Friday 5ive- August 5, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. It really is the Dog Days of Summer, this heat is crazy, even for August.

1) The Beach Club Book Club had our annual meeting at the beach club of one of our members. We read Adriana Trigiani's epic family novel, The Good Left Undone, and had a lovely luncheon. Our discussion of the book led us to talk about our own families, and the things we don't know about them but would like to.  Matelda, the protagonist of the novel, would have been pleased with us as one of the best quotes from the book is "Families are only as strong as their stories".  

Our host Kerry and her sister Kathy shared that their grandmother worked in vaudeville. She showed us photos and letters, and they even have a poster featuring their grandmother hanging on their wall. It was fascinating. We talked about the things our families have handed down, and many of those are family recipes, which we share in books, on printed tea towels, and wall hangings. Our desserts kept with the theme, with Italian cookies, cannolis and sfoglia (a nod to the Italian characters) and Scottish shortbread (in honor of Matelda's father, Scottish seaman John Lawrie McVicars).

Mary Beth printed two quotes from the book to inspire us, and she brought prosecco to toast to Matelda before we adjourned. Kerry even gave us each a lovely pin with our initials on it to commemorate Matelda's family business,  designing and creating jewelry. It was the perfect ending to another delightful Beach Club Book Club meeting.

Toasting to Matelda and Adriana Trigiani

Two of our favorite quotes from the book

Italian and Scottish-themed desserts

A jeweled initial pin was gifted to remember our discussion 

2)  As I was doing my laundry at 6:30am, it occured to me how much we depend on our phones for everything. The laundry room in our building now has an app (Hercules Mobile) that allows you to pay for your laundry without having to use a laundry card. You can start the washer and dryer with the app, refill the app with your credit card (and not have to worry if I have $20 in cash to refill the card), and the app will notify your phone when your laundry is done. It is also supposed to give a room status update so you can know if there any machines available for use, but this has not been working as of late. 

And speaking of a card I no longer need, you can use your phone to pay for subway rides. Every subway station now has Omni pay, so you can open your Apple wallet or credit card and tap and pay for your rides. This is all very convenient, as I hate digging around for cards in my wallet. However if I lose my phone, well I guess I won't be able to do laundry or go anywhere. 

When the app works, this is a great feature

3) I saw on our local news this morning that certain branches of the New York Public Library will be having a Dance Party on Saturday, August 6th. The Webster branch where the bookstore I volunteer is located is not on this list, however we at the Book Cellar will be having an all-day Dance Party while we sell books. Shall it be Disco, 70s, or 80s music tomorrow?

4)  I binge watched all eight episodes of the wonderful Uncoupled  on Netflix this week. Neil Patrick Harris is amazing as an almost-50 year old gay man who, on the night he throws a huge surprise 50th birthday party for his boyfriend of 17 years, discovers his boyfriend has moved out of their apartment. He is completely shell-shocked and turns to his friends (the fantastic Brooks Ashmanskas as an artgallery owner, Marcia Gay Harden as an Upper East Side divorcee, and Tisha Campell as his partner at a real estate firm) for help. Now that he is back in the dating scene, he finds it's a different story now that he is not in his twenties. If you liked Sex and the City, you'll love this. (It's created by Darren Star who did SATC.) It's poignant and funny and the New York setting is breathtaking. 

5) It was another busy week, but I managed to I read two books. Katie Gutierrez's novel, More Than You'll Ever Know, is one that true crime fans will want to read. Cassie writes about true crime for a website, something that she wishes paid better. When she comes across a newspaper story about a woman who was married to two men at the same time- one in Laredo, Texas, one in Mexico City- and one of the husbands killed the other one nearly thirty years ago, she wants to find out more. Lore was married to Fabian and they have twin sons. Lore has a good job at a bank, and she travels to Mexico for work frequently. Fabian's decorative ironwork business runs into problems as a recession decimates his business. He moves from Laredo to Austin to try and save the business while Lore remains home with their teenage sons. When she meets Andres in Mexico City, she is entranced by him and falls in love. How she ends up married to two men at the same time intrigues Cassie who manages to get Lore to agree to tell her story so Cassie can write a book about her. Gutierrez writes a compelling story, and she puts the reader inside the heads of these two intriguing women. It's a fascinating character study as well as a mystery, and the truth of what exactly happened the night of the murder consumes Cassie, as well as the reader. See if you can guess the ending. (Bonus- you'll be able to practice your high school Spanish.)

Jean Meltzer's new novel, Mr. Perfect on Paper, tells the story of Dana Rabinowitz, a third generation matchmaker. She updates her family's business when she creates the succcessful J-Mate, an app for Jewish people looking for a marriage mate. Dara has General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and one of the only things that calms her is listening to a police and fire scanner app. When Dara and her bubbe (grandmother), 90 year-old Miriam, appear on Good News, a national afternoon show with a small audience, Miriam embarasses Dara by sharing a list Dara made called Mr. Perfect on Paper.  The list is an extremely detailed description of the perfect man for Dara. Their segment goes viral much to Dara's dismay. The host of Good News, handsome single dad Chris Steadfast, decides that the only way to keep his show from being cancelled is to set Dara up on dates to find Mr. Perfect. Dara reluctantly agrees, knowing the publicity will help her company. Dara dealing with her GAD elevates this romantic novel, and as someone who isn't very familiar with Judiasm, I appreciated learning about the history and culture. (I also liked Meltzer's first novel, The Matzah Ball.) My full review posts on Tuesday.

Have a safe, healthy, cool week. Don't forget, you can support independent bookstores (including the Book Cellar) by buying books on Bookshop.org.

You can find this post and other food-related posts on Weekend Cooking at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader.  

The Beach Club Book Club Reads Jennifer Ryan's The Kitchen Front

It was time for the annual Beach Club Book Club summer book discussion. We couldn't go to the beach this year, so we discussed Jennifer Ryan's WWII novel, The Kitchen Front at the home of one of our members.

Mary Beth went all out with the theme of life in the small town outside of London during WWII. Four women compete in a cooking contest with the prize of cohosting on the BBC radio show, The Kitchen Front.

As we entered the kitchen, the island was set with the book surrounded by authentic posters from the era, and a recipe that Mary Beth made from the book- Audrey's Eggless Apple and Honey Cake (which was tasty). We were all glad that nothing with whale meat was served.

Susie made a family recipe that was handed down, potato and flour cakes fried in flour, because butter was in short supply in England in WWII.

Kerry made Victory Garden Brownies that were decorated like Audrey's garden.

Kathy put her own spin on "ration boxes", filled with wonderful appetizers. including mini wheels of brie, which made an appearance in the book. These were so cute, everyone wanted to steal the idea for their own parties.

Our discussion was insightful. We talked about the growth of the characters, particularly Lady Gwendoline, who began as a self-centered woman, but grew to become a strong, caring woman. Nell came out of her shell and showed her true accomplishments as a cook to honor Mrs. Quince, her mentor and friend. Many of us most identifed with Audrey, the widow raising her two sons, perhaps because many of us in the room have children.

We wondered if people today would be as stalwart when it came to handling the deprevations of wartime life- rationing food, growing our vegetables, raising animals (the Pig Club was interesting). The comparisons to the COVID lockdowns were commented on, and someone brought up the saying that during WWII people were asked to go to war, and during COVID we were just asked to sit on our couch and watch television,and some people found that too difficult.

Favorite scenes in the book were discussed, with the final competition scene with all the women marching into the room together receiving many comments. We liked the happy ending to the book, and hoped that perhaps the end of this book could lead into a sequel. We want to know what happens to these women once the war is over.

The Kitchen Front was big hit with the Beach Club Book Club, and if you like novels about female empowerment and friendship and the WWII British setting, you'd enjoy it too.

After a delicious and filling lunch of sandwiches, salad, quiche, and so many desserts, Kerry handed out gift bags she made for everyone. She included a bee bookmark, recipe cards, and pins and tiny ration cards. Mary Beth won the grand prize of a can of Spam. (My dad would have loved that, fried up in a pan.)

Posing with our books and aprons

The Beach Club Book Club

Friday 5ive- June 18, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week.

1) On Thursday night, my husband and I heard what we hoped was fireworks. We went out on our balcony and sure enough, there was barge in the East River shooting off fireworks. It was a few days too late for the Back to Normal celebration that New York State organized earlier in the week. Maybe it was practice for the Macys 4th of July Show?

2) My husband and I put together our new wine rack from Wine Enthusiast on Saturday. (Well, I held it together while my husband screwed in the 100 screws.) Thank goodness we had a cordless drill, we were able to finish in less than two hours. It's been awhile since we had to put furniture together.

3) I received the cutest invitation for our Beach Club Book Club meeting next month. The book is Jennifer Ryan's The Kitchen Front, about a cooking contest in England during WWII. I can't wait to read and discuss the book, if it's half as much fun as the invitation, it will be a great time.

4) We watched the hugely popular French TV series, Lupin, on Netflix this week. It tells the story of a man, Assane Diop, who sets about to avenge the false imprisonment and death of his father. Assane is a "gentleman thief", inspired by the French literature character Arséne Lupin, and it's a combination of Ocean's Eleven  and Sherlock Holmes. Omar Sy winningly portrays Assane Diop, a big man with a charming smile. It's fun to try and put the puzzle together as to what is happening. I forsee future Lupin tours of Paris, similiar to the Sex and the City tours in NYC. 

5) I read two terrific books this week. I stayed up late to finish in one day Laura Lippman's latest mystery, Dream Girl. Lippman has recently paid homage to books she loved Wilde Lake  (To Kill A Mockingbird), Sunburn (the novels of James M. Cain) and now she salutes Stephen King's Misery in Dream Girl. When writer Gerry Andersen is seriously injured in a fall at his Baltimore condo, he is bedridden and dependent on his young assistant Victoria, and the nurses and therapists who come to his home. He begins to get threatening phone calls from a woman who claims to be the character of his most famous book. Are these calls real or a figment of his imagination? It's a twisty mystery that goes back and forth in time through Gerry's life, and he has to take a look at how he has lived his life. and treated others, particularly the women, in his life. It's a fantastic, meaty mystery.

Julie Metz's nonfiction Eva and Eve, looks at the life of her mother, who escaped from Vienna with her parents during WWII. Metz and her mother had difficulties, and Metz hopes by visiting Vienna and Italy, where her mother spent nine days before boarding the ship to America, she will better understand her mother. If you only know about Austria's history during WWII from The Sound of Music or the brief mention of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany in your high school history book, you'll learn so much more about that important moment in history. It also has relevance in today's world if you look at what Russia is trying to do with the Ukraine and other neighboring countries. It's an enlightening book. My full review publishes June 28th. 

Our apartment building has lifted all mask requirements for vaccinated people, and it seems like teh whole world has changed for the better. I hope all is well in your part of the world as we get back to normal.

Friday 5ive- A Bookish Week

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my eye this week.
It's been a week filled with lots of exciting bookish things.

1) Thursday was our annual Beach Club Book Club meeting. We meet at a fantastic beach club on Atlantic Beach on Long Island. The weather was perfect-bright, sunny and hot. The ladies prepared some appetizers, followed by sandwiches and couscous salad, and ending with these gorgeous and delicious cookies baked by Buttercream and Biscuits. We had a great discussion of Lisa See's powerful novel, The Island of Sea Women.  (My full review is here.) The book is about two best friends, women divers on the island of Jeju, South Korea, and what happens when you can't forgive someone you love because you don't understand. One of the club members has a son who lives in South Korea and that gave an added dimension to our discussion. Many thanks to our hosts!

Beach Club Book Club

2) On Tuesday, I attended a book event at The Corner Bookstore on the Upper East Side for debut novelist Jonathan Vatner's book, Carnegie Hill. The overflow crowd (there were people outside on the sidewalk!) heard Jonathan read from a particularly humorous chapter (a scene about a woman visiting a doctor to consult about cosmetic surgery) of his book. Vatner, in discussion with author Grant Ginder, was inspired by a friend who lived in a co-op on the Upper East Side. His friend would share the emails he received from the co-op board, and Vatner turned that into this hilarious novel about residents of an Upper East Side co-op building that has gotten rave reviews. I can't wait to read it.

Jonathan Vatner

3) The Readerly Report is one of the podcasts that I subscribe to and enjoy a great deal. Gayle and Nicole talk candidly about the books they enjoy, the ones that didn't particularly move them, and other bookish things. They invited me on their show, and we had a fantastic chat about book events we attend, books we're reading, authors we like, and I answered their five questions they ask all their guests. You can listen to it here. And if you like podcasts about books, I highly recommend The Readerly Report, but be warned, listening will increase your To Be Read pile significantly.

4) I found the sign of the week at my local Italian grocery store, Agata & Valentina. While picking up some chicken thighs at the butcher counter, I noticed a sign advertising Filet Mignon from Seneca Falls NY. I was so excited, I took a photo and I know the butcher was wondering what I was doing.

5) In addition to my continued reading for our Italy trip, I read a memoir by Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy, Many Hands Make Light Work. It's about her family of nine children growing up in Iowa in the late 1960s, and 1970s. I loved this book! It's a sweet family story, and anyone from a big family will relate to it. The title comes from father Joe's favorite saying, "Many Hands Make Light Work" as the family owns several student rental homes, and the children spent much of their growing up years doing routine maintenance (mowing grass, shoveling snow, painting) and actual demolition on the homes. There's so much here to enjoy- a big Catholic family who enjoy each other's company, just reading about their daily routine will leave you speechless. Dad is a college professor, and Mom runs the home with an efficiency that is astonishing. Everyone should read this book, and I will have a full review this weekend.

We will be off to Italy next Friday, so I'll be back here in a few weeks with lots more to share with you all. Ciao!

The Beach Club Book Club Annual Meeting

Every year the Beach Club Book Club holds an annual meeting at the beach. We meet periodically during the year, but the beach club meeting is our favorite one, where we review many of the books we read during the year.

This year's meeting took place on a perfect summer day. The sky was bright blue, and the sun was shining. We grabbed our beach chairs, ate our delicious deli sandwiches and tasty Italian cookies and got down to business.

The Beach Club Book Club Annual Meeting

The books we talked about were:

• Marisa de los Santos' The Precious One
• Robin Antalek's The Grown Ups
• Jane Shemilt's The Daughter
• Ellen Herrick's The Sparrow Sisters
• Laura Lippman's Every Secret Thing
• Dorothea Benton Frank's The Hurricane Sisters

We noticed a theme here- many of the books were about sisters. The Sparrow Sisters was enjoyable for many of us because we have sisters whom we are close to, like in the book, and many of us grew up in a small town like the setting of the book. 

We understood the closeness of the sisters and the blessings and curses of living in a town where everyone knows everything about you. There were comments about how quickly the town was to turn on Patience when a tragic event occurs. It was noted that the men in the town turned against her more quickly. The women in the town supported her. 

Some of us felt that the doctor, Patience's new boyfriend and newcomer to the town, was little wimpy. He claimed to love Patience, but when she needed him most, he was more than willing to allow her sisters to care for her while he stayed away.

One character we liked was Charlotte, who could have been a stock wealthy, self-involved woman out to keep a rival away from her husband, but she had a lot of depth to her and was very supportive of her husband.

The Precious One also revolved around sisters- Taisy, writer whose father deserted the family when she was teenager, and Willow, her father's teenage daughter with the woman her left his family for years ago.

Taisy and Willow get to know each warily, and we liked both characters, feeling that Taisy could be a character in one of Adriana Trigiani's books. One of our group has twins- a boy and a girl- and she loved the fact that Taisy has a twin brother whom she is close to.

Dorothea Benton Frank's The Hurricane Sisters was another good read. We like Frank's writing style, especially the sense of humor she injects into her stories. There is a more serious side to this story, with a young woman dating an older man who is very controlling, and this sparked some conversation in the group about women we know in a similar situation. 

Every Secret Thing sparked a lot of conversation. Alice and Ronnie were young girls when they are accused of kidnapping a baby from a porch. The girls went to prison and when they were 18, they were released. Soon another child disappears and the girls are again suspect.

We enjoyed Lippman's way with the story, we felt that she kept the suspense all the way through. She develops her characters so well, and throws in a lot of red herrings that kept us guessing what would happen, even beyond the ending of the story.

There was one character we didn't particularly like, and that was the high-priced lawyer recruited to help. Some felt that she was weird and not fleshed out as a character. The female detective assigned to the new missing child case, Nancy, was an intriguing character. She had a connection to the original case, and Lippman had us wondering what her real story is.

We also talked about reading in general. We all love to browse in book stores and card stores. All of us have ereaders, so we compared reading on ereaders versus reading print books. There is a tendency to download many books on the ereaders that don't necessarily get read. 

Print books that we own we tend to read more. Maybe it's a case of "out of sight, out of mind"; we don't see our ebooks, but we do see our print books, beckoning us from our bookshelves.

It was also felt that we tend to skim books more on the ereaders, and we read print books more thoroughly.

We see many people reading actual books on the train, and we agreed that we like to give kids print books as gifts.

It was a terrific day and the Beach Club Book Club looks forward to meeting in the city to see the holiday displays and talk more bookish things.

Thanks to The Book Club Girl Book Club for providing books.

The Beach Club Book Club Reads The Precious One

The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos
Published by William Morrow ISBN 9780062323804
Hardcover, $25.99, 368 pages

As Marisa de los Santos' The Precious One opens, Taisy Cleary receives a phone out of the blue from her estranged father Wilson, the man who left her mother, twin brother Marcus and her to marry a young sculptor. After not hearing from the man in ages, he calls her to inform her that he had a heart attack two weeks ago and summons her to his home to discuss an important matter.

Marcus tells Taisy she is crazy to go see the man, but Taisy cannot say no. When she arrives, she finds that her father- a brilliant professor, inventor and self-made millionaire- wants her to help him write his memoir. Or rather, he will dictate it to Taisy and she can interview the many people who think he is brilliant too.

Taisy says yes, even though she has to stay in the poolhouse. (You wouldn't expect her to be allowed to stay in her father's house with his wife and brilliant and beautiful golden child Willow, would you?)

The only thing Willow knows about her half sister is that Taisy committed some horrible act when she was a teenager that made Wilson infuriated and lose all respect for her. Now Taisy is in their lives and Willow feels she must protect her father from her.

The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Taisy and Willow. Taisy is curious about her father and his other family and slowly comes to care for Willow and her mother. Willow has been isolated from most other people, being homeschooled and smothered by her father's attention.

As Taisy and Willow get to know each other, they come to understand and even like each other. Taisy helps Willow join the outside world, teaching her the things she needs to know.

As I read this book, I felt like Taisy could be a character in an Adriana Trigiani novel. She is a hardworking woman with a good sense of humor, and an even more developed sense of right and wrong.  There's even a crazy family dinner scene that reminded me of the Roncalli family ones from Trigiani's Valentine series.

The ladies in the book club all agreed that we liked Taisy, she might even make a great addition to our book club. Her growing affection for Willow and Willow's mother was touching and sweet. One of our members has twins, so she especially enjoyed the relationship between Taisy and Marcus.

We did not like Wilson, he was pompous and self-righteous, although Taisy's discovery of his past helped to mitigate that feeling somewhat (OK, just a little bit).

This was the first book I have read of de los Santos, and I would like to read more of them. I like her style of writing, and the way she was able to write in the voices of two distinct characters.

If you're looking for a good family story, The Precious One is an excellent choice.

The Beach Club Book Club Reads The Daughter

The Daughter by Jane Shemilt
Published by William Morrow ISBN 9780062320476
Trade paperback, $14.99, 341 pages

Jenny is a hardworking doctor, married to a successful surgeon and mother to three teenagers. Her fifteen-year-old daughter Naomi has been acting distant lately, which bothers Jenny since they have always been close. She attributes it to all the pressures of school, working hard on the school play and just normal teenage angst.

Then one night Jenny doesn't come home from play rehearsal. Jenny and Ted call her friends, drive around the town, and still no Naomi. Shemilt captures the raw fear and panic of realizing that your child is missing. Any parent reading it will have a visceral reaction to this story.

The story is told in alternating time lines, from the day she disappears and then one year later, with Naomi still gone and no answers from the police. Writing it this way made the story stronger for me, knowing that Naomi hasn't been found allows the reader to concentrate on the emotions of the family, rather than the actual search for Naomi.

Naomi's disappearance reveals many secrets about Jenny's family. She discovers that the things she believes to be true about her marriage and her children aren't necessarily so. Naomi hid many things from her mother, and one thing you find from reading The Daughter is that you may think you know everything about your children, but they may have an entirely different life than the one you think they do.

Watching Jenny suffer through her daughter's disappearance is tough. She tries to get through each day, wondering where her daughter is and what happened to her. Then there are the reactions of her two sons; as time goes on, she discovers things about them she never thought possible.

I'm not sure how I feel about the resolution to the story. It is definitely one that will engender conversation and controversy. One of our members said she felt it fell flat at the end, and she wasn't crazy about the characters.

The Daughter is a suspense thriller that does make a good book club pick because it will have people, especially mothers of teenagers, talking. It provokes strong reactions, and as a mother to sons, I wonder if I have a different reaction than mothers of daughters.

The Beach Club Book Club Reads A Memory of Violets by Hazel Gaynor

A Memory of Violets by Hazel Gaynor
Published by William Morrow ISBN 978-0-06-231689-9
Trade paperback, $14.99, 386 pages

The Beach Club Book Club enjoyed Hazel Gaynor's historical fiction The Girl Who Came Home, and so when the opportunity to read her novel A Memory of Violets came up with the Book Club Girl Book Club, we took it.

Irish sisters Florrie and Rose live in poverty in 1876 London, selling small posies of violets and watercress at Covent Garden's flower markets. Their mother is dead and their father is an awful man. Florrie always cared for her little sister, but one day they are separated and Florrie is panicked looking everywhere for Rose but not finding her.

Rose ended up hiding in the carriage of a wealthy woman, who took pity on the poor child and eventually convinced her husband to raise the child as their own. Florrie found refuge working and living with other young girls who made flowers to sell.

The conditions were nice, and the program was run by a kind, wealthy man who believed that helping these girls find a better life was his calling. But Florrie never stopped looking for Rose, hoping that one day they would be reunited.

The story moves forward to 1912, where a young woman named Tillie ends up working as a housemother's assistant in one of Mr. Shaw's Training Homes for Watercress and Flower Girls. She finds a journal written by a former resident, Florrie, and tries to find out what happened to Florrie and Rose.

The Beach Club Book Club loved A Memory of Violets. One of our members praised the sister theme (she has three older sisters), and compared the flower storyline to another book we had read, The Language of Flowers.

She also enjoyed the theme of how fate plays such an important part in our lives. Two quotes that resonated with her were:

"There is a reason for everything and everything has a reason. Keep a close eye on life and you'll know what the reason is."

And one quote that her children used in their yearbook was also in the book:

"Give the world your best and the best will come back to you."

Since some of us in the club are Irish, we enjoyed that aspect of the story. Irish families tend to be big and like to stay together, something we could relate to. Among the final thoughts about A Memory of Violets were that it was an enjoyable and heartwarming read, and we liked it even more than The Girl Who Came Home. We can't wait to read Hazel Gaynor's next one.

rating 5 of 5

Our review of The Girl Who Came Home is here.

The Beach Club Book Club Reads The Girl Who Came Home

The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor
Published by William Morrow ISBN 978-0-06-231686-8
Trade paperback, $14.99, 362 pages

The Beach Club Book Club, as part of Book Club Girl's book club, read Hazel Gaynor's historical fiction The Girl Who Came Home- A Novel of the Titanic. Taking the true story of a group of fourteen people from a small Irish countryside village who were on the Titanic, Gaynor uses the prism of one passenger, 17 year-old Maggie Murphy, to tell her tale.

Maggie's aunt Kathleen, who moved to Chicago to start a new life, returns to Ireland after Maggie is orphaned. Kathleen has come to take Maggie back to America with her, although Maggie does not want to leave behind the young man she loves.

Along with thirteen other people from their small village, they book passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, the most impressive ship ever built. Maggie and her friends meet a young steward Harry, who has eyes for pretty Peggy.

Gaynor's descriptions of life on the Titanic mesmerized us all. The opulence of the first class passengers, and life in the steerage, which was still impressive for many of the passengers, was so vividly portrayed. The author dropped the reader right onto this massive ship, making us feel as if we were along for the voyage too.

The action picks up when the ship hits the iceberg, and Gaynor also ratchets up the tension, and even though we know the outcome, it is startling and heartbreaking. The scenes of the survivors hearing the weakening cries from the sinking ship are gut-wrenching. For my money, this book was as good as the movie Titanic in creating that picture in the reader's mind, an amazing accomplishment for the author.

Maggie's story is interspersed with her great-granddaughter's Grace's. Grace loses her father when she is in college, and comes home to care for her mother. Maggie decides to share her story of the Titanic with Grace for a newspaper feature story Grace hopes to write to start her journalism career.

I liked the relationship between Maggie and Grace, and fans of Christina Baker Kline's Orphan Train will also enjoy this aspect of The Girl Who Came Home. But like The Orphan Train, I felt that the older woman's story was so powerful, it somewhat overwhelmed the younger woman's story. Fans of Kate Kerrigan's Ellis Island trilogy will like this book as well.

One of group mentioned that although she felt she knew what was going to happen (there is a surprise twist at the end) we all still greatly enjoyed The Girl Who Came Home. I am a big fan of stories that start with a true story or character and build from there, and The Girl Who Came Home scored a big hit with me.

 rating 4 of 5

Hazel Gaynor's website is here: http://www.hazelgaynor.com/

Here are some links for other historical fiction I have enjoyed:
Miramont's Ghost- set in a real castle built in Manitou Springs, Colorado
Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker
Orphan Train
Fever- about the life of Typhoid Mary

The Beach Club Book Club Reads Three Story House

Three Story House by Courtney Miller Santos
Published by William Morrow ISBN 978-0-06-213054-9
Trade paperback, $14.99, 376 pages

The Beach Club Book Club, as part of the Book Club Girl's book club, read Courtney Miller Santo's newest novel, Three Story House.  The novel tells the story of three cousins, Lizzie, Isobel and Elyse, who spent a lot of time together as young girls.

As adults, they come together to restore a nearly condemned three story house in Memphis that belonged to Lizzie's grandmother. Lizzie' mom and stepdad own the house now, but they are in Africa doing missionary work with their young children. Lizzie has always felt like an outsider in her family, and she never knew who her real father was.

Isobel was a child star who starred in a long-running TV series when she was growing up. Now that she is an adult, she has found that TV roles have dried up, and she works on buying and restoring houses to sell them at a profit.

Elyse is a lost soul. She has never found her calling in life, flitting from one thing to another. She never seems to plan ahead and every action she takes is a reaction to something else, not something she instigates. Elyse is devastated when her younger sister announces her engagement to a man Elyse has loved since she was a teenager.

Lizzie is a soccer player, good enough to make the US Olympic team until a knee injury derails her dream. Isobel has been helping her on the mend when the chance to return to Memphis and Lizzie's grandma's home comes up. They decide to stay at the house, and using Isobel's knowledge, they attempt to renovate the home.

Elyse shows up with her broken heart, and the three cousins are reunited with a mission. The women face an uphill battle to fix the broken-down home. The contractor they hire, who knew Lizzie's grandmother, seems to be hiding something. Permits and inspections are daunting. There are also the requisite unattached males who attract the cousins' attention.

There seem to be a lot of mother issues in this story. Elyse's mom is a bridezilla's stereotypical control freak, unsympathetic to her daughter's feelings. Lizzie's mother refuses to tell her anything about her father, and appears more concerned with her religion than her daughter.

Miller's previous book, The Roots of the Olive Tree, has similar mother issues, and the lead character in that book, 117-year-old Anna, has a cameo appearance in this story. Readers of the first book will enjoy seeing Anna again, and they will like Three Story House as well.

While The Beach Club Book Club enjoyed Three Story House and the cousin angle was interesting (two of us are cousins in the book club!), we felt that maybe more could have been done with the story. We did like the home renovation storyline. As with many books who have multiple protagonists, one character seems to get a little lost in the shuffle, and we felt that way about Isobel. We also felt that the ending was somewhat abrupt.

At the end, Miller shares some of the history of so-called 'spite houses', which was fascinating stuff, that inspired her novel.

rating 3.5 of 5 stars

Beach Club Book Club- GI Brides by Duncan Barrett & Nuala Calvi

GI Brides  by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
Published by William Morrow ISBN 978-0-06-232805-2
Trade paperback, $14.99, 361pages

After talking to her grandmother Margaret about her experiences as a GI bride, author Nuala Calvi knew that there was a book in that. Along with Duncan Barrett, they did much research and from that came the book GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love. 

The focus of the book is on four British women- Margaret, Lyn, Rae and Sylvia. The story begins in the days of WWII in England, where these young women worked and volunteered in the war effort. They each met an American GI, fell in love, and married their soldier.

When the war was over, the men went home, and their new brides soon followed. Our Beach Club Book Club received copies of the book from The Book Club Girls, and we discussed it yesterday over breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien before doing a little Christmas shopping at the Winter Village at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan.

At Bryant Park

One of the topics of discussion included the incredible number of British women who married U.S. soldiers. At the end of the war, over 70,000 women had to be transported to America to begin their new lives. We all marveled at the sheer logistics of doing this, and how the U.S. government, along with aid from the Red Cross, was able to get these women on ships and to their new husbands.

As expected, the adjustment to their new lives was difficult. Along with cultural differences, many of these women didn't know exactly what they were getting into. They only knew their husbands briefly before marrying them, and we wondered if they married so quickly because of the shortage of young men in England (so many were killed during the war), or because they realized that life was short and you couldn't let it pass you by.

We admired the bravery of these women, leaving their families and homes and traveling thousands of miles away. When things got difficult- one husband was an alcoholic, one was a gambler, one was a philanderer, one had mother issues- these women didn't have much of a support system to rely on to help them. And going home was not an option.

Rae's bravery impressed us. She left her cheating husband and found a job as a live-in nanny with a wonderful family. She loved the family, and they loved her, but she knew eventually she would have a build a life of her own, which she did.

Sylvia ended up in Baltimore, living with her husband Bob and his family. Bob had a gambling problem, and his family enabled him, even encouraged his behavior. Sylvia later found support by joining groups founded by other GI war brides.

Lyn ended up with her husband Ben in California. Ben's Italian family were very close, and his mother was a stereotypical Italian mother. She washed and ironed her son's clothes perfectly, and cooked elaborate Italian meals. Lyn could not meet her mother-in-law's impossible standards, and was very unkind to her non-Italian daughter-in-law, and that caused much conflict.

Margaret and the charismatic Lawrence had three daughters, and Lawrence's alcoholism deteriorated into domestic violence. Having nowhere to turn, Margaret moved to Ireland, where her abusive mother took in her and the children.

All of these women showed an amazing ability to overcome tough times and difficult marriages. They made the best lives they could, and eventually thrived and even found happiness.

We all agreed it took awhile to get into the book, and it was difficult to keep the women and their husbands straight at first. But as we read, it became easier and we found each women's story so interesting. We thought that either a chart in the beginning with each woman and her husband and children and family would have helped, or perhaps telling each women's story in their own section as opposed to in chronological order may have solved that issue.

rating 4 of 5