This was on my summer list, and it's one I'm glad I finally got around to reading. It follows a familiar, but fun, 'You've Got Mail' trope: the main character begins a communication via email with a mystery individual. In many cases it may be a secret admirer - see also Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and This is What Happy Looks Like. I enjoyed this as a straight up high school drama, but there was also a lot of good subject matter to chew on about friendship, parenting and loss. Even though the mystery person is pretty easy to pin down, I furiously turned the pages towards the end of the book to confirm my theory. It's just ADORABLE. I was surprised to learn that this was Buxbaum's first YA novel. Her depiction of teen life was evocative of my youth and felt spot-on.
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

This is How it Always Is immediately grabbed me as a wonderful story about marriage and family. Yes, the plot is driven by the child with gender dysphoria, but each of the characters are imbued with such authentic detail that Penn, Rosie and their children ALL wormed their way into my heart. The minutiae of their family life felt so familiar and intimate: from the details like the names given for the kids rooms (the self proclaimed 'shark cave' or parent named POH for 'pit of hell'), to those terrifyingly familiar moments of parenting decisions.

"When was the last time something was bothering one of the kids or he was acting strange or he wasn't sleeping or doing well in math or sharing nicely during free-choice time, and we knew why?" "Knew why?" Rosie said. "Knew why. Absolutely knew what was wrong and what should be done to fix it and how to make that happen." "As a parent?" "As a parent." "Never?" "Never," Penn agreed. "Not ever. Not once. You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future."

DAMN. This novel is full of these sharp observations about life as a parent and how everything affects the family as a whole. At times it almost felt like an editorial, but with great breadth and depth of emotion: I laughed, I cried, I clutched my hand to my heart. And, of course, it's a fascinating portrait of a transgender child - written by a parent of a transgender child. As progressive as I am, I felt like I learned SO MUCH and gained even more perspective on this timely issue. It is not at all heavy handed, but we can all learn from someone so brave to share a part of her story. You can read more about Laurie in this Seattle Times article.
http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/when-your-son-is-a-girl-seattle-author-tells-a-story-of-gender-dysphoria/
It sparked great conversation at the dinner table with my husband and he directed me to this article he found enlightening from National Geographic, which is also worth a read.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/01/how-science-helps-us-understand-gender-identity/

Thank you NetGalley and Flatiron Publishing for an advance copy for my review. And, of course, to Laurie Frankel for sharing a version of your story, your truth - and hopefully changing the world.
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

After reading the description, I thought I was getting into a sort of highbrow hipster chick-lit narrative. It was in some ways, but this novel surprised me. Yes, it was definitely written with wit, but not to a fault. Certain scenes felt hyper realistic - especially ones that revolved around Mel and her antics, as if she was a dark version of the manic pixie dreamgirl. And sometimes I felt that it got mired in it's own intellectualism: I felt it difficult to visualize the animation in my head based on the very niche language used to describe the process, and all the cult animation talk smacked of elitist Rob on music in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. However, just as Rob becomes a dear literary figure, so do Mel and Sharon. As the pretentious layers gets stripped away, various unexpected truths emerge about both of these vulnerable characters, and I couldn't help but empathize with them despite their flaws.

There is a lot of heavy stuff to ponder as they mine their personal lives for art, and I think it will stay with me for awhile. What makes a shared experience our story to tell? How much does reality mirror the life we live inside our heads? Does rehashing past trauma exorcise our demons or exacerbate them? How does that process affect our loved ones? How much do we really know the people closest to our hearts? This story took so many unexpected turns, and some horrible ones, that it took my breath away. There's an aura of melancholy throughout the book and I would caution anyone with emotional or traumatic triggers to research it before reading. It chewed me up and spit me out, but in a good way. It was an engrossing and indelible read.

Many thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an advance copy for my review.
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

This was an intriguing debut, but not a book to my liking. One review called it the 'literary Gone Girl.' Just to reiterate here, I enjoyed Gone Girl. I thought it was clever, suspenseful, and masterfully elicited strong emotions from all who read it. Nearly THREE YEARS have passed since it's release. Can we please stop with the Gone Girl comparisons as marketing ploy? I don't think I'm alone here in being tired of this, and I feel as if it's actually detracting from the greatness of Flynn's work. In every instance, I find that the book being compared does not live up to Gone Girl. How does that reflect on the original work? The things that made Gillian Flynn's book great (excruciating suspense, clever plotting, multiple narrators) were not present in A Separation. Okay, rant over.

Now, that is not to say great things were lacking in this novel - there were some searing observations about human nature, and Kitamura masterfully set an evocative scene of a sleepy seaside town in Greece. I did a fair bit of highlighting:

"The effect was not a new candidness or verisimilitude to the photographs that proliferated-on our phones, computers, on the Internet-but rather the opposite: the artifice of photography had infiltrated our daily lives. We pose all the time, even when we are not being photographed at all."
"One of the problems of happiness-and I'd been very happy, when Christopher and I were first engaged-is that it makes you both smug and unimaginative."

It was certainly smart, but it felt detached. Much of the prose was languid and lacking urgency or emotion, in what seemed like a rather urgent and emotional situation! I prefer a plot driven narrative and some emotional pull, so I should have steered clear when it was lauded as written with "exquisitely cool precision." As I said, there were some astute observations that really made me think, but nothing that I would describe as beautiful prose. If this is to be compared to any recent novel, I'd say it most resembles Fates and Furies: a cerebral, sociological study of a marriage that was also critically acclaimed. I can SEE the admirable qualities in this book, but they are not for me. However, if you enjoyed Fates and Furies, you might really enjoy the tone and character analysis in A Separation.

Many thanks to Riverhead for an advance copy for my honest review!
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

The premise of this story, a woman who kills a fellow student at 12 years old tries to move on from her past, was JUICY stuff. Though, major swaths of time were skipped over, which gave me a bit of whiplash and I wish I had gotten to know Rio and the other main characters better. It's not often that I say this, but this book could have been a good 50 pages longer! I was totally sucked in by her moral dilemma of whether the ends justify the means, and whether people can fundamentally change over time. I also enjoyed the peek into Japanese culture and being able to identify with Rio as a runner. I look forward to future work from Kelly Luce, for certain.

(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

Oh my goodness! I'm kicking myself for not having read this sooner. But I'm also jealous of anyone who hasn't read this most DELIGHTFUL true story of Helene Hanff and her letters exchanged with the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road. I love epistolary novels, and this was just a great segue into a nonfictional account of correspondence during the late 1940s until the 60s. It's the perfect uplifting book, which is handy these days, as a shining example of how people can be wonderful to each other.

(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

This book got a LOT of airtime on Book Riot and was also a Book of the Month pick, so I was intrigued. It was a gorgeous and sumptuous novel about an unlikely 19th century heroine of the of the Paris opera. I'm glad I started with lots of free time at the tail end of the holidays because it clocks in at 561 pages. An atmospheric novel is not usually my cup of tea, but the historical fiction aspect, and Lilliet's character haunted me and kept my attention. In many ways, it reminded me of Fingersmith: a very long, 19th century immersive story of plots within plots within plots... Sometimes I felt that Chee was trying a bit too hard with his provocative prose, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
"I wished it all to burn, to become a fire that would lay waste to the city, for me to turn from ember to inferno under the breath of whatever it was that would listen to my prayer and answer it."
Sometimes it dragged, while simultaneously seeming too complicated. This can certainly make for a frustrating reading experience, so your mileage may vary.

(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)

This story of a girl unraveling the mystery of her father's life, as he loses his battle with Alzheimer's, felt so real and raw, almost like a memoir. The cast of characters were wonderfully idiosyncratic and I loved them all. It was also a compelling coming of age story, with some astute gems like this one on teen girls:
"Ada could barely keep up with their swinging, shifting moods. They seemed to her like birds in flight, like starlings, changing direction with such collective unspoken force that it seemed as if they shared a central root system, a pine barren jointed together and invisibly beneath the earth."
The jumping back and forth in time to reveal plot points could be jarring for some, but I thought this created the perfect level of suspense. I also loved the way the author employed characters imbued in the science of AI to tell a story of what makes us human.
"sometimes, in her bed at night, Ada pondered the idea that she, in fact, was a machine --or that all humans were machines programmed in utero by their DNA, the human body a sort of hardware that possessed within it preloaded, self-executing software. And what, she wondered, did they say about the nature of existence? And what did it say about predestination? Fate? God?"
Sometimes it got a little long in the tooth, but overall, it was a haunting and memorable novel with one of the best epilogues I've ever read.
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)