Review: Forever This Summer

Forever This Summer

About the Book:

Georgie has no idea what to expect when she, Mama, and Peaches are plopped down in the middle of small town USA--aka Bogalusa, Louisiana--where Mama grew up and Great Aunt Vie needs constant care.

Georgie wants to help out at the once famous family diner that served celebrities like the Jackson 5 and the Supremes, but everyone is too busy to show her the ropes and Mama is treating her like a baby, not letting her leave her sight. When she finally gets permission to leave on her own, Georgie makes friends with Markie--a foster kid who'd been under Aunt Elvie's care--who has a limb difference and a huge attitude.

Then Markie asks Georgie to help her find her mom, and suddenly summer has a real purpose. But as Georgie and Markie's histories begin to entwine, Georgie becomes more desperate to find the truth. But words spoken cannot be taken back and once Georgie knows the truth, she may even find a way to right past wrongs and help Aunt Vie and Markie out after all.

My Comments:

I don't usually read kids/YA books but for some reason this one caught my eye.  It is set in Bogalusa, which is about an hour and a half from my home in suburban New Orleans.  Bogalusa is a relatively small paper mill town and you catch an air of the town's main industry as you drive into town--like a paper company executive one told me  "Smells like money to me"--and stinks to most people.  

The characters are all African-American but the writing and dialogue in the book is standard English.  The story includes features of African-American culture such as step dancing, silk sleeping bonnets, castor oil for hair, and extensions with long braids.  It sees the "bad" side of the small southern town through the eyes of those who live in it--and of course it isn't really bad, just poorer than the White side of town and of course, the people who live there are Black.  They stick together and look out for each other, in a way that puts many of us to shame.

On the other hand, this book shows that Black culture is not monolithic any more than White culture is.  Georgie lives in Atlanta, which is a far different world than the Black side of Bogalusa.  In the opinion of this late middle-aged White woman, Leslie Youngblood did a good job of of showing Black culture without turning it into a caricature of itself.   

The climax of the story is a fund-raising talent show put on by the girls and while it seems a little far-fetched that such a complex show was put together by some twelve year olds, it wasn't just the girls, it was the community coming together to take care of their own.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley.  Grade: B+  

 

It's Monday: What Are You Reading

 

I'm linking up with Kathryn and the gang over at Book Date. where we share what we've been reading and talk about life in general.

Due to a computer error, one of my husband's out-of-town customers did not get his order Friday, so Saturday he took a two hour drive to deliver it himself.  As it was a beautiful day and I like spending time with my husband, I went with him.  On the way back we stopped at a small state park to explore.  I'm not sorry we stopped, but we won't be back--not enough there to make it worth going out of our way.

My daughter was confirmed this week.  It was also her birthday.  In a year, for the first time in 30 years, we will have no minor children in the house.  Hard to believe.  My husband got his Medicare card last week--he's older than I am. 

Not much reading this week.  I published two book reviews:

My Review

My Review

Hope everyone has a great reading week and that all the moms had a wonderful Mother's Day.  If you want to support a debut author, Kathleen Basi is holding a launch party for her book Song for the Road on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. central via Zoom.  Here is the link  

Review: The Summer Seekers

 

The Summer Seekers

About the Book:

Kathleen is eighty years old. After she has a run-in with an intruder, her daughter wants her to move in to a residential home. But she’s not having any of it. What she craves—what she needs—is adventure.

Liza is drowning under the daily stress of family life. The last thing she needs is her mother jetting off on a wild holiday, making Liza long for a solo summer of her own.

Martha is having a quarter-life crisis. Unemployed, unloved and uninspired, she just can’t get her life together. But she knows something has to change.

When Martha sees Kathleen’s advertisement for a driver and companion to share an epic road trip across America with, she decides this job might be the answer to her prayers. She’s not the world’s best driver, but anything has to be better than living with her parents. And traveling with a stranger? No problem. Anyway, how much trouble can one eighty-year-old woman be?

As these women embark on the journey of a lifetime, they all discover it’s never too late to start over.

My Comments:

I wonder how I am screwing up my kids and their lives.  It seems that the last batch of books I've read seem to feature young adults whose parents had been less than perfect and who caused pain to their kids. I certainly know that "less than perfect" describes me, so how am I messing up my kids' lives? 

Kathleen had been cheated on when she was young, and so protected herself by creating a life in which her job and adventures trumped her relationships, including her relationship with her daughter, Liza.  Liza in turn has created a life in which relationships came first, to the point that her family takes her for granted.  Martha has realized that what she wants in life and what her parents want for her are two different things.  In The Summer Seekers Kathleen and Martha, who are British head out on a road trip from Chicago to California.  As they travel Kathleen thinks back on her life and the choices she made.  She also realizes that her time to make changes is getting shorter.

Liza, due to some things her mother says to her on the way to the airport, decides to take some time to decide what she wants in life.  I enjoyed watching her spread her wings.  Like me, Liza was the mom of kids about ready to leave the nest.  

Usually when I think of a "road trip", I think of a trip by car where the journey is part of the fun---not just a way to get from Point A to Point B.  It's a great metaphor for life--we are all headed from birth to death--but at a lot of intersections we get to pick which way to go, and those choices, whether good or bad, make us who we are.  

I enjoyed this book and getting to know Martha, Liza and Kathleen (and yes, there are romance sub-plots but this is really a book about the women) and recommend it.  Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy via NetGalley.  Grade:  A

Review: Confessions from the Quilting Circle

 Confessions from the Quilting Circle

About the Book:

When Lark Ashwood’s beloved grandmother dies, she and her sisters discover an unfinished quilt. Finishing it could be the reason Lark’s been looking for to stop running from the past, but is she ever going to be brave enough to share her biggest secret with the people she ought to be closest to?

Hannah can’t believe she’s back in Bear Creek, the tiny town she sacrificed everything to escape from. The plan? Help her sisters renovate her grandmother’s house and leave as fast as humanly possible. Until she comes face-to-face with a man from her past. But getting close to him again might mean confessing what really drove her away...

Stay-at-home mom Avery has built a perfect life, but at a cost. She’ll need all her family around her, and all her strength, to decide if the price of perfection is one she can afford to keep paying.

This summer, the Ashwood women must lean on each other like never before, if they are to stitch their family back together, one truth at a time...

My Comments:

There was a lot to like in this book, which is why I stayed up to 1:00 a.m. on a work  night reading it.  Three sisters and their mother are working together to close out their grandmother/mother's estate. While cleaning out the house they find fabric for a quilt that Grandma never got around to making and through journals found with the fabric, learn about women in their family's past, including Grandma.  Each of the four women was working with a different piece of fabric and of course they all end up with the one that they really needed to see, the ancestress who had a story that for whatever reason, came close to hers.  

Lark and Hannah both left town with secrets, and Avery has now acquired one.  As they sit and sew and as they live their lives that summer, they share their secrets and gain the strength to move beyond them.  Unfortunately to me, it seemed there were just too many secrets that were just too serious to believe they all belonged to one family.  Also the book had two romantic subplots and except for the fact that the men had different names and one man had a child and the other didn't, I really couldn't tell them apart.  Either of the romance subplots was believable on its own, but having two so similar just didn't ring true to me.

 

One thing I liked about the book was that the girls' mother was a strong secondary character.  While the sisters were in their 30's, their mom was about my age and she was a doer, like me.  Like me she wanted to be closer to her grown kids but didn't quite know how to reach out.  Like I hope I'd be, she was there for her girls when the chips were down and she knew they needed her. 

 

The book has a couple of bedroom scenes--too much to make it a "clean" romance but nothing anywhere near an instruction manual.  

 

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley.  Grade: B