Good Reads & Views

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes 
Fiction 

What happens: Recently widowed, Evvie Drake has decided to rent out the apartment in the back of her house to help get over her grief of losing her husband. She wasn’t expecting Major League Baseball Player Dean Tenney (a pitcher who has a bad case of the yips) to want her apartment. For this to work out, Evvie can’t talk to Dean about baseball and Dean can’t ask Evvie about her deceased husband. Of course, rules always have a way of getting broken. 

Reviewers say: “Believable, flawed characters are at the heart of this novel. At times deeply emotional yet sometimes extremely humorous. This is a satisfying crowd-pleaser” (Publishers Weekly).

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One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid 
Fiction 

What sets it apart: Emma marries her high school sweetheart Jesse, and they live happily ever after. Well, that is until Jesse goes missing on their one-year wedding anniversary. Years later, Emma finds herself in her 30’s and falling for an old friend, Sam. The couple get engaged and start to plan their future together. All is well until Jesse is found…alive! How will Emma ever decide between her husband and her fiancé? 

Why you might like it: Taylor Jenkins Reid does an excellent job of showing the internal conflict Emma goes through when choosing between Jesse and Sam. This is a heart-wrenching read that leaves readers guessing till the end, on who is the love of Emma’s life. 

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Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elyssa Friedland
Fiction 

Why this book: A perfect read for those who daydreamed about vacationing in the Catskills (Dirty Dancing anyone??). For sixty years the Golden Hotel has been owned by the Goldman and Weingold families. With the older generation getting older, the hotel and its legacy is up in the air. The younger generation isn’t into all the hard work that goes into preserving and running the hotel and buyers have come a knocking with plans to tear it down and build luxury resorts. Will the two families do everything in their power to save the hotel, or will they let the legacy of the hotel live in the past? 

Reviewers say: “Friedland brings laughs and nuance to the family foibles and demonstrates a wide range in her convincing narration from the many points of view. Breezy and charming, this is great fun” (Publishers Weekly).

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The Layover by Lacie Waldon
Fiction 

What it’s about: Ava Green has been a flight attendant for the past 10 years. Recently engaged, her fiancé is set on her quitting her job and living a more settled life. On her last flight, bad boy flight attendant Jack Stone is on the crew and trouble ensues. The airplane is grounded in Belize and the crew is taken to a resort to stay until the plane is fixed. Ava can’t seem to escape Jack and her personal life starts to unravel. Will Ava finally hang up her wings and settle down with her fiancé, or will she continue to explore the world and float from place to place? 

Why you might like it: This is a debut novel that shows the behind the scenes of being a flight attendant. If you enjoy the enemies-to-lovers trope with a will they, won’t they plot, this is a light and easy read.  

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The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
Fiction

What it’s about: It's about a young woman who is hired as a personal assistant to a commanding fashion magazine editor, a job that becomes frightening as she struggles to keep up with her boss's strenuous schedule and belittling demands.

Why you might like it: If you like fashion and learning about what happens in the fashion world, and what some people will go through for the sake of fashion, then you need to read this book.

You might also like: The Assistants by Camille Perri

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An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
Fiction

Featuring: Maud, a Swedish lady in her upper 80’s. She never married, lives alone, and prefers to keep it that way.

What it’s about: Maud lives in a nice, big apartment in a building that used to belong to her family. She pretends to be a sweet, confused, and rather frail old lady when it suits her, but woe to those who invoke her wrath. She’s actually in great physical shape for someone her age, sharp as a tack, and ruthless beyond measure when it comes to - permanently - getting rid of nuisances that interfere with her enjoyment of life… A small book, but, like Maud, it packs a punch.

Author note: Helene Tursten also writes the Irene Huss crime series and Irene makes a brief appearance in this book.

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Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
Fiction

Inspired by the movie “The Magnificent Seven,” four friends leave their Mexican village in search of seven men who can protect their town from drug-dealing thugs. Idealistic Nayeli, the group’s leader, is only nineteen, but her strong will and determination inspire her friends to follow her on this risky and dangerous quest. Her posse includes Yolo, a liberal thinking intellectual; goth-girl Vampi; and Nayeli’s boss, Tacho, probably the only gay man in their village. Along the way, they encounter a host of inventive and colorful characters who help or hinder them—the heroic warrior of the garbage dump, the young missionary once stationed in the village, the border agent who’s seen it all, and the darkwave metal band guitarist looking for love. This rollicking adventure is peppered with funny but sometimes gritty details that ground the book and make it real. 

Heartburn by Nora Ephron       
Fiction

Cookbook writer and very pregnant Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband Mark is in love with another woman.  Traveling back and forth between Washington D.C., where she lives with her husband, and New York City to stay at her father’s house, she continues to write, make television appearances and salvage her devastated marriage.  The story is based on the author Nora Ephron’s own life and divorce from her first husband and she is able to add humor to her very sad story.  The audiobook is wonderfully narrated by the actress Meryl Streep who played Rachel in the movie.  Nora Ephron also wrote the screenplay.

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Fiction

Borogravia is at war and Polly decides to go find her missing soldier brother. She cuts her hair, dresses like a male (including an appropriately placed pair of socks), practices manly noises, and off she goes to the recruiting station. She is welcomed into the army, along with a vampire, an igor, a troll, and a werewolf, among others. Hilarity ensues in this tale of Pratchett’s  Discworld series that can easily be enjoyed without having to read any previous books in the series. Recently adapted for the stage at Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre, earning a four-star review from the Chicago Tribune.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Fiction

This farcical historical fiction begins one afternoon when the abolitionist crusader John Brown rides into town;  by that evening the 11 year old slave boy named Henry is orphaned, kidnapped (or set free) and mistaken for a girl. Henry adjusts easily to life as a girl because "a damsel out west on the trail could spit, chaw tobacco, holler, grunt, and fart, and gather no more attention to herself than a bird would snatching crumbs off the ground.” Only other black people look at him closely enough to suspect that he is isn’t really a girl. Unable to correct the gender error, for the next few years Henry travels with Brown’s raiding party as Brown’s good luck charm, dubbed “little Onion.” He lives for a time in a Missouri brothel and falls in love with a prostitute, meets a courageous slave girl who dies for freedom, and accompanies Brown on countless raids as well as fundraising trips where he meets Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. Larger-than-life characters and boisterous adventure contrast with tragic situations and clashing passions in this unusual look at events (real and imagined) leading up to the start of the Civil War. Winner of the 2013 National Book Award.