Multiple layers of mystery and romance, Southern sensibilities, and dark family secrets combine to make Summer in the South one of those novels that you don't want to put down. On the surface the story sounds deceivingly typical: disenchanted aspiring writer Ava Dabrowski is at a personal and career crossroads when old college friend Will Fraser invites her to abandon her job in Chicago and spend the summer living and writing a novel at his family home in Woodburn, Tennessee. Ava, who has recently lost her free-spirited mother, Clotilde, and ended a stressful romance, agrees to the arrangement, quits her job in Chicago, and drives to Tennessee with Clotilde's ashes strapped into the front passenger seat of her car.
Will's great aunts, Fanny and Josephine, and Fanny's husband, Maitland Sinclair, welcome Ava to their home and community. Sweet tea, a friendly flirtation with Will, daily 5 o'clock "toddy time," and breakfasts with her amiable hosts lull Ava into a relaxing routine, but her muse remains elusive and her novel unwritten until she is inspired by the story of the mysterious death of Fanny's first husband, Charlie Woodburn. A recurrence of her childhood sleep paralysis (complete with a ghostly presence in her room) and access to old family journals inspire Ava to spend her nights writing the fictionalized story of Charlie's mysterious life and death. Ava is intrigued by past and present family secrets and by ostracized cousin Jake Woodburn, but none of these are things that the Woodburn family wants to discuss. Complicating Ava's summer are new revelations regarding her nomadic childhood with Clotilde, Will's obvious desire to move their relationship in a different direction, and her friendship with Jake.
Holton has created a quirky small-town atmosphere and intriguing and endearing characters, combining wonderful references to the 1920's and to more recent past. Multi-layered and mysterious, this one is a winner. I would recommend it!
BIBLIOPHILY
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
REAP WHAT YOU SEW (Elizabeth Lynn Casey)
Hollywood comes to Sweet Briar, SC when the town is chosen as the set for a movie starring Anita Belise, a notoriously difficult actress with an allergy to nuts. Leona Elkin, 60-something vamp and one of the Southern Sewing Circle group (except that she doesn't actually sew) sets her sights on the movie's famous director, Warren Shoemaker. The only thing standing in the way of her romance with Warren is Anita, whose sudden death from anaphylactic shock sends waves of shock, suspicion, and relief through the movie's crew and the townspeople. Unfortunately, Anita's "death by brownie" can be directly linked to a batch of nut-filled goodies baked by Leona' sister, Mary Louise, after Tori facetiously suggests that nuts would be a good way to get Anita out of Leona's way. As usual, Tori and the Sewing Circle are now persons of interest in the investigation into Anita's murder. Could Leona actually be guilty? If so, could Tori and Mary Louise be implicated? Tori pulls out all the stops to investigate the movie's crew to discover who may have killed the difficult actress before he police zero in local suspects. Another winner!
DANGEROUS ALTERATIONS (Elizabeth Lynn Casey)
Tori's ex-fiance Jeff (the one who cheated on her with a close friend at their engagement party!) shows up in Sweet Briar after the sudden death of his Aunt Vera. No love is lost between Jeff, Vera's heir, and his cousin Garret, Vera's step-son, an abusive husband who expected to inherit her estate. When healthy, athletic Jeff drops dead during a jog through town it is assumed that he suffered a heart attack. Will forensic evidence point to foul play? Naturally, Tori, the jilted lover, will be one of the main suspects, but it appears that there are many other people with more compelling motives.
Casey delves just a little bit deeper into her characters and their pasts with each book in this series, and with each one the reader becomes more entrenched in the lives of the ladies of the Sweet Briar Southern Sewing Circle. I enjoyed this one even more than the previous books because I know and love the characters better with each book. I'm looking forward to the new one and to Casey's visit to our library in September!
Casey delves just a little bit deeper into her characters and their pasts with each book in this series, and with each one the reader becomes more entrenched in the lives of the ladies of the Sweet Briar Southern Sewing Circle. I enjoyed this one even more than the previous books because I know and love the characters better with each book. I'm looking forward to the new one and to Casey's visit to our library in September!
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
TYME OF NOW (Michael Walsh)
In today's hi-tech environment there is little opportunity for teens to exercise their imaginations. The Internet, Smart phones, and video games provide instantaneous 24/7 access to entertainment and social networking, a veritable kaleidoscope of ideas, colors and sounds, all available at the push of a button or the flick of a switch. Sometimes it seems like technology has eradicated any need for personal creativity, which brings me to what I consider to be the strongest element of Mike Walsh's latest fantasy, Tyme of Now: room for imagination.
Mike's writing style is clean and precise, not excessively embellished. The tone is gentle and the story is character-driven. He provides basic descriptions of his characters: age, hair and eye color, height, and build and establishes relationships and necessary background information while clearly defining who is good (Nathan, Tyme, Clara), who is bad (Clarence, Corwin), and what motivates his characters. We kind of know (or hope) early on who is going to win in the end because of their innate goodness, but that's OK because we immediately care about Mike's characters and we WANT good to triumph over evil. From the first page the reader understands that there is trouble brewing, that old conflicts between the Kingdoms of Now and Gorin are going to be resolved very soon, and that it might be bloody. If this were a feature film we could just sit back and relax waiting to be bombarded with glorious battle scenes, gore, and special effects, with perhaps a love scene or two thrown in for effect, but I think we might miss the point.
Here, of course, there ARE the requisite menacing bad guys, exciting super powers, a grueling training regimen for wizards called the Gauntlet, and a few scary fireballs thrown in the heat of battle, all the stuff you'd wish for in a decent fantasy (especially those fireballs!). One of the best examples of how Mike nurtures the reader's imagination is during the Gauntlet sequence. All we know about this sequence of challenges is that every time a trainee fails they emerge soaked with water. The point is not to showcase the physical challenges of the course or to focus on competition among the trainees, but to illustrate the loyalty, discipline, and common goals of the participants. Of course I did find myself wondering what they were doing (scaling rock walls? target shooting?), but I think that focusing on "what" instead of "why" would have detracted from the characters. This section reminded me a bit of the author's autobiographical "Eddie's Method," an exercise in character-building.
As I also observed in reviewing one of Mike's earlier novels, a lot of the action takes place between the lines. The reader is given the opportunity to imagine, to see the story unfold in their mind's eye instead of being slapped in the face with a plethora of details. I have nothing against richly embellished prose; in fact, I often love it, but there is something very positive to be said about a more minimal approach. When it comes to fantasy, an author has a choice of making a work exclusively his own or allowing his readers to share in developing some aspects of the story through their own imaginations. Mike Walsh provides an opportunity for his readers to share in the creative process with him by creating a group of intriguing, well-defined characters in an appealing setting, making us care about them, and letting us fill in some of the details on our own. Interactive reading helps to build imagination and creativity. This is a great thing!
Mike's writing style is clean and precise, not excessively embellished. The tone is gentle and the story is character-driven. He provides basic descriptions of his characters: age, hair and eye color, height, and build and establishes relationships and necessary background information while clearly defining who is good (Nathan, Tyme, Clara), who is bad (Clarence, Corwin), and what motivates his characters. We kind of know (or hope) early on who is going to win in the end because of their innate goodness, but that's OK because we immediately care about Mike's characters and we WANT good to triumph over evil. From the first page the reader understands that there is trouble brewing, that old conflicts between the Kingdoms of Now and Gorin are going to be resolved very soon, and that it might be bloody. If this were a feature film we could just sit back and relax waiting to be bombarded with glorious battle scenes, gore, and special effects, with perhaps a love scene or two thrown in for effect, but I think we might miss the point.
Here, of course, there ARE the requisite menacing bad guys, exciting super powers, a grueling training regimen for wizards called the Gauntlet, and a few scary fireballs thrown in the heat of battle, all the stuff you'd wish for in a decent fantasy (especially those fireballs!). One of the best examples of how Mike nurtures the reader's imagination is during the Gauntlet sequence. All we know about this sequence of challenges is that every time a trainee fails they emerge soaked with water. The point is not to showcase the physical challenges of the course or to focus on competition among the trainees, but to illustrate the loyalty, discipline, and common goals of the participants. Of course I did find myself wondering what they were doing (scaling rock walls? target shooting?), but I think that focusing on "what" instead of "why" would have detracted from the characters. This section reminded me a bit of the author's autobiographical "Eddie's Method," an exercise in character-building.
As I also observed in reviewing one of Mike's earlier novels, a lot of the action takes place between the lines. The reader is given the opportunity to imagine, to see the story unfold in their mind's eye instead of being slapped in the face with a plethora of details. I have nothing against richly embellished prose; in fact, I often love it, but there is something very positive to be said about a more minimal approach. When it comes to fantasy, an author has a choice of making a work exclusively his own or allowing his readers to share in developing some aspects of the story through their own imaginations. Mike Walsh provides an opportunity for his readers to share in the creative process with him by creating a group of intriguing, well-defined characters in an appealing setting, making us care about them, and letting us fill in some of the details on our own. Interactive reading helps to build imagination and creativity. This is a great thing!
DEATH THREADS / PINNED FOR MURDER / DEADLY NOTIONS (Elizabeth Lynn Casey)
I'm reviewing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th books in Casey's Southern Sewing Circle series together because, in an unusual step for me, I read them one after the other! I love the characters in this delightful series, but I usually need to wait a while before reading the next book in any series. Since the author (real name: Laura Bradford) will be at our library for a third visit in September, I realized that I have been quite lax, just coveting and enjoying immensely the wonderful cover art and clever titles lined up on a shelf in my kitchen but neglecting to actually read the rest of the books. If you are reading this, Laura, I apologize and pledge to have them all read by the time I see you again, especially because I'm having a great time! Tori Sinclair and her Southern Sewing Circle friends become more endearing with each novel.
Tori, small-town librarian and amateur sleuth, investigates the disappearance of best-selling author Colby Calhoun in "Death Threads." After revealing the true story behind the legend of Sweet Briar's Civil War era destruction by fire and rebirth from the ashes, Colby disappears, leaving a trail of blood and a community that feels he may have gotten what he deserved. Anxious to solve the apparent murder of friend Debbie's husband, the ladies of the sewing circle leave no seam unsewn in their quest to solve Colby's disappearance.
In "Pinned for Murder," wealthy, mean Martha Jane is found dead, strangled with a piece of rope. The murder victim is the next-door neighbor of sewing circle member Rose and the prime suspect is Rose's former student, Kenny, a developmentally disabled young man with a temper. Rose is convinced of Kenny's innocence and Tori does her best to prove that someone else committed the crime.
"Deadly Notion"s features fashion designer Ashley Lawson, the helicopter mother from Hell. In her quest to make sure that her daughter Penelope is the center of attention at all times she wreaks havoc with nearly everyone in town, so when she is found murdered there are plenty of suspects, even members of the Tori's sewing Circle, many of whom were overheard at a library event suggesting that strangling Ashley would be a good idea. To add to the stress, Milo Wentworth's high-school flame Bethany has returned to town hell-bent on rekindling her romance with Tori's boyfriend. This series just gets better and better and the ending is spectacular. Don't peek!
Tori, small-town librarian and amateur sleuth, investigates the disappearance of best-selling author Colby Calhoun in "Death Threads." After revealing the true story behind the legend of Sweet Briar's Civil War era destruction by fire and rebirth from the ashes, Colby disappears, leaving a trail of blood and a community that feels he may have gotten what he deserved. Anxious to solve the apparent murder of friend Debbie's husband, the ladies of the sewing circle leave no seam unsewn in their quest to solve Colby's disappearance.
In "Pinned for Murder," wealthy, mean Martha Jane is found dead, strangled with a piece of rope. The murder victim is the next-door neighbor of sewing circle member Rose and the prime suspect is Rose's former student, Kenny, a developmentally disabled young man with a temper. Rose is convinced of Kenny's innocence and Tori does her best to prove that someone else committed the crime.
"Deadly Notion"s features fashion designer Ashley Lawson, the helicopter mother from Hell. In her quest to make sure that her daughter Penelope is the center of attention at all times she wreaks havoc with nearly everyone in town, so when she is found murdered there are plenty of suspects, even members of the Tori's sewing Circle, many of whom were overheard at a library event suggesting that strangling Ashley would be a good idea. To add to the stress, Milo Wentworth's high-school flame Bethany has returned to town hell-bent on rekindling her romance with Tori's boyfriend. This series just gets better and better and the ending is spectacular. Don't peek!
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