel that will likely stick with you for a few days after finishing it.  It did for me, as I contemplated just how much Ella chose to see only what she wanted to.

You can check out Sere Prince Halverson’s website here to get more details about the book and Sere herself.

I’m pleased to be a part of the blog tour for Nelle Davy’s debut novel, The Legacy of Eden. Aurelia has been the home of the Hathaway family for generations. The estate was born out of Lavinia Hathaway’s desire to escape her past and elevate her family’s name. And now, the last inhabitant of the estate has died. Lavinia’s youngest grandchild, Meredith Pincetti, is summoned back to Iowa to settle the estate.

Lavinia Hathaway brought Aurelia to greatness, no matter who she had to destroy in the process. Her conniving and manipulation set the Hathaway family on a path of deception and destruction that would tear them apart. Now, Meredith must confront her family’s legacy and her own part in it.

Reading The Legacy of Eden was like seeing a small town through a late summer’s haze. The air shimmers with the heat, and it’s almost too quiet. Still, you know something is simmering behind the closed doors. The Hathaways are that family found in nearly every small town- you know the one. They have money, and whether intentionally or not, lord that over other townspeople. Despite any good they do, there always appears to be something darker lurking beneath the surface. Every family has its secrets- some are just more devastating than others.

Nelle Davy’s debut is a good one.  I read the book quickly, wanting to know just how the destruction of the Hathaway family occurred, and what had happened that had led to so much anguish and estrangement in the surviving family.  The pacing of the story worked well. I felt for Meredith, struggling with her past and looking for some peace in her present. Despite everything that happened within her family, Meredith still longs for some connection to her sisters, and must deal with the very real estrangement from her sisters and her role in causing it.  Davy could have made this very easy, absolving Meredith of her guilt in some trite way. Instead, she chose the more plausible route of not wrapping up everything in a neat little bow at the earliest opportunity.

I  loved the gothic feel of The Legacy of Eden. If you’re looking for an intriguing drama, be sure to check it out. And be sure to come back here on 20 February, when I’ll have a guest post from Nelle Davy.

Today, I’m a stop on a blog tour for Spencer Seidel’s Lovesick. Just the kind of thriller I  love.  A troubled girl, missing. Her boyfriend dead, his throat slit. The only suspect? The boyfriend’s best friend, Paul Ducharme, who just happened to love the girl, too. But now, Paul says he can’t remember what happened to Lee that night on the Promenade Trail.  And Wendy is still missing. Enter Dr. Lisa Boyers, a forensic psychologist brought in to help Paul recover his memories. Except as Paul recounts more and more, Lisa’s own past comes back to haunt her.

Lovesick kept me turning pages.  Seidel drops enough clues that my inner detective was trying to piece together the evidence. At the same time, Seidel reveals just enough and at just the right time that the voracious reader in me didn’t figure out the whole whodunnit and enjoyed reading until the very end.

Paul, Wendy, and Lee are all deeply flawed. At times, I hated Lee. Other times, I thought Wendy was a cruel manipulator. But at the same time, I felt empathy for each of them.  Without being melodramatic, Seidel gives us enough insight to each character to help us understand them and their motivations, but without revealing their whole story. Because in a situation like this- a missing girl, a dead boyfriend- when do we ever really know the whole story? Hindsight is great for speculating on motivation, and that’s what Seidel provides here.  We get the background we need, enough of the story to leave us satisfied, but not so much that we feel we completely understand each of the characters. Not so much that the story turns into something cliche.

Lovesick is one I read in just a couple of days because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.  If you like thrillers, be sure to pick up this one, now available in paperback.

There’s a scavenger hunt going on with the Lovesick blog tour. Click here to see how you can participate.

A part of me wishes I had created some grand plan for discovering my charming life, but for once, I didn’t want to follow any rules or guidelines. I just want to see what happens when I look for more ways to bring enchantment into my life.

That doesn’t mean that I think everything should be all sparkly and happy all the time.  It means that I want to be present in my life, making conscious choices about what makes me happy, and feels right to my authentic self. Color is a big part of that for me, as you know from my Pink post.

But now I’m focusing on other things, too. Deeper things that I’ll be sharing throughout the year, when the time is right.  I’m taking a class called “A Year To Live” . The premise of A Year To Live is to imagine you had only a year to live. What would you want to feel and do? These are the things that we should be cultivating in our lives anyway. Yet many of us don’t. It sounds so simple, and maybe it is for others, but I’ve already learned so much in this course, tapped into parts of my buried deeply and I’ve begun exercising some of the small lessons in my daily life.

Between A Year To Live and Debora Geary’s Witches Under Way , I’ve also decided that what my charming life needs is more frivolity and play.  Not so many rules. Doing something because it’s fun and because it connects me with a part of myself I may have forgotten about.  Sometimes, it’s hard to play when you’re a grown up and have Responsibilities and Bills and a Job and Obligations.  So you have to look for opportunities to have these little frivolous moments.

Yesterday, I painted my toenails all different colors. Silly? Yes. Simple? Yes. But this little thing makes me happy when I see my feet.  I like it. I think I’ll keep my toes this way for a while.  It’s nothing groundbreaking, but I am really beginning to see how little things can make a difference in how I approach not only my day, but also my life.

I won a copy of Stop and Blog The Roses, a daily gratitude journal for 2012.   It seems so easy to write down three things each day that you are grateful for.  Go ahead. Try it.  Once you hit the “hierarchy of needs” items like a home, a job,  food, friends and family, it gets a little tougher.  Not because I don’t have a lot to be grateful for, but because I get so bogged down in the mechanics of every day, it’s sometimes hard to see ordinary things that are still worthy of gratitude. Like the wonderful neighbors I have. I’m not grateful for them because of some catastrophe they helped me avert. I’m grateful for them because an unseasonably warm Saturday evening in February became hours of laughter and conversation while we were enjoying the unexpected weather.  Or being grateful for the music I take for granted, that can affect my soul and change my mood. It’s always at my fingertips, but until I thought about it, I wasn’t actually grateful for it.

Not recognizing the magic in the mundane is a large part of what started me on this journey. I want to experience my life- feel it, embrace it, love it, live it- and not just sit by and let it happen to me.

As you know from my review of Thank You For Flying Air Zoe, I am a big fan of the book.  But as I was reading it, I was intrigued by the author and what made him choose first to write something  chick lit, and second to make some of the choices he did in the story.

What follows is a transcript of our email Q and A:

I’d love to know what inspired you to write this story?

This may sound odd, seeing as how I’m a guy who wrote a chick lit novel, but I was mostly inspired to write Thank You For Flying Air Zoe because I felt attached to the story’s core source material. I knew early on that I wanted to write a novel about staying connected to one’s youth, and my unabashed fondness for nostalgia and music served as a totally fun backdrop for such a story.

And I think your next question is the perfect playground for me to elaborate on this…

You took chick lit in a couple of different directions, too, that I love.  One, your Zoe and her friends are over 40- what drew you to writing that age?  I’m grateful you did. I’m not quite to that age yet, but I am getting a little tired of the almost-thirty-woe-is-me chick lit books, so an older protagonist was exciting to me.  What about that age appeals to you? Is it just a natural extension of not being in your twenties?

But before I elaborate, please allow me to weave, duck and dodge this question for a moment as I ponder what revealing a big secret might mean to my youthful career…

Okay, done. Thanks.

I was drawn to writing 40+ because Zoe and I are the same age. We’re both proud high school Class of ’87 grads. And get this – my life did NOT end on the day I turned 40!

I know. I’m as shocked as anyone.

Here’s the thing… We’ve all heard the clichés when it comes to aging.

40 is the new 30.

50 is the new 40.

Heh. I suppose that by the Transitive Property of Equality, 50 is the new 30.

But anyway…

I think that people often subject themselves to intense self-analysis whenever they enter into a new decade. At 20, I believed I was mighty and wise and knew everything under the sun – as well as a few things actually above the sun – that’s how wise I truly was. Then at 30, I examined my life and felt like I’d been an idiot when in my 20s. A fun, adventurous, and carefree idiot, but nonetheless, an idiot who probably needed to grow up. Then at 40, I pretty much thought the exact same thing I thought when I hit 30. So at that point, I think I took a look back at my two alleged grown-up decades and thought, “Wow, growing up is way overrated. Life is pretty damn awesome – maybe I should stop trying to self-analyze it and just keep on livin’ it.”

Here’s what I think… I think that youth is a muscle kept strong by constant exercise. The message I aspired to promote in Air Zoe is that youth doesn’t actually end at 40. It may get winded a lot sooner. It may need a few more painkillers, multivitamins and naps. But it’s definitely far from over if the spirit is willing.

Second, THANK YOU for making the Zoe-Silas story secondary to the Zoe finding herself story. I had just asked the other day on the Book Fetish FB page if people would read a chick lit book where a quest for Mr. Right wasn’t the backbone of the plot. Was it hard to deviate from the standard chick lit formula, or did you always know Zoe needed to find herself first and foremost?

Haha… You’re totally welcome! I think this is also a prime example of my writing being a reflection of my own beliefs. Yes, I planned on having Zoe’s personal crusade at the forefront of the novel from the outset. Yet I also believed that there was room for a little bit of romance at the periphery of her main mission. I believe that in and of itself, love is a wild and weird and amazing adventure that in all ways is a worthy pursuit. However, so too do I believe that love shouldn’t necessarily be an individual’s singular pursuit.

So yeah, John Lennon was a brilliant lyricist, but he was wrong on this one. Love is not all you need. It’s a terrific color to add to the canvas, but it needs many more colors to complement it.