The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

I feel like this is a book that will haunt me for a while. This was our book club selection for February and I loved it.

I have read a LOT of books about World War II and it makes you wonder how many stories are left to be told. But this one took a different approach and taught me some things I had never learned in a history class.

Vianne and Isabelle are French sisters who have led a difficult life. Their mother died when they were quite young, and their father, damaged from his time in WWI isn't able to care for them. They are sent from their life in Paris to live at a family home in the country. Vianne falls in love and marries quite young and Isabelle ends up bouncing around from school to school, a problem student who never seems to be able to find her place in life.

When WWII erupts, Vianne's husband leaves to fight, leaving her at home with their young daughter, Sophie. Isabelle gets kicked out of yet another school so her father sends her to live with Vianne to help during her husband's absence. Isabelle isn't satisfied with this and quickly joins a resistance group, trying to liberate France from Nazi occupation. She develops a plan that will help downed Allied airmen who have landed in France to escape over the Pyrenees to Spain where they can return home to take up the fight once again. She becomes known as the Nightingale and makes nearly 30 of these treks over the mountains to lead men to safety.

In the meantime, Vianne is left in the family home, with German soldiers billeting in her home against her will. Starving, cold, and alone, Vianne is forced to make some difficult decisions to protect her home and her family.

It is a beautiful story of how these women each found their strength in completely different ways. One jumped into dangerous decisions too quickly, the other acted out of a desperate desire to keep her loved ones safe.

I had never heard anything about downed airmen escaping over the mountains to safety. I've seen The Sound of Music, but I have read that the real story is a lot less exciting than portrayed in the movie and that there wasn't actually an escape over the mountains. But these escapes happened, lots of them. You can read a bit more about that here.

It is a beautiful book, full of pain, heartbreak and life-altering decisions. It is beautifully written and I highly recommend it.

The Girls by Emma Cline

Rob gave me this book for Christmas, and before I received it I hadn't heard a thing about it. I had somehow missed it on all the book blogs and sites I regularly follow. It had been recommended by Zoe Whittall, who wrote the other book he gave me for Christmas so he thought it would be a fun pairing. I like reading  books knowing absolutely nothing about the plot, so I didn't look up any information about the book before I started reading it. I thought it was going to be a book about girls understanding who they are and finding their place in the world. I didn't realize that would be happening in the context of the Charles Manson story.

This is the story of Evie Boyd, a 14-year old girl growing up in California in the summer of 1969. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mom, who is trying to rediscover herself as she re-enters the dating world. Evie also fights with her childhood best friend. Without her mom or her best friend, Evie finds herself drawn to a group of girls she sees in the park. She ends up joining these girls (led by the beautiful Suzanne) to a ranch where they all live together. The ranch is led by Russell, the charismatic leader. Evie gets caught up in life on the ranch, slowly leaving her life at home behind her. Throughout the book we also hear from Evie as a grown woman, looking back at her time on the ranch, her fascination with Suzanne and her desire to have been part of that group.

The book uses the story of Charles Manson and fictionalizes it, looking at it through the eyes of Evie. What made these people do what they did? Why didn't Evie join them? What is in her (or in all of us) to keep that from happening? What was missing in Suzanne and the others that caused them to kill innocent people?

The book was deeply disturbing in parts, but still quite fascinating. It was an interesting look into this horrifying story. I probably wouldn't have read it if I had known ahead of time that it was about Charles Manson, but in the end I'm glad I did read it.

The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall

Finally! A book that I read for fun, not for my book club. Rob gave me this one for Christmas, and a friend had previously recommended it, so I was eager to give it a read. I am going to have problems reviewing it, because I really enjoyed it up until the last 10 pages or so. However, I found the ending really unsatisfying, so it kind of ruined everything else for me. I will try to do my review without any sort of spoilers, but I apologize if I inadvertently give something away.

George Woodbury is a hero in Avalon Hills. He once stopped a school shooter from his attempt at attacking the private school where George was a teacher. The shooter had his gun out and George's daughter, Sadie, was the only student in the hallway at the time. George was in the right place at the right time and attacked the shooter, preventing a tragedy. After this, he is voted Teacher of the Year every year and is well-loved by everyone.
So everyone is surprised when George is suddenly arrested in his home, accused of the attempted rape of a student and inappropriate behaviour with other students. Can it be true?

George himself is a minor character, the rest of the story is told through the eyes of his daughter, Sadie and his wife, Joan and how they react to their new situation. It is a well written story, looking at rape culture, relationships, and how a family can survive this kind of trauma. Secrets are revealed, old hurts are brought back to the surface, and questions are raised about what the characters thought they knew.

All in all, a pretty good read, but a very frustrating ending!

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Suspenseful thrillers seem to be the big trend in modern literature. It started around the time Gone Girl was released a few years ago, and seems to be continually on the rise with each passing month. A trip to Indigo will have countless suspenseful reads on display, ready to grab your attention. I've tried a few of them, and haven't been all that thrilled, so I was a little leery when this was chosen as our book club selection for January. But I have to say, of all that I've read in this style in recent years, this one has been my favourite so far.

This is the story of Anne and Marco Conti. They are the parents of 6-month old Cora and are invited to a dinner party at their next door neighbour's house. The hostess has made it clear that their crying baby isn't welcome in her home, so when the babysitter cancels at the last minute Anne and Marco don't know what to do. Because they live in adjoining townhouses, they decide it would be ok to leave the baby at home, while they take the baby monitor with them and take turns checking on her every half hour. Everything goes along fine, until they return home after 1:00 AM to find the baby's crib empty. The rest of the book is the search for Cora and the unravelling of family secrets, which helps to solve the mystery.

It was a fast, exciting read, I managed to read it over the course of three days, which is pretty quick for me. If you are looking for a light, entertaining read, this would be a good place to start.

I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb

Reading Wally Lamb's work makes me nervous. Some of his books are on my lists of all time favourite reads (I Know This Much is True and Wishin' and Hopin'), some have been kind of mediocre for me (She's Come Undone and The Hour I First Believed) and I absolutely hated one (We Are Water).  After my disturbing experience with We Are Water, I was hesitant about reading any more of his work. However, when the synopsis showed that this book revived the characters from Wishin' and Hopin', I bought the book, hoping I'd love it as much as I loved Wishin' and Hopin'.

I didn't. But it wasn't as bad as We Are Water. So I put this one in his mediocre category for me.

Felix Funicello, who was a young boy in the first book, is now in his 60's and is a professor of film studies. He is divorced, and the father of a grown daughter, who is a writer in New York City. While preparing for his Monday night film club at a local theatre (restored to it's original beauty from its beginnings in the 1920's), he encounters the ghosts of Lois Weber, a pioneering film director and Billie Dove, an actress from the 20's. They present Felix with film reels, which hold the contents of his life. He is to watch these films, relive some painful parts of his past, and learn from them.

The book is a look at the struggles women have faced over time, what we have learned from our past, and how far we still need to go. At times it read like a feminism textbook. Some of the conversations seemed forced and unnatural. But it is important to consider how women at different levels of society have been treated over the years, and what our daughters will still be facing in the years to come. Aside from that, I was disappointed in the lack of the humour I experienced the first time I met these characters. But on the whole it is a good read, and I recommend it.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

I am a big fan of classic literature, but have somehow made it to this point in my life without having read anything by Jules Verne. The kids and I have been wanting to read this book for years, after hearing Doc and Marty talk about Jules Verne in Back to the Future 3. So we started it as our before bed read a couple of months back. One chapter at a time and we finished it earlier this week. We all loved it!

This is the story of Phileas Fogg and his servant, Passepartout, who embark on a journey around the world to settle a bet between Fogg and some of his friends. The book was published in 1873, so the idea of travelling around the world in so short a time was absurd. But Fogg was convinced he could do it, so he and Passepartout set off, leaving London behind them. Their adventure took them all around the world, using all kinds of means of travel, from elephant to ocean liner. They encounter lots of interesting characters in their journey, who add a lot of excitement to the trip. There is also a case of mistaken identity, which makes you wonder if Fogg truly is who you think he is. The ending was very exciting and had us on the edge of our seats. We couldn't wait to hear how it ended.

The language is a bit old fashioned, as you would expect from a book published in 1873. I had to paraphrase a few times, but on the whole we just loved it. Up next, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

There seems to be a lot of buzz about this book right now so I picked it up a while back with a gift card. It was on every list of the best books of 2016, and was recommended to me by the reading sites I use as something that would interest me.  So, I decided to read it.

Ugh. I did not enjoy this book. Granted, I was reading it during a very busy time for me (getting married and moving and trying to fit two houses into one) so maybe I wasn't in the best frame of mind to read right now. But I'm not sure there would ever be a time in my life when I would enjoy this book.

It is the story of the Plumb family, mainly focused on the eldest child, Leo, but including the stories of his siblings Beatrice, Jack and Melody as well. Their father had set up a trust fund (which they nicknamed "The Nest") for them that ended up growing beyond any of their expectations. There were each due to receive their share when the youngest child, Melody, turned 40. But a few months short of her 40th birthday, Leo was involved in a serious accident and "The Nest" was used as a legal settlement to avoid a big scandal. The rest of the family had been counting on receiving their share of the money soon, and had each gotten themselves into some financial trouble, counting on this money to come to their rescue.

The result of this is a bunch of entitled, unlikable characters. There are very few redeeming qualities in any of them. Beatrice is probably the most likable of them all, but none of them seemed to be all that interested in working for what they needed, everyone was hoping for a huge sum of money to mysteriously fall into their laps. It made it very hard for me to be interested in reading it at all, so it took me months to get through the book. The final third of the book moved along quickly, and I got through that quickly, but it took me months to get through the first two-thirds.

I'm still not sure where all they hype surrounding this book came from, but a lot of people seemed to like it. I am not one of those people!